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THE CALL OF THE WILD

by Jack London




      Contents

      I     Into the Primitive
      II    The Law of Club and Fang
      III   The Dominant Primordial Beast
      IV    Who Has Won to Mastership
      V     The Toil of Trace and Tail
      VI    For the Love of a Man
      VII   The Sounding of the Call





Chapter I. Into the Primitive


         “Old longings nomadic leap,
          Chafing at custom's chain;
          Again from its brumal sleep
          Wakens the ferine strain.”

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble
was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong
of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.
Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal,
and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the
find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted
dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by
which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

Buck lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge
Miller's place, it was called. It stood back from the road, half hidden
among the trees, through which glimpses could be caught of the wide
cool veranda that ran around its four sides. The house was approached by
gravelled driveways which wound about through wide-spreading lawns and
under the interlacing boughs of tall poplars. At the rear things were on
even a more spacious scale than at the front. There were great stables,
where a dozen grooms and boys held forth, rows of vine-clad servants'
cottages, an endless and orderly array of outhouses, long grape arbors,
green pastures, orchards, and berry patches. Then there was the pumping
plant for the artesian well, and the big cement tank where Judge
Miller's boys took their morning plunge and kept cool in the hot
afternoon.

And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and here he
had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other
dogs, There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did
not count. They came and went, resided in the populous kennels, or lived
obscurely in the recesses of the house after the fashion of Toots, the
Japanese pug, or Ysabel, the Mexican hairless,--strange creatures that
rarely put nose out of doors or set foot to ground. On the other hand,
there were the fox terriers, a score of them at least, who yelped
fearful promises at Toots and Ysabel looking out of the windows at them
and protected by a legion of housemaids armed with brooms and mops.

But Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole realm was his.
He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge's sons;
he escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge's daughters, on long twilight
or early morning rambles; on wintry nights he lay at the Judge's feet
before the roaring library fire; he carried the Judge's grandsons on his
back, or rolled them in the grass, and guarded their footsteps through
wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard, and even
beyond, where the paddocks were, and the berry patches. Among the
terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he utterly
ignored, for he was king,--king over all creeping, crawling, flying
things of Judge Miller's place, humans included.

His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge's inseparable
companion, and Buck bid fair to follow in the way of his father. He was
not so large,--he weighed only one hundred and forty pounds,--for his
mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog. Nevertheless, one hundred
and forty pounds, to which was added the dignity that comes of good
living and universal respect, enabled him to carry himself in right
royal fashion. During the four years since his puppyhood he had lived
the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride in himself, was even
a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become because of
their insular situation. But he had saved himself by not becoming a mere
pampered house-dog. Hunting and kindred outdoor delights had kept down
the fat and hardened his muscles; and to him, as to the cold-tubbing
races, the love of water had been a tonic and a health preserver.

And this was the manner of dog Buck was in the fall of 1897, when the
Klondike strike dragged men from all the world into the frozen North.
But Buck did not read the newspapers, and he did not know that Manuel,
one of the gardener's helpers, was an undesirable acquaintance. Manuel
had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his
gambling, he had one besetting weakness--faith in a system; and this
made his damnation certain. For to play a system requires money, while
the wages of a gardener's helper do not lap over the needs of a wife and
numerous progeny.

The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers' Association, and the
boys were busy organizing an athletic club, on the memorable night of
Manuel's treachery. No one saw him and Buck go off through the orchard
on what Buck imagined was merely a stroll. And with the exception of a
solitary man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag station known
as College Park. This man talked with Manuel, and money chinked between
them.

“You might wrap up the goods before you deliver 'm,” the stranger said
gruffly, and Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around Buck's neck
under the collar.

“Twist it, an' you'll choke 'm plentee,” said Manuel, and the stranger
grunted a ready affirmative.

Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was an
unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew, and to
give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own. But when the ends
of the rope were placed in the stranger's hands, he growled menacingly.
He had merely intimated his displeasure, in his pride believing that to
intimate was to command. But to his surprise the rope tightened around
his neck, shutting off his breath. In quick rage he sprang at the man,
who met him halfway, grappled him close by the throat, and with a deft
twist threw him over on his back. Then the rope tightened mercilessly,
while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and
his great chest panting futilely. Never in all his life had he been so
vilely treated, and never in all his life had he been so angry. But his
strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew nothing when the train was
flagged and the two men threw him into the baggage car.

The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting and
that he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance. The hoarse
shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him where he was. He
had travelled too often with the Judge not to know the sensation of
riding in a baggage car. He opened his eyes, and into them came the
unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man sprang for his throat, but
Buck was too quick for him. His jaws closed on the hand, nor did they
relax till his senses were choked out of him once more.

“Yep, has fits,” the man said, hiding his mangled hand from the
baggageman, who had been attracted by the sounds of struggle. “I'm
takin' 'm up for the boss to 'Frisco. A crack dog-doctor there thinks
that he can cure 'm.”

Concerning that night's ride, the man spoke most eloquently for himself,
in a little shed back of a saloon on the San Francisco water front.

“All I get is fifty for it,” he grumbled; “an' I wouldn't do it over for
a thousand, cold cash.”

His hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief, and the right trouser leg
was ripped from knee to ankle.

“How much did the other mug get?” the saloon-keeper demanded.

“A hundred,” was the reply. “Wouldn't take a sou less, so help me.”

“That makes a hundred and fifty,” the saloon-keeper calculated; “and
he's worth it, or I'm a squarehead.”

The kidnapper undid the bloody wrappings and looked at his lacerated
hand. “If I don't get the hydrophoby--”

“It'll be because you was born to hang,” laughed the saloon-keeper.
“Here, lend me a hand before you pull your freight,” he added.

Dazed, suffering intolerable pain from throat and tongue, with the life
half throttled out of him, Buck attempted to face his tormentors. But he
was thrown down and choked repeatedly, till they succeeded in filing the
heavy brass collar from off his neck. Then the rope was removed, and he
was flung into a cagelike crate.

There he lay for the remainder of the weary night, nursing his wrath and
wounded pride. He could not understand what it all meant. What did they
want with him, these strange men? Why were they keeping him pent up in
this narrow crate? He did not know why, but he felt oppressed by the
vague sense of impending calamity. Several times during the night he
sprang to his feet when the shed door rattled open, expecting to see the
Judge, or the boys at least. But each time it was the bulging face of
the saloon-keeper that peered in at him by the sickly light of a tallow
candle. And each time the joyful bark that trembled in Buck's throat was
twisted into a savage growl.

But the saloon-keeper let him alone, and in the morning four men entered
and picked up the crate. More tormentors, Buck decided, for they were
evil-looking creatures, ragged and unkempt; and he stormed and raged at
them through the bars. They only laughed and poked sticks at him, which
he promptly assailed with his teeth till he realized that that was what
they wanted. Whereupon he lay down sullenly and allowed the crate to be
lifted into a wagon. Then he, and the crate in which he was imprisoned,
began a passage through many hands. Clerks in the express office took
charge of him; he was carted about in another wagon; a truck carried
him, with an assortment of boxes and parcels, upon a ferry steamer; he
was trucked off the steamer into a great railway depot, and finally he
was deposited in an express car.

For two days and nights this express car was dragged along at the tail
of shrieking locomotives; and for two days and nights Buck neither ate
nor drank. In his anger he had met the first advances of the express
messengers with growls, and they had retaliated by teasing him. When he
flung himself against the bars, quivering and frothing, they laughed
at him and taunted him. They growled and barked like detestable dogs,
mewed, and flapped their arms and crowed. It was all very silly, he
knew; but therefore the more outrage to his dignity, and his anger waxed
and waxed. He did not mind the hunger so much, but the lack of water
caused him severe suffering and fanned his wrath to fever-pitch. For
that matter, high-strung and finely sensitive, the ill treatment had
flung him into a fever, which was fed by the inflammation of his parched
and swollen throat and tongue.

He was glad for one thing: the rope was off his neck. That had given
them an unfair advantage; but now that it was off, he would show them.
They would never get another rope around his neck. Upon that he was
resolved. For two days and nights he neither ate nor drank, and during
those two days and nights of torment, he accumulated a fund of wrath
that boded ill for whoever first fell foul of him. His eyes turned
blood-shot, and he was metamorphosed into a raging fiend. So changed was
he that the Judge himself would not have recognized him; and the express
messengers breathed with relief when they bundled him off the train at
Seattle.

Four men gingerly carried the crate from the wagon into a small,
high-walled back yard. A stout man, with a red sweater that sagged
generously at the neck, came out and signed the book for the driver.
That was the man, Buck divined, the next tormentor, and he hurled
himself savagely against the bars. The man smiled grimly, and brought a
hatchet and a club.

“You ain't going to take him out now?” the driver asked.

“Sure,” the man replied, driving the hatchet into the crate for a pry.

There was an instantaneous scattering of the four men who had carried
it in, and from safe perches on top the wall they prepared to watch the
performance.

Buck rushed at the splintering wood, sinking his teeth into it, surging
and wrestling with it. Wherever the hatchet fell on the outside, he was
there on the inside, snarling and growling, as furiously anxious to get
out as the man in the red sweater was calmly intent on getting him out.

“Now, you red-eyed devil,” he said, when he had made an opening
sufficient for the passage of Buck's body. At the same time he dropped
the hatchet and shifted the club to his right hand.

And Buck was truly a red-eyed devil, as he drew himself together for the
spring, hair bristling, mouth foaming, a mad glitter in his blood-shot
eyes. Straight at the man he launched his one hundred and forty pounds
of fury, surcharged with the pent passion of two days and nights. In
mid air, just as his jaws were about to close on the man, he received
a shock that checked his body and brought his teeth together with an
agonizing clip. He whirled over, fetching the ground on his back and
side. He had never been struck by a club in his life, and did not
understand. With a snarl that was part bark and more scream he was again
on his feet and launched into the air. And again the shock came and he
was brought crushingly to the ground. This time he was aware that it was
the club, but his madness knew no caution. A dozen times he charged, and
as often the club broke the charge and smashed him down.

After a particularly fierce blow, he crawled to his feet, too dazed to
rush. He staggered limply about, the blood flowing from nose and mouth
and ears, his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slaver.
Then the man advanced and deliberately dealt him a frightful blow on
the nose. All the pain he had endured was as nothing compared with the
exquisite agony of this. With a roar that was almost lionlike in its
ferocity, he again hurled himself at the man. But the man, shifting the
club from right to left, coolly caught him by the under jaw, at the same
time wrenching downward and backward. Buck described a complete circle
in the air, and half of another, then crashed to the ground on his head
and chest.

For the last time he rushed. The man struck the shrewd blow he had
purposely withheld for so long, and Buck crumpled up and went down,
knocked utterly senseless.

“He's no slouch at dog-breakin', that's wot I say,” one of the men on
the wall cried enthusiastically.

“Druther break cayuses any day, and twice on Sundays,” was the reply of
the driver, as he climbed on the wagon and started the horses.

Buck's senses came back to him, but not his strength. He lay where he
had fallen, and from there he watched the man in the red sweater.

“'Answers to the name of Buck,'” the man soliloquized, quoting from the
saloon-keeper's letter which had announced the consignment of the crate
and contents. “Well, Buck, my boy,” he went on in a genial voice, “we've
had our little ruction, and the best thing we can do is to let it go at
that. You've learned your place, and I know mine. Be a good dog and all
'll go well and the goose hang high. Be a bad dog, and I'll whale the
stuffin' outa you. Understand?”

As he spoke he fearlessly patted the head he had so mercilessly pounded,
and though Buck's hair involuntarily bristled at touch of the hand,
he endured it without protest. When the man brought him water he drank
eagerly, and later bolted a generous meal of raw meat, chunk by chunk,
from the man's hand.

He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for
all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned
the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club was
a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law,
and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer
aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the
latent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days went by, other dogs
came, in crates and at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and some raging
and roaring as he had come; and, one and all, he watched them pass
under the dominion of the man in the red sweater. Again and again, as he
looked at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven home to Buck:
a man with a club was a lawgiver, a master to be obeyed, though not
necessarily conciliated. Of this last Buck was never guilty, though he
did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails,
and licked his hand. Also he saw one dog, that would neither conciliate
nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery.

Now and again men came, strangers, who talked excitedly, wheedlingly,
and in all kinds of fashions to the man in the red sweater. And at such
times that money passed between them the strangers took one or more of
the dogs away with them. Buck wondered where they went, for they never
came back; but the fear of the future was strong upon him, and he was
glad each time when he was not selected.

Yet his time came, in the end, in the form of a little weazened man who
spat broken English and many strange and uncouth exclamations which Buck
could not understand.

“Sacredam!” he cried, when his eyes lit upon Buck. “Dat one dam bully
dog! Eh? How moch?”

“Three hundred, and a present at that,” was the prompt reply of the man
in the red sweater. “And seem' it's government money, you ain't got no
kick coming, eh, Perrault?”

Perrault grinned. Considering that the price of dogs had been boomed
skyward by the unwonted demand, it was not an unfair sum for so fine
an animal. The Canadian Government would be no loser, nor would its
despatches travel the slower. Perrault knew dogs, and when he looked at
Buck he knew that he was one in a thousand--“One in ten t'ousand,” he
commented mentally.

Buck saw money pass between them, and was not surprised when Curly, a
good-natured Newfoundland, and he were led away by the little weazened
man. That was the last he saw of the man in the red sweater, and as
Curly and he looked at receding Seattle from the deck of the Narwhal, it
was the last he saw of the warm Southland. Curly and he were taken below
by Perrault and turned over to a black-faced giant called Francois.
Perrault was a French-Canadian, and swarthy; but Francois was a
French-Canadian half-breed, and twice as swarthy. They were a new kind
of men to Buck (of which he was destined to see many more), and while
he developed no affection for them, he none the less grew honestly to
respect them. He speedily learned that Perrault and Francois were fair
men, calm and impartial in administering justice, and too wise in the
way of dogs to be fooled by dogs.

In the 'tween-decks of the Narwhal, Buck and Curly joined two other
dogs. One of them was a big, snow-white fellow from Spitzbergen who had
been brought away by a whaling captain, and who had later accompanied
a Geological Survey into the Barrens. He was friendly, in a treacherous
sort of way, smiling into one's face the while he meditated some
underhand trick, as, for instance, when he stole from Buck's food at the
first meal. As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of Francois's whip
sang through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing remained
to Buck but to recover the bone. That was fair of Francois, he decided,
and the half-breed began his rise in Buck's estimation.

The other dog made no advances, nor received any; also, he did not
attempt to steal from the newcomers. He was a gloomy, morose fellow, and
he showed Curly plainly that all he desired was to be left alone, and
further, that there would be trouble if he were not left alone. “Dave”
 he was called, and he ate and slept, or yawned between times, and took
interest in nothing, not even when the Narwhal crossed Queen Charlotte
Sound and rolled and pitched and bucked like a thing possessed. When
Buck and Curly grew excited, half wild with fear, he raised his head as
though annoyed, favored them with an incurious glance, yawned, and went
to sleep again.

Day and night the ship throbbed to the tireless pulse of the propeller,
and though one day was very like another, it was apparent to Buck that
the weather was steadily growing colder. At last, one morning, the
propeller was quiet, and the Narwhal was pervaded with an atmosphere of
excitement. He felt it, as did the other dogs, and knew that a change
was at hand. Francois leashed them and brought them on deck. At the
first step upon the cold surface, Buck's feet sank into a white mushy
something very like mud. He sprang back with a snort. More of this white
stuff was falling through the air. He shook himself, but more of it fell
upon him. He sniffed it curiously, then licked some up on his tongue. It
bit like fire, and the next instant was gone. This puzzled him. He tried
it again, with the same result. The onlookers laughed uproariously, and
he felt ashamed, he knew not why, for it was his first snow.




Chapter II. The Law of Club and Fang


Buck's first day on the Dyea beach was like a nightmare. Every hour was
filled with shock and surprise. He had been suddenly jerked from the
heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial.
No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be
bored. Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment's safety. All
was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril.
There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men
were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no
law but the law of club and fang.

He had never seen dogs fight as these wolfish creatures fought, and his
first experience taught him an unforgetable lesson. It is true, it was
a vicarious experience, else he would not have lived to profit by it.
Curly was the victim. They were camped near the log store, where she, in
her friendly way, made advances to a husky dog the size of a full-grown
wolf, though not half so large as she. There was no warning, only a leap
in like a flash, a metallic clip of teeth, a leap out equally swift, and
Curly's face was ripped open from eye to jaw.

It was the wolf manner of fighting, to strike and leap away; but there
was more to it than this. Thirty or forty huskies ran to the spot and
surrounded the combatants in an intent and silent circle. Buck did not
comprehend that silent intentness, nor the eager way with which they
were licking their chops. Curly rushed her antagonist, who struck again
and leaped aside. He met her next rush with his chest, in a peculiar
fashion that tumbled her off her feet. She never regained them, This
was what the onlooking huskies had waited for. They closed in upon her,
snarling and yelping, and she was buried, screaming with agony, beneath
the bristling mass of bodies.

So sudden was it, and so unexpected, that Buck was taken aback. He saw
Spitz run out his scarlet tongue in a way he had of laughing; and he saw
Francois, swinging an axe, spring into the mess of dogs. Three men
with clubs were helping him to scatter them. It did not take long. Two
minutes from the time Curly went down, the last of her assailants were
clubbed off. But she lay there limp and lifeless in the bloody, trampled
snow, almost literally torn to pieces, the swart half-breed standing
over her and cursing horribly. The scene often came back to Buck to
trouble him in his sleep. So that was the way. No fair play. Once down,
that was the end of you. Well, he would see to it that he never went
down. Spitz ran out his tongue and laughed again, and from that moment
Buck hated him with a bitter and deathless hatred.

Before he had recovered from the shock caused by the tragic passing
of Curly, he received another shock. Francois fastened upon him an
arrangement of straps and buckles. It was a harness, such as he had seen
the grooms put on the horses at home. And as he had seen horses work,
so he was set to work, hauling Francois on a sled to the forest that
fringed the valley, and returning with a load of firewood. Though his
dignity was sorely hurt by thus being made a draught animal, he was too
wise to rebel. He buckled down with a will and did his best, though
it was all new and strange. Francois was stern, demanding instant
obedience, and by virtue of his whip receiving instant obedience;
while Dave, who was an experienced wheeler, nipped Buck's hind quarters
whenever he was in error. Spitz was the leader, likewise experienced,
and while he could not always get at Buck, he growled sharp reproof now
and again, or cunningly threw his weight in the traces to jerk Buck
into the way he should go. Buck learned easily, and under the combined
tuition of his two mates and Francois made remarkable progress. Ere they
returned to camp he knew enough to stop at “ho,” to go ahead at “mush,”
 to swing wide on the bends, and to keep clear of the wheeler when the
loaded sled shot downhill at their heels.

“T'ree vair' good dogs,” Francois told Perrault. “Dat Buck, heem pool
lak hell. I tich heem queek as anyt'ing.”

By afternoon, Perrault, who was in a hurry to be on the trail with his
despatches, returned with two more dogs. “Billee” and “Joe” he called
them, two brothers, and true huskies both. Sons of the one mother though
they were, they were as different as day and night. Billee's one fault
was his excessive good nature, while Joe was the very opposite, sour and
introspective, with a perpetual snarl and a malignant eye. Buck received
them in comradely fashion, Dave ignored them, while Spitz proceeded to
thrash first one and then the other. Billee wagged his tail appeasingly,
turned to run when he saw that appeasement was of no avail, and cried
(still appeasingly) when Spitz's sharp teeth scored his flank. But no
matter how Spitz circled, Joe whirled around on his heels to face
him, mane bristling, ears laid back, lips writhing and snarling, jaws
clipping together as fast as he could snap, and eyes diabolically
gleaming--the incarnation of belligerent fear. So terrible was his
appearance that Spitz was forced to forego disciplining him; but to
cover his own discomfiture he turned upon the inoffensive and wailing
Billee and drove him to the confines of the camp.

By evening Perrault secured another dog, an old husky, long and lean
and gaunt, with a battle-scarred face and a single eye which flashed a
warning of prowess that commanded respect. He was called Sol-leks, which
means the Angry One. Like Dave, he asked nothing, gave nothing, expected
nothing; and when he marched slowly and deliberately into their midst,
even Spitz left him alone. He had one peculiarity which Buck was unlucky
enough to discover. He did not like to be approached on his blind side.
Of this offence Buck was unwittingly guilty, and the first knowledge he
had of his indiscretion was when Sol-leks whirled upon him and slashed
his shoulder to the bone for three inches up and down. Forever after
Buck avoided his blind side, and to the last of their comradeship had
no more trouble. His only apparent ambition, like Dave's, was to be left
alone; though, as Buck was afterward to learn, each of them possessed
one other and even more vital ambition.

That night Buck faced the great problem of sleeping. The tent, illumined
by a candle, glowed warmly in the midst of the white plain; and when he,
as a matter of course, entered it, both Perrault and Francois bombarded
him with curses and cooking utensils, till he recovered from his
consternation and fled ignominiously into the outer cold. A chill wind
was blowing that nipped him sharply and bit with especial venom into his
wounded shoulder. He lay down on the snow and attempted to sleep,
but the frost soon drove him shivering to his feet. Miserable and
disconsolate, he wandered about among the many tents, only to find that
one place was as cold as another. Here and there savage dogs rushed
upon him, but he bristled his neck-hair and snarled (for he was learning
fast), and they let him go his way unmolested.

Finally an idea came to him. He would return and see how his own
team-mates were making out. To his astonishment, they had disappeared.
Again he wandered about through the great camp, looking for them, and
again he returned. Were they in the tent? No, that could not be, else he
would not have been driven out. Then where could they possibly be? With
drooping tail and shivering body, very forlorn indeed, he aimlessly
circled the tent. Suddenly the snow gave way beneath his fore legs
and he sank down. Something wriggled under his feet. He sprang back,
bristling and snarling, fearful of the unseen and unknown. But a
friendly little yelp reassured him, and he went back to investigate. A
whiff of warm air ascended to his nostrils, and there, curled up under
the snow in a snug ball, lay Billee. He whined placatingly, squirmed and
wriggled to show his good will and intentions, and even ventured, as a
bribe for peace, to lick Buck's face with his warm wet tongue.

Another lesson. So that was the way they did it, eh? Buck confidently
selected a spot, and with much fuss and waste effort proceeded to dig a
hole for himself. In a trice the heat from his body filled the confined
space and he was asleep. The day had been long and arduous, and he slept
soundly and comfortably, though he growled and barked and wrestled with
bad dreams.

Nor did he open his eyes till roused by the noises of the waking camp.
At first he did not know where he was. It had snowed during the night
and he was completely buried. The snow walls pressed him on every side,
and a great surge of fear swept through him--the fear of the wild thing
for the trap. It was a token that he was harking back through his own
life to the lives of his forebears; for he was a civilized dog, an
unduly civilized dog, and of his own experience knew no trap and so
could not of himself fear it. The muscles of his whole body contracted
spasmodically and instinctively, the hair on his neck and shoulders
stood on end, and with a ferocious snarl he bounded straight up into
the blinding day, the snow flying about him in a flashing cloud. Ere he
landed on his feet, he saw the white camp spread out before him and knew
where he was and remembered all that had passed from the time he went
for a stroll with Manuel to the hole he had dug for himself the night
before.

A shout from Francois hailed his appearance. “Wot I say?” the dog-driver
cried to Perrault. “Dat Buck for sure learn queek as anyt'ing.”

Perrault nodded gravely. As courier for the Canadian Government, bearing
important despatches, he was anxious to secure the best dogs, and he was
particularly gladdened by the possession of Buck.

Three more huskies were added to the team inside an hour, making a total
of nine, and before another quarter of an hour had passed they were in
harness and swinging up the trail toward the Dyea Canon. Buck was
glad to be gone, and though the work was hard he found he did not
particularly despise it. He was surprised at the eagerness which
animated the whole team and which was communicated to him; but still
more surprising was the change wrought in Dave and Sol-leks. They
were new dogs, utterly transformed by the harness. All passiveness and
unconcern had dropped from them. They were alert and active, anxious
that the work should go well, and fiercely irritable with whatever, by
delay or confusion, retarded that work. The toil of the traces seemed
the supreme expression of their being, and all that they lived for and
the only thing in which they took delight.

Dave was wheeler or sled dog, pulling in front of him was Buck, then
came Sol-leks; the rest of the team was strung out ahead, single file,
to the leader, which position was filled by Spitz.

Buck had been purposely placed between Dave and Sol-leks so that he
might receive instruction. Apt scholar that he was, they were equally
apt teachers, never allowing him to linger long in error, and enforcing
their teaching with their sharp teeth. Dave was fair and very wise. He
never nipped Buck without cause, and he never failed to nip him when he
stood in need of it. As Francois's whip backed him up, Buck found it
to be cheaper to mend his ways than to retaliate. Once, during a brief
halt, when he got tangled in the traces and delayed the start, both
Dave and Solleks flew at him and administered a sound trouncing. The
resulting tangle was even worse, but Buck took good care to keep the
traces clear thereafter; and ere the day was done, so well had he
mastered his work, his mates about ceased nagging him. Francois's whip
snapped less frequently, and Perrault even honored Buck by lifting up
his feet and carefully examining them.

It was a hard day's run, up the Canon, through Sheep Camp, past the
Scales and the timber line, across glaciers and snowdrifts hundreds of
feet deep, and over the great Chilcoot Divide, which stands between
the salt water and the fresh and guards forbiddingly the sad and lonely
North. They made good time down the chain of lakes which fills the
craters of extinct volcanoes, and late that night pulled into the huge
camp at the head of Lake Bennett, where thousands of goldseekers were
building boats against the break-up of the ice in the spring. Buck made
his hole in the snow and slept the sleep of the exhausted just, but all
too early was routed out in the cold darkness and harnessed with his
mates to the sled.

That day they made forty miles, the trail being packed; but the next
day, and for many days to follow, they broke their own trail, worked
harder, and made poorer time. As a rule, Perrault travelled ahead of
the team, packing the snow with webbed shoes to make it easier for them.
Francois, guiding the sled at the gee-pole, sometimes exchanged places
with him, but not often. Perrault was in a hurry, and he prided himself
on his knowledge of ice, which knowledge was indispensable, for the fall
ice was very thin, and where there was swift water, there was no ice at
all.

Day after day, for days unending, Buck toiled in the traces. Always,
they broke camp in the dark, and the first gray of dawn found them
hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled off behind them. And always
they pitched camp after dark, eating their bit of fish, and crawling
to sleep into the snow. Buck was ravenous. The pound and a half of
sun-dried salmon, which was his ration for each day, seemed to go
nowhere. He never had enough, and suffered from perpetual hunger pangs.
Yet the other dogs, because they weighed less and were born to the life,
received a pound only of the fish and managed to keep in good condition.

He swiftly lost the fastidiousness which had characterized his old life.
A dainty eater, he found that his mates, finishing first, robbed him of
his unfinished ration. There was no defending it. While he was fighting
off two or three, it was disappearing down the throats of the others. To
remedy this, he ate as fast as they; and, so greatly did hunger compel
him, he was not above taking what did not belong to him. He watched and
learned. When he saw Pike, one of the new dogs, a clever malingerer and
thief, slyly steal a slice of bacon when Perrault's back was turned,
he duplicated the performance the following day, getting away with the
whole chunk. A great uproar was raised, but he was unsuspected; while
Dub, an awkward blunderer who was always getting caught, was punished
for Buck's misdeed.

This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland
environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself
to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and
terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his
moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for
existence. It was all well enough in the Southland, under the law of
love and fellowship, to respect private property and personal feelings;
but in the Northland, under the law of club and fang, whoso took such
things into account was a fool, and in so far as he observed them he
would fail to prosper.

Not that Buck reasoned it out. He was fit, that was all, and
unconsciously he accommodated himself to the new mode of life. All his
days, no matter what the odds, he had never run from a fight. But
the club of the man in the red sweater had beaten into him a more
fundamental and primitive code. Civilized, he could have died for a
moral consideration, say the defence of Judge Miller's riding-whip; but
the completeness of his decivilization was now evidenced by his ability
to flee from the defence of a moral consideration and so save his
hide. He did not steal for joy of it, but because of the clamor of his
stomach. He did not rob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out of
respect for club and fang. In short, the things he did were done because
it was easier to do them than not to do them.

His development (or retrogression) was rapid. His muscles became hard as
iron, and he grew callous to all ordinary pain. He achieved an internal
as well as external economy. He could eat anything, no matter how
loathsome or indigestible; and, once eaten, the juices of his stomach
extracted the last least particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it
to the farthest reaches of his body, building it into the toughest and
stoutest of tissues. Sight and scent became remarkably keen, while his
hearing developed such acuteness that in his sleep he heard the faintest
sound and knew whether it heralded peace or peril. He learned to bite
the ice out with his teeth when it collected between his toes; and when
he was thirsty and there was a thick scum of ice over the water hole, he
would break it by rearing and striking it with stiff fore legs. His most
conspicuous trait was an ability to scent the wind and forecast it a
night in advance. No matter how breathless the air when he dug his
nest by tree or bank, the wind that later blew inevitably found him to
leeward, sheltered and snug.

And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became
alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways
he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs
ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as
they ran it down. It was no task for him to learn to fight with cut
and slash and the quick wolf snap. In this manner had fought forgotten
ancestors. They quickened the old life within him, and the old tricks
which they had stamped into the heredity of the breed were his tricks.
They came to him without effort or discovery, as though they had been
his always. And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a
star and howled long and wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust,
pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through
him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced
their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stiffness, and the
cold, and dark.

Thus, as token of what a puppet thing life is, the ancient song surged
through him and he came into his own again; and he came because men had
found a yellow metal in the North, and because Manuel was a gardener's
helper whose wages did not lap over the needs of his wife and divers
small copies of himself.




Chapter III. The Dominant Primordial Beast


The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the fierce
conditions of trail life it grew and grew. Yet it was a secret growth.
His newborn cunning gave him poise and control. He was too busy
adjusting himself to the new life to feel at ease, and not only did
he not pick fights, but he avoided them whenever possible. A certain
deliberateness characterized his attitude. He was not prone to rashness
and precipitate action; and in the bitter hatred between him and Spitz
he betrayed no impatience, shunned all offensive acts.

On the other hand, possibly because he divined in Buck a dangerous
rival, Spitz never lost an opportunity of showing his teeth. He even
went out of his way to bully Buck, striving constantly to start the
fight which could end only in the death of one or the other. Early in
the trip this might have taken place had it not been for an unwonted
accident. At the end of this day they made a bleak and miserable camp
on the shore of Lake Le Barge. Driving snow, a wind that cut like a
white-hot knife, and darkness had forced them to grope for a camping
place. They could hardly have fared worse. At their backs rose a
perpendicular wall of rock, and Perrault and Francois were compelled to
make their fire and spread their sleeping robes on the ice of the lake
itself. The tent they had discarded at Dyea in order to travel light.
A few sticks of driftwood furnished them with a fire that thawed down
through the ice and left them to eat supper in the dark.

Close in under the sheltering rock Buck made his nest. So snug and warm
was it, that he was loath to leave it when Francois distributed the
fish which he had first thawed over the fire. But when Buck finished his
ration and returned, he found his nest occupied. A warning snarl told
him that the trespasser was Spitz. Till now Buck had avoided trouble
with his enemy, but this was too much. The beast in him roared. He
sprang upon Spitz with a fury which surprised them both, and Spitz
particularly, for his whole experience with Buck had gone to teach him
that his rival was an unusually timid dog, who managed to hold his own
only because of his great weight and size.

Francois was surprised, too, when they shot out in a tangle from the
disrupted nest and he divined the cause of the trouble. “A-a-ah!”
 he cried to Buck. “Gif it to heem, by Gar! Gif it to heem, the dirty
t'eef!”

Spitz was equally willing. He was crying with sheer rage and eagerness
as he circled back and forth for a chance to spring in. Buck was no less
eager, and no less cautious, as he likewise circled back and forth for
the advantage. But it was then that the unexpected happened, the thing
which projected their struggle for supremacy far into the future, past
many a weary mile of trail and toil.

An oath from Perrault, the resounding impact of a club upon a bony
frame, and a shrill yelp of pain, heralded the breaking forth of
pandemonium. The camp was suddenly discovered to be alive with skulking
furry forms,--starving huskies, four or five score of them, who had
scented the camp from some Indian village. They had crept in while Buck
and Spitz were fighting, and when the two men sprang among them with
stout clubs they showed their teeth and fought back. They were crazed
by the smell of the food. Perrault found one with head buried in the
grub-box. His club landed heavily on the gaunt ribs, and the grub-box
was capsized on the ground. On the instant a score of the famished
brutes were scrambling for the bread and bacon. The clubs fell upon them
unheeded. They yelped and howled under the rain of blows, but struggled
none the less madly till the last crumb had been devoured.

In the meantime the astonished team-dogs had burst out of their nests
only to be set upon by the fierce invaders. Never had Buck seen such
dogs. It seemed as though their bones would burst through their skins.
They were mere skeletons, draped loosely in draggled hides, with blazing
eyes and slavered fangs. But the hunger-madness made them terrifying,
irresistible. There was no opposing them. The team-dogs were swept back
against the cliff at the first onset. Buck was beset by three huskies,
and in a trice his head and shoulders were ripped and slashed. The din
was frightful. Billee was crying as usual. Dave and Sol-leks, dripping
blood from a score of wounds, were fighting bravely side by side. Joe
was snapping like a demon. Once, his teeth closed on the fore leg of
a husky, and he crunched down through the bone. Pike, the malingerer,
leaped upon the crippled animal, breaking its neck with a quick flash of
teeth and a jerk, Buck got a frothing adversary by the throat, and was
sprayed with blood when his teeth sank through the jugular. The warm
taste of it in his mouth goaded him to greater fierceness. He flung
himself upon another, and at the same time felt teeth sink into his own
throat. It was Spitz, treacherously attacking from the side.

Perrault and Francois, having cleaned out their part of the camp,
hurried to save their sled-dogs. The wild wave of famished beasts rolled
back before them, and Buck shook himself free. But it was only for a
moment. The two men were compelled to run back to save the grub, upon
which the huskies returned to the attack on the team. Billee, terrified
into bravery, sprang through the savage circle and fled away over the
ice. Pike and Dub followed on his heels, with the rest of the team
behind. As Buck drew himself together to spring after them, out of the
tail of his eye he saw Spitz rush upon him with the evident intention
of overthrowing him. Once off his feet and under that mass of huskies,
there was no hope for him. But he braced himself to the shock of Spitz's
charge, then joined the flight out on the lake.

Later, the nine team-dogs gathered together and sought shelter in the
forest. Though unpursued, they were in a sorry plight. There was not
one who was not wounded in four or five places, while some were wounded
grievously. Dub was badly injured in a hind leg; Dolly, the last husky
added to the team at Dyea, had a badly torn throat; Joe had lost an eye;
while Billee, the good-natured, with an ear chewed and rent to ribbons,
cried and whimpered throughout the night. At daybreak they limped warily
back to camp, to find the marauders gone and the two men in bad tempers.
Fully half their grub supply was gone. The huskies had chewed through
the sled lashings and canvas coverings. In fact, nothing, no matter how
remotely eatable, had escaped them. They had eaten a pair of Perrault's
moose-hide moccasins, chunks out of the leather traces, and even two
feet of lash from the end of Francois's whip. He broke from a mournful
contemplation of it to look over his wounded dogs.

“Ah, my frien's,” he said softly, “mebbe it mek you mad dog, dose many
bites. Mebbe all mad dog, sacredam! Wot you t'ink, eh, Perrault?”

The courier shook his head dubiously. With four hundred miles of trail
still between him and Dawson, he could ill afford to have madness break
out among his dogs. Two hours of cursing and exertion got the harnesses
into shape, and the wound-stiffened team was under way, struggling
painfully over the hardest part of the trail they had yet encountered,
and for that matter, the hardest between them and Dawson.

The Thirty Mile River was wide open. Its wild water defied the frost,
and it was in the eddies only and in the quiet places that the ice held
at all. Six days of exhausting toil were required to cover those thirty
terrible miles. And terrible they were, for every foot of them was
accomplished at the risk of life to dog and man. A dozen times,
Perrault, nosing the way broke through the ice bridges, being saved by
the long pole he carried, which he so held that it fell each time across
the hole made by his body. But a cold snap was on, the thermometer
registering fifty below zero, and each time he broke through he was
compelled for very life to build a fire and dry his garments.

Nothing daunted him. It was because nothing daunted him that he had been
chosen for government courier. He took all manner of risks, resolutely
thrusting his little weazened face into the frost and struggling on from
dim dawn to dark. He skirted the frowning shores on rim ice that bent
and crackled under foot and upon which they dared not halt. Once, the
sled broke through, with Dave and Buck, and they were half-frozen and
all but drowned by the time they were dragged out. The usual fire was
necessary to save them. They were coated solidly with ice, and the two
men kept them on the run around the fire, sweating and thawing, so close
that they were singed by the flames.

At another time Spitz went through, dragging the whole team after him up
to Buck, who strained backward with all his strength, his fore paws on
the slippery edge and the ice quivering and snapping all around. But
behind him was Dave, likewise straining backward, and behind the sled
was Francois, pulling till his tendons cracked.

Again, the rim ice broke away before and behind, and there was no escape
except up the cliff. Perrault scaled it by a miracle, while Francois
prayed for just that miracle; and with every thong and sled lashing and
the last bit of harness rove into a long rope, the dogs were hoisted,
one by one, to the cliff crest. Francois came up last, after the sled
and load. Then came the search for a place to descend, which descent was
ultimately made by the aid of the rope, and night found them back on the
river with a quarter of a mile to the day's credit.

By the time they made the Hootalinqua and good ice, Buck was played out.
The rest of the dogs were in like condition; but Perrault, to make
up lost time, pushed them late and early. The first day they covered
thirty-five miles to the Big Salmon; the next day thirty-five more to
the Little Salmon; the third day forty miles, which brought them well up
toward the Five Fingers.

Buck's feet were not so compact and hard as the feet of the huskies.
His had softened during the many generations since the day his last
wild ancestor was tamed by a cave-dweller or river man. All day long he
limped in agony, and camp once made, lay down like a dead dog. Hungry as
he was, he would not move to receive his ration of fish, which Francois
had to bring to him. Also, the dog-driver rubbed Buck's feet for half
an hour each night after supper, and sacrificed the tops of his own
moccasins to make four moccasins for Buck. This was a great relief, and
Buck caused even the weazened face of Perrault to twist itself into a
grin one morning, when Francois forgot the moccasins and Buck lay on his
back, his four feet waving appealingly in the air, and refused to budge
without them. Later his feet grew hard to the trail, and the worn-out
foot-gear was thrown away.

At the Pelly one morning, as they were harnessing up, Dolly, who had
never been conspicuous for anything, went suddenly mad. She announced
her condition by a long, heartbreaking wolf howl that sent every dog
bristling with fear, then sprang straight for Buck. He had never seen a
dog go mad, nor did he have any reason to fear madness; yet he knew
that here was horror, and fled away from it in a panic. Straight away he
raced, with Dolly, panting and frothing, one leap behind; nor could she
gain on him, so great was his terror, nor could he leave her, so great
was her madness. He plunged through the wooded breast of the island,
flew down to the lower end, crossed a back channel filled with rough ice
to another island, gained a third island, curved back to the main river,
and in desperation started to cross it. And all the time, though he
did not look, he could hear her snarling just one leap behind. Francois
called to him a quarter of a mile away and he doubled back, still one
leap ahead, gasping painfully for air and putting all his faith in that
Francois would save him. The dog-driver held the axe poised in his hand,
and as Buck shot past him the axe crashed down upon mad Dolly's head.

Buck staggered over against the sled, exhausted, sobbing for breath,
helpless. This was Spitz's opportunity. He sprang upon Buck, and twice
his teeth sank into his unresisting foe and ripped and tore the flesh to
the bone. Then Francois's lash descended, and Buck had the satisfaction
of watching Spitz receive the worst whipping as yet administered to any
of the teams.

“One devil, dat Spitz,” remarked Perrault. “Some dam day heem keel dat
Buck.”

“Dat Buck two devils,” was Francois's rejoinder. “All de tam I watch dat
Buck I know for sure. Lissen: some dam fine day heem get mad lak hell
an' den heem chew dat Spitz all up an' spit heem out on de snow. Sure. I
know.”

From then on it was war between them. Spitz, as lead-dog and
acknowledged master of the team, felt his supremacy threatened by this
strange Southland dog. And strange Buck was to him, for of the many
Southland dogs he had known, not one had shown up worthily in camp and
on trail. They were all too soft, dying under the toil, the frost, and
starvation. Buck was the exception. He alone endured and prospered,
matching the husky in strength, savagery, and cunning. Then he was a
masterful dog, and what made him dangerous was the fact that the club of
the man in the red sweater had knocked all blind pluck and rashness out
of his desire for mastery. He was preeminently cunning, and could bide
his time with a patience that was nothing less than primitive.

It was inevitable that the clash for leadership should come. Buck wanted
it. He wanted it because it was his nature, because he had been
gripped tight by that nameless, incomprehensible pride of the trail and
trace--that pride which holds dogs in the toil to the last gasp, which
lures them to die joyfully in the harness, and breaks their hearts
if they are cut out of the harness. This was the pride of Dave as
wheel-dog, of Sol-leks as he pulled with all his strength; the pride
that laid hold of them at break of camp, transforming them from sour and
sullen brutes into straining, eager, ambitious creatures; the pride
that spurred them on all day and dropped them at pitch of camp at night,
letting them fall back into gloomy unrest and uncontent. This was the
pride that bore up Spitz and made him thrash the sled-dogs who blundered
and shirked in the traces or hid away at harness-up time in the morning.
Likewise it was this pride that made him fear Buck as a possible
lead-dog. And this was Buck's pride, too.

He openly threatened the other's leadership. He came between him and the
shirks he should have punished. And he did it deliberately. One night
there was a heavy snowfall, and in the morning Pike, the malingerer,
did not appear. He was securely hidden in his nest under a foot of snow.
Francois called him and sought him in vain. Spitz was wild with wrath.
He raged through the camp, smelling and digging in every likely
place, snarling so frightfully that Pike heard and shivered in his
hiding-place.

But when he was at last unearthed, and Spitz flew at him to punish him,
Buck flew, with equal rage, in between. So unexpected was it, and so
shrewdly managed, that Spitz was hurled backward and off his feet. Pike,
who had been trembling abjectly, took heart at this open mutiny,
and sprang upon his overthrown leader. Buck, to whom fair play was a
forgotten code, likewise sprang upon Spitz. But Francois, chuckling at
the incident while unswerving in the administration of justice, brought
his lash down upon Buck with all his might. This failed to drive Buck
from his prostrate rival, and the butt of the whip was brought into
play. Half-stunned by the blow, Buck was knocked backward and the lash
laid upon him again and again, while Spitz soundly punished the many
times offending Pike.

In the days that followed, as Dawson grew closer and closer, Buck still
continued to interfere between Spitz and the culprits; but he did it
craftily, when Francois was not around, With the covert mutiny of Buck,
a general insubordination sprang up and increased. Dave and Sol-leks
were unaffected, but the rest of the team went from bad to worse.
Things no longer went right. There was continual bickering and jangling.
Trouble was always afoot, and at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept
Francois busy, for the dog-driver was in constant apprehension of the
life-and-death struggle between the two which he knew must take place
sooner or later; and on more than one night the sounds of quarrelling
and strife among the other dogs turned him out of his sleeping robe,
fearful that Buck and Spitz were at it.

But the opportunity did not present itself, and they pulled into Dawson
one dreary afternoon with the great fight still to come. Here were many
men, and countless dogs, and Buck found them all at work. It seemed the
ordained order of things that dogs should work. All day they swung up
and down the main street in long teams, and in the night their jingling
bells still went by. They hauled cabin logs and firewood, freighted up
to the mines, and did all manner of work that horses did in the Santa
Clara Valley. Here and there Buck met Southland dogs, but in the main
they were the wild wolf husky breed. Every night, regularly, at nine, at
twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant,
in which it was Buck's delight to join.

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping
in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow,
this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it
was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and
was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It
was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the
younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe
of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely
stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that
was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the
cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that he should be
stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through
the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling
ages.

Seven days from the time they pulled into Dawson, they dropped down the
steep bank by the Barracks to the Yukon Trail, and pulled for Dyea and
Salt Water. Perrault was carrying despatches if anything more urgent
than those he had brought in; also, the travel pride had gripped him,
and he purposed to make the record trip of the year. Several things
favored him in this. The week's rest had recuperated the dogs and put
them in thorough trim. The trail they had broken into the country was
packed hard by later journeyers. And further, the police had arranged
in two or three places deposits of grub for dog and man, and he was
travelling light.

They made Sixty Mile, which is a fifty-mile run, on the first day; and
the second day saw them booming up the Yukon well on their way to Pelly.
But such splendid running was achieved not without great trouble and
vexation on the part of Francois. The insidious revolt led by Buck
had destroyed the solidarity of the team. It no longer was as one dog
leaping in the traces. The encouragement Buck gave the rebels led them
into all kinds of petty misdemeanors. No more was Spitz a leader greatly
to be feared. The old awe departed, and they grew equal to challenging
his authority. Pike robbed him of half a fish one night, and gulped
it down under the protection of Buck. Another night Dub and Joe fought
Spitz and made him forego the punishment they deserved. And even
Billee, the good-natured, was less good-natured, and whined not half
so placatingly as in former days. Buck never came near Spitz without
snarling and bristling menacingly. In fact, his conduct approached that
of a bully, and he was given to swaggering up and down before Spitz's
very nose.

The breaking down of discipline likewise affected the dogs in their
relations with one another. They quarrelled and bickered more than ever
among themselves, till at times the camp was a howling bedlam. Dave and
Sol-leks alone were unaltered, though they were made irritable by the
unending squabbling. Francois swore strange barbarous oaths, and stamped
the snow in futile rage, and tore his hair. His lash was always singing
among the dogs, but it was of small avail. Directly his back was turned
they were at it again. He backed up Spitz with his whip, while Buck
backed up the remainder of the team. Francois knew he was behind all the
trouble, and Buck knew he knew; but Buck was too clever ever again to be
caught red-handed. He worked faithfully in the harness, for the toil
had become a delight to him; yet it was a greater delight slyly to
precipitate a fight amongst his mates and tangle the traces.

At the mouth of the Tahkeena, one night after supper, Dub turned up a
snowshoe rabbit, blundered it, and missed. In a second the whole team
was in full cry. A hundred yards away was a camp of the Northwest
Police, with fifty dogs, huskies all, who joined the chase. The rabbit
sped down the river, turned off into a small creek, up the frozen bed of
which it held steadily. It ran lightly on the surface of the snow, while
the dogs ploughed through by main strength. Buck led the pack, sixty
strong, around bend after bend, but he could not gain. He lay down low
to the race, whining eagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap
by leap, in the wan white moonlight. And leap by leap, like some pale
frost wraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead.

All that stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men
out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things
by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to
kill--all this was Buck's, only it was infinitely more intimate. He was
ranging at the head of the pack, running the wild thing down, the living
meat, to kill with his own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm
blood.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life
cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when
one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is
alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist,
caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the
soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came
to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after
the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the
moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of
his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time.
He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being,
the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was
everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing
itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face
of dead matter that did not move.

But Spitz, cold and calculating even in his supreme moods, left the pack
and cut across a narrow neck of land where the creek made a long bend
around. Buck did not know of this, and as he rounded the bend, the frost
wraith of a rabbit still flitting before him, he saw another and larger
frost wraith leap from the overhanging bank into the immediate path of
the rabbit. It was Spitz. The rabbit could not turn, and as the white
teeth broke its back in mid air it shrieked as loudly as a stricken man
may shriek. At sound of this, the cry of Life plunging down from Life's
apex in the grip of Death, the fall pack at Buck's heels raised a hell's
chorus of delight.

Buck did not cry out. He did not check himself, but drove in upon Spitz,
shoulder to shoulder, so hard that he missed the throat. They rolled
over and over in the powdery snow. Spitz gained his feet almost as
though he had not been overthrown, slashing Buck down the shoulder and
leaping clear. Twice his teeth clipped together, like the steel jaws of
a trap, as he backed away for better footing, with lean and lifting lips
that writhed and snarled.

In a flash Buck knew it. The time had come. It was to the death. As
they circled about, snarling, ears laid back, keenly watchful for the
advantage, the scene came to Buck with a sense of familiarity. He seemed
to remember it all,--the white woods, and earth, and moonlight, and the
thrill of battle. Over the whiteness and silence brooded a ghostly calm.
There was not the faintest whisper of air--nothing moved, not a leaf
quivered, the visible breaths of the dogs rising slowly and lingering in
the frosty air. They had made short work of the snowshoe rabbit, these
dogs that were ill-tamed wolves; and they were now drawn up in an
expectant circle. They, too, were silent, their eyes only gleaming and
their breaths drifting slowly upward. To Buck it was nothing new or
strange, this scene of old time. It was as though it had always been,
the wonted way of things.

Spitz was a practised fighter. From Spitzbergen through the Arctic, and
across Canada and the Barrens, he had held his own with all manner of
dogs and achieved to mastery over them. Bitter rage was his, but never
blind rage. In passion to rend and destroy, he never forgot that his
enemy was in like passion to rend and destroy. He never rushed till
he was prepared to receive a rush; never attacked till he had first
defended that attack.

In vain Buck strove to sink his teeth in the neck of the big white dog.
Wherever his fangs struck for the softer flesh, they were countered by
the fangs of Spitz. Fang clashed fang, and lips were cut and bleeding,
but Buck could not penetrate his enemy's guard. Then he warmed up and
enveloped Spitz in a whirlwind of rushes. Time and time again he tried
for the snow-white throat, where life bubbled near to the surface, and
each time and every time Spitz slashed him and got away. Then Buck took
to rushing, as though for the throat, when, suddenly drawing back his
head and curving in from the side, he would drive his shoulder at the
shoulder of Spitz, as a ram by which to overthrow him. But instead,
Buck's shoulder was slashed down each time as Spitz leaped lightly away.

Spitz was untouched, while Buck was streaming with blood and panting
hard. The fight was growing desperate. And all the while the silent and
wolfish circle waited to finish off whichever dog went down. As Buck
grew winded, Spitz took to rushing, and he kept him staggering for
footing. Once Buck went over, and the whole circle of sixty dogs started
up; but he recovered himself, almost in mid air, and the circle sank
down again and waited.

But Buck possessed a quality that made for greatness--imagination. He
fought by instinct, but he could fight by head as well. He rushed, as
though attempting the old shoulder trick, but at the last instant swept
low to the snow and in. His teeth closed on Spitz's left fore leg. There
was a crunch of breaking bone, and the white dog faced him on three
legs. Thrice he tried to knock him over, then repeated the trick and
broke the right fore leg. Despite the pain and helplessness, Spitz
struggled madly to keep up. He saw the silent circle, with gleaming
eyes, lolling tongues, and silvery breaths drifting upward, closing in
upon him as he had seen similar circles close in upon beaten antagonists
in the past. Only this time he was the one who was beaten.

There was no hope for him. Buck was inexorable. Mercy was a thing
reserved for gentler climes. He manoeuvred for the final rush. The
circle had tightened till he could feel the breaths of the huskies on
his flanks. He could see them, beyond Spitz and to either side, half
crouching for the spring, their eyes fixed upon him. A pause seemed to
fall. Every animal was motionless as though turned to stone. Only Spitz
quivered and bristled as he staggered back and forth, snarling with
horrible menace, as though to frighten off impending death. Then Buck
sprang in and out; but while he was in, shoulder had at last squarely
met shoulder. The dark circle became a dot on the moon-flooded snow as
Spitz disappeared from view. Buck stood and looked on, the successful
champion, the dominant primordial beast who had made his kill and found
it good.




Chapter IV. Who Has Won to Mastership


“Eh? Wot I say? I spik true w'en I say dat Buck two devils.” This was
Francois's speech next morning when he discovered Spitz missing and Buck
covered with wounds. He drew him to the fire and by its light pointed
them out.

“Dat Spitz fight lak hell,” said Perrault, as he surveyed the gaping
rips and cuts.

“An' dat Buck fight lak two hells,” was Francois's answer. “An' now we
make good time. No more Spitz, no more trouble, sure.”

While Perrault packed the camp outfit and loaded the sled, the
dog-driver proceeded to harness the dogs. Buck trotted up to the place
Spitz would have occupied as leader; but Francois, not noticing him,
brought Sol-leks to the coveted position. In his judgment, Sol-leks was
the best lead-dog left. Buck sprang upon Sol-leks in a fury, driving him
back and standing in his place.

“Eh? eh?” Francois cried, slapping his thighs gleefully. “Look at dat
Buck. Heem keel dat Spitz, heem t'ink to take de job.”

“Go 'way, Chook!” he cried, but Buck refused to budge.

He took Buck by the scruff of the neck, and though the dog growled
threateningly, dragged him to one side and replaced Sol-leks. The old
dog did not like it, and showed plainly that he was afraid of Buck.
Francois was obdurate, but when he turned his back Buck again displaced
Sol-leks, who was not at all unwilling to go.

Francois was angry. “Now, by Gar, I feex you!” he cried, coming back
with a heavy club in his hand.

Buck remembered the man in the red sweater, and retreated slowly; nor
did he attempt to charge in when Sol-leks was once more brought
forward. But he circled just beyond the range of the club, snarling with
bitterness and rage; and while he circled he watched the club so as to
dodge it if thrown by Francois, for he was become wise in the way of
clubs. The driver went about his work, and he called to Buck when he was
ready to put him in his old place in front of Dave. Buck retreated two
or three steps. Francois followed him up, whereupon he again retreated.
After some time of this, Francois threw down the club, thinking that
Buck feared a thrashing. But Buck was in open revolt. He wanted, not to
escape a clubbing, but to have the leadership. It was his by right. He
had earned it, and he would not be content with less.

Perrault took a hand. Between them they ran him about for the better
part of an hour. They threw clubs at him. He dodged. They cursed him,
and his fathers and mothers before him, and all his seed to come after
him down to the remotest generation, and every hair on his body and drop
of blood in his veins; and he answered curse with snarl and kept out of
their reach. He did not try to run away, but retreated around and around
the camp, advertising plainly that when his desire was met, he would
come in and be good.

Francois sat down and scratched his head. Perrault looked at his watch
and swore. Time was flying, and they should have been on the trail an
hour gone. Francois scratched his head again. He shook it and grinned
sheepishly at the courier, who shrugged his shoulders in sign that they
were beaten. Then Francois went up to where Sol-leks stood and called
to Buck. Buck laughed, as dogs laugh, yet kept his distance. Francois
unfastened Sol-leks's traces and put him back in his old place. The team
stood harnessed to the sled in an unbroken line, ready for the trail.
There was no place for Buck save at the front. Once more Francois
called, and once more Buck laughed and kept away.

“T'row down de club,” Perrault commanded.

Francois complied, whereupon Buck trotted in, laughing triumphantly,
and swung around into position at the head of the team. His traces were
fastened, the sled broken out, and with both men running they dashed out
on to the river trail.

Highly as the dog-driver had forevalued Buck, with his two devils, he
found, while the day was yet young, that he had undervalued. At a bound
Buck took up the duties of leadership; and where judgment was required,
and quick thinking and quick acting, he showed himself the superior even
of Spitz, of whom Francois had never seen an equal.

But it was in giving the law and making his mates live up to it, that
Buck excelled. Dave and Sol-leks did not mind the change in leadership.
It was none of their business. Their business was to toil, and toil
mightily, in the traces. So long as that were not interfered with, they
did not care what happened. Billee, the good-natured, could lead for all
they cared, so long as he kept order. The rest of the team, however, had
grown unruly during the last days of Spitz, and their surprise was great
now that Buck proceeded to lick them into shape.

Pike, who pulled at Buck's heels, and who never put an ounce more of his
weight against the breast-band than he was compelled to do, was swiftly
and repeatedly shaken for loafing; and ere the first day was done he was
pulling more than ever before in his life. The first night in camp,
Joe, the sour one, was punished roundly--a thing that Spitz had never
succeeded in doing. Buck simply smothered him by virtue of superior
weight, and cut him up till he ceased snapping and began to whine for
mercy.

The general tone of the team picked up immediately. It recovered its
old-time solidarity, and once more the dogs leaped as one dog in the
traces. At the Rink Rapids two native huskies, Teek and Koona, were
added; and the celerity with which Buck broke them in took away
Francois's breath.

“Nevaire such a dog as dat Buck!” he cried. “No, nevaire! Heem worth one
t'ousan' dollair, by Gar! Eh? Wot you say, Perrault?”

And Perrault nodded. He was ahead of the record then, and gaining day
by day. The trail was in excellent condition, well packed and hard, and
there was no new-fallen snow with which to contend. It was not too cold.
The temperature dropped to fifty below zero and remained there the whole
trip. The men rode and ran by turn, and the dogs were kept on the jump,
with but infrequent stoppages.

The Thirty Mile River was comparatively coated with ice, and they
covered in one day going out what had taken them ten days coming in. In
one run they made a sixty-mile dash from the foot of Lake Le Barge to
the White Horse Rapids. Across Marsh, Tagish, and Bennett (seventy miles
of lakes), they flew so fast that the man whose turn it was to run
towed behind the sled at the end of a rope. And on the last night of the
second week they topped White Pass and dropped down the sea slope with
the lights of Skaguay and of the shipping at their feet.

It was a record run. Each day for fourteen days they had averaged forty
miles. For three days Perrault and Francois threw chests up and down the
main street of Skaguay and were deluged with invitations to drink, while
the team was the constant centre of a worshipful crowd of dog-busters
and mushers. Then three or four western bad men aspired to clean out
the town, were riddled like pepper-boxes for their pains, and public
interest turned to other idols. Next came official orders. Francois
called Buck to him, threw his arms around him, wept over him. And that
was the last of Francois and Perrault. Like other men, they passed out
of Buck's life for good.

A Scotch half-breed took charge of him and his mates, and in company
with a dozen other dog-teams he started back over the weary trail to
Dawson. It was no light running now, nor record time, but heavy toil
each day, with a heavy load behind; for this was the mail train,
carrying word from the world to the men who sought gold under the shadow
of the Pole.

Buck did not like it, but he bore up well to the work, taking pride in
it after the manner of Dave and Sol-leks, and seeing that his mates,
whether they prided in it or not, did their fair share. It was a
monotonous life, operating with machine-like regularity. One day was
very like another. At a certain time each morning the cooks turned out,
fires were built, and breakfast was eaten. Then, while some broke camp,
others harnessed the dogs, and they were under way an hour or so before
the darkness fell which gave warning of dawn. At night, camp was made.
Some pitched the flies, others cut firewood and pine boughs for the
beds, and still others carried water or ice for the cooks. Also, the
dogs were fed. To them, this was the one feature of the day, though it
was good to loaf around, after the fish was eaten, for an hour or so
with the other dogs, of which there were fivescore and odd. There were
fierce fighters among them, but three battles with the fiercest brought
Buck to mastery, so that when he bristled and showed his teeth they got
out of his way.

Best of all, perhaps, he loved to lie near the fire, hind legs crouched
under him, fore legs stretched out in front, head raised, and eyes
blinking dreamily at the flames. Sometimes he thought of Judge Miller's
big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley, and of the cement
swimming-tank, and Ysabel, the Mexican hairless, and Toots, the Japanese
pug; but oftener he remembered the man in the red sweater, the death of
Curly, the great fight with Spitz, and the good things he had eaten or
would like to eat. He was not homesick. The Sunland was very dim and
distant, and such memories had no power over him. Far more potent were
the memories of his heredity that gave things he had never seen before
a seeming familiarity; the instincts (which were but the memories of
his ancestors become habits) which had lapsed in later days, and still
later, in him, quickened and become alive again.

Sometimes as he crouched there, blinking dreamily at the flames, it
seemed that the flames were of another fire, and that as he crouched
by this other fire he saw another and different man from the half-breed
cook before him. This other man was shorter of leg and longer of arm,
with muscles that were stringy and knotty rather than rounded and
swelling. The hair of this man was long and matted, and his head slanted
back under it from the eyes. He uttered strange sounds, and seemed very
much afraid of the darkness, into which he peered continually, clutching
in his hand, which hung midway between knee and foot, a stick with a
heavy stone made fast to the end. He was all but naked, a ragged and
fire-scorched skin hanging part way down his back, but on his body there
was much hair. In some places, across the chest and shoulders and down
the outside of the arms and thighs, it was matted into almost a thick
fur. He did not stand erect, but with trunk inclined forward from
the hips, on legs that bent at the knees. About his body there was
a peculiar springiness, or resiliency, almost catlike, and a quick
alertness as of one who lived in perpetual fear of things seen and
unseen.

At other times this hairy man squatted by the fire with head between
his legs and slept. On such occasions his elbows were on his knees, his
hands clasped above his head as though to shed rain by the hairy arms.
And beyond that fire, in the circling darkness, Buck could see many
gleaming coals, two by two, always two by two, which he knew to be the
eyes of great beasts of prey. And he could hear the crashing of their
bodies through the undergrowth, and the noises they made in the night.
And dreaming there by the Yukon bank, with lazy eyes blinking at the
fire, these sounds and sights of another world would make the hair to
rise along his back and stand on end across his shoulders and up his
neck, till he whimpered low and suppressedly, or growled softly, and the
half-breed cook shouted at him, “Hey, you Buck, wake up!” Whereupon the
other world would vanish and the real world come into his eyes, and he
would get up and yawn and stretch as though he had been asleep.

It was a hard trip, with the mail behind them, and the heavy work wore
them down. They were short of weight and in poor condition when they
made Dawson, and should have had a ten days' or a week's rest at
least. But in two days' time they dropped down the Yukon bank from the
Barracks, loaded with letters for the outside. The dogs were tired, the
drivers grumbling, and to make matters worse, it snowed every day. This
meant a soft trail, greater friction on the runners, and heavier pulling
for the dogs; yet the drivers were fair through it all, and did their
best for the animals.

Each night the dogs were attended to first. They ate before the drivers
ate, and no man sought his sleeping-robe till he had seen to the feet of
the dogs he drove. Still, their strength went down. Since the beginning
of the winter they had travelled eighteen hundred miles, dragging sleds
the whole weary distance; and eighteen hundred miles will tell upon life
of the toughest. Buck stood it, keeping his mates up to their work and
maintaining discipline, though he, too, was very tired. Billee cried and
whimpered regularly in his sleep each night. Joe was sourer than ever,
and Sol-leks was unapproachable, blind side or other side.

But it was Dave who suffered most of all. Something had gone wrong with
him. He became more morose and irritable, and when camp was pitched at
once made his nest, where his driver fed him. Once out of the harness
and down, he did not get on his feet again till harness-up time in the
morning. Sometimes, in the traces, when jerked by a sudden stoppage of
the sled, or by straining to start it, he would cry out with pain. The
driver examined him, but could find nothing. All the drivers became
interested in his case. They talked it over at meal-time, and over their
last pipes before going to bed, and one night they held a consultation.
He was brought from his nest to the fire and was pressed and prodded
till he cried out many times. Something was wrong inside, but they could
locate no broken bones, could not make it out.

By the time Cassiar Bar was reached, he was so weak that he was falling
repeatedly in the traces. The Scotch half-breed called a halt and took
him out of the team, making the next dog, Sol-leks, fast to the sled.
His intention was to rest Dave, letting him run free behind the sled.
Sick as he was, Dave resented being taken out, grunting and growling
while the traces were unfastened, and whimpering broken-heartedly when
he saw Sol-leks in the position he had held and served so long. For the
pride of trace and trail was his, and, sick unto death, he could not
bear that another dog should do his work.

When the sled started, he floundered in the soft snow alongside the
beaten trail, attacking Sol-leks with his teeth, rushing against him and
trying to thrust him off into the soft snow on the other side, striving
to leap inside his traces and get between him and the sled, and all the
while whining and yelping and crying with grief and pain. The half-breed
tried to drive him away with the whip; but he paid no heed to the
stinging lash, and the man had not the heart to strike harder. Dave
refused to run quietly on the trail behind the sled, where the going was
easy, but continued to flounder alongside in the soft snow, where the
going was most difficult, till exhausted. Then he fell, and lay where he
fell, howling lugubriously as the long train of sleds churned by.

With the last remnant of his strength he managed to stagger along behind
till the train made another stop, when he floundered past the sleds to
his own, where he stood alongside Sol-leks. His driver lingered a moment
to get a light for his pipe from the man behind. Then he returned and
started his dogs. They swung out on the trail with remarkable lack of
exertion, turned their heads uneasily, and stopped in surprise. The
driver was surprised, too; the sled had not moved. He called his
comrades to witness the sight. Dave had bitten through both of
Sol-leks's traces, and was standing directly in front of the sled in his
proper place.

He pleaded with his eyes to remain there. The driver was perplexed. His
comrades talked of how a dog could break its heart through being denied
the work that killed it, and recalled instances they had known, where
dogs, too old for the toil, or injured, had died because they were cut
out of the traces. Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to die
anyway, that he should die in the traces, heart-easy and content. So
he was harnessed in again, and proudly he pulled as of old, though more
than once he cried out involuntarily from the bite of his inward hurt.
Several times he fell down and was dragged in the traces, and once the
sled ran upon him so that he limped thereafter in one of his hind legs.

But he held out till camp was reached, when his driver made a place for
him by the fire. Morning found him too weak to travel. At harness-up
time he tried to crawl to his driver. By convulsive efforts he got on
his feet, staggered, and fell. Then he wormed his way forward slowly
toward where the harnesses were being put on his mates. He would advance
his fore legs and drag up his body with a sort of hitching movement,
when he would advance his fore legs and hitch ahead again for a few more
inches. His strength left him, and the last his mates saw of him he lay
gasping in the snow and yearning toward them. But they could hear him
mournfully howling till they passed out of sight behind a belt of river
timber.

Here the train was halted. The Scotch half-breed slowly retraced his
steps to the camp they had left. The men ceased talking. A revolver-shot
rang out. The man came back hurriedly. The whips snapped, the bells
tinkled merrily, the sleds churned along the trail; but Buck knew, and
every dog knew, what had taken place behind the belt of river trees.




Chapter V. The Toil of Trace and Trail


Thirty days from the time it left Dawson, the Salt Water Mail, with Buck
and his mates at the fore, arrived at Skaguay. They were in a wretched
state, worn out and worn down. Buck's one hundred and forty pounds
had dwindled to one hundred and fifteen. The rest of his mates, though
lighter dogs, had relatively lost more weight than he. Pike, the
malingerer, who, in his lifetime of deceit, had often successfully
feigned a hurt leg, was now limping in earnest. Sol-leks was limping,
and Dub was suffering from a wrenched shoulder-blade.

They were all terribly footsore. No spring or rebound was left in them.
Their feet fell heavily on the trail, jarring their bodies and doubling
the fatigue of a day's travel. There was nothing the matter with them
except that they were dead tired. It was not the dead-tiredness that
comes through brief and excessive effort, from which recovery is a
matter of hours; but it was the dead-tiredness that comes through the
slow and prolonged strength drainage of months of toil. There was no
power of recuperation left, no reserve strength to call upon. It had
been all used, the last least bit of it. Every muscle, every fibre,
every cell, was tired, dead tired. And there was reason for it. In less
than five months they had travelled twenty-five hundred miles, during
the last eighteen hundred of which they had had but five days' rest.
When they arrived at Skaguay they were apparently on their last legs.
They could barely keep the traces taut, and on the down grades just
managed to keep out of the way of the sled.

“Mush on, poor sore feets,” the driver encouraged them as they tottered
down the main street of Skaguay. “Dis is de las'. Den we get one long
res'. Eh? For sure. One bully long res'.”

The drivers confidently expected a long stopover. Themselves, they had
covered twelve hundred miles with two days' rest, and in the nature of
reason and common justice they deserved an interval of loafing. But so
many were the men who had rushed into the Klondike, and so many were the
sweethearts, wives, and kin that had not rushed in, that the congested
mail was taking on Alpine proportions; also, there were official orders.
Fresh batches of Hudson Bay dogs were to take the places of those
worthless for the trail. The worthless ones were to be got rid of, and,
since dogs count for little against dollars, they were to be sold.

Three days passed, by which time Buck and his mates found how really
tired and weak they were. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, two
men from the States came along and bought them, harness and all, for a
song. The men addressed each other as “Hal” and “Charles.” Charles was
a middle-aged, lightish-colored man, with weak and watery eyes and a
mustache that twisted fiercely and vigorously up, giving the lie to the
limply drooping lip it concealed. Hal was a youngster of nineteen or
twenty, with a big Colt's revolver and a hunting-knife strapped about
him on a belt that fairly bristled with cartridges. This belt was the
most salient thing about him. It advertised his callowness--a callowness
sheer and unutterable. Both men were manifestly out of place, and why
such as they should adventure the North is part of the mystery of things
that passes understanding.

Buck heard the chaffering, saw the money pass between the man and the
Government agent, and knew that the Scotch half-breed and the mail-train
drivers were passing out of his life on the heels of Perrault and
Francois and the others who had gone before. When driven with his mates
to the new owners' camp, Buck saw a slipshod and slovenly affair, tent
half stretched, dishes unwashed, everything in disorder; also, he saw a
woman. “Mercedes” the men called her. She was Charles's wife and Hal's
sister--a nice family party.

Buck watched them apprehensively as they proceeded to take down the tent
and load the sled. There was a great deal of effort about their manner,
but no businesslike method. The tent was rolled into an awkward bundle
three times as large as it should have been. The tin dishes were packed
away unwashed. Mercedes continually fluttered in the way of her men and
kept up an unbroken chattering of remonstrance and advice. When they put
a clothes-sack on the front of the sled, she suggested it should go on
the back; and when they had put it on the back, and covered it over
with a couple of other bundles, she discovered overlooked articles which
could abide nowhere else but in that very sack, and they unloaded again.

Three men from a neighboring tent came out and looked on, grinning and
winking at one another.

“You've got a right smart load as it is,” said one of them; “and it's
not me should tell you your business, but I wouldn't tote that tent
along if I was you.”

“Undreamed of!” cried Mercedes, throwing up her hands in dainty dismay.
“However in the world could I manage without a tent?”

“It's springtime, and you won't get any more cold weather,” the man
replied.

She shook her head decidedly, and Charles and Hal put the last odds and
ends on top the mountainous load.

“Think it'll ride?” one of the men asked.

“Why shouldn't it?” Charles demanded rather shortly.

“Oh, that's all right, that's all right,” the man hastened meekly to
say. “I was just a-wonderin', that is all. It seemed a mite top-heavy.”

Charles turned his back and drew the lashings down as well as he could,
which was not in the least well.

“An' of course the dogs can hike along all day with that contraption
behind them,” affirmed a second of the men.

“Certainly,” said Hal, with freezing politeness, taking hold of the
gee-pole with one hand and swinging his whip from the other. “Mush!” he
shouted. “Mush on there!”

The dogs sprang against the breast-bands, strained hard for a few
moments, then relaxed. They were unable to move the sled.

“The lazy brutes, I'll show them,” he cried, preparing to lash out at
them with the whip.

But Mercedes interfered, crying, “Oh, Hal, you mustn't,” as she caught
hold of the whip and wrenched it from him. “The poor dears! Now you
must promise you won't be harsh with them for the rest of the trip, or I
won't go a step.”

“Precious lot you know about dogs,” her brother sneered; “and I wish
you'd leave me alone. They're lazy, I tell you, and you've got to whip
them to get anything out of them. That's their way. You ask any one. Ask
one of those men.”

Mercedes looked at them imploringly, untold repugnance at sight of pain
written in her pretty face.

“They're weak as water, if you want to know,” came the reply from one
of the men. “Plum tuckered out, that's what's the matter. They need a
rest.”

“Rest be blanked,” said Hal, with his beardless lips; and Mercedes said,
“Oh!” in pain and sorrow at the oath.

But she was a clannish creature, and rushed at once to the defence of
her brother. “Never mind that man,” she said pointedly. “You're driving
our dogs, and you do what you think best with them.”

Again Hal's whip fell upon the dogs. They threw themselves against the
breast-bands, dug their feet into the packed snow, got down low to it,
and put forth all their strength. The sled held as though it were an
anchor. After two efforts, they stood still, panting. The whip was
whistling savagely, when once more Mercedes interfered. She dropped on
her knees before Buck, with tears in her eyes, and put her arms around
his neck.

“You poor, poor dears,” she cried sympathetically, “why don't you pull
hard?--then you wouldn't be whipped.” Buck did not like her, but he
was feeling too miserable to resist her, taking it as part of the day's
miserable work.

One of the onlookers, who had been clenching his teeth to suppress hot
speech, now spoke up:--

“It's not that I care a whoop what becomes of you, but for the dogs'
sakes I just want to tell you, you can help them a mighty lot by
breaking out that sled. The runners are froze fast. Throw your weight
against the gee-pole, right and left, and break it out.”

A third time the attempt was made, but this time, following the advice,
Hal broke out the runners which had been frozen to the snow. The
overloaded and unwieldy sled forged ahead, Buck and his mates struggling
frantically under the rain of blows. A hundred yards ahead the path
turned and sloped steeply into the main street. It would have required
an experienced man to keep the top-heavy sled upright, and Hal was not
such a man. As they swung on the turn the sled went over, spilling
half its load through the loose lashings. The dogs never stopped. The
lightened sled bounded on its side behind them. They were angry because
of the ill treatment they had received and the unjust load. Buck was
raging. He broke into a run, the team following his lead. Hal cried
“Whoa! whoa!” but they gave no heed. He tripped and was pulled off his
feet. The capsized sled ground over him, and the dogs dashed on up the
street, adding to the gayety of Skaguay as they scattered the remainder
of the outfit along its chief thoroughfare.

Kind-hearted citizens caught the dogs and gathered up the scattered
belongings. Also, they gave advice. Half the load and twice the dogs,
if they ever expected to reach Dawson, was what was said. Hal and
his sister and brother-in-law listened unwillingly, pitched tent, and
overhauled the outfit. Canned goods were turned out that made men laugh,
for canned goods on the Long Trail is a thing to dream about. “Blankets
for a hotel” quoth one of the men who laughed and helped. “Half as
many is too much; get rid of them. Throw away that tent, and all those
dishes,--who's going to wash them, anyway? Good Lord, do you think
you're travelling on a Pullman?”

And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous. Mercedes
cried when her clothes-bags were dumped on the ground and article
after article was thrown out. She cried in general, and she cried in
particular over each discarded thing. She clasped hands about knees,
rocking back and forth broken-heartedly. She averred she would not go
an inch, not for a dozen Charleses. She appealed to everybody and to
everything, finally wiping her eyes and proceeding to cast out even
articles of apparel that were imperative necessaries. And in her zeal,
when she had finished with her own, she attacked the belongings of her
men and went through them like a tornado.

This accomplished, the outfit, though cut in half, was still a
formidable bulk. Charles and Hal went out in the evening and bought six
Outside dogs. These, added to the six of the original team, and Teek
and Koona, the huskies obtained at the Rink Rapids on the record
trip, brought the team up to fourteen. But the Outside dogs, though
practically broken in since their landing, did not amount to much. Three
were short-haired pointers, one was a Newfoundland, and the other
two were mongrels of indeterminate breed. They did not seem to know
anything, these newcomers. Buck and his comrades looked upon them with
disgust, and though he speedily taught them their places and what not
to do, he could not teach them what to do. They did not take kindly
to trace and trail. With the exception of the two mongrels, they were
bewildered and spirit-broken by the strange savage environment in which
they found themselves and by the ill treatment they had received. The
two mongrels were without spirit at all; bones were the only things
breakable about them.

With the newcomers hopeless and forlorn, and the old team worn out by
twenty-five hundred miles of continuous trail, the outlook was anything
but bright. The two men, however, were quite cheerful. And they were
proud, too. They were doing the thing in style, with fourteen dogs. They
had seen other sleds depart over the Pass for Dawson, or come in from
Dawson, but never had they seen a sled with so many as fourteen dogs. In
the nature of Arctic travel there was a reason why fourteen dogs should
not drag one sled, and that was that one sled could not carry the food
for fourteen dogs. But Charles and Hal did not know this. They had
worked the trip out with a pencil, so much to a dog, so many dogs,
so many days, Q.E.D. Mercedes looked over their shoulders and nodded
comprehensively, it was all so very simple.

Late next morning Buck led the long team up the street. There was
nothing lively about it, no snap or go in him and his fellows. They were
starting dead weary. Four times he had covered the distance between Salt
Water and Dawson, and the knowledge that, jaded and tired, he was facing
the same trail once more, made him bitter. His heart was not in
the work, nor was the heart of any dog. The Outsides were timid and
frightened, the Insides without confidence in their masters.

Buck felt vaguely that there was no depending upon these two men and the
woman. They did not know how to do anything, and as the days went by
it became apparent that they could not learn. They were slack in all
things, without order or discipline. It took them half the night to
pitch a slovenly camp, and half the morning to break that camp and get
the sled loaded in fashion so slovenly that for the rest of the day they
were occupied in stopping and rearranging the load. Some days they did
not make ten miles. On other days they were unable to get started
at all. And on no day did they succeed in making more than half the
distance used by the men as a basis in their dog-food computation.

It was inevitable that they should go short on dog-food. But they
hastened it by overfeeding, bringing the day nearer when underfeeding
would commence. The Outside dogs, whose digestions had not been trained
by chronic famine to make the most of little, had voracious appetites.
And when, in addition to this, the worn-out huskies pulled weakly, Hal
decided that the orthodox ration was too small. He doubled it. And to
cap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in her pretty eyes and a quaver
in her throat, could not cajole him into giving the dogs still more, she
stole from the fish-sacks and fed them slyly. But it was not food that
Buck and the huskies needed, but rest. And though they were making poor
time, the heavy load they dragged sapped their strength severely.

Then came the underfeeding. Hal awoke one day to the fact that his
dog-food was half gone and the distance only quarter covered; further,
that for love or money no additional dog-food was to be obtained. So
he cut down even the orthodox ration and tried to increase the day's
travel. His sister and brother-in-law seconded him; but they were
frustrated by their heavy outfit and their own incompetence. It was a
simple matter to give the dogs less food; but it was impossible to
make the dogs travel faster, while their own inability to get under way
earlier in the morning prevented them from travelling longer hours. Not
only did they not know how to work dogs, but they did not know how to
work themselves.

The first to go was Dub. Poor blundering thief that he was, always
getting caught and punished, he had none the less been a faithful
worker. His wrenched shoulder-blade, untreated and unrested, went from
bad to worse, till finally Hal shot him with the big Colt's revolver. It
is a saying of the country that an Outside dog starves to death on the
ration of the husky, so the six Outside dogs under Buck could do no less
than die on half the ration of the husky. The Newfoundland went first,
followed by the three short-haired pointers, the two mongrels hanging
more grittily on to life, but going in the end.

By this time all the amenities and gentlenesses of the Southland had
fallen away from the three people. Shorn of its glamour and romance,
Arctic travel became to them a reality too harsh for their manhood and
womanhood. Mercedes ceased weeping over the dogs, being too occupied
with weeping over herself and with quarrelling with her husband and
brother. To quarrel was the one thing they were never too weary to do.
Their irritability arose out of their misery, increased with it, doubled
upon it, outdistanced it. The wonderful patience of the trail which
comes to men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of speech
and kindly, did not come to these two men and the woman. They had no
inkling of such a patience. They were stiff and in pain; their muscles
ached, their bones ached, their very hearts ached; and because of this
they became sharp of speech, and hard words were first on their lips in
the morning and last at night.

Charles and Hal wrangled whenever Mercedes gave them a chance. It was
the cherished belief of each that he did more than his share of the
work, and neither forbore to speak this belief at every opportunity.
Sometimes Mercedes sided with her husband, sometimes with her brother.
The result was a beautiful and unending family quarrel. Starting from
a dispute as to which should chop a few sticks for the fire (a dispute
which concerned only Charles and Hal), presently would be lugged in the
rest of the family, fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, people thousands
of miles away, and some of them dead. That Hal's views on art, or the
sort of society plays his mother's brother wrote, should have
anything to do with the chopping of a few sticks of firewood, passes
comprehension; nevertheless the quarrel was as likely to tend in that
direction as in the direction of Charles's political prejudices. And
that Charles's sister's tale-bearing tongue should be relevant to the
building of a Yukon fire, was apparent only to Mercedes, who disburdened
herself of copious opinions upon that topic, and incidentally upon a
few other traits unpleasantly peculiar to her husband's family. In the
meantime the fire remained unbuilt, the camp half pitched, and the dogs
unfed.

Mercedes nursed a special grievance--the grievance of sex. She was
pretty and soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days. But
the present treatment by her husband and brother was everything save
chivalrous. It was her custom to be helpless. They complained. Upon
which impeachment of what to her was her most essential sex-prerogative,
she made their lives unendurable. She no longer considered the dogs, and
because she was sore and tired, she persisted in riding on the sled. She
was pretty and soft, but she weighed one hundred and twenty pounds--a
lusty last straw to the load dragged by the weak and starving animals.
She rode for days, till they fell in the traces and the sled stood
still. Charles and Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleaded with her,
entreated, the while she wept and importuned Heaven with a recital of
their brutality.

On one occasion they took her off the sled by main strength. They never
did it again. She let her legs go limp like a spoiled child, and sat
down on the trail. They went on their way, but she did not move. After
they had travelled three miles they unloaded the sled, came back for
her, and by main strength put her on the sled again.

In the excess of their own misery they were callous to the suffering of
their animals. Hal's theory, which he practised on others, was that one
must get hardened. He had started out preaching it to his sister and
brother-in-law. Failing there, he hammered it into the dogs with a club.
At the Five Fingers the dog-food gave out, and a toothless old squaw
offered to trade them a few pounds of frozen horse-hide for the Colt's
revolver that kept the big hunting-knife company at Hal's hip. A poor
substitute for food was this hide, just as it had been stripped from the
starved horses of the cattlemen six months back. In its frozen state it
was more like strips of galvanized iron, and when a dog wrestled it into
his stomach it thawed into thin and innutritious leathery strings and
into a mass of short hair, irritating and indigestible.

And through it all Buck staggered along at the head of the team as in
a nightmare. He pulled when he could; when he could no longer pull, he
fell down and remained down till blows from whip or club drove him
to his feet again. All the stiffness and gloss had gone out of his
beautiful furry coat. The hair hung down, limp and draggled, or matted
with dried blood where Hal's club had bruised him. His muscles had
wasted away to knotty strings, and the flesh pads had disappeared, so
that each rib and every bone in his frame were outlined cleanly
through the loose hide that was wrinkled in folds of emptiness. It was
heartbreaking, only Buck's heart was unbreakable. The man in the red
sweater had proved that.

As it was with Buck, so was it with his mates. They were perambulating
skeletons. There were seven all together, including him. In their very
great misery they had become insensible to the bite of the lash or the
bruise of the club. The pain of the beating was dull and distant,
just as the things their eyes saw and their ears heard seemed dull and
distant. They were not half living, or quarter living. They were simply
so many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered faintly. When a
halt was made, they dropped down in the traces like dead dogs, and the
spark dimmed and paled and seemed to go out. And when the club or whip
fell upon them, the spark fluttered feebly up, and they tottered to
their feet and staggered on.

There came a day when Billee, the good-natured, fell and could not rise.
Hal had traded off his revolver, so he took the axe and knocked Billee
on the head as he lay in the traces, then cut the carcass out of the
harness and dragged it to one side. Buck saw, and his mates saw, and
they knew that this thing was very close to them. On the next day Koona
went, and but five of them remained: Joe, too far gone to be malignant;
Pike, crippled and limping, only half conscious and not conscious enough
longer to malinger; Sol-leks, the one-eyed, still faithful to the toil
of trace and trail, and mournful in that he had so little strength with
which to pull; Teek, who had not travelled so far that winter and who
was now beaten more than the others because he was fresher; and Buck,
still at the head of the team, but no longer enforcing discipline or
striving to enforce it, blind with weakness half the time and keeping
the trail by the loom of it and by the dim feel of his feet.

It was beautiful spring weather, but neither dogs nor humans were aware
of it. Each day the sun rose earlier and set later. It was dawn by three
in the morning, and twilight lingered till nine at night. The whole long
day was a blaze of sunshine. The ghostly winter silence had given way
to the great spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur arose from all
the land, fraught with the joy of living. It came from the things that
lived and moved again, things which had been as dead and which had not
moved during the long months of frost. The sap was rising in the pines.
The willows and aspens were bursting out in young buds. Shrubs and vines
were putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in the nights, and
in the days all manner of creeping, crawling things rustled forth into
the sun. Partridges and woodpeckers were booming and knocking in the
forest. Squirrels were chattering, birds singing, and overhead honked
the wild-fowl driving up from the south in cunning wedges that split the
air.

From every hill slope came the trickle of running water, the music of
unseen fountains. All things were thawing, bending, snapping. The Yukon
was straining to break loose the ice that bound it down. It ate away
from beneath; the sun ate from above. Air-holes formed, fissures sprang
and spread apart, while thin sections of ice fell through bodily into
the river. And amid all this bursting, rending, throbbing of awakening
life, under the blazing sun and through the soft-sighing breezes, like
wayfarers to death, staggered the two men, the woman, and the huskies.

With the dogs falling, Mercedes weeping and riding, Hal swearing
innocuously, and Charles's eyes wistfully watering, they staggered into
John Thornton's camp at the mouth of White River. When they halted,
the dogs dropped down as though they had all been struck dead. Mercedes
dried her eyes and looked at John Thornton. Charles sat down on a log
to rest. He sat down very slowly and painstakingly what of his great
stiffness. Hal did the talking. John Thornton was whittling the last
touches on an axe-handle he had made from a stick of birch. He whittled
and listened, gave monosyllabic replies, and, when it was asked, terse
advice. He knew the breed, and he gave his advice in the certainty that
it would not be followed.

“They told us up above that the bottom was dropping out of the trail and
that the best thing for us to do was to lay over,” Hal said in response
to Thornton's warning to take no more chances on the rotten ice. “They
told us we couldn't make White River, and here we are.” This last with a
sneering ring of triumph in it.

“And they told you true,” John Thornton answered. “The bottom's likely
to drop out at any moment. Only fools, with the blind luck of fools,
could have made it. I tell you straight, I wouldn't risk my carcass on
that ice for all the gold in Alaska.”

“That's because you're not a fool, I suppose,” said Hal. “All the same,
we'll go on to Dawson.” He uncoiled his whip. “Get up there, Buck! Hi!
Get up there! Mush on!”

Thornton went on whittling. It was idle, he knew, to get between a fool
and his folly; while two or three fools more or less would not alter the
scheme of things.

But the team did not get up at the command. It had long since passed
into the stage where blows were required to rouse it. The whip flashed
out, here and there, on its merciless errands. John Thornton compressed
his lips. Sol-leks was the first to crawl to his feet. Teek followed.
Joe came next, yelping with pain. Pike made painful efforts. Twice he
fell over, when half up, and on the third attempt managed to rise. Buck
made no effort. He lay quietly where he had fallen. The lash bit into
him again and again, but he neither whined nor struggled. Several times
Thornton started, as though to speak, but changed his mind. A moisture
came into his eyes, and, as the whipping continued, he arose and walked
irresolutely up and down.

This was the first time Buck had failed, in itself a sufficient reason
to drive Hal into a rage. He exchanged the whip for the customary club.
Buck refused to move under the rain of heavier blows which now fell upon
him. Like his mates, he was barely able to get up, but, unlike them, he
had made up his mind not to get up. He had a vague feeling of impending
doom. This had been strong upon him when he pulled in to the bank, and
it had not departed from him. What of the thin and rotten ice he had
felt under his feet all day, it seemed that he sensed disaster close at
hand, out there ahead on the ice where his master was trying to drive
him. He refused to stir. So greatly had he suffered, and so far gone was
he, that the blows did not hurt much. And as they continued to fall upon
him, the spark of life within flickered and went down. It was nearly
out. He felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance, he was
aware that he was being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him. He
no longer felt anything, though very faintly he could hear the impact of
the club upon his body. But it was no longer his body, it seemed so far
away.

And then, suddenly, without warning, uttering a cry that was
inarticulate and more like the cry of an animal, John Thornton sprang
upon the man who wielded the club. Hal was hurled backward, as
though struck by a falling tree. Mercedes screamed. Charles looked on
wistfully, wiped his watery eyes, but did not get up because of his
stiffness.

John Thornton stood over Buck, struggling to control himself, too
convulsed with rage to speak.

“If you strike that dog again, I'll kill you,” he at last managed to say
in a choking voice.

“It's my dog,” Hal replied, wiping the blood from his mouth as he came
back. “Get out of my way, or I'll fix you. I'm going to Dawson.”

Thornton stood between him and Buck, and evinced no intention of getting
out of the way. Hal drew his long hunting-knife. Mercedes screamed,
cried, laughed, and manifested the chaotic abandonment of hysteria.
Thornton rapped Hal's knuckles with the axe-handle, knocking the knife
to the ground. He rapped his knuckles again as he tried to pick it up.
Then he stooped, picked it up himself, and with two strokes cut Buck's
traces.

Hal had no fight left in him. Besides, his hands were full with his
sister, or his arms, rather; while Buck was too near dead to be of
further use in hauling the sled. A few minutes later they pulled out
from the bank and down the river. Buck heard them go and raised his head
to see, Pike was leading, Sol-leks was at the wheel, and between were
Joe and Teek. They were limping and staggering. Mercedes was riding the
loaded sled. Hal guided at the gee-pole, and Charles stumbled along in
the rear.

As Buck watched them, Thornton knelt beside him and with rough, kindly
hands searched for broken bones. By the time his search had disclosed
nothing more than many bruises and a state of terrible starvation, the
sled was a quarter of a mile away. Dog and man watched it crawling along
over the ice. Suddenly, they saw its back end drop down, as into a rut,
and the gee-pole, with Hal clinging to it, jerk into the air. Mercedes's
scream came to their ears. They saw Charles turn and make one step to
run back, and then a whole section of ice give way and dogs and humans
disappear. A yawning hole was all that was to be seen. The bottom had
dropped out of the trail.

John Thornton and Buck looked at each other.

“You poor devil,” said John Thornton, and Buck licked his hand.




Chapter VI. For the Love of a Man


When John Thornton froze his feet in the previous December his partners
had made him comfortable and left him to get well, going on themselves
up the river to get out a raft of saw-logs for Dawson. He was still
limping slightly at the time he rescued Buck, but with the continued
warm weather even the slight limp left him. And here, lying by the river
bank through the long spring days, watching the running water, listening
lazily to the songs of birds and the hum of nature, Buck slowly won back
his strength.

A rest comes very good after one has travelled three thousand miles,
and it must be confessed that Buck waxed lazy as his wounds healed, his
muscles swelled out, and the flesh came back to cover his bones. For
that matter, they were all loafing,--Buck, John Thornton, and Skeet
and Nig,--waiting for the raft to come that was to carry them down to
Dawson. Skeet was a little Irish setter who early made friends with
Buck, who, in a dying condition, was unable to resent her first
advances. She had the doctor trait which some dogs possess; and as a
mother cat washes her kittens, so she washed and cleansed Buck's
wounds. Regularly, each morning after he had finished his breakfast,
she performed her self-appointed task, till he came to look for her
ministrations as much as he did for Thornton's. Nig, equally friendly,
though less demonstrative, was a huge black dog, half bloodhound and
half deerhound, with eyes that laughed and a boundless good nature.

To Buck's surprise these dogs manifested no jealousy toward him. They
seemed to share the kindliness and largeness of John Thornton. As Buck
grew stronger they enticed him into all sorts of ridiculous games, in
which Thornton himself could not forbear to join; and in this fashion
Buck romped through his convalescence and into a new existence. Love,
genuine passionate love, was his for the first time. This he had never
experienced at Judge Miller's down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley.
With the Judge's sons, hunting and tramping, it had been a working
partnership; with the Judge's grandsons, a sort of pompous guardianship;
and with the Judge himself, a stately and dignified friendship. But love
that was feverish and burning, that was adoration, that was madness, it
had taken John Thornton to arouse.

This man had saved his life, which was something; but, further, he was
the ideal master. Other men saw to the welfare of their dogs from a
sense of duty and business expediency; he saw to the welfare of his as
if they were his own children, because he could not help it. And he saw
further. He never forgot a kindly greeting or a cheering word, and to
sit down for a long talk with them (“gas” he called it) was as much his
delight as theirs. He had a way of taking Buck's head roughly between
his hands, and resting his own head upon Buck's, of shaking him back
and forth, the while calling him ill names that to Buck were love
names. Buck knew no greater joy than that rough embrace and the sound of
murmured oaths, and at each jerk back and forth it seemed that his heart
would be shaken out of his body so great was its ecstasy. And when,
released, he sprang to his feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent,
his throat vibrant with unuttered sound, and in that fashion remained
without movement, John Thornton would reverently exclaim, “God! you can
all but speak!”

Buck had a trick of love expression that was akin to hurt. He would
often seize Thornton's hand in his mouth and close so fiercely that the
flesh bore the impress of his teeth for some time afterward. And as
Buck understood the oaths to be love words, so the man understood this
feigned bite for a caress.

For the most part, however, Buck's love was expressed in adoration.
While he went wild with happiness when Thornton touched him or spoke to
him, he did not seek these tokens. Unlike Skeet, who was wont to shove
her nose under Thornton's hand and nudge and nudge till petted, or Nig,
who would stalk up and rest his great head on Thornton's knee, Buck was
content to adore at a distance. He would lie by the hour, eager, alert,
at Thornton's feet, looking up into his face, dwelling upon it, studying
it, following with keenest interest each fleeting expression, every
movement or change of feature. Or, as chance might have it, he would lie
farther away, to the side or rear, watching the outlines of the man and
the occasional movements of his body. And often, such was the communion
in which they lived, the strength of Buck's gaze would draw John
Thornton's head around, and he would return the gaze, without speech,
his heart shining out of his eyes as Buck's heart shone out.

For a long time after his rescue, Buck did not like Thornton to get out
of his sight. From the moment he left the tent to when he entered it
again, Buck would follow at his heels. His transient masters since he
had come into the Northland had bred in him a fear that no master could
be permanent. He was afraid that Thornton would pass out of his life as
Perrault and Francois and the Scotch half-breed had passed out. Even in
the night, in his dreams, he was haunted by this fear. At such times
he would shake off sleep and creep through the chill to the flap of
the tent, where he would stand and listen to the sound of his master's
breathing.

But in spite of this great love he bore John Thornton, which seemed
to bespeak the soft civilizing influence, the strain of the primitive,
which the Northland had aroused in him, remained alive and active.
Faithfulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof, were his; yet
he retained his wildness and wiliness. He was a thing of the wild, come
in from the wild to sit by John Thornton's fire, rather than a dog
of the soft Southland stamped with the marks of generations of
civilization. Because of his very great love, he could not steal from
this man, but from any other man, in any other camp, he did not hesitate
an instant; while the cunning with which he stole enabled him to escape
detection.

His face and body were scored by the teeth of many dogs, and he
fought as fiercely as ever and more shrewdly. Skeet and Nig were too
good-natured for quarrelling,--besides, they belonged to John Thornton;
but the strange dog, no matter what the breed or valor, swiftly
acknowledged Buck's supremacy or found himself struggling for life with
a terrible antagonist. And Buck was merciless. He had learned well the
law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back
from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from
Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew
there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show
mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was
misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill
or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out
of the depths of Time, he obeyed.

He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn. He
linked the past with the present, and the eternity behind him throbbed
through him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed as the tides and
seasons swayed. He sat by John Thornton's fire, a broad-breasted dog,
white-fanged and long-furred; but behind him were the shades of all
manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, urgent and prompting,
tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for the water he drank,
scenting the wind with him, listening with him and telling him the
sounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods,
directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he lay down,
and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff
of his dreams.

So peremptorily did these shades beckon him, that each day mankind and
the claims of mankind slipped farther from him. Deep in the forest a
call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously
thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire
and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on
and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the
call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest. But as often as he gained
the soft unbroken earth and the green shade, the love for John Thornton
drew him back to the fire again.

Thornton alone held him. The rest of mankind was as nothing. Chance
travellers might praise or pet him; but he was cold under it all,
and from a too demonstrative man he would get up and walk away. When
Thornton's partners, Hans and Pete, arrived on the long-expected raft,
Buck refused to notice them till he learned they were close to Thornton;
after that he tolerated them in a passive sort of way, accepting favors
from them as though he favored them by accepting. They were of the same
large type as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking simply and
seeing clearly; and ere they swung the raft into the big eddy by the
saw-mill at Dawson, they understood Buck and his ways, and did not
insist upon an intimacy such as obtained with Skeet and Nig.

For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow and grow. He, alone among
men, could put a pack upon Buck's back in the summer travelling. Nothing
was too great for Buck to do, when Thornton commanded. One day (they had
grub-staked themselves from the proceeds of the raft and left Dawson
for the head-waters of the Tanana) the men and dogs were sitting on the
crest of a cliff which fell away, straight down, to naked bed-rock three
hundred feet below. John Thornton was sitting near the edge, Buck at his
shoulder. A thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention
of Hans and Pete to the experiment he had in mind. “Jump, Buck!” he
commanded, sweeping his arm out and over the chasm. The next instant he
was grappling with Buck on the extreme edge, while Hans and Pete were
dragging them back into safety.

“It's uncanny,” Pete said, after it was over and they had caught their
speech.

Thornton shook his head. “No, it is splendid, and it is terrible, too.
Do you know, it sometimes makes me afraid.”

“I'm not hankering to be the man that lays hands on you while he's
around,” Pete announced conclusively, nodding his head toward Buck.

“Py Jingo!” was Hans's contribution. “Not mineself either.”

It was at Circle City, ere the year was out, that Pete's apprehensions
were realized. “Black” Burton, a man evil-tempered and malicious, had
been picking a quarrel with a tenderfoot at the bar, when Thornton
stepped good-naturedly between. Buck, as was his custom, was lying in a
corner, head on paws, watching his master's every action. Burton struck
out, without warning, straight from the shoulder. Thornton was sent
spinning, and saved himself from falling only by clutching the rail of
the bar.

Those who were looking on heard what was neither bark nor yelp, but a
something which is best described as a roar, and they saw Buck's body
rise up in the air as he left the floor for Burton's throat. The man
saved his life by instinctively throwing out his arm, but was hurled
backward to the floor with Buck on top of him. Buck loosed his teeth
from the flesh of the arm and drove in again for the throat. This time
the man succeeded only in partly blocking, and his throat was torn open.
Then the crowd was upon Buck, and he was driven off; but while a surgeon
checked the bleeding, he prowled up and down, growling furiously,
attempting to rush in, and being forced back by an array of hostile
clubs. A “miners' meeting,” called on the spot, decided that the dog had
sufficient provocation, and Buck was discharged. But his reputation was
made, and from that day his name spread through every camp in Alaska.

Later on, in the fall of the year, he saved John Thornton's life in
quite another fashion. The three partners were lining a long and narrow
poling-boat down a bad stretch of rapids on the Forty-Mile Creek. Hans
and Pete moved along the bank, snubbing with a thin Manila rope from
tree to tree, while Thornton remained in the boat, helping its descent
by means of a pole, and shouting directions to the shore. Buck, on the
bank, worried and anxious, kept abreast of the boat, his eyes never off
his master.

At a particularly bad spot, where a ledge of barely submerged rocks
jutted out into the river, Hans cast off the rope, and, while Thornton
poled the boat out into the stream, ran down the bank with the end in
his hand to snub the boat when it had cleared the ledge. This it did,
and was flying down-stream in a current as swift as a mill-race, when
Hans checked it with the rope and checked too suddenly. The boat flirted
over and snubbed in to the bank bottom up, while Thornton, flung sheer
out of it, was carried down-stream toward the worst part of the rapids,
a stretch of wild water in which no swimmer could live.

Buck had sprung in on the instant; and at the end of three hundred
yards, amid a mad swirl of water, he overhauled Thornton. When he felt
him grasp his tail, Buck headed for the bank, swimming with all his
splendid strength. But the progress shoreward was slow; the progress
down-stream amazingly rapid. From below came the fatal roaring where the
wild current went wilder and was rent in shreds and spray by the rocks
which thrust through like the teeth of an enormous comb. The suck of the
water as it took the beginning of the last steep pitch was frightful,
and Thornton knew that the shore was impossible. He scraped furiously
over a rock, bruised across a second, and struck a third with crushing
force. He clutched its slippery top with both hands, releasing Buck, and
above the roar of the churning water shouted: “Go, Buck! Go!”

Buck could not hold his own, and swept on down-stream, struggling
desperately, but unable to win back. When he heard Thornton's command
repeated, he partly reared out of the water, throwing his head high, as
though for a last look, then turned obediently toward the bank. He swam
powerfully and was dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the very point
where swimming ceased to be possible and destruction began.

They knew that the time a man could cling to a slippery rock in the face
of that driving current was a matter of minutes, and they ran as fast as
they could up the bank to a point far above where Thornton was hanging
on. They attached the line with which they had been snubbing the boat to
Buck's neck and shoulders, being careful that it should neither strangle
him nor impede his swimming, and launched him into the stream. He struck
out boldly, but not straight enough into the stream. He discovered the
mistake too late, when Thornton was abreast of him and a bare half-dozen
strokes away while he was being carried helplessly past.

Hans promptly snubbed with the rope, as though Buck were a boat. The
rope thus tightening on him in the sweep of the current, he was jerked
under the surface, and under the surface he remained till his body
struck against the bank and he was hauled out. He was half drowned, and
Hans and Pete threw themselves upon him, pounding the breath into him
and the water out of him. He staggered to his feet and fell down. The
faint sound of Thornton's voice came to them, and though they could not
make out the words of it, they knew that he was in his extremity. His
master's voice acted on Buck like an electric shock, He sprang to his
feet and ran up the bank ahead of the men to the point of his previous
departure.

Again the rope was attached and he was launched, and again he struck
out, but this time straight into the stream. He had miscalculated once,
but he would not be guilty of it a second time. Hans paid out the rope,
permitting no slack, while Pete kept it clear of coils. Buck held on
till he was on a line straight above Thornton; then he turned, and with
the speed of an express train headed down upon him. Thornton saw him
coming, and, as Buck struck him like a battering ram, with the whole
force of the current behind him, he reached up and closed with both arms
around the shaggy neck. Hans snubbed the rope around the tree, and
Buck and Thornton were jerked under the water. Strangling, suffocating,
sometimes one uppermost and sometimes the other, dragging over the
jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and snags, they veered in to the
bank.

Thornton came to, belly downward and being violently propelled back
and forth across a drift log by Hans and Pete. His first glance was for
Buck, over whose limp and apparently lifeless body Nig was setting up a
howl, while Skeet was licking the wet face and closed eyes. Thornton was
himself bruised and battered, and he went carefully over Buck's body,
when he had been brought around, finding three broken ribs.

“That settles it,” he announced. “We camp right here.” And camp they
did, till Buck's ribs knitted and he was able to travel.

That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed another exploit, not so heroic,
perhaps, but one that put his name many notches higher on the totem-pole
of Alaskan fame. This exploit was particularly gratifying to the three
men; for they stood in need of the outfit which it furnished, and were
enabled to make a long-desired trip into the virgin East, where miners
had not yet appeared. It was brought about by a conversation in the
Eldorado Saloon, in which men waxed boastful of their favorite dogs.
Buck, because of his record, was the target for these men, and Thornton
was driven stoutly to defend him. At the end of half an hour one man
stated that his dog could start a sled with five hundred pounds and
walk off with it; a second bragged six hundred for his dog; and a third,
seven hundred.

“Pooh! pooh!” said John Thornton; “Buck can start a thousand pounds.”

“And break it out? and walk off with it for a hundred yards?” demanded
Matthewson, a Bonanza King, he of the seven hundred vaunt.

“And break it out, and walk off with it for a hundred yards,” John
Thornton said coolly.

“Well,” Matthewson said, slowly and deliberately, so that all could
hear, “I've got a thousand dollars that says he can't. And there it
is.” So saying, he slammed a sack of gold dust of the size of a bologna
sausage down upon the bar.

Nobody spoke. Thornton's bluff, if bluff it was, had been called. He
could feel a flush of warm blood creeping up his face. His tongue had
tricked him. He did not know whether Buck could start a thousand pounds.
Half a ton! The enormousness of it appalled him. He had great faith in
Buck's strength and had often thought him capable of starting such a
load; but never, as now, had he faced the possibility of it, the eyes
of a dozen men fixed upon him, silent and waiting. Further, he had no
thousand dollars; nor had Hans or Pete.

“I've got a sled standing outside now, with twenty fiftypound sacks of
flour on it,” Matthewson went on with brutal directness; “so don't let
that hinder you.”

Thornton did not reply. He did not know what to say. He glanced from
face to face in the absent way of a man who has lost the power of
thought and is seeking somewhere to find the thing that will start
it going again. The face of Jim O'Brien, a Mastodon King and old-time
comrade, caught his eyes. It was as a cue to him, seeming to rouse him
to do what he would never have dreamed of doing.

“Can you lend me a thousand?” he asked, almost in a whisper.

“Sure,” answered O'Brien, thumping down a plethoric sack by the side of
Matthewson's. “Though it's little faith I'm having, John, that the beast
can do the trick.”

The Eldorado emptied its occupants into the street to see the test. The
tables were deserted, and the dealers and gamekeepers came forth to see
the outcome of the wager and to lay odds. Several hundred men, furred
and mittened, banked around the sled within easy distance. Matthewson's
sled, loaded with a thousand pounds of flour, had been standing for a
couple of hours, and in the intense cold (it was sixty below zero) the
runners had frozen fast to the hard-packed snow. Men offered odds of two
to one that Buck could not budge the sled. A quibble arose concerning
the phrase “break out.” O'Brien contended it was Thornton's privilege
to knock the runners loose, leaving Buck to “break it out” from a dead
standstill. Matthewson insisted that the phrase included breaking the
runners from the frozen grip of the snow. A majority of the men who had
witnessed the making of the bet decided in his favor, whereat the odds
went up to three to one against Buck.

There were no takers. Not a man believed him capable of the feat.
Thornton had been hurried into the wager, heavy with doubt; and now that
he looked at the sled itself, the concrete fact, with the regular team
of ten dogs curled up in the snow before it, the more impossible the
task appeared. Matthewson waxed jubilant.

“Three to one!” he proclaimed. “I'll lay you another thousand at that
figure, Thornton. What d'ye say?”

Thornton's doubt was strong in his face, but his fighting spirit was
aroused--the fighting spirit that soars above odds, fails to recognize
the impossible, and is deaf to all save the clamor for battle. He called
Hans and Pete to him. Their sacks were slim, and with his own the three
partners could rake together only two hundred dollars. In the ebb of
their fortunes, this sum was their total capital; yet they laid it
unhesitatingly against Matthewson's six hundred.

The team of ten dogs was unhitched, and Buck, with his own harness, was
put into the sled. He had caught the contagion of the excitement, and
he felt that in some way he must do a great thing for John Thornton.
Murmurs of admiration at his splendid appearance went up. He was in
perfect condition, without an ounce of superfluous flesh, and the one
hundred and fifty pounds that he weighed were so many pounds of grit and
virility. His furry coat shone with the sheen of silk. Down the neck and
across the shoulders, his mane, in repose as it was, half bristled and
seemed to lift with every movement, as though excess of vigor made each
particular hair alive and active. The great breast and heavy fore legs
were no more than in proportion with the rest of the body, where the
muscles showed in tight rolls underneath the skin. Men felt these
muscles and proclaimed them hard as iron, and the odds went down to two
to one.

“Gad, sir! Gad, sir!” stuttered a member of the latest dynasty, a king
of the Skookum Benches. “I offer you eight hundred for him, sir, before
the test, sir; eight hundred just as he stands.”

Thornton shook his head and stepped to Buck's side.

“You must stand off from him,” Matthewson protested. “Free play and
plenty of room.”

The crowd fell silent; only could be heard the voices of the gamblers
vainly offering two to one. Everybody acknowledged Buck a magnificent
animal, but twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour bulked too large in their
eyes for them to loosen their pouch-strings.

Thornton knelt down by Buck's side. He took his head in his two hands
and rested cheek on cheek. He did not playfully shake him, as was his
wont, or murmur soft love curses; but he whispered in his ear. “As you
love me, Buck. As you love me,” was what he whispered. Buck whined with
suppressed eagerness.

The crowd was watching curiously. The affair was growing mysterious. It
seemed like a conjuration. As Thornton got to his feet, Buck seized his
mittened hand between his jaws, pressing in with his teeth and releasing
slowly, half-reluctantly. It was the answer, in terms, not of speech,
but of love. Thornton stepped well back.

“Now, Buck,” he said.

Buck tightened the traces, then slacked them for a matter of several
inches. It was the way he had learned.

“Gee!” Thornton's voice rang out, sharp in the tense silence.

Buck swung to the right, ending the movement in a plunge that took up
the slack and with a sudden jerk arrested his one hundred and fifty
pounds. The load quivered, and from under the runners arose a crisp
crackling.

“Haw!” Thornton commanded.

Buck duplicated the manoeuvre, this time to the left. The crackling
turned into a snapping, the sled pivoting and the runners slipping and
grating several inches to the side. The sled was broken out. Men were
holding their breaths, intensely unconscious of the fact.

“Now, MUSH!”

Thornton's command cracked out like a pistol-shot. Buck threw himself
forward, tightening the traces with a jarring lunge. His whole body
was gathered compactly together in the tremendous effort, the muscles
writhing and knotting like live things under the silky fur. His great
chest was low to the ground, his head forward and down, while his
feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring the hard-packed snow in
parallel grooves. The sled swayed and trembled, half-started forward.
One of his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud. Then the sled
lurched ahead in what appeared a rapid succession of jerks, though it
never really came to a dead stop again...half an inch...an inch... two
inches... The jerks perceptibly diminished; as the sled gained momentum,
he caught them up, till it was moving steadily along.

Men gasped and began to breathe again, unaware that for a moment they
had ceased to breathe. Thornton was running behind, encouraging Buck
with short, cheery words. The distance had been measured off, and as he
neared the pile of firewood which marked the end of the hundred yards,
a cheer began to grow and grow, which burst into a roar as he passed
the firewood and halted at command. Every man was tearing himself loose,
even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were flying in the air. Men were
shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a
general incoherent babel.

But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck. Head was against head,
and he was shaking him back and forth. Those who hurried up heard him
cursing Buck, and he cursed him long and fervently, and softly and
lovingly.

“Gad, sir! Gad, sir!” spluttered the Skookum Bench king. “I'll give you
a thousand for him, sir, a thousand, sir--twelve hundred, sir.”

Thornton rose to his feet. His eyes were wet. The tears were streaming
frankly down his cheeks. “Sir,” he said to the Skookum Bench king, “no,
sir. You can go to hell, sir. It's the best I can do for you, sir.”

Buck seized Thornton's hand in his teeth. Thornton shook him back and
forth. As though animated by a common impulse, the onlookers drew back
to a respectful distance; nor were they again indiscreet enough to
interrupt.




Chapter VII. The Sounding of the Call


When Buck earned sixteen hundred dollars in five minutes for John
Thornton, he made it possible for his master to pay off certain debts
and to journey with his partners into the East after a fabled lost mine,
the history of which was as old as the history of the country. Many men
had sought it; few had found it; and more than a few there were who had
never returned from the quest. This lost mine was steeped in tragedy and
shrouded in mystery. No one knew of the first man. The oldest tradition
stopped before it got back to him. From the beginning there had been an
ancient and ramshackle cabin. Dying men had sworn to it, and to the mine
the site of which it marked, clinching their testimony with nuggets that
were unlike any known grade of gold in the Northland.

But no living man had looted this treasure house, and the dead were
dead; wherefore John Thornton and Pete and Hans, with Buck and half a
dozen other dogs, faced into the East on an unknown trail to achieve
where men and dogs as good as themselves had failed. They sledded
seventy miles up the Yukon, swung to the left into the Stewart River,
passed the Mayo and the McQuestion, and held on until the Stewart itself
became a streamlet, threading the upstanding peaks which marked the
backbone of the continent.

John Thornton asked little of man or nature. He was unafraid of the
wild. With a handful of salt and a rifle he could plunge into the
wilderness and fare wherever he pleased and as long as he pleased. Being
in no haste, Indian fashion, he hunted his dinner in the course of the
day's travel; and if he failed to find it, like the Indian, he kept on
travelling, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later he would come
to it. So, on this great journey into the East, straight meat was the
bill of fare, ammunition and tools principally made up the load on the
sled, and the time-card was drawn upon the limitless future.

To Buck it was boundless delight, this hunting, fishing, and indefinite
wandering through strange places. For weeks at a time they would hold
on steadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end they would camp, here
and there, the dogs loafing and the men burning holes through frozen
muck and gravel and washing countless pans of dirt by the heat of the
fire. Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they feasted riotously, all
according to the abundance of game and the fortune of hunting. Summer
arrived, and dogs and men packed on their backs, rafted across blue
mountain lakes, and descended or ascended unknown rivers in slender
boats whipsawed from the standing forest.

The months came and went, and back and forth they twisted through the
uncharted vastness, where no men were and yet where men had been if
the Lost Cabin were true. They went across divides in summer blizzards,
shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between the timber
line and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarming
gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries and
flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland could boast. In the fall
of the year they penetrated a weird lake country, sad and silent,
where wildfowl had been, but where then there was no life nor sign of
life--only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice in sheltered
places, and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches.

And through another winter they wandered on the obliterated trails of
men who had gone before. Once, they came upon a path blazed through the
forest, an ancient path, and the Lost Cabin seemed very near. But the
path began nowhere and ended nowhere, and it remained mystery, as the
man who made it and the reason he made it remained mystery. Another time
they chanced upon the time-graven wreckage of a hunting lodge, and
amid the shreds of rotted blankets John Thornton found a long-barrelled
flint-lock. He knew it for a Hudson Bay Company gun of the young days
in the Northwest, when such a gun was worth its height in beaver skins
packed flat, And that was all--no hint as to the man who in an early day
had reared the lodge and left the gun among the blankets.

Spring came on once more, and at the end of all their wandering they
found, not the Lost Cabin, but a shallow placer in a broad valley where
the gold showed like yellow butter across the bottom of the washing-pan.
They sought no farther. Each day they worked earned them thousands of
dollars in clean dust and nuggets, and they worked every day. The gold
was sacked in moose-hide bags, fifty pounds to the bag, and piled
like so much firewood outside the spruce-bough lodge. Like giants they
toiled, days flashing on the heels of days like dreams as they heaped
the treasure up.

There was nothing for the dogs to do, save the hauling in of meat now
and again that Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours musing by
the fire. The vision of the short-legged hairy man came to him more
frequently, now that there was little work to be done; and often,
blinking by the fire, Buck wandered with him in that other world which
he remembered.

The salient thing of this other world seemed fear. When he watched the
hairy man sleeping by the fire, head between his knees and hands
clasped above, Buck saw that he slept restlessly, with many starts and
awakenings, at which times he would peer fearfully into the darkness
and fling more wood upon the fire. Did they walk by the beach of a sea,
where the hairy man gathered shellfish and ate them as he gathered,
it was with eyes that roved everywhere for hidden danger and with legs
prepared to run like the wind at its first appearance. Through the
forest they crept noiselessly, Buck at the hairy man's heels; and they
were alert and vigilant, the pair of them, ears twitching and moving and
nostrils quivering, for the man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck. The
hairy man could spring up into the trees and travel ahead as fast as on
the ground, swinging by the arms from limb to limb, sometimes a dozen
feet apart, letting go and catching, never falling, never missing his
grip. In fact, he seemed as much at home among the trees as on the
ground; and Buck had memories of nights of vigil spent beneath trees
wherein the hairy man roosted, holding on tightly as he slept.

And closely akin to the visions of the hairy man was the call still
sounding in the depths of the forest. It filled him with a great unrest
and strange desires. It caused him to feel a vague, sweet gladness,
and he was aware of wild yearnings and stirrings for he knew not what.
Sometimes he pursued the call into the forest, looking for it as though
it were a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the mood might
dictate. He would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss, or into the
black soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fat earth
smells; or he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behind
fungus-covered trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed and wide-eared to all
that moved and sounded about him. It might be, lying thus, that he hoped
to surprise this call he could not understand. But he did not know why
he did these various things. He was impelled to do them, and did not
reason about them at all.

Irresistible impulses seized him. He would be lying in camp, dozing
lazily in the heat of the day, when suddenly his head would lift and his
ears cock up, intent and listening, and he would spring to his feet
and dash away, and on and on, for hours, through the forest aisles and
across the open spaces where the niggerheads bunched. He loved to run
down dry watercourses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life in the
woods. For a day at a time he would lie in the underbrush where he could
watch the partridges drumming and strutting up and down. But especially
he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening
to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and
sounds as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something
that called--called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.

One night he sprang from sleep with a start, eager-eyed, nostrils
quivering and scenting, his mane bristling in recurrent waves. From the
forest came the call (or one note of it, for the call was many noted),
distinct and definite as never before,--a long-drawn howl, like, yet
unlike, any noise made by husky dog. And he knew it, in the old familiar
way, as a sound heard before. He sprang through the sleeping camp and in
swift silence dashed through the woods. As he drew closer to the cry
he went more slowly, with caution in every movement, till he came to an
open place among the trees, and looking out saw, erect on haunches, with
nose pointed to the sky, a long, lean, timber wolf.

He had made no noise, yet it ceased from its howling and tried to sense
his presence. Buck stalked into the open, half crouching, body gathered
compactly together, tail straight and stiff, feet falling with unwonted
care. Every movement advertised commingled threatening and overture of
friendliness. It was the menacing truce that marks the meeting of wild
beasts that prey. But the wolf fled at sight of him. He followed, with
wild leapings, in a frenzy to overtake. He ran him into a blind channel,
in the bed of the creek where a timber jam barred the way. The wolf
whirled about, pivoting on his hind legs after the fashion of Joe and
of all cornered husky dogs, snarling and bristling, clipping his teeth
together in a continuous and rapid succession of snaps.

Buck did not attack, but circled him about and hedged him in with
friendly advances. The wolf was suspicious and afraid; for Buck made
three of him in weight, while his head barely reached Buck's shoulder.
Watching his chance, he darted away, and the chase was resumed. Time
and again he was cornered, and the thing repeated, though he was in poor
condition, or Buck could not so easily have overtaken him. He would run
till Buck's head was even with his flank, when he would whirl around at
bay, only to dash away again at the first opportunity.

But in the end Buck's pertinacity was rewarded; for the wolf, finding
that no harm was intended, finally sniffed noses with him. Then they
became friendly, and played about in the nervous, half-coy way with
which fierce beasts belie their fierceness. After some time of this the
wolf started off at an easy lope in a manner that plainly showed he was
going somewhere. He made it clear to Buck that he was to come, and they
ran side by side through the sombre twilight, straight up the creek bed,
into the gorge from which it issued, and across the bleak divide where
it took its rise.

On the opposite slope of the watershed they came down into a level
country where were great stretches of forest and many streams, and
through these great stretches they ran steadily, hour after hour, the
sun rising higher and the day growing warmer. Buck was wildly glad. He
knew he was at last answering the call, running by the side of his wood
brother toward the place from where the call surely came. Old memories
were coming upon him fast, and he was stirring to them as of old he
stirred to the realities of which they were the shadows. He had done
this thing before, somewhere in that other and dimly remembered world,
and he was doing it again, now, running free in the open, the unpacked
earth underfoot, the wide sky overhead.

They stopped by a running stream to drink, and, stopping, Buck
remembered John Thornton. He sat down. The wolf started on toward the
place from where the call surely came, then returned to him, sniffing
noses and making actions as though to encourage him. But Buck turned
about and started slowly on the back track. For the better part of an
hour the wild brother ran by his side, whining softly. Then he sat down,
pointed his nose upward, and howled. It was a mournful howl, and as Buck
held steadily on his way he heard it grow faint and fainter until it was
lost in the distance.

John Thornton was eating dinner when Buck dashed into camp and sprang
upon him in a frenzy of affection, overturning him, scrambling upon him,
licking his face, biting his hand--“playing the general tom-fool,” as
John Thornton characterized it, the while he shook Buck back and forth
and cursed him lovingly.

For two days and nights Buck never left camp, never let Thornton out of
his sight. He followed him about at his work, watched him while he ate,
saw him into his blankets at night and out of them in the morning. But
after two days the call in the forest began to sound more imperiously
than ever. Buck's restlessness came back on him, and he was haunted by
recollections of the wild brother, and of the smiling land beyond the
divide and the run side by side through the wide forest stretches. Once
again he took to wandering in the woods, but the wild brother came no
more; and though he listened through long vigils, the mournful howl was
never raised.

He began to sleep out at night, staying away from camp for days at a
time; and once he crossed the divide at the head of the creek and went
down into the land of timber and streams. There he wandered for a week,
seeking vainly for fresh sign of the wild brother, killing his meat as
he travelled and travelling with the long, easy lope that seems never to
tire. He fished for salmon in a broad stream that emptied somewhere into
the sea, and by this stream he killed a large black bear, blinded by
the mosquitoes while likewise fishing, and raging through the forest
helpless and terrible. Even so, it was a hard fight, and it aroused the
last latent remnants of Buck's ferocity. And two days later, when he
returned to his kill and found a dozen wolverenes quarrelling over the
spoil, he scattered them like chaff; and those that fled left two behind
who would quarrel no more.

The blood-longing became stronger than ever before. He was a killer, a
thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone,
by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a
hostile environment where only the strong survived. Because of all this
he became possessed of a great pride in himself, which communicated
itself like a contagion to his physical being. It advertised itself
in all his movements, was apparent in the play of every muscle, spoke
plainly as speech in the way he carried himself, and made his glorious
furry coat if anything more glorious. But for the stray brown on his
muzzle and above his eyes, and for the splash of white hair that ran
midmost down his chest, he might well have been mistaken for a gigantic
wolf, larger than the largest of the breed. From his St. Bernard father
he had inherited size and weight, but it was his shepherd mother who
had given shape to that size and weight. His muzzle was the long wolf
muzzle, save that it was larger than the muzzle of any wolf; and his head,
somewhat broader, was the wolf head on a massive scale.

His cunning was wolf cunning, and wild cunning; his intelligence,
shepherd intelligence and St. Bernard intelligence; and all this, plus
an experience gained in the fiercest of schools, made him as formidable
a creature as any that roamed the wild. A carnivorous
animal living on a straight meat diet, he was in full flower, at the
high tide of his life, overspilling with vigor and virility. When
Thornton passed a caressing hand along his back, a snapping and
crackling followed the hand, each hair discharging its pent magnetism
at the contact. Every part, brain and body, nerve tissue and fibre, was
keyed to the most exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there was a
perfect equilibrium or adjustment. To sights and sounds and events which
required action, he responded with lightning-like rapidity. Quickly as
a husky dog could leap to defend from attack or to attack, he could leap
twice as quickly. He saw the movement, or heard sound, and responded
in less time than another dog required to compass the mere seeing or
hearing. He perceived and determined and responded in the same instant.
In point of fact the three actions of perceiving, determining, and
responding were sequential; but so infinitesimal were the intervals
of time between them that they appeared simultaneous. His muscles were
surcharged with vitality, and snapped into play sharply, like steel
springs. Life streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant,
until it seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy and
pour forth generously over the world.

“Never was there such a dog,” said John Thornton one day, as the
partners watched Buck marching out of camp.

“When he was made, the mould was broke,” said Pete.

“Py jingo! I t'ink so mineself,” Hans affirmed.

They saw him marching out of camp, but they did not see the instant and
terrible transformation which took place as soon as he was within the
secrecy of the forest. He no longer marched. At once he became a thing
of the wild, stealing along softly, cat-footed, a passing shadow
that appeared and disappeared among the shadows. He knew how to take
advantage of every cover, to crawl on his belly like a snake, and like a
snake to leap and strike. He could take a ptarmigan from its nest, kill
a rabbit as it slept, and snap in mid air the little chipmunks fleeing
a second too late for the trees. Fish, in open pools, were not too quick
for him; nor were beaver, mending their dams, too wary. He killed
to eat, not from wantonness; but he preferred to eat what he killed
himself. So a lurking humor ran through his deeds, and it was his
delight to steal upon the squirrels, and, when he all but had them, to
let them go, chattering in mortal fear to the treetops.

As the fall of the year came on, the moose appeared in greater
abundance, moving slowly down to meet the winter in the lower and less
rigorous valleys. Buck had already dragged down a stray part-grown calf;
but he wished strongly for larger and more formidable quarry, and he
came upon it one day on the divide at the head of the creek. A band of
twenty moose had crossed over from the land of streams and timber,
and chief among them was a great bull. He was in a savage temper, and,
standing over six feet from the ground, was as formidable an antagonist
as even Buck could desire. Back and forth the bull tossed his great
palmated antlers, branching to fourteen points and embracing seven feet
within the tips. His small eyes burned with a vicious and bitter light,
while he roared with fury at sight of Buck.

From the bull's side, just forward of the flank, protruded a feathered
arrow-end, which accounted for his savageness. Guided by that instinct
which came from the old hunting days of the primordial world, Buck
proceeded to cut the bull out from the herd. It was no slight task. He
would bark and dance about in front of the bull, just out of reach
of the great antlers and of the terrible splay hoofs which could have
stamped his life out with a single blow. Unable to turn his back on
the fanged danger and go on, the bull would be driven into paroxysms of
rage. At such moments he charged Buck, who retreated craftily, luring
him on by a simulated inability to escape. But when he was thus
separated from his fellows, two or three of the younger bulls would
charge back upon Buck and enable the wounded bull to rejoin the herd.

There is a patience of the wild--dogged, tireless, persistent as life
itself--that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web,
the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience
belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; and it
belonged to Buck as he clung to the flank of the herd, retarding
its march, irritating the young bulls, worrying the cows with their
half-grown calves, and driving the wounded bull mad with helpless rage.
For half a day this continued. Buck multiplied himself, attacking from
all sides, enveloping the herd in a whirlwind of menace, cutting out his
victim as fast as it could rejoin its mates, wearing out the patience of
creatures preyed upon, which is a lesser patience than that of creatures
preying.

As the day wore along and the sun dropped to its bed in the northwest
(the darkness had come back and the fall nights were six hours long),
the young bulls retraced their steps more and more reluctantly to the
aid of their beset leader. The down-coming winter was harrying them
on to the lower levels, and it seemed they could never shake off this
tireless creature that held them back. Besides, it was not the life of
the herd, or of the young bulls, that was threatened. The life of only
one member was demanded, which was a remoter interest than their lives,
and in the end they were content to pay the toll.

As twilight fell the old bull stood with lowered head, watching his
mates--the cows he had known, the calves he had fathered, the bulls he
had mastered--as they shambled on at a rapid pace through the fading
light. He could not follow, for before his nose leaped the merciless
fanged terror that would not let him go. Three hundredweight more than
half a ton he weighed; he had lived a long, strong life, full of fight
and struggle, and at the end he faced death at the teeth of a creature
whose head did not reach beyond his great knuckled knees.

From then on, night and day, Buck never left his prey, never gave it a
moment's rest, never permitted it to browse the leaves of trees or
the shoots of young birch and willow. Nor did he give the wounded bull
opportunity to slake his burning thirst in the slender trickling streams
they crossed. Often, in desperation, he burst into long stretches of
flight. At such times Buck did not attempt to stay him, but loped easily
at his heels, satisfied with the way the game was played, lying down
when the moose stood still, attacking him fiercely when he strove to eat
or drink.

The great head drooped more and more under its tree of horns, and
the shambling trot grew weak and weaker. He took to standing for long
periods, with nose to the ground and dejected ears dropped limply; and
Buck found more time in which to get water for himself and in which to
rest. At such moments, panting with red lolling tongue and with eyes
fixed upon the big bull, it appeared to Buck that a change was coming
over the face of things. He could feel a new stir in the land. As the
moose were coming into the land, other kinds of life were coming in.
Forest and stream and air seemed palpitant with their presence. The news
of it was borne in upon him, not by sight, or sound, or smell, but by
some other and subtler sense. He heard nothing, saw nothing, yet knew
that the land was somehow different; that through it strange things were
afoot and ranging; and he resolved to investigate after he had finished
the business in hand.

At last, at the end of the fourth day, he pulled the great moose down.
For a day and a night he remained by the kill, eating and sleeping, turn
and turn about. Then, rested, refreshed and strong, he turned his face
toward camp and John Thornton. He broke into the long easy lope, and
went on, hour after hour, never at loss for the tangled way, heading
straight home through strange country with a certitude of direction that
put man and his magnetic needle to shame.

As he held on he became more and more conscious of the new stir in the
land. There was life abroad in it different from the life which had been
there throughout the summer. No longer was this fact borne in upon him
in some subtle, mysterious way. The birds talked of it, the squirrels
chattered about it, the very breeze whispered of it. Several times he
stopped and drew in the fresh morning air in great sniffs, reading a
message which made him leap on with greater speed. He was oppressed with
a sense of calamity happening, if it were not calamity already happened;
and as he crossed the last watershed and dropped down into the valley
toward camp, he proceeded with greater caution.

Three miles away he came upon a fresh trail that sent his neck hair
rippling and bristling, It led straight toward camp and John Thornton.
Buck hurried on, swiftly and stealthily, every nerve straining and
tense, alert to the multitudinous details which told a story--all but
the end. His nose gave him a varying description of the passage of the
life on the heels of which he was travelling. He remarked the pregnant
silence of the forest. The bird life had flitted. The squirrels were in
hiding. One only he saw,--a sleek gray fellow, flattened against a gray
dead limb so that he seemed a part of it, a woody excrescence upon the
wood itself.

As Buck slid along with the obscureness of a gliding shadow, his nose
was jerked suddenly to the side as though a positive force had gripped
and pulled it. He followed the new scent into a thicket and found Nig.
He was lying on his side, dead where he had dragged himself, an arrow
protruding, head and feathers, from either side of his body.

A hundred yards farther on, Buck came upon one of the sled-dogs Thornton
had bought in Dawson. This dog was thrashing about in a death-struggle,
directly on the trail, and Buck passed around him without stopping. From
the camp came the faint sound of many voices, rising and falling in a
sing-song chant. Bellying forward to the edge of the clearing, he found
Hans, lying on his face, feathered with arrows like a porcupine. At the
same instant Buck peered out where the spruce-bough lodge had been and
saw what made his hair leap straight up on his neck and shoulders.
A gust of overpowering rage swept over him. He did not know that he
growled, but he growled aloud with a terrible ferocity. For the last
time in his life he allowed passion to usurp cunning and reason, and it
was because of his great love for John Thornton that he lost his head.

The Yeehats were dancing about the wreckage of the spruce-bough lodge
when they heard a fearful roaring and saw rushing upon them an animal
the like of which they had never seen before. It was Buck, a live
hurricane of fury, hurling himself upon them in a frenzy to destroy. He
sprang at the foremost man (it was the chief of the Yeehats), ripping
the throat wide open till the rent jugular spouted a fountain of blood.
He did not pause to worry the victim, but ripped in passing, with
the next bound tearing wide the throat of a second man. There was
no withstanding him. He plunged about in their very midst, tearing,
rending, destroying, in constant and terrific motion which defied the
arrows they discharged at him. In fact, so inconceivably rapid were his
movements, and so closely were the Indians tangled together, that they
shot one another with the arrows; and one young hunter, hurling a spear
at Buck in mid air, drove it through the chest of another hunter with
such force that the point broke through the skin of the back and stood
out beyond. Then a panic seized the Yeehats, and they fled in terror to
the woods, proclaiming as they fled the advent of the Evil Spirit.

And truly Buck was the Fiend incarnate, raging at their heels and
dragging them down like deer as they raced through the trees. It was
a fateful day for the Yeehats. They scattered far and wide over the
country, and it was not till a week later that the last of the survivors
gathered together in a lower valley and counted their losses. As for
Buck, wearying of the pursuit, he returned to the desolated camp. He
found Pete where he had been killed in his blankets in the first moment
of surprise. Thornton's desperate struggle was fresh-written on the
earth, and Buck scented every detail of it down to the edge of a deep
pool. By the edge, head and fore feet in the water, lay Skeet, faithful
to the last. The pool itself, muddy and discolored from the sluice
boxes, effectually hid what it contained, and it contained John
Thornton; for Buck followed his trace into the water, from which no
trace led away.

All day Buck brooded by the pool or roamed restlessly about the camp.
Death, as a cessation of movement, as a passing out and away from the
lives of the living, he knew, and he knew John Thornton was dead. It
left a great void in him, somewhat akin to hunger, but a void which
ached and ached, and which food could not fill, At times, when he paused
to contemplate the carcasses of the Yeehats, he forgot the pain of it;
and at such times he was aware of a great pride in himself,--a pride
greater than any he had yet experienced. He had killed man, the noblest
game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang.
He sniffed the bodies curiously. They had died so easily. It was harder
to kill a husky dog than them. They were no match at all, were it
not for their arrows and spears and clubs. Thenceforward he would be
unafraid of them except when they bore in their hands their arrows,
spears, and clubs.

Night came on, and a full moon rose high over the trees into the sky,
lighting the land till it lay bathed in ghostly day. And with the coming
of the night, brooding and mourning by the pool, Buck became alive to a
stirring of the new life in the forest other than that which the Yeehats
had made, He stood up, listening and scenting. From far away drifted a
faint, sharp yelp, followed by a chorus of similar sharp yelps. As the
moments passed the yelps grew closer and louder. Again Buck knew them
as things heard in that other world which persisted in his memory. He
walked to the centre of the open space and listened. It was the call,
the many-noted call, sounding more luringly and compellingly than ever
before. And as never before, he was ready to obey. John Thornton was
dead. The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man no longer bound
him.

Hunting their living meat, as the Yeehats were hunting it, on the flanks
of the migrating moose, the wolf pack had at last crossed over from the
land of streams and timber and invaded Buck's valley. Into the clearing
where the moonlight streamed, they poured in a silvery flood; and in the
centre of the clearing stood Buck, motionless as a statue, waiting their
coming. They were awed, so still and large he stood, and a moment's
pause fell, till the boldest one leaped straight for him. Like a flash
Buck struck, breaking the neck. Then he stood, without movement, as
before, the stricken wolf rolling in agony behind him. Three others
tried it in sharp succession; and one after the other they drew back,
streaming blood from slashed throats or shoulders.

This was sufficient to fling the whole pack forward, pell-mell, crowded
together, blocked and confused by its eagerness to pull down the
prey. Buck's marvellous quickness and agility stood him in good stead.
Pivoting on his hind legs, and snapping and gashing, he was everywhere
at once, presenting a front which was apparently unbroken so swiftly did
he whirl and guard from side to side. But to prevent them from getting
behind him, he was forced back, down past the pool and into the creek
bed, till he brought up against a high gravel bank. He worked along to a
right angle in the bank which the men had made in the course of mining,
and in this angle he came to bay, protected on three sides and with
nothing to do but face the front.

And so well did he face it, that at the end of half an hour the wolves
drew back discomfited. The tongues of all were out and lolling, the
white fangs showing cruelly white in the moonlight. Some were lying down
with heads raised and ears pricked forward; others stood on their feet,
watching him; and still others were lapping water from the pool. One
wolf, long and lean and gray, advanced cautiously, in a friendly manner,
and Buck recognized the wild brother with whom he had run for a night
and a day. He was whining softly, and, as Buck whined, they touched
noses.

Then an old wolf, gaunt and battle-scarred, came forward. Buck writhed
his lips into the preliminary of a snarl, but sniffed noses with him,
Whereupon the old wolf sat down, pointed nose at the moon, and broke
out the long wolf howl. The others sat down and howled. And now the call
came to Buck in unmistakable accents. He, too, sat down and howled. This
over, he came out of his angle and the pack crowded around him, sniffing
in half-friendly, half-savage manner. The leaders lifted the yelp of the
pack and sprang away into the woods. The wolves swung in behind, yelping
in chorus. And Buck ran with them, side by side with the wild brother,
yelping as he ran.

   *  *  *  *  *

And here may well end the story of Buck. The years were not many when
the Yeehats noted a change in the breed of timber wolves; for some were
seen with splashes of brown on head and muzzle, and with a rift of white
centring down the chest. But more remarkable than this, the Yeehats tell
of a Ghost Dog that runs at the head of the pack. They are afraid of
this Ghost Dog, for it has cunning greater than they, stealing from
their camps in fierce winters, robbing their traps, slaying their dogs,
and defying their bravest hunters.

Nay, the tale grows worse. Hunters there are who fail to return to
the camp, and hunters there have been whom their tribesmen found with
throats slashed cruelly open and with wolf prints about them in the snow
greater than the prints of any wolf. Each fall, when the Yeehats follow
the movement of the moose, there is a certain valley which they never
enter. And women there are who become sad when the word goes over
the fire of how the Evil Spirit came to select that valley for an
abiding-place.

In the summers there is one visitor, however, to that valley, of which
the Yeehats do not know. It is a great, gloriously coated wolf, like,
and yet unlike, all other wolves. He crosses alone from the smiling
timber land and comes down into an open space among the trees. Here
a yellow stream flows from rotted moose-hide sacks and sinks into
the ground, with long grasses growing through it and vegetable mould
overrunning it and hiding its yellow from the sun; and here he muses for
a time, howling once, long and mournfully, ere he departs.

But he is not always alone. When the long winter nights come on and the
wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running
at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering
borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a-bellow
as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.






2xxxxxxxxx


THE IRON HEEL

by Jack London



     “At first, this Earth, a stage so gloomed with woe
       You almost sicken at the shifting of the scenes.
     And yet be patient.  Our Playwright may show
       In some fifth act what this Wild Drama means.”

CONTENTS

     FORWARD
     I.     MY EAGLE
     II.    CHALLENGES
     III.   JOHNSON'S ARM
     IV.    SLAVES OF THE MACHINE
     V.     THE PHILOMATHS
     VI.    ADUMBRATIONS
     VII.   THE BISHOP'S VISION
     VIII.  THE MACHINE BREAKERS
     IX.    THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM
     X.     THE VORTEX
     XI.    THE GREAT ADVENTURE
     XII.   THE BISHOP
     XIII.  THE GENERAL STRIKE
     XIV.   THE BEGINNING OF THE END
     XV.    LAST DAYS
     XVI.   THE END
     XVII.  THE SCARLET LIVERY
     XVIII. IN THE SHADOW OF SONOMA
     XIX.   TRANSFORMATION
     XX.    THE LAST OLIGARCH
     XXI.   THE ROARING ABYSMAL BEAST
     XXII.  THE CHICAGO COMMUNE
     XXIII. THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS
     XXIV.  NIGHTMARE
     XXV.   THE TERRORISTS




THE IRON HEEL




FOREWORD


It cannot be said that the Everhard Manuscript is an important
historical document. To the historian it bristles with errors--not
errors of fact, but errors of interpretation. Looking back across the
seven centuries that have lapsed since Avis Everhard completed her
manuscript, events, and the bearings of events, that were confused and
veiled to her, are clear to us. She lacked perspective. She was too
close to the events she writes about. Nay, she was merged in the events
she has described.

Nevertheless, as a personal document, the Everhard Manuscript is of
inestimable value. But here again enter error of perspective, and
vitiation due to the bias of love. Yet we smile, indeed, and forgive
Avis Everhard for the heroic lines upon which she modelled her husband.
We know to-day that he was not so colossal, and that he loomed among the
events of his times less largely than the Manuscript would lead us to
believe.

We know that Ernest Everhard was an exceptionally strong man, but not so
exceptional as his wife thought him to be. He was, after all, but one of
a large number of heroes who, throughout the world, devoted their lives
to the Revolution; though it must be conceded that he did unusual
work, especially in his elaboration and interpretation of working-class
philosophy. “Proletarian science” and “proletarian philosophy” were his
phrases for it, and therein he shows the provincialism of his mind--a
defect, however, that was due to the times and that none in that day
could escape.

But to return to the Manuscript. Especially valuable is it in
communicating to us the FEEL of those terrible times. Nowhere do we find
more vividly portrayed the psychology of the persons that lived in
that turbulent period embraced between the years 1912 and 1932--their
mistakes and ignorance, their doubts and fears and misapprehensions,
their ethical delusions, their violent passions, their inconceivable
sordidness and selfishness. These are the things that are so hard for
us of this enlightened age to understand. History tells us that these
things were, and biology and psychology tell us why they were; but
history and biology and psychology do not make these things alive. We
accept them as facts, but we are left without sympathetic comprehension
of them.

This sympathy comes to us, however, as we peruse the Everhard
Manuscript. We enter into the minds of the actors in that long-ago
world-drama, and for the time being their mental processes are our
mental processes. Not alone do we understand Avis Everhard's love for
her hero-husband, but we feel, as he felt, in those first days, the
vague and terrible loom of the Oligarchy. The Iron Heel (well named) we
feel descending upon and crushing mankind.

And in passing we note that that historic phrase, the Iron Heel,
originated in Ernest Everhard's mind. This, we may say, is the one moot
question that this new-found document clears up. Previous to this, the
earliest-known use of the phrase occurred in the pamphlet, “Ye Slaves,”
 written by George Milford and published in December, 1912. This George
Milford was an obscure agitator about whom nothing is known, save the
one additional bit of information gained from the Manuscript, which
mentions that he was shot in the Chicago Commune. Evidently he had
heard Ernest Everhard make use of the phrase in some public speech, most
probably when he was running for Congress in the fall of 1912. From the
Manuscript we learn that Everhard used the phrase at a private dinner
in the spring of 1912. This is, without discussion, the earliest-known
occasion on which the Oligarchy was so designated.

The rise of the Oligarchy will always remain a cause of secret wonder
to the historian and the philosopher. Other great historical events
have their place in social evolution. They were inevitable. Their coming
could have been predicted with the same certitude that astronomers
to-day predict the outcome of the movements of stars. Without these
other great historical events, social evolution could not have
proceeded. Primitive communism, chattel slavery, serf slavery, and wage
slavery were necessary stepping-stones in the evolution of society.
But it were ridiculous to assert that the Iron Heel was a necessary
stepping-stone. Rather, to-day, is it adjudged a step aside, or a step
backward, to the social tyrannies that made the early world a hell, but
that were as necessary as the Iron Heel was unnecessary.

Black as Feudalism was, yet the coming of it was inevitable. What else
than Feudalism could have followed upon the breakdown of that great
centralized governmental machine known as the Roman Empire? Not
so, however, with the Iron Heel. In the orderly procedure of social
evolution there was no place for it. It was not necessary, and it was
not inevitable. It must always remain the great curiosity of history--a
whim, a fantasy, an apparition, a thing unexpected and undreamed; and
it should serve as a warning to those rash political theorists of to-day
who speak with certitude of social processes.

Capitalism was adjudged by the sociologists of the time to be the
culmination of bourgeois rule, the ripened fruit of the bourgeois
revolution. And we of to-day can but applaud that judgment. Following
upon Capitalism, it was held, even by such intellectual and antagonistic
giants as Herbert Spencer, that Socialism would come. Out of the decay
of self-seeking capitalism, it was held, would arise that flower of the
ages, the Brotherhood of Man. Instead of which, appalling alike to
us who look back and to those that lived at the time, capitalism,
rotten-ripe, sent forth that monstrous offshoot, the Oligarchy.

Too late did the socialist movement of the early twentieth century
divine the coming of the Oligarchy. Even as it was divined, the
Oligarchy was there--a fact established in blood, a stupendous and awful
reality. Nor even then, as the Everhard Manuscript well shows, was any
permanence attributed to the Iron Heel. Its overthrow was a matter of
a few short years, was the judgment of the revolutionists. It is true,
they realized that the Peasant Revolt was unplanned, and that the First
Revolt was premature; but they little realized that the Second Revolt,
planned and mature, was doomed to equal futility and more terrible
punishment.

It is apparent that Avis Everhard completed the Manuscript during the
last days of preparation for the Second Revolt; hence the fact that
there is no mention of the disastrous outcome of the Second Revolt.
It is quite clear that she intended the Manuscript for immediate
publication, as soon as the Iron Heel was overthrown, so that her
husband, so recently dead, should receive full credit for all that he
had ventured and accomplished. Then came the frightful crushing of the
Second Revolt, and it is probable that in the moment of danger, ere she
fled or was captured by the Mercenaries, she hid the Manuscript in the
hollow oak at Wake Robin Lodge.

Of Avis Everhard there is no further record. Undoubtedly she was
executed by the Mercenaries; and, as is well known, no record of such
executions was kept by the Iron Heel. But little did she realize, even
then, as she hid the Manuscript and prepared to flee, how terrible had
been the breakdown of the Second Revolt. Little did she realize that
the tortuous and distorted evolution of the next three centuries would
compel a Third Revolt and a Fourth Revolt, and many Revolts, all drowned
in seas of blood, ere the world-movement of labor should come into its
own. And little did she dream that for seven long centuries the tribute
of her love to Ernest Everhard would repose undisturbed in the heart of
the ancient oak of Wake Robin Lodge.

ANTHONY MEREDITH

Ardis,

November 27, 419 B.O.M.




THE IRON HEEL



CHAPTER I

MY EAGLE


The soft summer wind stirs the redwoods, and Wild-Water ripples sweet
cadences over its mossy stones. There are butterflies in the sunshine,
and from everywhere arises the drowsy hum of bees. It is so quiet and
peaceful, and I sit here, and ponder, and am restless. It is the quiet
that makes me restless. It seems unreal. All the world is quiet, but it
is the quiet before the storm. I strain my ears, and all my senses, for
some betrayal of that impending storm. Oh, that it may not be premature!
That it may not be premature!*

     * The Second Revolt was largely the work of Ernest Everhard,
     though he cooperated, of course, with the European leaders.
     The capture and secret execution of Everhard was the great
     event of the spring of 1932 A.D.  Yet so thoroughly had he
     prepared for the revolt, that his fellow-conspirators were
     able, with little confusion or delay, to carry out his
     plans.  It was after Everhard's execution that his wife went
     to Wake Robin Lodge, a small bungalow in the Sonoma Hills of
     California.

Small wonder that I am restless. I think, and think, and I cannot
cease from thinking. I have been in the thick of life so long that I
am oppressed by the peace and quiet, and I cannot forbear from dwelling
upon that mad maelstrom of death and destruction so soon to burst forth.
In my ears are the cries of the stricken; and I can see, as I have
seen in the past,* all the marring and mangling of the sweet, beautiful
flesh, and the souls torn with violence from proud bodies and hurled to
God. Thus do we poor humans attain our ends, striving through carnage
and destruction to bring lasting peace and happiness upon the earth.

     * Without doubt she here refers to the Chicago Commune.

And then I am lonely. When I do not think of what is to come, I think of
what has been and is no more--my Eagle, beating with tireless wings the
void, soaring toward what was ever his sun, the flaming ideal of human
freedom. I cannot sit idly by and wait the great event that is his
making, though he is not here to see. He devoted all the years of his
manhood to it, and for it he gave his life. It is his handiwork. He made
it.*

     * With all respect to Avis Everhard, it must be pointed out
     that Everhard was but one of many able leaders who planned
     the Second Revolt.  And we to-day, looking back across the
     centuries, can safely say that even had he lived, the Second
     Revolt would not have been less calamitous in its outcome
     than it was.

And so it is, in this anxious time of waiting, that I shall write of
my husband. There is much light that I alone of all persons living can
throw upon his character, and so noble a character cannot be blazoned
forth too brightly. His was a great soul, and, when my love grows
unselfish, my chiefest regret is that he is not here to witness
to-morrow's dawn. We cannot fail. He has built too stoutly and too
surely for that. Woe to the Iron Heel! Soon shall it be thrust back from
off prostrate humanity. When the word goes forth, the labor hosts of all
the world shall rise. There has been nothing like it in the history of
the world. The solidarity of labor is assured, and for the first time
will there be an international revolution wide as the world is wide.*

     * The Second Revolt was truly international.  It was a
     colossal plan--too colossal to be wrought by the genius of
     one man alone. Labor, in all the oligarchies of the world,
     was prepared to rise at the signal.  Germany, Italy, France,
     and all Australasia were labor countries--socialist states.
     They were ready to lend aid to the revolution.  Gallantly
     they did; and it was for this reason, when the Second Revolt
     was crushed, that they, too, were crushed by the united
     oligarchies of the world, their socialist governments being
     replaced by oligarchical governments.

You see, I am full of what is impending. I have lived it day and night
utterly and for so long that it is ever present in my mind. For that
matter, I cannot think of my husband without thinking of it. He was the
soul of it, and how can I possibly separate the two in thought?

As I have said, there is much light that I alone can throw upon his
character. It is well known that he toiled hard for liberty and suffered
sore. How hard he toiled and how greatly he suffered, I well know; for
I have been with him during these twenty anxious years and I know his
patience, his untiring effort, his infinite devotion to the Cause for
which, only two months gone, he laid down his life.

I shall try to write simply and to tell here how Ernest Everhard entered
my life--how I first met him, how he grew until I became a part of him,
and the tremendous changes he wrought in my life. In this way may you
look at him through my eyes and learn him as I learned him--in all save
the things too secret and sweet for me to tell.

It was in February, 1912, that I first met him, when, as a guest of my
father's* at dinner, he came to our house in Berkeley. I cannot say that
my very first impression of him was favorable. He was one of many at
dinner, and in the drawing-room where we gathered and waited for all
to arrive, he made a rather incongruous appearance. It was “preacher's
night,” as my father privately called it, and Ernest was certainly out
of place in the midst of the churchmen.

     * John Cunningham, Avis Everhard's father, was a professor
     at the State University at Berkeley, California.  His chosen
     field was physics, and in addition he did much original
     research and was greatly distinguished as a scientist.  His
     chief contribution to science was his studies of the
     electron and his monumental work on the “Identification of
     Matter and Energy,” wherein he established, beyond cavil and
     for all time, that the ultimate unit of matter and the
     ultimate unit of force were identical.  This idea had been
     earlier advanced, but not demonstrated, by Sir Oliver Lodge
     and other students in the new field of radio-activity.

In the first place, his clothes did not fit him. He wore a ready-made
suit of dark cloth that was ill adjusted to his body. In fact, no
ready-made suit of clothes ever could fit his body. And on this night,
as always, the cloth bulged with his muscles, while the coat between
the shoulders, what of the heavy shoulder-development, was a maze of
wrinkles. His neck was the neck of a prize-fighter,* thick and strong.
So this was the social philosopher and ex-horseshoer my father had
discovered, was my thought. And he certainly looked it with those
bulging muscles and that bull-throat. Immediately I classified him--a
sort of prodigy, I thought, a Blind Tom** of the working class.

     * In that day it was the custom of men to compete for purses
     of money.  They fought with their hands.  When one was
     beaten into insensibility or killed, the survivor took the
     money.

     ** This obscure reference applies to a blind negro musician
     who took the world by storm in the latter half of the
     nineteenth century of the Christian Era.

And then, when he shook hands with me! His handshake was firm and
strong, but he looked at me boldly with his black eyes--too boldly, I
thought. You see, I was a creature of environment, and at that time had
strong class instincts. Such boldness on the part of a man of my own
class would have been almost unforgivable. I know that I could not avoid
dropping my eyes, and I was quite relieved when I passed him on and
turned to greet Bishop Morehouse--a favorite of mine, a sweet and
serious man of middle age, Christ-like in appearance and goodness, and a
scholar as well.

But this boldness that I took to be presumption was a vital clew to the
nature of Ernest Everhard. He was simple, direct, afraid of nothing, and
he refused to waste time on conventional mannerisms. “You pleased me,”
 he explained long afterward; “and why should I not fill my eyes with
that which pleases me?” I have said that he was afraid of nothing. He
was a natural aristocrat--and this in spite of the fact that he was in
the camp of the non-aristocrats. He was a superman, a blond beast
such as Nietzsche* has described, and in addition he was aflame with
democracy.

     * Friederich Nietzsche, the mad philosopher of the
     nineteenth century of the Christian Era, who caught wild
     glimpses of truth, but who, before he was done, reasoned
     himself around the great circle of human thought and off
     into madness.

In the interest of meeting the other guests, and what of my unfavorable
impression, I forgot all about the working-class philosopher, though
once or twice at table I noticed him--especially the twinkle in his eye
as he listened to the talk first of one minister and then of another. He
has humor, I thought, and I almost forgave him his clothes. But the time
went by, and the dinner went by, and he never opened his mouth to speak,
while the ministers talked interminably about the working class and its
relation to the church, and what the church had done and was doing for
it. I noticed that my father was annoyed because Ernest did not talk.
Once father took advantage of a lull and asked him to say something; but
Ernest shrugged his shoulders and with an “I have nothing to say” went
on eating salted almonds.

But father was not to be denied. After a while he said:

“We have with us a member of the working class. I am sure that he can
present things from a new point of view that will be interesting and
refreshing. I refer to Mr. Everhard.”

The others betrayed a well-mannered interest, and urged Ernest for
a statement of his views. Their attitude toward him was so broadly
tolerant and kindly that it was really patronizing. And I saw that
Ernest noted it and was amused. He looked slowly about him, and I saw
the glint of laughter in his eyes.

“I am not versed in the courtesies of ecclesiastical controversy,” he
began, and then hesitated with modesty and indecision.

“Go on,” they urged, and Dr. Hammerfield said: “We do not mind the truth
that is in any man. If it is sincere,” he amended.

“Then you separate sincerity from truth?” Ernest laughed quickly.

Dr. Hammerfield gasped, and managed to answer, “The best of us may be
mistaken, young man, the best of us.”

Ernest's manner changed on the instant. He became another man.

“All right, then,” he answered; “and let me begin by saying that you
are all mistaken. You know nothing, and worse than nothing, about the
working class. Your sociology is as vicious and worthless as is your
method of thinking.”

It was not so much what he said as how he said it. I roused at the first
sound of his voice. It was as bold as his eyes. It was a clarion-call
that thrilled me. And the whole table was aroused, shaken alive from
monotony and drowsiness.

“What is so dreadfully vicious and worthless in our method of thinking,
young man?” Dr. Hammerfield demanded, and already there was something
unpleasant in his voice and manner of utterance.

“You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and
having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician
wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of
thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos
of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do
not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no
place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental
aberration.

“Do you know what I was reminded of as I sat at table and listened to
you talk and talk? You reminded me for all the world of the scholastics
of the Middle Ages who gravely and learnedly debated the absorbing
question of how many angels could dance on the point of a needle.
Why, my dear sirs, you are as remote from the intellectual life of the
twentieth century as an Indian medicine-man making incantation in the
primeval forest ten thousand years ago.”

As Ernest talked he seemed in a fine passion; his face glowed, his
eyes snapped and flashed, and his chin and jaw were eloquent with
aggressiveness. But it was only a way he had. It always aroused people.
His smashing, sledge-hammer manner of attack invariably made them forget
themselves. And they were forgetting themselves now. Bishop Morehouse
was leaning forward and listening intently. Exasperation and anger were
flushing the face of Dr. Hammerfield. And others were exasperated, too,
and some were smiling in an amused and superior way. As for myself, I
found it most enjoyable. I glanced at father, and I was afraid he was
going to giggle at the effect of this human bombshell he had been guilty
of launching amongst us.

“Your terms are rather vague,” Dr. Hammerfield interrupted. “Just
precisely what do you mean when you call us metaphysicians?”

“I call you metaphysicians because you reason metaphysically,” Ernest
went on. “Your method of reasoning is the opposite to that of science.
There is no validity to your conclusions. You can prove everything and
nothing, and no two of you can agree upon anything. Each of you goes
into his own consciousness to explain himself and the universe. As
well may you lift yourselves by your own bootstraps as to explain
consciousness by consciousness.”

“I do not understand,” Bishop Morehouse said. “It seems to me that all
things of the mind are metaphysical. That most exact and convincing
of all sciences, mathematics, is sheerly metaphysical. Each and every
thought-process of the scientific reasoner is metaphysical. Surely you
will agree with me?”

“As you say, you do not understand,” Ernest replied. “The metaphysician
reasons deductively out of his own subjectivity. The scientist reasons
inductively from the facts of experience. The metaphysician reasons
from theory to facts, the scientist reasons from facts to theory. The
metaphysician explains the universe by himself, the scientist explains
himself by the universe.”

“Thank God we are not scientists,” Dr. Hammerfield murmured
complacently.

“What are you then?” Ernest demanded.

“Philosophers.”

“There you go,” Ernest laughed. “You have left the real and solid earth
and are up in the air with a word for a flying machine. Pray come down
to earth and tell me precisely what you do mean by philosophy.”

“Philosophy is--” (Dr. Hammerfield paused and cleared his
throat)--“something that cannot be defined comprehensively except to
such minds and temperaments as are philosophical. The narrow scientist
with his nose in a test-tube cannot understand philosophy.”

Ernest ignored the thrust. It was always his way to turn the point back
upon an opponent, and he did it now, with a beaming brotherliness of
face and utterance.

“Then you will undoubtedly understand the definition I shall now make
of philosophy. But before I make it, I shall challenge you to point out
error in it or to remain a silent metaphysician. Philosophy is merely
the widest science of all. Its reasoning method is the same as that of
any particular science and of all particular sciences. And by that
same method of reasoning, the inductive method, philosophy fuses all
particular sciences into one great science. As Spencer says, the data
of any particular science are partially unified knowledge. Philosophy
unifies the knowledge that is contributed by all the sciences.
Philosophy is the science of science, the master science, if you please.
How do you like my definition?”

“Very creditable, very creditable,” Dr. Hammerfield muttered lamely.

But Ernest was merciless.

“Remember,” he warned, “my definition is fatal to metaphysics. If you do
not now point out a flaw in my definition, you are disqualified later on
from advancing metaphysical arguments. You must go through life seeking
that flaw and remaining metaphysically silent until you have found it.”

Ernest waited. The silence was painful. Dr. Hammerfield was pained. He
was also puzzled. Ernest's sledge-hammer attack disconcerted him. He
was not used to the simple and direct method of controversy. He looked
appealingly around the table, but no one answered for him. I caught
father grinning into his napkin.

“There is another way of disqualifying the metaphysicians,” Ernest said,
when he had rendered Dr. Hammerfield's discomfiture complete. “Judge
them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond the spinning
of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows for gods? They
have added to the gayety of mankind, I grant; but what tangible good
have they wrought for mankind? They philosophized, if you will pardon my
misuse of the word, about the heart as the seat of the emotions, while
the scientists were formulating the circulation of the blood. They
declaimed about famine and pestilence as being scourges of God, while
the scientists were building granaries and draining cities. They
builded gods in their own shapes and out of their own desires, while
the scientists were building roads and bridges. They were describing
the earth as the centre of the universe, while the scientists were
discovering America and probing space for the stars and the laws of
the stars. In short, the metaphysicians have done nothing, absolutely
nothing, for mankind. Step by step, before the advance of science, they
have been driven back. As fast as the ascertained facts of science have
overthrown their subjective explanations of things, they have made new
subjective explanations of things, including explanations of the latest
ascertained facts. And this, I doubt not, they will go on doing to
the end of time. Gentlemen, a metaphysician is a medicine man.
The difference between you and the Eskimo who makes a fur-clad
blubber-eating god is merely a difference of several thousand years of
ascertained facts. That is all.”

“Yet the thought of Aristotle ruled Europe for twelve centuries,” Dr.
Ballingford announced pompously. “And Aristotle was a metaphysician.”

Dr. Ballingford glanced around the table and was rewarded by nods and
smiles of approval.

“Your illustration is most unfortunate,” Ernest replied. “You refer to a
very dark period in human history. In fact, we call that period the Dark
Ages. A period wherein science was raped by the metaphysicians, wherein
physics became a search for the Philosopher's Stone, wherein chemistry
became alchemy, and astronomy became astrology. Sorry the domination of
Aristotle's thought!”

Dr. Ballingford looked pained, then he brightened up and said:

“Granted this horrible picture you have drawn, yet you must confess that
metaphysics was inherently potent in so far as it drew humanity out
of this dark period and on into the illumination of the succeeding
centuries.”

“Metaphysics had nothing to do with it,” Ernest retorted.

“What?” Dr. Hammerfield cried. “It was not the thinking and the
speculation that led to the voyages of discovery?”

“Ah, my dear sir,” Ernest smiled, “I thought you were disqualified. You
have not yet picked out the flaw in my definition of philosophy. You are
now on an unsubstantial basis. But it is the way of the metaphysicians,
and I forgive you. No, I repeat, metaphysics had nothing to do with
it. Bread and butter, silks and jewels, dollars and cents, and,
incidentally, the closing up of the overland trade-routes to India,
were the things that caused the voyages of discovery. With the fall of
Constantinople, in 1453, the Turks blocked the way of the caravans to
India. The traders of Europe had to find another route. Here was the
original cause for the voyages of discovery. Columbus sailed to find
a new route to the Indies. It is so stated in all the history books.
Incidentally, new facts were learned about the nature, size, and form of
the earth, and the Ptolemaic system went glimmering.”

Dr. Hammerfield snorted.

“You do not agree with me?” Ernest queried. “Then wherein am I wrong?”

“I can only reaffirm my position,” Dr. Hammerfield retorted tartly. “It
is too long a story to enter into now.”

“No story is too long for the scientist,” Ernest said sweetly. “That is
why the scientist gets to places. That is why he got to America.”

I shall not describe the whole evening, though it is a joy to me to
recall every moment, every detail, of those first hours of my coming to
know Ernest Everhard.

Battle royal raged, and the ministers grew red-faced and excited,
especially at the moments when Ernest called them romantic philosophers,
shadow-projectors, and similar things. And always he checked them back
to facts. “The fact, man, the irrefragable fact!” he would proclaim
triumphantly, when he had brought one of them a cropper. He bristled
with facts. He tripped them up with facts, ambuscaded them with facts,
bombarded them with broadsides of facts.

“You seem to worship at the shrine of fact,” Dr. Hammerfield taunted
him.

“There is no God but Fact, and Mr. Everhard is its prophet,” Dr.
Ballingford paraphrased.

Ernest smilingly acquiesced.

“I'm like the man from Texas,” he said. And, on being solicited, he
explained. “You see, the man from Missouri always says, 'You've got
to show me.' But the man from Texas says, 'You've got to put it in my
hand.' From which it is apparent that he is no metaphysician.”

Another time, when Ernest had just said that the metaphysical
philosophers could never stand the test of truth, Dr. Hammerfield
suddenly demanded:

“What is the test of truth, young man? Will you kindly explain what has
so long puzzled wiser heads than yours?”

“Certainly,” Ernest answered. His cocksureness irritated them. “The wise
heads have puzzled so sorely over truth because they went up into the
air after it. Had they remained on the solid earth, they would have
found it easily enough--ay, they would have found that they themselves
were precisely testing truth with every practical act and thought of
their lives.”

“The test, the test,” Dr. Hammerfield repeated impatiently. “Never mind
the preamble. Give us that which we have sought so long--the test of
truth. Give it us, and we will be as gods.”

There was an impolite and sneering scepticism in his words and manner
that secretly pleased most of them at the table, though it seemed to
bother Bishop Morehouse.

“Dr. Jordan* has stated it very clearly,” Ernest said. “His test of
truth is: 'Will it work? Will you trust your life to it?'”

     * A noted educator of the late nineteenth and early
     twentieth centuries of the Christian Era.  He was president
     of the Stanford University, a private benefaction of the
     times.

“Pish!” Dr. Hammerfield sneered. “You have not taken Bishop Berkeley*
into account. He has never been answered.”

     * An idealistic monist who long puzzled the philosophers of
     that time with his denial of the existence of matter, but
     whose clever argument was finally demolished when the new
     empiric facts of science were philosophically generalized.

“The noblest metaphysician of them all,” Ernest laughed. “But your
example is unfortunate. As Berkeley himself attested, his metaphysics
didn't work.”

Dr. Hammerfield was angry, righteously angry. It was as though he had
caught Ernest in a theft or a lie.

“Young man,” he trumpeted, “that statement is on a par with all you have
uttered to-night. It is a base and unwarranted assumption.”

“I am quite crushed,” Ernest murmured meekly. “Only I don't know what
hit me. You'll have to put it in my hand, Doctor.”

“I will, I will,” Dr. Hammerfield spluttered. “How do you know? You
do not know that Bishop Berkeley attested that his metaphysics did not
work. You have no proof. Young man, they have always worked.”

“I take it as proof that Berkeley's metaphysics did not work, because--”
 Ernest paused calmly for a moment. “Because Berkeley made an invariable
practice of going through doors instead of walls. Because he trusted his
life to solid bread and butter and roast beef. Because he shaved himself
with a razor that worked when it removed the hair from his face.”

“But those are actual things!” Dr. Hammerfield cried. “Metaphysics is of
the mind.”

“And they work--in the mind?” Ernest queried softly.

The other nodded.

“And even a multitude of angels can dance on the point of a needle--in
the mind,” Ernest went on reflectively. “And a blubber-eating, fur-clad
god can exist and work--in the mind; and there are no proofs to the
contrary--in the mind. I suppose, Doctor, you live in the mind?”

“My mind to me a kingdom is,” was the answer.

“That's another way of saying that you live up in the air. But you come
back to earth at meal-time, I am sure, or when an earthquake happens
along. Or, tell me, Doctor, do you have no apprehension in an earthquake
that that incorporeal body of yours will be hit by an immaterial brick?”

Instantly, and quite unconsciously, Dr. Hammerfield's hand shot up to
his head, where a scar disappeared under the hair. It happened that
Ernest had blundered on an apposite illustration. Dr. Hammerfield
had been nearly killed in the Great Earthquake* by a falling chimney.
Everybody broke out into roars of laughter.

     * The Great Earthquake of 1906 A.D. that destroyed San
     Francisco.

“Well?” Ernest asked, when the merriment had subsided. “Proofs to the
contrary?”

And in the silence he asked again, “Well?” Then he added, “Still well,
but not so well, that argument of yours.”

But Dr. Hammerfield was temporarily crushed, and the battle raged on in
new directions. On point after point, Ernest challenged the ministers.
When they affirmed that they knew the working class, he told them
fundamental truths about the working class that they did not know, and
challenged them for disproofs. He gave them facts, always facts, checked
their excursions into the air, and brought them back to the solid earth
and its facts.

How the scene comes back to me! I can hear him now, with that war-note
in his voice, flaying them with his facts, each fact a lash that stung
and stung again. And he was merciless. He took no quarter,* and gave
none. I can never forget the flaying he gave them at the end:

     * This figure arises from the customs of the times.  When,
     among men fighting to the death in their wild-animal way, a
     beaten man threw down his weapons, it was at the option of
     the victor to slay him or spare him.

“You have repeatedly confessed to-night, by direct avowal or ignorant
statement, that you do not know the working class. But you are not to be
blamed for this. How can you know anything about the working class? You
do not live in the same locality with the working class. You herd
with the capitalist class in another locality. And why not? It is the
capitalist class that pays you, that feeds you, that puts the very
clothes on your backs that you are wearing to-night. And in return you
preach to your employers the brands of metaphysics that are especially
acceptable to them; and the especially acceptable brands are acceptable
because they do not menace the established order of society.”

Here there was a stir of dissent around the table.

“Oh, I am not challenging your sincerity,” Ernest continued. “You are
sincere. You preach what you believe. There lies your strength and your
value--to the capitalist class. But should you change your belief to
something that menaces the established order, your preaching would
be unacceptable to your employers, and you would be discharged. Every
little while some one or another of you is so discharged.* Am I not
right?”

     * During this period there were many ministers cast out of
     the church for preaching unacceptable doctrine.  Especially
     were they cast out when their preaching became tainted with
     socialism.

This time there was no dissent. They sat dumbly acquiescent, with the
exception of Dr. Hammerfield, who said:

“It is when their thinking is wrong that they are asked to resign.”

“Which is another way of saying when their thinking is unacceptable,”
 Ernest answered, and then went on. “So I say to you, go ahead and preach
and earn your pay, but for goodness' sake leave the working class alone.
You belong in the enemy's camp. You have nothing in common with the
working class. Your hands are soft with the work others have performed
for you. Your stomachs are round with the plenitude of eating.” (Here
Dr. Ballingford winced, and every eye glanced at his prodigious girth.
It was said he had not seen his own feet in years.) “And your minds are
filled with doctrines that are buttresses of the established order. You
are as much mercenaries (sincere mercenaries, I grant) as were the men
of the Swiss Guard.* Be true to your salt and your hire; guard, with
your preaching, the interests of your employers; but do not come down to
the working class and serve as false leaders. You cannot honestly be in
the two camps at once. The working class has done without you. Believe
me, the working class will continue to do without you. And, furthermore,
the working class can do better without you than with you.”

     * The hired foreign palace guards of Louis XVI, a king of
     France that was beheaded by his people.



CHAPTER II

CHALLENGES.


After the guests had gone, father threw himself into a chair and gave
vent to roars of Gargantuan laughter. Not since the death of my mother
had I known him to laugh so heartily.

“I'll wager Dr. Hammerfield was never up against anything like it in his
life,” he laughed. “'The courtesies of ecclesiastical controversy!' Did
you notice how he began like a lamb--Everhard, I mean, and how quickly
he became a roaring lion? He has a splendidly disciplined mind. He would
have made a good scientist if his energies had been directed that way.”

I need scarcely say that I was deeply interested in Ernest Everhard. It
was not alone what he had said and how he had said it, but it was the
man himself. I had never met a man like him. I suppose that was why, in
spite of my twenty-four years, I had not married. I liked him; I had to
confess it to myself. And my like for him was founded on things
beyond intellect and argument. Regardless of his bulging muscles and
prize-fighter's throat, he impressed me as an ingenuous boy. I felt
that under the guise of an intellectual swashbuckler was a delicate and
sensitive spirit. I sensed this, in ways I knew not, save that they were
my woman's intuitions.

There was something in that clarion-call of his that went to my heart.
It still rang in my ears, and I felt that I should like to hear it
again--and to see again that glint of laughter in his eyes that belied
the impassioned seriousness of his face. And there were further reaches
of vague and indeterminate feelings that stirred in me. I almost loved
him then, though I am confident, had I never seen him again, that the
vague feelings would have passed away and that I should easily have
forgotten him.

But I was not destined never to see him again. My father's new-born
interest in sociology and the dinner parties he gave would not permit.
Father was not a sociologist. His marriage with my mother had been very
happy, and in the researches of his own science, physics, he had been
very happy. But when mother died, his own work could not fill the
emptiness. At first, in a mild way, he had dabbled in philosophy; then,
becoming interested, he had drifted on into economics and sociology. He
had a strong sense of justice, and he soon became fired with a passion
to redress wrong. It was with gratitude that I hailed these signs of a
new interest in life, though I little dreamed what the outcome would
be. With the enthusiasm of a boy he plunged excitedly into these new
pursuits, regardless of whither they led him.

He had been used always to the laboratory, and so it was that he turned
the dining room into a sociological laboratory. Here came to dinner
all sorts and conditions of men,--scientists, politicians, bankers,
merchants, professors, labor leaders, socialists, and anarchists. He
stirred them to discussion, and analyzed their thoughts of life and
society.

He had met Ernest shortly prior to the “preacher's night.” And after the
guests were gone, I learned how he had met him, passing down a street at
night and stopping to listen to a man on a soap-box who was addressing
a crowd of workingmen. The man on the box was Ernest. Not that he was
a mere soap-box orator. He stood high in the councils of the socialist
party, was one of the leaders, and was the acknowledged leader in the
philosophy of socialism. But he had a certain clear way of stating the
abstruse in simple language, was a born expositor and teacher, and
was not above the soap-box as a means of interpreting economics to the
workingmen.

My father stopped to listen, became interested, effected a meeting, and,
after quite an acquaintance, invited him to the ministers' dinner. It
was after the dinner that father told me what little he knew about him.
He had been born in the working class, though he was a descendant of
the old line of Everhards that for over two hundred years had lived
in America.* At ten years of age he had gone to work in the mills,
and later he served his apprenticeship and became a horseshoer. He was
self-educated, had taught himself German and French, and at that time
was earning a meagre living by translating scientific and philosophical
works for a struggling socialist publishing house in Chicago. Also, his
earnings were added to by the royalties from the small sales of his own
economic and philosophic works.

     * The distinction between being native born and foreign born
     was sharp and invidious in those days.

This much I learned of him before I went to bed, and I lay long awake,
listening in memory to the sound of his voice. I grew frightened at
my thoughts. He was so unlike the men of my own class, so alien and so
strong. His masterfulness delighted me and terrified me, for my fancies
wantonly roved until I found myself considering him as a lover, as a
husband. I had always heard that the strength of men was an irresistible
attraction to women; but he was too strong. “No! no!” I cried out. “It
is impossible, absurd!” And on the morrow I awoke to find in myself
a longing to see him again. I wanted to see him mastering men in
discussion, the war-note in his voice; to see him, in all his certitude
and strength, shattering their complacency, shaking them out of their
ruts of thinking. What if he did swashbuckle? To use his own phrase, “it
worked,” it produced effects. And, besides, his swashbuckling was a fine
thing to see. It stirred one like the onset of battle.

Several days passed during which I read Ernest's books, borrowed from my
father. His written word was as his spoken word, clear and convincing.
It was its absolute simplicity that convinced even while one continued
to doubt. He had the gift of lucidity. He was the perfect expositor.
Yet, in spite of his style, there was much that I did not like. He laid
too great stress on what he called the class struggle, the antagonism
between labor and capital, the conflict of interest.

Father reported with glee Dr. Hammerfield's judgment of Ernest, which
was to the effect that he was “an insolent young puppy, made bumptious
by a little and very inadequate learning.” Also, Dr. Hammerfield
declined to meet Ernest again.

But Bishop Morehouse turned out to have become interested in Ernest,
and was anxious for another meeting. “A strong young man,” he said; “and
very much alive, very much alive. But he is too sure, too sure.”

Ernest came one afternoon with father. The Bishop had already arrived,
and we were having tea on the veranda. Ernest's continued presence in
Berkeley, by the way, was accounted for by the fact that he was taking
special courses in biology at the university, and also that he was hard
at work on a new book entitled “Philosophy and Revolution.” *

     * This book continued to be secretly printed throughout the
     three centuries of the Iron Heel.  There are several copies
     of various editions in the National Library of Ardis.

The veranda seemed suddenly to have become small when Ernest arrived.
Not that he was so very large--he stood only five feet nine inches; but
that he seemed to radiate an atmosphere of largeness. As he stopped to
meet me, he betrayed a certain slight awkwardness that was strangely at
variance with his bold-looking eyes and his firm, sure hand that clasped
for a moment in greeting. And in that moment his eyes were just as
steady and sure. There seemed a question in them this time, and as
before he looked at me over long.

“I have been reading your 'Working-class Philosophy,'” I said, and his
eyes lighted in a pleased way.

“Of course,” he answered, “you took into consideration the audience to
which it was addressed.”

“I did, and it is because I did that I have a quarrel with you,” I
challenged.

“I, too, have a quarrel with you, Mr. Everhard,” Bishop Morehouse said.

Ernest shrugged his shoulders whimsically and accepted a cup of tea.

The Bishop bowed and gave me precedence.

“You foment class hatred,” I said. “I consider it wrong and criminal
to appeal to all that is narrow and brutal in the working class. Class
hatred is anti-social, and, it seems to me, anti-socialistic.”

“Not guilty,” he answered. “Class hatred is neither in the text nor in
the spirit of anything I have ever written.”

“Oh!” I cried reproachfully, and reached for his book and opened it.

He sipped his tea and smiled at me while I ran over the pages.

“Page one hundred and thirty-two,” I read aloud: “'The class struggle,
therefore, presents itself in the present stage of social development
between the wage-paying and the wage-paid classes.'”

I looked at him triumphantly.

“No mention there of class hatred,” he smiled back.

“But,” I answered, “you say 'class struggle.'”

“A different thing from class hatred,” he replied. “And, believe me,
we foment no hatred. We say that the class struggle is a law of social
development. We are not responsible for it. We do not make the class
struggle. We merely explain it, as Newton explained gravitation. We
explain the nature of the conflict of interest that produces the class
struggle.”

“But there should be no conflict of interest!” I cried.

“I agree with you heartily,” he answered. “That is what we socialists
are trying to bring about,--the abolition of the conflict of interest.
Pardon me. Let me read an extract.” He took his book and turned back
several pages. “Page one hundred and twenty-six: 'The cycle of class
struggles which began with the dissolution of rude, tribal communism
and the rise of private property will end with the passing of private
property in the means of social existence.'”

“But I disagree with you,” the Bishop interposed, his pale, ascetic face
betraying by a faint glow the intensity of his feelings. “Your premise
is wrong. There is no such thing as a conflict of interest between labor
and capital--or, rather, there ought not to be.”

“Thank you,” Ernest said gravely. “By that last statement you have given
me back my premise.”

“But why should there be a conflict?” the Bishop demanded warmly.

Ernest shrugged his shoulders. “Because we are so made, I guess.”

“But we are not so made!” cried the other.

“Are you discussing the ideal man?” Ernest asked, “--unselfish and
godlike, and so few in numbers as to be practically non-existent, or are
you discussing the common and ordinary average man?”

“The common and ordinary man,” was the answer.

“Who is weak and fallible, prone to error?”

Bishop Morehouse nodded.

“And petty and selfish?”

Again he nodded.

“Watch out!” Ernest warned. “I said 'selfish.'”

“The average man IS selfish,” the Bishop affirmed valiantly.

“Wants all he can get?”

“Wants all he can get--true but deplorable.”

“Then I've got you.” Ernest's jaw snapped like a trap. “Let me show you.
Here is a man who works on the street railways.”

“He couldn't work if it weren't for capital,” the Bishop interrupted.

“True, and you will grant that capital would perish if there were no
labor to earn the dividends.”

The Bishop was silent.

“Won't you?” Ernest insisted.

The Bishop nodded.

“Then our statements cancel each other,” Ernest said in a matter-of-fact
tone, “and we are where we were. Now to begin again. The workingmen
on the street railway furnish the labor. The stockholders furnish the
capital. By the joint effort of the workingmen and the capital, money is
earned.* They divide between them this money that is earned. Capital's
share is called 'dividends.' Labor's share is called 'wages.'”

     * In those days, groups of predatory individuals controlled
     all the means of transportation, and for the use of same
     levied toll upon the public.

“Very good,” the Bishop interposed. “And there is no reason that the
division should not be amicable.”

“You have already forgotten what we had agreed upon,” Ernest replied.
“We agreed that the average man is selfish. He is the man that is. You
have gone up in the air and are arranging a division between the kind
of men that ought to be but are not. But to return to the earth, the
workingman, being selfish, wants all he can get in the division. The
capitalist, being selfish, wants all he can get in the division. When
there is only so much of the same thing, and when two men want all they
can get of the same thing, there is a conflict of interest between labor
and capital. And it is an irreconcilable conflict. As long as workingmen
and capitalists exist, they will continue to quarrel over the division.
If you were in San Francisco this afternoon, you'd have to walk. There
isn't a street car running.”

“Another strike?” * the Bishop queried with alarm.

     * These quarrels were very common in those irrational and
     anarchic times.  Sometimes the laborers refused to work.
     Sometimes the capitalists refused to let the laborers work.
     In the violence and turbulence of such disagreements much
     property was destroyed and many lives lost.  All this is
     inconceivable to us--as inconceivable as another custom of
     that time, namely, the habit the men of the lower classes
     had of breaking the furniture when they quarrelled with
     their wives.

“Yes, they're quarrelling over the division of the earnings of the
street railways.”

Bishop Morehouse became excited.

“It is wrong!” he cried. “It is so short-sighted on the part of the
workingmen. How can they hope to keep our sympathy--”

“When we are compelled to walk,” Ernest said slyly.

But Bishop Morehouse ignored him and went on:

“Their outlook is too narrow. Men should be men, not brutes. There will
be violence and murder now, and sorrowing widows and orphans. Capital
and labor should be friends. They should work hand in hand and to their
mutual benefit.”

“Ah, now you are up in the air again,” Ernest remarked dryly. “Come back
to earth. Remember, we agreed that the average man is selfish.”

“But he ought not to be!” the Bishop cried.

“And there I agree with you,” was Ernest's rejoinder. “He ought not to
be selfish, but he will continue to be selfish as long as he lives in a
social system that is based on pig-ethics.”

The Bishop was aghast, and my father chuckled.

“Yes, pig-ethics,” Ernest went on remorselessly. “That is the meaning
of the capitalist system. And that is what your church is standing
for, what you are preaching for every time you get up in the pulpit.
Pig-ethics! There is no other name for it.”

Bishop Morehouse turned appealingly to my father, but he laughed and
nodded his head.

“I'm afraid Mr. Everhard is right,” he said. “LAISSEZ-FAIRE, the
let-alone policy of each for himself and devil take the hindmost. As Mr.
Everhard said the other night, the function you churchmen perform is to
maintain the established order of society, and society is established on
that foundation.”

“But that is not the teaching of Christ!” cried the Bishop.

“The Church is not teaching Christ these days,” Ernest put in quickly.
“That is why the workingmen will have nothing to do with the Church.
The Church condones the frightful brutality and savagery with which the
capitalist class treats the working class.”

“The Church does not condone it,” the Bishop objected.

“The Church does not protest against it,” Ernest replied. “And in so far
as the Church does not protest, it condones, for remember the Church is
supported by the capitalist class.”

“I had not looked at it in that light,” the Bishop said naively. “You
must be wrong. I know that there is much that is sad and wicked in
this world. I know that the Church has lost the--what you call the
proletariat.” *

     * Proletariat: Derived originally from the Latin PROLETARII,
     the name given in the census of Servius Tullius to those who
     were of value to the state only as the rearers of offspring
     (PROLES); in other words, they were of no importance either
     for wealth, or position, or exceptional ability.

“You never had the proletariat,” Ernest cried. “The proletariat has
grown up outside the Church and without the Church.”

“I do not follow you,” the Bishop said faintly.

“Then let me explain. With the introduction of machinery and the factory
system in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the great mass of
the working people was separated from the land. The old system of labor
was broken down. The working people were driven from their villages and
herded in factory towns. The mothers and children were put to work at
the new machines. Family life ceased. The conditions were frightful. It
is a tale of blood.”

“I know, I know,” Bishop Morehouse interrupted with an agonized
expression on his face. “It was terrible. But it occurred a century and
a half ago.”

“And there, a century and a half ago, originated the modern
proletariat,” Ernest continued. “And the Church ignored it. While a
slaughter-house was made of the nation by the capitalist, the Church
was dumb. It did not protest, as to-day it does not protest. As Austin
Lewis* says, speaking of that time, those to whom the command 'Feed my
lambs' had been given, saw those lambs sold into slavery and worked to
death without a protest.** The Church was dumb, then, and before I go on
I want you either flatly to agree with me or flatly to disagree with me.
Was the Church dumb then?”

     * Candidate for Governor of California on the Socialist
     ticket in the fall election of 1906 Christian Era.  An
     Englishman by birth, a writer of many books on political
     economy and philosophy, and one of the Socialist leaders of
     the times.

     ** There is no more horrible page in history than the
     treatment of the child and women slaves in the English
     factories in the latter half of the eighteenth century of
     the Christian Era.  In such industrial hells arose some of
     the proudest fortunes of that day.

Bishop Morehouse hesitated. Like Dr. Hammerfield, he was unused to this
fierce “infighting,” as Ernest called it.

“The history of the eighteenth century is written,” Ernest prompted. “If
the Church was not dumb, it will be found not dumb in the books.”

“I am afraid the Church was dumb,” the Bishop confessed.

“And the Church is dumb to-day.”

“There I disagree,” said the Bishop.

Ernest paused, looked at him searchingly, and accepted the challenge.

“All right,” he said. “Let us see. In Chicago there are women who toil
all the week for ninety cents. Has the Church protested?”

“This is news to me,” was the answer. “Ninety cents per week! It is
horrible!”

“Has the Church protested?” Ernest insisted.

“The Church does not know.” The Bishop was struggling hard.

“Yet the command to the Church was, 'Feed my lambs,'” Ernest sneered.
And then, the next moment, “Pardon my sneer, Bishop. But can you
wonder that we lose patience with you? When have you protested to your
capitalistic congregations at the working of children in the Southern
cotton mills?* Children, six and seven years of age, working every night
at twelve-hour shifts? They never see the blessed sunshine. They die
like flies. The dividends are paid out of their blood. And out of the
dividends magnificent churches are builded in New England, wherein your
kind preaches pleasant platitudes to the sleek, full-bellied recipients
of those dividends.”

     * Everhard might have drawn a better illustration from the
     Southern Church's outspoken defence of chattel slavery prior
     to what is known as the “War of the Rebellion.”  Several
     such illustrations, culled from the documents of the times,
     are here appended.  In 1835 A.D., the General Assembly of
     the Presbyterian Church resolved that: “slavery is
     recognized in both the Old and the New Testaments, and is
     not condemned by the authority of God.”  The Charleston
     Baptist Association issued the following, in an address, in
     1835 A.D.: “The right of masters to dispose of the time of
     their slaves has been distinctly recognized by the Creator
     of all things, who is surely at liberty to vest the right of
     property over any object whomsoever He pleases.”  The Rev.
     E. D. Simon, Doctor of Divinity and professor in the
     Randolph-Macon Methodist College of Virginia, wrote:
     “Extracts from Holy Writ unequivocally assert the right of
     property in slaves, together with the usual incidents to
     that right.  The right to buy and sell is clearly stated.
     Upon the whole, then, whether we consult the Jewish policy
     instituted by God himself, or the uniform opinion and
     practice of mankind in all ages, or the injunctions of the
     New Testament and the moral law, we are brought to the
     conclusion that slavery is not immoral.  Having established
     the point that the first African slaves were legally brought
     into bondage, the right to detain their children in bondage
     follows as an indispensable consequence.  Thus we see that
     the slavery that exists in America was founded in right.”

     It is not at all remarkable that this same note should have
     been struck by the Church a generation or so later in
     relation to the defence of capitalistic property.  In the
     great museum at Asgard there is a book entitled “Essays in
     Application,” written by Henry van Dyke.  The book was
     published in 1905 of the Christian Era. From what we can
     make out, Van Dyke must have been a churchman. The book is a
     good example of what Everhard would have called bourgeois
     thinking.  Note the similarity between the utterance of the
     Charleston Baptist Association quoted above, and the
     following utterance of Van Dyke seventy years later: “The
     Bible teaches that God owns the world.  He distributes to
     every man according to His own good pleasure, conformably to
     general laws.”

“I did not know,” the Bishop murmured faintly. His face was pale, and he
seemed suffering from nausea.

“Then you have not protested?”

The Bishop shook his head.

“Then the Church is dumb to-day, as it was in the eighteenth century?”

The Bishop was silent, and for once Ernest forbore to press the point.

“And do not forget, whenever a churchman does protest, that he is
discharged.”

“I hardly think that is fair,” was the objection.

“Will you protest?” Ernest demanded.

“Show me evils, such as you mention, in our own community, and I will
protest.”

“I'll show you,” Ernest said quietly. “I am at your disposal. I will
take you on a journey through hell.”

“And I shall protest.” The Bishop straightened himself in his chair, and
over his gentle face spread the harshness of the warrior. “The Church
shall not be dumb!”

“You will be discharged,” was the warning.

“I shall prove the contrary,” was the retort. “I shall prove, if
what you say is so, that the Church has erred through ignorance. And,
furthermore, I hold that whatever is horrible in industrial society is
due to the ignorance of the capitalist class. It will mend all that is
wrong as soon as it receives the message. And this message it shall be
the duty of the Church to deliver.”

Ernest laughed. He laughed brutally, and I was driven to the Bishop's
defence.

“Remember,” I said, “you see but one side of the shield. There is
much good in us, though you give us credit for no good at all. Bishop
Morehouse is right. The industrial wrong, terrible as you say it is,
is due to ignorance. The divisions of society have become too widely
separated.”

“The wild Indian is not so brutal and savage as the capitalist class,”
 he answered; and in that moment I hated him.

“You do not know us,” I answered. “We are not brutal and savage.”

“Prove it,” he challenged.

“How can I prove it . . . to you?” I was growing angry.

He shook his head. “I do not ask you to prove it to me. I ask you to
prove it to yourself.”

“I know,” I said.

“You know nothing,” was his rude reply.

“There, there, children,” father said soothingly.

“I don't care--” I began indignantly, but Ernest interrupted.

“I understand you have money, or your father has, which is the same
thing--money invested in the Sierra Mills.”

“What has that to do with it?” I cried.

“Nothing much,” he began slowly, “except that the gown you wear is
stained with blood. The food you eat is a bloody stew. The blood of
little children and of strong men is dripping from your very roof-beams.
I can close my eyes, now, and hear it drip, drop, drip, drop, all about
me.”

And suiting the action to the words, he closed his eyes and leaned back
in his chair. I burst into tears of mortification and hurt vanity. I had
never been so brutally treated in my life. Both the Bishop and my father
were embarrassed and perturbed. They tried to lead the conversation
away into easier channels; but Ernest opened his eyes, looked at me,
and waved them aside. His mouth was stern, and his eyes too; and in the
latter there was no glint of laughter. What he was about to say, what
terrible castigation he was going to give me, I never knew; for at that
moment a man, passing along the sidewalk, stopped and glanced in at us.
He was a large man, poorly dressed, and on his back was a great load of
rattan and bamboo stands, chairs, and screens. He looked at the house as
if debating whether or not he should come in and try to sell some of his
wares.

“That man's name is Jackson,” Ernest said.

“With that strong body of his he should be at work, and not peddling,” *
I answered curtly.

     * In that day there were many thousands of these poor
     merchants called PEDLERS.  They carried their whole stock in
     trade from door to door.  It was a most wasteful expenditure
     of energy. Distribution was as confused and irrational as
     the whole general system of society.

“Notice the sleeve of his left arm,” Ernest said gently.

I looked, and saw that the sleeve was empty.

“It was some of the blood from that arm that I heard dripping from your
roof-beams,” Ernest said with continued gentleness. “He lost his arm in
the Sierra Mills, and like a broken-down horse you turned him out on
the highway to die. When I say 'you,' I mean the superintendent and the
officials that you and the other stockholders pay to manage the mills
for you. It was an accident. It was caused by his trying to save the
company a few dollars. The toothed drum of the picker caught his arm. He
might have let the small flint that he saw in the teeth go through. It
would have smashed out a double row of spikes. But he reached for the
flint, and his arm was picked and clawed to shreds from the finger tips
to the shoulder. It was at night. The mills were working overtime. They
paid a fat dividend that quarter. Jackson had been working many hours,
and his muscles had lost their resiliency and snap. They made his
movements a bit slow. That was why the machine caught him. He had a wife
and three children.”

“And what did the company do for him?” I asked.

“Nothing. Oh, yes, they did do something. They successfully fought the
damage suit he brought when he came out of hospital. The company employs
very efficient lawyers, you know.”

“You have not told the whole story,” I said with conviction. “Or else
you do not know the whole story. Maybe the man was insolent.”

“Insolent! Ha! ha!” His laughter was Mephistophelian. “Great God!
Insolent! And with his arm chewed off! Nevertheless he was a meek and
lowly servant, and there is no record of his having been insolent.”

“But the courts,” I urged. “The case would not have been decided against
him had there been no more to the affair than you have mentioned.”

“Colonel Ingram is leading counsel for the company. He is a shrewd
lawyer.” Ernest looked at me intently for a moment, then went on. “I'll
tell you what you do, Miss Cunningham. You investigate Jackson's case.”

“I had already determined to,” I said coldly.

“All right,” he beamed good-naturedly, “and I'll tell you where to
find him. But I tremble for you when I think of all you are to prove by
Jackson's arm.”

And so it came about that both the Bishop and I accepted Ernest's
challenges. They went away together, leaving me smarting with a sense
of injustice that had been done me and my class. The man was a beast. I
hated him, then, and consoled myself with the thought that his behavior
was what was to be expected from a man of the working class.



CHAPTER III

JACKSON'S ARM.


Little did I dream the fateful part Jackson's arm was to play in my
life. Jackson himself did not impress me when I hunted him out. I found
him in a crazy, ramshackle* house down near the bay on the edge of the
marsh. Pools of stagnant water stood around the house, their surfaces
covered with a green and putrid-looking scum, while the stench that
arose from them was intolerable.

     * An adjective descriptive of ruined and dilapidated houses
     in which great numbers of the working people found shelter
     in those days.  They invariably paid rent, and, considering
     the value of such houses, enormous rent, to the landlords.

I found Jackson the meek and lowly man he had been described. He was
making some sort of rattan-work, and he toiled on stolidly while I
talked with him. But in spite of his meekness and lowliness, I fancied I
caught the first note of a nascent bitterness in him when he said:

“They might a-given me a job as watchman,* anyway.”

     * In those days thievery was incredibly prevalent.
     Everybody stole property from everybody else.  The lords of
     society stole legally or else legalized their stealing,
     while the poorer classes stole illegally.  Nothing was safe
     unless guarded.  Enormous numbers of men were employed as
     watchmen to protect property.  The houses of the well-to-do
     were a combination of safe deposit vault and fortress.  The
     appropriation of the personal belongings of others by our
     own children of to-day is looked upon as a rudimentary
     survival of the theft-characteristic that in those early
     times was universal.

I got little out of him. He struck me as stupid, and yet the deftness
with which he worked with his one hand seemed to belie his stupidity.
This suggested an idea to me.

“How did you happen to get your arm caught in the machine?” I asked.

He looked at me in a slow and pondering way, and shook his head. “I
don't know. It just happened.”

“Carelessness?” I prompted.

“No,” he answered, “I ain't for callin' it that. I was workin' overtime,
an' I guess I was tired out some. I worked seventeen years in them
mills, an' I've took notice that most of the accidents happens just
before whistle-blow.* I'm willin' to bet that more accidents happens
in the hour before whistle-blow than in all the rest of the day. A man
ain't so quick after workin' steady for hours. I've seen too many of 'em
cut up an' gouged an' chawed not to know.”

     * The laborers were called to work and dismissed by savage,
     screaming, nerve-racking steam-whistles.

“Many of them?” I queried.

“Hundreds an' hundreds, an' children, too.”

With the exception of the terrible details, Jackson's story of his
accident was the same as that I had already heard. When I asked him if
he had broken some rule of working the machinery, he shook his head.

“I chucked off the belt with my right hand,” he said, “an' made a reach
for the flint with my left. I didn't stop to see if the belt was off. I
thought my right hand had done it--only it didn't. I reached quick, and
the belt wasn't all the way off. And then my arm was chewed off.”

“It must have been painful,” I said sympathetically.

“The crunchin' of the bones wasn't nice,” was his answer.

His mind was rather hazy concerning the damage suit. Only one thing was
clear to him, and that was that he had not got any damages. He had a
feeling that the testimony of the foremen and the superintendent had
brought about the adverse decision of the court. Their testimony, as he
put it, “wasn't what it ought to have ben.” And to them I resolved to
go.

One thing was plain, Jackson's situation was wretched. His wife was in
ill health, and he was unable to earn, by his rattan-work and peddling,
sufficient food for the family. He was back in his rent, and the oldest
boy, a lad of eleven, had started to work in the mills.

“They might a-given me that watchman's job,” were his last words as I
went away.

By the time I had seen the lawyer who had handled Jackson's case, and
the two foremen and the superintendent at the mills who had testified, I
began to feel that there was something after all in Ernest's contention.

He was a weak and inefficient-looking man, the lawyer, and at sight of
him I did not wonder that Jackson's case had been lost. My first thought
was that it had served Jackson right for getting such a lawyer. But
the next moment two of Ernest's statements came flashing into my
consciousness: “The company employs very efficient lawyers” and “Colonel
Ingram is a shrewd lawyer.” I did some rapid thinking. It dawned upon me
that of course the company could afford finer legal talent than could a
workingman like Jackson. But this was merely a minor detail. There was
some very good reason, I was sure, why Jackson's case had gone against
him.

“Why did you lose the case?” I asked.

The lawyer was perplexed and worried for a moment, and I found it in my
heart to pity the wretched little creature. Then he began to whine. I
do believe his whine was congenital. He was a man beaten at birth. He
whined about the testimony. The witnesses had given only the evidence
that helped the other side. Not one word could he get out of them that
would have helped Jackson. They knew which side their bread was buttered
on. Jackson was a fool. He had been brow-beaten and confused by Colonel
Ingram. Colonel Ingram was brilliant at cross-examination. He had made
Jackson answer damaging questions.

“How could his answers be damaging if he had the right on his side?” I
demanded.

“What's right got to do with it?” he demanded back. “You see all those
books.” He moved his hand over the array of volumes on the walls of his
tiny office. “All my reading and studying of them has taught me that
law is one thing and right is another thing. Ask any lawyer. You go to
Sunday-school to learn what is right. But you go to those books to learn
. . . law.”

“Do you mean to tell me that Jackson had the right on his side and yet
was beaten?” I queried tentatively. “Do you mean to tell me that there
is no justice in Judge Caldwell's court?”

The little lawyer glared at me a moment, and then the belligerence faded
out of his face.

“I hadn't a fair chance,” he began whining again. “They made a fool out
of Jackson and out of me, too. What chance had I? Colonel Ingram is
a great lawyer. If he wasn't great, would he have charge of the law
business of the Sierra Mills, of the Erston Land Syndicate, of the
Berkeley Consolidated, of the Oakland, San Leandro, and Pleasanton
Electric? He's a corporation lawyer, and corporation lawyers are not
paid for being fools.* What do you think the Sierra Mills alone give him
twenty thousand dollars a year for? Because he's worth twenty thousand
dollars a year to them, that's what for. I'm not worth that much. If
I was, I wouldn't be on the outside, starving and taking cases like
Jackson's. What do you think I'd have got if I'd won Jackson's case?”

     * The function of the corporation lawyer was to serve, by
     corrupt methods, the money-grabbing propensities of the
     corporations.  It is on record that Theodore Roosevelt, at
     that time President of the United States, said in 1905 A.D.,
     in his address at Harvard Commencement: “We all know that,
     as things actually are, many of the most influential and
     most highly remunerated members of the Bar in every centre
     of wealth, make it their special task to work out bold and
     ingenious schemes by which their wealthy clients, individual
     or corporate, can evade the laws which were made to
     regulate, in the interests of the public, the uses of great
     wealth.”

“You'd have robbed him, most probably,” I answered.

“Of course I would,” he cried angrily. “I've got to live, haven't I?” *

     * A typical illustration of the internecine strife that
     permeated all society.  Men preyed upon one another like
     ravening wolves. The big wolves ate the little wolves, and
     in the social pack Jackson was one of the least of the
     little wolves.

“He has a wife and children,” I chided.

“So have I a wife and children,” he retorted. “And there's not a soul in
this world except myself that cares whether they starve or not.”

His face suddenly softened, and he opened his watch and showed me a
small photograph of a woman and two little girls pasted inside the case.

“There they are. Look at them. We've had a hard time, a hard time. I
had hoped to send them away to the country if I'd won Jackson's case.
They're not healthy here, but I can't afford to send them away.”

When I started to leave, he dropped back into his whine.

“I hadn't the ghost of a chance. Colonel Ingram and Judge Caldwell
are pretty friendly. I'm not saying that if I'd got the right kind of
testimony out of their witnesses on cross-examination, that friendship
would have decided the case. And yet I must say that Judge Caldwell
did a whole lot to prevent my getting that very testimony. Why, Judge
Caldwell and Colonel Ingram belong to the same lodge and the same club.
They live in the same neighborhood--one I can't afford. And their wives
are always in and out of each other's houses. They're always having
whist parties and such things back and forth.”

“And yet you think Jackson had the right of it?” I asked, pausing for
the moment on the threshold.

“I don't think; I know it,” was his answer. “And at first I thought
he had some show, too. But I didn't tell my wife. I didn't want to
disappoint her. She had her heart set on a trip to the country hard
enough as it was.”

“Why did you not call attention to the fact that Jackson was trying to
save the machinery from being injured?” I asked Peter Donnelly, one of
the foremen who had testified at the trial.

He pondered a long time before replying. Then he cast an anxious look
about him and said:

“Because I've a good wife an' three of the sweetest children ye ever
laid eyes on, that's why.”

“I do not understand,” I said.

“In other words, because it wouldn't a-ben healthy,” he answered.

“You mean--” I began.

But he interrupted passionately.

“I mean what I said. It's long years I've worked in the mills. I began
as a little lad on the spindles. I worked up ever since. It's by hard
work I got to my present exalted position. I'm a foreman, if you please.
An' I doubt me if there's a man in the mills that'd put out a hand to
drag me from drownin'. I used to belong to the union. But I've stayed
by the company through two strikes. They called me 'scab.' There's not
a man among 'em to-day to take a drink with me if I asked him. D'ye see
the scars on me head where I was struck with flying bricks? There ain't
a child at the spindles but what would curse me name. Me only friend is
the company. It's not me duty, but me bread an' butter an' the life of
me children to stand by the mills. That's why.”

“Was Jackson to blame?” I asked.

“He should a-got the damages. He was a good worker an' never made
trouble.”

“Then you were not at liberty to tell the whole truth, as you had sworn
to do?”

He shook his head.

“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” I said
solemnly.

Again his face became impassioned, and he lifted it, not to me, but to
heaven.

“I'd let me soul an' body burn in everlastin' hell for them children of
mine,” was his answer.

Henry Dallas, the superintendent, was a vulpine-faced creature who
regarded me insolently and refused to talk. Not a word could I get from
him concerning the trial and his testimony. But with the other foreman I
had better luck. James Smith was a hard-faced man, and my heart sank
as I encountered him. He, too, gave me the impression that he was not a
free agent, as we talked I began to see that he was mentally superior
to the average of his kind. He agreed with Peter Donnelly that Jackson
should have got damages, and he went farther and called the action
heartless and cold-blooded that had turned the worker adrift after he
had been made helpless by the accident. Also, he explained that there
were many accidents in the mills, and that the company's policy was to
fight to the bitter end all consequent damage suits.

“It means hundreds of thousands a year to the stockholders,” he said;
and as he spoke I remembered the last dividend that had been paid my
father, and the pretty gown for me and the books for him that had been
bought out of that dividend. I remembered Ernest's charge that my
gown was stained with blood, and my flesh began to crawl underneath my
garments.

“When you testified at the trial, you didn't point out that Jackson
received his accident through trying to save the machinery from damage?”
 I said.

“No, I did not,” was the answer, and his mouth set bitterly. “I
testified to the effect that Jackson injured himself by neglect and
carelessness, and that the company was not in any way to blame or
liable.”

“Was it carelessness?” I asked.

“Call it that, or anything you want to call it. The fact is, a man gets
tired after he's been working for hours.”

I was becoming interested in the man. He certainly was of a superior
kind.

“You are better educated than most workingmen,” I said.

“I went through high school,” he replied. “I worked my way through doing
janitor-work. I wanted to go through the university. But my father died,
and I came to work in the mills.

“I wanted to become a naturalist,” he explained shyly, as though
confessing a weakness. “I love animals. But I came to work in the mills.
When I was promoted to foreman I got married, then the family came, and
. . . well, I wasn't my own boss any more.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“I was explaining why I testified at the trial the way I did--why I
followed instructions.”

“Whose instructions?”

“Colonel Ingram. He outlined the evidence I was to give.”

“And it lost Jackson's case for him.”

He nodded, and the blood began to rise darkly in his face.

“And Jackson had a wife and two children dependent on him.”

“I know,” he said quietly, though his face was growing darker.

“Tell me,” I went on, “was it easy to make yourself over from what you
were, say in high school, to the man you must have become to do such a
thing at the trial?”

The suddenness of his outburst startled and frightened me. He ripped*
out a savage oath, and clenched his fist as though about to strike me.

     * It is interesting to note the virilities of language that
     were common speech in that day, as indicative of the life,
     'red of claw and fang,' that was then lived.  Reference is
     here made, of course, not to the oath of Smith, but to the
     verb ripped used by Avis Everhard.

“I beg your pardon,” he said the next moment. “No, it was not easy. And
now I guess you can go away. You've got all you wanted out of me. But
let me tell you this before you go. It won't do you any good to repeat
anything I've said. I'll deny it, and there are no witnesses. I'll deny
every word of it; and if I have to, I'll do it under oath on the witness
stand.”

After my interview with Smith I went to my father's office in
the Chemistry Building and there encountered Ernest. It was quite
unexpected, but he met me with his bold eyes and firm hand-clasp, and
with that curious blend of his awkwardness and ease. It was as though
our last stormy meeting was forgotten; but I was not in the mood to have
it forgotten.

“I have been looking up Jackson's case,” I said abruptly.

He was all interested attention, and waited for me to go on, though I
could see in his eyes the certitude that my convictions had been shaken.

“He seems to have been badly treated,” I confessed. “I--I--think some of
his blood is dripping from our roof-beams.”

“Of course,” he answered. “If Jackson and all his fellows were treated
mercifully, the dividends would not be so large.”

“I shall never be able to take pleasure in pretty gowns again,” I added.

I felt humble and contrite, and was aware of a sweet feeling that
Ernest was a sort of father confessor. Then, as ever after, his strength
appealed to me. It seemed to radiate a promise of peace and protection.

“Nor will you be able to take pleasure in sackcloth,” he said gravely.
“There are the jute mills, you know, and the same thing goes on there.
It goes on everywhere. Our boasted civilization is based upon blood,
soaked in blood, and neither you nor I nor any of us can escape the
scarlet stain. The men you talked with--who were they?”

I told him all that had taken place.

“And not one of them was a free agent,” he said. “They were all tied to
the merciless industrial machine. And the pathos of it and the tragedy
is that they are tied by their heartstrings. Their children--always
the young life that it is their instinct to protect. This instinct is
stronger than any ethic they possess. My father! He lied, he stole, he
did all sorts of dishonorable things to put bread into my mouth and into
the mouths of my brothers and sisters. He was a slave to the industrial
machine, and it stamped his life out, worked him to death.”

“But you,” I interjected. “You are surely a free agent.”

“Not wholly,” he replied. “I am not tied by my heartstrings. I am often
thankful that I have no children, and I dearly love children. Yet if I
married I should not dare to have any.”

“That surely is bad doctrine,” I cried.

“I know it is,” he said sadly. “But it is expedient doctrine. I am a
revolutionist, and it is a perilous vocation.”

I laughed incredulously.

“If I tried to enter your father's house at night to steal his dividends
from the Sierra Mills, what would he do?”

“He sleeps with a revolver on the stand by the bed,” I answered. “He
would most probably shoot you.”

“And if I and a few others should lead a million and a half of men*
into the houses of all the well-to-do, there would be a great deal of
shooting, wouldn't there?”

     * This reference is to the socialist vote cast in the United
     States in 1910.  The rise of this vote clearly indicates the
     swift growth of the party of revolution.  Its voting
     strength in the United States in 1888 was 2068; in 1902,
     127,713; in 1904, 435,040; in 1908, 1,108,427; and in 1910,
     1,688,211.

“Yes, but you are not doing that,” I objected.

“It is precisely what I am doing. And we intend to take, not the mere
wealth in the houses, but all the sources of that wealth, all the
mines, and railroads, and factories, and banks, and stores. That is
the revolution. It is truly perilous. There will be more shooting, I am
afraid, than even I dream of. But as I was saying, no one to-day is
a free agent. We are all caught up in the wheels and cogs of the
industrial machine. You found that you were, and that the men you talked
with were. Talk with more of them. Go and see Colonel Ingram. Look
up the reporters that kept Jackson's case out of the papers, and the
editors that run the papers. You will find them all slaves of the
machine.”

A little later in our conversation I asked him a simple little
question about the liability of workingmen to accidents, and received a
statistical lecture in return.

“It is all in the books,” he said. “The figures have been gathered, and
it has been proved conclusively that accidents rarely occur in the
first hours of the morning work, but that they increase rapidly in the
succeeding hours as the workers grow tired and slower in both their
muscular and mental processes.

“Why, do you know that your father has three times as many chances for
safety of life and limb than has a working-man? He has. The insurance*
companies know. They will charge him four dollars and twenty cents a
year on a thousand-dollar accident policy, and for the same policy they
will charge a laborer fifteen dollars.”

     * In the terrible wolf-struggle of those centuries, no man
     was permanently safe, no matter how much wealth he amassed.
     Out of fear for the welfare of their families, men devised
     the scheme of insurance.  To us, in this intelligent age,
     such a device is laughably absurd and primitive.  But in
     that age insurance was a very serious matter.  The amusing
     part of it is that the funds of the insurance companies were
     frequently plundered and wasted by the very officials who
     were intrusted with the management of them.

“And you?” I asked; and in the moment of asking I was aware of a
solicitude that was something more than slight.

“Oh, as a revolutionist, I have about eight chances to the workingman's
one of being injured or killed,” he answered carelessly. “The insurance
companies charge the highly trained chemists that handle explosives
eight times what they charge the workingmen. I don't think they'd insure
me at all. Why did you ask?”

My eyes fluttered, and I could feel the blood warm in my face. It
was not that he had caught me in my solicitude, but that I had caught
myself, and in his presence.

Just then my father came in and began making preparations to depart with
me. Ernest returned some books he had borrowed, and went away first. But
just as he was going, he turned and said:

“Oh, by the way, while you are ruining your own peace of mind and I
am ruining the Bishop's, you'd better look up Mrs. Wickson and
Mrs. Pertonwaithe. Their husbands, you know, are the two principal
stockholders in the Mills. Like all the rest of humanity, those two
women are tied to the machine, but they are so tied that they sit on top
of it.”



CHAPTER IV

SLAVES OF THE MACHINE


The more I thought of Jackson's arm, the more shaken I was. I was
confronted by the concrete. For the first time I was seeing life. My
university life, and study and culture, had not been real. I had learned
nothing but theories of life and society that looked all very well on
the printed page, but now I had seen life itself. Jackson's arm was a
fact of life. “The fact, man, the irrefragable fact!” of Ernest's was
ringing in my consciousness.

It seemed monstrous, impossible, that our whole society was based
upon blood. And yet there was Jackson. I could not get away from him.
Constantly my thought swung back to him as the compass to the Pole. He
had been monstrously treated. His blood had not been paid for in order
that a larger dividend might be paid. And I knew a score of happy
complacent families that had received those dividends and by that much
had profited by Jackson's blood. If one man could be so monstrously
treated and society move on its way unheeding, might not many men be so
monstrously treated? I remembered Ernest's women of Chicago who toiled
for ninety cents a week, and the child slaves of the Southern cotton
mills he had described. And I could see their wan white hands, from
which the blood had been pressed, at work upon the cloth out of which
had been made my gown. And then I thought of the Sierra Mills and the
dividends that had been paid, and I saw the blood of Jackson upon my
gown as well. Jackson I could not escape. Always my meditations led me
back to him.

Down in the depths of me I had a feeling that I stood on the edge of
a precipice. It was as though I were about to see a new and awful
revelation of life. And not I alone. My whole world was turning over.
There was my father. I could see the effect Ernest was beginning to have
on him. And then there was the Bishop. When I had last seen him he had
looked a sick man. He was at high nervous tension, and in his eyes there
was unspeakable horror. From the little I learned I knew that Ernest had
been keeping his promise of taking him through hell. But what scenes of
hell the Bishop's eyes had seen, I knew not, for he seemed too stunned
to speak about them.

Once, the feeling strong upon me that my little world and all the world
was turning over, I thought of Ernest as the cause of it; and also I
thought, “We were so happy and peaceful before he came!” And the next
moment I was aware that the thought was a treason against truth, and
Ernest rose before me transfigured, the apostle of truth, with shining
brows and the fearlessness of one of Gods own angels, battling for the
truth and the right, and battling for the succor of the poor and lonely
and oppressed. And then there arose before me another figure, the
Christ! He, too, had taken the part of the lowly and oppressed,
and against all the established power of priest and pharisee. And I
remembered his end upon the cross, and my heart contracted with a pang
as I thought of Ernest. Was he, too, destined for a cross?--he, with his
clarion call and war-noted voice, and all the fine man's vigor of him!

And in that moment I knew that I loved him, and that I was melting
with desire to comfort him. I thought of his life. A sordid, harsh, and
meagre life it must have been. And I thought of his father, who had lied
and stolen for him and been worked to death. And he himself had gone
into the mills when he was ten! All my heart seemed bursting with desire
to fold my arms around him, and to rest his head on my breast--his head
that must be weary with so many thoughts; and to give him rest--just
rest--and easement and forgetfulness for a tender space.

I met Colonel Ingram at a church reception. Him I knew well and had
known well for many years. I trapped him behind large palms and rubber
plants, though he did not know he was trapped. He met me with the
conventional gayety and gallantry. He was ever a graceful man,
diplomatic, tactful, and considerate. And as for appearance, he was
the most distinguished-looking man in our society. Beside him even the
venerable head of the university looked tawdry and small.

And yet I found Colonel Ingram situated the same as the unlettered
mechanics. He was not a free agent. He, too, was bound upon the wheel.
I shall never forget the change in him when I mentioned Jackson's case.
His smiling good nature vanished like a ghost. A sudden, frightful
expression distorted his well-bred face. I felt the same alarm that I
had felt when James Smith broke out. But Colonel Ingram did not curse.
That was the slight difference that was left between the workingman and
him. He was famed as a wit, but he had no wit now. And, unconsciously,
this way and that he glanced for avenues of escape. But he was trapped
amid the palms and rubber trees.

Oh, he was sick of the sound of Jackson's name. Why had I brought the
matter up? He did not relish my joke. It was poor taste on my part,
and very inconsiderate. Did I not know that in his profession personal
feelings did not count? He left his personal feelings at home when
he went down to the office. At the office he had only professional
feelings.

“Should Jackson have received damages?” I asked.

“Certainly,” he answered. “That is, personally, I have a feeling that he
should. But that has nothing to do with the legal aspects of the case.”

He was getting his scattered wits slightly in hand.

“Tell me, has right anything to do with the law?” I asked.

“You have used the wrong initial consonant,” he smiled in answer.

“Might?” I queried; and he nodded his head. “And yet we are supposed to
get justice by means of the law?”

“That is the paradox of it,” he countered. “We do get justice.”

“You are speaking professionally now, are you not?” I asked.

Colonel Ingram blushed, actually blushed, and again he looked anxiously
about him for a way of escape. But I blocked his path and did not offer
to move.

“Tell me,” I said, “when one surrenders his personal feelings to his
professional feelings, may not the action be defined as a sort of
spiritual mayhem?”

I did not get an answer. Colonel Ingram had ingloriously bolted,
overturning a palm in his flight.

Next I tried the newspapers. I wrote a quiet, restrained, dispassionate
account of Jackson's case. I made no charges against the men with whom
I had talked, nor, for that matter, did I even mention them. I gave
the actual facts of the case, the long years Jackson had worked in the
mills, his effort to save the machinery from damage and the consequent
accident, and his own present wretched and starving condition. The
three local newspapers rejected my communication, likewise did the two
weeklies.

I got hold of Percy Layton. He was a graduate of the university, had
gone in for journalism, and was then serving his apprenticeship as
reporter on the most influential of the three newspapers. He smiled when
I asked him the reason the newspapers suppressed all mention of Jackson
or his case.

“Editorial policy,” he said. “We have nothing to do with that. It's up
to the editors.”

“But why is it policy?” I asked.

“We're all solid with the corporations,” he answered. “If you paid
advertising rates, you couldn't get any such matter into the papers. A
man who tried to smuggle it in would lose his job. You couldn't get it
in if you paid ten times the regular advertising rates.”

“How about your own policy?” I questioned. “It would seem your function
is to twist truth at the command of your employers, who, in turn, obey
the behests of the corporations.”

“I haven't anything to do with that.” He looked uncomfortable for the
moment, then brightened as he saw his way out. “I, myself, do not write
untruthful things. I keep square all right with my own conscience. Of
course, there's lots that's repugnant in the course of the day's work.
But then, you see, that's all part of the day's work,” he wound up
boyishly.

“Yet you expect to sit at an editor's desk some day and conduct a
policy.”

“I'll be case-hardened by that time,” was his reply.

“Since you are not yet case-hardened, tell me what you think right now
about the general editorial policy.”

“I don't think,” he answered quickly. “One can't kick over the ropes
if he's going to succeed in journalism. I've learned that much, at any
rate.”

And he nodded his young head sagely.

“But the right?” I persisted.

“You don't understand the game. Of course it's all right, because it
comes out all right, don't you see?”

“Delightfully vague,” I murmured; but my heart was aching for the youth
of him, and I felt that I must either scream or burst into tears.

I was beginning to see through the appearances of the society in which I
had always lived, and to find the frightful realities that were beneath.
There seemed a tacit conspiracy against Jackson, and I was aware of a
thrill of sympathy for the whining lawyer who had ingloriously fought
his case. But this tacit conspiracy grew large. Not alone was it aimed
against Jackson. It was aimed against every workingman who was maimed in
the mills. And if against every man in the mills, why not against every
man in all the other mills and factories? In fact, was it not true of
all the industries?

And if this was so, then society was a lie. I shrank back from my own
conclusions. It was too terrible and awful to be true. But there was
Jackson, and Jackson's arm, and the blood that stained my gown and
dripped from my own roof-beams. And there were many Jacksons--hundreds
of them in the mills alone, as Jackson himself had said. Jackson I could
not escape.

I saw Mr. Wickson and Mr. Pertonwaithe, the two men who held most of the
stock in the Sierra Mills. But I could not shake them as I had shaken
the mechanics in their employ. I discovered that they had an ethic
superior to that of the rest of society. It was what I may call the
aristocratic ethic or the master ethic.* They talked in large ways of
policy, and they identified policy and right. And to me they talked in
fatherly ways, patronizing my youth and inexperience. They were the most
hopeless of all I had encountered in my quest. They believed absolutely
that their conduct was right. There was no question about it, no
discussion. They were convinced that they were the saviours of society,
and that it was they who made happiness for the many. And they drew
pathetic pictures of what would be the sufferings of the working class
were it not for the employment that they, and they alone, by their
wisdom, provided for it.

     * Before Avis Everhard was born, John Stuart Mill, in his
     essay, ON LIBERTY, wrote: “Wherever there is an ascendant
     class, a large portion of the morality emanates from its
     class interests and its class feelings of superiority.”

Fresh from these two masters, I met Ernest and related my experience. He
looked at me with a pleased expression, and said:

“Really, this is fine. You are beginning to dig truth for yourself. It
is your own empirical generalization, and it is correct. No man in the
industrial machine is a free-will agent, except the large capitalist,
and he isn't, if you'll pardon the Irishism.* You see, the masters
are quite sure that they are right in what they are doing. That is the
crowning absurdity of the whole situation. They are so tied by their
human nature that they can't do a thing unless they think it is right.
They must have a sanction for their acts.

     * Verbal contradictions, called BULLS, were long an amiable
     weakness of the ancient Irish.

“When they want to do a thing, in business of course, they must wait
till there arises in their brains, somehow, a religious, or ethical, or
scientific, or philosophic, concept that the thing is right. And then
they go ahead and do it, unwitting that one of the weaknesses of the
human mind is that the wish is parent to the thought. No matter what
they want to do, the sanction always comes. They are superficial
casuists. They are Jesuitical. They even see their way to doing wrong
that right may come of it. One of the pleasant and axiomatic fictions
they have created is that they are superior to the rest of mankind in
wisdom and efficiency. Therefrom comes their sanction to manage the
bread and butter of the rest of mankind. They have even resurrected the
theory of the divine right of kings--commercial kings in their case.*

     * The newspapers, in 1902 of that era, credited the
     president of the Anthracite Coal Trust, George F. Baer, with
     the enunciation of the following principle: “The rights and
     interests of the laboring man will be protected by the
     Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given
     the property interests of the country.”

“The weakness in their position lies in that they are merely
business men. They are not philosophers. They are not biologists nor
sociologists. If they were, of course all would be well. A business man
who was also a biologist and a sociologist would know, approximately,
the right thing to do for humanity. But, outside the realm of business,
these men are stupid. They know only business. They do not know mankind
nor society, and yet they set themselves up as arbiters of the fates of
the hungry millions and all the other millions thrown in. History, some
day, will have an excruciating laugh at their expense.”

I was not surprised when I had my talk out with Mrs. Wickson and Mrs.
Pertonwaithe. They were society women.* Their homes were palaces. They
had many homes scattered over the country, in the mountains, on lakes,
and by the sea. They were tended by armies of servants, and their social
activities were bewildering. They patronized the university and the
churches, and the pastors especially bowed at their knees in meek
subservience.** They were powers, these two women, what of the money
that was theirs. The power of subsidization of thought was theirs to a
remarkable degree, as I was soon to learn under Ernest's tuition.

     * SOCIETY is here used in a restricted sense, a common usage
     of the times to denote the gilded drones that did no labor,
     but only glutted themselves at the honey-vats of the
     workers.  Neither the business men nor the laborers had time
     or opportunity for SOCIETY. SOCIETY was the creation of the
     idle rich who toiled not and who in this way played.

     ** “Bring on your tainted money,” was the expressed
     sentiment of the Church during this period.

They aped their husbands, and talked in the same large ways about
policy, and the duties and responsibilities of the rich. They were
swayed by the same ethic that dominated their husbands--the ethic of
their class; and they uttered glib phrases that their own ears did not
understand.

Also, they grew irritated when I told them of the deplorable condition
of Jackson's family, and when I wondered that they had made no
voluntary provision for the man. I was told that they thanked no one
for instructing them in their social duties. When I asked them flatly
to assist Jackson, they as flatly refused. The astounding thing about it
was that they refused in almost identically the same language, and this
in face of the fact that I interviewed them separately and that one did
not know that I had seen or was going to see the other. Their common
reply was that they were glad of the opportunity to make it perfectly
plain that no premium would ever be put on carelessness by them; nor
would they, by paying for accident, tempt the poor to hurt themselves in
the machinery.*

     * In the files of the OUTLOOK, a critical weekly of the
     period, in the number dated August 18, 1906, is related the
     circumstance of a workingman losing his arm, the details of
     which are quite similar to those of Jackson's case as
     related by Avis Everhard.

And they were sincere, these two women. They were drunk with conviction
of the superiority of their class and of themselves. They had a
sanction, in their own class-ethic, for every act they performed. As I
drove away from Mrs. Pertonwaithe's great house, I looked back at
it, and I remembered Ernest's expression that they were bound to the
machine, but that they were so bound that they sat on top of it.



CHAPTER V

THE PHILOMATHS


Ernest was often at the house. Nor was it my father, merely, nor
the controversial dinners, that drew him there. Even at that time I
flattered myself that I played some part in causing his visits, and it
was not long before I learned the correctness of my surmise. For never
was there such a lover as Ernest Everhard. His gaze and his hand-clasp
grew firmer and steadier, if that were possible; and the question that
had grown from the first in his eyes, grew only the more imperative.

My impression of him, the first time I saw him, had been unfavorable.
Then I had found myself attracted toward him. Next came my repulsion,
when he so savagely attacked my class and me. After that, as I saw that
he had not maligned my class, and that the harsh and bitter things he
said about it were justified, I had drawn closer to him again. He became
my oracle. For me he tore the sham from the face of society and gave
me glimpses of reality that were as unpleasant as they were undeniably
true.

As I have said, there was never such a lover as he. No girl could
live in a university town till she was twenty-four and not have love
experiences. I had been made love to by beardless sophomores and gray
professors, and by the athletes and the football giants. But not one
of them made love to me as Ernest did. His arms were around me before I
knew. His lips were on mine before I could protest or resist. Before his
earnestness conventional maiden dignity was ridiculous. He swept me off
my feet by the splendid invincible rush of him. He did not propose. He
put his arms around me and kissed me and took it for granted that
we should be married. There was no discussion about it. The only
discussion--and that arose afterward--was when we should be married.

It was unprecedented. It was unreal. Yet, in accordance with Ernest's
test of truth, it worked. I trusted my life to it. And fortunate was the
trust. Yet during those first days of our love, fear of the future
came often to me when I thought of the violence and impetuosity of his
love-making. Yet such fears were groundless. No woman was ever blessed
with a gentler, tenderer husband. This gentleness and violence on
his part was a curious blend similar to the one in his carriage of
awkwardness and ease. That slight awkwardness! He never got over it,
and it was delicious. His behavior in our drawing-room reminded me of a
careful bull in a china shop.*

     * In those days it was still the custom to fill the living
     rooms with bric-a-brac.  They had not discovered simplicity
     of living. Such rooms were museums, entailing endless labor
     to keep clean. The dust-demon was the lord of the household.
     There were a myriad devices for catching dust, and only a
     few devices for getting rid of it.

It was at this time that vanished my last doubt of the completeness of
my love for him (a subconscious doubt, at most). It was at the Philomath
Club--a wonderful night of battle, wherein Ernest bearded the masters
in their lair. Now the Philomath Club was the most select on the Pacific
Coast. It was the creation of Miss Brentwood, an enormously wealthy old
maid; and it was her husband, and family, and toy. Its members were the
wealthiest in the community, and the strongest-minded of the wealthy,
with, of course, a sprinkling of scholars to give it intellectual tone.

The Philomath had no club house. It was not that kind of a club. Once a
month its members gathered at some one of their private houses to listen
to a lecture. The lecturers were usually, though not always, hired. If a
chemist in New York made a new discovery in say radium, all his expenses
across the continent were paid, and as well he received a princely fee
for his time. The same with a returning explorer from the polar regions,
or the latest literary or artistic success. No visitors were allowed,
while it was the Philomath's policy to permit none of its discussions
to get into the papers. Thus great statesmen--and there had been such
occasions--were able fully to speak their minds.

I spread before me a wrinkled letter, written to me by Ernest twenty
years ago, and from it I copy the following:

“Your father is a member of the Philomath, so you are able to come.
Therefore come next Tuesday night. I promise you that you will have the
time of your life. In your recent encounters, you failed to shake the
masters. If you come, I'll shake them for you. I'll make them snarl like
wolves. You merely questioned their morality. When their morality is
questioned, they grow only the more complacent and superior. But I shall
menace their money-bags. That will shake them to the roots of their
primitive natures. If you can come, you will see the cave-man, in
evening dress, snarling and snapping over a bone. I promise you a great
caterwauling and an illuminating insight into the nature of the beast.

“They've invited me in order to tear me to pieces. This is the idea of
Miss Brentwood. She clumsily hinted as much when she invited me.
She's given them that kind of fun before. They delight in getting
trustful-souled gentle reformers before them. Miss Brentwood thinks I
am as mild as a kitten and as good-natured and stolid as the family cow.
I'll not deny that I helped to give her that impression. She was very
tentative at first, until she divined my harmlessness. I am to receive
a handsome fee--two hundred and fifty dollars--as befits the man who,
though a radical, once ran for governor. Also, I am to wear evening
dress. This is compulsory. I never was so apparelled in my life. I
suppose I'll have to hire one somewhere. But I'd do more than that to
get a chance at the Philomaths.”

Of all places, the Club gathered that night at the Pertonwaithe house.
Extra chairs had been brought into the great drawing-room, and in
all there must have been two hundred Philomaths that sat down to hear
Ernest. They were truly lords of society. I amused myself with running
over in my mind the sum of the fortunes represented, and it ran well
into the hundreds of millions. And the possessors were not of the idle
rich. They were men of affairs who took most active parts in industrial
and political life.

We were all seated when Miss Brentwood brought Ernest in. They moved
at once to the head of the room, from where he was to speak. He was
in evening dress, and, what of his broad shoulders and kingly head, he
looked magnificent. And then there was that faint and unmistakable touch
of awkwardness in his movements. I almost think I could have loved him
for that alone. And as I looked at him I was aware of a great joy. I
felt again the pulse of his palm on mine, the touch of his lips; and
such pride was mine that I felt I must rise up and cry out to the
assembled company: “He is mine! He has held me in his arms, and I,
mere I, have filled that mind of his to the exclusion of all his
multitudinous and kingly thoughts!”

At the head of the room, Miss Brentwood introduced him to Colonel Van
Gilbert, and I knew that the latter was to preside. Colonel Van Gilbert
was a great corporation lawyer. In addition, he was immensely wealthy.
The smallest fee he would deign to notice was a hundred thousand
dollars. He was a master of law. The law was a puppet with which he
played. He moulded it like clay, twisted and distorted it like a Chinese
puzzle into any design he chose. In appearance and rhetoric he was
old-fashioned, but in imagination and knowledge and resource he was as
young as the latest statute. His first prominence had come when he broke
the Shardwell will.* His fee for this one act was five hundred thousand
dollars. From then on he had risen like a rocket. He was often called
the greatest lawyer in the country--corporation lawyer, of course; and
no classification of the three greatest lawyers in the United States
could have excluded him.

     * This breaking of wills was a peculiar feature of the
     period. With the accumulation of vast fortunes, the problem
     of disposing of these fortunes after death was a vexing one
     to the accumulators. Will-making and will-breaking became
     complementary trades, like armor-making and gun-making.  The
     shrewdest will-making lawyers were called in to make wills
     that could not be broken.  But these wills were always
     broken, and very often by the very lawyers that had drawn
     them up.  Nevertheless the delusion persisted in the wealthy
     class that an absolutely unbreakable will could be cast; and
     so, through the generations, clients and lawyers pursued the
     illusion.  It was a pursuit like unto that of the Universal
     Solvent of the mediaeval alchemists.

He arose and began, in a few well-chosen phrases that carried an
undertone of faint irony, to introduce Ernest. Colonel Van Gilbert was
subtly facetious in his introduction of the social reformer and member
of the working class, and the audience smiled. It made me angry, and
I glanced at Ernest. The sight of him made me doubly angry. He did not
seem to resent the delicate slurs. Worse than that, he did not seem to
be aware of them. There he sat, gentle, and stolid, and somnolent. He
really looked stupid. And for a moment the thought rose in my mind, What
if he were overawed by this imposing array of power and brains? Then I
smiled. He couldn't fool me. But he fooled the others, just as he had
fooled Miss Brentwood. She occupied a chair right up to the front, and
several times she turned her head toward one or another of her CONFRERES
and smiled her appreciation of the remarks.

Colonel Van Gilbert done, Ernest arose and began to speak. He began in
a low voice, haltingly and modestly, and with an air of evident
embarrassment. He spoke of his birth in the working class, and of the
sordidness and wretchedness of his environment, where flesh and spirit
were alike starved and tormented. He described his ambitions and ideals,
and his conception of the paradise wherein lived the people of the upper
classes. As he said:

“Up above me, I knew, were unselfishnesses of the spirit, clean and
noble thinking, keen intellectual living. I knew all this because I read
'Seaside Library' * novels, in which, with the exception of the villains
and adventuresses, all men and women thought beautiful thoughts, spoke a
beautiful tongue, and performed glorious deeds. In short, as I accepted
the rising of the sun, I accepted that up above me was all that was fine
and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life, all
that made life worth living and that remunerated one for his travail and
misery.”

     * A curious and amazing literature that served to make the
     working class utterly misapprehend the nature of the leisure
     class.

He went on and traced his life in the mills, the learning of the
horseshoeing trade, and his meeting with the socialists. Among them, he
said, he had found keen intellects and brilliant wits, ministers of the
Gospel who had been broken because their Christianity was too wide for
any congregation of mammon-worshippers, and professors who had been
broken on the wheel of university subservience to the ruling class. The
socialists were revolutionists, he said, struggling to overthrow the
irrational society of the present and out of the material to build the
rational society of the future. Much more he said that would take too
long to write, but I shall never forget how he described the life among
the revolutionists. All halting utterance vanished. His voice grew
strong and confident, and it glowed as he glowed, and as the thoughts
glowed that poured out from him. He said:

“Amongst the revolutionists I found, also, warm faith in the human,
ardent idealism, sweetnesses of unselfishness, renunciation, and
martyrdom--all the splendid, stinging things of the spirit. Here life
was clean, noble, and alive. I was in touch with great souls who exalted
flesh and spirit over dollars and cents, and to whom the thin wail of
the starved slum child meant more than all the pomp and circumstance of
commercial expansion and world empire. All about me were nobleness of
purpose and heroism of effort, and my days and nights were sunshine
and starshine, all fire and dew, with before my eyes, ever burning
and blazing, the Holy Grail, Christ's own Grail, the warm human,
long-suffering and maltreated but to be rescued and saved at the last.”

As before I had seen him transfigured, so now he stood transfigured
before me. His brows were bright with the divine that was in him, and
brighter yet shone his eyes from the midst of the radiance that seemed
to envelop him as a mantle. But the others did not see this radiance,
and I assumed that it was due to the tears of joy and love that dimmed
my vision. At any rate, Mr. Wickson, who sat behind me, was unaffected,
for I heard him sneer aloud, “Utopian.” *

     * The people of that age were phrase slaves.  The abjectness
     of their servitude is incomprehensible to us.  There was a
     magic in words greater than the conjurer's art.  So
     befuddled and chaotic were their minds that the utterance of
     a single word could negative the generalizations of a
     lifetime of serious research and thought. Such a word was
     the adjective UTOPIAN.  The mere utterance of it could damn
     any scheme, no matter how sanely conceived, of economic
     amelioration or regeneration.  Vast populations grew
     frenzied over such phrases as “an honest dollar” and “a full
     dinner pail.”  The coinage of such phrases was considered
     strokes of genius.

Ernest went on to his rise in society, till at last he came in touch
with members of the upper classes, and rubbed shoulders with the men
who sat in the high places. Then came his disillusionment, and this
disillusionment he described in terms that did not flatter his audience.
He was surprised at the commonness of the clay. Life proved not to be
fine and gracious. He was appalled by the selfishness he encountered,
and what had surprised him even more than that was the absence of
intellectual life. Fresh from his revolutionists, he was shocked by the
intellectual stupidity of the master class. And then, in spite of their
magnificent churches and well-paid preachers, he had found the masters,
men and women, grossly material. It was true that they prattled sweet
little ideals and dear little moralities, but in spite of their prattle
the dominant key of the life they lived was materialistic. And they were
without real morality--for instance, that which Christ had preached but
which was no longer preached.

“I met men,” he said, “who invoked the name of the Prince of Peace
in their diatribes against war, and who put rifles in the hands of
Pinkertons* with which to shoot down strikers in their own factories. I
met men incoherent with indignation at the brutality of prize-fighting,
and who, at the same time, were parties to the adulteration of food that
killed each year more babes than even red-handed Herod had killed.

     * Originally, they were private detectives; but they quickly
     became hired fighting men of the capitalists, and ultimately
     developed into the Mercenaries of the Oligarchy.

“This delicate, aristocratic-featured gentleman was a dummy director
and a tool of corporations that secretly robbed widows and orphans. This
gentleman, who collected fine editions and was a patron of literature,
paid blackmail to a heavy-jowled, black-browed boss of a municipal
machine. This editor, who published patent medicine advertisements,
called me a scoundrelly demagogue because I dared him to print in his
paper the truth about patent medicines.* This man, talking soberly and
earnestly about the beauties of idealism and the goodness of God, had
just betrayed his comrades in a business deal. This man, a pillar of the
church and heavy contributor to foreign missions, worked his shop girls
ten hours a day on a starvation wage and thereby directly encouraged
prostitution. This man, who endowed chairs in universities and erected
magnificent chapels, perjured himself in courts of law over dollars
and cents. This railroad magnate broke his word as a citizen, as a
gentleman, and as a Christian, when he granted a secret rebate, and he
granted many secret rebates. This senator was the tool and the slave,
the little puppet, of a brutal uneducated machine boss;** so was this
governor and this supreme court judge; and all three rode on railroad
passes; and, also, this sleek capitalist owned the machine, the machine
boss, and the railroads that issued the passes.

     * PATENT MEDICINES were patent lies, but, like the charms
     and indulgences of the Middle Ages, they deceived the
     people.  The only difference lay in that the patent
     medicines were more harmful and more costly.

     ** Even as late as 1912, A.D., the great mass of the people
     still persisted in the belief that they ruled the country by
     virtue of their ballots.  In reality, the country was ruled
     by what were called POLITICAL MACHINES.  At first the
     machine bosses charged the master capitalists extortionate
     tolls for legislation; but in a short time the master
     capitalists found it cheaper to own the political machines
     themselves and to hire the machine bosses.

“And so it was, instead of in paradise, that I found myself in the
arid desert of commercialism. I found nothing but stupidity, except for
business. I found none clean, noble, and alive, though I found many who
were alive--with rottenness. What I did find was monstrous selfishness
and heartlessness, and a gross, gluttonous, practised, and practical
materialism.”

Much more Ernest told them of themselves and of his disillusionment.
Intellectually they had bored him; morally and spiritually they had
sickened him; so that he was glad to go back to his revolutionists, who
were clean, noble, and alive, and all that the capitalists were not.

“And now,” he said, “let me tell you about that revolution.”

But first I must say that his terrible diatribe had not touched them. I
looked about me at their faces and saw that they remained complacently
superior to what he had charged. And I remembered what he had told me:
that no indictment of their morality could shake them. However, I could
see that the boldness of his language had affected Miss Brentwood. She
was looking worried and apprehensive.

Ernest began by describing the army of revolution, and as he gave the
figures of its strength (the votes cast in the various countries), the
assemblage began to grow restless. Concern showed in their faces, and I
noticed a tightening of lips. At last the gage of battle had been thrown
down. He described the international organization of the socialists that
united the million and a half in the United States with the twenty-three
millions and a half in the rest of the world.

“Such an army of revolution,” he said, “twenty-five millions strong, is
a thing to make rulers and ruling classes pause and consider. The cry
of this army is: 'No quarter! We want all that you possess. We will
be content with nothing less than all that you possess. We want in our
hands the reins of power and the destiny of mankind. Here are our hands.
They are strong hands. We are going to take your governments, your
palaces, and all your purpled ease away from you, and in that day
you shall work for your bread even as the peasant in the field or the
starved and runty clerk in your metropolises. Here are our hands. They
are strong hands!'”

And as he spoke he extended from his splendid shoulders his two great
arms, and the horseshoer's hands were clutching the air like eagle's
talons. He was the spirit of regnant labor as he stood there, his hands
outreaching to rend and crush his audience. I was aware of a faintly
perceptible shrinking on the part of the listeners before this figure
of revolution, concrete, potential, and menacing. That is, the women
shrank, and fear was in their faces. Not so with the men. They were
of the active rich, and not the idle, and they were fighters. A low,
throaty rumble arose, lingered on the air a moment, and ceased. It
was the forerunner of the snarl, and I was to hear it many times that
night--the token of the brute in man, the earnest of his primitive
passions. And they were unconscious that they had made this sound.
It was the growl of the pack, mouthed by the pack, and mouthed in all
unconsciousness. And in that moment, as I saw the harshness form in
their faces and saw the fight-light flashing in their eyes, I realized
that not easily would they let their lordship of the world be wrested
from them.

Ernest proceeded with his attack. He accounted for the existence of the
million and a half of revolutionists in the United States by charging
the capitalist class with having mismanaged society. He sketched the
economic condition of the cave-man and of the savage peoples of to-day,
pointing out that they possessed neither tools nor machines, and
possessed only a natural efficiency of one in producing power. Then
he traced the development of machinery and social organization so that
to-day the producing power of civilized man was a thousand times greater
than that of the savage.

“Five men,” he said, “can produce bread for a thousand. One man can
produce cotton cloth for two hundred and fifty people, woollens for
three hundred, and boots and shoes for a thousand. One would conclude
from this that under a capable management of society modern civilized
man would be a great deal better off than the cave-man. But is he? Let
us see. In the United States to-day there are fifteen million* people
living in poverty; and by poverty is meant that condition in life in
which, through lack of food and adequate shelter, the mere standard of
working efficiency cannot be maintained. In the United States to-day, in
spite of all your so-called labor legislation, there are three millions
of child laborers.** In twelve years their numbers have been doubled.
And in passing I will ask you managers of society why you did not make
public the census figures of 1910? And I will answer for you, that
you were afraid. The figures of misery would have precipitated the
revolution that even now is gathering.

     * Robert Hunter, in 1906, in a book entitled “Poverty,”
      pointed out that at that time there were ten millions in the
     United States living in poverty.

     ** In the United States Census of 1900 (the last census the
     figures of which were made public), the number of child
     laborers was placed at 1,752,187.

“But to return to my indictment. If modern man's producing power is
a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, why then, in the
United States to-day, are there fifteen million people who are not
properly sheltered and properly fed? Why then, in the United States
to-day, are there three million child laborers? It is a true indictment.
The capitalist class has mismanaged. In face of the facts that modern
man lives more wretchedly than the cave-man, and that his producing
power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, no other
conclusion is possible than that the capitalist class has mismanaged,
that you have mismanaged, my masters, that you have criminally and
selfishly mismanaged. And on this count you cannot answer me here
to-night, face to face, any more than can your whole class answer the
million and a half of revolutionists in the United States. You cannot
answer. I challenge you to answer. And furthermore, I dare to say to
you now that when I have finished you will not answer. On that point
you will be tongue-tied, though you will talk wordily enough about other
things.

“You have failed in your management. You have made a shambles of
civilization. You have been blind and greedy. You have risen up (as you
to-day rise up), shamelessly, in our legislative halls, and declared
that profits were impossible without the toil of children and babes.
Don't take my word for it. It is all in the records against you. You
have lulled your conscience to sleep with prattle of sweet ideals and
dear moralities. You are fat with power and possession, drunken with
success; and you have no more hope against us than have the drones,
clustered about the honey-vats, when the worker-bees spring upon them
to end their rotund existence. You have failed in your management of
society, and your management is to be taken away from you. A million and
a half of the men of the working class say that they are going to get
the rest of the working class to join with them and take the management
away from you. This is the revolution, my masters. Stop it if you can.”

For an appreciable lapse of time Ernest's voice continued to ring
through the great room. Then arose the throaty rumble I had heard
before, and a dozen men were on their feet clamoring for recognition
from Colonel Van Gilbert. I noticed Miss Brentwood's shoulders moving
convulsively, and for the moment I was angry, for I thought that she was
laughing at Ernest. And then I discovered that it was not laughter,
but hysteria. She was appalled by what she had done in bringing this
firebrand before her blessed Philomath Club.

Colonel Van Gilbert did not notice the dozen men, with passion-wrought
faces, who strove to get permission from him to speak. His own face
was passion-wrought. He sprang to his feet, waving his arms, and for a
moment could utter only incoherent sounds. Then speech poured from him.
But it was not the speech of a one-hundred-thousand-dollar lawyer, nor
was the rhetoric old-fashioned.

“Fallacy upon fallacy!” he cried. “Never in all my life have I heard so
many fallacies uttered in one short hour. And besides, young man, I must
tell you that you have said nothing new. I learned all that at college
before you were born. Jean Jacques Rousseau enunciated your socialistic
theory nearly two centuries ago. A return to the soil, forsooth!
Reversion! Our biology teaches the absurdity of it. It has been
truly said that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and you have
exemplified it to-night with your madcap theories. Fallacy upon fallacy!
I was never so nauseated in my life with overplus of fallacy. That for
your immature generalizations and childish reasonings!”

He snapped his fingers contemptuously and proceeded to sit down. There
were lip-exclamations of approval on the part of the women, and hoarser
notes of confirmation came from the men. As for the dozen men who
were clamoring for the floor, half of them began speaking at once. The
confusion and babel was indescribable. Never had Mrs. Pertonwaithe's
spacious walls beheld such a spectacle. These, then, were the cool
captains of industry and lords of society, these snarling, growling
savages in evening clothes. Truly Ernest had shaken them when he
stretched out his hands for their moneybags, his hands that had
appeared in their eyes as the hands of the fifteen hundred thousand
revolutionists.

But Ernest never lost his head in a situation. Before Colonel Van
Gilbert had succeeded in sitting down, Ernest was on his feet and had
sprung forward.

“One at a time!” he roared at them.

The sound arose from his great lungs and dominated the human tempest. By
sheer compulsion of personality he commanded silence.

“One at a time,” he repeated softly. “Let me answer Colonel Van Gilbert.
After that the rest of you can come at me--but one at a time, remember.
No mass-plays here. This is not a football field.

“As for you,” he went on, turning toward Colonel Van Gilbert, “you have
replied to nothing I have said. You have merely made a few excited and
dogmatic assertions about my mental caliber. That may serve you in your
business, but you can't talk to me like that. I am not a workingman,
cap in hand, asking you to increase my wages or to protect me from the
machine at which I work. You cannot be dogmatic with truth when you deal
with me. Save that for dealing with your wage-slaves. They will not dare
reply to you because you hold their bread and butter, their lives, in
your hands.

“As for this return to nature that you say you learned at college before
I was born, permit me to point out that on the face of it you cannot
have learned anything since. Socialism has no more to do with the state
of nature than has differential calculus with a Bible class. I have
called your class stupid when outside the realm of business. You, sir,
have brilliantly exemplified my statement.”

This terrible castigation of her hundred-thousand-dollar lawyer was too
much for Miss Brentwood's nerves. Her hysteria became violent, and she
was helped, weeping and laughing, out of the room. It was just as well,
for there was worse to follow.

“Don't take my word for it,” Ernest continued, when the interruption had
been led away. “Your own authorities with one unanimous voice will prove
you stupid. Your own hired purveyors of knowledge will tell you that you
are wrong. Go to your meekest little assistant instructor of sociology
and ask him what is the difference between Rousseau's theory of the
return to nature and the theory of socialism; ask your greatest orthodox
bourgeois political economists and sociologists; question through
the pages of every text-book written on the subject and stored on the
shelves of your subsidized libraries; and from one and all the answer
will be that there is nothing congruous between the return to nature and
socialism. On the other hand, the unanimous affirmative answer will be
that the return to nature and socialism are diametrically opposed to
each other. As I say, don't take my word for it. The record of your
stupidity is there in the books, your own books that you never read. And
so far as your stupidity is concerned, you are but the exemplar of your
class.

“You know law and business, Colonel Van Gilbert. You know how to serve
corporations and increase dividends by twisting the law. Very good.
Stick to it. You are quite a figure. You are a very good lawyer, but you
are a poor historian, you know nothing of sociology, and your biology is
contemporaneous with Pliny.”

Here Colonel Van Gilbert writhed in his chair. There was perfect quiet
in the room. Everybody sat fascinated--paralyzed, I may say. Such
fearful treatment of the great Colonel Van Gilbert was unheard of,
undreamed of, impossible to believe--the great Colonel Van Gilbert
before whom judges trembled when he arose in court. But Ernest never
gave quarter to an enemy.

“This is, of course, no reflection on you,” Ernest said. “Every man to
his trade. Only you stick to your trade, and I'll stick to mine. You
have specialized. When it comes to a knowledge of the law, of how
best to evade the law or make new law for the benefit of thieving
corporations, I am down in the dirt at your feet. But when it comes to
sociology--my trade--you are down in the dirt at my feet. Remember that.
Remember, also, that your law is the stuff of a day, and that you are
not versatile in the stuff of more than a day. Therefore your
dogmatic assertions and rash generalizations on things historical and
sociological are not worth the breath you waste on them.”

Ernest paused for a moment and regarded him thoughtfully, noting his
face dark and twisted with anger, his panting chest, his writhing body,
and his slim white hands nervously clenching and unclenching.

“But it seems you have breath to use, and I'll give you a chance to
use it. I indicted your class. Show me that my indictment is wrong. I
pointed out to you the wretchedness of modern man--three million child
slaves in the United States, without whose labor profits would not be
possible, and fifteen million under-fed, ill-clothed, and worse-housed
people. I pointed out that modern man's producing power through social
organization and the use of machinery was a thousand times greater than
that of the cave-man. And I stated that from these two facts no other
conclusion was possible than that the capitalist class had mismanaged.
This was my indictment, and I specifically and at length challenged you
to answer it. Nay, I did more. I prophesied that you would not answer.
It remains for your breath to smash my prophecy. You called my speech
fallacy. Show the fallacy, Colonel Van Gilbert. Answer the indictment
that I and my fifteen hundred thousand comrades have brought against
your class and you.”

Colonel Van Gilbert quite forgot that he was presiding, and that in
courtesy he should permit the other clamorers to speak. He was on his
feet, flinging his arms, his rhetoric, and his control to the winds,
alternately abusing Ernest for his youth and demagoguery, and
savagely attacking the working class, elaborating its inefficiency and
worthlessness.

“For a lawyer, you are the hardest man to keep to a point I ever saw,”
 Ernest began his answer to the tirade. “My youth has nothing to do with
what I have enunciated. Nor has the worthlessness of the working class.
I charged the capitalist class with having mismanaged society. You have
not answered. You have made no attempt to answer. Why? Is it because you
have no answer? You are the champion of this whole audience. Every
one here, except me, is hanging on your lips for that answer. They
are hanging on your lips for that answer because they have no answer
themselves. As for me, as I said before, I know that you not only cannot
answer, but that you will not attempt an answer.”

“This is intolerable!” Colonel Van Gilbert cried out. “This is insult!”

“That you should not answer is intolerable,” Ernest replied gravely.
“No man can be intellectually insulted. Insult, in its very nature,
is emotional. Recover yourself. Give me an intellectual answer to my
intellectual charge that the capitalist class has mismanaged society.”

Colonel Van Gilbert remained silent, a sullen, superior expression on
his face, such as will appear on the face of a man who will not bandy
words with a ruffian.

“Do not be downcast,” Ernest said. “Take consolation in the fact that
no member of your class has ever yet answered that charge.” He turned to
the other men who were anxious to speak. “And now it's your chance. Fire
away, and do not forget that I here challenge you to give the answer
that Colonel Van Gilbert has failed to give.”

It would be impossible for me to write all that was said in the
discussion. I never realized before how many words could be spoken in
three short hours. At any rate, it was glorious. The more his opponents
grew excited, the more Ernest deliberately excited them. He had an
encyclopaedic command of the field of knowledge, and by a word or a
phrase, by delicate rapier thrusts, he punctured them. He named the
points of their illogic. This was a false syllogism, that conclusion had
no connection with the premise, while that next premise was an impostor
because it had cunningly hidden in it the conclusion that was being
attempted to be proved. This was an error, that was an assumption, and
the next was an assertion contrary to ascertained truth as printed in
all the text-books.

And so it went. Sometimes he exchanged the rapier for the club and went
smashing amongst their thoughts right and left. And always he demanded
facts and refused to discuss theories. And his facts made for them a
Waterloo. When they attacked the working class, he always retorted, “The
pot calling the kettle black; that is no answer to the charge that
your own face is dirty.” And to one and all he said: “Why have you not
answered the charge that your class has mismanaged? You have talked
about other things and things concerning other things, but you have not
answered. Is it because you have no answer?”

It was at the end of the discussion that Mr. Wickson spoke. He was the
only one that was cool, and Ernest treated him with a respect he had not
accorded the others.

“No answer is necessary,” Mr. Wickson said with slow deliberation. “I
have followed the whole discussion with amazement and disgust. I am
disgusted with you gentlemen, members of my class. You have behaved like
foolish little schoolboys, what with intruding ethics and the thunder
of the common politician into such a discussion. You have been
outgeneralled and outclassed. You have been very wordy, and all you have
done is buzz. You have buzzed like gnats about a bear. Gentlemen, there
stands the bear” (he pointed at Ernest), “and your buzzing has only
tickled his ears.

“Believe me, the situation is serious. That bear reached out his paws
tonight to crush us. He has said there are a million and a half of
revolutionists in the United States. That is a fact. He has said that
it is their intention to take away from us our governments, our palaces,
and all our purpled ease. That, also, is a fact. A change, a great
change, is coming in society; but, haply, it may not be the change the
bear anticipates. The bear has said that he will crush us. What if we
crush the bear?”

The throat-rumble arose in the great room, and man nodded to man
with indorsement and certitude. Their faces were set hard. They were
fighters, that was certain.

“But not by buzzing will we crush the bear,” Mr. Wickson went on coldly
and dispassionately. “We will hunt the bear. We will not reply to the
bear in words. Our reply shall be couched in terms of lead. We are in
power. Nobody will deny it. By virtue of that power we shall remain in
power.”

He turned suddenly upon Ernest. The moment was dramatic.

“This, then, is our answer. We have no words to waste on you. When you
reach out your vaunted strong hands for our palaces and purpled ease,
we will show you what strength is. In roar of shell and shrapnel and
in whine of machine-guns will our answer be couched.* We will grind you
revolutionists down under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces.
The world is ours, we are its lords, and ours it shall remain. As for
the host of labor, it has been in the dirt since history began, and I
read history aright. And in the dirt it shall remain so long as I and
mine and those that come after us have the power. There is the word.
It is the king of words--Power. Not God, not Mammon, but Power. Pour it
over your tongue till it tingles with it. Power.”

     * To show the tenor of thought, the following definition is
     quoted from “The Cynic's Word Book” (1906 A.D.), written by
     one Ambrose Bierce, an avowed and confirmed misanthrope of
     the period: “Grapeshot, n.  An argument which the future is
     preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.”

“I am answered,” Ernest said quietly. “It is the only answer that could
be given. Power. It is what we of the working class preach. We know,
and well we know by bitter experience, that no appeal for the right, for
justice, for humanity, can ever touch you. Your hearts are hard as
your heels with which you tread upon the faces of the poor. So we have
preached power. By the power of our ballots on election day will we take
your government away from you--”

“What if you do get a majority, a sweeping majority, on election
day?” Mr. Wickson broke in to demand. “Suppose we refuse to turn the
government over to you after you have captured it at the ballot-box?”

“That, also, have we considered,” Ernest replied. “And we shall give you
an answer in terms of lead. Power you have proclaimed the king of words.
Very good. Power it shall be. And in the day that we sweep to victory at
the ballot-box, and you refuse to turn over to us the government we have
constitutionally and peacefully captured, and you demand what we are
going to do about it--in that day, I say, we shall answer you; and in
roar of shell and shrapnel and in whine of machine-guns shall our answer
be couched.

“You cannot escape us. It is true that you have read history aright. It
is true that labor has from the beginning of history been in the dirt.
And it is equally true that so long as you and yours and those that come
after you have power, that labor shall remain in the dirt. I agree with
you. I agree with all that you have said. Power will be the arbiter,
as it always has been the arbiter. It is a struggle of classes. Just as
your class dragged down the old feudal nobility, so shall it be dragged
down by my class, the working class. If you will read your biology and
your sociology as clearly as you do your history, you will see that this
end I have described is inevitable. It does not matter whether it is in
one year, ten, or a thousand--your class shall be dragged down. And it
shall be done by power. We of the labor hosts have conned that word over
till our minds are all a-tingle with it. Power. It is a kingly word.”

And so ended the night with the Philomaths.



CHAPTER VI

ADUMBRATIONS


It was about this time that the warnings of coming events began to fall
about us thick and fast. Ernest had already questioned father's policy
of having socialists and labor leaders at his house, and of openly
attending socialist meetings; and father had only laughed at him for
his pains. As for myself, I was learning much from this contact with the
working-class leaders and thinkers. I was seeing the other side of
the shield. I was delighted with the unselfishness and high idealism
I encountered, though I was appalled by the vast philosophic and
scientific literature of socialism that was opened up to me. I was
learning fast, but I learned not fast enough to realize then the peril
of our position.

There were warnings, but I did not heed them. For instance, Mrs.
Pertonwaithe and Mrs. Wickson exercised tremendous social power in
the university town, and from them emanated the sentiment that I was a
too-forward and self-assertive young woman with a mischievous penchant
for officiousness and interference in other persons' affairs. This
I thought no more than natural, considering the part I had played
in investigating the case of Jackson's arm. But the effect of such
a sentiment, enunciated by two such powerful social arbiters, I
underestimated.

True, I noticed a certain aloofness on the part of my general friends,
but this I ascribed to the disapproval that was prevalent in my circles
of my intended marriage with Ernest. It was not till some time afterward
that Ernest pointed out to me clearly that this general attitude of
my class was something more than spontaneous, that behind it were the
hidden springs of an organized conduct. “You have given shelter to an
enemy of your class,” he said. “And not alone shelter, for you have
given your love, yourself. This is treason to your class. Think not that
you will escape being penalized.”

But it was before this that father returned one afternoon. Ernest was
with me, and we could see that father was angry--philosophically angry.
He was rarely really angry; but a certain measure of controlled anger
he allowed himself. He called it a tonic. And we could see that he was
tonic-angry when he entered the room.

“What do you think?” he demanded. “I had luncheon with Wilcox.”

Wilcox was the superannuated president of the university, whose withered
mind was stored with generalizations that were young in 1870, and which
he had since failed to revise.

“I was invited,” father announced. “I was sent for.”

He paused, and we waited.

“Oh, it was done very nicely, I'll allow; but I was reprimanded. I! And
by that old fossil!”

“I'll wager I know what you were reprimanded for,” Ernest said.

“Not in three guesses,” father laughed.

“One guess will do,” Ernest retorted. “And it won't be a guess. It will
be a deduction. You were reprimanded for your private life.”

“The very thing!” father cried. “How did you guess?”

“I knew it was coming. I warned you before about it.”

“Yes, you did,” father meditated. “But I couldn't believe it. At any
rate, it is only so much more clinching evidence for my book.”

“It is nothing to what will come,” Ernest went on, “if you persist in
your policy of having these socialists and radicals of all sorts at your
house, myself included.”

“Just what old Wilcox said. And of all unwarranted things! He said it
was in poor taste, utterly profitless, anyway, and not in harmony with
university traditions and policy. He said much more of the same vague
sort, and I couldn't pin him down to anything specific. I made it pretty
awkward for him, and he could only go on repeating himself and telling
me how much he honored me, and all the world honored me, as a scientist.
It wasn't an agreeable task for him. I could see he didn't like it.”

“He was not a free agent,” Ernest said. “The leg-bar* is not always worn
graciously.”

     * LEG-BAR--the African slaves were so manacled; also
     criminals.  It was not until the coming of the Brotherhood
     of Man that the leg-bar passed out of use.

“Yes. I got that much out of him. He said the university needed ever
so much more money this year than the state was willing to furnish; and
that it must come from wealthy personages who could not but be offended
by the swerving of the university from its high ideal of the passionless
pursuit of passionless intelligence. When I tried to pin him down to
what my home life had to do with swerving the university from its high
ideal, he offered me a two years' vacation, on full pay, in Europe,
for recreation and research. Of course I couldn't accept it under the
circumstances.”

“It would have been far better if you had,” Ernest said gravely.

“It was a bribe,” father protested; and Ernest nodded.

“Also, the beggar said that there was talk, tea-table gossip and so
forth, about my daughter being seen in public with so notorious a
character as you, and that it was not in keeping with university tone
and dignity. Not that he personally objected--oh, no; but that there was
talk and that I would understand.”

Ernest considered this announcement for a moment, and then said, and his
face was very grave, withal there was a sombre wrath in it:

“There is more behind this than a mere university ideal. Somebody has
put pressure on President Wilcox.”

“Do you think so?” father asked, and his face showed that he was
interested rather than frightened.

“I wish I could convey to you the conception that is dimly forming in my
own mind,” Ernest said. “Never in the history of the world was society
in so terrific flux as it is right now. The swift changes in our
industrial system are causing equally swift changes in our religious,
political, and social structures. An unseen and fearful revolution is
taking place in the fibre and structure of society. One can only dimly
feel these things. But they are in the air, now, to-day. One can feel
the loom of them--things vast, vague, and terrible. My mind recoils from
contemplation of what they may crystallize into. You heard Wickson talk
the other night. Behind what he said were the same nameless, formless
things that I feel. He spoke out of a superconscious apprehension of
them.”

“You mean . . . ?” father began, then paused.

“I mean that there is a shadow of something colossal and menacing that
even now is beginning to fall across the land. Call it the shadow of an
oligarchy, if you will; it is the nearest I dare approximate it. What
its nature may be I refuse to imagine.* But what I wanted to say was
this: You are in a perilous position--a peril that my own fear enhances
because I am not able even to measure it. Take my advice and accept the
vacation.”

     * Though, like Everhard, they did not dream of the nature of
     it, there were men, even before his time, who caught
     glimpses of the shadow.  John C. Calhoun said: “A power has
     risen up in the government greater than the people
     themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful
     interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the
     cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.”  And that
     great humanist, Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his
     assassination: “I see in the near future a crisis
     approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for
     the safety of my country. . . .  Corporations have been
     enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow,
     and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong
     its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until
     the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is
     destroyed.”

“But it would be cowardly,” was the protest.

“Not at all. You are an old man. You have done your work in the world,
and a great work. Leave the present battle to youth and strength. We
young fellows have our work yet to do. Avis will stand by my side in
what is to come. She will be your representative in the battle-front.”

“But they can't hurt me,” father objected. “Thank God I am independent.
Oh, I assure you, I know the frightful persecution they can wage on
a professor who is economically dependent on his university. But I am
independent. I have not been a professor for the sake of my salary. I
can get along very comfortably on my own income, and the salary is all
they can take away from me.”

“But you do not realize,” Ernest answered. “If all that I fear be so,
your private income, your principal itself, can be taken from you just
as easily as your salary.”

Father was silent for a few minutes. He was thinking deeply, and I could
see the lines of decision forming in his face. At last he spoke.

“I shall not take the vacation.” He paused again. “I shall go on with
my book.* You may be wrong, but whether you are wrong or right, I shall
stand by my guns.”

     * This book, “Economics and Education,” was published in
     that year. Three copies of it are extant; two at Ardis, and
     one at Asgard.  It dealt, in elaborate detail, with one
     factor in the persistence of the established, namely, the
     capitalistic bias of the universities and common schools.
     It was a logical and crushing indictment of the whole system
     of education that developed in the minds of the students
     only such ideas as were favorable to the capitalistic
     regime, to the exclusion of all ideas that were inimical and
     subversive.  The book created a furor, and was promptly
     suppressed by the Oligarchy.

“All right,” Ernest said. “You are travelling the same path that Bishop
Morehouse is, and toward a similar smash-up. You'll both be proletarians
before you're done with it.”

The conversation turned upon the Bishop, and we got Ernest to explain
what he had been doing with him.

“He is soul-sick from the journey through hell I have given him. I took
him through the homes of a few of our factory workers. I showed him the
human wrecks cast aside by the industrial machine, and he listened to
their life stories. I took him through the slums of San Francisco, and
in drunkenness, prostitution, and criminality he learned a deeper cause
than innate depravity. He is very sick, and, worse than that, he has got
out of hand. He is too ethical. He has been too severely touched. And,
as usual, he is unpractical. He is up in the air with all kinds of
ethical delusions and plans for mission work among the cultured. He
feels it is his bounden duty to resurrect the ancient spirit of the
Church and to deliver its message to the masters. He is overwrought.
Sooner or later he is going to break out, and then there's going to be
a smash-up. What form it will take I can't even guess. He is a pure,
exalted soul, but he is so unpractical. He's beyond me. I can't keep
his feet on the earth. And through the air he is rushing on to his
Gethsemane. And after this his crucifixion. Such high souls are made for
crucifixion.”

“And you?” I asked; and beneath my smile was the seriousness of the
anxiety of love.

“Not I,” he laughed back. “I may be executed, or assassinated, but I
shall never be crucified. I am planted too solidly and stolidly upon the
earth.”

“But why should you bring about the crucifixion of the Bishop?” I asked.
“You will not deny that you are the cause of it.”

“Why should I leave one comfortable soul in comfort when there are
millions in travail and misery?” he demanded back.

“Then why did you advise father to accept the vacation?”

“Because I am not a pure, exalted soul,” was the answer. “Because I am
solid and stolid and selfish. Because I love you and, like Ruth of
old, thy people are my people. As for the Bishop, he has no daughter.
Besides, no matter how small the good, nevertheless his little
inadequate wail will be productive of some good in the revolution, and
every little bit counts.”

I could not agree with Ernest. I knew well the noble nature of
Bishop Morehouse, and I could not conceive that his voice raised for
righteousness would be no more than a little inadequate wail. But I did
not yet have the harsh facts of life at my fingers' ends as Ernest had.
He saw clearly the futility of the Bishop's great soul, as coming events
were soon to show as clearly to me.

It was shortly after this day that Ernest told me, as a good story, the
offer he had received from the government, namely, an appointment as
United States Commissioner of Labor. I was overjoyed. The salary was
comparatively large, and would make safe our marriage. And then it
surely was congenial work for Ernest, and, furthermore, my jealous pride
in him made me hail the proffered appointment as a recognition of his
abilities.

Then I noticed the twinkle in his eyes. He was laughing at me.

“You are not going to . . . to decline?” I quavered.

“It is a bribe,” he said. “Behind it is the fine hand of Wickson, and
behind him the hands of greater men than he. It is an old trick, old as
the class struggle is old--stealing the captains from the army of labor.
Poor betrayed labor! If you but knew how many of its leaders have been
bought out in similar ways in the past. It is cheaper, so much cheaper,
to buy a general than to fight him and his whole army. There was--but
I'll not call any names. I'm bitter enough over it as it is. Dear heart,
I am a captain of labor. I could not sell out. If for no other reason,
the memory of my poor old father and the way he was worked to death
would prevent.”

The tears were in his eyes, this great, strong hero of mine. He never
could forgive the way his father had been malformed--the sordid lies and
the petty thefts he had been compelled to, in order to put food in his
children's mouths.

“My father was a good man,” Ernest once said to me. “The soul of him was
good, and yet it was twisted, and maimed, and blunted by the savagery
of his life. He was made into a broken-down beast by his masters, the
arch-beasts. He should be alive to-day, like your father. He had a
strong constitution. But he was caught in the machine and worked to
death--for profit. Think of it. For profit--his life blood transmuted
into a wine-supper, or a jewelled gewgaw, or some similar sense-orgy of
the parasitic and idle rich, his masters, the arch-beasts.”



CHAPTER VII

THE BISHOP'S VISION


“The Bishop is out of hand,” Ernest wrote me. “He is clear up in the
air. Tonight he is going to begin putting to rights this very miserable
world of ours. He is going to deliver his message. He has told me so,
and I cannot dissuade him. To-night he is chairman of the I.P.H.,* and
he will embody his message in his introductory remarks.

     * There is no clew to the name of the organization for which
     these initials stand.

“May I bring you to hear him? Of course, he is foredoomed to futility.
It will break your heart--it will break his; but for you it will be an
excellent object lesson. You know, dear heart, how proud I am because
you love me. And because of that I want you to know my fullest value, I
want to redeem, in your eyes, some small measure of my unworthiness.
And so it is that my pride desires that you shall know my thinking is
correct and right. My views are harsh; the futility of so noble a soul
as the Bishop will show you the compulsion for such harshness. So come
to-night. Sad though this night's happening will be, I feel that it will
but draw you more closely to me.”

The I.P.H. held its convention that night in San Francisco.* This
convention had been called to consider public immorality and the remedy
for it. Bishop Morehouse presided. He was very nervous as he sat on the
platform, and I could see the high tension he was under. By his side
were Bishop Dickinson; H. H. Jones, the head of the ethical department
in the University of California; Mrs. W. W. Hurd, the great charity
organizer; Philip Ward, the equally great philanthropist; and several
lesser luminaries in the field of morality and charity. Bishop Morehouse
arose and abruptly began:

     * It took but a few minutes to cross by ferry from Berkeley
     to San Francisco.  These, and the other bay cities,
     practically composed one community.

“I was in my brougham, driving through the streets. It was night-time.
Now and then I looked through the carriage windows, and suddenly my eyes
seemed to be opened, and I saw things as they really are. At first I
covered my eyes with my hands to shut out the awful sight, and then, in
the darkness, the question came to me: What is to be done? What is to be
done? A little later the question came to me in another way: What would
the Master do? And with the question a great light seemed to fill
the place, and I saw my duty sun-clear, as Saul saw his on the way to
Damascus.

“I stopped the carriage, got out, and, after a few minutes'
conversation, persuaded two of the public women to get into the brougham
with me. If Jesus was right, then these two unfortunates were my
sisters, and the only hope of their purification was in my affection and
tenderness.

“I live in one of the loveliest localities of San Francisco. The house
in which I live cost a hundred thousand dollars, and its furnishings,
books, and works of art cost as much more. The house is a mansion.
No, it is a palace, wherein there are many servants. I never knew what
palaces were good for. I had thought they were to live in. But now I
know. I took the two women of the street to my palace, and they are
going to stay with me. I hope to fill every room in my palace with such
sisters as they.”

The audience had been growing more and more restless and unsettled, and
the faces of those that sat on the platform had been betraying greater
and greater dismay and consternation. And at this point Bishop Dickinson
arose, and with an expression of disgust on his face, fled from the
platform and the hall. But Bishop Morehouse, oblivious to all, his eyes
filled with his vision, continued:

“Oh, sisters and brothers, in this act of mine I find the solution of
all my difficulties. I didn't know what broughams were made for, but now
I know. They are made to carry the weak, the sick, and the aged; they
are made to show honor to those who have lost the sense even of shame.

“I did not know what palaces were made for, but now I have found a use
for them. The palaces of the Church should be hospitals and nurseries
for those who have fallen by the wayside and are perishing.”

He made a long pause, plainly overcome by the thought that was in him,
and nervous how best to express it.

“I am not fit, dear brethren, to tell you anything about morality. I
have lived in shame and hypocrisies too long to be able to help others;
but my action with those women, sisters of mine, shows me that the
better way is easy to find. To those who believe in Jesus and his gospel
there can be no other relation between man and man than the relation
of affection. Love alone is stronger than sin--stronger than death. I
therefore say to the rich among you that it is their duty to do what I
have done and am doing. Let each one of you who is prosperous take into
his house some thief and treat him as his brother, some unfortunate and
treat her as his sister, and San Francisco will need no police force
and no magistrates; the prisons will be turned into hospitals, and the
criminal will disappear with his crime.

“We must give ourselves and not our money alone. We must do as Christ
did; that is the message of the Church today. We have wandered far from
the Master's teaching. We are consumed in our own flesh-pots. We have
put mammon in the place of Christ. I have here a poem that tells the
whole story. I should like to read it to you. It was written by an
erring soul who yet saw clearly.* It must not be mistaken for an attack
upon the Catholic Church. It is an attack upon all churches, upon the
pomp and splendor of all churches that have wandered from the Master's
path and hedged themselves in from his lambs. Here it is:

     “The silver trumpets rang across the Dome;
             The people knelt upon the ground with awe;
             And borne upon the necks of men I saw,
     Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome.

     “Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam,
             And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red,
             Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head;
     In splendor and in light the Pope passed home.

     “My heart stole back across wide wastes of years
             To One who wandered by a lonely sea;
     And sought in vain for any place of rest:
     'Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest,
             I, only I, must wander wearily,
     And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.'”

     * Oscar Wilde, one of the lords of language of the
     nineteenth century of the Christian Era.

The audience was agitated, but unresponsive. Yet Bishop Morehouse was
not aware of it. He held steadily on his way.

“And so I say to the rich among you, and to all the rich, that bitterly
you oppress the Master's lambs. You have hardened your hearts. You have
closed your ears to the voices that are crying in the land--the voices
of pain and sorrow that you will not hear but that some day will be
heard. And so I say--”

But at this point H. H. Jones and Philip Ward, who had already risen
from their chairs, led the Bishop off the platform, while the audience
sat breathless and shocked.

Ernest laughed harshly and savagely when he had gained the street. His
laughter jarred upon me. My heart seemed ready to burst with suppressed
tears.

“He has delivered his message,” Ernest cried. “The manhood and the
deep-hidden, tender nature of their Bishop burst out, and his Christian
audience, that loved him, concluded that he was crazy! Did you see them
leading him so solicitously from the platform? There must have been
laughter in hell at the spectacle.”

“Nevertheless, it will make a great impression, what the Bishop did and
said to-night,” I said.

“Think so?” Ernest queried mockingly.

“It will make a sensation,” I asserted. “Didn't you see the reporters
scribbling like mad while he was speaking?”

“Not a line of which will appear in to-morrow's papers.”

“I can't believe it,” I cried.

“Just wait and see,” was the answer. “Not a line, not a thought that he
uttered. The daily press? The daily suppressage!”

“But the reporters,” I objected. “I saw them.”

“Not a word that he uttered will see print. You have forgotten the
editors. They draw their salaries for the policy they maintain. Their
policy is to print nothing that is a vital menace to the established.
The Bishop's utterance was a violent assault upon the established
morality. It was heresy. They led him from the platform to prevent him
from uttering more heresy. The newspapers will purge his heresy in the
oblivion of silence. The press of the United States? It is a parasitic
growth that battens on the capitalist class. Its function is to serve
the established by moulding public opinion, and right well it serves it.

“Let me prophesy. To-morrow's papers will merely mention that the Bishop
is in poor health, that he has been working too hard, and that he broke
down last night. The next mention, some days hence, will be to the
effect that he is suffering from nervous prostration and has been given
a vacation by his grateful flock. After that, one of two things will
happen: either the Bishop will see the error of his way and return from
his vacation a well man in whose eyes there are no more visions, or else
he will persist in his madness, and then you may expect to see in the
papers, couched pathetically and tenderly, the announcement of his
insanity. After that he will be left to gibber his visions to padded
walls.”

“Now there you go too far!” I cried out.

“In the eyes of society it will truly be insanity,” he replied. “What
honest man, who is not insane, would take lost women and thieves into
his house to dwell with him sisterly and brotherly? True, Christ died
between two thieves, but that is another story. Insanity? The mental
processes of the man with whom one disagrees, are always wrong.
Therefore the mind of the man is wrong. Where is the line between
wrong mind and insane mind? It is inconceivable that any sane man can
radically disagree with one's most sane conclusions.

“There is a good example of it in this evening's paper. Mary McKenna
lives south of Market Street. She is a poor but honest woman. She is
also patriotic. But she has erroneous ideas concerning the American flag
and the protection it is supposed to symbolize. And here's what happened
to her. Her husband had an accident and was laid up in hospital three
months. In spite of taking in washing, she got behind in her rent.
Yesterday they evicted her. But first, she hoisted an American flag, and
from under its folds she announced that by virtue of its protection they
could not turn her out on to the cold street. What was done? She was
arrested and arraigned for insanity. To-day she was examined by the
regular insanity experts. She was found insane. She was consigned to the
Napa Asylum.”

“But that is far-fetched,” I objected. “Suppose I should disagree with
everybody about the literary style of a book. They wouldn't send me to
an asylum for that.”

“Very true,” he replied. “But such divergence of opinion would
constitute no menace to society. Therein lies the difference. The
divergence of opinion on the parts of Mary McKenna and the Bishop do
menace society. What if all the poor people should refuse to pay rent
and shelter themselves under the American flag? Landlordism would go
crumbling. The Bishop's views are just as perilous to society. Ergo, to
the asylum with him.”

But still I refused to believe.

“Wait and see,” Ernest said, and I waited.

Next morning I sent out for all the papers. So far Ernest was right. Not
a word that Bishop Morehouse had uttered was in print. Mention was made
in one or two of the papers that he had been overcome by his feelings.
Yet the platitudes of the speakers that followed him were reported at
length.

Several days later the brief announcement was made that he had gone away
on a vacation to recover from the effects of overwork. So far so good,
but there had been no hint of insanity, nor even of nervous collapse.
Little did I dream the terrible road the Bishop was destined to
travel--the Gethsemane and crucifixion that Ernest had pondered about.



CHAPTER VIII

THE MACHINE BREAKERS


It was just before Ernest ran for Congress, on the socialist ticket,
that father gave what he privately called his “Profit and Loss” dinner.
Ernest called it the dinner of the Machine Breakers. In point of fact,
it was merely a dinner for business men--small business men, of
course. I doubt if one of them was interested in any business the total
capitalization of which exceeded a couple of hundred thousand dollars.
They were truly representative middle-class business men.

There was Owen, of Silverberg, Owen & Company--a large grocery firm with
several branch stores. We bought our groceries from them. There were
both partners of the big drug firm of Kowalt & Washburn, and Mr.
Asmunsen, the owner of a large granite quarry in Contra Costa County.
And there were many similar men, owners or part-owners in small
factories, small businesses and small industries--small capitalists, in
short.

They were shrewd-faced, interesting men, and they talked with simplicity
and clearness. Their unanimous complaint was against the corporations
and trusts. Their creed was, “Bust the Trusts.” All oppression
originated in the trusts, and one and all told the same tale of woe.
They advocated government ownership of such trusts as the railroads
and telegraphs, and excessive income taxes, graduated with ferocity,
to destroy large accumulations. Likewise they advocated, as a cure for
local ills, municipal ownership of such public utilities as water, gas,
telephones, and street railways.

Especially interesting was Mr. Asmunsen's narrative of his tribulations
as a quarry owner. He confessed that he never made any profits out of
his quarry, and this, in spite of the enormous volume of business
that had been caused by the destruction of San Francisco by the big
earthquake. For six years the rebuilding of San Francisco had been going
on, and his business had quadrupled and octupled, and yet he was no
better off.

“The railroad knows my business just a little bit better than I do,” he
said. “It knows my operating expenses to a cent, and it knows the terms
of my contracts. How it knows these things I can only guess. It must
have spies in my employ, and it must have access to the parties to all
my contracts. For look you, when I place a big contract, the terms
of which favor me a goodly profit, the freight rate from my quarry to
market is promptly raised. No explanation is made. The railroad gets my
profit. Under such circumstances I have never succeeded in getting the
railroad to reconsider its raise. On the other hand, when there have
been accidents, increased expenses of operating, or contracts with less
profitable terms, I have always succeeded in getting the railroad to
lower its rate. What is the result? Large or small, the railroad always
gets my profits.”

“What remains to you over and above,” Ernest interrupted to ask, “would
roughly be the equivalent of your salary as a manager did the railroad
own the quarry.”

“The very thing,” Mr. Asmunsen replied. “Only a short time ago I had my
books gone through for the past ten years. I discovered that for
those ten years my gain was just equivalent to a manager's salary. The
railroad might just as well have owned my quarry and hired me to run
it.”

“But with this difference,” Ernest laughed; “the railroad would have had
to assume all the risk which you so obligingly assumed for it.”

“Very true,” Mr. Asmunsen answered sadly.

Having let them have their say, Ernest began asking questions right and
left. He began with Mr. Owen.

“You started a branch store here in Berkeley about six months ago?”

“Yes,” Mr. Owen answered.

“And since then I've noticed that three little corner groceries have
gone out of business. Was your branch store the cause of it?”

Mr. Owen affirmed with a complacent smile. “They had no chance against
us.”

“Why not?”

“We had greater capital. With a large business there is always less
waste and greater efficiency.”

“And your branch store absorbed the profits of the three small ones. I
see. But tell me, what became of the owners of the three stores?”

“One is driving a delivery wagon for us. I don't know what happened to
the other two.”

Ernest turned abruptly on Mr. Kowalt.

“You sell a great deal at cut-rates.* What have become of the owners of
the small drug stores that you forced to the wall?”

     * A lowering of selling price to cost, and even to less than
     cost. Thus, a large company could sell at a loss for a
     longer period than a small company, and so drive the small
     company out of business.  A common device of competition.

“One of them, Mr. Haasfurther, has charge now of our prescription
department,” was the answer.

“And you absorbed the profits they had been making?”

“Surely. That is what we are in business for.”

“And you?” Ernest said suddenly to Mr. Asmunsen. “You are disgusted
because the railroad has absorbed your profits?”

Mr. Asmunsen nodded.

“What you want is to make profits yourself?”

Again Mr. Asmunsen nodded.

“Out of others?”

There was no answer.

“Out of others?” Ernest insisted.

“That is the way profits are made,” Mr. Asmunsen replied curtly.

“Then the business game is to make profits out of others, and to prevent
others from making profits out of you. That's it, isn't it?”

Ernest had to repeat his question before Mr. Asmunsen gave an answer,
and then he said:

“Yes, that's it, except that we do not object to the others making
profits so long as they are not extortionate.”

“By extortionate you mean large; yet you do not object to making large
profits yourself? . . . Surely not?”

And Mr. Asmunsen amiably confessed to the weakness. There was one other
man who was quizzed by Ernest at this juncture, a Mr. Calvin, who had
once been a great dairy-owner.

“Some time ago you were fighting the Milk Trust,” Ernest said to him;
“and now you are in Grange politics.* How did it happen?”

     * Many efforts were made during this period to organize the
     perishing farmer class into a political party, the aim of
     which was destroy the trusts and corporations by drastic
     legislation.  All such attempts ended in failure.

“Oh, I haven't quit the fight,” Mr. Calvin answered, and he looked
belligerent enough. “I'm fighting the Trust on the only field where it
is possible to fight--the political field. Let me show you. A few years
ago we dairymen had everything our own way.”

“But you competed among yourselves?” Ernest interrupted.

“Yes, that was what kept the profits down. We did try to organize, but
independent dairymen always broke through us. Then came the Milk Trust.”

“Financed by surplus capital from Standard Oil,” * Ernest said.

     * The first successful great trust--almost a generation in
     advance of the rest.

“Yes,” Mr. Calvin acknowledged. “But we did not know it at the time.
Its agents approached us with a club. “Come in and be fat,” was their
proposition, “or stay out and starve.” Most of us came in. Those that
didn't, starved. Oh, it paid us . . . at first. Milk was raised a cent a
quart. One-quarter of this cent came to us. Three-quarters of it went to
the Trust. Then milk was raised another cent, only we didn't get any
of that cent. Our complaints were useless. The Trust was in control. We
discovered that we were pawns. Finally, the additional quarter of a cent
was denied us. Then the Trust began to squeeze us out. What could we do?
We were squeezed out. There were no dairymen, only a Milk Trust.”

“But with milk two cents higher, I should think you could have
competed,” Ernest suggested slyly.

“So we thought. We tried it.” Mr. Calvin paused a moment. “It broke us.
The Trust could put milk upon the market more cheaply than we. It could
sell still at a slight profit when we were selling at actual loss.
I dropped fifty thousand dollars in that venture. Most of us went
bankrupt.* The dairymen were wiped out of existence.”

     * Bankruptcy--a peculiar institution that enabled an
     individual, who had failed in competitive industry, to
     forego paying his debts. The effect was to ameliorate the
     too savage conditions of the fang-and-claw social struggle.

“So the Trust took your profits away from you,” Ernest said, “and you've
gone into politics in order to legislate the Trust out of existence and
get the profits back?”

Mr. Calvin's face lighted up. “That is precisely what I say in my
speeches to the farmers. That's our whole idea in a nutshell.”

“And yet the Trust produces milk more cheaply than could the independent
dairymen?” Ernest queried.

“Why shouldn't it, with the splendid organization and new machinery its
large capital makes possible?”

“There is no discussion,” Ernest answered. “It certainly should, and,
furthermore, it does.”

Mr. Calvin here launched out into a political speech in exposition of
his views. He was warmly followed by a number of the others, and the cry
of all was to destroy the trusts.

“Poor simple folk,” Ernest said to me in an undertone. “They see clearly
as far as they see, but they see only to the ends of their noses.”

A little later he got the floor again, and in his characteristic way
controlled it for the rest of the evening.

“I have listened carefully to all of you,” he began, “and I see plainly
that you play the business game in the orthodox fashion. Life sums
itself up to you in profits. You have a firm and abiding belief that
you were created for the sole purpose of making profits. Only there is a
hitch. In the midst of your own profit-making along comes the trust
and takes your profits away from you. This is a dilemma that interferes
somehow with the aim of creation, and the only way out, as it seems to
you, is to destroy that which takes from you your profits.

“I have listened carefully, and there is only one name that will
epitomize you. I shall call you that name. You are machine-breakers. Do
you know what a machine-breaker is? Let me tell you. In the eighteenth
century, in England, men and women wove cloth on hand-looms in their own
cottages. It was a slow, clumsy, and costly way of weaving cloth,
this cottage system of manufacture. Along came the steam-engine and
labor-saving machinery. A thousand looms assembled in a large factory,
and driven by a central engine wove cloth vastly more cheaply than
could the cottage weavers on their hand-looms. Here in the factory was
combination, and before it competition faded away. The men and women who
had worked the hand-looms for themselves now went into the factories
and worked the machine-looms, not for themselves, but for the capitalist
owners. Furthermore, little children went to work on the machine-looms,
at lower wages, and displaced the men. This made hard times for the men.
Their standard of living fell. They starved. And they said it was
all the fault of the machines. Therefore, they proceeded to break the
machines. They did not succeed, and they were very stupid.

“Yet you have not learned their lesson. Here are you, a century and a
half later, trying to break machines. By your own confession the trust
machines do the work more efficiently and more cheaply than you can.
That is why you cannot compete with them. And yet you would break those
machines. You are even more stupid than the stupid workmen of England.
And while you maunder about restoring competition, the trusts go on
destroying you.

“One and all you tell the same story,--the passing away of competition
and the coming on of combination. You, Mr. Owen, destroyed competition
here in Berkeley when your branch store drove the three small groceries
out of business. Your combination was more effective. Yet you feel the
pressure of other combinations on you, the trust combinations, and you
cry out. It is because you are not a trust. If you were a grocery trust
for the whole United States, you would be singing another song. And the
song would be, 'Blessed are the trusts.' And yet again, not only is your
small combination not a trust, but you are aware yourself of its lack
of strength. You are beginning to divine your own end. You feel
yourself and your branch stores a pawn in the game. You see the powerful
interests rising and growing more powerful day by day; you feel their
mailed hands descending upon your profits and taking a pinch here and
a pinch there--the railroad trust, the oil trust, the steel trust, the
coal trust; and you know that in the end they will destroy you, take
away from you the last per cent of your little profits.

“You, sir, are a poor gamester. When you squeezed out the three small
groceries here in Berkeley by virtue of your superior combination, you
swelled out your chest, talked about efficiency and enterprise, and sent
your wife to Europe on the profits you had gained by eating up the three
small groceries. It is dog eat dog, and you ate them up. But, on the
other hand, you are being eaten up in turn by the bigger dogs, wherefore
you squeal. And what I say to you is true of all of you at this table.
You are all squealing. You are all playing the losing game, and you are
all squealing about it.

“But when you squeal you don't state the situation flatly, as I have
stated it. You don't say that you like to squeeze profits out of others,
and that you are making all the row because others are squeezing your
profits out of you. No, you are too cunning for that. You say something
else. You make small-capitalist political speeches such as Mr. Calvin
made. What did he say? Here are a few of his phrases I caught: 'Our
original principles are all right,' 'What this country requires is a
return to fundamental American methods--free opportunity for all,' 'The
spirit of liberty in which this nation was born,' 'Let us return to the
principles of our forefathers.'

“When he says 'free opportunity for all,' he means free opportunity to
squeeze profits, which freedom of opportunity is now denied him by the
great trusts. And the absurd thing about it is that you have repeated
these phrases so often that you believe them. You want opportunity
to plunder your fellow-men in your own small way, but you hypnotize
yourselves into thinking you want freedom. You are piggish and
acquisitive, but the magic of your phrases leads you to believe that you
are patriotic. Your desire for profits, which is sheer selfishness, you
metamorphose into altruistic solicitude for suffering humanity. Come
on now, right here amongst ourselves, and be honest for once. Look the
matter in the face and state it in direct terms.”

There were flushed and angry faces at the table, and withal a measure
of awe. They were a little frightened at this smooth-faced young fellow,
and the swing and smash of his words, and his dreadful trait of calling
a spade a spade. Mr. Calvin promptly replied.

“And why not?” he demanded. “Why can we not return to ways of our
fathers when this republic was founded? You have spoken much truth, Mr.
Everhard, unpalatable though it has been. But here amongst ourselves let
us speak out. Let us throw off all disguise and accept the truth as Mr.
Everhard has flatly stated it. It is true that we smaller capitalists
are after profits, and that the trusts are taking our profits away from
us. It is true that we want to destroy the trusts in order that our
profits may remain to us. And why can we not do it? Why not? I say, why
not?”

“Ah, now we come to the gist of the matter,” Ernest said with a pleased
expression. “I'll try to tell you why not, though the telling will be
rather hard. You see, you fellows have studied business, in a small way,
but you have not studied social evolution at all. You are in the
midst of a transition stage now in economic evolution, but you do not
understand it, and that's what causes all the confusion. Why cannot you
return? Because you can't. You can no more make water run up hill than
can you cause the tide of economic evolution to flow back in its channel
along the way it came. Joshua made the sun stand still upon Gibeon, but
you would outdo Joshua. You would make the sun go backward in the sky.
You would have time retrace its steps from noon to morning.

“In the face of labor-saving machinery, of organized production, of the
increased efficiency of combination, you would set the economic sun
back a whole generation or so to the time when there were no great
capitalists, no great machinery, no railroads--a time when a host of
little capitalists warred with each other in economic anarchy, and when
production was primitive, wasteful, unorganized, and costly. Believe me,
Joshua's task was easier, and he had Jehovah to help him. But God has
forsaken you small capitalists. The sun of the small capitalists is
setting. It will never rise again. Nor is it in your power even to make
it stand still. You are perishing, and you are doomed to perish utterly
from the face of society.

“This is the fiat of evolution. It is the word of God. Combination is
stronger than competition. Primitive man was a puny creature hiding in
the crevices of the rocks. He combined and made war upon his carnivorous
enemies. They were competitive beasts. Primitive man was a combinative
beast, and because of it he rose to primacy over all the animals. And
man has been achieving greater and greater combinations ever since. It
is combination versus competition, a thousand centuries long struggle,
in which competition has always been worsted. Whoso enlists on the side
of competition perishes.”

“But the trusts themselves arose out of competition,” Mr. Calvin
interrupted.

“Very true,” Ernest answered. “And the trusts themselves destroyed
competition. That, by your own word, is why you are no longer in the
dairy business.”

The first laughter of the evening went around the table, and even Mr.
Calvin joined in the laugh against himself.

“And now, while we are on the trusts,” Ernest went on, “let us settle
a few things. I shall make certain statements, and if you disagree
with them, speak up. Silence will mean agreement. Is it not true that
a machine-loom will weave more cloth and weave more cheaply than a
hand-loom?” He paused, but nobody spoke up. “Is it not then highly
irrational to break the machine-loom and go back to the clumsy and more
costly hand-loom method of weaving?” Heads nodded in acquiescence. “Is
it not true that that known as a trust produces more efficiently and
cheaply than can a thousand competing small concerns?” Still no one
objected. “Then is it not irrational to destroy that cheap and efficient
combination?”

No one answered for a long time. Then Mr. Kowalt spoke.

“What are we to do, then?” he demanded. “To destroy the trusts is the
only way we can see to escape their domination.”

Ernest was all fire and aliveness on the instant.

“I'll show you another way!” he cried. “Let us not destroy those
wonderful machines that produce efficiently and cheaply. Let us control
them. Let us profit by their efficiency and cheapness. Let us run them
for ourselves. Let us oust the present owners of the wonderful machines,
and let us own the wonderful machines ourselves. That, gentlemen, is
socialism, a greater combination than the trusts, a greater economic and
social combination than any that has as yet appeared on the planet. It
is in line with evolution. We meet combination with greater combination.
It is the winning side. Come on over with us socialists and play on the
winning side.”

Here arose dissent. There was a shaking of heads, and mutterings arose.

“All right, then, you prefer to be anachronisms,” Ernest laughed. “You
prefer to play atavistic roles. You are doomed to perish as all atavisms
perish. Have you ever asked what will happen to you when greater
combinations than even the present trusts arise? Have you ever
considered where you will stand when the great trusts themselves combine
into the combination of combinations--into the social, economic, and
political trust?”

He turned abruptly and irrelevantly upon Mr. Calvin.

“Tell me,” Ernest said, “if this is not true. You are compelled to form
a new political party because the old parties are in the hands of the
trusts. The chief obstacle to your Grange propaganda is the trusts.
Behind every obstacle you encounter, every blow that smites you, every
defeat that you receive, is the hand of the trusts. Is this not so? Tell
me.”

Mr. Calvin sat in uncomfortable silence.

“Go ahead,” Ernest encouraged.

“It is true,” Mr. Calvin confessed. “We captured the state legislature
of Oregon and put through splendid protective legislation, and it was
vetoed by the governor, who was a creature of the trusts. We elected a
governor of Colorado, and the legislature refused to permit him to take
office. Twice we have passed a national income tax, and each time the
supreme court smashed it as unconstitutional. The courts are in the
hands of the trusts. We, the people, do not pay our judges sufficiently.
But there will come a time--”

“When the combination of the trusts will control all legislation, when
the combination of the trusts will itself be the government,” Ernest
interrupted.

“Never! never!” were the cries that arose. Everybody was excited and
belligerent.

“Tell me,” Ernest demanded, “what will you do when such a time comes?”

“We will rise in our strength!” Mr. Asmunsen cried, and many voices
backed his decision.

“That will be civil war,” Ernest warned them.

“So be it, civil war,” was Mr. Asmunsen's answer, with the cries of all
the men at the table behind him. “We have not forgotten the deeds of our
forefathers. For our liberties we are ready to fight and die.”

Ernest smiled.

“Do not forget,” he said, “that we had tacitly agreed that liberty in
your case, gentlemen, means liberty to squeeze profits out of others.”

The table was angry, now, fighting angry; but Ernest controlled the
tumult and made himself heard.

“One more question. When you rise in your strength, remember, the reason
for your rising will be that the government is in the hands of the
trusts. Therefore, against your strength the government will turn the
regular army, the navy, the militia, the police--in short, the whole
organized war machinery of the United States. Where will your strength
be then?”

Dismay sat on their faces, and before they could recover, Ernest struck
again.

“Do you remember, not so long ago, when our regular army was only fifty
thousand? Year by year it has been increased until to-day it is three
hundred thousand.”

Again he struck.

“Nor is that all. While you diligently pursued that favorite phantom
of yours, called profits, and moralized about that favorite fetich of
yours, called competition, even greater and more direful things have
been accomplished by combination. There is the militia.”

“It is our strength!” cried Mr. Kowalt. “With it we would repel the
invasion of the regular army.”

“You would go into the militia yourself,” was Ernest's retort, “and
be sent to Maine, or Florida, or the Philippines, or anywhere else,
to drown in blood your own comrades civil-warring for their liberties.
While from Kansas, or Wisconsin, or any other state, your own comrades
would go into the militia and come here to California to drown in blood
your own civil-warring.”

Now they were really shocked, and they sat wordless, until Mr. Owen
murmured:

“We would not go into the militia. That would settle it. We would not be
so foolish.”

Ernest laughed outright.

“You do not understand the combination that has been effected. You could
not help yourself. You would be drafted into the militia.”

“There is such a thing as civil law,” Mr. Owen insisted.

“Not when the government suspends civil law. In that day when you
speak of rising in your strength, your strength would be turned against
yourself. Into the militia you would go, willy-nilly. Habeas corpus, I
heard some one mutter just now. Instead of habeas corpus you would get
post mortems. If you refused to go into the militia, or to obey after
you were in, you would be tried by drumhead court martial and shot down
like dogs. It is the law.”

“It is not the law!” Mr. Calvin asserted positively. “There is no such
law. Young man, you have dreamed all this. Why, you spoke of sending the
militia to the Philippines. That is unconstitutional. The Constitution
especially states that the militia cannot be sent out of the country.”

“What's the Constitution got to do with it?” Ernest demanded. “The
courts interpret the Constitution, and the courts, as Mr. Asmunsen
agreed, are the creatures of the trusts. Besides, it is as I have said,
the law. It has been the law for years, for nine years, gentlemen.”

“That we can be drafted into the militia?” Mr. Calvin asked
incredulously. “That they can shoot us by drumhead court martial if we
refuse?”

“Yes,” Ernest answered, “precisely that.”

“How is it that we have never heard of this law?” my father asked, and I
could see that it was likewise new to him.

“For two reasons,” Ernest said. “First, there has been no need to
enforce it. If there had, you'd have heard of it soon enough. And
secondly, the law was rushed through Congress and the Senate secretly,
with practically no discussion. Of course, the newspapers made no
mention of it. But we socialists knew about it. We published it in our
papers. But you never read our papers.”

“I still insist you are dreaming,” Mr. Calvin said stubbornly. “The
country would never have permitted it.”

“But the country did permit it,” Ernest replied. “And as for my
dreaming--” he put his hand in his pocket and drew out a small
pamphlet--“tell me if this looks like dream-stuff.”

He opened it and began to read:

“'Section One, be it enacted, and so forth and so forth, that the
militia shall consist of every able-bodied male citizen of the
respective states, territories, and District of Columbia, who is more
than eighteen and less than forty-five years of age.'

“'Section Seven, that any officer or enlisted man'--remember Section
One, gentlemen, you are all enlisted men--'that any enlisted man of the
militia who shall refuse or neglect to present himself to such mustering
officer upon being called forth as herein prescribed, shall be subject
to trial by court martial, and shall be punished as such court martial
shall direct.'

“'Section Eight, that courts martial, for the trial of officers or men
of the militia, shall be composed of militia officers only.'

“'Section Nine, that the militia, when called into the actual service
of the United States, shall be subject to the same rules and articles of
war as the regular troops of the United States.'

“There you are gentlemen, American citizens, and fellow-militiamen. Nine
years ago we socialists thought that law was aimed against labor. But it
would seem that it was aimed against you, too. Congressman Wiley, in the
brief discussion that was permitted, said that the bill 'provided for
a reserve force to take the mob by the throat'--you're the mob,
gentlemen--'and protect at all hazards life, liberty, and property.' And
in the time to come, when you rise in your strength, remember that you
will be rising against the property of the trusts, and the liberty of
the trusts, according to the law, to squeeze you. Your teeth are pulled,
gentlemen. Your claws are trimmed. In the day you rise in your strength,
toothless and clawless, you will be as harmless as any army of clams.”

“I don't believe it!” Kowalt cried. “There is no such law. It is a
canard got up by you socialists.”

“This bill was introduced in the House of Representatives on July 30,
1902,” was the reply. “It was introduced by Representative Dick of
Ohio. It was rushed through. It was passed unanimously by the Senate
on January 14, 1903. And just seven days afterward was approved by the
President of the United States.” *

     * Everhard was right in the essential particulars, though
     his date of the introduction of the bill is in error.  The
     bill was introduced on June 30, and not on July 30.  The
     Congressional Record is here in Ardis, and a reference to it
     shows mention of the bill on the following dates: June 30,
     December 9, 15, 16, and 17, 1902, and January 7 and 14,
     1903.  The ignorance evidenced by the business men at the
     dinner was nothing unusual.  Very few people knew of the
     existence of this law.  E.  Untermann, a revolutionist, in
     July, 1903, published a pamphlet at Girard, Kansas, on the
     “Militia Bill.”  This pamphlet had a small circulation among
     workingmen; but already had the segregation of classes
     proceeded so far, that the members of the middle class never
     heard of the pamphlet at all, and so remained in ignorance
     of the law.



CHAPTER IX

THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM


In the midst of the consternation his revelation had produced, Ernest
began again to speak.

“You have said, a dozen of you to-night, that socialism is impossible.
You have asserted the impossible, now let me demonstrate the inevitable.
Not only is it inevitable that you small capitalists shall pass away,
but it is inevitable that the large capitalists, and the trusts also,
shall pass away. Remember, the tide of evolution never flows backward.
It flows on and on, and it flows from competition to combination, and
from little combination to large combination, and from large combination
to colossal combination, and it flows on to socialism, which is the most
colossal combination of all.

“You tell me that I dream. Very good. I'll give you the mathematics
of my dream; and here, in advance, I challenge you to show that
my mathematics are wrong. I shall develop the inevitability of
the breakdown of the capitalist system, and I shall demonstrate
mathematically why it must break down. Here goes, and bear with me if at
first I seem irrelevant.

“Let us, first of all, investigate a particular industrial process, and
whenever I state something with which you disagree, please interrupt
me. Here is a shoe factory. This factory takes leather and makes it into
shoes. Here is one hundred dollars' worth of leather. It goes through
the factory and comes out in the form of shoes, worth, let us say, two
hundred dollars. What has happened? One hundred dollars has been added
to the value of the leather. How was it added? Let us see.

“Capital and labor added this value of one hundred dollars. Capital
furnished the factory, the machines, and paid all the expenses. Labor
furnished labor. By the joint effort of capital and labor one hundred
dollars of value was added. Are you all agreed so far?”

Heads nodded around the table in affirmation.

“Labor and capital having produced this one hundred dollars, now proceed
to divide it. The statistics of this division are fractional; so let
us, for the sake of convenience, make them roughly approximate. Capital
takes fifty dollars as its share, and labor gets in wages fifty dollars
as its share. We will not enter into the squabbling over the division.*
No matter how much squabbling takes place, in one percentage or another
the division is arranged. And take notice here, that what is true of
this particular industrial process is true of all industrial processes.
Am I right?”

     * Everhard here clearly develops the cause of all the labor
     troubles of that time.  In the division of the joint-product,
     capital wanted all it could get, and labor wanted
     all it could get. This quarrel over the division was
     irreconcilable.  So long as the system of capitalistic
     production existed, labor and capital continued to quarrel
     over the division of the joint-product.  It is a ludicrous
     spectacle to us, but we must not forget that we have seven
     centuries' advantage over those that lived in that time.

Again the whole table agreed with Ernest.

“Now, suppose labor, having received its fifty dollars, wanted to buy
back shoes. It could only buy back fifty dollars' worth. That's clear,
isn't it?

“And now we shift from this particular process to the sum total of all
industrial processes in the United States, which includes the leather
itself, raw material, transportation, selling, everything. We will say,
for the sake of round figures, that the total production of wealth in
the United States is one year is four billion dollars. Then labor has
received in wages, during the same period, two billion dollars. Four
billion dollars has been produced. How much of this can labor buy
back? Two billions. There is no discussion of this, I am sure. For that
matter, my percentages are mild. Because of a thousand capitalistic
devices, labor cannot buy back even half of the total product.

“But to return. We will say labor buys back two billions. Then it stands
to reason that labor can consume only two billions. There are still two
billions to be accounted for, which labor cannot buy back and consume.”

“Labor does not consume its two billions, even,” Mr. Kowalt spoke up.
“If it did, it would not have any deposits in the savings banks.”

“Labor's deposits in the savings banks are only a sort of reserve fund
that is consumed as fast as it accumulates. These deposits are saved
for old age, for sickness and accident, and for funeral expenses. The
savings bank deposit is simply a piece of the loaf put back on the shelf
to be eaten next day. No, labor consumes all of the total product that
its wages will buy back.

“Two billions are left to capital. After it has paid its expenses, does
it consume the remainder? Does capital consume all of its two billions?”

Ernest stopped and put the question point blank to a number of the men.
They shook their heads.

“I don't know,” one of them frankly said.

“Of course you do,” Ernest went on. “Stop and think a moment. If capital
consumed its share, the sum total of capital could not increase. It
would remain constant. If you will look at the economic history of
the United States, you will see that the sum total of capital has
continually increased. Therefore capital does not consume its share. Do
you remember when England owned so much of our railroad bonds? As the
years went by, we bought back those bonds. What does that mean? That
part of capital's unconsumed share bought back the bonds. What is the
meaning of the fact that to-day the capitalists of the United States own
hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of Mexican bonds, Russian
bonds, Italian bonds, Grecian bonds? The meaning is that those hundreds
and hundreds of millions were part of capital's share which capital
did not consume. Furthermore, from the very beginning of the capitalist
system, capital has never consumed all of its share.

“And now we come to the point. Four billion dollars of wealth is
produced in one year in the United States. Labor buys back and consumes
two billions. Capital does not consume the remaining two billions. There
is a large balance left over unconsumed. What is done with this balance?
What can be done with it? Labor cannot consume any of it, for labor
has already spent all its wages. Capital will not consume this balance,
because, already, according to its nature, it has consumed all it can.
And still remains the balance. What can be done with it? What is done
with it?”

“It is sold abroad,” Mr. Kowalt volunteered.

“The very thing,” Ernest agreed. “Because of this balance arises our
need for a foreign market. This is sold abroad. It has to be sold
abroad. There is no other way of getting rid of it. And that unconsumed
surplus, sold abroad, becomes what we call our favorable balance of
trade. Are we all agreed so far?”

“Surely it is a waste of time to elaborate these A B C's of commerce,”
 Mr. Calvin said tartly. “We all understand them.”

“And it is by these A B C's I have so carefully elaborated that I shall
confound you,” Ernest retorted. “There's the beauty of it. And I'm going
to confound you with them right now. Here goes.

“The United States is a capitalist country that has developed its
resources. According to its capitalist system of industry, it has an
unconsumed surplus that must be got rid of, and that must be got rid
of abroad.* What is true of the United States is true of every other
capitalist country with developed resources. Every one of such countries
has an unconsumed surplus. Don't forget that they have already traded
with one another, and that these surpluses yet remain. Labor in all
these countries has spent its wages, and cannot buy any of the surpluses.
Capital in all these countries has already consumed all it is able
according to its nature. And still remain the surpluses. They cannot
dispose of these surpluses to one another. How are they going to get rid
of them?”

     * Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States a few
     years prior to this time, made the following public
     declaration: “A more liberal and extensive reciprocity in
     the purchase and sale of commodities is necessary, so that
     the overproduction of the United States can be
     satisfactorily disposed of to foreign countries.”  Of
     course, this overproduction he mentions was the profits of
     the capitalist system over and beyond the consuming power of
     the capitalists.  It was at this time that Senator Mark
     Hanna said: “The production of wealth in the United States
     is one-third larger annually than its consumption.”  Also a
     fellow-Senator, Chauncey Depew, said: “The American people
     produce annually two billions more wealth than they
     consume.”

“Sell them to countries with undeveloped resources,” Mr. Kowalt
suggested.

“The very thing. You see, my argument is so clear and simple that
in your own minds you carry it on for me. And now for the next step.
Suppose the United States disposes of its surplus to a country with
undeveloped resources like, say, Brazil. Remember this surplus is over
and above trade, which articles of trade have been consumed. What, then,
does the United States get in return from Brazil?”

“Gold,” said Mr. Kowalt.

“But there is only so much gold, and not much of it, in the world,”
 Ernest objected.

“Gold in the form of securities and bonds and so forth,” Mr. Kowalt
amended.

“Now you've struck it,” Ernest said. “From Brazil the United States, in
return for her surplus, gets bonds and securities. And what does that
mean? It means that the United States is coming to own railroads in
Brazil, factories, mines, and lands in Brazil. And what is the meaning
of that in turn?”

Mr. Kowalt pondered and shook his head.

“I'll tell you,” Ernest continued. “It means that the resources of
Brazil are being developed. And now, the next point. When Brazil, under
the capitalist system, has developed her resources, she will herself
have an unconsumed surplus. Can she get rid of this surplus to the
United States? No, because the United States has herself a surplus. Can
the United States do what she previously did--get rid of her surplus to
Brazil? No, for Brazil now has a surplus, too.

“What happens? The United States and Brazil must both seek out other
countries with undeveloped resources, in order to unload the surpluses
on them. But by the very process of unloading the surpluses, the
resources of those countries are in turn developed. Soon they have
surpluses, and are seeking other countries on which to unload. Now,
gentlemen, follow me. The planet is only so large. There are only so
many countries in the world. What will happen when every country in
the world, down to the smallest and last, with a surplus in its hands,
stands confronting every other country with surpluses in their hands?”

He paused and regarded his listeners. The bepuzzlement in their faces
was delicious. Also, there was awe in their faces. Out of abstractions
Ernest had conjured a vision and made them see it. They were seeing it
then, as they sat there, and they were frightened by it.

“We started with A B C, Mr. Calvin,” Ernest said slyly. “I have now
given you the rest of the alphabet. It is very simple. That is the
beauty of it. You surely have the answer forthcoming. What, then, when
every country in the world has an unconsumed surplus? Where will your
capitalist system be then?”

But Mr. Calvin shook a troubled head. He was obviously questing back
through Ernest's reasoning in search of an error.

“Let me briefly go over the ground with you again,” Ernest said. “We
began with a particular industrial process, the shoe factory. We found
that the division of the joint product that took place there was similar
to the division that took place in the sum total of all industrial
processes. We found that labor could buy back with its wages only
so much of the product, and that capital did not consume all of the
remainder of the product. We found that when labor had consumed to the
full extent of its wages, and when capital had consumed all it wanted,
there was still left an unconsumed surplus. We agreed that this surplus
could only be disposed of abroad. We agreed, also, that the effect
of unloading this surplus on another country would be to develop the
resources of that country, and that in a short time that country
would have an unconsumed surplus. We extended this process to all the
countries on the planet, till every country was producing every year,
and every day, an unconsumed surplus, which it could dispose of to no
other country. And now I ask you again, what are we going to do with
those surpluses?”

Still no one answered.

“Mr. Calvin?” Ernest queried.

“It beats me,” Mr. Calvin confessed.

“I never dreamed of such a thing,” Mr. Asmunsen said. “And yet it does
seem clear as print.”

It was the first time I had ever heard Karl Marx's* doctrine of surplus
value elaborated, and Ernest had done it so simply that I, too, sat
puzzled and dumbfounded.

     * Karl Marx--the great intellectual hero of Socialism.  A
     German Jew of the nineteenth century.  A contemporary of
     John Stuart Mill. It seems incredible to us that whole
     generations should have elapsed after the enunciation of
     Marx's economic discoveries, in which time he was sneered at
     by the world's accepted thinkers and scholars.  Because of
     his discoveries he was banished from his native country, and
     he died an exile in England.

“I'll tell you a way to get rid of the surplus,” Ernest said. “Throw it
into the sea. Throw every year hundreds of millions of dollars' worth
of shoes and wheat and clothing and all the commodities of commerce into
the sea. Won't that fix it?”

“It will certainly fix it,” Mr. Calvin answered. “But it is absurd for
you to talk that way.”

Ernest was upon him like a flash.

“Is it a bit more absurd than what you advocate, you machine-breaker,
returning to the antediluvian ways of your forefathers? What do you
propose in order to get rid of the surplus? You would escape the problem
of the surplus by not producing any surplus. And how do you propose
to avoid producing a surplus? By returning to a primitive method of
production, so confused and disorderly and irrational, so wasteful and
costly, that it will be impossible to produce a surplus.”

Mr. Calvin swallowed. The point had been driven home. He swallowed again
and cleared his throat.

“You are right,” he said. “I stand convicted. It is absurd. But we've
got to do something. It is a case of life and death for us of the middle
class. We refuse to perish. We elect to be absurd and to return to the
truly crude and wasteful methods of our forefathers. We will put back
industry to its pre-trust stage. We will break the machines. And what
are you going to do about it?”

“But you can't break the machines,” Ernest replied. “You cannot make the
tide of evolution flow backward. Opposed to you are two great forces,
each of which is more powerful than you of the middle class. The large
capitalists, the trusts, in short, will not let you turn back. They
don't want the machines destroyed. And greater than the trusts, and
more powerful, is labor. It will not let you destroy the machines. The
ownership of the world, along with the machines, lies between the
trusts and labor. That is the battle alignment. Neither side wants
the destruction of the machines. But each side wants to possess the
machines. In this battle the middle class has no place. The middle class
is a pygmy between two giants. Don't you see, you poor perishing middle
class, you are caught between the upper and nether millstones, and even
now has the grinding begun.

“I have demonstrated to you mathematically the inevitable breakdown of
the capitalist system. When every country stands with an unconsumed and
unsalable surplus on its hands, the capitalist system will break down
under the terrific structure of profits that it itself has reared. And
in that day there won't be any destruction of the machines. The struggle
then will be for the ownership of the machines. If labor wins, your way
will be easy. The United States, and the whole world for that matter,
will enter upon a new and tremendous era. Instead of being crushed by
the machines, life will be made fairer, and happier, and nobler by
them. You of the destroyed middle class, along with labor--there will
be nothing but labor then; so you, and all the rest of labor, will
participate in the equitable distribution of the products of the
wonderful machines. And we, all of us, will make new and more wonderful
machines. And there won't be any unconsumed surplus, because there won't
be any profits.”

“But suppose the trusts win in this battle over the ownership of the
machines and the world?” Mr. Kowalt asked.

“Then,” Ernest answered, “you, and labor, and all of us, will be crushed
under the iron heel of a despotism as relentless and terrible as any
despotism that has blackened the pages of the history of man. That will
be a good name for that despotism, the Iron Heel.” *

     * The earliest known use of that name to designate the
     Oligarchy.

There was a long pause, and every man at the table meditated in ways
unwonted and profound.

“But this socialism of yours is a dream,” Mr. Calvin said; and repeated,
“a dream.”

“I'll show you something that isn't a dream, then,” Ernest answered.
“And that something I shall call the Oligarchy. You call it the
Plutocracy. We both mean the same thing, the large capitalists or the
trusts. Let us see where the power lies today. And in order to do so,
let us apportion society into its class divisions.

“There are three big classes in society. First comes the Plutocracy,
which is composed of wealthy bankers, railway magnates, corporation
directors, and trust magnates. Second, is the middle class, your class,
gentlemen, which is composed of farmers, merchants, small manufacturers,
and professional men. And third and last comes my class, the
proletariat, which is composed of the wage-workers.*

     * This division of society made by Everhard is in accordance
     with that made by Lucien Sanial, one of the statistical
     authorities of that time.  His calculation of the membership
     of these divisions by occupation, from the United States
     Census of 1900, is as follows: Plutocratic class, 250,251;
     Middle class, 8,429,845; and Proletariat class, 20,393,137.

“You cannot but grant that the ownership of wealth constitutes essential
power in the United States to-day. How is this wealth owned by these
three classes? Here are the figures. The Plutocracy owns sixty-seven
billions of wealth. Of the total number of persons engaged in
occupations in the United States, only nine-tenths of one per cent are
from the Plutocracy, yet the Plutocracy owns seventy per cent of the
total wealth. The middle class owns twenty-four billions. Twenty-nine
per cent of those in occupations are from the middle class, and they own
twenty-five per cent of the total wealth. Remains the proletariat. It
owns four billions. Of all persons in occupations, seventy per cent
come from the proletariat; and the proletariat owns four per cent of the
total wealth. Where does the power lie, gentlemen?”

“From your own figures, we of the middle class are more powerful than
labor,” Mr. Asmunsen remarked.

“Calling us weak does not make you stronger in the face of the strength
of the Plutocracy,” Ernest retorted. “And furthermore, I'm not done with
you. There is a greater strength than wealth, and it is greater because
it cannot be taken away. Our strength, the strength of the proletariat,
is in our muscles, in our hands to cast ballots, in our fingers to pull
triggers. This strength we cannot be stripped of. It is the primitive
strength, it is the strength that is to life germane, it is the strength
that is stronger than wealth, and that wealth cannot take away.

“But your strength is detachable. It can be taken away from you. Even
now the Plutocracy is taking it away from you. In the end it will take
it all away from you. And then you will cease to be the middle class.
You will descend to us. You will become proletarians. And the beauty of
it is that you will then add to our strength. We will hail you brothers,
and we will fight shoulder to shoulder in the cause of humanity.

“You see, labor has nothing concrete of which to be despoiled. Its
share of the wealth of the country consists of clothes and household
furniture, with here and there, in very rare cases, an unencumbered
home. But you have the concrete wealth, twenty-four billions of it, and
the Plutocracy will take it away from you. Of course, there is the large
likelihood that the proletariat will take it away first. Don't you
see your position, gentlemen? The middle class is a wobbly little lamb
between a lion and a tiger. If one doesn't get you, the other will. And
if the Plutocracy gets you first, why it's only a matter of time when
the Proletariat gets the Plutocracy.

“Even your present wealth is not a true measure of your power. The
strength of your wealth at this moment is only an empty shell. That is
why you are crying out your feeble little battle-cry, 'Return to the
ways of our fathers.' You are aware of your impotency. You know that
your strength is an empty shell. And I'll show you the emptiness of it.

“What power have the farmers? Over fifty per cent are thralls by virtue
of the fact that they are merely tenants or are mortgaged. And all of
them are thralls by virtue of the fact that the trusts already own or
control (which is the same thing only better)--own and control all
the means of marketing the crops, such as cold storage, railroads,
elevators, and steamship lines. And, furthermore, the trusts control
the markets. In all this the farmers are without power. As regards their
political and governmental power, I'll take that up later, along with
the political and governmental power of the whole middle class.

“Day by day the trusts squeeze out the farmers as they squeezed out Mr.
Calvin and the rest of the dairymen. And day by day are the merchants
squeezed out in the same way. Do you remember how, in six months, the
Tobacco Trust squeezed out over four hundred cigar stores in New York
City alone? Where are the old-time owners of the coal fields? You know
today, without my telling you, that the Railroad Trust owns or controls
the entire anthracite and bituminous coal fields. Doesn't the Standard
Oil Trust* own a score of the ocean lines? And does it not also control
copper, to say nothing of running a smelter trust as a little side
enterprise? There are ten thousand cities in the United States to-night
lighted by the companies owned or controlled by Standard Oil, and in
as many cities all the electric transportation,--urban, suburban, and
interurban,--is in the hands of Standard Oil. The small capitalists who
were in these thousands of enterprises are gone. You know that. It's the
same way that you are going.

     * Standard Oil and Rockefeller--see upcoming footnote:
     “Rockefeller began as a member . . .”

“The small manufacturer is like the farmer; and small manufacturers
and farmers to-day are reduced, to all intents and purposes, to feudal
tenure. For that matter, the professional men and the artists are
at this present moment villeins in everything but name, while the
politicians are henchmen. Why do you, Mr. Calvin, work all your nights
and days to organize the farmers, along with the rest of the middle
class, into a new political party? Because the politicians of the old
parties will have nothing to do with your atavistic ideas; and with your
atavistic ideas, they will have nothing to do because they are what I
said they are, henchmen, retainers of the Plutocracy.

“I spoke of the professional men and the artists as villeins. What else
are they? One and all, the professors, the preachers, and the editors,
hold their jobs by serving the Plutocracy, and their service consists of
propagating only such ideas as are either harmless to or commendatory
of the Plutocracy. Whenever they propagate ideas that menace the
Plutocracy, they lose their jobs, in which case, if they have not
provided for the rainy day, they descend into the proletariat and either
perish or become working-class agitators. And don't forget that it is
the press, the pulpit, and the university that mould public opinion, set
the thought-pace of the nation. As for the artists, they merely pander
to the little less than ignoble tastes of the Plutocracy.

“But after all, wealth in itself is not the real power; it is the means
to power, and power is governmental. Who controls the government to-day?
The proletariat with its twenty millions engaged in occupations? Even
you laugh at the idea. Does the middle class, with its eight million
occupied members? No more than the proletariat. Who, then, controls
the government? The Plutocracy, with its paltry quarter of a million
of occupied members. But this quarter of a million does not control the
government, though it renders yeoman service. It is the brain of the
Plutocracy that controls the government, and this brain consists of
seven* small and powerful groups of men. And do not forget that these
groups are working to-day practically in unison.

     * Even as late as 1907, it was considered that eleven groups
     dominated the country, but this number was reduced by the
     amalgamation of the five railroad groups into a supreme
     combination of all the railroads.  These five groups so
     amalgamated, along with their financial and political
     allies, were (1) James J. Hill with his control of the
     Northwest; (2) the Pennsylvania railway group, Schiff
     financial manager, with big banking firms of Philadelphia
     and New York; (3) Harriman, with Frick for counsel and Odell
     as political lieutenant, controlling the central
     continental, Southwestern and Southern Pacific Coast lines
     of transportation; (4) the Gould family railway interests;
     and (5) Moore, Reid, and Leeds, known as the “Rock Island
     crowd.”  These strong oligarchs arose out of the conflict of
     competition and travelled the inevitable road toward
     combination.

“Let me point out the power of but one of them, the railroad group. It
employs forty thousand lawyers to defeat the people in the courts. It
issues countless thousands of free passes to judges, bankers, editors,
ministers, university men, members of state legislatures, and of
Congress. It maintains luxurious lobbies* at every state capital, and
at the national capital; and in all the cities and towns of the land
it employs an immense army of pettifoggers and small politicians whose
business is to attend primaries, pack conventions, get on juries, bribe
judges, and in every way to work for its interests.**

     * Lobby--a peculiar institution for bribing, bulldozing, and
     corrupting the legislators who were supposed to represent
     the people's interests.

     ** A decade before this speech of Everhard's, the New York
     Board of Trade issued a report from which the following is
     quoted: “The railroads control absolutely the legislatures
     of a majority of the states of the Union; they make and
     unmake United States Senators, congressmen, and governors,
     and are practically dictators of the governmental policy of
     the United States.”

“Gentlemen, I have merely sketched the power of one of the seven groups
that constitute the brain of the Plutocracy.* Your twenty-four billions
of wealth does not give you twenty-five cents' worth of governmental
power. It is an empty shell, and soon even the empty shell will be taken
away from you. The Plutocracy has all power in its hands to-day. It
to-day makes the laws, for it owns the Senate, Congress, the courts, and
the state legislatures. And not only that. Behind law must be force to
execute the law. To-day the Plutocracy makes the law, and to enforce the
law it has at its beck and call the, police, the army, the navy, and,
lastly, the militia, which is you, and me, and all of us.”

     * Rockefeller began as a member of the proletariat, and
     through thrift and cunning succeeded in developing the first
     perfect trust, namely that known as Standard Oil.  We cannot
     forbear giving the following remarkable page from the
     history of the times, to show how the need for reinvestment
     of the Standard Oil surplus crushed out small capitalists
     and hastened the breakdown of the capitalist system.  David
     Graham Phillips was a radical writer of the period, and the
     quotation, by him, is taken from a copy of the Saturday
     Evening Post, dated October 4, 1902 A.D.  This is the only
     copy of this publication that has come down to us, and yet,
     from its appearance and content, we cannot but conclude that
     it was one of the popular periodicals with a large
     circulation.  The quotation here follows:

     “About ten years ago Rockefeller's income was given as
     thirty millions by an excellent authority.  He had reached
     the limit of profitable investment of profits in the oil
     industry.  Here, then, were these enormous sums in cash
     pouring in--more than $2,000,000 a month for John Davison
     Rockefeller alone.  The problem of reinvestment became more
     serious.  It became a nightmare.  The oil income was
     swelling, swelling, and the number of sound investments
     limited, even more limited than it is now.  It was through
     no special eagerness for more gains that the Rockefellers
     began to branch out from oil into other things.  They were
     forced, swept on by this inrolling tide of wealth which
     their monopoly magnet irresistibly attracted.  They
     developed a staff of investment seekers and investigators.
     It is said that the chief of this staff has a salary of
     $125,000 a year.

     “The first conspicuous excursion and incursion of the
     Rockefellers was into the railway field.  By 1895 they
     controlled one-fifth of the railway mileage of the country.
     What do they own or, through dominant ownership, control
     to-day?  They are powerful in all the great railways of New
     York, north, east, and west, except one, where their share
     is only a few millions.  They are in most of the great
     railways radiating from Chicago.  They dominate in several
     of the systems that extend to the Pacific.  It is their
     votes that make Mr. Morgan so potent, though, it may be
     added, they need his brains more than he needs their votes--
     at present, and the combination of the two constitutes in
     large measure the 'community of interest.'

     “But railways could not alone absorb rapidly enough those
     mighty floods of gold.  Presently John D. Rockefeller's
     $2,500,000 a month had increased to four, to five, to six
     millions a month, to $75,000,000 a year.  Illuminating oil
     was becoming all profit.  The reinvestments of income were
     adding their mite of many annual millions.

     “The Rockefellers went into gas and electricity when those
     industries had developed to the safe investment stage.  And
     now a large part of the American people must begin to enrich
     the Rockefellers as soon as the sun goes down, no matter
     what form of illuminant they use.  They went into farm
     mortgages.  It is said that when prosperity a few years ago
     enabled the farmers to rid themselves of their mortgages,
     John D. Rockefeller was moved almost to tears; eight
     millions which he had thought taken care of for years to
     come at a good interest were suddenly dumped upon his
     doorstep and there set up a-squawking for a new home.  This
     unexpected addition to his worriments in finding places for
     the progeny of his petroleum and their progeny and their
     progeny's progeny was too much for the equanimity of a man
     without a digestion. . . .

     “The Rockefellers went into mines--iron and coal and copper
     and lead; into other industrial companies; into street
     railways, into national, state, and municipal bonds; into
     steamships and steamboats and telegraphy; into real estate,
     into skyscrapers and residences and hotels and business
     blocks; into life insurance, into banking.  There was soon
     literally no field of industry where their millions were not
     at work. . . .

     “The Rockefeller bank--the National City Bank--is by itself
     far and away the biggest bank in the United States.  It is
     exceeded in the world only by the Bank of England and the
     Bank of France.  The deposits average more than one hundred
     millions a day; and it dominates the call loan market on
     Wall Street and the stock market. But it is not alone; it is
     the head of the Rockefeller chain of banks, which includes
     fourteen banks and trust companies in New York City, and
     banks of great strength and influence in every large money
     center in the country.

     “John D. Rockefeller owns Standard Oil stock worth between
     four and five hundred millions at the market quotations.  He
     has a hundred millions in the steel trust, almost as much in
     a single western railway system, half as much in a second,
     and so on and on and on until the mind wearies of the
     cataloguing.  His income last year was about $100,000,000--
     it is doubtful if the incomes of all the Rothschilds
     together make a greater sum.  And it is going up by leaps
     and bounds.”


     Little discussion took place after this, and the dinner soon broke
     up.  All were quiet and subdued, and leave-taking was done with low
     voices.  It seemed almost that they were scared by the vision of
     the times they had seen.

     “The situation is, indeed, serious,” Mr. Calvin said to Ernest.  “I
     have little quarrel with the way you have depicted it.  Only I
     disagree with you about the doom of the middle class.  We shall
     survive, and we shall overthrow the trusts.”

     “And return to the ways of your fathers,” Ernest finished for him.

     “Even so,” Mr. Calvin answered gravely.  “I know it's a sort of
     machine-breaking, and that it is absurd.  But then life seems
     absurd to-day, what of the machinations of the Plutocracy.  And at
     any rate, our sort of machine-breaking is at least practical and
     possible, which your dream is not.  Your socialistic dream is . . .
     well, a dream.  We cannot follow you.”

     “I only wish you fellows knew a little something about evolution
     and sociology,” Ernest said wistfully, as they shook hands.  “We
     would be saved so much trouble if you did.”



CHAPTER X

THE VORTEX


Following like thunder claps upon the Business Men's dinner, occurred
event after event of terrifying moment; and I, little I, who had lived
so placidly all my days in the quiet university town, found myself and
my personal affairs drawn into the vortex of the great world-affairs.
Whether it was my love for Ernest, or the clear sight he had given me of
the society in which I lived, that made me a revolutionist, I know not;
but a revolutionist I became, and I was plunged into a whirl of
happenings that would have been inconceivable three short months before.

The crisis in my own fortunes came simultaneously with great crises in
society. First of all, father was discharged from the university. Oh,
he was not technically discharged. His resignation was demanded, that
was all. This, in itself, did not amount to much. Father, in fact, was
delighted. He was especially delighted because his discharge had been
precipitated by the publication of his book, “Economics and Education.”
 It clinched his argument, he contended. What better evidence could be
advanced to prove that education was dominated by the capitalist class?

But this proof never got anywhere. Nobody knew he had been forced to
resign from the university. He was so eminent a scientist that such an
announcement, coupled with the reason for his enforced resignation,
would have created somewhat of a furor all over the world. The
newspapers showered him with praise and honor, and commended him for
having given up the drudgery of the lecture room in order to devote his
whole time to scientific research.

At first father laughed. Then he became angry--tonic angry. Then came
the suppression of his book. This suppression was performed secretly,
so secretly that at first we could not comprehend. The publication of
the book had immediately caused a bit of excitement in the country.
Father had been politely abused in the capitalist press, the tone of the
abuse being to the effect that it was a pity so great a scientist should
leave his field and invade the realm of sociology, about which he knew
nothing and wherein he had promptly become lost. This lasted for a
week, while father chuckled and said the book had touched a sore spot on
capitalism. And then, abruptly, the newspapers and the critical
magazines ceased saying anything about the book at all. Also, and with
equal suddenness, the book disappeared from the market. Not a copy was
obtainable from any bookseller. Father wrote to the publishers and was
informed that the plates had been accidentally injured. An
unsatisfactory correspondence followed. Driven finally to an
unequivocal stand, the publishers stated that they could not see their
way to putting the book into type again, but that they were willing to
relinquish their rights in it.

“And you won't find another publishing house in the country to touch
it,” Ernest said. “And if I were you, I'd hunt cover right now. You've
merely got a foretaste of the Iron Heel.”

But father was nothing if not a scientist. He never believed in jumping
to conclusions. A laboratory experiment was no experiment if it were
not carried through in all its details. So he patiently went the round
of the publishing houses. They gave a multitude of excuses, but not one
house would consider the book.

When father became convinced that the book had actually been suppressed,
he tried to get the fact into the newspapers; but his communications
were ignored. At a political meeting of the socialists, where many
reporters were present, father saw his chance. He arose and related the
history of the suppression of the book. He laughed next day when he
read the newspapers, and then he grew angry to a degree that eliminated
all tonic qualities. The papers made no mention of the book, but they
misreported him beautifully. They twisted his words and phrases away
from the context, and turned his subdued and controlled remarks into a
howling anarchistic speech. It was done artfully. One instance, in
particular, I remember. He had used the phrase “social revolution.”
 The reporter merely dropped out “social.” This was sent out all over
the country in an Associated Press despatch, and from all over the
country arose a cry of alarm. Father was branded as a nihilist and an
anarchist, and in one cartoon that was copied widely he was portrayed
waving a red flag at the head of a mob of long-haired, wild-eyed men who
bore in their hands torches, knives, and dynamite bombs.

He was assailed terribly in the press, in long and abusive editorials,
for his anarchy, and hints were made of mental breakdown on his part.
This behavior, on the part of the capitalist press, was nothing new,
Ernest told us. It was the custom, he said, to send reporters to all
the socialist meetings for the express purpose of misreporting and
distorting what was said, in order to frighten the middle class away
from any possible affiliation with the proletariat. And repeatedly
Ernest warned father to cease fighting and to take to cover.

The socialist press of the country took up the fight, however, and
throughout the reading portion of the working class it was known that
the book had been suppressed. But this knowledge stopped with the
working class. Next, the “Appeal to Reason,” a big socialist publishing
house, arranged with father to bring out the book. Father was jubilant,
but Ernest was alarmed.

“I tell you we are on the verge of the unknown,” he insisted. “Big
things are happening secretly all around us. We can feel them. We do
not know what they are, but they are there. The whole fabric of society
is a-tremble with them. Don't ask me. I don't know myself. But out of
this flux of society something is about to crystallize. It is
crystallizing now. The suppression of the book is a precipitation. How
many books have been suppressed? We haven't the least idea. We are in
the dark. We have no way of learning. Watch out next for the
suppression of the socialist press and socialist publishing houses. I'm
afraid it's coming. We are going to be throttled.”

Ernest had his hand on the pulse of events even more closely than the
rest of the socialists, and within two days the first blow was struck.
The Appeal to Reason was a weekly, and its regular circulation amongst
the proletariat was seven hundred and fifty thousand. Also, it very
frequently got out special editions of from two to five millions. These
great editions were paid for and distributed by the small army of
voluntary workers who had marshalled around the Appeal. The first blow
was aimed at these special editions, and it was a crushing one. By an
arbitrary ruling of the Post Office, these editions were decided to be
not the regular circulation of the paper, and for that reason were
denied admission to the mails.

A week later the Post Office Department ruled that the paper was
seditious, and barred it entirely from the mails. This was a fearful
blow to the socialist propaganda. The Appeal was desperate. It devised
a plan of reaching its subscribers through the express companies, but
they declined to handle it. This was the end of the Appeal. But not
quite. It prepared to go on with its book publishing. Twenty thousand
copies of father's book were in the bindery, and the presses were
turning off more. And then, without warning, a mob arose one night,
and, under a waving American flag, singing patriotic songs, set fire to
the great plant of the Appeal and totally destroyed it.

Now Girard, Kansas, was a quiet, peaceable town. There had never been
any labor troubles there. The Appeal paid union wages; and, in fact,
was the backbone of the town, giving employment to hundreds of men and
women. It was not the citizens of Girard that composed the mob. This
mob had risen up out of the earth apparently, and to all intents and
purposes, its work done, it had gone back into the earth. Ernest saw in
the affair the most sinister import.

“The Black Hundreds* are being organized in the United States,” he said.
“This is the beginning. There will be more of it. The Iron Heel is
getting bold.”

     * The Black Hundreds were reactionary mobs organized by the
     perishing Autocracy in the Russian Revolution.  These
     reactionary groups attacked the revolutionary groups, and
     also, at needed moments, rioted and destroyed property so as
     to afford the Autocracy the pretext of calling out the
     Cossacks.

And so perished father's book. We were to see much of the Black Hundreds
as the days went by. Week by week more of the socialist papers were
barred from the mails, and in a number of instances the Black Hundreds
destroyed the socialist presses. Of course, the newspapers of the
land lived up to the reactionary policy of the ruling class, and the
destroyed socialist press was misrepresented and vilified, while
the Black Hundreds were represented as true patriots and saviours of
society. So convincing was all this misrepresentation that even sincere
ministers in the pulpit praised the Black Hundreds while regretting the
necessity of violence.

History was making fast. The fall elections were soon to occur, and
Ernest was nominated by the socialist party to run for Congress. His
chance for election was most favorable. The street-car strike in San
Francisco had been broken. And following upon it the teamsters' strike
had been broken. These two defeats had been very disastrous to organized
labor. The whole Water Front Federation, along with its allies in the
structural trades, had backed up the teamsters, and all had been smashed
down ingloriously. It had been a bloody strike. The police had broken
countless heads with their riot clubs; and the death list had been
augmented by the turning loose of a machine-gun on the strikers from the
barns of the Marsden Special Delivery Company.

In consequence, the men were sullen and vindictive. They wanted blood,
and revenge. Beaten on their chosen field, they were ripe to seek
revenge by means of political action. They still maintained their labor
organization, and this gave them strength in the political struggle that
was on. Ernest's chance for election grew stronger and stronger. Day by
day unions and more unions voted their support to the socialists, until
even Ernest laughed when the Undertakers' Assistants and the Chicken
Pickers fell into line. Labor became mulish. While it packed the
socialist meetings with mad enthusiasm, it was impervious to the wiles
of the old-party politicians. The old-party orators were usually greeted
with empty halls, though occasionally they encountered full halls where
they were so roughly handled that more than once it was necessary to
call out the police reserves.

History was making fast. The air was vibrant with things happening and
impending. The country was on the verge of hard times,* caused by a
series of prosperous years wherein the difficulty of disposing abroad
of the unconsumed surplus had become increasingly difficult. Industries
were working short time; many great factories were standing idle against
the time when the surplus should be gone; and wages were being cut right
and left.

     * Under the capitalist regime these periods of hard times
     were as inevitable as they were absurd.  Prosperity always
     brought calamity.  This, of course, was due to the excess of
     unconsumed profits that was piled up.

Also, the great machinist strike had been broken. Two hundred thousand
machinists, along with their five hundred thousand allies in the
metalworking trades, had been defeated in as bloody a strike as had ever
marred the United States. Pitched battles had been fought with the small
armies of armed strike-breakers* put in the field by the employers'
associations; the Black Hundreds, appearing in scores of wide-scattered
places, had destroyed property; and, in consequence, a hundred thousand
regular soldiers of the United States has been called out to put a
frightful end to the whole affair. A number of the labor leaders had
been executed; many others had been sentenced to prison, while thousands
of the rank and file of the strikers had been herded into bull-pens**
and abominably treated by the soldiers.

     * Strike-breakers--these were, in purpose and practice and
     everything except name, the private soldiers of the
     capitalists. They were thoroughly organized and well armed,
     and they were held in readiness to be hurled in special
     trains to any part of the country where labor went on strike
     or was locked out by the employers.  Only those curious
     times could have given rise to the amazing spectacle of one,
     Farley, a notorious commander of strike-breakers, who, in
     1906, swept across the United States in special trains from
     New York to San Francisco with an army of twenty-five
     hundred men, fully armed and equipped, to break a strike of
     the San Francisco street-car men.  Such an act was in direct
     violation of the laws of the land.  The fact that this act,
     and thousands of similar acts, went unpunished, goes to show
     how completely the judiciary was the creature of the
     Plutocracy.

     ** Bull-pen--in a miners' strike in Idaho, in the latter
     part of the nineteenth century, it happened that many of the
     strikers were confined in a bull-pen by the troops.  The
     practice and the name continued in the twentieth century.

The years of prosperity were now to be paid for. All markets were
glutted; all markets were falling; and amidst the general crumble
of prices the price of labor crumbled fastest of all. The land was
convulsed with industrial dissensions. Labor was striking here, there,
and everywhere; and where it was not striking, it was being turned out
by the capitalists. The papers were filled with tales of violence and
blood. And through it all the Black Hundreds played their part. Riot,
arson, and wanton destruction of property was their function, and well
they performed it. The whole regular army was in the field, called there
by the actions of the Black Hundreds.* All cities and towns were like
armed camps, and laborers were shot down like dogs. Out of the vast
army of the unemployed the strike-breakers were recruited; and when
the strike-breakers were worsted by the labor unions, the troops always
appeared and crushed the unions. Then there was the militia. As yet, it
was not necessary to have recourse to the secret militia law. Only the
regularly organized militia was out, and it was out everywhere. And
in this time of terror, the regular army was increased an additional
hundred thousand by the government.

     * The name only, and not the idea, was imported from Russia.
     The Black Hundreds were a development out of the secret
     agents of the capitalists, and their use arose in the labor
     struggles of the nineteenth century.  There is no discussion
     of this.  No less an authority of the times than Carroll D.
     Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor, is responsible
     for the statement.  From his book, entitled “The Battles of
     Labor,” is quoted the declaration that “in some of the great
     historic strikes the employers themselves have instigated
     acts of violence;” that manufacturers have deliberately
     provoked strikes in order to get rid of surplus stock; and
     that freight cars have been burned by employers' agents
     during railroad strikes in order to increase disorder.  It
     was out of these secret agents of the employers that the
     Black Hundreds arose; and it was they, in turn, that later
     became that terrible weapon of the Oligarchy, the agents-
     provocateurs.

Never had labor received such an all-around beating. The great captains
of industry, the oligarchs, had for the first time thrown their full
weight into the breach the struggling employers' associations had made.
These associations were practically middle-class affairs, and now,
compelled by hard times and crashing markets, and aided by the great
captains of industry, they gave organized labor an awful and decisive
defeat. It was an all-powerful alliance, but it was an alliance of the
lion and the lamb, as the middle class was soon to learn.

Labor was bloody and sullen, but crushed. Yet its defeat did not put
an end to the hard times. The banks, themselves constituting one of the
most important forces of the Oligarchy, continued to call in credits.
The Wall Street* group turned the stock market into a maelstrom where
the values of all the land crumbled away almost to nothingness. And
out of all the rack and ruin rose the form of the nascent Oligarchy,
imperturbable, indifferent, and sure. Its serenity and certitude was
terrifying. Not only did it use its own vast power, but it used all the
power of the United States Treasury to carry out its plans.

     * Wall Street--so named from a street in ancient New York,
     where was situated the stock exchange, and where the
     irrational organization of society permitted underhanded
     manipulation of all the industries of the country.

The captains of industry had turned upon the middle class. The
employers' associations, that had helped the captains of industry to
tear and rend labor, were now torn and rent by their quondam allies.
Amidst the crashing of the middle men, the small business men and
manufacturers, the trusts stood firm. Nay, the trusts did more than
stand firm. They were active. They sowed wind, and wind, and ever more
wind; for they alone knew how to reap the whirlwind and make a profit
out of it. And such profits! Colossal profits! Strong enough themselves
to weather the storm that was largely their own brewing, they turned
loose and plundered the wrecks that floated about them. Values were
pitifully and inconceivably shrunken, and the trusts added hugely
to their holdings, even extending their enterprises into many new
fields--and always at the expense of the middle class.

Thus the summer of 1912 witnessed the virtual death-thrust to the middle
class. Even Ernest was astounded at the quickness with which it had been
done. He shook his head ominously and looked forward without hope to the
fall elections.

“It's no use,” he said. “We are beaten. The Iron Heel is here. I had
hoped for a peaceable victory at the ballot-box. I was wrong. Wickson
was right. We shall be robbed of our few remaining liberties; the Iron
Heel will walk upon our faces; nothing remains but a bloody revolution
of the working class. Of course we will win, but I shudder to think of
it.”

And from then on Ernest pinned his faith in revolution. In this he was
in advance of his party. His fellow-socialists could not agree with him.
They still insisted that victory could be gained through the elections.
It was not that they were stunned. They were too cool-headed and
courageous for that. They were merely incredulous, that was all. Ernest
could not get them seriously to fear the coming of the Oligarchy. They
were stirred by him, but they were too sure of their own strength. There
was no room in their theoretical social evolution for an oligarchy,
therefore the Oligarchy could not be.

“We'll send you to Congress and it will be all right,” they told him at
one of our secret meetings.

“And when they take me out of Congress,” Ernest replied coldly, “and put
me against a wall, and blow my brains out--what then?”

“Then we'll rise in our might,” a dozen voices answered at once.

“Then you'll welter in your gore,” was his retort. “I've heard that song
sung by the middle class, and where is it now in its might?”



CHAPTER XI

THE GREAT ADVENTURE


Mr. Wickson did not send for father. They met by chance on the
ferry-boat to San Francisco, so that the warning he gave father was not
premeditated. Had they not met accidentally, there would not have been
any warning. Not that the outcome would have been different, however.
Father came of stout old Mayflower* stock, and the blood was imperative
in him.

     * One of the first ships that carried colonies to America,
     after the discovery of the New World.  Descendants of these
     original colonists were for a while inordinately proud of
     their genealogy; but in time the blood became so widely
     diffused that it ran in the veins practically of all
     Americans.

“Ernest was right,” he told me, as soon as he had returned home. “Ernest
is a very remarkable young man, and I'd rather see you his wife than the
wife of Rockefeller himself or the King of England.”

“What's the matter?” I asked in alarm.

“The Oligarchy is about to tread upon our faces--yours and mine. Wickson
as much as told me so. He was very kind--for an oligarch. He offered to
reinstate me in the university. What do you think of that? He, Wickson,
a sordid money-grabber, has the power to determine whether I shall or
shall not teach in the university of the state. But he offered me even
better than that--offered to make me president of some great college of
physical sciences that is being planned--the Oligarchy must get rid of
its surplus somehow, you see.

“'Do you remember what I told that socialist lover of your daughter's?'
he said. 'I told him that we would walk upon the faces of the working
class. And so we shall. As for you, I have for you a deep respect as
a scientist; but if you throw your fortunes in with the working
class--well, watch out for your face, that is all.' And then he turned
and left me.”

“It means we'll have to marry earlier than you planned,” was Ernest's
comment when we told him.

I could not follow his reasoning, but I was soon to learn it. It was at
this time that the quarterly dividend of the Sierra Mills was paid--or,
rather, should have been paid, for father did not receive his. After
waiting several days, father wrote to the secretary. Promptly came
the reply that there was no record on the books of father's owning any
stock, and a polite request for more explicit information.

“I'll make it explicit enough, confound him,” father declared, and
departed for the bank to get the stock in question from his safe-deposit
box.

“Ernest is a very remarkable man,” he said when he got back and while
I was helping him off with his overcoat. “I repeat, my daughter, that
young man of yours is a very remarkable young man.”

I had learned, whenever he praised Ernest in such fashion, to expect
disaster.

“They have already walked upon my face,” father explained. “There was no
stock. The box was empty. You and Ernest will have to get married pretty
quickly.”

Father insisted on laboratory methods. He brought the Sierra Mills into
court, but he could not bring the books of the Sierra Mills into court.
He did not control the courts, and the Sierra Mills did. That explained
it all. He was thoroughly beaten by the law, and the bare-faced robbery
held good.

It is almost laughable now, when I look back on it, the way father was
beaten. He met Wickson accidentally on the street in San Francisco,
and he told Wickson that he was a damned scoundrel. And then father was
arrested for attempted assault, fined in the police court, and bound
over to keep the peace. It was all so ridiculous that when he got
home he had to laugh himself. But what a furor was raised in the
local papers! There was grave talk about the bacillus of violence that
infected all men who embraced socialism; and father, with his long and
peaceful life, was instanced as a shining example of how the bacillus
of violence worked. Also, it was asserted by more than one paper that
father's mind had weakened under the strain of scientific study, and
confinement in a state asylum for the insane was suggested. Nor was this
merely talk. It was an imminent peril. But father was wise enough to see
it. He had the Bishop's experience to lesson from, and he lessoned
well. He kept quiet no matter what injustice was perpetrated on him, and
really, I think, surprised his enemies.

There was the matter of the house--our home. A mortgage was foreclosed
on it, and we had to give up possession. Of course there wasn't any
mortgage, and never had been any mortgage. The ground had been bought
outright, and the house had been paid for when it was built. And house
and lot had always been free and unencumbered. Nevertheless there was
the mortgage, properly and legally drawn up and signed, with a record
of the payments of interest through a number of years. Father made no
outcry. As he had been robbed of his money, so was he now robbed of his
home. And he had no recourse. The machinery of society was in the hands
of those who were bent on breaking him. He was a philosopher at heart,
and he was no longer even angry.

“I am doomed to be broken,” he said to me; “but that is no reason that I
should not try to be shattered as little as possible. These old bones of
mine are fragile, and I've learned my lesson. God knows I don't want to
spend my last days in an insane asylum.”

Which reminds me of Bishop Morehouse, whom I have neglected for many
pages. But first let me tell of my marriage. In the play of events, my
marriage sinks into insignificance, I know, so I shall barely mention
it.

“Now we shall become real proletarians,” father said, when we were
driven from our home. “I have often envied that young man of yours for
his actual knowledge of the proletariat. Now I shall see and learn for
myself.”

Father must have had strong in him the blood of adventure. He looked
upon our catastrophe in the light of an adventure. No anger nor
bitterness possessed him. He was too philosophic and simple to be
vindictive, and he lived too much in the world of mind to miss the
creature comforts we were giving up. So it was, when we moved to San
Francisco into four wretched rooms in the slum south of Market Street,
that he embarked upon the adventure with the joy and enthusiasm of
a child--combined with the clear sight and mental grasp of an
extraordinary intellect. He really never crystallized mentally. He had
no false sense of values. Conventional or habitual values meant nothing
to him. The only values he recognized were mathematical and scientific
facts. My father was a great man. He had the mind and the soul that only
great men have. In ways he was even greater than Ernest, than whom I
have known none greater.

Even I found some relief in our change of living. If nothing else, I
was escaping from the organized ostracism that had been our increasing
portion in the university town ever since the enmity of the nascent
Oligarchy had been incurred. And the change was to me likewise
adventure, and the greatest of all, for it was love-adventure. The
change in our fortunes had hastened my marriage, and it was as a
wife that I came to live in the four rooms on Pell Street, in the San
Francisco slum.

And this out of all remains: I made Ernest happy. I came into his stormy
life, not as a new perturbing force, but as one that made toward peace
and repose. I gave him rest. It was the guerdon of my love for him.
It was the one infallible token that I had not failed. To bring
forgetfulness, or the light of gladness, into those poor tired eyes of
his--what greater joy could have blessed me than that?

Those dear tired eyes. He toiled as few men ever toiled, and all his
lifetime he toiled for others. That was the measure of his manhood. He
was a humanist and a lover. And he, with his incarnate spirit of battle,
his gladiator body and his eagle spirit--he was as gentle and tender to
me as a poet. He was a poet. A singer in deeds. And all his life he sang
the song of man. And he did it out of sheer love of man, and for man he
gave his life and was crucified.

And all this he did with no hope of future reward. In his conception of
things there was no future life. He, who fairly burnt with immortality,
denied himself immortality--such was the paradox of him. He, so warm
in spirit, was dominated by that cold and forbidding philosophy,
materialistic monism. I used to refute him by telling him that I
measured his immortality by the wings of his soul, and that I should
have to live endless aeons in order to achieve the full measurement.
Whereat he would laugh, and his arms would leap out to me, and he would
call me his sweet metaphysician; and the tiredness would pass out of his
eyes, and into them would flood the happy love-light that was in itself
a new and sufficient advertisement of his immortality.

Also, he used to call me his dualist, and he would explain how Kant, by
means of pure reason, had abolished reason, in order to worship God. And
he drew the parallel and included me guilty of a similar act. And when I
pleaded guilty, but defended the act as highly rational, he but pressed
me closer and laughed as only one of God's own lovers could laugh. I
was wont to deny that heredity and environment could explain his own
originality and genius, any more than could the cold groping finger of
science catch and analyze and classify that elusive essence that lurked
in the constitution of life itself.

I held that space was an apparition of God, and that soul was a
projection of the character of God; and when he called me his sweet
metaphysician, I called him my immortal materialist. And so we loved and
were happy; and I forgave him his materialism because of his tremendous
work in the world, performed without thought of soul-gain thereby, and
because of his so exceeding modesty of spirit that prevented him from
having pride and regal consciousness of himself and his soul.

But he had pride. How could he have been an eagle and not have pride?
His contention was that it was finer for a finite mortal speck of life
to feel Godlike, than for a god to feel godlike; and so it was that he
exalted what he deemed his mortality. He was fond of quoting a fragment
from a certain poem. He had never seen the whole poem, and he had tried
vainly to learn its authorship. I here give the fragment, not alone
because he loved it, but because it epitomized the paradox that he was
in the spirit of him, and his conception of his spirit. For how can a
man, with thrilling, and burning, and exaltation, recite the following
and still be mere mortal earth, a bit of fugitive force, an evanescent
form? Here it is:

     “Joy upon joy and gain upon gain
     Are the destined rights of my birth,
     And I shout the praise of my endless days
     To the echoing edge of the earth.
     Though I suffer all deaths that a man can die
     To the uttermost end of time,
     I have deep-drained this, my cup of bliss,
     In every age and clime--

     “The froth of Pride, the tang of Power,
     The sweet of Womanhood!
     I drain the lees upon my knees,
     For oh, the draught is good;
     I drink to Life, I drink to Death,
     And smack my lips with song,
     For when I die, another 'I' shall pass the cup along.

     “The man you drove from Eden's grove
              Was I, my Lord, was I,
     And I shall be there when the earth and the air
              Are rent from sea to sky;
     For it is my world, my gorgeous world,
              The world of my dearest woes,
     From the first faint cry of the newborn
              To the rack of the woman's throes.

     “Packed with the pulse of an unborn race,
     Torn with a world's desire,
     The surging flood of my wild young blood
     Would quench the judgment fire.
     I am Man, Man, Man, from the tingling flesh
     To the dust of my earthly goal,
     From the nestling gloom of the pregnant womb
     To the sheen of my naked soul.
     Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh
     The whole world leaps to my will,
     And the unslaked thirst of an Eden cursed
     Shall harrow the earth for its fill.
     Almighty God, when I drain life's glass
     Of all its rainbow gleams,
     The hapless plight of eternal night
     Shall be none too long for my dreams.

     “The man you drove from Eden's grove
              Was I, my Lord, was I,
     And I shall be there when the earth and the air
              Are rent from sea to sky;
     For it is my world, my gorgeous world,
              The world of my dear delight,
     From the brightest gleam of the Arctic stream
              To the dusk of my own love-night.”

Ernest always overworked. His wonderful constitution kept him up; but
even that constitution could not keep the tired look out of his eyes.
His dear, tired eyes! He never slept more than four and one-half hours
a night; yet he never found time to do all the work he wanted to do.
He never ceased from his activities as a propagandist, and was always
scheduled long in advance for lectures to workingmen's organizations.
Then there was the campaign. He did a man's full work in that alone.
With the suppression of the socialist publishing houses, his meagre
royalties ceased, and he was hard-put to make a living; for he had to
make a living in addition to all his other labor. He did a great deal
of translating for the magazines on scientific and philosophic subjects;
and, coming home late at night, worn out from the strain of the
campaign, he would plunge into his translating and toil on well into the
morning hours. And in addition to everything, there was his studying.
To the day of his death he kept up his studies, and he studied
prodigiously.

And yet he found time in which to love me and make me happy. But this
was accomplished only through my merging my life completely into his. I
learned shorthand and typewriting, and became his secretary. He insisted
that I succeeded in cutting his work in half; and so it was that I
schooled myself to understand his work. Our interests became mutual, and
we worked together and played together.

And then there were our sweet stolen moments in the midst of our
work--just a word, or caress, or flash of love-light; and our moments
were sweeter for being stolen. For we lived on the heights, where the
air was keen and sparkling, where the toil was for humanity, and where
sordidness and selfishness never entered. We loved love, and our love
was never smirched by anything less than the best. And this out of all
remains: I did not fail. I gave him rest--he who worked so hard for
others, my dear, tired-eyed mortalist.



CHAPTER XII

THE BISHOP


It was after my marriage that I chanced upon Bishop Morehouse. But I
must give the events in their proper sequence. After his outbreak at the
I. P. H. Convention, the Bishop, being a gentle soul, had yielded to
the friendly pressure brought to bear upon him, and had gone away on a
vacation. But he returned more fixed than ever in his determination
to preach the message of the Church. To the consternation of his
congregation, his first sermon was quite similar to the address he
had given before the Convention. Again he said, and at length and with
distressing detail, that the Church had wandered away from the Master's
teaching, and that Mammon had been instated in the place of Christ.

And the result was, willy-nilly, that he was led away to a private
sanitarium for mental disease, while in the newspapers appeared
pathetic accounts of his mental breakdown and of the saintliness of
his character. He was held a prisoner in the sanitarium. I called
repeatedly, but was denied access to him; and I was terribly impressed
by the tragedy of a sane, normal, saintly man being crushed by the
brutal will of society. For the Bishop was sane, and pure, and noble. As
Ernest said, all that was the matter with him was that he had incorrect
notions of biology and sociology, and because of his incorrect notions
he had not gone about it in the right way to rectify matters.

What terrified me was the Bishop's helplessness. If he persisted in the
truth as he saw it, he was doomed to an insane ward. And he could do
nothing. His money, his position, his culture, could not save him. His
views were perilous to society, and society could not conceive that such
perilous views could be the product of a sane mind. Or, at least, it
seems to me that such was society's attitude.

But the Bishop, in spite of the gentleness and purity of his spirit, was
possessed of guile. He apprehended clearly his danger. He saw himself
caught in the web, and he tried to escape from it. Denied help from his
friends, such as father and Ernest and I could have given, he was
left to battle for himself alone. And in the enforced solitude of the
sanitarium he recovered. He became again sane. His eyes ceased to see
visions; his brain was purged of the fancy that it was the duty of
society to feed the Master's lambs.

As I say, he became well, quite well, and the newspapers and the church
people hailed his return with joy. I went once to his church. The sermon
was of the same order as the ones he had preached long before his eyes
had seen visions. I was disappointed, shocked. Had society then beaten
him into submission? Was he a coward? Had he been bulldozed into
recanting? Or had the strain been too great for him, and had he meekly
surrendered to the juggernaut of the established?

I called upon him in his beautiful home. He was woefully changed. He was
thinner, and there were lines on his face which I had never seen before.
He was manifestly distressed by my coming. He plucked nervously at his
sleeve as we talked; and his eyes were restless, fluttering here, there,
and everywhere, and refusing to meet mine. His mind seemed preoccupied,
and there were strange pauses in his conversation, abrupt changes of
topic, and an inconsecutiveness that was bewildering. Could this, then,
be the firm-poised, Christ-like man I had known, with pure, limpid eyes
and a gaze steady and unfaltering as his soul? He had been man-handled;
he had been cowed into subjection. His spirit was too gentle. It had not
been mighty enough to face the organized wolf-pack of society.

I felt sad, unutterably sad. He talked ambiguously, and was so
apprehensive of what I might say that I had not the heart to catechise
him. He spoke in a far-away manner of his illness, and we talked
disjointedly about the church, the alterations in the organ, and about
petty charities; and he saw me depart with such evident relief that I
should have laughed had not my heart been so full of tears.

The poor little hero! If I had only known! He was battling like a giant,
and I did not guess it. Alone, all alone, in the midst of millions of
his fellow-men, he was fighting his fight. Torn by his horror of the
asylum and his fidelity to truth and the right, he clung steadfastly to
truth and the right; but so alone was he that he did not dare to trust
even me. He had learned his lesson well--too well.

But I was soon to know. One day the Bishop disappeared. He had told
nobody that he was going away; and as the days went by and he did not
reappear, there was much gossip to the effect that he had committed
suicide while temporarily deranged. But this idea was dispelled when it
was learned that he had sold all his possessions,--his city mansion, his
country house at Menlo Park, his paintings, and collections, and even
his cherished library. It was patent that he had made a clean and secret
sweep of everything before he disappeared.

This happened during the time when calamity had overtaken us in our own
affairs; and it was not till we were well settled in our new home that
we had opportunity really to wonder and speculate about the Bishop's
doings. And then, everything was suddenly made clear. Early one evening,
while it was yet twilight, I had run across the street and into the
butcher-shop to get some chops for Ernest's supper. We called the last
meal of the day “supper” in our new environment.

Just at the moment I came out of the butcher-shop, a man emerged from
the corner grocery that stood alongside. A queer sense familiarity made
me look again. But the man had turned and was walking rapidly away.
There was something about the slope of the shoulders and the fringe
of silver hair between coat collar and slouch hat that aroused vague
memories. Instead of crossing the street, I hurried after the man. I
quickened my pace, trying not to think the thoughts that formed unbidden
in my brain. No, it was impossible. It could not be--not in those faded
overalls, too long in the legs and frayed at the bottoms.

I paused, laughed at myself, and almost abandoned the chase. But the
haunting familiarity of those shoulders and that silver hair! Again
I hurried on. As I passed him, I shot a keen look at his face; then I
whirled around abruptly and confronted--the Bishop.

He halted with equal abruptness, and gasped. A large paper bag in his
right hand fell to the sidewalk. It burst, and about his feet and mine
bounced and rolled a flood of potatoes. He looked at me with surprise
and alarm, then he seemed to wilt away; the shoulders drooped with
dejection, and he uttered a deep sigh.

I held out my hand. He shook it, but his hand felt clammy. He cleared
his throat in embarrassment, and I could see the sweat starting out on
his forehead. It was evident that he was badly frightened.

“The potatoes,” he murmured faintly. “They are precious.”

Between us we picked them up and replaced them in the broken bag, which
he now held carefully in the hollow of his arm. I tried to tell him my
gladness at meeting him and that he must come right home with me.

“Father will be rejoiced to see you,” I said. “We live only a stone's
throw away.

“I can't,” he said, “I must be going. Good-by.”

He looked apprehensively about him, as though dreading discovery, and
made an attempt to walk on.

“Tell me where you live, and I shall call later,” he said, when he saw
that I walked beside him and that it was my intention to stick to him
now that he was found.

“No,” I answered firmly. “You must come now.”

He looked at the potatoes spilling on his arm, and at the small parcels
on his other arm.

“Really, it is impossible,” he said. “Forgive me for my rudeness. If you
only knew.”

He looked as if he were going to break down, but the next moment he had
himself in control.

“Besides, this food,” he went on. “It is a sad case. It is terrible. She
is an old woman. I must take it to her at once. She is suffering from
want of it. I must go at once. You understand. Then I will return. I
promise you.”

“Let me go with you,” I volunteered. “Is it far?”

He sighed again, and surrendered.

“Only two blocks,” he said. “Let us hasten.”

Under the Bishop's guidance I learned something of my own neighborhood.
I had not dreamed such wretchedness and misery existed in it. Of course,
this was because I did not concern myself with charity. I had become
convinced that Ernest was right when he sneered at charity as a
poulticing of an ulcer. Remove the ulcer, was his remedy; give to the
worker his product; pension as soldiers those who grow honorably old in
their toil, and there will be no need for charity. Convinced of this,
I toiled with him at the revolution, and did not exhaust my energy in
alleviating the social ills that continuously arose from the injustice
of the system.

I followed the Bishop into a small room, ten by twelve, in a rear
tenement. And there we found a little old German woman--sixty-four years
old, the Bishop said. She was surprised at seeing me, but she nodded a
pleasant greeting and went on sewing on the pair of men's trousers in
her lap. Beside her, on the floor, was a pile of trousers. The Bishop
discovered there was neither coal nor kindling, and went out to buy
some.

I took up a pair of trousers and examined her work.

“Six cents, lady,” she said, nodding her head gently while she went on
stitching. She stitched slowly, but never did she cease from stitching.
She seemed mastered by the verb “to stitch.”

“For all that work?” I asked. “Is that what they pay? How long does it
take you?”

“Yes,” she answered, “that is what they pay. Six cents for finishing.
Two hours' sewing on each pair.”

“But the boss doesn't know that,” she added quickly, betraying a fear
of getting him into trouble. “I'm slow. I've got the rheumatism in my
hands. Girls work much faster. They finish in half that time. The boss
is kind. He lets me take the work home, now that I am old and the noise
of the machine bothers my head. If it wasn't for his kindness, I'd
starve.

“Yes, those who work in the shop get eight cents. But what can you do?
There is not enough work for the young. The old have no chance. Often
one pair is all I can get. Sometimes, like to-day, I am given eight pair
to finish before night.”

I asked her the hours she worked, and she said it depended on the
season.

“In the summer, when there is a rush order, I work from five in the
morning to nine at night. But in the winter it is too cold. The hands do
not early get over the stiffness. Then you must work later--till after
midnight sometimes.

“Yes, it has been a bad summer. The hard times. God must be angry.
This is the first work the boss has given me in a week. It is true, one
cannot eat much when there is no work. I am used to it. I have sewed
all my life, in the old country and here in San Francisco--thirty-three
years.

“If you are sure of the rent, it is all right. The houseman is very
kind, but he must have his rent. It is fair. He only charges three
dollars for this room. That is cheap. But it is not easy for you to find
all of three dollars every month.”

She ceased talking, and, nodding her head, went on stitching.

“You have to be very careful as to how you spend your earnings,” I
suggested.

She nodded emphatically.

“After the rent it's not so bad. Of course you can't buy meat. And there
is no milk for the coffee. But always there is one meal a day, and often
two.”

She said this last proudly. There was a smack of success in her words.
But as she stitched on in silence, I noticed the sadness in her pleasant
eyes and the droop of her mouth. The look in her eyes became far away.
She rubbed the dimness hastily out of them; it interfered with her
stitching.

“No, it is not the hunger that makes the heart ache,” she explained.
“You get used to being hungry. It is for my child that I cry. It was
the machine that killed her. It is true she worked hard, but I cannot
understand. She was strong. And she was young--only forty; and she
worked only thirty years. She began young, it is true; but my man died.
The boiler exploded down at the works. And what were we to do? She was
ten, but she was very strong. But the machine killed her. Yes, it
did. It killed her, and she was the fastest worker in the shop. I have
thought about it often, and I know. That is why I cannot work in the
shop. The machine bothers my head. Always I hear it saying, 'I did it, I
did it.' And it says that all day long. And then I think of my daughter,
and I cannot work.”

The moistness was in her old eyes again, and she had to wipe it away
before she could go on stitching.

I heard the Bishop stumbling up the stairs, and I opened the door. What
a spectacle he was. On his back he carried half a sack of coal, with
kindling on top. Some of the coal dust had coated his face, and the
sweat from his exertions was running in streaks. He dropped his burden
in the corner by the stove and wiped his face on a coarse bandana
handkerchief. I could scarcely accept the verdict of my senses. The
Bishop, black as a coal-heaver, in a workingman's cheap cotton shirt
(one button was missing from the throat), and in overalls! That was the
most incongruous of all--the overalls, frayed at the bottoms, dragged
down at the heels, and held up by a narrow leather belt around the hips
such as laborers wear.

Though the Bishop was warm, the poor swollen hands of the old woman were
already cramping with the cold; and before we left her, the Bishop had
built the fire, while I had peeled the potatoes and put them on to boil.
I was to learn, as time went by, that there were many cases similar
to hers, and many worse, hidden away in the monstrous depths of the
tenements in my neighborhood.

We got back to find Ernest alarmed by my absence. After the first
surprise of greeting was over, the Bishop leaned back in his chair,
stretched out his overall-covered legs, and actually sighed a
comfortable sigh. We were the first of his old friends he had met since
his disappearance, he told us; and during the intervening weeks he must
have suffered greatly from loneliness. He told us much, though he told
us more of the joy he had experienced in doing the Master's bidding.

“For truly now,” he said, “I am feeding his lambs. And I have learned
a great lesson. The soul cannot be ministered to till the stomach is
appeased. His lambs must be fed bread and butter and potatoes and
meat; after that, and only after that, are their spirits ready for more
refined nourishment.”

He ate heartily of the supper I cooked. Never had he had such an
appetite at our table in the old days. We spoke of it, and he said that
he had never been so healthy in his life.

“I walk always now,” he said, and a blush was on his cheek at the
thought of the time when he rode in his carriage, as though it were a
sin not lightly to be laid.

“My health is better for it,” he added hastily. “And I am very
happy--indeed, most happy. At last I am a consecrated spirit.”

And yet there was in his face a permanent pain, the pain of the world
that he was now taking to himself. He was seeing life in the raw, and it
was a different life from what he had known within the printed books of
his library.

“And you are responsible for all this, young man,” he said directly to
Ernest.

Ernest was embarrassed and awkward.

“I--I warned you,” he faltered.

“No, you misunderstand,” the Bishop answered. “I speak not in reproach,
but in gratitude. I have you to thank for showing me my path. You led me
from theories about life to life itself. You pulled aside the veils from
the social shams. You were light in my darkness, but now I, too, see the
light. And I am very happy, only . . .” he hesitated painfully, and in
his eyes fear leaped large. “Only the persecution. I harm no one. Why
will they not let me alone? But it is not that. It is the nature of
the persecution. I shouldn't mind if they cut my flesh with stripes, or
burned me at the stake, or crucified me head--downward. But it is the
asylum that frightens me. Think of it! Of me--in an asylum for the
insane! It is revolting. I saw some of the cases at the sanitarium. They
were violent. My blood chills when I think of it. And to be imprisoned
for the rest of my life amid scenes of screaming madness! No! no! Not
that! Not that!”

It was pitiful. His hands shook, his whole body quivered and shrank away
from the picture he had conjured. But the next moment he was calm.

“Forgive me,” he said simply. “It is my wretched nerves. And if the
Master's work leads there, so be it. Who am I to complain?”

I felt like crying aloud as I looked at him: “Great Bishop! O hero!
God's hero!”

As the evening wore on we learned more of his doings.

“I sold my house--my houses, rather,” he said, “all my other possessions.
I knew I must do it secretly, else they would have taken everything away
from me. That would have been terrible. I often marvel these days at the
immense quantity of potatoes two or three hundred thousand dollars will
buy, or bread, or meat, or coal and kindling.” He turned to Ernest. “You
are right, young man. Labor is dreadfully underpaid. I never did a
bit of work in my life, except to appeal aesthetically to Pharisees--I
thought I was preaching the message--and yet I was worth half a million
dollars. I never knew what half a million dollars meant until I realized
how much potatoes and bread and butter and meat it could buy. And then
I realized something more. I realized that all those potatoes and that
bread and butter and meat were mine, and that I had not worked to make
them. Then it was clear to me, some one else had worked and made them
and been robbed of them. And when I came down amongst the poor I found
those who had been robbed and who were hungry and wretched because they
had been robbed.”

We drew him back to his narrative.

“The money? I have it deposited in many different banks under different
names. It can never be taken away from me, because it can never be
found. And it is so good, that money. It buys so much food. I never knew
before what money was good for.”

“I wish we could get some of it for the propaganda,” Ernest said
wistfully. “It would do immense good.”

“Do you think so?” the Bishop said. “I do not have much faith in
politics. In fact, I am afraid I do not understand politics.”

Ernest was delicate in such matters. He did not repeat his suggestion,
though he knew only too well the sore straits the Socialist Party was in
through lack of money.

“I sleep in cheap lodging houses,” the Bishop went on. “But I am afraid,
and never stay long in one place. Also, I rent two rooms in workingmen's
houses in different quarters of the city. It is a great extravagance,
I know, but it is necessary. I make up for it in part by doing my own
cooking, though sometimes I get something to eat in cheap coffee-houses.
And I have made a discovery. Tamales* are very good when the air grows
chilly late at night. Only they are so expensive. But I have discovered
a place where I can get three for ten cents. They are not so good as the
others, but they are very warming.

     * A Mexican dish, referred to occasionally in the literature
     of the times.  It is supposed that it was warmly seasoned.
     No recipe of it has come down to us.

“And so I have at last found my work in the world, thanks to you, young
man. It is the Master's work.” He looked at me, and his eyes twinkled.
“You caught me feeding his lambs, you know. And of course you will all
keep my secret.”

He spoke carelessly enough, but there was real fear behind the speech.
He promised to call upon us again. But a week later we read in the
newspaper of the sad case of Bishop Morehouse, who had been committed to
the Napa Asylum and for whom there were still hopes held out. In vain
we tried to see him, to have his case reconsidered or investigated. Nor
could we learn anything about him except the reiterated statements that
slight hopes were still held for his recovery.

“Christ told the rich young man to sell all he had,” Ernest said
bitterly. “The Bishop obeyed Christ's injunction and got locked up in a
madhouse. Times have changed since Christ's day. A rich man to-day who
gives all he has to the poor is crazy. There is no discussion. Society
has spoken.”



CHAPTER XIII

THE GENERAL STRIKE


Of course Ernest was elected to Congress in the great socialist
landslide that took place in the fall of 1912. One great factor that
helped to swell the socialist vote was the destruction of Hearst.*
This the Plutocracy found an easy task. It cost Hearst eighteen million
dollars a year to run his various papers, and this sum, and more, he got
back from the middle class in payment for advertising. The source of his
financial strength lay wholly in the middle class. The trusts did not
advertise.** To destroy Hearst, all that was necessary was to take away
from him his advertising.

     * William Randolph Hearst--a young California millionaire
     who became the most powerful newspaper owner in the country.
     His newspapers were published in all the large cities, and
     they appealed to the perishing middle class and to the
     proletariat.  So large was his following that he managed to
     take possession of the empty shell of the old Democratic
     Party.  He occupied an anomalous position, preaching an
     emasculated socialism combined with a nondescript sort of
     petty bourgeois capitalism.  It was oil and water, and there
     was no hope for him, though for a short period he was a
     source of serious apprehension to the Plutocrats.

     ** The cost of advertising was amazing in those helter-
     skelter times.  Only the small capitalists competed, and
     therefore they did the advertising.  There being no
     competition where there was a trust, there was no need for
     the trusts to advertise.

The whole middle class had not yet been exterminated. The sturdy
skeleton of it remained; but it was without power. The small
manufacturers and small business men who still survived were at the
complete mercy of the Plutocracy. They had no economic nor political
souls of their own. When the fiat of the Plutocracy went forth, they
withdrew their advertisements from the Hearst papers.

Hearst made a gallant fight. He brought his papers out at a loss of
a million and a half each month. He continued to publish the
advertisements for which he no longer received pay. Again the fiat of
the Plutocracy went forth, and the small business men and manufacturers
swamped him with a flood of notices that he must discontinue running
their old advertisements. Hearst persisted. Injunctions were served
on him. Still he persisted. He received six months' imprisonment for
contempt of court in disobeying the injunctions, while he was bankrupted
by countless damage suits. He had no chance. The Plutocracy had passed
sentence on him. The courts were in the hands of the Plutocracy to
carry the sentence out. And with Hearst crashed also to destruction the
Democratic Party that he had so recently captured.

With the destruction of Hearst and the Democratic Party, there were only
two paths for his following to take. One was into the Socialist Party;
the other was into the Republican Party. Then it was that we socialists
reaped the fruit of Hearst's pseudo-socialistic preaching; for the great
Majority of his followers came over to us.

The expropriation of the farmers that took place at this time would also
have swelled our vote had it not been for the brief and futile rise of
the Grange Party. Ernest and the socialist leaders fought fiercely to
capture the farmers; but the destruction of the socialist press
and publishing houses constituted too great a handicap, while the
mouth-to-mouth propaganda had not yet been perfected. So it was that
politicians like Mr. Calvin, who were themselves farmers long since
expropriated, captured the farmers and threw their political strength
away in a vain campaign.

“The poor farmers,” Ernest once laughed savagely; “the trusts have them
both coming and going.”

And that was really the situation. The seven great trusts, working
together, had pooled their enormous surpluses and made a farm trust.
The railroads, controlling rates, and the bankers and stock exchange
gamesters, controlling prices, had long since bled the farmers into
indebtedness. The bankers, and all the trusts for that matter, had
likewise long since loaned colossal amounts of money to the farmers. The
farmers were in the net. All that remained to be done was the drawing in
of the net. This the farm trust proceeded to do.

The hard times of 1912 had already caused a frightful slump in the farm
markets. Prices were now deliberately pressed down to bankruptcy,
while the railroads, with extortionate rates, broke the back of the
farmer-camel. Thus the farmers were compelled to borrow more and more,
while they were prevented from paying back old loans. Then ensued the
great foreclosing of mortgages and enforced collection of notes. The
farmers simply surrendered the land to the farm trust. There was nothing
else for them to do. And having surrendered the land, the farmers next
went to work for the farm trust, becoming managers, superintendents,
foremen, and common laborers. They worked for wages. They became
villeins, in short--serfs bound to the soil by a living wage. They could
not leave their masters, for their masters composed the Plutocracy.
They could not go to the cities, for there, also, the Plutocracy was
in control. They had but one alternative,--to leave the soil and become
vagrants, in brief, to starve. And even there they were frustrated, for
stringent vagrancy laws were passed and rigidly enforced.

Of course, here and there, farmers, and even whole communities of
farmers, escaped expropriation by virtue of exceptional conditions. But
they were merely strays and did not count, and they were gathered in
anyway during the following year.*

     * The destruction of the Roman yeomanry proceeded far less
     rapidly than the destruction of the American farmers and
     small capitalists. There was momentum in the twentieth
     century, while there was practically none in ancient Rome.

     Numbers of the farmers, impelled by an insane lust for the
     soil, and willing to show what beasts they could become,
     tried to escape expropriation by withdrawing from any and
     all market-dealing.  They sold nothing.  They bought
     nothing.  Among themselves a primitive barter began to
     spring up.  Their privation and hardships were terrible, but
     they persisted.  It became quite a movement, in fact. The
     manner in which they were beaten was unique and logical and
     simple.  The Plutocracy, by virtue of its possession of the
     government, raised their taxes.  It was the weak joint in
     their armor.  Neither buying nor selling, they had no money,
     and in the end their land was sold to pay the taxes.

Thus it was that in the fall of 1912 the socialist leaders, with the
exception of Ernest, decided that the end of capitalism had come. What
of the hard times and the consequent vast army of the unemployed; what
of the destruction of the farmers and the middle class; and what of the
decisive defeat administered all along the line to the labor unions; the
socialists were really justified in believing that the end of capitalism
had come and in themselves throwing down the gauntlet to the Plutocracy.

Alas, how we underestimated the strength of the enemy! Everywhere the
socialists proclaimed their coming victory at the ballot-box, while, in
unmistakable terms, they stated the situation. The Plutocracy accepted
the challenge. It was the Plutocracy, weighing and balancing, that
defeated us by dividing our strength. It was the Plutocracy, through its
secret agents, that raised the cry that socialism was sacrilegious
and atheistic; it was the Plutocracy that whipped the churches, and
especially the Catholic Church, into line, and robbed us of a portion of
the labor vote. And it was the Plutocracy, through its secret agents
of course, that encouraged the Grange Party and even spread it to the
cities into the ranks of the dying middle class.

Nevertheless the socialist landslide occurred. But, instead of a
sweeping victory with chief executive officers and majorities in all
legislative bodies, we found ourselves in the minority. It is true, we
elected fifty Congressmen; but when they took their seats in the spring
of 1913, they found themselves without power of any sort. Yet they
were more fortunate than the Grangers, who captured a dozen state
governments, and who, in the spring, were not permitted to take
possession of the captured offices. The incumbents refused to retire,
and the courts were in the hands of the Oligarchy. But this is too far
in advance of events. I have yet to tell of the stirring times of the
winter of 1912.

The hard times at home had caused an immense decrease in consumption.
Labor, out of work, had no wages with which to buy. The result was that
the Plutocracy found a greater surplus than ever on its hands. This
surplus it was compelled to dispose of abroad, and, what of its colossal
plans, it needed money. Because of its strenuous efforts to dispose of
the surplus in the world market, the Plutocracy clashed with Germany.
Economic clashes were usually succeeded by wars, and this particular
clash was no exception. The great German war-lord prepared, and so did
the United States prepare.

The war-cloud hovered dark and ominous. The stage was set for a
world-catastrophe, for in all the world were hard times, labor troubles,
perishing middle classes, armies of unemployed, clashes of economic
interests in the world-market, and mutterings and rumblings of the
socialist revolution.*

     * For a long time these mutterings and rumblings had been
     heard. As far back as 1906 A.D., Lord Avebury, an
     Englishman, uttered the following in the House of Lords:
     “The unrest in Europe, the spread of socialism, and the
     ominous rise of Anarchism, are warnings to the governments
     and the ruling classes that the condition of the working
     classes in Europe is becoming intolerable, and that if a
     revolution is to be avoided some steps must be taken to
     increase wages, reduce the hours of labor, and lower the
     prices of the necessaries of life.”  The Wall Street
     Journal, a stock gamesters' publication, in commenting upon
     Lord Avebury's speech, said: “These words were spoken by an
     aristocrat and a member of the most conservative body in all
     Europe.  That gives them all the more significance.  They
     contain more valuable political economy than is to be found
     in most of the books.  They sound a note of warning. Take
     heed, gentlemen of the war and navy departments!”

     At the same time, Sydney Brooks, writing in America, in
     Harper's Weekly, said: “You will not hear the socialists
     mentioned in Washington.  Why should you?  The politicians
     are always the last people in this country to see what is
     going on under their noses. They will jeer at me when I
     prophesy, and prophesy with the utmost confidence, that at
     the next presidential election the socialists will poll over
     a million votes.”

The Oligarchy wanted the war with Germany. And it wanted the war for a
dozen reasons. In the juggling of events such a war would cause, in the
reshuffling of the international cards and the making of new treaties
and alliances, the Oligarchy had much to gain. And, furthermore, the war
would consume many national surpluses, reduce the armies of unemployed
that menaced all countries, and give the Oligarchy a breathing space
in which to perfect its plans and carry them out. Such a war would
virtually put the Oligarchy in possession of the world-market. Also,
such a war would create a large standing army that need never be
disbanded, while in the minds of the people would be substituted
the issue, “America versus Germany,” in place of “Socialism versus
Oligarchy.”

And truly the war would have done all these things had it not been for
the socialists. A secret meeting of the Western leaders was held in our
four tiny rooms in Pell Street. Here was first considered the stand the
socialists were to take. It was not the first time we had put our foot
down upon war,* but it was the first time we had done so in the United
States. After our secret meeting we got in touch with the national
organization, and soon our code cables were passing back and forth
across the Atlantic between us and the International Bureau.

     * It was at the very beginning of the twentieth century
     A.D., that the international organization of the socialists
     finally formulated their long-maturing policy on war.
     Epitomized their doctrine was: “Why should the workingmen of
     one country fight with the workingmen of another country for
     the benefit of their capitalist masters?”

     On May 21, 1905 A.D., when war threatened between Austria
     and Italy, the socialists of Italy, Austria, and Hungary
     held a conference at Trieste, and threatened a general
     strike of the workingmen of both countries in case war was
     declared.  This was repeated the following year, when the
     “Morocco Affair” threatened to involve France, Germany, and
     England.

The German socialists were ready to act with us. There were over five
million of them, many of them in the standing army, and, in addition,
they were on friendly terms with the labor unions. In both countries the
socialists came out in bold declaration against the war and threatened
the general strike. And in the meantime they made preparation for the
general strike. Furthermore, the revolutionary parties in all countries
gave public utterance to the socialist principle of international peace
that must be preserved at all hazards, even to the extent of revolt and
revolution at home.

The general strike was the one great victory we American socialists
won. On the 4th of December the American minister was withdrawn from
the German capital. That night a German fleet made a dash on Honolulu,
sinking three American cruisers and a revenue cutter, and bombarding
the city. Next day both Germany and the United States declared war,
and within an hour the socialists called the general strike in both
countries.

For the first time the German war-lord faced the men of his empire
who made his empire go. Without them he could not run his empire. The
novelty of the situation lay in that their revolt was passive. They
did not fight. They did nothing. And by doing nothing they tied their
war-lord's hands. He would have asked for nothing better than an
opportunity to loose his war-dogs on his rebellious proletariat. But
this was denied him. He could not loose his war-dogs. Neither could
he mobilize his army to go forth to war, nor could he punish his
recalcitrant subjects. Not a wheel moved in his empire. Not a train ran,
not a telegraphic message went over the wires, for the telegraphers and
railroad men had ceased work along with the rest of the population.

And as it was in Germany, so it was in the United States. At last
organized labor had learned its lesson. Beaten decisively on its own
chosen field, it had abandoned that field and come over to the political
field of the socialists; for the general strike was a political strike.
Besides, organized labor had been so badly beaten that it did not care.
It joined in the general strike out of sheer desperation. The workers
threw down their tools and left their tasks by the millions. Especially
notable were the machinists. Their heads were bloody, their organization
had apparently been destroyed, yet out they came, along with their
allies in the metal-working trades.

Even the common laborers and all unorganized labor ceased work. The
strike had tied everything up so that nobody could work. Besides, the
women proved to be the strongest promoters of the strike. They set their
faces against the war. They did not want their men to go forth to
die. Then, also, the idea of the general strike caught the mood of the
people. It struck their sense of humor. The idea was infectious. The
children struck in all the schools, and such teachers as came, went home
again from deserted class rooms. The general strike took the form of
a great national picnic. And the idea of the solidarity of labor, so
evidenced, appealed to the imagination of all. And, finally, there was
no danger to be incurred by the colossal frolic. When everybody was
guilty, how was anybody to be punished?

The United States was paralyzed. No one knew what was happening. There
were no newspapers, no letters, no despatches. Every community was as
completely isolated as though ten thousand miles of primeval wilderness
stretched between it and the rest of the world. For that matter, the
world had ceased to exist. And for a week this state of affairs was
maintained.

In San Francisco we did not know what was happening even across the bay
in Oakland or Berkeley. The effect on one's sensibilities was weird,
depressing. It seemed as though some great cosmic thing lay dead. The
pulse of the land had ceased to beat. Of a truth the nation had died.
There were no wagons rumbling on the streets, no factory whistles, no
hum of electricity in the air, no passing of street cars, no cries
of news-boys--nothing but persons who at rare intervals went by like
furtive ghosts, themselves oppressed and made unreal by the silence.

And during that week of silence the Oligarchy was taught its lesson. And
well it learned the lesson. The general strike was a warning. It should
never occur again. The Oligarchy would see to that.

At the end of the week, as had been prearranged, the telegraphers of
Germany and the United States returned to their posts. Through them the
socialist leaders of both countries presented their ultimatum to the
rulers. The war should be called off, or the general strike would
continue. It did not take long to come to an understanding. The war was
declared off, and the populations of both countries returned to their
tasks.

It was this renewal of peace that brought about the alliance between
Germany and the United States. In reality, this was an alliance between
the Emperor and the Oligarchy, for the purpose of meeting their common
foe, the revolutionary proletariat of both countries. And it was this
alliance that the Oligarchy afterward so treacherously broke when the
German socialists rose and drove the war-lord from his throne. It was
the very thing the Oligarchy had played for--the destruction of its
great rival in the world-market. With the German Emperor out of the way,
Germany would have no surplus to sell abroad. By the very nature of
the socialist state, the German population would consume all that it
produced. Of course, it would trade abroad certain things it produced
for things it did not produce; but this would be quite different from an
unconsumable surplus.

“I'll wager the Oligarchy finds justification,” Ernest said, when its
treachery to the German Emperor became known. “As usual, the Oligarchy
will believe it has done right.”

And sure enough. The Oligarchy's public defence for the act was that it
had done it for the sake of the American people whose interests it was
looking out for. It had flung its hated rival out of the world-market
and enabled us to dispose of our surplus in that market.

“And the howling folly of it is that we are so helpless that such idiots
really are managing our interests,” was Ernest's comment. “They have
enabled us to sell more abroad, which means that we'll be compelled to
consume less at home.”



CHAPTER XIV

THE BEGINNING OF THE END


As early as January, 1913, Ernest saw the true trend of affairs, but
he could not get his brother leaders to see the vision of the Iron
Heel that had arisen in his brain. They were too confident. Events were
rushing too rapidly to culmination. A crisis had come in world
affairs. The American Oligarchy was practically in possession of the
world-market, and scores of countries were flung out of that market with
unconsumable and unsalable surpluses on their hands. For such countries
nothing remained but reorganization. They could not continue their
method of producing surpluses. The capitalistic system, so far as they
were concerned, had hopelessly broken down.

The reorganization of these countries took the form of revolution.
It was a time of confusion and violence. Everywhere institutions and
governments were crashing. Everywhere, with the exception of two or
three countries, the erstwhile capitalist masters fought bitterly for
their possessions. But the governments were taken away from them by the
militant proletariat. At last was being realized Karl Marx's classic:
“The knell of private capitalist property sounds. The expropriators
are expropriated.” And as fast as capitalistic governments crashed,
cooperative commonwealths arose in their place.

“Why does the United States lag behind?”; “Get busy, you American
revolutionists!”; “What's the matter with America?”--were the messages
sent to us by our successful comrades in other lands. But we could not
keep up. The Oligarchy stood in the way. Its bulk, like that of some
huge monster, blocked our path.

“Wait till we take office in the spring,” we answered. “Then you'll
see.”

Behind this lay our secret. We had won over the Grangers, and in the
spring a dozen states would pass into their hands by virtue of the
elections of the preceding fall. At once would be instituted a dozen
cooperative commonwealth states. After that, the rest would be easy.

“But what if the Grangers fail to get possession?” Ernest demanded. And
his comrades called him a calamity howler.

But this failure to get possession was not the chief danger that Ernest
had in mind. What he foresaw was the defection of the great labor unions
and the rise of the castes.

“Ghent has taught the oligarchs how to do it,” Ernest said. “I'll wager
they've made a text-book out of his 'Benevolent Feudalism.'”*

     * “Our Benevolent Feudalism,” a book published in 1902 A.D.,
     by W. J. Ghent.  It has always been insisted that Ghent put
     the idea of the Oligarchy into the minds of the great
     capitalists.  This belief persists throughout the literature
     of the three centuries of the Iron Heel, and even in the
     literature of the first century of the Brotherhood of Man.
     To-day we know better, but our knowledge does not overcome
     the fact that Ghent remains the most abused innocent man in
     all history.

Never shall I forget the night when, after a hot discussion with half a
dozen labor leaders, Ernest turned to me and said quietly: “That settles
it. The Iron Heel has won. The end is in sight.”

This little conference in our home was unofficial; but Ernest, like the
rest of his comrades, was working for assurances from the labor leaders
that they would call out their men in the next general strike. O'Connor,
the president of the Association of Machinists, had been foremost of the
six leaders present in refusing to give such assurance.

“You have seen that you were beaten soundly at your old tactics of
strike and boycott,” Ernest urged.

O'Connor and the others nodded their heads.

“And you saw what a general strike would do,” Ernest went on. “We
stopped the war with Germany. Never was there so fine a display of the
solidarity and the power of labor. Labor can and will rule the world.
If you continue to stand with us, we'll put an end to the reign of
capitalism. It is your only hope. And what is more, you know it. There
is no other way out. No matter what you do under your old tactics, you
are doomed to defeat, if for no other reason because the masters control
the courts.” *

     * As a sample of the decisions of the courts adverse to
     labor, the following instances are given.  In the coal-
     mining regions the employment of children was notorious.  In
     1905 A.D., labor succeeded in getting a law passed in
     Pennsylvania providing that proof of the age of the child
     and of certain educational qualifications must accompany the
     oath of the parent.  This was promptly declared
     unconstitutional by the Luzerne County Court, on the ground
     that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment in that it
     discriminated between individuals of the same class--namely,
     children above fourteen years of age and children below.
     The state court sustained the decision.  The New York Court
     of Special Sessions, in 1905 A.D., declared unconstitutional
     the law prohibiting minors and women from working in
     factories after nine o'clock at night, the ground taken
     being that such a law was “class legislation.”  Again, the
     bakers of that time were terribly overworked.  The New York
     Legislature passed a law restricting work in bakeries to ten
     hours a day.  In 1906 A.D., the Supreme Court of the United
     States declared this law to be unconstitutional.  In part
     the decision read: “There is no reasonable ground for
     interfering with the liberty of persons or the right of free
     contract by determining the hours of labor in the occupation
     of a baker.”

“You run ahead too fast,” O'Connor answered. “You don't know all the
ways out. There is another way out. We know what we're about. We're sick
of strikes. They've got us beaten that way to a frazzle. But I don't
think we'll ever need to call our men out again.”

“What is your way out?” Ernest demanded bluntly.

O'Connor laughed and shook his head. “I can tell you this much: We've
not been asleep. And we're not dreaming now.”

“There's nothing to be afraid of, or ashamed of, I hope,” Ernest
challenged.

“I guess we know our business best,” was the retort.

“It's a dark business, from the way you hide it,” Ernest said with
growing anger.

“We've paid for our experience in sweat and blood, and we've earned all
that's coming to us,” was the reply. “Charity begins at home.”

“If you're afraid to tell me your way out, I'll tell it to you.”
 Ernest's blood was up. “You're going in for grab-sharing. You've made
terms with the enemy, that's what you've done. You've sold out the cause
of labor, of all labor. You are leaving the battle-field like cowards.”

“I'm not saying anything,” O'Connor answered sullenly. “Only I guess we
know what's best for us a little bit better than you do.”

“And you don't care a cent for what is best for the rest of labor. You
kick it into the ditch.”

“I'm not saying anything,” O'Connor replied, “except that I'm president
of the Machinists' Association, and it's my business to consider the
interests of the men I represent, that's all.”

And then, when the labor leaders had left, Ernest, with the calmness of
defeat, outlined to me the course of events to come.

“The socialists used to foretell with joy,” he said, “the coming of the
day when organized labor, defeated on the industrial field, would come
over on to the political field. Well, the Iron Heel has defeated
the labor unions on the industrial field and driven them over to the
political field; and instead of this being joyful for us, it will be
a source of grief. The Iron Heel learned its lesson. We showed it our
power in the general strike. It has taken steps to prevent another
general strike.”

“But how?” I asked.

“Simply by subsidizing the great unions. They won't join in the next
general strike. Therefore it won't be a general strike.”

“But the Iron Heel can't maintain so costly a programme forever,” I
objected.

“Oh, it hasn't subsidized all of the unions. That's not necessary. Here
is what is going to happen. Wages are going to be advanced and hours
shortened in the railroad unions, the iron and steel workers unions,
and the engineer and machinist unions. In these unions more favorable
conditions will continue to prevail. Membership in these unions will
become like seats in Paradise.”

“Still I don't see,” I objected. “What is to become of the other unions?
There are far more unions outside of this combination than in it.”

“The other unions will be ground out of existence--all of them. For,
don't you see, the railway men, machinists and engineers, iron and
steel workers, do all of the vitally essential work in our machine
civilization. Assured of their faithfulness, the Iron Heel can snap
its fingers at all the rest of labor. Iron, steel, coal, machinery, and
transportation constitute the backbone of the whole industrial fabric.”

“But coal?” I queried. “There are nearly a million coal miners.”

They are practically unskilled labor. They will not count. Their wages
will go down and their hours will increase. They will be slaves like all
the rest of us, and they will become about the most bestial of all of
us. They will be compelled to work, just as the farmers are compelled
to work now for the masters who robbed them of their land. And the same
with all the other unions outside the combination. Watch them wobble and
go to pieces, and their members become slaves driven to toil by empty
stomachs and the law of the land.

“Do you know what will happen to Farley* and his strike-breakers? I'll
tell you. Strike-breaking as an occupation will cease. There won't be
any more strikes. In place of strikes will be slave revolts. Farley and
his gang will be promoted to slave-driving. Oh, it won't be called
that; it will be called enforcing the law of the land that compels the
laborers to work. It simply prolongs the fight, this treachery of the
big unions. Heaven only knows now where and when the Revolution will
triumph.”

     * James Farley--a notorious strike-breaker of the period.  A
     man more courageous than ethical, and of undeniable ability.
     He rose high under the rule of the Iron Heel and finally was
     translated into the oligarch class.  He was assassinated in
     1932 by Sarah Jenkins, whose husband, thirty years before,
     had been killed by Farley's strike-breakers.

“But with such a powerful combination as the Oligarchy and the big
unions, is there any reason to believe that the Revolution will ever
triumph?” I queried. “May not the combination endure forever?”

He shook his head. “One of our generalizations is that every system
founded upon class and caste contains within itself the germs of its own
decay. When a system is founded upon class, how can caste be prevented?
The Iron Heel will not be able to prevent it, and in the end caste will
destroy the Iron Heel. The oligarchs have already developed caste among
themselves; but wait until the favored unions develop caste. The Iron
Heel will use all its power to prevent it, but it will fail.

“In the favored unions are the flower of the American workingmen. They
are strong, efficient men. They have become members of those unions
through competition for place. Every fit workman in the United States
will be possessed by the ambition to become a member of the favored
unions. The Oligarchy will encourage such ambition and the consequent
competition. Thus will the strong men, who might else be revolutionists,
be won away and their strength used to bolster the Oligarchy.

“On the other hand, the labor castes, the members of the favored unions,
will strive to make their organizations into close corporations.
And they will succeed. Membership in the labor castes will become
hereditary. Sons will succeed fathers, and there will be no inflow of
new strength from that eternal reservoir of strength, the common people.
This will mean deterioration of the labor castes, and in the end they
will become weaker and weaker. At the same time, as an institution, they
will become temporarily all-powerful. They will be like the guards of
the palace in old Rome, and there will be palace revolutions whereby
the labor castes will seize the reins of power. And there will be
counter-palace revolutions of the oligarchs, and sometimes the one, and
sometimes the other, will be in power. And through it all the inevitable
caste-weakening will go on, so that in the end the common people will
come into their own.”

This foreshadowing of a slow social evolution was made when Ernest was
first depressed by the defection of the great unions. I never agreed
with him in it, and I disagree now, as I write these lines, more
heartily than ever; for even now, though Ernest is gone, we are on the
verge of the revolt that will sweep all oligarchies away. Yet I have
here given Ernest's prophecy because it was his prophecy. In spite of
his belief in it, he worked like a giant against it, and he, more than
any man, has made possible the revolt that even now waits the signal to
burst forth.*

     * Everhard's social foresight was remarkable.  As clearly as
     in the light of past events, he saw the defection of the
     favored unions, the rise and the slow decay of the labor
     castes, and the struggle between the decaying oligarchs and
     labor castes for control of the great governmental machine.

“But if the Oligarchy persists,” I asked him that evening, “what will
become of the great surpluses that will fall to its share every year?”

“The surpluses will have to be expended somehow,” he answered; “and
trust the oligarchs to find a way. Magnificent roads will be built.
There will be great achievements in science, and especially in art. When
the oligarchs have completely mastered the people, they will have time
to spare for other things. They will become worshippers of beauty.
They will become art-lovers. And under their direction and generously
rewarded, will toil the artists. The result will be great art; for no
longer, as up to yesterday, will the artists pander to the bourgeois
taste of the middle class. It will be great art, I tell you, and wonder
cities will arise that will make tawdry and cheap the cities of old
time. And in these cities will the oligarchs dwell and worship beauty.*

     * We cannot but marvel at Everhard's foresight.  Before ever
     the thought of wonder cities like Ardis and Asgard entered
     the minds of the oligarchs, Everhard saw those cities and
     the inevitable necessity for their creation.

“Thus will the surplus be constantly expended while labor does the work.
The building of these great works and cities will give a starvation
ration to millions of common laborers, for the enormous bulk of the
surplus will compel an equally enormous expenditure, and the oligarchs
will build for a thousand years--ay, for ten thousand years. They will
build as the Egyptians and the Babylonians never dreamed of building;
and when the oligarchs have passed away, their great roads and their
wonder cities will remain for the brotherhood of labor to tread upon and
dwell within.*

     * And since that day of prophecy, have passed away the three
     centuries of the Iron Heel and the four centuries of the
     Brotherhood of Man, and to-day we tread the roads and dwell
     in the cities that the oligarchs built.  It is true, we are
     even now building still more wonderful wonder cities, but
     the wonder cities of the oligarchs endure, and I write these
     lines in Ardis, one of the most wonderful of them all.

“These things the oligarchs will do because they cannot help doing them.
These great works will be the form their expenditure of the surplus will
take, and in the same way that the ruling classes of Egypt of long ago
expended the surplus they robbed from the people by the building of
temples and pyramids. Under the oligarchs will flourish, not a priest
class, but an artist class. And in place of the merchant class of
bourgeoisie will be the labor castes. And beneath will be the abyss,
wherein will fester and starve and rot, and ever renew itself, the
common people, the great bulk of the population. And in the end, who
knows in what day, the common people will rise up out of the abyss; the
labor castes and the Oligarchy will crumble away; and then, at last,
after the travail of the centuries, will it be the day of the common
man. I had thought to see that day; but now I know that I shall never
see it.”

He paused and looked at me, and added:

“Social evolution is exasperatingly slow, isn't it, sweetheart?”

My arms were about him, and his head was on my breast.

“Sing me to sleep,” he murmured whimsically. “I have had a visioning,
and I wish to forget.”



CHAPTER XV

LAST DAYS


It was near the end of January, 1913, that the changed attitude of the
Oligarchy toward the favored unions was made public. The newspapers
published information of an unprecedented rise in wages and shortening
of hours for the railroad employees, the iron and steel workers, and
the engineers and machinists. But the whole truth was not told. The
oligarchs did not dare permit the telling of the whole truth. In
reality, the wages had been raised much higher, and the privileges were
correspondingly greater. All this was secret, but secrets will out.
Members of the favored unions told their wives, and the wives gossiped,
and soon all the labor world knew what had happened.

It was merely the logical development of what in the nineteenth century
had been known as grab-sharing. In the industrial warfare of that time,
profit-sharing had been tried. That is, the capitalists had striven to
placate the workers by interesting them financially in their work.
But profit-sharing, as a system, was ridiculous and impossible.
Profit-sharing could be successful only in isolated cases in the midst
of a system of industrial strife; for if all labor and all capital
shared profits, the same conditions would obtain as did obtain when
there was no profit-sharing.

So, out of the unpractical idea of profit-sharing, arose the practical
idea of grab-sharing. “Give us more pay and charge it to the public,”
 was the slogan of the strong unions.* And here and there this selfish
policy worked successfully. In charging it to the public, it was charged
to the great mass of unorganized labor and of weakly organized labor.
These workers actually paid the increased wages of their stronger
brothers who were members of unions that were labor monopolies. This
idea, as I say, was merely carried to its logical conclusion, on a large
scale, by the combination of the oligarchs and the favored unions.

     * All the railroad unions entered into this combination with
     the oligarchs, and it is of interest to note that the first
     definite application of the policy of profit-grabbing was
     made by a railroad union in the nineteenth century A.D.,
     namely, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.  P. M.
     Arthur was for twenty years Grand Chief of the Brotherhood.
     After the strike on the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1877, he
     broached a scheme to have the Locomotive Engineers make
     terms with the railroads and to “go it alone” so far as the
     rest of the labor unions were concerned.  This scheme was
     eminently successful.  It was as successful as it was
     selfish, and out of it was coined the word “arthurization,”
      to denote grab-sharing on the part of labor unions.  This
     word “arthurization” has long puzzled the etymologists, but
     its derivation, I hope, is now made clear.

As soon as the secret of the defection of the favored unions leaked
out, there were rumblings and mutterings in the labor world. Next, the
favored unions withdrew from the international organizations and broke
off all affiliations. Then came trouble and violence. The members of the
favored unions were branded as traitors, and in saloons and brothels, on
the streets and at work, and, in fact, everywhere, they were assaulted
by the comrades they had so treacherously deserted.

Countless heads were broken, and there were many killed. No member of
the favored unions was safe. They gathered together in bands in order to
go to work or to return from work. They walked always in the middle
of the street. On the sidewalk they were liable to have their skulls
crushed by bricks and cobblestones thrown from windows and house-tops.
They were permitted to carry weapons, and the authorities aided them
in every way. Their persecutors were sentenced to long terms in prison,
where they were harshly treated; while no man, not a member of the
favored unions, was permitted to carry weapons. Violation of this law
was made a high misdemeanor and punished accordingly.

Outraged labor continued to wreak vengeance on the traitors. Caste lines
formed automatically. The children of the traitors were persecuted
by the children of the workers who had been betrayed, until it was
impossible for the former to play on the streets or to attend the public
schools. Also, the wives and families of the traitors were ostracized,
while the corner groceryman who sold provisions to them was boycotted.

As a result, driven back upon themselves from every side, the traitors
and their families became clannish. Finding it impossible to dwell in
safety in the midst of the betrayed proletariat, they moved into new
localities inhabited by themselves alone. In this they were favored by
the oligarchs. Good dwellings, modern and sanitary, were built for them,
surrounded by spacious yards, and separated here and there by parks and
playgrounds. Their children attended schools especially built for
them, and in these schools manual training and applied science were
specialized upon. Thus, and unavoidably, at the very beginning, out of
this segregation arose caste. The members of the favored unions became
the aristocracy of labor. They were set apart from the rest of labor.
They were better housed, better clothed, better fed, better treated.
They were grab-sharing with a vengeance.

In the meantime, the rest of the working class was more harshly treated.
Many little privileges were taken away from it, while its wages and its
standard of living steadily sank down. Incidentally, its public schools
deteriorated, and education slowly ceased to be compulsory. The increase
in the younger generation of children who could not read nor write was
perilous.

The capture of the world-market by the United States had disrupted the
rest of the world. Institutions and governments were everywhere crashing
or transforming. Germany, Italy, France, Australia, and New Zealand were
busy forming cooperative commonwealths. The British Empire was falling
apart. England's hands were full. In India revolt was in full swing. The
cry in all Asia was, “Asia for the Asiatics!” And behind this cry was
Japan, ever urging and aiding the yellow and brown races against the
white. And while Japan dreamed of continental empire and strove to
realize the dream, she suppressed her own proletarian revolution. It
was a simple war of the castes, Coolie versus Samurai, and the coolie
socialists were executed by tens of thousands. Forty thousand were
killed in the street-fighting of Tokio and in the futile assault on
the Mikado's palace. Kobe was a shambles; the slaughter of the cotton
operatives by machine-guns became classic as the most terrific execution
ever achieved by modern war machines. Most savage of all was the
Japanese Oligarchy that arose. Japan dominated the East, and took
to herself the whole Asiatic portion of the world-market, with the
exception of India.

England managed to crush her own proletarian revolution and to hold on
to India, though she was brought to the verge of exhaustion. Also, she
was compelled to let her great colonies slip away from her. So it was
that the socialists succeeded in making Australia and New Zealand into
cooperative commonwealths. And it was for the same reason that Canada
was lost to the mother country. But Canada crushed her own socialist
revolution, being aided in this by the Iron Heel. At the same time, the
Iron Heel helped Mexico and Cuba to put down revolt. The result was that
the Iron Heel was firmly established in the New World. It had welded
into one compact political mass the whole of North America from the
Panama Canal to the Arctic Ocean.

And England, at the sacrifice of her great colonies, had succeeded only
in retaining India. But this was no more than temporary. The struggle
with Japan and the rest of Asia for India was merely delayed. England
was destined shortly to lose India, while behind that event loomed the
struggle between a united Asia and the world.

And while all the world was torn with conflict, we of the United States
were not placid and peaceful. The defection of the great unions had
prevented our proletarian revolt, but violence was everywhere. In
addition to the labor troubles, and the discontent of the farmers and of
the remnant of the middle class, a religious revival had blazed up. An
offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists sprang into sudden prominence,
proclaiming the end of the world.

“Confusion thrice confounded!” Ernest cried. “How can we hope for
solidarity with all these cross purposes and conflicts?”

And truly the religious revival assumed formidable proportions. The
people, what of their wretchedness, and of their disappointment in
all things earthly, were ripe and eager for a heaven where industrial
tyrants entered no more than camels passed through needle-eyes.
Wild-eyed itinerant preachers swarmed over the land; and despite
the prohibition of the civil authorities, and the persecution for
disobedience, the flames of religious frenzy were fanned by countless
camp-meetings.

It was the last days, they claimed, the beginning of the end of the
world. The four winds had been loosed. God had stirred the nations
to strife. It was a time of visions and miracles, while seers and
prophetesses were legion. The people ceased work by hundreds of
thousands and fled to the mountains, there to await the imminent coming
of God and the rising of the hundred and forty and four thousand to
heaven. But in the meantime God did not come, and they starved to death
in great numbers. In their desperation they ravaged the farms for food,
and the consequent tumult and anarchy in the country districts but
increased the woes of the poor expropriated farmers.

Also, the farms and warehouses were the property of the Iron Heel.
Armies of troops were put into the field, and the fanatics were herded
back at the bayonet point to their tasks in the cities. There they broke
out in ever recurring mobs and riots. Their leaders were executed for
sedition or confined in madhouses. Those who were executed went to their
deaths with all the gladness of martyrs. It was a time of madness. The
unrest spread. In the swamps and deserts and waste places, from Florida
to Alaska, the small groups of Indians that survived were dancing ghost
dances and waiting the coming of a Messiah of their own.

And through it all, with a serenity and certitude that was terrifying,
continued to rise the form of that monster of the ages, the Oligarchy.
With iron hand and iron heel it mastered the surging millions, out
of confusion brought order, out of the very chaos wrought its own
foundation and structure.

“Just wait till we get in,” the Grangers said--Calvin said it to us in
our Pell Street quarters. “Look at the states we've captured. With you
socialists to back us, we'll make them sing another song when we take
office.”

“The millions of the discontented and the impoverished are ours,” the
socialists said. “The Grangers have come over to us, the farmers, the
middle class, and the laborers. The capitalist system will fall to
pieces. In another month we send fifty men to Congress. Two years
hence every office will be ours, from the President down to the local
dog-catcher.”

To all of which Ernest would shake his head and say:

“How many rifles have you got? Do you know where you can get plenty
of lead? When it comes to powder, chemical mixtures are better than
mechanical mixtures, you take my word.”



CHAPTER XVI

THE END


When it came time for Ernest and me to go to Washington, father did not
accompany us. He had become enamoured of proletarian life. He looked
upon our slum neighborhood as a great sociological laboratory, and
he had embarked upon an apparently endless orgy of investigation. He
chummed with the laborers, and was an intimate in scores of homes.
Also, he worked at odd jobs, and the work was play as well as learned
investigation, for he delighted in it and was always returning home with
copious notes and bubbling over with new adventures. He was the perfect
scientist.

There was no need for his working at all, because Ernest managed to earn
enough from his translating to take care of the three of us. But father
insisted on pursuing his favorite phantom, and a protean phantom it was,
judging from the jobs he worked at. I shall never forget the evening he
brought home his street pedler's outfit of shoe-laces and suspenders,
nor the time I went into the little corner grocery to make some purchase
and had him wait on me. After that I was not surprised when he tended
bar for a week in the saloon across the street. He worked as a night
watchman, hawked potatoes on the street, pasted labels in a cannery
warehouse, was utility man in a paper-box factory, and water-carrier
for a street railway construction gang, and even joined the Dishwashers'
Union just before it fell to pieces.

I think the Bishop's example, so far as wearing apparel was concerned,
must have fascinated father, for he wore the cheap cotton shirt of the
laborer and the overalls with the narrow strap about the hips. Yet one
habit remained to him from the old life; he always dressed for dinner,
or supper, rather.

I could be happy anywhere with Ernest; and father's happiness in our
changed circumstances rounded out my own happiness.

“When I was a boy,” father said, “I was very curious. I wanted to know
why things were and how they came to pass. That was why I became a
physicist. The life in me to-day is just as curious as it was in my
boyhood, and it's the being curious that makes life worth living.”

Sometimes he ventured north of Market Street into the shopping and
theatre district, where he sold papers, ran errands, and opened cabs.
There, one day, closing a cab, he encountered Mr. Wickson. In high glee
father described the incident to us that evening.

“Wickson looked at me sharply when I closed the door on him, and
muttered, 'Well, I'll be damned.' Just like that he said it, 'Well, I'll
be damned.' His face turned red and he was so confused that he forgot to
tip me. But he must have recovered himself quickly, for the cab hadn't
gone fifty feet before it turned around and came back. He leaned out of
the door.

“'Look here, Professor,' he said, 'this is too much. What can I do for
you?'

“'I closed the cab door for you,' I answered. 'According to common
custom you might give me a dime.'

“'Bother that!' he snorted. 'I mean something substantial.'

“He was certainly serious--a twinge of ossified conscience or something;
and so I considered with grave deliberation for a moment.

“His face was quite expectant when I began my answer, but you should
have seen it when I finished.

“'You might give me back my home,' I said, 'and my stock in the Sierra
Mills.'”

Father paused.

“What did he say?” I questioned eagerly.

“What could he say? He said nothing. But I said. 'I hope you are happy.'
He looked at me curiously. 'Tell me, are you happy?'” I asked.

“He ordered the cabman to drive on, and went away swearing horribly. And
he didn't give me the dime, much less the home and stock; so you see, my
dear, your father's street-arab career is beset with disappointments.”

And so it was that father kept on at our Pell Street quarters, while
Ernest and I went to Washington. Except for the final consummation, the
old order had passed away, and the final consummation was nearer than
I dreamed. Contrary to our expectation, no obstacles were raised to
prevent the socialist Congressmen from taking their seats. Everything
went smoothly, and I laughed at Ernest when he looked upon the very
smoothness as something ominous.

We found our socialist comrades confident, optimistic of their strength
and of the things they would accomplish. A few Grangers who had been
elected to Congress increased our strength, and an elaborate programme
of what was to be done was prepared by the united forces. In all of
which Ernest joined loyally and energetically, though he could not
forbear, now and again, from saying, apropos of nothing in particular,
“When it comes to powder, chemical mixtures are better than mechanical
mixtures, you take my word.”

The trouble arose first with the Grangers in the various states they had
captured at the last election. There were a dozen of these states, but
the Grangers who had been elected were not permitted to take office. The
incumbents refused to get out. It was very simple. They merely charged
illegality in the elections and wrapped up the whole situation in the
interminable red tape of the law. The Grangers were powerless. The
courts were in the hands of their enemies.

This was the moment of danger. If the cheated Grangers became violent,
all was lost. How we socialists worked to hold them back! There were
days and nights when Ernest never closed his eyes in sleep. The big
leaders of the Grangers saw the peril and were with us to a man. But
it was all of no avail. The Oligarchy wanted violence, and it set
its agents-provocateurs to work. Without discussion, it was the
agents-provocateurs who caused the Peasant Revolt.

In a dozen states the revolt flared up. The expropriated farmers
took forcible possession of the state governments. Of course this was
unconstitutional, and of course the United States put its soldiers into
the field. Everywhere the agents-provocateurs urged the people on. These
emissaries of the Iron Heel disguised themselves as artisans, farmers,
and farm laborers. In Sacramento, the capital of California, the
Grangers had succeeded in maintaining order. Thousands of secret agents
were rushed to the devoted city. In mobs composed wholly of themselves,
they fired and looted buildings and factories. They worked the people
up until they joined them in the pillage. Liquor in large quantities was
distributed among the slum classes further to inflame their minds. And
then, when all was ready, appeared upon the scene the soldiers of the
United States, who were, in reality, the soldiers of the Iron Heel.
Eleven thousand men, women, and children were shot down on the streets
of Sacramento or murdered in their houses. The national government took
possession of the state government, and all was over for California.

And as with California, so elsewhere. Every Granger state was ravaged
with violence and washed in blood. First, disorder was precipitated by
the secret agents and the Black Hundreds, then the troops were called
out. Rioting and mob-rule reigned throughout the rural districts. Day
and night the smoke of burning farms, warehouses, villages, and cities
filled the sky. Dynamite appeared. Railroad bridges and tunnels were
blown up and trains were wrecked. The poor farmers were shot and hanged
in great numbers. Reprisals were bitter, and many plutocrats and army
officers were murdered. Blood and vengeance were in men's hearts. The
regular troops fought the farmers as savagely as had they been Indians.
And the regular troops had cause. Twenty-eight hundred of them had been
annihilated in a tremendous series of dynamite explosions in Oregon,
and in a similar manner, a number of train loads, at different times and
places, had been destroyed. So it was that the regular troops fought for
their lives as well as did the farmers.

As for the militia, the militia law of 1903 was put into effect, and the
workers of one state were compelled, under pain of death, to shoot down
their comrade-workers in other states. Of course, the militia law did
not work smoothly at first. Many militia officers were murdered, and
many militiamen were executed by drumhead court martial. Ernest's
prophecy was strikingly fulfilled in the cases of Mr. Kowalt and Mr.
Asmunsen. Both were eligible for the militia, and both were drafted to
serve in the punitive expedition that was despatched from California
against the farmers of Missouri. Mr. Kowalt and Mr. Asmunsen refused to
serve. They were given short shrift. Drumhead court martial was their
portion, and military execution their end. They were shot with their
backs to the firing squad.

Many young men fled into the mountains to escape serving in the militia.
There they became outlaws, and it was not until more peaceful times that
they received their punishment. It was drastic. The government issued a
proclamation for all law-abiding citizens to come in from the mountains
for a period of three months. When the proclaimed date arrived, half a
million soldiers were sent into the mountainous districts everywhere.
There was no investigation, no trial. Wherever a man was encountered, he
was shot down on the spot. The troops operated on the basis that no
man not an outlaw remained in the mountains. Some bands, in strong
positions, fought gallantly, but in the end every deserter from the
militia met death.

A more immediate lesson, however, was impressed on the minds of the
people by the punishment meted out to the Kansas militia. The great
Kansas Mutiny occurred at the very beginning of military operations
against the Grangers. Six thousand of the militia mutinied. They had
been for several weeks very turbulent and sullen, and for that reason
had been kept in camp. Their open mutiny, however, was without doubt
precipitated by the agents-provocateurs.

On the night of the 22d of April they arose and murdered their officers,
only a small remnant of the latter escaping. This was beyond the scheme
of the Iron Heel, for the agents-provocateurs had done their work too
well. But everything was grist to the Iron Heel. It had prepared for the
outbreak, and the killing of so many officers gave it justification for
what followed. As by magic, forty thousand soldiers of the regular army
surrounded the malcontents. It was a trap. The wretched militiamen found
that their machine-guns had been tampered with, and that the cartridges
from the captured magazines did not fit their rifles. They hoisted the
white flag of surrender, but it was ignored. There were no survivors.
The entire six thousand were annihilated. Common shell and shrapnel were
thrown in upon them from a distance, and, when, in their desperation,
they charged the encircling lines, they were mowed down by the
machine-guns. I talked with an eye-witness, and he said that the nearest
any militiaman approached the machine-guns was a hundred and fifty
yards. The earth was carpeted with the slain, and a final charge of
cavalry, with trampling of horses' hoofs, revolvers, and sabres, crushed
the wounded into the ground.

Simultaneously with the destruction of the Grangers came the revolt
of the coal miners. It was the expiring effort of organized labor.
Three-quarters of a million of miners went out on strike. But they
were too widely scattered over the country to advantage from their own
strength. They were segregated in their own districts and beaten into
submission. This was the first great slave-drive. Pocock* won his spurs
as a slave-driver and earned the undying hatred of the proletariat.
Countless attempts were made upon his life, but he seemed to bear a
charmed existence. It was he who was responsible for the introduction
of the Russian passport system among the miners, and the denial of their
right of removal from one part of the country to another.

     * Albert Pocock, another of the notorious strike-breakers of
     earlier years, who, to the day of his death, successfully
     held all the coal-miners of the country to their task.  He
     was succeeded by his son, Lewis Pocock, and for five
     generations this remarkable line of slave-drivers handled
     the coal mines.  The elder Pocock, known as Pocock I., has
     been described as follows: “A long, lean head, semicircled
     by a fringe of brown and gray hair, with big cheek-bones and
     a heavy chin, . . . a pale face, lustreless gray eyes, a
     metallic voice, and a languid manner.”  He was born of
     humble parents, and began his career as a bartender.  He
     next became a private detective for a street railway
     corporation, and by successive steps developed into a
     professional strikebreaker. Pocock V., the last of the line,
     was blown up in a pump-house by a bomb during a petty revolt
     of the miners in the Indian Territory. This occurred in 2073
     A.D.

In the meantime, the socialists held firm. While the Grangers expired in
flame and blood, and organized labor was disrupted, the socialists
held their peace and perfected their secret organization. In vain the
Grangers pleaded with us. We rightly contended that any revolt on our
part was virtually suicide for the whole Revolution. The Iron Heel, at
first dubious about dealing with the entire proletariat at one time, had
found the work easier than it had expected, and would have asked nothing
better than an uprising on our part. But we avoided the issue, in spite
of the fact that agents-provocateurs swarmed in our midst. In those
early days, the agents of the Iron Heel were clumsy in their methods.
They had much to learn and in the meantime our Fighting Groups weeded
them out. It was bitter, bloody work, but we were fighting for life and
for the Revolution, and we had to fight the enemy with its own weapons.
Yet we were fair. No agent of the Iron Heel was executed without a
trial. We may have made mistakes, but if so, very rarely. The bravest,
and the most combative and self-sacrificing of our comrades went into
the Fighting Groups. Once, after ten years had passed, Ernest made a
calculation from figures furnished by the chiefs of the Fighting Groups,
and his conclusion was that the average life of a man or woman after
becoming a member was five years. The comrades of the Fighting Groups
were heroes all, and the peculiar thing about it was that they were
opposed to the taking of life. They violated their own natures, yet they
loved liberty and knew of no sacrifice too great to make for the Cause.*

     * These Fighting groups were modelled somewhat after the
     Fighting Organization of the Russian Revolution, and,
     despite the unceasing efforts of the Iron Heel, these groups
     persisted throughout the three centuries of its existence.
     Composed of men and women actuated by lofty purpose and
     unafraid to die, the Fighting Groups exercised tremendous
     influence and tempered the savage brutality of the rulers.
     Not alone was their work confined to unseen warfare with the
     secret agents of the Oligarchy.  The oligarchs themselves
     were compelled to listen to the decrees of the Groups, and
     often, when they disobeyed, were punished by death--and
     likewise with the subordinates of the oligarchs, with the
     officers of the army and the leaders of the labor castes.

     Stern justice was meted out by these organized avengers, but
     most remarkable was their passionless and judicial
     procedure.  There were no snap judgments.  When a man was
     captured he was given fair trial and opportunity for
     defence.  Of necessity, many men were tried and condemned by
     proxy, as in the case of General Lampton. This occurred in
     2138 A.D.  Possibly the most bloodthirsty and malignant of
     all the mercenaries that ever served the Iron Heel, he was
     informed by the Fighting Groups that they had tried him,
     found him guilty, and condemned him to death--and this,
     after three warnings for him to cease from his ferocious
     treatment of the proletariat.  After his condemnation he
     surrounded himself with a myriad protective devices.  Years
     passed, and in vain the Fighting Groups strove to execute
     their decree.  Comrade after comrade, men and women, failed
     in their attempts, and were cruelly executed by the
     Oligarchy.  It was the case of General Lampton that revived
     crucifixion as a legal method of execution.  But in the end
     the condemned man found his executioner in the form of a
     slender girl of seventeen, Madeline Provence, who, to
     accomplish her purpose, served two years in his palace as a
     seamstress to the household. She died in solitary
     confinement after horrible and prolonged torture; but to-day
     she stands in imperishable bronze in the Pantheon of
     Brotherhood in the wonder city of Serles.

     We, who by personal experience know nothing of bloodshed,
     must not judge harshly the heroes of the Fighting Groups.
     They gave up their lives for humanity, no sacrifice was too
     great for them to accomplish, while inexorable necessity
     compelled them to bloody expression in an age of blood.  The
     Fighting Groups constituted the one thorn in the side of the
     Iron Heel that the Iron Heel could never remove.  Everhard
     was the father of this curious army, and its accomplishments
     and successful persistence for three hundred years bear
     witness to the wisdom with which he organized and the solid
     foundation he laid for the succeeding generations to build
     upon.  In some respects, despite his great economic and
     sociological contributions, and his work as a general leader
     in the Revolution, his organization of the Fighting Groups
     must be regarded as his greatest achievement.

The task we set ourselves was threefold. First, the weeding out from our
circles of the secret agents of the Oligarchy. Second, the organizing
of the Fighting Groups, and outside of them, of the general secret
organization of the Revolution. And third, the introduction of our own
secret agents into every branch of the Oligarchy--into the labor castes
and especially among the telegraphers and secretaries and clerks, into
the army, the agents-provocateurs, and the slave-drivers. It was slow
work, and perilous, and often were our efforts rewarded with costly
failures.

The Iron Heel had triumphed in open warfare, but we held our own in the
new warfare, strange and awful and subterranean, that we instituted.
All was unseen, much was unguessed; the blind fought the blind; and
yet through it all was order, purpose, control. We permeated the
entire organization of the Iron Heel with our agents, while our own
organization was permeated with the agents of the Iron Heel. It was
warfare dark and devious, replete with intrigue and conspiracy, plot
and counterplot. And behind all, ever menacing, was death, violent and
terrible. Men and women disappeared, our nearest and dearest comrades.
We saw them to-day. To-morrow they were gone; we never saw them again,
and we knew that they had died.

There was no trust, no confidence anywhere. The man who plotted beside
us, for all we knew, might be an agent of the Iron Heel. We mined the
organization of the Iron Heel with our secret agents, and the Iron Heel
countermined with its secret agents inside its own organization. And
it was the same with our organization. And despite the absence of
confidence and trust we were compelled to base our every effort on
confidence and trust. Often were we betrayed. Men were weak. The Iron
Heel could offer money, leisure, the joys and pleasures that waited
in the repose of the wonder cities. We could offer nothing but the
satisfaction of being faithful to a noble ideal. As for the rest, the
wages of those who were loyal were unceasing peril, torture, and death.

Men were weak, I say, and because of their weakness we were compelled to
make the only other reward that was within our power. It was the reward
of death. Out of necessity we had to punish our traitors. For every man
who betrayed us, from one to a dozen faithful avengers were loosed upon
his heels. We might fail to carry out our decrees against our enemies,
such as the Pococks, for instance; but the one thing we could not afford
to fail in was the punishment of our own traitors. Comrades turned
traitor by permission, in order to win to the wonder cities and there
execute our sentences on the real traitors. In fact, so terrible did
we make ourselves, that it became a greater peril to betray us than to
remain loyal to us.

The Revolution took on largely the character of religion. We worshipped
at the shrine of the Revolution, which was the shrine of liberty. It was
the divine flashing through us. Men and women devoted their lives to
the Cause, and new-born babes were sealed to it as of old they had been
sealed to the service of God. We were lovers of Humanity.



CHAPTER XVII

THE SCARLET LIVERY


With the destruction of the Granger states, the Grangers in Congress
disappeared. They were being tried for high treason, and their places
were taken by the creatures of the Iron Heel. The socialists were in a
pitiful minority, and they knew that their end was near. Congress and
the Senate were empty pretences, farces. Public questions were gravely
debated and passed upon according to the old forms, while in reality all
that was done was to give the stamp of constitutional procedure to the
mandates of the Oligarchy.

Ernest was in the thick of the fight when the end came. It was in the
debate on the bill to assist the unemployed. The hard times of the
preceding year had thrust great masses of the proletariat beneath the
starvation line, and the continued and wide-reaching disorder had but
sunk them deeper. Millions of people were starving, while the oligarchs
and their supporters were surfeiting on the surplus.* We called these
wretched people the people of the abyss,** and it was to alleviate their
awful suffering that the socialists had introduced the unemployed bill.
But this was not to the fancy of the Iron Heel. In its own way it was
preparing to set these millions to work, but the way was not our way,
wherefore it had issued its orders that our bill should be voted down.
Ernest and his fellows knew that their effort was futile, but they
were tired of the suspense. They wanted something to happen. They were
accomplishing nothing, and the best they hoped for was the putting of an
end to the legislative farce in which they were unwilling players.
They knew not what end would come, but they never anticipated a more
disastrous end than the one that did come.

     * The same conditions obtained in the nineteenth century
     A.D. under British rule in India.  The natives died of
     starvation by the million, while their rulers robbed them of
     the fruits of their toil and expended it on magnificent
     pageants and mumbo-jumbo fooleries. Perforce, in this
     enlightened age, we have much to blush for in the acts of
     our ancestors.  Our only consolation is philosophic.  We
     must accept the capitalistic stage in social evolution as
     about on a par with the earlier monkey stage.  The human had
     to pass through those stages in its rise from the mire and
     slime of low organic life.  It was inevitable that much of
     the mire and slime should cling and be not easily shaken
     off.

     ** The people of the abyss--this phrase was struck out by
     the genius of H. G. Wells in the late nineteenth century
     A.D.  Wells was a sociological seer, sane and normal as well
     as warm human. Many fragments of his work have come down to
     us, while two of his greatest achievements, “Anticipations”
      and “Mankind in the Making,” have come down intact.  Before
     the oligarchs, and before Everhard, Wells speculated upon
     the building of the wonder cities, though in his writings
     they are referred to as “pleasure cities.”

I sat in the gallery that day. We all knew that something terrible was
imminent. It was in the air, and its presence was made visible by the
armed soldiers drawn up in lines in the corridors, and by the officers
grouped in the entrances to the House itself. The Oligarchy was about
to strike. Ernest was speaking. He was describing the sufferings of
the unemployed, as if with the wild idea of in some way touching their
hearts and consciences; but the Republican and Democratic members
sneered and jeered at him, and there was uproar and confusion. Ernest
abruptly changed front.

“I know nothing that I may say can influence you,” he said. “You have no
souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously
call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party.
There is no Democratic Party. There are no Republicans nor Democrats in
this House. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the
Plutocracy. You talk verbosely in antiquated terminology of your love
of liberty, and all the while you wear the scarlet livery of the Iron
Heel.”

Here the shouting and the cries of “Order! order!” drowned his voice,
and he stood disdainfully till the din had somewhat subsided. He waved
his hand to include all of them, turned to his own comrades, and said:

“Listen to the bellowing of the well-fed beasts.”

Pandemonium broke out again. The Speaker rapped for order and glanced
expectantly at the officers in the doorways. There were cries of
“Sedition!” and a great, rotund New York member began shouting
“Anarchist!” at Ernest. And Ernest was not pleasant to look at. Every
fighting fibre of him was quivering, and his face was the face of a
fighting animal, withal he was cool and collected.

“Remember,” he said, in a voice that made itself heard above the din,
“that as you show mercy now to the proletariat, some day will that same
proletariat show mercy to you.”

The cries of “Sedition!” and “Anarchist!” redoubled.

“I know that you will not vote for this bill,” Ernest went on. “You have
received the command from your masters to vote against it. And yet you
call me anarchist. You, who have destroyed the government of the people,
and who shamelessly flaunt your scarlet shame in public places, call me
anarchist. I do not believe in hell-fire and brimstone; but in moments
like this I regret my unbelief. Nay, in moments like this I almost do
believe. Surely there must be a hell, for in no less place could it be
possible for you to receive punishment adequate to your crimes. So long
as you exist, there is a vital need for hell-fire in the Cosmos.”

There was movement in the doorways. Ernest, the Speaker, all the members
turned to see.

“Why do you not call your soldiers in, Mr. Speaker, and bid them do
their work?” Ernest demanded. “They should carry out your plan with
expedition.”

“There are other plans afoot,” was the retort. “That is why the soldiers
are present.”

“Our plans, I suppose,” Ernest sneered. “Assassination or something
kindred.”

But at the word “assassination” the uproar broke out again. Ernest could
not make himself heard, but he remained on his feet waiting for a lull.
And then it happened. From my place in the gallery I saw nothing except
the flash of the explosion. The roar of it filled my ears and I saw
Ernest reeling and falling in a swirl of smoke, and the soldiers rushing
up all the aisles. His comrades were on their feet, wild with anger,
capable of any violence. But Ernest steadied himself for a moment, and
waved his arms for silence.

“It is a plot!” his voice rang out in warning to his comrades. “Do
nothing, or you will be destroyed.”

Then he slowly sank down, and the soldiers reached him. The next moment
soldiers were clearing the galleries and I saw no more.

Though he was my husband, I was not permitted to get to him. When I
announced who I was, I was promptly placed under arrest. And at the same
time were arrested all socialist Congressmen in Washington, including
the unfortunate Simpson, who lay ill with typhoid fever in his hotel.

The trial was prompt and brief. The men were foredoomed. The wonder
was that Ernest was not executed. This was a blunder on the part of
the Oligarchy, and a costly one. But the Oligarchy was too confident in
those days. It was drunk with success, and little did it dream that
that small handful of heroes had within them the power to rock it to
its foundations. To-morrow, when the Great Revolt breaks out and all
the world resounds with the tramp, tramp of the millions, the Oligarchy,
will realize, and too late, how mightily that band of heroes has grown.*

     * Avis Everhard took for granted that her narrative would be
     read in her own day, and so omits to mention the outcome of
     the trial for high treason.  Many other similar
     disconcerting omissions will be noticed in the Manuscript.
     Fifty-two socialist Congressmen were tried, and all were
     found guilty.  Strange to relate, not one received the death
     sentence.  Everhard and eleven others, among whom were
     Theodore Donnelson and Matthew Kent, received life
     imprisonment.  The remaining forty received sentences
     varying from thirty to forty-five years; while Arthur
     Simpson, referred to in the Manuscript as being ill of
     typhoid fever at the time of the explosion, received only
     fifteen years.  It is the tradition that he died of
     starvation in solitary confinement, and this harsh treatment
     is explained as having been caused by his uncompromising
     stubbornness and his fiery and tactless hatred for all men
     that served the despotism.  He died in Cabanas in Cuba,
     where three of his comrades were also confined.  The fifty-
     two socialist Congressmen were confined in military
     fortresses scattered all over the United States.  Thus, Du
     Bois and Woods were held in Porto Rico, while Everhard and
     Merryweather were placed in Alcatraz, an island in San
     Francisco Bay that had already seen long service as a
     military prison.

As a revolutionist myself, as one on the inside who knew the hopes and
fears and secret plans of the revolutionists, I am fitted to answer, as
very few are, the charge that they were guilty of exploding the bomb in
Congress. And I can say flatly, without qualification or doubt of any
sort, that the socialists, in Congress and out, had no hand in the
affair. Who threw the bomb we do not know, but the one thing we are
absolutely sure of is that we did not throw it.

On the other hand, there is evidence to show that the Iron Heel was
responsible for the act. Of course, we cannot prove this. Our conclusion
is merely presumptive. But here are such facts as we do know. It had
been reported to the Speaker of the House, by secret-service agents of
the government, that the Socialist Congressmen were about to resort to
terroristic tactics, and that they had decided upon the day when
their tactics would go into effect. This day was the very day of
the explosion. Wherefore the Capitol had been packed with troops in
anticipation. Since we knew nothing about the bomb, and since a bomb
actually was exploded, and since the authorities had prepared in advance
for the explosion, it is only fair to conclude that the Iron Heel
did know. Furthermore, we charge that the Iron Heel was guilty of the
outrage, and that the Iron Heel planned and perpetrated the outrage for
the purpose of foisting the guilt on our shoulders and so bringing about
our destruction.

From the Speaker the warning leaked out to all the creatures in
the House that wore the scarlet livery. They knew, while Ernest was
speaking, that some violent act was to be committed. And to do them
justice, they honestly believed that the act was to be committed by
the socialists. At the trial, and still with honest belief, several
testified to having seen Ernest prepare to throw the bomb, and that it
exploded prematurely. Of course they saw nothing of the sort. In the
fevered imagination of fear they thought they saw, that was all.

As Ernest said at the trial: “Does it stand to reason, if I were going
to throw a bomb, that I should elect to throw a feeble little squib like
the one that was thrown? There wasn't enough powder in it. It made a lot
of smoke, but hurt no one except me. It exploded right at my feet, and
yet it did not kill me. Believe me, when I get to throwing bombs, I'll
do damage. There'll be more than smoke in my petards.”

In return it was argued by the prosecution that the weakness of the
bomb was a blunder on the part of the socialists, just as its premature
explosion, caused by Ernest's losing his nerve and dropping it, was a
blunder. And to clinch the argument, there were the several Congressmen
who testified to having seen Ernest fumble and drop the bomb.

As for ourselves, not one of us knew how the bomb was thrown. Ernest
told me that the fraction of an instant before it exploded he both heard
and saw it strike at his feet. He testified to this at the trial, but
no one believed him. Besides, the whole thing, in popular slang, was
“cooked up.” The Iron Heel had made up its mind to destroy us, and there
was no withstanding it.

There is a saying that truth will out. I have come to doubt that saying.
Nineteen years have elapsed, and despite our untiring efforts, we have
failed to find the man who really did throw the bomb. Undoubtedly he was
some emissary of the Iron Heel, but he has escaped detection. We have
never got the slightest clew to his identity. And now, at this late
date, nothing remains but for the affair to take its place among the
mysteries of history.*

     * Avis Everhard would have had to live for many generations
     ere she could have seen the clearing up of this particular
     mystery.  A little less than a hundred years ago, and a
     little more than six hundred years after the death, the
     confession of Pervaise was discovered in the secret archives
     of the Vatican.  It is perhaps well to tell a little
     something about this obscure document, which, in the main,
     is of interest to the historian only.

     Pervaise was an American, of French descent, who in 1913
     A.D., was lying in the Tombs Prison, New York City, awaiting
     trial for murder.  From his confession we learn that he was
     not a criminal. He was warm-blooded, passionate, emotional.
     In an insane fit of jealousy he killed his wife--a very
     common act in those times. Pervaise was mastered by the fear
     of death, all of which is recounted at length in his
     confession.  To escape death he would have done anything,
     and the police agents prepared him by assuring him that he
     could not possibly escape conviction of murder in the first
     degree when his trial came off.  In those days, murder in
     the first degree was a capital offense.  The guilty man or
     woman was placed in a specially constructed death-chair,
     and, under the supervision of competent physicians, was
     destroyed by a current of electricity.  This was called
     electrocution, and it was very popular during that period.
     Anaesthesia, as a mode of compulsory death, was not
     introduced until later.

     This man, good at heart but with a ferocious animalism close
     at the surface of his being, lying in jail and expectant of
     nothing less than death, was prevailed upon by the agents of
     the Iron Heel to throw the bomb in the House of
     Representatives.  In his confession he states explicitly
     that he was informed that the bomb was to be a feeble thing
     and that no lives would be lost.  This is directly in line
     with the fact that the bomb was lightly charged, and that
     its explosion at Everhard's feet was not deadly.

     Pervaise was smuggled into one of the galleries ostensibly
     closed for repairs.  He was to select the moment for the
     throwing of the bomb, and he naively confesses that in his
     interest in Everhard's tirade and the general commotion
     raised thereby, he nearly forgot his mission.

     Not only was he released from prison in reward for his deed,
     but he was granted an income for life.  This he did not long
     enjoy.  In 1914 A.D., in September, he was stricken with
     rheumatism of the heart and lived for three days.  It was
     then that he sent for the Catholic priest, Father Peter
     Durban, and to him made confession. So important did it seem
     to the priest, that he had the confession taken down in
     writing and sworn to.  What happened after this we can only
     surmise.  The document was certainly important enough to
     find its way to Rome.  Powerful influences must have been
     brought to bear, hence its suppression.  For centuries no
     hint of its existence reached the world.  It was not until
     in the last century that Lorbia, the brilliant Italian
     scholar, stumbled upon it quite by chance during his
     researches in the Vatican.

     There is to-day no doubt whatever that the Iron Heel was
     responsible for the bomb that exploded in the House of
     Representatives in 1913 A.D.  Even though the Pervaise
     confession had never come to light, no reasonable doubt
     could obtain; for the act in question, that sent fifty-two
     Congressmen to prison, was on a par with countless other
     acts committed by the oligarchs, and, before them, by the
     capitalists.

     There is the classic instance of the ferocious and wanton
     judicial murder of the innocent and so-called Haymarket
     Anarchists in Chicago in the penultimate decade of the
     nineteenth century A.D. In a category by itself is the
     deliberate burning and destruction of capitalist property by
     the capitalists themselves.  For such destruction of
     property innocent men were frequently punished--“railroaded”
      in the parlance of the times.

     In the labor troubles of the first decade of the twentieth
     century A.D., between the capitalists and the Western
     Federation of Miners, similar but more bloody tactics were
     employed.  The railroad station at Independence was blown up
     by the agents of the capitalists.  Thirteen men were killed,
     and many more were wounded. And then the capitalists,
     controlling the legislative and judicial machinery of the
     state of Colorado, charged the miners with the crime and
     came very near to convicting them.  Romaines, one of the
     tools in this affair, like Pervaise, was lying in jail in
     another state, Kansas, awaiting trial, when he was
     approached by the agents of the capitalists.  But, unlike
     Pervaise the confession of Romaines was made public in his
     own time.

     Then, during this same period, there was the case of Moyer
     and Haywood, two strong, fearless leaders of labor.  One was
     president and the other was secretary of the Western
     Federation of Miners. The ex-governor of Idaho had been
     mysteriously murdered.  The crime, at the time, was openly
     charged to the mine owners by the socialists and miners.
     Nevertheless, in violation of the national and state
     constitutions, and by means of conspiracy on the parts of
     the governors of Idaho and Colorado, Moyer and Haywood were
     kidnapped, thrown into jail, and charged with the murder.
     It was this instance that provoked from Eugene V. Debs,
     national leader of the American socialists at the time, the
     following words: “The labor leaders that cannot be bribed
     nor bullied, must be ambushed and murdered.  The only crime
     of Moyer and Haywood is that they have been unswervingly
     true to the working class.  The capitalists have stolen our
     country, debauched our politics, defiled our judiciary, and
     ridden over us rough-shod, and now they propose to murder
     those who will not abjectly surrender to their brutal
     dominion.  The governors of Colorado and Idaho are but
     executing the mandates of their masters, the Plutocracy.
     The issue is the Workers versus the Plutocracy.  If they
     strike the first violent blow, we will strike the last.”



CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE SHADOW OF SONOMA


Of myself, during this period, there is not much to say. For six months
I was kept in prison, though charged with no crime. I was a suspect--a
word of fear that all revolutionists were soon to come to know. But
our own nascent secret service was beginning to work. By the end of
my second month in prison, one of the jailers made himself known as
a revolutionist in touch with the organization. Several weeks later,
Joseph Parkhurst, the prison doctor who had just been appointed, proved
himself to be a member of one of the Fighting Groups.

Thus, throughout the organization of the Oligarchy, our own
organization, weblike and spidery, was insinuating itself. And so I
was kept in touch with all that was happening in the world without. And
furthermore, every one of our imprisoned leaders was in contact with
brave comrades who masqueraded in the livery of the Iron Heel. Though
Ernest lay in prison three thousand miles away, on the Pacific Coast, I
was in unbroken communication with him, and our letters passed regularly
back and forth.

The leaders, in prison and out, were able to discuss and direct the
campaign. It would have been possible, within a few months, to have
effected the escape of some of them; but since imprisonment proved
no bar to our activities, it was decided to avoid anything premature.
Fifty-two Congressmen were in prison, and fully three hundred more
of our leaders. It was planned that they should be delivered
simultaneously. If part of them escaped, the vigilance of the oligarchs
might be aroused so as to prevent the escape of the remainder. On the
other hand, it was held that a simultaneous jail-delivery all over the
land would have immense psychological influence on the proletariat. It
would show our strength and give confidence.

So it was arranged, when I was released at the end of six months, that
I was to disappear and prepare a secure hiding-place for Ernest. To
disappear was in itself no easy thing. No sooner did I get my freedom
than my footsteps began to be dogged by the spies of the Iron Heel.
It was necessary that they should be thrown off the track, and that
I should win to California. It is laughable, the way this was
accomplished.

Already the passport system, modelled on the Russian, was developing. I
dared not cross the continent in my own character. It was necessary that
I should be completely lost if ever I was to see Ernest again, for by
trailing me after he escaped, he would be caught once more. Again, I
could not disguise myself as a proletarian and travel. There remained
the disguise of a member of the Oligarchy. While the arch-oligarchs were
no more than a handful, there were myriads of lesser ones of the type,
say, of Mr. Wickson--men, worth a few millions, who were adherents of
the arch-oligarchs. The wives and daughters of these lesser oligarchs
were legion, and it was decided that I should assume the disguise of
such a one. A few years later this would have been impossible, because
the passport system was to become so perfect that no man, woman, nor
child in all the land was unregistered and unaccounted for in his or her
movements.

When the time was ripe, the spies were thrown off my track. An hour
later Avis Everhard was no more. At that time one Felice Van Verdighan,
accompanied by two maids and a lap-dog, with another maid for the
lap-dog,* entered a drawing-room on a Pullman,** and a few minutes later
was speeding west.

     * This ridiculous picture well illustrates the heartless
     conduct of the masters.  While people starved, lap-dogs were
     waited upon by maids.  This was a serious masquerade on the
     part of Avis Everhard. Life and death and the Cause were in
     the issue; therefore the picture must be accepted as a true
     picture.  It affords a striking commentary of the times.

     ** Pullman--the designation of the more luxurious railway
     cars of the period and so named from the inventor.

The three maids who accompanied me were revolutionists. Two were members
of the Fighting Groups, and the third, Grace Holbrook, entered a group
the following year, and six months later was executed by the Iron Heel.
She it was who waited upon the dog. Of the other two, Bertha Stole
disappeared twelve years later, while Anna Roylston still lives and
plays an increasingly important part in the Revolution.*

     * Despite continual and almost inconceivable hazards, Anna
     Roylston lived to the royal age of ninety-one.  As the
     Pococks defied the executioners of the Fighting Groups, so
     she defied the executioners of the Iron Heel.  She bore a
     charmed life and prospered amid dangers and alarms.  She
     herself was an executioner for the Fighting Groups, and,
     known as the Red Virgin, she became one of the inspired
     figures of the Revolution.  When she was an old woman of
     sixty-nine she shot “Bloody” Halcliffe down in the midst of
     his armed escort and got away unscathed.  In the end she
     died peaceably of old age in a secret refuge of the
     revolutionists in the Ozark mountains.

Without adventure we crossed the United States to California. When the
train stopped at Sixteenth Street Station, in Oakland, we alighted, and
there Felice Van Verdighan, with her two maids, her lap-dog, and
her lap-dog's maid, disappeared forever. The maids, guided by trusty
comrades, were led away. Other comrades took charge of me. Within half
an hour after leaving the train I was on board a small fishing boat
and out on the waters of San Francisco Bay. The winds baffled, and we
drifted aimlessly the greater part of the night. But I saw the lights of
Alcatraz where Ernest lay, and found comfort in the thought of nearness
to him. By dawn, what with the rowing of the fishermen, we made the
Marin Islands. Here we lay in hiding all day, and on the following
night, swept on by a flood tide and a fresh wind, we crossed San Pablo
Bay in two hours and ran up Petaluma Creek.

Here horses were ready and another comrade, and without delay we were
away through the starlight. To the north I could see the loom of Sonoma
Mountain, toward which we rode. We left the old town of Sonoma to the
right and rode up a canyon that lay between outlying buttresses of the
mountain. The wagon-road became a wood-road, the wood-road became a
cow-path, and the cow-path dwindled away and ceased among the upland
pastures. Straight over Sonoma Mountain we rode. It was the safest
route. There was no one to mark our passing.

Dawn caught us on the northern brow, and in the gray light we dropped
down through chaparral into redwood canyons deep and warm with the
breath of passing summer. It was old country to me that I knew and
loved, and soon I became the guide. The hiding-place was mine. I had
selected it. We let down the bars and crossed an upland meadow. Next, we
went over a low, oak-covered ridge and descended into a smaller meadow.
Again we climbed a ridge, this time riding under red-limbed madronos and
manzanitas of deeper red. The first rays of the sun streamed upon
our backs as we climbed. A flight of quail thrummed off through the
thickets. A big jackrabbit crossed our path, leaping swiftly and
silently like a deer. And then a deer, a many-pronged buck, the sun
flashing red-gold from neck and shoulders, cleared the crest of the
ridge before us and was gone.

We followed in his wake a space, then dropped down a zigzag trail that
he disdained into a group of noble redwoods that stood about a pool of
water murky with minerals from the mountain side. I knew every inch of
the way. Once a writer friend of mine had owned the ranch; but he, too,
had become a revolutionist, though more disastrously than I, for he was
already dead and gone, and none knew where nor how. He alone, in the
days he had lived, knew the secret of the hiding-place for which I was
bound. He had bought the ranch for beauty, and paid a round price for
it, much to the disgust of the local farmers. He used to tell with great
glee how they were wont to shake their heads mournfully at the price, to
accomplish ponderously a bit of mental arithmetic, and then to say, “But
you can't make six per cent on it.”

But he was dead now, nor did the ranch descend to his children. Of all
men, it was now the property of Mr. Wickson, who owned the whole eastern
and northern slopes of Sonoma Mountain, running from the Spreckels
estate to the divide of Bennett Valley. Out of it he had made a
magnificent deer-park, where, over thousands of acres of sweet slopes
and glades and canyons, the deer ran almost in primitive wildness. The
people who had owned the soil had been driven away. A state home for the
feeble-minded had also been demolished to make room for the deer.

To cap it all, Wickson's hunting lodge was a quarter of a mile from my
hiding-place. This, instead of being a danger, was an added security.
We were sheltered under the very aegis of one of the minor oligarchs.
Suspicion, by the nature of the situation, was turned aside. The last
place in the world the spies of the Iron Heel would dream of looking for
me, and for Ernest when he joined me, was Wickson's deer-park.

We tied our horses among the redwoods at the pool. From a cache behind
a hollow rotting log my companion brought out a variety of things,--a
fifty-pound sack of flour, tinned foods of all sorts, cooking utensils,
blankets, a canvas tarpaulin, books and writing material, a great bundle
of letters, a five-gallon can of kerosene, an oil stove, and, last and
most important, a large coil of stout rope. So large was the supply of
things that a number of trips would be necessary to carry them to the
refuge.

But the refuge was very near. Taking the rope and leading the way, I
passed through a glade of tangled vines and bushes that ran between two
wooded knolls. The glade ended abruptly at the steep bank of a stream.
It was a little stream, rising from springs, and the hottest summer
never dried it up. On every hand were tall wooded knolls, a group of
them, with all the seeming of having been flung there from some careless
Titan's hand. There was no bed-rock in them. They rose from their bases
hundreds of feet, and they were composed of red volcanic earth, the
famous wine-soil of Sonoma. Through these the tiny stream had cut its
deep and precipitous channel.

It was quite a scramble down to the stream bed, and, once on the bed,
we went down stream perhaps for a hundred feet. And then we came to the
great hole. There was no warning of the existence of the hole, nor
was it a hole in the common sense of the word. One crawled through
tight-locked briers and branches, and found oneself on the very edge,
peering out and down through a green screen. A couple of hundred feet in
length and width, it was half of that in depth. Possibly because of
some fault that had occurred when the knolls were flung together, and
certainly helped by freakish erosion, the hole had been scooped out in
the course of centuries by the wash of water. Nowhere did the raw earth
appear. All was garmented by vegetation, from tiny maiden-hair and
gold-back ferns to mighty redwood and Douglas spruces. These great trees
even sprang out from the walls of the hole. Some leaned over at angles
as great as forty-five degrees, though the majority towered straight up
from the soft and almost perpendicular earth walls.

It was a perfect hiding-place. No one ever came there, not even the
village boys of Glen Ellen. Had this hole existed in the bed of a canyon
a mile long, or several miles long, it would have been well known. But
this was no canyon. From beginning to end the length of the stream was
no more than five hundred yards. Three hundred yards above the hole the
stream took its rise in a spring at the foot of a flat meadow. A hundred
yards below the hole the stream ran out into open country, joining the
main stream and flowing across rolling and grass-covered land.

My companion took a turn of the rope around a tree, and with me fast on
the other end lowered away. In no time I was on the bottom. And in but
a short while he had carried all the articles from the cache and lowered
them down to me. He hauled the rope up and hid it, and before he went
away called down to me a cheerful parting.

Before I go on I want to say a word for this comrade, John Carlson, a
humble figure of the Revolution, one of the countless faithful ones in
the ranks. He worked for Wickson, in the stables near the hunting lodge.
In fact, it was on Wickson's horses that we had ridden over Sonoma
Mountain. For nearly twenty years now John Carlson has been custodian
of the refuge. No thought of disloyalty, I am sure, has ever entered his
mind during all that time. To betray his trust would have been in his
mind a thing undreamed. He was phlegmatic, stolid to such a degree that
one could not but wonder how the Revolution had any meaning to him at
all. And yet love of freedom glowed sombrely and steadily in his
dim soul. In ways it was indeed good that he was not flighty and
imaginative. He never lost his head. He could obey orders, and he was
neither curious nor garrulous. Once I asked how it was that he was a
revolutionist.

“When I was a young man I was a soldier,” was his answer. “It was in
Germany. There all young men must be in the army. So I was in the army.
There was another soldier there, a young man, too. His father was what
you call an agitator, and his father was in jail for lese majesty--what
you call speaking the truth about the Emperor. And the young man, the
son, talked with me much about people, and work, and the robbery of
the people by the capitalists. He made me see things in new ways, and
I became a socialist. His talk was very true and good, and I have never
forgotten. When I came to the United States I hunted up the socialists.
I became a member of a section--that was in the day of the S. L. P.
Then later, when the split came, I joined the local of the S. P. I was
working in a livery stable in San Francisco then. That was before the
Earthquake. I have paid my dues for twenty-two years. I am yet a member,
and I yet pay my dues, though it is very secret now. I will always pay
my dues, and when the cooperative commonwealth comes, I will be glad.”

Left to myself, I proceeded to cook breakfast on the oil stove and to
prepare my home. Often, in the early morning, or in the evening after
dark, Carlson would steal down to the refuge and work for a couple of
hours. At first my home was the tarpaulin. Later, a small tent was put
up. And still later, when we became assured of the perfect security of
the place, a small house was erected. This house was completely hidden
from any chance eye that might peer down from the edge of the hole. The
lush vegetation of that sheltered spot make a natural shield. Also, the
house was built against the perpendicular wall; and in the wall itself,
shored by strong timbers, well drained and ventilated, we excavated two
small rooms. Oh, believe me, we had many comforts. When Biedenbach,
the German terrorist, hid with us some time later, he installed a
smoke-consuming device that enabled us to sit by crackling wood fires on
winter nights.

And here I must say a word for that gentle-souled terrorist, than whom
there is no comrade in the Revolution more fearfully misunderstood.
Comrade Biedenbach did not betray the Cause. Nor was he executed by
the comrades as is commonly supposed. This canard was circulated by
the creatures of the Oligarchy. Comrade Biedenbach was absent-minded,
forgetful. He was shot by one of our lookouts at the cave-refuge at
Carmel, through failure on his part to remember the secret signals. It
was all a sad mistake. And that he betrayed his Fighting Group is an
absolute lie. No truer, more loyal man ever labored for the Cause.*

     * Search as we may through all the material of those times
     that has come down to us, we can find no clew to the
     Biedenbach here referred to.  No mention is made of him
     anywhere save in the Everhard Manuscript.


For nineteen years now the refuge that I selected had been almost
continuously occupied, and in all that time, with one exception, it has
never been discovered by an outsider.  And yet it was only a quarter of
a mile from Wickson's hunting-lodge, and a short mile from the village
of Glen Ellen.  I was able, always, to hear the morning and evening
trains arrive and depart, and I used to set my watch by the whistle at
the brickyards.*

     * If the curious traveller will turn south from Glen Ellen,
     he will find himself on a boulevard that is identical with
     the old country road seven centuries ago.  A quarter of a
     mile from Glen Ellen, after the second bridge is passed, to
     the right will be noticed a barranca that runs like a scar
     across the rolling land toward a group of wooded knolls.
     The barranca is the site of the ancient right of way that in
     the time of private property in land ran across the holding
     of one Chauvet, a French pioneer of California who came from
     his native country in the fabled days of gold.  The wooded
     knolls are the same knolls referred to by Avis Everhard.

     The Great Earthquake of 2368 A.D. broke off the side of one
     of these knolls and toppled it into the hole where the
     Everhards made their refuge.  Since the finding of the
     Manuscript excavations have been made, and the house, the
     two cave rooms, and all the accumulated rubbish of long
     occupancy have been brought to light. Many valuable relics
     have been found, among which, curious to relate, is the
     smoke-consuming device of Biedenbach's mentioned in the
     narrative.  Students interested in such matters should read
     the brochure of Arnold Bentham soon to be published.

     A mile northwest from the wooded knolls brings one to the
     site of Wake Robin Lodge at the junction of Wild-Water and
     Sonoma Creeks. It may be noticed, in passing, that Wild-
     Water was originally called Graham Creek and was so named on
     the early local maps.  But the later name sticks.  It was at
     Wake Robin Lodge that Avis Everhard later lived for short
     periods, when, disguised as an agent-provocateur of the Iron
     Heel, she was enabled to play with impunity her part among
     men and events.  The official permission to occupy Wake
     Robin Lodge is still on the records, signed by no less a man
     than Wickson, the minor oligarch of the Manuscript.


CHAPTER XIX

TRANSFORMATION


“You must make yourself over again,” Ernest wrote to me. “You must cease
to be. You must become another woman--and not merely in the clothes you
wear, but inside your skin under the clothes. You must make yourself
over again so that even I would not know you--your voice, your gestures,
your mannerisms, your carriage, your walk, everything.”

This command I obeyed. Every day I practised for hours in burying
forever the old Avis Everhard beneath the skin of another woman whom I
may call my other self. It was only by long practice that such results
could be obtained. In the mere detail of voice intonation I practised
almost perpetually till the voice of my new self became fixed,
automatic. It was this automatic assumption of a role that was
considered imperative. One must become so adept as to deceive oneself.
It was like learning a new language, say the French. At first speech in
French is self-conscious, a matter of the will. The student thinks
in English and then transmutes into French, or reads in French but
transmutes into English before he can understand. Then later, becoming
firmly grounded, automatic, the student reads, writes, and THINKS in
French, without any recourse to English at all.

And so with our disguises. It was necessary for us to practise until our
assumed roles became real; until to be our original selves would require
a watchful and strong exercise of will. Of course, at first, much was
mere blundering experiment. We were creating a new art, and we had much
to discover. But the work was going on everywhere; masters in the
art were developing, and a fund of tricks and expedients was being
accumulated. This fund became a sort of text-book that was passed on, a
part of the curriculum, as it were, of the school of Revolution.*

     * Disguise did become a veritable art during that period.
     The revolutionists maintained schools of acting in all their
     refuges. They scorned accessories, such as wigs and beards,
     false eyebrows, and such aids of the theatrical actors.  The
     game of revolution was a game of life and death, and mere
     accessories were traps. Disguise had to be fundamental,
     intrinsic, part and parcel of one's being, second nature.
     The Red Virgin is reported to have been one of the most
     adept in the art, to which must be ascribed her long and
     successful career.

It was at this time that my father disappeared. His letters, which had
come to me regularly, ceased. He no longer appeared at our Pell Street
quarters. Our comrades sought him everywhere. Through our secret service
we ransacked every prison in the land. But he was lost as completely as
if the earth had swallowed him up, and to this day no clew to his end
has been discovered.*

     * Disappearance was one of the horrors of the time.  As a
     motif, in song and story, it constantly crops up.  It was an
     inevitable concomitant of the subterranean warfare that
     raged through those three centuries.  This phenomenon was
     almost as common in the oligarch class and the labor castes,
     as it was in the ranks of the revolutionists.  Without
     warning, without trace, men and women, and even children,
     disappeared and were seen no more, their end shrouded in
     mystery.

Six lonely months I spent in the refuge, but they were not idle months.
Our organization went on apace, and there were mountains of work always
waiting to be done. Ernest and his fellow-leaders, from their prisons,
decided what should be done; and it remained for us on the outside to
do it. There was the organization of the mouth-to-mouth propaganda;
the organization, with all its ramifications, of our spy system; the
establishment of our secret printing-presses; and the establishment of
our underground railways, which meant the knitting together of all our
myriads of places of refuge, and the formation of new refuges where
links were missing in the chains we ran over all the land.

So I say, the work was never done. At the end of six months my
loneliness was broken by the arrival of two comrades. They were young
girls, brave souls and passionate lovers of liberty: Lora Peterson, who
disappeared in 1922, and Kate Bierce, who later married Du Bois,* and
who is still with us with eyes lifted to to-morrow's sun, that heralds
in the new age.

     * Du Bois, the present librarian of Ardis, is a lineal
     descendant of this revolutionary pair.

The two girls arrived in a flurry of excitement, danger, and sudden
death. In the crew of the fishing boat that conveyed them across San
Pablo Bay was a spy. A creature of the Iron Heel, he had successfully
masqueraded as a revolutionist and penetrated deep into the secrets
of our organization. Without doubt he was on my trail, for we had long
since learned that my disappearance had been cause of deep concern to
the secret service of the Oligarchy. Luckily, as the outcome proved, he
had not divulged his discoveries to any one. He had evidently delayed
reporting, preferring to wait until he had brought things to a
successful conclusion by discovering my hiding-place and capturing me.
His information died with him. Under some pretext, after the girls had
landed at Petaluma Creek and taken to the horses, he managed to get away
from the boat.

Part way up Sonoma Mountain, John Carlson let the girls go on, leading
his horse, while he went back on foot. His suspicions had been aroused.
He captured the spy, and as to what then happened, Carlson gave us a
fair idea.

“I fixed him,” was Carlson's unimaginative way of describing the affair.
“I fixed him,” he repeated, while a sombre light burnt in his eyes, and
his huge, toil-distorted hands opened and closed eloquently. “He made no
noise. I hid him, and tonight I will go back and bury him deep.”

During that period I used to marvel at my own metamorphosis. At times it
seemed impossible, either that I had ever lived a placid, peaceful life
in a college town, or else that I had become a revolutionist inured to
scenes of violence and death. One or the other could not be. One was
real, the other was a dream, but which was which? Was this present
life of a revolutionist, hiding in a hole, a nightmare? or was I a
revolutionist who had somewhere, somehow, dreamed that in some former
existence I have lived in Berkeley and never known of life more violent
than teas and dances, debating societies, and lectures rooms? But then I
suppose this was a common experience of all of us who had rallied under
the red banner of the brotherhood of man.

I often remembered figures from that other life, and, curiously enough,
they appeared and disappeared, now and again, in my new life. There was
Bishop Morehouse. In vain we searched for him after our organization had
developed. He had been transferred from asylum to asylum. We traced him
from the state hospital for the insane at Napa to the one in Stockton,
and from there to the one in the Santa Clara Valley called Agnews, and
there the trail ceased. There was no record of his death. In some way he
must have escaped. Little did I dream of the awful manner in which I
was to see him once again--the fleeting glimpse of him in the whirlwind
carnage of the Chicago Commune.

Jackson, who had lost his arm in the Sierra Mills and who had been the
cause of my own conversion into a revolutionist, I never saw again;
but we all knew what he did before he died. He never joined the
revolutionists. Embittered by his fate, brooding over his wrongs, he
became an anarchist--not a philosophic anarchist, but a mere animal, mad
with hate and lust for revenge. And well he revenged himself. Evading
the guards, in the nighttime while all were asleep, he blew the
Pertonwaithe palace into atoms. Not a soul escaped, not even the guards.
And in prison, while awaiting trial, he suffocated himself under his
blankets.

Dr. Hammerfield and Dr. Ballingford achieved quite different fates from
that of Jackson. They have been faithful to their salt, and they have
been correspondingly rewarded with ecclesiastical palaces wherein they
dwell at peace with the world. Both are apologists for the Oligarchy.
Both have grown very fat. “Dr. Hammerfield,” as Ernest once said, “has
succeeded in modifying his metaphysics so as to give God's sanction to
the Iron Heel, and also to include much worship of beauty and to reduce
to an invisible wraith the gaseous vertebrate described by Haeckel--the
difference between Dr. Hammerfield and Dr. Ballingford being that the
latter has made the God of the oligarchs a little more gaseous and a
little less vertebrate.”

Peter Donnelly, the scab foreman at the Sierra Mills whom I encountered
while investigating the case of Jackson, was a surprise to all of us. In
1918 I was present at a meeting of the 'Frisco Reds. Of all our Fighting
Groups this one was the most formidable, ferocious, and merciless. It
was really not a part of our organization. Its members were fanatics,
madmen. We dared not encourage such a spirit. On the other hand, though
they did not belong to us, we remained on friendly terms with them. It
was a matter of vital importance that brought me there that night. I,
alone in the midst of a score of men, was the only person unmasked.
After the business that brought me there was transacted, I was led
away by one of them. In a dark passage this guide struck a match, and,
holding it close to his face, slipped back his mask. For a moment I
gazed upon the passion-wrought features of Peter Donnelly. Then the
match went out.

“I just wanted you to know it was me,” he said in the darkness. “D'you
remember Dallas, the superintendent?”

I nodded at recollection of the vulpine-face superintendent of the
Sierra Mills.

“Well, I got him first,” Donnelly said with pride. “'Twas after that I
joined the Reds.”

“But how comes it that you are here?” I queried. “Your wife and
children?”

“Dead,” he answered. “That's why. No,” he went on hastily, “'tis not
revenge for them. They died easily in their beds--sickness, you see,
one time and another. They tied my arms while they lived. And now that
they're gone, 'tis revenge for my blasted manhood I'm after. I was
once Peter Donnelly, the scab foreman. But to-night I'm Number 27 of the
'Frisco Reds. Come on now, and I'll get you out of this.”

More I heard of him afterward. In his own way he had told the truth
when he said all were dead. But one lived, Timothy, and him his father
considered dead because he had taken service with the Iron Heel in the
Mercenaries.* A member of the 'Frisco Reds pledged himself to twelve
annual executions. The penalty for failure was death. A member who
failed to complete his number committed suicide. These executions were
not haphazard. This group of madmen met frequently and passed wholesale
judgments upon offending members and servitors of the Oligarchy. The
executions were afterward apportioned by lot.

     * In addition to the labor castes, there arose another
     caste, the military.  A standing army of professional
     soldiers was created, officered by members of the Oligarchy
     and known as the Mercenaries. This institution took the
     place of the militia, which had proved impracticable under
     the new regime.  Outside the regular secret service of the
     Iron Heel, there was further established a secret service of
     the Mercenaries, this latter forming a connecting link
     between the police and the military.

In fact, the business that brought me there the night of my visit was
such a trial. One of our own comrades, who for years had successfully
maintained himself in a clerical position in the local bureau of the
secret service of the Iron Heel, had fallen under the ban of the 'Frisco
Reds and was being tried. Of course he was not present, and of course
his judges did not know that he was one of our men. My mission had been
to testify to his identity and loyalty. It may be wondered how we came
to know of the affair at all. The explanation is simple. One of our
secret agents was a member of the 'Frisco Reds. It was necessary for us
to keep an eye on friend as well as foe, and this group of madmen was
not too unimportant to escape our surveillance.

But to return to Peter Donnelly and his son. All went well with Donnelly
until, in the following year, he found among the sheaf of executions
that fell to him the name of Timothy Donnelly. Then it was that that
clannishness, which was his to so extraordinary a degree, asserted
itself. To save his son, he betrayed his comrades. In this he was
partially blocked, but a dozen of the 'Frisco Reds were executed, and
the group was well-nigh destroyed. In retaliation, the survivors meted
out to Donnelly the death he had earned by his treason.

Nor did Timothy Donnelly long survive. The 'Frisco Reds pledged
themselves to his execution. Every effort was made by the Oligarchy to
save him. He was transferred from one part of the country to another.
Three of the Reds lost their lives in vain efforts to get him. The Group
was composed only of men. In the end they fell back on a woman, one
of our comrades, and none other than Anna Roylston. Our Inner
Circle forbade her, but she had ever a will of her own and disdained
discipline. Furthermore, she was a genius and lovable, and we could
never discipline her anyway. She is in a class by herself and not
amenable to the ordinary standards of the revolutionists.

Despite our refusal to grant permission to do the deed, she went on with
it. Now Anna Roylston was a fascinating woman. All she had to do was
to beckon a man to her. She broke the hearts of scores of our young
comrades, and scores of others she captured, and by their heart-strings
led into our organization. Yet she steadfastly refused to marry. She
dearly loved children, but she held that a child of her own would claim
her from the Cause, and that it was the Cause to which her life was
devoted.

It was an easy task for Anna Roylston to win Timothy Donnelly. Her
conscience did not trouble her, for at that very time occurred the
Nashville Massacre, when the Mercenaries, Donnelly in command, literally
murdered eight hundred weavers of that city. But she did not kill
Donnelly. She turned him over, a prisoner, to the 'Frisco Reds.
This happened only last year, and now she had been renamed. The
revolutionists everywhere are calling her the “Red Virgin.” *

     * It was not until the Second Revolt was crushed, that the
     'Frisco Reds flourished again.  And for two generations the
     Group flourished.  Then an agent of the Iron Heel managed to
     become a member, penetrated all its secrets, and brought
     about its total annihilation.  This occurred in 2002 A.D.
     The members were executed one at a time, at intervals of
     three weeks, and their bodies exposed in the labor-ghetto of
     San Francisco.

Colonel Ingram and Colonel Van Gilbert are two more familiar figures
that I was later to encounter. Colonel Ingram rose high in the Oligarchy
and became Minister to Germany. He was cordially detested by the
proletariat of both countries. It was in Berlin that I met him, where,
as an accredited international spy of the Iron Heel, I was received by
him and afforded much assistance. Incidentally, I may state that in my
dual role I managed a few important things for the Revolution.

Colonel Van Gilbert became known as “Snarling” Van Gilbert. His
important part was played in drafting the new code after the Chicago
Commune. But before that, as trial judge, he had earned sentence of
death by his fiendish malignancy. I was one of those that tried him and
passed sentence upon him. Anna Roylston carried out the execution.

Still another figure arises out of the old life--Jackson's lawyer. Least
of all would I have expected again to meet this man, Joseph Hurd. It was
a strange meeting. Late at night, two years after the Chicago Commune,
Ernest and I arrived together at the Benton Harbor refuge. This was
in Michigan, across the lake from Chicago. We arrived just at the
conclusion of the trial of a spy. Sentence of death had been passed, and
he was being led away. Such was the scene as we came upon it. The next
moment the wretched man had wrenched free from his captors and flung
himself at my feet, his arms clutching me about the knees in a vicelike
grip as he prayed in a frenzy for mercy. As he turned his agonized face
up to me, I recognized him as Joseph Hurd. Of all the terrible things
I have witnessed, never have I been so unnerved as by this frantic
creature's pleading for life. He was mad for life. It was pitiable. He
refused to let go of me, despite the hands of a dozen comrades. And when
at last he was dragged shrieking away, I sank down fainting upon the
floor. It is far easier to see brave men die than to hear a coward beg
for life.*

     * The Benton Harbor refuge was a catacomb, the entrance of
     which was cunningly contrived by way of a well.  It has been
     maintained in a fair state of preservation, and the curious
     visitor may to-day tread its labyrinths to the assembly
     hall, where, without doubt, occurred the scene described by
     Avis Everhard.  Farther on are the cells where the prisoners
     were confined, and the death chamber where the executions
     took place.  Beyond is the cemetery--long, winding galleries
     hewn out of the solid rock, with recesses on either hand,
     wherein, tier above tier, lie the revolutionists just as
     they were laid away by their comrades long years agone.



CHAPTER XX

A LOST OLIGARCH


But in remembering the old life I have run ahead of my story into the
new life. The wholesale jail delivery did not occur until well along
into 1915. Complicated as it was, it was carried through without a
hitch, and as a very creditable achievement it cheered us on in our
work. From Cuba to California, out of scores of jails, military prisons,
and fortresses, in a single night, we delivered fifty-one of our
fifty-two Congressmen, and in addition over three hundred other leaders.
There was not a single instance of miscarriage. Not only did they
escape, but every one of them won to the refuges as planned. The one
comrade Congressman we did not get was Arthur Simpson, and he had
already died in Cabanas after cruel tortures.

The eighteen months that followed was perhaps the happiest of my life
with Ernest. During that time we were never apart. Later, when we went
back into the world, we were separated much. Not more impatiently do I
await the flame of to-morrow's revolt than did I that night await the
coming of Ernest. I had not seen him for so long, and the thought of a
possible hitch or error in our plans that would keep him still in his
island prison almost drove me mad. The hours passed like ages. I was
all alone. Biedenbach, and three young men who had been living in the
refuge, were out and over the mountain, heavily armed and prepared for
anything. The refuges all over the land were quite empty, I imagine, of
comrades that night.

Just as the sky paled with the first warning of dawn, I heard the
signal from above and gave the answer. In the darkness I almost embraced
Biedenbach, who came down first; but the next moment I was in Ernest's
arms. And in that moment, so complete had been my transformation, I
discovered it was only by an effort of will that I could be the old Avis
Everhard, with the old mannerisms and smiles, phrases and intonations of
voice. It was by strong effort only that I was able to maintain my
old identity; I could not allow myself to forget for an instant, so
automatically imperative had become the new personality I had created.

Once inside the little cabin, I saw Ernest's face in the light. With the
exception of the prison pallor, there was no change in him--at least,
not much. He was my same lover-husband and hero. And yet there was a
certain ascetic lengthening of the lines of his face. But he could well
stand it, for it seemed to add a certain nobility of refinement to the
riotous excess of life that had always marked his features. He might
have been a trifle graver than of yore, but the glint of laughter still
was in his eyes. He was twenty pounds lighter, but in splendid
physical condition. He had kept up exercise during the whole period of
confinement, and his muscles were like iron. In truth, he was in better
condition than when he had entered prison. Hours passed before his head
touched pillow and I had soothed him off to sleep. But there was no
sleep for me. I was too happy, and the fatigue of jail-breaking and
riding horseback had not been mine.

While Ernest slept, I changed my dress, arranged my hair differently,
and came back to my new automatic self. Then, when Biedenbach and the
other comrades awoke, with their aid I concocted a little conspiracy.
All was ready, and we were in the cave-room that served for kitchen
and dining room when Ernest opened the door and entered. At that moment
Biedenbach addressed me as Mary, and I turned and answered him. Then I
glanced at Ernest with curious interest, such as any young comrade might
betray on seeing for the first time so noted a hero of the Revolution.
But Ernest's glance took me in and questioned impatiently past and
around the room. The next moment I was being introduced to him as Mary
Holmes.

To complete the deception, an extra plate was laid, and when we sat down
to table one chair was not occupied. I could have cried with joy as I
noted Ernest's increasing uneasiness and impatience. Finally he could
stand it no longer.

“Where's my wife?” he demanded bluntly.

“She is still asleep,” I answered.

It was the crucial moment. But my voice was a strange voice, and in it
he recognized nothing familiar. The meal went on. I talked a great
deal, and enthusiastically, as a hero-worshipper might talk, and it
was obvious that he was my hero. I rose to a climax of enthusiasm and
worship, and, before he could guess my intention, threw my arms around
his neck and kissed him on the lips. He held me from him at arm's length
and stared about in annoyance and perplexity. The four men greeted him
with roars of laughter, and explanations were made. At first he was
sceptical. He scrutinized me keenly and was half convinced, then shook
his head and would not believe. It was not until I became the old Avis
Everhard and whispered secrets in his ear that none knew but he and Avis
Everhard, that he accepted me as his really, truly wife.

It was later in the day that he took me in his arms, manifesting great
embarrassment and claiming polygamous emotions.

“You are my Avis,” he said, “and you are also some one else. You are two
women, and therefore you are my harem. At any rate, we are safe now.
If the United States becomes too hot for us, why I have qualified for
citizenship in Turkey.” *

     * At that time polygamy was still practised in Turkey.

Life became for me very happy in the refuge. It is true, we worked
hard and for long hours; but we worked together. We had each other for
eighteen precious months, and we were not lonely, for there was always
a coming and going of leaders and comrades--strange voices from the
under-world of intrigue and revolution, bringing stranger tales of
strife and war from all our battle-line. And there was much fun and
delight. We were not mere gloomy conspirators. We toiled hard and
suffered greatly, filled the gaps in our ranks and went on, and through
all the labour and the play and interplay of life and death we found
time to laugh and love. There were artists, scientists, scholars,
musicians, and poets among us; and in that hole in the ground culture
was higher and finer than in the palaces of wonder-cities of the
oligarchs. In truth, many of our comrades toiled at making beautiful
those same palaces and wonder-cities.*

     * This is not braggadocio on the part of Avis Everhard.  The
     flower of the artistic and intellectual world were
     revolutionists.  With the exception of a few of the
     musicians and singers, and of a few of the oligarchs, all
     the great creators of the period whose names have come down
     to us, were revolutionists.

Nor were we confined to the refuge itself. Often at night we rode over
the mountains for exercise, and we rode on Wickson's horses. If only he
knew how many revolutionists his horses have carried! We even went on
picnics to isolated spots we knew, where we remained all day, going
before daylight and returning after dark. Also, we used Wickson's cream
and butter,* and Ernest was not above shooting Wickson's quail and
rabbits, and, on occasion, his young bucks.

     * Even as late as that period, cream and butter were still
     crudely extracted from cow's milk.  The laboratory
     preparation of foods had not yet begun.

Indeed, it was a safe refuge. I have said that it was discovered only
once, and this brings me to the clearing up of the mystery of the
disappearance of young Wickson. Now that he is dead, I am free to speak.
There was a nook on the bottom of the great hole where the sun shone for
several hours and which was hidden from above. Here we had carried
many loads of gravel from the creek-bed, so that it was dry and warm,
a pleasant basking place; and here, one afternoon, I was drowsing, half
asleep, over a volume of Mendenhall.* I was so comfortable and secure
that even his flaming lyrics failed to stir me.

     * In all the extant literature and documents of that period,
     continual reference is made to the poems of Rudolph
     Mendenhall.  By his comrades he was called “The Flame.”  He
     was undoubtedly a great genius; yet, beyond weird and
     haunting fragments of his verse, quoted in the writings of
     others, nothing of his has come down to us.  He was executed
     by the Iron Heel in 1928 A.D.

I was aroused by a clod of earth striking at my feet. Then from above,
I heard a sound of scrambling. The next moment a young man, with a
final slide down the crumbling wall, alighted at my feet. It was Philip
Wickson, though I did not know him at the time. He looked at me coolly
and uttered a low whistle of surprise.

“Well,” he said; and the next moment, cap in hand, he was saying, “I beg
your pardon. I did not expect to find any one here.”

I was not so cool. I was still a tyro so far as concerned knowing how to
behave in desperate circumstances. Later on, when I was an international
spy, I should have been less clumsy, I am sure. As it was, I scrambled
to my feet and cried out the danger call.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, looking at me searchingly.

It was evident that he had no suspicion of our presence when making the
descent. I recognized this with relief.

“For what purpose do you think I did it?” I countered. I was indeed
clumsy in those days.

“I don't know,” he answered, shaking his head. “Unless you've got
friends about. Anyway, you've got some explanations to make. I don't
like the look of it. You are trespassing. This is my father's land,
and--”

But at that moment, Biedenbach, every polite and gentle, said from
behind him in a low voice, “Hands up, my young sir.”

Young Wickson put his hands up first, then turned to confront
Biedenbach, who held a thirty-thirty automatic rifle on him. Wickson was
imperturbable.

“Oh, ho,” he said, “a nest of revolutionists--and quite a hornet's nest
it would seem. Well, you won't abide here long, I can tell you.”

“Maybe you'll abide here long enough to reconsider that statement,”
 Biedenbach said quietly. “And in the meanwhile I must ask you to come
inside with me.”

“Inside?” The young man was genuinely astonished. “Have you a catacomb
here? I have heard of such things.”

“Come and see,” Biedenbach answered with his adorable accent.

“But it is unlawful,” was the protest.

“Yes, by your law,” the terrorist replied significantly. “But by our
law, believe me, it is quite lawful. You must accustom yourself to
the fact that you are in another world than the one of oppression and
brutality in which you have lived.”

“There is room for argument there,” Wickson muttered.

“Then stay with us and discuss it.”

The young fellow laughed and followed his captor into the house. He
was led into the inner cave-room, and one of the young comrades left to
guard him, while we discussed the situation in the kitchen.

Biedenbach, with tears in his eyes, held that Wickson must die, and was
quite relieved when we outvoted him and his horrible proposition. On the
other hand, we could not dream of allowing the young oligarch to depart.

“I'll tell you what to do,” Ernest said. “We'll keep him and give him an
education.”

“I bespeak the privilege, then, of enlightening him in jurisprudence,”
 Biedenbach cried.

And so a decision was laughingly reached. We would keep Philip Wickson
a prisoner and educate him in our ethics and sociology. But in the
meantime there was work to be done. All trace of the young oligarch must
be obliterated. There were the marks he had left when descending the
crumbling wall of the hole. This task fell to Biedenbach, and, slung on
a rope from above, he toiled cunningly for the rest of the day till no
sign remained. Back up the canyon from the lip of the hole all marks
were likewise removed. Then, at twilight, came John Carlson, who
demanded Wickson's shoes.

The young man did not want to give up his shoes, and even offered to
fight for them, till he felt the horseshoer's strength in Ernest's
hands. Carlson afterward reported several blisters and much grievous
loss of skin due to the smallness of the shoes, but he succeeded in
doing gallant work with them. Back from the lip of the hole, where ended
the young man's obliterated trial, Carlson put on the shoes and walked
away to the left. He walked for miles, around knolls, over ridges and
through canyons, and finally covered the trail in the running water of
a creek-bed. Here he removed the shoes, and, still hiding trail for a
distance, at last put on his own shoes. A week later Wickson got back
his shoes.

That night the hounds were out, and there was little sleep in the
refuge. Next day, time and again, the baying hounds came down the
canyon, plunged off to the left on the trail Carlson had made for them,
and were lost to ear in the farther canyons high up the mountain. And
all the time our men waited in the refuge, weapons in hand--automatic
revolvers and rifles, to say nothing of half a dozen infernal machines
of Biedenbach's manufacture. A more surprised party of rescuers could
not be imagined, had they ventured down into our hiding-place.

I have now given the true disappearance of Philip Wickson, one-time
oligarch, and, later, comrade in the Revolution. For we converted him
in the end. His mind was fresh and plastic, and by nature he was very
ethical. Several months later we rode him, on one of his father's
horses, over Sonoma Mountains to Petaluma Creek and embarked him in
a small fishing-launch. By easy stages we smuggled him along our
underground railway to the Carmel refuge.

There he remained eight months, at the end of which time, for two
reasons, he was loath to leave us. One reason was that he had fallen in
love with Anna Roylston, and the other was that he had become one of
us. It was not until he became convinced of the hopelessness of his
love affair that he acceded to our wishes and went back to his father.
Ostensibly an oligarch until his death, he was in reality one of the
most valuable of our agents. Often and often has the Iron Heel been
dumbfounded by the miscarriage of its plans and operations against us.
If it but knew the number of its own members who are our agents, it
would understand. Young Wickson never wavered in his loyalty to the
Cause. In truth, his very death was incurred by his devotion to duty.
In the great storm of 1927, while attending a meeting of our leaders, he
contracted the pneumonia of which he died.*

     * The case of this young man was not unusual.  Many young
     men of the Oligarchy, impelled by sense of right conduct, or
     their imaginations captured by the glory of the Revolution,
     ethically or romantically devoted their lives to it.  In
     similar way, many sons of the Russian nobility played their
     parts in the earlier and protracted revolution in that
     country.


CHAPTER XXI

THE ROARING ABYSMAL BEAST


During the long period of our stay in the refuge, we were kept closely
in touch with what was happening in the world without, and we were
learning thoroughly the strength of the Oligarchy with which we were
at war. Out of the flux of transition the new institutions were
forming more definitely and taking on the appearance and attributes
of permanence. The oligarchs had succeeded in devising a governmental
machine, as intricate as it was vast, that worked--and this despite all
our efforts to clog and hamper.

This was a surprise to many of the revolutionists. They had not
conceived it possible. Nevertheless the work of the country went on.
The men toiled in the mines and fields--perforce they were no more than
slaves. As for the vital industries, everything prospered. The members
of the great labor castes were contented and worked on merrily. For the
first time in their lives they knew industrial peace. No more were they
worried by slack times, strike and lockout, and the union label. They
lived in more comfortable homes and in delightful cities of their
own--delightful compared with the slums and ghettos in which they had
formerly dwelt. They had better food to eat, less hours of labor, more
holidays, and a greater amount and variety of interests and pleasures.
And for their less fortunate brothers and sisters, the unfavored
laborers, the driven people of the abyss, they cared nothing. An age
of selfishness was dawning upon mankind. And yet this is not altogether
true. The labor castes were honeycombed by our agents--men whose
eyes saw, beyond the belly-need, the radiant figure of liberty and
brotherhood.

Another great institution that had taken form and was working smoothly
was the Mercenaries. This body of soldiers had been evolved out of the
old regular army and was now a million strong, to say nothing of the
colonial forces. The Mercenaries constituted a race apart. They dwelt in
cities of their own which were practically self-governed, and they
were granted many privileges. By them a large portion of the perplexing
surplus was consumed. They were losing all touch and sympathy with
the rest of the people, and, in fact, were developing their own class
morality and consciousness. And yet we had thousands of our agents among
them.*

     * The Mercenaries, in the last days of the Iron Heel, played
     an important role.  They constituted the balance of power in
     the struggles between the labor castes and the oligarchs,
     and now to one side and now to the other, threw their
     strength according to the play of intrigue and conspiracy.

The oligarchs themselves were going through a remarkable and, it must
be confessed, unexpected development. As a class, they disciplined
themselves. Every member had his work to do in the world, and this work
he was compelled to do. There were no more idle-rich young men. Their
strength was used to give united strength to the Oligarchy. They served
as leaders of troops and as lieutenants and captains of industry.
They found careers in applied science, and many of them became great
engineers. They went into the multitudinous divisions of the government,
took service in the colonial possessions, and by tens of thousands went
into the various secret services. They were, I may say, apprenticed
to education, to art, to the church, to science, to literature; and
in those fields they served the important function of moulding the
thought-processes of the nation in the direction of the perpetuity of
the Oligarchy.

They were taught, and later they in turn taught, that what they were
doing was right. They assimilated the aristocratic idea from the moment
they began, as children, to receive impressions of the world. The
aristocratic idea was woven into the making of them until it became bone
of them and flesh of them. They looked upon themselves as wild-animal
trainers, rulers of beasts. From beneath their feet rose always the
subterranean rumbles of revolt. Violent death ever stalked in their
midst; bomb and knife and bullet were looked upon as so many fangs
of the roaring abysmal beast they must dominate if humanity were
to persist. They were the saviours of humanity, and they regarded
themselves as heroic and sacrificing laborers for the highest good.

They, as a class, believed that they alone maintained civilization.
It was their belief that if ever they weakened, the great beast would
ingulf them and everything of beauty and wonder and joy and good in its
cavernous and slime-dripping maw. Without them, anarchy would reign and
humanity would drop backward into the primitive night out of which it
had so painfully emerged. The horrid picture of anarchy was held
always before their child's eyes until they, in turn, obsessed by this
cultivated fear, held the picture of anarchy before the eyes of the
children that followed them. This was the beast to be stamped upon, and
the highest duty of the aristocrat was to stamp upon it. In short,
they alone, by their unremitting toil and sacrifice, stood between
weak humanity and the all-devouring beast; and they believed it, firmly
believed it.

I cannot lay too great stress upon this high ethical righteousness of
the whole oligarch class. This has been the strength of the Iron Heel,
and too many of the comrades have been slow or loath to realize it. Many
of them have ascribed the strength of the Iron Heel to its system of
reward and punishment. This is a mistake. Heaven and hell may be the
prime factors of zeal in the religion of a fanatic; but for the great
majority of the religious, heaven and hell are incidental to right
and wrong. Love of the right, desire for the right, unhappiness with
anything less than the right--in short, right conduct, is the prime
factor of religion. And so with the Oligarchy. Prisons, banishment and
degradation, honors and palaces and wonder-cities, are all incidental.
The great driving force of the oligarchs is the belief that they are
doing right. Never mind the exceptions, and never mind the oppression
and injustice in which the Iron Heel was conceived. All is granted. The
point is that the strength of the Oligarchy today lies in its satisfied
conception of its own righteousness.*

     * Out of the ethical incoherency and inconsistency of
     capitalism, the oligarchs emerged with a new ethics,
     coherent and definite, sharp and severe as steel, the most
     absurd and unscientific and at the same time the most potent
     ever possessed by any tyrant class. The oligarchs believed
     their ethics, in spite of the fact that biology and
     evolution gave them the lie; and, because of their faith,
     for three centuries they were able to hold back the mighty
     tide of human progress--a spectacle, profound, tremendous,
     puzzling to the metaphysical moralist, and one that to the
     materialist is the cause of many doubts and
     reconsiderations.

For that matter, the strength of the Revolution, during these
frightful twenty years, has resided in nothing else than the sense
of righteousness. In no other way can be explained our sacrifices and
martyrdoms. For no other reason did Rudolph Mendenhall flame out his
soul for the Cause and sing his wild swan-song that last night of life.
For no other reason did Hurlbert die under torture, refusing to the last
to betray his comrades. For no other reason has Anna Roylston refused
blessed motherhood. For no other reason has John Carlson been the
faithful and unrewarded custodian of the Glen Ellen Refuge. It does
not matter, young or old, man or woman, high or low, genius or clod,
go where one will among the comrades of the Revolution, the motor-force
will be found to be a great and abiding desire for the right.

But I have run away from my narrative. Ernest and I well understood,
before we left the refuge, how the strength of the Iron Heel was
developing. The labor castes, the Mercenaries, and the great hordes
of secret agents and police of various sorts were all pledged to the
Oligarchy. In the main, and ignoring the loss of liberty, they were
better off than they had been. On the other hand, the great helpless
mass of the population, the people of the abyss, was sinking into a
brutish apathy of content with misery. Whenever strong proletarians
asserted their strength in the midst of the mass, they were drawn away
from the mass by the oligarchs and given better conditions by being made
members of the labor castes or of the Mercenaries. Thus discontent was
lulled and the proletariat robbed of its natural leaders.

The condition of the people of the abyss was pitiable. Common school
education, so far as they were concerned, had ceased. They lived
like beasts in great squalid labor-ghettos, festering in misery and
degradation. All their old liberties were gone. They were labor-slaves.
Choice of work was denied them. Likewise was denied them the right to
move from place to place, or the right to bear or possess arms. They
were not land serfs like the farmers. They were machine-serfs and
labor-serfs. When unusual needs arose for them, such as the building
of the great highways and air-lines, of canals, tunnels, subways, and
fortifications, levies were made on the labor-ghettos, and tens of
thousands of serfs, willy-nilly, were transported to the scene of
operations. Great armies of them are toiling now at the building of
Ardis, housed in wretched barracks where family life cannot exist, and
where decency is displaced by dull bestiality. In all truth, there in
the labor-ghettos is the roaring abysmal beast the oligarchs fear so
dreadfully--but it is the beast of their own making. In it they will not
let the ape and tiger die.

And just now the word has gone forth that new levies are being imposed
for the building of Asgard, the projected wonder-city that will far
exceed Ardis when the latter is completed.* We of the Revolution will go
on with that great work, but it will not be done by the miserable serfs.
The walls and towers and shafts of that fair city will arise to the
sound of singing, and into its beauty and wonder will be woven, not
sighs and groans, but music and laughter.

     * Ardis was completed in 1942 A.D., Asgard was not completed
     until 1984 A.D.  It was fifty-two years in the building,
     during which time a permanent army of half a million serfs
     was employed.  At times these numbers swelled to over a
     million--without any account being taken of the hundreds of
     thousands of the labor castes and the artists.

Ernest was madly impatient to be out in the world and doing, for our
ill-fated First Revolt, that had miscarried in the Chicago Commune, was
ripening fast. Yet he possessed his soul with patience, and during this
time of his torment, when Hadly, who had been brought for the purpose
from Illinois, made him over into another man* he revolved great plans
in his head for the organization of the learned proletariat, and for the
maintenance of at least the rudiments of education amongst the people of
the abyss--all this of course in the event of the First Revolt being a
failure.

     * Among the Revolutionists were many surgeons, and in
     vivisection they attained marvellous proficiency.  In Avis
     Everhard's words, they could literally make a man over.  To
     them the elimination of scars and disfigurements was a
     trivial detail.  They changed the features with such
     microscopic care that no traces were left of their
     handiwork.  The nose was a favorite organ to work upon.
     Skin-grafting and hair-transplanting were among their
     commonest devices.  The changes in expression they
     accomplished were wizard-like.  Eyes and eyebrows, lips,
     mouths, and ears, were radically altered.  By cunning
     operations on tongue, throat, larynx, and nasal cavities a
     man's whole enunciation and manner of speech could be
     changed.  Desperate times give need for desperate remedies,
     and the surgeons of the Revolution rose to the need.  Among
     other things, they could increase an adult's stature by as
     much as four or five inches and decrease it by one or two
     inches.  What they did is to-day a lost art.  We have no
     need for it.

It was not until January, 1917, that we left the refuge. All had been
arranged. We took our place at once as agents-provocateurs in the scheme
of the Iron Heel. I was supposed to be Ernest's sister. By oligarchs and
comrades on the inside who were high in authority, place had been made
for us, we were in possession of all necessary documents, and our pasts
were accounted for. With help on the inside, this was not difficult,
for in that shadow-world of secret service identity was nebulous. Like
ghosts the agents came and went, obeying commands, fulfilling duties,
following clews, making their reports often to officers they never saw
or cooperating with other agents they had never seen before and would
never see again.



CHAPTER XXII

THE CHICAGO COMMUNE


As agents-provocateurs, not alone were we able to travel a great deal,
but our very work threw us in contact with the proletariat and with our
comrades, the revolutionists. Thus we were in both camps at the same
time, ostensibly serving the Iron Heel and secretly working with all
our might for the Cause. There were many of us in the various
secret services of the Oligarchy, and despite the shakings-up and
reorganizations the secret services have undergone, they have never been
able to weed all of us out.

Ernest had largely planned the First Revolt, and the date set had been
somewhere early in the spring of 1918. In the fall of 1917 we were not
ready; much remained to be done, and when the Revolt was precipitated,
of course it was doomed to failure. The plot of necessity was
frightfully intricate, and anything premature was sure to destroy it.
This the Iron Heel foresaw and laid its schemes accordingly.

We had planned to strike our first blow at the nervous system of the
Oligarchy. The latter had remembered the general strike, and had
guarded against the defection of the telegraphers by installing wireless
stations, in the control of the Mercenaries. We, in turn, had countered
this move. When the signal was given, from every refuge, all over the
land, and from the cities, and towns, and barracks, devoted comrades
were to go forth and blow up the wireless stations. Thus at the first
shock would the Iron Heel be brought to earth and lie practically
dismembered.

At the same moment, other comrades were to blow up the bridges and
tunnels and disrupt the whole network of railroads. Still further, other
groups of comrades, at the signal, were to seize the officers of the
Mercenaries and the police, as well as all Oligarchs of unusual ability
or who held executive positions. Thus would the leaders of the enemy
be removed from the field of the local battles that would inevitably be
fought all over the land.

Many things were to occur simultaneously when the signal went forth. The
Canadian and Mexican patriots, who were far stronger than the Iron Heel
dreamed, were to duplicate our tactics. Then there were comrades (these
were the women, for the men would be busy elsewhere) who were to post
the proclamations from our secret presses. Those of us in the higher
employ of the Iron Heel were to proceed immediately to make confusion
and anarchy in all our departments. Inside the Mercenaries were
thousands of our comrades. Their work was to blow up the magazines
and to destroy the delicate mechanism of all the war machinery. In the
cities of the Mercenaries and of the labor castes similar programmes of
disruption were to be carried out.

In short, a sudden, colossal, stunning blow was to be struck. Before the
paralyzed Oligarchy could recover itself, its end would have come.
It would have meant terrible times and great loss of life, but no
revolutionist hesitates at such things. Why, we even depended much, in
our plan, on the unorganized people of the abyss. They were to be loosed
on the palaces and cities of the masters. Never mind the destruction
of life and property. Let the abysmal brute roar and the police and
Mercenaries slay. The abysmal brute would roar anyway, and the police
and Mercenaries would slay anyway. It would merely mean that various
dangers to us were harmlessly destroying one another. In the meantime we
would be doing our own work, largely unhampered, and gaining control of
all the machinery of society.

Such was our plan, every detail of which had to be worked out in secret,
and, as the day drew near, communicated to more and more comrades.
This was the danger point, the stretching of the conspiracy. But that
danger-point was never reached. Through its spy-system the Iron Heel
got wind of the Revolt and prepared to teach us another of its bloody
lessons. Chicago was the devoted city selected for the instruction, and
well were we instructed.

Chicago* was the ripest of all--Chicago which of old time was the city
of blood and which was to earn anew its name. There the revolutionary
spirit was strong. Too many bitter strikes had been curbed there in the
days of capitalism for the workers to forget and forgive. Even the
labor castes of the city were alive with revolt. Too many heads had
been broken in the early strikes. Despite their changed and favorable
conditions, their hatred for the master class had not died. This spirit
had infected the Mercenaries, of which three regiments in particular
were ready to come over to us en masse.

     * Chicago was the industrial inferno of the nineteenth
     century A.D. A curious anecdote has come down to us of John
     Burns, a great English labor leader and one time member of
     the British Cabinet. In Chicago, while on a visit to the
     United States, he was asked by a newspaper reporter for his
     opinion of that city.  “Chicago,” he answered, “is a pocket
     edition of hell.”  Some time later, as he was going aboard
     his steamer to sail to England, he was approached by another
     reporter, who wanted to know if he had changed his opinion
     of Chicago.  “Yes, I have,” was his reply.  “My present
     opinion is that hell is a pocket edition of Chicago.”

Chicago had always been the storm-centre of the conflict between
labor and capital, a city of street-battles and violent death, with a
class-conscious capitalist organization and a class-conscious workman
organization, where, in the old days, the very school-teachers were
formed into labor unions and affiliated with the hod-carriers and
brick-layers in the American Federation of Labor. And Chicago became the
storm-centre of the premature First Revolt.

The trouble was precipitated by the Iron Heel. It was cleverly done. The
whole population, including the favored labor castes, was given a course
of outrageous treatment. Promises and agreements were broken, and most
drastic punishments visited upon even petty offenders. The people of
the abyss were tormented out of their apathy. In fact, the Iron Heel was
preparing to make the abysmal beast roar. And hand in hand with this, in
all precautionary measures in Chicago, the Iron Heel was inconceivably
careless. Discipline was relaxed among the Mercenaries that remained,
while many regiments had been withdrawn and sent to various parts of the
country.

It did not take long to carry out this programme--only several weeks. We
of the Revolution caught vague rumors of the state of affairs, but had
nothing definite enough for an understanding. In fact, we thought it was
a spontaneous spirit of revolt that would require careful curbing on our
part, and never dreamed that it was deliberately manufactured--and it
had been manufactured so secretly, from the very innermost circle of
the Iron Heel, that we had got no inkling. The counter-plot was an able
achievement, and ably carried out.

I was in New York when I received the order to proceed immediately to
Chicago. The man who gave me the order was one of the oligarchs, I could
tell that by his speech, though I did not know his name nor see his
face. His instructions were too clear for me to make a mistake. Plainly
I read between the lines that our plot had been discovered, that we had
been countermined. The explosion was ready for the flash of powder, and
countless agents of the Iron Heel, including me, either on the ground
or being sent there, were to supply that flash. I flatter myself that I
maintained my composure under the keen eye of the oligarch, but my heart
was beating madly. I could almost have shrieked and flown at his throat
with my naked hands before his final, cold-blooded instructions were
given.

Once out of his presence, I calculated the time. I had just the moments
to spare, if I were lucky, to get in touch with some local leader before
catching my train. Guarding against being trailed, I made a rush of it
for the Emergency Hospital. Luck was with me, and I gained access at
once to comrade Galvin, the surgeon-in-chief. I started to gasp out my
information, but he stopped me.

“I already know,” he said quietly, though his Irish eyes were flashing.
“I knew what you had come for. I got the word fifteen minutes ago, and I
have already passed it along. Everything shall be done here to keep the
comrades quiet. Chicago is to be sacrificed, but it shall be Chicago
alone.”

“Have you tried to get word to Chicago?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No telegraphic communication. Chicago is shut off.
It's going to be hell there.”

He paused a moment, and I saw his white hands clinch. Then he burst out:

“By God! I wish I were going to be there!”

“There is yet a chance to stop it,” I said, “if nothing happens to
the train and I can get there in time. Or if some of the other
secret-service comrades who have learned the truth can get there in
time.”

“You on the inside were caught napping this time,” he said.

I nodded my head humbly.

“It was very secret,” I answered. “Only the inner chiefs could have
known up to to-day. We haven't yet penetrated that far, so we couldn't
escape being kept in the dark. If only Ernest were here. Maybe he is in
Chicago now, and all is well.”

Dr. Galvin shook his head. “The last news I heard of him was that he had
been sent to Boston or New Haven. This secret service for the enemy must
hamper him a lot, but it's better than lying in a refuge.”

I started to go, and Galvin wrung my hand.

“Keep a stout heart,” were his parting words. “What if the First Revolt
is lost? There will be a second, and we will be wiser then. Good-by and
good luck. I don't know whether I'll ever see you again. It's going to
be hell there, but I'd give ten years of my life for your chance to be
in it.”

The Twentieth Century* left New York at six in the evening, and was
supposed to arrive at Chicago at seven next morning. But it lost time
that night. We were running behind another train. Among the travellers
in my Pullman was comrade Hartman, like myself in the secret service
of the Iron Heel. He it was who told me of the train that immediately
preceded us. It was an exact duplicate of our train, though it contained
no passengers. The idea was that the empty train should receive the
disaster were an attempt made to blow up the Twentieth Century. For that
matter there were very few people on the train--only a baker's dozen in
our car.

     * This was reputed to be the fastest train in the world
     then.  It was quite a famous train.

“There must be some big men on board,” Hartman concluded. “I noticed a
private car on the rear.”

Night had fallen when we made our first change of engine, and I walked
down the platform for a breath of fresh air and to see what I could see.
Through the windows of the private car I caught a glimpse of three
men whom I recognized. Hartman was right. One of the men was General
Altendorff; and the other two were Mason and Vanderbold, the brains of
the inner circle of the Oligarchy's secret service.

It was a quiet moonlight night, but I tossed restlessly and could not
sleep. At five in the morning I dressed and abandoned my bed.

I asked the maid in the dressing-room how late the train was, and she
told me two hours. She was a mulatto woman, and I noticed that her
face was haggard, with great circles under the eyes, while the eyes
themselves were wide with some haunting fear.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

“Nothing, miss; I didn't sleep well, I guess,” was her reply.

I looked at her closely, and tried her with one of our signals. She
responded, and I made sure of her.

“Something terrible is going to happen in Chicago,” she said. “There's
that fake* train in front of us. That and the troop-trains have made us
late.”

     * False.

“Troop-trains?” I queried.

She nodded her head. “The line is thick with them. We've been passing
them all night. And they're all heading for Chicago. And bringing them
over the air-line--that means business.

“I've a lover in Chicago,” she added apologetically. “He's one of us,
and he's in the Mercenaries, and I'm afraid for him.”

Poor girl. Her lover was in one of the three disloyal regiments.

Hartman and I had breakfast together in the dining car, and I forced
myself to eat. The sky had clouded, and the train rushed on like a
sullen thunderbolt through the gray pall of advancing day. The very
negroes that waited on us knew that something terrible was impending.
Oppression sat heavily upon them; the lightness of their natures had
ebbed out of them; they were slack and absent-minded in their service,
and they whispered gloomily to one another in the far end of the car
next to the kitchen. Hartman was hopeless over the situation.

“What can we do?” he demanded for the twentieth time, with a helpless
shrug of the shoulders.

He pointed out of the window. “See, all is ready. You can depend upon it
that they're holding them like this, thirty or forty miles outside the
city, on every road.”

He had reference to troop-trains on the side-track. The soldiers were
cooking their breakfasts over fires built on the ground beside the
track, and they looked up curiously at us as we thundered past without
slackening our terrific speed.

All was quiet as we entered Chicago. It was evident nothing had happened
yet. In the suburbs the morning papers came on board the train. There
was nothing in them, and yet there was much in them for those skilled
in reading between the lines that it was intended the ordinary reader
should read into the text. The fine hand of the Iron Heel was apparent
in every column. Glimmerings of weakness in the armor of the Oligarchy
were given. Of course, there was nothing definite. It was intended that
the reader should feel his way to these glimmerings. It was
cleverly done. As fiction, those morning papers of October 27th were
masterpieces.

The local news was missing. This in itself was a masterstroke. It
shrouded Chicago in mystery, and it suggested to the average Chicago
reader that the Oligarchy did not dare give the local news. Hints that
were untrue, of course, were given of insubordination all over the land,
crudely disguised with complacent references to punitive measures to be
taken. There were reports of numerous wireless stations that had
been blown up, with heavy rewards offered for the detection of the
perpetrators. Of course no wireless stations had been blown up. Many
similar outrages, that dovetailed with the plot of the revolutionists,
were given. The impression to be made on the minds of the Chicago
comrades was that the general Revolt was beginning, albeit with a
confusing miscarriage in many details. It was impossible for one
uninformed to escape the vague yet certain feeling that all the land was
ripe for the revolt that had already begun to break out.

It was reported that the defection of the Mercenaries in California had
become so serious that half a dozen regiments had been disbanded and
broken, and that their members with their families had been driven
from their own city and on into the labor-ghettos. And the California
Mercenaries were in reality the most faithful of all to their salt!
But how was Chicago, shut off from the rest of the world, to know? Then
there was a ragged telegram describing an outbreak of the populace in
New York City, in which the labor castes were joining, concluding with
the statement (intended to be accepted as a bluff*) that the troops had
the situation in hand.

     * A lie.

And as the oligarchs had done with the morning papers, so had they done
in a thousand other ways. These we learned afterward, as, for example,
the secret messages of the oligarchs, sent with the express purpose of
leaking to the ears of the revolutionists, that had come over the wires,
now and again, during the first part of the night.

“I guess the Iron Heel won't need our services,” Hartman remarked,
putting down the paper he had been reading, when the train pulled into
the central depot. “They wasted their time sending us here. Their plans
have evidently prospered better than they expected. Hell will break
loose any second now.”

He turned and looked down the train as we alighted.

“I thought so,” he muttered. “They dropped that private car when the
papers came aboard.”

Hartman was hopelessly depressed. I tried to cheer him up, but he
ignored my effort and suddenly began talking very hurriedly, in a
low voice, as we passed through the station. At first I could not
understand.

“I have not been sure,” he was saying, “and I have told no one. I have
been working on it for weeks, and I cannot make sure. Watch out for
Knowlton. I suspect him. He knows the secrets of a score of our refuges.
He carries the lives of hundreds of us in his hands, and I think he is
a traitor. It's more a feeling on my part than anything else. But I
thought I marked a change in him a short while back. There is the danger
that he has sold us out, or is going to sell us out. I am almost sure
of it. I wouldn't whisper my suspicions to a soul, but, somehow, I don't
think I'll leave Chicago alive. Keep your eye on Knowlton. Trap him.
Find out. I don't know anything more. It is only an intuition, and so
far I have failed to find the slightest clew.” We were just stepping out
upon the sidewalk. “Remember,” Hartman concluded earnestly. “Keep your
eyes upon Knowlton.”

And Hartman was right. Before a month went by Knowlton paid for his
treason with his life. He was formally executed by the comrades in
Milwaukee.

All was quiet on the streets--too quiet. Chicago lay dead. There was no
roar and rumble of traffic. There were not even cabs on the streets. The
surface cars and the elevated were not running. Only occasionally, on
the sidewalks, were there stray pedestrians, and these pedestrians did
not loiter. They went their ways with great haste and definiteness,
withal there was a curious indecision in their movements, as though they
expected the buildings to topple over on them or the sidewalks to sink
under their feet or fly up in the air. A few gamins, however, were
around, in their eyes a suppressed eagerness in anticipation of
wonderful and exciting things to happen.

From somewhere, far to the south, the dull sound of an explosion came to
our ears. That was all. Then quiet again, though the gamins had startled
and listened, like young deer, at the sound. The doorways to all the
buildings were closed; the shutters to the shops were up. But there
were many police and watchmen in evidence, and now and again automobile
patrols of the Mercenaries slipped swiftly past.

Hartman and I agreed that it was useless to report ourselves to the
local chiefs of the secret service. Our failure so to report would be
excused, we knew, in the light of subsequent events. So we headed for
the great labor-ghetto on the South Side in the hope of getting in
contact with some of the comrades. Too late! We knew it. But we could
not stand still and do nothing in those ghastly, silent streets. Where
was Ernest? I was wondering. What was happening in the cities of the
labor castes and Mercenaries? In the fortresses?

As if in answer, a great screaming roar went up, dim with distance,
punctuated with detonation after detonation.

“It's the fortresses,” Hartman said. “God pity those three regiments!”

At a crossing we noticed, in the direction of the stockyards, a gigantic
pillar of smoke. At the next crossing several similar smoke pillars were
rising skyward in the direction of the West Side. Over the city of the
Mercenaries we saw a great captive war-balloon that burst even as we
looked at it, and fell in flaming wreckage toward the earth. There was
no clew to that tragedy of the air. We could not determine whether the
balloon had been manned by comrades or enemies. A vague sound came to
our ears, like the bubbling of a gigantic caldron a long way off, and
Hartman said it was machine-guns and automatic rifles.

And still we walked in immediate quietude. Nothing was happening where
we were. The police and the automobile patrols went by, and once half
a dozen fire-engines, returning evidently from some conflagration. A
question was called to the fireman by an officer in an automobile, and
we heard one shout in reply: “No water! They've blown up the mains!”

“We've smashed the water supply,” Hartman cried excitedly to me. “If we
can do all this in a premature, isolated, abortive attempt, what can't
we do in a concerted, ripened effort all over the land?”

The automobile containing the officer who had asked the question darted
on. Suddenly there was a deafening roar. The machine, with its human
freight, lifted in an upburst of smoke, and sank down a mass of wreckage
and death.

Hartman was jubilant. “Well done! well done!” he was repeating, over
and over, in a whisper. “The proletariat gets its lesson to-day, but it
gives one, too.”

Police were running for the spot. Also, another patrol machine had
halted. As for myself, I was in a daze. The suddenness of it was
stunning. How had it happened? I knew not how, and yet I had been
looking directly at it. So dazed was I for the moment that I was
scarcely aware of the fact that we were being held up by the police. I
abruptly saw that a policeman was in the act of shooting Hartman. But
Hartman was cool and was giving the proper passwords. I saw the levelled
revolver hesitate, then sink down, and heard the disgusted grunt of the
policeman. He was very angry, and was cursing the whole secret service.
It was always in the way, he was averring, while Hartman was talking
back to him and with fitting secret-service pride explaining to him the
clumsiness of the police.

The next moment I knew how it had happened. There was quite a group
about the wreck, and two men were just lifting up the wounded officer
to carry him to the other machine. A panic seized all of them, and
they scattered in every direction, running in blind terror, the wounded
officer, roughly dropped, being left behind. The cursing policeman
alongside of me also ran, and Hartman and I ran, too, we knew not why,
obsessed with the same blind terror to get away from that particular
spot.

Nothing really happened then, but everything was explained. The flying
men were sheepishly coming back, but all the while their eyes were
raised apprehensively to the many-windowed, lofty buildings that towered
like the sheer walls of a canyon on each side of the street. From one
of those countless windows the bomb had been thrown, but which window?
There had been no second bomb, only a fear of one.

Thereafter we looked with speculative comprehension at the windows.
Any of them contained possible death. Each building was a possible
ambuscade. This was warfare in that modern jungle, a great city. Every
street was a canyon, every building a mountain. We had not changed much
from primitive man, despite the war automobiles that were sliding by.

Turning a corner, we came upon a woman. She was lying on the pavement,
in a pool of blood. Hartman bent over and examined her. As for myself,
I turned deathly sick. I was to see many dead that day, but the total
carnage was not to affect me as did this first forlorn body lying
there at my feet abandoned on the pavement. “Shot in the breast,” was
Hartman's report. Clasped in the hollow of her arm, as a child might be
clasped, was a bundle of printed matter. Even in death she seemed loath
to part with that which had caused her death; for when Hartman had
succeeded in withdrawing the bundle, we found that it consisted of large
printed sheets, the proclamations of the revolutionists.

“A comrade,” I said.

But Hartman only cursed the Iron Heel, and we passed on. Often we
were halted by the police and patrols, but our passwords enabled us
to proceed. No more bombs fell from the windows, the last pedestrians
seemed to have vanished from the streets, and our immediate quietude
grew more profound; though the gigantic caldron continued to bubble in
the distance, dull roars of explosions came to us from all directions,
and the smoke-pillars were towering more ominously in the heavens.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS


Suddenly a change came over the face of things. A tingle of excitement
ran along the air. Automobiles fled past, two, three, a dozen, and from
them warnings were shouted to us. One of the machines swerved wildly
at high speed half a block down, and the next moment, already left well
behind it, the pavement was torn into a great hole by a bursting bomb.
We saw the police disappearing down the cross-streets on the run, and
knew that something terrible was coming. We could hear the rising roar
of it.

“Our brave comrades are coming,” Hartman said.

We could see the front of their column filling the street from gutter to
gutter, as the last war-automobile fled past. The machine stopped for a
moment just abreast of us. A soldier leaped from it, carrying something
carefully in his hands. This, with the same care, he deposited in the
gutter. Then he leaped back to his seat and the machine dashed on, took
the turn at the corner, and was gone from sight. Hartman ran to the
gutter and stooped over the object.

“Keep back,” he warned me.

I could see he was working rapidly with his hands. When he returned to
me the sweat was heavy on his forehead.

“I disconnected it,” he said, “and just in the nick of time. The soldier
was clumsy. He intended it for our comrades, but he didn't give it
enough time. It would have exploded prematurely. Now it won't explode at
all.”

Everything was happening rapidly now. Across the street and half a block
down, high up in a building, I could see heads peering out. I had just
pointed them out to Hartman, when a sheet of flame and smoke ran along
that portion of the face of the building where the heads had appeared,
and the air was shaken by the explosion. In places the stone facing of
the building was torn away, exposing the iron construction beneath. The
next moment similar sheets of flame and smoke smote the front of the
building across the street opposite it. Between the explosions we could
hear the rattle of the automatic pistols and rifles. For several minutes
this mid-air battle continued, then died out. It was patent that our
comrades were in one building, that Mercenaries were in the other, and
that they were fighting across the street. But we could not tell
which was which--which building contained our comrades and which the
Mercenaries.

By this time the column on the street was almost on us. As the front of
it passed under the warring buildings, both went into action again--one
building dropping bombs into the street, being attacked from across the
street, and in return replying to that attack. Thus we learned which
building was held by our comrades, and they did good work, saving those
in the street from the bombs of the enemy.

Hartman gripped my arm and dragged me into a wide entrance.

“They're not our comrades,” he shouted in my ear.

The inner doors to the entrance were locked and bolted. We could not
escape. The next moment the front of the column went by. It was not a
column, but a mob, an awful river that filled the street, the people
of the abyss, mad with drink and wrong, up at last and roaring for the
blood of their masters. I had seen the people of the abyss before, gone
through its ghettos, and thought I knew it; but I found that I was now
looking on it for the first time. Dumb apathy had vanished. It was now
dynamic--a fascinating spectacle of dread. It surged past my vision in
concrete waves of wrath, snarling and growling, carnivorous, drunk with
whiskey from pillaged warehouses, drunk with hatred, drunk with lust
for blood--men, women, and children, in rags and tatters, dim ferocious
intelligences with all the godlike blotted from their features and all
the fiendlike stamped in, apes and tigers, anaemic consumptives and
great hairy beasts of burden, wan faces from which vampire society had
sucked the juice of life, bloated forms swollen with physical grossness
and corruption, withered hags and death's-heads bearded like patriarchs,
festering youth and festering age, faces of fiends, crooked, twisted,
misshapen monsters blasted with the ravages of disease and all the
horrors of chronic innutrition--the refuse and the scum of life, a
raging, screaming, screeching, demoniacal horde.

And why not? The people of the abyss had nothing to lose but the misery
and pain of living. And to gain?--nothing, save one final, awful glut of
vengeance. And as I looked the thought came to me that in that rushing
stream of human lava were men, comrades and heroes, whose mission had
been to rouse the abysmal beast and to keep the enemy occupied in coping
with it.

And now a strange thing happened to me. A transformation came over me.
The fear of death, for myself and for others, left me. I was strangely
exalted, another being in another life. Nothing mattered. The Cause for
this one time was lost, but the Cause would be here to-morrow, the
same Cause, ever fresh and ever burning. And thereafter, in the orgy
of horror that raged through the succeeding hours, I was able to take
a calm interest. Death meant nothing, life meant nothing. I was an
interested spectator of events, and, sometimes swept on by the rush,
was myself a curious participant. For my mind had leaped to a star-cool
altitude and grasped a passionless transvaluation of values. Had it not
done this, I know that I should have died.

Half a mile of the mob had swept by when we were discovered. A woman
in fantastic rags, with cheeks cavernously hollow and with narrow black
eyes like burning gimlets, caught a glimpse of Hartman and me. She
let out a shrill shriek and bore in upon us. A section of the mob tore
itself loose and surged in after her. I can see her now, as I write
these lines, a leap in advance, her gray hair flying in thin tangled
strings, the blood dripping down her forehead from some wound in the
scalp, in her right hand a hatchet, her left hand, lean and wrinkled, a
yellow talon, gripping the air convulsively. Hartman sprang in front of
me. This was no time for explanations. We were well dressed, and that
was enough. His fist shot out, striking the woman between her burning
eyes. The impact of the blow drove her backward, but she struck the wall
of her on-coming fellows and bounced forward again, dazed and helpless,
the brandished hatchet falling feebly on Hartman's shoulder.

The next moment I knew not what was happening. I was overborne by the
crowd. The confined space was filled with shrieks and yells and curses.
Blows were falling on me. Hands were ripping and tearing at my flesh
and garments. I felt that I was being torn to pieces. I was being borne
down, suffocated. Some strong hand gripped my shoulder in the thick of
the press and was dragging fiercely at me. Between pain and pressure I
fainted. Hartman never came out of that entrance. He had shielded me and
received the first brunt of the attack. This had saved me, for the jam
had quickly become too dense for anything more than the mad gripping and
tearing of hands.

I came to in the midst of wild movement. All about me was the same
movement. I had been caught up in a monstrous flood that was sweeping me
I knew not whither. Fresh air was on my cheek and biting sweetly in my
lungs. Faint and dizzy, I was vaguely aware of a strong arm around my
body under the arms, and half-lifting me and dragging me along. Feebly
my own limbs were helping me. In front of me I could see the moving back
of a man's coat. It had been slit from top to bottom along the centre
seam, and it pulsed rhythmically, the slit opening and closing regularly
with every leap of the wearer. This phenomenon fascinated me for a time,
while my senses were coming back to me. Next I became aware of stinging
cheeks and nose, and could feel blood dripping on my face. My hat was
gone. My hair was down and flying, and from the stinging of the scalp I
managed to recollect a hand in the press of the entrance that had torn
at my hair. My chest and arms were bruised and aching in a score of
places.

My brain grew clearer, and I turned as I ran and looked at the man who
was holding me up. He it was who had dragged me out and saved me. He
noticed my movement.

“It's all right!” he shouted hoarsely. “I knew you on the instant.”

I failed to recognize him, but before I could speak I trod upon
something that was alive and that squirmed under my foot. I was swept on
by those behind and could not look down and see, and yet I knew that it
was a woman who had fallen and who was being trampled into the pavement
by thousands of successive feet.

“It's all right,” he repeated. “I'm Garthwaite.”

He was bearded and gaunt and dirty, but I succeeded in remembering him
as the stalwart youth that had spent several months in our Glen Ellen
refuge three years before. He passed me the signals of the Iron Heel's
secret service, in token that he, too, was in its employ.

“I'll get you out of this as soon as I can get a chance,” he assured me.
“But watch your footing. On your life don't stumble and go down.”

All things happened abruptly on that day, and with an abruptness that
was sickening the mob checked itself. I came in violent collision with
a large woman in front of me (the man with the split coat had vanished),
while those behind collided against me. A devilish pandemonium
reigned,--shrieks, curses, and cries of death, while above all rose the
churning rattle of machine-guns and the put-a-put, put-a-put of rifles.
At first I could make out nothing. People were falling about me right
and left. The woman in front doubled up and went down, her hands on her
abdomen in a frenzied clutch. A man was quivering against my legs in a
death-struggle.

It came to me that we were at the head of the column. Half a mile of it
had disappeared--where or how I never learned. To this day I do not know
what became of that half-mile of humanity--whether it was blotted out
by some frightful bolt of war, whether it was scattered and destroyed
piecemeal, or whether it escaped. But there we were, at the head of the
column instead of in its middle, and we were being swept out of life by
a torrent of shrieking lead.

As soon as death had thinned the jam, Garthwaite, still grasping my arm,
led a rush of survivors into the wide entrance of an office building.
Here, at the rear, against the doors, we were pressed by a panting,
gasping mass of creatures. For some time we remained in this position
without a change in the situation.

“I did it beautifully,” Garthwaite was lamenting to me. “Ran you right
into a trap. We had a gambler's chance in the street, but in here
there is no chance at all. It's all over but the shouting. Vive la
Revolution!”

Then, what he expected, began. The Mercenaries were killing without
quarter. At first, the surge back upon us was crushing, but as the
killing continued the pressure was eased. The dead and dying went down
and made room. Garthwaite put his mouth to my ear and shouted, but in
the frightful din I could not catch what he said. He did not wait. He
seized me and threw me down. Next he dragged a dying woman over on top
of me, and, with much squeezing and shoving, crawled in beside me and
partly over me. A mound of dead and dying began to pile up over us, and
over this mound, pawing and moaning, crept those that still survived.
But these, too, soon ceased, and a semi-silence settled down, broken by
groans and sobs and sounds of strangulation.

I should have been crushed had it not been for Garthwaite. As it was,
it seemed inconceivable that I could bear the weight I did and live. And
yet, outside of pain, the only feeling I possessed was one of curiosity.
How was it going to end? What would death be like? Thus did I receive
my red baptism in that Chicago shambles. Prior to that, death to me had
been a theory; but ever afterward death has been a simple fact that does
not matter, it is so easy.

But the Mercenaries were not content with what they had done. They
invaded the entrance, killing the wounded and searching out the unhurt
that, like ourselves, were playing dead. I remember one man they dragged
out of a heap, who pleaded abjectly until a revolver shot cut him short.
Then there was a woman who charged from a heap, snarling and shooting.
She fired six shots before they got her, though what damage she did we
could not know. We could follow these tragedies only by the sound. Every
little while flurries like this occurred, each flurry culminating in the
revolver shot that put an end to it. In the intervals we could hear
the soldiers talking and swearing as they rummaged among the carcasses,
urged on by their officers to hurry up.

At last they went to work on our heap, and we could feel the pressure
diminish as they dragged away the dead and wounded. Garthwaite began
uttering aloud the signals. At first he was not heard. Then he raised
his voice.

“Listen to that,” we heard a soldier say. And next the sharp voice of an
officer. “Hold on there! Careful as you go!”

Oh, that first breath of air as we were dragged out! Garthwaite did the
talking at first, but I was compelled to undergo a brief examination to
prove service with the Iron Heel.

“Agents-provocateurs all right,” was the officer's conclusion. He was
a beardless young fellow, a cadet, evidently, of some great oligarch
family.

“It's a hell of a job,” Garthwaite grumbled. “I'm going to try and
resign and get into the army. You fellows have a snap.”

“You've earned it,” was the young officer's answer. “I've got some pull,
and I'll see if it can be managed. I can tell them how I found you.”

He took Garthwaite's name and number, then turned to me.

“And you?”

“Oh, I'm going to be married,” I answered lightly, “and then I'll be out
of it all.”

And so we talked, while the killing of the wounded went on. It is all
a dream, now, as I look back on it; but at the time it was the most
natural thing in the world. Garthwaite and the young officer fell into
an animated conversation over the difference between so-called modern
warfare and the present street-fighting and sky-scraper fighting that
was taking place all over the city. I followed them intently, fixing up
my hair at the same time and pinning together my torn skirts. And all
the time the killing of the wounded went on. Sometimes the revolver
shots drowned the voices of Garthwaite and the officer, and they were
compelled to repeat what they had been saying.

I lived through three days of the Chicago Commune, and the vastness of
it and of the slaughter may be imagined when I say that in all that time
I saw practically nothing outside the killing of the people of the abyss
and the mid-air fighting between sky-scrapers. I really saw nothing of
the heroic work done by the comrades. I could hear the explosions of
their mines and bombs, and see the smoke of their conflagrations, and
that was all. The mid-air part of one great deed I saw, however, and
that was the balloon attacks made by our comrades on the fortresses.
That was on the second day. The three disloyal regiments had been
destroyed in the fortresses to the last man. The fortresses were crowded
with Mercenaries, the wind blew in the right direction, and up went our
balloons from one of the office buildings in the city.

Now Biedenbach, after he left Glen Ellen, had invented a most powerful
explosive--“expedite” he called it. This was the weapon the balloons
used. They were only hot-air balloons, clumsily and hastily made, but
they did the work. I saw it all from the top of an office building. The
first balloon missed the fortresses completely and disappeared into the
country; but we learned about it afterward. Burton and O'Sullivan were
in it. As they were descending they swept across a railroad directly
over a troop-train that was heading at full speed for Chicago. They
dropped their whole supply of expedite upon the locomotive. The
resulting wreck tied the line up for days. And the best of it was that,
released from the weight of expedite, the balloon shot up into the
air and did not come down for half a dozen miles, both heroes escaping
unharmed.

The second balloon was a failure. Its flight was lame. It floated too
low and was shot full of holes before it could reach the fortresses.
Herford and Guinness were in it, and they were blown to pieces along
with the field into which they fell. Biedenbach was in despair--we heard
all about it afterward--and he went up alone in the third balloon. He,
too, made a low flight, but he was in luck, for they failed seriously to
puncture his balloon. I can see it now as I did then, from the lofty top
of the building--that inflated bag drifting along the air, and that tiny
speck of a man clinging on beneath. I could not see the fortress, but
those on the roof with me said he was directly over it. I did not
see the expedite fall when he cut it loose. But I did see the balloon
suddenly leap up into the sky. An appreciable time after that the great
column of the explosion towered in the air, and after that, in turn, I
heard the roar of it. Biedenbach the gentle had destroyed a fortress.
Two other balloons followed at the same time. One was blown to pieces
in the air, the expedite exploding, and the shock of it disrupted the
second balloon, which fell prettily into the remaining fortress.
It couldn't have been better planned, though the two comrades in it
sacrificed their lives.

But to return to the people of the abyss. My experiences were confined
to them. They raged and slaughtered and destroyed all over the city
proper, and were in turn destroyed; but never once did they succeed in
reaching the city of the oligarchs over on the west side. The oligarchs
had protected themselves well. No matter what destruction was wreaked in
the heart of the city, they, and their womenkind and children, were to
escape hurt. I am told that their children played in the parks during
those terrible days and that their favorite game was an imitation of
their elders stamping upon the proletariat.

But the Mercenaries found it no easy task to cope with the people of the
abyss and at the same time fight with the comrades. Chicago was true to
her traditions, and though a generation of revolutionists was wiped out,
it took along with it pretty close to a generation of its enemies.
Of course, the Iron Heel kept the figures secret, but, at a very
conservative estimate, at least one hundred and thirty thousand
Mercenaries were slain. But the comrades had no chance. Instead of the
whole country being hand in hand in revolt, they were all alone, and the
total strength of the Oligarchy could have been directed against them
if necessary. As it was, hour after hour, day after day, in endless
train-loads, by hundreds of thousands, the Mercenaries were hurled into
Chicago.

And there were so many of the people of the abyss! Tiring of the
slaughter, a great herding movement was begun by the soldiers, the
intent of which was to drive the street mobs, like cattle, into Lake
Michigan. It was at the beginning of this movement that Garthwaite and I
had encountered the young officer. This herding movement was practically
a failure, thanks to the splendid work of the comrades. Instead of the
great host the Mercenaries had hoped to gather together, they succeeded
in driving no more than forty thousand of the wretches into the lake.
Time and again, when a mob of them was well in hand and being driven
along the streets to the water, the comrades would create a diversion,
and the mob would escape through the consequent hole torn in the
encircling net.

Garthwaite and I saw an example of this shortly after meeting with the
young officer. The mob of which we had been a part, and which had been
put in retreat, was prevented from escaping to the south and east by
strong bodies of troops. The troops we had fallen in with had held it
back on the west. The only outlet was north, and north it went toward
the lake, driven on from east and west and south by machine-gun fire and
automatics. Whether it divined that it was being driven toward the lake,
or whether it was merely a blind squirm of the monster, I do not know;
but at any rate the mob took a cross street to the west, turned down
the next street, and came back upon its track, heading south toward the
great ghetto.

Garthwaite and I at that time were trying to make our way westward to
get out of the territory of street-fighting, and we were caught right in
the thick of it again. As we came to the corner we saw the howling mob
bearing down upon us. Garthwaite seized my arm and we were just starting
to run, when he dragged me back from in front of the wheels of half a
dozen war automobiles, equipped with machine-guns, that were rushing for
the spot. Behind them came the soldiers with their automatic rifles.
By the time they took position, the mob was upon them, and it looked as
though they would be overwhelmed before they could get into action.

Here and there a soldier was discharging his rifle, but this scattered
fire had no effect in checking the mob. On it came, bellowing with brute
rage. It seemed the machine-guns could not get started. The automobiles
on which they were mounted blocked the street, compelling the soldiers
to find positions in, between, and on the sidewalks. More and more
soldiers were arriving, and in the jam we were unable to get away.
Garthwaite held me by the arm, and we pressed close against the front of
a building.

The mob was no more than twenty-five feet away when the machine-guns
opened up; but before that flaming sheet of death nothing could live.
The mob came on, but it could not advance. It piled up in a heap, a
mound, a huge and growing wave of dead and dying. Those behind urged on,
and the column, from gutter to gutter, telescoped upon itself. Wounded
creatures, men and women, were vomited over the top of that awful wave
and fell squirming down the face of it till they threshed about under
the automobiles and against the legs of the soldiers. The latter
bayoneted the struggling wretches, though one I saw who gained his feet
and flew at a soldier's throat with his teeth. Together they went down,
soldier and slave, into the welter.

The firing ceased. The work was done. The mob had been stopped in its
wild attempt to break through. Orders were being given to clear the
wheels of the war-machines. They could not advance over that wave of
dead, and the idea was to run them down the cross street. The soldiers
were dragging the bodies away from the wheels when it happened. We
learned afterward how it happened. A block distant a hundred of our
comrades had been holding a building. Across roofs and through buildings
they made their way, till they found themselves looking down upon the
close-packed soldiers. Then it was counter-massacre.

Without warning, a shower of bombs fell from the top of the building.
The automobiles were blown to fragments, along with many soldiers. We,
with the survivors, swept back in mad retreat. Half a block down another
building opened fire on us. As the soldiers had carpeted the street with
dead slaves, so, in turn, did they themselves become carpet. Garthwaite
and I bore charmed lives. As we had done before, so again we sought
shelter in an entrance. But he was not to be caught napping this time.
As the roar of the bombs died away, he began peering out.

“The mob's coming back!” he called to me. “We've got to get out of
this!”

We fled, hand in hand, down the bloody pavement, slipping and sliding,
and making for the corner. Down the cross street we could see a few
soldiers still running. Nothing was happening to them. The way was
clear. So we paused a moment and looked back. The mob came on slowly.
It was busy arming itself with the rifles of the slain and killing the
wounded. We saw the end of the young officer who had rescued us.
He painfully lifted himself on his elbow and turned loose with his
automatic pistol.

“There goes my chance of promotion,” Garthwaite laughed, as a woman bore
down on the wounded man, brandishing a butcher's cleaver. “Come on. It's
the wrong direction, but we'll get out somehow.”

And we fled eastward through the quiet streets, prepared at every cross
street for anything to happen. To the south a monster conflagration was
filling the sky, and we knew that the great ghetto was burning. At last
I sank down on the sidewalk. I was exhausted and could go no farther.
I was bruised and sore and aching in every limb; yet I could not escape
smiling at Garthwaite, who was rolling a cigarette and saying:

“I know I'm making a mess of rescuing you, but I can't get head nor
tail of the situation. It's all a mess. Every time we try to break out,
something happens and we're turned back. We're only a couple of blocks
now from where I got you out of that entrance. Friend and foe are all
mixed up. It's chaos. You can't tell who is in those darned buildings.
Try to find out, and you get a bomb on your head. Try to go peaceably on
your way, and you run into a mob and are killed by machine-guns, or
you run into the Mercenaries and are killed by your own comrades from a
roof. And on the top of it all the mob comes along and kills you, too.”

He shook his head dolefully, lighted his cigarette, and sat down beside
me.

“And I'm that hungry,” he added, “I could eat cobblestones.”

The next moment he was on his feet again and out in the street prying up
a cobblestone. He came back with it and assaulted the window of a store
behind us.

“It's ground floor and no good,” he explained as he helped me through
the hole he had made; “but it's the best we can do. You get a nap and
I'll reconnoitre. I'll finish this rescue all right, but I want time,
time, lots of it--and something to eat.”

It was a harness store we found ourselves in, and he fixed me up a couch
of horse blankets in the private office well to the rear. To add to my
wretchedness a splitting headache was coming on, and I was only too glad
to close my eyes and try to sleep.

“I'll be back,” were his parting words. “I don't hope to get an auto,
but I'll surely bring some grub,* anyway.”

     * Food.

And that was the last I saw of Garthwaite for three years. Instead of
coming back, he was carried away to a hospital with a bullet through his
lungs and another through the fleshy part of his neck.



CHAPTER XXIV

NIGHTMARE


I had not closed my eyes the night before on the Twentieth Century, and
what of that and of my exhaustion I slept soundly. When I first awoke,
it was night. Garthwaite had not returned. I had lost my watch and had
no idea of the time. As I lay with my eyes closed, I heard the same
dull sound of distant explosions. The inferno was still raging. I crept
through the store to the front. The reflection from the sky of vast
conflagrations made the street almost as light as day. One could have
read the finest print with ease. From several blocks away came the
crackle of small hand-bombs and the churning of machine-guns, and from a
long way off came a long series of heavy explosions. I crept back to my
horse blankets and slept again.

When next I awoke, a sickly yellow light was filtering in on me. It was
dawn of the second day. I crept to the front of the store. A smoke pall,
shot through with lurid gleams, filled the sky. Down the opposite
side of the street tottered a wretched slave. One hand he held tightly
against his side, and behind him he left a bloody trail. His eyes roved
everywhere, and they were filled with apprehension and dread. Once he
looked straight across at me, and in his face was all the dumb pathos
of the wounded and hunted animal. He saw me, but there was no kinship
between us, and with him, at least, no sympathy of understanding; for
he cowered perceptibly and dragged himself on. He could expect no aid
in all God's world. He was a helot in the great hunt of helots that the
masters were making. All he could hope for, all he sought, was some hole
to crawl away in and hide like any animal. The sharp clang of a passing
ambulance at the corner gave him a start. Ambulances were not for such
as he. With a groan of pain he threw himself into a doorway. A minute
later he was out again and desperately hobbling on.

I went back to my horse blankets and waited an hour for Garthwaite. My
headache had not gone away. On the contrary, it was increasing. It was
by an effort of will only that I was able to open my eyes and look
at objects. And with the opening of my eyes and the looking came
intolerable torment. Also, a great pulse was beating in my brain. Weak
and reeling, I went out through the broken window and down the street,
seeking to escape, instinctively and gropingly, from the awful shambles.
And thereafter I lived nightmare. My memory of what happened in the
succeeding hours is the memory one would have of nightmare. Many events
are focussed sharply on my brain, but between these indelible pictures
I retain are intervals of unconsciousness. What occurred in those
intervals I know not, and never shall know.

I remember stumbling at the corner over the legs of a man. It was the
poor hunted wretch that had dragged himself past my hiding-place. How
distinctly do I remember his poor, pitiful, gnarled hands as he lay
there on the pavement--hands that were more hoof and claw than hands,
all twisted and distorted by the toil of all his days, with on the palms
a horny growth of callous a half inch thick. And as I picked myself
up and started on, I looked into the face of the thing and saw that it
still lived; for the eyes, dimly intelligent, were looking at me and
seeing me.

After that came a kindly blank. I knew nothing, saw nothing, merely
tottered on in my quest for safety. My next nightmare vision was a
quiet street of the dead. I came upon it abruptly, as a wanderer in the
country would come upon a flowing stream. Only this stream I gazed upon
did not flow. It was congealed in death. From pavement to pavement, and
covering the sidewalks, it lay there, spread out quite evenly, with
only here and there a lump or mound of bodies to break the surface. Poor
driven people of the abyss, hunted helots--they lay there as the rabbits
in California after a drive.* Up the street and down I looked. There was
no movement, no sound. The quiet buildings looked down upon the scene
from their many windows. And once, and once only, I saw an arm that
moved in that dead stream. I swear I saw it move, with a strange
writhing gesture of agony, and with it lifted a head, gory with nameless
horror, that gibbered at me and then lay down again and moved no more.

     * In those days, so sparsely populated was the land that
     wild animals often became pests.  In California the custom
     of rabbit-driving obtained.  On a given day all the farmers
     in a locality would assemble and sweep across the country in
     converging lines, driving the rabbits by scores of thousands
     into a prepared enclosure, where they were clubbed to death
     by men and boys.

I remember another street, with quiet buildings on either side, and the
panic that smote me into consciousness as again I saw the people of the
abyss, but this time in a stream that flowed and came on. And then I saw
there was nothing to fear. The stream moved slowly, while from it arose
groans and lamentations, cursings, babblings of senility, hysteria, and
insanity; for these were the very young and the very old, the feeble and
the sick, the helpless and the hopeless, all the wreckage of the ghetto.
The burning of the great ghetto on the South Side had driven them forth
into the inferno of the street-fighting, and whither they wended and
whatever became of them I did not know and never learned.*

     * It was long a question of debate, whether the burning of
     the South Side ghetto was accidental, or whether it was done
     by the Mercenaries; but it is definitely settled now that
     the ghetto was fired by the Mercenaries under orders from
     their chiefs.

I have faint memories of breaking a window and hiding in some shop to
escape a street mob that was pursued by soldiers. Also, a bomb burst
near me, once, in some still street, where, look as I would, up and
down, I could see no human being. But my next sharp recollection begins
with the crack of a rifle and an abrupt becoming aware that I am being
fired at by a soldier in an automobile. The shot missed, and the next
moment I was screaming and motioning the signals. My memory of riding in
the automobile is very hazy, though this ride, in turn, is broken by one
vivid picture. The crack of the rifle of the soldier sitting beside me
made me open my eyes, and I saw George Milford, whom I had known in the
Pell Street days, sinking slowly down to the sidewalk. Even as he sank
the soldier fired again, and Milford doubled in, then flung his body
out, and fell sprawling. The soldier chuckled, and the automobile sped
on.

The next I knew after that I was awakened out of a sound sleep by a man
who walked up and down close beside me. His face was drawn and strained,
and the sweat rolled down his nose from his forehead. One hand was
clutched tightly against his chest by the other hand, and blood
dripped down upon the floor as he walked. He wore the uniform of the
Mercenaries. From without, as through thick walls, came the muffled roar
of bursting bombs. I was in some building that was locked in combat with
some other building.

A surgeon came in to dress the wounded soldier, and I learned that it
was two in the afternoon. My headache was no better, and the surgeon
paused from his work long enough to give me a powerful drug that would
depress the heart and bring relief. I slept again, and the next I knew I
was on top of the building. The immediate fighting had ceased, and I
was watching the balloon attack on the fortresses. Some one had an arm
around me and I was leaning close against him. It came to me quite as a
matter of course that this was Ernest, and I found myself wondering how
he had got his hair and eyebrows so badly singed.

It was by the merest chance that we had found each other in that
terrible city. He had had no idea that I had left New York, and, coming
through the room where I lay asleep, could not at first believe that
it was I. Little more I saw of the Chicago Commune. After watching the
balloon attack, Ernest took me down into the heart of the building,
where I slept the afternoon out and the night. The third day we spent
in the building, and on the fourth, Ernest having got permission and an
automobile from the authorities, we left Chicago.

My headache was gone, but, body and soul, I was very tired. I lay back
against Ernest in the automobile, and with apathetic eyes watched the
soldiers trying to get the machine out of the city. Fighting was
still going on, but only in isolated localities. Here and there whole
districts were still in possession of the comrades, but such districts
were surrounded and guarded by heavy bodies of troops. In a hundred
segregated traps were the comrades thus held while the work of
subjugating them went on. Subjugation meant death, for no quarter was
given, and they fought heroically to the last man.*

     * Numbers of the buildings held out over a week, while one
     held out eleven days.  Each building had to be stormed like
     a fort, and the Mercenaries fought their way upward floor by
     floor.  It was deadly fighting.  Quarter was neither given
     nor taken, and in the fighting the revolutionists had the
     advantage of being above.  While the revolutionists were
     wiped out, the loss was not one-sided.  The proud Chicago
     proletariat lived up to its ancient boast.  For as many of
     itself as were killed, it killed that many of the enemy.

Whenever we approached such localities, the guards turned us back and
sent us around. Once, the only way past two strong positions of the
comrades was through a burnt section that lay between. From either side
we could hear the rattle and roar of war, while the automobile picked
its way through smoking ruins and tottering walls. Often the streets
were blocked by mountains of debris that compelled us to go around. We
were in a labyrinth of ruin, and our progress was slow.

The stockyards (ghetto, plant, and everything) were smouldering ruins.
Far off to the right a wide smoke haze dimmed the sky,--the town of
Pullman, the soldier chauffeur told us, or what had been the town of
Pullman, for it was utterly destroyed. He had driven the machine out
there, with despatches, on the afternoon of the third day. Some of the
heaviest fighting had occurred there, he said, many of the streets being
rendered impassable by the heaps of the dead.

Swinging around the shattered walls of a building, in the stockyards
district, the automobile was stopped by a wave of dead. It was for all
the world like a wave tossed up by the sea. It was patent to us what
had happened. As the mob charged past the corner, it had been swept, at
right angles and point-blank range, by the machine-guns drawn up on the
cross street. But disaster had come to the soldiers. A chance bomb must
have exploded among them, for the mob, checked until its dead and dying
formed the wave, had white-capped and flung forward its foam of living,
fighting slaves. Soldiers and slaves lay together, torn and mangled,
around and over the wreckage of the automobiles and guns.

Ernest sprang out. A familiar pair of shoulders in a cotton shirt and a
familiar fringe of white hair had caught his eye. I did not watch him,
and it was not until he was back beside me and we were speeding on that
he said:

“It was Bishop Morehouse.”

Soon we were in the green country, and I took one last glance back at
the smoke-filled sky. Faint and far came the low thud of an explosion.
Then I turned my face against Ernest's breast and wept softly for the
Cause that was lost. Ernest's arm about me was eloquent with love.

“For this time lost, dear heart,” he said, “but not forever. We have
learned. To-morrow the Cause will rise again, strong with wisdom and
discipline.”

The automobile drew up at a railroad station. Here we would catch a
train to New York. As we waited on the platform, three trains thundered
past, bound west to Chicago. They were crowded with ragged, unskilled
laborers, people of the abyss.

“Slave-levies for the rebuilding of Chicago,” Ernest said. “You see, the
Chicago slaves are all killed.”



CHAPTER XXV

THE TERRORISTS


It was not until Ernest and I were back in New York, and after weeks had
elapsed, that we were able to comprehend thoroughly the full sweep of
the disaster that had befallen the Cause. The situation was bitter and
bloody. In many places, scattered over the country, slave revolts and
massacres had occurred. The roll of the martyrs increased mightily.
Countless executions took place everywhere. The mountains and waste
regions were filled with outlaws and refugees who were being hunted down
mercilessly. Our own refuges were packed with comrades who had prices on
their heads. Through information furnished by its spies, scores of our
refuges were raided by the soldiers of the Iron Heel.

Many of the comrades were disheartened, and they retaliated with
terroristic tactics. The set-back to their hopes made them despairing
and desperate. Many terrorist organizations unaffiliated with us sprang
into existence and caused us much trouble.* These misguided people
sacrificed their own lives wantonly, very often made our own plans go
astray, and retarded our organization.

     * The annals of this short-lived era of despair make bloody
     reading.  Revenge was the ruling motive, and the members of
     the terroristic organizations were careless of their own
     lives and hopeless about the future.  The Danites, taking
     their name from the avenging angels of the Mormon mythology,
     sprang up in the mountains of the Great West and spread over
     the Pacific Coast from Panama to Alaska.  The Valkyries were
     women.  They were the most terrible of all.  No woman was
     eligible for membership who had not lost near relatives at
     the hands of the Oligarchy.  They were guilty of torturing
     their prisoners to death.  Another famous organization of
     women was The Widows of War.  A companion organization to
     the Valkyries was the Berserkers.  These men placed no value
     whatever upon their own lives, and it was they who totally
     destroyed the great Mercenary city of Bellona along with its
     population of over a hundred thousand souls.  The Bedlamites
     and the Helldamites were twin slave organizations, while a
     new religious sect that did not flourish long was called The
     Wrath of God.  Among others, to show the whimsicality of
     their deadly seriousness, may be mentioned the following:
     The Bleeding Hearts, Sons of the Morning, the Morning Stars,
     The Flamingoes, The Triple Triangles, The Three Bars, The
     Rubonics, The Vindicators, The Comanches, and the
     Erebusites.

And through it all moved the Iron Heel, impassive and deliberate,
shaking up the whole fabric of the social structure in its search for
the comrades, combing out the Mercenaries, the labor castes, and all its
secret services, punishing without mercy and without malice, suffering
in silence all retaliations that were made upon it, and filling the gaps
in its fighting line as fast as they appeared. And hand in hand with
this, Ernest and the other leaders were hard at work reorganizing the
forces of the Revolution. The magnitude of the task may be understood
when it is taken into.*

     * This is the end of the Everhard Manuscript.  It breaks off
     abruptly in the middle of a sentence.  She must have
     received warning of the coming of the Mercenaries, for she
     had time safely to hide the Manuscript before she fled or
     was captured.  It is to be regretted that she did not live
     to complete her narrative, for then, undoubtedly, would have
     been cleared away the mystery that has shrouded for seven
     centuries the execution of Ernest Everhard.


3xxxxxxxxx

MARTIN EDEN


CHAPTER I


The one opened the door with a latch-key and went in, followed by a young
fellow who awkwardly removed his cap.  He wore rough clothes that smacked
of the sea, and he was manifestly out of place in the spacious hall in
which he found himself.  He did not know what to do with his cap, and was
stuffing it into his coat pocket when the other took it from him.  The
act was done quietly and naturally, and the awkward young fellow
appreciated it.  "He understands," was his thought.  "He'll see me
through all right."

He walked at the other's heels with a swing to his shoulders, and his
legs spread unwittingly, as if the level floors were tilting up and
sinking down to the heave and lunge of the sea.  The wide rooms seemed
too narrow for his rolling gait, and to himself he was in terror lest his
broad shoulders should collide with the doorways or sweep the bric-a-brac
from the low mantel.  He recoiled from side to side between the various
objects and multiplied the hazards that in reality lodged only in his
mind.  Between a grand piano and a centre-table piled high with books was
space for a half a dozen to walk abreast, yet he essayed it with
trepidation.  His heavy arms hung loosely at his sides.  He did not know
what to do with those arms and hands, and when, to his excited vision,
one arm seemed liable to brush against the books on the table, he lurched
away like a frightened horse, barely missing the piano stool.  He watched
the easy walk of the other in front of him, and for the first time
realized that his walk was different from that of other men.  He
experienced a momentary pang of shame that he should walk so uncouthly.
The sweat burst through the skin of his forehead in tiny beads, and he
paused and mopped his bronzed face with his handkerchief.

"Hold on, Arthur, my boy," he said, attempting to mask his anxiety with
facetious utterance.  "This is too much all at once for yours truly.  Give
me a chance to get my nerve.  You know I didn't want to come, an' I guess
your fam'ly ain't hankerin' to see me neither."

"That's all right," was the reassuring answer.  "You mustn't be
frightened at us.  We're just homely people--Hello, there's a letter for
me."

He stepped back to the table, tore open the envelope, and began to read,
giving the stranger an opportunity to recover himself.  And the stranger
understood and appreciated.  His was the gift of sympathy, understanding;
and beneath his alarmed exterior that sympathetic process went on.  He
mopped his forehead dry and glanced about him with a controlled face,
though in the eyes there was an expression such as wild animals betray
when they fear the trap.  He was surrounded by the unknown, apprehensive
of what might happen, ignorant of what he should do, aware that he walked
and bore himself awkwardly, fearful that every attribute and power of him
was similarly afflicted.  He was keenly sensitive, hopelessly
self-conscious, and the amused glance that the other stole privily at him
over the top of the letter burned into him like a dagger-thrust.  He saw
the glance, but he gave no sign, for among the things he had learned was
discipline.  Also, that dagger-thrust went to his pride.  He cursed
himself for having come, and at the same time resolved that, happen what
would, having come, he would carry it through.  The lines of his face
hardened, and into his eyes came a fighting light.  He looked about more
unconcernedly, sharply observant, every detail of the pretty interior
registering itself on his brain.  His eyes were wide apart; nothing in
their field of vision escaped; and as they drank in the beauty before
them the fighting light died out and a warm glow took its place.  He was
responsive to beauty, and here was cause to respond.

An oil painting caught and held him.  A heavy surf thundered and burst
over an outjutting rock; lowering storm-clouds covered the sky; and,
outside the line of surf, a pilot-schooner, close-hauled, heeled over
till every detail of her deck was visible, was surging along against a
stormy sunset sky.  There was beauty, and it drew him irresistibly.  He
forgot his awkward walk and came closer to the painting, very close.  The
beauty faded out of the canvas.  His face expressed his bepuzzlement.  He
stared at what seemed a careless daub of paint, then stepped away.
Immediately all the beauty flashed back into the canvas.  "A trick
picture," was his thought, as he dismissed it, though in the midst of the
multitudinous impressions he was receiving he found time to feel a prod
of indignation that so much beauty should be sacrificed to make a trick.
He did not know painting.  He had been brought up on chromos and
lithographs that were always definite and sharp, near or far.  He had
seen oil paintings, it was true, in the show windows of shops, but the
glass of the windows had prevented his eager eyes from approaching too
near.

He glanced around at his friend reading the letter and saw the books on
the table.  Into his eyes leaped a wistfulness and a yearning as promptly
as the yearning leaps into the eyes of a starving man at sight of food.
An impulsive stride, with one lurch to right and left of the shoulders,
brought him to the table, where he began affectionately handling the
books.  He glanced at the titles and the authors' names, read fragments
of text, caressing the volumes with his eyes and hands, and, once,
recognized a book he had read.  For the rest, they were strange books and
strange authors.  He chanced upon a volume of Swinburne and began reading
steadily, forgetful of where he was, his face glowing.  Twice he closed
the book on his forefinger to look at the name of the author.  Swinburne!
he would remember that name.  That fellow had eyes, and he had certainly
seen color and flashing light.  But who was Swinburne?  Was he dead a
hundred years or so, like most of the poets?  Or was he alive still, and
writing?  He turned to the title-page . . . yes, he had written other
books; well, he would go to the free library the first thing in the
morning and try to get hold of some of Swinburne's stuff.  He went back
to the text and lost himself.  He did not notice that a young woman had
entered the room.  The first he knew was when he heard Arthur's voice
saying:-

"Ruth, this is Mr. Eden."

The book was closed on his forefinger, and before he turned he was
thrilling to the first new impression, which was not of the girl, but of
her brother's words.  Under that muscled body of his he was a mass of
quivering sensibilities.  At the slightest impact of the outside world
upon his consciousness, his thoughts, sympathies, and emotions leapt and
played like lambent flame.  He was extraordinarily receptive and
responsive, while his imagination, pitched high, was ever at work
establishing relations of likeness and difference.  "Mr. Eden," was what
he had thrilled to--he who had been called "Eden," or "Martin Eden," or
just "Martin," all his life.  And "_Mister_!"  It was certainly going
some, was his internal comment.  His mind seemed to turn, on the instant,
into a vast camera obscura, and he saw arrayed around his consciousness
endless pictures from his life, of stoke-holes and forecastles, camps and
beaches, jails and boozing-kens, fever-hospitals and slum streets,
wherein the thread of association was the fashion in which he had been
addressed in those various situations.

And then he turned and saw the girl.  The phantasmagoria of his brain
vanished at sight of her.  She was a pale, ethereal creature, with wide,
spiritual blue eyes and a wealth of golden hair.  He did not know how she
was dressed, except that the dress was as wonderful as she.  He likened
her to a pale gold flower upon a slender stem.  No, she was a spirit, a
divinity, a goddess; such sublimated beauty was not of the earth.  Or
perhaps the books were right, and there were many such as she in the
upper walks of life.  She might well be sung by that chap, Swinburne.
Perhaps he had had somebody like her in mind when he painted that girl,
Iseult, in the book there on the table.  All this plethora of sight, and
feeling, and thought occurred on the instant.  There was no pause of the
realities wherein he moved.  He saw her hand coming out to his, and she
looked him straight in the eyes as she shook hands, frankly, like a man.
The women he had known did not shake hands that way.  For that matter,
most of them did not shake hands at all.  A flood of associations,
visions of various ways he had made the acquaintance of women, rushed
into his mind and threatened to swamp it.  But he shook them aside and
looked at her.  Never had he seen such a woman.  The women he had known!
Immediately, beside her, on either hand, ranged the women he had known.
For an eternal second he stood in the midst of a portrait gallery,
wherein she occupied the central place, while about her were limned many
women, all to be weighed and measured by a fleeting glance, herself the
unit of weight and measure.  He saw the weak and sickly faces of the
girls of the factories, and the simpering, boisterous girls from the
south of Market.  There were women of the cattle camps, and swarthy
cigarette-smoking women of Old Mexico.  These, in turn, were crowded out
by Japanese women, doll-like, stepping mincingly on wooden clogs; by
Eurasians, delicate featured, stamped with degeneracy; by full-bodied
South-Sea-Island women, flower-crowned and brown-skinned.  All these were
blotted out by a grotesque and terrible nightmare brood--frowsy,
shuffling creatures from the pavements of Whitechapel, gin-bloated hags
of the stews, and all the vast hell's following of harpies, vile-mouthed
and filthy, that under the guise of monstrous female form prey upon
sailors, the scrapings of the ports, the scum and slime of the human pit.

"Won't you sit down, Mr. Eden?" the girl was saying.  "I have been
looking forward to meeting you ever since Arthur told us.  It was brave
of you--"

He waved his hand deprecatingly and muttered that it was nothing at all,
what he had done, and that any fellow would have done it.  She noticed
that the hand he waved was covered with fresh abrasions, in the process
of healing, and a glance at the other loose-hanging hand showed it to be
in the same condition.  Also, with quick, critical eye, she noted a scar
on his cheek, another that peeped out from under the hair of the
forehead, and a third that ran down and disappeared under the starched
collar.  She repressed a smile at sight of the red line that marked the
chafe of the collar against the bronzed neck.  He was evidently unused to
stiff collars.  Likewise her feminine eye took in the clothes he wore,
the cheap and unaesthetic cut, the wrinkling of the coat across the
shoulders, and the series of wrinkles in the sleeves that advertised
bulging biceps muscles.

While he waved his hand and muttered that he had done nothing at all, he
was obeying her behest by trying to get into a chair.  He found time to
admire the ease with which she sat down, then lurched toward a chair
facing her, overwhelmed with consciousness of the awkward figure he was
cutting.  This was a new experience for him.  All his life, up to then,
he had been unaware of being either graceful or awkward.  Such thoughts
of self had never entered his mind.  He sat down gingerly on the edge of
the chair, greatly worried by his hands.  They were in the way wherever
he put them.  Arthur was leaving the room, and Martin Eden followed his
exit with longing eyes.  He felt lost, alone there in the room with that
pale spirit of a woman.  There was no bar-keeper upon whom to call for
drinks, no small boy to send around the corner for a can of beer and by
means of that social fluid start the amenities of friendship flowing.

"You have such a scar on your neck, Mr. Eden," the girl was saying.  "How
did it happen?  I am sure it must have been some adventure."

"A Mexican with a knife, miss," he answered, moistening his parched lips
and clearing his throat.  "It was just a fight.  After I got the knife
away, he tried to bite off my nose."

Baldly as he had stated it, in his eyes was a rich vision of that hot,
starry night at Salina Cruz, the white strip of beach, the lights of the
sugar steamers in the harbor, the voices of the drunken sailors in the
distance, the jostling stevedores, the flaming passion in the Mexican's
face, the glint of the beast-eyes in the starlight, the sting of the
steel in his neck, and the rush of blood, the crowd and the cries, the
two bodies, his and the Mexican's, locked together, rolling over and over
and tearing up the sand, and from away off somewhere the mellow tinkling
of a guitar.  Such was the picture, and he thrilled to the memory of it,
wondering if the man could paint it who had painted the pilot-schooner on
the wall.  The white beach, the stars, and the lights of the sugar
steamers would look great, he thought, and midway on the sand the dark
group of figures that surrounded the fighters.  The knife occupied a
place in the picture, he decided, and would show well, with a sort of
gleam, in the light of the stars.  But of all this no hint had crept into
his speech.  "He tried to bite off my nose," he concluded.

"Oh," the girl said, in a faint, far voice, and he noticed the shock in
her sensitive face.

He felt a shock himself, and a blush of embarrassment shone faintly on
his sunburned cheeks, though to him it burned as hotly as when his cheeks
had been exposed to the open furnace-door in the fire-room.  Such sordid
things as stabbing affrays were evidently not fit subjects for
conversation with a lady.  People in the books, in her walk of life, did
not talk about such things--perhaps they did not know about them, either.

There was a brief pause in the conversation they were trying to get
started.  Then she asked tentatively about the scar on his cheek.  Even
as she asked, he realized that she was making an effort to talk his talk,
and he resolved to get away from it and talk hers.

"It was just an accident," he said, putting his hand to his cheek.  "One
night, in a calm, with a heavy sea running, the main-boom-lift carried
away, an' next the tackle.  The lift was wire, an' it was threshin'
around like a snake.  The whole watch was tryin' to grab it, an' I rushed
in an' got swatted."

"Oh," she said, this time with an accent of comprehension, though
secretly his speech had been so much Greek to her and she was wondering
what a _lift_ was and what _swatted_ meant.

"This man Swineburne," he began, attempting to put his plan into
execution and pronouncing the i long.

"Who?"

"Swineburne," he repeated, with the same mispronunciation.  "The poet."

"Swinburne," she corrected.

"Yes, that's the chap," he stammered, his cheeks hot again.  "How long
since he died?"

"Why, I haven't heard that he was dead."  She looked at him curiously.
"Where did you make his acquaintance?"

"I never clapped eyes on him," was the reply.  "But I read some of his
poetry out of that book there on the table just before you come in.  How
do you like his poetry?"

And thereat she began to talk quickly and easily upon the subject he had
suggested.  He felt better, and settled back slightly from the edge of
the chair, holding tightly to its arms with his hands, as if it might get
away from him and buck him to the floor.  He had succeeded in making her
talk her talk, and while she rattled on, he strove to follow her,
marvelling at all the knowledge that was stowed away in that pretty head
of hers, and drinking in the pale beauty of her face.  Follow her he did,
though bothered by unfamiliar words that fell glibly from her lips and by
critical phrases and thought-processes that were foreign to his mind, but
that nevertheless stimulated his mind and set it tingling.  Here was
intellectual life, he thought, and here was beauty, warm and wonderful as
he had never dreamed it could be.  He forgot himself and stared at her
with hungry eyes.  Here was something to live for, to win to, to fight
for--ay, and die for.  The books were true.  There were such women in the
world.  She was one of them.  She lent wings to his imagination, and
great, luminous canvases spread themselves before him whereon loomed
vague, gigantic figures of love and romance, and of heroic deeds for
woman's sake--for a pale woman, a flower of gold.  And through the
swaying, palpitant vision, as through a fairy mirage, he stared at the
real woman, sitting there and talking of literature and art.  He listened
as well, but he stared, unconscious of the fixity of his gaze or of the
fact that all that was essentially masculine in his nature was shining in
his eyes.  But she, who knew little of the world of men, being a woman,
was keenly aware of his burning eyes.  She had never had men look at her
in such fashion, and it embarrassed her.  She stumbled and halted in her
utterance.  The thread of argument slipped from her.  He frightened her,
and at the same time it was strangely pleasant to be so looked upon.  Her
training warned her of peril and of wrong, subtle, mysterious, luring;
while her instincts rang clarion-voiced through her being, impelling her
to hurdle caste and place and gain to this traveller from another world,
to this uncouth young fellow with lacerated hands and a line of raw red
caused by the unaccustomed linen at his throat, who, all too evidently,
was soiled and tainted by ungracious existence.  She was clean, and her
cleanness revolted; but she was woman, and she was just beginning to
learn the paradox of woman.

"As I was saying--what was I saying?"  She broke off abruptly and laughed
merrily at her predicament.

"You was saying that this man Swinburne failed bein' a great poet
because--an' that was as far as you got, miss," he prompted, while to
himself he seemed suddenly hungry, and delicious little thrills crawled
up and down his spine at the sound of her laughter.  Like silver, he
thought to himself, like tinkling silver bells; and on the instant, and
for an instant, he was transported to a far land, where under pink cherry
blossoms, he smoked a cigarette and listened to the bells of the peaked
pagoda calling straw-sandalled devotees to worship.

"Yes, thank you," she said.  "Swinburne fails, when all is said, because
he is, well, indelicate.  There are many of his poems that should never
be read.  Every line of the really great poets is filled with beautiful
truth, and calls to all that is high and noble in the human.  Not a line
of the great poets can be spared without impoverishing the world by that
much."

"I thought it was great," he said hesitatingly, "the little I read.  I
had no idea he was such a--a scoundrel.  I guess that crops out in his
other books."

"There are many lines that could be spared from the book you were
reading," she said, her voice primly firm and dogmatic.

"I must 'a' missed 'em," he announced.  "What I read was the real goods.
It was all lighted up an' shining, an' it shun right into me an' lighted
me up inside, like the sun or a searchlight.  That's the way it landed on
me, but I guess I ain't up much on poetry, miss."

He broke off lamely.  He was confused, painfully conscious of his
inarticulateness.  He had felt the bigness and glow of life in what he
had read, but his speech was inadequate.  He could not express what he
felt, and to himself he likened himself to a sailor, in a strange ship,
on a dark night, groping about in the unfamiliar running rigging.  Well,
he decided, it was up to him to get acquainted in this new world.  He had
never seen anything that he couldn't get the hang of when he wanted to
and it was about time for him to want to learn to talk the things that
were inside of him so that she could understand.  _She_ was bulking large
on his horizon.

"Now Longfellow--" she was saying.

"Yes, I've read 'm," he broke in impulsively, spurred on to exhibit and
make the most of his little store of book knowledge, desirous of showing
her that he was not wholly a stupid clod.  "'The Psalm of Life,'
'Excelsior,' an' . . . I guess that's all."

She nodded her head and smiled, and he felt, somehow, that her smile was
tolerant, pitifully tolerant.  He was a fool to attempt to make a
pretence that way.  That Longfellow chap most likely had written
countless books of poetry.

"Excuse me, miss, for buttin' in that way.  I guess the real facts is
that I don't know nothin' much about such things.  It ain't in my class.
But I'm goin' to make it in my class."

It sounded like a threat.  His voice was determined, his eyes were
flashing, the lines of his face had grown harsh.  And to her it seemed
that the angle of his jaw had changed; its pitch had become unpleasantly
aggressive.  At the same time a wave of intense virility seemed to surge
out from him and impinge upon her.

"I think you could make it in--in your class," she finished with a laugh.
"You are very strong."

Her gaze rested for a moment on the muscular neck, heavy corded, almost
bull-like, bronzed by the sun, spilling over with rugged health and
strength.  And though he sat there, blushing and humble, again she felt
drawn to him.  She was surprised by a wanton thought that rushed into her
mind.  It seemed to her that if she could lay her two hands upon that
neck that all its strength and vigor would flow out to her.  She was
shocked by this thought.  It seemed to reveal to her an undreamed
depravity in her nature.  Besides, strength to her was a gross and
brutish thing.  Her ideal of masculine beauty had always been slender
gracefulness.  Yet the thought still persisted.  It bewildered her that
she should desire to place her hands on that sunburned neck.  In truth,
she was far from robust, and the need of her body and mind was for
strength.  But she did not know it.  She knew only that no man had ever
affected her before as this one had, who shocked her from moment to
moment with his awful grammar.

"Yes, I ain't no invalid," he said.  "When it comes down to hard-pan, I
can digest scrap-iron.  But just now I've got dyspepsia.  Most of what
you was sayin' I can't digest.  Never trained that way, you see.  I like
books and poetry, and what time I've had I've read 'em, but I've never
thought about 'em the way you have.  That's why I can't talk about 'em.
I'm like a navigator adrift on a strange sea without chart or compass.
Now I want to get my bearin's.  Mebbe you can put me right.  How did you
learn all this you've ben talkin'?"

"By going to school, I fancy, and by studying," she answered.

"I went to school when I was a kid," he began to object.

"Yes; but I mean high school, and lectures, and the university."

"You've gone to the university?" he demanded in frank amazement.  He felt
that she had become remoter from him by at least a million miles.

"I'm going there now.  I'm taking special courses in English."

He did not know what "English" meant, but he made a mental note of that
item of ignorance and passed on.

"How long would I have to study before I could go to the university?" he
asked.

She beamed encouragement upon his desire for knowledge, and said: "That
depends upon how much studying you have already done.  You have never
attended high school?  Of course not.  But did you finish grammar
school?"

"I had two years to run, when I left," he answered.  "But I was always
honorably promoted at school."

The next moment, angry with himself for the boast, he had gripped the
arms of the chair so savagely that every finger-end was stinging.  At the
same moment he became aware that a woman was entering the room.  He saw
the girl leave her chair and trip swiftly across the floor to the
newcomer.  They kissed each other, and, with arms around each other's
waists, they advanced toward him.  That must be her mother, he thought.
She was a tall, blond woman, slender, and stately, and beautiful.  Her
gown was what he might expect in such a house.  His eyes delighted in the
graceful lines of it.  She and her dress together reminded him of women
on the stage.  Then he remembered seeing similar grand ladies and gowns
entering the London theatres while he stood and watched and the policemen
shoved him back into the drizzle beyond the awning.  Next his mind leaped
to the Grand Hotel at Yokohama, where, too, from the sidewalk, he had
seen grand ladies.  Then the city and the harbor of Yokohama, in a
thousand pictures, began flashing before his eyes.  But he swiftly
dismissed the kaleidoscope of memory, oppressed by the urgent need of the
present.  He knew that he must stand up to be introduced, and he
struggled painfully to his feet, where he stood with trousers bagging at
the knees, his arms loose-hanging and ludicrous, his face set hard for
the impending ordeal.




CHAPTER II


The process of getting into the dining room was a nightmare to him.
Between halts and stumbles, jerks and lurches, locomotion had at times
seemed impossible.  But at last he had made it, and was seated alongside
of Her.  The array of knives and forks frightened him.  They bristled
with unknown perils, and he gazed at them, fascinated, till their dazzle
became a background across which moved a succession of forecastle
pictures, wherein he and his mates sat eating salt beef with
sheath-knives and fingers, or scooping thick pea-soup out of pannikins by
means of battered iron spoons.  The stench of bad beef was in his
nostrils, while in his ears, to the accompaniment of creaking timbers and
groaning bulkheads, echoed the loud mouth-noises of the eaters.  He
watched them eating, and decided that they ate like pigs.  Well, he would
be careful here.  He would make no noise.  He would keep his mind upon it
all the time.

He glanced around the table.  Opposite him was Arthur, and Arthur's
brother, Norman.  They were her brothers, he reminded himself, and his
heart warmed toward them.  How they loved each other, the members of this
family!  There flashed into his mind the picture of her mother, of the
kiss of greeting, and of the pair of them walking toward him with arms
entwined.  Not in his world were such displays of affection between
parents and children made.  It was a revelation of the heights of
existence that were attained in the world above.  It was the finest thing
yet that he had seen in this small glimpse of that world.  He was moved
deeply by appreciation of it, and his heart was melting with sympathetic
tenderness.  He had starved for love all his life.  His nature craved
love.  It was an organic demand of his being.  Yet he had gone without,
and hardened himself in the process.  He had not known that he needed
love.  Nor did he know it now.  He merely saw it in operation, and
thrilled to it, and thought it fine, and high, and splendid.

He was glad that Mr. Morse was not there.  It was difficult enough
getting acquainted with her, and her mother, and her brother, Norman.
Arthur he already knew somewhat.  The father would have been too much for
him, he felt sure.  It seemed to him that he had never worked so hard in
his life.  The severest toil was child's play compared with this.  Tiny
nodules of moisture stood out on his forehead, and his shirt was wet with
sweat from the exertion of doing so many unaccustomed things at once.  He
had to eat as he had never eaten before, to handle strange tools, to
glance surreptitiously about and learn how to accomplish each new thing,
to receive the flood of impressions that was pouring in upon him and
being mentally annotated and classified; to be conscious of a yearning
for her that perturbed him in the form of a dull, aching restlessness; to
feel the prod of desire to win to the walk in life whereon she trod, and
to have his mind ever and again straying off in speculation and vague
plans of how to reach to her.  Also, when his secret glance went across
to Norman opposite him, or to any one else, to ascertain just what knife
or fork was to be used in any particular occasion, that person's features
were seized upon by his mind, which automatically strove to appraise them
and to divine what they were--all in relation to her.  Then he had to
talk, to hear what was said to him and what was said back and forth, and
to answer, when it was necessary, with a tongue prone to looseness of
speech that required a constant curb.  And to add confusion to confusion,
there was the servant, an unceasing menace, that appeared noiselessly at
his shoulder, a dire Sphinx that propounded puzzles and conundrums
demanding instantaneous solution.  He was oppressed throughout the meal
by the thought of finger-bowls.  Irrelevantly, insistently, scores of
times, he wondered when they would come on and what they looked like.  He
had heard of such things, and now, sooner or later, somewhere in the next
few minutes, he would see them, sit at table with exalted beings who used
them--ay, and he would use them himself.  And most important of all, far
down and yet always at the surface of his thought, was the problem of how
he should comport himself toward these persons.  What should his attitude
be?  He wrestled continually and anxiously with the problem.  There were
cowardly suggestions that he should make believe, assume a part; and
there were still more cowardly suggestions that warned him he would fail
in such course, that his nature was not fitted to live up to it, and that
he would make a fool of himself.

It was during the first part of the dinner, struggling to decide upon his
attitude, that he was very quiet.  He did not know that his quietness was
giving the lie to Arthur's words of the day before, when that brother of
hers had announced that he was going to bring a wild man home to dinner
and for them not to be alarmed, because they would find him an
interesting wild man.  Martin Eden could not have found it in him, just
then, to believe that her brother could be guilty of such
treachery--especially when he had been the means of getting this
particular brother out of an unpleasant row.  So he sat at table,
perturbed by his own unfitness and at the same time charmed by all that
went on about him.  For the first time he realized that eating was
something more than a utilitarian function.  He was unaware of what he
ate.  It was merely food.  He was feasting his love of beauty at this
table where eating was an aesthetic function.  It was an intellectual
function, too.  His mind was stirred.  He heard words spoken that were
meaningless to him, and other words that he had seen only in books and
that no man or woman he had known was of large enough mental caliber to
pronounce.  When he heard such words dropping carelessly from the lips of
the members of this marvellous family, her family, he thrilled with
delight.  The romance, and beauty, and high vigor of the books were
coming true.  He was in that rare and blissful state wherein a man sees
his dreams stalk out from the crannies of fantasy and become fact.

Never had he been at such an altitude of living, and he kept himself in
the background, listening, observing, and pleasuring, replying in
reticent monosyllables, saying, "Yes, miss," and "No, miss," to her, and
"Yes, ma'am," and "No, ma'am," to her mother.  He curbed the impulse,
arising out of his sea-training, to say "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," to her
brothers.  He felt that it would be inappropriate and a confession of
inferiority on his part--which would never do if he was to win to her.
Also, it was a dictate of his pride.  "By God!" he cried to himself,
once; "I'm just as good as them, and if they do know lots that I don't, I
could learn 'm a few myself, all the same!"  And the next moment, when
she or her mother addressed him as "Mr. Eden," his aggressive pride was
forgotten, and he was glowing and warm with delight.  He was a civilized
man, that was what he was, shoulder to shoulder, at dinner, with people
he had read about in books.  He was in the books himself, adventuring
through the printed pages of bound volumes.

But while he belied Arthur's description, and appeared a gentle lamb
rather than a wild man, he was racking his brains for a course of action.
He was no gentle lamb, and the part of second fiddle would never do for
the high-pitched dominance of his nature.  He talked only when he had to,
and then his speech was like his walk to the table, filled with jerks and
halts as he groped in his polyglot vocabulary for words, debating over
words he knew were fit but which he feared he could not pronounce,
rejecting other words he knew would not be understood or would be raw and
harsh.  But all the time he was oppressed by the consciousness that this
carefulness of diction was making a booby of him, preventing him from
expressing what he had in him.  Also, his love of freedom chafed against
the restriction in much the same way his neck chafed against the starched
fetter of a collar.  Besides, he was confident that he could not keep it
up.  He was by nature powerful of thought and sensibility, and the
creative spirit was restive and urgent.  He was swiftly mastered by the
concept or sensation in him that struggled in birth-throes to receive
expression and form, and then he forgot himself and where he was, and the
old words--the tools of speech he knew--slipped out.

Once, he declined something from the servant who interrupted and pestered
at his shoulder, and he said, shortly and emphatically, "Pew!"

On the instant those at the table were keyed up and expectant, the
servant was smugly pleased, and he was wallowing in mortification.  But
he recovered himself quickly.

"It's the Kanaka for 'finish,'" he explained, "and it just come out
naturally.  It's spelt p-a-u."

He caught her curious and speculative eyes fixed on his hands, and, being
in explanatory mood, he said:-

"I just come down the Coast on one of the Pacific mail steamers.  She was
behind time, an' around the Puget Sound ports we worked like niggers,
storing cargo-mixed freight, if you know what that means.  That's how the
skin got knocked off."

"Oh, it wasn't that," she hastened to explain, in turn.  "Your hands
seemed too small for your body."

His cheeks were hot.  He took it as an exposure of another of his
deficiencies.

"Yes," he said depreciatingly.  "They ain't big enough to stand the
strain.  I can hit like a mule with my arms and shoulders.  They are too
strong, an' when I smash a man on the jaw the hands get smashed, too."

He was not happy at what he had said.  He was filled with disgust at
himself.  He had loosed the guard upon his tongue and talked about things
that were not nice.

"It was brave of you to help Arthur the way you did--and you a stranger,"
she said tactfully, aware of his discomfiture though not of the reason
for it.

He, in turn, realized what she had done, and in the consequent warm surge
of gratefulness that overwhelmed him forgot his loose-worded tongue.

"It wasn't nothin' at all," he said.  "Any guy 'ud do it for another.
That bunch of hoodlums was lookin' for trouble, an' Arthur wasn't
botherin' 'em none.  They butted in on 'm, an' then I butted in on them
an' poked a few.  That's where some of the skin off my hands went, along
with some of the teeth of the gang.  I wouldn't 'a' missed it for
anything.  When I seen--"

He paused, open-mouthed, on the verge of the pit of his own depravity and
utter worthlessness to breathe the same air she did.  And while Arthur
took up the tale, for the twentieth time, of his adventure with the
drunken hoodlums on the ferry-boat and of how Martin Eden had rushed in
and rescued him, that individual, with frowning brows, meditated upon the
fool he had made of himself, and wrestled more determinedly with the
problem of how he should conduct himself toward these people.  He
certainly had not succeeded so far.  He wasn't of their tribe, and he
couldn't talk their lingo, was the way he put it to himself.  He couldn't
fake being their kind.  The masquerade would fail, and besides,
masquerade was foreign to his nature.  There was no room in him for sham
or artifice.  Whatever happened, he must be real.  He couldn't talk their
talk just yet, though in time he would.  Upon that he was resolved.  But
in the meantime, talk he must, and it must be his own talk, toned down,
of course, so as to be comprehensible to them and so as not to shook them
too much.  And furthermore, he wouldn't claim, not even by tacit
acceptance, to be familiar with anything that was unfamiliar.  In
pursuance of this decision, when the two brothers, talking university
shop, had used "trig" several times, Martin Eden demanded:-

"What is _trig_?"

"Trignometry," Norman said; "a higher form of math."

"And what is math?" was the next question, which, somehow, brought the
laugh on Norman.

"Mathematics, arithmetic," was the answer.

Martin Eden nodded.  He had caught a glimpse of the apparently
illimitable vistas of knowledge.  What he saw took on tangibility.  His
abnormal power of vision made abstractions take on concrete form.  In the
alchemy of his brain, trigonometry and mathematics and the whole field of
knowledge which they betokened were transmuted into so much landscape.
The vistas he saw were vistas of green foliage and forest glades, all
softly luminous or shot through with flashing lights.  In the distance,
detail was veiled and blurred by a purple haze, but behind this purple
haze, he knew, was the glamour of the unknown, the lure of romance.  It
was like wine to him.  Here was adventure, something to do with head and
hand, a world to conquer--and straightway from the back of his
consciousness rushed the thought, _conquering, to win to her, that lily-
pale spirit sitting beside him_.

The glimmering vision was rent asunder and dissipated by Arthur, who, all
evening, had been trying to draw his wild man out.  Martin Eden
remembered his decision.  For the first time he became himself,
consciously and deliberately at first, but soon lost in the joy of
creating in making life as he knew it appear before his listeners' eyes.
He had been a member of the crew of the smuggling schooner Halcyon when
she was captured by a revenue cutter.  He saw with wide eyes, and he
could tell what he saw.  He brought the pulsing sea before them, and the
men and the ships upon the sea.  He communicated his power of vision,
till they saw with his eyes what he had seen.  He selected from the vast
mass of detail with an artist's touch, drawing pictures of life that
glowed and burned with light and color, injecting movement so that his
listeners surged along with him on the flood of rough eloquence,
enthusiasm, and power.  At times he shocked them with the vividness of
the narrative and his terms of speech, but beauty always followed fast
upon the heels of violence, and tragedy was relieved by humor, by
interpretations of the strange twists and quirks of sailors' minds.

And while he talked, the girl looked at him with startled eyes.  His fire
warmed her.  She wondered if she had been cold all her days.  She wanted
to lean toward this burning, blazing man that was like a volcano spouting
forth strength, robustness, and health.  She felt that she must lean
toward him, and resisted by an effort.  Then, too, there was the counter
impulse to shrink away from him.  She was repelled by those lacerated
hands, grimed by toil so that the very dirt of life was ingrained in the
flesh itself, by that red chafe of the collar and those bulging muscles.
His roughness frightened her; each roughness of speech was an insult to
her ear, each rough phase of his life an insult to her soul.  And ever
and again would come the draw of him, till she thought he must be evil to
have such power over her.  All that was most firmly established in her
mind was rocking.  His romance and adventure were battering at the
conventions.  Before his facile perils and ready laugh, life was no
longer an affair of serious effort and restraint, but a toy, to be played
with and turned topsy-turvy, carelessly to be lived and pleasured in, and
carelessly to be flung aside.  "Therefore, play!" was the cry that rang
through her.  "Lean toward him, if so you will, and place your two hands
upon his neck!"  She wanted to cry out at the recklessness of the
thought, and in vain she appraised her own cleanness and culture and
balanced all that she was against what he was not.  She glanced about her
and saw the others gazing at him with rapt attention; and she would have
despaired had not she seen horror in her mother's eyes--fascinated
horror, it was true, but none the less horror.  This man from outer
darkness was evil.  Her mother saw it, and her mother was right.  She
would trust her mother's judgment in this as she had always trusted it in
all things.  The fire of him was no longer warm, and the fear of him was
no longer poignant.

Later, at the piano, she played for him, and at him, aggressively, with
the vague intent of emphasizing the impassableness of the gulf that
separated them.  Her music was a club that she swung brutally upon his
head; and though it stunned him and crushed him down, it incited him.  He
gazed upon her in awe.  In his mind, as in her own, the gulf widened; but
faster than it widened, towered his ambition to win across it.  But he
was too complicated a plexus of sensibilities to sit staring at a gulf a
whole evening, especially when there was music.  He was remarkably
susceptible to music.  It was like strong drink, firing him to audacities
of feeling,--a drug that laid hold of his imagination and went
cloud-soaring through the sky.  It banished sordid fact, flooded his mind
with beauty, loosed romance and to its heels added wings.  He did not
understand the music she played.  It was different from the dance-hall
piano-banging and blatant brass bands he had heard.  But he had caught
hints of such music from the books, and he accepted her playing largely
on faith, patiently waiting, at first, for the lifting measures of
pronounced and simple rhythm, puzzled because those measures were not
long continued.  Just as he caught the swing of them and started, his
imagination attuned in flight, always they vanished away in a chaotic
scramble of sounds that was meaningless to him, and that dropped his
imagination, an inert weight, back to earth.

Once, it entered his mind that there was a deliberate rebuff in all this.
He caught her spirit of antagonism and strove to divine the message that
her hands pronounced upon the keys.  Then he dismissed the thought as
unworthy and impossible, and yielded himself more freely to the music.
The old delightful condition began to be induced.  His feet were no
longer clay, and his flesh became spirit; before his eyes and behind his
eyes shone a great glory; and then the scene before him vanished and he
was away, rocking over the world that was to him a very dear world.  The
known and the unknown were commingled in the dream-pageant that thronged
his vision.  He entered strange ports of sun-washed lands, and trod
market-places among barbaric peoples that no man had ever seen.  The
scent of the spice islands was in his nostrils as he had known it on
warm, breathless nights at sea, or he beat up against the southeast
trades through long tropic days, sinking palm-tufted coral islets in the
turquoise sea behind and lifting palm-tufted coral islets in the
turquoise sea ahead.  Swift as thought the pictures came and went.  One
instant he was astride a broncho and flying through the fairy-colored
Painted Desert country; the next instant he was gazing down through
shimmering heat into the whited sepulchre of Death Valley, or pulling an
oar on a freezing ocean where great ice islands towered and glistened in
the sun.  He lay on a coral beach where the cocoanuts grew down to the
mellow-sounding surf.  The hulk of an ancient wreck burned with blue
fires, in the light of which danced the hula dancers to the barbaric love-
calls of the singers, who chanted to tinkling ukuleles and rumbling tom-
toms.  It was a sensuous, tropic night.  In the background a volcano
crater was silhouetted against the stars.  Overhead drifted a pale
crescent moon, and the Southern Cross burned low in the sky.

He was a harp; all life that he had known and that was his consciousness
was the strings; and the flood of music was a wind that poured against
those strings and set them vibrating with memories and dreams.  He did
not merely feel.  Sensation invested itself in form and color and
radiance, and what his imagination dared, it objectified in some
sublimated and magic way.  Past, present, and future mingled; and he went
on oscillating across the broad, warm world, through high adventure and
noble deeds to Her--ay, and with her, winning her, his arm about her, and
carrying her on in flight through the empery of his mind.

And she, glancing at him across her shoulder, saw something of all this
in his face.  It was a transfigured face, with great shining eyes that
gazed beyond the veil of sound and saw behind it the leap and pulse of
life and the gigantic phantoms of the spirit.  She was startled.  The
raw, stumbling lout was gone.  The ill-fitting clothes, battered hands,
and sunburned face remained; but these seemed the prison-bars through
which she saw a great soul looking forth, inarticulate and dumb because
of those feeble lips that would not give it speech.  Only for a flashing
moment did she see this, then she saw the lout returned, and she laughed
at the whim of her fancy.  But the impression of that fleeting glimpse
lingered, and when the time came for him to beat a stumbling retreat and
go, she lent him the volume of Swinburne, and another of Browning--she
was studying Browning in one of her English courses.  He seemed such a
boy, as he stood blushing and stammering his thanks, that a wave of pity,
maternal in its prompting, welled up in her.  She did not remember the
lout, nor the imprisoned soul, nor the man who had stared at her in all
masculineness and delighted and frightened her.  She saw before her only
a boy, who was shaking her hand with a hand so calloused that it felt
like a nutmeg-grater and rasped her skin, and who was saying jerkily:-

"The greatest time of my life.  You see, I ain't used to things. . . "  He
looked about him helplessly.  "To people and houses like this.  It's all
new to me, and I like it."

"I hope you'll call again," she said, as he was saying good night to her
brothers.

He pulled on his cap, lurched desperately through the doorway, and was
gone.

"Well, what do you think of him?" Arthur demanded.

"He is most interesting, a whiff of ozone," she answered.  "How old is
he?"

"Twenty--almost twenty-one.  I asked him this afternoon.  I didn't think
he was that young."

And I am three years older, was the thought in her mind as she kissed her
brothers goodnight.




CHAPTER III


As Martin Eden went down the steps, his hand dropped into his coat
pocket.  It came out with a brown rice paper and a pinch of Mexican
tobacco, which were deftly rolled together into a cigarette.  He drew the
first whiff of smoke deep into his lungs and expelled it in a long and
lingering exhalation.  "By God!" he said aloud, in a voice of awe and
wonder.  "By God!" he repeated.  And yet again he murmured, "By God!"
Then his hand went to his collar, which he ripped out of the shirt and
stuffed into his pocket.  A cold drizzle was falling, but he bared his
head to it and unbuttoned his vest, swinging along in splendid unconcern.
He was only dimly aware that it was raining.  He was in an ecstasy,
dreaming dreams and reconstructing the scenes just past.

He had met the woman at last--the woman that he had thought little about,
not being given to thinking about women, but whom he had expected, in a
remote way, he would sometime meet.  He had sat next to her at table.  He
had felt her hand in his, he had looked into her eyes and caught a vision
of a beautiful spirit;--but no more beautiful than the eyes through which
it shone, nor than the flesh that gave it expression and form.  He did
not think of her flesh as flesh,--which was new to him; for of the women
he had known that was the only way he thought.  Her flesh was somehow
different.  He did not conceive of her body as a body, subject to the
ills and frailties of bodies.  Her body was more than the garb of her
spirit.  It was an emanation of her spirit, a pure and gracious
crystallization of her divine essence.  This feeling of the divine
startled him.  It shocked him from his dreams to sober thought.  No word,
no clew, no hint, of the divine had ever reached him before.  He had
never believed in the divine.  He had always been irreligious, scoffing
good-naturedly at the sky-pilots and their immortality of the soul.  There
was no life beyond, he had contended; it was here and now, then darkness
everlasting.  But what he had seen in her eyes was soul--immortal soul
that could never die.  No man he had known, nor any woman, had given him
the message of immortality.  But she had.  She had whispered it to him
the first moment she looked at him.  Her face shimmered before his eyes
as he walked along,--pale and serious, sweet and sensitive, smiling with
pity and tenderness as only a spirit could smile, and pure as he had
never dreamed purity could be.  Her purity smote him like a blow.  It
startled him.  He had known good and bad; but purity, as an attribute of
existence, had never entered his mind.  And now, in her, he conceived
purity to be the superlative of goodness and of cleanness, the sum of
which constituted eternal life.

And promptly urged his ambition to grasp at eternal life.  He was not fit
to carry water for her--he knew that; it was a miracle of luck and a
fantastic stroke that had enabled him to see her and be with her and talk
with her that night.  It was accidental.  There was no merit in it.  He
did not deserve such fortune.  His mood was essentially religious.  He
was humble and meek, filled with self-disparagement and abasement.  In
such frame of mind sinners come to the penitent form.  He was convicted
of sin.  But as the meek and lowly at the penitent form catch splendid
glimpses of their future lordly existence, so did he catch similar
glimpses of the state he would gain to by possessing her.  But this
possession of her was dim and nebulous and totally different from
possession as he had known it.  Ambition soared on mad wings, and he saw
himself climbing the heights with her, sharing thoughts with her,
pleasuring in beautiful and noble things with her.  It was a
soul-possession he dreamed, refined beyond any grossness, a free
comradeship of spirit that he could not put into definite thought.  He
did not think it.  For that matter, he did not think at all.  Sensation
usurped reason, and he was quivering and palpitant with emotions he had
never known, drifting deliciously on a sea of sensibility where feeling
itself was exalted and spiritualized and carried beyond the summits of
life.

He staggered along like a drunken man, murmuring fervently aloud: "By
God!  By God!"

A policeman on a street corner eyed him suspiciously, then noted his
sailor roll.

"Where did you get it?" the policeman demanded.

Martin Eden came back to earth.  His was a fluid organism, swiftly
adjustable, capable of flowing into and filling all sorts of nooks and
crannies.  With the policeman's hail he was immediately his ordinary
self, grasping the situation clearly.

"It's a beaut, ain't it?" he laughed back.  "I didn't know I was talkin'
out loud."

"You'll be singing next," was the policeman's diagnosis.

"No, I won't.  Gimme a match an' I'll catch the next car home."

He lighted his cigarette, said good night, and went on.  "Now wouldn't
that rattle you?" he ejaculated under his breath.  "That copper thought I
was drunk."  He smiled to himself and meditated.  "I guess I was," he
added; "but I didn't think a woman's face'd do it."

He caught a Telegraph Avenue car that was going to Berkeley.  It was
crowded with youths and young men who were singing songs and ever and
again barking out college yells.  He studied them curiously.  They were
university boys.  They went to the same university that she did, were in
her class socially, could know her, could see her every day if they
wanted to.  He wondered that they did not want to, that they had been out
having a good time instead of being with her that evening, talking with
her, sitting around her in a worshipful and adoring circle.  His thoughts
wandered on.  He noticed one with narrow-slitted eyes and a loose-lipped
mouth.  That fellow was vicious, he decided.  On shipboard he would be a
sneak, a whiner, a tattler.  He, Martin Eden, was a better man than that
fellow.  The thought cheered him.  It seemed to draw him nearer to Her.
He began comparing himself with the students.  He grew conscious of the
muscled mechanism of his body and felt confident that he was physically
their master.  But their heads were filled with knowledge that enabled
them to talk her talk,--the thought depressed him.  But what was a brain
for? he demanded passionately.  What they had done, he could do.  They
had been studying about life from the books while he had been busy living
life.  His brain was just as full of knowledge as theirs, though it was a
different kind of knowledge.  How many of them could tie a lanyard knot,
or take a wheel or a lookout?  His life spread out before him in a series
of pictures of danger and daring, hardship and toil.  He remembered his
failures and scrapes in the process of learning.  He was that much to the
good, anyway.  Later on they would have to begin living life and going
through the mill as he had gone.  Very well.  While they were busy with
that, he could be learning the other side of life from the books.

As the car crossed the zone of scattered dwellings that separated Oakland
from Berkeley, he kept a lookout for a familiar, two-story building along
the front of which ran the proud sign, HIGGINBOTHAM'S CASH STORE.  Martin
Eden got off at this corner.  He stared up for a moment at the sign.  It
carried a message to him beyond its mere wording.  A personality of
smallness and egotism and petty underhandedness seemed to emanate from
the letters themselves.  Bernard Higginbotham had married his sister, and
he knew him well.  He let himself in with a latch-key and climbed the
stairs to the second floor.  Here lived his brother-in-law.  The grocery
was below.  There was a smell of stale vegetables in the air.  As he
groped his way across the hall he stumbled over a toy-cart, left there by
one of his numerous nephews and nieces, and brought up against a door
with a resounding bang.  "The pincher," was his thought; "too miserly to
burn two cents' worth of gas and save his boarders' necks."

He fumbled for the knob and entered a lighted room, where sat his sister
and Bernard Higginbotham.  She was patching a pair of his trousers, while
his lean body was distributed over two chairs, his feet dangling in
dilapidated carpet-slippers over the edge of the second chair.  He
glanced across the top of the paper he was reading, showing a pair of
dark, insincere, sharp-staring eyes.  Martin Eden never looked at him
without experiencing a sense of repulsion.  What his sister had seen in
the man was beyond him.  The other affected him as so much vermin, and
always aroused in him an impulse to crush him under his foot.  "Some day
I'll beat the face off of him," was the way he often consoled himself for
enduring the man's existence.  The eyes, weasel-like and cruel, were
looking at him complainingly.

"Well," Martin demanded.  "Out with it."

"I had that door painted only last week," Mr. Higginbotham half whined,
half bullied; "and you know what union wages are.  You should be more
careful."

Martin had intended to reply, but he was struck by the hopelessness of
it.  He gazed across the monstrous sordidness of soul to a chromo on the
wall.  It surprised him.  He had always liked it, but it seemed that now
he was seeing it for the first time.  It was cheap, that was what it was,
like everything else in this house.  His mind went back to the house he
had just left, and he saw, first, the paintings, and next, Her, looking
at him with melting sweetness as she shook his hand at leaving.  He
forgot where he was and Bernard Higginbotham's existence, till that
gentleman demanded:-

"Seen a ghost?"

Martin came back and looked at the beady eyes, sneering, truculent,
cowardly, and there leaped into his vision, as on a screen, the same eyes
when their owner was making a sale in the store below--subservient eyes,
smug, and oily, and flattering.

"Yes," Martin answered.  "I seen a ghost.  Good night.  Good night,
Gertrude."

He started to leave the room, tripping over a loose seam in the
slatternly carpet.

"Don't bang the door," Mr. Higginbotham cautioned him.

He felt the blood crawl in his veins, but controlled himself and closed
the door softly behind him.

Mr. Higginbotham looked at his wife exultantly.

"He's ben drinkin'," he proclaimed in a hoarse whisper.  "I told you he
would."

She nodded her head resignedly.

"His eyes was pretty shiny," she confessed; "and he didn't have no
collar, though he went away with one.  But mebbe he didn't have more'n a
couple of glasses."

"He couldn't stand up straight," asserted her husband.  "I watched him.
He couldn't walk across the floor without stumblin'.  You heard 'm
yourself almost fall down in the hall."

"I think it was over Alice's cart," she said.  "He couldn't see it in the
dark."

Mr. Higginbotham's voice and wrath began to rise.  All day he effaced
himself in the store, reserving for the evening, with his family, the
privilege of being himself.

"I tell you that precious brother of yours was drunk."

His voice was cold, sharp, and final, his lips stamping the enunciation
of each word like the die of a machine.  His wife sighed and remained
silent.  She was a large, stout woman, always dressed slatternly and
always tired from the burdens of her flesh, her work, and her husband.

"He's got it in him, I tell you, from his father," Mr. Higginbotham went
on accusingly.  "An' he'll croak in the gutter the same way.  You know
that."

She nodded, sighed, and went on stitching.  They were agreed that Martin
had come home drunk.  They did not have it in their souls to know beauty,
or they would have known that those shining eyes and that glowing face
betokened youth's first vision of love.

"Settin' a fine example to the children," Mr. Higginbotham snorted,
suddenly, in the silence for which his wife was responsible and which he
resented.  Sometimes he almost wished she would oppose him more.  "If he
does it again, he's got to get out.  Understand!  I won't put up with his
shinanigan--debotchin' innocent children with his boozing."  Mr.
Higginbotham liked the word, which was a new one in his vocabulary,
recently gleaned from a newspaper column.  "That's what it is,
debotchin'--there ain't no other name for it."

Still his wife sighed, shook her head sorrowfully, and stitched on.  Mr.
Higginbotham resumed the newspaper.

"Has he paid last week's board?" he shot across the top of the newspaper.

She nodded, then added, "He still has some money."

"When is he goin' to sea again?"

"When his pay-day's spent, I guess," she answered.  "He was over to San
Francisco yesterday looking for a ship.  But he's got money, yet, an'
he's particular about the kind of ship he signs for."

"It's not for a deck-swab like him to put on airs," Mr. Higginbotham
snorted.  "Particular!  Him!"

"He said something about a schooner that's gettin' ready to go off to
some outlandish place to look for buried treasure, that he'd sail on her
if his money held out."

"If he only wanted to steady down, I'd give him a job drivin' the wagon,"
her husband said, but with no trace of benevolence in his voice.  "Tom's
quit."

His wife looked alarm and interrogation.

"Quit to-night.  Is goin' to work for Carruthers.  They paid 'm more'n I
could afford."

"I told you you'd lose 'm," she cried out.  "He was worth more'n you was
giving him."

"Now look here, old woman," Higginbotham bullied, "for the thousandth
time I've told you to keep your nose out of the business.  I won't tell
you again."

"I don't care," she sniffled.  "Tom was a good boy."  Her husband glared
at her.  This was unqualified defiance.

"If that brother of yours was worth his salt, he could take the wagon,"
he snorted.

"He pays his board, just the same," was the retort.  "An' he's my
brother, an' so long as he don't owe you money you've got no right to be
jumping on him all the time.  I've got some feelings, if I have been
married to you for seven years."

"Did you tell 'm you'd charge him for gas if he goes on readin' in bed?"
he demanded.

Mrs. Higginbotham made no reply.  Her revolt faded away, her spirit
wilting down into her tired flesh.  Her husband was triumphant.  He had
her.  His eyes snapped vindictively, while his ears joyed in the sniffles
she emitted.  He extracted great happiness from squelching her, and she
squelched easily these days, though it had been different in the first
years of their married life, before the brood of children and his
incessant nagging had sapped her energy.

"Well, you tell 'm to-morrow, that's all," he said.  "An' I just want to
tell you, before I forget it, that you'd better send for Marian to-morrow
to take care of the children.  With Tom quit, I'll have to be out on the
wagon, an' you can make up your mind to it to be down below waitin' on
the counter."

"But to-morrow's wash day," she objected weakly.

"Get up early, then, an' do it first.  I won't start out till ten
o'clock."

He crinkled the paper viciously and resumed his reading.




CHAPTER IV


Martin Eden, with blood still crawling from contact with his brother-in-
law, felt his way along the unlighted back hall and entered his room, a
tiny cubbyhole with space for a bed, a wash-stand, and one chair.  Mr.
Higginbotham was too thrifty to keep a servant when his wife could do the
work.  Besides, the servant's room enabled them to take in two boarders
instead of one.  Martin placed the Swinburne and Browning on the chair,
took off his coat, and sat down on the bed.  A screeching of asthmatic
springs greeted the weight of his body, but he did not notice them.  He
started to take off his shoes, but fell to staring at the white plaster
wall opposite him, broken by long streaks of dirty brown where rain had
leaked through the roof.  On this befouled background visions began to
flow and burn.  He forgot his shoes and stared long, till his lips began
to move and he murmured, "Ruth."

"Ruth."  He had not thought a simple sound could be so beautiful.  It
delighted his ear, and he grew intoxicated with the repetition of it.
"Ruth."  It was a talisman, a magic word to conjure with.  Each time he
murmured it, her face shimmered before him, suffusing the foul wall with
a golden radiance.  This radiance did not stop at the wall.  It extended
on into infinity, and through its golden depths his soul went questing
after hers.  The best that was in him was out in splendid flood.  The
very thought of her ennobled and purified him, made him better, and made
him want to be better.  This was new to him.  He had never known women
who had made him better.  They had always had the counter effect of
making him beastly.  He did not know that many of them had done their
best, bad as it was.  Never having been conscious of himself, he did not
know that he had that in his being that drew love from women and which
had been the cause of their reaching out for his youth.  Though they had
often bothered him, he had never bothered about them; and he would never
have dreamed that there were women who had been better because of him.
Always in sublime carelessness had he lived, till now, and now it seemed
to him that they had always reached out and dragged at him with vile
hands.  This was not just to them, nor to himself.  But he, who for the
first time was becoming conscious of himself, was in no condition to
judge, and he burned with shame as he stared at the vision of his infamy.

He got up abruptly and tried to see himself in the dirty looking-glass
over the wash-stand.  He passed a towel over it and looked again, long
and carefully.  It was the first time he had ever really seen himself.
His eyes were made for seeing, but up to that moment they had been filled
with the ever changing panorama of the world, at which he had been too
busy gazing, ever to gaze at himself.  He saw the head and face of a
young fellow of twenty, but, being unused to such appraisement, he did
not know how to value it.  Above a square-domed forehead he saw a mop of
brown hair, nut-brown, with a wave to it and hints of curls that were a
delight to any woman, making hands tingle to stroke it and fingers tingle
to pass caresses through it.  But he passed it by as without merit, in
Her eyes, and dwelt long and thoughtfully on the high, square
forehead,--striving to penetrate it and learn the quality of its content.
What kind of a brain lay behind there? was his insistent interrogation.
What was it capable of?  How far would it take him?  Would it take him to
her?

He wondered if there was soul in those steel-gray eyes that were often
quite blue of color and that were strong with the briny airs of the sun-
washed deep.  He wondered, also, how his eyes looked to her.  He tried to
imagine himself she, gazing into those eyes of his, but failed in the
jugglery.  He could successfully put himself inside other men's minds,
but they had to be men whose ways of life he knew.  He did not know her
way of life.  She was wonder and mystery, and how could he guess one
thought of hers?  Well, they were honest eyes, he concluded, and in them
was neither smallness nor meanness.  The brown sunburn of his face
surprised him.  He had not dreamed he was so black.  He rolled up his
shirt-sleeve and compared the white underside if the arm with his face.
Yes, he was a white man, after all.  But the arms were sunburned, too.  He
twisted his arm, rolled the biceps over with his other hand, and gazed
underneath where he was least touched by the sun.  It was very white.  He
laughed at his bronzed face in the glass at the thought that it was once
as white as the underside of his arm; nor did he dream that in the world
there were few pale spirits of women who could boast fairer or smoother
skins than he--fairer than where he had escaped the ravages of the sun.

His might have been a cherub's mouth, had not the full, sensuous lips a
trick, under stress, of drawing firmly across the teeth.  At times, so
tightly did they draw, the mouth became stern and harsh, even ascetic.
They were the lips of a fighter and of a lover.  They could taste the
sweetness of life with relish, and they could put the sweetness aside and
command life.  The chin and jaw, strong and just hinting of square
aggressiveness, helped the lips to command life.  Strength balanced
sensuousness and had upon it a tonic effect, compelling him to love
beauty that was healthy and making him vibrate to sensations that were
wholesome.  And between the lips were teeth that had never known nor
needed the dentist's care.  They were white and strong and regular, he
decided, as he looked at them.  But as he looked, he began to be
troubled.  Somewhere, stored away in the recesses of his mind and vaguely
remembered, was the impression that there were people who washed their
teeth every day.  They were the people from up above--people in her
class.  She must wash her teeth every day, too.  What would she think if
she learned that he had never washed his teeth in all the days of his
life?  He resolved to get a tooth-brush and form the habit.  He would
begin at once, to-morrow.  It was not by mere achievement that he could
hope to win to her.  He must make a personal reform in all things, even
to tooth-washing and neck-gear, though a starched collar affected him as
a renunciation of freedom.

He held up his hand, rubbing the ball of the thumb over the calloused
palm and gazing at the dirt that was ingrained in the flesh itself and
which no brush could scrub away.  How different was her palm!  He
thrilled deliciously at the remembrance.  Like a rose-petal, he thought;
cool and soft as a snowflake.  He had never thought that a mere woman's
hand could be so sweetly soft.  He caught himself imagining the wonder of
a caress from such a hand, and flushed guiltily.  It was too gross a
thought for her.  In ways it seemed to impugn her high spirituality.  She
was a pale, slender spirit, exalted far beyond the flesh; but
nevertheless the softness of her palm persisted in his thoughts.  He was
used to the harsh callousness of factory girls and working women.  Well
he knew why their hands were rough; but this hand of hers . . . It was
soft because she had never used it to work with.  The gulf yawned between
her and him at the awesome thought of a person who did not have to work
for a living.  He suddenly saw the aristocracy of the people who did not
labor.  It towered before him on the wall, a figure in brass, arrogant
and powerful.  He had worked himself; his first memories seemed connected
with work, and all his family had worked.  There was Gertrude.  When her
hands were not hard from the endless housework, they were swollen and red
like boiled beef, what of the washing.  And there was his sister Marian.
She had worked in the cannery the preceding summer, and her slim, pretty
hands were all scarred with the tomato-knives.  Besides, the tips of two
of her fingers had been left in the cutting machine at the paper-box
factory the preceding winter.  He remembered the hard palms of his mother
as she lay in her coffin.  And his father had worked to the last fading
gasp; the horned growth on his hands must have been half an inch thick
when he died.  But Her hands were soft, and her mother's hands, and her
brothers'.  This last came to him as a surprise; it was tremendously
indicative of the highness of their caste, of the enormous distance that
stretched between her and him.

He sat back on the bed with a bitter laugh, and finished taking off his
shoes.  He was a fool; he had been made drunken by a woman's face and by
a woman's soft, white hands.  And then, suddenly, before his eyes, on the
foul plaster-wall appeared a vision.  He stood in front of a gloomy
tenement house.  It was night-time, in the East End of London, and before
him stood Margey, a little factory girl of fifteen.  He had seen her home
after the bean-feast.  She lived in that gloomy tenement, a place not fit
for swine.  His hand was going out to hers as he said good night.  She
had put her lips up to be kissed, but he wasn't going to kiss her.
Somehow he was afraid of her.  And then her hand closed on his and
pressed feverishly.  He felt her callouses grind and grate on his, and a
great wave of pity welled over him.  He saw her yearning, hungry eyes,
and her ill-fed female form which had been rushed from childhood into a
frightened and ferocious maturity; then he put his arms about her in
large tolerance and stooped and kissed her on the lips.  Her glad little
cry rang in his ears, and he felt her clinging to him like a cat.  Poor
little starveling!  He continued to stare at the vision of what had
happened in the long ago.  His flesh was crawling as it had crawled that
night when she clung to him, and his heart was warm with pity.  It was a
gray scene, greasy gray, and the rain drizzled greasily on the pavement
stones.  And then a radiant glory shone on the wall, and up through the
other vision, displacing it, glimmered Her pale face under its crown of
golden hair, remote and inaccessible as a star.

He took the Browning and the Swinburne from the chair and kissed them.
Just the same, she told me to call again, he thought.  He took another
look at himself in the glass, and said aloud, with great solemnity:-

"Martin Eden, the first thing to-morrow you go to the free library an'
read up on etiquette.  Understand!"

He turned off the gas, and the springs shrieked under his body.

"But you've got to quit cussin', Martin, old boy; you've got to quit
cussin'," he said aloud.

Then he dozed off to sleep and to dream dreams that for madness and
audacity rivalled those of poppy-eaters.




CHAPTER V


He awoke next morning from rosy scenes of dream to a steamy atmosphere
that smelled of soapsuds and dirty clothes, and that was vibrant with the
jar and jangle of tormented life.  As he came out of his room he heard
the slosh of water, a sharp exclamation, and a resounding smack as his
sister visited her irritation upon one of her numerous progeny.  The
squall of the child went through him like a knife.  He was aware that the
whole thing, the very air he breathed, was repulsive and mean.  How
different, he thought, from the atmosphere of beauty and repose of the
house wherein Ruth dwelt.  There it was all spiritual.  Here it was all
material, and meanly material.

"Come here, Alfred," he called to the crying child, at the same time
thrusting his hand into his trousers pocket, where he carried his money
loose in the same large way that he lived life in general.  He put a
quarter in the youngster's hand and held him in his arms a moment,
soothing his sobs.  "Now run along and get some candy, and don't forget
to give some to your brothers and sisters.  Be sure and get the kind that
lasts longest."

His sister lifted a flushed face from the wash-tub and looked at him.

"A nickel'd ha' ben enough," she said.  "It's just like you, no idea of
the value of money.  The child'll eat himself sick."

"That's all right, sis," he answered jovially.  "My money'll take care of
itself.  If you weren't so busy, I'd kiss you good morning."

He wanted to be affectionate to this sister, who was good, and who, in
her way, he knew, loved him.  But, somehow, she grew less herself as the
years went by, and more and more baffling.  It was the hard work, the
many children, and the nagging of her husband, he decided, that had
changed her.  It came to him, in a flash of fancy, that her nature seemed
taking on the attributes of stale vegetables, smelly soapsuds, and of the
greasy dimes, nickels, and quarters she took in over the counter of the
store.

"Go along an' get your breakfast," she said roughly, though secretly
pleased.  Of all her wandering brood of brothers he had always been her
favorite.  "I declare I _will_ kiss you," she said, with a sudden stir at
her heart.

With thumb and forefinger she swept the dripping suds first from one arm
and then from the other.  He put his arms round her massive waist and
kissed her wet steamy lips. The tears welled into her eyes--not so much
from strength of feeling as from the weakness of chronic overwork.  She
shoved him away from her, but not before he caught a glimpse of her moist
eyes.

"You'll find breakfast in the oven," she said hurriedly.  "Jim ought to
be up now.  I had to get up early for the washing.  Now get along with
you and get out of the house early.  It won't be nice to-day, what of Tom
quittin' an' nobody but Bernard to drive the wagon."

Martin went into the kitchen with a sinking heart, the image of her red
face and slatternly form eating its way like acid into his brain.  She
might love him if she only had some time, he concluded.  But she was
worked to death.  Bernard Higginbotham was a brute to work her so hard.
But he could not help but feel, on the other hand, that there had not
been anything beautiful in that kiss.  It was true, it was an unusual
kiss.  For years she had kissed him only when he returned from voyages or
departed on voyages. But this kiss had tasted soapsuds, and the lips, he
had noticed, were flabby.  There had been no quick, vigorous lip-pressure
such as should accompany any kiss.  Hers was the kiss of a tired woman
who had been tired so long that she had forgotten how to kiss.  He
remembered her as a girl, before her marriage, when she would dance with
the best, all night, after a hard day's work at the laundry, and think
nothing of leaving the dance to go to another day's hard work.  And then
he thought of Ruth and the cool sweetness that must reside in her lips as
it resided in all about her.  Her kiss would be like her hand-shake or
the way she looked at one, firm and frank.  In imagination he dared to
think of her lips on his, and so vividly did he imagine that he went
dizzy at the thought and seemed to rift through clouds of rose-petals,
filling his brain with their perfume.

In the kitchen he found Jim, the other boarder, eating mush very
languidly, with a sick, far-away look in his eyes.  Jim was a plumber's
apprentice whose weak chin and hedonistic temperament, coupled with a
certain nervous stupidity, promised to take him nowhere in the race for
bread and butter.

"Why don't you eat?" he demanded, as Martin dipped dolefully into the
cold, half-cooked oatmeal mush.  "Was you drunk again last night?"

Martin shook his head.  He was oppressed by the utter squalidness of it
all.  Ruth Morse seemed farther removed than ever.

"I was," Jim went on with a boastful, nervous giggle.  "I was loaded
right to the neck.  Oh, she was a daisy.  Billy brought me home."

Martin nodded that he heard,--it was a habit of nature with him to pay
heed to whoever talked to him,--and poured a cup of lukewarm coffee.

"Goin' to the Lotus Club dance to-night?" Jim demanded.  "They're goin'
to have beer, an' if that Temescal bunch comes, there'll be a
rough-house.  I don't care, though.  I'm takin' my lady friend just the
same.  Cripes, but I've got a taste in my mouth!"

He made a wry face and attempted to wash the taste away with coffee.

"D'ye know Julia?"

Martin shook his head.

"She's my lady friend," Jim explained, "and she's a peach.  I'd introduce
you to her, only you'd win her.  I don't see what the girls see in you,
honest I don't; but the way you win them away from the fellers is
sickenin'."

"I never got any away from you," Martin answered uninterestedly.  The
breakfast had to be got through somehow.

"Yes, you did, too," the other asserted warmly.  "There was Maggie."

"Never had anything to do with her.  Never danced with her except that
one night."

"Yes, an' that's just what did it," Jim cried out.  "You just danced with
her an' looked at her, an' it was all off.  Of course you didn't mean
nothin' by it, but it settled me for keeps.  Wouldn't look at me again.
Always askin' about you.  She'd have made fast dates enough with you if
you'd wanted to."

"But I didn't want to."

"Wasn't necessary.  I was left at the pole."  Jim looked at him
admiringly.  "How d'ye do it, anyway, Mart?"

"By not carin' about 'em," was the answer.

"You mean makin' b'lieve you don't care about them?" Jim queried eagerly.

Martin considered for a moment, then answered, "Perhaps that will do, but
with me I guess it's different.  I never have cared--much.  If you can
put it on, it's all right, most likely."

"You should 'a' ben up at Riley's barn last night," Jim announced
inconsequently.  "A lot of the fellers put on the gloves.  There was a
peach from West Oakland.  They called 'm 'The Rat.'  Slick as silk.  No
one could touch 'm.  We was all wishin' you was there.  Where was you
anyway?"

"Down in Oakland," Martin replied.

"To the show?"

Martin shoved his plate away and got up.

"Comin' to the dance to-night?" the other called after him.

"No, I think not," he answered.

He went downstairs and out into the street, breathing great breaths of
air.  He had been suffocating in that atmosphere, while the apprentice's
chatter had driven him frantic.  There had been times when it was all he
could do to refrain from reaching over and mopping Jim's face in the mush-
plate.  The more he had chattered, the more remote had Ruth seemed to
him.  How could he, herding with such cattle, ever become worthy of her?
He was appalled at the problem confronting him, weighted down by the
incubus of his working-class station.  Everything reached out to hold him
down--his sister, his sister's house and family, Jim the apprentice,
everybody he knew, every tie of life.  Existence did not taste good in
his mouth.  Up to then he had accepted existence, as he had lived it with
all about him, as a good thing.  He had never questioned it, except when
he read books; but then, they were only books, fairy stories of a fairer
and impossible world.  But now he had seen that world, possible and real,
with a flower of a woman called Ruth in the midmost centre of it; and
thenceforth he must know bitter tastes, and longings sharp as pain, and
hopelessness that tantalized because it fed on hope.

He had debated between the Berkeley Free Library and the Oakland Free
Library, and decided upon the latter because Ruth lived in Oakland.  Who
could tell?--a library was a most likely place for her, and he might see
her there.  He did not know the way of libraries, and he wandered through
endless rows of fiction, till the delicate-featured French-looking girl
who seemed in charge, told him that the reference department was
upstairs.  He did not know enough to ask the man at the desk, and began
his adventures in the philosophy alcove.  He had heard of book
philosophy, but had not imagined there had been so much written about it.
The high, bulging shelves of heavy tomes humbled him and at the same time
stimulated him.  Here was work for the vigor of his brain.  He found
books on trigonometry in the mathematics section, and ran the pages, and
stared at the meaningless formulas and figures.  He could read English,
but he saw there an alien speech.  Norman and Arthur knew that speech.  He
had heard them talking it.  And they were her brothers.  He left the
alcove in despair.  From every side the books seemed to press upon him
and crush him.

He had never dreamed that the fund of human knowledge bulked so big.  He
was frightened.  How could his brain ever master it all?  Later, he
remembered that there were other men, many men, who had mastered it; and
he breathed a great oath, passionately, under his breath, swearing that
his brain could do what theirs had done.

And so he wandered on, alternating between depression and elation as he
stared at the shelves packed with wisdom.  In one miscellaneous section
he came upon a "Norrie's Epitome."  He turned the pages reverently.  In a
way, it spoke a kindred speech.  Both he and it were of the sea.  Then he
found a "Bowditch" and books by Lecky and Marshall.  There it was; he
would teach himself navigation.  He would quit drinking, work up, and
become a captain.  Ruth seemed very near to him in that moment.  As a
captain, he could marry her (if she would have him).  And if she
wouldn't, well--he would live a good life among men, because of Her, and
he would quit drinking anyway.  Then he remembered the underwriters and
the owners, the two masters a captain must serve, either of which could
and would break him and whose interests were diametrically opposed.  He
cast his eyes about the room and closed the lids down on a vision of ten
thousand books.  No; no more of the sea for him.  There was power in all
that wealth of books, and if he would do great things, he must do them on
the land.  Besides, captains were not allowed to take their wives to sea
with them.

Noon came, and afternoon.  He forgot to eat, and sought on for the books
on etiquette; for, in addition to career, his mind was vexed by a simple
and very concrete problem: _When you meet a young lady and she asks you
to call, how soon can you call_? was the way he worded it to himself.  But
when he found the right shelf, he sought vainly for the answer.  He was
appalled at the vast edifice of etiquette, and lost himself in the mazes
of visiting-card conduct between persons in polite society.  He abandoned
his search.  He had not found what he wanted, though he had found that it
would take all of a man's time to be polite, and that he would have to
live a preliminary life in which to learn how to be polite.

"Did you find what you wanted?" the man at the desk asked him as he was
leaving.

"Yes, sir," he answered.  "You have a fine library here."

The man nodded.  "We should be glad to see you here often.  Are you a
sailor?"

"Yes, sir," he answered.  "And I'll come again."

Now, how did he know that? he asked himself as he went down the stairs.

And for the first block along the street he walked very stiff and
straight and awkwardly, until he forgot himself in his thoughts,
whereupon his rolling gait gracefully returned to him.




CHAPTER VI


A terrible restlessness that was akin to hunger afflicted Martin Eden.  He
was famished for a sight of the girl whose slender hands had gripped his
life with a giant's grasp.  He could not steel himself to call upon her.
He was afraid that he might call too soon, and so be guilty of an awful
breach of that awful thing called etiquette.  He spent long hours in the
Oakland and Berkeley libraries, and made out application blanks for
membership for himself, his sisters Gertrude and Marian, and Jim, the
latter's consent being obtained at the expense of several glasses of
beer.  With four cards permitting him to draw books, he burned the gas
late in the servant's room, and was charged fifty cents a week for it by
Mr. Higginbotham.

The many books he read but served to whet his unrest.  Every page of
every book was a peep-hole into the realm of knowledge.  His hunger fed
upon what he read, and increased.  Also, he did not know where to begin,
and continually suffered from lack of preparation.  The commonest
references, that he could see plainly every reader was expected to know,
he did not know.  And the same was true of the poetry he read which
maddened him with delight.  He read more of Swinburne than was contained
in the volume Ruth had lent him; and "Dolores" he understood thoroughly.
But surely Ruth did not understand it, he concluded.  How could she,
living the refined life she did?  Then he chanced upon Kipling's poems,
and was swept away by the lilt and swing and glamour with which familiar
things had been invested.  He was amazed at the man's sympathy with life
and at his incisive psychology.  Psychology was a new word in Martin's
vocabulary.  He had bought a dictionary, which deed had decreased his
supply of money and brought nearer the day on which he must sail in
search of more.  Also, it incensed Mr. Higginbotham, who would have
preferred the money taking the form of board.

He dared not go near Ruth's neighborhood in the daytime, but night found
him lurking like a thief around the Morse home, stealing glimpses at the
windows and loving the very walls that sheltered her.  Several times he
barely escaped being caught by her brothers, and once he trailed Mr.
Morse down town and studied his face in the lighted streets, longing all
the while for some quick danger of death to threaten so that he might
spring in and save her father.  On another night, his vigil was rewarded
by a glimpse of Ruth through a second-story window.  He saw only her head
and shoulders, and her arms raised as she fixed her hair before a mirror.
It was only for a moment, but it was a long moment to him, during which
his blood turned to wine and sang through his veins.  Then she pulled
down the shade.  But it was her room--he had learned that; and thereafter
he strayed there often, hiding under a dark tree on the opposite side of
the street and smoking countless cigarettes.  One afternoon he saw her
mother coming out of a bank, and received another proof of the enormous
distance that separated Ruth from him.  She was of the class that dealt
with banks.  He had never been inside a bank in his life, and he had an
idea that such institutions were frequented only by the very rich and the
very powerful.

In one way, he had undergone a moral revolution.  Her cleanness and
purity had reacted upon him, and he felt in his being a crying need to be
clean.  He must be that if he were ever to be worthy of breathing the
same air with her.  He washed his teeth, and scrubbed his hands with a
kitchen scrub-brush till he saw a nail-brush in a drug-store window and
divined its use.  While purchasing it, the clerk glanced at his nails,
suggested a nail-file, and so he became possessed of an additional toilet-
tool.  He ran across a book in the library on the care of the body, and
promptly developed a penchant for a cold-water bath every morning, much
to the amazement of Jim, and to the bewilderment of Mr. Higginbotham, who
was not in sympathy with such high-fangled notions and who seriously
debated whether or not he should charge Martin extra for the water.
Another stride was in the direction of creased trousers.  Now that Martin
was aroused in such matters, he swiftly noted the difference between the
baggy knees of the trousers worn by the working class and the straight
line from knee to foot of those worn by the men above the working class.
Also, he learned the reason why, and invaded his sister's kitchen in
search of irons and ironing-board.  He had misadventures at first,
hopelessly burning one pair and buying another, which expenditure again
brought nearer the day on which he must put to sea.

But the reform went deeper than mere outward appearance.  He still
smoked, but he drank no more.  Up to that time, drinking had seemed to
him the proper thing for men to do, and he had prided himself on his
strong head which enabled him to drink most men under the table.  Whenever
he encountered a chance shipmate, and there were many in San Francisco,
he treated them and was treated in turn, as of old, but he ordered for
himself root beer or ginger ale and good-naturedly endured their
chaffing.  And as they waxed maudlin he studied them, watching the beast
rise and master them and thanking God that he was no longer as they.  They
had their limitations to forget, and when they were drunk, their dim,
stupid spirits were even as gods, and each ruled in his heaven of
intoxicated desire.  With Martin the need for strong drink had vanished.
He was drunken in new and more profound ways--with Ruth, who had fired
him with love and with a glimpse of higher and eternal life; with books,
that had set a myriad maggots of desire gnawing in his brain; and with
the sense of personal cleanliness he was achieving, that gave him even
more superb health than what he had enjoyed and that made his whole body
sing with physical well-being.

One night he went to the theatre, on the blind chance that he might see
her there, and from the second balcony he did see her.  He saw her come
down the aisle, with Arthur and a strange young man with a football mop
of hair and eyeglasses, the sight of whom spurred him to instant
apprehension and jealousy.  He saw her take her seat in the orchestra
circle, and little else than her did he see that night--a pair of slender
white shoulders and a mass of pale gold hair, dim with distance.  But
there were others who saw, and now and again, glancing at those about
him, he noted two young girls who looked back from the row in front, a
dozen seats along, and who smiled at him with bold eyes.  He had always
been easy-going.  It was not in his nature to give rebuff.  In the old
days he would have smiled back, and gone further and encouraged smiling.
But now it was different.  He did smile back, then looked away, and
looked no more deliberately.  But several times, forgetting the existence
of the two girls, his eyes caught their smiles.  He could not re-thumb
himself in a day, nor could he violate the intrinsic kindliness of his
nature; so, at such moments, he smiled at the girls in warm human
friendliness.  It was nothing new to him.  He knew they were reaching out
their woman's hands to him.  But it was different now.  Far down there in
the orchestra circle was the one woman in all the world, so different, so
terrifically different, from these two girls of his class, that he could
feel for them only pity and sorrow.  He had it in his heart to wish that
they could possess, in some small measure, her goodness and glory.  And
not for the world could he hurt them because of their outreaching.  He
was not flattered by it; he even felt a slight shame at his lowliness
that permitted it.  He knew, did he belong in Ruth's class, that there
would be no overtures from these girls; and with each glance of theirs he
felt the fingers of his own class clutching at him to hold him down.

He left his seat before the curtain went down on the last act, intent on
seeing Her as she passed out.  There were always numbers of men who stood
on the sidewalk outside, and he could pull his cap down over his eyes and
screen himself behind some one's shoulder so that she should not see him.
He emerged from the theatre with the first of the crowd; but scarcely had
he taken his position on the edge of the sidewalk when the two girls
appeared.  They were looking for him, he knew; and for the moment he
could have cursed that in him which drew women.  Their casual edging
across the sidewalk to the curb, as they drew near, apprised him of
discovery.  They slowed down, and were in the thick of the crown as they
came up with him.  One of them brushed against him and apparently for the
first time noticed him.  She was a slender, dark girl, with black,
defiant eyes.  But they smiled at him, and he smiled back.

"Hello," he said.

It was automatic; he had said it so often before under similar
circumstances of first meetings.  Besides, he could do no less.  There
was that large tolerance and sympathy in his nature that would permit him
to do no less.  The black-eyed girl smiled gratification and greeting,
and showed signs of stopping, while her companion, arm linked in arm,
giggled and likewise showed signs of halting.  He thought quickly.  It
would never do for Her to come out and see him talking there with them.
Quite naturally, as a matter of course, he swung in along-side the dark-
eyed one and walked with her.  There was no awkwardness on his part, no
numb tongue.  He was at home here, and he held his own royally in the
badinage, bristling with slang and sharpness, that was always the
preliminary to getting acquainted in these swift-moving affairs.  At the
corner where the main stream of people flowed onward, he started to edge
out into the cross street.  But the girl with the black eyes caught his
arm, following him and dragging her companion after her, as she cried:

"Hold on, Bill!  What's yer rush?  You're not goin' to shake us so sudden
as all that?"

He halted with a laugh, and turned, facing them.  Across their shoulders
he could see the moving throng passing under the street lamps.  Where he
stood it was not so light, and, unseen, he would be able to see Her as
she passed by.  She would certainly pass by, for that way led home.

"What's her name?" he asked of the giggling girl, nodding at the dark-
eyed one.

"You ask her," was the convulsed response.

"Well, what is it?" he demanded, turning squarely on the girl in
question.

"You ain't told me yours, yet," she retorted.

"You never asked it," he smiled.  "Besides, you guessed the first rattle.
It's Bill, all right, all right."

"Aw, go 'long with you."  She looked him in the eyes, her own sharply
passionate and inviting.  "What is it, honest?"

Again she looked.  All the centuries of woman since sex began were
eloquent in her eyes.  And he measured her in a careless way, and knew,
bold now, that she would begin to retreat, coyly and delicately, as he
pursued, ever ready to reverse the game should he turn fainthearted.  And,
too, he was human, and could feel the draw of her, while his ego could
not but appreciate the flattery of her kindness.  Oh, he knew it all, and
knew them well, from A to Z.  Good, as goodness might be measured in
their particular class, hard-working for meagre wages and scorning the
sale of self for easier ways, nervously desirous for some small pinch of
happiness in the desert of existence, and facing a future that was a
gamble between the ugliness of unending toil and the black pit of more
terrible wretchedness, the way whereto being briefer though better paid.

"Bill," he answered, nodding his head.  "Sure, Pete, Bill an' no other."

"No joshin'?" she queried.

"It ain't Bill at all," the other broke in.

"How do you know?" he demanded.  "You never laid eyes on me before."

"No need to, to know you're lyin'," was the retort.

"Straight, Bill, what is it?" the first girl asked.

"Bill'll do," he confessed.

She reached out to his arm and shook him playfully.  "I knew you was
lyin', but you look good to me just the same."

He captured the hand that invited, and felt on the palm familiar markings
and distortions.

"When'd you chuck the cannery?" he asked.

"How'd yeh know?" and, "My, ain't cheh a mind-reader!" the girls
chorussed.

And while he exchanged the stupidities of stupid minds with them, before
his inner sight towered the book-shelves of the library, filled with the
wisdom of the ages.  He smiled bitterly at the incongruity of it, and was
assailed by doubts.  But between inner vision and outward pleasantry he
found time to watch the theatre crowd streaming by.  And then he saw Her,
under the lights, between her brother and the strange young man with
glasses, and his heart seemed to stand still.  He had waited long for
this moment.  He had time to note the light, fluffy something that hid
her queenly head, the tasteful lines of her wrapped figure, the
gracefulness of her carriage and of the hand that caught up her skirts;
and then she was gone and he was left staring at the two girls of the
cannery, at their tawdry attempts at prettiness of dress, their tragic
efforts to be clean and trim, the cheap cloth, the cheap ribbons, and the
cheap rings on the fingers.  He felt a tug at his arm, and heard a voice
saying:-

"Wake up, Bill!  What's the matter with you?"

"What was you sayin'?" he asked.

"Oh, nothin'," the dark girl answered, with a toss of her head.  "I was
only remarkin'--"

"What?"

"Well, I was whisperin' it'd be a good idea if you could dig up a
gentleman friend--for her" (indicating her companion), "and then, we
could go off an' have ice-cream soda somewhere, or coffee, or anything."

He was afflicted by a sudden spiritual nausea.  The transition from Ruth
to this had been too abrupt.  Ranged side by side with the bold, defiant
eyes of the girl before him, he saw Ruth's clear, luminous eyes, like a
saint's, gazing at him out of unplumbed depths of purity.  And, somehow,
he felt within him a stir of power.  He was better than this.  Life meant
more to him than it meant to these two girls whose thoughts did not go
beyond ice-cream and a gentleman friend.  He remembered that he had led
always a secret life in his thoughts.  These thoughts he had tried to
share, but never had he found a woman capable of understanding--nor a
man.  He had tried, at times, but had only puzzled his listeners.  And as
his thoughts had been beyond them, so, he argued now, he must be beyond
them.  He felt power move in him, and clenched his fists.  If life meant
more to him, then it was for him to demand more from life, but he could
not demand it from such companionship as this.  Those bold black eyes had
nothing to offer.  He knew the thoughts behind them--of ice-cream and of
something else.  But those saint's eyes alongside--they offered all he
knew and more than he could guess.  They offered books and painting,
beauty and repose, and all the fine elegance of higher existence.  Behind
those black eyes he knew every thought process.  It was like clockwork.
He could watch every wheel go around.  Their bid was low pleasure, narrow
as the grave, that palled, and the grave was at the end of it.  But the
bid of the saint's eyes was mystery, and wonder unthinkable, and eternal
life.  He had caught glimpses of the soul in them, and glimpses of his
own soul, too.

"There's only one thing wrong with the programme," he said aloud.  "I've
got a date already."

The girl's eyes blazed her disappointment.

"To sit up with a sick friend, I suppose?" she sneered.

"No, a real, honest date with--" he faltered, "with a girl."

"You're not stringin' me?" she asked earnestly.

He looked her in the eyes and answered: "It's straight, all right.  But
why can't we meet some other time?  You ain't told me your name yet.  An'
where d'ye live?"

"Lizzie," she replied, softening toward him, her hand pressing his arm,
while her body leaned against his.  "Lizzie Connolly.  And I live at
Fifth an' Market."

He talked on a few minutes before saying good night.  He did not go home
immediately; and under the tree where he kept his vigils he looked up at
a window and murmured: "That date was with you, Ruth.  I kept it for
you."




CHAPTER VII


A week of heavy reading had passed since the evening he first met Ruth
Morse, and still he dared not call.  Time and again he nerved himself up
to call, but under the doubts that assailed him his determination died
away.  He did not know the proper time to call, nor was there any one to
tell him, and he was afraid of committing himself to an irretrievable
blunder.  Having shaken himself free from his old companions and old ways
of life, and having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to
read, and the long hours he devoted to it would have ruined a dozen pairs
of ordinary eyes.  But his eyes were strong, and they were backed by a
body superbly strong.  Furthermore, his mind was fallow.  It had lain
fallow all his life so far as the abstract thought of the books was
concerned, and it was ripe for the sowing.  It had never been jaded by
study, and it bit hold of the knowledge in the books with sharp teeth
that would not let go.

It seemed to him, by the end of the week, that he had lived centuries, so
far behind were the old life and outlook.  But he was baffled by lack of
preparation.  He attempted to read books that required years of
preliminary specialization.  One day he would read a book of antiquated
philosophy, and the next day one that was ultra-modern, so that his head
would be whirling with the conflict and contradiction of ideas.  It was
the same with the economists.  On the one shelf at the library he found
Karl Marx, Ricardo, Adam Smith, and Mill, and the abstruse formulas of
the one gave no clew that the ideas of another were obsolete.  He was
bewildered, and yet he wanted to know.  He had become interested, in a
day, in economics, industry, and politics.  Passing through the City Hall
Park, he had noticed a group of men, in the centre of which were half a
dozen, with flushed faces and raised voices, earnestly carrying on a
discussion.  He joined the listeners, and heard a new, alien tongue in
the mouths of the philosophers of the people.  One was a tramp, another
was a labor agitator, a third was a law-school student, and the remainder
was composed of wordy workingmen.  For the first time he heard of
socialism, anarchism, and single tax, and learned that there were warring
social philosophies.  He heard hundreds of technical words that were new
to him, belonging to fields of thought that his meagre reading had never
touched upon.  Because of this he could not follow the arguments closely,
and he could only guess at and surmise the ideas wrapped up in such
strange expressions.  Then there was a black-eyed restaurant waiter who
was a theosophist, a union baker who was an agnostic, an old man who
baffled all of them with the strange philosophy that _what is is right_,
and another old man who discoursed interminably about the cosmos and the
father-atom and the mother-atom.

Martin Eden's head was in a state of addlement when he went away after
several hours, and he hurried to the library to look up the definitions
of a dozen unusual words.  And when he left the library, he carried under
his arm four volumes: Madam Blavatsky's "Secret Doctrine," "Progress and
Poverty," "The Quintessence of Socialism," and, "Warfare of Religion and
Science."  Unfortunately, he began on the "Secret Doctrine."  Every line
bristled with many-syllabled words he did not understand.  He sat up in
bed, and the dictionary was in front of him more often than the book.  He
looked up so many new words that when they recurred, he had forgotten
their meaning and had to look them up again.  He devised the plan of
writing the definitions in a note-book, and filled page after page with
them.  And still he could not understand.  He read until three in the
morning, and his brain was in a turmoil, but not one essential thought in
the text had he grasped.  He looked up, and it seemed that the room was
lifting, heeling, and plunging like a ship upon the sea.  Then he hurled
the "Secret Doctrine" and many curses across the room, turned off the
gas, and composed himself to sleep.  Nor did he have much better luck
with the other three books.  It was not that his brain was weak or
incapable; it could think these thoughts were it not for lack of training
in thinking and lack of the thought-tools with which to think.  He
guessed this, and for a while entertained the idea of reading nothing but
the dictionary until he had mastered every word in it.

Poetry, however, was his solace, and he read much of it, finding his
greatest joy in the simpler poets, who were more understandable.  He
loved beauty, and there he found beauty.  Poetry, like music, stirred him
profoundly, and, though he did not know it, he was preparing his mind for
the heavier work that was to come.  The pages of his mind were blank,
and, without effort, much he read and liked, stanza by stanza, was
impressed upon those pages, so that he was soon able to extract great joy
from chanting aloud or under his breath the music and the beauty of the
printed words he had read.  Then he stumbled upon Gayley's "Classic
Myths" and Bulfinch's "Age of Fable," side by side on a library shelf.  It
was illumination, a great light in the darkness of his ignorance, and he
read poetry more avidly than ever.

The man at the desk in the library had seen Martin there so often that he
had become quite cordial, always greeting him with a smile and a nod when
he entered.  It was because of this that Martin did a daring thing.
Drawing out some books at the desk, and while the man was stamping the
cards, Martin blurted out:-

"Say, there's something I'd like to ask you."

The man smiled and paid attention.

"When you meet a young lady an' she asks you to call, how soon can you
call?"

Martin felt his shirt press and cling to his shoulders, what of the sweat
of the effort.

"Why I'd say any time," the man answered.

"Yes, but this is different," Martin objected.  "She--I--well, you see,
it's this way: maybe she won't be there.  She goes to the university."

"Then call again."

"What I said ain't what I meant," Martin confessed falteringly, while he
made up his mind to throw himself wholly upon the other's mercy.  "I'm
just a rough sort of a fellow, an' I ain't never seen anything of
society.  This girl is all that I ain't, an' I ain't anything that she
is.  You don't think I'm playin' the fool, do you?" he demanded abruptly.

"No, no; not at all, I assure you," the other protested.  "Your request
is not exactly in the scope of the reference department, but I shall be
only too pleased to assist you."

Martin looked at him admiringly.

"If I could tear it off that way, I'd be all right," he said.

"I beg pardon?"

"I mean if I could talk easy that way, an' polite, an' all the rest."

"Oh," said the other, with comprehension.

"What is the best time to call?  The afternoon?--not too close to meal-
time?  Or the evening?  Or Sunday?"

"I'll tell you," the librarian said with a brightening face.  "You call
her up on the telephone and find out."

"I'll do it," he said, picking up his books and starting away.

He turned back and asked:-

"When you're speakin' to a young lady--say, for instance, Miss Lizzie
Smith--do you say 'Miss Lizzie'? or 'Miss Smith'?"

"Say 'Miss Smith,'" the librarian stated authoritatively.  "Say 'Miss
Smith' always--until you come to know her better."

So it was that Martin Eden solved the problem.

"Come down any time; I'll be at home all afternoon," was Ruth's reply
over the telephone to his stammered request as to when he could return
the borrowed books.

She met him at the door herself, and her woman's eyes took in immediately
the creased trousers and the certain slight but indefinable change in him
for the better.  Also, she was struck by his face.  It was almost
violent, this health of his, and it seemed to rush out of him and at her
in waves of force.  She felt the urge again of the desire to lean toward
him for warmth, and marvelled again at the effect his presence produced
upon her.  And he, in turn, knew again the swimming sensation of bliss
when he felt the contact of her hand in greeting.  The difference between
them lay in that she was cool and self-possessed while his face flushed
to the roots of the hair.  He stumbled with his old awkwardness after
her, and his shoulders swung and lurched perilously.

Once they were seated in the living-room, he began to get on easily--more
easily by far than he had expected.  She made it easy for him; and the
gracious spirit with which she did it made him love her more madly than
ever.  They talked first of the borrowed books, of the Swinburne he was
devoted to, and of the Browning he did not understand; and she led the
conversation on from subject to subject, while she pondered the problem
of how she could be of help to him.  She had thought of this often since
their first meeting.  She wanted to help him.  He made a call upon her
pity and tenderness that no one had ever made before, and the pity was
not so much derogatory of him as maternal in her.  Her pity could not be
of the common sort, when the man who drew it was so much man as to shock
her with maidenly fears and set her mind and pulse thrilling with strange
thoughts and feelings.  The old fascination of his neck was there, and
there was sweetness in the thought of laying her hands upon it.  It
seemed still a wanton impulse, but she had grown more used to it.  She
did not dream that in such guise new-born love would epitomize itself.
Nor did she dream that the feeling he excited in her was love.  She
thought she was merely interested in him as an unusual type possessing
various potential excellencies, and she even felt philanthropic about it.

She did not know she desired him; but with him it was different.  He knew
that he loved her, and he desired her as he had never before desired
anything in his life.  He had loved poetry for beauty's sake; but since
he met her the gates to the vast field of love-poetry had been opened
wide.  She had given him understanding even more than Bulfinch and
Gayley.  There was a line that a week before he would not have favored
with a second thought--"God's own mad lover dying on a kiss"; but now it
was ever insistent in his mind.  He marvelled at the wonder of it and the
truth; and as he gazed upon her he knew that he could die gladly upon a
kiss.  He felt himself God's own mad lover, and no accolade of knighthood
could have given him greater pride.  And at last he knew the meaning of
life and why he had been born.

As he gazed at her and listened, his thoughts grew daring.  He reviewed
all the wild delight of the pressure of her hand in his at the door, and
longed for it again.  His gaze wandered often toward her lips, and he
yearned for them hungrily.  But there was nothing gross or earthly about
this yearning.  It gave him exquisite delight to watch every movement and
play of those lips as they enunciated the words she spoke; yet they were
not ordinary lips such as all men and women had.  Their substance was not
mere human clay.  They were lips of pure spirit, and his desire for them
seemed absolutely different from the desire that had led him to other
women's lips.  He could kiss her lips, rest his own physical lips upon
them, but it would be with the lofty and awful fervor with which one
would kiss the robe of God.  He was not conscious of this transvaluation
of values that had taken place in him, and was unaware that the light
that shone in his eyes when he looked at her was quite the same light
that shines in all men's eyes when the desire of love is upon them.  He
did not dream how ardent and masculine his gaze was, nor that the warm
flame of it was affecting the alchemy of her spirit.  Her penetrative
virginity exalted and disguised his own emotions, elevating his thoughts
to a star-cool chastity, and he would have been startled to learn that
there was that shining out of his eyes, like warm waves, that flowed
through her and kindled a kindred warmth.  She was subtly perturbed by
it, and more than once, though she knew not why, it disrupted her train
of thought with its delicious intrusion and compelled her to grope for
the remainder of ideas partly uttered.  Speech was always easy with her,
and these interruptions would have puzzled her had she not decided that
it was because he was a remarkable type.  She was very sensitive to
impressions, and it was not strange, after all, that this aura of a
traveller from another world should so affect her.

The problem in the background of her consciousness was how to help him,
and she turned the conversation in that direction; but it was Martin who
came to the point first.

"I wonder if I can get some advice from you," he began, and received an
acquiescence of willingness that made his heart bound.  "You remember the
other time I was here I said I couldn't talk about books an' things
because I didn't know how?  Well, I've ben doin' a lot of thinkin' ever
since.  I've ben to the library a whole lot, but most of the books I've
tackled have ben over my head.  Mebbe I'd better begin at the beginnin'.
I ain't never had no advantages.  I've worked pretty hard ever since I
was a kid, an' since I've ben to the library, lookin' with new eyes at
books--an' lookin' at new books, too--I've just about concluded that I
ain't ben reading the right kind.  You know the books you find in cattle-
camps an' fo'c's'ls ain't the same you've got in this house, for
instance.  Well, that's the sort of readin' matter I've ben accustomed
to.  And yet--an' I ain't just makin' a brag of it--I've ben different
from the people I've herded with.  Not that I'm any better than the
sailors an' cow-punchers I travelled with,--I was cow-punchin' for a
short time, you know,--but I always liked books, read everything I could
lay hands on, an'--well, I guess I think differently from most of 'em.

"Now, to come to what I'm drivin' at.  I was never inside a house like
this.  When I come a week ago, an' saw all this, an' you, an' your
mother, an' brothers, an' everything--well, I liked it.  I'd heard about
such things an' read about such things in some of the books, an' when I
looked around at your house, why, the books come true.  But the thing I'm
after is I liked it.  I wanted it.  I want it now.  I want to breathe air
like you get in this house--air that is filled with books, and pictures,
and beautiful things, where people talk in low voices an' are clean, an'
their thoughts are clean.  The air I always breathed was mixed up with
grub an' house-rent an' scrappin' an booze an' that's all they talked
about, too.  Why, when you was crossin' the room to kiss your mother, I
thought it was the most beautiful thing I ever seen.  I've seen a whole
lot of life, an' somehow I've seen a whole lot more of it than most of
them that was with me.  I like to see, an' I want to see more, an' I want
to see it different.

"But I ain't got to the point yet.  Here it is.  I want to make my way to
the kind of life you have in this house.  There's more in life than
booze, an' hard work, an' knockin' about.  Now, how am I goin' to get it?
Where do I take hold an' begin?  I'm willin' to work my passage, you
know, an' I can make most men sick when it comes to hard work.  Once I
get started, I'll work night an' day.  Mebbe you think it's funny, me
askin' you about all this.  I know you're the last person in the world I
ought to ask, but I don't know anybody else I could ask--unless it's
Arthur.  Mebbe I ought to ask him.  If I was--"

His voice died away.  His firmly planned intention had come to a halt on
the verge of the horrible probability that he should have asked Arthur
and that he had made a fool of himself.  Ruth did not speak immediately.
She was too absorbed in striving to reconcile the stumbling, uncouth
speech and its simplicity of thought with what she saw in his face.  She
had never looked in eyes that expressed greater power.  Here was a man
who could do anything, was the message she read there, and it accorded
ill with the weakness of his spoken thought.  And for that matter so
complex and quick was her own mind that she did not have a just
appreciation of simplicity.  And yet she had caught an impression of
power in the very groping of this mind.  It had seemed to her like a
giant writhing and straining at the bonds that held him down.  Her face
was all sympathy when she did speak.

"What you need, you realize yourself, and it is education.  You should go
back and finish grammar school, and then go through to high school and
university."

"But that takes money," he interrupted.

"Oh!" she cried.  "I had not thought of that.  But then you have
relatives, somebody who could assist you?"

He shook his head.

"My father and mother are dead.  I've two sisters, one married, an' the
other'll get married soon, I suppose.  Then I've a string of
brothers,--I'm the youngest,--but they never helped nobody.  They've just
knocked around over the world, lookin' out for number one.  The oldest
died in India.  Two are in South Africa now, an' another's on a whaling
voyage, an' one's travellin' with a circus--he does trapeze work.  An' I
guess I'm just like them.  I've taken care of myself since I was
eleven--that's when my mother died.  I've got to study by myself, I
guess, an' what I want to know is where to begin."

"I should say the first thing of all would be to get a grammar.  Your
grammar is--"  She had intended saying "awful," but she amended it to "is
not particularly good."

He flushed and sweated.

"I know I must talk a lot of slang an' words you don't understand.  But
then they're the only words I know--how to speak.  I've got other words
in my mind, picked 'em up from books, but I can't pronounce 'em, so I
don't use 'em."

"It isn't what you say, so much as how you say it.  You don't mind my
being frank, do you?  I don't want to hurt you."

"No, no," he cried, while he secretly blessed her for her kindness.  "Fire
away.  I've got to know, an' I'd sooner know from you than anybody else."

"Well, then, you say, 'You was'; it should be, 'You were.'  You say 'I
seen' for 'I saw.'  You use the double negative--"

"What's the double negative?" he demanded; then added humbly, "You see, I
don't even understand your explanations."

"I'm afraid I didn't explain that," she smiled.  "A double negative
is--let me see--well, you say, 'never helped nobody.'  'Never' is a
negative.  'Nobody' is another negative.  It is a rule that two negatives
make a positive.  'Never helped nobody' means that, not helping nobody,
they must have helped somebody."

"That's pretty clear," he said.  "I never thought of it before.  But it
don't mean they _must_ have helped somebody, does it?  Seems to me that
'never helped nobody' just naturally fails to say whether or not they
helped somebody.  I never thought of it before, and I'll never say it
again."

She was pleased and surprised with the quickness and surety of his mind.
As soon as he had got the clew he not only understood but corrected her
error.

"You'll find it all in the grammar," she went on.  "There's something
else I noticed in your speech.  You say 'don't' when you shouldn't.
'Don't' is a contraction and stands for two words.  Do you know them?"

He thought a moment, then answered, "'Do not.'"

She nodded her head, and said, "And you use 'don't' when you mean 'does
not.'"

He was puzzled over this, and did not get it so quickly.

"Give me an illustration," he asked.

"Well--"  She puckered her brows and pursed up her mouth as she thought,
while he looked on and decided that her expression was most adorable.
"'It don't do to be hasty.'  Change 'don't' to 'do not,' and it reads,
'It do not do to be hasty,' which is perfectly absurd."

He turned it over in his mind and considered.

"Doesn't it jar on your ear?" she suggested.

"Can't say that it does," he replied judicially.

"Why didn't you say, 'Can't say that it do'?" she queried.

"That sounds wrong," he said slowly.  "As for the other I can't make up
my mind.  I guess my ear ain't had the trainin' yours has."

"There is no such word as 'ain't,'" she said, prettily emphatic.

Martin flushed again.

"And you say 'ben' for 'been,'" she continued; "'come' for 'came'; and
the way you chop your endings is something dreadful."

"How do you mean?"  He leaned forward, feeling that he ought to get down
on his knees before so marvellous a mind.  "How do I chop?"

"You don't complete the endings.  'A-n-d' spells 'and.'  You pronounce it
'an'.'  'I-n-g' spells 'ing.'  Sometimes you pronounce it 'ing' and
sometimes you leave off the 'g.'  And then you slur by dropping initial
letters and diphthongs.  'T-h-e-m' spells 'them.'  You pronounce it--oh,
well, it is not necessary to go over all of them.  What you need is the
grammar.  I'll get one and show you how to begin."

As she arose, there shot through his mind something that he had read in
the etiquette books, and he stood up awkwardly, worrying as to whether he
was doing the right thing, and fearing that she might take it as a sign
that he was about to go.

"By the way, Mr. Eden," she called back, as she was leaving the room.
"What is _booze_?  You used it several times, you know."

"Oh, booze," he laughed.  "It's slang.  It means whiskey an'
beer--anything that will make you drunk."

"And another thing," she laughed back.  "Don't use 'you' when you are
impersonal.  'You' is very personal, and your use of it just now was not
precisely what you meant."

"I don't just see that."

"Why, you said just now, to me, 'whiskey and beer--anything that will
make you drunk'--make me drunk, don't you see?"

"Well, it would, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, of course," she smiled.  "But it would be nicer not to bring me
into it.  Substitute 'one' for 'you' and see how much better it sounds."

When she returned with the grammar, she drew a chair near his--he
wondered if he should have helped her with the chair--and sat down beside
him.  She turned the pages of the grammar, and their heads were inclined
toward each other.  He could hardly follow her outlining of the work he
must do, so amazed was he by her delightful propinquity.  But when she
began to lay down the importance of conjugation, he forgot all about her.
He had never heard of conjugation, and was fascinated by the glimpse he
was catching into the tie-ribs of language.  He leaned closer to the
page, and her hair touched his cheek.  He had fainted but once in his
life, and he thought he was going to faint again.  He could scarcely
breathe, and his heart was pounding the blood up into his throat and
suffocating him.  Never had she seemed so accessible as now.  For the
moment the great gulf that separated them was bridged.  But there was no
diminution in the loftiness of his feeling for her.  She had not
descended to him.  It was he who had been caught up into the clouds and
carried to her.  His reverence for her, in that moment, was of the same
order as religious awe and fervor.  It seemed to him that he had intruded
upon the holy of holies, and slowly and carefully he moved his head aside
from the contact which thrilled him like an electric shock and of which
she had not been aware.




CHAPTER VIII


Several weeks went by, during which Martin Eden studied his grammar,
reviewed the books on etiquette, and read voraciously the books that
caught his fancy.  Of his own class he saw nothing.  The girls of the
Lotus Club wondered what had become of him and worried Jim with
questions, and some of the fellows who put on the glove at Riley's were
glad that Martin came no more.  He made another discovery of treasure-
trove in the library.  As the grammar had shown him the tie-ribs of
language, so that book showed him the tie-ribs of poetry, and he began to
learn metre and construction and form, beneath the beauty he loved
finding the why and wherefore of that beauty.  Another modern book he
found treated poetry as a representative art, treated it exhaustively,
with copious illustrations from the best in literature.  Never had he
read fiction with so keen zest as he studied these books.  And his fresh
mind, untaxed for twenty years and impelled by maturity of desire,
gripped hold of what he read with a virility unusual to the student mind.

When he looked back now from his vantage-ground, the old world he had
known, the world of land and sea and ships, of sailor-men and
harpy-women, seemed a very small world; and yet it blended in with this
new world and expanded.  His mind made for unity, and he was surprised
when at first he began to see points of contact between the two worlds.
And he was ennobled, as well, by the loftiness of thought and beauty he
found in the books.  This led him to believe more firmly than ever that
up above him, in society like Ruth and her family, all men and women
thought these thoughts and lived them.  Down below where he lived was the
ignoble, and he wanted to purge himself of the ignoble that had soiled
all his days, and to rise to that sublimated realm where dwelt the upper
classes.  All his childhood and youth had been troubled by a vague
unrest; he had never known what he wanted, but he had wanted something
that he had hunted vainly for until he met Ruth.  And now his unrest had
become sharp and painful, and he knew at last, clearly and definitely,
that it was beauty, and intellect, and love that he must have.

During those several weeks he saw Ruth half a dozen times, and each time
was an added inspiration.  She helped him with his English, corrected his
pronunciation, and started him on arithmetic.  But their intercourse was
not all devoted to elementary study.  He had seen too much of life, and
his mind was too matured, to be wholly content with fractions, cube root,
parsing, and analysis; and there were times when their conversation
turned on other themes--the last poetry he had read, the latest poet she
had studied.  And when she read aloud to him her favorite passages, he
ascended to the topmost heaven of delight.  Never, in all the women he
had heard speak, had he heard a voice like hers.  The least sound of it
was a stimulus to his love, and he thrilled and throbbed with every word
she uttered.  It was the quality of it, the repose, and the musical
modulation--the soft, rich, indefinable product of culture and a gentle
soul.  As he listened to her, there rang in the ears of his memory the
harsh cries of barbarian women and of hags, and, in lesser degrees of
harshness, the strident voices of working women and of the girls of his
own class.  Then the chemistry of vision would begin to work, and they
would troop in review across his mind, each, by contrast, multiplying
Ruth's glories.  Then, too, his bliss was heightened by the knowledge
that her mind was comprehending what she read and was quivering with
appreciation of the beauty of the written thought.  She read to him much
from "The Princess," and often he saw her eyes swimming with tears, so
finely was her aesthetic nature strung.  At such moments her own emotions
elevated him till he was as a god, and, as he gazed at her and listened,
he seemed gazing on the face of life and reading its deepest secrets.  And
then, becoming aware of the heights of exquisite sensibility he attained,
he decided that this was love and that love was the greatest thing in the
world.  And in review would pass along the corridors of memory all
previous thrills and burnings he had known,--the drunkenness of wine, the
caresses of women, the rough play and give and take of physical
contests,--and they seemed trivial and mean compared with this sublime
ardor he now enjoyed.

The situation was obscured to Ruth.  She had never had any experiences of
the heart.  Her only experiences in such matters were of the books, where
the facts of ordinary day were translated by fancy into a fairy realm of
unreality; and she little knew that this rough sailor was creeping into
her heart and storing there pent forces that would some day burst forth
and surge through her in waves of fire.  She did not know the actual fire
of love.  Her knowledge of love was purely theoretical, and she conceived
of it as lambent flame, gentle as the fall of dew or the ripple of quiet
water, and cool as the velvet-dark of summer nights.  Her idea of love
was more that of placid affection, serving the loved one softly in an
atmosphere, flower-scented and dim-lighted, of ethereal calm.  She did
not dream of the volcanic convulsions of love, its scorching heat and
sterile wastes of parched ashes.  She knew neither her own potencies, nor
the potencies of the world; and the deeps of life were to her seas of
illusion.  The conjugal affection of her father and mother constituted
her ideal of love-affinity, and she looked forward some day to emerging,
without shock or friction, into that same quiet sweetness of existence
with a loved one.

So it was that she looked upon Martin Eden as a novelty, a strange
individual, and she identified with novelty and strangeness the effects
he produced upon her.  It was only natural.  In similar ways she had
experienced unusual feelings when she looked at wild animals in the
menagerie, or when she witnessed a storm of wind, or shuddered at the
bright-ribbed lightning.  There was something cosmic in such things, and
there was something cosmic in him.  He came to her breathing of large
airs and great spaces.  The blaze of tropic suns was in his face, and in
his swelling, resilient muscles was the primordial vigor of life.  He was
marred and scarred by that mysterious world of rough men and rougher
deeds, the outposts of which began beyond her horizon.  He was untamed,
wild, and in secret ways her vanity was touched by the fact that he came
so mildly to her hand.  Likewise she was stirred by the common impulse to
tame the wild thing.  It was an unconscious impulse, and farthest from
her thoughts that her desire was to re-thumb the clay of him into a
likeness of her father's image, which image she believed to be the finest
in the world.  Nor was there any way, out of her inexperience, for her to
know that the cosmic feel she caught of him was that most cosmic of
things, love, which with equal power drew men and women together across
the world, compelled stags to kill each other in the rutting season, and
drove even the elements irresistibly to unite.

His swift development was a source of surprise and interest.  She
detected unguessed finenesses in him that seemed to bud, day by day, like
flowers in congenial soil.  She read Browning aloud to him, and was often
puzzled by the strange interpretations he gave to mooted passages.  It
was beyond her to realize that, out of his experience of men and women
and life, his interpretations were far more frequently correct than hers.
His conceptions seemed naive to her, though she was often fired by his
daring flights of comprehension, whose orbit-path was so wide among the
stars that she could not follow and could only sit and thrill to the
impact of unguessed power.  Then she played to him--no longer at him--and
probed him with music that sank to depths beyond her plumb-line.  His
nature opened to music as a flower to the sun, and the transition was
quick from his working-class rag-time and jingles to her classical
display pieces that she knew nearly by heart.  Yet he betrayed a
democratic fondness for Wagner, and the "Tannhauser" overture, when she
had given him the clew to it, claimed him as nothing else she played.  In
an immediate way it personified his life.  All his past was the Venusburg
motif, while her he identified somehow with the Pilgrim's Chorus motif;
and from the exalted state this elevated him to, he swept onward and
upward into that vast shadow-realm of spirit-groping, where good and evil
war eternally.

Sometimes he questioned, and induced in her mind temporary doubts as to
the correctness of her own definitions and conceptions of music.  But her
singing he did not question.  It was too wholly her, and he sat always
amazed at the divine melody of her pure soprano voice.  And he could not
help but contrast it with the weak pipings and shrill quaverings of
factory girls, ill-nourished and untrained, and with the raucous
shriekings from gin-cracked throats of the women of the seaport towns.
She enjoyed singing and playing to him.  In truth, it was the first time
she had ever had a human soul to play with, and the plastic clay of him
was a delight to mould; for she thought she was moulding it, and her
intentions were good.  Besides, it was pleasant to be with him.  He did
not repel her.  That first repulsion had been really a fear of her
undiscovered self, and the fear had gone to sleep.  Though she did not
know it, she had a feeling in him of proprietary right.  Also, he had a
tonic effect upon her.  She was studying hard at the university, and it
seemed to strengthen her to emerge from the dusty books and have the
fresh sea-breeze of his personality blow upon her.  Strength!  Strength
was what she needed, and he gave it to her in generous measure.  To come
into the same room with him, or to meet him at the door, was to take
heart of life.  And when he had gone, she would return to her books with
a keener zest and fresh store of energy.

She knew her Browning, but it had never sunk into her that it was an
awkward thing to play with souls.  As her interest in Martin increased,
the remodelling of his life became a passion with her.

"There is Mr. Butler," she said one afternoon, when grammar and
arithmetic and poetry had been put aside.

"He had comparatively no advantages at first.  His father had been a bank
cashier, but he lingered for years, dying of consumption in Arizona, so
that when he was dead, Mr. Butler, Charles Butler he was called, found
himself alone in the world.  His father had come from Australia, you
know, and so he had no relatives in California.  He went to work in a
printing-office,--I have heard him tell of it many times,--and he got
three dollars a week, at first.  His income to-day is at least thirty
thousand a year.  How did he do it?  He was honest, and faithful, and
industrious, and economical.  He denied himself the enjoyments that most
boys indulge in.  He made it a point to save so much every week, no
matter what he had to do without in order to save it.  Of course, he was
soon earning more than three dollars a week, and as his wages increased
he saved more and more.

"He worked in the daytime, and at night he went to night school.  He had
his eyes fixed always on the future.  Later on he went to night high
school.  When he was only seventeen, he was earning excellent wages at
setting type, but he was ambitious.  He wanted a career, not a
livelihood, and he was content to make immediate sacrifices for his
ultimate again.  He decided upon the law, and he entered father's office
as an office boy--think of that!--and got only four dollars a week.  But
he had learned how to be economical, and out of that four dollars he went
on saving money."

She paused for breath, and to note how Martin was receiving it.  His face
was lighted up with interest in the youthful struggles of Mr. Butler; but
there was a frown upon his face as well.

"I'd say they was pretty hard lines for a young fellow," he remarked.
"Four dollars a week!  How could he live on it?  You can bet he didn't
have any frills.  Why, I pay five dollars a week for board now, an'
there's nothin' excitin' about it, you can lay to that.  He must have
lived like a dog.  The food he ate--"

"He cooked for himself," she interrupted, "on a little kerosene stove."

"The food he ate must have been worse than what a sailor gets on the
worst-feedin' deep-water ships, than which there ain't much that can be
possibly worse."

"But think of him now!" she cried enthusiastically.  "Think of what his
income affords him.  His early denials are paid for a thousand-fold."

Martin looked at her sharply.

"There's one thing I'll bet you," he said, "and it is that Mr. Butler is
nothin' gay-hearted now in his fat days.  He fed himself like that for
years an' years, on a boy's stomach, an' I bet his stomach's none too
good now for it."

Her eyes dropped before his searching gaze.

"I'll bet he's got dyspepsia right now!" Martin challenged.

"Yes, he has," she confessed; "but--"

"An' I bet," Martin dashed on, "that he's solemn an' serious as an old
owl, an' doesn't care a rap for a good time, for all his thirty thousand
a year.  An' I'll bet he's not particularly joyful at seein' others have
a good time.  Ain't I right?"

She nodded her head in agreement, and hastened to explain:-

"But he is not that type of man.  By nature he is sober and serious.  He
always was that."

"You can bet he was," Martin proclaimed.  "Three dollars a week, an' four
dollars a week, an' a young boy cookin' for himself on an oil-burner an'
layin' up money, workin' all day an' studyin' all night, just workin' an'
never playin', never havin' a good time, an' never learnin' how to have a
good time--of course his thirty thousand came along too late."

His sympathetic imagination was flashing upon his inner sight all the
thousands of details of the boy's existence and of his narrow spiritual
development into a thirty-thousand-dollar-a-year man.  With the swiftness
and wide-reaching of multitudinous thought Charles Butler's whole life
was telescoped upon his vision.

"Do you know," he added, "I feel sorry for Mr. Butler.  He was too young
to know better, but he robbed himself of life for the sake of thirty
thousand a year that's clean wasted upon him.  Why, thirty thousand, lump
sum, wouldn't buy for him right now what ten cents he was layin' up would
have bought him, when he was a kid, in the way of candy an' peanuts or a
seat in nigger heaven."

It was just such uniqueness of points of view that startled Ruth.  Not
only were they new to her, and contrary to her own beliefs, but she
always felt in them germs of truth that threatened to unseat or modify
her own convictions.  Had she been fourteen instead of twenty-four, she
might have been changed by them; but she was twenty-four, conservative by
nature and upbringing, and already crystallized into the cranny of life
where she had been born and formed.  It was true, his bizarre judgments
troubled her in the moments they were uttered, but she ascribed them to
his novelty of type and strangeness of living, and they were soon
forgotten.  Nevertheless, while she disapproved of them, the strength of
their utterance, and the flashing of eyes and earnestness of face that
accompanied them, always thrilled her and drew her toward him.  She would
never have guessed that this man who had come from beyond her horizon,
was, in such moments, flashing on beyond her horizon with wider and
deeper concepts.  Her own limits were the limits of her horizon; but
limited minds can recognize limitations only in others.  And so she felt
that her outlook was very wide indeed, and that where his conflicted with
hers marked his limitations; and she dreamed of helping him to see as she
saw, of widening his horizon until it was identified with hers.

"But I have not finished my story," she said.  "He worked, so father
says, as no other office boy he ever had.  Mr. Butler was always eager to
work.  He never was late, and he was usually at the office a few minutes
before his regular time.  And yet he saved his time.  Every spare moment
was devoted to study.  He studied book-keeping and type-writing, and he
paid for lessons in shorthand by dictating at night to a court reporter
who needed practice.  He quickly became a clerk, and he made himself
invaluable.  Father appreciated him and saw that he was bound to rise.  It
was on father's suggestion that he went to law college.  He became a
lawyer, and hardly was he back in the office when father took him in as
junior partner.  He is a great man.  He refused the United States Senate
several times, and father says he could become a justice of the Supreme
Court any time a vacancy occurs, if he wants to.  Such a life is an
inspiration to all of us.  It shows us that a man with will may rise
superior to his environment."

"He is a great man," Martin said sincerely.

But it seemed to him there was something in the recital that jarred upon
his sense of beauty and life.  He could not find an adequate motive in
Mr. Butler's life of pinching and privation.  Had he done it for love of
a woman, or for attainment of beauty, Martin would have understood.  God's
own mad lover should do anything for the kiss, but not for thirty
thousand dollars a year.  He was dissatisfied with Mr. Butler's career.
There was something paltry about it, after all.  Thirty thousand a year
was all right, but dyspepsia and inability to be humanly happy robbed
such princely income of all its value.

Much of this he strove to express to Ruth, and shocked her and made it
clear that more remodelling was necessary.  Hers was that common
insularity of mind that makes human creatures believe that their color,
creed, and politics are best and right and that other human creatures
scattered over the world are less fortunately placed than they.  It was
the same insularity of mind that made the ancient Jew thank God he was
not born a woman, and sent the modern missionary god-substituting to the
ends of the earth; and it made Ruth desire to shape this man from other
crannies of life into the likeness of the men who lived in her particular
cranny of life.




CHAPTER IX


Back from sea Martin Eden came, homing for California with a lover's
desire.  His store of money exhausted, he had shipped before the mast on
the treasure-hunting schooner; and the Solomon Islands, after eight
months of failure to find treasure, had witnessed the breaking up of the
expedition.  The men had been paid off in Australia, and Martin had
immediately shipped on a deep-water vessel for San Francisco.  Not alone
had those eight months earned him enough money to stay on land for many
weeks, but they had enabled him to do a great deal of studying and
reading.

His was the student's mind, and behind his ability to learn was the
indomitability of his nature and his love for Ruth.  The grammar he had
taken along he went through again and again until his unjaded brain had
mastered it.  He noticed the bad grammar used by his shipmates, and made
a point of mentally correcting and reconstructing their crudities of
speech.  To his great joy he discovered that his ear was becoming
sensitive and that he was developing grammatical nerves.  A double
negative jarred him like a discord, and often, from lack of practice, it
was from his own lips that the jar came.  His tongue refused to learn new
tricks in a day.

After he had been through the grammar repeatedly, he took up the
dictionary and added twenty words a day to his vocabulary.  He found that
this was no light task, and at wheel or lookout he steadily went over and
over his lengthening list of pronunciations and definitions, while he
invariably memorized himself to sleep.  "Never did anything," "if I
were," and "those things," were phrases, with many variations, that he
repeated under his breath in order to accustom his tongue to the language
spoken by Ruth.  "And" and "ing," with the "d" and "g" pronounced
emphatically, he went over thousands of times; and to his surprise he
noticed that he was beginning to speak cleaner and more correct English
than the officers themselves and the gentleman-adventurers in the cabin
who had financed the expedition.

The captain was a fishy-eyed Norwegian who somehow had fallen into
possession of a complete Shakespeare, which he never read, and Martin had
washed his clothes for him and in return been permitted access to the
precious volumes.  For a time, so steeped was he in the plays and in the
many favorite passages that impressed themselves almost without effort on
his brain, that all the world seemed to shape itself into forms of
Elizabethan tragedy or comedy and his very thoughts were in blank verse.
It trained his ear and gave him a fine appreciation for noble English;
withal it introduced into his mind much that was archaic and obsolete.

The eight months had been well spent, and, in addition to what he had
learned of right speaking and high thinking, he had learned much of
himself.  Along with his humbleness because he knew so little, there
arose a conviction of power.  He felt a sharp gradation between himself
and his shipmates, and was wise enough to realize that the difference lay
in potentiality rather than achievement.  What he could do,--they could
do; but within him he felt a confused ferment working that told him there
was more in him than he had done.  He was tortured by the exquisite
beauty of the world, and wished that Ruth were there to share it with
him.  He decided that he would describe to her many of the bits of South
Sea beauty.  The creative spirit in him flamed up at the thought and
urged that he recreate this beauty for a wider audience than Ruth.  And
then, in splendor and glory, came the great idea.  He would write.  He
would be one of the eyes through which the world saw, one of the ears
through which it heard, one of the hearts through which it felt.  He
would write--everything--poetry and prose, fiction and description, and
plays like Shakespeare.  There was career and the way to win to Ruth.  The
men of literature were the world's giants, and he conceived them to be
far finer than the Mr. Butlers who earned thirty thousand a year and
could be Supreme Court justices if they wanted to.

Once the idea had germinated, it mastered him, and the return voyage to
San Francisco was like a dream.  He was drunken with unguessed power and
felt that he could do anything.  In the midst of the great and lonely sea
he gained perspective.  Clearly, and for the first lime, he saw Ruth and
her world.  It was all visualized in his mind as a concrete thing which
he could take up in his two hands and turn around and about and examine.
There was much that was dim and nebulous in that world, but he saw it as
a whole and not in detail, and he saw, also, the way to master it.  To
write!  The thought was fire in him.  He would begin as soon as he got
back.  The first thing he would do would be to describe the voyage of the
treasure-hunters.  He would sell it to some San Francisco newspaper.  He
would not tell Ruth anything about it, and she would be surprised and
pleased when she saw his name in print.  While he wrote, he could go on
studying.  There were twenty-four hours in each day.  He was invincible.
He knew how to work, and the citadels would go down before him.  He would
not have to go to sea again--as a sailor; and for the instant he caught a
vision of a steam yacht.  There were other writers who possessed steam
yachts.  Of course, he cautioned himself, it would be slow succeeding at
first, and for a time he would be content to earn enough money by his
writing to enable him to go on studying.  And then, after some time,--a
very indeterminate time,--when he had learned and prepared himself, he
would write the great things and his name would be on all men's lips.  But
greater than that, infinitely greater and greatest of all, he would have
proved himself worthy of Ruth.  Fame was all very well, but it was for
Ruth that his splendid dream arose.  He was not a fame-monger, but merely
one of God's mad lovers.

Arrived in Oakland, with his snug pay-day in his pocket, he took up his
old room at Bernard Higginbotham's and set to work.  He did not even let
Ruth know he was back.  He would go and see her when he finished the
article on the treasure-hunters.  It was not so difficult to abstain from
seeing her, because of the violent heat of creative fever that burned in
him.  Besides, the very article he was writing would bring her nearer to
him.  He did not know how long an article he should write, but he counted
the words in a double-page article in the Sunday supplement of the San
Francisco Examiner, and guided himself by that.  Three days, at white
heat, completed his narrative; but when he had copied it carefully, in a
large scrawl that was easy to read, he learned from a rhetoric he picked
up in the library that there were such things as paragraphs and quotation
marks.  He had never thought of such things before; and he promptly set
to work writing the article over, referring continually to the pages of
the rhetoric and learning more in a day about composition than the
average schoolboy in a year.  When he had copied the article a second
time and rolled it up carefully, he read in a newspaper an item on hints
to beginners, and discovered the iron law that manuscripts should never
be rolled and that they should be written on one side of the paper.  He
had violated the law on both counts.  Also, he learned from the item that
first-class papers paid a minimum of ten dollars a column.  So, while he
copied the manuscript a third time, he consoled himself by multiplying
ten columns by ten dollars.  The product was always the same, one hundred
dollars, and he decided that that was better than seafaring.  If it
hadn't been for his blunders, he would have finished the article in three
days.  One hundred dollars in three days!  It would have taken him three
months and longer on the sea to earn a similar amount.  A man was a fool
to go to sea when he could write, he concluded, though the money in
itself meant nothing to him.  Its value was in the liberty it would get
him, the presentable garments it would buy him, all of which would bring
him nearer, swiftly nearer, to the slender, pale girl who had turned his
life back upon itself and given him inspiration.

He mailed the manuscript in a flat envelope, and addressed it to the
editor of the San Francisco Examiner.  He had an idea that anything
accepted by a paper was published immediately, and as he had sent the
manuscript in on Friday he expected it to come out on the following
Sunday.  He conceived that it would be fine to let that event apprise
Ruth of his return.  Then, Sunday afternoon, he would call and see her.
In the meantime he was occupied by another idea, which he prided himself
upon as being a particularly sane, careful, and modest idea.  He would
write an adventure story for boys and sell it to The Youth's Companion.
He went to the free reading-room and looked through the files of The
Youth's Companion.  Serial stories, he found, were usually published in
that weekly in five instalments of about three thousand words each.  He
discovered several serials that ran to seven instalments, and decided to
write one of that length.

He had been on a whaling voyage in the Arctic, once--a voyage that was to
have been for three years and which had terminated in shipwreck at the
end of six months.  While his imagination was fanciful, even fantastic at
times, he had a basic love of reality that compelled him to write about
the things he knew.  He knew whaling, and out of the real materials of
his knowledge he proceeded to manufacture the fictitious adventures of
the two boys he intended to use as joint heroes.  It was easy work, he
decided on Saturday evening.  He had completed on that day the first
instalment of three thousand words--much to the amusement of Jim, and to
the open derision of Mr. Higginbotham, who sneered throughout meal-time
at the "litery" person they had discovered in the family.

Martin contented himself by picturing his brother-in-law's surprise on
Sunday morning when he opened his Examiner and saw the article on the
treasure-hunters.  Early that morning he was out himself to the front
door, nervously racing through the many-sheeted newspaper.  He went
through it a second time, very carefully, then folded it up and left it
where he had found it.  He was glad he had not told any one about his
article.  On second thought he concluded that he had been wrong about the
speed with which things found their way into newspaper columns.  Besides,
there had not been any news value in his article, and most likely the
editor would write to him about it first.

After breakfast he went on with his serial.  The words flowed from his
pen, though he broke off from the writing frequently to look up
definitions in the dictionary or to refer to the rhetoric.  He often read
or re-read a chapter at a time, during such pauses; and he consoled
himself that while he was not writing the great things he felt to be in
him, he was learning composition, at any rate, and training himself to
shape up and express his thoughts.  He toiled on till dark, when he went
out to the reading-room and explored magazines and weeklies until the
place closed at ten o'clock.  This was his programme for a week.  Each
day he did three thousand words, and each evening he puzzled his way
through the magazines, taking note of the stories, articles, and poems
that editors saw fit to publish.  One thing was certain: What these
multitudinous writers did he could do, and only give him time and he
would do what they could not do.  He was cheered to read in Book News, in
a paragraph on the payment of magazine writers, not that Rudyard Kipling
received a dollar per word, but that the minimum rate paid by first-class
magazines was two cents a word.  The Youth's Companion was certainly
first class, and at that rate the three thousand words he had written
that day would bring him sixty dollars--two months' wages on the sea!

On Friday night he finished the serial, twenty-one thousand words long.
At two cents a word, he calculated, that would bring him four hundred and
twenty dollars.  Not a bad week's work.  It was more money than he had
ever possessed at one time.  He did not know how he could spend it all.
He had tapped a gold mine.  Where this came from he could always get
more.  He planned to buy some more clothes, to subscribe to many
magazines, and to buy dozens of reference books that at present he was
compelled to go to the library to consult.  And still there was a large
portion of the four hundred and twenty dollars unspent.  This worried him
until the thought came to him of hiring a servant for Gertrude and of
buying a bicycle for Marion.

He mailed the bulky manuscript to The Youth's Companion, and on Saturday
afternoon, after having planned an article on pearl-diving, he went to
see Ruth.  He had telephoned, and she went herself to greet him at the
door.  The old familiar blaze of health rushed out from him and struck
her like a blow.  It seemed to enter into her body and course through her
veins in a liquid glow, and to set her quivering with its imparted
strength.  He flushed warmly as he took her hand and looked into her blue
eyes, but the fresh bronze of eight months of sun hid the flush, though
it did not protect the neck from the gnawing chafe of the stiff collar.
She noted the red line of it with amusement which quickly vanished as she
glanced at his clothes.  They really fitted him,--it was his first made-
to-order suit,--and he seemed slimmer and better modelled.  In addition,
his cloth cap had been replaced by a soft hat, which she commanded him to
put on and then complimented him on his appearance.  She did not remember
when she had felt so happy.  This change in him was her handiwork, and
she was proud of it and fired with ambition further to help him.

But the most radical change of all, and the one that pleased her most,
was the change in his speech.  Not only did he speak more correctly, but
he spoke more easily, and there were many new words in his vocabulary.
When he grew excited or enthusiastic, however, he dropped back into the
old slurring and the dropping of final consonants.  Also, there was an
awkward hesitancy, at times, as he essayed the new words he had learned.
On the other hand, along with his ease of expression, he displayed a
lightness and facetiousness of thought that delighted her.  It was his
old spirit of humor and badinage that had made him a favorite in his own
class, but which he had hitherto been unable to use in her presence
through lack of words and training.  He was just beginning to orientate
himself and to feel that he was not wholly an intruder.  But he was very
tentative, fastidiously so, letting Ruth set the pace of sprightliness
and fancy, keeping up with her but never daring to go beyond her.

He told her of what he had been doing, and of his plan to write for a
livelihood and of going on with his studies.  But he was disappointed at
her lack of approval.  She did not think much of his plan.

"You see," she said frankly, "writing must be a trade, like anything
else.  Not that I know anything about it, of course.  I only bring common
judgment to bear.  You couldn't hope to be a blacksmith without spending
three years at learning the trade--or is it five years!  Now writers are
so much better paid than blacksmiths that there must be ever so many more
men who would like to write, who--try to write."

"But then, may not I be peculiarly constituted to write?" he queried,
secretly exulting at the language he had used, his swift imagination
throwing the whole scene and atmosphere upon a vast screen along with a
thousand other scenes from his life--scenes that were rough and raw,
gross and bestial.

The whole composite vision was achieved with the speed of light,
producing no pause in the conversation, nor interrupting his calm train
of thought.  On the screen of his imagination he saw himself and this
sweet and beautiful girl, facing each other and conversing in good
English, in a room of books and paintings and tone and culture, and all
illuminated by a bright light of steadfast brilliance; while ranged about
and fading away to the remote edges of the screen were antithetical
scenes, each scene a picture, and he the onlooker, free to look at will
upon what he wished.  He saw these other scenes through drifting vapors
and swirls of sullen fog dissolving before shafts of red and garish
light.  He saw cowboys at the bar, drinking fierce whiskey, the air
filled with obscenity and ribald language, and he saw himself with them
drinking and cursing with the wildest, or sitting at table with them,
under smoking kerosene lamps, while the chips clicked and clattered and
the cards were dealt around.  He saw himself, stripped to the waist, with
naked fists, fighting his great fight with Liverpool Red in the
forecastle of the Susquehanna; and he saw the bloody deck of the John
Rogers, that gray morning of attempted mutiny, the mate kicking in death-
throes on the main-hatch, the revolver in the old man's hand spitting
fire and smoke, the men with passion-wrenched faces, of brutes screaming
vile blasphemies and falling about him--and then he returned to the
central scene, calm and clean in the steadfast light, where Ruth sat and
talked with him amid books and paintings; and he saw the grand piano upon
which she would later play to him; and he heard the echoes of his own
selected and correct words, "But then, may I not be peculiarly
constituted to write?"

"But no matter how peculiarly constituted a man may be for
blacksmithing," she was laughing, "I never heard of one becoming a
blacksmith without first serving his apprenticeship."

"What would you advise?" he asked.  "And don't forget that I feel in me
this capacity to write--I can't explain it; I just know that it is in
me."

"You must get a thorough education," was the answer, "whether or not you
ultimately become a writer.  This education is indispensable for whatever
career you select, and it must not be slipshod or sketchy.  You should go
to high school."

"Yes--" he began; but she interrupted with an afterthought:-

"Of course, you could go on with your writing, too."

"I would have to," he said grimly.

"Why?"  She looked at him, prettily puzzled, for she did not quite like
the persistence with which he clung to his notion.

"Because, without writing there wouldn't be any high school.  I must live
and buy books and clothes, you know."

"I'd forgotten that," she laughed.  "Why weren't you born with an
income?"

"I'd rather have good health and imagination," he answered.  "I can make
good on the income, but the other things have to be made good for--"  He
almost said "you," then amended his sentence to, "have to be made good
for one."

"Don't say 'make good,'" she cried, sweetly petulant.  "It's slang, and
it's horrid."

He flushed, and stammered, "That's right, and I only wish you'd correct
me every time."

"I--I'd like to," she said haltingly.  "You have so much in you that is
good that I want to see you perfect."

He was clay in her hands immediately, as passionately desirous of being
moulded by her as she was desirous of shaping him into the image of her
ideal of man.  And when she pointed out the opportuneness of the time,
that the entrance examinations to high school began on the following
Monday, he promptly volunteered that he would take them.

Then she played and sang to him, while he gazed with hungry yearning at
her, drinking in her loveliness and marvelling that there should not be a
hundred suitors listening there and longing for her as he listened and
longed.




CHAPTER X


He stopped to dinner that evening, and, much to Ruth's satisfaction, made
a favorable impression on her father.  They talked about the sea as a
career, a subject which Martin had at his finger-ends, and Mr. Morse
remarked afterward that he seemed a very clear-headed young man.  In his
avoidance of slang and his search after right words, Martin was compelled
to talk slowly, which enabled him to find the best thoughts that were in
him.  He was more at ease than that first night at dinner, nearly a year
before, and his shyness and modesty even commended him to Mrs. Morse, who
was pleased at his manifest improvement.

"He is the first man that ever drew passing notice from Ruth," she told
her husband.  "She has been so singularly backward where men are
concerned that I have been worried greatly."

Mr. Morse looked at his wife curiously.

"You mean to use this young sailor to wake her up?" he questioned.

"I mean that she is not to die an old maid if I can help it," was the
answer.  "If this young Eden can arouse her interest in mankind in
general, it will be a good thing."

"A very good thing," he commented.  "But suppose,--and we must suppose,
sometimes, my dear,--suppose he arouses her interest too particularly in
him?"

"Impossible," Mrs. Morse laughed.  "She is three years older than he,
and, besides, it is impossible.  Nothing will ever come of it.  Trust
that to me."

And so Martin's role was arranged for him, while he, led on by Arthur and
Norman, was meditating an extravagance.  They were going out for a ride
into the hills Sunday morning on their wheels, which did not interest
Martin until he learned that Ruth, too, rode a wheel and was going along.
He did not ride, nor own a wheel, but if Ruth rode, it was up to him to
begin, was his decision; and when he said good night, he stopped in at a
cyclery on his way home and spent forty dollars for a wheel.  It was more
than a month's hard-earned wages, and it reduced his stock of money
amazingly; but when he added the hundred dollars he was to receive from
the Examiner to the four hundred and twenty dollars that was the least
The Youth's Companion could pay him, he felt that he had reduced the
perplexity the unwonted amount of money had caused him.  Nor did he mind,
in the course of learning to ride the wheel home, the fact that he ruined
his suit of clothes.  He caught the tailor by telephone that night from
Mr. Higginbotham's store and ordered another suit.  Then he carried the
wheel up the narrow stairway that clung like a fire-escape to the rear
wall of the building, and when he had moved his bed out from the wall,
found there was just space enough in the small room for himself and the
wheel.

Sunday he had intended to devote to studying for the high school
examination, but the pearl-diving article lured him away, and he spent
the day in the white-hot fever of re-creating the beauty and romance that
burned in him.  The fact that the Examiner of that morning had failed to
publish his treasure-hunting article did not dash his spirits.  He was at
too great a height for that, and having been deaf to a twice-repeated
summons, he went without the heavy Sunday dinner with which Mr.
Higginbotham invariably graced his table.  To Mr. Higginbotham such a
dinner was advertisement of his worldly achievement and prosperity, and
he honored it by delivering platitudinous sermonettes upon American
institutions and the opportunity said institutions gave to any
hard-working man to rise--the rise, in his case, which he pointed out
unfailingly, being from a grocer's clerk to the ownership of
Higginbotham's Cash Store.

Martin Eden looked with a sigh at his unfinished "Pearl-diving" on Monday
morning, and took the car down to Oakland to the high school.  And when,
days later, he applied for the results of his examinations, he learned
that he had failed in everything save grammar.

"Your grammar is excellent," Professor Hilton informed him, staring at
him through heavy spectacles; "but you know nothing, positively nothing,
in the other branches, and your United States history is abominable--there
is no other word for it, abominable.  I should advise you--"

Professor Hilton paused and glared at him, unsympathetic and
unimaginative as one of his own test-tubes.  He was professor of physics
in the high school, possessor of a large family, a meagre salary, and a
select fund of parrot-learned knowledge.

"Yes, sir," Martin said humbly, wishing somehow that the man at the desk
in the library was in Professor Hilton's place just then.

"And I should advise you to go back to the grammar school for at least
two years.  Good day."

Martin was not deeply affected by his failure, though he was surprised at
Ruth's shocked expression when he told her Professor Hilton's advice.  Her
disappointment was so evident that he was sorry he had failed, but
chiefly so for her sake.

"You see I was right," she said.  "You know far more than any of the
students entering high school, and yet you can't pass the examinations.
It is because what education you have is fragmentary, sketchy.  You need
the discipline of study, such as only skilled teachers can give you.  You
must be thoroughly grounded.  Professor Hilton is right, and if I were
you, I'd go to night school.  A year and a half of it might enable you to
catch up that additional six months.  Besides, that would leave you your
days in which to write, or, if you could not make your living by your
pen, you would have your days in which to work in some position."

But if my days are taken up with work and my nights with school, when am
I going to see you?--was Martin's first thought, though he refrained from
uttering it.  Instead, he said:-

"It seems so babyish for me to be going to night school.  But I wouldn't
mind that if I thought it would pay.  But I don't think it will pay.  I
can do the work quicker than they can teach me.  It would be a loss of
time--" he thought of her and his desire to have her--"and I can't afford
the time.  I haven't the time to spare, in fact."

"There is so much that is necessary."  She looked at him gently, and he
was a brute to oppose her.  "Physics and chemistry--you can't do them
without laboratory study; and you'll find algebra and geometry almost
hopeless without instruction.  You need the skilled teachers, the
specialists in the art of imparting knowledge."

He was silent for a minute, casting about for the least vainglorious way
in which to express himself.

"Please don't think I'm bragging," he began.  "I don't intend it that way
at all.  But I have a feeling that I am what I may call a natural
student.  I can study by myself.  I take to it kindly, like a duck to
water.  You see yourself what I did with grammar.  And I've learned much
of other things--you would never dream how much.  And I'm only getting
started.  Wait till I get--"  He hesitated and assured himself of the
pronunciation before he said "momentum.  I'm getting my first real feel
of things now.  I'm beginning to size up the situation--"

"Please don't say 'size up,'" she interrupted.

"To get a line on things," he hastily amended.

"That doesn't mean anything in correct English," she objected.

He floundered for a fresh start.

"What I'm driving at is that I'm beginning to get the lay of the land."

Out of pity she forebore, and he went on.

"Knowledge seems to me like a chart-room.  Whenever I go into the
library, I am impressed that way.  The part played by teachers is to
teach the student the contents of the chart-room in a systematic way.  The
teachers are guides to the chart-room, that's all.  It's not something
that they have in their own heads.  They don't make it up, don't create
it.  It's all in the chart-room and they know their way about in it, and
it's their business to show the place to strangers who might else get
lost.  Now I don't get lost easily.  I have the bump of location.  I
usually know where I'm at--What's wrong now?"

"Don't say 'where I'm at.'"

"That's right," he said gratefully, "where I am.  But where am I at--I
mean, where am I?  Oh, yes, in the chart-room.  Well, some people--"

"Persons," she corrected.

"Some persons need guides, most persons do; but I think I can get along
without them.  I've spent a lot of time in the chart-room now, and I'm on
the edge of knowing my way about, what charts I want to refer to, what
coasts I want to explore.  And from the way I line it up, I'll explore a
whole lot more quickly by myself.  The speed of a fleet, you know, is the
speed of the slowest ship, and the speed of the teachers is affected the
same way.  They can't go any faster than the ruck of their scholars, and
I can set a faster pace for myself than they set for a whole schoolroom."

"'He travels the fastest who travels alone,'" she quoted at him.

But I'd travel faster with you just the same, was what he wanted to blurt
out, as he caught a vision of a world without end of sunlit spaces and
starry voids through which he drifted with her, his arm around her, her
pale gold hair blowing about his face.  In the same instant he was aware
of the pitiful inadequacy of speech.  God!  If he could so frame words
that she could see what he then saw!  And he felt the stir in him, like a
throe of yearning pain, of the desire to paint these visions that flashed
unsummoned on the mirror of his mind.  Ah, that was it!  He caught at the
hem of the secret.  It was the very thing that the great writers and
master-poets did.  That was why they were giants.  They knew how to
express what they thought, and felt, and saw.  Dogs asleep in the sun
often whined and barked, but they were unable to tell what they saw that
made them whine and bark.  He had often wondered what it was.  And that
was all he was, a dog asleep in the sun.  He saw noble and beautiful
visions, but he could only whine and bark at Ruth.  But he would cease
sleeping in the sun.  He would stand up, with open eyes, and he would
struggle and toil and learn until, with eyes unblinded and tongue untied,
he could share with her his visioned wealth.  Other men had discovered
the trick of expression, of making words obedient servitors, and of
making combinations of words mean more than the sum of their separate
meanings.  He was stirred profoundly by the passing glimpse at the
secret, and he was again caught up in the vision of sunlit spaces and
starry voids--until it came to him that it was very quiet, and he saw
Ruth regarding him with an amused expression and a smile in her eyes.

"I have had a great visioning," he said, and at the sound of his words in
his own ears his heart gave a leap.  Where had those words come from?
They had adequately expressed the pause his vision had put in the
conversation.  It was a miracle.  Never had he so loftily framed a lofty
thought.  But never had he attempted to frame lofty thoughts in words.
That was it.  That explained it.  He had never tried.  But Swinburne had,
and Tennyson, and Kipling, and all the other poets.  His mind flashed on
to his "Pearl-diving."  He had never dared the big things, the spirit of
the beauty that was a fire in him.  That article would be a different
thing when he was done with it.  He was appalled by the vastness of the
beauty that rightfully belonged in it, and again his mind flashed and
dared, and he demanded of himself why he could not chant that beauty in
noble verse as the great poets did.  And there was all the mysterious
delight and spiritual wonder of his love for Ruth.  Why could he not
chant that, too, as the poets did?  They had sung of love.  So would he.
By God!--

And in his frightened ears he heard his exclamation echoing.  Carried
away, he had breathed it aloud.  The blood surged into his face, wave
upon wave, mastering the bronze of it till the blush of shame flaunted
itself from collar-rim to the roots of his hair.

"I--I--beg your pardon," he stammered.  "I was thinking."

"It sounded as if you were praying," she said bravely, but she felt
herself inside to be withering and shrinking.  It was the first time she
had heard an oath from the lips of a man she knew, and she was shocked,
not merely as a matter of principle and training, but shocked in spirit
by this rough blast of life in the garden of her sheltered maidenhood.

But she forgave, and with surprise at the ease of her forgiveness.
Somehow it was not so difficult to forgive him anything.  He had not had
a chance to be as other men, and he was trying so hard, and succeeding,
too.  It never entered her head that there could be any other reason for
her being kindly disposed toward him.  She was tenderly disposed toward
him, but she did not know it.  She had no way of knowing it.  The placid
poise of twenty-four years without a single love affair did not fit her
with a keen perception of her own feelings, and she who had never warmed
to actual love was unaware that she was warming now.




CHAPTER XI


Martin went back to his pearl-diving article, which would have been
finished sooner if it had not been broken in upon so frequently by his
attempts to write poetry.  His poems were love poems, inspired by Ruth,
but they were never completed.  Not in a day could he learn to chant in
noble verse.  Rhyme and metre and structure were serious enough in
themselves, but there was, over and beyond them, an intangible and
evasive something that he caught in all great poetry, but which he could
not catch and imprison in his own.  It was the elusive spirit of poetry
itself that he sensed and sought after but could not capture.  It seemed
a glow to him, a warm and trailing vapor, ever beyond his reaching,
though sometimes he was rewarded by catching at shreds of it and weaving
them into phrases that echoed in his brain with haunting notes or drifted
across his vision in misty wafture of unseen beauty.  It was baffling.  He
ached with desire to express and could but gibber prosaically as
everybody gibbered.  He read his fragments aloud.  The metre marched
along on perfect feet, and the rhyme pounded a longer and equally
faultless rhythm, but the glow and high exaltation that he felt within
were lacking.  He could not understand, and time and again, in despair,
defeated and depressed, he returned to his article.  Prose was certainly
an easier medium.

Following the "Pearl-diving," he wrote an article on the sea as a career,
another on turtle-catching, and a third on the northeast trades.  Then he
tried, as an experiment, a short story, and before he broke his stride he
had finished six short stories and despatched them to various magazines.
He wrote prolifically, intensely, from morning till night, and late at
night, except when he broke off to go to the reading-room, draw books
from the library, or to call on Ruth.  He was profoundly happy.  Life was
pitched high.  He was in a fever that never broke.  The joy of creation
that is supposed to belong to the gods was his.  All the life about
him--the odors of stale vegetables and soapsuds, the slatternly form of
his sister, and the jeering face of Mr. Higginbotham--was a dream.  The
real world was in his mind, and the stories he wrote were so many pieces
of reality out of his mind.

The days were too short.  There was so much he wanted to study.  He cut
his sleep down to five hours and found that he could get along upon it.
He tried four hours and a half, and regretfully came back to five.  He
could joyfully have spent all his waking hours upon any one of his
pursuits.  It was with regret that he ceased from writing to study, that
he ceased from study to go to the library, that he tore himself away from
that chart-room of knowledge or from the magazines in the reading-room
that were filled with the secrets of writers who succeeded in selling
their wares.  It was like severing heart strings, when he was with Ruth,
to stand up and go; and he scorched through the dark streets so as to get
home to his books at the least possible expense of time.  And hardest of
all was it to shut up the algebra or physics, put note-book and pencil
aside, and close his tired eyes in sleep.  He hated the thought of
ceasing to live, even for so short a time, and his sole consolation was
that the alarm clock was set five hours ahead.  He would lose only five
hours anyway, and then the jangling bell would jerk him out of
unconsciousness and he would have before him another glorious day of
nineteen hours.

In the meantime the weeks were passing, his money was ebbing low, and
there was no money coming in.  A month after he had mailed it, the
adventure serial for boys was returned to him by The Youth's Companion.
The rejection slip was so tactfully worded that he felt kindly toward the
editor.  But he did not feel so kindly toward the editor of the San
Francisco Examiner.  After waiting two whole weeks, Martin had written to
him.  A week later he wrote again.  At the end of the month, he went over
to San Francisco and personally called upon the editor.  But he did not
meet that exalted personage, thanks to a Cerberus of an office boy, of
tender years and red hair, who guarded the portals.  At the end of the
fifth week the manuscript came back to him, by mail, without comment.
There was no rejection slip, no explanation, nothing.  In the same way
his other articles were tied up with the other leading San Francisco
papers.  When he recovered them, he sent them to the magazines in the
East, from which they were returned more promptly, accompanied always by
the printed rejection slips.

The short stories were returned in similar fashion.  He read them over
and over, and liked them so much that he could not puzzle out the cause
of their rejection, until, one day, he read in a newspaper that
manuscripts should always be typewritten.  That explained it.  Of course
editors were so busy that they could not afford the time and strain of
reading handwriting.  Martin rented a typewriter and spent a day
mastering the machine.  Each day he typed what he composed, and he typed
his earlier manuscripts as fast as they were returned him.  He was
surprised when the typed ones began to come back.  His jaw seemed to
become squarer, his chin more aggressive, and he bundled the manuscripts
off to new editors.

The thought came to him that he was not a good judge of his own work.  He
tried it out on Gertrude.  He read his stories aloud to her.  Her eyes
glistened, and she looked at him proudly as she said:-

"Ain't it grand, you writin' those sort of things."

"Yes, yes," he demanded impatiently.  "But the story--how did you like
it?"

"Just grand," was the reply.  "Just grand, an' thrilling, too.  I was all
worked up."

He could see that her mind was not clear.  The perplexity was strong in
her good-natured face.  So he waited.

"But, say, Mart," after a long pause, "how did it end?  Did that young
man who spoke so highfalutin' get her?"

And, after he had explained the end, which he thought he had made
artistically obvious, she would say:-

"That's what I wanted to know.  Why didn't you write that way in the
story?"

One thing he learned, after he had read her a number of stories, namely,
that she liked happy endings.

"That story was perfectly grand," she announced, straightening up from
the wash-tub with a tired sigh and wiping the sweat from her forehead
with a red, steamy hand; "but it makes me sad.  I want to cry.  There is
too many sad things in the world anyway.  It makes me happy to think
about happy things.  Now if he'd married her, and--You don't mind, Mart?"
she queried apprehensively.  "I just happen to feel that way, because I'm
tired, I guess.  But the story was grand just the same, perfectly grand.
Where are you goin' to sell it?"

"That's a horse of another color," he laughed.

"But if you _did_ sell it, what do you think you'd get for it?"

"Oh, a hundred dollars.  That would be the least, the way prices go."

"My!  I do hope you'll sell it!"

"Easy money, eh?"  Then he added proudly: "I wrote it in two days.  That's
fifty dollars a day."

He longed to read his stories to Ruth, but did not dare.  He would wait
till some were published, he decided, then she would understand what he
had been working for.  In the meantime he toiled on.  Never had the
spirit of adventure lured him more strongly than on this amazing
exploration of the realm of mind.  He bought the text-books on physics
and chemistry, and, along with his algebra, worked out problems and
demonstrations.  He took the laboratory proofs on faith, and his intense
power of vision enabled him to see the reactions of chemicals more
understandingly than the average student saw them in the laboratory.
Martin wandered on through the heavy pages, overwhelmed by the clews he
was getting to the nature of things.  He had accepted the world as the
world, but now he was comprehending the organization of it, the play and
interplay of force and matter.  Spontaneous explanations of old matters
were continually arising in his mind.  Levers and purchases fascinated
him, and his mind roved backward to hand-spikes and blocks and tackles at
sea.  The theory of navigation, which enabled the ships to travel
unerringly their courses over the pathless ocean, was made clear to him.
The mysteries of storm, and rain, and tide were revealed, and the reason
for the existence of trade-winds made him wonder whether he had written
his article on the northeast trade too soon.  At any rate he knew he
could write it better now.  One afternoon he went out with Arthur to the
University of California, and, with bated breath and a feeling of
religious awe, went through the laboratories, saw demonstrations, and
listened to a physics professor lecturing to his classes.

But he did not neglect his writing.  A stream of short stories flowed
from his pen, and he branched out into the easier forms of verse--the
kind he saw printed in the magazines--though he lost his head and wasted
two weeks on a tragedy in blank verse, the swift rejection of which, by
half a dozen magazines, dumfounded him.  Then he discovered Henley and
wrote a series of sea-poems on the model of "Hospital Sketches."  They
were simple poems, of light and color, and romance and adventure.  "Sea
Lyrics," he called them, and he judged them to be the best work he had
yet done.  There were thirty, and he completed them in a month, doing one
a day after having done his regular day's work on fiction, which day's
work was the equivalent to a week's work of the average successful
writer.  The toil meant nothing to him.  It was not toil.  He was finding
speech, and all the beauty and wonder that had been pent for years behind
his inarticulate lips was now pouring forth in a wild and virile flood.

He showed the "Sea Lyrics" to no one, not even to the editors.  He had
become distrustful of editors.  But it was not distrust that prevented
him from submitting the "Lyrics."  They were so beautiful to him that he
was impelled to save them to share with Ruth in some glorious, far-off
time when he would dare to read to her what he had written.  Against that
time he kept them with him, reading them aloud, going over them until he
knew them by heart.

He lived every moment of his waking hours, and he lived in his sleep, his
subjective mind rioting through his five hours of surcease and combining
the thoughts and events of the day into grotesque and impossible marvels.
In reality, he never rested, and a weaker body or a less firmly poised
brain would have been prostrated in a general break-down.  His late
afternoon calls on Ruth were rarer now, for June was approaching, when
she would take her degree and finish with the university.  Bachelor of
Arts!--when he thought of her degree, it seemed she fled beyond him
faster than he could pursue.

One afternoon a week she gave to him, and arriving late, he usually
stayed for dinner and for music afterward.  Those were his red-letter
days.  The atmosphere of the house, in such contrast with that in which
he lived, and the mere nearness to her, sent him forth each time with a
firmer grip on his resolve to climb the heights.  In spite of the beauty
in him, and the aching desire to create, it was for her that he
struggled.  He was a lover first and always.  All other things he
subordinated to love.

Greater than his adventure in the world of thought was his
love-adventure.  The world itself was not so amazing because of the atoms
and molecules that composed it according to the propulsions of
irresistible force; what made it amazing was the fact that Ruth lived in
it.  She was the most amazing thing he had ever known, or dreamed, or
guessed.

But he was oppressed always by her remoteness.  She was so far from him,
and he did not know how to approach her.  He had been a success with
girls and women in his own class; but he had never loved any of them,
while he did love her, and besides, she was not merely of another class.
His very love elevated her above all classes.  She was a being apart, so
far apart that he did not know how to draw near to her as a lover should
draw near.  It was true, as he acquired knowledge and language, that he
was drawing nearer, talking her speech, discovering ideas and delights in
common; but this did not satisfy his lover's yearning.  His lover's
imagination had made her holy, too holy, too spiritualized, to have any
kinship with him in the flesh.  It was his own love that thrust her from
him and made her seem impossible for him.  Love itself denied him the one
thing that it desired.

And then, one day, without warning, the gulf between them was bridged for
a moment, and thereafter, though the gulf remained, it was ever narrower.
They had been eating cherries--great, luscious, black cherries with a
juice of the color of dark wine.  And later, as she read aloud to him
from "The Princess," he chanced to notice the stain of the cherries on
her lips.  For the moment her divinity was shattered.  She was clay,
after all, mere clay, subject to the common law of clay as his clay was
subject, or anybody's clay.  Her lips were flesh like his, and cherries
dyed them as cherries dyed his.  And if so with her lips, then was it so
with all of her.  She was woman, all woman, just like any woman.  It came
upon him abruptly.  It was a revelation that stunned him.  It was as if
he had seen the sun fall out of the sky, or had seen worshipped purity
polluted.

Then he realized the significance of it, and his heart began pounding and
challenging him to play the lover with this woman who was not a spirit
from other worlds but a mere woman with lips a cherry could stain.  He
trembled at the audacity of his thought; but all his soul was singing,
and reason, in a triumphant paean, assured him he was right.  Something
of this change in him must have reached her, for she paused from her
reading, looked up at him, and smiled.  His eyes dropped from her blue
eyes to her lips, and the sight of the stain maddened him.  His arms all
but flashed out to her and around her, in the way of his old careless
life.  She seemed to lean toward him, to wait, and all his will fought to
hold him back.

"You were not following a word," she pouted.

Then she laughed at him, delighting in his confusion, and as he looked
into her frank eyes and knew that she had divined nothing of what he
felt, he became abashed.  He had indeed in thought dared too far.  Of all
the women he had known there was no woman who would not have guessed--save
her.  And she had not guessed.  There was the difference.  She was
different.  He was appalled by his own grossness, awed by her clear
innocence, and he gazed again at her across the gulf.  The bridge had
broken down.

But still the incident had brought him nearer.  The memory of it
persisted, and in the moments when he was most cast down, he dwelt upon
it eagerly.  The gulf was never again so wide.  He had accomplished a
distance vastly greater than a bachelorship of arts, or a dozen
bachelorships.  She was pure, it was true, as he had never dreamed of
purity; but cherries stained her lips.  She was subject to the laws of
the universe just as inexorably as he was.  She had to eat to live, and
when she got her feet wet, she caught cold.  But that was not the point.
If she could feel hunger and thirst, and heat and cold, then could she
feel love--and love for a man.  Well, he was a man.  And why could he not
be the man?  "It's up to me to make good," he would murmur fervently.  "I
will be _the_ man.  I will make myself _the_ man.  I will make good."




CHAPTER XII


Early one evening, struggling with a sonnet that twisted all awry the
beauty and thought that trailed in glow and vapor through his brain,
Martin was called to the telephone.

"It's a lady's voice, a fine lady's," Mr. Higginbotham, who had called
him, jeered.

Martin went to the telephone in the corner of the room, and felt a wave
of warmth rush through him as he heard Ruth's voice.  In his battle with
the sonnet he had forgotten her existence, and at the sound of her voice
his love for her smote him like a sudden blow.  And such a
voice!--delicate and sweet, like a strain of music heard far off and
faint, or, better, like a bell of silver, a perfect tone, crystal-pure.
No mere woman had a voice like that.  There was something celestial about
it, and it came from other worlds.  He could scarcely hear what it said,
so ravished was he, though he controlled his face, for he knew that Mr.
Higginbotham's ferret eyes were fixed upon him.

It was not much that Ruth wanted to say--merely that Norman had been
going to take her to a lecture that night, but that he had a headache,
and she was so disappointed, and she had the tickets, and that if he had
no other engagement, would he be good enough to take her?

Would he!  He fought to suppress the eagerness in his voice.  It was
amazing.  He had always seen her in her own house.  And he had never
dared to ask her to go anywhere with him.  Quite irrelevantly, still at
the telephone and talking with her, he felt an overpowering desire to die
for her, and visions of heroic sacrifice shaped and dissolved in his
whirling brain.  He loved her so much, so terribly, so hopelessly.  In
that moment of mad happiness that she should go out with him, go to a
lecture with him--with him, Martin Eden--she soared so far above him that
there seemed nothing else for him to do than die for her.  It was the
only fit way in which he could express the tremendous and lofty emotion
he felt for her.  It was the sublime abnegation of true love that comes
to all lovers, and it came to him there, at the telephone, in a whirlwind
of fire and glory; and to die for her, he felt, was to have lived and
loved well.  And he was only twenty-one, and he had never been in love
before.

His hand trembled as he hung up the receiver, and he was weak from the
organ which had stirred him.  His eyes were shining like an angel's, and
his face was transfigured, purged of all earthly dross, and pure and
holy.

"Makin' dates outside, eh?" his brother-in-law sneered.  "You know what
that means.  You'll be in the police court yet."

But Martin could not come down from the height.  Not even the bestiality
of the allusion could bring him back to earth.  Anger and hurt were
beneath him.  He had seen a great vision and was as a god, and he could
feel only profound and awful pity for this maggot of a man.  He did not
look at him, and though his eyes passed over him, he did not see him; and
as in a dream he passed out of the room to dress.  It was not until he
had reached his own room and was tying his necktie that he became aware
of a sound that lingered unpleasantly in his ears.  On investigating this
sound he identified it as the final snort of Bernard Higginbotham, which
somehow had not penetrated to his brain before.

As Ruth's front door closed behind them and he came down the steps with
her, he found himself greatly perturbed.  It was not unalloyed bliss,
taking her to the lecture.  He did not know what he ought to do.  He had
seen, on the streets, with persons of her class, that the women took the
men's arms.  But then, again, he had seen them when they didn't; and he
wondered if it was only in the evening that arms were taken, or only
between husbands and wives and relatives.

Just before he reached the sidewalk, he remembered Minnie.  Minnie had
always been a stickler.  She had called him down the second time she
walked out with him, because he had gone along on the inside, and she had
laid the law down to him that a gentleman always walked on the
outside--when he was with a lady.  And Minnie had made a practice of
kicking his heels, whenever they crossed from one side of the street to
the other, to remind him to get over on the outside.  He wondered where
she had got that item of etiquette, and whether it had filtered down from
above and was all right.

It wouldn't do any harm to try it, he decided, by the time they had
reached the sidewalk; and he swung behind Ruth and took up his station on
the outside.  Then the other problem presented itself.  Should he offer
her his arm?  He had never offered anybody his arm in his life.  The
girls he had known never took the fellows' arms.  For the first several
times they walked freely, side by side, and after that it was arms around
the waists, and heads against the fellows' shoulders where the streets
were unlighted.  But this was different.  She wasn't that kind of a girl.
He must do something.

He crooked the arm next to her--crooked it very slightly and with secret
tentativeness, not invitingly, but just casually, as though he was
accustomed to walk that way.  And then the wonderful thing happened.  He
felt her hand upon his arm.  Delicious thrills ran through him at the
contact, and for a few sweet moments it seemed that he had left the solid
earth and was flying with her through the air.  But he was soon back
again, perturbed by a new complication.  They were crossing the street.
This would put him on the inside.  He should be on the outside.  Should
he therefore drop her arm and change over?  And if he did so, would he
have to repeat the manoeuvre the next time?  And the next?  There was
something wrong about it, and he resolved not to caper about and play the
fool.  Yet he was not satisfied with his conclusion, and when he found
himself on the inside, he talked quickly and earnestly, making a show of
being carried away by what he was saying, so that, in case he was wrong
in not changing sides, his enthusiasm would seem the cause for his
carelessness.

As they crossed Broadway, he came face to face with a new problem.  In
the blaze of the electric lights, he saw Lizzie Connolly and her giggly
friend.  Only for an instant he hesitated, then his hand went up and his
hat came off.  He could not be disloyal to his kind, and it was to more
than Lizzie Connolly that his hat was lifted.  She nodded and looked at
him boldly, not with soft and gentle eyes like Ruth's, but with eyes that
were handsome and hard, and that swept on past him to Ruth and itemized
her face and dress and station.  And he was aware that Ruth looked, too,
with quick eyes that were timid and mild as a dove's, but which saw, in a
look that was a flutter on and past, the working-class girl in her cheap
finery and under the strange hat that all working-class girls were
wearing just then.

"What a pretty girl!" Ruth said a moment later.

Martin could have blessed her, though he said:-

"I don't know.  I guess it's all a matter of personal taste, but she
doesn't strike me as being particularly pretty."

"Why, there isn't one woman in ten thousand with features as regular as
hers.  They are splendid.  Her face is as clear-cut as a cameo.  And her
eyes are beautiful."

"Do you think so?" Martin queried absently, for to him there was only one
beautiful woman in the world, and she was beside him, her hand upon his
arm.

"Do I think so?  If that girl had proper opportunity to dress, Mr. Eden,
and if she were taught how to carry herself, you would be fairly dazzled
by her, and so would all men."

"She would have to be taught how to speak," he commented, "or else most
of the men wouldn't understand her.  I'm sure you couldn't understand a
quarter of what she said if she just spoke naturally."

"Nonsense!  You are as bad as Arthur when you try to make your point."

"You forget how I talked when you first met me.  I have learned a new
language since then.  Before that time I talked as that girl talks.  Now
I can manage to make myself understood sufficiently in your language to
explain that you do not know that other girl's language.  And do you know
why she carries herself the way she does?  I think about such things now,
though I never used to think about them, and I am beginning to
understand--much."

"But why does she?"

"She has worked long hours for years at machines.  When one's body is
young, it is very pliable, and hard work will mould it like putty
according to the nature of the work.  I can tell at a glance the trades
of many workingmen I meet on the street.  Look at me.  Why am I rolling
all about the shop?  Because of the years I put in on the sea.  If I'd
put in the same years cow-punching, with my body young and pliable, I
wouldn't be rolling now, but I'd be bow-legged.  And so with that girl.
You noticed that her eyes were what I might call hard.  She has never
been sheltered.  She has had to take care of herself, and a young girl
can't take care of herself and keep her eyes soft and gentle like--like
yours, for example."

"I think you are right," Ruth said in a low voice.  "And it is too bad.
She is such a pretty girl."

He looked at her and saw her eyes luminous with pity.  And then he
remembered that he loved her and was lost in amazement at his fortune
that permitted him to love her and to take her on his arm to a lecture.

Who are you, Martin Eden? he demanded of himself in the looking-glass,
that night when he got back to his room.  He gazed at himself long and
curiously.  Who are you?  What are you?  Where do you belong?  You belong
by rights to girls like Lizzie Connolly.  You belong with the legions of
toil, with all that is low, and vulgar, and unbeautiful.  You belong with
the oxen and the drudges, in dirty surroundings among smells and
stenches.  There are the stale vegetables now.  Those potatoes are
rotting.  Smell them, damn you, smell them.  And yet you dare to open the
books, to listen to beautiful music, to learn to love beautiful
paintings, to speak good English, to think thoughts that none of your own
kind thinks, to tear yourself away from the oxen and the Lizzie Connollys
and to love a pale spirit of a woman who is a million miles beyond you
and who lives in the stars!  Who are you? and what are you? damn you!  And
are you going to make good?

He shook his fist at himself in the glass, and sat down on the edge of
the bed to dream for a space with wide eyes.  Then he got out note-book
and algebra and lost himself in quadratic equations, while the hours
slipped by, and the stars dimmed, and the gray of dawn flooded against
his window.




CHAPTER XIII


It was the knot of wordy socialists and working-class philosophers that
held forth in the City Hall Park on warm afternoons that was responsible
for the great discovery.  Once or twice in the month, while riding
through the park on his way to the library, Martin dismounted from his
wheel and listened to the arguments, and each time he tore himself away
reluctantly.  The tone of discussion was much lower than at Mr. Morse's
table.  The men were not grave and dignified.  They lost their tempers
easily and called one another names, while oaths and obscene allusions
were frequent on their lips.  Once or twice he had seen them come to
blows.  And yet, he knew not why, there seemed something vital about the
stuff of these men's thoughts.  Their logomachy was far more stimulating
to his intellect than the reserved and quiet dogmatism of Mr. Morse.
These men, who slaughtered English, gesticulated like lunatics, and
fought one another's ideas with primitive anger, seemed somehow to be
more alive than Mr. Morse and his crony, Mr. Butler.

Martin had heard Herbert Spencer quoted several times in the park, but
one afternoon a disciple of Spencer's appeared, a seedy tramp with a
dirty coat buttoned tightly at the throat to conceal the absence of a
shirt.  Battle royal was waged, amid the smoking of many cigarettes and
the expectoration of much tobacco-juice, wherein the tramp successfully
held his own, even when a socialist workman sneered, "There is no god but
the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is his prophet."  Martin was puzzled
as to what the discussion was about, but when he rode on to the library
he carried with him a new-born interest in Herbert Spencer, and because
of the frequency with which the tramp had mentioned "First Principles,"
Martin drew out that volume.

So the great discovery began.  Once before he had tried Spencer, and
choosing the "Principles of Psychology" to begin with, he had failed as
abjectly as he had failed with Madam Blavatsky.  There had been no
understanding the book, and he had returned it unread.  But this night,
after algebra and physics, and an attempt at a sonnet, he got into bed
and opened "First Principles."  Morning found him still reading.  It was
impossible for him to sleep.  Nor did he write that day.  He lay on the
bed till his body grew tired, when he tried the hard floor, reading on
his back, the book held in the air above him, or changing from side to
side.  He slept that night, and did his writing next morning, and then
the book tempted him and he fell, reading all afternoon, oblivious to
everything and oblivious to the fact that that was the afternoon Ruth
gave to him.  His first consciousness of the immediate world about him
was when Bernard Higginbotham jerked open the door and demanded to know
if he thought they were running a restaurant.

Martin Eden had been mastered by curiosity all his days.  He wanted to
know, and it was this desire that had sent him adventuring over the
world.  But he was now learning from Spencer that he never had known, and
that he never could have known had he continued his sailing and wandering
forever.  He had merely skimmed over the surface of things, observing
detached phenomena, accumulating fragments of facts, making superficial
little generalizations--and all and everything quite unrelated in a
capricious and disorderly world of whim and chance.  The mechanism of the
flight of birds he had watched and reasoned about with understanding; but
it had never entered his head to try to explain the process whereby
birds, as organic flying mechanisms, had been developed.  He had never
dreamed there was such a process.  That birds should have come to be, was
unguessed.  They always had been.  They just happened.

And as it was with birds, so had it been with everything.  His ignorant
and unprepared attempts at philosophy had been fruitless.  The medieval
metaphysics of Kant had given him the key to nothing, and had served the
sole purpose of making him doubt his own intellectual powers.  In similar
manner his attempt to study evolution had been confined to a hopelessly
technical volume by Romanes.  He had understood nothing, and the only
idea he had gathered was that evolution was a dry-as-dust theory, of a
lot of little men possessed of huge and unintelligible vocabularies.  And
now he learned that evolution was no mere theory but an accepted process
of development; that scientists no longer disagreed about it, their only
differences being over the method of evolution.

And here was the man Spencer, organizing all knowledge for him, reducing
everything to unity, elaborating ultimate realities, and presenting to
his startled gaze a universe so concrete of realization that it was like
the model of a ship such as sailors make and put into glass bottles.
There was no caprice, no chance.  All was law.  It was in obedience to
law that the bird flew, and it was in obedience to the same law that
fermenting slime had writhed and squirmed and put out legs and wings and
become a bird.

Martin had ascended from pitch to pitch of intellectual living, and here
he was at a higher pitch than ever.  All the hidden things were laying
their secrets bare.  He was drunken with comprehension.  At night,
asleep, he lived with the gods in colossal nightmare; and awake, in the
day, he went around like a somnambulist, with absent stare, gazing upon
the world he had just discovered.  At table he failed to hear the
conversation about petty and ignoble things, his eager mind seeking out
and following cause and effect in everything before him.  In the meat on
the platter he saw the shining sun and traced its energy back through all
its transformations to its source a hundred million miles away, or traced
its energy ahead to the moving muscles in his arms that enabled him to
cut the meat, and to the brain wherewith he willed the muscles to move to
cut the meat, until, with inward gaze, he saw the same sun shining in his
brain.  He was entranced by illumination, and did not hear the
"Bughouse," whispered by Jim, nor see the anxiety on his sister's face,
nor notice the rotary motion of Bernard Higginbotham's finger, whereby he
imparted the suggestion of wheels revolving in his brother-in-law's head.

What, in a way, most profoundly impressed Martin, was the correlation of
knowledge--of all knowledge.  He had been curious to know things, and
whatever he acquired he had filed away in separate memory compartments in
his brain.  Thus, on the subject of sailing he had an immense store.  On
the subject of woman he had a fairly large store.  But these two subjects
had been unrelated.  Between the two memory compartments there had been
no connection.  That, in the fabric of knowledge, there should be any
connection whatever between a woman with hysterics and a schooner
carrying a weather-helm or heaving to in a gale, would have struck him as
ridiculous and impossible.  But Herbert Spencer had shown him not only
that it was not ridiculous, but that it was impossible for there to be no
connection.  All things were related to all other things from the
farthermost star in the wastes of space to the myriads of atoms in the
grain of sand under one's foot.  This new concept was a perpetual
amazement to Martin, and he found himself engaged continually in tracing
the relationship between all things under the sun and on the other side
of the sun.  He drew up lists of the most incongruous things and was
unhappy until he succeeded in establishing kinship between them
all--kinship between love, poetry, earthquake, fire, rattlesnakes,
rainbows, precious gems, monstrosities, sunsets, the roaring of lions,
illuminating gas, cannibalism, beauty, murder, lovers, fulcrums, and
tobacco.  Thus, he unified the universe and held it up and looked at it,
or wandered through its byways and alleys and jungles, not as a terrified
traveller in the thick of mysteries seeking an unknown goal, but
observing and charting and becoming familiar with all there was to know.
And the more he knew, the more passionately he admired the universe, and
life, and his own life in the midst of it all.

"You fool!" he cried at his image in the looking-glass.  "You wanted to
write, and you tried to write, and you had nothing in you to write about.
What did you have in you?--some childish notions, a few half-baked
sentiments, a lot of undigested beauty, a great black mass of ignorance,
a heart filled to bursting with love, and an ambition as big as your love
and as futile as your ignorance.  And you wanted to write!  Why, you're
just on the edge of beginning to get something in you to write about.  You
wanted to create beauty, but how could you when you knew nothing about
the nature of beauty?  You wanted to write about life when you knew
nothing of the essential characteristics of life.  You wanted to write
about the world and the scheme of existence when the world was a Chinese
puzzle to you and all that you could have written would have been about
what you did not know of the scheme of existence.  But cheer up, Martin,
my boy.  You'll write yet.  You know a little, a very little, and you're
on the right road now to know more.  Some day, if you're lucky, you may
come pretty close to knowing all that may be known.  Then you will
write."

He brought his great discovery to Ruth, sharing with her all his joy and
wonder in it.  But she did not seem to be so enthusiastic over it.  She
tacitly accepted it and, in a way, seemed aware of it from her own
studies.  It did not stir her deeply, as it did him, and he would have
been surprised had he not reasoned it out that it was not new and fresh
to her as it was to him.  Arthur and Norman, he found, believed in
evolution and had read Spencer, though it did not seem to have made any
vital impression upon them, while the young fellow with the glasses and
the mop of hair, Will Olney, sneered disagreeably at Spencer and repeated
the epigram, "There is no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is
his prophet."

But Martin forgave him the sneer, for he had begun to discover that Olney
was not in love with Ruth.  Later, he was dumfounded to learn from
various little happenings not only that Olney did not care for Ruth, but
that he had a positive dislike for her.  Martin could not understand
this.  It was a bit of phenomena that he could not correlate with all the
rest of the phenomena in the universe.  But nevertheless he felt sorry
for the young fellow because of the great lack in his nature that
prevented him from a proper appreciation of Ruth's fineness and beauty.
They rode out into the hills several Sundays on their wheels, and Martin
had ample opportunity to observe the armed truce that existed between
Ruth and Olney.  The latter chummed with Norman, throwing Arthur and
Martin into company with Ruth, for which Martin was duly grateful.

Those Sundays were great days for Martin, greatest because he was with
Ruth, and great, also, because they were putting him more on a par with
the young men of her class.  In spite of their long years of disciplined
education, he was finding himself their intellectual equal, and the hours
spent with them in conversation was so much practice for him in the use
of the grammar he had studied so hard.  He had abandoned the etiquette
books, falling back upon observation to show him the right things to do.
Except when carried away by his enthusiasm, he was always on guard,
keenly watchful of their actions and learning their little courtesies and
refinements of conduct.

The fact that Spencer was very little read was for some time a source of
surprise to Martin.  "Herbert Spencer," said the man at the desk in the
library, "oh, yes, a great mind."  But the man did not seem to know
anything of the content of that great mind.  One evening, at dinner, when
Mr. Butler was there, Martin turned the conversation upon Spencer.  Mr.
Morse bitterly arraigned the English philosopher's agnosticism, but
confessed that he had not read "First Principles"; while Mr. Butler
stated that he had no patience with Spencer, had never read a line of
him, and had managed to get along quite well without him.  Doubts arose
in Martin's mind, and had he been less strongly individual he would have
accepted the general opinion and given Herbert Spencer up.  As it was, he
found Spencer's explanation of things convincing; and, as he phrased it
to himself, to give up Spencer would be equivalent to a navigator
throwing the compass and chronometer overboard.  So Martin went on into a
thorough study of evolution, mastering more and more the subject himself,
and being convinced by the corroborative testimony of a thousand
independent writers.  The more he studied, the more vistas he caught of
fields of knowledge yet unexplored, and the regret that days were only
twenty-four hours long became a chronic complaint with him.

One day, because the days were so short, he decided to give up algebra
and geometry.  Trigonometry he had not even attempted.  Then he cut
chemistry from his study-list, retaining only physics.

"I am not a specialist," he said, in defence, to Ruth.  "Nor am I going
to try to be a specialist.  There are too many special fields for any one
man, in a whole lifetime, to master a tithe of them.  I must pursue
general knowledge.  When I need the work of specialists, I shall refer to
their books."

"But that is not like having the knowledge yourself," she protested.

"But it is unnecessary to have it.  We profit from the work of the
specialists.  That's what they are for.  When I came in, I noticed the
chimney-sweeps at work.  They're specialists, and when they get done, you
will enjoy clean chimneys without knowing anything about the construction
of chimneys."

"That's far-fetched, I am afraid."

She looked at him curiously, and he felt a reproach in her gaze and
manner.  But he was convinced of the rightness of his position.

"All thinkers on general subjects, the greatest minds in the world, in
fact, rely on the specialists.  Herbert Spencer did that.  He generalized
upon the findings of thousands of investigators.  He would have had to
live a thousand lives in order to do it all himself.  And so with Darwin.
He took advantage of all that had been learned by the florists and cattle-
breeders."

"You're right, Martin," Olney said.  "You know what you're after, and
Ruth doesn't.  She doesn't know what she is after for herself even."

"--Oh, yes," Olney rushed on, heading off her objection, "I know you call
it general culture.  But it doesn't matter what you study if you want
general culture.  You can study French, or you can study German, or cut
them both out and study Esperanto, you'll get the culture tone just the
same.  You can study Greek or Latin, too, for the same purpose, though it
will never be any use to you.  It will be culture, though.  Why, Ruth
studied Saxon, became clever in it,--that was two years ago,--and all
that she remembers of it now is 'Whan that sweet Aprile with his schowers
soote'--isn't that the way it goes?"

"But it's given you the culture tone just the same," he laughed, again
heading her off.  "I know.  We were in the same classes."

"But you speak of culture as if it should be a means to something," Ruth
cried out.  Her eyes were flashing, and in her cheeks were two spots of
color.  "Culture is the end in itself."

"But that is not what Martin wants."

"How do you know?"

"What do you want, Martin?" Olney demanded, turning squarely upon him.

Martin felt very uncomfortable, and looked entreaty at Ruth.

"Yes, what do you want?" Ruth asked.  "That will settle it."

"Yes, of course, I want culture," Martin faltered.  "I love beauty, and
culture will give me a finer and keener appreciation of beauty."

She nodded her head and looked triumph.

"Rot, and you know it," was Olney's comment.  "Martin's after career, not
culture.  It just happens that culture, in his case, is incidental to
career.  If he wanted to be a chemist, culture would be unnecessary.
Martin wants to write, but he's afraid to say so because it will put you
in the wrong."

"And why does Martin want to write?" he went on.  "Because he isn't
rolling in wealth.  Why do you fill your head with Saxon and general
culture?  Because you don't have to make your way in the world.  Your
father sees to that.  He buys your clothes for you, and all the rest.
What rotten good is our education, yours and mine and Arthur's and
Norman's?  We're soaked in general culture, and if our daddies went broke
to-day, we'd be falling down to-morrow on teachers' examinations.  The
best job you could get, Ruth, would be a country school or music teacher
in a girls' boarding-school."

"And pray what would you do?" she asked.

"Not a blessed thing.  I could earn a dollar and a half a day, common
labor, and I might get in as instructor in Hanley's cramming joint--I say
might, mind you, and I might be chucked out at the end of the week for
sheer inability."

Martin followed the discussion closely, and while he was convinced that
Olney was right, he resented the rather cavalier treatment he accorded
Ruth.  A new conception of love formed in his mind as he listened.  Reason
had nothing to do with love.  It mattered not whether the woman he loved
reasoned correctly or incorrectly.  Love was above reason.  If it just
happened that she did not fully appreciate his necessity for a career,
that did not make her a bit less lovable.  She was all lovable, and what
she thought had nothing to do with her lovableness.

"What's that?" he replied to a question from Olney that broke in upon his
train of thought.

"I was saying that I hoped you wouldn't be fool enough to tackle Latin."

"But Latin is more than culture," Ruth broke in.  "It is equipment."

"Well, are you going to tackle it?" Olney persisted.

Martin was sore beset.  He could see that Ruth was hanging eagerly upon
his answer.

"I am afraid I won't have time," he said finally.  "I'd like to, but I
won't have time."

"You see, Martin's not seeking culture," Olney exulted.  "He's trying to
get somewhere, to do something."

"Oh, but it's mental training.  It's mind discipline.  It's what makes
disciplined minds."  Ruth looked expectantly at Martin, as if waiting for
him to change his judgment.  "You know, the foot-ball players have to
train before the big game.  And that is what Latin does for the thinker.
It trains."

"Rot and bosh!  That's what they told us when we were kids.  But there is
one thing they didn't tell us then.  They let us find it out for
ourselves afterwards."  Olney paused for effect, then added, "And what
they didn't tell us was that every gentleman should have studied Latin,
but that no gentleman should know Latin."

"Now that's unfair," Ruth cried.  "I knew you were turning the
conversation just in order to get off something."

"It's clever all right," was the retort, "but it's fair, too.  The only
men who know their Latin are the apothecaries, the lawyers, and the Latin
professors.  And if Martin wants to be one of them, I miss my guess.  But
what's all that got to do with Herbert Spencer anyway?  Martin's just
discovered Spencer, and he's wild over him.  Why?  Because Spencer is
taking him somewhere.  Spencer couldn't take me anywhere, nor you.  We
haven't got anywhere to go.  You'll get married some day, and I'll have
nothing to do but keep track of the lawyers and business agents who will
take care of the money my father's going to leave me."

Onley got up to go, but turned at the door and delivered a parting shot.

"You leave Martin alone, Ruth.  He knows what's best for himself.  Look
at what he's done already.  He makes me sick sometimes, sick and ashamed
of myself.  He knows more now about the world, and life, and man's place,
and all the rest, than Arthur, or Norman, or I, or you, too, for that
matter, and in spite of all our Latin, and French, and Saxon, and
culture."

"But Ruth is my teacher," Martin answered chivalrously.  "She is
responsible for what little I have learned."

"Rats!"  Olney looked at Ruth, and his expression was malicious.  "I
suppose you'll be telling me next that you read Spencer on her
recommendation--only you didn't.  And she doesn't know anything more
about Darwin and evolution than I do about King Solomon's mines.  What's
that jawbreaker definition about something or other, of Spencer's, that
you sprang on us the other day--that indefinite, incoherent homogeneity
thing?  Spring it on her, and see if she understands a word of it.  That
isn't culture, you see.  Well, tra la, and if you tackle Latin, Martin, I
won't have any respect for you."

And all the while, interested in the discussion, Martin had been aware of
an irk in it as well.  It was about studies and lessons, dealing with the
rudiments of knowledge, and the schoolboyish tone of it conflicted with
the big things that were stirring in him--with the grip upon life that
was even then crooking his fingers like eagle's talons, with the cosmic
thrills that made him ache, and with the inchoate consciousness of
mastery of it all.  He likened himself to a poet, wrecked on the shores
of a strange land, filled with power of beauty, stumbling and stammering
and vainly trying to sing in the rough, barbaric tongue of his brethren
in the new land.  And so with him.  He was alive, painfully alive, to the
great universal things, and yet he was compelled to potter and grope
among schoolboy topics and debate whether or not he should study Latin.

"What in hell has Latin to do with it?" he demanded before his mirror
that night.  "I wish dead people would stay dead.  Why should I and the
beauty in me be ruled by the dead?  Beauty is alive and everlasting.
Languages come and go.  They are the dust of the dead."

And his next thought was that he had been phrasing his ideas very well,
and he went to bed wondering why he could not talk in similar fashion
when he was with Ruth.  He was only a schoolboy, with a schoolboy's
tongue, when he was in her presence.

"Give me time," he said aloud.  "Only give me time."

Time!  Time!  Time! was his unending plaint.




CHAPTER XIV


It was not because of Olney, but in spite of Ruth, and his love for Ruth,
that he finally decided not to take up Latin.  His money meant time.
There was so much that was more important than Latin, so many studies
that clamored with imperious voices.  And he must write.  He must earn
money.  He had had no acceptances.  Twoscore of manuscripts were
travelling the endless round of the magazines.  How did the others do it?
He spent long hours in the free reading-room, going over what others had
written, studying their work eagerly and critically, comparing it with
his own, and wondering, wondering, about the secret trick they had
discovered which enabled them to sell their work.

He was amazed at the immense amount of printed stuff that was dead.  No
light, no life, no color, was shot through it.  There was no breath of
life in it, and yet it sold, at two cents a word, twenty dollars a
thousand--the newspaper clipping had said so.  He was puzzled by
countless short stories, written lightly and cleverly he confessed, but
without vitality or reality.  Life was so strange and wonderful, filled
with an immensity of problems, of dreams, and of heroic toils, and yet
these stories dealt only with the commonplaces of life.  He felt the
stress and strain of life, its fevers and sweats and wild
insurgences--surely this was the stuff to write about!  He wanted to
glorify the leaders of forlorn hopes, the mad lovers, the giants that
fought under stress and strain, amid terror and tragedy, making life
crackle with the strength of their endeavor.  And yet the magazine short
stories seemed intent on glorifying the Mr. Butlers, the sordid dollar-
chasers, and the commonplace little love affairs of commonplace little
men and women.  Was it because the editors of the magazines were
commonplace? he demanded.  Or were they afraid of life, these writers and
editors and readers?

But his chief trouble was that he did not know any editors or writers.
And not merely did he not know any writers, but he did not know anybody
who had ever attempted to write.  There was nobody to tell him, to hint
to him, to give him the least word of advice.  He began to doubt that
editors were real men.  They seemed cogs in a machine.  That was what it
was, a machine.  He poured his soul into stories, articles, and poems,
and intrusted them to the machine.  He folded them just so, put the
proper stamps inside the long envelope along with the manuscript, sealed
the envelope, put more stamps outside, and dropped it into the mail-box.
It travelled across the continent, and after a certain lapse of time the
postman returned him the manuscript in another long envelope, on the
outside of which were the stamps he had enclosed.  There was no human
editor at the other end, but a mere cunning arrangement of cogs that
changed the manuscript from one envelope to another and stuck on the
stamps.  It was like the slot machines wherein one dropped pennies, and,
with a metallic whirl of machinery had delivered to him a stick of
chewing-gum or a tablet of chocolate.  It depended upon which slot one
dropped the penny in, whether he got chocolate or gum.  And so with the
editorial machine.  One slot brought checks and the other brought
rejection slips.  So far he had found only the latter slot.

It was the rejection slips that completed the horrible machinelikeness of
the process.  These slips were printed in stereotyped forms and he had
received hundreds of them--as many as a dozen or more on each of his
earlier manuscripts.  If he had received one line, one personal line,
along with one rejection of all his rejections, he would have been
cheered.  But not one editor had given that proof of existence.  And he
could conclude only that there were no warm human men at the other end,
only mere cogs, well oiled and running beautifully in the machine.

He was a good fighter, whole-souled and stubborn, and he would have been
content to continue feeding the machine for years; but he was bleeding to
death, and not years but weeks would determine the fight.  Each week his
board bill brought him nearer destruction, while the postage on forty
manuscripts bled him almost as severely.  He no longer bought books, and
he economized in petty ways and sought to delay the inevitable end;
though he did not know how to economize, and brought the end nearer by a
week when he gave his sister Marian five dollars for a dress.

He struggled in the dark, without advice, without encouragement, and in
the teeth of discouragement.  Even Gertrude was beginning to look
askance.  At first she had tolerated with sisterly fondness what she
conceived to be his foolishness; but now, out of sisterly solicitude, she
grew anxious.  To her it seemed that his foolishness was becoming a
madness.  Martin knew this and suffered more keenly from it than from the
open and nagging contempt of Bernard Higginbotham.  Martin had faith in
himself, but he was alone in this faith.  Not even Ruth had faith.  She
had wanted him to devote himself to study, and, though she had not openly
disapproved of his writing, she had never approved.

He had never offered to show her his work.  A fastidious delicacy had
prevented him.  Besides, she had been studying heavily at the university,
and he felt averse to robbing her of her time.  But when she had taken
her degree, she asked him herself to let her see something of what he had
been doing.  Martin was elated and diffident.  Here was a judge.  She was
a bachelor of arts.  She had studied literature under skilled
instructors.  Perhaps the editors were capable judges, too.  But she
would be different from them.  She would not hand him a stereotyped
rejection slip, nor would she inform him that lack of preference for his
work did not necessarily imply lack of merit in his work.  She would
talk, a warm human being, in her quick, bright way, and, most important
of all, she would catch glimpses of the real Martin Eden.  In his work
she would discern what his heart and soul were like, and she would come
to understand something, a little something, of the stuff of his dreams
and the strength of his power.

Martin gathered together a number of carbon copies of his short stories,
hesitated a moment, then added his "Sea Lyrics."  They mounted their
wheels on a late June afternoon and rode for the hills.  It was the
second time he had been out with her alone, and as they rode along
through the balmy warmth, just chilled by she sea-breeze to refreshing
coolness, he was profoundly impressed by the fact that it was a very
beautiful and well-ordered world and that it was good to be alive and to
love.  They left their wheels by the roadside and climbed to the brown
top of an open knoll where the sunburnt grass breathed a harvest breath
of dry sweetness and content.

"Its work is done," Martin said, as they seated themselves, she upon his
coat, and he sprawling close to the warm earth.  He sniffed the sweetness
of the tawny grass, which entered his brain and set his thoughts whirling
on from the particular to the universal.  "It has achieved its reason for
existence," he went on, patting the dry grass affectionately.  "It
quickened with ambition under the dreary downpour of last winter, fought
the violent early spring, flowered, and lured the insects and the bees,
scattered its seeds, squared itself with its duty and the world, and--"

"Why do you always look at things with such dreadfully practical eyes?"
she interrupted.

"Because I've been studying evolution, I guess.  It's only recently that
I got my eyesight, if the truth were told."

"But it seems to me you lose sight of beauty by being so practical, that
you destroy beauty like the boys who catch butterflies and rub the down
off their beautiful wings."

He shook his head.

"Beauty has significance, but I never knew its significance before.  I
just accepted beauty as something meaningless, as something that was just
beautiful without rhyme or reason.  I did not know anything about beauty.
But now I know, or, rather, am just beginning to know.  This grass is
more beautiful to me now that I know why it is grass, and all the hidden
chemistry of sun and rain and earth that makes it become grass.  Why,
there is romance in the life-history of any grass, yes, and adventure,
too.  The very thought of it stirs me.  When I think of the play of force
and matter, and all the tremendous struggle of it, I feel as if I could
write an epic on the grass.

"How well you talk," she said absently, and he noted that she was looking
at him in a searching way.

He was all confusion and embarrassment on the instant, the blood flushing
red on his neck and brow.

"I hope I am learning to talk," he stammered.  "There seems to be so much
in me I want to say.  But it is all so big.  I can't find ways to say
what is really in me.  Sometimes it seems to me that all the world, all
life, everything, had taken up residence inside of me and was clamoring
for me to be the spokesman.  I feel--oh, I can't describe it--I feel the
bigness of it, but when I speak, I babble like a little child.  It is a
great task to transmute feeling and sensation into speech, written or
spoken, that will, in turn, in him who reads or listens, transmute itself
back into the selfsame feeling and sensation.  It is a lordly task.  See,
I bury my face in the grass, and the breath I draw in through my nostrils
sets me quivering with a thousand thoughts and fancies.  It is a breath
of the universe I have breathed.  I know song and laughter, and success
and pain, and struggle and death; and I see visions that arise in my
brain somehow out of the scent of the grass, and I would like to tell
them to you, to the world.  But how can I?  My tongue is tied.  I have
tried, by the spoken word, just now, to describe to you the effect on me
of the scent of the grass.  But I have not succeeded.  I have no more
than hinted in awkward speech.  My words seem gibberish to me.  And yet I
am stifled with desire to tell.  Oh!--" he threw up his hands with a
despairing gesture--"it is impossible!  It is not understandable!  It is
incommunicable!"

"But you do talk well," she insisted.  "Just think how you have improved
in the short time I have known you.  Mr. Butler is a noted public
speaker.  He is always asked by the State Committee to go out on stump
during campaign.  Yet you talked just as well as he the other night at
dinner.  Only he was more controlled.  You get too excited; but you will
get over that with practice.  Why, you would make a good public speaker.
You can go far--if you want to.  You are masterly.  You can lead men, I
am sure, and there is no reason why you should not succeed at anything
you set your hand to, just as you have succeeded with grammar.  You would
make a good lawyer.  You should shine in politics.  There is nothing to
prevent you from making as great a success as Mr. Butler has made.  And
minus the dyspepsia," she added with a smile.

They talked on; she, in her gently persistent way, returning always to
the need of thorough grounding in education and to the advantages of
Latin as part of the foundation for any career.  She drew her ideal of
the successful man, and it was largely in her father's image, with a few
unmistakable lines and touches of color from the image of Mr. Butler.  He
listened eagerly, with receptive ears, lying on his back and looking up
and joying in each movement of her lips as she talked.  But his brain was
not receptive.  There was nothing alluring in the pictures she drew, and
he was aware of a dull pain of disappointment and of a sharper ache of
love for her.  In all she said there was no mention of his writing, and
the manuscripts he had brought to read lay neglected on the ground.

At last, in a pause, he glanced at the sun, measured its height above the
horizon, and suggested his manuscripts by picking them up.

"I had forgotten," she said quickly.  "And I am so anxious to hear."

He read to her a story, one that he flattered himself was among his very
best.  He called it "The Wine of Life," and the wine of it, that had
stolen into his brain when he wrote it, stole into his brain now as he
read it.  There was a certain magic in the original conception, and he
had adorned it with more magic of phrase and touch.  All the old fire and
passion with which he had written it were reborn in him, and he was
swayed and swept away so that he was blind and deaf to the faults of it.
But it was not so with Ruth.  Her trained ear detected the weaknesses and
exaggerations, the overemphasis of the tyro, and she was instantly aware
each time the sentence-rhythm tripped and faltered.  She scarcely noted
the rhythm otherwise, except when it became too pompous, at which moments
she was disagreeably impressed with its amateurishness.  That was her
final judgment on the story as a whole--amateurish, though she did not
tell him so.  Instead, when he had done, she pointed out the minor flaws
and said that she liked the story.

But he was disappointed.  Her criticism was just.  He acknowledged that,
but he had a feeling that he was not sharing his work with her for the
purpose of schoolroom correction.  The details did not matter.  They
could take care of themselves.  He could mend them, he could learn to
mend them.  Out of life he had captured something big and attempted to
imprison it in the story.  It was the big thing out of life he had read
to her, not sentence-structure and semicolons.  He wanted her to feel
with him this big thing that was his, that he had seen with his own eyes,
grappled with his own brain, and placed there on the page with his own
hands in printed words.  Well, he had failed, was his secret decision.
Perhaps the editors were right.  He had felt the big thing, but he had
failed to transmute it.  He concealed his disappointment, and joined so
easily with her in her criticism that she did not realize that deep down
in him was running a strong undercurrent of disagreement.

"This next thing I've called 'The Pot'," he said, unfolding the
manuscript.  "It has been refused by four or five magazines now, but
still I think it is good.  In fact, I don't know what to think of it,
except that I've caught something there.  Maybe it won't affect you as it
does me.  It's a short thing--only two thousand words."

"How dreadful!" she cried, when he had finished.  "It is horrible,
unutterably horrible!"

He noted her pale face, her eyes wide and tense, and her clenched hands,
with secret satisfaction.  He had succeeded.  He had communicated the
stuff of fancy and feeling from out of his brain.  It had struck home.  No
matter whether she liked it or not, it had gripped her and mastered her,
made her sit there and listen and forget details.

"It is life," he said, "and life is not always beautiful.  And yet,
perhaps because I am strangely made, I find something beautiful there.  It
seems to me that the beauty is tenfold enhanced because it is there--"

"But why couldn't the poor woman--" she broke in disconnectedly.  Then
she left the revolt of her thought unexpressed to cry out: "Oh!  It is
degrading!  It is not nice!  It is nasty!"

For the moment it seemed to him that his heart stood still.  _Nasty_!  He
had never dreamed it.  He had not meant it.  The whole sketch stood
before him in letters of fire, and in such blaze of illumination he
sought vainly for nastiness.  Then his heart began to beat again.  He was
not guilty.

"Why didn't you select a nice subject?" she was saying.  "We know there
are nasty things in the world, but that is no reason--"

She talked on in her indignant strain, but he was not following her.  He
was smiling to himself as he looked up into her virginal face, so
innocent, so penetratingly innocent, that its purity seemed always to
enter into him, driving out of him all dross and bathing him in some
ethereal effulgence that was as cool and soft and velvety as starshine.
_We know there are nasty things in the world_!  He cuddled to him the
notion of her knowing, and chuckled over it as a love joke.  The next
moment, in a flashing vision of multitudinous detail, he sighted the
whole sea of life's nastiness that he had known and voyaged over and
through, and he forgave her for not understanding the story.  It was
through no fault of hers that she could not understand.  He thanked God
that she had been born and sheltered to such innocence.  But he knew
life, its foulness as well as its fairness, its greatness in spite of the
slime that infested it, and by God he was going to have his say on it to
the world.  Saints in heaven--how could they be anything but fair and
pure?  No praise to them.  But saints in slime--ah, that was the
everlasting wonder!  That was what made life worth while.  To see moral
grandeur rising out of cesspools of iniquity; to rise himself and first
glimpse beauty, faint and far, through mud-dripping eyes; to see out of
weakness, and frailty, and viciousness, and all abysmal brutishness,
arising strength, and truth, and high spiritual endowment--

He caught a stray sequence of sentences she was uttering.

"The tone of it all is low.  And there is so much that is high.  Take 'In
Memoriam.'"

He was impelled to suggest "Locksley Hall," and would have done so, had
not his vision gripped him again and left him staring at her, the female
of his kind, who, out of the primordial ferment, creeping and crawling up
the vast ladder of life for a thousand thousand centuries, had emerged on
the topmost rung, having become one Ruth, pure, and fair, and divine, and
with power to make him know love, and to aspire toward purity, and to
desire to taste divinity--him, Martin Eden, who, too, had come up in some
amazing fashion from out of the ruck and the mire and the countless
mistakes and abortions of unending creation.  There was the romance, and
the wonder, and the glory.  There was the stuff to write, if he could
only find speech.  Saints in heaven!--They were only saints and could not
help themselves.  But he was a man.

"You have strength," he could hear her saying, "but it is untutored
strength."

"Like a bull in a china shop," he suggested, and won a smile.

"And you must develop discrimination.  You must consult taste, and
fineness, and tone."

"I dare too much," he muttered.

She smiled approbation, and settled herself to listen to another story.

"I don't know what you'll make of this," he said apologetically.  "It's a
funny thing.  I'm afraid I got beyond my depth in it, but my intentions
were good.  Don't bother about the little features of it.  Just see if
you catch the feel of the big thing in it.  It is big, and it is true,
though the chance is large that I have failed to make it intelligible."

He read, and as he read he watched her.  At last he had reached her, he
thought.  She sat without movement, her eyes steadfast upon him, scarcely
breathing, caught up and out of herself, he thought, by the witchery of
the thing he had created.  He had entitled the story "Adventure," and it
was the apotheosis of adventure--not of the adventure of the storybooks,
but of real adventure, the savage taskmaster, awful of punishment and
awful of reward, faithless and whimsical, demanding terrible patience and
heartbreaking days and nights of toil, offering the blazing sunlight
glory or dark death at the end of thirst and famine or of the long drag
and monstrous delirium of rotting fever, through blood and sweat and
stinging insects leading up by long chains of petty and ignoble contacts
to royal culminations and lordly achievements.

It was this, all of it, and more, that he had put into his story, and it
was this, he believed, that warmed her as she sat and listened.  Her eyes
were wide, color was in her pale cheeks, and before he finished it seemed
to him that she was almost panting.  Truly, she was warmed; but she was
warmed, not by the story, but by him.  She did not think much of the
story; it was Martin's intensity of power, the old excess of strength
that seemed to pour from his body and on and over her.  The paradox of it
was that it was the story itself that was freighted with his power, that
was the channel, for the time being, through which his strength poured
out to her.  She was aware only of the strength, and not of the medium,
and when she seemed most carried away by what he had written, in reality
she had been carried away by something quite foreign to it--by a thought,
terrible and perilous, that had formed itself unsummoned in her brain.
She had caught herself wondering what marriage was like, and the becoming
conscious of the waywardness and ardor of the thought had terrified her.
It was unmaidenly.  It was not like her.  She had never been tormented by
womanhood, and she had lived in a dreamland of Tennysonian poesy, dense
even to the full significance of that delicate master's delicate
allusions to the grossnesses that intrude upon the relations of queens
and knights.  She had been asleep, always, and now life was thundering
imperatively at all her doors.  Mentally she was in a panic to shoot the
bolts and drop the bars into place, while wanton instincts urged her to
throw wide her portals and bid the deliciously strange visitor to enter
in.

Martin waited with satisfaction for her verdict.  He had no doubt of what
it would be, and he was astounded when he heard her say:

"It is beautiful."

"It is beautiful," she repeated, with emphasis, after a pause.

Of course it was beautiful; but there was something more than mere beauty
in it, something more stingingly splendid which had made beauty its
handmaiden.  He sprawled silently on the ground, watching the grisly form
of a great doubt rising before him.  He had failed.  He was inarticulate.
He had seen one of the greatest things in the world, and he had not
expressed it.

"What did you think of the--"  He hesitated, abashed at his first attempt
to use a strange word.  "Of the _motif_?" he asked.

"It was confused," she answered.  "That is my only criticism in the large
way.  I followed the story, but there seemed so much else.  It is too
wordy.  You clog the action by introducing so much extraneous material."

"That was the major _motif_," he hurriedly explained, "the big
underrunning _motif_, the cosmic and universal thing.  I tried to make it
keep time with the story itself, which was only superficial after all.  I
was on the right scent, but I guess I did it badly.  I did not succeed in
suggesting what I was driving at.  But I'll learn in time."

She did not follow him.  She was a bachelor of arts, but he had gone
beyond her limitations.  This she did not comprehend, attributing her
incomprehension to his incoherence.

"You were too voluble," she said.  "But it was beautiful, in places."

He heard her voice as from far off, for he was debating whether he would
read her the "Sea Lyrics."  He lay in dull despair, while she watched him
searchingly, pondering again upon unsummoned and wayward thoughts of
marriage.

"You want to be famous?" she asked abruptly.

"Yes, a little bit," he confessed.  "That is part of the adventure.  It
is not the being famous, but the process of becoming so, that counts.  And
after all, to be famous would be, for me, only a means to something else.
I want to be famous very much, for that matter, and for that reason."

"For your sake," he wanted to add, and might have added had she proved
enthusiastic over what he had read to her.

But she was too busy in her mind, carving out a career for him that would
at least be possible, to ask what the ultimate something was which he had
hinted at.  There was no career for him in literature.  Of that she was
convinced.  He had proved it to-day, with his amateurish and sophomoric
productions.  He could talk well, but he was incapable of expressing
himself in a literary way.  She compared Tennyson, and Browning, and her
favorite prose masters with him, and to his hopeless discredit.  Yet she
did not tell him her whole mind.  Her strange interest in him led her to
temporize.  His desire to write was, after all, a little weakness which
he would grow out of in time.  Then he would devote himself to the more
serious affairs of life.  And he would succeed, too.  She knew that.  He
was so strong that he could not fail--if only he would drop writing.

"I wish you would show me all you write, Mr. Eden," she said.

He flushed with pleasure.  She was interested, that much was sure.  And
at least she had not given him a rejection slip.  She had called certain
portions of his work beautiful, and that was the first encouragement he
had ever received from any one.

"I will," he said passionately.  "And I promise you, Miss Morse, that I
will make good.  I have come far, I know that; and I have far to go, and
I will cover it if I have to do it on my hands and knees."  He held up a
bunch of manuscript.  "Here are the 'Sea Lyrics.'  When you get home,
I'll turn them over to you to read at your leisure.  And you must be sure
to tell me just what you think of them.  What I need, you know, above all
things, is criticism.  And do, please, be frank with me."

"I will be perfectly frank," she promised, with an uneasy conviction that
she had not been frank with him and with a doubt if she could be quite
frank with him the next time.




CHAPTER XV


"The first battle, fought and finished," Martin said to the looking-glass
ten days later.  "But there will be a second battle, and a third battle,
and battles to the end of time, unless--"

He had not finished the sentence, but looked about the mean little room
and let his eyes dwell sadly upon a heap of returned manuscripts, still
in their long envelopes, which lay in a corner on the floor.  He had no
stamps with which to continue them on their travels, and for a week they
had been piling up.  More of them would come in on the morrow, and on the
next day, and the next, till they were all in.  And he would be unable to
start them out again.  He was a month's rent behind on the typewriter,
which he could not pay, having barely enough for the week's board which
was due and for the employment office fees.

He sat down and regarded the table thoughtfully.  There were ink stains
upon it, and he suddenly discovered that he was fond of it.

"Dear old table," he said, "I've spent some happy hours with you, and
you've been a pretty good friend when all is said and done.  You never
turned me down, never passed me out a reward-of-unmerit rejection slip,
never complained about working overtime."

He dropped his arms upon the table and buried his face in them.  His
throat was aching, and he wanted to cry.  It reminded him of his first
fight, when he was six years old, when he punched away with the tears
running down his cheeks while the other boy, two years his elder, had
beaten and pounded him into exhaustion.  He saw the ring of boys, howling
like barbarians as he went down at last, writhing in the throes of
nausea, the blood streaming from his nose and the tears from his bruised
eyes.

"Poor little shaver," he murmured.  "And you're just as badly licked now.
You're beaten to a pulp.  You're down and out."

But the vision of that first fight still lingered under his eyelids, and
as he watched he saw it dissolve and reshape into the series of fights
which had followed.  Six months later Cheese-Face (that was the boy) had
whipped him again.  But he had blacked Cheese-Face's eye that time.  That
was going some.  He saw them all, fight after fight, himself always
whipped and Cheese-Face exulting over him.  But he had never run away.  He
felt strengthened by the memory of that.  He had always stayed and taken
his medicine.  Cheese-Face had been a little fiend at fighting, and had
never once shown mercy to him.  But he had stayed!  He had stayed with
it!

Next, he saw a narrow alley, between ramshackle frame buildings.  The end
of the alley was blocked by a one-story brick building, out of which
issued the rhythmic thunder of the presses, running off the first edition
of the Enquirer.  He was eleven, and Cheese-Face was thirteen, and they
both carried the Enquirer.  That was why they were there, waiting for
their papers.  And, of course, Cheese-Face had picked on him again, and
there was another fight that was indeterminate, because at quarter to
four the door of the press-room was thrown open and the gang of boys
crowded in to fold their papers.

"I'll lick you to-morrow," he heard Cheese-Face promise; and he heard his
own voice, piping and trembling with unshed tears, agreeing to be there
on the morrow.

And he had come there the next day, hurrying from school to be there
first, and beating Cheese-Face by two minutes.  The other boys said he
was all right, and gave him advice, pointing out his faults as a scrapper
and promising him victory if he carried out their instructions.  The same
boys gave Cheese-Face advice, too.  How they had enjoyed the fight!  He
paused in his recollections long enough to envy them the spectacle he and
Cheese-Face had put up.  Then the fight was on, and it went on, without
rounds, for thirty minutes, until the press-room door was opened.

He watched the youthful apparition of himself, day after day, hurrying
from school to the Enquirer alley.  He could not walk very fast.  He was
stiff and lame from the incessant fighting.  His forearms were black and
blue from wrist to elbow, what of the countless blows he had warded off,
and here and there the tortured flesh was beginning to fester.  His head
and arms and shoulders ached, the small of his back ached,--he ached all
over, and his brain was heavy and dazed.  He did not play at school.  Nor
did he study.  Even to sit still all day at his desk, as he did, was a
torment.  It seemed centuries since he had begun the round of daily
fights, and time stretched away into a nightmare and infinite future of
daily fights.  Why couldn't Cheese-Face be licked? he often thought; that
would put him, Martin, out of his misery.  It never entered his head to
cease fighting, to allow Cheese-Face to whip him.

And so he dragged himself to the Enquirer alley, sick in body and soul,
but learning the long patience, to confront his eternal enemy, Cheese-
Face, who was just as sick as he, and just a bit willing to quit if it
were not for the gang of newsboys that looked on and made pride painful
and necessary.  One afternoon, after twenty minutes of desperate efforts
to annihilate each other according to set rules that did not permit
kicking, striking below the belt, nor hitting when one was down, Cheese-
Face, panting for breath and reeling, offered to call it quits.  And
Martin, head on arms, thrilled at the picture he caught of himself, at
that moment in the afternoon of long ago, when he reeled and panted and
choked with the blood that ran into his mouth and down his throat from
his cut lips; when he tottered toward Cheese-Face, spitting out a
mouthful of blood so that he could speak, crying out that he would never
quit, though Cheese-Face could give in if he wanted to.  And Cheese-Face
did not give in, and the fight went on.

The next day and the next, days without end, witnessed the afternoon
fight.  When he put up his arms, each day, to begin, they pained
exquisitely, and the first few blows, struck and received, racked his
soul; after that things grew numb, and he fought on blindly, seeing as in
a dream, dancing and wavering, the large features and burning, animal-
like eyes of Cheese-Face.  He concentrated upon that face; all else about
him was a whirling void.  There was nothing else in the world but that
face, and he would never know rest, blessed rest, until he had beaten
that face into a pulp with his bleeding knuckles, or until the bleeding
knuckles that somehow belonged to that face had beaten him into a pulp.
And then, one way or the other, he would have rest.  But to quit,--for
him, Martin, to quit,--that was impossible!

Came the day when he dragged himself into the Enquirer alley, and there
was no Cheese-Face.  Nor did Cheese-Face come.  The boys congratulated
him, and told him that he had licked Cheese-Face.  But Martin was not
satisfied.  He had not licked Cheese-Face, nor had Cheese-Face licked
him.  The problem had not been solved.  It was not until afterward that
they learned that Cheese-Face's father had died suddenly that very day.

Martin skipped on through the years to the night in the nigger heaven at
the Auditorium.  He was seventeen and just back from sea.  A row started.
Somebody was bullying somebody, and Martin interfered, to be confronted
by Cheese-Face's blazing eyes.

"I'll fix you after de show," his ancient enemy hissed.

Martin nodded.  The nigger-heaven bouncer was making his way toward the
disturbance.

"I'll meet you outside, after the last act," Martin whispered, the while
his face showed undivided interest in the buck-and-wing dancing on the
stage.

The bouncer glared and went away.

"Got a gang?" he asked Cheese-Face, at the end of the act.

"Sure."

"Then I got to get one," Martin announced.

Between the acts he mustered his following--three fellows he knew from
the nail works, a railroad fireman, and half a dozen of the Boo Gang,
along with as many more from the dread Eighteen-and-Market Gang.

When the theatre let out, the two gangs strung along inconspicuously on
opposite sides of the street.  When they came to a quiet corner, they
united and held a council of war.

"Eighth Street Bridge is the place," said a red-headed fellow belonging
to Cheese-Face's Gang.  "You kin fight in the middle, under the electric
light, an' whichever way the bulls come in we kin sneak the other way."

"That's agreeable to me," Martin said, after consulting with the leaders
of his own gang.

The Eighth Street Bridge, crossing an arm of San Antonio Estuary, was the
length of three city blocks.  In the middle of the bridge, and at each
end, were electric lights.  No policeman could pass those end-lights
unseen.  It was the safe place for the battle that revived itself under
Martin's eyelids.  He saw the two gangs, aggressive and sullen, rigidly
keeping apart from each other and backing their respective champions; and
he saw himself and Cheese-Face stripping.  A short distance away lookouts
were set, their task being to watch the lighted ends of the bridge.  A
member of the Boo Gang held Martin's coat, and shirt, and cap, ready to
race with them into safety in case the police interfered.  Martin watched
himself go into the centre, facing Cheese-Face, and he heard himself say,
as he held up his hand warningly:-

"They ain't no hand-shakin' in this.  Understand?  They ain't nothin' but
scrap.  No throwin' up the sponge.  This is a grudge-fight an' it's to a
finish.  Understand?  Somebody's goin' to get licked."

Cheese-Face wanted to demur,--Martin could see that,--but Cheese-Face's
old perilous pride was touched before the two gangs.

"Aw, come on," he replied.  "Wot's the good of chewin' de rag about it?
I'm wit' cheh to de finish."

Then they fell upon each other, like young bulls, in all the glory of
youth, with naked fists, with hatred, with desire to hurt, to maim, to
destroy.  All the painful, thousand years' gains of man in his upward
climb through creation were lost.  Only the electric light remained, a
milestone on the path of the great human adventure.  Martin and Cheese-
Face were two savages, of the stone age, of the squatting place and the
tree refuge.  They sank lower and lower into the muddy abyss, back into
the dregs of the raw beginnings of life, striving blindly and chemically,
as atoms strive, as the star-dust of the heavens strives, colliding,
recoiling, and colliding again and eternally again.

"God!  We are animals!  Brute-beasts!"  Martin muttered aloud, as he
watched the progress of the fight.  It was to him, with his splendid
power of vision, like gazing into a kinetoscope.  He was both onlooker
and participant.  His long months of culture and refinement shuddered at
the sight; then the present was blotted out of his consciousness and the
ghosts of the past possessed him, and he was Martin Eden, just returned
from sea and fighting Cheese-Face on the Eighth Street Bridge.  He
suffered and toiled and sweated and bled, and exulted when his naked
knuckles smashed home.

They were twin whirlwinds of hatred, revolving about each other
monstrously.  The time passed, and the two hostile gangs became very
quiet.  They had never witnessed such intensity of ferocity, and they
were awed by it.  The two fighters were greater brutes than they.  The
first splendid velvet edge of youth and condition wore off, and they
fought more cautiously and deliberately.  There had been no advantage
gained either way.  "It's anybody's fight," Martin heard some one saying.
Then he followed up a feint, right and left, was fiercely countered, and
felt his cheek laid open to the bone.  No bare knuckle had done that.  He
heard mutters of amazement at the ghastly damage wrought, and was
drenched with his own blood.  But he gave no sign.  He became immensely
wary, for he was wise with knowledge of the low cunning and foul vileness
of his kind.  He watched and waited, until he feigned a wild rush, which
he stopped midway, for he had seen the glint of metal.

"Hold up yer hand!" he screamed.  "Them's brass knuckles, an' you hit me
with 'em!"

Both gangs surged forward, growling and snarling.  In a second there
would be a free-for-all fight, and he would be robbed of his vengeance.
He was beside himself.

"You guys keep out!" he screamed hoarsely.  "Understand?  Say, d'ye
understand?"

They shrank away from him.  They were brutes, but he was the arch-brute,
a thing of terror that towered over them and dominated them.

"This is my scrap, an' they ain't goin' to be no buttin' in.  Gimme them
knuckles."

Cheese-Face, sobered and a bit frightened, surrendered the foul weapon.

"You passed 'em to him, you red-head sneakin' in behind the push there,"
Martin went on, as he tossed the knuckles into the water.  "I seen you,
an' I was wonderin' what you was up to.  If you try anything like that
again, I'll beat cheh to death.  Understand?"

They fought on, through exhaustion and beyond, to exhaustion immeasurable
and inconceivable, until the crowd of brutes, its blood-lust sated,
terrified by what it saw, begged them impartially to cease.  And Cheese-
Face, ready to drop and die, or to stay on his legs and die, a grisly
monster out of whose features all likeness to Cheese-Face had been
beaten, wavered and hesitated; but Martin sprang in and smashed him again
and again.

Next, after a seeming century or so, with Cheese-Face weakening fast, in
a mix-up of blows there was a loud snap, and Martin's right arm dropped
to his side.  It was a broken bone.  Everybody heard it and knew; and
Cheese-Face knew, rushing like a tiger in the other's extremity and
raining blow on blow.  Martin's gang surged forward to interfere.  Dazed
by the rapid succession of blows, Martin warned them back with vile and
earnest curses sobbed out and groaned in ultimate desolation and despair.

He punched on, with his left hand only, and as he punched, doggedly, only
half-conscious, as from a remote distance he heard murmurs of fear in the
gangs, and one who said with shaking voice: "This ain't a scrap, fellows.
It's murder, an' we ought to stop it."

But no one stopped it, and he was glad, punching on wearily and endlessly
with his one arm, battering away at a bloody something before him that
was not a face but a horror, an oscillating, hideous, gibbering, nameless
thing that persisted before his wavering vision and would not go away.
And he punched on and on, slower and slower, as the last shreds of
vitality oozed from him, through centuries and aeons and enormous lapses
of time, until, in a dim way, he became aware that the nameless thing was
sinking, slowly sinking down to the rough board-planking of the bridge.
And the next moment he was standing over it, staggering and swaying on
shaky legs, clutching at the air for support, and saying in a voice he
did not recognize:-

"D'ye want any more?  Say, d'ye want any more?"

He was still saying it, over and over,--demanding, entreating,
threatening, to know if it wanted any more,--when he felt the fellows of
his gang laying hands on him, patting him on the back and trying to put
his coat on him.  And then came a sudden rush of blackness and oblivion.

The tin alarm-clock on the table ticked on, but Martin Eden, his face
buried on his arms, did not hear it.  He heard nothing.  He did not
think.  So absolutely had he relived life that he had fainted just as he
fainted years before on the Eighth Street Bridge.  For a full minute the
blackness and the blankness endured.  Then, like one from the dead, he
sprang upright, eyes flaming, sweat pouring down his face, shouting:-

"I licked you, Cheese-Face!  It took me eleven years, but I licked you!"

His knees were trembling under him, he felt faint, and he staggered back
to the bed, sinking down and sitting on the edge of it.  He was still in
the clutch of the past.  He looked about the room, perplexed, alarmed,
wondering where he was, until he caught sight of the pile of manuscripts
in the corner.  Then the wheels of memory slipped ahead through four
years of time, and he was aware of the present, of the books he had
opened and the universe he had won from their pages, of his dreams and
ambitions, and of his love for a pale wraith of a girl, sensitive and
sheltered and ethereal, who would die of horror did she witness but one
moment of what he had just lived through--one moment of all the muck of
life through which he had waded.

He arose to his feet and confronted himself in the looking-glass.

"And so you arise from the mud, Martin Eden," he said solemnly.  "And you
cleanse your eyes in a great brightness, and thrust your shoulders among
the stars, doing what all life has done, letting the 'ape and tiger die'
and wresting highest heritage from all powers that be."

He looked more closely at himself and laughed.

"A bit of hysteria and melodrama, eh?" he queried.  "Well, never mind.
You licked Cheese-Face, and you'll lick the editors if it takes twice
eleven years to do it in.  You can't stop here.  You've got to go on.
It's to a finish, you know."




CHAPTER XVI


The alarm-clock went off, jerking Martin out of sleep with a suddenness
that would have given headache to one with less splendid constitution.
Though he slept soundly, he awoke instantly, like a cat, and he awoke
eagerly, glad that the five hours of unconsciousness were gone.  He hated
the oblivion of sleep.  There was too much to do, too much of life to
live.  He grudged every moment of life sleep robbed him of, and before
the clock had ceased its clattering he was head and ears in the washbasin
and thrilling to the cold bite of the water.

But he did not follow his regular programme.  There was no unfinished
story waiting his hand, no new story demanding articulation.  He had
studied late, and it was nearly time for breakfast.  He tried to read a
chapter in Fiske, but his brain was restless and he closed the book.  To-
day witnessed the beginning of the new battle, wherein for some time
there would be no writing.  He was aware of a sadness akin to that with
which one leaves home and family.  He looked at the manuscripts in the
corner.  That was it.  He was going away from them, his pitiful,
dishonored children that were welcome nowhere.  He went over and began to
rummage among them, reading snatches here and there, his favorite
portions.  "The Pot" he honored with reading aloud, as he did
"Adventure."  "Joy," his latest-born, completed the day before and tossed
into the corner for lack of stamps, won his keenest approbation.

"I can't understand," he murmured.  "Or maybe it's the editors who can't
understand.  There's nothing wrong with that.  They publish worse every
month.  Everything they publish is worse--nearly everything, anyway."

After breakfast he put the type-writer in its case and carried it down
into Oakland.

"I owe a month on it," he told the clerk in the store.  "But you tell the
manager I'm going to work and that I'll be in in a month or so and
straighten up."

He crossed on the ferry to San Francisco and made his way to an
employment office.  "Any kind of work, no trade," he told the agent; and
was interrupted by a new-comer, dressed rather foppishly, as some
workingmen dress who have instincts for finer things.  The agent shook
his head despondently.

"Nothin' doin' eh?" said the other.  "Well, I got to get somebody
to-day."

He turned and stared at Martin, and Martin, staring back, noted the
puffed and discolored face, handsome and weak, and knew that he had been
making a night of it.

"Lookin' for a job?" the other queried.  "What can you do?"

"Hard labor, sailorizing, run a type-writer, no shorthand, can sit on a
horse, willing to do anything and tackle anything," was the answer.

The other nodded.

"Sounds good to me.  My name's Dawson, Joe Dawson, an' I'm tryin' to
scare up a laundryman."

"Too much for me."  Martin caught an amusing glimpse of himself ironing
fluffy white things that women wear.  But he had taken a liking to the
other, and he added: "I might do the plain washing.  I learned that much
at sea."  Joe Dawson thought visibly for a moment.

"Look here, let's get together an' frame it up.  Willin' to listen?"

Martin nodded.

"This is a small laundry, up country, belongs to Shelly Hot
Springs,--hotel, you know.  Two men do the work, boss and assistant.  I'm
the boss.  You don't work for me, but you work under me.  Think you'd be
willin' to learn?"

Martin paused to think.  The prospect was alluring.  A few months of it,
and he would have time to himself for study.  He could work hard and
study hard.

"Good grub an' a room to yourself," Joe said.

That settled it.  A room to himself where he could burn the midnight oil
unmolested.

"But work like hell," the other added.

Martin caressed his swelling shoulder-muscles significantly.  "That came
from hard work."

"Then let's get to it."  Joe held his hand to his head for a moment.
"Gee, but it's a stem-winder.  Can hardly see.  I went down the line last
night--everything--everything.  Here's the frame-up.  The wages for two
is a hundred and board.  I've ben drawin' down sixty, the second man
forty.  But he knew the biz.  You're green.  If I break you in, I'll be
doing plenty of your work at first.  Suppose you begin at thirty, an'
work up to the forty.  I'll play fair.  Just as soon as you can do your
share you get the forty."

"I'll go you," Martin announced, stretching out his hand, which the other
shook.  "Any advance?--for rail-road ticket and extras?"

"I blew it in," was Joe's sad answer, with another reach at his aching
head.  "All I got is a return ticket."

"And I'm broke--when I pay my board."

"Jump it," Joe advised.

"Can't.  Owe it to my sister."

Joe whistled a long, perplexed whistle, and racked his brains to little
purpose.

"I've got the price of the drinks," he said desperately.  "Come on, an'
mebbe we'll cook up something."

Martin declined.

"Water-wagon?"

This time Martin nodded, and Joe lamented, "Wish I was."

"But I somehow just can't," he said in extenuation.  "After I've ben
workin' like hell all week I just got to booze up.  If I didn't, I'd cut
my throat or burn up the premises.  But I'm glad you're on the wagon.
Stay with it."

Martin knew of the enormous gulf between him and this man--the gulf the
books had made; but he found no difficulty in crossing back over that
gulf.  He had lived all his life in the working-class world, and the
camaraderie of labor was second nature with him.  He solved the
difficulty of transportation that was too much for the other's aching
head.  He would send his trunk up to Shelly Hot Springs on Joe's ticket.
As for himself, there was his wheel.  It was seventy miles, and he could
ride it on Sunday and be ready for work Monday morning.  In the meantime
he would go home and pack up.  There was no one to say good-by to.  Ruth
and her whole family were spending the long summer in the Sierras, at
Lake Tahoe.

He arrived at Shelly Hot Springs, tired and dusty, on Sunday night.  Joe
greeted him exuberantly.  With a wet towel bound about his aching brow,
he had been at work all day.

"Part of last week's washin' mounted up, me bein' away to get you," he
explained.  "Your box arrived all right.  It's in your room.  But it's a
hell of a thing to call a trunk.  An' what's in it?  Gold bricks?"

Joe sat on the bed while Martin unpacked.  The box was a packing-case for
breakfast food, and Mr. Higginbotham had charged him half a dollar for
it.  Two rope handles, nailed on by Martin, had technically transformed
it into a trunk eligible for the baggage-car.  Joe watched, with bulging
eyes, a few shirts and several changes of underclothes come out of the
box, followed by books, and more books.

"Books clean to the bottom?" he asked.

Martin nodded, and went on arranging the books on a kitchen table which
served in the room in place of a wash-stand.

"Gee!" Joe exploded, then waited in silence for the deduction to arise in
his brain.  At last it came.

"Say, you don't care for the girls--much?" he queried.

"No," was the answer.  "I used to chase a lot before I tackled the books.
But since then there's no time."

"And there won't be any time here.  All you can do is work an' sleep."

Martin thought of his five hours' sleep a night, and smiled.  The room
was situated over the laundry and was in the same building with the
engine that pumped water, made electricity, and ran the laundry
machinery.  The engineer, who occupied the adjoining room, dropped in to
meet the new hand and helped Martin rig up an electric bulb, on an
extension wire, so that it travelled along a stretched cord from over the
table to the bed.

The next morning, at quarter-past six, Martin was routed out for a
quarter-to-seven breakfast.  There happened to be a bath-tub for the
servants in the laundry building, and he electrified Joe by taking a cold
bath.

"Gee, but you're a hummer!" Joe announced, as they sat down to breakfast
in a corner of the hotel kitchen.

With them was the engineer, the gardener, and the assistant gardener, and
two or three men from the stable.  They ate hurriedly and gloomily, with
but little conversation, and as Martin ate and listened he realized how
far he had travelled from their status.  Their small mental caliber was
depressing to him, and he was anxious to get away from them.  So he
bolted his breakfast, a sickly, sloppy affair, as rapidly as they, and
heaved a sigh of relief when he passed out through the kitchen door.

It was a perfectly appointed, small steam laundry, wherein the most
modern machinery did everything that was possible for machinery to do.
Martin, after a few instructions, sorted the great heaps of soiled
clothes, while Joe started the masher and made up fresh supplies of soft-
soap, compounded of biting chemicals that compelled him to swathe his
mouth and nostrils and eyes in bath-towels till he resembled a mummy.
Finished the sorting, Martin lent a hand in wringing the clothes.  This
was done by dumping them into a spinning receptacle that went at a rate
of a few thousand revolutions a minute, tearing the water from the
clothes by centrifugal force.  Then Martin began to alternate between the
dryer and the wringer, between times "shaking out" socks and stockings.
By the afternoon, one feeding and one, stacking up, they were running
socks and stockings through the mangle while the irons were heating.  Then
it was hot irons and underclothes till six o'clock, at which time Joe
shook his head dubiously.

"Way behind," he said.  "Got to work after supper."  And after supper
they worked until ten o'clock, under the blazing electric lights, until
the last piece of under-clothing was ironed and folded away in the
distributing room.  It was a hot California night, and though the windows
were thrown wide, the room, with its red-hot ironing-stove, was a
furnace.  Martin and Joe, down to undershirts, bare armed, sweated and
panted for air.

"Like trimming cargo in the tropics," Martin said, when they went
upstairs.

"You'll do," Joe answered.  "You take hold like a good fellow.  If you
keep up the pace, you'll be on thirty dollars only one month.  The second
month you'll be gettin' your forty.  But don't tell me you never ironed
before.  I know better."

"Never ironed a rag in my life, honestly, until to-day," Martin
protested.

He was surprised at his weariness when he got into his room, forgetful of
the fact that he had been on his feet and working without let up for
fourteen hours.  He set the alarm clock at six, and measured back five
hours to one o'clock.  He could read until then.  Slipping off his shoes,
to ease his swollen feet, he sat down at the table with his books.  He
opened Fiske, where he had left off to read.  But he found trouble and began
to read it through a second time.  Then he awoke, in pain from his
stiffened muscles and chilled by the mountain wind that had begun to blow
in through the window.  He looked at the clock.  It marked two.  He had
been asleep four hours.  He pulled off his clothes and crawled into bed,
where he was asleep the moment after his head touched the pillow.

Tuesday was a day of similar unremitting toil.  The speed with which Joe
worked won Martin's admiration.  Joe was a dozen of demons for work.  He
was keyed up to concert pitch, and there was never a moment in the long
day when he was not fighting for moments.  He concentrated himself upon
his work and upon how to save time, pointing out to Martin where he did
in five motions what could be done in three, or in three motions what
could be done in two.  "Elimination of waste motion," Martin phrased it
as he watched and patterned after.  He was a good workman himself, quick
and deft, and it had always been a point of pride with him that no man
should do any of his work for him or outwork him.  As a result, he
concentrated with a similar singleness of purpose, greedily snapping up
the hints and suggestions thrown out by his working mate.  He "rubbed
out" collars and cuffs, rubbing the starch out from between the double
thicknesses of linen so that there would be no blisters when it came to
the ironing, and doing it at a pace that elicited Joe's praise.

There was never an interval when something was not at hand to be done.
Joe waited for nothing, waited on nothing, and went on the jump from task
to task.  They starched two hundred white shirts, with a single gathering
movement seizing a shirt so that the wristbands, neckband, yoke, and
bosom protruded beyond the circling right hand.  At the same moment the
left hand held up the body of the shirt so that it would not enter the
starch, and at the moment the right hand dipped into the starch--starch
so hot that, in order to wring it out, their hands had to thrust, and
thrust continually, into a bucket of cold water.  And that night they
worked till half-past ten, dipping "fancy starch"--all the frilled and
airy, delicate wear of ladies.

"Me for the tropics and no clothes," Martin laughed.

"And me out of a job," Joe answered seriously.  "I don't know nothin' but
laundrying."

"And you know it well."

"I ought to.  Began in the Contra Costa in Oakland when I was eleven,
shakin' out for the mangle.  That was eighteen years ago, an' I've never
done a tap of anything else.  But this job is the fiercest I ever had.
Ought to be one more man on it at least.  We work to-morrow night.  Always
run the mangle Wednesday nights--collars an' cuffs."

Martin set his alarm, drew up to the table, and opened Fiske.  He did not
finish the first paragraph.  The lines blurred and ran together and his
head nodded.  He walked up and down, batting his head savagely with his
fists, but he could not conquer the numbness of sleep.  He propped the
book before him, and propped his eyelids with his fingers, and fell
asleep with his eyes wide open.  Then he surrendered, and, scarcely
conscious of what he did, got off his clothes and into bed.  He slept
seven hours of heavy, animal-like sleep, and awoke by the alarm, feeling
that he had not had enough.

"Doin' much readin'?" Joe asked.

Martin shook his head.

"Never mind.  We got to run the mangle to-night, but Thursday we'll knock
off at six.  That'll give you a chance."

Martin washed woollens that day, by hand, in a large barrel, with strong
soft-soap, by means of a hub from a wagon wheel, mounted on a plunger-
pole that was attached to a spring-pole overhead.

"My invention," Joe said proudly.  "Beats a washboard an' your knuckles,
and, besides, it saves at least fifteen minutes in the week, an' fifteen
minutes ain't to be sneezed at in this shebang."

Running the collars and cuffs through the mangle was also Joe's idea.
That night, while they toiled on under the electric lights, he explained
it.

"Something no laundry ever does, except this one.  An' I got to do it if
I'm goin' to get done Saturday afternoon at three o'clock.  But I know
how, an' that's the difference.  Got to have right heat, right pressure,
and run 'em through three times.  Look at that!"  He held a cuff aloft.
"Couldn't do it better by hand or on a tiler."

Thursday, Joe was in a rage.  A bundle of extra "fancy starch" had come
in.

"I'm goin' to quit," he announced.  "I won't stand for it.  I'm goin' to
quit it cold.  What's the good of me workin' like a slave all week, a-
savin' minutes, an' them a-comin' an' ringin' in fancy-starch extras on
me?  This is a free country, an' I'm to tell that fat Dutchman what I
think of him.  An' I won't tell 'm in French.  Plain United States is
good enough for me.  Him a-ringin' in fancy starch extras!"

"We got to work to-night," he said the next moment, reversing his
judgment and surrendering to fate.

And Martin did no reading that night.  He had seen no daily paper all
week, and, strangely to him, felt no desire to see one.  He was not
interested in the news.  He was too tired and jaded to be interested in
anything, though he planned to leave Saturday afternoon, if they finished
at three, and ride on his wheel to Oakland.  It was seventy miles, and
the same distance back on Sunday afternoon would leave him anything but
rested for the second week's work.  It would have been easier to go on
the train, but the round trip was two dollars and a half, and he was
intent on saving money.




CHAPTER XVII


Martin learned to do many things.  In the course of the first week, in
one afternoon, he and Joe accounted for the two hundred white shirts.  Joe
ran the tiler, a machine wherein a hot iron was hooked on a steel string
which furnished the pressure.  By this means he ironed the yoke,
wristbands, and neckband, setting the latter at right angles to the
shirt, and put the glossy finish on the bosom.  As fast as he finished
them, he flung the shirts on a rack between him and Martin, who caught
them up and "backed" them.  This task consisted of ironing all the
unstarched portions of the shirts.

It was exhausting work, carried on, hour after hour, at top speed.  Out
on the broad verandas of the hotel, men and women, in cool white, sipped
iced drinks and kept their circulation down.  But in the laundry the air
was sizzling.  The huge stove roared red hot and white hot, while the
irons, moving over the damp cloth, sent up clouds of steam.  The heat of
these irons was different from that used by housewives.  An iron that
stood the ordinary test of a wet finger was too cold for Joe and Martin,
and such test was useless.  They went wholly by holding the irons close
to their cheeks, gauging the heat by some secret mental process that
Martin admired but could not understand.  When the fresh irons proved too
hot, they hooked them on iron rods and dipped them into cold water.  This
again required a precise and subtle judgment.  A fraction of a second too
long in the water and the fine and silken edge of the proper heat was
lost, and Martin found time to marvel at the accuracy he developed--an
automatic accuracy, founded upon criteria that were machine-like and
unerring.

But there was little time in which to marvel.  All Martin's consciousness
was concentrated in the work.  Ceaselessly active, head and hand, an
intelligent machine, all that constituted him a man was devoted to
furnishing that intelligence.  There was no room in his brain for the
universe and its mighty problems.  All the broad and spacious corridors
of his mind were closed and hermetically sealed.  The echoing chamber of
his soul was a narrow room, a conning tower, whence were directed his arm
and shoulder muscles, his ten nimble fingers, and the swift-moving iron
along its steaming path in broad, sweeping strokes, just so many strokes
and no more, just so far with each stroke and not a fraction of an inch
farther, rushing along interminable sleeves, sides, backs, and tails, and
tossing the finished shirts, without rumpling, upon the receiving frame.
And even as his hurrying soul tossed, it was reaching for another shirt.
This went on, hour after hour, while outside all the world swooned under
the overhead California sun.  But there was no swooning in that
superheated room.  The cool guests on the verandas needed clean linen.

The sweat poured from Martin.  He drank enormous quantities of water, but
so great was the heat of the day and of his exertions, that the water
sluiced through the interstices of his flesh and out at all his pores.
Always, at sea, except at rare intervals, the work he performed had given
him ample opportunity to commune with himself.  The master of the ship
had been lord of Martin's time; but here the manager of the hotel was
lord of Martin's thoughts as well.  He had no thoughts save for the nerve-
racking, body-destroying toil.  Outside of that it was impossible to
think.  He did not know that he loved Ruth.  She did not even exist, for
his driven soul had no time to remember her.  It was only when he crawled
to bed at night, or to breakfast in the morning, that she asserted
herself to him in fleeting memories.

"This is hell, ain't it?" Joe remarked once.

Martin nodded, but felt a rasp of irritation.  The statement had been
obvious and unnecessary.  They did not talk while they worked.
Conversation threw them out of their stride, as it did this time,
compelling Martin to miss a stroke of his iron and to make two extra
motions before he caught his stride again.

On Friday morning the washer ran.  Twice a week they had to put through
hotel linen,--the sheets, pillow-slips, spreads, table-cloths, and
napkins.  This finished, they buckled down to "fancy starch."  It was
slow work, fastidious and delicate, and Martin did not learn it so
readily.  Besides, he could not take chances.  Mistakes were disastrous.

"See that," Joe said, holding up a filmy corset-cover that he could have
crumpled from view in one hand.  "Scorch that an' it's twenty dollars out
of your wages."

So Martin did not scorch that, and eased down on his muscular tension,
though nervous tension rose higher than ever, and he listened
sympathetically to the other's blasphemies as he toiled and suffered over
the beautiful things that women wear when they do not have to do their
own laundrying.  "Fancy starch" was Martin's nightmare, and it was Joe's,
too.  It was "fancy starch" that robbed them of their hard-won minutes.
They toiled at it all day.  At seven in the evening they broke off to run
the hotel linen through the mangle.  At ten o'clock, while the hotel
guests slept, the two laundrymen sweated on at "fancy starch" till
midnight, till one, till two.  At half-past two they knocked off.

Saturday morning it was "fancy starch," and odds and ends, and at three
in the afternoon the week's work was done.

"You ain't a-goin' to ride them seventy miles into Oakland on top of
this?" Joe demanded, as they sat on the stairs and took a triumphant
smoke.

"Got to," was the answer.

"What are you goin' for?--a girl?"

"No; to save two and a half on the railroad ticket.  I want to renew some
books at the library."

"Why don't you send 'em down an' up by express?  That'll cost only a
quarter each way."

Martin considered it.

"An' take a rest to-morrow," the other urged.  "You need it.  I know I
do.  I'm plumb tuckered out."

He looked it.  Indomitable, never resting, fighting for seconds and
minutes all week, circumventing delays and crushing down obstacles, a
fount of resistless energy, a high-driven human motor, a demon for work,
now that he had accomplished the week's task he was in a state of
collapse.  He was worn and haggard, and his handsome face drooped in lean
exhaustion.  He pulled his cigarette spiritlessly, and his voice was
peculiarly dead and monotonous.  All the snap and fire had gone out of
him.  His triumph seemed a sorry one.

"An' next week we got to do it all over again," he said sadly.  "An'
what's the good of it all, hey?  Sometimes I wish I was a hobo.  They
don't work, an' they get their livin'.  Gee!  I wish I had a glass of
beer; but I can't get up the gumption to go down to the village an' get
it.  You'll stay over, an' send your books dawn by express, or else
you're a damn fool."

"But what can I do here all day Sunday?" Martin asked.

"Rest.  You don't know how tired you are.  Why, I'm that tired Sunday I
can't even read the papers.  I was sick once--typhoid.  In the hospital
two months an' a half.  Didn't do a tap of work all that time.  It was
beautiful."

"It was beautiful," he repeated dreamily, a minute later.

Martin took a bath, after which he found that the head laundryman had
disappeared.  Most likely he had gone for a glass of beer Martin decided,
but the half-mile walk down to the village to find out seemed a long
journey to him.  He lay on his bed with his shoes off, trying to make up
his mind.  He did not reach out for a book.  He was too tired to feel
sleepy, and he lay, scarcely thinking, in a semi-stupor of weariness,
until it was time for supper.  Joe did not appear for that function, and
when Martin heard the gardener remark that most likely he was ripping the
slats off the bar, Martin understood.  He went to bed immediately
afterward, and in the morning decided that he was greatly rested.  Joe
being still absent, Martin procured a Sunday paper and lay down in a
shady nook under the trees.  The morning passed, he knew not how.  He did
not sleep, nobody disturbed him, and he did not finish the paper.  He
came back to it in the afternoon, after dinner, and fell asleep over it.

So passed Sunday, and Monday morning he was hard at work, sorting
clothes, while Joe, a towel bound tightly around his head, with groans
and blasphemies, was running the washer and mixing soft-soap.

"I simply can't help it," he explained.  "I got to drink when Saturday
night comes around."

Another week passed, a great battle that continued under the electric
lights each night and that culminated on Saturday afternoon at three
o'clock, when Joe tasted his moment of wilted triumph and then drifted
down to the village to forget.  Martin's Sunday was the same as before.
He slept in the shade of the trees, toiled aimlessly through the
newspaper, and spent long hours lying on his back, doing nothing,
thinking nothing.  He was too dazed to think, though he was aware that he
did not like himself.  He was self-repelled, as though he had undergone
some degradation or was intrinsically foul.  All that was god-like in him
was blotted out.  The spur of ambition was blunted; he had no vitality
with which to feel the prod of it.  He was dead.  His soul seemed dead.
He was a beast, a work-beast.  He saw no beauty in the sunshine sifting
down through the green leaves, nor did the azure vault of the sky whisper
as of old and hint of cosmic vastness and secrets trembling to
disclosure.  Life was intolerably dull and stupid, and its taste was bad
in his mouth.  A black screen was drawn across his mirror of inner
vision, and fancy lay in a darkened sick-room where entered no ray of
light.  He envied Joe, down in the village, rampant, tearing the slats
off the bar, his brain gnawing with maggots, exulting in maudlin ways
over maudlin things, fantastically and gloriously drunk and forgetful of
Monday morning and the week of deadening toil to come.

A third week went by, and Martin loathed himself, and loathed life.  He
was oppressed by a sense of failure.  There was reason for the editors
refusing his stuff.  He could see that clearly now, and laugh at himself
and the dreams he had dreamed.  Ruth returned his "Sea Lyrics" by mail.
He read her letter apathetically.  She did her best to say how much she
liked them and that they were beautiful.  But she could not lie, and she
could not disguise the truth from herself.  She knew they were failures,
and he read her disapproval in every perfunctory and unenthusiastic line
of her letter.  And she was right.  He was firmly convinced of it as he
read the poems over.  Beauty and wonder had departed from him, and as he
read the poems he caught himself puzzling as to what he had had in mind
when he wrote them.  His audacities of phrase struck him as grotesque,
his felicities of expression were monstrosities, and everything was
absurd, unreal, and impossible.  He would have burned the "Sea Lyrics" on
the spot, had his will been strong enough to set them aflame.  There was
the engine-room, but the exertion of carrying them to the furnace was not
worth while.  All his exertion was used in washing other persons'
clothes.  He did not have any left for private affairs.

He resolved that when Sunday came he would pull himself together and
answer Ruth's letter.  But Saturday afternoon, after work was finished
and he had taken a bath, the desire to forget overpowered him.  "I guess
I'll go down and see how Joe's getting on," was the way he put it to
himself; and in the same moment he knew that he lied.  But he did not
have the energy to consider the lie.  If he had had the energy, he would
have refused to consider the lie, because he wanted to forget.  He
started for the village slowly and casually, increasing his pace in spite
of himself as he neared the saloon.

"I thought you was on the water-wagon," was Joe's greeting.

Martin did not deign to offer excuses, but called for whiskey, filling
his own glass brimming before he passed the bottle.

"Don't take all night about it," he said roughly.

The other was dawdling with the bottle, and Martin refused to wait for
him, tossing the glass off in a gulp and refilling it.

"Now, I can wait for you," he said grimly; "but hurry up."

Joe hurried, and they drank together.

"The work did it, eh?" Joe queried.

Martin refused to discuss the matter.

"It's fair hell, I know," the other went on, "but I kind of hate to see
you come off the wagon, Mart.  Well, here's how!"

Martin drank on silently, biting out his orders and invitations and awing
the barkeeper, an effeminate country youngster with watery blue eyes and
hair parted in the middle.

"It's something scandalous the way they work us poor devils," Joe was
remarking.  "If I didn't bowl up, I'd break loose an' burn down the
shebang.  My bowlin' up is all that saves 'em, I can tell you that."

But Martin made no answer.  A few more drinks, and in his brain he felt
the maggots of intoxication beginning to crawl.  Ah, it was living, the
first breath of life he had breathed in three weeks.  His dreams came
back to him.  Fancy came out of the darkened room and lured him on, a
thing of flaming brightness.  His mirror of vision was silver-clear, a
flashing, dazzling palimpsest of imagery.  Wonder and beauty walked with
him, hand in hand, and all power was his.  He tried to tell it to Joe,
but Joe had visions of his own, infallible schemes whereby he would
escape the slavery of laundry-work and become himself the owner of a
great steam laundry.

"I tell yeh, Mart, they won't be no kids workin' in my laundry--not on
yer life.  An' they won't be no workin' a livin' soul after six P.M.  You
hear me talk!  They'll be machinery enough an' hands enough to do it all
in decent workin' hours, an' Mart, s'help me, I'll make yeh
superintendent of the shebang--the whole of it, all of it.  Now here's
the scheme.  I get on the water-wagon an' save my money for two
years--save an' then--"

But Martin turned away, leaving him to tell it to the barkeeper, until
that worthy was called away to furnish drinks to two farmers who, coming
in, accepted Martin's invitation.  Martin dispensed royal largess,
inviting everybody up, farm-hands, a stableman, and the gardener's
assistant from the hotel, the barkeeper, and the furtive hobo who slid in
like a shadow and like a shadow hovered at the end of the bar.




CHAPTER XVIII


Monday morning, Joe groaned over the first truck load of clothes to the
washer.

"I say," he began.

"Don't talk to me," Martin snarled.

"I'm sorry, Joe," he said at noon, when they knocked off for dinner.

Tears came into the other's eyes.

"That's all right, old man," he said.  "We're in hell, an' we can't help
ourselves.  An', you know, I kind of like you a whole lot.  That's what
made it--hurt.  I cottoned to you from the first."

Martin shook his hand.

"Let's quit," Joe suggested.  "Let's chuck it, an' go hoboin'.  I ain't
never tried it, but it must be dead easy.  An' nothin' to do.  Just think
of it, nothin' to do.  I was sick once, typhoid, in the hospital, an' it
was beautiful.  I wish I'd get sick again."

The week dragged on.  The hotel was full, and extra "fancy starch" poured
in upon them.  They performed prodigies of valor.  They fought late each
night under the electric lights, bolted their meals, and even got in a
half hour's work before breakfast.  Martin no longer took his cold baths.
Every moment was drive, drive, drive, and Joe was the masterful shepherd
of moments, herding them carefully, never losing one, counting them over
like a miser counting gold, working on in a frenzy, toil-mad, a feverish
machine, aided ably by that other machine that thought of itself as once
having been one Martin Eden, a man.

But it was only at rare moments that Martin was able to think.  The house
of thought was closed, its windows boarded up, and he was its shadowy
caretaker.  He was a shadow.  Joe was right.  They were both shadows, and
this was the unending limbo of toil.  Or was it a dream?  Sometimes, in
the steaming, sizzling heat, as he swung the heavy irons back and forth
over the white garments, it came to him that it was a dream.  In a short
while, or maybe after a thousand years or so, he would awake, in his
little room with the ink-stained table, and take up his writing where he
had left off the day before.  Or maybe that was a dream, too, and the
awakening would be the changing of the watches, when he would drop down
out of his bunk in the lurching forecastle and go up on deck, under the
tropic stars, and take the wheel and feel the cool tradewind blowing
through his flesh.

Came Saturday and its hollow victory at three o'clock.

"Guess I'll go down an' get a glass of beer," Joe said, in the queer,
monotonous tones that marked his week-end collapse.

Martin seemed suddenly to wake up.  He opened the kit bag and oiled his
wheel, putting graphite on the chain and adjusting the bearings.  Joe was
halfway down to the saloon when Martin passed by, bending low over the
handle-bars, his legs driving the ninety-six gear with rhythmic strength,
his face set for seventy miles of road and grade and dust.  He slept in
Oakland that night, and on Sunday covered the seventy miles back.  And on
Monday morning, weary, he began the new week's work, but he had kept
sober.

A fifth week passed, and a sixth, during which he lived and toiled as a
machine, with just a spark of something more in him, just a glimmering
bit of soul, that compelled him, at each week-end, to scorch off the
hundred and forty miles.  But this was not rest.  It was
super-machinelike, and it helped to crush out the glimmering bit of soul
that was all that was left him from former life.  At the end of the
seventh week, without intending it, too weak to resist, he drifted down
to the village with Joe and drowned life and found life until Monday
morning.

Again, at the week-ends, he ground out the one hundred and forty miles,
obliterating the numbness of too great exertion by the numbness of still
greater exertion.  At the end of three months he went down a third time
to the village with Joe.  He forgot, and lived again, and, living, he
saw, in clear illumination, the beast he was making of himself--not by
the drink, but by the work.  The drink was an effect, not a cause.  It
followed inevitably upon the work, as the night follows upon the day.  Not
by becoming a toil-beast could he win to the heights, was the message the
whiskey whispered to him, and he nodded approbation.  The whiskey was
wise.  It told secrets on itself.

He called for paper and pencil, and for drinks all around, and while they
drank his very good health, he clung to the bar and scribbled.

"A telegram, Joe," he said.  "Read it."

Joe read it with a drunken, quizzical leer.  But what he read seemed to
sober him.  He looked at the other reproachfully, tears oozing into his
eyes and down his cheeks.

"You ain't goin' back on me, Mart?" he queried hopelessly.

Martin nodded, and called one of the loungers to him to take the message
to the telegraph office.

"Hold on," Joe muttered thickly.  "Lemme think."

He held on to the bar, his legs wobbling under him, Martin's arm around
him and supporting him, while he thought.

"Make that two laundrymen," he said abruptly.  "Here, lemme fix it."

"What are you quitting for?" Martin demanded.

"Same reason as you."

"But I'm going to sea.  You can't do that."

"Nope," was the answer, "but I can hobo all right, all right."

Martin looked at him searchingly for a moment, then cried:-

"By God, I think you're right!  Better a hobo than a beast of toil.  Why,
man, you'll live.  And that's more than you ever did before."

"I was in hospital, once," Joe corrected.  "It was beautiful.  Typhoid--did
I tell you?"

While Martin changed the telegram to "two laundrymen," Joe went on:-

"I never wanted to drink when I was in hospital.  Funny, ain't it?  But
when I've ben workin' like a slave all week, I just got to bowl up.  Ever
noticed that cooks drink like hell?--an' bakers, too?  It's the work.
They've sure got to.  Here, lemme pay half of that telegram."

"I'll shake you for it," Martin offered.

"Come on, everybody drink," Joe called, as they rattled the dice and
rolled them out on the damp bar.

Monday morning Joe was wild with anticipation.  He did not mind his
aching head, nor did he take interest in his work.  Whole herds of
moments stole away and were lost while their careless shepherd gazed out
of the window at the sunshine and the trees.

"Just look at it!" he cried.  "An' it's all mine!  It's free.  I can lie
down under them trees an' sleep for a thousan' years if I want to.  Aw,
come on, Mart, let's chuck it.  What's the good of waitin' another
moment.  That's the land of nothin' to do out there, an' I got a ticket
for it--an' it ain't no return ticket, b'gosh!"

A few minutes later, filling the truck with soiled clothes for the
washer, Joe spied the hotel manager's shirt.  He knew its mark, and with
a sudden glorious consciousness of freedom he threw it on the floor and
stamped on it.

"I wish you was in it, you pig-headed Dutchman!" he shouted.  "In it, an'
right there where I've got you!  Take that! an' that! an' that! damn you!
Hold me back, somebody!  Hold me back!"

Martin laughed and held him to his work.  On Tuesday night the new
laundrymen arrived, and the rest of the week was spent breaking them into
the routine.  Joe sat around and explained his system, but he did no more
work.

"Not a tap," he announced.  "Not a tap.  They can fire me if they want
to, but if they do, I'll quit.  No more work in mine, thank you kindly.
Me for the freight cars an' the shade under the trees.  Go to it, you
slaves!  That's right.  Slave an' sweat!  Slave an' sweat!  An' when
you're dead, you'll rot the same as me, an' what's it matter how you
live?--eh?  Tell me that--what's it matter in the long run?"

On Saturday they drew their pay and came to the parting of the ways.

"They ain't no use in me askin' you to change your mind an' hit the road
with me?" Joe asked hopelessly:

Martin shook his head.  He was standing by his wheel, ready to start.
They shook hands, and Joe held on to his for a moment, as he said:-

"I'm goin' to see you again, Mart, before you an' me die.  That's
straight dope.  I feel it in my bones.  Good-by, Mart, an' be good.  I
like you like hell, you know."

He stood, a forlorn figure, in the middle of the road, watching until
Martin turned a bend and was gone from sight.

"He's a good Indian, that boy," he muttered.  "A good Indian."

Then he plodded down the road himself, to the water tank, where half a
dozen empties lay on a side-track waiting for the up freight.




CHAPTER XIX


Ruth and her family were home again, and Martin, returned to Oakland, saw
much of her.  Having gained her degree, she was doing no more studying;
and he, having worked all vitality out of his mind and body, was doing no
writing.  This gave them time for each other that they had never had
before, and their intimacy ripened fast.

At first, Martin had done nothing but rest.  He had slept a great deal,
and spent long hours musing and thinking and doing nothing.  He was like
one recovering from some terrible bout of hardship.  The first signs of
reawakening came when he discovered more than languid interest in the
daily paper.  Then he began to read again--light novels, and poetry; and
after several days more he was head over heels in his long-neglected
Fiske.  His splendid body and health made new vitality, and he possessed
all the resiliency and rebound of youth.

Ruth showed her disappointment plainly when he announced that he was
going to sea for another voyage as soon as he was well rested.

"Why do you want to do that?" she asked.

"Money," was the answer.  "I'll have to lay in a supply for my next
attack on the editors.  Money is the sinews of war, in my case--money and
patience."

"But if all you wanted was money, why didn't you stay in the laundry?"

"Because the laundry was making a beast of me.  Too much work of that
sort drives to drink."

She stared at him with horror in her eyes.

"Do you mean--?" she quavered.

It would have been easy for him to get out of it; but his natural impulse
was for frankness, and he remembered his old resolve to be frank, no
matter what happened.

"Yes," he answered.  "Just that.  Several times."

She shivered and drew away from him.

"No man that I have ever known did that--ever did that."

"Then they never worked in the laundry at Shelly Hot Springs," he laughed
bitterly.  "Toil is a good thing.  It is necessary for human health, so
all the preachers say, and Heaven knows I've never been afraid of it.  But
there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and the laundry up
there is one of them.  And that's why I'm going to sea one more voyage.
It will be my last, I think, for when I come back, I shall break into the
magazines.  I am certain of it."

She was silent, unsympathetic, and he watched her moodily, realizing how
impossible it was for her to understand what he had been through.

"Some day I shall write it up--'The Degradation of Toil' or the
'Psychology of Drink in the Working-class,' or something like that for a
title."

Never, since the first meeting, had they seemed so far apart as that day.
His confession, told in frankness, with the spirit of revolt behind, had
repelled her.  But she was more shocked by the repulsion itself than by
the cause of it.  It pointed out to her how near she had drawn to him,
and once accepted, it paved the way for greater intimacy.  Pity, too, was
aroused, and innocent, idealistic thoughts of reform.  She would save
this raw young man who had come so far.  She would save him from the
curse of his early environment, and she would save him from himself in
spite of himself.  And all this affected her as a very noble state of
consciousness; nor did she dream that behind it and underlying it were
the jealousy and desire of love.

They rode on their wheels much in the delightful fall weather, and out in
the hills they read poetry aloud, now one and now the other, noble,
uplifting poetry that turned one's thoughts to higher things.
Renunciation, sacrifice, patience, industry, and high endeavor were the
principles she thus indirectly preached--such abstractions being
objectified in her mind by her father, and Mr. Butler, and by Andrew
Carnegie, who, from a poor immigrant boy had arisen to be the book-giver
of the world.  All of which was appreciated and enjoyed by Martin.  He
followed her mental processes more clearly now, and her soul was no
longer the sealed wonder it had been.  He was on terms of intellectual
equality with her.  But the points of disagreement did not affect his
love.  His love was more ardent than ever, for he loved her for what she
was, and even her physical frailty was an added charm in his eyes.  He
read of sickly Elizabeth Barrett, who for years had not placed her feet
upon the ground, until that day of flame when she eloped with Browning
and stood upright, upon the earth, under the open sky; and what Browning
had done for her, Martin decided he could do for Ruth.  But first, she
must love him.  The rest would be easy.  He would give her strength and
health.  And he caught glimpses of their life, in the years to come,
wherein, against a background of work and comfort and general well-being,
he saw himself and Ruth reading and discussing poetry, she propped amid a
multitude of cushions on the ground while she read aloud to him.  This
was the key to the life they would live.  And always he saw that
particular picture.  Sometimes it was she who leaned against him while he
read, one arm about her, her head upon his shoulder.  Sometimes they
pored together over the printed pages of beauty.  Then, too, she loved
nature, and with generous imagination he changed the scene of their
reading--sometimes they read in closed-in valleys with precipitous walls,
or in high mountain meadows, and, again, down by the gray sand-dunes with
a wreath of billows at their feet, or afar on some volcanic tropic isle
where waterfalls descended and became mist, reaching the sea in vapor
veils that swayed and shivered to every vagrant wisp of wind.  But
always, in the foreground, lords of beauty and eternally reading and
sharing, lay he and Ruth, and always in the background that was beyond
the background of nature, dim and hazy, were work and success and money
earned that made them free of the world and all its treasures.

"I should recommend my little girl to be careful," her mother warned her
one day.

"I know what you mean.  But it is impossible.  He is not--"

Ruth was blushing, but it was the blush of maidenhood called upon for the
first time to discuss the sacred things of life with a mother held
equally sacred.

"Your kind."  Her mother finished the sentence for her.

Ruth nodded.

"I did not want to say it, but he is not.  He is rough, brutal,
strong--too strong.  He has not--"

She hesitated and could not go on.  It was a new experience, talking over
such matters with her mother.  And again her mother completed her thought
for her.

"He has not lived a clean life, is what you wanted to say."

Again Ruth nodded, and again a blush mantled her face.

"It is just that," she said.  "It has not been his fault, but he has
played much with--"

"With pitch?"

"Yes, with pitch.  And he frightens me.  Sometimes I am positively in
terror of him, when he talks in that free and easy way of the things he
has done--as if they did not matter.  They do matter, don't they?"

They sat with their arms twined around each other, and in the pause her
mother patted her hand and waited for her to go on.

"But I am interested in him dreadfully," she continued.  "In a way he is
my protege.  Then, too, he is my first boy friend--but not exactly
friend; rather protege and friend combined.  Sometimes, too, when he
frightens me, it seems that he is a bulldog I have taken for a plaything,
like some of the 'frat' girls, and he is tugging hard, and showing his
teeth, and threatening to break loose."

Again her mother waited.

"He interests me, I suppose, like the bulldog.  And there is much good in
him, too; but there is much in him that I would not like in--in the other
way.  You see, I have been thinking.  He swears, he smokes, he drinks, he
has fought with his fists (he has told me so, and he likes it; he says
so).  He is all that a man should not be--a man I would want for my--"
her voice sank very low--"husband.  Then he is too strong.  My prince
must be tall, and slender, and dark--a graceful, bewitching prince.  No,
there is no danger of my failing in love with Martin Eden.  It would be
the worst fate that could befall me."

"But it is not that that I spoke about," her mother equivocated.  "Have
you thought about him?  He is so ineligible in every way, you know, and
suppose he should come to love you?"

"But he does--already," she cried.

"It was to be expected," Mrs. Morse said gently.  "How could it be
otherwise with any one who knew you?"

"Olney hates me!" she exclaimed passionately.  "And I hate Olney.  I feel
always like a cat when he is around.  I feel that I must be nasty to him,
and even when I don't happen to feel that way, why, he's nasty to me,
anyway.  But I am happy with Martin Eden.  No one ever loved me before--no
man, I mean, in that way.  And it is sweet to be loved--that way.  You
know what I mean, mother dear.  It is sweet to feel that you are really
and truly a woman."  She buried her face in her mother's lap, sobbing.
"You think I am dreadful, I know, but I am honest, and I tell you just
how I feel."

Mrs. Morse was strangely sad and happy.  Her child-daughter, who was a
bachelor of arts, was gone; but in her place was a woman-daughter.  The
experiment had succeeded.  The strange void in Ruth's nature had been
filled, and filled without danger or penalty.  This rough sailor-fellow
had been the instrument, and, though Ruth did not love him, he had made
her conscious of her womanhood.

"His hand trembles," Ruth was confessing, her face, for shame's sake,
still buried.  "It is most amusing and ridiculous, but I feel sorry for
him, too.  And when his hands are too trembly, and his eyes too shiny,
why, I lecture him about his life and the wrong way he is going about it
to mend it.  But he worships me, I know.  His eyes and his hands do not
lie.  And it makes me feel grown-up, the thought of it, the very thought
of it; and I feel that I am possessed of something that is by rights my
own--that makes me like the other girls--and--and young women.  And,
then, too, I knew that I was not like them before, and I knew that it
worried you.  You thought you did not let me know that dear worry of
yours, but I did, and I wanted to--'to make good,' as Martin Eden says."

It was a holy hour for mother and daughter, and their eyes were wet as
they talked on in the twilight, Ruth all white innocence and frankness,
her mother sympathetic, receptive, yet calmly explaining and guiding.

"He is four years younger than you," she said.  "He has no place in the
world.  He has neither position nor salary.  He is impractical.  Loving
you, he should, in the name of common sense, be doing something that
would give him the right to marry, instead of paltering around with those
stories of his and with childish dreams.  Martin Eden, I am afraid, will
never grow up.  He does not take to responsibility and a man's work in
the world like your father did, or like all our friends, Mr. Butler for
one.  Martin Eden, I am afraid, will never be a money-earner.  And this
world is so ordered that money is necessary to happiness--oh, no, not
these swollen fortunes, but enough of money to permit of common comfort
and decency.  He--he has never spoken?"

"He has not breathed a word.  He has not attempted to; but if he did, I
would not let him, because, you see, I do not love him."

"I am glad of that.  I should not care to see my daughter, my one
daughter, who is so clean and pure, love a man like him.  There are noble
men in the world who are clean and true and manly.  Wait for them.  You
will find one some day, and you will love him and be loved by him, and
you will be happy with him as your father and I have been happy with each
other.  And there is one thing you must always carry in mind--"

"Yes, mother."

Mrs. Morse's voice was low and sweet as she said, "And that is the
children."

"I--have thought about them," Ruth confessed, remembering the wanton
thoughts that had vexed her in the past, her face again red with maiden
shame that she should be telling such things.

"And it is that, the children, that makes Mr. Eden impossible," Mrs.
Morse went on incisively.  "Their heritage must be clean, and he is, I am
afraid, not clean.  Your father has told me of sailors' lives, and--and
you understand."

Ruth pressed her mother's hand in assent, feeling that she really did
understand, though her conception was of something vague, remote, and
terrible that was beyond the scope of imagination.

"You know I do nothing without telling you," she began.  "--Only,
sometimes you must ask me, like this time.  I wanted to tell you, but I
did not know how.  It is false modesty, I know it is that, but you can
make it easy for me.  Sometimes, like this time, you must ask me, you
must give me a chance."

"Why, mother, you are a woman, too!" she cried exultantly, as they stood
up, catching her mother's hands and standing erect, facing her in the
twilight, conscious of a strangely sweet equality between them.  "I
should never have thought of you in that way if we had not had this talk.
I had to learn that I was a woman to know that you were one, too."

"We are women together," her mother said, drawing her to her and kissing
her.  "We are women together," she repeated, as they went out of the
room, their arms around each other's waists, their hearts swelling with a
new sense of companionship.

"Our little girl has become a woman," Mrs. Morse said proudly to her
husband an hour later.

"That means," he said, after a long look at his wife, "that means she is
in love."

"No, but that she is loved," was the smiling rejoinder.  "The experiment
has succeeded.  She is awakened at last."

"Then we'll have to get rid of him."  Mr. Morse spoke briskly, in matter-
of-fact, businesslike tones.

But his wife shook her head.  "It will not be necessary.  Ruth says he is
going to sea in a few days.  When he comes back, she will not be here.  We
will send her to Aunt Clara's.  And, besides, a year in the East, with
the change in climate, people, ideas, and everything, is just the thing
she needs."




CHAPTER XX


The desire to write was stirring in Martin once more.  Stories and poems
were springing into spontaneous creation in his brain, and he made notes
of them against the future time when he would give them expression.  But
he did not write.  This was his little vacation; he had resolved to
devote it to rest and love, and in both matters he prospered.  He was
soon spilling over with vitality, and each day he saw Ruth, at the moment
of meeting, she experienced the old shock of his strength and health.

"Be careful," her mother warned her once again.  "I am afraid you are
seeing too much of Martin Eden."

But Ruth laughed from security.  She was sure of herself, and in a few
days he would be off to sea.  Then, by the time he returned, she would be
away on her visit East.  There was a magic, however, in the strength and
health of Martin.  He, too, had been told of her contemplated Eastern
trip, and he felt the need for haste.  Yet he did not know how to make
love to a girl like Ruth.  Then, too, he was handicapped by the
possession of a great fund of experience with girls and women who had
been absolutely different from her.  They had known about love and life
and flirtation, while she knew nothing about such things.  Her prodigious
innocence appalled him, freezing on his lips all ardors of speech, and
convincing him, in spite of himself, of his own unworthiness.  Also he
was handicapped in another way.  He had himself never been in love
before.  He had liked women in that turgid past of his, and been
fascinated by some of them, but he had not known what it was to love
them.  He had whistled in a masterful, careless way, and they had come to
him.  They had been diversions, incidents, part of the game men play, but
a small part at most.  And now, and for the first time, he was a
suppliant, tender and timid and doubting.  He did not know the way of
love, nor its speech, while he was frightened at his loved one's clear
innocence.

In the course of getting acquainted with a varied world, whirling on
through the ever changing phases of it, he had learned a rule of conduct
which was to the effect that when one played a strange game, he should
let the other fellow play first.  This had stood him in good stead a
thousand times and trained him as an observer as well.  He knew how to
watch the thing that was strange, and to wait for a weakness, for a place
of entrance, to divulge itself.  It was like sparring for an opening in
fist-fighting.  And when such an opening came, he knew by long experience
to play for it and to play hard.

So he waited with Ruth and watched, desiring to speak his love but not
daring.  He was afraid of shocking her, and he was not sure of himself.
Had he but known it, he was following the right course with her.  Love
came into the world before articulate speech, and in its own early youth
it had learned ways and means that it had never forgotten.  It was in
this old, primitive way that Martin wooed Ruth.  He did not know he was
doing it at first, though later he divined it.  The touch of his hand on
hers was vastly more potent than any word he could utter, the impact of
his strength on her imagination was more alluring than the printed poems
and spoken passions of a thousand generations of lovers.  Whatever his
tongue could express would have appealed, in part, to her judgment; but
the touch of hand, the fleeting contact, made its way directly to her
instinct.  Her judgment was as young as she, but her instincts were as
old as the race and older.  They had been young when love was young, and
they were wiser than convention and opinion and all the new-born things.
So her judgment did not act.  There was no call upon it, and she did not
realize the strength of the appeal Martin made from moment to moment to
her love-nature.  That he loved her, on the other hand, was as clear as
day, and she consciously delighted in beholding his
love-manifestations--the glowing eyes with their tender lights, the
trembling hands, and the never failing swarthy flush that flooded darkly
under his sunburn.  She even went farther, in a timid way inciting him,
but doing it so delicately that he never suspected, and doing it half-
consciously, so that she scarcely suspected herself.  She thrilled with
these proofs of her power that proclaimed her a woman, and she took an
Eve-like delight in tormenting him and playing upon him.

Tongue-tied by inexperience and by excess of ardor, wooing unwittingly
and awkwardly, Martin continued his approach by contact.  The touch of
his hand was pleasant to her, and something deliciously more than
pleasant.  Martin did not know it, but he did know that it was not
distasteful to her.  Not that they touched hands often, save at meeting
and parting; but that in handling the bicycles, in strapping on the books
of verse they carried into the hills, and in conning the pages of books
side by side, there were opportunities for hand to stray against hand.
And there were opportunities, too, for her hair to brush his cheek, and
for shoulder to touch shoulder, as they leaned together over the beauty
of the books.  She smiled to herself at vagrant impulses which arose from
nowhere and suggested that she rumple his hair; while he desired greatly,
when they tired of reading, to rest his head in her lap and dream with
closed eyes about the future that was to be theirs.  On Sunday picnics at
Shellmound Park and Schuetzen Park, in the past, he had rested his head
on many laps, and, usually, he had slept soundly and selfishly while the
girls shaded his face from the sun and looked down and loved him and
wondered at his lordly carelessness of their love.  To rest his head in a
girl's lap had been the easiest thing in the world until now, and now he
found Ruth's lap inaccessible and impossible.  Yet it was right here, in
his reticence, that the strength of his wooing lay.  It was because of
this reticence that he never alarmed her.  Herself fastidious and timid,
she never awakened to the perilous trend of their intercourse.  Subtly
and unaware she grew toward him and closer to him, while he, sensing the
growing closeness, longed to dare but was afraid.

Once he dared, one afternoon, when he found her in the darkened living
room with a blinding headache.

"Nothing can do it any good," she had answered his inquiries.  "And
besides, I don't take headache powders.  Doctor Hall won't permit me."

"I can cure it, I think, and without drugs," was Martin's answer.  "I am
not sure, of course, but I'd like to try.  It's simply massage.  I
learned the trick first from the Japanese.  They are a race of masseurs,
you know.  Then I learned it all over again with variations from the
Hawaiians.  They call it _lomi-lomi_.  It can accomplish most of the
things drugs accomplish and a few things that drugs can't."

Scarcely had his hands touched her head when she sighed deeply.

"That is so good," she said.

She spoke once again, half an hour later, when she asked, "Aren't you
tired?"

The question was perfunctory, and she knew what the answer would be.  Then
she lost herself in drowsy contemplation of the soothing balm of his
strength: Life poured from the ends of his fingers, driving the pain
before it, or so it seemed to her, until with the easement of pain, she
fell asleep and he stole away.

She called him up by telephone that evening to thank him.

"I slept until dinner," she said.  "You cured me completely, Mr. Eden,
and I don't know how to thank you."

He was warm, and bungling of speech, and very happy, as he replied to
her, and there was dancing in his mind, throughout the telephone
conversation, the memory of Browning and of sickly Elizabeth Barrett.
What had been done could be done again, and he, Martin Eden, could do it
and would do it for Ruth Morse.  He went back to his room and to the
volume of Spencer's "Sociology" lying open on the bed.  But he could not
read.  Love tormented him and overrode his will, so that, despite all
determination, he found himself at the little ink-stained table.  The
sonnet he composed that night was the first of a love-cycle of fifty
sonnets which was completed within two months.  He had the "Love-sonnets
from the Portuguese" in mind as he wrote, and he wrote under the best
conditions for great work, at a climacteric of living, in the throes of
his own sweet love-madness.

The many hours he was not with Ruth he devoted to the "Love-cycle," to
reading at home, or to the public reading-rooms, where he got more
closely in touch with the magazines of the day and the nature of their
policy and content.  The hours he spent with Ruth were maddening alike in
promise and in inconclusiveness.  It was a week after he cured her
headache that a moonlight sail on Lake Merritt was proposed by Norman and
seconded by Arthur and Olney.  Martin was the only one capable of
handling a boat, and he was pressed into service.  Ruth sat near him in
the stern, while the three young fellows lounged amidships, deep in a
wordy wrangle over "frat" affairs.

The moon had not yet risen, and Ruth, gazing into the starry vault of the
sky and exchanging no speech with Martin, experienced a sudden feeling of
loneliness.  She glanced at him.  A puff of wind was heeling the boat
over till the deck was awash, and he, one hand on tiller and the other on
main-sheet, was luffing slightly, at the same time peering ahead to make
out the near-lying north shore.  He was unaware of her gaze, and she
watched him intently, speculating fancifully about the strange warp of
soul that led him, a young man with signal powers, to fritter away his
time on the writing of stories and poems foredoomed to mediocrity and
failure.

Her eyes wandered along the strong throat, dimly seen in the starlight,
and over the firm-poised head, and the old desire to lay her hands upon
his neck came back to her.  The strength she abhorred attracted her.  Her
feeling of loneliness became more pronounced, and she felt tired.  Her
position on the heeling boat irked her, and she remembered the headache
he had cured and the soothing rest that resided in him.  He was sitting
beside her, quite beside her, and the boat seemed to tilt her toward him.
Then arose in her the impulse to lean against him, to rest herself
against his strength--a vague, half-formed impulse, which, even as she
considered it, mastered her and made her lean toward him.  Or was it the
heeling of the boat?  She did not know.  She never knew.  She knew only
that she was leaning against him and that the easement and soothing rest
were very good.  Perhaps it had been the boat's fault, but she made no
effort to retrieve it.  She leaned lightly against his shoulder, but she
leaned, and she continued to lean when he shifted his position to make it
more comfortable for her.

It was a madness, but she refused to consider the madness.  She was no
longer herself but a woman, with a woman's clinging need; and though she
leaned ever so lightly, the need seemed satisfied.  She was no longer
tired.  Martin did not speak.  Had he, the spell would have been broken.
But his reticence of love prolonged it.  He was dazed and dizzy.  He
could not understand what was happening.  It was too wonderful to be
anything but a delirium.  He conquered a mad desire to let go sheet and
tiller and to clasp her in his arms.  His intuition told him it was the
wrong thing to do, and he was glad that sheet and tiller kept his hands
occupied and fended off temptation.  But he luffed the boat less
delicately, spilling the wind shamelessly from the sail so as to prolong
the tack to the north shore.  The shore would compel him to go about, and
the contact would be broken.  He sailed with skill, stopping way on the
boat without exciting the notice of the wranglers, and mentally forgiving
his hardest voyages in that they had made this marvellous night possible,
giving him mastery over sea and boat and wind so that he could sail with
her beside him, her dear weight against him on his shoulder.

When the first light of the rising moon touched the sail, illuminating
the boat with pearly radiance, Ruth moved away from him.  And, even as
she moved, she felt him move away.  The impulse to avoid detection was
mutual.  The episode was tacitly and secretly intimate.  She sat apart
from him with burning cheeks, while the full force of it came home to
her.  She had been guilty of something she would not have her brothers
see, nor Olney see.  Why had she done it?  She had never done anything
like it in her life, and yet she had been moonlight-sailing with young
men before.  She had never desired to do anything like it.  She was
overcome with shame and with the mystery of her own burgeoning womanhood.
She stole a glance at Martin, who was busy putting the boat about on the
other tack, and she could have hated him for having made her do an
immodest and shameful thing.  And he, of all men!  Perhaps her mother was
right, and she was seeing too much of him.  It would never happen again,
she resolved, and she would see less of him in the future.  She
entertained a wild idea of explaining to him the first time they were
alone together, of lying to him, of mentioning casually the attack of
faintness that had overpowered her just before the moon came up.  Then
she remembered how they had drawn mutually away before the revealing
moon, and she knew he would know it for a lie.

In the days that swiftly followed she was no longer herself but a
strange, puzzling creature, wilful over judgment and scornful of self-
analysis, refusing to peer into the future or to think about herself and
whither she was drifting.  She was in a fever of tingling mystery,
alternately frightened and charmed, and in constant bewilderment.  She
had one idea firmly fixed, however, which insured her security.  She
would not let Martin speak his love.  As long as she did this, all would
be well.  In a few days he would be off to sea.  And even if he did
speak, all would be well.  It could not be otherwise, for she did not
love him.  Of course, it would be a painful half hour for him, and an
embarrassing half hour for her, because it would be her first proposal.
She thrilled deliciously at the thought.  She was really a woman, with a
man ripe to ask for her in marriage.  It was a lure to all that was
fundamental in her sex.  The fabric of her life, of all that constituted
her, quivered and grew tremulous.  The thought fluttered in her mind like
a flame-attracted moth.  She went so far as to imagine Martin proposing,
herself putting the words into his mouth; and she rehearsed her refusal,
tempering it with kindness and exhorting him to true and noble manhood.
And especially he must stop smoking cigarettes.  She would make a point
of that.  But no, she must not let him speak at all.  She could stop him,
and she had told her mother that she would.  All flushed and burning, she
regretfully dismissed the conjured situation.  Her first proposal would
have to be deferred to a more propitious time and a more eligible suitor.




CHAPTER XXI


Came a beautiful fall day, warm and languid, palpitant with the hush of
the changing season, a California Indian summer day, with hazy sun and
wandering wisps of breeze that did not stir the slumber of the air.  Filmy
purple mists, that were not vapors but fabrics woven of color, hid in the
recesses of the hills.  San Francisco lay like a blur of smoke upon her
heights.  The intervening bay was a dull sheen of molten metal, whereon
sailing craft lay motionless or drifted with the lazy tide.  Far
Tamalpais, barely seen in the silver haze, bulked hugely by the Golden
Gate, the latter a pale gold pathway under the westering sun.  Beyond,
the Pacific, dim and vast, was raising on its sky-line tumbled
cloud-masses that swept landward, giving warning of the first blustering
breath of winter.

The erasure of summer was at hand.  Yet summer lingered, fading and
fainting among her hills, deepening the purple of her valleys, spinning a
shroud of haze from waning powers and sated raptures, dying with the calm
content of having lived and lived well.  And among the hills, on their
favorite knoll, Martin and Ruth sat side by side, their heads bent over
the same pages, he reading aloud from the love-sonnets of the woman who
had loved Browning as it is given to few men to be loved.

But the reading languished.  The spell of passing beauty all about them
was too strong.  The golden year was dying as it had lived, a beautiful
and unrepentant voluptuary, and reminiscent rapture and content freighted
heavily the air.  It entered into them, dreamy and languorous, weakening
the fibres of resolution, suffusing the face of morality, or of judgment,
with haze and purple mist.  Martin felt tender and melting, and from time
to time warm glows passed over him.  His head was very near to hers, and
when wandering phantoms of breeze stirred her hair so that it touched his
face, the printed pages swam before his eyes.

"I don't believe you know a word of what you are reading," she said once
when he had lost his place.

He looked at her with burning eyes, and was on the verge of becoming
awkward, when a retort came to his lips.

"I don't believe you know either.  What was the last sonnet about?"

"I don't know," she laughed frankly.  "I've already forgotten.  Don't let
us read any more.  The day is too beautiful."

"It will be our last in the hills for some time," he announced gravely.
"There's a storm gathering out there on the sea-rim."

The book slipped from his hands to the ground, and they sat idly and
silently, gazing out over the dreamy bay with eyes that dreamed and did
not see.  Ruth glanced sidewise at his neck.  She did not lean toward
him.  She was drawn by some force outside of herself and stronger than
gravitation, strong as destiny.  It was only an inch to lean, and it was
accomplished without volition on her part.  Her shoulder touched his as
lightly as a butterfly touches a flower, and just as lightly was the
counter-pressure.  She felt his shoulder press hers, and a tremor run
through him.  Then was the time for her to draw back.  But she had become
an automaton.  Her actions had passed beyond the control of her will--she
never thought of control or will in the delicious madness that was upon
her.  His arm began to steal behind her and around her.  She waited its
slow progress in a torment of delight.  She waited, she knew not for
what, panting, with dry, burning lips, a leaping pulse, and a fever of
expectancy in all her blood.  The girdling arm lifted higher and drew her
toward him, drew her slowly and caressingly.  She could wait no longer.
With a tired sigh, and with an impulsive movement all her own,
unpremeditated, spasmodic, she rested her head upon his breast.  His head
bent over swiftly, and, as his lips approached, hers flew to meet them.

This must be love, she thought, in the one rational moment that was
vouchsafed her.  If it was not love, it was too shameful.  It could be
nothing else than love.  She loved the man whose arms were around her and
whose lips were pressed to hers.  She pressed more, tightly to him, with
a snuggling movement of her body.  And a moment later, tearing herself
half out of his embrace, suddenly and exultantly she reached up and
placed both hands upon Martin Eden's sunburnt neck.  So exquisite was the
pang of love and desire fulfilled that she uttered a low moan, relaxed
her hands, and lay half-swooning in his arms.

Not a word had been spoken, and not a word was spoken for a long time.
Twice he bent and kissed her, and each time her lips met his shyly and
her body made its happy, nestling movement.  She clung to him, unable to
release herself, and he sat, half supporting her in his arms, as he gazed
with unseeing eyes at the blur of the great city across the bay.  For
once there were no visions in his brain.  Only colors and lights and
glows pulsed there, warm as the day and warm as his love.  He bent over
her.  She was speaking.

"When did you love me?" she whispered.

"From the first, the very first, the first moment I laid eye on you.  I
was mad for love of you then, and in all the time that has passed since
then I have only grown the madder.  I am maddest, now, dear.  I am almost
a lunatic, my head is so turned with joy."

"I am glad I am a woman, Martin--dear," she said, after a long sigh.

He crushed her in his arms again and again, and then asked:-

"And you?  When did you first know?"

"Oh, I knew it all the time, almost, from the first."

"And I have been as blind as a bat!" he cried, a ring of vexation in his
voice.  "I never dreamed it until just how, when I--when I kissed you."

"I didn't mean that."  She drew herself partly away and looked at him.  "I
meant I knew you loved almost from the first."

"And you?" he demanded.

"It came to me suddenly."  She was speaking very slowly, her eyes warm
and fluttery and melting, a soft flush on her cheeks that did not go
away.  "I never knew until just now when--you put your arms around me.
And I never expected to marry you, Martin, not until just now.  How did
you make me love you?"

"I don't know," he laughed, "unless just by loving you, for I loved you
hard enough to melt the heart of a stone, much less the heart of the
living, breathing woman you are."

"This is so different from what I thought love would be," she announced
irrelevantly.

"What did you think it would be like?"

"I didn't think it would be like this."  She was looking into his eyes at
the moment, but her own dropped as she continued, "You see, I didn't know
what this was like."

He offered to draw her toward him again, but it was no more than a
tentative muscular movement of the girdling arm, for he feared that he
might be greedy.  Then he felt her body yielding, and once again she was
close in his arms and lips were pressed on lips.

"What will my people say?" she queried, with sudden apprehension, in one
of the pauses.

"I don't know.  We can find out very easily any time we are so minded."

"But if mamma objects?  I am sure I am afraid to tell her."

"Let me tell her," he volunteered valiantly.  "I think your mother does
not like me, but I can win her around.  A fellow who can win you can win
anything.  And if we don't--"

"Yes?"

"Why, we'll have each other.  But there's no danger not winning your
mother to our marriage.  She loves you too well."

"I should not like to break her heart," Ruth said pensively.

He felt like assuring her that mothers' hearts were not so easily broken,
but instead he said, "And love is the greatest thing in the world."

"Do you know, Martin, you sometimes frighten me.  I am frightened now,
when I think of you and of what you have been.  You must be very, very
good to me.  Remember, after all, that I am only a child.  I never loved
before."

"Nor I.  We are both children together.  And we are fortunate above most,
for we have found our first love in each other."

"But that is impossible!" she cried, withdrawing herself from his arms
with a swift, passionate movement.  "Impossible for you.  You have been a
sailor, and sailors, I have heard, are--are--"

Her voice faltered and died away.

"Are addicted to having a wife in every port?" he suggested.  "Is that
what you mean?"

"Yes," she answered in a low voice.

"But that is not love."  He spoke authoritatively.  "I have been in many
ports, but I never knew a passing touch of love until I saw you that
first night.  Do you know, when I said good night and went away, I was
almost arrested."

"Arrested?"

"Yes.  The policeman thought I was drunk; and I was, too--with love for
you."

"But you said we were children, and I said it was impossible, for you,
and we have strayed away from the point."

"I said that I never loved anybody but you," he replied.  "You are my
first, my very first."

"And yet you have been a sailor," she objected.

"But that doesn't prevent me from loving you the first."

"And there have been women--other women--oh!"

And to Martin Eden's supreme surprise, she burst into a storm of tears
that took more kisses than one and many caresses to drive away.  And all
the while there was running through his head Kipling's line: "_And the
Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins_."  It was
true, he decided; though the novels he had read had led him to believe
otherwise.  His idea, for which the novels were responsible, had been
that only formal proposals obtained in the upper classes.  It was all
right enough, down whence he had come, for youths and maidens to win each
other by contact; but for the exalted personages up above on the heights
to make love in similar fashion had seemed unthinkable.  Yet the novels
were wrong.  Here was a proof of it.  The same pressures and caresses,
unaccompanied by speech, that were efficacious with the girls of the
working-class, were equally efficacious with the girls above the working-
class.  They were all of the same flesh, after all, sisters under their
skins; and he might have known as much himself had he remembered his
Spencer.  As he held Ruth in his arms and soothed her, he took great
consolation in the thought that the Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady were
pretty much alike under their skins.  It brought Ruth closer to him, made
her possible.  Her dear flesh was as anybody's flesh, as his flesh.  There
was no bar to their marriage.  Class difference was the only difference,
and class was extrinsic.  It could be shaken off.  A slave, he had read,
had risen to the Roman purple.  That being so, then he could rise to
Ruth.  Under her purity, and saintliness, and culture, and ethereal
beauty of soul, she was, in things fundamentally human, just like Lizzie
Connolly and all Lizzie Connollys.  All that was possible of them was
possible of her.  She could love, and hate, maybe have hysterics; and she
could certainly be jealous, as she was jealous now, uttering her last
sobs in his arms.

"Besides, I am older than you," she remarked suddenly, opening her eyes
and looking up at him, "three years older."

"Hush, you are only a child, and I am forty years older than you, in
experience," was his answer.

In truth, they were children together, so far as love was concerned, and
they were as naive and immature in the expression of their love as a pair
of children, and this despite the fact that she was crammed with a
university education and that his head was full of scientific philosophy
and the hard facts of life.

They sat on through the passing glory of the day, talking as lovers are
prone to talk, marvelling at the wonder of love and at destiny that had
flung them so strangely together, and dogmatically believing that they
loved to a degree never attained by lovers before.  And they returned
insistently, again and again, to a rehearsal of their first impressions
of each other and to hopeless attempts to analyze just precisely what
they felt for each other and how much there was of it.

The cloud-masses on the western horizon received the descending sun, and
the circle of the sky turned to rose, while the zenith glowed with the
same warm color.  The rosy light was all about them, flooding over them,
as she sang, "Good-by, Sweet Day."  She sang softly, leaning in the
cradle of his arm, her hands in his, their hearts in each other's hands.




CHAPTER XXII


Mrs. Morse did not require a mother's intuition to read the advertisement
in Ruth's face when she returned home.  The flush that would not leave
the cheeks told the simple story, and more eloquently did the eyes, large
and bright, reflecting an unmistakable inward glory.

"What has happened?" Mrs. Morse asked, having bided her time till Ruth
had gone to bed.

"You know?" Ruth queried, with trembling lips.

For reply, her mother's arm went around her, and a hand was softly
caressing her hair.

"He did not speak," she blurted out.  "I did not intend that it should
happen, and I would never have let him speak--only he didn't speak."

"But if he did not speak, then nothing could have happened, could it?"

"But it did, just the same."

"In the name of goodness, child, what are you babbling about?" Mrs. Morse
was bewildered.  "I don't think I know what happened, after all.  What
did happen?"

Ruth looked at her mother in surprise.

"I thought you knew.  Why, we're engaged, Martin and I."

Mrs. Morse laughed with incredulous vexation.

"No, he didn't speak," Ruth explained.  "He just loved me, that was all.
I was as surprised as you are.  He didn't say a word.  He just put his
arm around me.  And--and I was not myself.  And he kissed me, and I
kissed him.  I couldn't help it.  I just had to.  And then I knew I loved
him."

She paused, waiting with expectancy the benediction of her mother's kiss,
but Mrs. Morse was coldly silent.

"It is a dreadful accident, I know," Ruth recommenced with a sinking
voice.  "And I don't know how you will ever forgive me.  But I couldn't
help it.  I did not dream that I loved him until that moment.  And you
must tell father for me."

"Would it not be better not to tell your father?  Let me see Martin Eden,
and talk with him, and explain.  He will understand and release you."

"No! no!" Ruth cried, starting up.  "I do not want to be released.  I
love him, and love is very sweet.  I am going to marry him--of course, if
you will let me."

"We have other plans for you, Ruth, dear, your father and I--oh, no, no;
no man picked out for you, or anything like that.  Our plans go no
farther than your marrying some man in your own station in life, a good
and honorable gentleman, whom you will select yourself, when you love
him."

"But I love Martin already," was the plaintive protest.

"We would not influence your choice in any way; but you are our daughter,
and we could not bear to see you make a marriage such as this.  He has
nothing but roughness and coarseness to offer you in exchange for all
that is refined and delicate in you.  He is no match for you in any way.
He could not support you.  We have no foolish ideas about wealth, but
comfort is another matter, and our daughter should at least marry a man
who can give her that--and not a penniless adventurer, a sailor, a
cowboy, a smuggler, and Heaven knows what else, who, in addition to
everything, is hare-brained and irresponsible."

Ruth was silent.  Every word she recognized as true.

"He wastes his time over his writing, trying to accomplish what geniuses
and rare men with college educations sometimes accomplish.  A man
thinking of marriage should be preparing for marriage.  But not he.  As I
have said, and I know you agree with me, he is irresponsible.  And why
should he not be?  It is the way of sailors.  He has never learned to be
economical or temperate.  The spendthrift years have marked him.  It is
not his fault, of course, but that does not alter his nature.  And have
you thought of the years of licentiousness he inevitably has lived?  Have
you thought of that, daughter?  You know what marriage means."

Ruth shuddered and clung close to her mother.

"I have thought."  Ruth waited a long time for the thought to frame
itself.  "And it is terrible.  It sickens me to think of it.  I told you
it was a dreadful accident, my loving him; but I can't help myself.  Could
you help loving father?  Then it is the same with me.  There is something
in me, in him--I never knew it was there until to-day--but it is there,
and it makes me love him.  I never thought to love him, but, you see, I
do," she concluded, a certain faint triumph in her voice.

They talked long, and to little purpose, in conclusion agreeing to wait
an indeterminate time without doing anything.

The same conclusion was reached, a little later that night, between Mrs.
Morse and her husband, after she had made due confession of the
miscarriage of her plans.

"It could hardly have come otherwise," was Mr. Morse's judgment.  "This
sailor-fellow has been the only man she was in touch with.  Sooner or
later she was going to awaken anyway; and she did awaken, and lo! here
was this sailor-fellow, the only accessible man at the moment, and of
course she promptly loved him, or thought she did, which amounts to the
same thing."

Mrs. Morse took it upon herself to work slowly and indirectly upon Ruth,
rather than to combat her.  There would be plenty of time for this, for
Martin was not in position to marry.

"Let her see all she wants of him," was Mr. Morse's advice.  "The more
she knows him, the less she'll love him, I wager.  And give her plenty of
contrast.  Make a point of having young people at the house.  Young women
and young men, all sorts of young men, clever men, men who have done
something or who are doing things, men of her own class, gentlemen.  She
can gauge him by them.  They will show him up for what he is.  And after
all, he is a mere boy of twenty-one.  Ruth is no more than a child.  It
is calf love with the pair of them, and they will grow out of it."

So the matter rested.  Within the family it was accepted that Ruth and
Martin were engaged, but no announcement was made.  The family did not
think it would ever be necessary.  Also, it was tacitly understood that
it was to be a long engagement.  They did not ask Martin to go to work,
nor to cease writing.  They did not intend to encourage him to mend
himself.  And he aided and abetted them in their unfriendly designs, for
going to work was farthest from his thoughts.

"I wonder if you'll like what I have done!" he said to Ruth several days
later.  "I've decided that boarding with my sister is too expensive, and
I am going to board myself.  I've rented a little room out in North
Oakland, retired neighborhood and all the rest, you know, and I've bought
an oil-burner on which to cook."

Ruth was overjoyed.  The oil-burner especially pleased her.

"That was the way Mr. Butler began his start," she said.

Martin frowned inwardly at the citation of that worthy gentleman, and
went on: "I put stamps on all my manuscripts and started them off to the
editors again.  Then to-day I moved in, and to-morrow I start to work."

"A position!" she cried, betraying the gladness of her surprise in all
her body, nestling closer to him, pressing his hand, smiling.  "And you
never told me!  What is it?"

He shook his head.

"I meant that I was going to work at my writing."  Her face fell, and he
went on hastily.  "Don't misjudge me.  I am not going in this time with
any iridescent ideas.  It is to be a cold, prosaic, matter-of-fact
business proposition.  It is better than going to sea again, and I shall
earn more money than any position in Oakland can bring an unskilled man."

"You see, this vacation I have taken has given me perspective.  I haven't
been working the life out of my body, and I haven't been writing, at
least not for publication.  All I've done has been to love you and to
think.  I've read some, too, but it has been part of my thinking, and I
have read principally magazines.  I have generalized about myself, and
the world, my place in it, and my chance to win to a place that will be
fit for you.  Also, I've been reading Spencer's 'Philosophy of Style,'
and found out a lot of what was the matter with me--or my writing,
rather; and for that matter with most of the writing that is published
every month in the magazines."

"But the upshot of it all--of my thinking and reading and loving--is that
I am going to move to Grub Street.  I shall leave masterpieces alone and
do hack-work--jokes, paragraphs, feature articles, humorous verse, and
society verse--all the rot for which there seems so much demand.  Then
there are the newspaper syndicates, and the newspaper short-story
syndicates, and the syndicates for the Sunday supplements.  I can go
ahead and hammer out the stuff they want, and earn the equivalent of a
good salary by it.  There are free-lances, you know, who earn as much as
four or five hundred a month.  I don't care to become as they; but I'll
earn a good living, and have plenty of time to myself, which I wouldn't
have in any position."

"Then, I'll have my spare time for study and for real work.  In between
the grind I'll try my hand at masterpieces, and I'll study and prepare
myself for the writing of masterpieces.  Why, I am amazed at the distance
I have come already.  When I first tried to write, I had nothing to write
about except a few paltry experiences which I neither understood nor
appreciated.  But I had no thoughts.  I really didn't.  I didn't even
have the words with which to think.  My experiences were so many
meaningless pictures.  But as I began to add to my knowledge, and to my
vocabulary, I saw something more in my experiences than mere pictures.  I
retained the pictures and I found their interpretation.  That was when I
began to do good work, when I wrote 'Adventure,'  'Joy,' 'The Pot,' 'The
Wine of Life,' 'The Jostling Street,' the 'Love-cycle,' and the 'Sea
Lyrics.'  I shall write more like them, and better; but I shall do it in
my spare time.  My feet are on the solid earth, now.  Hack-work and
income first, masterpieces afterward.  Just to show you, I wrote half a
dozen jokes last night for the comic weeklies; and just as I was going to
bed, the thought struck me to try my hand at a triolet--a humorous one;
and inside an hour I had written four.  They ought to be worth a dollar
apiece.  Four dollars right there for a few afterthoughts on the way to
bed."

"Of course it's all valueless, just so much dull and sordid plodding; but
it is no more dull and sordid than keeping books at sixty dollars a
month, adding up endless columns of meaningless figures until one dies.
And furthermore, the hack-work keeps me in touch with things literary and
gives me time to try bigger things."

"But what good are these bigger-things, these masterpieces?" Ruth
demanded.  "You can't sell them."

"Oh, yes, I can," he began; but she interrupted.

"All those you named, and which you say yourself are good--you have not
sold any of them.  We can't get married on masterpieces that won't sell."

"Then we'll get married on triolets that will sell," he asserted stoutly,
putting his arm around her and drawing a very unresponsive sweetheart
toward him.

"Listen to this," he went on in attempted gayety.  "It's not art, but
it's a dollar.

   "He came in
   When I was out,
   To borrow some tin
   Was why he came in,
   And he went without;
   So I was in
   And he was out."

The merry lilt with which he had invested the jingle was at variance with
the dejection that came into his face as he finished.  He had drawn no
smile from Ruth.  She was looking at him in an earnest and troubled way.

"It may be a dollar," she said, "but it is a jester's dollar, the fee of
a clown.  Don't you see, Martin, the whole thing is lowering.  I want the
man I love and honor to be something finer and higher than a perpetrator
of jokes and doggerel."

"You want him to be like--say Mr. Butler?" he suggested.

"I know you don't like Mr. Butler," she began.

"Mr. Butler's all right," he interrupted.  "It's only his indigestion I
find fault with.  But to save me I can't see any difference between
writing jokes or comic verse and running a type-writer, taking dictation,
or keeping sets of books.  It is all a means to an end.  Your theory is
for me to begin with keeping books in order to become a successful lawyer
or man of business.  Mine is to begin with hack-work and develop into an
able author."

"There is a difference," she insisted.

"What is it?"

"Why, your good work, what you yourself call good, you can't sell.  You
have tried, you know that,--but the editors won't buy it."

"Give me time, dear," he pleaded.  "The hack-work is only makeshift, and
I don't take it seriously.  Give me two years.  I shall succeed in that
time, and the editors will be glad to buy my good work.  I know what I am
saying; I have faith in myself.  I know what I have in me; I know what
literature is, now; I know the average rot that is poured out by a lot of
little men; and I know that at the end of two years I shall be on the
highroad to success.  As for business, I shall never succeed at it.  I am
not in sympathy with it.  It strikes me as dull, and stupid, and
mercenary, and tricky.  Anyway I am not adapted for it.  I'd never get
beyond a clerkship, and how could you and I be happy on the paltry
earnings of a clerk?  I want the best of everything in the world for you,
and the only time when I won't want it will be when there is something
better.  And I'm going to get it, going to get all of it.  The income of
a successful author makes Mr. Butler look cheap.  A 'best-seller' will
earn anywhere between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars--sometimes
more and sometimes less; but, as a rule, pretty close to those figures."

She remained silent; her disappointment was apparent.

"Well?" he asked.

"I had hoped and planned otherwise.  I had thought, and I still think,
that the best thing for you would be to study shorthand--you already know
type-writing--and go into father's office.  You have a good mind, and I
am confident you would succeed as a lawyer."




CHAPTER XXIII


That Ruth had little faith in his power as a writer, did not alter her
nor diminish her in Martin's eyes.  In the breathing spell of the
vacation he had taken, he had spent many hours in self-analysis, and
thereby learned much of himself.  He had discovered that he loved beauty
more than fame, and that what desire he had for fame was largely for
Ruth's sake.  It was for this reason that his desire for fame was strong.
He wanted to be great in the world's eyes; "to make good," as he
expressed it, in order that the woman he loved should be proud of him and
deem him worthy.

As for himself, he loved beauty passionately, and the joy of serving her
was to him sufficient wage.  And more than beauty he loved Ruth.  He
considered love the finest thing in the world.  It was love that had
worked the revolution in him, changing him from an uncouth sailor to a
student and an artist; therefore, to him, the finest and greatest of the
three, greater than learning and artistry, was love.  Already he had
discovered that his brain went beyond Ruth's, just as it went beyond the
brains of her brothers, or the brain of her father.  In spite of every
advantage of university training, and in the face of her bachelorship of
arts, his power of intellect overshadowed hers, and his year or so of
self-study and equipment gave him a mastery of the affairs of the world
and art and life that she could never hope to possess.

All this he realized, but it did not affect his love for her, nor her
love for him.  Love was too fine and noble, and he was too loyal a lover
for him to besmirch love with criticism.  What did love have to do with
Ruth's divergent views on art, right conduct, the French Revolution, or
equal suffrage?  They were mental processes, but love was beyond reason;
it was superrational.  He could not belittle love.  He worshipped it.
Love lay on the mountain-tops beyond the valley-land of reason.  It was a
sublimates condition of existence, the topmost peak of living, and it
came rarely.  Thanks to the school of scientific philosophers he favored,
he knew the biological significance of love; but by a refined process of
the same scientific reasoning he reached the conclusion that the human
organism achieved its highest purpose in love, that love must not be
questioned, but must be accepted as the highest guerdon of life.  Thus,
he considered the lover blessed over all creatures, and it was a delight
to him to think of "God's own mad lover," rising above the things of
earth, above wealth and judgment, public opinion and applause, rising
above life itself and "dying on a kiss."

Much of this Martin had already reasoned out, and some of it he reasoned
out later.  In the meantime he worked, taking no recreation except when
he went to see Ruth, and living like a Spartan.  He paid two dollars and
a half a month rent for the small room he got from his Portuguese
landlady, Maria Silva, a virago and a widow, hard working and harsher
tempered, rearing her large brood of children somehow, and drowning her
sorrow and fatigue at irregular intervals in a gallon of the thin, sour
wine that she bought from the corner grocery and saloon for fifteen
cents.  From detesting her and her foul tongue at first, Martin grew to
admire her as he observed the brave fight she made.  There were but four
rooms in the little house--three, when Martin's was subtracted.  One of
these, the parlor, gay with an ingrain carpet and dolorous with a funeral
card and a death-picture of one of her numerous departed babes, was kept
strictly for company.  The blinds were always down, and her barefooted
tribe was never permitted to enter the sacred precinct save on state
occasions.  She cooked, and all ate, in the kitchen, where she likewise
washed, starched, and ironed clothes on all days of the week except
Sunday; for her income came largely from taking in washing from her more
prosperous neighbors.  Remained the bedroom, small as the one occupied by
Martin, into which she and her seven little ones crowded and slept.  It
was an everlasting miracle to Martin how it was accomplished, and from
her side of the thin partition he heard nightly every detail of the going
to bed, the squalls and squabbles, the soft chattering, and the sleepy,
twittering noises as of birds.  Another source of income to Maria were
her cows, two of them, which she milked night and morning and which
gained a surreptitious livelihood from vacant lots and the grass that
grew on either side the public side walks, attended always by one or more
of her ragged boys, whose watchful guardianship consisted chiefly in
keeping their eyes out for the poundmen.

In his own small room Martin lived, slept, studied, wrote, and kept
house.  Before the one window, looking out on the tiny front porch, was
the kitchen table that served as desk, library, and type-writing stand.
The bed, against the rear wall, occupied two-thirds of the total space of
the room.  The table was flanked on one side by a gaudy bureau,
manufactured for profit and not for service, the thin veneer of which was
shed day by day.  This bureau stood in the corner, and in the opposite
corner, on the table's other flank, was the kitchen--the oil-stove on a
dry-goods box, inside of which were dishes and cooking utensils, a shelf
on the wall for provisions, and a bucket of water on the floor.  Martin
had to carry his water from the kitchen sink, there being no tap in his
room.  On days when there was much steam to his cooking, the harvest of
veneer from the bureau was unusually generous.  Over the bed, hoisted by
a tackle to the ceiling, was his bicycle.  At first he had tried to keep
it in the basement; but the tribe of Silva, loosening the bearings and
puncturing the tires, had driven him out.  Next he attempted the tiny
front porch, until a howling southeaster drenched the wheel a night-long.
Then he had retreated with it to his room and slung it aloft.

A small closet contained his clothes and the books he had accumulated and
for which there was no room on the table or under the table.  Hand in
hand with reading, he had developed the habit of making notes, and so
copiously did he make them that there would have been no existence for
him in the confined quarters had he not rigged several clothes-lines
across the room on which the notes were hung.  Even so, he was crowded
until navigating the room was a difficult task.  He could not open the
door without first closing the closet door, and vice versa.  It was
impossible for him anywhere to traverse the room in a straight line.  To
go from the door to the head of the bed was a zigzag course that he was
never quite able to accomplish in the dark without collisions.  Having
settled the difficulty of the conflicting doors, he had to steer sharply
to the right to avoid the kitchen.  Next, he sheered to the left, to
escape the foot of the bed; but this sheer, if too generous, brought him
against the corner of the table.  With a sudden twitch and lurch, he
terminated the sheer and bore off to the right along a sort of canal, one
bank of which was the bed, the other the table.  When the one chair in
the room was at its usual place before the table, the canal was
unnavigable.  When the chair was not in use, it reposed on top of the
bed, though sometimes he sat on the chair when cooking, reading a book
while the water boiled, and even becoming skilful enough to manage a
paragraph or two while steak was frying.  Also, so small was the little
corner that constituted the kitchen, he was able, sitting down, to reach
anything he needed.  In fact, it was expedient to cook sitting down;
standing up, he was too often in his own way.

In conjunction with a perfect stomach that could digest anything, he
possessed knowledge of the various foods that were at the same time
nutritious and cheap.  Pea-soup was a common article in his diet, as well
as potatoes and beans, the latter large and brown and cooked in Mexican
style.  Rice, cooked as American housewives never cook it and can never
learn to cook it, appeared on Martin's table at least once a day.  Dried
fruits were less expensive than fresh, and he had usually a pot of them,
cooked and ready at hand, for they took the place of butter on his bread.
Occasionally he graced his table with a piece of round-steak, or with a
soup-bone.  Coffee, without cream or milk, he had twice a day, in the
evening substituting tea; but both coffee and tea were excellently
cooked.

There was need for him to be economical.  His vacation had consumed
nearly all he had earned in the laundry, and he was so far from his
market that weeks must elapse before he could hope for the first returns
from his hack-work.  Except at such times as he saw Ruth, or dropped in
to see his sister Gertude, he lived a recluse, in each day accomplishing
at least three days' labor of ordinary men.  He slept a scant five hours,
and only one with a constitution of iron could have held himself down, as
Martin did, day after day, to nineteen consecutive hours of toil.  He
never lost a moment.  On the looking-glass were lists of definitions and
pronunciations; when shaving, or dressing, or combing his hair, he conned
these lists over.  Similar lists were on the wall over the oil-stove, and
they were similarly conned while he was engaged in cooking or in washing
the dishes.  New lists continually displaced the old ones.  Every strange
or partly familiar word encountered in his reading was immediately jotted
down, and later, when a sufficient number had been accumulated, were
typed and pinned to the wall or looking-glass.  He even carried them in
his pockets, and reviewed them at odd moments on the street, or while
waiting in butcher shop or grocery to be served.

He went farther in the matter.  Reading the works of men who had arrived,
he noted every result achieved by them, and worked out the tricks by
which they had been achieved--the tricks of narrative, of exposition, of
style, the points of view, the contrasts, the epigrams; and of all these
he made lists for study.  He did not ape.  He sought principles.  He drew
up lists of effective and fetching mannerisms, till out of many such,
culled from many writers, he was able to induce the general principle of
mannerism, and, thus equipped, to cast about for new and original ones of
his own, and to weigh and measure and appraise them properly.  In similar
manner he collected lists of strong phrases, the phrases of living
language, phrases that bit like acid and scorched like flame, or that
glowed and were mellow and luscious in the midst of the arid desert of
common speech.  He sought always for the principle that lay behind and
beneath.  He wanted to know how the thing was done; after that he could
do it for himself.  He was not content with the fair face of beauty.  He
dissected beauty in his crowded little bedroom laboratory, where cooking
smells alternated with the outer bedlam of the Silva tribe; and, having
dissected and learned the anatomy of beauty, he was nearer being able to
create beauty itself.

He was so made that he could work only with understanding.  He could not
work blindly, in the dark, ignorant of what he was producing and trusting
to chance and the star of his genius that the effect produced should be
right and fine.  He had no patience with chance effects.  He wanted to
know why and how.  His was deliberate creative genius, and, before he
began a story or poem, the thing itself was already alive in his brain,
with the end in sight and the means of realizing that end in his
conscious possession.  Otherwise the effort was doomed to failure.  On
the other hand, he appreciated the chance effects in words and phrases
that came lightly and easily into his brain, and that later stood all
tests of beauty and power and developed tremendous and incommunicable
connotations.  Before such he bowed down and marvelled, knowing that they
were beyond the deliberate creation of any man.  And no matter how much
he dissected beauty in search of the principles that underlie beauty and
make beauty possible, he was aware, always, of the innermost mystery of
beauty to which he did not penetrate and to which no man had ever
penetrated.  He knew full well, from his Spencer, that man can never
attain ultimate knowledge of anything, and that the mystery of beauty was
no less than that of life--nay, more that the fibres of beauty and life
were intertwisted, and that he himself was but a bit of the same
nonunderstandable fabric, twisted of sunshine and star-dust and wonder.

In fact, it was when filled with these thoughts that he wrote his essay
entitled "Star-dust," in which he had his fling, not at the principles of
criticism, but at the principal critics.  It was brilliant, deep,
philosophical, and deliciously touched with laughter.  Also it was
promptly rejected by the magazines as often as it was submitted.  But
having cleared his mind of it, he went serenely on his way.  It was a
habit he developed, of incubating and maturing his thought upon a
subject, and of then rushing into the type-writer with it.  That it did
not see print was a matter of small moment with him.  The writing of it
was the culminating act of a long mental process, the drawing together of
scattered threads of thought and the final generalizing upon all the data
with which his mind was burdened.  To write such an article was the
conscious effort by which he freed his mind and made it ready for fresh
material and problems.  It was in a way akin to that common habit of men
and women troubled by real or fancied grievances, who periodically and
volubly break their long-suffering silence and "have their say" till the
last word is said.




CHAPTER XXIV


The weeks passed.  Martin ran out of money, and publishers' checks were
far away as ever.  All his important manuscripts had come back and been
started out again, and his hack-work fared no better.  His little kitchen
was no longer graced with a variety of foods.  Caught in the pinch with a
part sack of rice and a few pounds of dried apricots, rice and apricots
was his menu three times a day for five days hand-running.  Then he
startled to realize on his credit.  The Portuguese grocer, to whom he had
hitherto paid cash, called a halt when Martin's bill reached the
magnificent total of three dollars and eighty-five cents.

"For you see," said the grocer, "you no catcha da work, I losa da mon'."

And Martin could reply nothing.  There was no way of explaining.  It was
not true business principle to allow credit to a strong-bodied young
fellow of the working-class who was too lazy to work.

"You catcha da job, I let you have mora da grub," the grocer assured
Martin.  "No job, no grub.  Thata da business."  And then, to show that
it was purely business foresight and not prejudice, "Hava da drink on da
house--good friends justa da same."

So Martin drank, in his easy way, to show that he was good friends with
the house, and then went supperless to bed.

The fruit store, where Martin had bought his vegetables, was run by an
American whose business principles were so weak that he let Martin run a
bill of five dollars before stopping his credit.  The baker stopped at
two dollars, and the butcher at four dollars.  Martin added his debts and
found that he was possessed of a total credit in all the world of
fourteen dollars and eighty-five cents.  He was up with his type-writer
rent, but he estimated that he could get two months' credit on that,
which would be eight dollars.  When that occurred, he would have
exhausted all possible credit.

The last purchase from the fruit store had been a sack of potatoes, and
for a week he had potatoes, and nothing but potatoes, three times a day.
An occasional dinner at Ruth's helped to keep strength in his body,
though he found it tantalizing enough to refuse further helping when his
appetite was raging at sight of so much food spread before it.  Now and
again, though afflicted with secret shame, he dropped in at his sister's
at meal-time and ate as much as he dared--more than he dared at the Morse
table.

Day by day he worked on, and day by day the postman delivered to him
rejected manuscripts.  He had no money for stamps, so the manuscripts
accumulated in a heap under the table.  Came a day when for forty hours
he had not tasted food.  He could not hope for a meal at Ruth's, for she
was away to San Rafael on a two weeks' visit; and for very shame's sake
he could not go to his sister's.  To cap misfortune, the postman, in his
afternoon round, brought him five returned manuscripts.  Then it was that
Martin wore his overcoat down into Oakland, and came back without it, but
with five dollars tinkling in his pocket.  He paid a dollar each on
account to the four tradesmen, and in his kitchen fried steak and onions,
made coffee, and stewed a large pot of prunes.  And having dined, he sat
down at his table-desk and completed before midnight an essay which he
entitled "The Dignity of Usury."  Having typed it out, he flung it under
the table, for there had been nothing left from the five dollars with
which to buy stamps.

Later on he pawned his watch, and still later his wheel, reducing the
amount available for food by putting stamps on all his manuscripts and
sending them out.  He was disappointed with his hack-work.  Nobody cared
to buy.  He compared it with what he found in the newspapers, weeklies,
and cheap magazines, and decided that his was better, far better, than
the average; yet it would not sell.  Then he discovered that most of the
newspapers printed a great deal of what was called "plate" stuff, and he
got the address of the association that furnished it.  His own work that
he sent in was returned, along with a stereotyped slip informing him that
the staff supplied all the copy that was needed.

In one of the great juvenile periodicals he noted whole columns of
incident and anecdote.  Here was a chance.  His paragraphs were returned,
and though he tried repeatedly he never succeeded in placing one.  Later
on, when it no longer mattered, he learned that the associate editors and
sub-editors augmented their salaries by supplying those paragraphs
themselves.  The comic weeklies returned his jokes and humorous verse,
and the light society verse he wrote for the large magazines found no
abiding-place.  Then there was the newspaper storiette.  He knew that he
could write better ones than were published.  Managing to obtain the
addresses of two newspaper syndicates, he deluged them with storiettes.
When he had written twenty and failed to place one of them, he ceased.
And yet, from day to day, he read storiettes in the dailies and weeklies,
scores and scores of storiettes, not one of which would compare with his.
In his despondency, he concluded that he had no judgment whatever, that
he was hypnotized by what he wrote, and that he was a self-deluded
pretender.

The inhuman editorial machine ran smoothly as ever.  He folded the stamps
in with his manuscript, dropped it into the letter-box, and from three
weeks to a month afterward the postman came up the steps and handed him
the manuscript.  Surely there were no live, warm editors at the other
end.  It was all wheels and cogs and oil-cups--a clever mechanism
operated by automatons.  He reached stages of despair wherein he doubted
if editors existed at all.  He had never received a sign of the existence
of one, and from absence of judgment in rejecting all he wrote it seemed
plausible that editors were myths, manufactured and maintained by office
boys, typesetters, and pressmen.

The hours he spent with Ruth were the only happy ones he had, and they
were not all happy.  He was afflicted always with a gnawing restlessness,
more tantalizing than in the old days before he possessed her love; for
now that he did possess her love, the possession of her was far away as
ever.  He had asked for two years; time was flying, and he was achieving
nothing.  Again, he was always conscious of the fact that she did not
approve what he was doing.  She did not say so directly.  Yet indirectly
she let him understand it as clearly and definitely as she could have
spoken it.  It was not resentment with her, but disapproval; though less
sweet-natured women might have resented where she was no more than
disappointed.  Her disappointment lay in that this man she had taken to
mould, refused to be moulded.  To a certain extent she had found his clay
plastic, then it had developed stubbornness, declining to be shaped in
the image of her father or of Mr. Butler.

What was great and strong in him, she missed, or, worse yet,
misunderstood.  This man, whose clay was so plastic that he could live in
any number of pigeonholes of human existence, she thought wilful and most
obstinate because she could not shape him to live in her pigeonhole,
which was the only one she knew.  She could not follow the flights of his
mind, and when his brain got beyond her, she deemed him erratic.  Nobody
else's brain ever got beyond her.  She could always follow her father and
mother, her brothers and Olney; wherefore, when she could not follow
Martin, she believed the fault lay with him.  It was the old tragedy of
insularity trying to serve as mentor to the universal.

"You worship at the shrine of the established," he told her once, in a
discussion they had over Praps and Vanderwater.  "I grant that as
authorities to quote they are most excellent--the two foremost literary
critics in the United States.  Every school teacher in the land looks up
to Vanderwater as the Dean of American criticism.  Yet I read his stuff,
and it seems to me the perfection of the felicitous expression of the
inane.  Why, he is no more than a ponderous bromide, thanks to Gelett
Burgess.  And Praps is no better.  His 'Hemlock Mosses,' for instance is
beautifully written.  Not a comma is out of place; and the tone--ah!--is
lofty, so lofty.  He is the best-paid critic in the United States.
Though, Heaven forbid! he's not a critic at all.  They do criticism
better in England.

"But the point is, they sound the popular note, and they sound it so
beautifully and morally and contentedly.  Their reviews remind me of a
British Sunday.  They are the popular mouthpieces.  They back up your
professors of English, and your professors of English back them up.  And
there isn't an original idea in any of their skulls.  They know only the
established,--in fact, they are the established.  They are weak minded,
and the established impresses itself upon them as easily as the name of
the brewery is impressed on a beer bottle.  And their function is to
catch all the young fellows attending the university, to drive out of
their minds any glimmering originality that may chance to be there, and
to put upon them the stamp of the established."

"I think I am nearer the truth," she replied, "when I stand by the
established, than you are, raging around like an iconoclastic South Sea
Islander."

"It was the missionary who did the image breaking," he laughed.  "And
unfortunately, all the missionaries are off among the heathen, so there
are none left at home to break those old images, Mr. Vanderwater and Mr.
Praps."

"And the college professors, as well," she added.

He shook his head emphatically.  "No; the science professors should live.
They're really great.  But it would be a good deed to break the heads of
nine-tenths of the English professors--little, microscopic-minded
parrots!"

Which was rather severe on the professors, but which to Ruth was
blasphemy.  She could not help but measure the professors, neat,
scholarly, in fitting clothes, speaking in well-modulated voices,
breathing of culture and refinement, with this almost indescribable young
fellow whom somehow she loved, whose clothes never would fit him, whose
heavy muscles told of damning toil, who grew excited when he talked,
substituting abuse for calm statement and passionate utterance for cool
self-possession.  They at least earned good salaries and were--yes, she
compelled herself to face it--were gentlemen; while he could not earn a
penny, and he was not as they.

She did not weigh Martin's words nor judge his argument by them.  Her
conclusion that his argument was wrong was reached--unconsciously, it is
true--by a comparison of externals.  They, the professors, were right in
their literary judgments because they were successes.  Martin's literary
judgments were wrong because he could not sell his wares.  To use his own
phrase, they made good, and he did not make good.  And besides, it did
not seem reasonable that he should be right--he who had stood, so short a
time before, in that same living room, blushing and awkward,
acknowledging his introduction, looking fearfully about him at the bric-a-
brac his swinging shoulders threatened to break, asking how long since
Swinburne died, and boastfully announcing that he had read "Excelsior"
and the "Psalm of Life."

Unwittingly, Ruth herself proved his point that she worshipped the
established.  Martin followed the processes of her thoughts, but forbore
to go farther.  He did not love her for what she thought of Praps and
Vanderwater and English professors, and he was coming to realize, with
increasing conviction, that he possessed brain-areas and stretches of
knowledge which she could never comprehend nor know existed.

In music she thought him unreasonable, and in the matter of opera not
only unreasonable but wilfully perverse.

"How did you like it?" she asked him one night, on the way home from the
opera.

It was a night when he had taken her at the expense of a month's rigid
economizing on food.  After vainly waiting for him to speak about it,
herself still tremulous and stirred by what she had just seen and heard,
she had asked the question.

"I liked the overture," was his answer.  "It was splendid."

"Yes, but the opera itself?"

"That was splendid too; that is, the orchestra was, though I'd have
enjoyed it more if those jumping-jacks had kept quiet or gone off the
stage."

Ruth was aghast.

"You don't mean Tetralani or Barillo?" she queried.

"All of them--the whole kit and crew."

"But they are great artists," she protested.

"They spoiled the music just the same, with their antics and
unrealities."

"But don't you like Barillo's voice?" Ruth asked.  "He is next to Caruso,
they say."

"Of course I liked him, and I liked Tetralani even better.  Her voice is
exquisite--or at least I think so."

"But, but--" Ruth stammered.  "I don't know what you mean, then.  You
admire their voices, yet say they spoiled the music."

"Precisely that.  I'd give anything to hear them in concert, and I'd give
even a bit more not to hear them when the orchestra is playing.  I'm
afraid I am a hopeless realist.  Great singers are not great actors.  To
hear Barillo sing a love passage with the voice of an angel, and to hear
Tetralani reply like another angel, and to hear it all accompanied by a
perfect orgy of glowing and colorful music--is ravishing, most ravishing.
I do not admit it.  I assert it.  But the whole effect is spoiled when I
look at them--at Tetralani, five feet ten in her stocking feet and
weighing a hundred and ninety pounds, and at Barillo, a scant five feet
four, greasy-featured, with the chest of a squat, undersized blacksmith,
and at the pair of them, attitudinizing, clasping their breasts, flinging
their arms in the air like demented creatures in an asylum; and when I am
expected to accept all this as the faithful illusion of a love-scene
between a slender and beautiful princess and a handsome, romantic, young
prince--why, I can't accept it, that's all.  It's rot; it's absurd; it's
unreal.  That's what's the matter with it.  It's not real.  Don't tell me
that anybody in this world ever made love that way.  Why, if I'd made
love to you in such fashion, you'd have boxed my ears."

"But you misunderstand," Ruth protested.  "Every form of art has its
limitations."  (She was busy recalling a lecture she had heard at the
university on the conventions of the arts.)  "In painting there are only
two dimensions to the canvas, yet you accept the illusion of three
dimensions which the art of a painter enables him to throw into the
canvas.  In writing, again, the author must be omnipotent.  You accept as
perfectly legitimate the author's account of the secret thoughts of the
heroine, and yet all the time you know that the heroine was alone when
thinking these thoughts, and that neither the author nor any one else was
capable of hearing them.  And so with the stage, with sculpture, with
opera, with every art form.  Certain irreconcilable things must be
accepted."

"Yes, I understood that," Martin answered.  "All the arts have their
conventions."  (Ruth was surprised at his use of the word.  It was as if
he had studied at the university himself, instead of being ill-equipped
from browsing at haphazard through the books in the library.)  "But even
the conventions must be real.  Trees, painted on flat cardboard and stuck
up on each side of the stage, we accept as a forest.  It is a real enough
convention.  But, on the other hand, we would not accept a sea scene as a
forest.  We can't do it.  It violates our senses.  Nor would you, or,
rather, should you, accept the ravings and writhings and agonized
contortions of those two lunatics to-night as a convincing portrayal of
love."

"But you don't hold yourself superior to all the judges of music?" she
protested.

"No, no, not for a moment.  I merely maintain my right as an individual.
I have just been telling you what I think, in order to explain why the
elephantine gambols of Madame Tetralani spoil the orchestra for me.  The
world's judges of music may all be right.  But I am I, and I won't
subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind.  If I don't
like a thing, I don't like it, that's all; and there is no reason under
the sun why I should ape a liking for it just because the majority of my
fellow-creatures like it, or make believe they like it.  I can't follow
the fashions in the things I like or dislike."

"But music, you know, is a matter of training," Ruth argued; "and opera
is even more a matter of training.  May it not be--"

"That I am not trained in opera?" he dashed in.

She nodded.

"The very thing," he agreed.  "And I consider I am fortunate in not
having been caught when I was young.  If I had, I could have wept
sentimental tears to-night, and the clownish antics of that precious pair
would have but enhanced the beauty of their voices and the beauty of the
accompanying orchestra.  You are right.  It's mostly a matter of
training.  And I am too old, now.  I must have the real or nothing.  An
illusion that won't convince is a palpable lie, and that's what grand
opera is to me when little Barillo throws a fit, clutches mighty
Tetralani in his arms (also in a fit), and tells her how passionately he
adores her."

Again Ruth measured his thoughts by comparison of externals and in
accordance with her belief in the established.  Who was he that he should
be right and all the cultured world wrong?  His words and thoughts made
no impression upon her.  She was too firmly intrenched in the established
to have any sympathy with revolutionary ideas.  She had always been used
to music, and she had enjoyed opera ever since she was a child, and all
her world had enjoyed it, too.  Then by what right did Martin Eden
emerge, as he had so recently emerged, from his rag-time and
working-class songs, and pass judgment on the world's music?  She was
vexed with him, and as she walked beside him she had a vague feeling of
outrage.  At the best, in her most charitable frame of mind, she
considered the statement of his views to be a caprice, an erratic and
uncalled-for prank.  But when he took her in his arms at the door and
kissed her good night in tender lover-fashion, she forgot everything in
the outrush of her own love to him.  And later, on a sleepless pillow,
she puzzled, as she had often puzzled of late, as to how it was that she
loved so strange a man, and loved him despite the disapproval of her
people.

And next day Martin Eden cast hack-work aside, and at white heat hammered
out an essay to which he gave the title, "The Philosophy of Illusion."  A
stamp started it on its travels, but it was destined to receive many
stamps and to be started on many travels in the months that followed.




CHAPTER XXV


Maria Silva was poor, and all the ways of poverty were clear to her.
Poverty, to Ruth, was a word signifying a not-nice condition of
existence.  That was her total knowledge on the subject.  She knew Martin
was poor, and his condition she associated in her mind with the boyhood
of Abraham Lincoln, of Mr. Butler, and of other men who had become
successes.  Also, while aware that poverty was anything but delectable,
she had a comfortable middle-class feeling that poverty was salutary,
that it was a sharp spur that urged on to success all men who were not
degraded and hopeless drudges.  So that her knowledge that Martin was so
poor that he had pawned his watch and overcoat did not disturb her.  She
even considered it the hopeful side of the situation, believing that
sooner or later it would arouse him and compel him to abandon his
writing.

Ruth never read hunger in Martin's face, which had grown lean and had
enlarged the slight hollows in the cheeks.  In fact, she marked the
change in his face with satisfaction.  It seemed to refine him, to remove
from him much of the dross of flesh and the too animal-like vigor that
lured her while she detested it.  Sometimes, when with her, she noted an
unusual brightness in his eyes, and she admired it, for it made him
appear more the poet and the scholar--the things he would have liked to
be and which she would have liked him to be.  But Maria Silva read a
different tale in the hollow cheeks and the burning eyes, and she noted
the changes in them from day to day, by them following the ebb and flow
of his fortunes.  She saw him leave the house with his overcoat and
return without it, though the day was chill and raw, and promptly she saw
his cheeks fill out slightly and the fire of hunger leave his eyes.  In
the same way she had seen his wheel and watch go, and after each event
she had seen his vigor bloom again.

Likewise she watched his toils, and knew the measure of the midnight oil
he burned.  Work!  She knew that he outdid her, though his work was of a
different order.  And she was surprised to behold that the less food he
had, the harder he worked.  On occasion, in a casual sort of way, when
she thought hunger pinched hardest, she would send him in a loaf of new
baking, awkwardly covering the act with banter to the effect that it was
better than he could bake.  And again, she would send one of her toddlers
in to him with a great pitcher of hot soup, debating inwardly the while
whether she was justified in taking it from the mouths of her own flesh
and blood.  Nor was Martin ungrateful, knowing as he did the lives of the
poor, and that if ever in the world there was charity, this was it.

On a day when she had filled her brood with what was left in the house,
Maria invested her last fifteen cents in a gallon of cheap wine.  Martin,
coming into her kitchen to fetch water, was invited to sit down and
drink.  He drank her very-good health, and in return she drank his.  Then
she drank to prosperity in his undertakings, and he drank to the hope
that James Grant would show up and pay her for his washing.  James Grant
was a journeymen carpenter who did not always pay his bills and who owed
Maria three dollars.

Both Maria and Martin drank the sour new wine on empty stomachs, and it
went swiftly to their heads.  Utterly differentiated creatures that they
were, they were lonely in their misery, and though the misery was tacitly
ignored, it was the bond that drew them together.  Maria was amazed to
learn that he had been in the Azores, where she had lived until she was
eleven.  She was doubly amazed that he had been in the Hawaiian Islands,
whither she had migrated from the Azores with her people.  But her
amazement passed all bounds when he told her he had been on Maui, the
particular island whereon she had attained womanhood and married.
Kahului, where she had first met her husband,--he, Martin, had been there
twice!  Yes, she remembered the sugar steamers, and he had been on
them--well, well, it was a small world.  And Wailuku!  That place, too!
Did he know the head-luna of the plantation?  Yes, and had had a couple
of drinks with him.

And so they reminiscenced and drowned their hunger in the raw, sour wine.
To Martin the future did not seem so dim.  Success trembled just before
him.  He was on the verge of clasping it.  Then he studied the deep-lined
face of the toil-worn woman before him, remembered her soups and loaves
of new baking, and felt spring up in him the warmest gratitude and
philanthropy.

"Maria," he exclaimed suddenly.  "What would you like to have?"

She looked at him, bepuzzled.

"What would you like to have now, right now, if you could get it?"

"Shoe alla da roun' for da childs--seven pairs da shoe."

"You shall have them," he announced, while she nodded her head gravely.
"But I mean a big wish, something big that you want."

Her eyes sparkled good-naturedly.  He was choosing to make fun with her,
Maria, with whom few made fun these days.

"Think hard," he cautioned, just as she was opening her mouth to speak.

"Alla right," she answered.  "I thinka da hard.  I lika da house, dis
house--all mine, no paya da rent, seven dollar da month."

"You shall have it," he granted, "and in a short time.  Now wish the
great wish.  Make believe I am God, and I say to you anything you want
you can have.  Then you wish that thing, and I listen."

Maria considered solemnly for a space.

"You no 'fraid?" she asked warningly.

"No, no," he laughed, "I'm not afraid.  Go ahead."

"Most verra big," she warned again.

"All right.  Fire away."

"Well, den--"  She drew a big breath like a child, as she voiced to the
uttermost all she cared to demand of life.  "I lika da have one milka
ranch--good milka ranch.  Plenty cow, plenty land, plenty grass.  I lika
da have near San Le-an; my sister liva dere.  I sella da milk in Oakland.
I maka da plentee mon.  Joe an' Nick no runna da cow.  Dey go-a to
school.  Bimeby maka da good engineer, worka da railroad.  Yes, I lika da
milka ranch."

She paused and regarded Martin with twinkling eyes.

"You shall have it," he answered promptly.

She nodded her head and touched her lips courteously to the wine-glass
and to the giver of the gift she knew would never be given.  His heart
was right, and in her own heart she appreciated his intention as much as
if the gift had gone with it.

"No, Maria," he went on; "Nick and Joe won't have to peddle milk, and all
the kids can go to school and wear shoes the whole year round.  It will
be a first-class milk ranch--everything complete.  There will be a house
to live in and a stable for the horses, and cow-barns, of course.  There
will be chickens, pigs, vegetables, fruit trees, and everything like
that; and there will be enough cows to pay for a hired man or two.  Then
you won't have anything to do but take care of the children.  For that
matter, if you find a good man, you can marry and take it easy while he
runs the ranch."

And from such largess, dispensed from his future, Martin turned and took
his one good suit of clothes to the pawnshop.  His plight was desperate
for him to do this, for it cut him off from Ruth.  He had no second-best
suit that was presentable, and though he could go to the butcher and the
baker, and even on occasion to his sister's, it was beyond all daring to
dream of entering the Morse home so disreputably apparelled.

He toiled on, miserable and well-nigh hopeless.  It began to appear to
him that the second battle was lost and that he would have to go to work.
In doing this he would satisfy everybody--the grocer, his sister, Ruth,
and even Maria, to whom he owed a month's room rent.  He was two months
behind with his type-writer, and the agency was clamoring for payment or
for the return of the machine.  In desperation, all but ready to
surrender, to make a truce with fate until he could get a fresh start, he
took the civil service examinations for the Railway Mail.  To his
surprise, he passed first.  The job was assured, though when the call
would come to enter upon his duties nobody knew.

It was at this time, at the lowest ebb, that the smooth-running editorial
machine broke down.  A cog must have slipped or an oil-cup run dry, for
the postman brought him one morning a short, thin envelope.  Martin
glanced at the upper left-hand corner and read the name and address of
the Transcontinental Monthly.  His heart gave a great leap, and he
suddenly felt faint, the sinking feeling accompanied by a strange
trembling of the knees.  He staggered into his room and sat down on the
bed, the envelope still unopened, and in that moment came understanding
to him how people suddenly fall dead upon receipt of extraordinarily good
news.

Of course this was good news.  There was no manuscript in that thin
envelope, therefore it was an acceptance.  He knew the story in the hands
of the Transcontinental.  It was "The Ring of Bells," one of his horror
stories, and it was an even five thousand words.  And, since first-class
magazines always paid on acceptance, there was a check inside.  Two cents
a word--twenty dollars a thousand; the check must be a hundred dollars.
One hundred dollars!  As he tore the envelope open, every item of all his
debts surged in his brain--$3.85 to the grocer; butcher $4.00 flat;
baker, $2.00; fruit store, $5.00; total, $14.85.  Then there was room
rent, $2.50; another month in advance, $2.50; two months' type-writer,
$8.00; a month in advance, $4.00; total, $31.85.  And finally to be
added, his pledges, plus interest, with the pawnbroker--watch, $5.50;
overcoat, $5.50; wheel, $7.75; suit of clothes, $5.50 (60 % interest, but
what did it matter?)--grand total, $56.10.  He saw, as if visible in the
air before him, in illuminated figures, the whole sum, and the
subtraction that followed and that gave a remainder of $43.90.  When he
had squared every debt, redeemed every pledge, he would still have
jingling in his pockets a princely $43.90.  And on top of that he would
have a month's rent paid in advance on the type-writer and on the room.

By this time he had drawn the single sheet of type-written letter out and
spread it open.  There was no check.  He peered into the envelope, held
it to the light, but could not trust his eyes, and in trembling haste
tore the envelope apart.  There was no check.  He read the letter,
skimming it line by line, dashing through the editor's praise of his
story to the meat of the letter, the statement why the check had not been
sent.  He found no such statement, but he did find that which made him
suddenly wilt.  The letter slid from his hand.  His eyes went
lack-lustre, and he lay back on the pillow, pulling the blanket about him
and up to his chin.

Five dollars for "The Ring of Bells"--five dollars for five thousand
words!  Instead of two cents a word, ten words for a cent!  And the
editor had praised it, too.  And he would receive the check when the
story was published.  Then it was all poppycock, two cents a word for
minimum rate and payment upon acceptance.  It was a lie, and it had led
him astray.  He would never have attempted to write had he known that.  He
would have gone to work--to work for Ruth.  He went back to the day he
first attempted to write, and was appalled at the enormous waste of
time--and all for ten words for a cent.  And the other high rewards of
writers, that he had read about, must be lies, too.  His second-hand
ideas of authorship were wrong, for here was the proof of it.

The Transcontinental sold for twenty-five cents, and its dignified and
artistic cover proclaimed it as among the first-class magazines.  It was
a staid, respectable magazine, and it had been published continuously
since long before he was born.  Why, on the outside cover were printed
every month the words of one of the world's great writers, words
proclaiming the inspired mission of the Transcontinental by a star of
literature whose first coruscations had appeared inside those self-same
covers.  And the high and lofty, heaven-inspired Transcontinental paid
five dollars for five thousand words!  The great writer had recently died
in a foreign land--in dire poverty, Martin remembered, which was not to
be wondered at, considering the magnificent pay authors receive.

Well, he had taken the bait, the newspaper lies about writers and their
pay, and he had wasted two years over it.  But he would disgorge the bait
now.  Not another line would he ever write.  He would do what Ruth wanted
him to do, what everybody wanted him to do--get a job.  The thought of
going to work reminded him of Joe--Joe, tramping through the land of
nothing-to-do.  Martin heaved a great sigh of envy.  The reaction of
nineteen hours a day for many days was strong upon him.  But then, Joe
was not in love, had none of the responsibilities of love, and he could
afford to loaf through the land of nothing-to-do.  He, Martin, had
something to work for, and go to work he would.  He would start out early
next morning to hunt a job.  And he would let Ruth know, too, that he had
mended his ways and was willing to go into her father's office.

Five dollars for five thousand words, ten words for a cent, the market
price for art.  The disappointment of it, the lie of it, the infamy of
it, were uppermost in his thoughts; and under his closed eyelids, in
fiery figures, burned the "$3.85" he owed the grocer.  He shivered, and
was aware of an aching in his bones.  The small of his back ached
especially.  His head ached, the top of it ached, the back of it ached,
the brains inside of it ached and seemed to be swelling, while the ache
over his brows was intolerable.  And beneath the brows, planted under his
lids, was the merciless "$3.85."  He opened his eyes to escape it, but
the white light of the room seemed to sear the balls and forced him to
close his eyes, when the "$3.85" confronted him again.

Five dollars for five thousand words, ten words for a cent--that
particular thought took up its residence in his brain, and he could no
more escape it than he could the "$3.85" under his eyelids.  A change
seemed to come over the latter, and he watched curiously, till "$2.00"
burned in its stead.  Ah, he thought, that was the baker.  The next sum
that appeared was "$2.50."  It puzzled him, and he pondered it as if life
and death hung on the solution.  He owed somebody two dollars and a half,
that was certain, but who was it?  To find it was the task set him by an
imperious and malignant universe, and he wandered through the endless
corridors of his mind, opening all manner of lumber rooms and chambers
stored with odds and ends of memories and knowledge as he vainly sought
the answer.  After several centuries it came to him, easily, without
effort, that it was Maria.  With a great relief he turned his soul to the
screen of torment under his lids.  He had solved the problem; now he
could rest.  But no, the "$2.50" faded away, and in its place burned
"$8.00."  Who was that?  He must go the dreary round of his mind again
and find out.

How long he was gone on this quest he did not know, but after what seemed
an enormous lapse of time, he was called back to himself by a knock at
the door, and by Maria's asking if he was sick.  He replied in a muffled
voice he did not recognize, saying that he was merely taking a nap.  He
was surprised when he noted the darkness of night in the room.  He had
received the letter at two in the afternoon, and he realized that he was
sick.

Then the "$8.00" began to smoulder under his lids again, and he returned
himself to servitude.  But he grew cunning.  There was no need for him to
wander through his mind.  He had been a fool.  He pulled a lever and made
his mind revolve about him, a monstrous wheel of fortune, a
merry-go-round of memory, a revolving sphere of wisdom.  Faster and
faster it revolved, until its vortex sucked him in and he was flung
whirling through black chaos.

Quite naturally he found himself at a mangle, feeding starched cuffs.  But
as he fed he noticed figures printed in the cuffs.  It was a new way of
marking linen, he thought, until, looking closer, he saw "$3.85" on one
of the cuffs.  Then it came to him that it was the grocer's bill, and
that these were his bills flying around on the drum of the mangle.  A
crafty idea came to him.  He would throw the bills on the floor and so
escape paying them.  No sooner thought than done, and he crumpled the
cuffs spitefully as he flung them upon an unusually dirty floor.  Ever
the heap grew, and though each bill was duplicated a thousand times, he
found only one for two dollars and a half, which was what he owed Maria.
That meant that Maria would not press for payment, and he resolved
generously that it would be the only one he would pay; so he began
searching through the cast-out heap for hers.  He sought it desperately,
for ages, and was still searching when the manager of the hotel entered,
the fat Dutchman.  His face blazed with wrath, and he shouted in
stentorian tones that echoed down the universe, "I shall deduct the cost
of those cuffs from your wages!"  The pile of cuffs grew into a mountain,
and Martin knew that he was doomed to toil for a thousand years to pay
for them.  Well, there was nothing left to do but kill the manager and
burn down the laundry.  But the big Dutchman frustrated him, seizing him
by the nape of the neck and dancing him up and down.  He danced him over
the ironing tables, the stove, and the mangles, and out into the wash-
room and over the wringer and washer.  Martin was danced until his teeth
rattled and his head ached, and he marvelled that the Dutchman was so
strong.

And then he found himself before the mangle, this time receiving the
cuffs an editor of a magazine was feeding from the other side.  Each cuff
was a check, and Martin went over them anxiously, in a fever of
expectation, but they were all blanks.  He stood there and received the
blanks for a million years or so, never letting one go by for fear it
might be filled out.  At last he found it.  With trembling fingers he
held it to the light.  It was for five dollars.  "Ha! Ha!" laughed the
editor across the mangle.  "Well, then, I shall kill you," Martin said.
He went out into the wash-room to get the axe, and found Joe starching
manuscripts.  He tried to make him desist, then swung the axe for him.
But the weapon remained poised in mid-air, for Martin found himself back
in the ironing room in the midst of a snow-storm.  No, it was not snow
that was falling, but checks of large denomination, the smallest not less
than a thousand dollars.  He began to collect them and sort them out, in
packages of a hundred, tying each package securely with twine.

He looked up from his task and saw Joe standing before him juggling flat-
irons, starched shirts, and manuscripts.  Now and again he reached out
and added a bundle of checks to the flying miscellany that soared through
the roof and out of sight in a tremendous circle.  Martin struck at him,
but he seized the axe and added it to the flying circle.  Then he plucked
Martin and added him.  Martin went up through the roof, clutching at
manuscripts, so that by the time he came down he had a large armful.  But
no sooner down than up again, and a second and a third time and countless
times he flew around the circle.  From far off he could hear a childish
treble singing: "Waltz me around again, Willie, around, around, around."

He recovered the axe in the midst of the Milky Way of checks, starched
shirts, and manuscripts, and prepared, when he came down, to kill Joe.
But he did not come down.  Instead, at two in the morning, Maria, having
heard his groans through the thin partition, came into his room, to put
hot flat-irons against his body and damp cloths upon his aching eyes.




CHAPTER XXVI


Martin Eden did not go out to hunt for a job in the morning.  It was late
afternoon before he came out of his delirium and gazed with aching eyes
about the room.  Mary, one of the tribe of Silva, eight years old,
keeping watch, raised a screech at sight of his returning consciousness.
Maria hurried into the room from the kitchen.  She put her work-calloused
hand upon his hot forehead and felt his pulse.

"You lika da eat?" she asked.

He shook his head.  Eating was farthest from his desire, and he wondered
that he should ever have been hungry in his life.

"I'm sick, Maria," he said weakly.  "What is it?  Do you know?"

"Grip," she answered.  "Two or three days you alla da right.  Better you
no eat now.  Bimeby plenty can eat, to-morrow can eat maybe."

Martin was not used to sickness, and when Maria and her little girl left
him, he essayed to get up and dress.  By a supreme exertion of will, with
rearing brain and eyes that ached so that he could not keep them open, he
managed to get out of bed, only to be left stranded by his senses upon
the table.  Half an hour later he managed to regain the bed, where he was
content to lie with closed eyes and analyze his various pains and
weaknesses.  Maria came in several times to change the cold cloths on his
forehead.  Otherwise she left him in peace, too wise to vex him with
chatter.  This moved him to gratitude, and he murmured to himself,
"Maria, you getta da milka ranch, all righta, all right."

Then he remembered his long-buried past of yesterday.

It seemed a life-time since he had received that letter from the
Transcontinental, a life-time since it was all over and done with and a
new page turned.  He had shot his bolt, and shot it hard, and now he was
down on his back.  If he hadn't starved himself, he wouldn't have been
caught by La Grippe.  He had been run down, and he had not had the
strength to throw off the germ of disease which had invaded his system.
This was what resulted.

"What does it profit a man to write a whole library and lose his own
life?" he demanded aloud.  "This is no place for me.  No more literature
in mine.  Me for the counting-house and ledger, the monthly salary, and
the little home with Ruth."

Two days later, having eaten an egg and two slices of toast and drunk a
cup of tea, he asked for his mail, but found his eyes still hurt too much
to permit him to read.

"You read for me, Maria," he said.  "Never mind the big, long letters.
Throw them under the table.  Read me the small letters."

"No can," was the answer.  "Teresa, she go to school, she can."

So Teresa Silva, aged nine, opened his letters and read them to him.  He
listened absently to a long dun from the type-writer people, his mind
busy with ways and means of finding a job.  Suddenly he was shocked back
to himself.

"'We offer you forty dollars for all serial rights in your story,'"
Teresa slowly spelled out, "'provided you allow us to make the
alterations suggested.'"

"What magazine is that?" Martin shouted.  "Here, give it to me!"

He could see to read, now, and he was unaware of the pain of the action.
It was the White Mouse that was offering him forty dollars, and the story
was "The Whirlpool," another of his early horror stories.  He read the
letter through again and again.  The editor told him plainly that he had
not handled the idea properly, but that it was the idea they were buying
because it was original.  If they could cut the story down one-third,
they would take it and send him forty dollars on receipt of his answer.

He called for pen and ink, and told the editor he could cut the story
down three-thirds if he wanted to, and to send the forty dollars right
along.

The letter despatched to the letter-box by Teresa, Martin lay back and
thought.  It wasn't a lie, after all.  The White Mouse paid on
acceptance.  There were three thousand words in "The Whirlpool."  Cut
down a third, there would be two thousand.  At forty dollars that would
be two cents a word.  Pay on acceptance and two cents a word--the
newspapers had told the truth.  And he had thought the White Mouse a
third-rater!  It was evident that he did not know the magazines.  He had
deemed the Transcontinental a first-rater, and it paid a cent for ten
words.  He had classed the White Mouse as of no account, and it paid
twenty times as much as the Transcontinental and also had paid on
acceptance.

Well, there was one thing certain: when he got well, he would not go out
looking for a job.  There were more stories in his head as good as "The
Whirlpool," and at forty dollars apiece he could earn far more than in
any job or position.  Just when he thought the battle lost, it was won.
He had proved for his career.  The way was clear.  Beginning with the
White Mouse he would add magazine after magazine to his growing list of
patrons.  Hack-work could be put aside.  For that matter, it had been
wasted time, for it had not brought him a dollar.  He would devote
himself to work, good work, and he would pour out the best that was in
him.  He wished Ruth was there to share in his joy, and when he went over
the letters left lying on his bed, he found one from her.  It was sweetly
reproachful, wondering what had kept him away for so dreadful a length of
time.  He reread the letter adoringly, dwelling over her handwriting,
loving each stroke of her pen, and in the end kissing her signature.

And when he answered, he told her recklessly that he had not been to see
her because his best clothes were in pawn.  He told her that he had been
sick, but was once more nearly well, and that inside ten days or two
weeks (as soon as a letter could travel to New York City and return) he
would redeem his clothes and be with her.

But Ruth did not care to wait ten days or two weeks.  Besides, her lover
was sick.  The next afternoon, accompanied by Arthur, she arrived in the
Morse carriage, to the unqualified delight of the Silva tribe and of all
the urchins on the street, and to the consternation of Maria.  She boxed
the ears of the Silvas who crowded about the visitors on the tiny front
porch, and in more than usual atrocious English tried to apologize for
her appearance.  Sleeves rolled up from soap-flecked arms and a wet gunny-
sack around her waist told of the task at which she had been caught.  So
flustered was she by two such grand young people asking for her lodger,
that she forgot to invite them to sit down in the little parlor.  To
enter Martin's room, they passed through the kitchen, warm and moist and
steamy from the big washing in progress.  Maria, in her excitement,
jammed the bedroom and bedroom-closet doors together, and for five
minutes, through the partly open door, clouds of steam, smelling of soap-
suds and dirt, poured into the sick chamber.

Ruth succeeded in veering right and left and right again, and in running
the narrow passage between table and bed to Martin's side; but Arthur
veered too wide and fetched up with clatter and bang of pots and pans in
the corner where Martin did his cooking.  Arthur did not linger long.
Ruth occupied the only chair, and having done his duty, he went outside
and stood by the gate, the centre of seven marvelling Silvas, who watched
him as they would have watched a curiosity in a side-show.  All about the
carriage were gathered the children from a dozen blocks, waiting and
eager for some tragic and terrible denouement.  Carriages were seen on
their street only for weddings and funerals.  Here was neither marriage
nor death: therefore, it was something transcending experience and well
worth waiting for.

Martin had been wild to see Ruth.  His was essentially a love-nature, and
he possessed more than the average man's need for sympathy.  He was
starving for sympathy, which, with him, meant intelligent understanding;
and he had yet to learn that Ruth's sympathy was largely sentimental and
tactful, and that it proceeded from gentleness of nature rather than from
understanding of the objects of her sympathy.  So it was while Martin
held her hand and gladly talked, that her love for him prompted her to
press his hand in return, and that her eyes were moist and luminous at
sight of his helplessness and of the marks suffering had stamped upon his
face.

But while he told her of his two acceptances, of his despair when he
received the one from the Transcontinental, and of the corresponding
delight with which he received the one from the White Mouse, she did not
follow him.  She heard the words he uttered and understood their literal
import, but she was not with him in his despair and his delight.  She
could not get out of herself.  She was not interested in selling stories
to magazines.  What was important to her was matrimony.  She was not
aware of it, however, any more than she was aware that her desire that
Martin take a position was the instinctive and preparative impulse of
motherhood.  She would have blushed had she been told as much in plain,
set terms, and next, she might have grown indignant and asserted that her
sole interest lay in the man she loved and her desire for him to make the
best of himself.  So, while Martin poured out his heart to her, elated
with the first success his chosen work in the world had received, she
paid heed to his bare words only, gazing now and again about the room,
shocked by what she saw.

For the first time Ruth gazed upon the sordid face of poverty.  Starving
lovers had always seemed romantic to her,--but she had had no idea how
starving lovers lived.  She had never dreamed it could be like this.  Ever
her gaze shifted from the room to him and back again.  The steamy smell
of dirty clothes, which had entered with her from the kitchen, was
sickening.  Martin must be soaked with it, Ruth concluded, if that awful
woman washed frequently.  Such was the contagiousness of degradation.
When she looked at Martin, she seemed to see the smirch left upon him by
his surroundings.  She had never seen him unshaven, and the three days'
growth of beard on his face was repulsive to her.  Not alone did it give
him the same dark and murky aspect of the Silva house, inside and out,
but it seemed to emphasize that animal-like strength of his which she
detested.  And here he was, being confirmed in his madness by the two
acceptances he took such pride in telling her about.  A little longer and
he would have surrendered and gone to work.  Now he would continue on in
this horrible house, writing and starving for a few more months.

"What is that smell?" she asked suddenly.

"Some of Maria's washing smells, I imagine," was the answer.  "I am
growing quite accustomed to them."

"No, no; not that.  It is something else.  A stale, sickish smell."

Martin sampled the air before replying.

"I can't smell anything else, except stale tobacco smoke," he announced.

"That's it.  It is terrible.  Why do you smoke so much, Martin?"

"I don't know, except that I smoke more than usual when I am lonely.  And
then, too, it's such a long-standing habit.  I learned when I was only a
youngster."

"It is not a nice habit, you know," she reproved.  "It smells to heaven."

"That's the fault of the tobacco.  I can afford only the cheapest.  But
wait until I get that forty-dollar check.  I'll use a brand that is not
offensive even to the angels.  But that wasn't so bad, was it, two
acceptances in three days?  That forty-five dollars will pay about all my
debts."

"For two years' work?" she queried.

"No, for less than a week's work.  Please pass me that book over on the
far corner of the table, the account book with the gray cover."  He
opened it and began turning over the pages rapidly.  "Yes, I was right.
Four days for 'The Ring of Bells,' two days for 'The Whirlpool.'  That's
forty-five dollars for a week's work, one hundred and eighty dollars a
month.  That beats any salary I can command.  And, besides, I'm just
beginning.  A thousand dollars a month is not too much to buy for you all
I want you to have.  A salary of five hundred a month would be too small.
That forty-five dollars is just a starter.  Wait till I get my stride.
Then watch my smoke."

Ruth misunderstood his slang, and reverted to cigarettes.

"You smoke more than enough as it is, and the brand of tobacco will make
no difference.  It is the smoking itself that is not nice, no matter what
the brand may be.  You are a chimney, a living volcano, a perambulating
smoke-stack, and you are a perfect disgrace, Martin dear, you know you
are."

She leaned toward him, entreaty in her eyes, and as he looked at her
delicate face and into her pure, limpid eyes, as of old he was struck
with his own unworthiness.

"I wish you wouldn't smoke any more," she whispered.  "Please, for--my
sake."

"All right, I won't," he cried.  "I'll do anything you ask, dear love,
anything; you know that."

A great temptation assailed her.  In an insistent way she had caught
glimpses of the large, easy-going side of his nature, and she felt sure,
if she asked him to cease attempting to write, that he would grant her
wish.  In the swift instant that elapsed, the words trembled on her lips.
But she did not utter them.  She was not quite brave enough; she did not
quite dare.  Instead, she leaned toward him to meet him, and in his arms
murmured:-

"You know, it is really not for my sake, Martin, but for your own.  I am
sure smoking hurts you; and besides, it is not good to be a slave to
anything, to a drug least of all."

"I shall always be your slave," he smiled.

"In which case, I shall begin issuing my commands."

She looked at him mischievously, though deep down she was already
regretting that she had not preferred her largest request.

"I live but to obey, your majesty."

"Well, then, my first commandment is, Thou shalt not omit to shave every
day.  Look how you have scratched my cheek."

And so it ended in caresses and love-laughter.  But she had made one
point, and she could not expect to make more than one at a time.  She
felt a woman's pride in that she had made him stop smoking.  Another time
she would persuade him to take a position, for had he not said he would
do anything she asked?

She left his side to explore the room, examining the clothes-lines of
notes overhead, learning the mystery of the tackle used for suspending
his wheel under the ceiling, and being saddened by the heap of
manuscripts under the table which represented to her just so much wasted
time.  The oil-stove won her admiration, but on investigating the food
shelves she found them empty.

"Why, you haven't anything to eat, you poor dear," she said with tender
compassion.  "You must be starving."

"I store my food in Maria's safe and in her pantry," he lied.  "It keeps
better there.  No danger of my starving.  Look at that."

She had come back to his side, and she saw him double his arm at the
elbow, the biceps crawling under his shirt-sleeve and swelling into a
knot of muscle, heavy and hard.  The sight repelled her.  Sentimentally,
she disliked it.  But her pulse, her blood, every fibre of her, loved it
and yearned for it, and, in the old, inexplicable way, she leaned toward
him, not away from him.  And in the moment that followed, when he crushed
her in his arms, the brain of her, concerned with the superficial aspects
of life, was in revolt; while the heart of her, the woman of her,
concerned with life itself, exulted triumphantly.  It was in moments like
this that she felt to the uttermost the greatness of her love for Martin,
for it was almost a swoon of delight to her to feel his strong arms about
her, holding her tightly, hurting her with the grip of their fervor.  At
such moments she found justification for her treason to her standards,
for her violation of her own high ideals, and, most of all, for her tacit
disobedience to her mother and father.  They did not want her to marry
this man.  It shocked them that she should love him.  It shocked her,
too, sometimes, when she was apart from him, a cool and reasoning
creature.  With him, she loved him--in truth, at times a vexed and
worried love; but love it was, a love that was stronger than she.

"This La Grippe is nothing," he was saying.  "It hurts a bit, and gives
one a nasty headache, but it doesn't compare with break-bone fever."

"Have you had that, too?" she queried absently, intent on the heaven-sent
justification she was finding in his arms.

And so, with absent queries, she led him on, till suddenly his words
startled her.

He had had the fever in a secret colony of thirty lepers on one of the
Hawaiian Islands.

"But why did you go there?" she demanded.

Such royal carelessness of body seemed criminal.

"Because I didn't know," he answered.  "I never dreamed of lepers.  When
I deserted the schooner and landed on the beach, I headed inland for some
place of hiding.  For three days I lived off guavas, ohia-apples, and
bananas, all of which grew wild in the jungle.  On the fourth day I found
the trail--a mere foot-trail.  It led inland, and it led up.  It was the
way I wanted to go, and it showed signs of recent travel.  At one place
it ran along the crest of a ridge that was no more than a knife-edge.  The
trail wasn't three feet wide on the crest, and on either side the ridge
fell away in precipices hundreds of feet deep.  One man, with plenty of
ammunition, could have held it against a hundred thousand.

"It was the only way in to the hiding-place.  Three hours after I found
the trail I was there, in a little mountain valley, a pocket in the midst
of lava peaks.  The whole place was terraced for taro-patches, fruit
trees grew there, and there were eight or ten grass huts.  But as soon as
I saw the inhabitants I knew what I'd struck.  One sight of them was
enough."

"What did you do?" Ruth demanded breathlessly, listening, like any
Desdemona, appalled and fascinated.

"Nothing for me to do.  Their leader was a kind old fellow, pretty far
gone, but he ruled like a king.  He had discovered the little valley and
founded the settlement--all of which was against the law.  But he had
guns, plenty of ammunition, and those Kanakas, trained to the shooting of
wild cattle and wild pig, were dead shots.  No, there wasn't any running
away for Martin Eden.  He stayed--for three months."

"But how did you escape?"

"I'd have been there yet, if it hadn't been for a girl there, a
half-Chinese, quarter-white, and quarter-Hawaiian.  She was a beauty,
poor thing, and well educated.  Her mother, in Honolulu, was worth a
million or so.  Well, this girl got me away at last.  Her mother financed
the settlement, you see, so the girl wasn't afraid of being punished for
letting me go.  But she made me swear, first, never to reveal the hiding-
place; and I never have.  This is the first time I have even mentioned
it.  The girl had just the first signs of leprosy.  The fingers of her
right hand were slightly twisted, and there was a small spot on her arm.
That was all.  I guess she is dead, now."

"But weren't you frightened?  And weren't you glad to get away without
catching that dreadful disease?"

"Well," he confessed, "I was a bit shivery at first; but I got used to
it.  I used to feel sorry for that poor girl, though.  That made me
forget to be afraid.  She was such a beauty, in spirit as well as in
appearance, and she was only slightly touched; yet she was doomed to lie
there, living the life of a primitive savage and rotting slowly away.
Leprosy is far more terrible than you can imagine it."

"Poor thing," Ruth murmured softly.  "It's a wonder she let you get
away."

"How do you mean?" Martin asked unwittingly.

"Because she must have loved you," Ruth said, still softly.  "Candidly,
now, didn't she?"

Martin's sunburn had been bleached by his work in the laundry and by the
indoor life he was living, while the hunger and the sickness had made his
face even pale; and across this pallor flowed the slow wave of a blush.
He was opening his mouth to speak, but Ruth shut him off.

"Never mind, don't answer; it's not necessary," she laughed.

But it seemed to him there was something metallic in her laughter, and
that the light in her eyes was cold.  On the spur of the moment it
reminded him of a gale he had once experienced in the North Pacific.  And
for the moment the apparition of the gale rose before his eyes--a gale at
night, with a clear sky and under a full moon, the huge seas glinting
coldly in the moonlight.  Next, he saw the girl in the leper refuge and
remembered it was for love of him that she had let him go.

"She was noble," he said simply.  "She gave me life."

That was all of the incident, but he heard Ruth muffle a dry sob in her
throat, and noticed that she turned her face away to gaze out of the
window.  When she turned it back to him, it was composed, and there was
no hint of the gale in her eyes.

"I'm such a silly," she said plaintively.  "But I can't help it.  I do so
love you, Martin, I do, I do.  I shall grow more catholic in time, but at
present I can't help being jealous of those ghosts of the past, and you
know your past is full of ghosts."

"It must be," she silenced his protest.  "It could not be otherwise.  And
there's poor Arthur motioning me to come.  He's tired waiting.  And now
good-by, dear."

"There's some kind of a mixture, put up by the druggists, that helps men
to stop the use of tobacco," she called back from the door, "and I am
going to send you some."

The door closed, but opened again.

"I do, I do," she whispered to him; and this time she was really gone.

Maria, with worshipful eyes that none the less were keen to note the
texture of Ruth's garments and the cut of them (a cut unknown that
produced an effect mysteriously beautiful), saw her to the carriage.  The
crowd of disappointed urchins stared till the carriage disappeared from
view, then transferred their stare to Maria, who had abruptly become the
most important person on the street.  But it was one of her progeny who
blasted Maria's reputation by announcing that the grand visitors had been
for her lodger.  After that Maria dropped back into her old obscurity and
Martin began to notice the respectful manner in which he was regarded by
the small fry of the neighborhood.  As for Maria, Martin rose in her
estimation a full hundred per cent, and had the Portuguese grocer
witnessed that afternoon carriage-call he would have allowed Martin an
additional three-dollars-and-eighty-five-cents' worth of credit.




CHAPTER XXVII


The sun of Martin's good fortune rose.  The day after Ruth's visit, he
received a check for three dollars from a New York scandal weekly in
payment for three of his triolets.  Two days later a newspaper published
in Chicago accepted his "Treasure Hunters," promising to pay ten dollars
for it on publication.  The price was small, but it was the first article
he had written, his very first attempt to express his thought on the
printed page.  To cap everything, the adventure serial for boys, his
second attempt, was accepted before the end of the week by a juvenile
monthly calling itself Youth and Age.  It was true the serial was twenty-
one thousand words, and they offered to pay him sixteen dollars on
publication, which was something like seventy-five cents a thousand
words; but it was equally true that it was the second thing he had
attempted to write and that he was himself thoroughly aware of its clumsy
worthlessness.

But even his earliest efforts were not marked with the clumsiness of
mediocrity.  What characterized them was the clumsiness of too great
strength--the clumsiness which the tyro betrays when he crushes
butterflies with battering rams and hammers out vignettes with a
war-club.  So it was that Martin was glad to sell his early efforts for
songs.  He knew them for what they were, and it had not taken him long to
acquire this knowledge.  What he pinned his faith to was his later work.
He had striven to be something more than a mere writer of magazine
fiction.  He had sought to equip himself with the tools of artistry.  On
the other hand, he had not sacrificed strength.  His conscious aim had
been to increase his strength by avoiding excess of strength.  Nor had he
departed from his love of reality.  His work was realism, though he had
endeavored to fuse with it the fancies and beauties of imagination.  What
he sought was an impassioned realism, shot through with human aspiration
and faith.  What he wanted was life as it was, with all its
spirit-groping and soul-reaching left in.

He had discovered, in the course of his reading, two schools of fiction.
One treated of man as a god, ignoring his earthly origin; the other
treated of man as a clod, ignoring his heaven-sent dreams and divine
possibilities.  Both the god and the clod schools erred, in Martin's
estimation, and erred through too great singleness of sight and purpose.
There was a compromise that approximated the truth, though it flattered
not the school of god, while it challenged the brute-savageness of the
school of clod.  It was his story, "Adventure," which had dragged with
Ruth, that Martin believed had achieved his ideal of the true in fiction;
and it was in an essay, "God and Clod," that he had expressed his views
on the whole general subject.

But "Adventure," and all that he deemed his best work, still went begging
among the editors.  His early work counted for nothing in his eyes except
for the money it brought, and his horror stories, two of which he had
sold, he did not consider high work nor his best work.  To him they were
frankly imaginative and fantastic, though invested with all the glamour
of the real, wherein lay their power.  This investiture of the grotesque
and impossible with reality, he looked upon as a trick--a skilful trick
at best.  Great literature could not reside in such a field.  Their
artistry was high, but he denied the worthwhileness of artistry when
divorced from humanness.  The trick had been to fling over the face of
his artistry a mask of humanness, and this he had done in the half-dozen
or so stories of the horror brand he had written before he emerged upon
the high peaks of "Adventure," "Joy," "The Pot," and "The Wine of Life."

The three dollars he received for the triolets he used to eke out a
precarious existence against the arrival of the White Mouse check.  He
cashed the first check with the suspicious Portuguese grocer, paying a
dollar on account and dividing the remaining two dollars between the
baker and the fruit store.  Martin was not yet rich enough to afford
meat, and he was on slim allowance when the White Mouse check arrived.  He
was divided on the cashing of it.  He had never been in a bank in his
life, much less been in one on business, and he had a naive and childlike
desire to walk into one of the big banks down in Oakland and fling down
his indorsed check for forty dollars.  On the other hand, practical
common sense ruled that he should cash it with his grocer and thereby
make an impression that would later result in an increase of credit.
Reluctantly Martin yielded to the claims of the grocer, paying his bill
with him in full, and receiving in change a pocketful of jingling coin.
Also, he paid the other tradesmen in full, redeemed his suit and his
bicycle, paid one month's rent on the type-writer, and paid Maria the
overdue month for his room and a month in advance.  This left him in his
pocket, for emergencies, a balance of nearly three dollars.

In itself, this small sum seemed a fortune.  Immediately on recovering
his clothes he had gone to see Ruth, and on the way he could not refrain
from jingling the little handful of silver in his pocket.  He had been so
long without money that, like a rescued starving man who cannot let the
unconsumed food out of his sight, Martin could not keep his hand off the
silver.  He was not mean, nor avaricious, but the money meant more than
so many dollars and cents.  It stood for success, and the eagles stamped
upon the coins were to him so many winged victories.

It came to him insensibly that it was a very good world.  It certainly
appeared more beautiful to him.  For weeks it had been a very dull and
sombre world; but now, with nearly all debts paid, three dollars jingling
in his pocket, and in his mind the consciousness of success, the sun
shone bright and warm, and even a rain-squall that soaked unprepared
pedestrians seemed a merry happening to him.  When he starved, his
thoughts had dwelt often upon the thousands he knew were starving the
world over; but now that he was feasted full, the fact of the thousands
starving was no longer pregnant in his brain.  He forgot about them, and,
being in love, remembered the countless lovers in the world.  Without
deliberately thinking about it, motifs for love-lyrics began to agitate
his brain.  Swept away by the creative impulse, he got off the electric
car, without vexation, two blocks beyond his crossing.

He found a number of persons in the Morse home.  Ruth's two girl-cousins
were visiting her from San Rafael, and Mrs. Morse, under pretext of
entertaining them, was pursuing her plan of surrounding Ruth with young
people.  The campaign had begun during Martin's enforced absence, and was
already in full swing.  She was making a point of having at the house men
who were doing things.  Thus, in addition to the cousins Dorothy and
Florence, Martin encountered two university professors, one of Latin, the
other of English; a young army officer just back from the Philippines,
one-time school-mate of Ruth's; a young fellow named Melville, private
secretary to Joseph Perkins, head of the San Francisco Trust Company; and
finally of the men, a live bank cashier, Charles Hapgood, a youngish man
of thirty-five, graduate of Stanford University, member of the Nile Club
and the Unity Club, and a conservative speaker for the Republican Party
during campaigns--in short, a rising young man in every way.  Among the
women was one who painted portraits, another who was a professional
musician, and still another who possessed the degree of Doctor of
Sociology and who was locally famous for her social settlement work in
the slums of San Francisco.  But the women did not count for much in Mrs.
Morse's plan.  At the best, they were necessary accessories.  The men who
did things must be drawn to the house somehow.

"Don't get excited when you talk," Ruth admonished Martin, before the
ordeal of introduction began.

He bore himself a bit stiffly at first, oppressed by a sense of his own
awkwardness, especially of his shoulders, which were up to their old
trick of threatening destruction to furniture and ornaments.  Also, he
was rendered self-conscious by the company.  He had never before been in
contact with such exalted beings nor with so many of them.  Melville, the
bank cashier, fascinated him, and he resolved to investigate him at the
first opportunity.  For underneath Martin's awe lurked his assertive ego,
and he felt the urge to measure himself with these men and women and to
find out what they had learned from the books and life which he had not
learned.

Ruth's eyes roved to him frequently to see how he was getting on, and she
was surprised and gladdened by the ease with which he got acquainted with
her cousins.  He certainly did not grow excited, while being seated
removed from him the worry of his shoulders.  Ruth knew them for clever
girls, superficially brilliant, and she could scarcely understand their
praise of Martin later that night at going to bed.  But he, on the other
hand, a wit in his own class, a gay quizzer and laughter-maker at dances
and Sunday picnics, had found the making of fun and the breaking of good-
natured lances simple enough in this environment.  And on this evening
success stood at his back, patting him on the shoulder and telling him
that he was making good, so that he could afford to laugh and make
laughter and remain unabashed.

Later, Ruth's anxiety found justification.  Martin and Professor Caldwell
had got together in a conspicuous corner, and though Martin no longer
wove the air with his hands, to Ruth's critical eye he permitted his own
eyes to flash and glitter too frequently, talked too rapidly and warmly,
grew too intense, and allowed his aroused blood to redden his cheeks too
much.  He lacked decorum and control, and was in decided contrast to the
young professor of English with whom he talked.

But Martin was not concerned with appearances!  He had been swift to note
the other's trained mind and to appreciate his command of knowledge.
Furthermore, Professor Caldwell did not realize Martin's concept of the
average English professor.  Martin wanted him to talk shop, and, though
he seemed averse at first, succeeded in making him do it.  For Martin did
not see why a man should not talk shop.

"It's absurd and unfair," he had told Ruth weeks before, "this objection
to talking shop.  For what reason under the sun do men and women come
together if not for the exchange of the best that is in them?  And the
best that is in them is what they are interested in, the thing by which
they make their living, the thing they've specialized on and sat up days
and nights over, and even dreamed about.  Imagine Mr. Butler living up to
social etiquette and enunciating his views on Paul Verlaine or the German
drama or the novels of D'Annunzio.  We'd be bored to death.  I, for one,
if I must listen to Mr. Butler, prefer to hear him talk about his law.
It's the best that is in him, and life is so short that I want the best
of every man and woman I meet."

"But," Ruth had objected, "there are the topics of general interest to
all."

"There, you mistake," he had rushed on.  "All persons in society, all
cliques in society--or, rather, nearly all persons and cliques--ape their
betters.  Now, who are the best betters?  The idlers, the wealthy idlers.
They do not know, as a rule, the things known by the persons who are
doing something in the world.  To listen to conversation about such
things would mean to be bored, wherefore the idlers decree that such
things are shop and must not be talked about.  Likewise they decree the
things that are not shop and which may be talked about, and those things
are the latest operas, latest novels, cards, billiards, cocktails,
automobiles, horse shows, trout fishing, tuna-fishing, big-game shooting,
yacht sailing, and so forth--and mark you, these are the things the
idlers know.  In all truth, they constitute the shop-talk of the idlers.
And the funniest part of it is that many of the clever people, and all
the would-be clever people, allow the idlers so to impose upon them.  As
for me, I want the best a man's got in him, call it shop vulgarity or
anything you please."

And Ruth had not understood.  This attack of his on the established had
seemed to her just so much wilfulness of opinion.

So Martin contaminated Professor Caldwell with his own earnestness,
challenging him to speak his mind.  As Ruth paused beside them she heard
Martin saying:-

"You surely don't pronounce such heresies in the University of
California?"

Professor Caldwell shrugged his shoulders.  "The honest taxpayer and the
politician, you know.  Sacramento gives us our appropriations and
therefore we kowtow to Sacramento, and to the Board of Regents, and to
the party press, or to the press of both parties."

"Yes, that's clear; but how about you?" Martin urged.  "You must be a
fish out of the water."

"Few like me, I imagine, in the university pond.  Sometimes I am fairly
sure I am out of water, and that I should belong in Paris, in Grub
Street, in a hermit's cave, or in some sadly wild Bohemian crowd,
drinking claret,--dago-red they call it in San Francisco,--dining in
cheap restaurants in the Latin Quarter, and expressing vociferously
radical views upon all creation.  Really, I am frequently almost sure
that I was cut out to be a radical.  But then, there are so many
questions on which I am not sure.  I grow timid when I am face to face
with my human frailty, which ever prevents me from grasping all the
factors in any problem--human, vital problems, you know."

And as he talked on, Martin became aware that to his own lips had come
the "Song of the Trade Wind":-

   "I am strongest at noon,
   But under the moon
   I stiffen the bunt of the sail."

He was almost humming the words, and it dawned upon him that the other
reminded him of the trade wind, of the Northeast Trade, steady, and cool,
and strong.  He was equable, he was to be relied upon, and withal there
was a certain bafflement about him.  Martin had the feeling that he never
spoke his full mind, just as he had often had the feeling that the trades
never blew their strongest but always held reserves of strength that were
never used.  Martin's trick of visioning was active as ever.  His brain
was a most accessible storehouse of remembered fact and fancy, and its
contents seemed ever ordered and spread for his inspection.  Whatever
occurred in the instant present, Martin's mind immediately presented
associated antithesis or similitude which ordinarily expressed themselves
to him in vision.  It was sheerly automatic, and his visioning was an
unfailing accompaniment to the living present.  Just as Ruth's face, in a
momentary jealousy had called before his eyes a forgotten moonlight gale,
and as Professor Caldwell made him see again the Northeast Trade herding
the white billows across the purple sea, so, from moment to moment, not
disconcerting but rather identifying and classifying, new memory-visions
rose before him, or spread under his eyelids, or were thrown upon the
screen of his consciousness.  These visions came out of the actions and
sensations of the past, out of things and events and books of yesterday
and last week--a countless host of apparitions that, waking or sleeping,
forever thronged his mind.

So it was, as he listened to Professor Caldwell's easy flow of speech--the
conversation of a clever, cultured man--that Martin kept seeing himself
down all his past.  He saw himself when he had been quite the hoodlum,
wearing a "stiff-rim" Stetson hat and a square-cut, double-breasted coat,
with a certain swagger to the shoulders and possessing the ideal of being
as tough as the police permitted.  He did not disguise it to himself, nor
attempt to palliate it.  At one time in his life he had been just a
common hoodlum, the leader of a gang that worried the police and
terrorized honest, working-class householders.  But his ideals had
changed.  He glanced about him at the well-bred, well-dressed men and
women, and breathed into his lungs the atmosphere of culture and
refinement, and at the same moment the ghost of his early youth, in stiff-
rim and square-cut, with swagger and toughness, stalked across the room.
This figure, of the corner hoodlum, he saw merge into himself, sitting
and talking with an actual university professor.

For, after all, he had never found his permanent abiding place.  He had
fitted in wherever he found himself, been a favorite always and
everywhere by virtue of holding his own at work and at play and by his
willingness and ability to fight for his rights and command respect.  But
he had never taken root.  He had fitted in sufficiently to satisfy his
fellows but not to satisfy himself.  He had been perturbed always by a
feeling of unrest, had heard always the call of something from beyond,
and had wandered on through life seeking it until he found books and art
and love.  And here he was, in the midst of all this, the only one of all
the comrades he had adventured with who could have made themselves
eligible for the inside of the Morse home.

But such thoughts and visions did not prevent him from following
Professor Caldwell closely.  And as he followed, comprehendingly and
critically, he noted the unbroken field of the other's knowledge.  As for
himself, from moment to moment the conversation showed him gaps and open
stretches, whole subjects with which he was unfamiliar.  Nevertheless,
thanks to his Spencer, he saw that he possessed the outlines of the field
of knowledge.  It was a matter only of time, when he would fill in the
outline.  Then watch out, he thought--'ware shoal, everybody!  He felt
like sitting at the feet of the professor, worshipful and absorbent; but,
as he listened, he began to discern a weakness in the other's judgments--a
weakness so stray and elusive that he might not have caught it had it not
been ever present.  And when he did catch it, he leapt to equality at
once.

Ruth came up to them a second time, just as Martin began to speak.

"I'll tell you where you are wrong, or, rather, what weakens your
judgments," he said.  "You lack biology.  It has no place in your scheme
of things.--Oh, I mean the real interpretative biology, from the ground
up, from the laboratory and the test-tube and the vitalized inorganic
right on up to the widest aesthetic and sociological generalizations."

Ruth was appalled.  She had sat two lecture courses under Professor
Caldwell and looked up to him as the living repository of all knowledge.

"I scarcely follow you," he said dubiously.

Martin was not so sure but what he had followed him.

"Then I'll try to explain," he said.  "I remember reading in Egyptian
history something to the effect that understanding could not be had of
Egyptian art without first studying the land question."

"Quite right," the professor nodded.

"And it seems to me," Martin continued, "that knowledge of the land
question, in turn, of all questions, for that matter, cannot be had
without previous knowledge of the stuff and the constitution of life.  How
can we understand laws and institutions, religions and customs, without
understanding, not merely the nature of the creatures that made them, but
the nature of the stuff out of which the creatures are made?  Is
literature less human than the architecture and sculpture of Egypt?  Is
there one thing in the known universe that is not subject to the law of
evolution?--Oh, I know there is an elaborate evolution of the various
arts laid down, but it seems to me to be too mechanical.  The human
himself is left out.  The evolution of the tool, of the harp, of music
and song and dance, are all beautifully elaborated; but how about the
evolution of the human himself, the development of the basic and
intrinsic parts that were in him before he made his first tool or
gibbered his first chant?  It is that which you do not consider, and
which I call biology.  It is biology in its largest aspects.

"I know I express myself incoherently, but I've tried to hammer out the
idea.  It came to me as you were talking, so I was not primed and ready
to deliver it.  You spoke yourself of the human frailty that prevented
one from taking all the factors into consideration.  And you, in turn,--or
so it seems to me,--leave out the biological factor, the very stuff out
of which has been spun the fabric of all the arts, the warp and the woof
of all human actions and achievements."

To Ruth's amazement, Martin was not immediately crushed, and that the
professor replied in the way he did struck her as forbearance for
Martin's youth.  Professor Caldwell sat for a full minute, silent and
fingering his watch chain.

"Do you know," he said at last, "I've had that same criticism passed on
me once before--by a very great man, a scientist and evolutionist, Joseph
Le Conte.  But he is dead, and I thought to remain undetected; and now
you come along and expose me.  Seriously, though--and this is
confession--I think there is something in your contention--a great deal,
in fact.  I am too classical, not enough up-to-date in the interpretative
branches of science, and I can only plead the disadvantages of my
education and a temperamental slothfulness that prevents me from doing
the work.  I wonder if you'll believe that I've never been inside a
physics or chemistry laboratory?  It is true, nevertheless.  Le Conte was
right, and so are you, Mr. Eden, at least to an extent--how much I do not
know."

Ruth drew Martin away with her on a pretext; when she had got him aside,
whispering:-

"You shouldn't have monopolized Professor Caldwell that way.  There may
be others who want to talk with him."

"My mistake," Martin admitted contritely.  "But I'd got him stirred up,
and he was so interesting that I did not think.  Do you know, he is the
brightest, the most intellectual, man I have ever talked with.  And I'll
tell you something else.  I once thought that everybody who went to
universities, or who sat in the high places in society, was just as
brilliant and intelligent as he."

"He's an exception," she answered.

"I should say so.  Whom do you want me to talk to now?--Oh, say, bring me
up against that cashier-fellow."

Martin talked for fifteen minutes with him, nor could Ruth have wished
better behavior on her lover's part.  Not once did his eyes flash nor his
cheeks flush, while the calmness and poise with which he talked surprised
her.  But in Martin's estimation the whole tribe of bank cashiers fell a
few hundred per cent, and for the rest of the evening he labored under
the impression that bank cashiers and talkers of platitudes were
synonymous phrases.  The army officer he found good-natured and simple, a
healthy, wholesome young fellow, content to occupy the place in life into
which birth and luck had flung him.  On learning that he had completed
two years in the university, Martin was puzzled to know where he had
stored it away.  Nevertheless Martin liked him better than the
platitudinous bank cashier.

"I really don't object to platitudes," he told Ruth later; "but what
worries me into nervousness is the pompous, smugly complacent, superior
certitude with which they are uttered and the time taken to do it.  Why,
I could give that man the whole history of the Reformation in the time he
took to tell me that the Union-Labor Party had fused with the Democrats.
Do you know, he skins his words as a professional poker-player skins the
cards that are dealt out to him.  Some day I'll show you what I mean."

"I'm sorry you don't like him," was her reply.  "He's a favorite of Mr.
Butler's.  Mr. Butler says he is safe and honest--calls him the Rock,
Peter, and says that upon him any banking institution can well be built."

"I don't doubt it--from the little I saw of him and the less I heard from
him; but I don't think so much of banks as I did.  You don't mind my
speaking my mind this way, dear?"

"No, no; it is most interesting."

"Yes," Martin went on heartily, "I'm no more than a barbarian getting my
first impressions of civilization.  Such impressions must be
entertainingly novel to the civilized person."

"What did you think of my cousins?" Ruth queried.

"I liked them better than the other women.  There's plenty of fun in them
along with paucity of pretence."

"Then you did like the other women?"

He shook his head.

"That social-settlement woman is no more than a sociological poll-parrot.
I swear, if you winnowed her out between the stars, like Tomlinson, there
would be found in her not one original thought.  As for the
portrait-painter, she was a positive bore.  She'd make a good wife for
the cashier.  And the musician woman!  I don't care how nimble her
fingers are, how perfect her technique, how wonderful her expression--the
fact is, she knows nothing about music."

"She plays beautifully," Ruth protested.

"Yes, she's undoubtedly gymnastic in the externals of music, but the
intrinsic spirit of music is unguessed by her.  I asked her what music
meant to her--you know I'm always curious to know that particular thing;
and she did not know what it meant to her, except that she adored it,
that it was the greatest of the arts, and that it meant more than life to
her."

"You were making them talk shop," Ruth charged him.

"I confess it.  And if they were failures on shop, imagine my sufferings
if they had discoursed on other subjects.  Why, I used to think that up
here, where all the advantages of culture were enjoyed--"  He paused for
a moment, and watched the youthful shade of himself, in stiff-rim and
square-cut, enter the door and swagger across the room.  "As I was
saying, up here I thought all men and women were brilliant and radiant.
But now, from what little I've seen of them, they strike me as a pack of
ninnies, most of them, and ninety percent of the remainder as bores.  Now
there's Professor Caldwell--he's different.  He's a man, every inch of
him and every atom of his gray matter."

Ruth's face brightened.

"Tell me about him," she urged.  "Not what is large and brilliant--I know
those qualities; but whatever you feel is adverse.  I am most curious to
know."

"Perhaps I'll get myself in a pickle."  Martin debated humorously for a
moment.  "Suppose you tell me first.  Or maybe you find in him nothing
less than the best."

"I attended two lecture courses under him, and I have known him for two
years; that is why I am anxious for your first impression."

"Bad impression, you mean?  Well, here goes.  He is all the fine things
you think about him, I guess.  At least, he is the finest specimen of
intellectual man I have met; but he is a man with a secret shame."

"Oh, no, no!" he hastened to cry.  "Nothing paltry nor vulgar.  What I
mean is that he strikes me as a man who has gone to the bottom of things,
and is so afraid of what he saw that he makes believe to himself that he
never saw it.  Perhaps that's not the clearest way to express it.  Here's
another way.  A man who has found the path to the hidden temple but has
not followed it; who has, perhaps, caught glimpses of the temple and
striven afterward to convince himself that it was only a mirage of
foliage.  Yet another way.  A man who could have done things but who
placed no value on the doing, and who, all the time, in his innermost
heart, is regretting that he has not done them; who has secretly laughed
at the rewards for doing, and yet, still more secretly, has yearned for
the rewards and for the joy of doing."

"I don't read him that way," she said.  "And for that matter, I don't see
just what you mean."

"It is only a vague feeling on my part," Martin temporized.  "I have no
reason for it.  It is only a feeling, and most likely it is wrong.  You
certainly should know him better than I."

From the evening at Ruth's Martin brought away with him strange
confusions and conflicting feelings.  He was disappointed in his goal, in
the persons he had climbed to be with.  On the other hand, he was
encouraged with his success.  The climb had been easier than he expected.
He was superior to the climb, and (he did not, with false modesty, hide
it from himself) he was superior to the beings among whom he had
climbed--with the exception, of course, of Professor Caldwell.  About
life and the books he knew more than they, and he wondered into what
nooks and crannies they had cast aside their educations.  He did not know
that he was himself possessed of unusual brain vigor; nor did he know
that the persons who were given to probing the depths and to thinking
ultimate thoughts were not to be found in the drawing rooms of the
world's Morses; nor did he dream that such persons were as lonely eagles
sailing solitary in the azure sky far above the earth and its swarming
freight of gregarious life.




CHAPTER XXVIII


But success had lost Martin's address, and her messengers no longer came
to his door.  For twenty-five days, working Sundays and holidays, he
toiled on "The Shame of the Sun," a long essay of some thirty thousand
words.  It was a deliberate attack on the mysticism of the Maeterlinck
school--an attack from the citadel of positive science upon the wonder-
dreamers, but an attack nevertheless that retained much of beauty and
wonder of the sort compatible with ascertained fact.  It was a little
later that he followed up the attack with two short essays, "The Wonder-
Dreamers" and "The Yardstick of the Ego."  And on essays, long and short,
he began to pay the travelling expenses from magazine to magazine.

During the twenty-five days spent on "The Shame of the Sun," he sold hack-
work to the extent of six dollars and fifty cents.  A joke had brought in
fifty cents, and a second one, sold to a high-grade comic weekly, had
fetched a dollar.  Then two humorous poems had earned two dollars and
three dollars respectively.  As a result, having exhausted his credit
with the tradesmen (though he had increased his credit with the grocer to
five dollars), his wheel and suit of clothes went back to the pawnbroker.
The type-writer people were again clamoring for money, insistently
pointing out that according to the agreement rent was to be paid strictly
in advance.

Encouraged by his several small sales, Martin went back to hack-work.
Perhaps there was a living in it, after all.  Stored away under his table
were the twenty storiettes which had been rejected by the newspaper short-
story syndicate.  He read them over in order to find out how not to write
newspaper storiettes, and so doing, reasoned out the perfect formula.  He
found that the newspaper storiette should never be tragic, should never
end unhappily, and should never contain beauty of language, subtlety of
thought, nor real delicacy of sentiment.  Sentiment it must contain,
plenty of it, pure and noble, of the sort that in his own early youth had
brought his applause from "nigger heaven"--the "For-God-my-country-and-
the-Czar" and "I-may-be-poor-but-I-am-honest" brand of sentiment.

Having learned such precautions, Martin consulted "The Duchess" for tone,
and proceeded to mix according to formula.  The formula consists of three
parts: (1) a pair of lovers are jarred apart; (2) by some deed or event
they are reunited; (3) marriage bells.  The third part was an unvarying
quantity, but the first and second parts could be varied an infinite
number of times.  Thus, the pair of lovers could be jarred apart by
misunderstood motives, by accident of fate, by jealous rivals, by irate
parents, by crafty guardians, by scheming relatives, and so forth and so
forth; they could be reunited by a brave deed of the man lover, by a
similar deed of the woman lover, by change of heart in one lover or the
other, by forced confession of crafty guardian, scheming relative, or
jealous rival, by voluntary confession of same, by discovery of some
unguessed secret, by lover storming girl's heart, by lover making long
and noble self-sacrifice, and so on, endlessly.  It was very fetching to
make the girl propose in the course of being reunited, and Martin
discovered, bit by bit, other decidedly piquant and fetching ruses.  But
marriage bells at the end was the one thing he could take no liberties
with; though the heavens rolled up as a scroll and the stars fell, the
wedding bells must go on ringing just the same.  In quantity, the formula
prescribed twelve hundred words minimum dose, fifteen hundred words
maximum dose.

Before he got very far along in the art of the storiette, Martin worked
out half a dozen stock forms, which he always consulted when constructing
storiettes.  These forms were like the cunning tables used by
mathematicians, which may be entered from top, bottom, right, and left,
which entrances consist of scores of lines and dozens of columns, and
from which may be drawn, without reasoning or thinking, thousands of
different conclusions, all unchallengably precise and true.  Thus, in the
course of half an hour with his forms, Martin could frame up a dozen or
so storiettes, which he put aside and filled in at his convenience.  He
found that he could fill one in, after a day of serious work, in the hour
before going to bed.  As he later confessed to Ruth, he could almost do
it in his sleep.  The real work was in constructing the frames, and that
was merely mechanical.

He had no doubt whatever of the efficacy of his formula, and for once he
knew the editorial mind when he said positively to himself that the first
two he sent off would bring checks.  And checks they brought, for four
dollars each, at the end of twelve days.

In the meantime he was making fresh and alarming discoveries concerning
the magazines.  Though the Transcontinental had published "The Ring of
Bells," no check was forthcoming.  Martin needed it, and he wrote for it.
An evasive answer and a request for more of his work was all he received.
He had gone hungry two days waiting for the reply, and it was then that
he put his wheel back in pawn.  He wrote regularly, twice a week, to the
Transcontinental for his five dollars, though it was only
semi-occasionally that he elicited a reply.  He did not know that the
Transcontinental had been staggering along precariously for years, that
it was a fourth-rater, or tenth-rater, without standing, with a crazy
circulation that partly rested on petty bullying and partly on patriotic
appealing, and with advertisements that were scarcely more than
charitable donations.  Nor did he know that the Transcontinental was the
sole livelihood of the editor and the business manager, and that they
could wring their livelihood out of it only by moving to escape paying
rent and by never paying any bill they could evade.  Nor could he have
guessed that the particular five dollars that belonged to him had been
appropriated by the business manager for the painting of his house in
Alameda, which painting he performed himself, on week-day afternoons,
because he could not afford to pay union wages and because the first scab
he had employed had had a ladder jerked out from under him and been sent
to the hospital with a broken collar-bone.

The ten dollars for which Martin had sold "Treasure Hunters" to the
Chicago newspaper did not come to hand.  The article had been published,
as he had ascertained at the file in the Central Reading-room, but no
word could he get from the editor.  His letters were ignored.  To satisfy
himself that they had been received, he registered several of them.  It
was nothing less than robbery, he concluded--a cold-blooded steal; while
he starved, he was pilfered of his merchandise, of his goods, the sale of
which was the sole way of getting bread to eat.

Youth and Age was a weekly, and it had published two-thirds of his twenty-
one-thousand-word serial when it went out of business.  With it went all
hopes of getting his sixteen dollars.

To cap the situation, "The Pot," which he looked upon as one of the best
things he had written, was lost to him.  In despair, casting about
frantically among the magazines, he had sent it to The Billow, a society
weekly in San Francisco.  His chief reason for submitting it to that
publication was that, having only to travel across the bay from Oakland,
a quick decision could be reached.  Two weeks later he was overjoyed to
see, in the latest number on the news-stand, his story printed in full,
illustrated, and in the place of honor.  He went home with leaping pulse,
wondering how much they would pay him for one of the best things he had
done.  Also, the celerity with which it had been accepted and published
was a pleasant thought to him.  That the editor had not informed him of
the acceptance made the surprise more complete.  After waiting a week,
two weeks, and half a week longer, desperation conquered diffidence, and
he wrote to the editor of The Billow, suggesting that possibly through
some negligence of the business manager his little account had been
overlooked.

Even if it isn't more than five dollars, Martin thought to himself, it
will buy enough beans and pea-soup to enable me to write half a dozen
like it, and possibly as good.

Back came a cool letter from the editor that at least elicited Martin's
admiration.

"We thank you," it ran, "for your excellent contribution.  All of us in
the office enjoyed it immensely, and, as you see, it was given the place
of honor and immediate publication.  We earnestly hope that you liked the
illustrations.

"On rereading your letter it seems to us that you are laboring under the
misapprehension that we pay for unsolicited manuscripts.  This is not our
custom, and of course yours was unsolicited.  We assumed, naturally, when
we received your story, that you understood the situation.  We can only
deeply regret this unfortunate misunderstanding, and assure you of our
unfailing regard.  Again, thanking you for your kind contribution, and
hoping to receive more from you in the near future, we remain, etc."

There was also a postscript to the effect that though The Billow carried
no free-list, it took great pleasure in sending him a complimentary
subscription for the ensuing year.

After that experience, Martin typed at the top of the first sheet of all
his manuscripts: "Submitted at your usual rate."

Some day, he consoled himself, they will be submitted at _my_ usual rate.

He discovered in himself, at this period, a passion for perfection, under
the sway of which he rewrote and polished "The Jostling Street," "The
Wine of Life," "Joy," the "Sea Lyrics," and others of his earlier work.
As of old, nineteen hours of labor a day was all too little to suit him.
He wrote prodigiously, and he read prodigiously, forgetting in his toil
the pangs caused by giving up his tobacco.  Ruth's promised cure for the
habit, flamboyantly labelled, he stowed away in the most inaccessible
corner of his bureau.  Especially during his stretches of famine he
suffered from lack of the weed; but no matter how often he mastered the
craving, it remained with him as strong as ever.  He regarded it as the
biggest thing he had ever achieved.  Ruth's point of view was that he was
doing no more than was right.  She brought him the anti-tobacco remedy,
purchased out of her glove money, and in a few days forgot all about it.

His machine-made storiettes, though he hated them and derided them, were
successful.  By means of them he redeemed all his pledges, paid most of
his bills, and bought a new set of tires for his wheel.  The storiettes
at least kept the pot a-boiling and gave him time for ambitious work;
while the one thing that upheld him was the forty dollars he had received
from The White Mouse.  He anchored his faith to that, and was confident
that the really first-class magazines would pay an unknown writer at
least an equal rate, if not a better one.  But the thing was, how to get
into the first-class magazines.  His best stories, essays, and poems went
begging among them, and yet, each month, he read reams of dull, prosy,
inartistic stuff between all their various covers.  If only one editor,
he sometimes thought, would descend from his high seat of pride to write
me one cheering line!  No matter if my work is unusual, no matter if it
is unfit, for prudential reasons, for their pages, surely there must be
some sparks in it, somewhere, a few, to warm them to some sort of
appreciation.  And thereupon he would get out one or another of his
manuscripts, such as "Adventure," and read it over and over in a vain
attempt to vindicate the editorial silence.

As the sweet California spring came on, his period of plenty came to an
end.  For several weeks he had been worried by a strange silence on the
part of the newspaper storiette syndicate.  Then, one day, came back to
him through the mail ten of his immaculate machine-made storiettes.  They
were accompanied by a brief letter to the effect that the syndicate was
overstocked, and that some months would elapse before it would be in the
market again for manuscripts.  Martin had even been extravagant on the
strength of those ten storiettes.  Toward the last the syndicate had
been paying him five dollars each for them and accepting every one he
sent.  So he had looked upon the ten as good as sold, and he had lived
accordingly, on a basis of fifty dollars in the bank.  So it was that he
entered abruptly upon a lean period, wherein he continued selling his
earlier efforts to publications that would not pay and submitting his
later work to magazines that would not buy.  Also, he resumed his trips
to the pawn-broker down in Oakland.  A few jokes and snatches of humorous
verse, sold to the New York weeklies, made existence barely possible for
him.  It was at this time that he wrote letters of inquiry to the several
great monthly and quarterly reviews, and learned in reply that they
rarely considered unsolicited articles, and that most of their contents
were written upon order by well-known specialists who were authorities in
their various fields.




CHAPTER XXIX


It was a hard summer for Martin.  Manuscript readers and editors were
away on vacation, and publications that ordinarily returned a decision in
three weeks now retained his manuscript for three months or more.  The
consolation he drew from it was that a saving in postage was effected by
the deadlock.  Only the robber-publications seemed to remain actively in
business, and to them Martin disposed of all his early efforts, such as
"Pearl-diving," "The Sea as a Career," "Turtle-catching," and "The
Northeast Trades."  For these manuscripts he never received a penny.  It
is true, after six months' correspondence, he effected a compromise,
whereby he received a safety razor for "Turtle-catching," and that The
Acropolis, having agreed to give him five dollars cash and five yearly
subscriptions: for "The Northeast Trades," fulfilled the second part of
the agreement.

For a sonnet on Stevenson he managed to wring two dollars out of a Boston
editor who was running a magazine with a Matthew Arnold taste and a penny-
dreadful purse.  "The Peri and the Pearl," a clever skit of a poem of two
hundred lines, just finished, white hot from his brain, won the heart of
the editor of a San Francisco magazine published in the interest of a
great railroad.  When the editor wrote, offering him payment in
transportation, Martin wrote back to inquire if the transportation was
transferable.  It was not, and so, being prevented from peddling it, he
asked for the return of the poem.  Back it came, with the editor's
regrets, and Martin sent it to San Francisco again, this time to The
Hornet, a pretentious monthly that had been fanned into a constellation
of the first magnitude by the brilliant journalist who founded it.  But
The Hornet's light had begun to dim long before Martin was born.  The
editor promised Martin fifteen dollars for the poem, but, when it was
published, seemed to forget about it.  Several of his letters being
ignored, Martin indicted an angry one which drew a reply.  It was written
by a new editor, who coolly informed Martin that he declined to be held
responsible for the old editor's mistakes, and that he did not think much
of "The Peri and the Pearl" anyway.

But The Globe, a Chicago magazine, gave Martin the most cruel treatment
of all.  He had refrained from offering his "Sea Lyrics" for publication,
until driven to it by starvation.  After having been rejected by a dozen
magazines, they had come to rest in The Globe office.  There were thirty
poems in the collection, and he was to receive a dollar apiece for them.
The first month four were published, and he promptly received a cheek for
four dollars; but when he looked over the magazine, he was appalled at
the slaughter.  In some cases the titles had been altered: "Finis," for
instance, being changed to "The Finish," and "The Song of the Outer Reef"
to "The Song of the Coral Reef."  In one case, an absolutely different
title, a misappropriate title, was substituted.  In place of his own,
"Medusa Lights," the editor had printed, "The Backward Track."  But the
slaughter in the body of the poems was terrifying.  Martin groaned and
sweated and thrust his hands through his hair.  Phrases, lines, and
stanzas were cut out, interchanged, or juggled about in the most
incomprehensible manner.  Sometimes lines and stanzas not his own were
substituted for his.  He could not believe that a sane editor could be
guilty of such maltreatment, and his favorite hypothesis was that his
poems must have been doctored by the office boy or the stenographer.
Martin wrote immediately, begging the editor to cease publishing the
lyrics and to return them to him.

He wrote again and again, begging, entreating, threatening, but his
letters were ignored.  Month by month the slaughter went on till the
thirty poems were published, and month by month he received a check for
those which had appeared in the current number.

Despite these various misadventures, the memory of the White Mouse forty-
dollar check sustained him, though he was driven more and more to hack-
work.  He discovered a bread-and-butter field in the agricultural
weeklies and trade journals, though among the religious weeklies he found
he could easily starve.  At his lowest ebb, when his black suit was in
pawn, he made a ten-strike--or so it seemed to him--in a prize contest
arranged by the County Committee of the Republican Party.  There were
three branches of the contest, and he entered them all, laughing at
himself bitterly the while in that he was driven to such straits to live.
His poem won the first prize of ten dollars, his campaign song the second
prize of five dollars, his essay on the principles of the Republican
Party the first prize of twenty-five dollars.  Which was very gratifying
to him until he tried to collect.  Something had gone wrong in the County
Committee, and, though a rich banker and a state senator were members of
it, the money was not forthcoming.  While this affair was hanging fire,
he proved that he understood the principles of the Democratic Party by
winning the first prize for his essay in a similar contest.  And,
moreover, he received the money, twenty-five dollars.  But the forty
dollars won in the first contest he never received.

Driven to shifts in order to see Ruth, and deciding that the long walk
from north Oakland to her house and back again consumed too much time, he
kept his black suit in pawn in place of his bicycle.  The latter gave him
exercise, saved him hours of time for work, and enabled him to see Ruth
just the same.  A pair of knee duck trousers and an old sweater made him
a presentable wheel costume, so that he could go with Ruth on afternoon
rides.  Besides, he no longer had opportunity to see much of her in her
own home, where Mrs. Morse was thoroughly prosecuting her campaign of
entertainment.  The exalted beings he met there, and to whom he had
looked up but a short time before, now bored him.  They were no longer
exalted.  He was nervous and irritable, what of his hard times,
disappointments, and close application to work, and the conversation of
such people was maddening.  He was not unduly egotistic.  He measured the
narrowness of their minds by the minds of the thinkers in the books he
read.  At Ruth's home he never met a large mind, with the exception of
Professor Caldwell, and Caldwell he had met there only once.  As for the
rest, they were numskulls, ninnies, superficial, dogmatic, and ignorant.
It was their ignorance that astounded him.  What was the matter with
them?  What had they done with their educations?  They had had access to
the same books he had.  How did it happen that they had drawn nothing
from them?

He knew that the great minds, the deep and rational thinkers, existed.  He
had his proofs from the books, the books that had educated him beyond the
Morse standard.  And he knew that higher intellects than those of the
Morse circle were to be found in the world.  He read English society
novels, wherein he caught glimpses of men and women talking politics and
philosophy.  And he read of salons in great cities, even in the United
States, where art and intellect congregated.  Foolishly, in the past, he
had conceived that all well-groomed persons above the working class were
persons with power of intellect and vigor of beauty.  Culture and collars
had gone together, to him, and he had been deceived into believing that
college educations and mastery were the same things.

Well, he would fight his way on and up higher.  And he would take Ruth
with him.  Her he dearly loved, and he was confident that she would shine
anywhere.  As it was clear to him that he had been handicapped by his
early environment, so now he perceived that she was similarly
handicapped.  She had not had a chance to expand.  The books on her
father's shelves, the paintings on the walls, the music on the piano--all
was just so much meretricious display.  To real literature, real
painting, real music, the Morses and their kind, were dead.  And bigger
than such things was life, of which they were densely, hopelessly
ignorant.  In spite of their Unitarian proclivities and their masks of
conservative broadmindedness, they were two generations behind
interpretative science: their mental processes were mediaeval, while
their thinking on the ultimate data of existence and of the universe
struck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young as the
youngest race, as old as the cave-man, and older--the same that moved the
first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that moved the first hasty
Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam's rib; that moved Descartes to
build an idealistic system of the universe out of the projections of his
own puny ego; and that moved the famous British ecclesiastic to denounce
evolution in satire so scathing as to win immediate applause and leave
his name a notorious scrawl on the page of history.

So Martin thought, and he thought further, till it dawned upon him that
the difference between these lawyers, officers, business men, and bank
cashiers he had met and the members of the working class he had known was
on a par with the difference in the food they ate, clothes they wore,
neighborhoods in which they lived.  Certainly, in all of them was lacking
the something more which he found in himself and in the books.  The
Morses had shown him the best their social position could produce, and he
was not impressed by it.  A pauper himself, a slave to the money-lender,
he knew himself the superior of those he met at the Morses'; and, when
his one decent suit of clothes was out of pawn, he moved among them a
lord of life, quivering with a sense of outrage akin to what a prince
would suffer if condemned to live with goat-herds.

"You hate and fear the socialists," he remarked to Mr. Morse, one evening
at dinner; "but why?  You know neither them nor their doctrines."

The conversation had been swung in that direction by Mrs. Morse, who had
been invidiously singing the praises of Mr. Hapgood.  The cashier was
Martin's black beast, and his temper was a trifle short where the talker
of platitudes was concerned.

"Yes," he had said, "Charley Hapgood is what they call a rising young
man--somebody told me as much.  And it is true.  He'll make the
Governor's Chair before he dies, and, who knows? maybe the United States
Senate."

"What makes you think so?" Mrs. Morse had inquired.

"I've heard him make a campaign speech.  It was so cleverly stupid and
unoriginal, and also so convincing, that the leaders cannot help but
regard him as safe and sure, while his platitudes are so much like the
platitudes of the average voter that--oh, well, you know you flatter any
man by dressing up his own thoughts for him and presenting them to him."

"I actually think you are jealous of Mr. Hapgood," Ruth had chimed in.

"Heaven forbid!"

The look of horror on Martin's face stirred Mrs. Morse to belligerence.

"You surely don't mean to say that Mr. Hapgood is stupid?" she demanded
icily.

"No more than the average Republican," was the retort, "or average
Democrat, either.  They are all stupid when they are not crafty, and very
few of them are crafty.  The only wise Republicans are the millionnaires
and their conscious henchmen.  They know which side their bread is
buttered on, and they know why."

"I am a Republican," Mr. Morse put in lightly.  "Pray, how do you
classify me?"

"Oh, you are an unconscious henchman."

"Henchman?"

"Why, yes.  You do corporation work.  You have no working-class nor
criminal practice.  You don't depend upon wife-beaters and pickpockets
for your income.  You get your livelihood from the masters of society,
and whoever feeds a man is that man's master.  Yes, you are a henchman.
You are interested in advancing the interests of the aggregations of
capital you serve."

Mr. Morse's face was a trifle red.

"I confess, sir," he said, "that you talk like a scoundrelly socialist."

Then it was that Martin made his remark:

"You hate and fear the socialists; but why?  You know neither them nor
their doctrines."

"Your doctrine certainly sounds like socialism," Mr. Morse replied, while
Ruth gazed anxiously from one to the other, and Mrs. Morse beamed happily
at the opportunity afforded of rousing her liege lord's antagonism.

"Because I say Republicans are stupid, and hold that liberty, equality,
and fraternity are exploded bubbles, does not make me a socialist,"
Martin said with a smile.  "Because I question Jefferson and the
unscientific Frenchmen who informed his mind, does not make me a
socialist.  Believe me, Mr. Morse, you are far nearer socialism than I
who am its avowed enemy."

"Now you please to be facetious," was all the other could say.

"Not at all.  I speak in all seriousness.  You still believe in equality,
and yet you do the work of the corporations, and the corporations, from
day to day, are busily engaged in burying equality.  And you call me a
socialist because I deny equality, because I affirm just what you live up
to.  The Republicans are foes to equality, though most of them fight the
battle against equality with the very word itself the slogan on their
lips.  In the name of equality they destroy equality.  That was why I
called them stupid.  As for myself, I am an individualist.  I believe the
race is to the swift, the battle to the strong.  Such is the lesson I
have learned from biology, or at least think I have learned.  As I said,
I am an individualist, and individualism is the hereditary and eternal
foe of socialism."

"But you frequent socialist meetings," Mr. Morse challenged.

"Certainly, just as spies frequent hostile camps.  How else are you to
learn about the enemy?  Besides, I enjoy myself at their meetings.  They
are good fighters, and, right or wrong, they have read the books.  Any
one of them knows far more about sociology and all the other ologies than
the average captain of industry.  Yes, I have been to half a dozen of
their meetings, but that doesn't make me a socialist any more than
hearing Charley Hapgood orate made me a Republican."

"I can't help it," Mr. Morse said feebly, "but I still believe you
incline that way."

Bless me, Martin thought to himself, he doesn't know what I was talking
about.  He hasn't understood a word of it.  What did he do with his
education, anyway?

Thus, in his development, Martin found himself face to face with economic
morality, or the morality of class; and soon it became to him a grisly
monster.  Personally, he was an intellectual moralist, and more offending
to him than platitudinous pomposity was the morality of those about him,
which was a curious hotchpotch of the economic, the metaphysical, the
sentimental, and the imitative.

A sample of this curious messy mixture he encountered nearer home.  His
sister Marian had been keeping company with an industrious young
mechanic, of German extraction, who, after thoroughly learning the trade,
had set up for himself in a bicycle-repair shop.  Also, having got the
agency for a low-grade make of wheel, he was prosperous.  Marian had
called on Martin in his room a short time before to announce her
engagement, during which visit she had playfully inspected Martin's palm
and told his fortune.  On her next visit she brought Hermann von Schmidt
along with her.  Martin did the honors and congratulated both of them in
language so easy and graceful as to affect disagreeably the peasant-mind
of his sister's lover.  This bad impression was further heightened by
Martin's reading aloud the half-dozen stanzas of verse with which he had
commemorated Marian's previous visit.  It was a bit of society verse,
airy and delicate, which he had named "The Palmist."  He was surprised,
when he finished reading it, to note no enjoyment in his sister's face.
Instead, her eyes were fixed anxiously upon her betrothed, and Martin,
following her gaze, saw spread on that worthy's asymmetrical features
nothing but black and sullen disapproval.  The incident passed over, they
made an early departure, and Martin forgot all about it, though for the
moment he had been puzzled that any woman, even of the working class,
should not have been flattered and delighted by having poetry written
about her.

Several evenings later Marian again visited him, this time alone.  Nor
did she waste time in coming to the point, upbraiding him sorrowfully for
what he had done.

"Why, Marian," he chided, "you talk as though you were ashamed of your
relatives, or of your brother at any rate."

"And I am, too," she blurted out.

Martin was bewildered by the tears of mortification he saw in her eyes.
The mood, whatever it was, was genuine.

"But, Marian, why should your Hermann be jealous of my writing poetry
about my own sister?"

"He ain't jealous," she sobbed.  "He says it was indecent, ob--obscene."

Martin emitted a long, low whistle of incredulity, then proceeded to
resurrect and read a carbon copy of "The Palmist."

"I can't see it," he said finally, proffering the manuscript to her.
"Read it yourself and show me whatever strikes you as obscene--that was
the word, wasn't it?"

"He says so, and he ought to know," was the answer, with a wave aside of
the manuscript, accompanied by a look of loathing.  "And he says you've
got to tear it up.  He says he won't have no wife of his with such things
written about her which anybody can read.  He says it's a disgrace, an'
he won't stand for it."

"Now, look here, Marian, this is nothing but nonsense," Martin began;
then abruptly changed his mind.

He saw before him an unhappy girl, knew the futility of attempting to
convince her husband or her, and, though the whole situation was absurd
and preposterous, he resolved to surrender.

"All right," he announced, tearing the manuscript into half a dozen
pieces and throwing it into the waste-basket.

He contented himself with the knowledge that even then the original type-
written manuscript was reposing in the office of a New York magazine.
Marian and her husband would never know, and neither himself nor they nor
the world would lose if the pretty, harmless poem ever were published.

Marian, starting to reach into the waste-basket, refrained.

"Can I?" she pleaded.

He nodded his head, regarding her thoughtfully as she gathered the torn
pieces of manuscript and tucked them into the pocket of her jacket--ocular
evidence of the success of her mission.  She reminded him of Lizzie
Connolly, though there was less of fire and gorgeous flaunting life in
her than in that other girl of the working class whom he had seen twice.
But they were on a par, the pair of them, in dress and carriage, and he
smiled with inward amusement at the caprice of his fancy which suggested
the appearance of either of them in Mrs. Morse's drawing-room.  The
amusement faded, and he was aware of a great loneliness.  This sister of
his and the Morse drawing-room were milestones of the road he had
travelled.  And he had left them behind.  He glanced affectionately about
him at his few books.  They were all the comrades left to him.

"Hello, what's that?" he demanded in startled surprise.

Marian repeated her question.

"Why don't I go to work?"  He broke into a laugh that was only
half-hearted.  "That Hermann of yours has been talking to you."

She shook her head.

"Don't lie," he commanded, and the nod of her head affirmed his charge.

"Well, you tell that Hermann of yours to mind his own business; that when
I write poetry about the girl he's keeping company with it's his
business, but that outside of that he's got no say so.  Understand?

"So you don't think I'll succeed as a writer, eh?" he went on.  "You
think I'm no good?--that I've fallen down and am a disgrace to the
family?"

"I think it would be much better if you got a job," she said firmly, and
he saw she was sincere.  "Hermann says--"

"Damn Hermann!" he broke out good-naturedly.  "What I want to know is
when you're going to get married.  Also, you find out from your Hermann
if he will deign to permit you to accept a wedding present from me."

He mused over the incident after she had gone, and once or twice broke
out into laughter that was bitter as he saw his sister and her betrothed,
all the members of his own class and the members of Ruth's class,
directing their narrow little lives by narrow little
formulas--herd-creatures, flocking together and patterning their lives by
one another's opinions, failing of being individuals and of really living
life because of the childlike formulas by which they were enslaved.  He
summoned them before him in apparitional procession: Bernard Higginbotham
arm in arm with Mr. Butler, Hermann von Schmidt cheek by jowl with
Charley Hapgood, and one by one and in pairs he judged them and dismissed
them--judged them by the standards of intellect and morality he had
learned from the books.  Vainly he asked: Where are the great souls, the
great men and women?  He found them not among the careless, gross, and
stupid intelligences that answered the call of vision to his narrow room.
He felt a loathing for them such as Circe must have felt for her swine.
When he had dismissed the last one and thought himself alone, a
late-comer entered, unexpected and unsummoned.  Martin watched him and
saw the stiff-rim, the square-cut, double-breasted coat and the
swaggering shoulders, of the youthful hoodlum who had once been he.

"You were like all the rest, young fellow," Martin sneered.  "Your
morality and your knowledge were just the same as theirs.  You did not
think and act for yourself.  Your opinions, like your clothes, were ready
made; your acts were shaped by popular approval.  You were cock of your
gang because others acclaimed you the real thing.  You fought and ruled
the gang, not because you liked to,--you know you really despised it,--but
because the other fellows patted you on the shoulder.  You licked Cheese-
Face because you wouldn't give in, and you wouldn't give in partly
because you were an abysmal brute and for the rest because you believed
what every one about you believed, that the measure of manhood was the
carnivorous ferocity displayed in injuring and marring fellow-creatures'
anatomies.  Why, you whelp, you even won other fellows' girls away from
them, not because you wanted the girls, but because in the marrow of
those about you, those who set your moral pace, was the instinct of the
wild stallion and the bull-seal.  Well, the years have passed, and what
do you think about it now?"

As if in reply, the vision underwent a swift metamorphosis.  The stiff-
rim and the square-cut vanished, being replaced by milder garments; the
toughness went out of the face, the hardness out of the eyes; and, the
face, chastened and refined, was irradiated from an inner life of
communion with beauty and knowledge.  The apparition was very like his
present self, and, as he regarded it, he noted the student-lamp by which
it was illuminated, and the book over which it pored.  He glanced at the
title and read, "The Science of AEsthetics."  Next, he entered into the
apparition, trimmed the student-lamp, and himself went on reading "The
Science of AEsthetics."




CHAPTER XXX


On a beautiful fall day, a day of similar Indian summer to that which had
seen their love declared the year before, Martin read his "Love-cycle" to
Ruth.  It was in the afternoon, and, as before, they had ridden out to
their favorite knoll in the hills.  Now and again she had interrupted his
reading with exclamations of pleasure, and now, as he laid the last sheet
of manuscript with its fellows, he waited her judgment.

She delayed to speak, and at last she spoke haltingly, hesitating to
frame in words the harshness of her thought.

"I think they are beautiful, very beautiful," she said; "but you can't
sell them, can you?  You see what I mean," she said, almost pleaded.
"This writing of yours is not practical.  Something is the matter--maybe
it is with the market--that prevents you from earning a living by it.  And
please, dear, don't misunderstand me.  I am flattered, and made proud,
and all that--I could not be a true woman were it otherwise--that you
should write these poems to me.  But they do not make our marriage
possible.  Don't you see, Martin?  Don't think me mercenary.  It is love,
the thought of our future, with which I am burdened.  A whole year has
gone by since we learned we loved each other, and our wedding day is no
nearer.  Don't think me immodest in thus talking about our wedding, for
really I have my heart, all that I am, at stake.  Why don't you try to
get work on a newspaper, if you are so bound up in your writing?  Why not
become a reporter?--for a while, at least?"

"It would spoil my style," was his answer, in a low, monotonous voice.
"You have no idea how I've worked for style."

"But those storiettes," she argued.  "You called them hack-work.  You
wrote many of them.  Didn't they spoil your style?"

"No, the cases are different.  The storiettes were ground out, jaded, at
the end of a long day of application to style.  But a reporter's work is
all hack from morning till night, is the one paramount thing of life.  And
it is a whirlwind life, the life of the moment, with neither past nor
future, and certainly without thought of any style but reportorial style,
and that certainly is not literature.  To become a reporter now, just as
my style is taking form, crystallizing, would be to commit literary
suicide.  As it is, every storiette, every word of every storiette, was a
violation of myself, of my self-respect, of my respect for beauty.  I
tell you it was sickening.  I was guilty of sin.  And I was secretly glad
when the markets failed, even if my clothes did go into pawn.  But the
joy of writing the 'Love-cycle'!  The creative joy in its noblest form!
That was compensation for everything."

Martin did not know that Ruth was unsympathetic concerning the creative
joy.  She used the phrase--it was on her lips he had first heard it.  She
had read about it, studied about it, in the university in the course of
earning her Bachelorship of Arts; but she was not original, not creative,
and all manifestations of culture on her part were but harpings of the
harpings of others.

"May not the editor have been right in his revision of your 'Sea
Lyrics'?" she questioned.  "Remember, an editor must have proved
qualifications or else he would not be an editor."

"That's in line with the persistence of the established," he rejoined,
his heat against the editor-folk getting the better of him.  "What is, is
not only right, but is the best possible.  The existence of anything is
sufficient vindication of its fitness to exist--to exist, mark you, as
the average person unconsciously believes, not merely in present
conditions, but in all conditions.  It is their ignorance, of course,
that makes them believe such rot--their ignorance, which is nothing more
nor less than the henidical mental process described by Weininger.  They
think they think, and such thinkless creatures are the arbiters of the
lives of the few who really think."

He paused, overcome by the consciousness that he had been talking over
Ruth's head.

"I'm sure I don't know who this Weininger is," she retorted.  "And you
are so dreadfully general that I fail to follow you.  What I was speaking
of was the qualification of editors--"

"And I'll tell you," he interrupted.  "The chief qualification of ninety-
nine per cent of all editors is failure.  They have failed as writers.
Don't think they prefer the drudgery of the desk and the slavery to their
circulation and to the business manager to the joy of writing.  They have
tried to write, and they have failed.  And right there is the cursed
paradox of it.  Every portal to success in literature is guarded by those
watch-dogs, the failures in literature.  The editors, sub-editors,
associate editors, most of them, and the manuscript-readers for the
magazines and book-publishers, most of them, nearly all of them, are men
who wanted to write and who have failed.  And yet they, of all creatures
under the sun the most unfit, are the very creatures who decide what
shall and what shall not find its way into print--they, who have proved
themselves not original, who have demonstrated that they lack the divine
fire, sit in judgment upon originality and genius.  And after them come
the reviewers, just so many more failures.  Don't tell me that they have
not dreamed the dream and attempted to write poetry or fiction; for they
have, and they have failed.  Why, the average review is more nauseating
than cod-liver oil.  But you know my opinion on the reviewers and the
alleged critics.  There are great critics, but they are as rare as
comets.  If I fail as a writer, I shall have proved for the career of
editorship.  There's bread and butter and jam, at any rate."

Ruth's mind was quick, and her disapproval of her lover's views was
buttressed by the contradiction she found in his contention.

"But, Martin, if that be so, if all the doors are closed as you have
shown so conclusively, how is it possible that any of the great writers
ever arrived?"

"They arrived by achieving the impossible," he answered.  "They did such
blazing, glorious work as to burn to ashes those that opposed them.  They
arrived by course of miracle, by winning a thousand-to-one wager against
them.  They arrived because they were Carlyle's battle-scarred giants who
will not be kept down.  And that is what I must do; I must achieve the
impossible."

"But if you fail?  You must consider me as well, Martin."

"If I fail?"  He regarded her for a moment as though the thought she had
uttered was unthinkable.  Then intelligence illumined his eyes.  "If I
fail, I shall become an editor, and you will be an editor's wife."

She frowned at his facetiousness--a pretty, adorable frown that made him
put his arm around her and kiss it away.

"There, that's enough," she urged, by an effort of will withdrawing
herself from the fascination of his strength.  "I have talked with father
and mother.  I never before asserted myself so against them.  I demanded
to be heard.  I was very undutiful.  They are against you, you know; but
I assured them over and over of my abiding love for you, and at last
father agreed that if you wanted to, you could begin right away in his
office.  And then, of his own accord, he said he would pay you enough at
the start so that we could get married and have a little cottage
somewhere.  Which I think was very fine of him--don't you?"

Martin, with the dull pain of despair at his heart, mechanically reaching
for the tobacco and paper (which he no longer carried) to roll a
cigarette, muttered something inarticulate, and Ruth went on.

"Frankly, though, and don't let it hurt you--I tell you, to show you
precisely how you stand with him--he doesn't like your radical views, and
he thinks you are lazy.  Of course I know you are not.  I know you work
hard."

How hard, even she did not know, was the thought in Martin's mind.

"Well, then," he said, "how about my views?  Do you think they are so
radical?"

He held her eyes and waited the answer.

"I think them, well, very disconcerting," she replied.

The question was answered for him, and so oppressed was he by the
grayness of life that he forgot the tentative proposition she had made
for him to go to work.  And she, having gone as far as she dared, was
willing to wait the answer till she should bring the question up again.

She had not long to wait.  Martin had a question of his own to propound
to her.  He wanted to ascertain the measure of her faith in him, and
within the week each was answered.  Martin precipitated it by reading to
her his "The Shame of the Sun."

"Why don't you become a reporter?" she asked when he had finished.  "You
love writing so, and I am sure you would succeed.  You could rise in
journalism and make a name for yourself.  There are a number of great
special correspondents.  Their salaries are large, and their field is the
world.  They are sent everywhere, to the heart of Africa, like Stanley,
or to interview the Pope, or to explore unknown Thibet."

"Then you don't like my essay?" he rejoined.  "You believe that I have
some show in journalism but none in literature?"

"No, no; I do like it.  It reads well.  But I am afraid it's over the
heads of your readers.  At least it is over mine.  It sounds beautiful,
but I don't understand it.  Your scientific slang is beyond me.  You are
an extremist, you know, dear, and what may be intelligible to you may not
be intelligible to the rest of us."

"I imagine it's the philosophic slang that bothers you," was all he could
say.

He was flaming from the fresh reading of the ripest thought he had
expressed, and her verdict stunned him.

"No matter how poorly it is done," he persisted, "don't you see anything
in it?--in the thought of it, I mean?"

She shook her head.

"No, it is so different from anything I have read.  I read Maeterlinck
and understand him--"

"His mysticism, you understand that?" Martin flashed out.

"Yes, but this of yours, which is supposed to be an attack upon him, I
don't understand.  Of course, if originality counts--"

He stopped her with an impatient gesture that was not followed by speech.
He became suddenly aware that she was speaking and that she had been
speaking for some time.

"After all, your writing has been a toy to you," she was saying.  "Surely
you have played with it long enough.  It is time to take up life
seriously--_our_ life, Martin.  Hitherto you have lived solely your own."

"You want me to go to work?" he asked.

"Yes.  Father has offered--"

"I understand all that," he broke in; "but what I want to know is whether
or not you have lost faith in me?"

She pressed his hand mutely, her eyes dim.

"In your writing, dear," she admitted in a half-whisper.

"You've read lots of my stuff," he went on brutally.  "What do you think
of it?  Is it utterly hopeless?  How does it compare with other men's
work?"

"But they sell theirs, and you--don't."

"That doesn't answer my question.  Do you think that literature is not at
all my vocation?"

"Then I will answer."  She steeled herself to do it.  "I don't think you
were made to write.  Forgive me, dear.  You compel me to say it; and you
know I know more about literature than you do."

"Yes, you are a Bachelor of Arts," he said meditatively; "and you ought
to know."

"But there is more to be said," he continued, after a pause painful to
both.  "I know what I have in me.  No one knows that so well as I.  I
know I shall succeed.  I will not be kept down.  I am afire with what I
have to say in verse, and fiction, and essay.  I do not ask you to have
faith in that, though.  I do not ask you to have faith in me, nor in my
writing.  What I do ask of you is to love me and have faith in love."

"A year ago I believed for two years.  One of those years is yet to run.
And I do believe, upon my honor and my soul, that before that year is run
I shall have succeeded.  You remember what you told me long ago, that I
must serve my apprenticeship to writing.  Well, I have served it.  I have
crammed it and telescoped it.  With you at the end awaiting me, I have
never shirked.  Do you know, I have forgotten what it is to fall
peacefully asleep.  A few million years ago I knew what it was to sleep
my fill and to awake naturally from very glut of sleep.  I am awakened
always now by an alarm clock.  If I fall asleep early or late, I set the
alarm accordingly; and this, and the putting out of the lamp, are my last
conscious actions."

"When I begin to feel drowsy, I change the heavy book I am reading for a
lighter one.  And when I doze over that, I beat my head with my knuckles
in order to drive sleep away.  Somewhere I read of a man who was afraid
to sleep.  Kipling wrote the story.  This man arranged a spur so that
when unconsciousness came, his naked body pressed against the iron teeth.
Well, I've done the same.  I look at the time, and I resolve that not
until midnight, or not until one o'clock, or two o'clock, or three
o'clock, shall the spur be removed.  And so it rowels me awake until the
appointed time.  That spur has been my bed-mate for months.  I have grown
so desperate that five and a half hours of sleep is an extravagance.  I
sleep four hours now.  I am starved for sleep.  There are times when I am
light-headed from want of sleep, times when death, with its rest and
sleep, is a positive lure to me, times when I am haunted by Longfellow's
lines:

   "'The sea is still and deep;
   All things within its bosom sleep;
   A single step and all is o'er,
   A plunge, a bubble, and no more.'

"Of course, this is sheer nonsense.  It comes from nervousness, from an
overwrought mind.  But the point is: Why have I done this?  For you.  To
shorten my apprenticeship.  To compel Success to hasten.  And my
apprenticeship is now served.  I know my equipment.  I swear that I learn
more each month than the average college man learns in a year.  I know
it, I tell you.  But were my need for you to understand not so desperate
I should not tell you.  It is not boasting.  I measure the results by the
books.  Your brothers, to-day, are ignorant barbarians compared with me
and the knowledge I have wrung from the books in the hours they were
sleeping.  Long ago I wanted to be famous.  I care very little for fame
now.  What I want is you; I am more hungry for you than for food, or
clothing, or recognition.  I have a dream of laying my head on your
breast and sleeping an aeon or so, and the dream will come true ere
another year is gone."

His power beat against her, wave upon wave; and in the moment his will
opposed hers most she felt herself most strongly drawn toward him.  The
strength that had always poured out from him to her was now flowering in
his impassioned voice, his flashing eyes, and the vigor of life and
intellect surging in him.  And in that moment, and for the moment, she
was aware of a rift that showed in her certitude--a rift through which
she caught sight of the real Martin Eden, splendid and invincible; and as
animal-trainers have their moments of doubt, so she, for the instant,
seemed to doubt her power to tame this wild spirit of a man.

"And another thing," he swept on.  "You love me.  But why do you love me?
The thing in me that compels me to write is the very thing that draws
your love.  You love me because I am somehow different from the men you
have known and might have loved.  I was not made for the desk and
counting-house, for petty business squabbling, and legal jangling.  Make
me do such things, make me like those other men, doing the work they do,
breathing the air they breathe, developing the point of view they have
developed, and you have destroyed the difference, destroyed me, destroyed
the thing you love.  My desire to write is the most vital thing in me.
Had I been a mere clod, neither would I have desired to write, nor would
you have desired me for a husband."

"But you forget," she interrupted, the quick surface of her mind
glimpsing a parallel.  "There have been eccentric inventors, starving
their families while they sought such chimeras as perpetual motion.
Doubtless their wives loved them, and suffered with them and for them,
not because of but in spite of their infatuation for perpetual motion."

"True," was the reply.  "But there have been inventors who were not
eccentric and who starved while they sought to invent practical things;
and sometimes, it is recorded, they succeeded.  Certainly I do not seek
any impossibilities--"

"You have called it 'achieving the impossible,'" she interpolated.

"I spoke figuratively.  I seek to do what men have done before me--to
write and to live by my writing."

Her silence spurred him on.

"To you, then, my goal is as much a chimera as perpetual motion?" he
demanded.

He read her answer in the pressure of her hand on his--the pitying mother-
hand for the hurt child.  And to her, just then, he was the hurt child,
the infatuated man striving to achieve the impossible.

Toward the close of their talk she warned him again of the antagonism of
her father and mother.

"But you love me?" he asked.

"I do!  I do!" she cried.

"And I love you, not them, and nothing they do can hurt me."  Triumph
sounded in his voice.  "For I have faith in your love, not fear of their
enmity.  All things may go astray in this world, but not love.  Love
cannot go wrong unless it be a weakling that faints and stumbles by the
way."




CHAPTER XXXI


Martin had encountered his sister Gertrude by chance on Broadway--as it
proved, a most propitious yet disconcerting chance.  Waiting on the
corner for a car, she had seen him first, and noted the eager, hungry
lines of his face and the desperate, worried look of his eyes.  In truth,
he was desperate and worried.  He had just come from a fruitless
interview with the pawnbroker, from whom he had tried to wring an
additional loan on his wheel.  The muddy fall weather having come on,
Martin had pledged his wheel some time since and retained his black suit.

"There's the black suit," the pawnbroker, who knew his every asset, had
answered.  "You needn't tell me you've gone and pledged it with that Jew,
Lipka.  Because if you have--"

The man had looked the threat, and Martin hastened to cry:-

"No, no; I've got it.  But I want to wear it on a matter of business."

"All right," the mollified usurer had replied.  "And I want it on a
matter of business before I can let you have any more money.  You don't
think I'm in it for my health?"

"But it's a forty-dollar wheel, in good condition," Martin had argued.
"And you've only let me have seven dollars on it.  No, not even seven.
Six and a quarter; you took the interest in advance."

"If you want some more, bring the suit," had been the reply that sent
Martin out of the stuffy little den, so desperate at heart as to reflect
it in his face and touch his sister to pity.

Scarcely had they met when the Telegraph Avenue car came along and
stopped to take on a crowd of afternoon shoppers.  Mrs. Higginbotham
divined from the grip on her arm as he helped her on, that he was not
going to follow her.  She turned on the step and looked down upon him.
His haggard face smote her to the heart again.

"Ain't you comin'?" she asked

The next moment she had descended to his side.

"I'm walking--exercise, you know," he explained.

"Then I'll go along for a few blocks," she announced.  "Mebbe it'll do me
good.  I ain't ben feelin' any too spry these last few days."

Martin glanced at her and verified her statement in her general slovenly
appearance, in the unhealthy fat, in the drooping shoulders, the tired
face with the sagging lines, and in the heavy fall of her feet, without
elasticity--a very caricature of the walk that belongs to a free and
happy body.

"You'd better stop here," he said, though she had already come to a halt
at the first corner, "and take the next car."

"My goodness!--if I ain't all tired a'ready!" she panted.  "But I'm just
as able to walk as you in them soles.  They're that thin they'll bu'st
long before you git out to North Oakland."

"I've a better pair at home," was the answer.

"Come out to dinner to-morrow," she invited irrelevantly.  "Mr.
Higginbotham won't be there.  He's goin' to San Leandro on business."

Martin shook his head, but he had failed to keep back the wolfish, hungry
look that leapt into his eyes at the suggestion of dinner.

"You haven't a penny, Mart, and that's why you're walkin'.  Exercise!"
She tried to sniff contemptuously, but succeeded in producing only a
sniffle.  "Here, lemme see."

And, fumbling in her satchel, she pressed a five-dollar piece into his
hand.  "I guess I forgot your last birthday, Mart," she mumbled lamely.

Martin's hand instinctively closed on the piece of gold.  In the same
instant he knew he ought not to accept, and found himself struggling in
the throes of indecision.  That bit of gold meant food, life, and light
in his body and brain, power to go on writing, and--who was to say?--maybe
to write something that would bring in many pieces of gold.  Clear on his
vision burned the manuscripts of two essays he had just completed.  He
saw them under the table on top of the heap of returned manuscripts for
which he had no stamps, and he saw their titles, just as he had typed
them--"The High Priests of Mystery," and "The Cradle of Beauty."  He had
never submitted them anywhere.  They were as good as anything he had done
in that line.  If only he had stamps for them!  Then the certitude of his
ultimate success rose up in him, an able ally of hunger, and with a quick
movement he slipped the coin into his pocket.

"I'll pay you back, Gertrude, a hundred times over," he gulped out, his
throat painfully contracted and in his eyes a swift hint of moisture.

"Mark my words!" he cried with abrupt positiveness.  "Before the year is
out I'll put an even hundred of those little yellow-boys into your hand.
I don't ask you to believe me.  All you have to do is wait and see."

Nor did she believe.  Her incredulity made her uncomfortable, and failing
of other expedient, she said:-

"I know you're hungry, Mart.  It's sticking out all over you.  Come in to
meals any time.  I'll send one of the children to tell you when Mr.
Higginbotham ain't to be there.  An' Mart--"

He waited, though he knew in his secret heart what she was about to say,
so visible was her thought process to him.

"Don't you think it's about time you got a job?"

"You don't think I'll win out?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Nobody has faith in me, Gertrude, except myself."  His voice was
passionately rebellious.  "I've done good work already, plenty of it, and
sooner or later it will sell."

"How do you know it is good?"

"Because--"  He faltered as the whole vast field of literature and the
history of literature stirred in his brain and pointed the futility of
his attempting to convey to her the reasons for his faith.  "Well,
because it's better than ninety-nine per cent of what is published in the
magazines."

"I wish't you'd listen to reason," she answered feebly, but with
unwavering belief in the correctness of her diagnosis of what was ailing
him.  "I wish't you'd listen to reason," she repeated, "an' come to
dinner to-morrow."

After Martin had helped her on the car, he hurried to the post-office and
invested three of the five dollars in stamps; and when, later in the day,
on the way to the Morse home, he stopped in at the post-office to weigh a
large number of long, bulky envelopes, he affixed to them all the stamps
save three of the two-cent denomination.

It proved a momentous night for Martin, for after dinner he met Russ
Brissenden.  How he chanced to come there, whose friend he was or what
acquaintance brought him, Martin did not know.  Nor had he the curiosity
to inquire about him of Ruth.  In short, Brissenden struck Martin as
anaemic and feather-brained, and was promptly dismissed from his mind.  An
hour later he decided that Brissenden was a boor as well, what of the way
he prowled about from one room to another, staring at the pictures or
poking his nose into books and magazines he picked up from the table or
drew from the shelves.  Though a stranger in the house he finally
isolated himself in the midst of the company, huddling into a capacious
Morris chair and reading steadily from a thin volume he had drawn from
his pocket.  As he read, he abstractedly ran his fingers, with a
caressing movement, through his hair.  Martin noticed him no more that
evening, except once when he observed him chaffing with great apparent
success with several of the young women.

It chanced that when Martin was leaving, he overtook Brissenden already
half down the walk to the street.

"Hello, is that you?" Martin said.

The other replied with an ungracious grunt, but swung alongside.  Martin
made no further attempt at conversation, and for several blocks unbroken
silence lay upon them.

"Pompous old ass!"

The suddenness and the virulence of the exclamation startled Martin.  He
felt amused, and at the same time was aware of a growing dislike for the
other.

"What do you go to such a place for?" was abruptly flung at him after
another block of silence.

"Why do you?" Martin countered.

"Bless me, I don't know," came back.  "At least this is my first
indiscretion.  There are twenty-four hours in each day, and I must spend
them somehow.  Come and have a drink."

"All right," Martin answered.

The next moment he was nonplussed by the readiness of his acceptance.  At
home was several hours' hack-work waiting for him before he went to bed,
and after he went to bed there was a volume of Weismann waiting for him,
to say nothing of Herbert Spencer's Autobiography, which was as replete
for him with romance as any thrilling novel.  Why should he waste any
time with this man he did not like? was his thought.  And yet, it was not
so much the man nor the drink as was it what was associated with the
drink--the bright lights, the mirrors and dazzling array of glasses, the
warm and glowing faces and the resonant hum of the voices of men.  That
was it, it was the voices of men, optimistic men, men who breathed
success and spent their money for drinks like men.  He was lonely, that
was what was the matter with him; that was why he had snapped at the
invitation as a bonita strikes at a white rag on a hook.  Not since with
Joe, at Shelly Hot Springs, with the one exception of the wine he took
with the Portuguese grocer, had Martin had a drink at a public bar.
Mental exhaustion did not produce a craving for liquor such as physical
exhaustion did, and he had felt no need for it.  But just now he felt
desire for the drink, or, rather, for the atmosphere wherein drinks were
dispensed and disposed of.  Such a place was the Grotto, where Brissenden
and he lounged in capacious leather chairs and drank Scotch and soda.

They talked.  They talked about many things, and now Brissenden and now
Martin took turn in ordering Scotch and soda.  Martin, who was extremely
strong-headed, marvelled at the other's capacity for liquor, and ever and
anon broke off to marvel at the other's conversation.  He was not long in
assuming that Brissenden knew everything, and in deciding that here was
the second intellectual man he had met.  But he noted that Brissenden had
what Professor Caldwell lacked--namely, fire, the flashing insight and
perception, the flaming uncontrol of genius.  Living language flowed from
him.  His thin lips, like the dies of a machine, stamped out phrases that
cut and stung; or again, pursing caressingly about the inchoate sound
they articulated, the thin lips shaped soft and velvety things, mellow
phrases of glow and glory, of haunting beauty, reverberant of the mystery
and inscrutableness of life; and yet again the thin lips were like a
bugle, from which rang the crash and tumult of cosmic strife, phrases
that sounded clear as silver, that were luminous as starry spaces, that
epitomized the final word of science and yet said something more--the
poet's word, the transcendental truth, elusive and without words which
could express, and which none the less found expression in the subtle and
all but ungraspable connotations of common words.  He, by some wonder of
vision, saw beyond the farthest outpost of empiricism, where was no
language for narration, and yet, by some golden miracle of speech,
investing known words with unknown significances, he conveyed to Martin's
consciousness messages that were incommunicable to ordinary souls.

Martin forgot his first impression of dislike.  Here was the best the
books had to offer coming true.  Here was an intelligence, a living man
for him to look up to.  "I am down in the dirt at your feet," Martin
repeated to himself again and again.

"You've studied biology," he said aloud, in significant allusion.

To his surprise Brissenden shook his head.

"But you are stating truths that are substantiated only by biology,"
Martin insisted, and was rewarded by a blank stare.  "Your conclusions
are in line with the books which you must have read."

"I am glad to hear it," was the answer.  "That my smattering of knowledge
should enable me to short-cut my way to truth is most reassuring.  As for
myself, I never bother to find out if I am right or not.  It is all
valueless anyway.  Man can never know the ultimate verities."

"You are a disciple of Spencer!" Martin cried triumphantly.

"I haven't read him since adolescence, and all I read then was his
'Education.'"

"I wish I could gather knowledge as carelessly," Martin broke out half an
hour later.  He had been closely analyzing Brissenden's mental equipment.
"You are a sheer dogmatist, and that's what makes it so marvellous.  You
state dogmatically the latest facts which science has been able to
establish only by a posteriori reasoning.  You jump at correct
conclusions.  You certainly short-cut with a vengeance.  You feel your
way with the speed of light, by some hyperrational process, to truth."

"Yes, that was what used to bother Father Joseph, and Brother Dutton,"
Brissenden replied.  "Oh, no," he added; "I am not anything.  It was a
lucky trick of fate that sent me to a Catholic college for my education.
Where did you pick up what you know?"

And while Martin told him, he was busy studying Brissenden, ranging from
a long, lean, aristocratic face and drooping shoulders to the overcoat on
a neighboring chair, its pockets sagged and bulged by the freightage of
many books.  Brissenden's face and long, slender hands were browned by
the sun--excessively browned, Martin thought.  This sunburn bothered
Martin.  It was patent that Brissenden was no outdoor man.  Then how had
he been ravaged by the sun?  Something morbid and significant attached to
that sunburn, was Martin's thought as he returned to a study of the face,
narrow, with high cheek-bones and cavernous hollows, and graced with as
delicate and fine an aquiline nose as Martin had ever seen.  There was
nothing remarkable about the size of the eyes.  They were neither large
nor small, while their color was a nondescript brown; but in them
smouldered a fire, or, rather, lurked an expression dual and strangely
contradictory.  Defiant, indomitable, even harsh to excess, they at the
same time aroused pity.  Martin found himself pitying him he knew not
why, though he was soon to learn.

"Oh, I'm a lunger," Brissenden announced, offhand, a little later, having
already stated that he came from Arizona.  "I've been down there a couple
of years living on the climate."

"Aren't you afraid to venture it up in this climate?"

"Afraid?"

There was no special emphasis of his repetition of Martin's word.  But
Martin saw in that ascetic face the advertisement that there was nothing
of which it was afraid.  The eyes had narrowed till they were eagle-like,
and Martin almost caught his breath as he noted the eagle beak with its
dilated nostrils, defiant, assertive, aggressive.  Magnificent, was what
he commented to himself, his blood thrilling at the sight.  Aloud, he
quoted:-

   "'Under the bludgeoning of Chance
   My head is bloody but unbowed.'"

"You like Henley," Brissenden said, his expression changing swiftly to
large graciousness and tenderness.  "Of course, I couldn't have expected
anything else of you.  Ah, Henley!  A brave soul.  He stands out among
contemporary rhymesters--magazine rhymesters--as a gladiator stands out
in the midst of a band of eunuchs."

"You don't like the magazines," Martin softly impeached.

"Do you?" was snarled back at him so savagely as to startle him.

"I--I write, or, rather, try to write, for the magazines," Martin
faltered.

"That's better," was the mollified rejoinder.  "You try to write, but you
don't succeed.  I respect and admire your failure.  I know what you
write.  I can see it with half an eye, and there's one ingredient in it
that shuts it out of the magazines.  It's guts, and magazines have no use
for that particular commodity.  What they want is wish-wash and slush,
and God knows they get it, but not from you."

"I'm not above hack-work," Martin contended.

"On the contrary--"  Brissenden paused and ran an insolent eye over
Martin's objective poverty, passing from the well-worn tie and the saw-
edged collar to the shiny sleeves of the coat and on to the slight fray
of one cuff, winding up and dwelling upon Martin's sunken cheeks.  "On
the contrary, hack-work is above you, so far above you that you can never
hope to rise to it.  Why, man, I could insult you by asking you to have
something to eat."

Martin felt the heat in his face of the involuntary blood, and Brissenden
laughed triumphantly.

"A full man is not insulted by such an invitation," he concluded.

"You are a devil," Martin cried irritably.

"Anyway, I didn't ask you."

"You didn't dare."

"Oh, I don't know about that.  I invite you now."

Brissenden half rose from his chair as he spoke, as if with the intention
of departing to the restaurant forthwith.

Martin's fists were tight-clenched, and his blood was drumming in his
temples.

"Bosco!  He eats 'em alive!  Eats 'em alive!"  Brissenden exclaimed,
imitating the spieler of a locally famous snake-eater.

"I could certainly eat you alive," Martin said, in turn running insolent
eyes over the other's disease-ravaged frame.

"Only I'm not worthy of it?"

"On the contrary," Martin considered, "because the incident is not
worthy."  He broke into a laugh, hearty and wholesome.  "I confess you
made a fool of me, Brissenden.  That I am hungry and you are aware of it
are only ordinary phenomena, and there's no disgrace.  You see, I laugh
at the conventional little moralities of the herd; then you drift by, say
a sharp, true word, and immediately I am the slave of the same little
moralities."

"You were insulted," Brissenden affirmed.

"I certainly was, a moment ago.  The prejudice of early youth, you know.
I learned such things then, and they cheapen what I have since learned.
They are the skeletons in my particular closet."

"But you've got the door shut on them now?"

"I certainly have."

"Sure?"

"Sure."

"Then let's go and get something to eat."

"I'll go you," Martin answered, attempting to pay for the current Scotch
and soda with the last change from his two dollars and seeing the waiter
bullied by Brissenden into putting that change back on the table.

Martin pocketed it with a grimace, and felt for a moment the kindly
weight of Brissenden's hand upon his shoulder.




CHAPTER XXXII


Promptly, the next afternoon, Maria was excited by Martin's second
visitor.  But she did not lose her head this time, for she seated
Brissenden in her parlor's grandeur of respectability.

"Hope you don't mind my coming?" Brissenden began.

"No, no, not at all," Martin answered, shaking hands and waving him to
the solitary chair, himself taking to the bed.  "But how did you know
where I lived?"

"Called up the Morses.  Miss Morse answered the 'phone.  And here I am."
He tugged at his coat pocket and flung a thin volume on the table.
"There's a book, by a poet.  Read it and keep it."  And then, in reply to
Martin's protest: "What have I to do with books?  I had another
hemorrhage this morning.  Got any whiskey?  No, of course not.  Wait a
minute."

He was off and away.  Martin watched his long figure go down the outside
steps, and, on turning to close the gate, noted with a pang the
shoulders, which had once been broad, drawn in now over, the collapsed
ruin of the chest.  Martin got two tumblers, and fell to reading the book
of verse, Henry Vaughn Marlow's latest collection.

"No Scotch," Brissenden announced on his return.  "The beggar sells
nothing but American whiskey.  But here's a quart of it."

"I'll send one of the youngsters for lemons, and we'll make a toddy,"
Martin offered.

"I wonder what a book like that will earn Marlow?" he went on, holding up
the volume in question.

"Possibly fifty dollars," came the answer.  "Though he's lucky if he
pulls even on it, or if he can inveigle a publisher to risk bringing it
out."

"Then one can't make a living out of poetry?"

Martin's tone and face alike showed his dejection.

"Certainly not.  What fool expects to?  Out of rhyming, yes.  There's
Bruce, and Virginia Spring, and Sedgwick.  They do very nicely.  But
poetry--do you know how Vaughn Marlow makes his living?--teaching in a
boys' cramming-joint down in Pennsylvania, and of all private little
hells such a billet is the limit.  I wouldn't trade places with him if he
had fifty years of life before him.  And yet his work stands out from the
ruck of the contemporary versifiers as a balas ruby among carrots.  And
the reviews he gets!  Damn them, all of them, the crass manikins!"

"Too much is written by the men who can't write about the men who do
write," Martin concurred.  "Why, I was appalled at the quantities of
rubbish written about Stevenson and his work."

"Ghouls and harpies!" Brissenden snapped out with clicking teeth.  "Yes,
I know the spawn--complacently pecking at him for his Father Damien
letter, analyzing him, weighing him--"

"Measuring him by the yardstick of their own miserable egos," Martin
broke in.

"Yes, that's it, a good phrase,--mouthing and besliming the True, and
Beautiful, and Good, and finally patting him on the back and saying,
'Good dog, Fido.'  Faugh!  'The little chattering daws of men,' Richard
Realf called them the night he died."

"Pecking at star-dust," Martin took up the strain warmly; "at the
meteoric flight of the master-men.  I once wrote a squib on them--the
critics, or the reviewers, rather."

"Let's see it," Brissenden begged eagerly.

So Martin unearthed a carbon copy of "Star-dust," and during the reading
of it Brissenden chuckled, rubbed his hands, and forgot to sip his toddy.

"Strikes me you're a bit of star-dust yourself, flung into a world of
cowled gnomes who cannot see," was his comment at the end of it.  "Of
course it was snapped up by the first magazine?"

Martin ran over the pages of his manuscript book.  "It has been refused
by twenty-seven of them."

Brissenden essayed a long and hearty laugh, but broke down in a fit of
coughing.

"Say, you needn't tell me you haven't tackled poetry," he gasped.  "Let
me see some of it."

"Don't read it now," Martin pleaded.  "I want to talk with you.  I'll
make up a bundle and you can take it home."

Brissenden departed with the "Love-cycle," and "The Peri and the Pearl,"
returning next day to greet Martin with:-

"I want more."

Not only did he assure Martin that he was a poet, but Martin learned that
Brissenden also was one.  He was swept off his feet by the other's work,
and astounded that no attempt had been made to publish it.

"A plague on all their houses!" was Brissenden's answer to Martin's
volunteering to market his work for him.  "Love Beauty for its own sake,"
was his counsel, "and leave the magazines alone.  Back to your ships and
your sea--that's my advice to you, Martin Eden.  What do you want in
these sick and rotten cities of men?  You are cutting your throat every
day you waste in them trying to prostitute beauty to the needs of
magazinedom.  What was it you quoted me the other day?--Oh, yes, 'Man,
the latest of the ephemera.'  Well, what do you, the latest of the
ephemera, want with fame?  If you got it, it would be poison to you.  You
are too simple, too elemental, and too rational, by my faith, to prosper
on such pap.  I hope you never do sell a line to the magazines.  Beauty
is the only master to serve.  Serve her and damn the multitude!  Success!
What in hell's success if it isn't right there in your Stevenson sonnet,
which outranks Henley's 'Apparition,' in that 'Love-cycle,' in those sea-
poems?

"It is not in what you succeed in doing that you get your joy, but in the
doing of it.  You can't tell me.  I know it.  You know it.  Beauty hurts
you.  It is an everlasting pain in you, a wound that does not heal, a
knife of flame.  Why should you palter with magazines?  Let beauty be
your end.  Why should you mint beauty into gold?  Anyway, you can't; so
there's no use in my getting excited over it.  You can read the magazines
for a thousand years and you won't find the value of one line of Keats.
Leave fame and coin alone, sign away on a ship to-morrow, and go back to
your sea."

"Not for fame, but for love," Martin laughed.  "Love seems to have no
place in your Cosmos; in mine, Beauty is the handmaiden of Love."

Brissenden looked at him pityingly and admiringly.  "You are so young,
Martin boy, so young.  You will flutter high, but your wings are of the
finest gauze, dusted with the fairest pigments.  Do not scorch them.  But
of course you have scorched them already.  It required some glorified
petticoat to account for that 'Love-cycle,' and that's the shame of it."

"It glorifies love as well as the petticoat," Martin laughed.

"The philosophy of madness," was the retort.  "So have I assured myself
when wandering in hasheesh dreams.  But beware.  These bourgeois cities
will kill you.  Look at that den of traitors where I met you.  Dry rot is
no name for it.  One can't keep his sanity in such an atmosphere.  It's
degrading.  There's not one of them who is not degrading, man and woman,
all of them animated stomachs guided by the high intellectual and
artistic impulses of clams--"

He broke off suddenly and regarded Martin.  Then, with a flash of
divination, he saw the situation.  The expression on his face turned to
wondering horror.

"And you wrote that tremendous 'Love-cycle' to her--that pale,
shrivelled, female thing!"

The next instant Martin's right hand had shot to a throttling clutch on
his throat, and he was being shaken till his teeth rattled.  But Martin,
looking into his eyes, saw no fear there,--naught but a curious and
mocking devil.  Martin remembered himself, and flung Brissenden, by the
neck, sidelong upon the bed, at the same moment releasing his hold.

Brissenden panted and gasped painfully for a moment, then began to
chuckle.

"You had made me eternally your debtor had you shaken out the flame," he
said.

"My nerves are on a hair-trigger these days," Martin apologized.  "Hope I
didn't hurt you.  Here, let me mix a fresh toddy."

"Ah, you young Greek!" Brissenden went on.  "I wonder if you take just
pride in that body of yours.  You are devilish strong.  You are a young
panther, a lion cub.  Well, well, it is you who must pay for that
strength."

"What do you mean?" Martin asked curiously, passing aim a glass.  "Here,
down this and be good."

"Because--" Brissenden sipped his toddy and smiled appreciation of it.
"Because of the women.  They will worry you until you die, as they have
already worried you, or else I was born yesterday.  Now there's no use in
your choking me; I'm going to have my say.  This is undoubtedly your calf
love; but for Beauty's sake show better taste next time.  What under
heaven do you want with a daughter of the bourgeoisie?  Leave them alone.
Pick out some great, wanton flame of a woman, who laughs at life and
jeers at death and loves one while she may.  There are such women, and
they will love you just as readily as any pusillanimous product of
bourgeois sheltered life."

"Pusillanimous?" Martin protested.

"Just so, pusillanimous; prattling out little moralities that have been
prattled into them, and afraid to live life.  They will love you, Martin,
but they will love their little moralities more.  What you want is the
magnificent abandon of life, the great free souls, the blazing
butterflies and not the little gray moths.  Oh, you will grow tired of
them, too, of all the female things, if you are unlucky enough to live.
But you won't live.  You won't go back to your ships and sea; therefore,
you'll hang around these pest-holes of cities until your bones are
rotten, and then you'll die."

"You can lecture me, but you can't make me talk back," Martin said.
"After all, you have but the wisdom of your temperament, and the wisdom
of my temperament is just as unimpeachable as yours."

They disagreed about love, and the magazines, and many things, but they
liked each other, and on Martin's part it was no less than a profound
liking.  Day after day they were together, if for no more than the hour
Brissenden spent in Martin's stuffy room.  Brissenden never arrived
without his quart of whiskey, and when they dined together down-town, he
drank Scotch and soda throughout the meal.  He invariably paid the way
for both, and it was through him that Martin learned the refinements of
food, drank his first champagne, and made acquaintance with Rhenish
wines.

But Brissenden was always an enigma.  With the face of an ascetic, he
was, in all the failing blood of him, a frank voluptuary.  He was
unafraid to die, bitter and cynical of all the ways of living; and yet,
dying, he loved life, to the last atom of it.  He was possessed by a
madness to live, to thrill, "to squirm my little space in the cosmic dust
whence I came," as he phrased it once himself.  He had tampered with
drugs and done many strange things in quest of new thrills, new
sensations.  As he told Martin, he had once gone three days without
water, had done so voluntarily, in order to experience the exquisite
delight of such a thirst assuaged.  Who or what he was, Martin never
learned.  He was a man without a past, whose future was the imminent
grave and whose present was a bitter fever of living.




CHAPTER XXXIII


Martin was steadily losing his battle.  Economize as he would, the
earnings from hack-work did not balance expenses.  Thanksgiving found him
with his black suit in pawn and unable to accept the Morses' invitation
to dinner.  Ruth was not made happy by his reason for not coming, and the
corresponding effect on him was one of desperation.  He told her that he
would come, after all; that he would go over to San Francisco, to the
Transcontinental office, collect the five dollars due him, and with it
redeem his suit of clothes.

In the morning he borrowed ten cents from Maria.  He would have borrowed
it, by preference, from Brissenden, but that erratic individual had
disappeared.  Two weeks had passed since Martin had seen him, and he
vainly cudgelled his brains for some cause of offence.  The ten cents
carried Martin across the ferry to San Francisco, and as he walked up
Market Street he speculated upon his predicament in case he failed to
collect the money.  There would then be no way for him to return to
Oakland, and he knew no one in San Francisco from whom to borrow another
ten cents.

The door to the Transcontinental office was ajar, and Martin, in the act
of opening it, was brought to a sudden pause by a loud voice from within,
which exclaimed:- "But that is not the question, Mr. Ford."  (Ford,
Martin knew, from his correspondence, to be the editor's name.)  "The
question is, are you prepared to pay?--cash, and cash down, I mean?  I am
not interested in the prospects of the Transcontinental and what you
expect to make it next year.  What I want is to be paid for what I do.
And I tell you, right now, the Christmas Transcontinental don't go to
press till I have the money in my hand.  Good day.  When you get the
money, come and see me."

The door jerked open, and the man flung past Martin, with an angry
countenance and went down the corridor, muttering curses and clenching
his fists.  Martin decided not to enter immediately, and lingered in the
hallways for a quarter of an hour.  Then he shoved the door open and
walked in.  It was a new experience, the first time he had been inside an
editorial office.  Cards evidently were not necessary in that office, for
the boy carried word to an inner room that there was a man who wanted to
see Mr. Ford.  Returning, the boy beckoned him from halfway across the
room and led him to the private office, the editorial sanctum.  Martin's
first impression was of the disorder and cluttered confusion of the room.
Next he noticed a bewhiskered, youthful-looking man, sitting at a roll-
top desk, who regarded him curiously.  Martin marvelled at the calm
repose of his face.  It was evident that the squabble with the printer
had not affected his equanimity.

"I--I am Martin Eden," Martin began the conversation.  ("And I want my
five dollars," was what he would have liked to say.)

But this was his first editor, and under the circumstances he did not
desire to scare him too abruptly.  To his surprise, Mr. Ford leaped into
the air with a "You don't say so!" and the next moment, with both hands,
was shaking Martin's hand effusively.

"Can't say how glad I am to see you, Mr. Eden.  Often wondered what you
were like."

Here he held Martin off at arm's length and ran his beaming eyes over
Martin's second-best suit, which was also his worst suit, and which was
ragged and past repair, though the trousers showed the careful crease he
had put in with Maria's flat-irons.

"I confess, though, I conceived you to be a much older man than you are.
Your story, you know, showed such breadth, and vigor, such maturity and
depth of thought.  A masterpiece, that story--I knew it when I had read
the first half-dozen lines.  Let me tell you how I first read it.  But
no; first let me introduce you to the staff."

Still talking, Mr. Ford led him into the general office, where he
introduced him to the associate editor, Mr. White, a slender, frail
little man whose hand seemed strangely cold, as if he were suffering from
a chill, and whose whiskers were sparse and silky.

"And Mr. Ends, Mr. Eden.  Mr. Ends is our business manager, you know."

Martin found himself shaking hands with a cranky-eyed, bald-headed man,
whose face looked youthful enough from what little could be seen of it,
for most of it was covered by a snow-white beard, carefully trimmed--by
his wife, who did it on Sundays, at which times she also shaved the back
of his neck.

The three men surrounded Martin, all talking admiringly and at once,
until it seemed to him that they were talking against time for a wager.

"We often wondered why you didn't call," Mr. White was saying.

"I didn't have the carfare, and I live across the Bay," Martin answered
bluntly, with the idea of showing them his imperative need for the money.

Surely, he thought to himself, my glad rags in themselves are eloquent
advertisement of my need.  Time and again, whenever opportunity offered,
he hinted about the purpose of his business.  But his admirers' ears were
deaf.  They sang his praises, told him what they had thought of his story
at first sight, what they subsequently thought, what their wives and
families thought; but not one hint did they breathe of intention to pay
him for it.

"Did I tell you how I first read your story?" Mr. Ford said.  "Of course
I didn't.  I was coming west from New York, and when the train stopped at
Ogden, the train-boy on the new run brought aboard the current number of
the Transcontinental."

My God! Martin thought; you can travel in a Pullman while I starve for
the paltry five dollars you owe me.  A wave of anger rushed over him.  The
wrong done him by the Transcontinental loomed colossal, for strong upon
him were all the dreary months of vain yearning, of hunger and privation,
and his present hunger awoke and gnawed at him, reminding him that he had
eaten nothing since the day before, and little enough then.  For the
moment he saw red.  These creatures were not even robbers.  They were
sneak-thieves.  By lies and broken promises they had tricked him out of
his story.  Well, he would show them.  And a great resolve surged into
his will to the effect that he would not leave the office until he got
his money.  He remembered, if he did not get it, that there was no way
for him to go back to Oakland.  He controlled himself with an effort, but
not before the wolfish expression of his face had awed and perturbed
them.

They became more voluble than ever.  Mr. Ford started anew to tell how he
had first read "The Ring of Bells," and Mr. Ends at the same time was
striving to repeat his niece's appreciation of "The Ring of Bells," said
niece being a school-teacher in Alameda.

"I'll tell you what I came for," Martin said finally.  "To be paid for
that story all of you like so well.  Five dollars, I believe, is what you
promised me would be paid on publication."

Mr. Ford, with an expression on his mobile features of mediate and happy
acquiescence, started to reach for his pocket, then turned suddenly to
Mr. Ends, and said that he had left his money home.  That Mr. Ends
resented this, was patent; and Martin saw the twitch of his arm as if to
protect his trousers pocket.  Martin knew that the money was there.

"I am sorry," said Mr. Ends, "but I paid the printer not an hour ago, and
he took my ready change.  It was careless of me to be so short; but the
bill was not yet due, and the printer's request, as a favor, to make an
immediate advance, was quite unexpected."

Both men looked expectantly at Mr. White, but that gentleman laughed and
shrugged his shoulders.  His conscience was clean at any rate.  He had
come into the Transcontinental to learn magazine-literature, instead of
which he had principally learned finance.  The Transcontinental owed him
four months' salary, and he knew that the printer must be appeased before
the associate editor.

"It's rather absurd, Mr. Eden, to have caught us in this shape," Mr. Ford
preambled airily.  "All carelessness, I assure you.  But I'll tell you
what we'll do.  We'll mail you a check the first thing in the morning.
You have Mr. Eden's address, haven't you, Mr. Ends?"

Yes, Mr. Ends had the address, and the check would be mailed the first
thing in the morning.  Martin's knowledge of banks and checks was hazy,
but he could see no reason why they should not give him the check on this
day just as well as on the next.

"Then it is understood, Mr. Eden, that we'll mail you the check
to-morrow?" Mr. Ford said.

"I need the money to-day," Martin answered stolidly.

"The unfortunate circumstances--if you had chanced here any other day,"
Mr. Ford began suavely, only to be interrupted by Mr. Ends, whose cranky
eyes justified themselves in his shortness of temper.

"Mr. Ford has already explained the situation," he said with asperity.
"And so have I.  The check will be mailed--"

"I also have explained," Martin broke in, "and I have explained that I
want the money to-day."

He had felt his pulse quicken a trifle at the business manager's
brusqueness, and upon him he kept an alert eye, for it was in that
gentleman's trousers pocket that he divined the Transcontinental's ready
cash was reposing.

"It is too bad--" Mr. Ford began.

But at that moment, with an impatient movement, Mr. Ends turned as if
about to leave the room.  At the same instant Martin sprang for him,
clutching him by the throat with one hand in such fashion that Mr. Ends'
snow-white beard, still maintaining its immaculate trimness, pointed
ceilingward at an angle of forty-five degrees.  To the horror of Mr.
White and Mr. Ford, they saw their business manager shaken like an
Astrakhan rug.

"Dig up, you venerable discourager of rising young talent!" Martin
exhorted.  "Dig up, or I'll shake it out of you, even if it's all in
nickels."  Then, to the two affrighted onlookers: "Keep away!  If you
interfere, somebody's liable to get hurt."

Mr. Ends was choking, and it was not until the grip on his throat was
eased that he was able to signify his acquiescence in the digging-up
programme.  All together, after repeated digs, its trousers pocket
yielded four dollars and fifteen cents.

"Inside out with it," Martin commanded.

An additional ten cents fell out.  Martin counted the result of his raid
a second time to make sure.

"You next!" he shouted at Mr. Ford.  "I want seventy-five cents more."

Mr. Ford did not wait, but ransacked his pockets, with the result of
sixty cents.

"Sure that is all?" Martin demanded menacingly, possessing himself of it.
"What have you got in your vest pockets?"

In token of his good faith, Mr. Ford turned two of his pockets inside
out.  A strip of cardboard fell to the floor from one of them.  He
recovered it and was in the act of returning it, when Martin cried:-

"What's that?--A ferry ticket?  Here, give it to me.  It's worth ten
cents.  I'll credit you with it.  I've now got four dollars and ninety-
five cents, including the ticket.  Five cents is still due me."

He looked fiercely at Mr. White, and found that fragile creature in the
act of handing him a nickel.

"Thank you," Martin said, addressing them collectively.  "I wish you a
good day."

"Robber!" Mr. Ends snarled after him.

"Sneak-thief!" Martin retorted, slamming the door as he passed out.

Martin was elated--so elated that when he recollected that The Hornet
owed him fifteen dollars for "The Peri and the Pearl," he decided
forthwith to go and collect it.  But The Hornet was run by a set of clean-
shaven, strapping young men, frank buccaneers who robbed everything and
everybody, not excepting one another.  After some breakage of the office
furniture, the editor (an ex-college athlete), ably assisted by the
business manager, an advertising agent, and the porter, succeeded in
removing Martin from the office and in accelerating, by initial impulse,
his descent of the first flight of stairs.

"Come again, Mr. Eden; glad to see you any time," they laughed down at
him from the landing above.

Martin grinned as he picked himself up.

"Phew!" he murmured back.  "The Transcontinental crowd were nanny-goats,
but you fellows are a lot of prize-fighters."

More laughter greeted this.

"I must say, Mr. Eden," the editor of The Hornet called down, "that for a
poet you can go some yourself.  Where did you learn that right cross--if
I may ask?"

"Where you learned that half-Nelson," Martin answered.  "Anyway, you're
going to have a black eye."

"I hope your neck doesn't stiffen up," the editor wished solicitously:
"What do you say we all go out and have a drink on it--not the neck, of
course, but the little rough-house?"

"I'll go you if I lose," Martin accepted.

And robbers and robbed drank together, amicably agreeing that the battle
was to the strong, and that the fifteen dollars for "The Peri and the
Pearl" belonged by right to The Hornet's editorial staff.




CHAPTER XXXIV


Arthur remained at the gate while Ruth climbed Maria's front steps.  She
heard the rapid click of the type-writer, and when Martin let her in,
found him on the last page of a manuscript.  She had come to make certain
whether or not he would be at their table for Thanksgiving dinner; but
before she could broach the subject Martin plunged into the one with
which he was full.

"Here, let me read you this," he cried, separating the carbon copies and
running the pages of manuscript into shape.  "It's my latest, and
different from anything I've done.  It is so altogether different that I
am almost afraid of it, and yet I've a sneaking idea it is good.  You be
judge.  It's an Hawaiian story.  I've called it 'Wiki-wiki.'"

His face was bright with the creative glow, though she shivered in the
cold room and had been struck by the coldness of his hands at greeting.
She listened closely while he read, and though he from time to time had
seen only disapprobation in her face, at the close he asked:-

"Frankly, what do you think of it?"

"I--I don't know," she, answered.  "Will it--do you think it will sell?"

"I'm afraid not," was the confession.  "It's too strong for the
magazines.  But it's true, on my word it's true."

"But why do you persist in writing such things when you know they won't
sell?" she went on inexorably.  "The reason for your writing is to make a
living, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's right; but the miserable story got away with me.  I couldn't
help writing it.  It demanded to be written."

"But that character, that Wiki-Wiki, why do you make him talk so roughly?
Surely it will offend your readers, and surely that is why the editors
are justified in refusing your work."

"Because the real Wiki-Wiki would have talked that way."

"But it is not good taste."

"It is life," he replied bluntly.  "It is real.  It is true.  And I must
write life as I see it."

She made no answer, and for an awkward moment they sat silent.  It was
because he loved her that he did not quite understand her, and she could
not understand him because he was so large that he bulked beyond her
horizon.

"Well, I've collected from the Transcontinental," he said in an effort to
shift the conversation to a more comfortable subject.  The picture of the
bewhiskered trio, as he had last seen them, mulcted of four dollars and
ninety cents and a ferry ticket, made him chuckle.

"Then you'll come!" she cried joyously.  "That was what I came to find
out."

"Come?" he muttered absently.  "Where?"

"Why, to dinner to-morrow.  You know you said you'd recover your suit if
you got that money."

"I forgot all about it," he said humbly.  "You see, this morning the
poundman got Maria's two cows and the baby calf, and--well, it happened
that Maria didn't have any money, and so I had to recover her cows for
her.  That's where the Transcontinental fiver went--'The Ring of Bells'
went into the poundman's pocket."

"Then you won't come?"

He looked down at his clothing.

"I can't."

Tears of disappointment and reproach glistened in her blue eyes, but she
said nothing.

"Next Thanksgiving you'll have dinner with me in Delmonico's," he said
cheerily; "or in London, or Paris, or anywhere you wish.  I know it."

"I saw in the paper a few days ago," she announced abruptly, "that there
had been several local appointments to the Railway Mail.  You passed
first, didn't you?"

He was compelled to admit that the call had come for him, but that he had
declined it.  "I was so sure--I am so sure--of myself," he concluded.  "A
year from now I'll be earning more than a dozen men in the Railway Mail.
You wait and see."

"Oh," was all she said, when he finished.  She stood up, pulling at her
gloves.  "I must go, Martin.  Arthur is waiting for me."

He took her in his arms and kissed her, but she proved a passive
sweetheart.  There was no tenseness in her body, her arms did not go
around him, and her lips met his without their wonted pressure.

She was angry with him, he concluded, as he returned from the gate.  But
why?  It was unfortunate that the poundman had gobbled Maria's cows.  But
it was only a stroke of fate.  Nobody could be blamed for it.  Nor did it
enter his head that he could have done aught otherwise than what he had
done.  Well, yes, he was to blame a little, was his next thought, for
having refused the call to the Railway Mail.  And she had not liked "Wiki-
Wiki."

He turned at the head of the steps to meet the letter-carrier on his
afternoon round.  The ever recurrent fever of expectancy assailed Martin
as he took the bundle of long envelopes.  One was not long.  It was short
and thin, and outside was printed the address of The New York Outview.  He
paused in the act of tearing the envelope open.  It could not be an
acceptance.  He had no manuscripts with that publication.  Perhaps--his
heart almost stood still at the--wild thought--perhaps they were ordering
an article from him; but the next instant he dismissed the surmise as
hopelessly impossible.

It was a short, formal letter, signed by the office editor, merely
informing him that an anonymous letter which they had received was
enclosed, and that he could rest assured the Outview's staff never under
any circumstances gave consideration to anonymous correspondence.

The enclosed letter Martin found to be crudely printed by hand.  It was a
hotchpotch of illiterate abuse of Martin, and of assertion that the "so-
called Martin Eden" who was selling stories to magazines was no writer at
all, and that in reality he was stealing stories from old magazines,
typing them, and sending them out as his own.  The envelope was
postmarked "San Leandro."  Martin did not require a second thought to
discover the author.  Higginbotham's grammar, Higginbotham's
colloquialisms, Higginbotham's mental quirks and processes, were apparent
throughout.  Martin saw in every line, not the fine Italian hand, but the
coarse grocer's fist, of his brother-in-law.

But why? he vainly questioned.  What injury had he done Bernard
Higginbotham?  The thing was so unreasonable, so wanton.  There was no
explaining it.  In the course of the week a dozen similar letters were
forwarded to Martin by the editors of various Eastern magazines.  The
editors were behaving handsomely, Martin concluded.  He was wholly
unknown to them, yet some of them had even been sympathetic.  It was
evident that they detested anonymity.  He saw that the malicious attempt
to hurt him had failed.  In fact, if anything came of it, it was bound to
be good, for at least his name had been called to the attention of a
number of editors.  Sometime, perhaps, reading a submitted manuscript of
his, they might remember him as the fellow about whom they had received
an anonymous letter.  And who was to say that such a remembrance might
not sway the balance of their judgment just a trifle in his favor?

It was about this time that Martin took a great slump in Maria's
estimation.  He found her in the kitchen one morning groaning with pain,
tears of weakness running down her cheeks, vainly endeavoring to put
through a large ironing.  He promptly diagnosed her affliction as La
Grippe, dosed her with hot whiskey (the remnants in the bottles for which
Brissenden was responsible), and ordered her to bed.  But Maria was
refractory.  The ironing had to be done, she protested, and delivered
that night, or else there would be no food on the morrow for the seven
small and hungry Silvas.

To her astonishment (and it was something that she never ceased from
relating to her dying day), she saw Martin Eden seize an iron from the
stove and throw a fancy shirt-waist on the ironing-board.  It was Kate
Flanagan's best Sunday waist, than whom there was no more exacting and
fastidiously dressed woman in Maria's world.  Also, Miss Flanagan had
sent special instruction that said waist must be delivered by that night.
As every one knew, she was keeping company with John Collins, the
blacksmith, and, as Maria knew privily, Miss Flanagan and Mr. Collins
were going next day to Golden Gate Park.  Vain was Maria's attempt to
rescue the garment.  Martin guided her tottering footsteps to a chair,
from where she watched him with bulging eyes.  In a quarter of the time
it would have taken her she saw the shirt-waist safely ironed, and ironed
as well as she could have done it, as Martin made her grant.

"I could work faster," he explained, "if your irons were only hotter."

To her, the irons he swung were much hotter than she ever dared to use.

"Your sprinkling is all wrong," he complained next.  "Here, let me teach
you how to sprinkle.  Pressure is what's wanted.  Sprinkle under pressure
if you want to iron fast."

He procured a packing-case from the woodpile in the cellar, fitted a
cover to it, and raided the scrap-iron the Silva tribe was collecting for
the junkman.  With fresh-sprinkled garments in the box, covered with the
board and pressed by the iron, the device was complete and in operation.

"Now you watch me, Maria," he said, stripping off to his undershirt and
gripping an iron that was what he called "really hot."

"An' when he feenish da iron' he washa da wools," as she described it
afterward.  "He say, 'Maria, you are da greata fool.  I showa you how to
washa da wools,' an' he shows me, too.  Ten minutes he maka da
machine--one barrel, one wheel-hub, two poles, justa like dat."

Martin had learned the contrivance from Joe at the Shelly Hot Springs.
The old wheel-hub, fixed on the end of the upright pole, constituted the
plunger.  Making this, in turn, fast to the spring-pole attached to the
kitchen rafters, so that the hub played upon the woollens in the barrel,
he was able, with one hand, thoroughly to pound them.

"No more Maria washa da wools," her story always ended.  "I maka da kids
worka da pole an' da hub an' da barrel.  Him da smarta man, Mister Eden."

Nevertheless, by his masterly operation and improvement of her kitchen-
laundry he fell an immense distance in her regard.  The glamour of
romance with which her imagination had invested him faded away in the
cold light of fact that he was an ex-laundryman.  All his books, and his
grand friends who visited him in carriages or with countless bottles of
whiskey, went for naught.  He was, after all, a mere workingman, a member
of her own class and caste.  He was more human and approachable, but, he
was no longer mystery.

Martin's alienation from his family continued.  Following upon Mr.
Higginbotham's unprovoked attack, Mr. Hermann von Schmidt showed his
hand.  The fortunate sale of several storiettes, some humorous verse, and
a few jokes gave Martin a temporary splurge of prosperity.  Not only did
he partially pay up his bills, but he had sufficient balance left to
redeem his black suit and wheel.  The latter, by virtue of a twisted
crank-hanger, required repairing, and, as a matter of friendliness with
his future brother-in-law, he sent it to Von Schmidt's shop.

The afternoon of the same day Martin was pleased by the wheel being
delivered by a small boy.  Von Schmidt was also inclined to be friendly,
was Martin's conclusion from this unusual favor.  Repaired wheels usually
had to be called for.  But when he examined the wheel, he discovered no
repairs had been made.  A little later in the day he telephoned his
sister's betrothed, and learned that that person didn't want anything to
do with him in "any shape, manner, or form."

"Hermann von Schmidt," Martin answered cheerfully, "I've a good mind to
come over and punch that Dutch nose of yours."

"You come to my shop," came the reply, "an' I'll send for the police.  An'
I'll put you through, too.  Oh, I know you, but you can't make no rough-
house with me.  I don't want nothin' to do with the likes of you.  You're
a loafer, that's what, an' I ain't asleep.  You ain't goin' to do no
spongin' off me just because I'm marryin' your sister.  Why don't you go
to work an' earn an honest livin', eh?  Answer me that."

Martin's philosophy asserted itself, dissipating his anger, and he hung
up the receiver with a long whistle of incredulous amusement.  But after
the amusement came the reaction, and he was oppressed by his loneliness.
Nobody understood him, nobody seemed to have any use for him, except
Brissenden, and Brissenden had disappeared, God alone knew where.

Twilight was falling as Martin left the fruit store and turned homeward,
his marketing on his arm.  At the corner an electric car had stopped, and
at sight of a lean, familiar figure alighting, his heart leapt with joy.
It was Brissenden, and in the fleeting glimpse, ere the car started up,
Martin noted the overcoat pockets, one bulging with books, the other
bulging with a quart bottle of whiskey.




CHAPTER XXXV


Brissenden gave no explanation of his long absence, nor did Martin pry
into it.  He was content to see his friend's cadaverous face opposite him
through the steam rising from a tumbler of toddy.

"I, too, have not been idle," Brissenden proclaimed, after hearing
Martin's account of the work he had accomplished.

He pulled a manuscript from his inside coat pocket and passed it to
Martin, who looked at the title and glanced up curiously.

"Yes, that's it," Brissenden laughed.  "Pretty good title, eh?
'Ephemera'--it is the one word.  And you're responsible for it, what of
your _man_, who is always the erected, the vitalized inorganic, the
latest of the ephemera, the creature of temperature strutting his little
space on the thermometer.  It got into my head and I had to write it to
get rid of it.  Tell me what you think of it."

Martin's face, flushed at first, paled as he read on.  It was perfect
art.  Form triumphed over substance, if triumph it could be called where
the last conceivable atom of substance had found expression in so perfect
construction as to make Martin's head swim with delight, to put
passionate tears into his eyes, and to send chills creeping up and down
his back.  It was a long poem of six or seven hundred lines, and it was a
fantastic, amazing, unearthly thing.  It was terrific, impossible; and
yet there it was, scrawled in black ink across the sheets of paper.  It
dealt with man and his soul-gropings in their ultimate terms, plumbing
the abysses of space for the testimony of remotest suns and rainbow
spectrums.  It was a mad orgy of imagination, wassailing in the skull of
a dying man who half sobbed under his breath and was quick with the wild
flutter of fading heart-beats.  The poem swung in majestic rhythm to the
cool tumult of interstellar conflict, to the onset of starry hosts, to
the impact of cold suns and the flaming up of nebulae in the darkened
void; and through it all, unceasing and faint, like a silver shuttle, ran
the frail, piping voice of man, a querulous chirp amid the screaming of
planets and the crash of systems.

"There is nothing like it in literature," Martin said, when at last he
was able to speak.  "It's wonderful!--wonderful!  It has gone to my head.
I am drunken with it.  That great, infinitesimal question--I can't shake
it out of my thoughts.  That questing, eternal, ever recurring, thin
little wailing voice of man is still ringing in my ears.  It is like the
dead-march of a gnat amid the trumpeting of elephants and the roaring of
lions.  It is insatiable with microscopic desire.  I now I'm making a
fool of myself, but the thing has obsessed me.  You are--I don't know
what you are--you are wonderful, that's all.  But how do you do it?  How
do you do it?"

Martin paused from his rhapsody, only to break out afresh.

"I shall never write again.  I am a dauber in clay.  You have shown me
the work of the real artificer-artisan.  Genius!  This is something more
than genius.  It transcends genius.  It is truth gone mad.  It is true,
man, every line of it.  I wonder if you realize that, you dogmatist.
Science cannot give you the lie.  It is the truth of the sneer, stamped
out from the black iron of the Cosmos and interwoven with mighty rhythms
of sound into a fabric of splendor and beauty.  And now I won't say
another word.  I am overwhelmed, crushed.  Yes, I will, too.  Let me
market it for you."

Brissenden grinned.  "There's not a magazine in Christendom that would
dare to publish it--you know that."

"I know nothing of the sort.  I know there's not a magazine in
Christendom that wouldn't jump at it.  They don't get things like that
every day.  That's no mere poem of the year.  It's the poem of the
century."

"I'd like to take you up on the proposition."

"Now don't get cynical," Martin exhorted.  "The magazine editors are not
wholly fatuous.  I know that.  And I'll close with you on the bet.  I'll
wager anything you want that 'Ephemera' is accepted either on the first
or second offering."

"There's just one thing that prevents me from taking you."  Brissenden
waited a moment.  "The thing is big--the biggest I've ever done.  I know
that.  It's my swan song.  I am almighty proud of it.  I worship it.  It's
better than whiskey.  It is what I dreamed of--the great and perfect
thing--when I was a simple young man, with sweet illusions and clean
ideals.  And I've got it, now, in my last grasp, and I'll not have it
pawed over and soiled by a lot of swine.  No, I won't take the bet.  It's
mine.  I made it, and I've shared it with you."

"But think of the rest of the world," Martin protested.  "The function of
beauty is joy-making."

"It's my beauty."

"Don't be selfish."

"I'm not selfish."  Brissenden grinned soberly in the way he had when
pleased by the thing his thin lips were about to shape.  "I'm as
unselfish as a famished hog."

In vain Martin strove to shake him from his decision.  Martin told him
that his hatred of the magazines was rabid, fanatical, and that his
conduct was a thousand times more despicable than that of the youth who
burned the temple of Diana at Ephesus.  Under the storm of denunciation
Brissenden complacently sipped his toddy and affirmed that everything the
other said was quite true, with the exception of the magazine editors.
His hatred of them knew no bounds, and he excelled Martin in denunciation
when he turned upon them.

"I wish you'd type it for me," he said.  "You know how a thousand times
better than any stenographer.  And now I want to give you some advice."
He drew a bulky manuscript from his outside coat pocket.  "Here's your
'Shame of the Sun.'  I've read it not once, but twice and three times--the
highest compliment I can pay you.  After what you've said about
'Ephemera' I must be silent.  But this I will say: when 'The Shame of the
Sun' is published, it will make a hit.  It will start a controversy that
will be worth thousands to you just in advertising."

Martin laughed.  "I suppose your next advice will be to submit it to the
magazines."

"By all means no--that is, if you want to see it in print.  Offer it to
the first-class houses.  Some publisher's reader may be mad enough or
drunk enough to report favorably on it.  You've read the books.  The meat
of them has been transmuted in the alembic of Martin Eden's mind and
poured into 'The Shame of the Sun,' and one day Martin Eden will be
famous, and not the least of his fame will rest upon that work.  So you
must get a publisher for it--the sooner the better."

Brissenden went home late that night; and just as he mounted the first
step of the car, he swung suddenly back on Martin and thrust into his
hand a small, tightly crumpled wad of paper.

"Here, take this," he said.  "I was out to the races to-day, and I had
the right dope."

The bell clanged and the car pulled out, leaving Martin wondering as to
the nature of the crinkly, greasy wad he clutched in his hand.  Back in
his room he unrolled it and found a hundred-dollar bill.

He did not scruple to use it.  He knew his friend had always plenty of
money, and he knew also, with profound certitude, that his success would
enable him to repay it.  In the morning he paid every bill, gave Maria
three months' advance on the room, and redeemed every pledge at the
pawnshop.  Next he bought Marian's wedding present, and simpler presents,
suitable to Christmas, for Ruth and Gertrude.  And finally, on the
balance remaining to him, he herded the whole Silva tribe down into
Oakland.  He was a winter late in redeeming his promise, but redeemed it
was, for the last, least Silva got a pair of shoes, as well as Maria
herself.  Also, there were horns, and dolls, and toys of various sorts,
and parcels and bundles of candies and nuts that filled the arms of all
the Silvas to overflowing.

It was with this extraordinary procession trooping at his and Maria's
heels into a confectioner's in quest if the biggest candy-cane ever made,
that he encountered Ruth and her mother.  Mrs. Morse was shocked.  Even
Ruth was hurt, for she had some regard for appearances, and her lover,
cheek by jowl with Maria, at the head of that army of Portuguese
ragamuffins, was not a pretty sight.  But it was not that which hurt so
much as what she took to be his lack of pride and self-respect.  Further,
and keenest of all, she read into the incident the impossibility of his
living down his working-class origin.  There was stigma enough in the
fact of it, but shamelessly to flaunt it in the face of the world--her
world--was going too far.  Though her engagement to Martin had been kept
secret, their long intimacy had not been unproductive of gossip; and in
the shop, glancing covertly at her lover and his following, had been
several of her acquaintances.  She lacked the easy largeness of Martin
and could not rise superior to her environment.  She had been hurt to the
quick, and her sensitive nature was quivering with the shame of it.  So
it was, when Martin arrived later in the day, that he kept her present in
his breast-pocket, deferring the giving of it to a more propitious
occasion.  Ruth in tears--passionate, angry tears--was a revelation to
him.  The spectacle of her suffering convinced him that he had been a
brute, yet in the soul of him he could not see how nor why.  It never
entered his head to be ashamed of those he knew, and to take the Silvas
out to a Christmas treat could in no way, so it seemed to him, show lack
of consideration for Ruth.  On the other hand, he did see Ruth's point of
view, after she had explained it; and he looked upon it as a feminine
weakness, such as afflicted all women and the best of women.




CHAPTER XXXVI


"Come on,--I'll show you the real dirt," Brissenden said to him, one
evening in January.

They had dined together in San Francisco, and were at the Ferry Building,
returning to Oakland, when the whim came to him to show Martin the "real
dirt."  He turned and fled across the water-front, a meagre shadow in a
flapping overcoat, with Martin straining to keep up with him.  At a
wholesale liquor store he bought two gallon-demijohns of old port, and
with one in each hand boarded a Mission Street car, Martin at his heels
burdened with several quart-bottles of whiskey.

If Ruth could see me now, was his thought, while he wondered as to what
constituted the real dirt.

"Maybe nobody will be there," Brissenden said, when they dismounted and
plunged off to the right into the heart of the working-class ghetto,
south of Market Street.  "In which case you'll miss what you've been
looking for so long."

"And what the deuce is that?" Martin asked.

"Men, intelligent men, and not the gibbering nonentities I found you
consorting with in that trader's den.  You read the books and you found
yourself all alone.  Well, I'm going to show you to-night some other men
who've read the books, so that you won't be lonely any more."

"Not that I bother my head about their everlasting discussions," he said
at the end of a block.  "I'm not interested in book philosophy.  But
you'll find these fellows intelligences and not bourgeois swine.  But
watch out, they'll talk an arm off of you on any subject under the sun."

"Hope Norton's there," he panted a little later, resisting Martin's
effort to relieve him of the two demijohns.  "Norton's an idealist--a
Harvard man.  Prodigious memory.  Idealism led him to philosophic
anarchy, and his family threw him off.  Father's a railroad president and
many times millionnaire, but the son's starving in 'Frisco, editing an
anarchist sheet for twenty-five a month."

Martin was little acquainted in San Francisco, and not at all south of
Market; so he had no idea of where he was being led.

"Go ahead," he said; "tell me about them beforehand.  What do they do for
a living?  How do they happen to be here?"

"Hope Hamilton's there."  Brissenden paused and rested his hands.  "Strawn-
Hamilton's his name--hyphenated, you know--comes of old Southern stock.
He's a tramp--laziest man I ever knew, though he's clerking, or trying
to, in a socialist cooperative store for six dollars a week.  But he's a
confirmed hobo.  Tramped into town.  I've seen him sit all day on a bench
and never a bite pass his lips, and in the evening, when I invited him to
dinner--restaurant two blocks away--have him say, 'Too much trouble, old
man.  Buy me a package of cigarettes instead.'  He was a Spencerian like
you till Kreis turned him to materialistic monism.  I'll start him on
monism if I can.  Norton's another monist--only he affirms naught but
spirit.  He can give Kreis and Hamilton all they want, too."

"Who is Kreis?" Martin asked.

"His rooms we're going to.  One time professor--fired from
university--usual story.  A mind like a steel trap.  Makes his living any
old way.  I know he's been a street fakir when he was down.  Unscrupulous.
Rob a corpse of a shroud--anything.  Difference between him--and the
bourgeoisie is that he robs without illusion.  He'll talk Nietzsche, or
Schopenhauer, or Kant, or anything, but the only thing in this world, not
excepting Mary, that he really cares for, is his monism.  Haeckel is his
little tin god.  The only way to insult him is to take a slap at
Haeckel."

"Here's the hang-out."  Brissenden rested his demijohn at the upstairs
entrance, preliminary to the climb.  It was the usual two-story corner
building, with a saloon and grocery underneath.  "The gang lives here--got
the whole upstairs to themselves.  But Kreis is the only one who has two
rooms.  Come on."

No lights burned in the upper hall, but Brissenden threaded the utter
blackness like a familiar ghost.  He stopped to speak to Martin.

"There's one fellow--Stevens--a theosophist.  Makes a pretty tangle when
he gets going.  Just now he's dish-washer in a restaurant.  Likes a good
cigar.  I've seen him eat in a ten-cent hash-house and pay fifty cents
for the cigar he smoked afterward.  I've got a couple in my pocket for
him, if he shows up."

"And there's another fellow--Parry--an Australian, a statistician and a
sporting encyclopaedia.  Ask him the grain output of Paraguay for 1903,
or the English importation of sheetings into China for 1890, or at what
weight Jimmy Britt fought Battling Nelson, or who was welter-weight
champion of the United States in '68, and you'll get the correct answer
with the automatic celerity of a slot-machine.  And there's Andy, a stone-
mason, has ideas on everything, a good chess-player; and another fellow,
Harry, a baker, red hot socialist and strong union man.  By the way, you
remember Cooks' and Waiters' strike--Hamilton was the chap who organized
that union and precipitated the strike--planned it all out in advance,
right here in Kreis's rooms.  Did it just for the fun of it, but was too
lazy to stay by the union.  Yet he could have risen high if he wanted to.
There's no end to the possibilities in that man--if he weren't so
insuperably lazy."

Brissenden advanced through the darkness till a thread of light marked
the threshold of a door.  A knock and an answer opened it, and Martin
found himself shaking hands with Kreis, a handsome brunette man, with
dazzling white teeth, a drooping black mustache, and large, flashing
black eyes.  Mary, a matronly young blonde, was washing dishes in the
little back room that served for kitchen and dining room.  The front room
served as bedchamber and living room.  Overhead was the week's washing,
hanging in festoons so low that Martin did not see at first the two men
talking in a corner.  They hailed Brissenden and his demijohns with
acclamation, and, on being introduced, Martin learned they were Andy and
Parry.  He joined them and listened attentively to the description of a
prize-fight Parry had seen the night before; while Brissenden, in his
glory, plunged into the manufacture of a toddy and the serving of wine
and whiskey-and-sodas.  At his command, "Bring in the clan," Andy
departed to go the round of the rooms for the lodgers.

"We're lucky that most of them are here," Brissenden whispered to Martin.
"There's Norton and Hamilton; come on and meet them.  Stevens isn't
around, I hear.  I'm going to get them started on monism if I can.  Wait
till they get a few jolts in them and they'll warm up."

At first the conversation was desultory.  Nevertheless Martin could not
fail to appreciate the keen play of their minds.  They were men with
opinions, though the opinions often clashed, and, though they were witty
and clever, they were not superficial.  He swiftly saw, no matter upon
what they talked, that each man applied the correlation of knowledge and
had also a deep-seated and unified conception of society and the Cosmos.
Nobody manufactured their opinions for them; they were all rebels of one
variety or another, and their lips were strangers to platitudes.  Never
had Martin, at the Morses', heard so amazing a range of topics discussed.
There seemed no limit save time to the things they were alive to.  The
talk wandered from Mrs. Humphry Ward's new book to Shaw's latest play,
through the future of the drama to reminiscences of Mansfield.  They
appreciated or sneered at the morning editorials, jumped from labor
conditions in New Zealand to Henry James and Brander Matthews, passed on
to the German designs in the Far East and the economic aspect of the
Yellow Peril, wrangled over the German elections and Bebel's last speech,
and settled down to local politics, the latest plans and scandals in the
union labor party administration, and the wires that were pulled to bring
about the Coast Seamen's strike.  Martin was struck by the inside
knowledge they possessed.  They knew what was never printed in the
newspapers--the wires and strings and the hidden hands that made the
puppets dance.  To Martin's surprise, the girl, Mary, joined in the
conversation, displaying an intelligence he had never encountered in the
few women he had met.  They talked together on Swinburne and Rossetti,
after which she led him beyond his depth into the by-paths of French
literature.  His revenge came when she defended Maeterlinck and he
brought into action the carefully-thought-out thesis of "The Shame of the
Sun."

Several other men had dropped in, and the air was thick with tobacco
smoke, when Brissenden waved the red flag.

"Here's fresh meat for your axe, Kreis," he said; "a rose-white youth
with the ardor of a lover for Herbert Spencer.  Make a Haeckelite of
him--if you can."

Kreis seemed to wake up and flash like some metallic, magnetic thing,
while Norton looked at Martin sympathetically, with a sweet, girlish
smile, as much as to say that he would be amply protected.

Kreis began directly on Martin, but step by step Norton interfered, until
he and Kreis were off and away in a personal battle.  Martin listened and
fain would have rubbed his eyes.  It was impossible that this should be,
much less in the labor ghetto south of Market.  The books were alive in
these men.  They talked with fire and enthusiasm, the intellectual
stimulant stirring them as he had seen drink and anger stir other men.
What he heard was no longer the philosophy of the dry, printed word,
written by half-mythical demigods like Kant and Spencer.  It was living
philosophy, with warm, red blood, incarnated in these two men till its
very features worked with excitement.  Now and again other men joined in,
and all followed the discussion with cigarettes going out in their hands
and with alert, intent faces.

Idealism had never attracted Martin, but the exposition it now received
at the hands of Norton was a revelation.  The logical plausibility of it,
that made an appeal to his intellect, seemed missed by Kreis and
Hamilton, who sneered at Norton as a metaphysician, and who, in turn,
sneered back at them as metaphysicians.  Phenomenon and noumenon were
bandied back and forth.  They charged him with attempting to explain
consciousness by itself.  He charged them with word-jugglery, with
reasoning from words to theory instead of from facts to theory.  At this
they were aghast.  It was the cardinal tenet of their mode of reasoning
to start with facts and to give names to the facts.

When Norton wandered into the intricacies of Kant, Kreis reminded him
that all good little German philosophies when they died went to Oxford.  A
little later Norton reminded them of Hamilton's Law of Parsimony, the
application of which they immediately claimed for every reasoning process
of theirs.  And Martin hugged his knees and exulted in it all.  But
Norton was no Spencerian, and he, too, strove for Martin's philosophic
soul, talking as much at him as to his two opponents.

"You know Berkeley has never been answered," he said, looking directly at
Martin.  "Herbert Spencer came the nearest, which was not very near.  Even
the stanchest of Spencer's followers will not go farther.  I was reading
an essay of Saleeby's the other day, and the best Saleeby could say was
that Herbert Spencer _nearly_ succeeded in answering Berkeley."

"You know what Hume said?" Hamilton asked.  Norton nodded, but Hamilton
gave it for the benefit of the rest.  "He said that Berkeley's arguments
admit of no answer and produce no conviction."

"In his, Hume's, mind," was the reply.  "And Hume's mind was the same as
yours, with this difference: he was wise enough to admit there was no
answering Berkeley."

Norton was sensitive and excitable, though he never lost his head, while
Kreis and Hamilton were like a pair of cold-blooded savages, seeking out
tender places to prod and poke.  As the evening grew late, Norton,
smarting under the repeated charges of being a metaphysician, clutching
his chair to keep from jumping to his feet, his gray eyes snapping and
his girlish face grown harsh and sure, made a grand attack upon their
position.

"All right, you Haeckelites, I may reason like a medicine man, but, pray,
how do you reason?  You have nothing to stand on, you unscientific
dogmatists with your positive science which you are always lugging about
into places it has no right to be.  Long before the school of
materialistic monism arose, the ground was removed so that there could be
no foundation.  Locke was the man, John Locke.  Two hundred years
ago--more than that, even in his 'Essay concerning the Human
Understanding,' he proved the non-existence of innate ideas.  The best of
it is that that is precisely what you claim.  To-night, again and again,
you have asserted the non-existence of innate ideas.

"And what does that mean?  It means that you can never know ultimate
reality.  Your brains are empty when you are born.  Appearances, or
phenomena, are all the content your minds can receive from your five
senses.  Then noumena, which are not in your minds when you are born,
have no way of getting in--"

"I deny--" Kreis started to interrupt.

"You wait till I'm done," Norton shouted.  "You can know only that much
of the play and interplay of force and matter as impinges in one way or
another on our senses.  You see, I am willing to admit, for the sake of
the argument, that matter exists; and what I am about to do is to efface
you by your own argument.  I can't do it any other way, for you are both
congenitally unable to understand a philosophic abstraction."

"And now, what do you know of matter, according to your own positive
science?  You know it only by its phenomena, its appearances.  You are
aware only of its changes, or of such changes in it as cause changes in
your consciousness.  Positive science deals only with phenomena, yet you
are foolish enough to strive to be ontologists and to deal with noumena.
Yet, by the very definition of positive science, science is concerned
only with appearances.  As somebody has said, phenomenal knowledge cannot
transcend phenomena."

"You cannot answer Berkeley, even if you have annihilated Kant, and yet,
perforce, you assume that Berkeley is wrong when you affirm that science
proves the non-existence of God, or, as much to the point, the existence
of matter.--You know I granted the reality of matter only in order to
make myself intelligible to your understanding.  Be positive scientists,
if you please; but ontology has no place in positive science, so leave it
alone.  Spencer is right in his agnosticism, but if Spencer--"

But it was time to catch the last ferry-boat for Oakland, and Brissenden
and Martin slipped out, leaving Norton still talking and Kreis and
Hamilton waiting to pounce on him like a pair of hounds as soon as he
finished.

"You have given me a glimpse of fairyland," Martin said on the
ferry-boat.  "It makes life worth while to meet people like that.  My
mind is all worked up.  I never appreciated idealism before.  Yet I can't
accept it.  I know that I shall always be a realist.  I am so made, I
guess.  But I'd like to have made a reply to Kreis and Hamilton, and I
think I'd have had a word or two for Norton.  I didn't see that Spencer
was damaged any.  I'm as excited as a child on its first visit to the
circus.  I see I must read up some more.  I'm going to get hold of
Saleeby.  I still think Spencer is unassailable, and next time I'm going
to take a hand myself."

But Brissenden, breathing painfully, had dropped off to sleep, his chin
buried in a scarf and resting on his sunken chest, his body wrapped in
the long overcoat and shaking to the vibration of the propellers.




CHAPTER XXXVII


The first thing Martin did next morning was to go counter both to
Brissenden's advice and command.  "The Shame of the Sun" he wrapped and
mailed to The Acropolis.  He believed he could find magazine publication
for it, and he felt that recognition by the magazines would commend him
to the book-publishing houses.  "Ephemera" he likewise wrapped and mailed
to a magazine.  Despite Brissenden's prejudice against the magazines,
which was a pronounced mania with him, Martin decided that the great poem
should see print.  He did not intend, however, to publish it without the
other's permission.  His plan was to get it accepted by one of the high
magazines, and, thus armed, again to wrestle with Brissenden for consent.

Martin began, that morning, a story which he had sketched out a number of
weeks before and which ever since had been worrying him with its
insistent clamor to be created.  Apparently it was to be a rattling sea
story, a tale of twentieth-century adventure and romance, handling real
characters, in a real world, under real conditions.  But beneath the
swing and go of the story was to be something else--something that the
superficial reader would never discern and which, on the other hand,
would not diminish in any way the interest and enjoyment for such a
reader.  It was this, and not the mere story, that impelled Martin to
write it.  For that matter, it was always the great, universal motif that
suggested plots to him.  After having found such a motif, he cast about
for the particular persons and particular location in time and space
wherewith and wherein to utter the universal thing.  "Overdue" was the
title he had decided for it, and its length he believed would not be more
than sixty thousand words--a bagatelle for him with his splendid vigor of
production.  On this first day he took hold of it with conscious delight
in the mastery of his tools.  He no longer worried for fear that the
sharp, cutting edges should slip and mar his work.  The long months of
intense application and study had brought their reward.  He could now
devote himself with sure hand to the larger phases of the thing he
shaped; and as he worked, hour after hour, he felt, as never before, the
sure and cosmic grasp with which he held life and the affairs of life.
"Overdue" would tell a story that would be true of its particular
characters and its particular events; but it would tell, too, he was
confident, great vital things that would be true of all time, and all
sea, and all life--thanks to Herbert Spencer, he thought, leaning back
for a moment from the table.  Ay, thanks to Herbert Spencer and to the
master-key of life, evolution, which Spencer had placed in his hands.

He was conscious that it was great stuff he was writing.  "It will go!  It
will go!" was the refrain that kept, sounding in his ears.  Of course it
would go.  At last he was turning out the thing at which the magazines
would jump.  The whole story worked out before him in lightning flashes.
He broke off from it long enough to write a paragraph in his note-book.
This would be the last paragraph in "Overdue"; but so thoroughly was the
whole book already composed in his brain that he could write, weeks
before he had arrived at the end, the end itself.  He compared the tale,
as yet unwritten, with the tales of the sea-writers, and he felt it to be
immeasurably superior.  "There's only one man who could touch it," he
murmured aloud, "and that's Conrad.  And it ought to make even him sit up
and shake hands with me, and say, 'Well done, Martin, my boy.'"

He toiled on all day, recollecting, at the last moment, that he was to
have dinner at the Morses'.  Thanks to Brissenden, his black suit was out
of pawn and he was again eligible for dinner parties.  Down town he
stopped off long enough to run into the library and search for Saleeby's
books.  He drew out "The Cycle of Life," and on the car turned to the
essay Norton had mentioned on Spencer.  As Martin read, he grew angry.
His face flushed, his jaw set, and unconsciously his hand clenched,
unclenched, and clenched again as if he were taking fresh grips upon some
hateful thing out of which he was squeezing the life.  When he left the
car, he strode along the sidewalk as a wrathful man will stride, and he
rang the Morse bell with such viciousness that it roused him to
consciousness of his condition, so that he entered in good nature,
smiling with amusement at himself.  No sooner, however, was he inside
than a great depression descended upon him.  He fell from the height
where he had been up-borne all day on the wings of inspiration.
"Bourgeois," "trader's den"--Brissenden's epithets repeated themselves in
his mind.  But what of that? he demanded angrily.  He was marrying Ruth,
not her family.

It seemed to him that he had never seen Ruth more beautiful, more
spiritual and ethereal and at the same time more healthy.  There was
color in her cheeks, and her eyes drew him again and again--the eyes in
which he had first read immortality.  He had forgotten immortality of
late, and the trend of his scientific reading had been away from it; but
here, in Ruth's eyes, he read an argument without words that transcended
all worded arguments.  He saw that in her eyes before which all
discussion fled away, for he saw love there.  And in his own eyes was
love; and love was unanswerable.  Such was his passionate doctrine.

The half hour he had with her, before they went in to dinner, left him
supremely happy and supremely satisfied with life.  Nevertheless, at
table, the inevitable reaction and exhaustion consequent upon the hard
day seized hold of him.  He was aware that his eyes were tired and that
he was irritable.  He remembered it was at this table, at which he now
sneered and was so often bored, that he had first eaten with civilized
beings in what he had imagined was an atmosphere of high culture and
refinement.  He caught a glimpse of that pathetic figure of him, so long
ago, a self-conscious savage, sprouting sweat at every pore in an agony
of apprehension, puzzled by the bewildering minutiae of
eating-implements, tortured by the ogre of a servant, striving at a leap
to live at such dizzy social altitude, and deciding in the end to be
frankly himself, pretending no knowledge and no polish he did not
possess.

He glanced at Ruth for reassurance, much in the same manner that a
passenger, with sudden panic thought of possible shipwreck, will strive
to locate the life preservers.  Well, that much had come out of it--love
and Ruth.  All the rest had failed to stand the test of the books.  But
Ruth and love had stood the test; for them he found a biological
sanction.  Love was the most exalted expression of life.  Nature had been
busy designing him, as she had been busy with all normal men, for the
purpose of loving.  She had spent ten thousand centuries--ay, a hundred
thousand and a million centuries--upon the task, and he was the best she
could do.  She had made love the strongest thing in him, increased its
power a myriad per cent with her gift of imagination, and sent him forth
into the ephemera to thrill and melt and mate.  His hand sought Ruth's
hand beside him hidden by the table, and a warm pressure was given and
received.  She looked at him a swift instant, and her eyes were radiant
and melting.  So were his in the thrill that pervaded him; nor did he
realize how much that was radiant and melting in her eyes had been
aroused by what she had seen in his.

Across the table from him, cater-cornered, at Mr. Morse's right, sat
Judge Blount, a local superior court judge.  Martin had met him a number
of times and had failed to like him.  He and Ruth's father were
discussing labor union politics, the local situation, and socialism, and
Mr. Morse was endeavoring to twit Martin on the latter topic.  At last
Judge Blount looked across the table with benignant and fatherly pity.
Martin smiled to himself.

"You'll grow out of it, young man," he said soothingly.  "Time is the
best cure for such youthful distempers."  He turned to Mr. Morse.  "I do
not believe discussion is good in such cases.  It makes the patient
obstinate."

"That is true," the other assented gravely.  "But it is well to warn the
patient occasionally of his condition."

Martin laughed merrily, but it was with an effort.  The day had been too
long, the day's effort too intense, and he was deep in the throes of the
reaction.

"Undoubtedly you are both excellent doctors," he said; "but if you care a
whit for the opinion of the patient, let him tell you that you are poor
diagnosticians.  In fact, you are both suffering from the disease you
think you find in me.  As for me, I am immune.  The socialist philosophy
that riots half-baked in your veins has passed me by."

"Clever, clever," murmured the judge.  "An excellent ruse in controversy,
to reverse positions."

"Out of your mouth."  Martin's eyes were sparkling, but he kept control
of himself.  "You see, Judge, I've heard your campaign speeches.  By some
henidical process--henidical, by the way is a favorite word of mine which
nobody understands--by some henidical process you persuade yourself that
you believe in the competitive system and the survival of the strong, and
at the same time you indorse with might and main all sorts of measures to
shear the strength from the strong."

"My young man--"

"Remember, I've heard your campaign speeches," Martin warned.  "It's on
record, your position on interstate commerce regulation, on regulation of
the railway trust and Standard Oil, on the conservation of the forests,
on a thousand and one restrictive measures that are nothing else than
socialistic."

"Do you mean to tell me that you do not believe in regulating these
various outrageous exercises of power?"

"That's not the point.  I mean to tell you that you are a poor
diagnostician.  I mean to tell you that I am not suffering from the
microbe of socialism.  I mean to tell you that it is you who are
suffering from the emasculating ravages of that same microbe.  As for me,
I am an inveterate opponent of socialism just as I am an inveterate
opponent of your own mongrel democracy that is nothing else than pseudo-
socialism masquerading under a garb of words that will not stand the test
of the dictionary."

"I am a reactionary--so complete a reactionary that my position is
incomprehensible to you who live in a veiled lie of social organization
and whose sight is not keen enough to pierce the veil.  You make believe
that you believe in the survival of the strong and the rule of the
strong.  I believe.  That is the difference.  When I was a trifle
younger,--a few months younger,--I believed the same thing.  You see, the
ideas of you and yours had impressed me.  But merchants and traders are
cowardly rulers at best; they grunt and grub all their days in the trough
of money-getting, and I have swung back to aristocracy, if you please.  I
am the only individualist in this room.  I look to the state for nothing.
I look only to the strong man, the man on horseback, to save the state
from its own rotten futility."

"Nietzsche was right.  I won't take the time to tell you who Nietzsche
was, but he was right.  The world belongs to the strong--to the strong
who are noble as well and who do not wallow in the swine-trough of trade
and exchange.  The world belongs to the true nobleman, to the great blond
beasts, to the noncompromisers, to the 'yes-sayers.'  And they will eat
you up, you socialists--who are afraid of socialism and who think
yourselves individualists.  Your slave-morality of the meek and lowly
will never save you.--Oh, it's all Greek, I know, and I won't bother you
any more with it.  But remember one thing.  There aren't half a dozen
individualists in Oakland, but Martin Eden is one of them."

He signified that he was done with the discussion, and turned to Ruth.

"I'm wrought up to-day," he said in an undertone.  "All I want to do is
to love, not talk."

He ignored Mr. Morse, who said:-

"I am unconvinced.  All socialists are Jesuits.  That is the way to tell
them."

"We'll make a good Republican out of you yet," said Judge Blount.

"The man on horseback will arrive before that time," Martin retorted with
good humor, and returned to Ruth.

But Mr. Morse was not content.  He did not like the laziness and the
disinclination for sober, legitimate work of this prospective son-in-law
of his, for whose ideas he had no respect and of whose nature he had no
understanding.  So he turned the conversation to Herbert Spencer.  Judge
Blount ably seconded him, and Martin, whose ears had pricked at the first
mention of the philosopher's name, listened to the judge enunciate a
grave and complacent diatribe against Spencer.  From time to time Mr.
Morse glanced at Martin, as much as to say, "There, my boy, you see."

"Chattering daws," Martin muttered under his breath, and went on talking
with Ruth and Arthur.

But the long day and the "real dirt" of the night before were telling
upon him; and, besides, still in his burnt mind was what had made him
angry when he read it on the car.

"What is the matter?" Ruth asked suddenly alarmed by the effort he was
making to contain himself.

"There is no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is its prophet,"
Judge Blount was saying at that moment.

Martin turned upon him.

"A cheap judgment," he remarked quietly.  "I heard it first in the City
Hall Park, on the lips of a workingman who ought to have known better.  I
have heard it often since, and each time the clap-trap of it nauseates
me.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself.  To hear that great and noble
man's name upon your lips is like finding a dew-drop in a cesspool.  You
are disgusting."

It was like a thunderbolt.  Judge Blount glared at him with apoplectic
countenance, and silence reigned.  Mr. Morse was secretly pleased.  He
could see that his daughter was shocked.  It was what he wanted to do--to
bring out the innate ruffianism of this man he did not like.

Ruth's hand sought Martin's beseechingly under the table, but his blood
was up.  He was inflamed by the intellectual pretence and fraud of those
who sat in the high places.  A Superior Court Judge!  It was only several
years before that he had looked up from the mire at such glorious
entities and deemed them gods.

Judge Blount recovered himself and attempted to go on, addressing himself
to Martin with an assumption of politeness that the latter understood was
for the benefit of the ladies.  Even this added to his anger.  Was there
no honesty in the world?

"You can't discuss Spencer with me," he cried.  "You do not know any more
about Spencer than do his own countrymen.  But it is no fault of yours, I
grant.  It is just a phase of the contemptible ignorance of the times.  I
ran across a sample of it on my way here this evening.  I was reading an
essay by Saleeby on Spencer.  You should read it.  It is accessible to
all men.  You can buy it in any book-store or draw it from the public
library.  You would feel ashamed of your paucity of abuse and ignorance
of that noble man compared with what Saleeby has collected on the
subject.  It is a record of shame that would shame your shame."

"'The philosopher of the half-educated,' he was called by an academic
Philosopher who was not worthy to pollute the atmosphere he breathed.  I
don't think you have read ten pages of Spencer, but there have been
critics, assumably more intelligent than you, who have read no more than
you of Spencer, who publicly challenged his followers to adduce one
single idea from all his writings--from Herbert Spencer's writings, the
man who has impressed the stamp of his genius over the whole field of
scientific research and modern thought; the father of psychology; the man
who revolutionized pedagogy, so that to-day the child of the French
peasant is taught the three R's according to principles laid down by him.
And the little gnats of men sting his memory when they get their very
bread and butter from the technical application of his ideas.  What
little of worth resides in their brains is largely due to him.  It is
certain that had he never lived, most of what is correct in their parrot-
learned knowledge would be absent."

"And yet a man like Principal Fairbanks of Oxford--a man who sits in an
even higher place than you, Judge Blount--has said that Spencer will be
dismissed by posterity as a poet and dreamer rather than a thinker.
Yappers and blatherskites, the whole brood of them!  '"First Principles"
is not wholly destitute of a certain literary power,' said one of them.
And others of them have said that he was an industrious plodder rather
than an original thinker.  Yappers and blatherskites!  Yappers and
blatherskites!"

Martin ceased abruptly, in a dead silence.  Everybody in Ruth's family
looked up to Judge Blount as a man of power and achievement, and they
were horrified at Martin's outbreak.  The remainder of the dinner passed
like a funeral, the judge and Mr. Morse confining their talk to each
other, and the rest of the conversation being extremely desultory.  Then
afterward, when Ruth and Martin were alone, there was a scene.

"You are unbearable," she wept.

But his anger still smouldered, and he kept muttering, "The beasts!  The
beasts!"

When she averred he had insulted the judge, he retorted:-

"By telling the truth about him?"

"I don't care whether it was true or not," she insisted.  "There are
certain bounds of decency, and you had no license to insult anybody."

"Then where did Judge Blount get the license to assault truth?" Martin
demanded.  "Surely to assault truth is a more serious misdemeanor than to
insult a pygmy personality such as the judge's.  He did worse than that.
He blackened the name of a great, noble man who is dead.  Oh, the beasts!
The beasts!"

His complex anger flamed afresh, and Ruth was in terror of him.  Never
had she seen him so angry, and it was all mystified and unreasonable to
her comprehension.  And yet, through her very terror ran the fibres of
fascination that had drawn and that still drew her to him--that had
compelled her to lean towards him, and, in that mad, culminating moment,
lay her hands upon his neck.  She was hurt and outraged by what had taken
place, and yet she lay in his arms and quivered while he went on
muttering, "The beasts!  The beasts!"  And she still lay there when he
said: "I'll not bother your table again, dear.  They do not like me, and
it is wrong of me to thrust my objectionable presence upon them.  Besides,
they are just as objectionable to me.  Faugh!  They are sickening.  And
to think of it, I dreamed in my innocence that the persons who sat in the
high places, who lived in fine houses and had educations and bank
accounts, were worth while!"




CHAPTER XXXVIII


"Come on, let's go down to the local."

So spoke Brissenden, faint from a hemorrhage of half an hour before--the
second hemorrhage in three days.  The perennial whiskey glass was in his
hands, and he drained it with shaking fingers.

"What do I want with socialism?" Martin demanded.

"Outsiders are allowed five-minute speeches," the sick man urged.  "Get
up and spout.  Tell them why you don't want socialism.  Tell them what
you think about them and their ghetto ethics.  Slam Nietzsche into them
and get walloped for your pains.  Make a scrap of it.  It will do them
good.  Discussion is what they want, and what you want, too.  You see,
I'd like to see you a socialist before I'm gone.  It will give you a
sanction for your existence.  It is the one thing that will save you in
the time of disappointment that is coming to you."

"I never can puzzle out why you, of all men, are a socialist," Martin
pondered.  "You detest the crowd so.  Surely there is nothing in the
canaille to recommend it to your aesthetic soul."  He pointed an accusing
finger at the whiskey glass which the other was refilling.  "Socialism
doesn't seem to save you."

"I'm very sick," was the answer.  "With you it is different.  You have
health and much to live for, and you must be handcuffed to life somehow.
As for me, you wonder why I am a socialist.  I'll tell you.  It is
because Socialism is inevitable; because the present rotten and
irrational system cannot endure; because the day is past for your man on
horseback.  The slaves won't stand for it.  They are too many, and willy-
nilly they'll drag down the would-be equestrian before ever he gets
astride.  You can't get away from them, and you'll have to swallow the
whole slave-morality.  It's not a nice mess, I'll allow.  But it's been a-
brewing and swallow it you must.  You are antediluvian anyway, with your
Nietzsche ideas.  The past is past, and the man who says history repeats
itself is a liar.  Of course I don't like the crowd, but what's a poor
chap to do?  We can't have the man on horseback, and anything is
preferable to the timid swine that now rule.  But come on, anyway.  I'm
loaded to the guards now, and if I sit here any longer, I'll get drunk.
And you know the doctor says--damn the doctor!  I'll fool him yet."

It was Sunday night, and they found the small hall packed by the Oakland
socialists, chiefly members of the working class.  The speaker, a clever
Jew, won Martin's admiration at the same time that he aroused his
antagonism.  The man's stooped and narrow shoulders and weazened chest
proclaimed him the true child of the crowded ghetto, and strong on Martin
was the age-long struggle of the feeble, wretched slaves against the
lordly handful of men who had ruled over them and would rule over them to
the end of time.  To Martin this withered wisp of a creature was a
symbol.  He was the figure that stood forth representative of the whole
miserable mass of weaklings and inefficients who perished according to
biological law on the ragged confines of life.  They were the unfit.  In
spite of their cunning philosophy and of their antlike proclivities for
cooperation, Nature rejected them for the exceptional man.  Out of the
plentiful spawn of life she flung from her prolific hand she selected
only the best.  It was by the same method that men, aping her, bred race-
horses and cucumbers.  Doubtless, a creator of a Cosmos could have
devised a better method; but creatures of this particular Cosmos must put
up with this particular method.  Of course, they could squirm as they
perished, as the socialists squirmed, as the speaker on the platform and
the perspiring crowd were squirming even now as they counselled together
for some new device with which to minimize the penalties of living and
outwit the Cosmos.

So Martin thought, and so he spoke when Brissenden urged him to give them
hell.  He obeyed the mandate, walking up to the platform, as was the
custom, and addressing the chairman.  He began in a low voice, haltingly,
forming into order the ideas which had surged in his brain while the Jew
was speaking.  In such meetings five minutes was the time allotted to
each speaker; but when Martin's five minutes were up, he was in full
stride, his attack upon their doctrines but half completed.  He had
caught their interest, and the audience urged the chairman by acclamation
to extend Martin's time.  They appreciated him as a foeman worthy of
their intellect, and they listened intently, following every word.  He
spoke with fire and conviction, mincing no words in his attack upon the
slaves and their morality and tactics and frankly alluding to his hearers
as the slaves in question.  He quoted Spencer and Malthus, and enunciated
the biological law of development.

"And so," he concluded, in a swift resume, "no state composed of the
slave-types can endure.  The old law of development still holds.  In the
struggle for existence, as I have shown, the strong and the progeny of
the strong tend to survive, while the weak and the progeny of the weak
are crushed and tend to perish.  The result is that the strong and the
progeny of the strong survive, and, so long as the struggle obtains, the
strength of each generation increases.  That is development.  But you
slaves--it is too bad to be slaves, I grant--but you slaves dream of a
society where the law of development will be annulled, where no weaklings
and inefficients will perish, where every inefficient will have as much
as he wants to eat as many times a day as he desires, and where all will
marry and have progeny--the weak as well as the strong.  What will be the
result?  No longer will the strength and life-value of each generation
increase.  On the contrary, it will diminish.  There is the Nemesis of
your slave philosophy.  Your society of slaves--of, by, and for,
slaves--must inevitably weaken and go to pieces as the life which
composes it weakens and goes to pieces.

"Remember, I am enunciating biology and not sentimental ethics.  No state
of slaves can stand--"

"How about the United States?" a man yelled from the audience.

"And how about it?" Martin retorted.  "The thirteen colonies threw off
their rulers and formed the Republic so-called.  The slaves were their
own masters.  There were no more masters of the sword.  But you couldn't
get along without masters of some sort, and there arose a new set of
masters--not the great, virile, noble men, but the shrewd and spidery
traders and money-lenders.  And they enslaved you over again--but not
frankly, as the true, noble men would do with weight of their own right
arms, but secretly, by spidery machinations and by wheedling and cajolery
and lies.  They have purchased your slave judges, they have debauched
your slave legislatures, and they have forced to worse horrors than
chattel slavery your slave boys and girls.  Two million of your children
are toiling to-day in this trader-oligarchy of the United States.  Ten
millions of you slaves are not properly sheltered nor properly fed."

"But to return.  I have shown that no society of slaves can endure,
because, in its very nature, such society must annul the law of
development.  No sooner can a slave society be organized than
deterioration sets in.  It is easy for you to talk of annulling the law
of development, but where is the new law of development that will
maintain your strength?  Formulate it.  Is it already formulated?  Then
state it."

Martin took his seat amidst an uproar of voices.  A score of men were on
their feet clamoring for recognition from the chair.  And one by one,
encouraged by vociferous applause, speaking with fire and enthusiasm and
excited gestures, they replied to the attack.  It was a wild night--but
it was wild intellectually, a battle of ideas.  Some strayed from the
point, but most of the speakers replied directly to Martin.  They shook
him with lines of thought that were new to him; and gave him insights,
not into new biological laws, but into new applications of the old laws.
They were too earnest to be always polite, and more than once the
chairman rapped and pounded for order.

It chanced that a cub reporter sat in the audience, detailed there on a
day dull of news and impressed by the urgent need of journalism for
sensation.  He was not a bright cub reporter.  He was merely facile and
glib.  He was too dense to follow the discussion.  In fact, he had a
comfortable feeling that he was vastly superior to these wordy maniacs of
the working class.  Also, he had a great respect for those who sat in the
high places and dictated the policies of nations and newspapers.  Further,
he had an ideal, namely, of achieving that excellence of the perfect
reporter who is able to make something--even a great deal--out of
nothing.

He did not know what all the talk was about.  It was not necessary.  Words
like _revolution_ gave him his cue.  Like a paleontologist, able to
reconstruct an entire skeleton from one fossil bone, he was able to
reconstruct a whole speech from the one word _revolution_.  He did it
that night, and he did it well; and since Martin had made the biggest
stir, he put it all into his mouth and made him the arch-anarch of the
show, transforming his reactionary individualism into the most lurid, red-
shirt socialist utterance.  The cub reporter was an artist, and it was a
large brush with which he laid on the local color--wild-eyed long-haired
men, neurasthenic and degenerate types of men, voices shaken with
passion, clenched fists raised on high, and all projected against a
background of oaths, yells, and the throaty rumbling of angry men.




CHAPTER XXXIX


Over the coffee, in his little room, Martin read next morning's paper.  It
was a novel experience to find himself head-lined, on the first page at
that; and he was surprised to learn that he was the most notorious leader
of the Oakland socialists.  He ran over the violent speech the cub
reporter had constructed for him, and, though at first he was angered by
the fabrication, in the end he tossed the paper aside with a laugh.

"Either the man was drunk or criminally malicious," he said that
afternoon, from his perch on the bed, when Brissenden had arrived and
dropped limply into the one chair.

"But what do you care?" Brissenden asked.  "Surely you don't desire the
approval of the bourgeois swine that read the newspapers?"

Martin thought for a while, then said:-

"No, I really don't care for their approval, not a whit.  On the other
hand, it's very likely to make my relations with Ruth's family a trifle
awkward.  Her father always contended I was a socialist, and this
miserable stuff will clinch his belief.  Not that I care for his
opinion--but what's the odds?  I want to read you what I've been doing to-
day.  It's 'Overdue,' of course, and I'm just about halfway through."

He was reading aloud when Maria thrust open the door and ushered in a
young man in a natty suit who glanced briskly about him, noting the oil-
burner and the kitchen in the corner before his gaze wandered on to
Martin.

"Sit down," Brissenden said.

Martin made room for the young man on the bed and waited for him to
broach his business.

"I heard you speak last night, Mr. Eden, and I've come to interview you,"
he began.

Brissenden burst out in a hearty laugh.

"A brother socialist?" the reporter asked, with a quick glance at
Brissenden that appraised the color-value of that cadaverous and dying
man.

"And he wrote that report," Martin said softly.  "Why, he is only a boy!"

"Why don't you poke him?" Brissenden asked.  "I'd give a thousand dollars
to have my lungs back for five minutes."

The cub reporter was a trifle perplexed by this talking over him and
around him and at him.  But he had been commended for his brilliant
description of the socialist meeting and had further been detailed to get
a personal interview with Martin Eden, the leader of the organized menace
to society.

"You do not object to having your picture taken, Mr. Eden?" he said.
"I've a staff photographer outside, you see, and he says it will be
better to take you right away before the sun gets lower.  Then we can
have the interview afterward."

"A photographer," Brissenden said meditatively.  "Poke him, Martin!  Poke
him!"

"I guess I'm getting old," was the answer.  "I know I ought, but I really
haven't the heart.  It doesn't seem to matter."

"For his mother's sake," Brissenden urged.

"It's worth considering," Martin replied; "but it doesn't seem worth
while enough to rouse sufficient energy in me.  You see, it does take
energy to give a fellow a poking.  Besides, what does it matter?"

"That's right--that's the way to take it," the cub announced airily,
though he had already begun to glance anxiously at the door.

"But it wasn't true, not a word of what he wrote," Martin went on,
confining his attention to Brissenden.

"It was just in a general way a description, you understand," the cub
ventured, "and besides, it's good advertising.  That's what counts.  It
was a favor to you."

"It's good advertising, Martin, old boy," Brissenden repeated solemnly.

"And it was a favor to me--think of that!" was Martin's contribution.

"Let me see--where were you born, Mr. Eden?" the cub asked, assuming an
air of expectant attention.

"He doesn't take notes," said Brissenden.  "He remembers it all."

"That is sufficient for me."  The cub was trying not to look worried.  "No
decent reporter needs to bother with notes."

"That was sufficient--for last night."  But Brissenden was not a disciple
of quietism, and he changed his attitude abruptly.  "Martin, if you don't
poke him, I'll do it myself, if I fall dead on the floor the next
moment."

"How will a spanking do?" Martin asked.

Brissenden considered judicially, and nodded his head.

The next instant Martin was seated on the edge of the bed with the cub
face downward across his knees.

"Now don't bite," Martin warned, "or else I'll have to punch your face.
It would be a pity, for it is such a pretty face."

His uplifted hand descended, and thereafter rose and fell in a swift and
steady rhythm.  The cub struggled and cursed and squirmed, but did not
offer to bite.  Brissenden looked on gravely, though once he grew excited
and gripped the whiskey bottle, pleading, "Here, just let me swat him
once."

"Sorry my hand played out," Martin said, when at last he desisted.  "It
is quite numb."

He uprighted the cub and perched him on the bed.

"I'll have you arrested for this," he snarled, tears of boyish
indignation running down his flushed cheeks.  "I'll make you sweat for
this.  You'll see."

"The pretty thing," Martin remarked.  "He doesn't realize that he has
entered upon the downward path.  It is not honest, it is not square, it
is not manly, to tell lies about one's fellow-creatures the way he has
done, and he doesn't know it."

"He has to come to us to be told," Brissenden filled in a pause.

"Yes, to me whom he has maligned and injured.  My grocery will
undoubtedly refuse me credit now.  The worst of it is that the poor boy
will keep on this way until he deteriorates into a first-class newspaper
man and also a first-class scoundrel."

"But there is yet time," quoth Brissenden.  "Who knows but what you may
prove the humble instrument to save him.  Why didn't you let me swat him
just once?  I'd like to have had a hand in it."

"I'll have you arrested, the pair of you, you b-b-big brutes," sobbed the
erring soul.

"No, his mouth is too pretty and too weak."  Martin shook his head
lugubriously.  "I'm afraid I've numbed my hand in vain.  The young man
cannot reform.  He will become eventually a very great and successful
newspaper man.  He has no conscience.  That alone will make him great."

With that the cub passed out the door in trepidation to the last for fear
that Brissenden would hit him in the back with the bottle he still
clutched.

In the next morning's paper Martin learned a great deal more about
himself that was new to him.  "We are the sworn enemies of society," he
found himself quoted as saying in a column interview.  "No, we are not
anarchists but socialists."  When the reporter pointed out to him that
there seemed little difference between the two schools, Martin had
shrugged his shoulders in silent affirmation.  His face was described as
bilaterally asymmetrical, and various other signs of degeneration were
described.  Especially notable were his thuglike hands and the fiery
gleams in his blood-shot eyes.

He learned, also, that he spoke nightly to the workmen in the City Hall
Park, and that among the anarchists and agitators that there inflamed the
minds of the people he drew the largest audiences and made the most
revolutionary speeches.  The cub painted a high-light picture of his poor
little room, its oil-stove and the one chair, and of the death's-head
tramp who kept him company and who looked as if he had just emerged from
twenty years of solitary confinement in some fortress dungeon.

The cub had been industrious.  He had scurried around and nosed out
Martin's family history, and procured a photograph of Higginbotham's Cash
Store with Bernard Higginbotham himself standing out in front.  That
gentleman was depicted as an intelligent, dignified businessman who had
no patience with his brother-in-law's socialistic views, and no patience
with the brother-in-law, either, whom he was quoted as characterizing as
a lazy good-for-nothing who wouldn't take a job when it was offered to
him and who would go to jail yet.  Hermann Von Schmidt, Marian's husband,
had likewise been interviewed.  He had called Martin the black sheep of
the family and repudiated him.  "He tried to sponge off of me, but I put
a stop to that good and quick," Von Schmidt had said to the reporter.  "He
knows better than to come bumming around here.  A man who won't work is
no good, take that from me."

This time Martin was genuinely angry.  Brissenden looked upon the affair
as a good joke, but he could not console Martin, who knew that it would
be no easy task to explain to Ruth.  As for her father, he knew that he
must be overjoyed with what had happened and that he would make the most
of it to break off the engagement.  How much he would make of it he was
soon to realize.  The afternoon mail brought a letter from Ruth.  Martin
opened it with a premonition of disaster, and read it standing at the
open door when he had received it from the postman.  As he read,
mechanically his hand sought his pocket for the tobacco and brown paper
of his old cigarette days.  He was not aware that the pocket was empty or
that he had even reached for the materials with which to roll a
cigarette.

It was not a passionate letter.  There were no touches of anger in it.
But all the way through, from the first sentence to the last, was sounded
the note of hurt and disappointment.  She had expected better of him.  She
had thought he had got over his youthful wildness, that her love for him
had been sufficiently worth while to enable him to live seriously and
decently.  And now her father and mother had taken a firm stand and
commanded that the engagement be broken.  That they were justified in
this she could not but admit.  Their relation could never be a happy one.
It had been unfortunate from the first.  But one regret she voiced in the
whole letter, and it was a bitter one to Martin.  "If only you had
settled down to some position and attempted to make something of
yourself," she wrote.  "But it was not to be.  Your past life had been
too wild and irregular.  I can understand that you are not to be blamed.
You could act only according to your nature and your early training.  So
I do not blame you, Martin.  Please remember that.  It was simply a
mistake.  As father and mother have contended, we were not made for each
other, and we should both be happy because it was discovered not too
late." . . "There is no use trying to see me," she said toward the last.
"It would be an unhappy meeting for both of us, as well as for my mother.
I feel, as it is, that I have caused her great pain and worry.  I shall
have to do much living to atone for it."

He read it through to the end, carefully, a second time, then sat down
and replied.  He outlined the remarks he had uttered at the socialist
meeting, pointing out that they were in all ways the converse of what the
newspaper had put in his mouth.  Toward the end of the letter he was
God's own lover pleading passionately for love.  "Please answer," he
said, "and in your answer you have to tell me but one thing.  Do you love
me?  That is all--the answer to that one question."

But no answer came the next day, nor the next.  "Overdue" lay untouched
upon the table, and each day the heap of returned manuscripts under the
table grew larger.  For the first time Martin's glorious sleep was
interrupted by insomnia, and he tossed through long, restless nights.
Three times he called at the Morse home, but was turned away by the
servant who answered the bell.  Brissenden lay sick in his hotel, too
feeble to stir out, and, though Martin was with him often, he did not
worry him with his troubles.

For Martin's troubles were many.  The aftermath of the cub reporter's
deed was even wider than Martin had anticipated.  The Portuguese grocer
refused him further credit, while the greengrocer, who was an American
and proud of it, had called him a traitor to his country and refused
further dealings with him--carrying his patriotism to such a degree that
he cancelled Martin's account and forbade him ever to attempt to pay it.
The talk in the neighborhood reflected the same feeling, and indignation
against Martin ran high.  No one would have anything to do with a
socialist traitor.  Poor Maria was dubious and frightened, but she
remained loyal.  The children of the neighborhood recovered from the awe
of the grand carriage which once had visited Martin, and from safe
distances they called him "hobo" and "bum."  The Silva tribe, however,
stanchly defended him, fighting more than one pitched battle for his
honor, and black eyes and bloody noses became quite the order of the day
and added to Maria's perplexities and troubles.

Once, Martin met Gertrude on the street, down in Oakland, and learned
what he knew could not be otherwise--that Bernard Higginbotham was
furious with him for having dragged the family into public disgrace, and
that he had forbidden him the house.

"Why don't you go away, Martin?" Gertrude had begged.  "Go away and get a
job somewhere and steady down.  Afterwards, when this all blows over, you
can come back."

Martin shook his head, but gave no explanations.  How could he explain?
He was appalled at the awful intellectual chasm that yawned between him
and his people.  He could never cross it and explain to them his
position,--the Nietzschean position, in regard to socialism.  There were
not words enough in the English language, nor in any language, to make
his attitude and conduct intelligible to them.  Their highest concept of
right conduct, in his case, was to get a job.  That was their first word
and their last.  It constituted their whole lexicon of ideas.  Get a job!
Go to work!  Poor, stupid slaves, he thought, while his sister talked.
Small wonder the world belonged to the strong.  The slaves were obsessed
by their own slavery.  A job was to them a golden fetich before which
they fell down and worshipped.

He shook his head again, when Gertrude offered him money, though he knew
that within the day he would have to make a trip to the pawnbroker.

"Don't come near Bernard now," she admonished him.  "After a few months,
when he is cooled down, if you want to, you can get the job of drivin'
delivery-wagon for him.  Any time you want me, just send for me an' I'll
come.  Don't forget."

She went away weeping audibly, and he felt a pang of sorrow shoot through
him at sight of her heavy body and uncouth gait.  As he watched her go,
the Nietzschean edifice seemed to shake and totter.  The slave-class in
the abstract was all very well, but it was not wholly satisfactory when
it was brought home to his own family.  And yet, if there was ever a
slave trampled by the strong, that slave was his sister Gertrude.  He
grinned savagely at the paradox.  A fine Nietzsche-man he was, to allow
his intellectual concepts to be shaken by the first sentiment or emotion
that strayed along--ay, to be shaken by the slave-morality itself, for
that was what his pity for his sister really was.  The true noble men
were above pity and compassion.  Pity and compassion had been generated
in the subterranean barracoons of the slaves and were no more than the
agony and sweat of the crowded miserables and weaklings.




CHAPTER XL


"Overdue" still continued to lie forgotten on the table.  Every
manuscript that he had had out now lay under the table.  Only one
manuscript he kept going, and that was Brissenden's "Ephemera."  His
bicycle and black suit were again in pawn, and the type-writer people
were once more worrying about the rent.  But such things no longer
bothered him.  He was seeking a new orientation, and until that was found
his life must stand still.

After several weeks, what he had been waiting for happened.  He met Ruth
on the street.  It was true, she was accompanied by her brother, Norman,
and it was true that they tried to ignore him and that Norman attempted
to wave him aside.

"If you interfere with my sister, I'll call an officer," Norman
threatened.  "She does not wish to speak with you, and your insistence is
insult."

"If you persist, you'll have to call that officer, and then you'll get
your name in the papers," Martin answered grimly.  "And now, get out of
my way and get the officer if you want to.  I'm going to talk with Ruth."

"I want to have it from your own lips," he said to her.

She was pale and trembling, but she held up and looked inquiringly.

"The question I asked in my letter," he prompted.

Norman made an impatient movement, but Martin checked him with a swift
look.

She shook her head.

"Is all this of your own free will?" he demanded.

"It is."  She spoke in a low, firm voice and with deliberation.  "It is
of my own free will.  You have disgraced me so that I am ashamed to meet
my friends.  They are all talking about me, I know.  That is all I can
tell you.  You have made me very unhappy, and I never wish to see you
again."

"Friends!  Gossip!  Newspaper misreports!  Surely such things are not
stronger than love!  I can only believe that you never loved me."

A blush drove the pallor from her face.

"After what has passed?" she said faintly.  "Martin, you do not know what
you are saying.  I am not common."

"You see, she doesn't want to have anything to do with you," Norman
blurted out, starting on with her.

Martin stood aside and let them pass, fumbling unconsciously in his coat
pocket for the tobacco and brown papers that were not there.

It was a long walk to North Oakland, but it was not until he went up the
steps and entered his room that he knew he had walked it.  He found
himself sitting on the edge of the bed and staring about him like an
awakened somnambulist.  He noticed "Overdue" lying on the table and drew
up his chair and reached for his pen.  There was in his nature a logical
compulsion toward completeness.  Here was something undone.  It had been
deferred against the completion of something else.  Now that something
else had been finished, and he would apply himself to this task until it
was finished.  What he would do next he did not know.  All that he did
know was that a climacteric in his life had been attained.  A period had
been reached, and he was rounding it off in workman-like fashion.  He was
not curious about the future.  He would soon enough find out what it held
in store for him.  Whatever it was, it did not matter.  Nothing seemed to
matter.

For five days he toiled on at "Overdue," going nowhere, seeing nobody,
and eating meagrely.  On the morning of the sixth day the postman brought
him a thin letter from the editor of The Parthenon.  A glance told him
that "Ephemera" was accepted.  "We have submitted the poem to Mr.
Cartwright Bruce," the editor went on to say, "and he has reported so
favorably upon it that we cannot let it go.  As an earnest of our
pleasure in publishing the poem, let me tell you that we have set it for
the August number, our July number being already made up.  Kindly extend
our pleasure and our thanks to Mr. Brissenden.  Please send by return
mail his photograph and biographical data.  If our honorarium is
unsatisfactory, kindly telegraph us at once and state what you consider a
fair price."

Since the honorarium they had offered was three hundred and fifty
dollars, Martin thought it not worth while to telegraph.  Then, too,
there was Brissenden's consent to be gained.  Well, he had been right,
after all.  Here was one magazine editor who knew real poetry when he saw
it.  And the price was splendid, even though it was for the poem of a
century.  As for Cartwright Bruce, Martin knew that he was the one critic
for whose opinions Brissenden had any respect.

Martin rode down town on an electric car, and as he watched the houses
and cross-streets slipping by he was aware of a regret that he was not
more elated over his friend's success and over his own signal victory.
The one critic in the United States had pronounced favorably on the poem,
while his own contention that good stuff could find its way into the
magazines had proved correct.  But enthusiasm had lost its spring in him,
and he found that he was more anxious to see Brissenden than he was to
carry the good news.  The acceptance of The Parthenon had recalled to him
that during his five days' devotion to "Overdue" he had not heard from
Brissenden nor even thought about him.  For the first time Martin
realized the daze he had been in, and he felt shame for having forgotten
his friend.  But even the shame did not burn very sharply.  He was numb
to emotions of any sort save the artistic ones concerned in the writing
of "Overdue."  So far as other affairs were concerned, he had been in a
trance.  For that matter, he was still in a trance.  All this life
through which the electric car whirred seemed remote and unreal, and he
would have experienced little interest and less shock if the great stone
steeple of the church he passed had suddenly crumbled to mortar-dust upon
his head.

At the hotel he hurried up to Brissenden's room, and hurried down again.
The room was empty.  All luggage was gone.

"Did Mr. Brissenden leave any address?" he asked the clerk, who looked at
him curiously for a moment.

"Haven't you heard?" he asked.

Martin shook his head.

"Why, the papers were full of it.  He was found dead in bed.  Suicide.
Shot himself through the head."

"Is he buried yet?" Martin seemed to hear his voice, like some one else's
voice, from a long way off, asking the question.

"No.  The body was shipped East after the inquest.  Lawyers engaged by
his people saw to the arrangements."

"They were quick about it, I must say," Martin commented.

"Oh, I don't know.  It happened five days ago."

"Five days ago?"

"Yes, five days ago."

"Oh," Martin said as he turned and went out.

At the corner he stepped into the Western Union and sent a telegram to
The Parthenon, advising them to proceed with the publication of the poem.
He had in his pocket but five cents with which to pay his carfare home,
so he sent the message collect.

Once in his room, he resumed his writing.  The days and nights came and
went, and he sat at his table and wrote on.  He went nowhere, save to the
pawnbroker, took no exercise, and ate methodically when he was hungry and
had something to cook, and just as methodically went without when he had
nothing to cook.  Composed as the story was, in advance, chapter by
chapter, he nevertheless saw and developed an opening that increased the
power of it, though it necessitated twenty thousand additional words.  It
was not that there was any vital need that the thing should be well done,
but that his artistic canons compelled him to do it well.  He worked on
in the daze, strangely detached from the world around him, feeling like a
familiar ghost among these literary trappings of his former life.  He
remembered that some one had said that a ghost was the spirit of a man
who was dead and who did not have sense enough to know it; and he paused
for the moment to wonder if he were really dead and unaware of it.

Came the day when "Overdue" was finished.  The agent of the type-writer
firm had come for the machine, and he sat on the bed while Martin, on the
one chair, typed the last pages of the final chapter.  "Finis," he wrote,
in capitals, at the end, and to him it was indeed finis.  He watched the
type-writer carried out the door with a feeling of relief, then went over
and lay down on the bed.  He was faint from hunger.  Food had not passed
his lips in thirty-six hours, but he did not think about it.  He lay on
his back, with closed eyes, and did not think at all, while the daze or
stupor slowly welled up, saturating his consciousness.  Half in delirium,
he began muttering aloud the lines of an anonymous poem Brissenden had
been fond of quoting to him.  Maria, listening anxiously outside his
door, was perturbed by his monotonous utterance.  The words in themselves
were not significant to her, but the fact that he was saying them was.  "I
have done," was the burden of the poem.

   "'I have done--
   Put by the lute.
   Song and singing soon are over
   As the airy shades that hover
   In among the purple clover.
   I have done--
   Put by the lute.
   Once I sang as early thrushes
   Sing among the dewy bushes;
   Now I'm mute.
   I am like a weary linnet,
   For my throat has no song in it;
   I have had my singing minute.
   I have done.
   Put by the lute.'"

Maria could stand it no longer, and hurried away to the stove, where she
filled a quart-bowl with soup, putting into it the lion's share of
chopped meat and vegetables which her ladle scraped from the bottom of
the pot.  Martin roused himself and sat up and began to eat, between
spoonfuls reassuring Maria that he had not been talking in his sleep and
that he did not have any fever.

After she left him he sat drearily, with drooping shoulders, on the edge
of the bed, gazing about him with lack-lustre eyes that saw nothing until
the torn wrapper of a magazine, which had come in the morning's mail and
which lay unopened, shot a gleam of light into his darkened brain.  It is
The Parthenon, he thought, the August Parthenon, and it must contain
"Ephemera."  If only Brissenden were here to see!

He was turning the pages of the magazine, when suddenly he stopped.
"Ephemera" had been featured, with gorgeous head-piece and Beardsley-like
margin decorations.  On one side of the head-piece was Brissenden's
photograph, on the other side was the photograph of Sir John Value, the
British Ambassador.  A preliminary editorial note quoted Sir John Value
as saying that there were no poets in America, and the publication of
"Ephemera" was The Parthenon's.  "There, take that, Sir John Value!"
Cartwright Bruce was described as the greatest critic in America, and he
was quoted as saying that "Ephemera" was the greatest poem ever written
in America.  And finally, the editor's foreword ended with: "We have not
yet made up our minds entirely as to the merits of "Ephemera"; perhaps we
shall never be able to do so.  But we have read it often, wondering at
the words and their arrangement, wondering where Mr. Brissenden got them,
and how he could fasten them together."  Then followed the poem.

"Pretty good thing you died, Briss, old man," Martin murmured, letting
the magazine slip between his knees to the floor.

The cheapness and vulgarity of it was nauseating, and Martin noted
apathetically that he was not nauseated very much.  He wished he could
get angry, but did not have energy enough to try.  He was too numb.  His
blood was too congealed to accelerate to the swift tidal flow of
indignation.  After all, what did it matter?  It was on a par with all
the rest that Brissenden had condemned in bourgeois society.

"Poor Briss," Martin communed; "he would never have forgiven me."

Rousing himself with an effort, he possessed himself of a box which had
once contained type-writer paper.  Going through its contents, he drew
forth eleven poems which his friend had written.  These he tore
lengthwise and crosswise and dropped into the waste basket.  He did it
languidly, and, when he had finished, sat on the edge of the bed staring
blankly before him.

How long he sat there he did not know, until, suddenly, across his
sightless vision he saw form a long horizontal line of white.  It was
curious.  But as he watched it grow in definiteness he saw that it was a
coral reef smoking in the white Pacific surges.  Next, in the line of
breakers he made out a small canoe, an outrigger canoe.  In the stern he
saw a young bronzed god in scarlet hip-cloth dipping a flashing paddle.
He recognized him.  He was Moti, the youngest son of Tati, the chief, and
this was Tahiti, and beyond that smoking reef lay the sweet land of
Papara and the chief's grass house by the river's mouth.  It was the end
of the day, and Moti was coming home from the fishing.  He was waiting
for the rush of a big breaker whereon to jump the reef.  Then he saw
himself, sitting forward in the canoe as he had often sat in the past,
dipping a paddle that waited Moti's word to dig in like mad when the
turquoise wall of the great breaker rose behind them.  Next, he was no
longer an onlooker but was himself in the canoe, Moti was crying out,
they were both thrusting hard with their paddles, racing on the steep
face of the flying turquoise.  Under the bow the water was hissing as
from a steam jet, the air was filled with driven spray, there was a rush
and rumble and long-echoing roar, and the canoe floated on the placid
water of the lagoon.  Moti laughed and shook the salt water from his
eyes, and together they paddled in to the pounded-coral beach where
Tati's grass walls through the cocoanut-palms showed golden in the
setting sun.

The picture faded, and before his eyes stretched the disorder of his
squalid room.  He strove in vain to see Tahiti again.  He knew there was
singing among the trees and that the maidens were dancing in the
moonlight, but he could not see them.  He could see only the littered
writing-table, the empty space where the type-writer had stood, and the
unwashed window-pane.  He closed his eyes with a groan, and slept.




CHAPTER XLI


He slept heavily all night, and did not stir until aroused by the postman
on his morning round.  Martin felt tired and passive, and went through
his letters aimlessly.  One thin envelope, from a robber magazine,
contained for twenty-two dollars.  He had been dunning for it for a year
and a half.  He noted its amount apathetically.  The old-time thrill at
receiving a publisher's check was gone.  Unlike his earlier checks, this
one was not pregnant with promise of great things to come.  To him it was
a check for twenty-two dollars, that was all, and it would buy him
something to eat.

Another check was in the same mail, sent from a New York weekly in
payment for some humorous verse which had been accepted months before.  It
was for ten dollars.  An idea came to him, which he calmly considered.  He
did not know what he was going to do, and he felt in no hurry to do
anything.  In the meantime he must live.  Also he owed numerous debts.
Would it not be a paying investment to put stamps on the huge pile of
manuscripts under the table and start them on their travels again?  One
or two of them might be accepted.  That would help him to live.  He
decided on the investment, and, after he had cashed the checks at the
bank down in Oakland, he bought ten dollars' worth of postage stamps.  The
thought of going home to cook breakfast in his stuffy little room was
repulsive to him.  For the first time he refused to consider his debts.
He knew that in his room he could manufacture a substantial breakfast at
a cost of from fifteen to twenty cents.  But, instead, he went into the
Forum Cafe and ordered a breakfast that cost two dollars.  He tipped the
waiter a quarter, and spent fifty cents for a package of Egyptian
cigarettes.  It was the first time he had smoked since Ruth had asked him
to stop.  But he could see now no reason why he should not, and besides,
he wanted to smoke.  And what did the money matter?  For five cents he
could have bought a package of Durham and brown papers and rolled forty
cigarettes--but what of it?  Money had no meaning to him now except what
it would immediately buy.  He was chartless and rudderless, and he had no
port to make, while drifting involved the least living, and it was living
that hurt.

The days slipped along, and he slept eight hours regularly every night.
Though now, while waiting for more checks, he ate in the Japanese
restaurants where meals were served for ten cents, his wasted body filled
out, as did the hollows in his cheeks.  He no longer abused himself with
short sleep, overwork, and overstudy.  He wrote nothing, and the books
were closed.  He walked much, out in the hills, and loafed long hours in
the quiet parks.  He had no friends nor acquaintances, nor did he make
any.  He had no inclination.  He was waiting for some impulse, from he
knew not where, to put his stopped life into motion again.  In the
meantime his life remained run down, planless, and empty and idle.

Once he made a trip to San Francisco to look up the "real dirt."  But at
the last moment, as he stepped into the upstairs entrance, he recoiled
and turned and fled through the swarming ghetto.  He was frightened at
the thought of hearing philosophy discussed, and he fled furtively, for
fear that some one of the "real dirt" might chance along and recognize
him.

Sometimes he glanced over the magazines and newspapers to see how
"Ephemera" was being maltreated.  It had made a hit.  But what a hit!
Everybody had read it, and everybody was discussing whether or not it was
really poetry.  The local papers had taken it up, and daily there
appeared columns of learned criticisms, facetious editorials, and serious
letters from subscribers.  Helen Della Delmar (proclaimed with a flourish
of trumpets and rolling of tomtoms to be the greatest woman poet in the
United States) denied Brissenden a seat beside her on Pegasus and wrote
voluminous letters to the public, proving that he was no poet.

The Parthenon came out in its next number patting itself on the back for
the stir it had made, sneering at Sir John Value, and exploiting
Brissenden's death with ruthless commercialism.  A newspaper with a sworn
circulation of half a million published an original and spontaneous poem
by Helen Della Delmar, in which she gibed and sneered at Brissenden.
Also, she was guilty of a second poem, in which she parodied him.

Martin had many times to be glad that Brissenden was dead.  He had hated
the crowd so, and here all that was finest and most sacred of him had
been thrown to the crowd.  Daily the vivisection of Beauty went on.  Every
nincompoop in the land rushed into free print, floating their wizened
little egos into the public eye on the surge of Brissenden's greatness.
Quoth one paper: "We have received a letter from a gentleman who wrote a
poem just like it, only better, some time ago."  Another paper, in deadly
seriousness, reproving Helen Della Delmar for her parody, said: "But
unquestionably Miss Delmar wrote it in a moment of badinage and not quite
with the respect that one great poet should show to another and perhaps
to the greatest.  However, whether Miss Delmar be jealous or not of the
man who invented 'Ephemera,' it is certain that she, like thousands of
others, is fascinated by his work, and that the day may come when she
will try to write lines like his."

Ministers began to preach sermons against "Ephemera," and one, who too
stoutly stood for much of its content, was expelled for heresy.  The
great poem contributed to the gayety of the world.  The comic
verse-writers and the cartoonists took hold of it with screaming
laughter, and in the personal columns of society weeklies jokes were
perpetrated on it to the effect that Charley Frensham told Archie
Jennings, in confidence, that five lines of "Ephemera" would drive a man
to beat a cripple, and that ten lines would send him to the bottom of the
river.

Martin did not laugh; nor did he grit his teeth in anger.  The effect
produced upon him was one of great sadness.  In the crash of his whole
world, with love on the pinnacle, the crash of magazinedom and the dear
public was a small crash indeed.  Brissenden had been wholly right in his
judgment of the magazines, and he, Martin, had spent arduous and futile
years in order to find it out for himself.  The magazines were all
Brissenden had said they were and more.  Well, he was done, he solaced
himself.  He had hitched his wagon to a star and been landed in a
pestiferous marsh.  The visions of Tahiti--clean, sweet Tahiti--were
coming to him more frequently.  And there were the low Paumotus, and the
high Marquesas; he saw himself often, now, on board trading schooners or
frail little cutters, slipping out at dawn through the reef at Papeete
and beginning the long beat through the pearl-atolls to Nukahiva and the
Bay of Taiohae, where Tamari, he knew, would kill a pig in honor of his
coming, and where Tamari's flower-garlanded daughters would seize his
hands and with song and laughter garland him with flowers.  The South
Seas were calling, and he knew that sooner or later he would answer the
call.

In the meantime he drifted, resting and recuperating after the long
traverse he had made through the realm of knowledge.  When The Parthenon
check of three hundred and fifty dollars was forwarded to him, he turned
it over to the local lawyer who had attended to Brissenden's affairs for
his family.  Martin took a receipt for the check, and at the same time
gave a note for the hundred dollars Brissenden had let him have.

The time was not long when Martin ceased patronizing the Japanese
restaurants.  At the very moment when he had abandoned the fight, the
tide turned.  But it had turned too late.  Without a thrill he opened a
thick envelope from The Millennium, scanned the face of a check that
represented three hundred dollars, and noted that it was the payment on
acceptance for "Adventure."  Every debt he owed in the world, including
the pawnshop, with its usurious interest, amounted to less than a hundred
dollars.  And when he had paid everything, and lifted the hundred-dollar
note with Brissenden's lawyer, he still had over a hundred dollars in
pocket.  He ordered a suit of clothes from the tailor and ate his meals
in the best cafes in town.  He still slept in his little room at Maria's,
but the sight of his new clothes caused the neighborhood children to
cease from calling him "hobo" and "tramp" from the roofs of woodsheds and
over back fences.

"Wiki-Wiki," his Hawaiian short story, was bought by Warren's Monthly for
two hundred and fifty dollars.  The Northern Review took his essay, "The
Cradle of Beauty," and Mackintosh's Magazine took "The Palmist"--the poem
he had written to Marian.  The editors and readers were back from their
summer vacations, and manuscripts were being handled quickly.  But Martin
could not puzzle out what strange whim animated them to this general
acceptance of the things they had persistently rejected for two years.
Nothing of his had been published.  He was not known anywhere outside of
Oakland, and in Oakland, with the few who thought they knew him, he was
notorious as a red-shirt and a socialist.  So there was no explaining
this sudden acceptability of his wares.  It was sheer jugglery of fate.

After it had been refused by a number of magazines, he had taken
Brissenden's rejected advice and started, "The Shame of the Sun" on the
round of publishers.  After several refusals, Singletree, Darnley & Co.
accepted it, promising fall publication.  When Martin asked for an
advance on royalties, they wrote that such was not their custom, that
books of that nature rarely paid for themselves, and that they doubted if
his book would sell a thousand copies.  Martin figured what the book
would earn him on such a sale.  Retailed at a dollar, on a royalty of
fifteen per cent, it would bring him one hundred and fifty dollars.  He
decided that if he had it to do over again he would confine himself to
fiction.  "Adventure," one-fourth as long, had brought him twice as much
from The Millennium.  That newspaper paragraph he had read so long ago
had been true, after all.  The first-class magazines did not pay on
acceptance, and they paid well.  Not two cents a word, but four cents a
word, had The Millennium paid him.  And, furthermore, they bought good
stuff, too, for were they not buying his?  This last thought he
accompanied with a grin.

He wrote to Singletree, Darnley & Co., offering to sell out his rights in
"The Shame of the Sun" for a hundred dollars, but they did not care to
take the risk.  In the meantime he was not in need of money, for several
of his later stories had been accepted and paid for.  He actually opened
a bank account, where, without a debt in the world, he had several
hundred dollars to his credit.  "Overdue," after having been declined by
a number of magazines, came to rest at the Meredith-Lowell Company.
Martin remembered the five dollars Gertrude had given him, and his
resolve to return it to her a hundred times over; so he wrote for an
advance on royalties of five hundred dollars.  To his surprise a check
for that amount, accompanied by a contract, came by return mail.  He
cashed the check into five-dollar gold pieces and telephoned Gertrude
that he wanted to see her.

She arrived at the house panting and short of breath from the haste she
had made.  Apprehensive of trouble, she had stuffed the few dollars she
possessed into her hand-satchel; and so sure was she that disaster had
overtaken her brother, that she stumbled forward, sobbing, into his arms,
at the same time thrusting the satchel mutely at him.

"I'd have come myself," he said.  "But I didn't want a row with Mr.
Higginbotham, and that is what would have surely happened."

"He'll be all right after a time," she assured him, while she wondered
what the trouble was that Martin was in.  "But you'd best get a job first
an' steady down.  Bernard does like to see a man at honest work.  That
stuff in the newspapers broke 'm all up.  I never saw 'm so mad before."

"I'm not going to get a job," Martin said with a smile.  "And you can
tell him so from me.  I don't need a job, and there's the proof of it."

He emptied the hundred gold pieces into her lap in a glinting, tinkling
stream.

"You remember that fiver you gave me the time I didn't have carfare?
Well, there it is, with ninety-nine brothers of different ages but all of
the same size."

If Gertrude had been frightened when she arrived, she was now in a panic
of fear.  Her fear was such that it was certitude.  She was not
suspicious.  She was convinced.  She looked at Martin in horror, and her
heavy limbs shrank under the golden stream as though it were burning her.

"It's yours," he laughed.

She burst into tears, and began to moan, "My poor boy, my poor boy!"

He was puzzled for a moment.  Then he divined the cause of her agitation
and handed her the Meredith-Lowell letter which had accompanied the
check.  She stumbled through it, pausing now and again to wipe her eyes,
and when she had finished, said:-

"An' does it mean that you come by the money honestly?"

"More honestly than if I'd won it in a lottery.  I earned it."

Slowly faith came back to her, and she reread the letter carefully.  It
took him long to explain to her the nature of the transaction which had
put the money into his possession, and longer still to get her to
understand that the money was really hers and that he did not need it.

"I'll put it in the bank for you," she said finally.

"You'll do nothing of the sort.  It's yours, to do with as you please,
and if you won't take it, I'll give it to Maria.  She'll know what to do
with it.  I'd suggest, though, that you hire a servant and take a good
long rest."

"I'm goin' to tell Bernard all about it," she announced, when she was
leaving.

Martin winced, then grinned.

"Yes, do," he said.  "And then, maybe, he'll invite me to dinner again."

"Yes, he will--I'm sure he will!" she exclaimed fervently, as she drew
him to her and kissed and hugged him.




CHAPTER XLII


One day Martin became aware that he was lonely.  He was healthy and
strong, and had nothing to do.  The cessation from writing and studying,
the death of Brissenden, and the estrangement from Ruth had made a big
hole in his life; and his life refused to be pinned down to good living
in cafes and the smoking of Egyptian cigarettes.  It was true the South
Seas were calling to him, but he had a feeling that the game was not yet
played out in the United States.  Two books were soon to be published,
and he had more books that might find publication.  Money could be made
out of them, and he would wait and take a sackful of it into the South
Seas.  He knew a valley and a bay in the Marquesas that he could buy for
a thousand Chili dollars.  The valley ran from the horseshoe, land-locked
bay to the tops of the dizzy, cloud-capped peaks and contained perhaps
ten thousand acres.  It was filled with tropical fruits, wild chickens,
and wild pigs, with an occasional herd of wild cattle, while high up
among the peaks were herds of wild goats harried by packs of wild dogs.
The whole place was wild.  Not a human lived in it. And he could buy it
and the bay for a thousand Chili dollars.

The bay, as he remembered it, was magnificent, with water deep enough to
accommodate the largest vessel afloat, and so safe that the South Pacific
Directory recommended it to the best careening place for ships for
hundreds of miles around.  He would buy a schooner--one of those yacht-
like, coppered crafts that sailed like witches--and go trading copra and
pearling among the islands.  He would make the valley and the bay his
headquarters.  He would build a patriarchal grass house like Tati's, and
have it and the valley and the schooner filled with dark-skinned
servitors.  He would entertain there the factor of Taiohae, captains of
wandering traders, and all the best of the South Pacific riffraff.  He
would keep open house and entertain like a prince.  And he would forget
the books he had opened and the world that had proved an illusion.

To do all this he must wait in California to fill the sack with money.
Already it was beginning to flow in.  If one of the books made a strike,
it might enable him to sell the whole heap of manuscripts.  Also he could
collect the stories and the poems into books, and make sure of the valley
and the bay and the schooner.  He would never write again.  Upon that he
was resolved.  But in the meantime, awaiting the publication of the
books, he must do something more than live dazed and stupid in the sort
of uncaring trance into which he had fallen.

He noted, one Sunday morning, that the Bricklayers' Picnic took place
that day at Shell Mound Park, and to Shell Mound Park he went.  He had
been to the working-class picnics too often in his earlier life not to
know what they were like, and as he entered the park he experienced a
recrudescence of all the old sensations.  After all, they were his kind,
these working people.  He had been born among them, he had lived among
them, and though he had strayed for a time, it was well to come back
among them.

"If it ain't Mart!" he heard some one say, and the next moment a hearty
hand was on his shoulder.  "Where you ben all the time?  Off to sea?  Come
on an' have a drink."

It was the old crowd in which he found himself--the old crowd, with here
and there a gap, and here and there a new face.  The fellows were not
bricklayers, but, as in the old days, they attended all Sunday picnics
for the dancing, and the fighting, and the fun.  Martin drank with them,
and began to feel really human once more.  He was a fool to have ever
left them, he thought; and he was very certain that his sum of happiness
would have been greater had he remained with them and let alone the books
and the people who sat in the high places.  Yet the beer seemed not so
good as of yore.  It didn't taste as it used to taste.  Brissenden had
spoiled him for steam beer, he concluded, and wondered if, after all, the
books had spoiled him for companionship with these friends of his youth.
He resolved that he would not be so spoiled, and he went on to the
dancing pavilion.  Jimmy, the plumber, he met there, in the company of a
tall, blond girl who promptly forsook him for Martin.

"Gee, it's like old times," Jimmy explained to the gang that gave him the
laugh as Martin and the blonde whirled away in a waltz.  "An' I don't
give a rap.  I'm too damned glad to see 'm back.  Watch 'm waltz, eh?
It's like silk.  Who'd blame any girl?"

But Martin restored the blonde to Jimmy, and the three of them, with half
a dozen friends, watched the revolving couples and laughed and joked with
one another.  Everybody was glad to see Martin back.  No book of his been
published; he carried no fictitious value in their eyes.  They liked him
for himself.  He felt like a prince returned from excile, and his lonely
heart burgeoned in the geniality in which it bathed.  He made a mad day
of it, and was at his best.  Also, he had money in his pockets, and, as
in the old days when he returned from sea with a pay-day, he made the
money fly.

Once, on the dancing-floor, he saw Lizzie Connolly go by in the arms of a
young workingman; and, later, when he made the round of the pavilion, he
came upon her sitting by a refreshment table.  Surprise and greetings
over, he led her away into the grounds, where they could talk without
shouting down the music.  From the instant he spoke to her, she was his.
He knew it.  She showed it in the proud humility of her eyes, in every
caressing movement of her proudly carried body, and in the way she hung
upon his speech.  She was not the young girl as he had known her.  She
was a woman, now, and Martin noted that her wild, defiant beauty had
improved, losing none of its wildness, while the defiance and the fire
seemed more in control.  "A beauty, a perfect beauty," he murmured
admiringly under his breath.  And he knew she was his, that all he had to
do was to say "Come," and she would go with him over the world wherever
he led.

Even as the thought flashed through his brain he received a heavy blow on
the side of his head that nearly knocked him down.  It was a man's fist,
directed by a man so angry and in such haste that the fist had missed the
jaw for which it was aimed.  Martin turned as he staggered, and saw the
fist coming at him in a wild swing.  Quite as a matter of course he
ducked, and the fist flew harmlessly past, pivoting the man who had
driven it.  Martin hooked with his left, landing on the pivoting man with
the weight of his body behind the blow.  The man went to the ground
sidewise, leaped to his feet, and made a mad rush.  Martin saw his
passion-distorted face and wondered what could be the cause of the
fellow's anger.  But while he wondered, he shot in a straight left, the
weight of his body behind the blow.  The man went over backward and fell
in a crumpled heap.  Jimmy and others of the gang were running toward
them.

Martin was thrilling all over.  This was the old days with a vengeance,
with their dancing, and their fighting, and their fun.  While he kept a
wary eye on his antagonist, he glanced at Lizzie.  Usually the girls
screamed when the fellows got to scrapping, but she had not screamed.  She
was looking on with bated breath, leaning slightly forward, so keen was
her interest, one hand pressed to her breast, her cheek flushed, and in
her eyes a great and amazed admiration.

The man had gained his feet and was struggling to escape the restraining
arms that were laid on him.

"She was waitin' for me to come back!" he was proclaiming to all and
sundry.  "She was waitin' for me to come back, an' then that fresh guy
comes buttin' in.  Let go o' me, I tell yeh.  I'm goin' to fix 'm."

"What's eatin' yer?" Jimmy was demanding, as he helped hold the young
fellow back.  "That guy's Mart Eden.  He's nifty with his mits, lemme
tell you that, an' he'll eat you alive if you monkey with 'm."

"He can't steal her on me that way," the other interjected.

"He licked the Flyin' Dutchman, an' you know _him_," Jimmy went on
expostulating.  "An' he did it in five rounds.  You couldn't last a
minute against him.  See?"

This information seemed to have a mollifying effect, and the irate young
man favored Martin with a measuring stare.

"He don't look it," he sneered; but the sneer was without passion.

"That's what the Flyin' Dutchman thought," Jimmy assured him.  "Come on,
now, let's get outa this.  There's lots of other girls.  Come on."

The young fellow allowed himself to be led away toward the pavilion, and
the gang followed after him.

"Who is he?" Martin asked Lizzie.  "And what's it all about, anyway?"

Already the zest of combat, which of old had been so keen and lasting,
had died down, and he discovered that he was self-analytical, too much so
to live, single heart and single hand, so primitive an existence.

Lizzie tossed her head.

"Oh, he's nobody," she said.  "He's just ben keepin' company with me."

"I had to, you see," she explained after a pause.  "I was gettin' pretty
lonesome.  But I never forgot."  Her voice sank lower, and she looked
straight before her.  "I'd throw 'm down for you any time."

Martin looking at her averted face, knowing that all he had to do was to
reach out his hand and pluck her, fell to pondering whether, after all,
there was any real worth in refined, grammatical English, and, so, forgot
to reply to her.

"You put it all over him," she said tentatively, with a laugh.

"He's a husky young fellow, though," he admitted generously.  "If they
hadn't taken him away, he might have given me my hands full."

"Who was that lady friend I seen you with that night?" she asked
abruptly.

"Oh, just a lady friend," was his answer.

"It was a long time ago," she murmured contemplatively.  "It seems like a
thousand years."

But Martin went no further into the matter.  He led the conversation off
into other channels.  They had lunch in the restaurant, where he ordered
wine and expensive delicacies and afterward he danced with her and with
no one but her, till she was tired.  He was a good dancer, and she
whirled around and around with him in a heaven of delight, her head
against his shoulder, wishing that it could last forever.  Later in the
afternoon they strayed off among the trees, where, in the good old
fashion, she sat down while he sprawled on his back, his head in her lap.
He lay and dozed, while she fondled his hair, looked down on his closed
eyes, and loved him without reserve.  Looking up suddenly, he read the
tender advertisement in her face.  Her eyes fluttered down, then they
opened and looked into his with soft defiance.

"I've kept straight all these years," she said, her voice so low that it
was almost a whisper.

In his heart Martin knew that it was the miraculous truth.  And at his
heart pleaded a great temptation.  It was in his power to make her happy.
Denied happiness himself, why should he deny happiness to her?  He could
marry her and take her down with him to dwell in the grass-walled castle
in the Marquesas.  The desire to do it was strong, but stronger still was
the imperative command of his nature not to do it.  In spite of himself
he was still faithful to Love.  The old days of license and easy living
were gone.  He could not bring them back, nor could he go back to them.
He was changed--how changed he had not realized until now.

"I am not a marrying man, Lizzie," he said lightly.

The hand caressing his hair paused perceptibly, then went on with the
same gentle stroke.  He noticed her face harden, but it was with the
hardness of resolution, for still the soft color was in her cheeks and
she was all glowing and melting.

"I did not mean that--" she began, then faltered.  "Or anyway I don't
care."

"I don't care," she repeated.  "I'm proud to be your friend.  I'd do
anything for you.  I'm made that way, I guess."

Martin sat up.  He took her hand in his.  He did it deliberately, with
warmth but without passion; and such warmth chilled her.

"Don't let's talk about it," she said.

"You are a great and noble woman," he said.  "And it is I who should be
proud to know you.  And I am, I am.  You are a ray of light to me in a
very dark world, and I've got to be straight with you, just as straight
as you have been."

"I don't care whether you're straight with me or not.  You could do
anything with me.  You could throw me in the dirt an' walk on me.  An'
you're the only man in the world that can," she added with a defiant
flash.  "I ain't taken care of myself ever since I was a kid for
nothin'."

"And it's just because of that that I'm not going to," he said gently.
"You are so big and generous that you challenge me to equal generousness.
I'm not marrying, and I'm not--well, loving without marrying, though I've
done my share of that in the past.  I'm sorry I came here to-day and met
you.  But it can't be helped now, and I never expected it would turn out
this way."

"But look here, Lizzie.  I can't begin to tell you how much I like you.  I
do more than like you.  I admire and respect you.  You are magnificent,
and you are magnificently good.  But what's the use of words?  Yet
there's something I'd like to do.  You've had a hard life; let me make it
easy for you."  (A joyous light welled into her eyes, then faded out
again.)  "I'm pretty sure of getting hold of some money soon--lots of
it."

In that moment he abandoned the idea of the valley and the bay, the grass-
walled castle and the trim, white schooner.  After all, what did it
matter?  He could go away, as he had done so often, before the mast, on
any ship bound anywhere.

"I'd like to turn it over to you.  There must be something you want--to
go to school or business college.  You might like to study and be a
stenographer.  I could fix it for you.  Or maybe your father and mother
are living--I could set them up in a grocery store or something.  Anything
you want, just name it, and I can fix it for you."

She made no reply, but sat, gazing straight before her, dry-eyed and
motionless, but with an ache in the throat which Martin divined so
strongly that it made his own throat ache.  He regretted that he had
spoken.  It seemed so tawdry what he had offered her--mere money--compared
with what she offered him.  He offered her an extraneous thing with which
he could part without a pang, while she offered him herself, along with
disgrace and shame, and sin, and all her hopes of heaven.

"Don't let's talk about it," she said with a catch in her voice that she
changed to a cough.  She stood up.  "Come on, let's go home.  I'm all
tired out."

The day was done, and the merrymakers had nearly all departed.  But as
Martin and Lizzie emerged from the trees they found the gang waiting for
them.  Martin knew immediately the meaning of it.  Trouble was brewing.
The gang was his body-guard.  They passed out through the gates of the
park with, straggling in the rear, a second gang, the friends that
Lizzie's young man had collected to avenge the loss of his lady.  Several
constables and special police officers, anticipating trouble, trailed
along to prevent it, and herded the two gangs separately aboard the train
for San Francisco.  Martin told Jimmy that he would get off at Sixteenth
Street Station and catch the electric car into Oakland.  Lizzie was very
quiet and without interest in what was impending.  The train pulled in to
Sixteenth Street Station, and the waiting electric car could be seen, the
conductor of which was impatiently clanging the gong.

"There she is," Jimmy counselled.  "Make a run for it, an' we'll hold 'em
back.  Now you go!  Hit her up!"

The hostile gang was temporarily disconcerted by the manoeuvre, then it
dashed from the train in pursuit.  The staid and sober Oakland folk who
sat upon the car scarcely noted the young fellow and the girl who ran for
it and found a seat in front on the outside.  They did not connect the
couple with Jimmy, who sprang on the steps, crying to the motorman:-

"Slam on the juice, old man, and beat it outa here!"

The next moment Jimmy whirled about, and the passengers saw him land his
fist on the face of a running man who was trying to board the car.  But
fists were landing on faces the whole length of the car.  Thus, Jimmy and
his gang, strung out on the long, lower steps, met the attacking gang.
The car started with a great clanging of its gong, and, as Jimmy's gang
drove off the last assailants, they, too, jumped off to finish the job.
The car dashed on, leaving the flurry of combat far behind, and its
dumfounded passengers never dreamed that the quiet young man and the
pretty working-girl sitting in the corner on the outside seat had been
the cause of the row.

Martin had enjoyed the fight, with a recrudescence of the old fighting
thrills.  But they quickly died away, and he was oppressed by a great
sadness.  He felt very old--centuries older than those careless, care-
free young companions of his others days.  He had travelled far, too far
to go back.  Their mode of life, which had once been his, was now
distasteful to him.  He was disappointed in it all.  He had developed
into an alien.  As the steam beer had tasted raw, so their companionship
seemed raw to him.  He was too far removed.  Too many thousands of opened
books yawned between them and him.  He had exiled himself.  He had
travelled in the vast realm of intellect until he could no longer return
home.  On the other hand, he was human, and his gregarious need for
companionship remained unsatisfied.  He had found no new home.  As the
gang could not understand him, as his own family could not understand
him, as the bourgeoisie could not understand him, so this girl beside
him, whom he honored high, could not understand him nor the honor he paid
her.  His sadness was not untouched with bitterness as he thought it
over.

"Make it up with him," he advised Lizzie, at parting, as they stood in
front of the workingman's shack in which she lived, near Sixth and
Market.  He referred to the young fellow whose place he had usurped that
day.

"I can't--now," she said.

"Oh, go on," he said jovially.  "All you have to do is whistle and he'll
come running."

"I didn't mean that," she said simply.

And he knew what she had meant.

She leaned toward him as he was about to say good night.  But she leaned
not imperatively, not seductively, but wistfully and humbly.  He was
touched to the heart.  His large tolerance rose up in him.  He put his
arms around her, and kissed her, and knew that upon his own lips rested
as true a kiss as man ever received.

"My God!" she sobbed.  "I could die for you.  I could die for you."

She tore herself from him suddenly and ran up the steps.  He felt a quick
moisture in his eyes.

"Martin Eden," he communed.  "You're not a brute, and you're a damn poor
Nietzscheman.  You'd marry her if you could and fill her quivering heart
full with happiness.  But you can't, you can't.  And it's a damn shame."

"'A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers,'" he muttered,
remembering his Henly.  "'Life is, I think, a blunder and a shame.'  It
is--a blunder and a shame."




CHAPTER XLIII


"The Shame of the Sun" was published in October.  As Martin cut the cords
of the express package and the half-dozen complimentary copies from the
publishers spilled out on the table, a heavy sadness fell upon him.  He
thought of the wild delight that would have been his had this happened a
few short months before, and he contrasted that delight that should have
been with his present uncaring coldness.  His book, his first book, and
his pulse had not gone up a fraction of a beat, and he was only sad.  It
meant little to him now.  The most it meant was that it might bring some
money, and little enough did he care for money.

He carried a copy out into the kitchen and presented it to Maria.

"I did it," he explained, in order to clear up her bewilderment.  "I
wrote it in the room there, and I guess some few quarts of your vegetable
soup went into the making of it.  Keep it.  It's yours.  Just to remember
me by, you know."

He was not bragging, not showing off.  His sole motive was to make her
happy, to make her proud of him, to justify her long faith in him.  She
put the book in the front room on top of the family Bible.  A sacred
thing was this book her lodger had made, a fetich of friendship.  It
softened the blow of his having been a laundryman, and though she could
not understand a line of it, she knew that every line of it was great.
She was a simple, practical, hard-working woman, but she possessed faith
in large endowment.

Just as emotionlessly as he had received "The Shame of the Sun" did he
read the reviews of it that came in weekly from the clipping bureau.  The
book was making a hit, that was evident.  It meant more gold in the money
sack.  He could fix up Lizzie, redeem all his promises, and still have
enough left to build his grass-walled castle.

Singletree, Darnley & Co. had cautiously brought out an edition of
fifteen hundred copies, but the first reviews had started a second
edition of twice the size through the presses; and ere this was delivered
a third edition of five thousand had been ordered.  A London firm made
arrangements by cable for an English edition, and hot-footed upon this
came the news of French, German, and Scandinavian translations in
progress.  The attack upon the Maeterlinck school could not have been
made at a more opportune moment.  A fierce controversy was precipitated.
Saleeby and Haeckel indorsed and defended "The Shame of the Sun," for
once finding themselves on the same side of a question.  Crookes and
Wallace ranged up on the opposing side, while Sir Oliver Lodge attempted
to formulate a compromise that would jibe with his particular cosmic
theories.  Maeterlinck's followers rallied around the standard of
mysticism.  Chesterton set the whole world laughing with a series of
alleged non-partisan essays on the subject, and the whole affair,
controversy and controversialists, was well-nigh swept into the pit by a
thundering broadside from George Bernard Shaw.  Needless to say the arena
was crowded with hosts of lesser lights, and the dust and sweat and din
became terrific.

"It is a most marvellous happening," Singletree, Darnley & Co. wrote
Martin, "a critical philosophic essay selling like a novel.  You could
not have chosen your subject better, and all contributory factors have
been unwarrantedly propitious.  We need scarcely to assure you that we
are making hay while the sun shines.  Over forty thousand copies have
already been sold in the United States and Canada, and a new edition of
twenty thousand is on the presses.  We are overworked, trying to supply
the demand.  Nevertheless we have helped to create that demand.  We have
already spent five thousand dollars in advertising.  The book is bound to
be a record-breaker."

"Please find herewith a contract in duplicate for your next book which we
have taken the liberty of forwarding to you.  You will please note that
we have increased your royalties to twenty per cent, which is about as
high as a conservative publishing house dares go.  If our offer is
agreeable to you, please fill in the proper blank space with the title of
your book.  We make no stipulations concerning its nature.  Any book on
any subject.  If you have one already written, so much the better.  Now
is the time to strike.  The iron could not be hotter."

"On receipt of signed contract we shall be pleased to make you an advance
on royalties of five thousand dollars.  You see, we have faith in you,
and we are going in on this thing big.  We should like, also, to discuss
with you the drawing up of a contract for a term of years, say ten,
during which we shall have the exclusive right of publishing in book-form
all that you produce.  But more of this anon."

Martin laid down the letter and worked a problem in mental arithmetic,
finding the product of fifteen cents times sixty thousand to be nine
thousand dollars.  He signed the new contract, inserting "The Smoke of
Joy" in the blank space, and mailed it back to the publishers along with
the twenty storiettes he had written in the days before he discovered the
formula for the newspaper storiette.  And promptly as the United States
mail could deliver and return, came Singletree, Darnley & Co.'s check for
five thousand dollars.

"I want you to come down town with me, Maria, this afternoon about two
o'clock," Martin said, the morning the check arrived.  "Or, better, meet
me at Fourteenth and Broadway at two o'clock.  I'll be looking out for
you."

At the appointed time she was there; but _shoes_ was the only clew to the
mystery her mind had been capable of evolving, and she suffered a
distinct shock of disappointment when Martin walked her right by a shoe-
store and dived into a real estate office.  What happened thereupon
resided forever after in her memory as a dream.  Fine gentlemen smiled at
her benevolently as they talked with Martin and one another; a
type-writer clicked; signatures were affixed to an imposing document; her
own landlord was there, too, and affixed his signature; and when all was
over and she was outside on the sidewalk, her landlord spoke to her,
saying, "Well, Maria, you won't have to pay me no seven dollars and a
half this month."

Maria was too stunned for speech.

"Or next month, or the next, or the next," her landlord said.

She thanked him incoherently, as if for a favor.  And it was not until
she had returned home to North Oakland and conferred with her own kind,
and had the Portuguese grocer investigate, that she really knew that she
was the owner of the little house in which she had lived and for which
she had paid rent so long.

"Why don't you trade with me no more?" the Portuguese grocer asked Martin
that evening, stepping out to hail him when he got off the car; and
Martin explained that he wasn't doing his own cooking any more, and then
went in and had a drink of wine on the house.  He noted it was the best
wine the grocer had in stock.

"Maria," Martin announced that night, "I'm going to leave you.  And
you're going to leave here yourself soon.  Then you can rent the house
and be a landlord yourself.  You've a brother in San Leandro or Haywards,
and he's in the milk business.  I want you to send all your washing back
unwashed--understand?--unwashed, and to go out to San Leandro to-morrow,
or Haywards, or wherever it is, and see that brother of yours.  Tell him
to come to see me.  I'll be stopping at the Metropole down in Oakland.
He'll know a good milk-ranch when he sees one."

And so it was that Maria became a landlord and the sole owner of a dairy,
with two hired men to do the work for her and a bank account that
steadily increased despite the fact that her whole brood wore shoes and
went to school.  Few persons ever meet the fairy princes they dream
about; but Maria, who worked hard and whose head was hard, never dreaming
about fairy princes, entertained hers in the guise of an ex-laundryman.

In the meantime the world had begun to ask: "Who is this Martin Eden?"  He
had declined to give any biographical data to his publishers, but the
newspapers were not to be denied.  Oakland was his own town, and the
reporters nosed out scores of individuals who could supply information.
All that he was and was not, all that he had done and most of what he had
not done, was spread out for the delectation of the public, accompanied
by snapshots and photographs--the latter procured from the local
photographer who had once taken Martin's picture and who promptly
copyrighted it and put it on the market.  At first, so great was his
disgust with the magazines and all bourgeois society, Martin fought
against publicity; but in the end, because it was easier than not to, he
surrendered.  He found that he could not refuse himself to the special
writers who travelled long distances to see him.  Then again, each day
was so many hours long, and, since he no longer was occupied with writing
and studying, those hours had to be occupied somehow; so he yielded to
what was to him a whim, permitted interviews, gave his opinions on
literature and philosophy, and even accepted invitations of the
bourgeoisie.  He had settled down into a strange and comfortable state of
mind.  He no longer cared.  He forgave everybody, even the cub reporter
who had painted him red and to whom he now granted a full page with
specially posed photographs.

He saw Lizzie occasionally, and it was patent that she regretted the
greatness that had come to him.  It widened the space between them.
Perhaps it was with the hope of narrowing it that she yielded to his
persuasions to go to night school and business college and to have
herself gowned by a wonderful dressmaker who charged outrageous prices.
She improved visibly from day to day, until Martin wondered if he was
doing right, for he knew that all her compliance and endeavor was for his
sake.  She was trying to make herself of worth in his eyes--of the sort
of worth he seemed to value.  Yet he gave her no hope, treating her in
brotherly fashion and rarely seeing her.

"Overdue" was rushed upon the market by the Meredith-Lowell Company in
the height of his popularity, and being fiction, in point of sales it
made even a bigger strike than "The Shame of the Sun."  Week after week
his was the credit of the unprecedented performance of having two books
at the head of the list of best-sellers.  Not only did the story take
with the fiction-readers, but those who read "The Shame of the Sun" with
avidity were likewise attracted to the sea-story by the cosmic grasp of
mastery with which he had handled it.  First he had attacked the
literature of mysticism, and had done it exceeding well; and, next, he
had successfully supplied the very literature he had exposited, thus
proving himself to be that rare genius, a critic and a creator in one.

Money poured in on him, fame poured in on him; he flashed, comet-like,
through the world of literature, and he was more amused than interested
by the stir he was making.  One thing was puzzling him, a little thing
that would have puzzled the world had it known.  But the world would have
puzzled over his bepuzzlement rather than over the little thing that to
him loomed gigantic.  Judge Blount invited him to dinner.  That was the
little thing, or the beginning of the little thing, that was soon to
become the big thing.  He had insulted Judge Blount, treated him
abominably, and Judge Blount, meeting him on the street, invited him to
dinner.  Martin bethought himself of the numerous occasions on which he
had met Judge Blount at the Morses' and when Judge Blount had not invited
him to dinner.  Why had he not invited him to dinner then? he asked
himself.  He had not changed.  He was the same Martin Eden.  What made
the difference?  The fact that the stuff he had written had appeared
inside the covers of books?  But it was work performed.  It was not
something he had done since.  It was achievement accomplished at the very
time Judge Blount was sharing this general view and sneering at his
Spencer and his intellect.  Therefore it was not for any real value, but
for a purely fictitious value that Judge Blount invited him to dinner.

Martin grinned and accepted the invitation, marvelling the while at his
complacence.  And at the dinner, where, with their womankind, were half a
dozen of those that sat in high places, and where Martin found himself
quite the lion, Judge Blount, warmly seconded by Judge Hanwell, urged
privately that Martin should permit his name to be put up for the
Styx--the ultra-select club to which belonged, not the mere men of
wealth, but the men of attainment.  And Martin declined, and was more
puzzled than ever.

He was kept busy disposing of his heap of manuscripts.  He was
overwhelmed by requests from editors.  It had been discovered that he was
a stylist, with meat under his style.  The Northern Review, after
publishing "The Cradle of Beauty," had written him for half a dozen
similar essays, which would have been supplied out of the heap, had not
Burton's Magazine, in a speculative mood, offered him five hundred
dollars each for five essays.  He wrote back that he would supply the
demand, but at a thousand dollars an essay.  He remembered that all these
manuscripts had been refused by the very magazines that were now
clamoring for them.  And their refusals had been cold-blooded, automatic,
stereotyped.  They had made him sweat, and now he intended to make them
sweat.  Burton's Magazine paid his price for five essays, and the
remaining four, at the same rate, were snapped up by Mackintosh's
Monthly, The Northern Review being too poor to stand the pace.  Thus went
out to the world "The High Priests of Mystery," "The Wonder-Dreamers,"
"The Yardstick of the Ego," "Philosophy of Illusion," "God and Clod,"
"Art and Biology," "Critics and Test-tubes," "Star-dust," and "The
Dignity of Usury,"--to raise storms and rumblings and mutterings that
were many a day in dying down.

Editors wrote to him telling him to name his own terms, which he did, but
it was always for work performed.  He refused resolutely to pledge
himself to any new thing.  The thought of again setting pen to paper
maddened him.  He had seen Brissenden torn to pieces by the crowd, and
despite the fact that him the crowd acclaimed, he could not get over the
shock nor gather any respect for the crowd.  His very popularity seemed a
disgrace and a treason to Brissenden.  It made him wince, but he made up
his mind to go on and fill the money-bag.

He received letters from editors like the following: "About a year ago we
were unfortunate enough to refuse your collection of love-poems.  We were
greatly impressed by them at the time, but certain arrangements already
entered into prevented our taking them.  If you still have them, and if
you will be kind enough to forward them, we shall be glad to publish the
entire collection on your own terms.  We are also prepared to make a most
advantageous offer for bringing them out in book-form."

Martin recollected his blank-verse tragedy, and sent it instead.  He read
it over before mailing, and was particularly impressed by its sophomoric
amateurishness and general worthlessness.  But he sent it; and it was
published, to the everlasting regret of the editor.  The public was
indignant and incredulous.  It was too far a cry from Martin Eden's high
standard to that serious bosh.  It was asserted that he had never written
it, that the magazine had faked it very clumsily, or that Martin Eden was
emulating the elder Dumas and at the height of success was hiring his
writing done for him.  But when he explained that the tragedy was an
early effort of his literary childhood, and that the magazine had refused
to be happy unless it got it, a great laugh went up at the magazine's
expense and a change in the editorship followed.  The tragedy was never
brought out in book-form, though Martin pocketed the advance royalties
that had been paid.

Coleman's Weekly sent Martin a lengthy telegram, costing nearly three
hundred dollars, offering him a thousand dollars an article for twenty
articles.  He was to travel over the United States, with all expenses
paid, and select whatever topics interested him.  The body of the
telegram was devoted to hypothetical topics in order to show him the
freedom of range that was to be his.  The only restriction placed upon
him was that he must confine himself to the United States.  Martin sent
his inability to accept and his regrets by wire "collect."

"Wiki-Wiki," published in Warren's Monthly, was an instantaneous success.
It was brought out forward in a wide-margined, beautifully decorated
volume that struck the holiday trade and sold like wildfire.  The critics
were unanimous in the belief that it would take its place with those two
classics by two great writers, "The Bottle Imp" and "The Magic Skin."

The public, however, received the "Smoke of Joy" collection rather
dubiously and coldly.  The audacity and unconventionality of the
storiettes was a shock to bourgeois morality and prejudice; but when
Paris went mad over the immediate translation that was made, the American
and English reading public followed suit and bought so many copies that
Martin compelled the conservative house of Singletree, Darnley & Co. to
pay a flat royalty of twenty-five per cent for a third book, and thirty
per cent flat for a fourth.  These two volumes comprised all the short
stories he had written and which had received, or were receiving, serial
publication.  "The Ring of Bells" and his horror stories constituted one
collection; the other collection was composed of "Adventure," "The Pot,"
"The Wine of Life," "The Whirlpool," "The Jostling Street," and four
other stories.  The Lowell-Meredith Company captured the collection of
all his essays, and the Maxmillian Company got his "Sea Lyrics" and the
"Love-cycle," the latter receiving serial publication in the Ladies' Home
Companion after the payment of an extortionate price.

Martin heaved a sigh of relief when he had disposed of the last
manuscript.  The grass-walled castle and the white, coppered schooner
were very near to him.  Well, at any rate he had discovered Brissenden's
contention that nothing of merit found its way into the magazines.  His
own success demonstrated that Brissenden had been wrong.

And yet, somehow, he had a feeling that Brissenden had been right, after
all.  "The Shame of the Sun" had been the cause of his success more than
the stuff he had written.  That stuff had been merely incidental.  It had
been rejected right and left by the magazines.  The publication of "The
Shame of the Sun" had started a controversy and precipitated the
landslide in his favor.  Had there been no "Shame of the Sun" there would
have been no landslide, and had there been no miracle in the go of "The
Shame of the Sun" there would have been no landslide.  Singletree,
Darnley & Co. attested that miracle.  They had brought out a first
edition of fifteen hundred copies and been dubious of selling it.  They
were experienced publishers and no one had been more astounded than they
at the success which had followed.  To them it had been in truth a
miracle.  They never got over it, and every letter they wrote him
reflected their reverent awe of that first mysterious happening.  They
did not attempt to explain it.  There was no explaining it.  It had
happened.  In the face of all experience to the contrary, it had
happened.

So it was, reasoning thus, that Martin questioned the validity of his
popularity.  It was the bourgeoisie that bought his books and poured its
gold into his money-sack, and from what little he knew of the bourgeoisie
it was not clear to him how it could possibly appreciate or comprehend
what he had written.  His intrinsic beauty and power meant nothing to the
hundreds of thousands who were acclaiming him and buying his books.  He
was the fad of the hour, the adventurer who had stormed Parnassus while
the gods nodded.  The hundreds of thousands read him and acclaimed him
with the same brute non-understanding with which they had flung
themselves on Brissenden's "Ephemera" and torn it to pieces--a
wolf-rabble that fawned on him instead of fanging him.  Fawn or fang, it
was all a matter of chance.  One thing he knew with absolute certitude:
"Ephemera" was infinitely greater than anything he had done.  It was
infinitely greater than anything he had in him.  It was a poem of
centuries.  Then the tribute the mob paid him was a sorry tribute indeed,
for that same mob had wallowed "Ephemera" into the mire.  He sighed
heavily and with satisfaction.  He was glad the last manuscript was sold
and that he would soon be done with it all.




CHAPTER XLIV


Mr. Morse met Martin in the office of the Hotel Metropole.  Whether he
had happened there just casually, intent on other affairs, or whether he
had come there for the direct purpose of inviting him to dinner, Martin
never could quite make up his mind, though he inclined toward the second
hypothesis.  At any rate, invited to dinner he was by Mr. Morse--Ruth's
father, who had forbidden him the house and broken off the engagement.

Martin was not angry.  He was not even on his dignity.  He tolerated Mr.
Morse, wondering the while how it felt to eat such humble pie.  He did
not decline the invitation.  Instead, he put it off with vagueness and
indefiniteness and inquired after the family, particularly after Mrs.
Morse and Ruth.  He spoke her name without hesitancy, naturally, though
secretly surprised that he had had no inward quiver, no old, familiar
increase of pulse and warm surge of blood.

He had many invitations to dinner, some of which he accepted.  Persons
got themselves introduced to him in order to invite him to dinner.  And
he went on puzzling over the little thing that was becoming a great
thing.  Bernard Higginbotham invited him to dinner.  He puzzled the
harder.  He remembered the days of his desperate starvation when no one
invited him to dinner.  That was the time he needed dinners, and went
weak and faint for lack of them and lost weight from sheer famine.  That
was the paradox of it.  When he wanted dinners, no one gave them to him,
and now that he could buy a hundred thousand dinners and was losing his
appetite, dinners were thrust upon him right and left.  But why?  There
was no justice in it, no merit on his part.  He was no different.  All
the work he had done was even at that time work performed.  Mr. and Mrs.
Morse had condemned him for an idler and a shirk and through Ruth had
urged that he take a clerk's position in an office.  Furthermore, they
had been aware of his work performed.  Manuscript after manuscript of his
had been turned over to them by Ruth.  They had read them.  It was the
very same work that had put his name in all the papers, and, it was his
name being in all the papers that led them to invite him.

One thing was certain: the Morses had not cared to have him for himself
or for his work.  Therefore they could not want him now for himself or
for his work, but for the fame that was his, because he was somebody
amongst men, and--why not?--because he had a hundred thousand dollars or
so.  That was the way bourgeois society valued a man, and who was he to
expect it otherwise?  But he was proud.  He disdained such valuation.  He
desired to be valued for himself, or for his work, which, after all, was
an expression of himself.  That was the way Lizzie valued him.  The work,
with her, did not even count.  She valued him, himself.  That was the way
Jimmy, the plumber, and all the old gang valued him.  That had been
proved often enough in the days when he ran with them; it had been proved
that Sunday at Shell Mound Park.  His work could go hang.  What they
liked, and were willing to scrap for, was just Mart Eden, one of the
bunch and a pretty good guy.

Then there was Ruth.  She had liked him for himself, that was
indisputable.  And yet, much as she had liked him she had liked the
bourgeois standard of valuation more.  She had opposed his writing, and
principally, it seemed to him, because it did not earn money.  That had
been her criticism of his "Love-cycle."  She, too, had urged him to get a
job.  It was true, she refined it to "position," but it meant the same
thing, and in his own mind the old nomenclature stuck.  He had read her
all that he wrote--poems, stories, essays--"Wiki-Wiki," "The Shame of the
Sun," everything.  And she had always and consistently urged him to get a
job, to go to work--good God!--as if he hadn't been working, robbing
sleep, exhausting life, in order to be worthy of her.

So the little thing grew bigger.  He was healthy and normal, ate
regularly, slept long hours, and yet the growing little thing was
becoming an obsession.  Work performed.  The phrase haunted his brain.  He
sat opposite Bernard Higginbotham at a heavy Sunday dinner over
Higginbotham's Cash Store, and it was all he could do to restrain himself
from shouting out:-

"It was work performed!  And now you feed me, when then you let me
starve, forbade me your house, and damned me because I wouldn't get a
job.  And the work was already done, all done.  And now, when I speak,
you check the thought unuttered on your lips and hang on my lips and pay
respectful attention to whatever I choose to say.  I tell you your party
is rotten and filled with grafters, and instead of flying into a rage you
hum and haw and admit there is a great deal in what I say.  And why?
Because I'm famous; because I've a lot of money.  Not because I'm Martin
Eden, a pretty good fellow and not particularly a fool.  I could tell you
the moon is made of green cheese and you would subscribe to the notion,
at least you would not repudiate it, because I've got dollars, mountains
of them.  And it was all done long ago; it was work performed, I tell
you, when you spat upon me as the dirt under your feet."

But Martin did not shout out.  The thought gnawed in his brain, an
unceasing torment, while he smiled and succeeded in being tolerant.  As
he grew silent, Bernard Higginbotham got the reins and did the talking.
He was a success himself, and proud of it.  He was self-made.  No one had
helped him.  He owed no man.  He was fulfilling his duty as a citizen and
bringing up a large family.  And there was Higginbotham's Cash Store,
that monument of his own industry and ability.  He loved Higginbotham's
Cash Store as some men loved their wives.  He opened up his heart to
Martin, showed with what keenness and with what enormous planning he had
made the store.  And he had plans for it, ambitious plans.  The
neighborhood was growing up fast.  The store was really too small.  If he
had more room, he would be able to put in a score of labor-saving and
money-saving improvements.  And he would do it yet.  He was straining
every effort for the day when he could buy the adjoining lot and put up
another two-story frame building.  The upstairs he could rent, and the
whole ground-floor of both buildings would be Higginbotham's Cash Store.
His eyes glistened when he spoke of the new sign that would stretch clear
across both buildings.

Martin forgot to listen.  The refrain of "Work performed," in his own
brain, was drowning the other's clatter.  The refrain maddened him, and
he tried to escape from it.

"How much did you say it would cost?" he asked suddenly.

His brother-in-law paused in the middle of an expatiation on the business
opportunities of the neighborhood.  He hadn't said how much it would
cost.  But he knew.  He had figured it out a score of times.

"At the way lumber is now," he said, "four thousand could do it."

"Including the sign?"

"I didn't count on that.  It'd just have to come, onc't the buildin' was
there."

"And the ground?"

"Three thousand more."

He leaned forward, licking his lips, nervously spreading and closing his
fingers, while he watched Martin write a check.  When it was passed over
to him, he glanced at the amount-seven thousand dollars.

"I--I can't afford to pay more than six per cent," he said huskily.

Martin wanted to laugh, but, instead, demanded:-

"How much would that be?"

"Lemme see.  Six per cent--six times seven--four hundred an' twenty."

"That would be thirty-five dollars a month, wouldn't it?"

Higginbotham nodded.

"Then, if you've no objection, well arrange it this way."  Martin glanced
at Gertrude.  "You can have the principal to keep for yourself, if you'll
use the thirty-five dollars a month for cooking and washing and
scrubbing.  The seven thousand is yours if you'll guarantee that Gertrude
does no more drudgery.  Is it a go?"

Mr. Higginbotham swallowed hard.  That his wife should do no more
housework was an affront to his thrifty soul.  The magnificent present
was the coating of a pill, a bitter pill.  That his wife should not work!
It gagged him.

"All right, then," Martin said.  "I'll pay the thirty-five a month, and--"

He reached across the table for the check.  But Bernard Higginbotham got
his hand on it first, crying:

"I accept!  I accept!"

When Martin got on the electric car, he was very sick and tired.  He
looked up at the assertive sign.

"The swine," he groaned.  "The swine, the swine."

When Mackintosh's Magazine published "The Palmist," featuring it with
decorations by Berthier and with two pictures by Wenn, Hermann von
Schmidt forgot that he had called the verses obscene.  He announced that
his wife had inspired the poem, saw to it that the news reached the ears
of a reporter, and submitted to an interview by a staff writer who was
accompanied by a staff photographer and a staff artist.  The result was a
full page in a Sunday supplement, filled with photographs and idealized
drawings of Marian, with many intimate details of Martin Eden and his
family, and with the full text of "The Palmist" in large type, and
republished by special permission of Mackintosh's Magazine.  It caused
quite a stir in the neighborhood, and good housewives were proud to have
the acquaintances of the great writer's sister, while those who had not
made haste to cultivate it.  Hermann von Schmidt chuckled in his little
repair shop and decided to order a new lathe.  "Better than advertising,"
he told Marian, "and it costs nothing."

"We'd better have him to dinner," she suggested.

And to dinner Martin came, making himself agreeable with the fat
wholesale butcher and his fatter wife--important folk, they, likely to be
of use to a rising young man like Hermann Von Schmidt.  No less a bait,
however, had been required to draw them to his house than his great
brother-in-law.  Another man at table who had swallowed the same bait was
the superintendent of the Pacific Coast agencies for the Asa Bicycle
Company.  Him Von Schmidt desired to please and propitiate because from
him could be obtained the Oakland agency for the bicycle.  So Hermann von
Schmidt found it a goodly asset to have Martin for a brother-in-law, but
in his heart of hearts he couldn't understand where it all came in.  In
the silent watches of the night, while his wife slept, he had floundered
through Martin's books and poems, and decided that the world was a fool
to buy them.

And in his heart of hearts Martin understood the situation only too well,
as he leaned back and gloated at Von Schmidt's head, in fancy punching it
well-nigh off of him, sending blow after blow home just right--the
chuckle-headed Dutchman!  One thing he did like about him, however.  Poor
as he was, and determined to rise as he was, he nevertheless hired one
servant to take the heavy work off of Marian's hands.  Martin talked with
the superintendent of the Asa agencies, and after dinner he drew him
aside with Hermann, whom he backed financially for the best bicycle store
with fittings in Oakland.  He went further, and in a private talk with
Hermann told him to keep his eyes open for an automobile agency and
garage, for there was no reason that he should not be able to run both
establishments successfully.

With tears in her eyes and her arms around his neck, Marian, at parting,
told Martin how much she loved him and always had loved him.  It was
true, there was a perceptible halt midway in her assertion, which she
glossed over with more tears and kisses and incoherent stammerings, and
which Martin inferred to be her appeal for forgiveness for the time she
had lacked faith in him and insisted on his getting a job.

"He can't never keep his money, that's sure," Hermann von Schmidt
confided to his wife.  "He got mad when I spoke of interest, an' he said
damn the principal and if I mentioned it again, he'd punch my Dutch head
off.  That's what he said--my Dutch head.  But he's all right, even if he
ain't no business man.  He's given me my chance, an' he's all right."

Invitations to dinner poured in on Martin; and the more they poured, the
more he puzzled.  He sat, the guest of honor, at an Arden Club banquet,
with men of note whom he had heard about and read about all his life; and
they told him how, when they had read "The Ring of Bells" in the
Transcontinental, and "The Peri and the Pearl" in The Hornet, they had
immediately picked him for a winner.  My God! and I was hungry and in
rags, he thought to himself.  Why didn't you give me a dinner then?  Then
was the time.  It was work performed.  If you are feeding me now for work
performed, why did you not feed me then when I needed it?  Not one word
in "The Ring of Bells," nor in "The Peri and the Pearl" has been changed.
No; you're not feeding me now for work performed.  You are feeding me
because everybody else is feeding me and because it is an honor to feed
me.  You are feeding me now because you are herd animals; because you are
part of the mob; because the one blind, automatic thought in the mob-mind
just now is to feed me.  And where does Martin Eden and the work Martin
Eden performed come in in all this? he asked himself plaintively, then
arose to respond cleverly and wittily to a clever and witty toast.

So it went.  Wherever he happened to be--at the Press Club, at the
Redwood Club, at pink teas and literary gatherings--always were
remembered "The Ring of Bells" and "The Peri and the Pearl" when they
were first published.  And always was Martin's maddening and unuttered
demand: Why didn't you feed me then?  It was work performed.  "The Ring
of Bells" and "The Peri and the Pearl" are not changed one iota.  They
were just as artistic, just as worth while, then as now.  But you are not
feeding me for their sake, nor for the sake of anything else I have
written.  You're feeding me because it is the style of feeding just now,
because the whole mob is crazy with the idea of feeding Martin Eden.

And often, at such times, he would abruptly see slouch in among the
company a young hoodlum in square-cut coat and under a stiff-rim Stetson
hat.  It happened to him at the Gallina Society in Oakland one afternoon.
As he rose from his chair and stepped forward across the platform, he saw
stalk through the wide door at the rear of the great room the young
hoodlum with the square-cut coat and stiff-rim hat.  Five hundred
fashionably gowned women turned their heads, so intent and steadfast was
Martin's gaze, to see what he was seeing.  But they saw only the empty
centre aisle.  He saw the young tough lurching down that aisle and
wondered if he would remove the stiff-rim which never yet had he seen him
without.  Straight down the aisle he came, and up the platform.  Martin
could have wept over that youthful shade of himself, when he thought of
all that lay before him.  Across the platform he swaggered, right up to
Martin, and into the foreground of Martin's consciousness disappeared.
The five hundred women applauded softly with gloved hands, seeking to
encourage the bashful great man who was their guest.  And Martin shook
the vision from his brain, smiled, and began to speak.

The Superintendent of Schools, good old man, stopped Martin on the street
and remembered him, recalling seances in his office when Martin was
expelled from school for fighting.

"I read your 'Ring of Bells' in one of the magazines quite a time ago,"
he said.  "It was as good as Poe.  Splendid, I said at the time,
splendid!"

Yes, and twice in the months that followed you passed me on the street
and did not know me, Martin almost said aloud.  Each time I was hungry
and heading for the pawnbroker.  Yet it was work performed.  You did not
know me then.  Why do you know me now?

"I was remarking to my wife only the other day," the other was saying,
"wouldn't it be a good idea to have you out to dinner some time?  And she
quite agreed with me.  Yes, she quite agreed with me."

"Dinner?" Martin said so sharply that it was almost a snarl.

"Why, yes, yes, dinner, you know--just pot luck with us, with your old
superintendent, you rascal," he uttered nervously, poking Martin in an
attempt at jocular fellowship.

Martin went down the street in a daze.  He stopped at the corner and
looked about him vacantly.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he murmured at last.  "The old fellow was afraid
of me."




CHAPTER XLV


Kreis came to Martin one day--Kreis, of the "real dirt"; and Martin
turned to him with relief, to receive the glowing details of a scheme
sufficiently wild-catty to interest him as a fictionist rather than an
investor.  Kreis paused long enough in the midst of his exposition to
tell him that in most of his "Shame of the Sun" he had been a chump.

"But I didn't come here to spout philosophy," Kreis went on.  "What I
want to know is whether or not you will put a thousand dollars in on this
deal?"

"No, I'm not chump enough for that, at any rate," Martin answered.  "But
I'll tell you what I will do.  You gave me the greatest night of my life.
You gave me what money cannot buy.  Now I've got money, and it means
nothing to me.  I'd like to turn over to you a thousand dollars of what I
don't value for what you gave me that night and which was beyond price.
You need the money.  I've got more than I need.  You want it.  You came
for it.  There's no use scheming it out of me.  Take it."

Kreis betrayed no surprise.  He folded the check away in his pocket.

"At that rate I'd like the contract of providing you with many such
nights," he said.

"Too late."  Martin shook his head.  "That night was the one night for
me.  I was in paradise.  It's commonplace with you, I know.  But it
wasn't to me.  I shall never live at such a pitch again.  I'm done with
philosophy.  I want never to hear another word of it."

"The first dollar I ever made in my life out of my philosophy," Kreis
remarked, as he paused in the doorway.  "And then the market broke."

Mrs. Morse drove by Martin on the street one day, and smiled and nodded.
He smiled back and lifted his hat.  The episode did not affect him.  A
month before it might have disgusted him, or made him curious and set him
to speculating about her state of consciousness at that moment.  But now
it was not provocative of a second thought.  He forgot about it the next
moment.  He forgot about it as he would have forgotten the Central Bank
Building or the City Hall after having walked past them.  Yet his mind
was preternaturally active.  His thoughts went ever around and around in
a circle.  The centre of that circle was "work performed"; it ate at his
brain like a deathless maggot.  He awoke to it in the morning.  It
tormented his dreams at night.  Every affair of life around him that
penetrated through his senses immediately related itself to "work
performed."  He drove along the path of relentless logic to the
conclusion that he was nobody, nothing.  Mart Eden, the hoodlum, and Mart
Eden, the sailor, had been real, had been he; but Martin Eden! the famous
writer, did not exist.  Martin Eden, the famous writer, was a vapor that
had arisen in the mob-mind and by the mob-mind had been thrust into the
corporeal being of Mart Eden, the hoodlum and sailor.  But it couldn't
fool him.  He was not that sun-myth that the mob was worshipping and
sacrificing dinners to.  He knew better.

He read the magazines about himself, and pored over portraits of himself
published therein until he was unable to associate his identity with
those portraits.  He was the fellow who had lived and thrilled and loved;
who had been easy-going and tolerant of the frailties of life; who had
served in the forecastle, wandered in strange lands, and led his gang in
the old fighting days.  He was the fellow who had been stunned at first
by the thousands of books in the free library, and who had afterward
learned his way among them and mastered them; he was the fellow who had
burned the midnight oil and bedded with a spur and written books himself.
But the one thing he was not was that colossal appetite that all the mob
was bent upon feeding.

There were things, however, in the magazines that amused him.  All the
magazines were claiming him.  Warren's Monthly advertised to its
subscribers that it was always on the quest after new writers, and that,
among others, it had introduced Martin Eden to the reading public.  The
White Mouse claimed him; so did The Northern Review and Mackintosh's
Magazine, until silenced by The Globe, which pointed triumphantly to its
files where the mangled "Sea Lyrics" lay buried.  Youth and Age, which
had come to life again after having escaped paying its bills, put in a
prior claim, which nobody but farmers' children ever read.  The
Transcontinental made a dignified and convincing statement of how it
first discovered Martin Eden, which was warmly disputed by The Hornet,
with the exhibit of "The Peri and the Pearl."  The modest claim of
Singletree, Darnley & Co. was lost in the din.  Besides, that publishing
firm did not own a magazine wherewith to make its claim less modest.

The newspapers calculated Martin's royalties.  In some way the
magnificent offers certain magazines had made him leaked out, and Oakland
ministers called upon him in a friendly way, while professional begging
letters began to clutter his mail.  But worse than all this were the
women.  His photographs were published broadcast, and special writers
exploited his strong, bronzed face, his scars, his heavy shoulders, his
clear, quiet eyes, and the slight hollows in his cheeks like an
ascetic's.  At this last he remembered his wild youth and smiled.  Often,
among the women he met, he would see now one, now another, looking at
him, appraising him, selecting him.  He laughed to himself.  He
remembered Brissenden's warning and laughed again.  The women would never
destroy him, that much was certain.  He had gone past that stage.

Once, walking with Lizzie toward night school, she caught a glance
directed toward him by a well-gowned, handsome woman of the bourgeoisie.
The glance was a trifle too long, a shade too considerative.  Lizzie knew
it for what it was, and her body tensed angrily.  Martin noticed, noticed
the cause of it, told her how used he was becoming to it and that he did
not care anyway.

"You ought to care," she answered with blazing eyes.  "You're sick.
That's what's the matter."

"Never healthier in my life.  I weigh five pounds more than I ever did."

"It ain't your body.  It's your head.  Something's wrong with your think-
machine.  Even I can see that, an' I ain't nobody."

He walked on beside her, reflecting.

"I'd give anything to see you get over it," she broke out impulsively.
"You ought to care when women look at you that way, a man like you.  It's
not natural.  It's all right enough for sissy-boys.  But you ain't made
that way.  So help me, I'd be willing an' glad if the right woman came
along an' made you care."

When he left Lizzie at night school, he returned to the Metropole.

Once in his rooms, he dropped into a Morris chair and sat staring
straight before him.  He did not doze.  Nor did he think.  His mind was a
blank, save for the intervals when unsummoned memory pictures took form
and color and radiance just under his eyelids.  He saw these pictures,
but he was scarcely conscious of them--no more so than if they had been
dreams.  Yet he was not asleep.  Once, he roused himself and glanced at
his watch.  It was just eight o'clock.  He had nothing to do, and it was
too early for bed.  Then his mind went blank again, and the pictures
began to form and vanish under his eyelids.  There was nothing
distinctive about the pictures.  They were always masses of leaves and
shrub-like branches shot through with hot sunshine.

A knock at the door aroused him.  He was not asleep, and his mind
immediately connected the knock with a telegram, or letter, or perhaps
one of the servants bringing back clean clothes from the laundry.  He was
thinking about Joe and wondering where he was, as he said, "Come in."

He was still thinking about Joe, and did not turn toward the door.  He
heard it close softly.  There was a long silence.  He forgot that there
had been a knock at the door, and was still staring blankly before him
when he heard a woman's sob.  It was involuntary, spasmodic, checked, and
stifled--he noted that as he turned about.  The next instant he was on
his feet.

"Ruth!" he said, amazed and bewildered.

Her face was white and strained.  She stood just inside the door, one
hand against it for support, the other pressed to her side.  She extended
both hands toward him piteously, and started forward to meet him.  As he
caught her hands and led her to the Morris chair he noticed how cold they
were.  He drew up another chair and sat down on the broad arm of it.  He
was too confused to speak.  In his own mind his affair with Ruth was
closed and sealed.  He felt much in the same way that he would have felt
had the Shelly Hot Springs Laundry suddenly invaded the Hotel Metropole
with a whole week's washing ready for him to pitch into.  Several times
he was about to speak, and each time he hesitated.

"No one knows I am here," Ruth said in a faint voice, with an appealing
smile.

"What did you say?"

He was surprised at the sound of his own voice.

She repeated her words.

"Oh," he said, then wondered what more he could possibly say.

"I saw you come in, and I waited a few minutes."

"Oh," he said again.

He had never been so tongue-tied in his life.  Positively he did not have
an idea in his head.  He felt stupid and awkward, but for the life of him
he could think of nothing to say.  It would have been easier had the
intrusion been the Shelly Hot Springs laundry.  He could have rolled up
his sleeves and gone to work.

"And then you came in," he said finally.

She nodded, with a slightly arch expression, and loosened the scarf at
her throat.

"I saw you first from across the street when you were with that girl."

"Oh, yes," he said simply.  "I took her down to night school."

"Well, aren't you glad to see me?" she said at the end of another
silence.

"Yes, yes."  He spoke hastily.  "But wasn't it rash of you to come here?"

"I slipped in.  Nobody knows I am here.  I wanted to see you.  I came to
tell you I have been very foolish.  I came because I could no longer stay
away, because my heart compelled me to come, because--because I wanted to
come."

She came forward, out of her chair and over to him.  She rested her hand
on his shoulder a moment, breathing quickly, and then slipped into his
arms.  And in his large, easy way, desirous of not inflicting hurt,
knowing that to repulse this proffer of herself was to inflict the most
grievous hurt a woman could receive, he folded his arms around her and
held her close.  But there was no warmth in the embrace, no caress in the
contact.  She had come into his arms, and he held her, that was all.  She
nestled against him, and then, with a change of position, her hands crept
up and rested upon his neck.  But his flesh was not fire beneath those
hands, and he felt awkward and uncomfortable.

"What makes you tremble so?" he asked.  "Is it a chill?  Shall I light
the grate?"

He made a movement to disengage himself, but she clung more closely to
him, shivering violently.

"It is merely nervousness," she said with chattering teeth.  "I'll
control myself in a minute.  There, I am better already."

Slowly her shivering died away.  He continued to hold her, but he was no
longer puzzled.  He knew now for what she had come.

"My mother wanted me to marry Charley Hapgood," she announced.

"Charley Hapgood, that fellow who speaks always in platitudes?" Martin
groaned.  Then he added, "And now, I suppose, your mother wants you to
marry me."

He did not put it in the form of a question.  He stated it as a
certitude, and before his eyes began to dance the rows of figures of his
royalties.

"She will not object, I know that much," Ruth said.

"She considers me quite eligible?"

Ruth nodded.

"And yet I am not a bit more eligible now than I was when she broke our
engagement," he meditated.  "I haven't changed any.  I'm the same Martin
Eden, though for that matter I'm a bit worse--I smoke now.  Don't you
smell my breath?"

In reply she pressed her open fingers against his lips, placed them
graciously and playfully, and in expectancy of the kiss that of old had
always been a consequence.  But there was no caressing answer of Martin's
lips.  He waited until the fingers were removed and then went on.

"I am not changed.  I haven't got a job.  I'm not looking for a job.
Furthermore, I am not going to look for a job.  And I still believe that
Herbert Spencer is a great and noble man and that Judge Blount is an
unmitigated ass.  I had dinner with him the other night, so I ought to
know."

"But you didn't accept father's invitation," she chided.

"So you know about that?  Who sent him?  Your mother?"

She remained silent.

"Then she did send him.  I thought so.  And now I suppose she has sent
you."

"No one knows that I am here," she protested.  "Do you think my mother
would permit this?"

"She'd permit you to marry me, that's certain."

She gave a sharp cry.  "Oh, Martin, don't be cruel.  You have not kissed
me once.  You are as unresponsive as a stone.  And think what I have
dared to do."  She looked about her with a shiver, though half the look
was curiosity.  "Just think of where I am."

"_I could die for you!  I could die for you_!"--Lizzie's words were
ringing in his ears.

"Why didn't you dare it before?" he asked harshly.  "When I hadn't a job?
When I was starving?  When I was just as I am now, as a man, as an
artist, the same Martin Eden?  That's the question I've been propounding
to myself for many a day--not concerning you merely, but concerning
everybody.  You see I have not changed, though my sudden apparent
appreciation in value compels me constantly to reassure myself on that
point.  I've got the same flesh on my bones, the same ten fingers and
toes.  I am the same.  I have not developed any new strength nor virtue.
My brain is the same old brain.  I haven't made even one new
generalization on literature or philosophy.  I am personally of the same
value that I was when nobody wanted me.  And what is puzzling me is why
they want me now.  Surely they don't want me for myself, for myself is
the same old self they did not want.  Then they must want me for
something else, for something that is outside of me, for something that
is not I!  Shall I tell you what that something is?  It is for the
recognition I have received.  That recognition is not I.  It resides in
the minds of others.  Then again for the money I have earned and am
earning.  But that money is not I.  It resides in banks and in the
pockets of Tom, Dick, and Harry.  And is it for that, for the recognition
and the money, that you now want me?"

"You are breaking my heart," she sobbed.  "You know I love you, that I am
here because I love you."

"I am afraid you don't see my point," he said gently.  "What I mean is:
if you love me, how does it happen that you love me now so much more than
you did when your love was weak enough to deny me?"

"Forget and forgive," she cried passionately.  "I loved you all the time,
remember that, and I am here, now, in your arms."

"I'm afraid I am a shrewd merchant, peering into the scales, trying to
weigh your love and find out what manner of thing it is."

She withdrew herself from his arms, sat upright, and looked at him long
and searchingly.  She was about to speak, then faltered and changed her
mind.

"You see, it appears this way to me," he went on.  "When I was all that I
am now, nobody out of my own class seemed to care for me.  When my books
were all written, no one who had read the manuscripts seemed to care for
them.  In point of fact, because of the stuff I had written they seemed
to care even less for me.  In writing the stuff it seemed that I had
committed acts that were, to say the least, derogatory.  'Get a job,'
everybody said."

She made a movement of dissent.

"Yes, yes," he said; "except in your case you told me to get a position.
The homely word _job_, like much that I have written, offends you.  It is
brutal.  But I assure you it was no less brutal to me when everybody I
knew recommended it to me as they would recommend right conduct to an
immoral creature.  But to return.  The publication of what I had written,
and the public notice I received, wrought a change in the fibre of your
love.  Martin Eden, with his work all performed, you would not marry.
Your love for him was not strong enough to enable you to marry him.  But
your love is now strong enough, and I cannot avoid the conclusion that
its strength arises from the publication and the public notice.  In your
case I do not mention royalties, though I am certain that they apply to
the change wrought in your mother and father.  Of course, all this is not
flattering to me.  But worst of all, it makes me question love, sacred
love.  Is love so gross a thing that it must feed upon publication and
public notice?  It would seem so.  I have sat and thought upon it till my
head went around."

"Poor, dear head."  She reached up a hand and passed the fingers
soothingly through his hair.  "Let it go around no more.  Let us begin
anew, now.  I loved you all the time.  I know that I was weak in yielding
to my mother's will.  I should not have done so.  Yet I have heard you
speak so often with broad charity of the fallibility and frailty of
humankind.  Extend that charity to me.  I acted mistakenly.  Forgive me."

"Oh, I do forgive," he said impatiently.  "It is easy to forgive where
there is really nothing to forgive.  Nothing that you have done requires
forgiveness.  One acts according to one's lights, and more than that one
cannot do.  As well might I ask you to forgive me for my not getting a
job."

"I meant well," she protested.  "You know that I could not have loved you
and not meant well."

"True; but you would have destroyed me out of your well-meaning."

"Yes, yes," he shut off her attempted objection.  "You would have
destroyed my writing and my career.  Realism is imperative to my nature,
and the bourgeois spirit hates realism.  The bourgeoisie is cowardly.  It
is afraid of life.  And all your effort was to make me afraid of life.
You would have formalized me.  You would have compressed me into a two-by-
four pigeonhole of life, where all life's values are unreal, and false,
and vulgar."  He felt her stir protestingly.  "Vulgarity--a hearty
vulgarity, I'll admit--is the basis of bourgeois refinement and culture.
As I say, you wanted to formalize me, to make me over into one of your
own class, with your class-ideals, class-values, and class-prejudices."
He shook his head sadly.  "And you do not understand, even now, what I am
saying.  My words do not mean to you what I endeavor to make them mean.
What I say is so much fantasy to you.  Yet to me it is vital reality.  At
the best you are a trifle puzzled and amused that this raw boy, crawling
up out of the mire of the abyss, should pass judgment upon your class and
call it vulgar."

She leaned her head wearily against his shoulder, and her body shivered
with recurrent nervousness.  He waited for a time for her to speak, and
then went on.

"And now you want to renew our love.  You want us to be married.  You
want me.  And yet, listen--if my books had not been noticed, I'd
nevertheless have been just what I am now.  And you would have stayed
away.  It is all those damned books--"

"Don't swear," she interrupted.

Her reproof startled him.  He broke into a harsh laugh.

"That's it," he said, "at a high moment, when what seems your life's
happiness is at stake, you are afraid of life in the same old way--afraid
of life and a healthy oath."

She was stung by his words into realization of the puerility of her act,
and yet she felt that he had magnified it unduly and was consequently
resentful.  They sat in silence for a long time, she thinking desperately
and he pondering upon his love which had departed.  He knew, now, that he
had not really loved her.  It was an idealized Ruth he had loved, an
ethereal creature of his own creating, the bright and luminous spirit of
his love-poems.  The real bourgeois Ruth, with all the bourgeois failings
and with the hopeless cramp of the bourgeois psychology in her mind, he
had never loved.

She suddenly began to speak.

"I know that much you have said is so.  I have been afraid of life.  I
did not love you well enough.  I have learned to love better.  I love you
for what you are, for what you were, for the ways even by which you have
become.  I love you for the ways wherein you differ from what you call my
class, for your beliefs which I do not understand but which I know I can
come to understand.  I shall devote myself to understanding them.  And
even your smoking and your swearing--they are part of you and I will love
you for them, too.  I can still learn.  In the last ten minutes I have
learned much.  That I have dared to come here is a token of what I have
already learned.  Oh, Martin!--"

She was sobbing and nestling close against him.

For the first time his arms folded her gently and with sympathy, and she
acknowledged it with a happy movement and a brightening face.

"It is too late," he said.  He remembered Lizzie's words.  "I am a sick
man--oh, not my body.  It is my soul, my brain.  I seem to have lost all
values.  I care for nothing.  If you had been this way a few months ago,
it would have been different.  It is too late, now."

"It is not too late," she cried.  "I will show you.  I will prove to you
that my love has grown, that it is greater to me than my class and all
that is dearest to me.  All that is dearest to the bourgeoisie I will
flout.  I am no longer afraid of life.  I will leave my father and
mother, and let my name become a by-word with my friends.  I will come to
you here and now, in free love if you will, and I will be proud and glad
to be with you.  If I have been a traitor to love, I will now, for love's
sake, be a traitor to all that made that earlier treason."

She stood before him, with shining eyes.

"I am waiting, Martin," she whispered, "waiting for you to accept me.
Look at me."

It was splendid, he thought, looking at her.  She had redeemed herself
for all that she had lacked, rising up at last, true woman, superior to
the iron rule of bourgeois convention.  It was splendid, magnificent,
desperate.  And yet, what was the matter with him?  He was not thrilled
nor stirred by what she had done.  It was splendid and magnificent only
intellectually.  In what should have been a moment of fire, he coldly
appraised her.  His heart was untouched.  He was unaware of any desire
for her.  Again he remembered Lizzie's words.

"I am sick, very sick," he said with a despairing gesture.  "How sick I
did not know till now.  Something has gone out of me.  I have always been
unafraid of life, but I never dreamed of being sated with life.  Life has
so filled me that I am empty of any desire for anything.  If there were
room, I should want you, now.  You see how sick I am."

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes; and like a child, crying,
that forgets its grief in watching the sunlight percolate through the
tear-dimmed films over the pupils, so Martin forgot his sickness, the
presence of Ruth, everything, in watching the masses of vegetation, shot
through hotly with sunshine that took form and blazed against this
background of his eyelids.  It was not restful, that green foliage.  The
sunlight was too raw and glaring.  It hurt him to look at it, and yet he
looked, he knew not why.

He was brought back to himself by the rattle of the door-knob.  Ruth was
at the door.

"How shall I get out?" she questioned tearfully.  "I am afraid."

"Oh, forgive me," he cried, springing to his feet.  "I'm not myself, you
know.  I forgot you were here."  He put his hand to his head.  "You see,
I'm not just right.  I'll take you home.  We can go out by the servants'
entrance.  No one will see us.  Pull down that veil and everything will
be all right."

She clung to his arm through the dim-lighted passages and down the narrow
stairs.

"I am safe now," she said, when they emerged on the sidewalk, at the same
time starting to take her hand from his arm.

"No, no, I'll see you home," he answered.

"No, please don't," she objected.  "It is unnecessary."

Again she started to remove her hand.  He felt a momentary curiosity.  Now
that she was out of danger she was afraid.  She was in almost a panic to
be quit of him.  He could see no reason for it and attributed it to her
nervousness.  So he restrained her withdrawing hand and started to walk
on with her.  Halfway down the block, he saw a man in a long overcoat
shrink back into a doorway.  He shot a glance in as he passed by, and,
despite the high turned-up collar, he was certain that he recognized
Ruth's brother, Norman.

During the walk Ruth and Martin held little conversation.  She was
stunned.  He was apathetic.  Once, he mentioned that he was going away,
back to the South Seas, and, once, she asked him to forgive her having
come to him.  And that was all.  The parting at her door was
conventional.  They shook hands, said good night, and he lifted his hat.
The door swung shut, and he lighted a cigarette and turned back for his
hotel.  When he came to the doorway into which he had seen Norman shrink,
he stopped and looked in in a speculative humor.

"She lied," he said aloud.  "She made believe to me that she had dared
greatly, and all the while she knew the brother that brought her was
waiting to take her back."  He burst into laughter.  "Oh, these
bourgeois!  When I was broke, I was not fit to be seen with his sister.
When I have a bank account, he brings her to me."

As he swung on his heel to go on, a tramp, going in the same direction,
begged him over his shoulder.

"Say, mister, can you give me a quarter to get a bed?" were the words.

But it was the voice that made Martin turn around.  The next instant he
had Joe by the hand.

"D'ye remember that time we parted at the Hot Springs?" the other was
saying.  "I said then we'd meet again.  I felt it in my bones.  An' here
we are."

"You're looking good," Martin said admiringly, "and you've put on
weight."

"I sure have."  Joe's face was beaming.  "I never knew what it was to
live till I hit hoboin'.  I'm thirty pounds heavier an' feel tiptop all
the time.  Why, I was worked to skin an' bone in them old days.  Hoboin'
sure agrees with me."

"But you're looking for a bed just the same," Martin chided, "and it's a
cold night."

"Huh?  Lookin' for a bed?"  Joe shot a hand into his hip pocket and
brought it out filled with small change.  "That beats hard graft," he
exulted.  "You just looked good; that's why I battered you."

Martin laughed and gave in.

"You've several full-sized drunks right there," he insinuated.

Joe slid the money back into his pocket.

"Not in mine," he announced.  "No gettin' oryide for me, though there
ain't nothin' to stop me except I don't want to.  I've ben drunk once
since I seen you last, an' then it was unexpected, bein' on an empty
stomach.  When I work like a beast, I drink like a beast.  When I live
like a man, I drink like a man--a jolt now an' again when I feel like it,
an' that's all."

Martin arranged to meet him next day, and went on to the hotel.  He
paused in the office to look up steamer sailings.  The Mariposa sailed
for Tahiti in five days.

"Telephone over to-morrow and reserve a stateroom for me," he told the
clerk.  "No deck-stateroom, but down below, on the weather-side,--the
port-side, remember that, the port-side.  You'd better write it down."

Once in his room he got into bed and slipped off to sleep as gently as a
child.  The occurrences of the evening had made no impression on him.  His
mind was dead to impressions.  The glow of warmth with which he met Joe
had been most fleeting.  The succeeding minute he had been bothered by
the ex-laundryman's presence and by the compulsion of conversation.  That
in five more days he sailed for his loved South Seas meant nothing to
him.  So he closed his eyes and slept normally and comfortably for eight
uninterrupted hours.  He was not restless.  He did not change his
position, nor did he dream.  Sleep had become to him oblivion, and each
day that he awoke, he awoke with regret.  Life worried and bored him, and
time was a vexation.




CHAPTER XLVI


"Say, Joe," was his greeting to his old-time working-mate next morning,
"there's a Frenchman out on Twenty-eighth Street.  He's made a pot of
money, and he's going back to France.  It's a dandy, well-appointed,
small steam laundry.  There's a start for you if you want to settle down.
Here, take this; buy some clothes with it and be at this man's office by
ten o'clock.  He looked up the laundry for me, and he'll take you out and
show you around.  If you like it, and think it is worth the price--twelve
thousand--let me know and it is yours.  Now run along.  I'm busy.  I'll
see you later."

"Now look here, Mart," the other said slowly, with kindling anger, "I
come here this mornin' to see you.  Savve?  I didn't come here to get no
laundry.  I come a here for a talk for old friends' sake, and you shove a
laundry at me.  I tell you, what you can do.  You can take that laundry
an' go to hell."

He was out of the room when Martin caught him and whirled him around.

"Now look here, Joe," he said; "if you act that way, I'll punch your
head.  An for old friends' sake I'll punch it hard.  Savve?--you will,
will you?"

Joe had clinched and attempted to throw him, and he was twisting and
writhing out of the advantage of the other's hold.  They reeled about the
room, locked in each other's arms, and came down with a crash across the
splintered wreckage of a wicker chair.  Joe was underneath, with arms
spread out and held and with Martin's knee on his chest.  He was panting
and gasping for breath when Martin released him.

"Now we'll talk a moment," Martin said.  "You can't get fresh with me.  I
want that laundry business finished first of all.  Then you can come back
and we'll talk for old sake's sake.  I told you I was busy.  Look at
that."

A servant had just come in with the morning mail, a great mass of letters
and magazines.

"How can I wade through that and talk with you?  You go and fix up that
laundry, and then we'll get together."

"All right," Joe admitted reluctantly.  "I thought you was turnin' me
down, but I guess I was mistaken.  But you can't lick me, Mart, in a
stand-up fight.  I've got the reach on you."

"We'll put on the gloves sometime and see," Martin said with a smile.

"Sure; as soon as I get that laundry going."  Joe extended his arm.  "You
see that reach?  It'll make you go a few."

Martin heaved a sigh of relief when the door closed behind the
laundryman.  He was becoming anti-social.  Daily he found it a severer
strain to be decent with people.  Their presence perturbed him, and the
effort of conversation irritated him.  They made him restless, and no
sooner was he in contact with them than he was casting about for excuses
to get rid of them.

He did not proceed to attack his mail, and for a half hour he lolled in
his chair, doing nothing, while no more than vague, half-formed thoughts
occasionally filtered through his intelligence, or rather, at wide
intervals, themselves constituted the flickering of his intelligence.

He roused himself and began glancing through his mail.  There were a
dozen requests for autographs--he knew them at sight; there were
professional begging letters; and there were letters from cranks, ranging
from the man with a working model of perpetual motion, and the man who
demonstrated that the surface of the earth was the inside of a hollow
sphere, to the man seeking financial aid to purchase the Peninsula of
Lower California for the purpose of communist colonization.  There were
letters from women seeking to know him, and over one such he smiled, for
enclosed was her receipt for pew-rent, sent as evidence of her good faith
and as proof of her respectability.

Editors and publishers contributed to the daily heap of letters, the
former on their knees for his manuscripts, the latter on their knees for
his books--his poor disdained manuscripts that had kept all he possessed
in pawn for so many dreary months in order to fund them in postage.  There
were unexpected checks for English serial rights and for advance payments
on foreign translations.  His English agent announced the sale of German
translation rights in three of his books, and informed him that Swedish
editions, from which he could expect nothing because Sweden was not a
party to the Berne Convention, were already on the market.  Then there
was a nominal request for his permission for a Russian translation, that
country being likewise outside the Berne Convention.

He turned to the huge bundle of clippings which had come in from his
press bureau, and read about himself and his vogue, which had become a
furore.  All his creative output had been flung to the public in one
magnificent sweep.  That seemed to account for it.  He had taken the
public off its feet, the way Kipling had, that time when he lay near to
death and all the mob, animated by a mob-mind thought, began suddenly to
read him.  Martin remembered how that same world-mob, having read him and
acclaimed him and not understood him in the least, had, abruptly, a few
months later, flung itself upon him and torn him to pieces.  Martin
grinned at the thought.  Who was he that he should not be similarly
treated in a few more months?  Well, he would fool the mob.  He would be
away, in the South Seas, building his grass house, trading for pearls and
copra, jumping reefs in frail outriggers, catching sharks and bonitas,
hunting wild goats among the cliffs of the valley that lay next to the
valley of Taiohae.

In the moment of that thought the desperateness of his situation dawned
upon him.  He saw, cleared eyed, that he was in the Valley of the Shadow.
All the life that was in him was fading, fainting, making toward death.

He realized how much he slept, and how much he desired to sleep.  Of old,
he had hated sleep.  It had robbed him of precious moments of living.
Four hours of sleep in the twenty-four had meant being robbed of four
hours of life.  How he had grudged sleep!  Now it was life he grudged.
Life was not good; its taste in his mouth was without tang, and bitter.
This was his peril.  Life that did not yearn toward life was in fair way
toward ceasing.  Some remote instinct for preservation stirred in him,
and he knew he must get away.  He glanced about the room, and the thought
of packing was burdensome.  Perhaps it would be better to leave that to
the last.  In the meantime he might be getting an outfit.

He put on his hat and went out, stopping in at a gun-store, where he
spent the remainder of the morning buying automatic rifles, ammunition,
and fishing tackle.  Fashions changed in trading, and he knew he would
have to wait till he reached Tahiti before ordering his trade-goods.  They
could come up from Australia, anyway.  This solution was a source of
pleasure.  He had avoided doing something, and the doing of anything just
now was unpleasant.  He went back to the hotel gladly, with a feeling of
satisfaction in that the comfortable Morris chair was waiting for him;
and he groaned inwardly, on entering his room, at sight of Joe in the
Morris chair.

Joe was delighted with the laundry.  Everything was settled, and he would
enter into possession next day.  Martin lay on the bed, with closed eyes,
while the other talked on.  Martin's thoughts were far away--so far away
that he was rarely aware that he was thinking.  It was only by an effort
that he occasionally responded.  And yet this was Joe, whom he had always
liked.  But Joe was too keen with life.  The boisterous impact of it on
Martin's jaded mind was a hurt.  It was an aching probe to his tired
sensitiveness.  When Joe reminded him that sometime in the future they
were going to put on the gloves together, he could almost have screamed.

"Remember, Joe, you're to run the laundry according to those old rules
you used to lay down at Shelly Hot Springs," he said.  "No overworking.
No working at night.  And no children at the mangles.  No children
anywhere.  And a fair wage."

Joe nodded and pulled out a note-book.

"Look at here.  I was workin' out them rules before breakfast this A.M.
What d'ye think of them?"

He read them aloud, and Martin approved, worrying at the same time as to
when Joe would take himself off.

It was late afternoon when he awoke.  Slowly the fact of life came back
to him.  He glanced about the room.  Joe had evidently stolen away after
he had dozed off.  That was considerate of Joe, he thought.  Then he
closed his eyes and slept again.

In the days that followed Joe was too busy organizing and taking hold of
the laundry to bother him much; and it was not until the day before
sailing that the newspapers made the announcement that he had taken
passage on the Mariposa.  Once, when the instinct of preservation
fluttered, he went to a doctor and underwent a searching physical
examination.  Nothing could be found the matter with him.  His heart and
lungs were pronounced magnificent.  Every organ, so far as the doctor
could know, was normal and was working normally.

"There is nothing the matter with you, Mr. Eden," he said, "positively
nothing the matter with you.  You are in the pink of condition.  Candidly,
I envy you your health.  It is superb.  Look at that chest.  There, and
in your stomach, lies the secret of your remarkable constitution.
Physically, you are a man in a thousand--in ten thousand.  Barring
accidents, you should live to be a hundred."

And Martin knew that Lizzie's diagnosis had been correct.  Physically he
was all right.  It was his "think-machine" that had gone wrong, and there
was no cure for that except to get away to the South Seas.  The trouble
was that now, on the verge of departure, he had no desire to go.  The
South Seas charmed him no more than did bourgeois civilization.  There
was no zest in the thought of departure, while the act of departure
appalled him as a weariness of the flesh.  He would have felt better if
he were already on board and gone.

The last day was a sore trial.  Having read of his sailing in the morning
papers, Bernard Higginbotham, Gertrude, and all the family came to say
good-by, as did Hermann von Schmidt and Marian.  Then there was business
to be transacted, bills to be paid, and everlasting reporters to be
endured.  He said good-by to Lizzie Connolly, abruptly, at the entrance
to night school, and hurried away.  At the hotel he found Joe, too busy
all day with the laundry to have come to him earlier.  It was the last
straw, but Martin gripped the arms of his chair and talked and listened
for half an hour.

"You know, Joe," he said, "that you are not tied down to that laundry.
There are no strings on it.  You can sell it any time and blow the money.
Any time you get sick of it and want to hit the road, just pull out.  Do
what will make you the happiest."

Joe shook his head.

"No more road in mine, thank you kindly.  Hoboin's all right, exceptin'
for one thing--the girls.  I can't help it, but I'm a ladies' man.  I
can't get along without 'em, and you've got to get along without 'em when
you're hoboin'.  The times I've passed by houses where dances an' parties
was goin' on, an' heard the women laugh, an' saw their white dresses and
smiling faces through the windows--Gee!  I tell you them moments was
plain hell.  I like dancin' an' picnics, an' walking in the moonlight,
an' all the rest too well.  Me for the laundry, and a good front, with
big iron dollars clinkin' in my jeans.  I seen a girl already, just
yesterday, and, d'ye know, I'm feelin' already I'd just as soon marry her
as not.  I've ben whistlin' all day at the thought of it.  She's a beaut,
with the kindest eyes and softest voice you ever heard.  Me for her, you
can stack on that.  Say, why don't you get married with all this money to
burn?  You could get the finest girl in the land."

Martin shook his head with a smile, but in his secret heart he was
wondering why any man wanted to marry.  It seemed an amazing and
incomprehensible thing.

From the deck of the Mariposa, at the sailing hour, he saw Lizzie
Connolly hiding in the skirts of the crowd on the wharf.  Take her with
you, came the thought.  It is easy to be kind.  She will be supremely
happy.  It was almost a temptation one moment, and the succeeding moment
it became a terror.  He was in a panic at the thought of it.  His tired
soul cried out in protest.  He turned away from the rail with a groan,
muttering, "Man, you are too sick, you are too sick."

He fled to his stateroom, where he lurked until the steamer was clear of
the dock.  In the dining saloon, at luncheon, he found himself in the
place of honor, at the captain's right; and he was not long in
discovering that he was the great man on board.  But no more
unsatisfactory great man ever sailed on a ship.  He spent the afternoon
in a deck-chair, with closed eyes, dozing brokenly most of the time, and
in the evening went early to bed.

After the second day, recovered from seasickness, the full passenger list
was in evidence, and the more he saw of the passengers the more he
disliked them.  Yet he knew that he did them injustice.  They were good
and kindly people, he forced himself to acknowledge, and in the moment of
acknowledgment he qualified--good and kindly like all the bourgeoisie,
with all the psychological cramp and intellectual futility of their kind,
they bored him when they talked with him, their little superficial minds
were so filled with emptiness; while the boisterous high spirits and the
excessive energy of the younger people shocked him.  They were never
quiet, ceaselessly playing deck-quoits, tossing rings, promenading, or
rushing to the rail with loud cries to watch the leaping porpoises and
the first schools of flying fish.

He slept much.  After breakfast he sought his deck-chair with a magazine
he never finished.  The printed pages tired him.  He puzzled that men
found so much to write about, and, puzzling, dozed in his chair.  When
the gong awoke him for luncheon, he was irritated that he must awaken.
There was no satisfaction in being awake.

Once, he tried to arouse himself from his lethargy, and went forward into
the forecastle with the sailors.  But the breed of sailors seemed to have
changed since the days he had lived in the forecastle.  He could find no
kinship with these stolid-faced, ox-minded bestial creatures.  He was in
despair.  Up above nobody had wanted Martin Eden for his own sake, and he
could not go back to those of his own class who had wanted him in the
past.  He did not want them.  He could not stand them any more than he
could stand the stupid first-cabin passengers and the riotous young
people.

Life was to him like strong, white light that hurts the tired eyes of a
sick person.  During every conscious moment life blazed in a raw glare
around him and upon him.  It hurt.  It hurt intolerably.  It was the
first time in his life that Martin had travelled first class.  On ships
at sea he had always been in the forecastle, the steerage, or in the
black depths of the coal-hold, passing coal.  In those days, climbing up
the iron ladders out the pit of stifling heat, he had often caught
glimpses of the passengers, in cool white, doing nothing but enjoy
themselves, under awnings spread to keep the sun and wind away from them,
with subservient stewards taking care of their every want and whim, and
it had seemed to him that the realm in which they moved and had their
being was nothing else than paradise.  Well, here he was, the great man
on board, in the midmost centre of it, sitting at the captain's right
hand, and yet vainly harking back to forecastle and stoke-hole in quest
of the Paradise he had lost.  He had found no new one, and now he could
not find the old one.

He strove to stir himself and find something to interest him.  He
ventured the petty officers' mess, and was glad to get away.  He talked
with a quartermaster off duty, an intelligent man who promptly prodded
him with the socialist propaganda and forced into his hands a bunch of
leaflets and pamphlets.  He listened to the man expounding the
slave-morality, and as he listened, he thought languidly of his own
Nietzsche philosophy.  But what was it worth, after all?  He remembered
one of Nietzsche's mad utterances wherein that madman had doubted truth.
And who was to say?  Perhaps Nietzsche had been right.  Perhaps there was
no truth in anything, no truth in truth--no such thing as truth.  But his
mind wearied quickly, and he was content to go back to his chair and
doze.

Miserable as he was on the steamer, a new misery came upon him.  What
when the steamer reached Tahiti?  He would have to go ashore.  He would
have to order his trade-goods, to find a passage on a schooner to the
Marquesas, to do a thousand and one things that were awful to
contemplate.  Whenever he steeled himself deliberately to think, he could
see the desperate peril in which he stood.  In all truth, he was in the
Valley of the Shadow, and his danger lay in that he was not afraid.  If
he were only afraid, he would make toward life.  Being unafraid, he was
drifting deeper into the shadow.  He found no delight in the old familiar
things of life.  The Mariposa was now in the northeast trades, and this
wine of wind, surging against him, irritated him.  He had his chair moved
to escape the embrace of this lusty comrade of old days and nights.

The day the Mariposa entered the doldrums, Martin was more miserable than
ever.  He could no longer sleep.  He was soaked with sleep, and perforce
he must now stay awake and endure the white glare of life.  He moved
about restlessly.  The air was sticky and humid, and the rain-squalls
were unrefreshing.  He ached with life.  He walked around the deck until
that hurt too much, then sat in his chair until he was compelled to walk
again.  He forced himself at last to finish the magazine, and from the
steamer library he culled several volumes of poetry.  But they could not
hold him, and once more he took to walking.

He stayed late on deck, after dinner, but that did not help him, for when
he went below, he could not sleep.  This surcease from life had failed
him.  It was too much.  He turned on the electric light and tried to
read.  One of the volumes was a Swinburne.  He lay in bed, glancing
through its pages, until suddenly he became aware that he was reading
with interest.  He finished the stanza, attempted to read on, then came
back to it.  He rested the book face downward on his breast and fell to
thinking.  That was it.  The very thing.  Strange that it had never come
to him before.  That was the meaning of it all; he had been drifting that
way all the time, and now Swinburne showed him that it was the happy way
out.  He wanted rest, and here was rest awaiting him.  He glanced at the
open port-hole.  Yes, it was large enough.  For the first time in weeks
he felt happy.  At last he had discovered the cure of his ill.  He picked
up the book and read the stanza slowly aloud:-

   "'From too much love of living,
   From hope and fear set free,
   We thank with brief thanksgiving
   Whatever gods may be
   That no life lives forever;
   That dead men rise up never;
   That even the weariest river
   Winds somewhere safe to sea.'"

He looked again at the open port.  Swinburne had furnished the key.  Life
was ill, or, rather, it had become ill--an unbearable thing.  "That dead
men rise up never!"  That line stirred him with a profound feeling of
gratitude.  It was the one beneficent thing in the universe.  When life
became an aching weariness, death was ready to soothe away to everlasting
sleep.  But what was he waiting for?  It was time to go.

He arose and thrust his head out the port-hole, looking down into the
milky wash.  The Mariposa was deeply loaded, and, hanging by his hands,
his feet would be in the water.  He could slip in noiselessly.  No one
would hear.  A smother of spray dashed up, wetting his face.  It tasted
salt on his lips, and the taste was good.  He wondered if he ought to
write a swan-song, but laughed the thought away.  There was no time.  He
was too impatient to be gone.

Turning off the light in his room so that it might not betray him, he
went out the port-hole feet first.  His shoulders stuck, and he forced
himself back so as to try it with one arm down by his side.  A roll of
the steamer aided him, and he was through, hanging by his hands.  When
his feet touched the sea, he let go.  He was in a milky froth of water.
The side of the Mariposa rushed past him like a dark wall, broken here
and there by lighted ports.  She was certainly making time.  Almost
before he knew it, he was astern, swimming gently on the foam-crackling
surface.

A bonita struck at his white body, and he laughed aloud.  It had taken a
piece out, and the sting of it reminded him of why he was there.  In the
work to do he had forgotten the purpose of it.  The lights of the
Mariposa were growing dim in the distance, and there he was, swimming
confidently, as though it were his intention to make for the nearest land
a thousand miles or so away.

It was the automatic instinct to live.  He ceased swimming, but the
moment he felt the water rising above his mouth the hands struck out
sharply with a lifting movement.  The will to live, was his thought, and
the thought was accompanied by a sneer.  Well, he had will,--ay, will
strong enough that with one last exertion it could destroy itself and
cease to be.

He changed his position to a vertical one.  He glanced up at the quiet
stars, at the same time emptying his lungs of air.  With swift, vigorous
propulsion of hands and feet, he lifted his shoulders and half his chest
out of water.  This was to gain impetus for the descent.  Then he let
himself go and sank without movement, a white statue, into the sea.  He
breathed in the water deeply, deliberately, after the manner of a man
taking an anaesthetic.  When he strangled, quite involuntarily his arms
and legs clawed the water and drove him up to the surface and into the
clear sight of the stars.

The will to live, he thought disdainfully, vainly endeavoring not to
breathe the air into his bursting lungs.  Well, he would have to try a
new way.  He filled his lungs with air, filled them full.  This supply
would take him far down.  He turned over and went down head first,
swimming with all his strength and all his will.  Deeper and deeper he
went.  His eyes were open, and he watched the ghostly, phosphorescent
trails of the darting bonita.  As he swam, he hoped that they would not
strike at him, for it might snap the tension of his will.  But they did
not strike, and he found time to be grateful for this last kindness of
life.

Down, down, he swam till his arms and leg grew tired and hardly moved.  He
knew that he was deep.  The pressure on his ear-drums was a pain, and
there was a buzzing in his head.  His endurance was faltering, but he
compelled his arms and legs to drive him deeper until his will snapped
and the air drove from his lungs in a great explosive rush.  The bubbles
rubbed and bounded like tiny balloons against his cheeks and eyes as they
took their upward flight.  Then came pain and strangulation.  This hurt
was not death, was the thought that oscillated through his reeling
consciousness.  Death did not hurt.  It was life, the pangs of life, this
awful, suffocating feeling; it was the last blow life could deal him.

His wilful hands and feet began to beat and churn about, spasmodically
and feebly.  But he had fooled them and the will to live that made them
beat and churn.  He was too deep down.  They could never bring him to the
surface.  He seemed floating languidly in a sea of dreamy vision.  Colors
and radiances surrounded him and bathed him and pervaded him.  What was
that?  It seemed a lighthouse; but it was inside his brain--a flashing,
bright white light.  It flashed swifter and swifter.  There was a long
rumble of sound, and it seemed to him that he was falling down a vast and
interminable stairway.  And somewhere at the bottom he fell into
darkness.  That much he knew.  He had fallen into darkness.  And at the
instant he knew, he ceased to know.


4xxxxxxxxx

THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS


The chief priests and rulers cry:-

   "O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt,
   We build but as our fathers built;
   Behold thine images how they stand
   Sovereign and sole through all our land.

   "Our task is hard--with sword and flame,
   To hold thine earth forever the same,
   And with sharp crooks of steel to keep,
   Still as thou leftest them, thy sheep."

   Then Christ sought out an artisan,
   A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,
   And a motherless girl whose fingers thin
   Crushed from her faintly want and sin.

   These set he in the midst of them,
   And as they drew back their garment hem
   For fear of defilement, "Lo, here," said he,
   "The images ye have made of me."

   JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.




PREFACE


The experiences related in this volume fell to me in the summer of 1902.
I went down into the under-world of London with an attitude of mind which
I may best liken to that of the explorer.  I was open to be convinced by
the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the teachings of those who had
not seen, or by the words of those who had seen and gone before.  Further,
I took with me certain simple criteria with which to measure the life of
the under-world.  That which made for more life, for physical and
spiritual health, was good; that which made for less life, which hurt,
and dwarfed, and distorted life, was bad.

It will be readily apparent to the reader that I saw much that was bad.
Yet it must not be forgotten that the time of which I write was
considered "good times" in England.  The starvation and lack of shelter I
encountered constituted a chronic condition of misery which is never
wiped out, even in the periods of greatest prosperity.

Following the summer in question came a hard winter.  Great numbers of
the unemployed formed into processions, as many as a dozen at a time, and
daily marched through the streets of London crying for bread.  Mr. Justin
McCarthy, writing in the month of January 1903, to the New York
_Independent_, briefly epitomises the situation as follows:-

   "The workhouses have no space left in which to pack the starving
   crowds who are craving every day and night at their doors for food and
   shelter.  All the charitable institutions have exhausted their means
   in trying to raise supplies of food for the famishing residents of the
   garrets and cellars of London lanes and alleys.  The quarters of the
   Salvation Army in various parts of London are nightly besieged by
   hosts of the unemployed and the hungry for whom neither shelter nor
   the means of sustenance can be provided."

It has been urged that the criticism I have passed on things as they are
in England is too pessimistic.  I must say, in extenuation, that of
optimists I am the most optimistic.  But I measure manhood less by
political aggregations than by individuals.  Society grows, while
political machines rack to pieces and become "scrap."  For the English,
so far as manhood and womanhood and health and happiness go, I see a
broad and smiling future.  But for a great deal of the political
machinery, which at present mismanages for them, I see nothing else than
the scrap heap.

JACK LONDON.
PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA.




CHAPTER I--THE DESCENT


"But you can't do it, you know," friends said, to whom I applied for
assistance in the matter of sinking myself down into the East End of
London.  "You had better see the police for a guide," they added, on
second thought, painfully endeavouring to adjust themselves to the
psychological processes of a madman who had come to them with better
credentials than brains.

"But I don't want to see the police," I protested.  "What I wish to do is
to go down into the East End and see things for myself.  I wish to know
how those people are living there, and why they are living there, and
what they are living for.  In short, I am going to live there myself."

"You don't want to _live_ down there!" everybody said, with
disapprobation writ large upon their faces.  "Why, it is said there are
places where a man's life isn't worth tu'pence."

"The very places I wish to see," I broke in.

"But you can't, you know," was the unfailing rejoinder.

"Which is not what I came to see you about," I answered brusquely,
somewhat nettled by their incomprehension.  "I am a stranger here, and I
want you to tell me what you know of the East End, in order that I may
have something to start on."

"But we know nothing of the East End.  It is over there, somewhere."  And
they waved their hands vaguely in the direction where the sun on rare
occasions may be seen to rise.

"Then I shall go to Cook's," I announced.

"Oh yes," they said, with relief.  "Cook's will be sure to know."

But O Cook, O Thomas Cook & Son, path-finders and trail-clearers, living
sign-posts to all the world, and bestowers of first aid to bewildered
travellers--unhesitatingly and instantly, with ease and celerity, could
you send me to Darkest Africa or Innermost Thibet, but to the East End of
London, barely a stone's throw distant from Ludgate Circus, you know not
the way!

"You can't do it, you know," said the human emporium of routes and fares
at Cook's Cheapside branch.  "It is so--hem--so unusual."

"Consult the police," he concluded authoritatively, when I had persisted.
"We are not accustomed to taking travellers to the East End; we receive
no call to take them there, and we know nothing whatsoever about the
place at all."

"Never mind that," I interposed, to save myself from being swept out of
the office by his flood of negations.  "Here's something you can do for
me.  I wish you to understand in advance what I intend doing, so that in
case of trouble you may be able to identify me."

"Ah, I see! should you be murdered, we would be in position to identify
the corpse."

He said it so cheerfully and cold-bloodedly that on the instant I saw my
stark and mutilated cadaver stretched upon a slab where cool waters
trickle ceaselessly, and him I saw bending over and sadly and patiently
identifying it as the body of the insane American who _would_ see the
East End.

"No, no," I answered; "merely to identify me in case I get into a scrape
with the 'bobbies.'"  This last I said with a thrill; truly, I was
gripping hold of the vernacular.

"That," he said, "is a matter for the consideration of the Chief Office."

"It is so unprecedented, you know," he added apologetically.

The man at the Chief Office hemmed and hawed.  "We make it a rule," he
explained, "to give no information concerning our clients."

"But in this case," I urged, "it is the client who requests you to give
the information concerning himself."

Again he hemmed and hawed.

"Of course," I hastily anticipated, "I know it is unprecedented, but--"

"As I was about to remark," he went on steadily, "it is unprecedented,
and I don't think we can do anything for you."

However, I departed with the address of a detective who lived in the East
End, and took my way to the American consul-general.  And here, at last,
I found a man with whom I could "do business."  There was no hemming and
hawing, no lifted brows, open incredulity, or blank amazement.  In one
minute I explained myself and my project, which he accepted as a matter
of course.  In the second minute he asked my age, height, and weight, and
looked me over.  And in the third minute, as we shook hands at parting,
he said: "All right, Jack.  I'll remember you and keep track."

I breathed a sigh of relief.  Having burnt my ships behind me, I was now
free to plunge into that human wilderness of which nobody seemed to know
anything.  But at once I encountered a new difficulty in the shape of my
cabby, a grey-whiskered and eminently decorous personage who had
imperturbably driven me for several hours about the "City."

"Drive me down to the East End," I ordered, taking my seat.

"Where, sir?" he demanded with frank surprise.

"To the East End, anywhere.  Go on."

The hansom pursued an aimless way for several minutes, then came to a
puzzled stop.  The aperture above my head was uncovered, and the cabman
peered down perplexedly at me.

"I say," he said, "wot plyce yer wanter go?"

"East End," I repeated.  "Nowhere in particular.  Just drive me around
anywhere."

"But wot's the haddress, sir?"

"See here!" I thundered.  "Drive me down to the East End, and at once!"

It was evident that he did not understand, but he withdrew his head, and
grumblingly started his horse.

Nowhere in the streets of London may one escape the sight of abject
poverty, while five minutes' walk from almost any point will bring one to
a slum; but the region my hansom was now penetrating was one unending
slum.  The streets were filled with a new and different race of people,
short of stature, and of wretched or beer-sodden appearance.  We rolled
along through miles of bricks and squalor, and from each cross street and
alley flashed long vistas of bricks and misery.  Here and there lurched a
drunken man or woman, and the air was obscene with sounds of jangling and
squabbling.  At a market, tottery old men and women were searching in the
garbage thrown in the mud for rotten potatoes, beans, and vegetables,
while little children clustered like flies around a festering mass of
fruit, thrusting their arms to the shoulders into the liquid corruption,
and drawing forth morsels but partially decayed, which they devoured on
the spot.

Not a hansom did I meet with in all my drive, while mine was like an
apparition from another and better world, the way the children ran after
it and alongside.  And as far as I could see were the solid walls of
brick, the slimy pavements, and the screaming streets; and for the first
time in my life the fear of the crowd smote me.  It was like the fear of
the sea; and the miserable multitudes, street upon street, seemed so many
waves of a vast and malodorous sea, lapping about me and threatening to
well up and over me.

"Stepney, sir; Stepney Station," the cabby called down.

I looked about.  It was really a railroad station, and he had driven
desperately to it as the one familiar spot he had ever heard of in all
that wilderness.

"Well," I said.

He spluttered unintelligibly, shook his head, and looked very miserable.
"I'm a strynger 'ere," he managed to articulate.  "An' if yer don't want
Stepney Station, I'm blessed if I know wotcher do want."

"I'll tell you what I want," I said.  "You drive along and keep your eye
out for a shop where old clothes are sold.  Now, when you see such a
shop, drive right on till you turn the corner, then stop and let me out."

I could see that he was growing dubious of his fare, but not long
afterwards he pulled up to the curb and informed me that an old-clothes
shop was to be found a bit of the way back.

"Won'tcher py me?" he pleaded.  "There's seven an' six owin' me."

"Yes," I laughed, "and it would be the last I'd see of you."

"Lord lumme, but it'll be the last I see of you if yer don't py me," he
retorted.

But a crowd of ragged onlookers had already gathered around the cab, and
I laughed again and walked back to the old-clothes shop.

Here the chief difficulty was in making the shopman understand that I
really and truly wanted old clothes.  But after fruitless attempts to
press upon me new and impossible coats and trousers, he began to bring to
light heaps of old ones, looking mysterious the while and hinting darkly.
This he did with the palpable intention of letting me know that he had
"piped my lay," in order to bulldose me, through fear of exposure, into
paying heavily for my purchases.  A man in trouble, or a high-class
criminal from across the water, was what he took my measure for--in
either case, a person anxious to avoid the police.

But I disputed with him over the outrageous difference between prices and
values, till I quite disabused him of the notion, and he settled down to
drive a hard bargain with a hard customer.  In the end I selected a pair
of stout though well-worn trousers, a frayed jacket with one remaining
button, a pair of brogans which had plainly seen service where coal was
shovelled, a thin leather belt, and a very dirty cloth cap.  My
underclothing and socks, however, were new and warm, but of the sort that
any American waif, down in his luck, could acquire in the ordinary course
of events.

"I must sy yer a sharp 'un," he said, with counterfeit admiration, as I
handed over the ten shillings finally agreed upon for the outfit.
"Blimey, if you ain't ben up an' down Petticut Lane afore now.  Yer
trouseys is wuth five bob to hany man, an' a docker 'ud give two an' six
for the shoes, to sy nothin' of the coat an' cap an' new stoker's singlet
an' hother things."

"How much will you give me for them?" I demanded suddenly.  "I paid you
ten bob for the lot, and I'll sell them back to you, right now, for
eight!  Come, it's a go!"

But he grinned and shook his head, and though I had made a good bargain,
I was unpleasantly aware that he had made a better one.

I found the cabby and a policeman with their heads together, but the
latter, after looking me over sharply, and particularly scrutinizing the
bundle under my arm, turned away and left the cabby to wax mutinous by
himself.  And not a step would he budge till I paid him the seven
shillings and sixpence owing him.  Whereupon he was willing to drive me
to the ends of the earth, apologising profusely for his insistence, and
explaining that one ran across queer customers in London Town.

But he drove me only to Highbury Vale, in North London, where my luggage
was waiting for me.  Here, next day, I took off my shoes (not without
regret for their lightness and comfort), and my soft, grey travelling
suit, and, in fact, all my clothing; and proceeded to array myself in the
clothes of the other and unimaginable men, who must have been indeed
unfortunate to have had to part with such rags for the pitiable sums
obtainable from a dealer.

Inside my stoker's singlet, in the armpit, I sewed a gold sovereign (an
emergency sum certainly of modest proportions); and inside my stoker's
singlet I put myself.  And then I sat down and moralised upon the fair
years and fat, which had made my skin soft and brought the nerves close
to the surface; for the singlet was rough and raspy as a hair shirt, and
I am confident that the most rigorous of ascetics suffer no more than I
did in the ensuing twenty-four hours.

The remainder of my costume was fairly easy to put on, though the
brogans, or brogues, were quite a problem.  As stiff and hard as if made
of wood, it was only after a prolonged pounding of the uppers with my
fists that I was able to get my feet into them at all.  Then, with a few
shillings, a knife, a handkerchief, and some brown papers and flake
tobacco stowed away in my pockets, I thumped down the stairs and said
good-bye to my foreboding friends.  As I paused out of the door, the
"help," a comely middle-aged woman, could not conquer a grin that twisted
her lips and separated them till the throat, out of involuntary sympathy,
made the uncouth animal noises we are wont to designate as "laughter."

No sooner was I out on the streets than I was impressed by the difference
in status effected by my clothes.  All servility vanished from the
demeanour of the common people with whom I came in contact.  Presto! in
the twinkling of an eye, so to say, I had become one of them.  My frayed
and out-at-elbows jacket was the badge and advertisement of my class,
which was their class.  It made me of like kind, and in place of the
fawning and too respectful attention I had hitherto received, I now
shared with them a comradeship.  The man in corduroy and dirty
neckerchief no longer addressed me as "sir" or "governor."  It was "mate"
now--and a fine and hearty word, with a tingle to it, and a warmth and
gladness, which the other term does not possess.  Governor!  It smacks of
mastery, and power, and high authority--the tribute of the man who is
under to the man on top, delivered in the hope that he will let up a bit
and ease his weight, which is another way of saying that it is an appeal
for alms.

This brings me to a delight I experienced in my rags and tatters which is
denied the average American abroad.  The European traveller from the
States, who is not a Croesus, speedily finds himself reduced to a chronic
state of self-conscious sordidness by the hordes of cringing robbers who
clutter his steps from dawn till dark, and deplete his pocket-book in a
way that puts compound interest to the blush.

In my rags and tatters I escaped the pestilence of tipping, and
encountered men on a basis of equality.  Nay, before the day was out I
turned the tables, and said, most gratefully, "Thank you, sir," to a
gentleman whose horse I held, and who dropped a penny into my eager palm.

Other changes I discovered were wrought in my condition by my new garb.
In crossing crowded thoroughfares I found I had to be, if anything, more
lively in avoiding vehicles, and it was strikingly impressed upon me that
my life had cheapened in direct ratio with my clothes.  When before I
inquired the way of a policeman, I was usually asked, "Bus or 'ansom,
sir?"  But now the query became, "Walk or ride?"  Also, at the railway
stations, a third-class ticket was now shoved out to me as a matter of
course.

But there was compensation for it all.  For the first time I met the
English lower classes face to face, and knew them for what they were.
When loungers and workmen, at street corners and in public-houses, talked
with me, they talked as one man to another, and they talked as natural
men should talk, without the least idea of getting anything out of me for
what they talked or the way they talked.

And when at last I made into the East End, I was gratified to find that
the fear of the crowd no longer haunted me.  I had become a part of it.
The vast and malodorous sea had welled up and over me, or I had slipped
gently into it, and there was nothing fearsome about it--with the one
exception of the stoker's singlet.




CHAPTER II--JOHNNY UPRIGHT


I shall not give you the address of Johnny Upright.  Let it suffice that
he lives in the most respectable street in the East End--a street that
would be considered very mean in America, but a veritable oasis in the
desert of East London.  It is surrounded on every side by close-packed
squalor and streets jammed by a young and vile and dirty generation; but
its own pavements are comparatively bare of the children who have no
other place to play, while it has an air of desertion, so few are the
people that come and go.

Each house in this street, as in all the streets, is shoulder to shoulder
with its neighbours.  To each house there is but one entrance, the front
door; and each house is about eighteen feet wide, with a bit of a brick-
walled yard behind, where, when it is not raining, one may look at a
slate-coloured sky.  But it must be understood that this is East End
opulence we are now considering.  Some of the people in this street are
even so well-to-do as to keep a "slavey."  Johnny Upright keeps one, as I
well know, she being my first acquaintance in this particular portion of
the world.

To Johnny Upright's house I came, and to the door came the "slavey."  Now,
mark you, her position in life was pitiable and contemptible, but it was
with pity and contempt that she looked at me.  She evinced a plain desire
that our conversation should be short.  It was Sunday, and Johnny Upright
was not at home, and that was all there was to it.  But I lingered,
discussing whether or not it was all there was to it, till Mrs. Johnny
Upright was attracted to the door, where she scolded the girl for not
having closed it before turning her attention to me.

No, Mr. Johnny Upright was not at home, and further, he saw nobody on
Sunday.  It is too bad, said I.  Was I looking for work?  No, quite the
contrary; in fact, I had come to see Johnny Upright on business which
might be profitable to him.

A change came over the face of things at once.  The gentleman in question
was at church, but would be home in an hour or thereabouts, when no doubt
he could be seen.

Would I kindly step in?--no, the lady did not ask me, though I fished for
an invitation by stating that I would go down to the corner and wait in a
public-house.  And down to the corner I went, but, it being church time,
the "pub" was closed.  A miserable drizzle was falling, and, in lieu of
better, I took a seat on a neighbourly doorstep and waited.

And here to the doorstep came the "slavey," very frowzy and very
perplexed, to tell me that the missus would let me come back and wait in
the kitchen.

"So many people come 'ere lookin' for work," Mrs. Johnny Upright
apologetically explained.  "So I 'ope you won't feel bad the way I
spoke."

"Not at all, not at all," I replied in my grandest manner, for the nonce
investing my rags with dignity.  "I quite understand, I assure you.  I
suppose people looking for work almost worry you to death?"

"That they do," she answered, with an eloquent and expressive glance; and
thereupon ushered me into, not the kitchen, but the dining room--a
favour, I took it, in recompense for my grand manner.

This dining-room, on the same floor as the kitchen, was about four feet
below the level of the ground, and so dark (it was midday) that I had to
wait a space for my eyes to adjust themselves to the gloom.  Dirty light
filtered in through a window, the top of which was on a level with a
sidewalk, and in this light I found that I was able to read newspaper
print.

And here, while waiting the coming of Johnny Upright, let me explain my
errand.  While living, eating, and sleeping with the people of the East
End, it was my intention to have a port of refuge, not too far distant,
into which could run now and again to assure myself that good clothes and
cleanliness still existed.  Also in such port I could receive my mail,
work up my notes, and sally forth occasionally in changed garb to
civilisation.

But this involved a dilemma.  A lodging where my property would be safe
implied a landlady apt to be suspicious of a gentleman leading a double
life; while a landlady who would not bother her head over the double life
of her lodgers would imply lodgings where property was unsafe.  To avoid
the dilemma was what had brought me to Johnny Upright.  A detective of
thirty-odd years' continuous service in the East End, known far and wide
by a name given him by a convicted felon in the dock, he was just the man
to find me an honest landlady, and make her rest easy concerning the
strange comings and goings of which I might be guilty.

His two daughters beat him home from church--and pretty girls they were
in their Sunday dresses; withal it was the certain weak and delicate
prettiness which characterises the Cockney lasses, a prettiness which is
no more than a promise with no grip on time, and doomed to fade quickly
away like the colour from a sunset sky.

They looked me over with frank curiosity, as though I were some sort of a
strange animal, and then ignored me utterly for the rest of my wait.  Then
Johnny Upright himself arrived, and I was summoned upstairs to confer
with him.

"Speak loud," he interrupted my opening words.  "I've got a bad cold, and
I can't hear well."

Shades of Old Sleuth and Sherlock Holmes!  I wondered as to where the
assistant was located whose duty it was to take down whatever information
I might loudly vouchsafe.  And to this day, much as I have seen of Johnny
Upright and much as I have puzzled over the incident, I have never been
quite able to make up my mind as to whether or not he had a cold, or had
an assistant planted in the other room.  But of one thing I am sure:
though I gave Johnny Upright the facts concerning myself and project, he
withheld judgment till next day, when I dodged into his street
conventionally garbed and in a hansom.  Then his greeting was cordial
enough, and I went down into the dining-room to join the family at tea.

"We are humble here," he said, "not given to the flesh, and you must take
us for what we are, in our humble way."

The girls were flushed and embarrassed at greeting me, while he did not
make it any the easier for them.

"Ha! ha!" he roared heartily, slapping the table with his open hand till
the dishes rang.  "The girls thought yesterday you had come to ask for a
piece of bread!  Ha! ha! ho! ho! ho!"

This they indignantly denied, with snapping eyes and guilty red cheeks,
as though it were an essential of true refinement to be able to discern
under his rags a man who had no need to go ragged.

And then, while I ate bread and marmalade, proceeded a play at cross
purposes, the daughters deeming it an insult to me that I should have
been mistaken for a beggar, and the father considering it as the highest
compliment to my cleverness to succeed in being so mistaken.  All of
which I enjoyed, and the bread, the marmalade, and the tea, till the time
came for Johnny Upright to find me a lodging, which he did, not half-a-
dozen doors away, in his own respectable and opulent street, in a house
as like to his own as a pea to its mate.




CHAPTER III--MY LODGING AND SOME OTHERS


From an East London standpoint, the room I rented for six shillings, or a
dollar and a half, per week, was a most comfortable affair.  From the
American standpoint, on the other hand, it was rudely furnished,
uncomfortable, and small.  By the time I had added an ordinary typewriter
table to its scanty furnishing, I was hard put to turn around; at the
best, I managed to navigate it by a sort of vermicular progression
requiring great dexterity and presence of mind.

Having settled myself, or my property rather, I put on my knockabout
clothes and went out for a walk.  Lodgings being fresh in my mind, I
began to look them up, bearing in mind the hypothesis that I was a poor
young man with a wife and large family.

My first discovery was that empty houses were few and far between--so far
between, in fact, that though I walked miles in irregular circles over a
large area, I still remained between.  Not one empty house could I find--a
conclusive proof that the district was "saturated."

It being plain that as a poor young man with a family I could rent no
houses at all in this most undesirable region, I next looked for rooms,
unfurnished rooms, in which I could store my wife and babies and
chattels.  There were not many, but I found them, usually in the
singular, for one appears to be considered sufficient for a poor man's
family in which to cook and eat and sleep.  When I asked for two rooms,
the sublettees looked at me very much in the manner, I imagine, that a
certain personage looked at Oliver Twist when he asked for more.

Not only was one room deemed sufficient for a poor man and his family,
but I learned that many families, occupying single rooms, had so much
space to spare as to be able to take in a lodger or two.  When such rooms
can be rented for from three to six shillings per week, it is a fair
conclusion that a lodger with references should obtain floor space for,
say, from eightpence to a shilling.  He may even be able to board with
the sublettees for a few shillings more.  This, however, I failed to
inquire into--a reprehensible error on my part, considering that I was
working on the basis of a hypothetical family.

Not only did the houses I investigated have no bath-tubs, but I learned
that there were no bath-tubs in all the thousands of houses I had seen.
Under the circumstances, with my wife and babies and a couple of lodgers
suffering from the too great spaciousness of one room, taking a bath in a
tin wash-basin would be an unfeasible undertaking.  But, it seems, the
compensation comes in with the saving of soap, so all's well, and God's
still in heaven.

However, I rented no rooms, but returned to my own Johnny Upright's
street.  What with my wife, and babies, and lodgers, and the various
cubby-holes into which I had fitted them, my mind's eye had become narrow-
angled, and I could not quite take in all of my own room at once.  The
immensity of it was awe-inspiring.  Could this be the room I had rented
for six shillings a week?  Impossible!  But my landlady, knocking at the
door to learn if I were comfortable, dispelled my doubts.

"Oh yes, sir," she said, in reply to a question.  "This street is the
very last.  All the other streets were like this eight or ten years ago,
and all the people were very respectable.  But the others have driven our
kind out.  Those in this street are the only ones left.  It's shocking,
sir!"

And then she explained the process of saturation, by which the rental
value of a neighbourhood went up, while its tone went down.

"You see, sir, our kind are not used to crowding in the way the others
do.  We need more room.  The others, the foreigners and lower-class
people, can get five and six families into this house, where we only get
one.  So they can pay more rent for the house than we can afford.  It
_is_ shocking, sir; and just to think, only a few years ago all this
neighbourhood was just as nice as it could be."

I looked at her.  Here was a woman, of the finest grade of the English
working-class, with numerous evidences of refinement, being slowly
engulfed by that noisome and rotten tide of humanity which the powers
that be are pouring eastward out of London Town.  Bank, factory, hotel,
and office building must go up, and the city poor folk are a nomadic
breed; so they migrate eastward, wave upon wave, saturating and degrading
neighbourhood by neighbourhood, driving the better class of workers
before them to pioneer, on the rim of the city, or dragging them down, if
not in the first generation, surely in the second and third.

It is only a question of months when Johnny Upright's street must go.  He
realises it himself.

"In a couple of years," he says, "my lease expires.  My landlord is one
of our kind.  He has not put up the rent on any of his houses here, and
this has enabled us to stay.  But any day he may sell, or any day he may
die, which is the same thing so far as we are concerned.  The house is
bought by a money breeder, who builds a sweat shop on the patch of ground
at the rear where my grapevine is, adds to the house, and rents it a room
to a family.  There you are, and Johnny Upright's gone!"

And truly I saw Johnny Upright, and his good wife and fair daughters, and
frowzy slavey, like so many ghosts flitting eastward through the gloom,
the monster city roaring at their heels.

But Johnny Upright is not alone in his flitting.  Far, far out, on the
fringe of the city, live the small business men, little managers, and
successful clerks.  They dwell in cottages and semi-detached villas, with
bits of flower garden, and elbow room, and breathing space.  They inflate
themselves with pride, and throw out their chests when they contemplate
the Abyss from which they have escaped, and they thank God that they are
not as other men.  And lo! down upon them comes Johnny Upright and the
monster city at his heels.  Tenements spring up like magic, gardens are
built upon, villas are divided and subdivided into many dwellings, and
the black night of London settles down in a greasy pall.




CHAPTER IV--A MAN AND THE ABYSS


"I say, can you let a lodging?"

These words I discharged carelessly over my shoulder at a stout and
elderly woman, of whose fare I was partaking in a greasy coffee-house
down near the Pool and not very far from Limehouse.

"Oh yus," she answered shortly, my appearance possibly not approximating
the standard of affluence required by her house.

I said no more, consuming my rasher of bacon and pint of sickly tea in
silence.  Nor did she take further interest in me till I came to pay my
reckoning (fourpence), when I pulled all of ten shillings out of my
pocket.  The expected result was produced.

"Yus, sir," she at once volunteered; "I 'ave nice lodgin's you'd likely
tyke a fancy to.  Back from a voyage, sir?"

"How much for a room?" I inquired, ignoring her curiosity.

She looked me up and down with frank surprise.  "I don't let rooms, not
to my reg'lar lodgers, much less casuals."

"Then I'll have to look along a bit," I said, with marked disappointment.

But the sight of my ten shillings had made her keen.  "I can let you have
a nice bed in with two hother men," she urged.  "Good, respectable men,
an' steady."

"But I don't want to sleep with two other men," I objected.

"You don't 'ave to.  There's three beds in the room, an' hit's not a very
small room."

"How much?" I demanded.

"'Arf a crown a week, two an' six, to a regular lodger.  You'll fancy the
men, I'm sure.  One works in the ware'ouse, an' 'e's been with me two
years now.  An' the hother's bin with me six--six years, sir, an' two
months comin' nex' Saturday.  'E's a scene-shifter," she went on.  "A
steady, respectable man, never missin' a night's work in the time 'e's
bin with me.  An' 'e likes the 'ouse; 'e says as it's the best 'e can do
in the w'y of lodgin's.  I board 'im, an' the hother lodgers too."

"I suppose he's saving money right along," I insinuated innocently.

"Bless you, no!  Nor can 'e do as well helsewhere with 'is money."

And I thought of my own spacious West, with room under its sky and
unlimited air for a thousand Londons; and here was this man, a steady and
reliable man, never missing a night's work, frugal and honest, lodging in
one room with two other men, paying two dollars and a half per month for
it, and out of his experience adjudging it to be the best he could do!
And here was I, on the strength of the ten shillings in my pocket, able
to enter in with my rags and take up my bed with him.  The human soul is
a lonely thing, but it must be very lonely sometimes when there are three
beds to a room, and casuals with ten shillings are admitted.

"How long have you been here?" I asked.

"Thirteen years, sir; an' don't you think you'll fancy the lodgin'?"

The while she talked she was shuffling ponderously about the small
kitchen in which she cooked the food for her lodgers who were also
boarders.  When I first entered, she had been hard at work, nor had she
let up once throughout the conversation.  Undoubtedly she was a busy
woman.  "Up at half-past five," "to bed the last thing at night,"
"workin' fit ter drop," thirteen years of it, and for reward, grey hairs,
frowzy clothes, stooped shoulders, slatternly figure, unending toil in a
foul and noisome coffee-house that faced on an alley ten feet between the
walls, and a waterside environment that was ugly and sickening, to say
the least.

"You'll be hin hagain to 'ave a look?" she questioned wistfully, as I
went out of the door.

And as I turned and looked at her, I realized to the full the deeper
truth underlying that very wise old maxim: "Virtue is its own reward."

I went back to her.  "Have you ever taken a vacation?" I asked.

"Vycytion!"

"A trip to the country for a couple of days, fresh air, a day off, you
know, a rest."

"Lor' lumme!" she laughed, for the first time stopping from her work.  "A
vycytion, eh? for the likes o' me?  Just fancy, now!--Mind yer
feet!"--this last sharply, and to me, as I stumbled over the rotten
threshold.

Down near the West India Dock I came upon a young fellow staring
disconsolately at the muddy water.  A fireman's cap was pulled down
across his eyes, and the fit and sag of his clothes whispered
unmistakably of the sea.

"Hello, mate," I greeted him, sparring for a beginning.  "Can you tell me
the way to Wapping?"

"Worked yer way over on a cattle boat?" he countered, fixing my
nationality on the instant.

And thereupon we entered upon a talk that extended itself to a public-
house and a couple of pints of "arf an' arf."  This led to closer
intimacy, so that when I brought to light all of a shilling's worth of
coppers (ostensibly my all), and put aside sixpence for a bed, and
sixpence for more arf an' arf, he generously proposed that we drink up
the whole shilling.

"My mate, 'e cut up rough las' night," he explained.  "An' the bobbies
got 'm, so you can bunk in wi' me.  Wotcher say?"

I said yes, and by the time we had soaked ourselves in a whole shilling's
worth of beer, and slept the night on a miserable bed in a miserable den,
I knew him pretty fairly for what he was.  And that in one respect he was
representative of a large body of the lower-class London workman, my
later experience substantiates.

He was London-born, his father a fireman and a drinker before him.  As a
child, his home was the streets and the docks.  He had never learned to
read, and had never felt the need for it--a vain and useless
accomplishment, he held, at least for a man of his station in life.

He had had a mother and numerous squalling brothers and sisters, all
crammed into a couple of rooms and living on poorer and less regular food
than he could ordinarily rustle for himself.  In fact, he never went home
except at periods when he was unfortunate in procuring his own food.
Petty pilfering and begging along the streets and docks, a trip or two to
sea as mess-boy, a few trips more as coal-trimmer, and then a
full-fledged fireman, he had reached the top of his life.

And in the course of this he had also hammered out a philosophy of life,
an ugly and repulsive philosophy, but withal a very logical and sensible
one from his point of view.  When I asked him what he lived for, he
immediately answered, "Booze."  A voyage to sea (for a man must live and
get the wherewithal), and then the paying off and the big drunk at the
end.  After that, haphazard little drunks, sponged in the "pubs" from
mates with a few coppers left, like myself, and when sponging was played
out another trip to sea and a repetition of the beastly cycle.

"But women," I suggested, when he had finished proclaiming booze the sole
end of existence.

"Wimmen!"  He thumped his pot upon the bar and orated eloquently.  "Wimmen
is a thing my edication 'as learnt me t' let alone.  It don't pay, matey;
it don't pay.  Wot's a man like me want o' wimmen, eh? jest you tell me.
There was my mar, she was enough, a-bangin' the kids about an' makin' the
ole man mis'rable when 'e come 'ome, w'ich was seldom, I grant.  An' fer
w'y?  Becos o' mar!  She didn't make 'is 'ome 'appy, that was w'y.  Then,
there's the other wimmen, 'ow do they treat a pore stoker with a few
shillin's in 'is trouseys?  A good drunk is wot 'e's got in 'is pockits,
a good long drunk, an' the wimmen skin 'im out of his money so quick 'e
ain't 'ad 'ardly a glass.  I know.  I've 'ad my fling, an' I know wot's
wot.  An' I tell you, where's wimmen is trouble--screechin' an' carryin'
on, fightin', cuttin', bobbies, magistrates, an' a month's 'ard labour
back of it all, an' no pay-day when you come out."

"But a wife and children," I insisted.  "A home of your own, and all
that.  Think of it, back from a voyage, little children climbing on your
knee, and the wife happy and smiling, and a kiss for you when she lays
the table, and a kiss all round from the babies when they go to bed, and
the kettle singing and the long talk afterwards of where you've been and
what you've seen, and of her and all the little happenings at home while
you've been away, and--"

"Garn!" he cried, with a playful shove of his fist on my shoulder.  "Wot's
yer game, eh?  A missus kissin' an' kids clim'in', an' kettle singin',
all on four poun' ten a month w'en you 'ave a ship, an' four nothin' w'en
you 'aven't.  I'll tell you wot I'd get on four poun' ten--a missus
rowin', kids squallin', no coal t' make the kettle sing, an' the kettle
up the spout, that's wot I'd get.  Enough t' make a bloke bloomin' well
glad to be back t' sea.  A missus!  Wot for?  T' make you mis'rable?
Kids?  Jest take my counsel, matey, an' don't 'ave 'em.  Look at me!  I
can 'ave my beer w'en I like, an' no blessed missus an' kids a-crying for
bread.  I'm 'appy, I am, with my beer an' mates like you, an' a good ship
comin', an' another trip to sea.  So I say, let's 'ave another pint.  Arf
an' arf's good enough for me."

Without going further with the speech of this young fellow of two-and-
twenty, I think I have sufficiently indicated his philosophy of life and
the underlying economic reason for it.  Home life he had never known.  The
word "home" aroused nothing but unpleasant associations.  In the low
wages of his father, and of other men in the same walk in life, he found
sufficient reason for branding wife and children as encumbrances and
causes of masculine misery.  An unconscious hedonist, utterly unmoral and
materialistic, he sought the greatest possible happiness for himself, and
found it in drink.

A young sot; a premature wreck; physical inability to do a stoker's work;
the gutter or the workhouse; and the end--he saw it all as clearly as I,
but it held no terrors for him.  From the moment of his birth, all the
forces of his environment had tended to harden him, and he viewed his
wretched, inevitable future with a callousness and unconcern I could not
shake.

And yet he was not a bad man.  He was not inherently vicious and brutal.
He had normal mentality, and a more than average physique.  His eyes were
blue and round, shaded by long lashes, and wide apart.  And there was a
laugh in them, and a fund of humour behind.  The brow and general
features were good, the mouth and lips sweet, though already developing a
harsh twist.  The chin was weak, but not too weak; I have seen men
sitting in the high places with weaker.

His head was shapely, and so gracefully was it poised upon a perfect neck
that I was not surprised by his body that night when he stripped for bed.
I have seen many men strip, in gymnasium and training quarters, men of
good blood and upbringing, but I have never seen one who stripped to
better advantage than this young sot of two-and-twenty, this young god
doomed to rack and ruin in four or five short years, and to pass hence
without posterity to receive the splendid heritage it was his to
bequeath.

It seemed sacrilege to waste such life, and yet I was forced to confess
that he was right in not marrying on four pounds ten in London Town.  Just
as the scene-shifter was happier in making both ends meet in a room
shared with two other men, than he would have been had he packed a feeble
family along with a couple of men into a cheaper room, and failed in
making both ends meet.

And day by day I became convinced that not only is it unwise, but it is
criminal for the people of the Abyss to marry.  They are the stones by
the builder rejected.  There is no place for them, in the social fabric,
while all the forces of society drive them downward till they perish.  At
the bottom of the Abyss they are feeble, besotted, and imbecile.  If they
reproduce, the life is so cheap that perforce it perishes of itself.  The
work of the world goes on above them, and they do not care to take part
in it, nor are they able.  Moreover, the work of the world does not need
them.  There are plenty, far fitter than they, clinging to the steep
slope above, and struggling frantically to slide no more.

In short, the London Abyss is a vast shambles.  Year by year, and decade
after decade, rural England pours in a flood of vigorous strong life,
that not only does not renew itself, but perishes by the third
generation.  Competent authorities aver that the London workman whose
parents and grand-parents were born in London is so remarkable a specimen
that he is rarely found.

Mr. A. C. Pigou has said that the aged poor, and the residuum which
compose the "submerged tenth," constitute 71 per cent, of the population
of London.  Which is to say that last year, and yesterday, and to-day, at
this very moment, 450,000 of these creatures are dying miserably at the
bottom of the social pit called "London."  As to how they die, I shall
take an instance from this morning's paper.

   SELF-NEGLECT

   Yesterday Dr. Wynn Westcott held an inquest at Shoreditch, respecting
   the death of Elizabeth Crews, aged 77 years, of 32 East Street,
   Holborn, who died on Wednesday last.  Alice Mathieson stated that she
   was landlady of the house where deceased lived.  Witness last saw her
   alive on the previous Monday.  She lived quite alone.  Mr. Francis
   Birch, relieving officer for the Holborn district, stated that
   deceased had occupied the room in question for thirty-five years.  When
   witness was called, on the 1st, he found the old woman in a terrible
   state, and the ambulance and coachman had to be disinfected after the
   removal.  Dr. Chase Fennell said death was due to blood-poisoning from
   bed-sores, due to self-neglect and filthy surroundings, and the jury
   returned a verdict to that effect.

The most startling thing about this little incident of a woman's death is
the smug complacency with which the officials looked upon it and rendered
judgment.  That an old woman of seventy-seven years of age should die of
SELF-NEGLECT is the most optimistic way possible of looking at it.  It
was the old dead woman's fault that she died, and having located the
responsibility, society goes contentedly on about its own affairs.

Of the "submerged tenth" Mr. Pigou has said: "Either through lack of
bodily strength, or of intelligence, or of fibre, or of all three, they
are inefficient or unwilling workers, and consequently unable to support
themselves . . . They are often so degraded in intellect as to be
incapable of distinguishing their right from their left hand, or of
recognising the numbers of their own houses; their bodies are feeble and
without stamina, their affections are warped, and they scarcely know what
family life means."

Four hundred and fifty thousand is a whole lot of people.  The young
fireman was only one, and it took him some time to say his little say.  I
should not like to hear them all talk at once.  I wonder if God hears
them?




CHAPTER V--THOSE ON THE EDGE


My first impression of East London was naturally a general one.  Later
the details began to appear, and here and there in the chaos of misery I
found little spots where a fair measure of happiness reigned--sometimes
whole rows of houses in little out-of-the-way streets, where artisans
dwell and where a rude sort of family life obtains.  In the evenings the
men can be seen at the doors, pipes in their mouths and children on their
knees, wives gossiping, and laughter and fun going on.  The content of
these people is manifestly great, for, relative to the wretchedness that
encompasses them, they are well off.

But at the best, it is a dull, animal happiness, the content of the full
belly.  The dominant note of their lives is materialistic.  They are
stupid and heavy, without imagination.  The Abyss seems to exude a
stupefying atmosphere of torpor, which wraps about them and deadens them.
Religion passes them by.  The Unseen holds for them neither terror nor
delight.  They are unaware of the Unseen; and the full belly and the
evening pipe, with their regular "arf an' arf," is all they demand, or
dream of demanding, from existence.

This would not be so bad if it were all; but it is not all.  The
satisfied torpor in which they are sunk is the deadly inertia that
precedes dissolution.  There is no progress, and with them not to
progress is to fall back and into the Abyss.  In their own lives they may
only start to fall, leaving the fall to be completed by their children
and their children's children.  Man always gets less than he demands from
life; and so little do they demand, that the less than little they get
cannot save them.

At the best, city life is an unnatural life for the human; but the city
life of London is so utterly unnatural that the average workman or
workwoman cannot stand it.  Mind and body are sapped by the undermining
influences ceaselessly at work.  Moral and physical stamina are broken,
and the good workman, fresh from the soil, becomes in the first city
generation a poor workman; and by the second city generation, devoid of
push and go and initiative, and actually unable physically to perform the
labour his father did, he is well on the way to the shambles at the
bottom of the Abyss.

If nothing else, the air he breathes, and from which he never escapes, is
sufficient to weaken him mentally and physically, so that he becomes
unable to compete with the fresh virile life from the country hastening
on to London Town to destroy and be destroyed.

Leaving out the disease germs that fill the air of the East End, consider
but the one item of smoke.  Sir William Thiselton-Dyer, curator of Kew
Gardens, has been studying smoke deposits on vegetation, and, according
to his calculations, no less than six tons of solid matter, consisting of
soot and tarry hydrocarbons, are deposited every week on every quarter of
a square mile in and about London.  This is equivalent to twenty-four
tons per week to the square mile, or 1248 tons per year to the square
mile.  From the cornice below the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral was
recently taken a solid deposit of crystallised sulphate of lime.  This
deposit had been formed by the action of the sulphuric acid in the
atmosphere upon the carbonate of lime in the stone.  And this sulphuric
acid in the atmosphere is constantly being breathed by the London workmen
through all the days and nights of their lives.

It is incontrovertible that the children grow up into rotten adults,
without virility or stamina, a weak-kneed, narrow-chested, listless
breed, that crumples up and goes down in the brute struggle for life with
the invading hordes from the country.  The railway men, carriers, omnibus
drivers, corn and timber porters, and all those who require physical
stamina, are largely drawn from the country; while in the Metropolitan
Police there are, roughly, 12,000 country-born as against 3000 London-
born.

So one is forced to conclude that the Abyss is literally a huge
man-killing machine, and when I pass along the little out-of-the-way
streets with the full-bellied artisans at the doors, I am aware of a
greater sorrow for them than for the 450,000 lost and hopeless wretches
dying at the bottom of the pit.  They, at least, are dying, that is the
point; while these have yet to go through the slow and preliminary pangs
extending through two and even three generations.

And yet the quality of the life is good.  All human potentialities are in
it.  Given proper conditions, it could live through the centuries, and
great men, heroes and masters, spring from it and make the world better
by having lived.

I talked with a woman who was representative of that type which has been
jerked out of its little out-of-the-way streets and has started on the
fatal fall to the bottom.  Her husband was a fitter and a member of the
Engineers' Union.  That he was a poor engineer was evidenced by his
inability to get regular employment.  He did not have the energy and
enterprise necessary to obtain or hold a steady position.

The pair had two daughters, and the four of them lived in a couple of
holes, called "rooms" by courtesy, for which they paid seven shillings
per week.  They possessed no stove, managing their cooking on a single
gas-ring in the fireplace.  Not being persons of property, they were
unable to obtain an unlimited supply of gas; but a clever machine had
been installed for their benefit.  By dropping a penny in the slot, the
gas was forthcoming, and when a penny's worth had forthcome the supply
was automatically shut off.  "A penny gawn in no time," she explained,
"an' the cookin' not arf done!"

Incipient starvation had been their portion for years.  Month in and
month out, they had arisen from the table able and willing to eat more.
And when once on the downward slope, chronic innutrition is an important
factor in sapping vitality and hastening the descent.

Yet this woman was a hard worker.  From 4.30 in the morning till the last
light at night, she said, she had toiled at making cloth dress-skirts,
lined up and with two flounces, for seven shillings a dozen.  Cloth dress-
skirts, mark you, lined up with two flounces, for seven shillings a
dozen!  This is equal to $1.75 per dozen, or 14.75 cents per skirt.

The husband, in order to obtain employment, had to belong to the union,
which collected one shilling and sixpence from him each week.  Also, when
strikes were afoot and he chanced to be working, he had at times been
compelled to pay as high as seventeen shillings into the union's coffers
for the relief fund.

One daughter, the elder, had worked as green hand for a dressmaker, for
one shilling and sixpence per week--37.5 cents per week, or a fraction
over 5 cents per day.  However, when the slack season came she was
discharged, though she had been taken on at such low pay with the
understanding that she was to learn the trade and work up.  After that
she had been employed in a bicycle store for three years, for which she
received five shillings per week, walking two miles to her work, and two
back, and being fined for tardiness.

As far as the man and woman were concerned, the game was played.  They
had lost handhold and foothold, and were falling into the pit.  But what
of the daughters?  Living like swine, enfeebled by chronic innutrition,
being sapped mentally, morally, and physically, what chance have they to
crawl up and out of the Abyss into which they were born falling?

As I write this, and for an hour past, the air has been made hideous by a
free-for-all, rough-and-tumble fight going on in the yard that is back to
back with my yard.  When the first sounds reached me I took it for the
barking and snarling of dogs, and some minutes were required to convince
me that human beings, and women at that, could produce such a fearful
clamour.

Drunken women fighting!  It is not nice to think of; it is far worse to
listen to.  Something like this it runs--

Incoherent babble, shrieked at the top of the lungs of several women; a
lull, in which is heard a child crying and a young girl's voice pleading
tearfully; a woman's voice rises, harsh and grating, "You 'it me!  Jest
you 'it me!" then, swat! challenge accepted and fight rages afresh.

The back windows of the houses commanding the scene are lined with
enthusiastic spectators, and the sound of blows, and of oaths that make
one's blood run cold, are borne to my ears.  Happily, I cannot see the
combatants.

A lull; "You let that child alone!" child, evidently of few years,
screaming in downright terror.  "Awright," repeated insistently and at
top pitch twenty times straight running; "you'll git this rock on the
'ead!" and then rock evidently on the head from the shriek that goes up.

A lull; apparently one combatant temporarily disabled and being
resuscitated; child's voice audible again, but now sunk to a lower note
of terror and growing exhaustion.

Voices begin to go up the scale, something like this:-

"Yes?"

"Yes!"

"Yes?"

"Yes!"

"Yes?"

"Yes!"

"Yes?"

"Yes!"

Sufficient affirmation on both sides, conflict again precipitated.  One
combatant gets overwhelming advantage, and follows it up from the way the
other combatant screams bloody murder.  Bloody murder gurgles and dies
out, undoubtedly throttled by a strangle hold.

Entrance of new voices; a flank attack; strangle hold suddenly broken
from the way bloody murder goes up half an octave higher than before;
general hullaballoo, everybody fighting.

Lull; new voice, young girl's, "I'm goin' ter tyke my mother's part;"
dialogue, repeated about five times, "I'll do as I like, blankety, blank,
blank!"  "I'd like ter see yer, blankety, blank, blank!" renewed
conflict, mothers, daughters, everybody, during which my landlady calls
her young daughter in from the back steps, while I wonder what will be
the effect of all that she has heard upon her moral fibre.




CHAPTER VI--FRYING-PAN ALLEY AND A GLIMPSE OF INFERNO


Three of us walked down Mile End Road, and one was a hero.  He was a
slender lad of nineteen, so slight and frail, in fact, that, like Fra
Lippo Lippi, a puff of wind might double him up and turn him over.  He
was a burning young socialist, in the first throes of enthusiasm and ripe
for martyrdom.  As platform speaker or chairman he had taken an active
and dangerous part in the many indoor and outdoor pro-Boer meetings which
have vexed the serenity of Merry England these several years back.  Little
items he had been imparting to me as he walked along; of being mobbed in
parks and on tram-cars; of climbing on the platform to lead the forlorn
hope, when brother speaker after brother speaker had been dragged down by
the angry crowd and cruelly beaten; of a siege in a church, where he and
three others had taken sanctuary, and where, amid flying missiles and the
crashing of stained glass, they had fought off the mob till rescued by
platoons of constables; of pitched and giddy battles on stairways,
galleries, and balconies; of smashed windows, collapsed stairways,
wrecked lecture halls, and broken heads and bones--and then, with a
regretful sigh, he looked at me and said: "How I envy you big, strong
men!  I'm such a little mite I can't do much when it comes to fighting."

And I, walking head and shoulders above my two companions, remembered my
own husky West, and the stalwart men it had been my custom, in turn, to
envy there.  Also, as I looked at the mite of a youth with the heart of a
lion, I thought, this is the type that on occasion rears barricades and
shows the world that men have not forgotten how to die.

But up spoke my other companion, a man of twenty-eight, who eked out a
precarious existence in a sweating den.

"I'm a 'earty man, I am," he announced.  "Not like the other chaps at my
shop, I ain't.  They consider me a fine specimen of manhood.  W'y, d' ye
know, I weigh ten stone!"

I was ashamed to tell him that I weighed one hundred and seventy pounds,
or over twelve stone, so I contented myself with taking his measure.
Poor, misshapen little man!  His skin an unhealthy colour, body gnarled
and twisted out of all decency, contracted chest, shoulders bent
prodigiously from long hours of toil, and head hanging heavily forward
and out of place!  A "'earty man,' 'e was!"

"How tall are you?"

"Five foot two," he answered proudly; "an' the chaps at the shop . . . "

"Let me see that shop," I said.

The shop was idle just then, but I still desired to see it.  Passing
Leman Street, we cut off to the left into Spitalfields, and dived into
Frying-pan Alley.  A spawn of children cluttered the slimy pavement, for
all the world like tadpoles just turned frogs on the bottom of a dry
pond.  In a narrow doorway, so narrow that perforce we stepped over her,
sat a woman with a young babe, nursing at breasts grossly naked and
libelling all the sacredness of motherhood.  In the black and narrow hall
behind her we waded through a mess of young life, and essayed an even
narrower and fouler stairway.  Up we went, three flights, each landing
two feet by three in area, and heaped with filth and refuse.

There were seven rooms in this abomination called a house.  In six of the
rooms, twenty-odd people, of both sexes and all ages, cooked, ate, slept,
and worked.  In size the rooms averaged eight feet by eight, or possibly
nine.  The seventh room we entered.  It was the den in which five men
"sweated."  It was seven feet wide by eight long, and the table at which
the work was performed took up the major portion of the space.  On this
table were five lasts, and there was barely room for the men to stand to
their work, for the rest of the space was heaped with cardboard, leather,
bundles of shoe uppers, and a miscellaneous assortment of materials used
in attaching the uppers of shoes to their soles.

In the adjoining room lived a woman and six children.  In another vile
hole lived a widow, with an only son of sixteen who was dying of
consumption.  The woman hawked sweetmeats on the street, I was told, and
more often failed than not to supply her son with the three quarts of
milk he daily required.  Further, this son, weak and dying, did not taste
meat oftener than once a week; and the kind and quality of this meat
cannot possibly be imagined by people who have never watched human swine
eat.

"The w'y 'e coughs is somethin' terrible," volunteered my sweated friend,
referring to the dying boy.  "We 'ear 'im 'ere, w'ile we're workin', an'
it's terrible, I say, terrible!"

And, what of the coughing and the sweetmeats, I found another menace
added to the hostile environment of the children of the slum.

My sweated friend, when work was to be had, toiled with four other men in
his eight-by-seven room.  In the winter a lamp burned nearly all the day
and added its fumes to the over-loaded air, which was breathed, and
breathed, and breathed again.

In good times, when there was a rush of work, this man told me that he
could earn as high as "thirty bob a week."--Thirty shillings!  Seven
dollars and a half!

"But it's only the best of us can do it," he qualified.  "An' then we
work twelve, thirteen, and fourteen hours a day, just as fast as we can.
An' you should see us sweat!  Just running from us!  If you could see us,
it'd dazzle your eyes--tacks flyin' out of mouth like from a machine.
Look at my mouth."

I looked.  The teeth were worn down by the constant friction of the
metallic brads, while they were coal-black and rotten.

"I clean my teeth," he added, "else they'd be worse."

After he had told me that the workers had to furnish their own tools,
brads, "grindery," cardboard, rent, light, and what not, it was plain
that his thirty bob was a diminishing quantity.

"But how long does the rush season last, in which you receive this high
wage of thirty bob?" I asked.

"Four months," was the answer; and for the rest of the year, he informed
me, they average from "half a quid" to a "quid" a week, which is
equivalent to from two dollars and a half to five dollars.  The present
week was half gone, and he had earned four bob, or one dollar.  And yet I
was given to understand that this was one of the better grades of
sweating.

I looked out of the window, which should have commanded the back yards of
the neighbouring buildings.  But there were no back yards, or, rather,
they were covered with one-storey hovels, cowsheds, in which people
lived.  The roofs of these hovels were covered with deposits of filth, in
some places a couple of feet deep--the contributions from the back
windows of the second and third storeys.  I could make out fish and meat
bones, garbage, pestilential rags, old boots, broken earthenware, and all
the general refuse of a human sty.

"This is the last year of this trade; they're getting machines to do away
with us," said the sweated one mournfully, as we stepped over the woman
with the breasts grossly naked and waded anew through the cheap young
life.

We next visited the municipal dwellings erected by the London County
Council on the site of the slums where lived Arthur Morrison's "Child of
the Jago."  While the buildings housed more people than before, it was
much healthier.  But the dwellings were inhabited by the better-class
workmen and artisans.  The slum people had simply drifted on to crowd
other slums or to form new slums.

"An' now," said the sweated one, the 'earty man who worked so fast as to
dazzle one's eyes, "I'll show you one of London's lungs.  This is
Spitalfields Garden."  And he mouthed the word "garden" with scorn.

The shadow of Christ's Church falls across Spitalfields Garden, and in
the shadow of Christ's Church, at three o'clock in the afternoon, I saw a
sight I never wish to see again.  There are no flowers in this garden,
which is smaller than my own rose garden at home.  Grass only grows here,
and it is surrounded by a sharp-spiked iron fencing, as are all the parks
of London Town, so that homeless men and women may not come in at night
and sleep upon it.

As we entered the garden, an old woman, between fifty and sixty, passed
us, striding with sturdy intention if somewhat rickety action, with two
bulky bundles, covered with sacking, slung fore and aft upon her.  She
was a woman tramp, a houseless soul, too independent to drag her failing
carcass through the workhouse door.  Like the snail, she carried her home
with her.  In the two sacking-covered bundles were her household goods,
her wardrobe, linen, and dear feminine possessions.

We went up the narrow gravelled walk.  On the benches on either side
arrayed a mass of miserable and distorted humanity, the sight of which
would have impelled Dore to more diabolical flights of fancy than he ever
succeeded in achieving.  It was a welter of rags and filth, of all manner
of loathsome skin diseases, open sores, bruises, grossness, indecency,
leering monstrosities, and bestial faces.  A chill, raw wind was blowing,
and these creatures huddled there in their rags, sleeping for the most
part, or trying to sleep.  Here were a dozen women, ranging in age from
twenty years to seventy.  Next a babe, possibly of nine months, lying
asleep, flat on the hard bench, with neither pillow nor covering, nor
with any one looking after it.  Next half-a-dozen men, sleeping bolt
upright or leaning against one another in their sleep.  In one place a
family group, a child asleep in its sleeping mother's arms, and the
husband (or male mate) clumsily mending a dilapidated shoe.  On another
bench a woman trimming the frayed strips of her rags with a knife, and
another woman, with thread and needle, sewing up rents.  Adjoining, a man
holding a sleeping woman in his arms.  Farther on, a man, his clothing
caked with gutter mud, asleep, with head in the lap of a woman, not more
than twenty-five years old, and also asleep.

It was this sleeping that puzzled me.  Why were nine out of ten of them
asleep or trying to sleep?  But it was not till afterwards that I
learned.  _It is a law of the powers that be that the homeless shall not
sleep by night_.  On the pavement, by the portico of Christ's Church,
where the stone pillars rise toward the sky in a stately row, were whole
rows of men lying asleep or drowsing, and all too deep sunk in torpor to
rouse or be made curious by our intrusion.

"A lung of London," I said; "nay, an abscess, a great putrescent sore."

"Oh, why did you bring me here?" demanded the burning young socialist,
his delicate face white with sickness of soul and stomach sickness.

"Those women there," said our guide, "will sell themselves for
thru'pence, or tu'pence, or a loaf of stale bread."

He said it with a cheerful sneer.

But what more he might have said I do not know, for the sick man cried,
"For heaven's sake let us get out of this."




CHAPTER VII--A WINNER OF THE VICTORIA CROSS


I have found that it is not easy to get into the casual ward of the
workhouse.  I have made two attempts now, and I shall shortly make a
third.  The first time I started out at seven o'clock in the evening with
four shillings in my pocket.  Herein I committed two errors.  In the
first place, the applicant for admission to the casual ward must be
destitute, and as he is subjected to a rigorous search, he must really be
destitute; and fourpence, much less four shillings, is sufficient
affluence to disqualify him.  In the second place, I made the mistake of
tardiness.  Seven o'clock in the evening is too late in the day for a
pauper to get a pauper's bed.

For the benefit of gently nurtured and innocent folk, let me explain what
a ward is.  It is a building where the homeless, bedless, penniless man,
if he be lucky, may _casually_ rest his weary bones, and then work like a
navvy next day to pay for it.

My second attempt to break into the casual ward began more auspiciously.
I started in the middle of the afternoon, accompanied by the burning
young socialist and another friend, and all I had in my pocket was
thru'pence.  They piloted me to the Whitechapel Workhouse, at which I
peered from around a friendly corner.  It was a few minutes past five in
the afternoon but already a long and melancholy line was formed, which
strung out around the corner of the building and out of sight.

It was a most woeful picture, men and women waiting in the cold grey end
of the day for a pauper's shelter from the night, and I confess it almost
unnerved me.  Like the boy before the dentist's door, I suddenly
discovered a multitude of reasons for being elsewhere.  Some hints of the
struggle going on within must have shown in my face, for one of my
companions said, "Don't funk; you can do it."

Of course I could do it, but I became aware that even thru'pence in my
pocket was too lordly a treasure for such a throng; and, in order that
all invidious distinctions might be removed, I emptied out the coppers.
Then I bade good-bye to my friends, and with my heart going pit-a-pat,
slouched down the street and took my place at the end of the line.  Woeful
it looked, this line of poor folk tottering on the steep pitch to death;
how woeful it was I did not dream.

Next to me stood a short, stout man.  Hale and hearty, though aged,
strong-featured, with the tough and leathery skin produced by long years
of sunbeat and weatherbeat, his was the unmistakable sea face and eyes;
and at once there came to me a bit of Kipling's "Galley Slave":-

   "By the brand upon my shoulder, by the gall of clinging steel;
   By the welt the whips have left me, by the scars that never heal;
   By eyes grown old with staring through the sun-wash on the brine,
   I am paid in full for service . . . "

How correct I was in my surmise, and how peculiarly appropriate the verse
was, you shall learn.

"I won't stand it much longer, I won't," he was complaining to the man on
the other side of him.  "I'll smash a windy, a big 'un, an' get run in
for fourteen days.  Then I'll have a good place to sleep, never fear, an'
better grub than you get here.  Though I'd miss my bit of bacey"--this as
an after-thought, and said regretfully and resignedly.

"I've been out two nights now," he went on; "wet to the skin night before
last, an' I can't stand it much longer.  I'm gettin' old, an' some
mornin' they'll pick me up dead."

He whirled with fierce passion on me: "Don't you ever let yourself grow
old, lad.  Die when you're young, or you'll come to this.  I'm tellin'
you sure.  Seven an' eighty years am I, an' served my country like a man.
Three good-conduct stripes and the Victoria Cross, an' this is what I get
for it.  I wish I was dead, I wish I was dead.  Can't come any too quick
for me, I tell you."

The moisture rushed into his eyes, but, before the other man could
comfort him, he began to hum a lilting sea song as though there was no
such thing as heartbreak in the world.

Given encouragement, this is the story he told while waiting in line at
the workhouse after two nights of exposure in the streets.

As a boy he had enlisted in the British navy, and for two score years and
more served faithfully and well.  Names, dates, commanders, ports, ships,
engagements, and battles, rolled from his lips in a steady stream, but it
is beyond me to remember them all, for it is not quite in keeping to take
notes at the poorhouse door.  He had been through the "First War in
China," as he termed it; had enlisted with the East India Company and
served ten years in India; was back in India again, in the English navy,
at the time of the Mutiny; had served in the Burmese War and in the
Crimea; and all this in addition to having fought and toiled for the
English flag pretty well over the rest of the globe.

Then the thing happened.  A little thing, it could only be traced back to
first causes: perhaps the lieutenant's breakfast had not agreed with him;
or he had been up late the night before; or his debts were pressing; or
the commander had spoken brusquely to him.  The point is, that on this
particular day the lieutenant was irritable.  The sailor, with others,
was "setting up" the fore rigging.

Now, mark you, the sailor had been over forty years in the navy, had
three good-conduct stripes, and possessed the Victoria Cross for
distinguished service in battle; so he could not have been such an
altogether bad sort of a sailorman.  The lieutenant was irritable; the
lieutenant called him a name--well, not a nice sort of name.  It referred
to his mother.  When I was a boy it was our boys' code to fight like
little demons should such an insult be given our mothers; and many men
have died in my part of the world for calling other men this name.

However, the lieutenant called the sailor this name.  At that moment it
chanced the sailor had an iron lever or bar in his hands.  He promptly
struck the lieutenant over the head with it, knocking him out of the
rigging and overboard.

And then, in the man's own words: "I saw what I had done.  I knew the
Regulations, and I said to myself, 'It's all up with you, Jack, my boy;
so here goes.'  An' I jumped over after him, my mind made up to drown us
both.  An' I'd ha' done it, too, only the pinnace from the flagship was
just comin' alongside.  Up we came to the top, me a hold of him an'
punchin' him.  This was what settled for me.  If I hadn't ben strikin'
him, I could have claimed that, seein' what I had done, I jumped over to
save him."

Then came the court-martial, or whatever name a sea trial goes by.  He
recited his sentence, word for word, as though memorised and gone over in
bitterness many times.  And here it is, for the sake of discipline and
respect to officers not always gentlemen, the punishment of a man who was
guilty of manhood.  To be reduced to the rank of ordinary seaman; to be
debarred all prize-money due him; to forfeit all rights to pension; to
resign the Victoria Cross; to be discharged from the navy with a good
character (this being his first offence); to receive fifty lashes; and to
serve two years in prison.

"I wish I had drowned that day, I wish to God I had," he concluded, as
the line moved up and we passed around the corner.

At last the door came in sight, through which the paupers were being
admitted in bunches.  And here I learned a surprising thing: _this being
Wednesday, none of us would be released till Friday morning_.
Furthermore, and oh, you tobacco users, take heed: _we would not be
permitted to take in any tobacco_.  This we would have to surrender as we
entered.  Sometimes, I was told, it was returned on leaving and sometimes
it was destroyed.

The old man-of-war's man gave me a lesson.  Opening his pouch, he emptied
the tobacco (a pitiful quantity) into a piece of paper.  This, snugly and
flatly wrapped, went down his sock inside his shoe.  Down went my piece
of tobacco inside my sock, for forty hours without tobacco is a hardship
all tobacco users will understand.

Again and again the line moved up, and we were slowly but surely
approaching the wicket.  At the moment we happened to be standing on an
iron grating, and a man appearing underneath, the old sailor called down
to him,--

"How many more do they want?"

"Twenty-four," came the answer.

We looked ahead anxiously and counted.  Thirty-four were ahead of us.
Disappointment and consternation dawned upon the faces about me.  It is
not a nice thing, hungry and penniless, to face a sleepless night in the
streets.  But we hoped against hope, till, when ten stood outside the
wicket, the porter turned us away.

"Full up," was what he said, as he banged the door.

Like a flash, for all his eighty-seven years, the old sailor was speeding
away on the desperate chance of finding shelter elsewhere.  I stood and
debated with two other men, wise in the knowledge of casual wards, as to
where we should go.  They decided on the Poplar Workhouse, three miles
away, and we started off.

As we rounded the corner, one of them said, "I could a' got in 'ere to-
day.  I come by at one o'clock, an' the line was beginnin' to form
then--pets, that's what they are.  They let 'm in, the same ones, night
upon night."




CHAPTER VIII--THE CARTER AND THE CARPENTER


The Carter, with his clean-cut face, chin beard, and shaved upper lip, I
should have taken in the United States for anything from a master workman
to a well-to-do farmer.  The Carpenter--well, I should have taken him for
a carpenter.  He looked it, lean and wiry, with shrewd, observant eyes,
and hands that had grown twisted to the handles of tools through forty-
seven years' work at the trade.  The chief difficulty with these men was
that they were old, and that their children, instead of growing up to
take care of them, had died.  Their years had told on them, and they had
been forced out of the whirl of industry by the younger and stronger
competitors who had taken their places.

These two men, turned away from the casual ward of Whitechapel Workhouse,
were bound with me for Poplar Workhouse.  Not much of a show, they
thought, but to chance it was all that remained to us.  It was Poplar, or
the streets and night.  Both men were anxious for a bed, for they were
"about gone," as they phrased it.  The Carter, fifty-eight years of age,
had spent the last three nights without shelter or sleep, while the
Carpenter, sixty-five years of age, had been out five nights.

But, O dear, soft people, full of meat and blood, with white beds and
airy rooms waiting you each night, how can I make you know what it is to
suffer as you would suffer if you spent a weary night on London's
streets!  Believe me, you would think a thousand centuries had come and
gone before the east paled into dawn; you would shiver till you were
ready to cry aloud with the pain of each aching muscle; and you would
marvel that you could endure so much and live.  Should you rest upon a
bench, and your tired eyes close, depend upon it the policeman would
rouse you and gruffly order you to "move on."  You may rest upon the
bench, and benches are few and far between; but if rest means sleep, on
you must go, dragging your tired body through the endless streets.  Should
you, in desperate slyness, seek some forlorn alley or dark passageway and
lie down, the omnipresent policeman will rout you out just the same.  It
is his business to rout you out.  It is a law of the powers that be that
you shall be routed out.

But when the dawn came, the nightmare over, you would hale you home to
refresh yourself, and until you died you would tell the story of your
adventure to groups of admiring friends.  It would grow into a mighty
story.  Your little eight-hour night would become an Odyssey and you a
Homer.

Not so with these homeless ones who walked to Poplar Workhouse with me.
And there are thirty-five thousand of them, men and women, in London Town
this night.  Please don't remember it as you go to bed; if you are as
soft as you ought to be you may not rest so well as usual.  But for old
men of sixty, seventy, and eighty, ill-fed, with neither meat nor blood,
to greet the dawn unrefreshed, and to stagger through the day in mad
search for crusts, with relentless night rushing down upon them again,
and to do this five nights and days--O dear, soft people, full of meat
and blood, how can you ever understand?

I walked up Mile End Road between the Carter and the Carpenter.  Mile End
Road is a wide thoroughfare, cutting the heart of East London, and there
were tens of thousands of people abroad on it.  I tell you this so that
you may fully appreciate what I shall describe in the next paragraph.  As
I say, we walked along, and when they grew bitter and cursed the land, I
cursed with them, cursed as an American waif would curse, stranded in a
strange and terrible land.  And, as I tried to lead them to believe, and
succeeded in making them believe, they took me for a "seafaring man," who
had spent his money in riotous living, lost his clothes (no unusual
occurrence with seafaring men ashore), and was temporarily broke while
looking for a ship.  This accounted for my ignorance of English ways in
general and casual wards in particular, and my curiosity concerning the
same.

The Carter was hard put to keep the pace at which we walked (he told me
that he had eaten nothing that day), but the Carpenter, lean and hungry,
his grey and ragged overcoat flapping mournfully in the breeze, swung on
in a long and tireless stride which reminded me strongly of the plains
wolf or coyote.  Both kept their eyes upon the pavement as they walked
and talked, and every now and then one or the other would stoop and pick
something up, never missing the stride the while.  I thought it was cigar
and cigarette stumps they were collecting, and for some time took no
notice.  Then I did notice.

_From the slimy, spittle-drenched, sidewalk, they were picking up bits of
orange peel, apple skin, and grape stems, and, they were eating them.  The
pits of greengage plums they cracked between their teeth for the kernels
inside.  They picked up stray bits of bread the size of peas, apple cores
so black and dirty one would not take them to be apple cores, and these
things these two men took into their mouths, and chewed them, and
swallowed them; and this, between six and seven o'clock in the evening of
August 20, year of our Lord 1902, in the heart of the greatest,
wealthiest, and most powerful empire the world has ever seen_.

These two men talked.  They were not fools, they were merely old.  And,
naturally, their guts a-reek with pavement offal, they talked of bloody
revolution.  They talked as anarchists, fanatics, and madmen would talk.
And who shall blame them?  In spite of my three good meals that day, and
the snug bed I could occupy if I wished, and my social philosophy, and my
evolutionary belief in the slow development and metamorphosis of
things--in spite of all this, I say, I felt impelled to talk rot with
them or hold my tongue.  Poor fools!  Not of their sort are revolutions
bred.  And when they are dead and dust, which will be shortly, other
fools will talk bloody revolution as they gather offal from the spittle-
drenched sidewalk along Mile End Road to Poplar Workhouse.

Being a foreigner, and a young man, the Carter and the Carpenter
explained things to me and advised me.  Their advice, by the way, was
brief, and to the point; it was to get out of the country.  "As fast as
God'll let me," I assured them; "I'll hit only the high places, till you
won't be able to see my trail for smoke."  They felt the force of my
figures, rather than understood them, and they nodded their heads
approvingly.

"Actually make a man a criminal against 'is will," said the Carpenter.
"'Ere I am, old, younger men takin' my place, my clothes gettin' shabbier
an' shabbier, an' makin' it 'arder every day to get a job.  I go to the
casual ward for a bed.  Must be there by two or three in the afternoon or
I won't get in.  You saw what happened to-day.  What chance does that
give me to look for work?  S'pose I do get into the casual ward?  Keep me
in all day to-morrow, let me out mornin' o' next day.  What then?  The
law sez I can't get in another casual ward that night less'n ten miles
distant.  Have to hurry an' walk to be there in time that day.  What
chance does that give me to look for a job?  S'pose I don't walk.  S'pose
I look for a job?  In no time there's night come, an' no bed.  No sleep
all night, nothin' to eat, what shape am I in the mornin' to look for
work?  Got to make up my sleep in the park somehow" (the vision of
Christ's Church, Spitalfield, was strong on me) "an' get something to
eat.  An' there I am!  Old, down, an' no chance to get up."

"Used to be a toll-gate 'ere," said the Carter.  "Many's the time I've
paid my toll 'ere in my cartin' days."

"I've 'ad three 'a'penny rolls in two days," the Carpenter announced,
after a long pause in the conversation.  "Two of them I ate yesterday,
an' the third to-day," he concluded, after another long pause.

"I ain't 'ad anything to-day," said the Carter.  "An' I'm fagged out.  My
legs is hurtin' me something fearful."

"The roll you get in the 'spike' is that 'ard you can't eat it nicely
with less'n a pint of water," said the Carpenter, for my benefit.  And,
on asking him what the "spike" was, he answered, "The casual ward.  It's
a cant word, you know."

But what surprised me was that he should have the word "cant" in his
vocabulary, a vocabulary that I found was no mean one before we parted.

I asked them what I might expect in the way of treatment, if we succeeded
in getting into the Poplar Workhouse, and between them I was supplied
with much information.  Having taken a cold bath on entering, I would be
given for supper six ounces of bread and "three parts of skilly."  "Three
parts" means three-quarters of a pint, and "skilly" is a fluid concoction
of three quarts of oatmeal stirred into three buckets and a half of hot
water.

"Milk and sugar, I suppose, and a silver spoon?" I queried.

"No fear.  Salt's what you'll get, an' I've seen some places where you'd
not get any spoon.  'Old 'er up an' let 'er run down, that's 'ow they do
it."

"You do get good skilly at 'Ackney," said the Carter.

"Oh, wonderful skilly, that," praised the Carpenter, and each looked
eloquently at the other.

"Flour an' water at St. George's in the East," said the Carter.

The Carpenter nodded.  He had tried them all.

"Then what?" I demanded

And I was informed that I was sent directly to bed.  "Call you at half
after five in the mornin', an' you get up an' take a 'sluice'--if there's
any soap.  Then breakfast, same as supper, three parts o' skilly an' a
six-ounce loaf."

"'Tisn't always six ounces," corrected the Carter.

"'Tisn't, no; an' often that sour you can 'ardly eat it.  When first I
started I couldn't eat the skilly nor the bread, but now I can eat my own
an' another man's portion."

"I could eat three other men's portions," said the Carter.  "I 'aven't
'ad a bit this blessed day."

"Then what?"

"Then you've got to do your task, pick four pounds of oakum, or clean an'
scrub, or break ten to eleven hundredweight o' stones.  I don't 'ave to
break stones; I'm past sixty, you see.  They'll make you do it, though.
You're young an' strong."

"What I don't like," grumbled the Carter, "is to be locked up in a cell
to pick oakum.  It's too much like prison."

"But suppose, after you've had your night's sleep, you refuse to pick
oakum, or break stones, or do any work at all?" I asked.

"No fear you'll refuse the second time; they'll run you in," answered the
Carpenter.  "Wouldn't advise you to try it on, my lad."

"Then comes dinner," he went on.  "Eight ounces of bread, one and a arf
ounces of cheese, an' cold water.  Then you finish your task an' 'ave
supper, same as before, three parts o' skilly any six ounces o' bread.
Then to bed, six o'clock, an' next mornin' you're turned loose, provided
you've finished your task."

We had long since left Mile End Road, and after traversing a gloomy maze
of narrow, winding streets, we came to Poplar Workhouse.  On a low stone
wall we spread our handkerchiefs, and each in his handkerchief put all
his worldly possessions, with the exception of the "bit o' baccy" down
his sock.  And then, as the last light was fading from the drab-coloured
sky, the wind blowing cheerless and cold, we stood, with our pitiful
little bundles in our hands, a forlorn group at the workhouse door.

Three working girls came along, and one looked pityingly at me; as she
passed I followed her with my eyes, and she still looked pityingly back
at me.  The old men she did not notice.  Dear Christ, she pitied me,
young and vigorous and strong, but she had no pity for the two old men
who stood by my side!  She was a young woman, and I was a young man, and
what vague sex promptings impelled her to pity me put her sentiment on
the lowest plane.  Pity for old men is an altruistic feeling, and
besides, the workhouse door is the accustomed place for old men.  So she
showed no pity for them, only for me, who deserved it least or not at
all.  Not in honour do grey hairs go down to the grave in London Town.

On one side the door was a bell handle, on the other side a press button.

"Ring the bell," said the Carter to me.

And just as I ordinarily would at anybody's door, I pulled out the handle
and rang a peal.

"Oh!  Oh!" they cried in one terrified voice.  "Not so 'ard!"

I let go, and they looked reproachfully at me, as though I had imperilled
their chance for a bed and three parts of skilly.  Nobody came.  Luckily
it was the wrong bell, and I felt better.

"Press the button," I said to the Carpenter.

"No, no, wait a bit," the Carter hurriedly interposed.

From all of which I drew the conclusion that a poorhouse porter, who
commonly draws a yearly salary of from seven to nine pounds, is a very
finicky and important personage, and cannot be treated too fastidiously
by--paupers.

So we waited, ten times a decent interval, when the Carter stealthily
advanced a timid forefinger to the button, and gave it the faintest,
shortest possible push.  I have looked at waiting men where life or death
was in the issue; but anxious suspense showed less plainly on their faces
than it showed on the faces of these two men as they waited on the coming
of the porter.

He came.  He barely looked at us.  "Full up," he said and shut the door.

"Another night of it," groaned the Carpenter.  In the dim light the
Carter looked wan and grey.

Indiscriminate charity is vicious, say the professional philanthropists.
Well, I resolved to be vicious.

"Come on; get your knife out and come here," I said to the Carter,
drawing him into a dark alley.

He glared at me in a frightened manner, and tried to draw back.  Possibly
he took me for a latter-day Jack-the-Ripper, with a penchant for elderly
male paupers.  Or he may have thought I was inveigling him into the
commission of some desperate crime.  Anyway, he was frightened.

It will be remembered, at the outset, that I sewed a pound inside my
stoker's singlet under the armpit.  This was my emergency fund, and I was
now called upon to use it for the first time.

Not until I had gone through the acts of a contortionist, and shown the
round coin sewed in, did I succeed in getting the Carter's help.  Even
then his hand was trembling so that I was afraid he would cut me instead
of the stitches, and I was forced to take the knife away and do it
myself.  Out rolled the gold piece, a fortune in their hungry eyes; and
away we stampeded for the nearest coffee-house.

Of course I had to explain to them that I was merely an investigator, a
social student, seeking to find out how the other half lived.  And at
once they shut up like clams.  I was not of their kind; my speech had
changed, the tones of my voice were different, in short, I was a
superior, and they were superbly class conscious.

"What will you have?" I asked, as the waiter came for the order.

"Two slices an' a cup of tea," meekly said the Carter.

"Two slices an' a cup of tea," meekly said the Carpenter.

Stop a moment, and consider the situation.  Here were two men, invited by
me into the coffee-house.  They had seen my gold piece, and they could
understand that I was no pauper.  One had eaten a ha'penny roll that day,
the other had eaten nothing.  And they called for "two slices an' a cup
of tea!"  Each man had given a tu'penny order.  "Two slices," by the way,
means two slices of bread and butter.

This was the same degraded humility that had characterised their attitude
toward the poorhouse porter.  But I wouldn't have it.  Step by step I
increased their order--eggs, rashers of bacon, more eggs, more bacon,
more tea, more slices and so forth--they denying wistfully all the while
that they cared for anything more, and devouring it ravenously as fast as
it arrived.

"First cup o' tea I've 'ad in a fortnight," said the Carter.

"Wonderful tea, that," said the Carpenter.

They each drank two pints of it, and I assure you that it was slops.  It
resembled tea less than lager beer resembles champagne.  Nay, it was
"water-bewitched," and did not resemble tea at all.

It was curious, after the first shock, to notice the effect the food had
on them.  At first they were melancholy, and talked of the divers times
they had contemplated suicide.  The Carter, not a week before, had stood
on the bridge and looked at the water, and pondered the question.  Water,
the Carpenter insisted with heat, was a bad route.  He, for one, he knew,
would struggle.  A bullet was "'andier," but how under the sun was he to
get hold of a revolver?  That was the rub.

They grew more cheerful as the hot "tea" soaked in, and talked more about
themselves.  The Carter had buried his wife and children, with the
exception of one son, who grew to manhood and helped him in his little
business.  Then the thing happened.  The son, a man of thirty-one, died
of the smallpox.  No sooner was this over than the father came down with
fever and went to the hospital for three months.  Then he was done for.
He came out weak, debilitated, no strong young son to stand by him, his
little business gone glimmering, and not a farthing.  The thing had
happened, and the game was up.  No chance for an old man to start again.
Friends all poor and unable to help.  He had tried for work when they
were putting up the stands for the first Coronation parade.  "An' I got
fair sick of the answer: 'No! no! no!'  It rang in my ears at night when
I tried to sleep, always the same, 'No! no! no!'"  Only the past week he
had answered an advertisement in Hackney, and on giving his age was told,
"Oh, too old, too old by far."

The Carpenter had been born in the army, where his father had served
twenty-two years.  Likewise, his two brothers had gone into the army;
one, troop sergeant-major of the Seventh Hussars, dying in India after
the Mutiny; the other, after nine years under Roberts in the East, had
been lost in Egypt.  The Carpenter had not gone into the army, so here he
was, still on the planet.

"But 'ere, give me your 'and," he said, ripping open his ragged shirt.
"I'm fit for the anatomist, that's all.  I'm wastin' away, sir, actually
wastin' away for want of food.  Feel my ribs an' you'll see."

I put my hand under his shirt and felt.  The skin was stretched like
parchment over the bones, and the sensation produced was for all the
world like running one's hand over a washboard.

"Seven years o' bliss I 'ad," he said.  "A good missus and three bonnie
lassies.  But they all died.  Scarlet fever took the girls inside a
fortnight."

"After this, sir," said the Carter, indicating the spread, and desiring
to turn the conversation into more cheerful channels; "after this, I
wouldn't be able to eat a workhouse breakfast in the morning."

"Nor I," agreed the Carpenter, and they fell to discussing belly delights
and the fine dishes their respective wives had cooked in the old days.

"I've gone three days and never broke my fast," said the Carter.

"And I, five," his companion added, turning gloomy with the memory of it.
"Five days once, with nothing on my stomach but a bit of orange peel, an'
outraged nature wouldn't stand it, sir, an' I near died.  Sometimes,
walkin' the streets at night, I've ben that desperate I've made up my
mind to win the horse or lose the saddle.  You know what I mean, sir--to
commit some big robbery.  But when mornin' come, there was I, too weak
from 'unger an' cold to 'arm a mouse."

As their poor vitals warmed to the food, they began to expand and wax
boastful, and to talk politics.  I can only say that they talked politics
as well as the average middle-class man, and a great deal better than
some of the middle-class men I have heard.  What surprised me was the
hold they had on the world, its geography and peoples, and on recent and
contemporaneous history.  As I say, they were not fools, these two men.
They were merely old, and their children had undutifully failed to grow
up and give them a place by the fire.

One last incident, as I bade them good-bye on the corner, happy with a
couple of shillings in their pockets and the certain prospect of a bed
for the night.  Lighting a cigarette, I was about to throw away the
burning match when the Carter reached for it.  I proffered him the box,
but he said, "Never mind, won't waste it, sir."  And while he lighted the
cigarette I had given him, the Carpenter hurried with the filling of his
pipe in order to have a go at the same match.

"It's wrong to waste," said he.

"Yes," I said, but I was thinking of the wash-board ribs over which I had
run my hand.




CHAPTER IX--THE SPIKE


First of all, I must beg forgiveness of my body for the vileness through
which I have dragged it, and forgiveness of my stomach for the vileness
which I have thrust into it.  I have been to the spike, and slept in the
spike, and eaten in the spike; also, I have run away from the spike.

After my two unsuccessful attempts to penetrate the Whitechapel casual
ward, I started early, and joined the desolate line before three o'clock
in the afternoon.  They did not "let in" till six, but at that early hour
I was number twenty, while the news had gone forth that only twenty-two
were to be admitted.  By four o'clock there were thirty-four in line, the
last ten hanging on in the slender hope of getting in by some kind of a
miracle.  Many more came, looked at the line, and went away, wise to the
bitter fact that the spike would be "full up."

Conversation was slack at first, standing there, till the man on one side
of me and the man on the other side of me discovered that they had been
in the smallpox hospital at the same time, though a full house of sixteen
hundred patients had prevented their becoming acquainted.  But they made
up for it, discussing and comparing the more loathsome features of their
disease in the most cold-blooded, matter-of-fact way.  I learned that the
average mortality was one in six, that one of them had been in three
months and the other three months and a half, and that they had been
"rotten wi' it."  Whereat my flesh began to creep and crawl, and I asked
them how long they had been out.  One had been out two weeks, and the
other three weeks.  Their faces were badly pitted (though each assured
the other that this was not so), and further, they showed me in their
hands and under the nails the smallpox "seeds" still working out.  Nay,
one of them worked a seed out for my edification, and pop it went, right
out of his flesh into the air.  I tried to shrink up smaller inside my
clothes, and I registered a fervent though silent hope that it had not
popped on me.

In both instances, I found that the smallpox was the cause of their being
"on the doss," which means on the tramp.  Both had been working when
smitten by the disease, and both had emerged from the hospital "broke,"
with the gloomy task before them of hunting for work.  So far, they had
not found any, and they had come to the spike for a "rest up" after three
days and nights on the street.

It seems that not only the man who becomes old is punished for his
involuntary misfortune, but likewise the man who is struck by disease or
accident.  Later on, I talked with another man--"Ginger" we called
him--who stood at the head of the line--a sure indication that he had
been waiting since one o'clock.  A year before, one day, while in the
employ of a fish dealer, he was carrying a heavy box of fish which was
too much for him.  Result: "something broke," and there was the box on
the ground, and he on the ground beside it.

At the first hospital, whither he was immediately carried, they said it
was a rupture, reduced the swelling, gave him some vaseline to rub on it,
kept him four hours, and told him to get along.  But he was not on the
streets more than two or three hours when he was down on his back again.
This time he went to another hospital and was patched up.  But the point
is, the employer did nothing, positively nothing, for the man injured in
his employment, and even refused him "a light job now and again," when he
came out.  As far as Ginger is concerned, he is a broken man.  His only
chance to earn a living was by heavy work.  He is now incapable of
performing heavy work, and from now until he dies, the spike, the peg,
and the streets are all he can look forward to in the way of food and
shelter.  The thing happened--that is all.  He put his back under too
great a load of fish, and his chance for happiness in life was crossed
off the books.

Several men in the line had been to the United States, and they were
wishing that they had remained there, and were cursing themselves for
their folly in ever having left.  England had become a prison to them, a
prison from which there was no hope of escape.  It was impossible for
them to get away.  They could neither scrape together the passage money,
nor get a chance to work their passage.  The country was too overrun by
poor devils on that "lay."

I was on the seafaring-man-who-had-lost-his-clothes-and-money tack, and
they all condoled with me and gave me much sound advice.  To sum it up,
the advice was something like this: To keep out of all places like the
spike.  There was nothing good in it for me.  To head for the coast and
bend every effort to get away on a ship.  To go to work, if possible, and
scrape together a pound or so, with which I might bribe some steward or
underling to give me chance to work my passage.  They envied me my youth
and strength, which would sooner or later get me out of the country.
These they no longer possessed.  Age and English hardship had broken
them, and for them the game was played and up.

There was one, however, who was still young, and who, I am sure, will in
the end make it out.  He had gone to the United States as a young fellow,
and in fourteen years' residence the longest period he had been out of
work was twelve hours.  He had saved his money, grown too prosperous, and
returned to the mother-country.  Now he was standing in line at the
spike.

For the past two years, he told me, he had been working as a cook.  His
hours had been from 7 a.m. to 10.30 p.m., and on Saturday to 12.30
p.m.--ninety-five hours per week, for which he had received twenty
shillings, or five dollars.

"But the work and the long hours was killing me," he said, "and I had to
chuck the job.  I had a little money saved, but I spent it living and
looking for another place."

This was his first night in the spike, and he had come in only to get
rested.  As soon as he emerged, he intended to start for Bristol, a one-
hundred-and-ten-mile walk, where he thought he would eventually get a
ship for the States.

But the men in the line were not all of this calibre.  Some were poor,
wretched beasts, inarticulate and callous, but for all of that, in many
ways very human.  I remember a carter, evidently returning home after the
day's work, stopping his cart before us so that his young hopeful, who
had run to meet him, could climb in.  But the cart was big, the young
hopeful little, and he failed in his several attempts to swarm up.
Whereupon one of the most degraded-looking men stepped out of the line
and hoisted him in.  Now the virtue and the joy of this act lies in that
it was service of love, not hire.  The carter was poor, and the man knew
it; and the man was standing in the spike line, and the carter knew it;
and the man had done the little act, and the carter had thanked him, even
as you and I would have done and thanked.

Another beautiful touch was that displayed by the "Hopper" and his "ole
woman."  He had been in line about half-an-hour when the "ole woman" (his
mate) came up to him.  She was fairly clad, for her class, with a weather-
worn bonnet on her grey head and a sacking-covered bundle in her arms.  As
she talked to him, he reached forward, caught the one stray wisp of the
white hair that was flying wild, deftly twirled it between his fingers,
and tucked it back properly behind her ear.  From all of which one may
conclude many things.  He certainly liked her well enough to wish her to
be neat and tidy.  He was proud of her, standing there in the spike line,
and it was his desire that she should look well in the eyes of the other
unfortunates who stood in the spike line.  But last and best, and
underlying all these motives, it was a sturdy affection he bore her; for
man is not prone to bother his head over neatness and tidiness in a woman
for whom he does not care, nor is he likely to be proud of such a woman.

And I found myself questioning why this man and his mate, hard workers I
knew from their talk, should have to seek a pauper lodging.  He had
pride, pride in his old woman and pride in himself.  When I asked him
what he thought I, a greenhorn, might expect to earn at "hopping," he
sized me up, and said that it all depended.  Plenty of people were too
slow to pick hops and made a failure of it.  A man, to succeed, must use
his head and be quick with his fingers, must be exceeding quick with his
fingers.  Now he and his old woman could do very well at it, working the
one bin between them and not going to sleep over it; but then, they had
been at it for years.

"I 'ad a mate as went down last year," spoke up a man.  "It was 'is fust
time, but 'e come back wi' two poun' ten in 'is pockit, an' 'e was only
gone a month."

"There you are," said the Hopper, a wealth of admiration in his voice.
"'E was quick.  'E was jest nat'rally born to it, 'e was."

Two pound ten--twelve dollars and a half--for a month's work when one is
"jest nat'rally born to it!"  And in addition, sleeping out without
blankets and living the Lord knows how.  There are moments when I am
thankful that I was not "jest nat'rally born" a genius for anything, not
even hop-picking,

In the matter of getting an outfit for "the hops," the Hopper gave me
some sterling advice, to which same give heed, you soft and tender
people, in case you should ever be stranded in London Town.

"If you ain't got tins an' cookin' things, all as you can get'll be bread
and cheese.  No bloomin' good that!  You must 'ave 'ot tea, an'
wegetables, an' a bit o' meat, now an' again, if you're goin' to do work
as is work.  Cawn't do it on cold wittles.  Tell you wot you do, lad.  Run
around in the mornin' an' look in the dust pans.  You'll find plenty o'
tins to cook in.  Fine tins, wonderful good some o' them.  Me an' the ole
woman got ours that way."  (He pointed at the bundle she held, while she
nodded proudly, beaming on me with good-nature and consciousness of
success and prosperity.)  "This overcoat is as good as a blanket," he
went on, advancing the skirt of it that I might feel its thickness.  "An'
'oo knows, I may find a blanket before long."

Again the old woman nodded and beamed, this time with the dead certainty
that he _would_ find a blanket before long.

"I call it a 'oliday, 'oppin'," he concluded rapturously.  "A tidy way o'
gettin' two or three pounds together an' fixin' up for winter.  The only
thing I don't like"--and here was the rift within the lute--"is paddin'
the 'oof down there."

It was plain the years were telling on this energetic pair, and while
they enjoyed the quick work with the fingers, "paddin' the 'oof," which
is walking, was beginning to bear heavily upon them.  And I looked at
their grey hairs, and ahead into the future ten years, and wondered how
it would be with them.

I noticed another man and his old woman join the line, both of them past
fifty.  The woman, because she was a woman, was admitted into the spike;
but he was too late, and, separated from his mate, was turned away to
tramp the streets all night.

The street on which we stood, from wall to wall, was barely twenty feet
wide.  The sidewalks were three feet wide.  It was a residence street.  At
least workmen and their families existed in some sort of fashion in the
houses across from us.  And each day and every day, from one in the
afternoon till six, our ragged spike line is the principal feature of the
view commanded by their front doors and windows.  One workman sat in his
door directly opposite us, taking his rest and a breath of air after the
toil of the day.  His wife came to chat with him.  The doorway was too
small for two, so she stood up.  Their babes sprawled before them.  And
here was the spike line, less than a score of feet away--neither privacy
for the workman, nor privacy for the pauper.  About our feet played the
children of the neighbourhood.  To them our presence was nothing unusual.
We were not an intrusion.  We were as natural and ordinary as the brick
walls and stone curbs of their environment.  They had been born to the
sight of the spike line, and all their brief days they had seen it.

At six o'clock the line moved up, and we were admitted in groups of
three.  Name, age, occupation, place of birth, condition of destitution,
and the previous night's "doss," were taken with lightning-like rapidity
by the superintendent; and as I turned I was startled by a man's
thrusting into my hand something that felt like a brick, and shouting
into my ear, "any knives, matches, or tobacco?"  "No, sir," I lied, as
lied every man who entered.  As I passed downstairs to the cellar, I
looked at the brick in my hand, and saw that by doing violence to the
language it might be called "bread."  By its weight and hardness it
certainly must have been unleavened.

The light was very dim down in the cellar, and before I knew it some
other man had thrust a pannikin into my other hand.  Then I stumbled on
to a still darker room, where were benches and tables and men.  The place
smelled vilely, and the sombre gloom, and the mumble of voices from out
of the obscurity, made it seem more like some anteroom to the infernal
regions.

Most of the men were suffering from tired feet, and they prefaced the
meal by removing their shoes and unbinding the filthy rags with which
their feet were wrapped.  This added to the general noisomeness, while it
took away from my appetite.

In fact, I found that I had made a mistake.  I had eaten a hearty dinner
five hours before, and to have done justice to the fare before me I
should have fasted for a couple of days.  The pannikin contained skilly,
three-quarters of a pint, a mixture of Indian corn and hot water.  The
men were dipping their bread into heaps of salt scattered over the dirty
tables.  I attempted the same, but the bread seemed to stick in my mouth,
and I remembered the words of the Carpenter, "You need a pint of water to
eat the bread nicely."

I went over into a dark corner where I had observed other men going and
found the water.  Then I returned and attacked the skilly.  It was coarse
of texture, unseasoned, gross, and bitter.  This bitterness which
lingered persistently in the mouth after the skilly had passed on, I
found especially repulsive.  I struggled manfully, but was mastered by my
qualms, and half-a-dozen mouthfuls of skilly and bread was the measure of
my success.  The man beside me ate his own share, and mine to boot,
scraped the pannikins, and looked hungrily for more.

"I met a 'towny,' and he stood me too good a dinner," I explained.

"An' I 'aven't 'ad a bite since yesterday mornin'," he replied.

"How about tobacco?" I asked.  "Will the bloke bother with a fellow now?"

"Oh no," he answered me.  "No bloomin' fear.  This is the easiest spike
goin'.  Y'oughto see some of them.  Search you to the skin."

The pannikins scraped clean, conversation began to spring up.  "This
super'tendent 'ere is always writin' to the papers 'bout us mugs," said
the man on the other side of me.

"What does he say?" I asked.

"Oh, 'e sez we're no good, a lot o' blackguards an' scoundrels as won't
work.  Tells all the ole tricks I've bin 'earin' for twenty years an'
w'ich I never seen a mug ever do.  Las' thing of 'is I see, 'e was
tellin' 'ow a mug gets out o' the spike, wi' a crust in 'is pockit.  An'
w'en 'e sees a nice ole gentleman comin' along the street 'e chucks the
crust into the drain, an' borrows the old gent's stick to poke it out.
An' then the ole gent gi'es 'im a tanner."

A roar of applause greeted the time-honoured yarn, and from somewhere
over in the deeper darkness came another voice, orating angrily:

"Talk o' the country bein' good for tommy [food]; I'd like to see it.  I
jest came up from Dover, an' blessed little tommy I got.  They won't gi'
ye a drink o' water, they won't, much less tommy."

"There's mugs never go out of Kent," spoke a second voice, "they live
bloomin' fat all along."

"I come through Kent," went on the first voice, still more angrily, "an'
Gawd blimey if I see any tommy.  An' I always notices as the blokes as
talks about 'ow much they can get, w'en they're in the spike can eat my
share o' skilly as well as their bleedin' own."

"There's chaps in London," said a man across the table from me, "that get
all the tommy they want, an' they never think o' goin' to the country.
Stay in London the year 'round.  Nor do they think of lookin' for a kip
[place to sleep], till nine or ten o'clock at night."

A general chorus verified this statement

"But they're bloomin' clever, them chaps," said an admiring voice.

"Course they are," said another voice.  "But it's not the likes of me an'
you can do it.  You got to be born to it, I say.  Them chaps 'ave ben
openin' cabs an' sellin' papers since the day they was born, an' their
fathers an' mothers before 'em.  It's all in the trainin', I say, an' the
likes of me an' you 'ud starve at it."

This also was verified by the general chorus, and likewise the statement
that there were "mugs as lives the twelvemonth 'round in the spike an'
never get a blessed bit o' tommy other than spike skilly an' bread."

"I once got arf a crown in the Stratford spike," said a new voice.
Silence fell on the instant, and all listened to the wonderful tale.
"There was three of us breakin' stones.  Winter-time, an' the cold was
cruel.  T'other two said they'd be blessed if they do it, an' they
didn't; but I kept wearin' into mine to warm up, you know.  An' then the
guardians come, an' t'other chaps got run in for fourteen days, an' the
guardians, w'en they see wot I'd been doin', gives me a tanner each, five
o' them, an' turns me up."

The majority of these men, nay, all of them, I found, do not like the
spike, and only come to it when driven in.  After the "rest up" they are
good for two or three days and nights on the streets, when they are
driven in again for another rest.  Of course, this continuous hardship
quickly breaks their constitutions, and they realise it, though only in a
vague way; while it is so much the common run of things that they do not
worry about it.

"On the doss," they call vagabondage here, which corresponds to "on the
road" in the United States.  The agreement is that kipping, or dossing,
or sleeping, is the hardest problem they have to face, harder even than
that of food.  The inclement weather and the harsh laws are mainly
responsible for this, while the men themselves ascribe their homelessness
to foreign immigration, especially of Polish and Russian Jews, who take
their places at lower wages and establish the sweating system.

By seven o'clock we were called away to bathe and go to bed.  We stripped
our clothes, wrapping them up in our coats and buckling our belts about
them, and deposited them in a heaped rack and on the floor--a beautiful
scheme for the spread of vermin.  Then, two by two, we entered the
bathroom.  There were two ordinary tubs, and this I know: the two men
preceding had washed in that water, we washed in the same water, and it
was not changed for the two men that followed us.  This I know; but I am
also certain that the twenty-two of us washed in the same water.

I did no more than make a show of splashing some of this dubious liquid
at myself, while I hastily brushed it off with a towel wet from the
bodies of other men.  My equanimity was not restored by seeing the back
of one poor wretch a mass of blood from attacks of vermin and retaliatory
scratching.

A shirt was handed me--which I could not help but wonder how many other
men had worn; and with a couple of blankets under my arm I trudged off to
the sleeping apartment.  This was a long, narrow room, traversed by two
low iron rails.  Between these rails were stretched, not hammocks, but
pieces of canvas, six feet long and less than two feet wide.  These were
the beds, and they were six inches apart and about eight inches above the
floor.  The chief difficulty was that the head was somewhat higher than
the feet, which caused the body constantly to slip down.  Being slung to
the same rails, when one man moved, no matter how slightly, the rest were
set rocking; and whenever I dozed somebody was sure to struggle back to
the position from which he had slipped, and arouse me again.

Many hours passed before I won to sleep.  It was only seven in the
evening, and the voices of children, in shrill outcry, playing in the
street, continued till nearly midnight.  The smell was frightful and
sickening, while my imagination broke loose, and my skin crept and
crawled till I was nearly frantic.  Grunting, groaning, and snoring arose
like the sounds emitted by some sea monster, and several times, afflicted
by nightmare, one or another, by his shrieks and yells, aroused the lot
of us.  Toward morning I was awakened by a rat or some similar animal on
my breast.  In the quick transition from sleep to waking, before I was
completely myself, I raised a shout to wake the dead.  At any rate, I
woke the living, and they cursed me roundly for my lack of manners.

But morning came, with a six o'clock breakfast of bread and skilly, which
I gave away, and we were told off to our various tasks.  Some were set to
scrubbing and cleaning, others to picking oakum, and eight of us were
convoyed across the street to the Whitechapel Infirmary where we were set
at scavenger work.  This was the method by which we paid for our skilly
and canvas, and I, for one, know that I paid in full many times over.

Though we had most revolting tasks to perform, our allotment was
considered the best and the other men deemed themselves lucky in being
chosen to perform it.

"Don't touch it, mate, the nurse sez it's deadly," warned my working
partner, as I held open a sack into which he was emptying a garbage can.

It came from the sick wards, and I told him that I purposed neither to
touch it, nor to allow it to touch me.  Nevertheless, I had to carry the
sack, and other sacks, down five flights of stairs and empty them in a
receptacle where the corruption was speedily sprinkled with strong
disinfectant.

Perhaps there is a wise mercy in all this.  These men of the spike, the
peg, and the street, are encumbrances.  They are of no good or use to any
one, nor to themselves.  They clutter the earth with their presence, and
are better out of the way.  Broken by hardship, ill fed, and worse
nourished, they are always the first to be struck down by disease, as
they are likewise the quickest to die.

They feel, themselves, that the forces of society tend to hurl them out
of existence.  We were sprinkling disinfectant by the mortuary, when the
dead waggon drove up and five bodies were packed into it.  The
conversation turned to the "white potion" and "black jack," and I found
they were all agreed that the poor person, man or woman, who in the
Infirmary gave too much trouble or was in a bad way, was "polished off."
That is to say, the incurables and the obstreperous were given a dose of
"black jack" or the "white potion," and sent over the divide.  It does
not matter in the least whether this be actually so or not.  The point
is, they have the feeling that it is so, and they have created the
language with which to express that feeling--"black jack" "white potion,"
"polishing off."

At eight o'clock we went down into a cellar under the infirmary, where
tea was brought to us, and the hospital scraps.  These were heaped high
on a huge platter in an indescribable mess--pieces of bread, chunks of
grease and fat pork, the burnt skin from the outside of roasted joints,
bones, in short, all the leavings from the fingers and mouths of the sick
ones suffering from all manner of diseases.  Into this mess the men
plunged their hands, digging, pawing, turning over, examining, rejecting,
and scrambling for.  It wasn't pretty.  Pigs couldn't have done worse.
But the poor devils were hungry, and they ate ravenously of the swill,
and when they could eat no more they bundled what was left into their
handkerchiefs and thrust it inside their shirts.

"Once, w'en I was 'ere before, wot did I find out there but a 'ole lot of
pork-ribs," said Ginger to me.  By "out there" he meant the place where
the corruption was dumped and sprinkled with strong disinfectant.  "They
was a prime lot, no end o' meat on 'em, an' I 'ad 'em into my arms an'
was out the gate an' down the street, a-lookin' for some 'un to gi' 'em
to.  Couldn't see a soul, an' I was runnin' 'round clean crazy, the bloke
runnin' after me an' thinkin' I was 'slingin' my 'ook' [running away].
But jest before 'e got me, I got a ole woman an' poked 'em into 'er
apron."

O Charity, O Philanthropy, descend to the spike and take a lesson from
Ginger.  At the bottom of the Abyss he performed as purely an altruistic
act as was ever performed outside the Abyss.  It was fine of Ginger, and
if the old woman caught some contagion from the "no end o' meat" on the
pork-ribs, it was still fine, though not so fine.  But the most salient
thing in this incident, it seems to me, is poor Ginger, "clean crazy" at
sight of so much food going to waste.

It is the rule of the casual ward that a man who enters must stay two
nights and a day; but I had seen sufficient for my purpose, had paid for
my skilly and canvas, and was preparing to run for it.

"Come on, let's sling it," I said to one of my mates, pointing toward the
open gate through which the dead waggon had come.

"An' get fourteen days?"

"No; get away."

"Aw, I come 'ere for a rest," he said complacently.  "An' another night's
kip won't 'urt me none."

They were all of this opinion, so I was forced to "sling it" alone.

"You cawn't ever come back 'ere again for a doss," they warned me.

"No fear," said I, with an enthusiasm they could not comprehend; and,
dodging out the gate, I sped down the street.

Straight to my room I hurried, changed my clothes, and less than an hour
from my escape, in a Turkish bath, I was sweating out whatever germs and
other things had penetrated my epidermis, and wishing that I could stand
a temperature of three hundred and twenty rather than two hundred and
twenty.




CHAPTER X--CARRYING THE BANNER


"To carry the banner" means to walk the streets all night; and I, with
the figurative emblem hoisted, went out to see what I could see.  Men and
women walk the streets at night all over this great city, but I selected
the West End, making Leicester Square my base, and scouting about from
the Thames Embankment to Hyde Park.

The rain was falling heavily when the theatres let out, and the brilliant
throng which poured from the places of amusement was hard put to find
cabs.  The streets were so many wild rivers of cabs, most of which were
engaged, however; and here I saw the desperate attempts of ragged men and
boys to get a shelter from the night by procuring cabs for the cabless
ladies and gentlemen.  I use the word "desperate" advisedly, for these
wretched, homeless ones were gambling a soaking against a bed; and most
of them, I took notice, got the soaking and missed the bed.  Now, to go
through a stormy night with wet clothes, and, in addition, to be ill
nourished and not to have tasted meat for a week or a month, is about as
severe a hardship as a man can undergo.  Well fed and well clad, I have
travelled all day with the spirit thermometer down to seventy-four
degrees below zero--one hundred and six degrees of frost {1}; and though
I suffered, it was a mere nothing compared with carrying the banner for a
night, ill fed, ill clad, and soaking wet.

The streets grew very quiet and lonely after the theatre crowd had gone
home.  Only were to be seen the ubiquitous policemen, flashing their dark
lanterns into doorways and alleys, and men and women and boys taking
shelter in the lee of buildings from the wind and rain.  Piccadilly,
however, was not quite so deserted.  Its pavements were brightened by
well-dressed women without escort, and there was more life and action
there than elsewhere, due to the process of finding escort.  But by three
o'clock the last of them had vanished, and it was then indeed lonely.

At half-past one the steady downpour ceased, and only showers fell
thereafter.  The homeless folk came away from the protection of the
buildings, and slouched up and down and everywhere, in order to rush up
the circulation and keep warm.

One old woman, between fifty and sixty, a sheer wreck, I had noticed
earlier in the night standing in Piccadilly, not far from Leicester
Square.  She seemed to have neither the sense nor the strength to get out
of the rain or keep walking, but stood stupidly, whenever she got the
chance, meditating on past days, I imagine, when life was young and blood
was warm.  But she did not get the chance often.  She was moved on by
every policeman, and it required an average of six moves to send her
doddering off one man's beat and on to another's.  By three o'clock, she
had progressed as far as St. James Street, and as the clocks were
striking four I saw her sleeping soundly against the iron railings of
Green Park.  A brisk shower was falling at the time, and she must have
been drenched to the skin.

Now, said I, at one o'clock, to myself; consider that you are a poor
young man, penniless, in London Town, and that to-morrow you must look
for work.  It is necessary, therefore, that you get some sleep in order
that you may have strength to look for work and to do work in case you
find it.

So I sat down on the stone steps of a building.  Five minutes later a
policeman was looking at me.  My eyes were wide open, so he only grunted
and passed on.  Ten minutes later my head was on my knees, I was dozing,
and the same policeman was saying gruffly, "'Ere, you, get outa that!"

I got.  And, like the old woman, I continued to get; for every time I
dozed, a policeman was there to rout me along again.  Not long after,
when I had given this up, I was walking with a young Londoner (who had
been out to the colonies and wished he were out to them again), when I
noticed an open passage leading under a building and disappearing in
darkness.  A low iron gate barred the entrance.

"Come on," I said.  "Let's climb over and get a good sleep."

"Wot?" he answered, recoiling from me.  "An' get run in fer three months!
Blimey if I do!"

Later on I was passing Hyde Park with a young boy of fourteen or fifteen,
a most wretched-looking youth, gaunt and hollow-eyed and sick.

"Let's go over the fence," I proposed, "and crawl into the shrubbery for
a sleep.  The bobbies couldn't find us there."

"No fear," he answered.  "There's the park guardians, and they'd run you
in for six months."

Times have changed, alas!  When I was a youngster I used to read of
homeless boys sleeping in doorways.  Already the thing has become a
tradition.  As a stock situation it will doubtless linger in literature
for a century to come, but as a cold fact it has ceased to be.  Here are
the doorways, and here are the boys, but happy conjunctions are no longer
effected.  The doorways remain empty, and the boys keep awake and carry
the banner.

"I was down under the arches," grumbled another young fellow.  By
"arches" he meant the shore arches where begin the bridges that span the
Thames.  "I was down under the arches wen it was ryning its 'ardest, an'
a bobby comes in an' chyses me out.  But I come back, an' 'e come too.
''Ere,' sez 'e, 'wot you doin' 'ere?'  An' out I goes, but I sez, 'Think
I want ter pinch [steal] the bleedin' bridge?'"

Among those who carry the banner, Green Park has the reputation of
opening its gates earlier than the other parks, and at quarter-past four
in the morning, I, and many more, entered Green Park.  It was raining
again, but they were worn out with the night's walking, and they were
down on the benches and asleep at once.  Many of the men stretched out
full length on the dripping wet grass, and, with the rain falling
steadily upon them, were sleeping the sleep of exhaustion.

And now I wish to criticise the powers that be.  They _are_ the powers,
therefore they may decree whatever they please; so I make bold only to
criticise the ridiculousness of their decrees.  All night long they make
the homeless ones walk up and down.  They drive them out of doors and
passages, and lock them out of the parks.  The evident intention of all
this is to deprive them of sleep.  Well and good, the powers have the
power to deprive them of sleep, or of anything else for that matter; but
why under the sun do they open the gates of the parks at five o'clock in
the morning and let the homeless ones go inside and sleep?  If it is
their intention to deprive them of sleep, why do they let them sleep
after five in the morning?  And if it is not their intention to deprive
them of sleep, why don't they let them sleep earlier in the night?

In this connection, I will say that I came by Green Park that same day,
at one in the afternoon, and that I counted scores of the ragged wretches
asleep in the grass.  It was Sunday afternoon, the sun was fitfully
appearing, and the well-dressed West Enders, with their wives and
progeny, were out by thousands, taking the air.  It was not a pleasant
sight for them, those horrible, unkempt, sleeping vagabonds; while the
vagabonds themselves, I know, would rather have done their sleeping the
night before.

And so, dear soft people, should you ever visit London Town, and see
these men asleep on the benches and in the grass, please do not think
they are lazy creatures, preferring sleep to work.  Know that the powers
that be have kept them walking all the night long, and that in the day
they have nowhere else to sleep.




CHAPTER XI--THE PEG


But, after carrying the banner all night, I did not sleep in Green Park
when morning dawned.  I was wet to the skin, it is true, and I had had no
sleep for twenty-four hours; but, still adventuring as a penniless man
looking for work, I had to look about me, first for a breakfast, and next
for the work.

During the night I had heard of a place over on the Surrey side of the
Thames, where the Salvation Army every Sunday morning gave away a
breakfast to the unwashed.  (And, by the way, the men who carry the
banner are unwashed in the morning, and unless it is raining they do not
have much show for a wash, either.)  This, thought I, is the very
thing--breakfast in the morning, and then the whole day in which to look
for work.

It was a weary walk.  Down St. James Street I dragged my tired legs,
along Pall Mall, past Trafalgar Square, to the Strand.  I crossed the
Waterloo Bridge to the Surrey side, cut across to Blackfriars Road,
coming out near the Surrey Theatre, and arrived at the Salvation Army
barracks before seven o'clock.  This was "the peg."  And by "the peg," in
the argot, is meant the place where a free meal may be obtained.

Here was a motley crowd of woebegone wretches who had spent the night in
the rain.  Such prodigious misery! and so much of it!  Old men, young
men, all manner of men, and boys to boot, and all manner of boys.  Some
were drowsing standing up; half a score of them were stretched out on the
stone steps in most painful postures, all of them sound asleep, the skin
of their bodies showing red through the holes, and rents in their rags.
And up and down the street and across the street for a block either way,
each doorstep had from two to three occupants, all asleep, their heads
bent forward on their knees.  And, it must be remembered, these are not
hard times in England.  Things are going on very much as they ordinarily
do, and times are neither hard nor easy.

And then came the policeman.  "Get outa that, you bloomin' swine!  Eigh!
eigh!  Get out now!"  And like swine he drove them from the doorways and
scattered them to the four winds of Surrey.  But when he encountered the
crowd asleep on the steps he was astounded.  "Shocking!" he exclaimed.
"Shocking!  And of a Sunday morning!  A pretty sight!  Eigh! eigh!  Get
outa that, you bleeding nuisances!"

Of course it was a shocking sight, I was shocked myself.  And I should
not care to have my own daughter pollute her eyes with such a sight, or
come within half a mile of it; but--and there we were, and there you are,
and "but" is all that can be said.

The policeman passed on, and back we clustered, like flies around a honey
jar.  For was there not that wonderful thing, a breakfast, awaiting us?
We could not have clustered more persistently and desperately had they
been giving away million-dollar bank-notes.  Some were already off to
sleep, when back came the policeman and away we scattered only to return
again as soon as the coast was clear.

At half-past seven a little door opened, and a Salvation Army soldier
stuck out his head.  "Ayn't no sense blockin' the wy up that wy," he
said.  "Those as 'as tickets cawn come hin now, an' those as 'asn't
cawn't come hin till nine."

Oh, that breakfast!  Nine o'clock!  An hour and a half longer!  The men
who held tickets were greatly envied.  They were permitted to go inside,
have a wash, and sit down and rest until breakfast, while we waited for
the same breakfast on the street.  The tickets had been distributed the
previous night on the streets and along the Embankment, and the
possession of them was not a matter of merit, but of chance.

At eight-thirty, more men with tickets were admitted, and by nine the
little gate was opened to us.  We crushed through somehow, and found
ourselves packed in a courtyard like sardines.  On more occasions than
one, as a Yankee tramp in Yankeeland, I have had to work for my
breakfast; but for no breakfast did I ever work so hard as for this one.
For over two hours I had waited outside, and for over another hour I
waited in this packed courtyard.  I had had nothing to eat all night, and
I was weak and faint, while the smell of the soiled clothes and unwashed
bodies, steaming from pent animal heat, and blocked solidly about me,
nearly turned my stomach.  So tightly were we packed, that a number of
the men took advantage of the opportunity and went soundly asleep
standing up.

Now, about the Salvation Army in general I know nothing, and whatever
criticism I shall make here is of that particular portion of the
Salvation Army which does business on Blackfriars Road near the Surrey
Theatre.  In the first place, this forcing of men who have been up all
night to stand on their feet for hours longer, is as cruel as it is
needless.  We were weak, famished, and exhausted from our night's
hardship and lack of sleep, and yet there we stood, and stood, and stood,
without rhyme or reason.

Sailors were very plentiful in this crowd.  It seemed to me that one man
in four was looking for a ship, and I found at least a dozen of them to
be American sailors.  In accounting for their being "on the beach," I
received the same story from each and all, and from my knowledge of sea
affairs this story rang true.  English ships sign their sailors for the
voyage, which means the round trip, sometimes lasting as long as three
years; and they cannot sign off and receive their discharges until they
reach the home port, which is England.  Their wages are low, their food
is bad, and their treatment worse.  Very often they are really forced by
their captains to desert in the New World or the colonies, leaving a
handsome sum of wages behind them--a distinct gain, either to the captain
or the owners, or to both.  But whether for this reason alone or not, it
is a fact that large numbers of them desert.  Then, for the home voyage,
the ship engages whatever sailors it can find on the beach.  These men
are engaged at the somewhat higher wages that obtain in other portions of
the world, under the agreement that they shall sign off on reaching
England.  The reason for this is obvious; for it would be poor business
policy to sign them for any longer time, since seamen's wages are low in
England, and England is always crowded with sailormen on the beach.  So
this fully accounted for the American seamen at the Salvation Army
barracks.  To get off the beach in other outlandish places they had come
to England, and gone on the beach in the most outlandish place of all.

There were fully a score of Americans in the crowd, the non-sailors being
"tramps royal," the men whose "mate is the wind that tramps the world."
They were all cheerful, facing things with the pluck which is their chief
characteristic and which seems never to desert them, withal they were
cursing the country with lurid metaphors quite refreshing after a month
of unimaginative, monotonous Cockney swearing.  The Cockney has one oath,
and one oath only, the most indecent in the language, which he uses on
any and every occasion.  Far different is the luminous and varied Western
swearing, which runs to blasphemy rather than indecency.  And after all,
since men will swear, I think I prefer blasphemy to indecency; there is
an audacity about it, an adventurousness and defiance that is better than
sheer filthiness.

There was one American tramp royal whom I found particularly enjoyable.  I
first noticed him on the street, asleep in a doorway, his head on his
knees, but a hat on his head that one does not meet this side of the
Western Ocean.  When the policeman routed him out, he got up slowly and
deliberately, looked at the policeman, yawned and stretched himself,
looked at the policeman again as much as to say he didn't know whether he
would or wouldn't, and then sauntered leisurely down the sidewalk.  At
the outset I was sure of the hat, but this made me sure of the wearer of
the hat.

In the jam inside I found myself alongside of him, and we had quite a
chat.  He had been through Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and France, and had
accomplished the practically impossible feat of beating his way three
hundred miles on a French railway without being caught at the finish.
Where was I hanging out? he asked.  And how did I manage for
"kipping"?--which means sleeping.  Did I know the rounds yet?  He was
getting on, though the country was "horstyl" and the cities were "bum."
Fierce, wasn't it?  Couldn't "batter" (beg) anywhere without being
"pinched."  But he wasn't going to quit it.  Buffalo Bill's Show was
coming over soon, and a man who could drive eight horses was sure of a
job any time.  These mugs over here didn't know beans about driving
anything more than a span.  What was the matter with me hanging on and
waiting for Buffalo Bill?  He was sure I could ring in somehow.

And so, after all, blood is thicker than water.  We were
fellow-countrymen and strangers in a strange land.  I had warmed to his
battered old hat at sight of it, and he was as solicitous for my welfare
as if we were blood brothers.  We swapped all manner of useful
information concerning the country and the ways of its people, methods by
which to obtain food and shelter and what not, and we parted genuinely
sorry at having to say good-bye.

One thing particularly conspicuous in this crowd was the shortness of
stature.  I, who am but of medium height, looked over the heads of nine
out of ten.  The natives were all short, as were the foreign sailors.
There were only five or six in the crowd who could be called fairly tall,
and they were Scandinavians and Americans.  The tallest man there,
however, was an exception.  He was an Englishman, though not a Londoner.
"Candidate for the Life Guards," I remarked to him.  "You've hit it,
mate," was his reply; "I've served my bit in that same, and the way
things are I'll be back at it before long."

For an hour we stood quietly in this packed courtyard.  Then the men
began to grow restless.  There was pushing and shoving forward, and a
mild hubbub of voices.  Nothing rough, however, nor violent; merely the
restlessness of weary and hungry men.  At this juncture forth came the
adjutant.  I did not like him.  His eyes were not good.  There was
nothing of the lowly Galilean about him, but a great deal of the
centurion who said: "For I am a man in authority, having soldiers under
me; and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he
cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it."

Well, he looked at us in just that way, and those nearest to him quailed.
Then he lifted his voice.

"Stop this 'ere, now, or I'll turn you the other wy an' march you out,
an' you'll get no breakfast."

I cannot convey by printed speech the insufferable way in which he said
this.  He seemed to me to revel in that he was a man in authority, able
to say to half a thousand ragged wretches, "you may eat or go hungry, as
I elect."

To deny us our breakfast after standing for hours!  It was an awful
threat, and the pitiful, abject silence which instantly fell attested its
awfulness.  And it was a cowardly threat.  We could not strike back, for
we were starving; and it is the way of the world that when one man feeds
another he is that man's master.  But the centurion--I mean the
adjutant--was not satisfied.  In the dead silence he raised his voice
again, and repeated the threat, and amplified it.

At last we were permitted to enter the feasting hall, where we found the
"ticket men" washed but unfed.  All told, there must have been nearly
seven hundred of us who sat down--not to meat or bread, but to speech,
song, and prayer.  From all of which I am convinced that Tantalus suffers
in many guises this side of the infernal regions.  The adjutant made the
prayer, but I did not take note of it, being too engrossed with the
massed picture of misery before me.  But the speech ran something like
this: "You will feast in Paradise.  No matter how you starve and suffer
here, you will feast in Paradise, that is, if you will follow the
directions."  And so forth and so forth.  A clever bit of propaganda, I
took it, but rendered of no avail for two reasons.  First, the men who
received it were unimaginative and materialistic, unaware of the
existence of any Unseen, and too inured to hell on earth to be frightened
by hell to come.  And second, weary and exhausted from the night's
sleeplessness and hardship, suffering from the long wait upon their feet,
and faint from hunger, they were yearning, not for salvation, but for
grub.  The "soul-snatchers" (as these men call all religious
propagandists), should study the physiological basis of psychology a
little, if they wish to make their efforts more effective.

All in good time, about eleven o'clock, breakfast arrived.  It arrived,
not on plates, but in paper parcels.  I did not have all I wanted, and I
am sure that no man there had all he wanted, or half of what he wanted or
needed.  I gave part of my bread to the tramp royal who was waiting for
Buffalo Bill, and he was as ravenous at the end as he was in the
beginning.  This is the breakfast: two slices of bread, one small piece
of bread with raisins in it and called "cake," a wafer of cheese, and a
mug of "water bewitched."  Numbers of the men had been waiting since five
o'clock for it, while all of us had waited at least four hours; and in
addition, we had been herded like swine, packed like sardines, and
treated like curs, and been preached at, and sung to, and prayed for.  Nor
was that all.

No sooner was breakfast over (and it was over almost as quickly as it
takes to tell), than the tired heads began to nod and droop, and in five
minutes half of us were sound asleep.  There were no signs of our being
dismissed, while there were unmistakable signs of preparation for a
meeting.  I looked at a small clock hanging on the wall.  It indicated
twenty-five minutes to twelve.  Heigh-ho, thought I, time is flying, and
I have yet to look for work.

"I want to go," I said to a couple of waking men near me.

"Got ter sty fer the service," was the answer.

"Do you want to stay?" I asked.

They shook their heads.

"Then let us go and tell them we want to get out," I continued.  "Come
on."

But the poor creatures were aghast.  So I left them to their fate, and
went up to the nearest Salvation Army man.

"I want to go," I said.  "I came here for breakfast in order that I might
be in shape to look for work.  I didn't think it would take so long to
get breakfast.  I think I have a chance for work in Stepney, and the
sooner I start, the better chance I'll have of getting it."

He was really a good fellow, though he was startled by my request.  "Wy,"
he said, "we're goin' to 'old services, and you'd better sty."

"But that will spoil my chances for work," I urged.  "And work is the
most important thing for me just now."

As he was only a private, he referred me to the adjutant, and to the
adjutant I repeated my reasons for wishing to go, and politely requested
that he let me go.

"But it cawn't be done," he said, waxing virtuously indignant at such
ingratitude.  "The idea!" he snorted.  "The idea!"

"Do you mean to say that I can't get out of here?" I demanded.  "That you
will keep me here against my will?"

"Yes," he snorted.

I do not know what might have happened, for I was waxing indignant
myself; but the "congregation" had "piped" the situation, and he drew me
over to a corner of the room, and then into another room.  Here he again
demanded my reasons for wishing to go.

"I want to go," I said, "because I wish to look for work over in Stepney,
and every hour lessens my chance of finding work.  It is now twenty-five
minutes to twelve.  I did not think when I came in that it would take so
long to get a breakfast."

"You 'ave business, eh?" he sneered.  "A man of business you are, eh?
Then wot did you come 'ere for?"

"I was out all night, and I needed a breakfast in order to strengthen me
to find work.  That is why I came here."

"A nice thing to do," he went on in the same sneering manner.  "A man
with business shouldn't come 'ere.  You've tyken some poor man's
breakfast 'ere this morning, that's wot you've done."

Which was a lie, for every mother's son of us had come in.

Now I submit, was this Christian-like, or even honest?--after I had
plainly stated that I was homeless and hungry, and that I wished to look
for work, for him to call my looking for work "business," to call me
therefore a business man, and to draw the corollary that a man of
business, and well off, did not require a charity breakfast, and that by
taking a charity breakfast I had robbed some hungry waif who was not a
man of business.

I kept my temper, but I went over the facts again, and clearly and
concisely demonstrated to him how unjust he was and how he had perverted
the facts.  As I manifested no signs of backing down (and I am sure my
eyes were beginning to snap), he led me to the rear of the building
where, in an open court, stood a tent.  In the same sneering tone he
informed a couple of privates standing there that "'ere is a fellow that
'as business an' 'e wants to go before services."

They were duly shocked, of course, and they looked unutterable horror
while he went into the tent and brought out the major.  Still in the same
sneering manner, laying particular stress on the "business," he brought
my case before the commanding officer.  The major was of a different
stamp of man.  I liked him as soon as I saw him, and to him I stated my
case in the same fashion as before.

"Didn't you know you had to stay for services?" he asked.

"Certainly not," I answered, "or I should have gone without my breakfast.
You have no placards posted to that effect, nor was I so informed when I
entered the place."

He meditated a moment.  "You can go," he said.

It was twelve o'clock when I gained the street, and I couldn't quite make
up my mind whether I had been in the army or in prison.  The day was half
gone, and it was a far fetch to Stepney.  And besides, it was Sunday, and
why should even a starving man look for work on Sunday?  Furthermore, it
was my judgment that I had done a hard night's work walking the streets,
and a hard day's work getting my breakfast; so I disconnected myself from
my working hypothesis of a starving young man in search of employment,
hailed a bus, and climbed aboard.

After a shave and a bath, with my clothes all off, I got in between clean
white sheets and went to sleep.  It was six in the evening when I closed
my eyes.  When they opened again, the clocks were striking nine next
morning.  I had slept fifteen straight hours.  And as I lay there
drowsily, my mind went back to the seven hundred unfortunates I had left
waiting for services.  No bath, no shave for them, no clean white sheets
and all clothes off, and fifteen hours' straight sleep.  Services over,
it was the weary streets again, the problem of a crust of bread ere
night, and the long sleepless night in the streets, and the pondering of
the problem of how to obtain a crust at dawn.




CHAPTER XII--CORONATION DAY


   O thou that sea-walls sever
   From lands unwalled by seas!
   Wilt thou endure forever,
   O Milton's England, these?
   Thou that wast his Republic,
   Wilt thou clasp their knees?
   These royalties rust-eaten,
   These worm-corroded lies
   That keep thy head storm-beaten,
   And sun-like strength of eyes
   From the open air and heaven
   Of intercepted skies!

   SWINBURNE.

Vivat Rex Eduardus!  They crowned a king this day, and there has been
great rejoicing and elaborate tomfoolery, and I am perplexed and
saddened.  I never saw anything to compare with the pageant, except
Yankee circuses and Alhambra ballets; nor did I ever see anything so
hopeless and so tragic.

To have enjoyed the Coronation procession, I should have come straight
from America to the Hotel Cecil, and straight from the Hotel Cecil to a
five-guinea seat among the washed.  My mistake was in coming from the
unwashed of the East End.  There were not many who came from that
quarter.  The East End, as a whole, remained in the East End and got
drunk.  The Socialists, Democrats, and Republicans went off to the
country for a breath of fresh air, quite unaffected by the fact that four
hundred millions of people were taking to themselves a crowned and
anointed ruler.  Six thousand five hundred prelates, priests, statesmen,
princes, and warriors beheld the crowning and anointing, and the rest of
us the pageant as it passed.

I saw it at Trafalgar Square, "the most splendid site in Europe," and the
very innermost heart of the empire.  There were many thousands of us, all
checked and held in order by a superb display of armed power.  The line
of march was double-walled with soldiers.  The base of the Nelson Column
was triple-fringed with bluejackets.  Eastward, at the entrance to the
square, stood the Royal Marine Artillery.  In the triangle of Pall Mall
and Cockspur Street, the statue of George III. was buttressed on either
side by the Lancers and Hussars.  To the west were the red-coats of the
Royal Marines, and from the Union Club to the embouchure of Whitehall
swept the glittering, massive curve of the 1st Life Guards--gigantic men
mounted on gigantic chargers, steel-breastplated, steel-helmeted, steel-
caparisoned, a great war-sword of steel ready to the hand of the powers
that be.  And further, throughout the crowd, were flung long lines of the
Metropolitan Constabulary, while in the rear were the reserves--tall,
well-fed men, with weapons to wield and muscles to wield them in ease of
need.

And as it was thus at Trafalgar Square, so was it along the whole line of
march--force, overpowering force; myriads of men, splendid men, the pick
of the people, whose sole function in life is blindly to obey, and
blindly to kill and destroy and stamp out life.  And that they should be
well fed, well clothed, and well armed, and have ships to hurl them to
the ends of the earth, the East End of London, and the "East End" of all
England, toils and rots and dies.

There is a Chinese proverb that if one man lives in laziness another will
die of hunger; and Montesquieu has said, "The fact that many men are
occupied in making clothes for one individual is the cause of there being
many people without clothes."  So one explains the other.  We cannot
understand the starved and runty {2} toiler of the East End (living with
his family in a one-room den, and letting out the floor space for
lodgings to other starved and runty toilers) till we look at the
strapping Life Guardsmen of the West End, and come to know that the one
must feed and clothe and groom the other.

And while in Westminster Abbey the people were taking unto themselves a
king, I, jammed between the Life Guards and Constabulary of Trafalgar
Square, was dwelling upon the time when the people of Israel first took
unto themselves a king.  You all know how it runs.  The elders came to
the prophet Samuel, and said: "Make us a king to judge us like all the
nations."

   And the Lord said unto Samuel: Now therefore hearken unto their voice;
   howbeit thou shalt show them the manner of the king that shall reign
   over them.

   And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked
   of him a king, and he said:

   This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you; he will
   take your sons, and appoint them unto him, for his chariots, and to be
   his horsemen, and they shall run before his chariots.

   And he will appoint them unto him for captains of thousands, and
   captains of fifties; and he will set some to plough his ground, and to
   reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the
   instruments of his chariots.

   And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be
   cooks, and to be bakers.

   And he will take your fields and your vineyards, and your oliveyards,
   even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

   And he will take a tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give
   to his officers, and to his servants.

   And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your
   goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.

   He will take a tenth of your flocks; and ye shall be his servants.

   And ye shall call out in that day because of your king which ye shall
   have chosen you; and the Lord will not answer you in that day.

All of which came to pass in that ancient day, and they did cry out to
Samuel, saying: "Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we die
not; for we have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask us a king."
And after Saul, David, and Solomon, came Rehoboam, who "answered the
people roughly, saying: My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to
your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you
with scorpions."

And in these latter days, five hundred hereditary peers own one-fifth of
England; and they, and the officers and servants under the King, and
those who go to compose the powers that be, yearly spend in wasteful
luxury $1,850,000,000, or 370,000,000 pounds, which is thirty-two per
cent. of the total wealth produced by all the toilers of the country.

At the Abbey, clad in wonderful golden raiment, amid fanfare of trumpets
and throbbing of music, surrounded by a brilliant throng of masters,
lords, and rulers, the King was being invested with the insignia of his
sovereignty.  The spurs were placed to his heels by the Lord Great
Chamberlain, and a sword of state, in purple scabbard, was presented him
by the Archbishop of Canterbury, with these words:-

   Receive this kingly sword brought now from the altar of God, and
   delivered to you by the hands of the bishops and servants of God,
   though unworthy.

Whereupon, being girded, he gave heed to the Archbishop's exhortation:-

   With this sword do justice, stop the growth of iniquity, protect the
   Holy Church of God, help and defend widows and orphans, restore the
   things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored,
   punish and reform what is amiss, and confirm what is in good order.

But hark!  There is cheering down Whitehall; the crowd sways, the double
walls of soldiers come to attention, and into view swing the King's
watermen, in fantastic mediaeval garbs of red, for all the world like the
van of a circus parade.  Then a royal carriage, filled with ladies and
gentlemen of the household, with powdered footmen and coachmen most
gorgeously arrayed.  More carriages, lords, and chamberlains, viscounts,
mistresses of the robes--lackeys all.  Then the warriors, a kingly
escort, generals, bronzed and worn, from the ends of the earth come up to
London Town, volunteer officers, officers of the militia and regular
forces; Spens and Plumer, Broadwood and Cooper who relieved Ookiep,
Mathias of Dargai, Dixon of Vlakfontein; General Gaselee and Admiral
Seymour of China; Kitchener of Khartoum; Lord Roberts of India and all
the world--the fighting men of England, masters of destruction, engineers
of death!  Another race of men from those of the shops and slums, a
totally different race of men.

But here they come, in all the pomp and certitude of power, and still
they come, these men of steel, these war lords and world harnessers.  Pell-
mell, peers and commoners, princes and maharajahs, Equerries to the King
and Yeomen of the Guard.  And here the colonials, lithe and hardy men;
and here all the breeds of all the world-soldiers from Canada, Australia,
New Zealand; from Bermuda, Borneo, Fiji, and the Gold Coast; from
Rhodesia, Cape Colony, Natal, Sierra Leone and Gambia, Nigeria, and
Uganda; from Ceylon, Cyprus, Hong-Kong, Jamaica, and Wei-Hai-Wei; from
Lagos, Malta, St. Lucia, Singapore, Trinidad.  And here the conquered men
of Ind, swarthy horsemen and sword wielders, fiercely barbaric, blazing
in crimson and scarlet, Sikhs, Rajputs, Burmese, province by province,
and caste by caste.

And now the Horse Guards, a glimpse of beautiful cream ponies, and a
golden panoply, a hurricane of cheers, the crashing of bands--"The King!
the King!  God save the King!"  Everybody has gone mad.  The contagion is
sweeping me off my feet--I, too, want to shout, "The King!  God save the
King!"  Ragged men about me, tears in their eyes, are tossing up their
hats and crying ecstatically, "Bless 'em!  Bless 'em!  Bless 'em!"  See,
there he is, in that wondrous golden coach, the great crown flashing on
his head, the woman in white beside him likewise crowned.

And I check myself with a rush, striving to convince myself that it is
all real and rational, and not some glimpse of fairyland.  This I cannot
succeed in doing, and it is better so.  I much prefer to believe that all
this pomp, and vanity, and show, and mumbo-jumbo foolery has come from
fairyland, than to believe it the performance of sane and sensible people
who have mastered matter and solved the secrets of the stars.

Princes and princelings, dukes, duchesses, and all manner of coroneted
folk of the royal train are flashing past; more warriors, and lackeys,
and conquered peoples, and the pagent is over.  I drift with the crowd
out of the square into a tangle of narrow streets, where the
public-houses are a-roar with drunkenness, men, women, and children mixed
together in colossal debauch.  And on every side is rising the favourite
song of the Coronation:-

   "Oh! on Coronation Day, on Coronation Day,
   We'll have a spree, a jubilee, and shout, Hip, hip, hooray,
   For we'll all be marry, drinking whisky, wine, and sherry,
   We'll all be merry on Coronation Day."

The rain is pouring down.  Up the street come troops of the auxiliaries,
black Africans and yellow Asiatics, beturbaned and befezed, and coolies
swinging along with machine guns and mountain batteries on their heads,
and the bare feet of all, in quick rhythm, going _slish, slish, slish_
through the pavement mud.  The public-houses empty by magic, and the
swarthy allegiants are cheered by their British brothers, who return at
once to the carouse.

"And how did you like the procession, mate?" I asked an old man on a
bench in Green Park.

"'Ow did I like it?  A bloomin' good chawnce, sez I to myself, for a
sleep, wi' all the coppers aw'y, so I turned into the corner there, along
wi' fifty others.  But I couldn't sleep, a-lyin' there an' thinkin' 'ow
I'd worked all the years o' my life an' now 'ad no plyce to rest my 'ead;
an' the music comin' to me, an' the cheers an' cannon, till I got almost
a hanarchist an' wanted to blow out the brains o' the Lord Chamberlain."

Why the Lord Chamberlain I could not precisely see, nor could he, but
that was the way he felt, he said conclusively, and them was no more
discussion.

As night drew on, the city became a blaze of light.  Splashes of colour,
green, amber, and ruby, caught the eye at every point, and "E. R.," in
great crystal letters and backed by flaming gas, was everywhere.  The
crowds in the streets increased by hundreds of thousands, and though the
police sternly put down mafficking, drunkenness and rough play abounded.
The tired workers seemed to have gone mad with the relaxation and
excitement, and they surged and danced down the streets, men and women,
old and young, with linked arms and in long rows, singing, "I may be
crazy, but I love you," "Dolly Gray," and "The Honeysuckle and the
Bee"--the last rendered something like this:-

   "Yew aw the enny, ennyseckle, Oi em ther bee,
   Oi'd like ter sip ther enny from those red lips, yew see."

I sat on a bench on the Thames Embankment, looking across the illuminated
water.  It was approaching midnight, and before me poured the better
class of merrymakers, shunning the more riotous streets and returning
home.  On the bench beside me sat two ragged creatures, a man and a
woman, nodding and dozing.  The woman sat with her arms clasped across
the breast, holding tightly, her body in constant play--now dropping
forward till it seemed its balance would be overcome and she would fall
to the pavement; now inclining to the left, sideways, till her head
rested on the man's shoulder; and now to the right, stretched and
strained, till the pain of it awoke her and she sat bolt upright.
Whereupon the dropping forward would begin again and go through its cycle
till she was aroused by the strain and stretch.

Every little while boys and young men stopped long enough to go behind
the bench and give vent to sudden and fiendish shouts.  This always
jerked the man and woman abruptly from their sleep; and at sight of the
startled woe upon their faces the crowd would roar with laughter as it
flooded past.

This was the most striking thing, the general heartlessness exhibited on
every hand.  It is a commonplace, the homeless on the benches, the poor
miserable folk who may be teased and are harmless.  Fifty thousand people
must have passed the bench while I sat upon it, and not one, on such a
jubilee occasion as the crowning of the King, felt his heart-strings
touched sufficiently to come up and say to the woman: "Here's sixpence;
go and get a bed."  But the women, especially the young women, made witty
remarks upon the woman nodding, and invariably set their companions
laughing.

To use a Briticism, it was "cruel"; the corresponding Americanism was
more appropriate--it was "fierce."  I confess I began to grow incensed at
this happy crowd streaming by, and to extract a sort of satisfaction from
the London statistics which demonstrate that one in every four adults is
destined to die on public charity, either in the workhouse, the
infirmary, or the asylum.

I talked with the man.  He was fifty-four and a broken-down docker.  He
could only find odd work when there was a large demand for labour, for
the younger and stronger men were preferred when times were slack.  He
had spent a week, now, on the benches of the Embankment; but things
looked brighter for next week, and he might possibly get in a few days'
work and have a bed in some doss-house.  He had lived all his life in
London, save for five years, when, in 1878, he saw foreign service in
India.

Of course he would eat; so would the girl.  Days like this were uncommon
hard on such as they, though the coppers were so busy poor folk could get
in more sleep.  I awoke the girl, or woman, rather, for she was "Eyght
an' twenty, sir," and we started for a coffee-house.

"Wot a lot o' work puttin' up the lights," said the man at sight of some
building superbly illuminated.  This was the keynote of his being.  All
his life he had worked, and the whole objective universe, as well as his
own soul, he could express in terms only of work.  "Coronations is some
good," he went on.  "They give work to men."

"But your belly is empty," I said.

"Yes," he answered.  "I tried, but there wasn't any chawnce.  My age is
against me.  Wot do you work at?  Seafarin' chap, eh?  I knew it from yer
clothes."

"I know wot you are," said the girl, "an Eyetalian."

"No 'e ayn't," the man cried heatedly.  "'E's a Yank, that's wot 'e is.  I
know."

"Lord lumne, look a' that," she exclaimed, as we debauched upon the
Strand, choked with the roaring, reeling Coronation crowd, the men
bellowing and the girls singing in high throaty notes:-

   "Oh! on Coronation D'y, on Coronation D'y,
   We'll 'ave a spree, a jubilee, an' shout 'Ip, 'ip, 'ooray;
   For we'll all be merry, drinkin' whisky, wine, and sherry,
   We'll all be merry on Coronation D'y."

"'Ow dirty I am, bein' around the w'y I 'ave," the woman said, as she sat
down in a coffee-house, wiping the sleep and grime from the corners of
her eyes.  "An' the sights I 'ave seen this d'y, an' I enjoyed it, though
it was lonesome by myself.  An' the duchesses an' the lydies 'ad sich
gran' w'ite dresses.  They was jest bu'ful, bu'ful."

"I'm Irish," she said, in answer to a question.  "My nyme's Eyethorne."

"What?" I asked.

"Eyethorne, sir; Eyethorne."

"Spell it."

"H-a-y-t-h-o-r-n-e, Eyethorne.'

"Oh," I said, "Irish Cockney."

"Yes, sir, London-born."

She had lived happily at home till her father died, killed in an
accident, when she had found herself on the world.  One brother was in
the army, and the other brother, engaged in keeping a wife and eight
children on twenty shillings a week and unsteady employment, could do
nothing for her.  She had been out of London once in her life, to a place
in Essex, twelve miles away, where she had picked fruit for three weeks:
"An' I was as brown as a berry w'en I come back.  You won't b'lieve it,
but I was."

The last place in which she had worked was a coffee-house, hours from
seven in the morning till eleven at night, and for which she had received
five shillings a week and her food.  Then she had fallen sick, and since
emerging from the hospital had been unable to find anything to do.  She
wasn't feeling up to much, and the last two nights had been spent in the
street.

Between them they stowed away a prodigious amount of food, this man and
woman, and it was not till I had duplicated and triplicated their
original orders that they showed signs of easing down.

Once she reached across and felt the texture of my coat and shirt, and
remarked upon the good clothes the Yanks wore.  My rags good clothes!  It
put me to the blush; but, on inspecting them more closely and on
examining the clothes worn by the man and woman, I began to feel quite
well dressed and respectable.

"What do you expect to do in the end?" I asked them.  "You know you're
growing older every day."

"Work'ouse," said he.

"Gawd blimey if I do," said she.  "There's no 'ope for me, I know, but
I'll die on the streets.  No work'ouse for me, thank you.  No, indeed,"
she sniffed in the silence that fell.

"After you have been out all night in the streets," I asked, "what do you
do in the morning for something to eat?"

"Try to get a penny, if you 'aven't one saved over," the man explained.
"Then go to a coffee-'ouse an' get a mug o' tea."

"But I don't see how that is to feed you," I objected.

The pair smiled knowingly.

"You drink your tea in little sips," he went on, "making it last its
longest.  An' you look sharp, an' there's some as leaves a bit be'ind
'em."

"It's s'prisin', the food wot some people leaves," the woman broke in.

"The thing," said the man judicially, as the trick dawned upon me, "is to
get 'old o' the penny."

As we started to leave, Miss Haythorne gathered up a couple of crusts
from the neighbouring tables and thrust them somewhere into her rags.

"Cawn't wyste 'em, you know," said she; to which the docker nodded,
tucking away a couple of crusts himself.

At three in the morning I strolled up the Embankment.  It was a gala
night for the homeless, for the police were elsewhere; and each bench was
jammed with sleeping occupants.  There were as many women as men, and the
great majority of them, male and female, were old.  Occasionally a boy
was to be seen.  On one bench I noticed a family, a man sitting upright
with a sleeping babe in his arms, his wife asleep, her head on his
shoulder, and in her lap the head of a sleeping youngster.  The man's
eyes were wide open.  He was staring out over the water and thinking,
which is not a good thing for a shelterless man with a family to do.  It
would not be a pleasant thing to speculate upon his thoughts; but this I
know, and all London knows, that the cases of out-of-works killing their
wives and babies is not an uncommon happening.

One cannot walk along the Thames Embankment, in the small hours of
morning, from the Houses of Parliament, past Cleopatra's Needle, to
Waterloo Bridge, without being reminded of the sufferings, seven and
twenty centuries old, recited by the author of "Job":-

   There are that remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks
   and feed them.

   They drive away the ass of the fatherless, they take the widow's ox
   for a pledge.

   They turn the needy out of the way; the poor of the earth hide
   themselves together.

   Behold, as wild asses in the desert they go forth to their work,
   seeking diligently for meat; the wilderness yieldeth them food for
   their children.

   They cut their provender in the field, and they glean the vintage of
   the wicked.

   They lie all night naked without clothing, and have no covering in the
   cold.

   They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock
   for want of a shelter.

   There are that pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge
   of the poor.

   So that they go about naked without clothing, and being an hungered
   they carry the sheaves.--Job xxiv. 2-10.

Seven and twenty centuries agone!  And it is all as true and apposite to-
day in the innermost centre of this Christian civilisation whereof Edward
VII. is king.




CHAPTER XIII--DAN CULLEN, DOCKER


I stood, yesterday, in a room in one of the "Municipal Dwellings," not
far from Leman Street.  If I looked into a dreary future and saw that I
would have to live in such a room until I died, I should immediately go
down, plump into the Thames, and cut the tenancy short.

It was not a room.  Courtesy to the language will no more permit it to be
called a room than it will permit a hovel to be called a mansion.  It was
a den, a lair.  Seven feet by eight were its dimensions, and the ceiling
was so low as not to give the cubic air space required by a British
soldier in barracks.  A crazy couch, with ragged coverlets, occupied
nearly half the room.  A rickety table, a chair, and a couple of boxes
left little space in which to turn around.  Five dollars would have
purchased everything in sight.  The floor was bare, while the walls and
ceiling were literally covered with blood marks and splotches.  Each mark
represented a violent death--of an insect, for the place swarmed with
vermin, a plague with which no person could cope single-handed.

The man who had occupied this hole, one Dan Cullen, docker, was dying in
hospital.  Yet he had impressed his personality on his miserable
surroundings sufficiently to give an inkling as to what sort of man he
was.  On the walls were cheap pictures of Garibaldi, Engels, Dan Burns,
and other labour leaders, while on the table lay one of Walter Besant's
novels.  He knew his Shakespeare, I was told, and had read history,
sociology, and economics.  And he was self-educated.

On the table, amidst a wonderful disarray, lay a sheet of paper on which
was scrawled: _Mr. Cullen, please return the large white jug and
corkscrew I lent you_--articles loaned, during the first stages of his
sickness, by a woman neighbour, and demanded back in anticipation of his
death.  A large white jug and a corkscrew are far too valuable to a
creature of the Abyss to permit another creature to die in peace.  To the
last, Dan Cullen's soul must be harrowed by the sordidness out of which
it strove vainly to rise.

It is a brief little story, the story of Dan Cullen, but there is much to
read between the lines.  He was born lowly, in a city and land where the
lines of caste are tightly drawn.  All his days he toiled hard with his
body; and because he had opened the books, and been caught up by the
fires of the spirit, and could "write a letter like a lawyer," he had
been selected by his fellows to toil hard for them with his brain.  He
became a leader of the fruit-porters, represented the dockers on the
London Trades Council, and wrote trenchant articles for the labour
journals.

He did not cringe to other men, even though they were his economic
masters, and controlled the means whereby he lived, and he spoke his mind
freely, and fought the good fight.  In the "Great Dock Strike" he was
guilty of taking a leading part.  And that was the end of Dan Cullen.
From that day he was a marked man, and every day, for ten years and more,
he was "paid off" for what he had done.

A docker is a casual labourer.  Work ebbs and flows, and he works or does
not work according to the amount of goods on hand to be moved.  Dan
Cullen was discriminated against.  While he was not absolutely turned
away (which would have caused trouble, and which would certainly have
been more merciful), he was called in by the foreman to do not more than
two or three days' work per week.  This is what is called being
"disciplined," or "drilled."  It means being starved.  There is no
politer word.  Ten years of it broke his heart, and broken-hearted men
cannot live.

He took to his bed in his terrible den, which grew more terrible with his
helplessness.  He was without kith or kin, a lonely old man, embittered
and pessimistic, fighting vermin the while and looking at Garibaldi,
Engels, and Dan Burns gazing down at him from the blood-bespattered
walls.  No one came to see him in that crowded municipal barracks (he had
made friends with none of them), and he was left to rot.

But from the far reaches of the East End came a cobbler and his son, his
sole friends.  They cleansed his room, brought fresh linen from home, and
took from off his limbs the sheets, greyish-black with dirt.  And they
brought to him one of the Queen's Bounty nurses from Aldgate.

She washed his face, shook up his conch, and talked with him.  It was
interesting to talk with him--until he learned her name.  Oh, yes, Blank
was her name, she replied innocently, and Sir George Blank was her
brother.  Sir George Blank, eh? thundered old Dan Cullen on his death-
bed; Sir George Blank, solicitor to the docks at Cardiff, who, more than
any other man, had broken up the Dockers' Union of Cardiff, and was
knighted?  And she was his sister?  Thereupon Dan Cullen sat up on his
crazy couch and pronounced anathema upon her and all her breed; and she
fled, to return no more, strongly impressed with the ungratefulness of
the poor.

Dan Cullen's feet became swollen with dropsy.  He sat up all day on the
side of the bed (to keep the water out of his body), no mat on the floor,
a thin blanket on his legs, and an old coat around his shoulders.  A
missionary brought him a pair of paper slippers, worth fourpence (I saw
them), and proceeded to offer up fifty prayers or so for the good of Dan
Cullen's soul.  But Dan Cullen was the sort of man that wanted his soul
left alone.  He did not care to have Tom, Dick, or Harry, on the strength
of fourpenny slippers, tampering with it.  He asked the missionary kindly
to open the window, so that he might toss the slippers out.  And the
missionary went away, to return no more, likewise impressed with the
ungratefulness of the poor.

The cobbler, a brave old hero himself, though unaneled and unsung, went
privily to the head office of the big fruit brokers for whom Dan Cullen
had worked as a casual labourer for thirty years.  Their system was such
that the work was almost entirely done by casual hands.  The cobbler told
them the man's desperate plight, old, broken, dying, without help or
money, reminded them that he had worked for them thirty years, and asked
them to do something for him.

"Oh," said the manager, remembering Dan Cullen without having to refer to
the books, "you see, we make it a rule never to help casuals, and we can
do nothing."

Nor did they do anything, not even sign a letter asking for Dan Cullen's
admission to a hospital.  And it is not so easy to get into a hospital in
London Town.  At Hampstead, if he passed the doctors, at least four
months would elapse before he could get in, there were so many on the
books ahead of him.  The cobbler finally got him into the Whitechapel
Infirmary, where he visited him frequently.  Here he found that Dan
Cullen had succumbed to the prevalent feeling, that, being hopeless, they
were hurrying him out of the way.  A fair and logical conclusion, one
must agree, for an old and broken man to arrive at, who has been
resolutely "disciplined" and "drilled" for ten years.  When they sweated
him for Bright's disease to remove the fat from the kidneys, Dan Cullen
contended that the sweating was hastening his death; while Bright's
disease, being a wasting away of the kidneys, there was therefore no fat
to remove, and the doctor's excuse was a palpable lie.  Whereupon the
doctor became wroth, and did not come near him for nine days.

Then his bed was tilted up so that his feet and legs were elevated.  At
once dropsy appeared in the body, and Dan Cullen contended that the thing
was done in order to run the water down into his body from his legs and
kill him more quickly.  He demanded his discharge, though they told him
he would die on the stairs, and dragged himself, more dead than alive, to
the cobbler's shop.  At the moment of writing this, he is dying at the
Temperance Hospital, into which place his staunch friend, the cobbler,
moved heaven and earth to have him admitted.

Poor Dan Cullen!  A Jude the Obscure, who reached out after knowledge;
who toiled with his body in the day and studied in the watches of the
night; who dreamed his dream and struck valiantly for the Cause; a
patriot, a lover of human freedom, and a fighter unafraid; and in the
end, not gigantic enough to beat down the conditions which baffled and
stifled him, a cynic and a pessimist, gasping his final agony on a
pauper's couch in a charity ward,--"For a man to die who might have been
wise and was not, this I call a tragedy."




CHAPTER XIV--HOPS AND HOPPERS


So far has the divorcement of the worker from the soil proceeded, that
the farming districts, the civilised world over, are dependent upon the
cities for the gathering of the harvests.  Then it is, when the land is
spilling its ripe wealth to waste, that the street folk, who have been
driven away from the soil, are called back to it again.  But in England
they return, not as prodigals, but as outcasts still, as vagrants and
pariahs, to be doubted and flouted by their country brethren, to sleep in
jails and casual wards, or under the hedges, and to live the Lord knows
how.

It is estimated that Kent alone requires eighty thousand of the street
people to pick her hops.  And out they come, obedient to the call, which
is the call of their bellies and of the lingering dregs of adventure-lust
still in them.  Slum, stews, and ghetto pour them forth, and the
festering contents of slum, stews, and ghetto are undiminished.  Yet they
overrun the country like an army of ghouls, and the country does not want
them.  They are out of place.  As they drag their squat, misshapen bodies
along the highways and byways, they resemble some vile spawn from
underground.  Their very presence, the fact of their existence, is an
outrage to the fresh, bright sun and the green and growing things.  The
clean, upstanding trees cry shame upon them and their withered
crookedness, and their rottenness is a slimy desecration of the sweetness
and purity of nature.

Is the picture overdrawn?  It all depends.  For one who sees and thinks
life in terms of shares and coupons, it is certainly overdrawn.  But for
one who sees and thinks life in terms of manhood and womanhood, it cannot
be overdrawn.  Such hordes of beastly wretchedness and inarticulate
misery are no compensation for a millionaire brewer who lives in a West
End palace, sates himself with the sensuous delights of London's golden
theatres, hobnobs with lordlings and princelings, and is knighted by the
king.  Wins his spurs--God forbid!  In old time the great blonde beasts
rode in the battle's van and won their spurs by cleaving men from pate to
chine.  And, after all, it is finer to kill a strong man with a clean-
slicing blow of singing steel than to make a beast of him, and of his
seed through the generations, by the artful and spidery manipulation of
industry and politics.

But to return to the hops.  Here the divorcement from the soil is as
apparent as in every other agricultural line in England.  While the
manufacture of beer steadily increases, the growth of hops steadily
decreases.  In 1835 the acreage under hops was 71,327.  To-day it stands
at 48,024, a decrease of 3103 from the acreage of last year.

Small as the acreage is this year, a poor summer and terrible storms
reduced the yield.  This misfortune is divided between the people who own
hops and the people who pick hops.  The owners perforce must put up with
less of the nicer things of life, the pickers with less grub, of which,
in the best of times, they never get enough.  For weary weeks headlines
like the following have appeared in the London papers.-

   TRAMPS PLENTIFUL, BUT THE HOPS ARE FEW AND NOT YET READY.

Then there have been numberless paragraphs like this:-

   From the neighbourhood of the hop fields comes news of a distressing
   nature.  The bright outburst of the last two days has sent many
   hundreds of hoppers into Kent, who will have to wait till the fields
   are ready for them.  At Dover the number of vagrants in the workhouse
   is treble the number there last year at this time, and in other towns
   the lateness of the season is responsible for a large increase in the
   number of casuals.

To cap their wretchedness, when at last the picking had begun, hops and
hoppers were well-nigh swept away by a frightful storm of wind, rain, and
hail.  The hops were stripped clean from the poles and pounded into the
earth, while the hoppers, seeking shelter from the stinging hail, were
close to drowning in their huts and camps on the low-lying ground.  Their
condition after the storm was pitiable, their state of vagrancy more
pronounced than ever; for, poor crop that it was, its destruction had
taken away the chance of earning a few pennies, and nothing remained for
thousands of them but to "pad the hoof" back to London.

"We ayn't crossin'-sweepers," they said, turning away from the ground,
carpeted ankle-deep with hops.

Those that remained grumbled savagely among the half-stripped poles at
the seven bushels for a shilling--a rate paid in good seasons when the
hops are in prime condition, and a rate likewise paid in bad seasons by
the growers because they cannot afford more.

I passed through Teston and East and West Farleigh shortly after the
storm, and listened to the grumbling of the hoppers and saw the hops
rotting on the ground.  At the hothouses of Barham Court, thirty thousand
panes of glass had been broken by the hail, while peaches, plums, pears,
apples, rhubarb, cabbages, mangolds, everything, had been pounded to
pieces and torn to shreds.

All of which was too bad for the owners, certainly; but at the worst, not
one of them, for one meal, would have to go short of food or drink.  Yet
it was to them that the newspapers devoted columns of sympathy, their
pecuniary losses being detailed at harrowing length.  "Mr. Herbert L---
calculates his loss at 8000 pounds;" "Mr. F---, of brewery fame, who
rents all the land in this parish, loses 10,000 pounds;" and "Mr. L---,
the Wateringbury brewer, brother to Mr. Herbert L---, is another heavy
loser."  As for the hoppers, they did not count.  Yet I venture to assert
that the several almost-square meals lost by underfed William Buggles,
and underfed Mrs. Buggles, and the underfed Buggles kiddies, was a
greater tragedy than the 10,000 pounds lost by Mr. F---.  And in
addition, underfed William Buggles' tragedy might be multiplied by
thousands where Mr. F---'s could not be multiplied by five.

To see how William Buggles and his kind fared, I donned my seafaring togs
and started out to get a job.  With me was a young East London cobbler,
Bert, who had yielded to the lure of adventure and joined me for the
trip.  Acting on my advice, he had brought his "worst rags," and as we
hiked up the London road out of Maidstone he was worrying greatly for
fear we had come too ill-dressed for the business.

Nor was he to be blamed.  When we stopped in a tavern the publican eyed
us gingerly, nor did his demeanour brighten till we showed him the colour
of our cash.  The natives along the coast were all dubious; and "bean-
feasters" from London, dashing past in coaches, cheered and jeered and
shouted insulting things after us.  But before we were done with the
Maidstone district my friend found that we were as well clad, if not
better, than the average hopper.  Some of the bunches of rags we chanced
upon were marvellous.

"The tide is out," called a gypsy-looking woman to her mates, as we came
up a long row of bins into which the pickers were stripping the hops.

"Do you twig?" Bert whispered.  "She's on to you."

I twigged.  And it must be confessed the figure was an apt one.  When the
tide is out boats are left on the beach and do not sail, and a sailor,
when the tide is out, does not sail either.  My seafaring togs and my
presence in the hop field proclaimed that I was a seaman without a ship,
a man on the beach, and very like a craft at low water.

"Can yer give us a job, governor?" Bert asked the bailiff, a kindly faced
and elderly man who was very busy.

His "No" was decisively uttered; but Bert clung on and followed him
about, and I followed after, pretty well all over the field.  Whether our
persistency struck the bailiff as anxiety to work, or whether he was
affected by our hard-luck appearance and tale, neither Bert nor I
succeeded in making out; but in the end he softened his heart and found
us the one unoccupied bin in the place--a bin deserted by two other men,
from what I could learn, because of inability to make living wages.

"No bad conduct, mind ye," warned the bailiff, as he left us at work in
the midst of the women.

It was Saturday afternoon, and we knew quitting time would come early; so
we applied ourselves earnestly to the task, desiring to learn if we could
at least make our salt.  It was simple work, woman's work, in fact, and
not man's.  We sat on the edge of the bin, between the standing hops,
while a pole-puller supplied us with great fragrant branches.  In an
hour's time we became as expert as it is possible to become.  As soon as
the fingers became accustomed automatically to differentiate between hops
and leaves and to strip half-a-dozen blossoms at a time there was no more
to learn.

We worked nimbly, and as fast as the women themselves, though their bins
filled more rapidly because of their swarming children, each of which
picked with two hands almost as fast as we picked.

"Don'tcher pick too clean, it's against the rules," one of the women
informed us; and we took the tip and were grateful.

As the afternoon wore along, we realised that living wages could not be
made--by men.  Women could pick as much as men, and children could do
almost as well as women; so it was impossible for a man to compete with a
woman and half-a-dozen children.  For it is the woman and the half-dozen
children who count as a unit, and by their combined capacity determine
the unit's pay.

"I say, matey, I'm beastly hungry," said I to Bert.  We had not had any
dinner.

"Blimey, but I could eat the 'ops," he replied.

Whereupon we both lamented our negligence in not rearing up a numerous
progeny to help us in this day of need.  And in such fashion we whiled
away the time and talked for the edification of our neighbours.  We quite
won the sympathy of the pole-puller, a young country yokel, who now and
again emptied a few picked blossoms into our bin, it being part of his
business to gather up the stray clusters torn off in the process of
pulling.

With him we discussed how much we could "sub," and were informed that
while we were being paid a shilling for seven bushels, we could only
"sub," or have advanced to us, a shilling for every twelve bushels.  Which
is to say that the pay for five out of every twelve bushels was
withheld--a method of the grower to hold the hopper to his work whether
the crop runs good or bad, and especially if it runs bad.

After all, it was pleasant sitting there in the bright sunshine, the
golden pollen showering from our hands, the pungent aromatic odour of the
hops biting our nostrils, and the while remembering dimly the sounding
cities whence these people came.  Poor street people!  Poor gutter folk!
Even they grow earth-hungry, and yearn vaguely for the soil from which
they have been driven, and for the free life in the open, and the wind
and rain and sun all undefiled by city smirches.  As the sea calls to the
sailor, so calls the land to them; and, deep down in their aborted and
decaying carcasses, they are stirred strangely by the peasant memories of
their forbears who lived before cities were.  And in incomprehensible
ways they are made glad by the earth smells and sights and sounds which
their blood has not forgotten though unremembered by them.

"No more 'ops, matey," Bert complained.

It was five o'clock, and the pole-pullers had knocked off, so that
everything could be cleaned up, there being no work on Sunday.  For an
hour we were forced idly to wait the coming of the measurers, our feet
tingling with the frost which came on the heels of the setting sun.  In
the adjoining bin, two women and half-a-dozen children had picked nine
bushels: so that the five bushels the measurers found in our bin
demonstrated that we had done equally well, for the half-dozen children
had ranged from nine to fourteen years of age.

Five bushels!  We worked it out to eight-pence ha'penny, or seventeen
cents, for two men working three hours and a half.  Fourpence farthing
apiece! a little over a penny an hour!  But we were allowed only to "sub"
fivepence of the total sum, though the tally-keeper, short of change,
gave us sixpence.  Entreaty was in vain.  A hard-luck story could not
move him.  He proclaimed loudly that we had received a penny more than
our due, and went his way.

Granting, for the sake of the argument, that we were what we represented
ourselves to be--namely, poor men and broke--then here was out position:
night was coming on; we had had no supper, much less dinner; and we
possessed sixpence between us.  I was hungry enough to eat three
sixpenn'orths of food, and so was Bert.  One thing was patent.  By doing
16.3 per cent. justice to our stomachs, we would expend the sixpence, and
our stomachs would still be gnawing under 83.3 per cent. injustice.  Being
broke again, we could sleep under a hedge, which was not so bad, though
the cold would sap an undue portion of what we had eaten.  But the morrow
was Sunday, on which we could do no work, though our silly stomachs would
not knock off on that account.  Here, then, was the problem: how to get
three meals on Sunday, and two on Monday (for we could not make another
"sub" till Monday evening).

We knew that the casual wards were overcrowded; also, that if we begged
from farmer or villager, there was a large likelihood of our going to
jail for fourteen days.  What was to be done?  We looked at each other in
despair--

--Not a bit of it.  We joyfully thanked God that we were not as other
men, especially hoppers, and went down the road to Maidstone, jingling in
our pockets the half-crowns and florins we had brought from London.




CHAPTER XV--THE SEA WIFE


You might not expect to find the Sea Wife in the heart of Kent, but that
is where I found her, in a mean street, in the poor quarter of Maidstone.
In her window she had no sign of lodgings to let, and persuasion was
necessary before she could bring herself to let me sleep in her front
room.  In the evening I descended to the semi-subterranean kitchen, and
talked with her and her old man, Thomas Mugridge by name.

And as I talked to them, all the subtleties and complexities of this
tremendous machine civilisation vanished away.  It seemed that I went
down through the skin and the flesh to the naked soul of it, and in
Thomas Mugridge and his old woman gripped hold of the essence of this
remarkable English breed.  I found there the spirit of the wanderlust
which has lured Albion's sons across the zones; and I found there the
colossal unreckoning which has tricked the English into foolish
squabblings and preposterous fights, and the doggedness and stubbornness
which have brought them blindly through to empire and greatness; and
likewise I found that vast, incomprehensible patience which has enabled
the home population to endure under the burden of it all, to toil without
complaint through the weary years, and docilely to yield the best of its
sons to fight and colonise to the ends of the earth.

Thomas Mugridge was seventy-one years old and a little man.  It was
because he was little that he had not gone for a soldier.  He had
remained at home and worked.  His first recollections were connected with
work.  He knew nothing else but work.  He had worked all his days, and at
seventy-one he still worked.  Each morning saw him up with the lark and
afield, a day labourer, for as such he had been born.  Mrs. Mugridge was
seventy-three.  From seven years of age she had worked in the fields,
doing a boy's work at first, and later a man's.  She still worked,
keeping the house shining, washing, boiling, and baking, and, with my
advent, cooking for me and shaming me by making my bed.  At the end of
threescore years and more of work they possessed nothing, had nothing to
look forward to save more work.  And they were contented.  They expected
nothing else, desired nothing else.

They lived simply.  Their wants were few--a pint of beer at the end of
the day, sipped in the semi-subterranean kitchen, a weekly paper to pore
over for seven nights hand-running, and conversation as meditative and
vacant as the chewing of a heifer's cud.  From a wood engraving on the
wall a slender, angelic girl looked down upon them, and underneath was
the legend: "Our Future Queen."  And from a highly coloured lithograph
alongside looked down a stout and elderly lady, with underneath: "Our
Queen--Diamond Jubilee."

"What you earn is sweetest," quoth Mrs. Mugridge, when I suggested that
it was about time they took a rest.

"No, an' we don't want help," said Thomas Mugridge, in reply to my
question as to whether the children lent them a hand.

"We'll work till we dry up and blow away, mother an' me," he added; and
Mrs. Mugridge nodded her head in vigorous indorsement.

Fifteen children she had borne, and all were away and gone, or dead.  The
"baby," however, lived in Maidstone, and she was twenty-seven.  When the
children married they had their hands full with their own families and
troubles, like their fathers and mothers before them.

Where were the children?  Ah, where were they not?  Lizzie was in
Australia; Mary was in Buenos Ayres; Poll was in New York; Joe had died
in India--and so they called them up, the living and the dead, soldier
and sailor, and colonist's wife, for the traveller's sake who sat in
their kitchen.

They passed me a photograph.  A trim young fellow, in soldier's garb
looked out at me.

"And which son is this?" I asked.

They laughed a hearty chorus.  Son!  Nay, grandson, just back from Indian
service and a soldier-trumpeter to the King.  His brother was in the same
regiment with him.  And so it ran, sons and daughters, and grand sons and
daughters, world-wanderers and empire-builders, all of them, while the
old folks stayed at home and worked at building empire too.

   "There dwells a wife by the Northern Gate,
      And a wealthy wife is she;
   She breeds a breed o' rovin' men
      And casts them over sea.

   "And some are drowned in deep water,
      And some in sight of shore;
   And word goes back to the weary wife,
      And ever she sends more."

But the Sea Wife's child-bearing is about done.  The stock is running
out, and the planet is filling up.  The wives of her sons may carry on
the breed, but her work is past.  The erstwhile men of England are now
the men of Australia, of Africa, of America.  England has sent forth "the
best she breeds" for so long, and has destroyed those that remained so
fiercely, that little remains for her to do but to sit down through the
long nights and gaze at royalty on the wall.

The true British merchant seaman has passed away.  The merchant service
is no longer a recruiting ground for such sea dogs as fought with Nelson
at Trafalgar and the Nile.  Foreigners largely man the merchant ships,
though Englishmen still continue to officer them and to prefer foreigners
for'ard.  In South Africa the colonial teaches the islander how to shoot,
and the officers muddle and blunder; while at home the street people play
hysterically at mafficking, and the War Office lowers the stature for
enlistment.

It could not be otherwise.  The most complacent Britisher cannot hope to
draw off the life-blood, and underfeed, and keep it up forever.  The
average Mrs. Thomas Mugridge has been driven into the city, and she is
not breeding very much of anything save an anaemic and sickly progeny
which cannot find enough to eat.  The strength of the English-speaking
race to-day is not in the tight little island, but in the New World
overseas, where are the sons and daughters of Mrs. Thomas Mugridge.  The
Sea Wife by the Northern Gate has just about done her work in the world,
though she does not realize it.  She must sit down and rest her tired
loins for a space; and if the casual ward and the workhouse do not await
her, it is because of the sons and daughters she has reared up against
the day of her feebleness and decay.




CHAPTER XVI--PROPERTY VERSUS PERSON


In a civilisation frankly materialistic and based upon property, not
soul, it is inevitable that property shall be exalted over soul, that
crimes against property shall be considered far more serious than crimes
against the person.  To pound one's wife to a jelly and break a few of
her ribs is a trivial offence compared with sleeping out under the naked
stars because one has not the price of a doss.  The lad who steals a few
pears from a wealthy railway corporation is a greater menace to society
than the young brute who commits an unprovoked assault upon an old man
over seventy years of age.  While the young girl who takes a lodging
under the pretence that she has work commits so dangerous an offence,
that, were she not severely punished, she and her kind might bring the
whole fabric of property clattering to the ground.  Had she unholily
tramped Piccadilly and the Strand after midnight, the police would not
have interfered with her, and she would have been able to pay for her
lodging.

The following illustrative cases are culled from the police-court reports
for a single week:-

   Widnes Police Court.  Before Aldermen Gossage and Neil.  Thomas Lynch,
   charged with being drunk and disorderly and with assaulting a
   constable.  Defendant rescued a woman from custody, kicked the
   constable, and threw stones at him.  Fined 3s. 6d. for the first
   offence, and 10s. and costs for the assault.

   Glasgow Queen's Park Police Court.  Before Baillie Norman Thompson.
   John Kane pleaded guilty to assaulting his wife.  There were five
   previous convictions.  Fined 2 pounds, 2s.

   Taunton County Petty Sessions.  John Painter, a big, burly fellow,
   described as a labourer, charged with assaulting his wife.  The woman
   received two severe black eyes, and her face was badly swollen.  Fined
   1 pound, 8s., including costs, and bound over to keep the peace.

   Widnes Police Court.  Richard Bestwick and George Hunt, charged with
   trespassing in search of game.  Hunt fined 1 pound and costs, Bestwick
   2 pounds and costs; in default, one month.

   Shaftesbury Police Court.  Before the Mayor (Mr. A. T. Carpenter).
   Thomas Baker, charged with sleeping out.  Fourteen days.

   Glasgow Central Police Court.  Before Bailie Dunlop.  Edward Morrison,
   a lad, convicted of stealing fifteen pears from a lorry at the
   railroad station.  Seven days.

   Doncaster Borough Police Court.  Before Alderman Clark and other
   magistrates.  James M'Gowan, charged under the Poaching Prevention Act
   with being found in possession of poaching implements and a number of
   rabbits.  Fined 2 pounds and costs, or one month.

   Dunfermline Sheriff Court.  Before Sheriff Gillespie.  John Young, a
   pit-head worker, pleaded guilty to assaulting Alexander Storrar by
   beating him about the head and body with his fists, throwing him on
   the ground, and also striking him with a pit prop.  Fined 1 pound.

   Kirkcaldy Police Court.  Before Bailie Dishart.  Simon Walker pleaded
   guilty to assaulting a man by striking and knocking him down.  It was
   an unprovoked assault, and the magistrate described the accused as a
   perfect danger to the community.  Fined 30s.

   Mansfield Police Court.  Before the Mayor, Messrs. F. J. Turner, J.
   Whitaker, F. Tidsbury, E. Holmes, and Dr. R. Nesbitt.  Joseph Jackson,
   charged with assaulting Charles Nunn.  Without any provocation,
   defendant struck the complainant a violent blow in the face, knocking
   him down, and then kicked him on the side of the head.  He was
   rendered unconscious, and he remained under medical treatment for a
   fortnight.  Fined 21s.

   Perth Sheriff Court.  Before Sheriff Sym.  David Mitchell, charged
   with poaching.  There were two previous convictions, the last being
   three years ago.  The sheriff was asked to deal leniently with
   Mitchell, who was sixty-two years of age, and who offered no
   resistance to the gamekeeper.  Four months.

   Dundee Sheriff Court.  Before Hon. Sheriff-Substitute R. C. Walker.
   John Murray, Donald Craig, and James Parkes, charged with poaching.
   Craig and Parkes fined 1 pound each or fourteen days; Murray, 5 pounds
   or one month.

   Reading Borough Police Court.  Before Messrs. W. B. Monck, F. B.
   Parfitt, H. M. Wallis, and G. Gillagan.  Alfred Masters, aged sixteen,
   charged with sleeping out on a waste piece of ground and having no
   visible means of subsistence.  Seven days.

   Salisbury City Petty Sessions.  Before the Mayor, Messrs. C. Hoskins,
   G. Fullford, E. Alexander, and W. Marlow.  James Moore, charged with
   stealing a pair of boots from outside a shop.  Twenty-one days.

   Horncastle Police Court.  Before the Rev. W. F. Massingberd, the Rev.
   J. Graham, and Mr. N. Lucas Calcraft.  George Brackenbury, a young
   labourer, convicted of what the magistrates characterised as an
   altogether unprovoked and brutal assault upon James Sargeant Foster, a
   man over seventy years of age.  Fined 1 pound and 5s. 6d. costs.

   Worksop Petty Sessions.  Before Messrs. F. J. S. Foljambe, R. Eddison,
   and S. Smith.  John Priestley, charged with assaulting the Rev. Leslie
   Graham.  Defendant, who was drunk, was wheeling a perambulator and
   pushed it in front of a lorry, with the result that the perambulator
   was overturned and the baby in it thrown out.  The lorry passed over
   the perambulator, but the baby was uninjured.  Defendant then attacked
   the driver of the lorry, and afterwards assaulted the complainant, who
   remonstrated with him upon his conduct.  In consequence of the
   injuries defendant inflicted, complainant had to consult a doctor.
   Fined 40s. and costs.

   Rotherham West Riding Police Court.  Before Messrs. C. Wright and G.
   Pugh and Colonel Stoddart.  Benjamin Storey, Thomas Brammer, and
   Samuel Wilcock, charged with poaching.  One month each.

   Southampton County Police Court.  Before Admiral J. C. Rowley, Mr. H.
   H. Culme-Seymour, and other magistrates.  Henry Thorrington, charged
   with sleeping out.  Seven days.

   Eckington Police Court.  Before Major L. B. Bowden, Messrs. R. Eyre,
   and H. A. Fowler, and Dr. Court.  Joseph Watts, charged with stealing
   nine ferns from a garden.  One month.

   Ripley Petty Sessions.  Before Messrs. J. B. Wheeler, W. D. Bembridge,
   and M. Hooper.  Vincent Allen and George Hall, charged under the
   Poaching Prevention Act with being found in possession of a number of
   rabbits, and John Sparham, charged with aiding and abetting them.  Hall
   and Sparham fined 1 pound, 17s. 4d., and Allen 2 pounds, 17s. 4d.,
   including costs; the former committed for fourteen days and the latter
   for one month in default of payment.

   South-western Police Court, London.  Before Mr. Rose.  John Probyn,
   charged with doing grievous bodily harm to a constable.  Prisoner had
   been kicking his wife, and also assaulting another woman who protested
   against his brutality.  The constable tried to persuade him to go
   inside his house, but prisoner suddenly turned upon him, knocking him
   down by a blow on the face, kicking him as he lay on the ground, and
   attempting to strangle him.  Finally the prisoner deliberately kicked
   the officer in a dangerous part, inflicting an injury which will keep
   him off duty for a long time to come.  Six weeks.

   Lambeth Police Court, London.  Before Mr. Hopkins.  "Baby" Stuart,
   aged nineteen, described as a chorus girl, charged with obtaining food
   and lodging to the value of 5s. by false pretences, and with intent to
   defraud Emma Brasier.  Emma Brasier, complainant, lodging-house keeper
   of Atwell Road.  Prisoner took apartments at her house on the
   representation that she was employed at the Crown Theatre.  After
   prisoner had been in her house two or three days, Mrs. Brasier made
   inquiries, and, finding the girl's story untrue, gave her into
   custody.  Prisoner told the magistrate that she would have worked had
   she not had such bad health.  Six weeks' hard labour.




CHAPTER XVII--INEFFICIENCY


I stopped a moment to listen to an argument on the Mile End Waste.  It
was night-time, and they were all workmen of the better class.  They had
surrounded one of their number, a pleasant-faced man of thirty, and were
giving it to him rather heatedly.

"But 'ow about this 'ere cheap immigration?" one of them demanded.  "The
Jews of Whitechapel, say, a-cutting our throats right along?"

"You can't blame them," was the answer.  "They're just like us, and
they've got to live.  Don't blame the man who offers to work cheaper than
you and gets your job."

"But 'ow about the wife an' kiddies?" his interlocutor demanded.

"There you are," came the answer.  "How about the wife and kiddies of the
man who works cheaper than you and gets your job?  Eh?  How about his
wife and kiddies?  He's more interested in them than in yours, and he
can't see them starve.  So he cuts the price of labour and out you go.
But you mustn't blame him, poor devil.  He can't help it.  Wages always
come down when two men are after the same job.  That's the fault of
competition, not of the man who cuts the price."

"But wyges don't come down where there's a union," the objection was
made.

"And there you are again, right on the head.  The union cheeks
competition among the labourers, but makes it harder where there are no
unions.  There's where your cheap labour of Whitechapel comes in.  They're
unskilled, and have no unions, and cut each other's throats, and ours in
the bargain, if we don't belong to a strong union."

Without going further into the argument, this man on the Mile End Waste
pointed the moral that when two men were after the one job wages were
bound to fall.  Had he gone deeper into the matter, he would have found
that even the union, say twenty thousand strong, could not hold up wages
if twenty thousand idle men were trying to displace the union men.  This
is admirably instanced, just now, by the return and disbandment of the
soldiers from South Africa.  They find themselves, by tens of thousands,
in desperate straits in the army of the unemployed.  There is a general
decline in wages throughout the land, which, giving rise to labour
disputes and strikes, is taken advantage of by the unemployed, who gladly
pick up the tools thrown down by the strikers.

Sweating, starvation wages, armies of unemployed, and great numbers of
the homeless and shelterless are inevitable when there are more men to do
work than there is work for men to do.  The men and women I have met upon
the streets, and in the spikes and pegs, are not there because as a mode
of life it may be considered a "soft snap."  I have sufficiently outlined
the hardships they undergo to demonstrate that their existence is
anything but "soft."

It is a matter of sober calculation, here in England, that it is softer
to work for twenty shillings a week, and have regular food, and a bed at
night, than it is to walk the streets.  The man who walks the streets
suffers more, and works harder, for far less return.  I have depicted the
nights they spend, and how, driven in by physical exhaustion, they go to
the casual ward for a "rest up."  Nor is the casual ward a soft snap.  To
pick four pounds of oakum, break twelve hundredweight of stones, or
perform the most revolting tasks, in return for the miserable food and
shelter they receive, is an unqualified extravagance on the part of the
men who are guilty of it.  On the part of the authorities it is sheer
robbery.  They give the men far less for their labour than do the
capitalistic employers.  The wage for the same amount of labour,
performed for a private employer, would buy them better beds, better
food, more good cheer, and, above all, greater freedom.

As I say, it is an extravagance for a man to patronise a casual ward.  And
that they know it themselves is shown by the way these men shun it till
driven in by physical exhaustion.  Then why do they do it?  Not because
they are discouraged workers.  The very opposite is true; they are
discouraged vagabonds.  In the United States the tramp is almost
invariably a discouraged worker.  He finds tramping a softer mode of life
than working.  But this is not true in England.  Here the powers that be
do their utmost to discourage the tramp and vagabond, and he is, in all
truth, a mightily discouraged creature.  He knows that two shillings a
day, which is only fifty cents, will buy him three fair meals, a bed at
night, and leave him a couple of pennies for pocket money.  He would
rather work for those two shillings than for the charity of the casual
ward; for he knows that he would not have to work so hard, and that he
would not be so abominably treated.  He does not do so, however, because
there are more men to do work than there is work for men to do.

When there are more men than there is work to be done, a sifting-out
process must obtain.  In every branch of industry the less efficient are
crowded out.  Being crowded out because of inefficiency, they cannot go
up, but must descend, and continue to descend, until they reach their
proper level, a place in the industrial fabric where they are efficient.
It follows, therefore, and it is inexorable, that the least efficient
must descend to the very bottom, which is the shambles wherein they
perish miserably.

A glance at the confirmed inefficients at the bottom demonstrates that
they are, as a rule, mental, physical, and moral wrecks.  The exceptions
to the rule are the late arrivals, who are merely very inefficient, and
upon whom the wrecking process is just beginning to operate.  All the
forces here, it must be remembered, are destructive.  The good body
(which is there because its brain is not quick and capable) is speedily
wrenched and twisted out of shape; the clean mind (which is there because
of its weak body) is speedily fouled and contaminated.

The mortality is excessive, but, even then, they die far too lingering
deaths.

Here, then, we have the construction of the Abyss and the shambles.
Throughout the whole industrial fabric a constant elimination is going
on.  The inefficient are weeded out and flung downward.  Various things
constitute inefficiency.  The engineer who is irregular or irresponsible
will sink down until he finds his place, say as a casual labourer, an
occupation irregular in its very nature and in which there is little or
no responsibility.  Those who are slow and clumsy, who suffer from
weakness of body or mind, or who lack nervous, mental, and physical
stamina, must sink down, sometimes rapidly, sometimes step by step, to
the bottom.  Accident, by disabling an efficient worker, will make him
inefficient, and down he must go.  And the worker who becomes aged, with
failing energy and numbing brain, must begin the frightful descent which
knows no stopping-place short of the bottom and death.

In this last instance, the statistics of London tell a terrible tale.  The
population of London is one-seventh of the total population of the United
Kingdom, and in London, year in and year out, one adult in every four
dies on public charity, either in the workhouse, the hospital, or the
asylum.  When the fact that the well-to-do do not end thus is taken into
consideration, it becomes manifest that it is the fate of at least one in
every three adult workers to die on public charity.

As an illustration of how a good worker may suddenly become inefficient,
and what then happens to him, I am tempted to give the case of M'Garry, a
man thirty-two years of age, and an inmate of the workhouse.  The
extracts are quoted from the annual report of the trade union.

   I worked at Sullivan's place in Widnes, better known as the British
   Alkali Chemical Works.  I was working in a shed, and I had to cross
   the yard.  It was ten o'clock at night, and there was no light about.
   While crossing the yard I felt something take hold of my leg and screw
   it off.  I became unconscious; I didn't know what became of me for a
   day or two.  On the following Sunday night I came to my senses, and
   found myself in the hospital.  I asked the nurse what was to do with
   my legs, and she told me both legs were off.

   There was a stationary crank in the yard, let into the ground; the
   hole was 18 inches long, 15 inches deep, and 15 inches wide.  The
   crank revolved in the hole three revolutions a minute.  There was no
   fence or covering over the hole.  Since my accident they have stopped
   it altogether, and have covered the hole up with a piece of sheet
   iron. . . . They gave me 25 pounds.  They didn't reckon that as
   compensation; they said it was only for charity's sake.  Out of that I
   paid 9 pounds for a machine by which to wheel myself about.

   I was labouring at the time I got my legs off.  I got twenty-four
   shillings a week, rather better pay than the other men, because I used
   to take shifts.  When there was heavy work to be done I used to be
   picked out to do it.  Mr. Manton, the manager, visited me at the
   hospital several times.  When I was getting better, I asked him if he
   would be able to find me a job.  He told me not to trouble myself, as
   the firm was not cold-hearted.  I would be right enough in any case .
   . . Mr. Manton stopped coming to see me; and the last time, he said he
   thought of asking the directors to give me a fifty-pound note, so I
   could go home to my friends in Ireland.

Poor M'Garry!  He received rather better pay than the other men because
he was ambitious and took shifts, and when heavy work was to be done he
was the man picked out to do it.  And then the thing happened, and he
went into the workhouse.  The alternative to the workhouse is to go home
to Ireland and burden his friends for the rest of his life.  Comment is
superfluous.

It must be understood that efficiency is not determined by the workers
themselves, but is determined by the demand for labour.  If three men
seek one position, the most efficient man will get it.  The other two, no
matter how capable they may be, will none the less be inefficients.  If
Germany, Japan, and the United States should capture the entire world
market for iron, coal, and textiles, at once the English workers would be
thrown idle by hundreds of thousands.  Some would emigrate, but the rest
would rush their labour into the remaining industries.  A general shaking
up of the workers from top to bottom would result; and when equilibrium
had been restored, the number of the inefficients at the bottom of the
Abyss would have been increased by hundreds of thousands.  On the other
hand, conditions remaining constant and all the workers doubling their
efficiency, there would still be as many inefficients, though each
inefficient were twice as capable as he had been and more capable than
many of the efficients had previously been.

When there are more men to work than there is work for men to do, just as
many men as are in excess of work will be inefficients, and as
inefficients they are doomed to lingering and painful destruction.  It
shall be the aim of future chapters to show, by their work and manner of
living, not only how the inefficients are weeded out and destroyed, but
to show how inefficients are being constantly and wantonly created by the
forces of industrial society as it exists to-day.




CHAPTER XVIII--WAGES


When I learned that in Lesser London there were 1,292,737 people who
received twenty-one shillings or less a week per family, I became
interested as to how the wages could best be spent in order to maintain
the physical efficiency of such families.  Families of six, seven, eight
or ten being beyond consideration, I have based the following table upon
a family of five--a father, mother, and three children; while I have made
twenty-one shillings equivalent to $5.25, though actually, twenty-one
shillings are equivalent to about $5.11.

Rent       $1.50    or 6/0
Bread       1.00    " 4/0
Meat        O.87.5  " 3/6
Vegetables  O.62.5  " 2/6
Coals       0.25    " 1/0
Tea         0.18    " 0/9
Oil         0.16    " 0/8
Sugar       0.18    " 0/9
Milk        0.12    " 0/6
Soap        0.08    " 0/4
Butter      0.20    " 0/10
Firewood    0.08    " 0/4
Total      $5.25     21/2

An analysis of one item alone will show how little room there is for
waste.  _Bread_, $1: for a family of five, for seven days, one dollar's
worth of bread will give each a daily ration of 2.8 cents; and if they
eat three meals a day, each may consume per meal 9.5 mills' worth of
bread, a little less than one halfpennyworth.  Now bread is the heaviest
item.  They will get less of meat per mouth each meal, and still less of
vegetates; while the smaller items become too microscopic for
consideration.  On the other hand, these food articles are all bought at
small retail, the most expensive and wasteful method of purchasing.

While the table given above will permit no extravagance, no overloading
of stomachs, it will be noticed that there is no surplus.  The whole
guinea is spent for food and rent.  There is no pocket-money left over.
Does the man buy a glass of beer, the family must eat that much less; and
in so far as it eats less, just that far will it impair its physical
efficiency.  The members of this family cannot ride in busses or trams,
cannot write letters, take outings, go to a "tu'penny gaff" for cheap
vaudeville, join social or benefit clubs, nor can they buy sweetmeats,
tobacco, books, or newspapers.

And further, should one child (and there are three) require a pair of
shoes, the family must strike meat for a week from its bill of fare.  And
since there are five pairs of feet requiring shoes, and five heads
requiring hats, and five bodies requiring clothes, and since there are
laws regulating indecency, the family must constantly impair its physical
efficiency in order to keep warm and out of jail.  For notice, when rent,
coals, oil, soap, and firewood are extracted from the weekly income,
there remains a daily allowance for food of 4.5d. to each person; and
that 4.5d. cannot be lessened by buying clothes without impairing the
physical efficiency.

All of which is hard enough.  But the thing happens; the husband and
father breaks his leg or his neck.  No 4.5d. a day per mouth for food is
coming in; no halfpennyworth of bread per meal; and, at the end of the
week, no six shillings for rent.  So out they must go, to the streets or
the workhouse, or to a miserable den, somewhere, in which the mother will
desperately endeavour to hold the family together on the ten shillings
she may possibly be able to earn.

While in London there are 1,292,737 people who receive twenty-one
shillings or less a week per family, it must be remembered that we have
investigated a family of five living on a twenty-one shilling basis.
There are larger families, there are many families that live on less than
twenty-one shillings, and there is much irregular employment.  The
question naturally arises, How do _they_ live?  The answer is that they
do not live.  They do not know what life is.  They drag out a
subterbestial existence until mercifully released by death.

Before descending to the fouler depths, let the case of the telephone
girls be cited.  Here are clean, fresh English maids, for whom a higher
standard of living than that of the beasts is absolutely necessary.
Otherwise they cannot remain clean, fresh English maids.  On entering the
service, a telephone girl receives a weekly wage of eleven shillings.  If
she be quick and clever, she may, at the end of five years, attain a
minimum wage of one pound.  Recently a table of such a girl's weekly
expenditure was furnished to Lord Londonderry.  Here it is:-

                      s.   d.
Rent, fire, and light 7    6
Board at home         3    6
Board at the office   4    6
Street car fare       1    6
Laundry               1    0
Total                18    0

This leaves nothing for clothes, recreation, or sickness.  And yet many
of the girls are receiving, not eighteen shillings, but eleven shillings,
twelve shillings, and fourteen shillings per week.  They must have
clothes and recreation, and--

   Man to Man so oft unjust,
   Is always so to Woman.

At the Trades Union Congress now being held in London, the Gasworkers'
Union moved that instructions be given the Parliamentary Committee to
introduce a Bill to prohibit the employment of children under fifteen
years of age.  Mr. Shackleton, Member of Parliament and a representative
of the Northern Counties Weavers, opposed the resolution on behalf of the
textile workers, who, he said, could not dispense with the earnings of
their children and live on the scale of wages which obtained.  The
representatives of 514,000 workers voted against the resolution, while
the representatives of 535,000 workers voted in favour of it.  When
514,000 workers oppose a resolution prohibiting child-labour under
fifteen, it is evident that a less-than-living wage is being paid to an
immense number of the adult workers of the country.

I have spoken with women in Whitechapel who receive right along less than
one shilling for a twelve-hour day in the coat-making sweat shops; and
with women trousers finishers who receive an average princely and weekly
wage of three to four shillings.

A case recently cropped up of men, in the employ of a wealthy business
house, receiving their board and six shillings per week for six working
days of sixteen hours each.  The sandwich men get fourteenpence per day
and find themselves.  The average weekly earnings of the hawkers and
costermongers are not more than ten to twelve shillings.  The average of
all common labourers, outside the dockers, is less than sixteen shillings
per week, while the dockers average from eight to nine shillings.  These
figures are taken from a royal commission report and are authentic.

Conceive of an old woman, broken and dying, supporting herself and four
children, and paying three shillings per week rent, by making match boxes
at 2.25d. per gross.  Twelve dozen boxes for 2.25d., and, in addition,
finding her own paste and thread!  She never knew a day off, either for
sickness, rest, or recreation.  Each day and every day, Sundays as well,
she toiled fourteen hours.  Her day's stint was seven gross, for which
she received 1s. 3.75d.  In the week of ninety-eight hours' work, she
made 7066 match boxes, and earned 4s. 10.25d., less per paste and thread.

Last year, Mr. Thomas Holmes, a police-court missionary of note, after
writing about the condition of the women workers, received the following
letter, dated April 18, 1901:-

   Sir,--Pardon the liberty I am taking, but, having read what you said
   about poor women working fourteen hours a day for ten shillings per
   week, I beg to state my case.  I am a tie-maker, who, after working
   all the week, cannot earn more than five shillings, and I have a poor
   afflicted husband to keep who hasn't earned a penny for more than ten
   years.

Imagine a woman, capable of writing such a clear, sensible, grammatical
letter, supporting her husband and self on five shillings per week!  Mr.
Holmes visited her.  He had to squeeze to get into the room.  There lay
her sick husband; there she worked all day long; there she cooked, ate,
washed, and slept; and there her husband and she performed all the
functions of living and dying.  There was no space for the missionary to
sit down, save on the bed, which was partially covered with ties and
silk.  The sick man's lungs were in the last stages of decay.  He coughed
and expectorated constantly, the woman ceasing from her work to assist
him in his paroxysms.  The silken fluff from the ties was not good for
his sickness; nor was his sickness good for the ties, and the handlers
and wearers of the ties yet to come.

Another case Mr. Holmes visited was that of a young girl, twelve years of
age, charged in the police court with stealing food.  He found her the
deputy mother of a boy of nine, a crippled boy of seven, and a younger
child.  Her mother was a widow and a blouse-maker.  She paid five
shillings a week rent.  Here are the last items in her housekeeping
account: Tea. 0.5d.; sugar, 0.5d.; bread, 0.25d.; margarine, 1d.; oil,
1.5d.; and firewood, 1d.  Good housewives of the soft and tender folk,
imagine yourselves marketing and keeping house on such a scale, setting a
table for five, and keeping an eye on your deputy mother of twelve to see
that she did not steal food for her little brothers and sisters, the
while you stitched, stitched, stitched at a nightmare line of blouses,
which stretched away into the gloom and down to the pauper's coffin a-
yawn for you.




CHAPTER XIX--THE GHETTO


   Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the time,
   City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?
   There among the gloomy alleys Progress halts on palsied feet;
   Crime and hunger cast out maidens by the thousand on the street;

   There the master scrimps his haggard seamstress of her daily bread;
   There the single sordid attic holds the living and the dead;
   There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor,
   And the crowded couch of incest, in the warrens of the poor.

At one time the nations of Europe confined the undesirable Jews in city
ghettos.  But to-day the dominant economic class, by less arbitrary but
none the less rigorous methods, has confined the undesirable yet
necessary workers into ghettos of remarkable meanness and vastness.  East
London is such a ghetto, where the rich and the powerful do not dwell,
and the traveller cometh not, and where two million workers swarm,
procreate, and die.

It must not be supposed that all the workers of London are crowded into
the East End, but the tide is setting strongly in that direction.  The
poor quarters of the city proper are constantly being destroyed, and the
main stream of the unhoused is toward the east.  In the last twelve
years, one district, "London over the Border," as it is called, which
lies well beyond Aldgate, Whitechapel, and Mile End, has increased
260,000, or over sixty per cent.  The churches in this district, by the
way, can seat but one in every thirty-seven of the added population.

The City of Dreadful Monotony, the East End is often called, especially
by well-fed, optimistic sightseers, who look over the surface of things
and are merely shocked by the intolerable sameness and meanness of it
all.  If the East End is worthy of no worse title than The City of
Dreadful Monotony, and if working people are unworthy of variety and
beauty and surprise, it would not be such a bad place in which to live.
But the East End does merit a worse title.  It should be called The City
of Degradation.

While it is not a city of slums, as some people imagine, it may well be
said to be one gigantic slum.  From the standpoint of simple decency and
clean manhood and womanhood, any mean street, of all its mean streets, is
a slum.  Where sights and sounds abound which neither you nor I would
care to have our children see and hear is a place where no man's children
should live, and see, and hear.  Where you and I would not care to have
our wives pass their lives is a place where no other man's wife should
have to pass her life.  For here, in the East End, the obscenities and
brute vulgarities of life are rampant.  There is no privacy.  The bad
corrupts the good, and all fester together.  Innocent childhood is sweet
and beautiful: but in East London innocence is a fleeting thing, and you
must catch them before they crawl out of the cradle, or you will find the
very babes as unholily wise as you.

The application of the Golden Rule determines that East London is an
unfit place in which to live.  Where you would not have your own babe
live, and develop, and gather to itself knowledge of life and the things
of life, is not a fit place for the babes of other men to live, and
develop, and gather to themselves knowledge of life and the things of
life.  It is a simple thing, this Golden Rule, and all that is required.
Political economy and the survival of the fittest can go hang if they say
otherwise.  What is not good enough for you is not good enough for other
men, and there's no more to be said.

There are 300,000 people in London, divided into families, that live in
one-room tenements.  Far, far more live in two and three rooms and are as
badly crowded, regardless of sex, as those that live in one room.  The
law demands 400 cubic feet of space for each person.  In army barracks
each soldier is allowed 600 cubic feet.  Professor Huxley, at one time
himself a medical officer in East London, always held that each person
should have 800 cubic feet of space, and that it should be well
ventilated with pure air.  Yet in London there are 900,000 people living
in less than the 400 cubic feet prescribed by the law.

Mr. Charles Booth, who engaged in a systematic work of years in charting
and classifying the toiling city population, estimates that there are
1,800,000 people in London who are _poor_ and _very poor_.  It is of
interest to mark what he terms poor.  By _poor_ he means families which
have a total weekly income of from eighteen to twenty-one shillings.  The
_very poor_ fall greatly below this standard.

The workers, as a class, are being more and more segregated by their
economic masters; and this process, with its jamming and overcrowding,
tends not so much toward immorality as unmorality.  Here is an extract
from a recent meeting of the London County Council, terse and bald, but
with a wealth of horror to be read between the lines:-

   Mr. Bruce asked the Chairman of the Public Health Committee whether
   his attention had been called to a number of cases of serious
   overcrowding in the East End.  In St. Georges-in-the-East a man and
   his wife and their family of eight occupied one small room.  This
   family consisted of five daughters, aged twenty, seventeen, eight,
   four, and an infant; and three sons, aged fifteen, thirteen, and
   twelve.  In Whitechapel a man and his wife and their three daughters,
   aged sixteen, eight, and four, and two sons, aged ten and twelve
   years, occupied a smaller room.  In Bethnal Green a man and his wife,
   with four sons, aged twenty-three, twenty-one, nineteen, and sixteen,
   and two daughters, aged fourteen and seven, were also found in one
   room.  He asked whether it was not the duty of the various local
   authorities to prevent such serious overcrowding.

But with 900,000 people actually living under illegal conditions, the
authorities have their hands full.  When the overcrowded folk are ejected
they stray off into some other hole; and, as they move their belongings
by night, on hand-barrows (one hand-barrow accommodating the entire
household goods and the sleeping children), it is next to impossible to
keep track of them.  If the Public Health Act of 1891 were suddenly and
completely enforced, 900,000 people would receive notice to clear out of
their houses and go on to the streets, and 500,000 rooms would have to be
built before they were all legally housed again.

The mean streets merely look mean from the outside, but inside the walls
are to be found squalor, misery, and tragedy.  While the following
tragedy may be revolting to read, it must not be forgotten that the
existence of it is far more revolting.

In Devonshire Place, Lisson Grove, a short while back died an old woman
of seventy-five years of age.  At the inquest the coroner's officer
stated that "all he found in the room was a lot of old rags covered with
vermin.  He had got himself smothered with the vermin.  The room was in a
shocking condition, and he had never seen anything like it.  Everything
was absolutely covered with vermin."

The doctor said: "He found deceased lying across the fender on her back.
She had one garment and her stockings on.  The body was quite alive with
vermin, and all the clothes in the room were absolutely grey with
insects.  Deceased was very badly nourished and was very emaciated.  She
had extensive sores on her legs, and her stockings were adherent to those
sores.  The sores were the result of vermin."

A man present at the inquest wrote: "I had the evil fortune to see the
body of the unfortunate woman as it lay in the mortuary; and even now the
memory of that gruesome sight makes me shudder.  There she lay in the
mortuary shell, so starved and emaciated that she was a mere bundle of
skin and bones.  Her hair, which was matted with filth, was simply a nest
of vermin.  Over her bony chest leaped and rolled hundreds, thousands,
myriads of vermin!"

If it is not good for your mother and my mother so to die, then it is not
good for this woman, whosoever's mother she might be, so to die.

Bishop Wilkinson, who has lived in Zululand, recently said, "No human of
an African village would allow such a promiscuous mixing of young men and
women, boys and girls."  He had reference to the children of the
overcrowded folk, who at five have nothing to learn and much to unlearn
which they will never unlearn.

It is notorious that here in the Ghetto the houses of the poor are
greater profit earners than the mansions of the rich.  Not only does the
poor worker have to live like a beast, but he pays proportionately more
for it than does the rich man for his spacious comfort.  A class of house-
sweaters has been made possible by the competition of the poor for
houses.  There are more people than there is room, and numbers are in the
workhouse because they cannot find shelter elsewhere.  Not only are
houses let, but they are sublet, and sub-sublet down to the very rooms.

"A part of a room to let."  This notice was posted a short while ago in a
window not five minutes' walk from St. James's Hall.  The Rev. Hugh Price
Hughes is authority for the statement that beds are let on the
three-relay system--that is, three tenants to a bed, each occupying it
eight hours, so that it never grows cold; while the floor space
underneath the bed is likewise let on the three-relay system.  Health
officers are not at all unused to finding such cases as the following: in
one room having a cubic capacity of 1000 feet, three adult females in the
bed, and two adult females under the bed; and in one room of 1650 cubic
feet, one adult male and two children in the bed, and two adult females
under the bed.

Here is a typical example of a room on the more respectable two-relay
system.  It is occupied in the daytime by a young woman employed all
night in a hotel.  At seven o'clock in the evening she vacates the room,
and a bricklayer's labourer comes in.  At seven in the morning he
vacates, and goes to his work, at which time she returns from hers.

The Rev. W. N. Davies, rector of Spitalfields, took a census of some of
the alleys in his parish.  He says:-

   In one alley there are ten houses--fifty-one rooms, nearly all about 8
   feet by 9 feet--and 254 people.  In six instances only do 2 people
   occupy one room; and in others the number varied from 3 to 9.  In
   another court with six houses and twenty-two rooms were 84
   people--again 6, 7, 8, and 9 being the number living in one room, in
   several instances.  In one house with eight rooms are 45 people--one
   room containing 9 persons, one 8, two 7, and another 6.

This Ghetto crowding is not through inclination, but compulsion.  Nearly
fifty per cent. of the workers pay from one-fourth to one-half of their
earnings for rent.  The average rent in the larger part of the East End
is from four to six shillings per week for one room, while skilled
mechanics, earning thirty-five shillings per week, are forced to part
with fifteen shillings of it for two or three pokey little dens, in which
they strive desperately to obtain some semblance of home life.  And rents
are going up all the time.  In one street in Stepney the increase in only
two years has been from thirteen to eighteen shillings; in another street
from eleven to sixteen shillings; and in another street, from eleven to
fifteen shillings; while in Whitechapel, two-room houses that recently
rented for ten shillings are now costing twenty-one shillings.  East,
west, north, and south the rents are going up.  When land is worth from
20,000 to 30,000 pounds an acre, some one must pay the landlord.

Mr. W. C. Steadman, in the House of Commons, in a speech concerning his
constituency in Stepney, related the following:-

   This morning, not a hundred yards from where I am myself living, a
   widow stopped me.  She has six children to support, and the rent of
   her house was fourteen shillings per week.  She gets her living by
   letting the house to lodgers and doing a day's washing or charring.
   That woman, with tears in her eyes, told me that the landlord had
   increased the rent from fourteen shillings to eighteen shillings.  What
   could the woman do?  There is no accommodation in Stepney.  Every
   place is taken up and overcrowded.

Class supremacy can rest only on class degradation; and when the workers
are segregated in the Ghetto, they cannot escape the consequent
degradation.  A short and stunted people is created--a breed strikingly
differentiated from their masters' breed, a pavement folk, as it were
lacking stamina and strength.  The men become caricatures of what
physical men ought to be, and their women and children are pale and
anaemic, with eyes ringed darkly, who stoop and slouch, and are early
twisted out of all shapeliness and beauty.

To make matters worse, the men of the Ghetto are the men who are left--a
deteriorated stock, left to undergo still further deterioration.  For a
hundred and fifty years, at least, they have been drained of their best.
The strong men, the men of pluck, initiative, and ambition, have been
faring forth to the fresher and freer portions of the globe, to make new
lands and nations.  Those who are lacking, the weak of heart and head and
hand, as well as the rotten and hopeless, have remained to carry on the
breed.  And year by year, in turn, the best they breed are taken from
them.  Wherever a man of vigour and stature manages to grow up, he is
haled forthwith into the army.  A soldier, as Bernard Shaw has said,
"ostensibly a heroic and patriotic defender of his country, is really an
unfortunate man driven by destitution to offer himself as food for powder
for the sake of regular rations, shelter, and clothing."

This constant selection of the best from the workers has impoverished
those who are left, a sadly degraded remainder, for the great part,
which, in the Ghetto, sinks to the deepest depths.  The wine of life has
been drawn off to spill itself in blood and progeny over the rest of the
earth.  Those that remain are the lees, and they are segregated and
steeped in themselves.  They become indecent and bestial.  When they
kill, they kill with their hands, and then stupidly surrender themselves
to the executioners.  There is no splendid audacity about their
transgressions.  They gouge a mate with a dull knife, or beat his head in
with an iron pot, and then sit down and wait for the police.  Wife-beating
is the masculine prerogative of matrimony.  They wear remarkable boots of
brass and iron, and when they have polished off the mother of their
children with a black eye or so, they knock her down and proceed to
trample her very much as a Western stallion tramples a rattlesnake.

A woman of the lower Ghetto classes is as much the slave of her husband
as is the Indian squaw.  And I, for one, were I a woman and had but the
two choices, should prefer being a squaw.  The men are economically
dependent on their masters, and the women are economically dependent on
the men.  The result is, the woman gets the beating the man should give
his master, and she can do nothing.  There are the kiddies, and he is the
bread-winner, and she dare not send him to jail and leave herself and
children to starve.  Evidence to convict can rarely be obtained when such
cases come into the courts; as a rule, the trampled wife and mother is
weeping and hysterically beseeching the magistrate to let her husband off
for the kiddies' sakes.

The wives become screaming harridans or, broken-spirited and doglike,
lose what little decency and self-respect they have remaining over from
their maiden days, and all sink together, unheeding, in their degradation
and dirt.

Sometimes I become afraid of my own generalizations upon the massed
misery of this Ghetto life, and feel that my impressions are exaggerated,
that I am too close to the picture and lack perspective.  At such moments
I find it well to turn to the testimony of other men to prove to myself
that I am not becoming over-wrought and addle-pated.  Frederick Harrison
has always struck me as being a level-headed, well-controlled man, and he
says:-

   To me, at least, it would be enough to condemn modern society as
   hardly an advance on slavery or serfdom, if the permanent condition of
   industry were to be that which we behold, that ninety per cent. of the
   actual producers of wealth have no home that they can call their own
   beyond the end of the week; have no bit of soil, or so much as a room
   that belongs to them; have nothing of value of any kind, except as
   much old furniture as will go into a cart; have the precarious chance
   of weekly wages, which barely suffice to keep them in health; are
   housed, for the most part, in places that no man thinks fit for his
   horse; are separated by so narrow a margin from destitution that a
   month of bad trade, sickness, or unexpected loss brings them face to
   face with hunger and pauperism . . . But below this normal state of
   the average workman in town and country, there is found the great band
   of destitute outcasts--the camp followers of the army of industry--at
   least one-tenth the whole proletarian population, whose normal
   condition is one of sickening wretchedness.  If this is to be the
   permanent arrangement of modern society, civilization must be held to
   bring a curse on the great majority of mankind.

Ninety per cent.!  The figures are appalling, yet Mr. Stopford Brooke,
after drawing a frightful London picture, finds himself compelled to
multiply it by half a million.  Here it is:-

   I often used to meet, when I was curate at Kensington, families
   drifting into London along the Hammersmith Road.  One day there came
   along a labourer and his wife, his son and two daughters.  Their
   family had lived for a long time on an estate in the country, and
   managed, with the help of the common-land and their labour, to get on.
   But the time came when the common was encroached upon, and their
   labour was not needed on the estate, and they were quietly turned out
   of their cottage.  Where should they go?  Of course to London, where
   work was thought to be plentiful.  They had a little savings, and they
   thought they could get two decent rooms to live in.  But the
   inexorable land question met them in London.  They tried the decent
   courts for lodgings, and found that two rooms would cost ten shillings
   a week.  Food was dear and bad, water was bad, and in a short time
   their health suffered.  Work was hard to get, and its wage was so low
   that they were soon in debt.  They became more ill and more despairing
   with the poisonous surroundings, the darkness, and the long hours of
   work; and they were driven forth to seek a cheaper lodging.  They
   found it in a court I knew well--a hotbed of crime and nameless
   horrors.  In this they got a single room at a cruel rent, and work was
   more difficult for them to get now, as they came from a place of such
   bad repute, and they fell into the hands of those who sweat the last
   drop out of man and woman and child, for wages which are the food only
   of despair.  And the darkness and the dirt, the bad food and the
   sickness, and the want of water was worse than before; and the crowd
   and the companionship of the court robbed them of the last shreds of
   self-respect.  The drink demon seized upon them.  Of course there was
   a public-house at both ends of the court.  There they fled, one and
   all, for shelter, and warmth, and society, and forgetfulness.  And
   they came out in deeper debt, with inflamed senses and burning brains,
   and an unsatisfied craving for drink they would do anything to
   satiate.  And in a few months the father was in prison, the wife
   dying, the son a criminal, and the daughters on the street.  _Multiply
   this by half a million, and you will be beneath the truth_.

No more dreary spectacle can be found on this earth than the whole of the
"awful East," with its Whitechapel, Hoxton, Spitalfields, Bethnal Green,
and Wapping to the East India Docks.  The colour of life is grey and
drab.  Everything is helpless, hopeless, unrelieved, and dirty.  Bath
tubs are a thing totally unknown, as mythical as the ambrosia of the
gods.  The people themselves are dirty, while any attempt at cleanliness
becomes howling farce, when it is not pitiful and tragic.  Strange,
vagrant odours come drifting along the greasy wind, and the rain, when it
falls, is more like grease than water from heaven.  The very cobblestones
are scummed with grease.

Here lives a population as dull and unimaginative as its long grey miles
of dingy brick.  Religion has virtually passed it by, and a gross and
stupid materialism reigns, fatal alike to the things of the spirit and
the finer instincts of life.

It used to be the proud boast that every Englishman's home was his
castle.  But to-day it is an anachronism.  The Ghetto folk have no homes.
They do not know the significance and the sacredness of home life.  Even
the municipal dwellings, where live the better-class workers, are
overcrowded barracks.  They have no home life.  The very language proves
it.  The father returning from work asks his child in the street where
her mother is; and back the answer comes, "In the buildings."

A new race has sprung up, a street people.  They pass their lives at work
and in the streets.  They have dens and lairs into which to crawl for
sleeping purposes, and that is all.  One cannot travesty the word by
calling such dens and lairs "homes."  The traditional silent and reserved
Englishman has passed away.  The pavement folk are noisy, voluble, high-
strung, excitable--when they are yet young.  As they grow older they
become steeped and stupefied in beer.  When they have nothing else to do,
they ruminate as a cow ruminates.  They are to be met with everywhere,
standing on curbs and corners, and staring into vacancy.  Watch one of
them.  He will stand there, motionless, for hours, and when you go away
you will leave him still staring into vacancy.  It is most absorbing.  He
has no money for beer, and his lair is only for sleeping purposes, so
what else remains for him to do?  He has already solved the mysteries of
girl's love, and wife's love, and child's love, and found them delusions
and shams, vain and fleeting as dew-drops, quick-vanishing before the
ferocious facts of life.

As I say, the young are high-strung, nervous, excitable; the middle-aged
are empty-headed, stolid, and stupid.  It is absurd to think for an
instant that they can compete with the workers of the New World.
Brutalised, degraded, and dull, the Ghetto folk will be unable to render
efficient service to England in the world struggle for industrial
supremacy which economists declare has already begun.  Neither as workers
nor as soldiers can they come up to the mark when England, in her need,
calls upon them, her forgotten ones; and if England be flung out of the
world's industrial orbit, they will perish like flies at the end of
summer.  Or, with England critically situated, and with them made
desperate as wild beasts are made desperate, they may become a menace and
go "swelling" down to the West End to return the "slumming" the West End
has done in the East.  In which case, before rapid-fire guns and the
modern machinery of warfare, they will perish the more swiftly and
easily.




CHAPTER XX--COFFEE-HOUSES AND DOSS-HOUSES


Another phrase gone glimmering, shorn of romance and tradition and all
that goes to make phrases worth keeping!  For me, henceforth, "coffee-
house" will possess anything but an agreeable connotation.  Over on the
other side of the world, the mere mention of the word was sufficient to
conjure up whole crowds of its historic frequenters, and to send trooping
through my imagination endless groups of wits and dandies, pamphleteers
and bravos, and bohemians of Grub Street.

But here, on this side of the world, alas and alack, the very name is a
misnomer.  Coffee-house: a place where people drink coffee.  Not at all.
You cannot obtain coffee in such a place for love or money.  True, you
may call for coffee, and you will have brought you something in a cup
purporting to be coffee, and you will taste it and be disillusioned, for
coffee it certainly is not.

And what is true of the coffee is true of the coffee-house.  Working-men,
in the main, frequent these places, and greasy, dirty places they are,
without one thing about them to cherish decency in a man or put
self-respect into him.  Table-cloths and napkins are unknown.  A man eats
in the midst of the debris left by his predecessor, and dribbles his own
scraps about him and on the floor.  In rush times, in such places, I have
positively waded through the muck and mess that covered the floor, and I
have managed to eat because I was abominably hungry and capable of eating
anything.

This seems to be the normal condition of the working-man, from the zest
with which he addresses himself to the board.  Eating is a necessity, and
there are no frills about it.  He brings in with him a primitive
voraciousness, and, I am confident, carries away with him a fairly
healthy appetite.  When you see such a man, on his way to work in the
morning, order a pint of tea, which is no more tea than it is ambrosia,
pull a hunk of dry bread from his pocket, and wash the one down with the
other, depend upon it, that man has not the right sort of stuff in his
belly, nor enough of the wrong sort of stuff, to fit him for big day's
work.  And further, depend upon it, he and a thousand of his kind will
not turn out the quantity or quality of work that a thousand men will who
have eaten heartily of meat and potatoes, and drunk coffee that is
coffee.

As a vagrant in the "Hobo" of a California jail, I have been served
better food and drink than the London workman receives in his
coffee-houses; while as an American labourer I have eaten a breakfast for
twelvepence such as the British labourer would not dream of eating.  Of
course, he will pay only three or four pence for his; which is, however,
as much as I paid, for I would be earning six shillings to his two or two
and a half.  On the other hand, though, and in return, I would turn out
an amount of work in the course of the day that would put to shame the
amount he turned out.  So there are two sides to it.  The man with the
high standard of living will always do more work and better than the man
with the low standard of living.

There is a comparison which sailormen make between the English and
American merchant services.  In an English ship, they say, it is poor
grub, poor pay, and easy work; in an American ship, good grub, good pay,
and hard work.  And this is applicable to the working populations of both
countries.  The ocean greyhounds have to pay for speed and steam, and so
does the workman.  But if the workman is not able to pay for it, he will
not have the speed and steam, that is all.  The proof of it is when the
English workman comes to America.  He will lay more bricks in New York
than he will in London, still more bricks in St. Louis, and still more
bricks when he gets to San Francisco. {3}  His standard of living has
been rising all the time.

Early in the morning, along the streets frequented by workmen on the way
to work, many women sit on the sidewalk with sacks of bread beside them.
No end of workmen purchase these, and eat them as they walk along.  They
do not even wash the dry bread down with the tea to be obtained for a
penny in the coffee-houses.  It is incontestable that a man is not fit to
begin his day's work on a meal like that; and it is equally incontestable
that the loss will fall upon his employer and upon the nation.  For some
time, now, statesmen have been crying, "Wake up, England!"  It would show
more hard-headed common sense if they changed the tune to "Feed up,
England!"

Not only is the worker poorly fed, but he is filthily fed.  I have stood
outside a butcher-shop and watched a horde of speculative housewives
turning over the trimmings and scraps and shreds of beef and mutton--dog-
meat in the States.  I would not vouch for the clean fingers of these
housewives, no more than I would vouch for the cleanliness of the single
rooms in which many of them and their families lived; yet they raked, and
pawed, and scraped the mess about in their anxiety to get the worth of
their coppers.  I kept my eye on one particularly offensive-looking bit
of meat, and followed it through the clutches of over twenty women, till
it fell to the lot of a timid-appearing little woman whom the butcher
bluffed into taking it.  All day long this heap of scraps was added to
and taken away from, the dust and dirt of the street falling upon it,
flies settling on it, and the dirty fingers turning it over and over.

The costers wheel loads of specked and decaying fruit around in the
barrows all day, and very often store it in their one living and sleeping
room for the night.  There it is exposed to the sickness and disease, the
effluvia and vile exhalations of overcrowded and rotten life, and next
day it is carted about again to be sold.

The poor worker of the East End never knows what it is to eat good,
wholesome meat or fruit--in fact, he rarely eats meat or fruit at all;
while the skilled workman has nothing to boast of in the way of what he
eats.  Judging from the coffee-houses, which is a fair criterion, they
never know in all their lives what tea, coffee, or cocoa tastes like.  The
slops and water-witcheries of the coffee-houses, varying only in
sloppiness and witchery, never even approximate or suggest what you and I
are accustomed to drink as tea and coffee.

A little incident comes to me, connected with a coffee-house not far from
Jubilee Street on the Mile End Road.

"Cawn yer let me 'ave somethin' for this, daughter?  Anythin', Hi don't
mind.  Hi 'aven't 'ad a bite the blessed dy, an' Hi'm that fynt . . . "

She was an old woman, clad in decent black rags, and in her hand she held
a penny.  The one she had addressed as "daughter" was a careworn woman of
forty, proprietress and waitress of the house.

I waited, possibly as anxiously as the old woman, to see how the appeal
would be received.  It was four in the afternoon, and she looked faint
and sick.  The woman hesitated an instant, then brought a large plate of
"stewed lamb and young peas."  I was eating a plate of it myself, and it
is my judgment that the lamb was mutton and that the peas might have been
younger without being youthful.  However, the point is, the dish was sold
at sixpence, and the proprietress gave it for a penny, demonstrating anew
the old truth that the poor are the most charitable.

The old woman, profuse in her gratitude, took a seat on the other side of
the narrow table and ravenously attacked the smoking stew.  We ate
steadily and silently, the pair of us, when suddenly, explosively and
most gleefully, she cried out to me,--

"Hi sold a box o' matches!  Yus," she confirmed, if anything with greater
and more explosive glee.  "Hi sold a box o' matches!  That's 'ow Hi got
the penny."

"You must be getting along in years," I suggested.

"Seventy-four yesterday," she replied, and returned with gusto to her
plate.

"Blimey, I'd like to do something for the old girl, that I would, but
this is the first I've 'ad to-dy," the young fellow alongside volunteered
to me.  "An' I only 'ave this because I 'appened to make an odd shilling
washin' out, Lord lumme! I don't know 'ow many pots."

"No work at my own tryde for six weeks," he said further, in reply to my
questions; "nothin' but odd jobs a blessed long wy between."

* * * * *

One meets with all sorts of adventures in coffee-house, and I shall not
soon forget a Cockney Amazon in a place near Trafalgar Square, to whom I
tendered a sovereign when paying my score.  (By the way, one is supposed
to pay before he begins to eat, and if he be poorly dressed he is
compelled to pay before he eats).

The girl bit the gold piece between her teeth, rang it on the counter,
and then looked me and my rags witheringly up and down.

"Where'd you find it?" she at length demanded.

"Some mug left it on the table when he went out, eh, don't you think?" I
retorted.

"Wot's yer gyme?" she queried, looking me calmly in the eyes.

"I makes 'em," quoth I.

She sniffed superciliously and gave me the change in small silver, and I
had my revenge by biting and ringing every piece of it.

"I'll give you a ha'penny for another lump of sugar in the tea," I said.

"I'll see you in 'ell first," came the retort courteous.  Also, she
amplified the retort courteous in divers vivid and unprintable ways.

I never had much talent for repartee, but she knocked silly what little I
had, and I gulped down my tea a beaten man, while she gloated after me
even as I passed out to the street.

While 300,000 people of London live in one-room tenements, and 900,000
are illegally and viciously housed, 38,000 more are registered as living
in common lodging-houses--known in the vernacular as "doss-houses."  There
are many kinds of doss-houses, but in one thing they are all alike, from
the filthy little ones to the monster big ones paying five per cent. and
blatantly lauded by smug middle-class men who know but one thing about
them, and that one thing is their uninhabitableness.  By this I do not
mean that the roofs leak or the walls are draughty; but what I do mean is
that life in them is degrading and unwholesome.

"The poor man's hotel," they are often called, but the phrase is
caricature.  Not to possess a room to one's self, in which sometimes to
sit alone; to be forced out of bed willy-nilly, the first thing in the
morning; to engage and pay anew for a bed each night; and never to have
any privacy, surely is a mode of existence quite different from that of
hotel life.

This must not be considered a sweeping condemnation of the big private
and municipal lodging-houses and working-men's homes.  Far from it.  They
have remedied many of the atrocities attendant upon the irresponsible
small doss-houses, and they give the workman more for his money than he
ever received before; but that does not make them as habitable or
wholesome as the dwelling-place of a man should be who does his work in
the world.

The little private doss-houses, as a rule, are unmitigated horrors.  I
have slept in them, and I know; but let me pass them by and confine
myself to the bigger and better ones.  Not far from Middlesex Street,
Whitechapel, I entered such a house, a place inhabited almost entirely by
working men.  The entrance was by way of a flight of steps descending
from the sidewalk to what was properly the cellar of the building.  Here
were two large and gloomily lighted rooms, in which men cooked and ate.  I
had intended to do some cooking myself, but the smell of the place stole
away my appetite, or, rather, wrested it from me; so I contented myself
with watching other men cook and eat.

One workman, home from work, sat down opposite me at the rough wooden
table, and began his meal.  A handful of salt on the not over-clean table
constituted his butter.  Into it he dipped his bread, mouthful by
mouthful, and washed it down with tea from a big mug.  A piece of fish
completed his bill of fare.  He ate silently, looking neither to right
nor left nor across at me.  Here and there, at the various tables, other
men were eating, just as silently.  In the whole room there was hardly a
note of conversation.  A feeling of gloom pervaded the ill-lighted place.
Many of them sat and brooded over the crumbs of their repast, and made me
wonder, as Childe Roland wondered, what evil they had done that they
should be punished so.

From the kitchen came the sounds of more genial life, and I ventured into
the range where the men were cooking.  But the smell I had noticed on
entering was stronger here, and a rising nausea drove me into the street
for fresh air.

On my return I paid fivepence for a "cabin," took my receipt for the same
in the form of a huge brass check, and went upstairs to the smoking-room.
Here, a couple of small billiard tables and several checkerboards were
being used by young working-men, who waited in relays for their turn at
the games, while many men were sitting around, smoking, reading, and
mending their clothes.  The young men were hilarious, the old men were
gloomy.  In fact, there were two types of men, the cheerful and the
sodden or blue, and age seemed to determine the classification.

But no more than the two cellar rooms did this room convey the remotest
suggestion of home.  Certainly there could be nothing home-like about it
to you and me, who know what home really is.  On the walls were the most
preposterous and insulting notices regulating the conduct of the guests,
and at ten o'clock the lights were put out, and nothing remained but bed.
This was gained by descending again to the cellar, by surrendering the
brass check to a burly doorkeeper, and by climbing a long flight of
stairs into the upper regions.  I went to the top of the building and
down again, passing several floors filled with sleeping men.  The
"cabins" were the best accommodation, each cabin allowing space for a
tiny bed and room alongside of it in which to undress.  The bedding was
clean, and with neither it nor the bed do I find any fault.  But there
was no privacy about it, no being alone.

To get an adequate idea of a floor filled with cabins, you have merely to
magnify a layer of the pasteboard pigeon-holes of an egg-crate till each
pigeon-hole is seven feet in height and otherwise properly dimensioned,
then place the magnified layer on the floor of a large, barnlike room,
and there you have it.  There are no ceilings to the pigeon-holes, the
walls are thin, and the snores from all the sleepers and every move and
turn of your nearer neighbours come plainly to your ears.  And this cabin
is yours only for a little while.  In the morning out you go.  You cannot
put your trunk in it, or come and go when you like, or lock the door
behind you, or anything of the sort.  In fact, there is no door at all,
only a doorway.  If you care to remain a guest in this poor man's hotel,
you must put up with all this, and with prison regulations which impress
upon you constantly that you are nobody, with little soul of your own and
less to say about it.

Now I contend that the least a man who does his day's work should have is
a room to himself, where he can lock the door and be safe in his
possessions; where he can sit down and read by a window or look out;
where he can come and go whenever he wishes; where he can accumulate a
few personal belongings other than those he carries about with him on his
back and in his pockets; where he can hang up pictures of his mother,
sister, sweet-heart, ballet dancers, or bulldogs, as his heart listeth--in
short, one place of his own on the earth of which he can say: "This is
mine, my castle; the world stops at the threshold; here am I lord and
master."  He will be a better citizen, this man; and he will do a better
day's work.

I stood on one floor of the poor man's hotel and listened.  I went from
bed to bed and looked at the sleepers.  They were young men, from twenty
to forty, most of them.  Old men cannot afford the working-man's home.
They go to the workhouse.  But I looked at the young men, scores of them,
and they were not bad-looking fellows.  Their faces were made for women's
kisses, their necks for women's arms.  They were lovable, as men are
lovable.  They were capable of love.  A woman's touch redeems and
softens, and they needed such redemption and softening instead of each
day growing harsh and harsher.  And I wondered where these women were,
and heard a "harlot's ginny laugh."  Leman Street, Waterloo Road,
Piccadilly, The Strand, answered me, and I knew where they were.




CHAPTER XXI--THE PRECARIOUSNESS OF LIFE


I was talking with a very vindictive man.  In his opinion, his wife had
wronged him and the law had wronged him.  The merits and morals of the
case are immaterial.  The meat of the matter is that she had obtained a
separation, and he was compelled to pay ten shillings each week for the
support of her and the five children.  "But look you," said he to me,
"wot'll 'appen to 'er if I don't py up the ten shillings?  S'posin', now,
just s'posin' a accident 'appens to me, so I cawn't work.  S'posin' I get
a rupture, or the rheumatics, or the cholera.  Wot's she goin' to do, eh?
Wot's she goin' to do?"

He shook his head sadly.  "No 'ope for 'er.  The best she cawn do is the
work'ouse, an' that's 'ell.  An' if she don't go to the work'ouse, it'll
be a worse 'ell.  Come along 'ith me an' I'll show you women sleepin' in
a passage, a dozen of 'em.  An' I'll show you worse, wot she'll come to
if anythin' 'appens to me and the ten shillings."

The certitude of this man's forecast is worthy of consideration.  He knew
conditions sufficiently to know the precariousness of his wife's grasp on
food and shelter.  For her game was up when his working capacity was
impaired or destroyed.  And when this state of affairs is looked at in
its larger aspect, the same will be found true of hundreds of thousands
and even millions of men and women living amicably together and
co-operating in the pursuit of food and shelter.

The figures are appalling: 1,800,000 people in London live on the poverty
line and below it, and 1,000,000 live with one week's wages between them
and pauperism.  In all England and Wales, eighteen per cent. of the whole
population are driven to the parish for relief, and in London, according
to the statistics of the London County Council, twenty-one per cent. of
the whole population are driven to the parish for relief.  Between being
driven to the parish for relief and being an out-and-out pauper there is
a great difference, yet London supports 123,000 paupers, quite a city of
folk in themselves.  One in every four in London dies on public charity,
while 939 out of every 1000 in the United Kingdom die in poverty;
8,000,000 simply struggle on the ragged edge of starvation, and
20,000,000 more are not comfortable in the simple and clean sense of the
word.

It is interesting to go more into detail concerning the London people who
die on charity.

In 1886, and up to 1893, the percentage of pauperism to population was
less in London than in all England; but since 1893, and for every
succeeding year, the percentage of pauperism to population has been
greater in London than in all England.  Yet, from the Registrar-General's
Report for 1886, the following figures are taken:-

Out of 81,951 deaths in London (1884):-

In workhouses            9,909
In hospitals             6,559
In lunatic asylums         278
Total in public refuges 16,746

Commenting on these figures, a Fabian writer says: "Considering that
comparatively few of these are children, it is probable that one in every
three London adults will be driven into one of these refuges to die, and
the proportion in the case of the manual labour class must of course be
still larger."

These figures serve somewhat to indicate the proximity of the average
worker to pauperism.  Various things make pauperism.  An advertisement,
for instance, such as this, appearing in yesterday morning's paper:-

"Clerk wanted, with knowledge of shorthand, typewriting, and invoicing:
wages ten shillings ($2.50) a week.  Apply by letter," &c.

And in to-day's paper I read of a clerk, thirty-five years of age and an
inmate of a London workhouse, brought before a magistrate for
non-performance of task.  He claimed that he had done his various tasks
since he had been an inmate; but when the master set him to breaking
stones, his hands blistered, and he could not finish the task.  He had
never been used to an implement heavier than a pen, he said.  The
magistrate sentenced him and his blistered hands to seven days' hard
labour.

Old age, of course, makes pauperism.  And then there is the accident, the
thing happening, the death or disablement of the husband, father, and
bread-winner.  Here is a man, with a wife and three children, living on
the ticklish security of twenty shillings per week--and there are
hundreds of thousands of such families in London.  Perforce, to even half
exist, they must live up to the last penny of it, so that a week's wages
(one pound) is all that stands between this family and pauperism or
starvation.  The thing happens, the father is struck down, and what then?
A mother with three children can do little or nothing.  Either she must
hand her children over to society as juvenile paupers, in order to be
free to do something adequate for herself, or she must go to the sweat-
shops for work which she can perform in the vile den possible to her
reduced income.  But with the sweat-shops, married women who eke out
their husband's earnings, and single women who have but themselves
miserably to support, determine the scale of wages.  And this scale of
wages, so determined, is so low that the mother and her three children
can live only in positive beastliness and semi-starvation, till decay and
death end their suffering.

To show that this mother, with her three children to support, cannot
compete in the sweating industries, I instance from the current
newspapers the two following cases:-

A father indignantly writes that his daughter and a girl companion
receive 8.5d. per gross for making boxes.  They made each day four gross.
Their expenses were 8d. for car fare, 2d. for stamps, 2.5d. for glue, and
1d. for string, so that all they earned between them was 1s. 9d., or a
daily wage each of 10.5d.

In the second ewe, before the Luton Guardians a few days ago, an old
woman of seventy-two appeared, asking for relief.  "She was a straw-hat
maker, but had been compelled to give up the work owing to the price she
obtained for them--namely, 2.25d. each.  For that price she had to
provide plait trimmings and make and finish the hats."

Yet this mother and her three children we are considering have done no
wrong that they should be so punished.  They have not sinned.  The thing
happened, that is all; the husband, father and bread-winner, was struck
down.  There is no guarding against it.  It is fortuitous.  A family
stands so many chances of escaping the bottom of the Abyss, and so many
chances of falling plump down to it.  The chance is reducible to cold,
pitiless figures, and a few of these figures will not be out of place.

Sir A. Forwood calculates that--

1 of every 1400 workmen is killed annually.
1 of every 2500 workmen is totally disabled.
1 of every 300 workmen is permanently partially disabled.
1 of every 8 workmen is temporarily disabled 3 or 4 weeks.

But these are only the accidents of industry.  The high mortality of the
people who live in the Ghetto plays a terrible part.  The average age at
death among the people of the West End is fifty-five years; the average
age at death among the people of the East End is thirty years.  That is
to say, the person in the West End has twice the chance for life that the
person has in the East End.  Talk of war!  The mortality in South Africa
and the Philippines fades away to insignificance.  Here, in the heart of
peace, is where the blood is being shed; and here not even the civilised
rules of warfare obtain, for the women and children and babes in the arms
are killed just as ferociously as the men are killed.  War!  In England,
every year, 500,000 men, women, and children, engaged in the various
industries, are killed and disabled, or are injured to disablement by
disease.

In the West End eighteen per cent. of the children die before five years
of age; in the East End fifty-five per cent. of the children die before
five years of age.  And there are streets in London where out of every
one hundred children born in a year, fifty die during the next year; and
of the fifty that remain, twenty-five die before they are five years old.
Slaughter!  Herod did not do quite so badly.

That industry causes greater havoc with human life than battle does no
better substantiation can be given than the following extract from a
recent report of the Liverpool Medical Officer, which is not applicable
to Liverpool alone:-

   In many instances little if any sunlight could get to the courts, and
   the atmosphere within the dwellings was always foul, owing largely to
   the saturated condition of the walls and ceilings, which for so many
   years had absorbed the exhalations of the occupants into their porous
   material.  Singular testimony to the absence of sunlight in these
   courts was furnished by the action of the Parks and Gardens Committee,
   who desired to brighten the homes of the poorest class by gifts of
   growing flowers and window-boxes; but these gifts could not be made in
   courts such as these, _as flowers and plants were susceptible to the
   unwholesome surroundings, and would not live_.

Mr. George Haw has compiled the following table on the three St. George's
parishes (London parishes):-

                   Percentage of
                   Population      Death-rate
                   Overcrowded      per 1000
St. George's West  10                 13.2
St. George's South 35                 23.7
St. George's East  40                 26.4

Then there are the "dangerous trades," in which countless workers are
employed.  Their hold on life is indeed precarious--far, far more
precarious than the hold of the twentieth-century soldier on life.  In
the linen trade, in the preparation of the flax, wet feet and wet clothes
cause an unusual amount of bronchitis, pneumonia, and severe rheumatism;
while in the carding and spinning departments the fine dust produces lung
disease in the majority of cases, and the woman who starts carding at
seventeen or eighteen begins to break up and go to pieces at thirty.  The
chemical labourers, picked from the strongest and most splendidly-built
men to be found, live, on an average, less than forty-eight years.

Says Dr. Arlidge, of the potter's trade: "Potter's dust does not kill
suddenly, but settles, year after year, a little more firmly into the
lungs, until at length a case of plaster is formed.  Breathing becomes
more and more difficult and depressed, and finally ceases."

Steel dust, stone dust, clay dust, alkali dust, fluff dust, fibre
dust--all these things kill, and they are more deadly than machine-guns
and pom-poms.  Worst of all is the lead dust in the white-lead trades.
Here is a description of the typical dissolution of a young, healthy,
well-developed girl who goes to work in a white-lead factory:-

   Here, after a varying degree of exposure, she becomes anaemic.  It may
   be that her gums show a very faint blue line, or perchance her teeth
   and gums are perfectly sound, and no blue line is discernible.
   Coincidently with the anaemia she has been getting thinner, but so
   gradually as scarcely to impress itself upon her or her friends.
   Sickness, however, ensues, and headaches, growing in intensity, are
   developed.  These are frequently attended by obscuration of vision or
   temporary blindness.  Such a girl passes into what appears to her
   friends and medical adviser as ordinary hysteria.  This gradually
   deepens without warning, until she is suddenly seized with a
   convulsion, beginning in one half of the face, then involving the arm,
   next the leg of the same side of the body, until the convulsion,
   violent and purely epileptic form in character, becomes universal.
   This is attended by loss of consciousness, out of which she passes
   into a series of convulsions, gradually increasing in severity, in one
   of which she dies--or consciousness, partial or perfect, is regained,
   either, it may be, for a few minutes, a few hours, or days, during
   which violent headache is complained of, or she is delirious and
   excited, as in acute mania, or dull and sullen as in melancholia, and
   requires to be roused, when she is found wandering, and her speech is
   somewhat imperfect.  Without further warning, save that the pulse,
   which has become soft, with nearly the normal number of beats, all at
   once becomes low and hard; she is suddenly seized with another
   convulsion, in which she dies, or passes into a state of coma from
   which she never rallies.  In another case the convulsions will
   gradually subside, the headache disappears and the patient recovers,
   only to find that she has completely lost her eyesight, a loss that
   may be temporary or permanent.

And here are a few specific cases of white-lead poisoning:-

   Charlotte Rafferty, a fine, well-grown young woman with a splendid
   constitution--who had never had a day's illness in her life--became a
   white-lead worker.  Convulsions seized her at the foot of the ladder
   in the works.  Dr. Oliver examined her, found the blue line along her
   gums, which shows that the system is under the influence of the lead.
   He knew that the convulsions would shortly return.  They did so, and
   she died.

   Mary Ann Toler--a girl of seventeen, who had never had a fit in her
   life--three times became ill, and had to leave off work in the
   factory.  Before she was nineteen she showed symptoms of lead
   poisoning--had fits, frothed at the mouth, and died.

   Mary A., an unusually vigorous woman, was able to work in the lead
   factory for _twenty years_, having colic once only during that time.
   Her eight children all died in early infancy from convulsions.  One
   morning, whilst brushing her hair, this woman suddenly lost all power
   in both her wrists.

   Eliza H., aged twenty-five, _after five months_ at lead works, was
   seized with colic.  She entered another factory (after being refused
   by the first one) and worked on uninterruptedly for two years.  Then
   the former symptoms returned, she was seized with convulsions, and
   died in two days of acute lead poisoning.

Mr. Vaughan Nash, speaking of the unborn generation, says: "The children
of the white-lead worker enter the world, as a rule, only to die from the
convulsions of lead poisoning--they are either born prematurely, or die
within the first year."

And, finally, let me instance the case of Harriet A. Walker, a young girl
of seventeen, killed while leading a forlorn hope on the industrial
battlefield.  She was employed as an enamelled ware brusher, wherein lead
poisoning is encountered.  Her father and brother were both out of
employment.  She concealed her illness, walked six miles a day to and
from work, earned her seven or eight shillings per week, and died, at
seventeen.

Depression in trade also plays an important part in hurling the workers
into the Abyss.  With a week's wages between a family and pauperism, a
month's enforced idleness means hardship and misery almost indescribable,
and from the ravages of which the victims do not always recover when work
is to be had again.  Just now the daily papers contain the report of a
meeting of the Carlisle branch of the Dockers' Union, wherein it is
stated that many of the men, for months past, have not averaged a weekly
income of more than from four to five shillings.  The stagnated state of
the shipping industry in the port of London is held accountable for this
condition of affairs.

To the young working-man or working-woman, or married couple, there is no
assurance of happy or healthy middle life, nor of solvent old age.  Work
as they will, they cannot make their future secure.  It is all a matter
of chance.  Everything depends upon the thing happening, the thing with
which they have nothing to do.  Precaution cannot fend it off, nor can
wiles evade it.  If they remain on the industrial battlefield they must
face it and take their chance against heavy odds.  Of course, if they are
favourably made and are not tied by kinship duties, they may run away
from the industrial battlefield.  In which event the safest thing the man
can do is to join the army; and for the woman, possibly, to become a Red
Cross nurse or go into a nunnery.  In either case they must forego home
and children and all that makes life worth living and old age other than
a nightmare.




CHAPTER XXII--SUICIDE


With life so precarious, and opportunity for the happiness of life so
remote, it is inevitable that life shall be cheap and suicide common.  So
common is it, that one cannot pick up a daily paper without running
across it; while an attempt-at-suicide case in a police court excites no
more interest than an ordinary "drunk," and is handled with the same
rapidity and unconcern.

I remember such a case in the Thames Police Court.  I pride myself that I
have good eyes and ears, and a fair working knowledge of men and things;
but I confess, as I stood in that court-room, that I was half bewildered
by the amazing despatch with which drunks, disorderlies, vagrants,
brawlers, wife-beaters, thieves, fences, gamblers, and women of the
street went through the machine of justice.  The dock stood in the centre
of the court (where the light is best), and into it and out again stepped
men, women, and children, in a stream as steady as the stream of
sentences which fell from the magistrate's lips.

I was still pondering over a consumptive "fence" who had pleaded
inability to work and necessity for supporting wife and children, and who
had received a year at hard labour, when a young boy of about twenty
appeared in the dock.  "Alfred Freeman," I caught his name, but failed to
catch the charge.  A stout and motherly-looking woman bobbed up in the
witness-box and began her testimony.  Wife of the Britannia lock-keeper,
I learned she was.  Time, night; a splash; she ran to the lock and found
the prisoner in the water.

I flashed my gaze from her to him.  So that was the charge, self-murder.
He stood there dazed and unheeding, his bonny brown hair rumpled down his
forehead, his face haggard and careworn and boyish still.

"Yes, sir," the lock-keeper's wife was saying.  "As fast as I pulled to
get 'im out, 'e crawled back.  Then I called for 'elp, and some workmen
'appened along, and we got 'im out and turned 'im over to the constable."

The magistrate complimented the woman on her muscular powers, and the
court-room laughed; but all I could see was a boy on the threshold of
life, passionately crawling to muddy death, and there was no laughter in
it.

A man was now in the witness-box, testifying to the boy's good character
and giving extenuating evidence.  He was the boy's foreman, or had been.
Alfred was a good boy, but he had had lots of trouble at home, money
matters.  And then his mother was sick.  He was given to worrying, and he
worried over it till he laid himself out and wasn't fit for work.  He
(the foreman), for the sake of his own reputation, the boy's work being
bad, had been forced to ask him to resign.

"Anything to say?" the magistrate demanded abruptly.

The boy in the dock mumbled something indistinctly.  He was still dazed.

"What does he say, constable?" the magistrate asked impatiently.

The stalwart man in blue bent his ear to the prisoner's lips, and then
replied loudly, "He says he's very sorry, your Worship."

"Remanded," said his Worship; and the next case was under way, the first
witness already engaged in taking the oath.  The boy, dazed and
unheeding, passed out with the jailer.  That was all, five minutes from
start to finish; and two hulking brutes in the dock were trying
strenuously to shift the responsibility of the possession of a stolen
fishing-pole, worth probably ten cents.

The chief trouble with these poor folk is that they do not know how to
commit suicide, and usually have to make two or three attempts before
they succeed.  This, very naturally, is a horrid nuisance to the
constables and magistrates, and gives them no end of trouble.  Sometimes,
however, the magistrates are frankly outspoken about the matter, and
censure the prisoners for the slackness of their attempts.  For instance
Mr. R. S---, chairman of the S--- B--- magistrates, in the case the other
day of Ann Wood, who tried to make away with herself in the canal: "If
you wanted to do it, why didn't you do it and get it done with?" demanded
the indignant Mr. R. S---.  "Why did you not get under the water and make
an end of it, instead of giving us all this trouble and bother?"

Poverty, misery, and fear of the workhouse, are the principal causes of
suicide among the working classes.  "I'll drown myself before I go into
the workhouse," said Ellen Hughes Hunt, aged fifty-two.  Last Wednesday
they held an inquest on her body at Shoreditch.  Her husband came from
the Islington Workhouse to testify.  He had been a cheesemonger, but
failure in business and poverty had driven him into the workhouse,
whither his wife had refused to accompany him.

She was last seen at one in the morning.  Three hours later her hat and
jacket were found on the towing path by the Regent's Canal, and later her
body was fished from the water.  _Verdict: Suicide during temporary
insanity_.

Such verdicts are crimes against truth.  The Law is a lie, and through it
men lie most shamelessly.  For instance, a disgraced woman, forsaken and
spat upon by kith and kin, doses herself and her baby with laudanum.  The
baby dies; but she pulls through after a few weeks in hospital, is
charged with murder, convicted, and sentenced to ten years' penal
servitude.  Recovering, the Law holds her responsible for her actions;
yet, had she died, the same Law would have rendered a verdict of
temporary insanity.

Now, considering the case of Ellen Hughes Hunt, it is as fair and logical
to say that her husband was suffering from temporary insanity when he
went into the Islington Workhouse, as it is to say that she was suffering
from temporary insanity when she went into the Regent's Canal.  As to
which is the preferable sojourning place is a matter of opinion, of
intellectual judgment.  I, for one, from what I know of canals and
workhouses, should choose the canal, were I in a similar position.  And I
make bold to contend that I am no more insane than Ellen Hughes Hunt, her
husband, and the rest of the human herd.

Man no longer follows instinct with the old natural fidelity.  He has
developed into a reasoning creature, and can intellectually cling to life
or discard life just as life happens to promise great pleasure or pain.  I
dare to assert that Ellen Hughes Hunt, defrauded and bilked of all the
joys of life which fifty-two years' service in the world has earned, with
nothing but the horrors of the workhouse before her, was very rational
and level-headed when she elected to jump into the canal.  And I dare to
assert, further, that the jury had done a wiser thing to bring in a
verdict charging society with temporary insanity for allowing Ellen
Hughes Hunt to be defrauded and bilked of all the joys of life which
fifty-two years' service in the world had earned.

Temporary insanity!  Oh, these cursed phrases, these lies of language,
under which people with meat in their bellies and whole shirts on their
backs shelter themselves, and evade the responsibility of their brothers
and sisters, empty of belly and without whole shirts on their backs.

From one issue of the _Observer_, an East End paper, I quote the
following commonplace events:-

   A ship's fireman, named Johnny King, was charged with attempting to
   commit suicide.  On Wednesday defendant went to Bow Police Station and
   stated that he had swallowed a quantity of phosphor paste, as he was
   hard up and unable to obtain work.  King was taken inside and an
   emetic administered, when he vomited up a quantity of the poison.
   Defendant now said he was very sorry.  Although he had sixteen years'
   good character, he was unable to obtain work of any kind.  Mr.
   Dickinson had defendant put back for the court missionary to see him.

   Timothy Warner, thirty-two, was remanded for a similar offence.  He
   jumped off Limehouse Pier, and when rescued, said, "I intended to do
   it."

   A decent-looking young woman, named Ellen Gray, was remanded on a
   charge of attempting to commit suicide.  About half-past eight on
   Sunday morning Constable 834 K found defendant lying in a doorway in
   Benworth Street, and she was in a very drowsy condition.  She was
   holding an empty bottle in one hand, and stated that some two or three
   hours previously she had swallowed a quantity of laudanum.  As she was
   evidently very ill, the divisional surgeon was sent for, and having
   administered some coffee, ordered that she was to be kept awake.  When
   defendant was charged, she stated that the reason why she attempted to
   take her life was she had neither home nor friends.

I do not say that all people who commit suicide are sane, no more than I
say that all people who do not commit suicide are sane.  Insecurity of
food and shelter, by the way, is a great cause of insanity among the
living.  Costermongers, hawkers, and pedlars, a class of workers who live
from hand to mouth more than those of any other class, form the highest
percentage of those in the lunatic asylums.  Among the males each year,
26.9 per 10,000 go insane, and among the women, 36.9.  On the other hand,
of soldiers, who are at least sure of food and shelter, 13 per 10,000 go
insane; and of farmers and graziers, only 5.1.  So a coster is twice as
likely to lose his reason as a soldier, and five times as likely as a
farmer.

Misfortune and misery are very potent in turning people's heads, and
drive one person to the lunatic asylum, and another to the morgue or the
gallows.  When the thing happens, and the father and husband, for all of
his love for wife and children and his willingness to work, can get no
work to do, it is a simple matter for his reason to totter and the light
within his brain go out.  And it is especially simple when it is taken
into consideration that his body is ravaged by innutrition and disease,
in addition to his soul being torn by the sight of his suffering wife and
little ones.

"He is a good-looking man, with a mass of black hair, dark, expressive
eyes, delicately chiselled nose and chin, and wavy, fair moustache."  This
is the reporter's description of Frank Cavilla as he stood in court, this
dreary month of September, "dressed in a much worn grey suit, and wearing
no collar."

Frank Cavilla lived and worked as a house decorator in London.  He is
described as a good workman, a steady fellow, and not given to drink,
while all his neighbours unite in testifying that he was a gentle and
affectionate husband and father.

His wife, Hannah Cavilla, was a big, handsome, light-hearted woman.  She
saw to it that his children were sent neat and clean (the neighbours all
remarked the fact) to the Childeric Road Board School.  And so, with such
a man, so blessed, working steadily and living temperately, all went
well, and the goose hung high.

Then the thing happened.  He worked for a Mr. Beck, builder, and lived in
one of his master's houses in Trundley Road.  Mr. Beck was thrown from
his trap and killed.  The thing was an unruly horse, and, as I say, it
happened.  Cavilla had to seek fresh employment and find another house.

This occurred eighteen months ago.  For eighteen months he fought the big
fight.  He got rooms in a little house in Batavia Road, but could not
make both ends meet.  Steady work could not be obtained.  He struggled
manfully at casual employment of all sorts, his wife and four children
starving before his eyes.  He starved himself, and grew weak, and fell
ill.  This was three months ago, and then there was absolutely no food at
all.  They made no complaint, spoke no word; but poor folk know.  The
housewives of Batavia Road sent them food, but so respectable were the
Cavillas that the food was sent anonymously, mysteriously, so as not to
hurt their pride.

The thing had happened.  He had fought, and starved, and suffered for
eighteen months.  He got up one September morning, early.  He opened his
pocket-knife.  He cut the throat of his wife, Hannah Cavilla, aged thirty-
three.  He cut the throat of his first-born, Frank, aged twelve.  He cut
the throat of his son, Walter, aged eight.  He cut the throat of his
daughter, Nellie, aged four.  He cut the throat of his youngest-born,
Ernest, aged sixteen months.  Then he watched beside the dead all day
until the evening, when the police came, and he told them to put a penny
in the slot of the gas-meter in order that they might have light to see.

Frank Cavilla stood in court, dressed in a much worn grey suit, and
wearing no collar.  He was a good-looking man, with a mass of black hair,
dark, expressive eyes, delicately chiselled nose and chin, and wavy, fair
moustache.




CHAPTER XXIII--THE CHILDREN


   "Where home is a hovel, and dull we grovel,
   Forgetting the world is fair."

There is one beautiful sight in the East End, and only one, and it is the
children dancing in the street when the organ-grinder goes his round.  It
is fascinating to watch them, the new-born, the next generation, swaying
and stepping, with pretty little mimicries and graceful inventions all
their own, with muscles that move swiftly and easily, and bodies that
leap airily, weaving rhythms never taught in dancing school.

I have talked with these children, here, there, and everywhere, and they
struck me as being bright as other children, and in many ways even
brighter.  They have most active little imaginations.  Their capacity for
projecting themselves into the realm of romance and fantasy is
remarkable.  A joyous life is romping in their blood.  They delight in
music, and motion, and colour, and very often they betray a startling
beauty of face and form under their filth and rags.

But there is a Pied Piper of London Town who steals them all away.  They
disappear.  One never sees them again, or anything that suggests them.
You may look for them in vain amongst the generation of grown-ups.  Here
you will find stunted forms, ugly faces, and blunt and stolid minds.
Grace, beauty, imagination, all the resiliency of mind and muscle, are
gone.  Sometimes, however, you may see a woman, not necessarily old, but
twisted and deformed out of all womanhood, bloated and drunken, lift her
draggled skirts and execute a few grotesque and lumbering steps upon the
pavement.  It is a hint that she was once one of those children who
danced to the organ-grinder.  Those grotesque and lumbering steps are all
that is left of the promise of childhood.  In the befogged recesses of
her brain has arisen a fleeting memory that she was once a girl.  The
crowd closes in.  Little girls are dancing beside her, about her, with
all the pretty graces she dimly recollects, but can no more than parody
with her body.  Then she pants for breath, exhausted, and stumbles out
through the circle.  But the little girls dance on.

The children of the Ghetto possess all the qualities which make for noble
manhood and womanhood; but the Ghetto itself, like an infuriated tigress
turning on its young, turns upon and destroys all these qualities, blots
out the light and laughter, and moulds those it does not kill into sodden
and forlorn creatures, uncouth, degraded, and wretched below the beasts
of the field.

As to the manner in which this is done, I have in previous chapters
described it at length; here let Professor Huxley describe it in brief:-

"Any one who is acquainted with the state of the population of all great
industrial centres, whether in this or other countries, is aware that
amidst a large and increasing body of that population there reigns
supreme . . . that condition which the French call _la misere_, a word
for which I do not think there is any exact English equivalent.  It is a
condition in which the food, warmth, and clothing which are necessary for
the mere maintenance of the functions of the body in their normal state
cannot be obtained; in which men, women, and children are forced to crowd
into dens wherein decency is abolished, and the most ordinary conditions
of healthful existence are impossible of attainment; in which the
pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness; in which
the pains accumulate at compound interest in the shape of starvation,
disease, stunted development, and moral degradation; in which the
prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of unsuccessful
battling with hunger, rounded by a pauper's grave."

In such conditions, the outlook for children is hopeless.  They die like
flies, and those that survive, survive because they possess excessive
vitality and a capacity of adaptation to the degradation with which they
are surrounded.  They have no home life.  In the dens and lairs in which
they live they are exposed to all that is obscene and indecent.  And as
their minds are made rotten, so are their bodies made rotten by bad
sanitation, overcrowding, and underfeeding.  When a father and mother
live with three or four children in a room where the children take turn
about in sitting up to drive the rats away from the sleepers, when those
children never have enough to eat and are preyed upon and made miserable
and weak by swarming vermin, the sort of men and women the survivors will
make can readily be imagined.

   "Dull despair and misery
   Lie about them from their birth;
   Ugly curses, uglier mirth,
   Are their earliest lullaby."

A man and a woman marry and set up housekeeping in one room.  Their
income does not increase with the years, though their family does, and
the man is exceedingly lucky if he can keep his health and his job.  A
baby comes, and then another.  This means that more room should be
obtained; but these little mouths and bodies mean additional expense and
make it absolutely impossible to get more spacious quarters.  More babies
come.  There is not room in which to turn around.  The youngsters run the
streets, and by the time they are twelve or fourteen the room-issue comes
to a head, and out they go on the streets for good.  The boy, if he be
lucky, can manage to make the common lodging-houses, and he may have any
one of several ends.  But the girl of fourteen or fifteen, forced in this
manner to leave the one room called home, and able to earn at the best a
paltry five or six shillings per week, can have but one end.  And the
bitter end of that one end is such as that of the woman whose body the
police found this morning in a doorway in Dorset Street, Whitechapel.
Homeless, shelterless, sick, with no one with her in her last hour, she
had died in the night of exposure.  She was sixty-two years old and a
match vendor.  She died as a wild animal dies.

Fresh in my mind is the picture of a boy in the dock of an East End
police court.  His head was barely visible above the railing.  He was
being proved guilty of stealing two shillings from a woman, which he had
spent, not for candy and cakes and a good time, but for food.

"Why didn't you ask the woman for food?" the magistrate demanded, in a
hurt sort of tone.  "She would surely have given you something to eat."

"If I 'ad arsked 'er, I'd got locked up for beggin'," was the boy's
reply.

The magistrate knitted his brows and accepted the rebuke.  Nobody knew
the boy, nor his father or mother.  He was without beginning or
antecedent, a waif, a stray, a young cub seeking his food in the jungle
of empire, preying upon the weak and being preyed upon by the strong.

The people who try to help, who gather up the Ghetto children and send
them away on a day's outing to the country, believe that not very many
children reach the age of ten without having had at least one day there.
Of this, a writer says: "The mental change caused by one day so spent
must not be undervalued.  Whatever the circumstances, the children learn
the meaning of fields and woods, so that descriptions of country scenery
in the books they read, which before conveyed no impression, become now
intelligible."

One day in the fields and woods, if they are lucky enough to be picked up
by the people who try to help!  And they are being born faster every day
than they can be carted off to the fields and woods for the one day in
their lives.  One day!  In all their lives, one day!  And for the rest of
the days, as the boy told a certain bishop, "At ten we 'ops the wag; at
thirteen we nicks things; an' at sixteen we bashes the copper."  Which is
to say, at ten they play truant, at thirteen steal, and at sixteen are
sufficiently developed hooligans to smash the policemen.

The Rev. J. Cartmel Robinson tells of a boy and girl of his parish who
set out to walk to the forest.  They walked and walked through the never-
ending streets, expecting always to see it by-and-by; until they sat down
at last, faint and despairing, and were rescued by a kind woman who
brought them back.  Evidently they had been overlooked by the people who
try to help.

The same gentleman is authority for the statement that in a street in
Hoxton (a district of the vast East End), over seven hundred children,
between five and thirteen years, live in eighty small houses.  And he
adds: "It is because London has largely shut her children in a maze of
streets and houses and robbed them of their rightful inheritance in sky
and field and brook, that they grow up to be men and women physically
unfit."

He tells of a member of his congregation who let a basement room to a
married couple.  "They said they had two children; when they got
possession it turned out that they had four.  After a while a fifth
appeared, and the landlord gave them notice to quit.  They paid no
attention to it.  Then the sanitary inspector who has to wink at the law
so often, came in and threatened my friend with legal proceedings.  He
pleaded that he could not get them out.  They pleaded that nobody would
have them with so many children at a rental within their means, which is
one of the commonest complaints of the poor, by-the-bye.  What was to be
done?  The landlord was between two millstones.  Finally he applied to
the magistrate, who sent up an officer to inquire into the case.  Since
that time about twenty days have elapsed, and nothing has yet been done.
Is this a singular case?  By no means; it is quite common."

Last week the police raided a disorderly house.  In one room were found
two young children.  They were arrested and charged with being inmates
the same as the women had been.  Their father appeared at the trial.  He
stated that himself and wife and two older children, besides the two in
the dock, occupied that room; he stated also that he occupied it because
he could get no other room for the half-crown a week he paid for it.  The
magistrate discharged the two juvenile offenders and warned the father
that he was bringing his children up unhealthily.

But there is no need further to multiply instances.  In London the
slaughter of the innocents goes on on a scale more stupendous than any
before in the history of the world.  And equally stupendous is the
callousness of the people who believe in Christ, acknowledge God, and go
to church regularly on Sunday.  For the rest of the week they riot about
on the rents and profits which come to them from the East End stained
with the blood of the children.  Also, at times, so peculiarly are they
made, they will take half a million of these rents and profits and send
it away to educate the black boys of the Soudan.




CHAPTER XXIV--A VISION OF THE NIGHT


   All these were years ago little red-coloured, pulpy infants, capable
   of being kneaded, baked, into any social form you chose.--CARLYLE.

Late last night I walked along Commercial Street from Spitalfields to
Whitechapel, and still continuing south, down Leman Street to the docks.
And as I walked I smiled at the East End papers, which, filled with civic
pride, boastfully proclaim that there is nothing the matter with the East
End as a living place for men and women.

It is rather hard to tell a tithe of what I saw.  Much of it is
untenable.  But in a general way I may say that I saw a nightmare, a
fearful slime that quickened the pavement with life, a mess of
unmentionable obscenity that put into eclipse the "nightly horror" of
Piccadilly and the Strand.  It _was_ a menagerie of garmented bipeds that
looked something like humans and more like beasts, and to complete the
picture, brass-buttoned keepers kept order among them when they snarled
too fiercely.

I was glad the keepers were there, for I did not have on my "seafaring"
clothes, and I was what is called a "mark" for the creatures of prey that
prowled up and down.  At times, between keepers, these males looked at me
sharply, hungrily, gutter-wolves that they were, and I was afraid of
their hands, of their naked hands, as one may be afraid of the paws of a
gorilla.  They reminded me of gorillas.  Their bodies were small, ill-
shaped, and squat.  There were no swelling muscles, no abundant thews and
wide-spreading shoulders.  They exhibited, rather, an elemental economy
of nature, such as the cave-men must have exhibited.  But there was
strength in those meagre bodies, the ferocious, primordial strength to
clutch and gripe and tear and rend.  When they spring upon their human
prey they are known even to bend the victim backward and double its body
till the back is broken.  They possess neither conscience nor sentiment,
and they will kill for a half-sovereign, without fear or favour, if they
are given but half a chance.  They are a new species, a breed of city
savages.  The streets and houses, alleys and courts, are their hunting
grounds.  As valley and mountain are to the natural savage, street and
building are valley and mountain to them.  The slum is their jungle, and
they live and prey in the jungle.

The dear soft people of the golden theatres and wonder-mansions of the
West End do not see these creatures, do not dream that they exist.  But
they are here, alive, very much alive in their jungle.  And woe the day,
when England is fighting in her last trench, and her able-bodied men are
on the firing line!  For on that day they will crawl out of their dens
and lairs, and the people of the West End will see them, as the dear soft
aristocrats of Feudal France saw them and asked one another, "Whence came
they?"  "Are they men?"

But they were not the only beasts that ranged the menagerie.  They were
only here and there, lurking in dark courts and passing like grey shadows
along the walls; but the women from whose rotten loins they spring were
everywhere.  They whined insolently, and in maudlin tones begged me for
pennies, and worse.  They held carouse in every boozing ken, slatternly,
unkempt, bleary-eyed, and towsled, leering and gibbering, overspilling
with foulness and corruption, and, gone in debauch, sprawling across
benches and bars, unspeakably repulsive, fearful to look upon.

And there were others, strange, weird faces and forms and twisted
monstrosities that shouldered me on every side, inconceivable types of
sodden ugliness, the wrecks of society, the perambulating carcasses, the
living deaths--women, blasted by disease and drink till their shame
brought not tuppence in the open mart; and men, in fantastic rags,
wrenched by hardship and exposure out of all semblance of men, their
faces in a perpetual writhe of pain, grinning idiotically, shambling like
apes, dying with every step they took and each breath they drew.  And
there were young girls, of eighteen and twenty, with trim bodies and
faces yet untouched with twist and bloat, who had fetched the bottom of
the Abyss plump, in one swift fall.  And I remember a lad of fourteen,
and one of six or seven, white-faced and sickly, homeless, the pair of
them, who sat upon the pavement with their backs against a railing and
watched it all.

The unfit and the unneeded!  Industry does not clamour for them.  There
are no jobs going begging through lack of men and women.  The dockers
crowd at the entrance gate, and curse and turn away when the foreman does
not give them a call.  The engineers who have work pay six shillings a
week to their brother engineers who can find nothing to do; 514,000
textile workers oppose a resolution condemning the employment of children
under fifteen.  Women, and plenty to spare, are found to toil under the
sweat-shop masters for tenpence a day of fourteen hours.  Alfred Freeman
crawls to muddy death because he loses his job.  Ellen Hughes Hunt
prefers Regent's Canal to Islington Workhouse.  Frank Cavilla cuts the
throats of his wife and children because he cannot find work enough to
give them food and shelter.

The unfit and the unneeded!  The miserable and despised and forgotten,
dying in the social shambles.  The progeny of prostitution--of the
prostitution of men and women and children, of flesh and blood, and
sparkle and spirit; in brief, the prostitution of labour.  If this is the
best that civilisation can do for the human, then give us howling and
naked savagery.  Far better to be a people of the wilderness and desert,
of the cave and the squatting-place, than to be a people of the machine
and the Abyss.




CHAPTER XXV--THE HUNGER WAIL


"My father has more stamina than I, for he is country-born."

The speaker, a bright young East Ender, was lamenting his poor physical
development.

"Look at my scrawny arm, will you."  He pulled up his sleeve.  "Not
enough to eat, that's what's the matter with it.  Oh, not now.  I have
what I want to eat these days.  But it's too late.  It can't make up for
what I didn't have to eat when I was a kiddy.  Dad came up to London from
the Fen Country.  Mother died, and there were six of us kiddies and dad
living in two small rooms.

"He had hard times, dad did.  He might have chucked us, but he didn't.  He
slaved all day, and at night he came home and cooked and cared for us.  He
was father and mother, both.  He did his best, but we didn't have enough
to eat.  We rarely saw meat, and then of the worst.  And it is not good
for growing kiddies to sit down to a dinner of bread and a bit of cheese,
and not enough of it.

"And what's the result?  I am undersized, and I haven't the stamina of my
dad.  It was starved out of me.  In a couple of generations there'll be
no more of me here in London.  Yet there's my younger brother; he's
bigger and better developed.  You see, dad and we children held together,
and that accounts for it."

"But I don't see," I objected.  "I should think, under such conditions,
that the vitality should decrease and the younger children be born weaker
and weaker."

"Not when they hold together," he replied.  "Whenever you come along in
the East End and see a child of from eight to twelve, good-sized, well-
developed, and healthy-looking, just you ask and you will find that it is
the youngest in the family, or at least is one of the younger.  The way
of it is this: the older children starve more than the younger ones.  By
the time the younger ones come along, the older ones are starting to
work, and there is more money coming in, and more food to go around."

He pulled down his sleeve, a concrete instance of where chronic
semi-starvation kills not, but stunts.  His voice was but one among the
myriads that raise the cry of the hunger wail in the greatest empire in
the world.  On any one day, over 1,000,000 people are in receipt of poor-
law relief in the United Kingdom.  One in eleven of the whole working-
class receive poor-law relief in the course of the year; 37,500,000
people receive less than 12 pounds per month, per family; and a constant
army of 8,000,000 lives on the border of starvation.

A committee of the London County school board makes this declaration: "At
times, _when there is no special distress_, 55,000 children in a state of
hunger, which makes it useless to attempt to teach them, are in the
schools of London alone."  The italics are mine.  "When there is no
special distress" means good times in England; for the people of England
have come to look upon starvation and suffering, which they call
"distress," as part of the social order.  Chronic starvation is looked
upon as a matter of course.  It is only when acute starvation makes its
appearance on a large scale that they think something is unusual

I shall never forget the bitter wail of a blind man in a little East End
shop at the close of a murky day.  He had been the eldest of five
children, with a mother and no father.  Being the eldest, he had starved
and worked as a child to put bread into the mouths of his little brothers
and sisters.  Not once in three months did he ever taste meat.  He never
knew what it was to have his hunger thoroughly appeased.  And he claimed
that this chronic starvation of his childhood had robbed him of his
sight.  To support the claim, he quoted from the report of the Royal
Commission on the Blind, "Blindness is more prevalent in poor districts,
and poverty accelerates this dreadful affliction."

But he went further, this blind man, and in his voice was the bitterness
of an afflicted man to whom society did not give enough to eat.  He was
one of an enormous army of blind in London, and he said that in the blind
homes they did not receive half enough to eat.  He gave the diet for a
day:-

Breakfast--0.75 pint of skilly and dry bread.
Dinner   --3 oz. meat.
            1 slice of bread.
            0.5 lb. potatoes.
Supper   --0.75 pint of skilly and dry bread.

Oscar Wilde, God rest his soul, voices the cry of the prison child,
which, in varying degree, is the cry of the prison man and woman:-

"The second thing from which a child suffers in prison is hunger.  The
food that is given to it consists of a piece of usually bad-baked prison
bread and a tin of water for breakfast at half-past seven.  At twelve
o'clock it gets dinner, composed of a tin of coarse Indian meal stirabout
(skilly), and at half-past five it gets a piece of dry bread and a tin of
water for its supper.  This diet in the case of a strong grown man is
always productive of illness of some kind, chiefly of course diarrhoea,
with its attendant weakness.  In fact, in a big prison astringent
medicines are served out regularly by the warders as a matter of course.
In the case of a child, the child is, as a rule, incapable of eating the
food at all.  Any one who knows anything about children knows how easily
a child's digestion is upset by a fit of crying, or trouble and mental
distress of any kind.  A child who has been crying all day long, and
perhaps half the night, in a lonely dim-lit cell, and is preyed upon by
terror, simply cannot eat food of this coarse, horrible kind.  In the
case of the little child to whom Warder Martin gave the biscuits, the
child was crying with hunger on Tuesday morning, and utterly unable to
eat the bread and water served to it for its breakfast.  Martin went out
after the breakfasts had been served and bought the few sweet biscuits
for the child rather than see it starving.  It was a beautiful action on
his part, and was so recognised by the child, who, utterly unconscious of
the regulations of the Prison Board, told one of the senior wardens how
kind this junior warden had been to him.  The result was, of course, a
report and a dismissal."

Robert Blatchford compares the workhouse pauper's daily diet with the
soldier's, which, when he was a soldier, was not considered liberal
enough, and yet is twice as liberal as the pauper's.

PAUPER    DIET          SOLDIER
3.25 oz.  Meat          12 oz.
15.5 oz.  Bread         24 oz.
6 oz.     Vegetables     8 oz.

The adult male pauper gets meat (outside of soup) but once a week, and
the paupers "have nearly all that pallid, pasty complexion which is the
sure mark of starvation."

Here is a table, comparing the workhouse officer's weekly allowance:-

OFFICER    DIET          PAUPER
7 lb.      Bread         6.75 lb.
5 lb.      Meat          1 lb. 2 oz.
12 oz.     Bacon         2.5 oz.
8 oz.      Cheese        2 oz.
7 lb.      Potatoes      1.5 lb.
6 lb.      Vegetables    none.
1 lb.      Flour         none.
2 oz.      Lard          none.
12 oz.     Butter        7 oz.
none.      Rice Pudding  1 lb.

And as the same writer remarks: "The officer's diet is still more liberal
than the pauper's; but evidently it is not considered liberal enough, for
a footnote is added to the officer's table saying that 'a cash payment of
two shillings and sixpence a week is also made to each resident officer
and servant.'  If the pauper has ample food, why does the officer have
more?  And if the officer has not too much, can the pauper be properly
fed on less than half the amount?"

But it is not alone the Ghetto-dweller, the prisoner, and the pauper that
starve.  Hodge, of the country, does not know what it is always to have a
full belly.  In truth, it is his empty belly which has driven him to the
city in such great numbers.  Let us investigate the way of living of a
labourer from a parish in the Bradfield Poor Law Union, Berks.  Supposing
him to have two children, steady work, a rent-free cottage, and an
average weekly wage of thirteen shillings, which is equivalent to $3.25,
then here is his weekly budget:-

                                      s.  d.
Bread (5 quarterns)                   1   10
Flour (0.5 gallon)                    0   4
Tea (0.25 lb.)                        0   6
Butter (1 lb.)                        1   3
Lard (1 lb.)                          0   6
Sugar (6 lb.)                         1   0
Bacon or other meat (about 0.25 lb.)  2   8
Cheese (1 lb.)                        0   8
Milk (half-tin condensed)             0   3.25
Coal                                  1   6
Beer                                  none
Tobacco                               none
Insurance ("Prudential")              0   3
Labourers' Union                      0   1
Wood, tools, dispensary, &c.          0   6
Insurance ("Foresters") and margin    1   1.75
        for clothes
Total                                13   0

The guardians of the workhouse in the above Union pride themselves on
their rigid economy.  It costs per pauper per week:-

               s.   d.
Men            6    1.5
Women          5    6.5
Children       5    1.25

If the labourer whose budget has been described should quit his toil and
go into the workhouse, he would cost the guardians for

               s.   d.
Himself        6    1.5
Wife           5    6.5
Two children  10    2.5
Total         21    10.5
Or roughly, $5.46

It would require more than a guinea for the workhouse to care for him and
his family, which he, somehow, manages to do on thirteen shillings.  And
in addition, it is an understood fact that it is cheaper to cater for a
large number of people--buying, cooking, and serving wholesale--than it
is to cater for a small number of people, say a family.

Nevertheless, at the time this budget was compiled, there was in that
parish another family, not of four, but eleven persons, who had to live
on an income, not of thirteen shillings, but of twelve shillings per week
(eleven shillings in winter), and which had, not a rent-free cottage, but
a cottage for which it paid three shillings per week.

This must be understood, and understood clearly: _Whatever is true of
London in the way of poverty and degradation, is true of all England_.
While Paris is not by any means France, the city of London is England.
The frightful conditions which mark London an inferno likewise mark the
United Kingdom an inferno.  The argument that the decentralisation of
London would ameliorate conditions is a vain thing and false.  If the
6,000,000 people of London were separated into one hundred cities each
with a population of 60,000, misery would be decentralised but not
diminished.  The sum of it would remain as large.

In this instance, Mr. B. S. Rowntree, by an exhaustive analysis, has
proved for the country town what Mr. Charles Booth has proved for the
metropolis, that fully one-fourth of the dwellers are condemned to a
poverty which destroys them physically and spiritually; that fully one-
fourth of the dwellers do not have enough to eat, are inadequately
clothed, sheltered, and warmed in a rigorous climate, and are doomed to a
moral degeneracy which puts them lower than the savage in cleanliness and
decency.

After listening to the wail of an old Irish peasant in Kerry, Robert
Blatchford asked him what he wanted.  "The old man leaned upon his spade
and looked out across the black peat fields at the lowering skies.  'What
is it that I'm wantun?' he said; then in a deep plaintive tone he
continued, more to himself than to me, 'All our brave bhoys and dear
gurrls is away an' over the says, an' the agent has taken the pig off me,
an' the wet has spiled the praties, an' I'm an owld man, _an' I want the
Day av Judgment_.'"

The Day of Judgment!  More than he want it.  From all the land rises the
hunger wail, from Ghetto and countryside, from prison and casual ward,
from asylum and workhouse--the cry of the people who have not enough to
eat.  Millions of people, men, women, children, little babes, the blind,
the deaf, the halt, the sick, vagabonds and toilers, prisoners and
paupers, the people of Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, who have not
enough to eat.  And this, in face of the fact that five men can produce
bread for a thousand; that one workman can produce cotton cloth for 250
people, woollens for 300, and boots and shoes for 1000.  It would seem
that 40,000,000 people are keeping a big house, and that they are keeping
it badly.  The income is all right, but there is something criminally
wrong with the management.  And who dares to say that it is not
criminally mismanaged, this big house, when five men can produce bread
for a thousand, and yet millions have not enough to eat?




CHAPTER XXVI--DRINK, TEMPERANCE, AND THRIFT


The English working classes may be said to be soaked in beer.  They are
made dull and sodden by it.  Their efficiency is sadly impaired, and they
lose whatever imagination, invention, and quickness may be theirs by
right of race.  It may hardly be called an acquired habit, for they are
accustomed to it from their earliest infancy.  Children are begotten in
drunkenness, saturated in drink before they draw their first breath, born
to the smell and taste of it, and brought up in the midst of it.

The public-house is ubiquitous.  It flourishes on every corner and
between corners, and it is frequented almost as much by women as by men.
Children are to be found in it as well, waiting till their fathers and
mothers are ready to go home, sipping from the glasses of their elders,
listening to the coarse language and degrading conversation, catching the
contagion of it, familiarising themselves with licentiousness and
debauchery.

Mrs. Grundy rules as supremely over the workers as she does over the
bourgeoisie; but in the case of the workers, the one thing she does not
frown upon is the public-house.  No disgrace or shame attaches to it, nor
to the young woman or girl who makes a practice of entering it.

I remember a girl in a coffee-house saying, "I never drink spirits when
in a public-'ouse."  She was a young and pretty waitress, and she was
laying down to another waitress her pre-eminent respectability and
discretion.  Mrs. Grundy drew the line at spirits, but allowed that it
was quite proper for a clean young girl to drink beer, and to go into a
public-house to drink it.

Not only is this beer unfit for the people to drink, but too often the
men and women are unfit to drink it.  On the other hand, it is their very
unfitness that drives them to drink it.  Ill-fed, suffering from
innutrition and the evil effects of overcrowding and squalor, their
constitutions develop a morbid craving for the drink, just as the sickly
stomach of the overstrung Manchester factory operative hankers after
excessive quantities of pickles and similar weird foods.  Unhealthy
working and living engenders unhealthy appetites and desires.  Man cannot
be worked worse than a horse is worked, and be housed and fed as a pig is
housed and fed, and at the same time have clean and wholesome ideals and
aspirations.

As home-life vanishes, the public-house appears.  Not only do men and
women abnormally crave drink, who are overworked, exhausted, suffering
from deranged stomachs and bad sanitation, and deadened by the ugliness
and monotony of existence, but the gregarious men and women who have no
home-life flee to the bright and clattering public-house in a vain
attempt to express their gregariousness.  And when a family is housed in
one small room, home-life is impossible.

A brief examination of such a dwelling will serve to bring to light one
important cause of drunkenness.  Here the family arises in the morning,
dresses, and makes its toilet, father, mother, sons, and daughters, and
in the same room, shoulder to shoulder (for the room is small), the wife
and mother cooks the breakfast.  And in the same room, heavy and
sickening with the exhalations of their packed bodies throughout the
night, that breakfast is eaten.  The father goes to work, the elder
children go to school or into the street, and the mother remains with her
crawling, toddling youngsters to do her housework--still in the same
room.  Here she washes the clothes, filling the pent space with soapsuds
and the smell of dirty clothes, and overhead she hangs the wet linen to
dry.

Here, in the evening, amid the manifold smells of the day, the family
goes to its virtuous couch.  That is to say, as many as possible pile
into the one bed (if bed they have), and the surplus turns in on the
floor.  And this is the round of their existence, month after month, year
after year, for they never get a vacation save when they are evicted.
When a child dies, and some are always bound to die, since fifty-five per
cent. of the East End children die before they are five years old, the
body is laid out in the same room.  And if they are very poor, it is kept
for some time until they can bury it.  During the day it lies on the bed;
during the night, when the living take the bed, the dead occupies the
table, from which, in the morning, when the dead is put back into the
bed, they eat their breakfast.  Sometimes the body is placed on the shelf
which serves as a pantry for their food.  Only a couple of weeks ago, an
East End woman was in trouble, because, in this fashion, being unable to
bury it, she had kept her dead child three weeks.

Now such a room as I have described is not home but horror; and the men
and women who flee away from it to the public-house are to be pitied, not
blamed.  There are 300,000 people, in London, divided into families that
live in single rooms, while there are 900,000 who are illegally housed
according to the Public Health Act of 1891--a respectable
recruiting-ground for the drink traffic.

Then there are the insecurity of happiness, the precariousness of
existence, the well-founded fear of the future--potent factors in driving
people to drink.  Wretchedness squirms for alleviation, and in the public-
house its pain is eased and forgetfulness is obtained.  It is unhealthy.
Certainly it is, but everything else about their lives is unhealthy,
while this brings the oblivion that nothing else in their lives can
bring.  It even exalts them, and makes them feel that they are finer and
better, though at the same time it drags them down and makes them more
beastly than ever.  For the unfortunate man or woman, it is a race
between miseries that ends with death.

It is of no avail to preach temperance and teetotalism to these people.
The drink habit may be the cause of many miseries; but it is, in turn,
the effect of other and prior miseries.  The temperance advocates may
preach their hearts out over the evils of drink, but until the evils that
cause people to drink are abolished, drink and its evils will remain.

Until the people who try to help realise this, their well-intentioned
efforts will be futile, and they will present a spectacle fit only to set
Olympus laughing.  I have gone through an exhibition of Japanese art, got
up for the poor of Whitechapel with the idea of elevating them, of
begetting in them yearnings for the Beautiful and True and Good.  Granting
(what is not so) that the poor folk are thus taught to know and yearn
after the Beautiful and True and Good, the foul facts of their existence
and the social law that dooms one in three to a public-charity death,
demonstrate that this knowledge and yearning will be only so much of an
added curse to them.  They will have so much more to forget than if they
had never known and yearned.  Did Destiny to-day bind me down to the life
of an East End slave for the rest of my years, and did Destiny grant me
but one wish, I should ask that I might forget all about the Beautiful
and True and Good; that I might forget all I had learned from the open
books, and forget the people I had known, the things I had heard, and the
lands I had seen.  And if Destiny didn't grant it, I am pretty confident
that I should get drunk and forget it as often as possible.

These people who try to help!  Their college settlements, missions,
charities, and what not, are failures.  In the nature of things they
cannot but be failures.  They are wrongly, though sincerely, conceived.
They approach life through a misunderstanding of life, these good folk.
They do not understand the West End, yet they come down to the East End
as teachers and savants.  They do not understand the simple sociology of
Christ, yet they come to the miserable and the despised with the pomp of
social redeemers.  They have worked faithfully, but beyond relieving an
infinitesimal fraction of misery and collecting a certain amount of data
which might otherwise have been more scientifically and less expensively
collected, they have achieved nothing.

As some one has said, they do everything for the poor except get off
their backs.  The very money they dribble out in their child's schemes
has been wrung from the poor.  They come from a race of successful and
predatory bipeds who stand between the worker and his wages, and they try
to tell the worker what he shall do with the pitiful balance left to him.
Of what use, in the name of God, is it to establish nurseries for women
workers, in which, for instance, a child is taken while the mother makes
violets in Islington at three farthings a gross, when more children and
violet-makers than they can cope with are being born right along?  This
violet-maker handles each flower four times, 576 handlings for three
farthings, and in the day she handles the flowers 6912 times for a wage
of ninepence.  She is being robbed.  Somebody is on her back, and a
yearning for the Beautiful and True and Good will not lighten her burden.
They do nothing for her, these dabblers; and what they do not do for the
mother, undoes at night, when the child comes home, all that they have
done for the child in the day.

And one and all, they join in teaching a fundamental lie.  They do not
know it is a lie, but their ignorance does not make it more of a truth.
And the lie they preach is "thrift."  An instant will demonstrate it.  In
overcrowded London, the struggle for a chance to work is keen, and
because of this struggle wages sink to the lowest means of subsistence.
To be thrifty means for a worker to spend less than his income--in other
words, to live on less.  This is equivalent to a lowering of the standard
of living.  In the competition for a chance to work, the man with a lower
standard of living will underbid the man with a higher standard.  And a
small group of such thrifty workers in any overcrowded industry will
permanently lower the wages of that industry.  And the thrifty ones will
no longer be thrifty, for their income will have been reduced till it
balances their expenditure.

In short, thrift negates thrift.  If every worker in England should heed
the preachers of thrift and cut expenditure in half, the condition of
there being more men to work than there is work to do would swiftly cut
wages in half.  And then none of the workers of England would be thrifty,
for they would be living up to their diminished incomes.  The
short-sighted thrift-preachers would naturally be astounded at the
outcome.  The measure of their failure would be precisely the measure of
the success of their propaganda.  And, anyway, it is sheer bosh and
nonsense to preach thrift to the 1,800,000 London workers who are divided
into families which have a total income of less than 21s. per week, one
quarter to one half of which must be paid for rent.

Concerning the futility of the people who try to help, I wish to make one
notable, noble exception, namely, the Dr. Barnardo Homes.  Dr. Barnardo
is a child-catcher.  First, he catches them when they are young, before
they are set, hardened, in the vicious social mould; and then he sends
them away to grow up and be formed in another and better social mould.  Up
to date he has sent out of the country 13,340 boys, most of them to
Canada, and not one in fifty has failed.  A splendid record, when it is
considered that these lads are waifs and strays, homeless and parentless,
jerked out from the very bottom of the Abyss, and forty-nine out of fifty
of them made into men.

Every twenty-four hours in the year Dr. Barnardo snatches nine waifs from
the streets; so the enormous field he has to work in may be comprehended.
The people who try to help have something to learn from him.  He does not
play with palliatives.  He traces social viciousness and misery to their
sources.  He removes the progeny of the gutter-folk from their
pestilential environment, and gives them a healthy, wholesome environment
in which to be pressed and prodded and moulded into men.

When the people who try to help cease their playing and dabbling with day
nurseries and Japanese art exhibits and go back and learn their West End
and the sociology of Christ, they will be in better shape to buckle down
to the work they ought to be doing in the world.  And if they do buckle
down to the work, they will follow Dr. Barnardo's lead, only on a scale
as large as the nation is large.  They won't cram yearnings for the
Beautiful, and True, and Good down the throat of the woman making violets
for three farthings a gross, but they will make somebody get off her back
and quit cramming himself till, like the Romans, he must go to a bath and
sweat it out.  And to their consternation, they will find that they will
have to get off that woman's back themselves, as well as the backs of a
few other women and children they did not dream they were riding upon.




CHAPTER XXVII--THE MANAGEMENT


In this final chapter it were well to look at the Social Abyss in its
widest aspect, and to put certain questions to Civilisation, by the
answers to which Civilisation must stand or fall.  For instance, has
Civilisation bettered the lot of man?  "Man," I use in its democratic
sense, meaning the average man.  So the question re-shapes itself: _Has
Civilisation bettered the lot of the average man_?

Let us see.  In Alaska, along the banks of the Yukon River, near its
mouth, live the Innuit folk.  They are a very primitive people,
manifesting but mere glimmering adumbrations of that tremendous artifice,
Civilisation.  Their capital amounts possibly to 2 pounds per head.  They
hunt and fish for their food with bone-headed spews and arrows.  They
never suffer from lack of shelter.  Their clothes, largely made from the
skins of animals, are warm.  They always have fuel for their fires,
likewise timber for their houses, which they build partly underground,
and in which they lie snugly during the periods of intense cold.  In the
summer they live in tents, open to every breeze and cool.  They are
healthy, and strong, and happy.  Their one problem is food.  They have
their times of plenty and times of famine.  In good times they feast; in
bad times they die of starvation.  But starvation, as a chronic
condition, present with a large number of them all the time, is a thing
unknown.  Further, they have no debts.

In the United Kingdom, on the rim of the Western Ocean, live the English
folk.  They are a consummately civilised people.  Their capital amounts
to at least 300 pounds per head.  They gain their food, not by hunting
and fishing, but by toil at colossal artifices.  For the most part, they
suffer from lack of shelter.  The greater number of them are vilely
housed, do not have enough fuel to keep them warm, and are insufficiently
clothed.  A constant number never have any houses at all, and sleep
shelterless under the stars.  Many are to be found, winter and summer,
shivering on the streets in their rags.  They have good times and bad.  In
good times most of them manage to get enough to eat, in bad times they
die of starvation.  They are dying now, they were dying yesterday and
last year, they will die to-morrow and next year, of starvation; for
they, unlike the Innuit, suffer from a chronic condition of starvation.
There are 40,000,000 of the English folk, and 939 out of every 1000 of
them die in poverty, while a constant army of 8,000,000 struggles on the
ragged edge of starvation.  Further, each babe that is born, is born in
debt to the sum of 22 pounds.  This is because of an artifice called the
National Debt.

In a fair comparison of the average Innuit and the average Englishman, it
will be seen that life is less rigorous for the Innuit; that while the
Innuit suffers only during bad times from starvation, the Englishman
suffers during good times as well; that no Innuit lacks fuel, clothing,
or housing, while the Englishman is in perpetual lack of these three
essentials.  In this connection it is well to instance the judgment of a
man such as Huxley.  From the knowledge gained as a medical officer in
the East End of London, and as a scientist pursuing investigations among
the most elemental savages, he concludes, "Were the alternative presented
to me, I would deliberately prefer the life of the savage to that of
those people of Christian London."

The creature comforts man enjoys are the products of man's labour.  Since
Civilisation has failed to give the average Englishman food and shelter
equal to that enjoyed by the Innuit, the question arises: _Has
Civilisation increased the producing power of the average man_?  If it
has not increased man's producing power, then Civilisation cannot stand.

But, it will be instantly admitted, Civilisation has increased man's
producing power.  Five men can produce bread for a thousand.  One man can
produce cotton cloth for 250 people, woollens for 300, and boots and
shoes for 1000.  Yet it has been shown throughout the pages of this book
that English folk by the millions do not receive enough food, clothes,
and boots.  Then arises the third and inexorable question: _If
Civilisation has increased the producing power of the average man, why
has it not bettered the lot of the average man_?

There can be one answer only--MISMANAGEMENT.  Civilisation has made
possible all manner of creature comforts and heart's delights.  In these
the average Englishman does not participate.  If he shall be forever
unable to participate, then Civilisation falls.  There is no reason for
the continued existence of an artifice so avowed a failure.  But it is
impossible that men should have reared this tremendous artifice in vain.
It stuns the intellect.  To acknowledge so crushing a defeat is to give
the death-blow to striving and progress.

One other alternative, and one other only, presents itself.  _Civilisation
must be compelled to better the lot of the average men_.  This accepted,
it becomes at once a question of business management.  Things profitable
must be continued; things unprofitable must be eliminated.  Either the
Empire is a profit to England, or it is a loss.  If it is a loss, it must
be done away with.  If it is a profit, it must be managed so that the
average man comes in for a share of the profit.

If the struggle for commercial supremacy is profitable, continue it.  If
it is not, if it hurts the worker and makes his lot worse than the lot of
a savage, then fling foreign markets and industrial empire overboard.  For
it is a patent fact that if 40,000,000 people, aided by Civilisation,
possess a greater individual producing power than the Innuit, then those
40,000,000 people should enjoy more creature comforts and heart's
delights than the Innuits enjoy.

If the 400,000 English gentlemen, "of no occupation," according to their
own statement in the Census of 1881, are unprofitable, do away with them.
Set them to work ploughing game preserves and planting potatoes.  If they
are profitable, continue them by all means, but let it be seen to that
the average Englishman shares somewhat in the profits they produce by
working at no occupation.

In short, society must be reorganised, and a capable management put at
the head.  That the present management is incapable, there can be no
discussion.  It has drained the United Kingdom of its life-blood.  It has
enfeebled the stay-at-home folk till they are unable longer to struggle
in the van of the competing nations.  It has built up a West End and an
East End as large as the Kingdom is large, in which one end is riotous
and rotten, the other end sickly and underfed.

A vast empire is foundering on the hands of this incapable management.
And by empire is meant the political machinery which holds together the
English-speaking people of the world outside of the United States.  Nor
is this charged in a pessimistic spirit.  Blood empire is greater than
political empire, and the English of the New World and the Antipodes are
strong and vigorous as ever.  But the political empire under which they
are nominally assembled is perishing.  The political machine known as the
British Empire is running down.  In the hands of its management it is
losing momentum every day.

It is inevitable that this management, which has grossly and criminally
mismanaged, shall be swept away.  Not only has it been wasteful and
inefficient, but it has misappropriated the funds.  Every worn-out, pasty-
faced pauper, every blind man, every prison babe, every man, woman, and
child whose belly is gnawing with hunger pangs, is hungry because the
funds have been misappropriated by the management.

Nor can one member of this managing class plead not guilty before the
judgment bar of Man.  "The living in their houses, and in their graves
the dead," are challenged by every babe that dies of innutrition, by
every girl that flees the sweater's den to the nightly promenade of
Piccadilly, by every worked-out toiler that plunges into the canal.  The
food this managing class eats, the wine it drinks, the shows it makes,
and the fine clothes it wears, are challenged by eight million mouths
which have never had enough to fill them, and by twice eight million
bodies which have never been sufficiently clothed and housed.

There can be no mistake.  Civilisation has increased man's producing
power an hundred-fold, and through mismanagement the men of Civilisation
live worse than the beasts, and have less to eat and wear and protect
them from the elements than the savage Innuit in a frigid climate who
lives to-day as he lived in the stone age ten thousand years ago.




CHALLENGE


I have a vague remembrance
   Of a story that is told
In some ancient Spanish legend
   Or chronicle of old.

It was when brave King Sanche
   Was before Zamora slain,
And his great besieging army
   Lay encamped upon the plain.

Don Diego de Ordenez
   Sallied forth in front of all,
And shouted loud his challenge
   To the warders on the wall.

All the people of Zamora,
   Both the born and the unborn,
As traitors did he challenge
   With taunting words of scorn.

The living in their houses,
   And in their graves the dead,
And the waters in their rivers,
   And their wine, and oil, and bread.

There is a greater army
   That besets us round with strife,
A starving, numberless army
   At all the gates of life.

The poverty-stricken millions
   Who challenge our wine and bread,
And impeach us all as traitors,
   Both the living and the dead.

And whenever I sit at the banquet,
   Where the feast and song are high,
Amid the mirth and music
   I can hear that fearful cry.

And hollow and haggard faces
   Look into the lighted hall,
And wasted hands are extended
   To catch the crumbs that fall

And within there is light and plenty,
   And odours fill the air;
But without there is cold and darkness,
   And hunger and despair.

And there in the camp of famine,
   In wind, and cold, and rain,
Christ, the great Lord of the Army,
   Lies dead upon the plain.

LONGFELLOW




Footnotes:


{1}  This in the Klondike.--J. L.

{2}  "Runt" in America is the equivalent of the English "crowl," the
dwarf of a litter.

{3}  The San Francisco bricklayer receives twenty shillings per day, and
at present is on strike for twenty-four shillings.

5xxxxxxxxx

THE SCARLET PLAGUE

By Jack London


Illustrated By Gordon Grant

1915




THE SCARLET PLAGUE




I

THE way led along upon what had once been the embankment of a railroad.
But no train had run upon it for many years. The forest on either side
swelled up the slopes of the embankment and crested across it in a green
wave of trees and bushes. The trail was as narrow as a man's body, and
was no more than a wild-animal runway. Occasionally, a piece of rusty
iron, showing through the forest-mould, advertised that the rail and the
ties still remained. In one place, a ten-inch tree, bursting through at
a connection, had lifted the end of a rail clearly into view. The tie
had evidently followed the rail, held to it by the spike long enough
for its bed to be filled with gravel and rotten leaves, so that now the
crumbling, rotten timber thrust itself up at a curious slant. Old as the
road was, it was manifest that it had been of the mono-rail type.

An old man and a boy travelled along this runway. They moved slowly, for
the old man was very old, a touch of palsy made his movements tremulous,
and he leaned heavily upon his staff. A rude skull-cap of goat-skin
protected his head from the sun. From beneath this fell a scant fringe
of stained and dirty-white hair. A visor, ingeniously made from a large
leaf, shielded his eyes, and from under this he peered at the way of
his feet on the trail. His beard, which should have been snow-white
but which showed the same weather-wear and camp-stain as his hair,
fell nearly to his waist in a great tangled mass. About his chest and
shoulders hung a single, mangy garment of goat-skin. His arms and legs,
withered and skinny, betokened extreme age, as well as did their sunburn
and scars and scratches betoken long years of exposure to the elements.

The boy, who led the way, checking the eagerness of his muscles to
the slow progress of the elder, likewise wore a single garment--a
ragged-edged piece of bear-skin, with a hole in the middle through which
he had thrust his head. He could not have been more than twelve years
old. Tucked coquettishly over one ear was the freshly severed tail of a
pig. In one hand he carried a medium-sized bow and an arrow.

On his back was a quiverful of arrows. From a sheath hanging about his
neck on a thong, projected the battered handle of a hunting knife. He
was as brown as a berry, and walked softly, with almost a catlike tread.
In marked contrast with his sunburned skin were his eyes--blue, deep
blue, but keen and sharp as a pair of gimlets. They seemed to bore into
aft about him in a way that was habitual. As he went along he smelled
things, as well, his distended, quivering nostrils carrying to his brain
an endless series of messages from the outside world. Also, his hearing
was acute, and had been so trained that it operated automatically.
Without conscious effort, he heard all the slight sounds in the apparent
quiet--heard, and differentiated, and classified these sounds--whether
they were of the wind rustling the leaves, of the humming of bees and
gnats, of the distant rumble of the sea that drifted to him only in
lulls, or of the gopher, just under his foot, shoving a pouchful of
earth into the entrance of his hole.

Suddenly he became alertly tense. Sound, sight, and odor had given him
a simultaneous warning. His hand went back to the old man, touching
him, and the pair stood still. Ahead, at one side of the top of the
embankment, arose a crackling sound, and the boy's gaze was fixed on the
tops of the agitated bushes. Then a large bear, a grizzly, crashed into
view, and likewise stopped abruptly, at sight of the humans. He did not
like them, and growled querulously. Slowly the boy fitted the arrow to
the bow, and slowly he pulled the bowstring taut. But he never removed
his eyes from the bear.

[Illustration: Slowly he pulled the bowstring taut 020]

The old man peered from under his green leaf at the danger, and stood as
quietly as the boy. For a few seconds this mutual scrutinizing went
on; then, the bear betraying a growing irritability, the boy, with a
movement of his head, indicated that the old man must step aside from
the trail and go down the embankment. The boy followed, going backward,
still holding the bow taut and ready. They waited till a crashing among
the bushes from the opposite side of the embankment told them the bear
had gone on. The boy grinned as he led back to the trail.

“A big un, Granser,” he chuckled.

The old man shook his head.

“They get thicker every day,” he complained in a thin, undependable
falsetto. “Who'd have thought I'd live to see the time when a man would
be afraid of his life on the way to the Cliff House. When I was a boy,
Edwin, men and women and little babies used to come out here from San
Francisco by tens of thousands on a nice day. And there weren't any
bears then. No, sir. They used to pay money to look at them in cages,
they were that rare.”

“What is money, Granser?”

Before the old man could answer, the boy recollected and triumphantly
shoved his hand into a pouch under his bear-skin and pulled forth a
battered and tarnished silver dollar. The old man's eyes glistened, as
he held the coin close to them.

“I can't see,” he muttered. “You look and see if you can make out the
date, Edwin.”

The boy laughed.

“You're a great Granser,” he cried delightedly, “always making believe
them little marks mean something.”

The old man manifested an accustomed chagrin as he brought the coin back
again close to his own eyes.

“2012,” he shrilled, and then fell to cackling grotesquely. “That was
the year Morgan the Fifth was appointed President of the United States
by the Board of Magnates. It must have been one of the last coins
minted, for the Scarlet Death came in 2013. Lord! Lord!--think of it!
Sixty years ago, and I am the only person alive to-day that lived in
those times. Where did you find it, Edwin?”

The boy, who had been regarding him with the tolerant curiousness one
accords to the prattlings of the feeble-minded, answered promptly.

“I got it off of Hoo-Hoo. He found it when we was herdin' goats down
near San José last spring. Hoo-Hoo said it was _money_. Ain't you
hungry, Granser?”

The ancient caught his staff in a tighter grip and urged along the
trail, his old eyes shining greedily.

“I hope Har-Lip 's found a crab... or two,” he mumbled. “They're good
eating, crabs, mighty good eating when you've no more teeth and you've
got grandsons that love their old grandsire and make a point of catching
crabs for him. When I was a boy--”

But Edwin, suddenly stopped by what he saw, was drawing the bowstring
on a fitted arrow. He had paused on the brink of a crevasse in the
embankment. An ancient culvert had here washed out, and the stream, no
longer confined, had cut a passage through the fill. On the opposite
side, the end of a rail projected and overhung. It showed rustily
through the creeping vines which overran it. Beyond, crouching by a
bush, a rabbit looked across at him in trembling hesitancy. Fully fifty
feet was the distance, but the arrow flashed true; and the transfixed
rabbit, crying out in sudden fright and hurt, struggled painfully away
into the brush. The boy himself was a flash of brown skin and flying fur
as he bounded down the steep wall of the gap and up the other side.
His lean muscles were springs of steel that released into graceful
and efficient action. A hundred feet beyond, in a tangle of bushes,
he overtook the wounded creature, knocked its head on a convenient
tree-trunk, and turned it over to Granser to carry.

[Illustration: Rabbit is good, very good 026]

“Rabbit is good, very good,” the ancient quavered, “but when it comes to
a toothsome delicacy I prefer crab. When I was a boy--”

“Why do you say so much that ain't got no sense?” Edwin impatiently
interrupted the other's threatened garrulousness.

The boy did not exactly utter these words, but something that remotely
resembled them and that was more guttural and explosive and economical
of qualifying phrases. His speech showed distant kinship with that of
the old man, and the latter's speech was approximately an English that
had gone through a bath of corrupt usage.

“What I want to know,” Edwin continued, “is why you call crab 'toothsome
delicacy'? Crab is crab, ain't it? No one I never heard calls it such
funny things.”

The old man sighed but did not answer, and they moved on in silence.
The surf grew suddenly louder, as they emerged from the forest upon a
stretch of sand dunes bordering the sea. A few goats were browsing among
the sandy hillocks, and a skin-clad boy, aided by a wolfish-looking
dog that was only faintly reminiscent of a collie, was watching them.
Mingled with the roar of the surf was a continuous, deep-throated
barking or bellowing, which came from a cluster of jagged rocks a
hundred yards out from shore. Here huge sea-lions hauled themselves
up to lie in the sun or battle with one another. In the immediate
foreground arose the smoke of a fire, tended by a third savage-looking
boy. Crouched near him were several wolfish dogs similar to the one that
guarded the goats.

The old man accelerated his pace, sniffing eagerly as he neared the
fire.

“Mussels!” he muttered ecstatically. “Mussels! And ain't that a crab,
Hoo-Hoo? Ain't that a crab? My, my, you boys are good to your old
grandsire.”

Hoo-Hoo, who was apparently of the same age as Edwin, grinned.

“All you want, Granser. I got four.”

The old man's palsied eagerness was pitiful. Sitting down in the sand as
quickly as his stiff limbs would let him, he poked a large rock-mussel
from out of the coals. The heat had forced its shells apart, and
the meat, salmon-colored, was thoroughly cooked. Between thumb and
forefinger, in trembling haste, he caught the morsel and carried it
to his mouth. But it was too hot, and the next moment was violently
ejected. The old man spluttered with the pain, and tears ran out of his
eyes and down his cheeks.

The boys were true savages, possessing only the cruel humor of the
savage. To them the incident was excruciatingly funny, and they burst
into loud laughter. Hoo-Hoo danced up and down, while Edwin rolled
gleefully on the ground. The boy with the goats came running to join in
the fun.

“Set 'em to cool, Edwin, set 'em to cool,” the old man besought, in the
midst of his grief, making no attempt to wipe away the tears that
still flowed from his eyes. “And cool a crab, Edwin, too. You know your
grandsire likes crabs.”

From the coals arose a great sizzling, which proceeded from the many
mussels bursting open their shells and exuding their moisture. They were
large shellfish, running from three to six inches in length. The boys
raked them out with sticks and placed them on a large piece of driftwood
to cool.

“When I was a boy, we did not laugh at our elders; we respected them.”

The boys took no notice, and Granser continued to babble an incoherent
flow of complaint and censure. But this time he was more careful, and
did not burn his mouth. All began to eat, using nothing but their hands
and making loud mouth-noises and lip-smackings. The third boy, who was
called Hare-Lip, slyly deposited a pinch of sand on a mussel the ancient
was carrying to his mouth; and when the grit of it bit into the old
fellow's mucous membrane and gums, the laughter was again uproarious. He
was unaware that a joke had been played on him, and spluttered and spat
until Edwin, relenting, gave him a gourd of fresh water with which to
wash out his mouth.

“Where's them crabs, Hoo-Hoo?” Edwin demanded. “Granser's set upon
having a snack.”

Again Granser's eyes burned with greediness as a large crab was handed
to him. It was a shell with legs and all complete, but the meat had long
since departed. With shaky fingers and babblings of anticipation, the
old man broke off a leg and found it filled with emptiness.

“The crabs, Hoo-Hoo?” he wailed. “The crabs?”

“I was fooling Granser. They ain't no crabs! I never found one.”

The boys were overwhelmed with delight at sight of the tears of senile
disappointment that dribbled down the old man's cheeks. Then, unnoticed,
Hoo-Hoo replaced the empty shell with a fresh-cooked crab. Already
dismembered, from the cracked legs the white meat sent forth a small
cloud of savory steam. This attracted the old man's nostrils, and he
looked down in amazement.

[Illustration: This attracted the old man's nostrils 033]

The change of his mood to one of joy was immediate. He snuffled and
muttered and mumbled, making almost a croon of delight, as he began
to eat. Of this the boys took little notice, for it was an accustomed
spectacle. Nor did they notice his occasional exclamations and
utterances of phrases which meant nothing to them, as, for instance,
when he smacked his lips and champed his gums while muttering:
“Mayonnaise! Just think--mayonnaise! And it's sixty years since the last
was ever made! Two generations and never a smell of it! Why, in those
days it was served in every restaurant with crab.”

When he could eat no more, the old man sighed, wiped his hands on his
naked legs, and gazed out over the sea. With the content of a full
stomach, he waxed reminiscent.

“To think of it! I've seen this beach alive with men, women, and
children on a pleasant Sunday. And there weren't any bears to eat them
up, either. And right up there on the cliff was a big restaurant where
you could get anything you wanted to eat. Four million people lived in
San Francisco then. And now, in the whole city and county there aren't
forty all told. And out there on the sea were ships and ships always to
be seen, going in for the Golden Gate or coming out. And airships in the
air--dirigibles and flying machines. They could travel two hundred miles
an hour. The mail contracts with the New York and San Francisco Limited
demanded that for the minimum. There was a chap, a Frenchman, I forget
his name, who succeeded in making three hundred; but the thing was
risky, too risky for conservative persons. But he was on the right clew,
and he would have managed it if it hadn't been for the Great Plague.
When I was a boy, there were men alive who remembered the coming of the
first aeroplanes, and now I have lived to see the last of them, and that
sixty years ago.”

The old man babbled on, unheeded by the boys, who were long accustomed
to his garrulousness, and whose vocabularies, besides, lacked the
greater portion of the words he used. It was noticeable that in these
rambling soliloquies his English seemed to recrudesce into better
construction and phraseology. But when he talked directly with the boys
it lapsed, largely, into their own uncouth and simpler forms.

“But there weren't many crabs in those days,” the old man wandered on.
“They were fished out, and they were great delicacies. The open season
was only a month long, too. And now crabs are accessible the whole year
around. Think of it--catching all the crabs you want, any time you want,
in the surf of the Cliff House beach!”

A sudden commotion among the goats brought the boys to their feet. The
dogs about the fire rushed to join their snarling fellow who guarded the
goats, while the goats themselves stampeded in the direction of their
human protectors. A half dozen forms, lean and gray, glided about on the
sand hillocks and faced the bristling dogs. Edwin arched an arrow that
fell short. But Hare-Lip, with a sling such as David carried into battle
against Goliath, hurled a stone through the air that whistled from the
speed of its flight. It fell squarely among the wolves and caused them
to slink away toward the dark depths of the eucalyptus forest.

[Illustration: With a sling such as David carried 036]

The boys laughed and lay down again in the sand, while Granser sighed
ponderously. He had eaten too much, and, with hands clasped on his
paunch, the fingers interlaced, he resumed his maunderings.

“'The fleeting systems lapse like foam,'” he mumbled what was evidently
a quotation. “That's it--foam, and fleeting. All man's toil upon the
planet was just so much foam. He domesticated the serviceable animals,
destroyed the hostile ones, and cleared the land of its wild vegetation.
And then he passed, and the flood of primordial life rolled back again,
sweeping his handiwork away--the weeds and the forest inundated his
fields, the beasts of prey swept over his flocks, and now there are
wolves on the Cliff House beach.” He was appalled by the thought. “Where
four million people disported themselves, the wild wolves roam to-day,
and the savage progeny of our loins, with prehistoric weapons, defend
themselves against the fanged despoilers. Think of it! And all because
of the Scarlet Death--”

The adjective had caught Hare-Lip's ear.

“He's always saying that,” he said to Edwin. “What is _scarlet?_”

“'The scarlet of the maples can shake me like the cry of bugles going
by,'” the old man quoted.

“It's red,” Edwin answered the question. “And you don't know it because
you come from the Chauffeur Tribe. They never did know nothing, none of
them. Scarlet is red--I know that.”

“Red is red, ain't it?” Hare-Lip grumbled. “Then what's the good of
gettin' cocky and calling it scarlet?”

“Granser, what for do you always say so much what nobody knows?” he
asked. “Scarlet ain't anything, but red is red. Why don't you say red,
then?”

“Red is not the right word,” was the reply. “The plague was scarlet.
The whole face and body turned scarlet in an hour's time. Don't I
know? Didn't I see enough of it? And I am telling you it was scarlet
because--well, because it _was_ scarlet. There is no other word for it.”

“Red is good enough for me,” Hare-Lip muttered obstinately. “My dad
calls red red, and he ought to know. He says everybody died of the Red
Death.”

“Your dad is a common fellow, descended from a common fellow,” Granser
retorted heatedly. “Don't I know the beginnings of the Chauffeurs? Your
grandsire was a chauffeur, a servant, and without education. He worked
for other persons. But your grandmother was of good stock, only the
children did not take after her. Don't I remember when I first met them,
catching fish at Lake Temescal?”

“What is _education?_” Edwin asked.

“Calling red scarlet,” Hare-Lip sneered, then returned to the attack on
Granser. “My dad told me, an' he got it from his dad afore he croaked,
that your wife was a Santa Rosan, an' that she was sure no account. He
said she was a _hash-slinger_ before the Red Death, though I don't know
what a _hash-slinger_ is. You can tell me, Edwin.”

But Edwin shook his head in token of ignorance.

“It is true, she was a waitress,” Granser acknowledged. “But she was a
good woman, and your mother was her daughter. Women were very scarce in
the days after the Plague. She was the only wife I could find, even if
she was a _hash-slinger_, as your father calls it. But it is not nice to
talk about our progenitors that way.”

“Dad says that the wife of the first Chauffeur was a _lady_--”

“What's a _lady?_” Hoo-Hoo demanded.

“A _lady_ 's a Chauffeur squaw,” was the quick reply of Hare-Lip.

“The first Chauffeur was Bill, a common fellow, as I said before,” the
old man expounded; “but his wife was a lady, a great lady. Before the
Scarlet Death she was the wife of Van Worden. He was President of the
Board of Industrial Magnates, and was one of the dozen men who
ruled America. He was worth one billion, eight hundred millions of
dollars--coins like you have there in your pouch, Edwin. And then came
the Scarlet Death, and his wife became the wife of Bill, the first
Chauffeur. He used to beat her, too. I have seen it myself.”

Hoo-Hoo, lying on his stomach and idly digging his toes in the sand,
cried out and investigated, first, his toe-nail, and next, the small
hole he had dug. The other two boys joined him, excavating the sand
rapidly with their hands till there lay three skeletons exposed. Two
were of adults, the third being that of a part-grown child. The old man
hudged along on the ground and peered at the find.

“Plague victims,” he announced. “That's the way they died everywhere
in the last days. This must have been a family, running away from the
contagion and perishing here on the Cliff House beach. They--what are
you doing, Edwin?”

This question was asked in sudden dismay, as Edwin, using the back of
his hunting knife, began to knock out the teeth from the jaws of one of
the skulls.

“Going to string 'em,” was the response.

The three boys were now hard at it; and quite a knocking and hammering
arose, in which Granser babbled on unnoticed.

“You are true savages. Already has begun the custom of wearing human
teeth. In another generation you will be perforating your noses and
ears and wearing ornaments of bone and shell. I know. The human race
is doomed to sink back farther and farther into the primitive night
ere again it begins its bloody climb upward to civilization. When we
increase and feel the lack of room, we will proceed to kill one another.
And then I suppose you will wear human scalp-locks at your waist, as
well--as you, Edwin, who are the gentlest of my grandsons, have already
begun with that vile pigtail. Throw it away, Edwin, boy; throw it away.”

“What a gabble the old geezer makes,” Hare-Lip remarked, when, the teeth
all extracted, they began an attempt at equal division.

They were very quick and abrupt in their actions, and their speech, in
moments of hot discussion over the allotment of the choicer teeth, was
truly a gabble. They spoke in monosyllables and short jerky sentences
that was more a gibberish than a language. And yet, through it ran hints
of grammatical construction, and appeared vestiges of the conjugation
of some superior culture. Even the speech of Granser was so corrupt that
were it put down literally it would be almost so much nonsense to the
reader. This, however, was when he talked with the boys.

When he got into the full swing of babbling to himself, it slowly purged
itself into pure English. The sentences grew longer and were enunciated
with a rhythm and ease that was reminiscent of the lecture platform.

“Tell us about the Red Death, Granser,” Hare-Lip demanded, when the
teeth affair had been satisfactorily concluded.

“The Scarlet Death,” Edwin corrected.

“An' don't work all that funny lingo on us,” Hare-Lip went on. “Talk
sensible, Granser, like a Santa Rosan ought to talk. Other Santa Rosans
don't talk like you.”




II

THE old man showed pleasure in being thus called upon. He cleared his
throat and began.

“Twenty or thirty years ago my story was in great demand. But in these
days nobody seems interested--”

“There you go!” Hare-Lip cried hotly. “Cut out the funny stuff and talk
sensible. What's _interested?_ You talk like a baby that don't know
how.”

“Let him alone,” Edwin urged, “or he'll get mad and won't talk at all.
Skip the funny places. We'll catch on to some of what he tells us.”

“Let her go, Granser,” Hoo-Hoo encouraged; for the old man was already
maundering about the disrespect for elders and the reversion to cruelty
of all humans that fell from high culture to primitive conditions.

The tale began.

“There were very many people in the world in those days. San Francisco
alone held four millions--”

“What is millions?” Edwin interrupted.

Granser looked at him kindly.

“I know you cannot count beyond ten, so I will tell you. Hold up your
two hands. On both of them you have altogether ten fingers and thumbs.
Very well. I now take this grain of sand--you hold it, Hoo-Hoo.” He
dropped the grain of sand into the lad's palm and went on. “Now that
grain of sand stands for the ten fingers of Edwin. I add another grain.
That's ten more fingers. And I add another, and another, and another,
until I have added as many grains as Edwin has fingers and thumbs. That
makes what I call one hundred. Remember that word--one hundred. Now I
put this pebble in Hare-Lip's hand. It stands for ten grains of sand, or
ten tens of fingers, or one hundred fingers. I put in ten pebbles. They
stand for a thousand fingers. I take a mussel-shell, and it stands for
ten pebbles, or one hundred grains of sand, or one thousand fingers....”
 And so on, laboriously, and with much reiteration, he strove to build
up in their minds a crude conception of numbers. As the quantities
increased, he had the boys holding different magnitudes in each of
their hands. For still higher sums, he laid the symbols on the log of
driftwood; and for symbols he was hard put, being compelled to use the
teeth from the skulls for millions, and the crab-shells for billions.
It was here that he stopped, for the boys were showing signs of becoming
tired.

“There were four million people in San Francisco--four teeth.”

The boys' eyes ranged along from the teeth and from hand to hand, down
through the pebbles and sand-grains to Edwin's fingers. And back again
they ranged along the ascending series in the effort to grasp such
inconceivable numbers.

“That was a lot of folks, Granser,” Edwin at last hazarded.

“Like sand on the beach here, like sand on the beach, each grain of sand
a man, or woman, or child. Yes, my boy, all those people lived right
here in San Francisco. And at one time or another all those people
came out on this very beach--more people than there are grains of sand.
More--more--more. And San Francisco was a noble city. And across the
bay--where we camped last year, even more people lived, clear from Point
Richmond, on the level ground and on the hills, all the way around to
San Leandro--one great city of seven million people.--Seven teeth...
there, that's it, seven millions.”

Again the boys' eyes ranged up and down from Edwin's fingers to the
teeth on the log.

“The world was full of people. The census of 2010 gave eight billions
for the whole world--eight crab-shells, yes, eight billions. It was not
like to-day. Mankind knew a great deal more about getting food. And the
more food there was, the more people there were. In the year 1800, there
were one hundred and seventy millions in Europe alone. One hundred years
later--a grain of sand, Hoo-Hoo--one hundred years later, at 1900, there
were five hundred millions in Europe--five grains of sand, Hoo-Hoo, and
this one tooth. This shows how easy was the getting of food, and how men
increased. And in the year 2000 there were fifteen hundred millions
in Europe. And it was the same all over the rest of the world. Eight
crab-shells there, yes, eight billion people were alive on the earth
when the Scarlet Death began.

“I was a young man when the Plague came--twenty-seven years old; and I
lived on the other side of San Francisco Bay, in Berkeley. You remember
those great stone houses, Edwin, when we came down the hills from Contra
Costa? That was where I lived, in those stone houses. I was a professor
of English literature.”

[Illustration: I was a professor of English literature 054]

Much of this was over the heads of the boys, but they strove to
comprehend dimly this tale of the past.

“What was them stone houses for?” Hare-Lip queried.

“You remember when your dad taught you to swim?” The boy nodded.
“Well, in the University of California--that is the name we had for
the houses--we taught young men and women how to think, just as I have
taught you now, by sand and pebbles and shells, to know how many people
lived in those days. There was very much to teach. The young men and
women we taught were called students. We had large rooms in which we
taught. I talked to them, forty or fifty at a time, just as I am talking
to you now. I told them about the books other men had written before
their time, and even, sometimes, in their time--”

“Was that all you did?--just talk, talk, talk?” Hoo-Hoo demanded. “Who
hunted your meat for you? and milked the goats? and caught the fish?”

“A sensible question, Hoo-Hoo, a sensible question. As I have told you,
in those days food-getting was easy. We were very wise. A few men got
the food for many men. The other men did other things. As you say, I
talked. I talked all the time, and for this food was given me--much
food, fine food, beautiful food, food that I have not tasted in sixty
years and shall never taste again. I sometimes think the most wonderful
achievement of our tremendous civilization was food--its inconceivable
abundance, its infinite variety, its marvellous delicacy. O my
grandsons, life was life in those days, when we had such wonderful
things to eat.”

This was beyond the boys, and they let it slip by, words and thoughts,
as a mere senile wandering in the narrative.

“Our food-getters were called _freemen_. This was a joke. We of the
ruling classes owned all the land, all the machines, everything. These
food-getters were our slaves. We took almost all the food they got, and
left them a little so that they might eat, and work, and get us more
food--”

“I'd have gone into the forest and got food for myself,” Hare-Lip
announced; “and if any man tried to take it away from me, I'd have
killed him.”

The old man laughed.

“Did I not tell you that we of the ruling class owned all the land, all
the forest, everything? Any food-getter who would not get food for us,
him we punished or compelled to starve to death. And very few did that.
They preferred to get food for us, and make clothes for us, and prepare
and administer to us a thousand--a mussel-shell, Hoo-Hoo--a thousand
satisfactions and delights. And I was Professor Smith in those
days--Professor James Howard Smith. And my lecture courses were very
popular--that is, very many of the young men and women liked to hear me
talk about the books other men had written.

“And I was very happy, and I had beautiful things to eat. And my hands
were soft, because I did no work with them, and my body was clean
all over and dressed in the softest garments--

“He surveyed his mangy goat-skin with disgust.

“We did not wear such things in those days. Even the slaves had better
garments. And we were most clean. We washed our faces and hands often
every day. You boys never wash unless you fall into the water or go
swimming.”

“Neither do you Granzer,” Hoo-Hoo retorted.

“I know, I know, I am a filthy old man, but times have changed. Nobody
washes these days, there are no conveniences. It is sixty years since I
have seen a piece of soap.

[Illustration: Sixty years since I have seen a piece of soap. 059]

“You do not know what soap is, and I shall not tell you, for I am telling
the story of the Scarlet Death. You know what sickness is. We called
it a disease. Very many of the diseases came from what we called germs.
Remember that word--germs. A germ is a very small thing. It is like a
woodtick, such as you find on the dogs in the spring of the year when
they run in the forest. Only the germ is very small. It is so small that
you cannot see it--”

Hoo-Hoo began to laugh.

“You're a queer un, Granser, talking about things you can't see. If you
can't see 'em, how do you know they are? That's what I want to know. How
do you know anything you can't see?”

“A good question, a very good question, Hoo-Hoo. But we did see--some of
them. We had what we called microscopes and ultramicroscopes, and we put
them to our eyes and looked through them, so that we saw things larger
than they really were, and many things we could not see without the
microscopes at all. Our best ultramicroscopes could make a germ look
forty thousand times larger. A mussel-shell is a thousand fingers like
Edwin's. Take forty mussel-shells, and by as many times larger was the
germ when we looked at it through a microscope. And after that, we
had other ways, by using what we called moving pictures, of making the
forty-thousand-times germ many, many thousand times larger still. And
thus we saw all these things which our eyes of themselves could not see.
Take a grain of sand. Break it into ten pieces. Take one piece and break
it into ten. Break one of those pieces into ten, and one of those into
ten, and one of those into ten, and one of those into ten, and do it all
day, and maybe, by sunset, you will have a piece as small as one of the
germs.” The boys were openly incredulous. Hare-Lip sniffed and sneered
and Hoo-Hoo snickered, until Edwin nudged them to be silent.

“The woodtick sucks the blood of the dog, but the germ, being so very
small, goes right into the blood of the body, and there it has
many children. In those days there would be as many as a billion--a
crab-shell, please--as many as that crab-shell in one man's body. We
called germs micro-organisms. When a few million, or a billion, of them
were in a man, in all the blood of a man, he was sick. These germs were
a disease. There were many different kinds of them--more different kinds
than there are grains of sand on this beach. We knew only a few of the
kinds. The micro-organic world was an invisible world, a world we could
not see, and we knew very little about it. Yet we did know something.
There was the _bacillus anthracis_; there was the _micrococcus_; there
was the _Bacterium termo_, and the _Bacterium lactis_--that's what
turns the goat milk sour even to this day, Hare-Lip; and there were
_Schizomycetes_ without end. And there were many others....”

Here the old man launched into a disquisition on germs and their
natures, using words and phrases of such extraordinary length and
meaninglessness, that the boys grinned at one another and looked out
over the deserted ocean till they forgot the old man was babbling on.

“But the Scarlet Death, Granser,” Edwin at last suggested.

Granser recollected himself, and with a start tore himself away from the
rostrum of the lecture-hall, where, to another world audience, he
had been expounding the latest theory, sixty years gone, of germs and
germ-diseases.

“Yes, yes, Edwin; I had forgotten. Sometimes the memory of the past is
very strong upon me, and I forget that I am a dirty old man, clad in
goat-skin, wandering with my savage grandsons who are goatherds in
the primeval wilderness. 'The fleeting systems lapse like foam,' and so
lapsed our glorious, colossal civilization. I am Granser, a tired old
man. I belong to the tribe of Santa Rosans. I married into that tribe.
My sons and daughters married into the Chauffeurs, the Sacramen-tos, and
the Palo-Altos. You, Hare-Lip, are of the Chauffeurs. You, Edwin, are
of the Sacramentos. And you, Hoo-Hoo, are of the Palo-Altos. Your tribe
takes its name from a town that was near the seat of another great
institution of learning. It was called Stanford University. Yes, I
remember now. It is perfectly clear. I was telling you of the Scarlet
Death. Where was I in my story?”

“You was telling about germs, the things you can't see but which make
men sick,” Edwin prompted.

“Yes, that's where I was. A man did not notice at first when only a few
of these germs got into his body. But each germ broke in half and became
two germs, and they kept doing this very rapidly so that in a short time
there were many millions of them in the body. Then the man was sick. He
had a disease, and the disease was named after the kind of a germ that
was in him. It might be measles, it might be influenza, it might be
yellow fever; it might be any of thousands and thousands of kinds of
diseases.

“Now this is the strange thing about these germs. There were always new
ones coming to live in men's bodies. Long and long and long ago, when
there were only a few men in the world, there were few diseases. But
as men increased and lived closely together in great cities and
civilizations, new diseases arose, new kinds of germs entered their
bodies. Thus were countless millions and billions of human beings
killed. And the more thickly men packed together, the more terrible were
the new diseases that came to be. Long before my time, in the middle
ages, there was the Black Plague that swept across Europe. It swept
across Europe many times. There was tuberculosis, that entered into men
wherever they were thickly packed. A hundred years before my time there
was the bubonic plague. And in Africa was the sleeping sickness. The
bacteriologists fought all these sicknesses and destroyed them, just as
you boys fight the wolves away from your goats, or squash the mosquitoes
that light on you. The bacteriologists--”

“But, Granser, what is a what-you-call-it?” Edwin interrupted.

“You, Edwin, are a goatherd. Your task is to watch the goats. You know a
great deal about goats. A bacteriologist watches germs. That's his
task, and he knows a great deal about them. So, as I was saying, the
bacteriologists fought with the germs and destroyed them--sometimes.
There was leprosy, a horrible disease. A hundred years before I was
born, the bacteriologists discovered the germ of leprosy. They knew all
about it. They made pictures of it. I have seen those pictures. But
they never found a way to kill it. But in 1984, there was the Pantoblast
Plague, a disease that broke out in a country called Brazil and that
killed millions of people. But the bacteriologists found it out, and
found the way to kill it, so that the Pantoblast Plague went no farther.
They made what they called a serum, which they put into a man's body and
which killed the pantoblast germs without killing the man. And in 1910,
there was Pellagra, and also the hookworm. These were easily killed
by the bacteriologists. But in 1947 there arose a new disease that had
never been seen before. It got into the bodies of babies of only ten
months old or less, and it made them unable to move their hands and
feet, or to eat, or anything; and the bacteriologists were eleven years
in discovering how to kill that particular germ and save the babies.

“In spite of all these diseases, and of all the new ones that continued
to arise, there were more and more men in the world. This was because it
was easy to get food. The easier it was to get food, the more men
there were; the more men there were, the more thickly were they packed
together on the earth; and the more thickly they were packed, the more
new kinds of germs became diseases. There were warnings. Soldervetzsky,
as early as 1929, told the bacteriologists that they had no guaranty
against some new disease, a thousand times more deadly than any they
knew, arising and killing by the hundreds of millions and even by the
billion. You see, the micro-organic world remained a mystery to the end.
They knew there was such a world, and that from time to time armies of
new germs emerged from it to kill men.

“And that was all they knew about it. For all they knew, in that
invisible micro-organic world there might be as many different kinds of
germs as there are grains of sand on this beach. And also, in that same
invisible world it might well be that new kinds of germs came to be.
It might be there that life originated--the 'abysmal fecundity,'
Soldervetzsky called it, applying the words of other men who had written
before him....”

It was at this point that Hare-Lip rose to his feet, an expression of
huge contempt on his face.

[Illustration: Granser, you make me sick with your gabble 071]

“Granser,” he announced, “you make me sick with your gabble. Why don't
you tell about the Red Death? If you ain't going to, say so, an' we'll
start back for camp.”

The old man looked at him and silently began to cry. The weak tears of
age rolled down his cheeks and all the feebleness of his eighty-seven
years showed in his grief-stricken countenance.

“Sit down,” Edwin counselled soothingly. “Granser's all right. He's just
gettin' to the Scarlet Death, ain't you, Granser? He's just goin' to
tell us about it right now. Sit down, Hare-Lip. Go ahead, Granser.”




III

THE old man wiped the tears away on his grimy knuckles and took up the
tale in a tremulous, piping voice that soon strengthened as he got the
swing of the narrative.

“It was in the summer of 2013 that the Plague came. I was twenty-seven
years old, and well do I remember it. Wireless despatches--”

Hare-Lip spat loudly his disgust, and Granser hastened to make amends.

“We talked through the air in those days, thousands and thousands of
miles. And the word came of a strange disease that had broken out in
New York. There were seventeen millions of people living then in that
noblest city of America. Nobody thought anything about the news. It was
only a small thing. There had been only a few deaths. It seemed, though,
that they had died very quickly, and that one of the first signs of
the disease was the turning red of the face and all the body. Within
twenty-four hours came the report of the first case in Chicago. And on
the same day, it was made public that London, the greatest city in the
world, next to Chicago, had been secretly fighting the plague for two
weeks and censoring the news despatches--that is, not permitting the
word to go forth to the rest of the world that London had the plague.

“It looked serious, but we in California, like everywhere else, were
not alarmed. We were sure that the bacteriologists would find a way to
overcome this new germ, just as they had overcome other germs in the
past. But the trouble was the astonishing quickness with which this germ
destroyed human beings, and the fact that it inevitably killed any
human body it entered. No one ever recovered. There was the old Asiatic
cholera, when you might eat dinner with a well man in the evening, and
the next morning, if you got up early enough, you would see him being
hauled by your window in the death-cart. But this new plague was quicker
than that--much quicker.

[Illustration: But this new plague was quicker 078]

“From the moment of the first signs of it, a man would be dead in an
hour. Some lasted for several hours. Many died within ten or fifteen
minutes of the appearance of the first signs.

“The heart began to beat faster and the heat of the body to increase.
Then came the scarlet rash, spreading like wildfire over the face and
body. Most persons never noticed the increase in heat and heart-beat,
and the first they knew was when the scarlet rash came out. Usually,
they had convulsions at the time of the appearance of the rash. But
these convulsions did not last long and were not very severe. If one
lived through them, he became perfectly quiet, and only did he feel a
numbness swiftly creeping up his body from the feet. The heels became
numb first, then the legs, and hips, and when the numbness reached
as high as his heart he died. They did not rave or sleep. Their minds
always remained cool and calm up to the moment their heart numbed and
stopped. And another strange thing was the rapidity of decomposition. No
sooner was a person dead than the body seemed to fall to pieces, to
fly apart, to melt away even as you looked at it. That was one of the
reasons the plague spread so rapidly. All the billions of germs in a
corpse were so immediately released.

“And it was because of all this that the bacteriologists had so little
chance in fighting the germs. They were killed in their laboratories
even as they studied the germ of the Scarlet Death. They were heroes.
As fast as they perished, others stepped forth and took their places.
It was in London that they first isolated it. The news was telegraphed
everywhere. Trask was the name of the man who succeeded in this, but
within thirty hours he was dead. Then came the struggle in all the
laboratories to find something that would kill the plague germs. All
drugs failed. You see, the problem was to get a drug, or serum, that
would kill the germs in the body and not kill the body. They tried to
fight it with other germs, to put into the body of a sick man germs that
were the enemies of the plague germs--”

“And you can't see these germ-things, Granser,” Hare-Lip objected, “and
here you gabble, gabble, gabble about them as if they was anything,
when they're nothing at all. Anything you can't see, ain't, that's what.
Fighting things that ain't with things that ain't! They must have
been all fools in them days. That's why they croaked. I ain't goin' to
believe in such rot, I tell you that.”

Granser promptly began to weep, while Edwin hotly took up his defence.

“Look here, Hare-Lip, you believe in lots of things you can't see.”

Hare-Lip shook his head.

“You believe in dead men walking about. You never seen one dead man walk
about.”

“I tell you I seen 'em, last winter, when I was wolf-hunting with dad.”

“Well, you always spit when you cross running water,” Edwin challenged.

“That's to keep off bad luck,” was Hare-Lip's defence.

“You believe in bad luck?”

“Sure.”

“An' you ain't never seen bad luck,” Edwin concluded triumphantly.
“You're just as bad as Granser and his germs. You believe in what you
don't see. Go on, Granser.”

Hare-Lip, crushed by this metaphysical defeat, remained silent, and
the old man went on. Often and often, though this narrative must not be
clogged by the details, was Granser's tale interrupted while the boys
squabbled among themselves. Also, among themselves they kept up a
constant, low-voiced exchange of explanation and conjecture, as they
strove to follow the old man into his unknown and vanished world.

“The Scarlet Death broke out in San Francisco. The first death came on
a Monday morning. By Thursday they were dying like flies in Oakland
and San Francisco. They died everywhere--in their beds, at their
work, walking along the street. It was on Tuesday that I saw my first
death--Miss Collbran, one of my students, sitting right there before my
eyes, in my lecture-room. I noticed her face while I was talking. It had
suddenly turned scarlet. I ceased speaking and could only look at her,
for the first fear of the plague was already on all of us and we knew
that it had come. The young women screamed and ran out of the room. So
did the young men run out, all but two. Miss Collbran's convulsions were
very mild and lasted less than a minute. One of the young men fetched
her a glass of water. She drank only a little of it, and cried out:

“'My feet! All sensation has left them.'

“After a minute she said, 'I have no feet. I am unaware that I have any
feet. And my knees are cold. I can scarcely feel that I have knees.'

“She lay on the floor, a bundle of notebooks under her head. And we
could do nothing. The coldness and the numbness crept up past her hips
to her heart, and when it reached her heart she was dead. In fifteen
minutes, by the clock--I timed it--she was dead, there, in my own
classroom, dead. And she was a very beautiful, strong, healthy young
woman. And from the first sign of the plague to her death only fifteen
minutes elapsed. That will show you how swift was the Scarlet Death.

“Yet in those few minutes I remained with the dying woman in my
classroom, the alarm had spread over the university; and the students,
by thousands, all of them, had deserted the lecture-room and
laboratories. When I emerged, on my way to make report to the President
of the Faculty, I found the university deserted. Across the campus were
several stragglers hurrying for their homes. Two of them were running.

“President Hoag, I found in his office, all alone, looking very old and
very gray, with a multitude of wrinkles in his face that I had never
seen before. At the sight of me, he pulled himself to his feet and
tottered away to the inner office, banging the door after him and
locking it. You see, he knew I had been exposed, and he was afraid.
He shouted to me through the door to go away. I shall never forget
my feelings as I walked down the silent corridors and out across that
deserted campus. I was not afraid. I had been exposed, and I looked
upon myself as already dead. It was not that, but a feeling of awful
depression that impressed me. Everything had stopped. It was like the
end of the world to me--my world. I had been born within sight and sound
of the university. It had been my predestined career. My father had been
a professor there before me, and his father before him. For a century
and a half had this university, like a splendid machine, been running
steadily on. And now, in an instant, it had stopped. It was like seeing
the sacred flame die down on some thrice-sacred altar. I was shocked,
unutterably shocked.

“When I arrived home, my housekeeper screamed as I entered, and fled
away. And when I rang, I found the housemaid had likewise fled. I
investigated. In the kitchen I found the cook on the point of departure.
But she screamed, too, and in her haste dropped a suitcase of her
personal belongings and ran out of the house and across the grounds,
still screaming. I can hear her scream to this day. You see, we did not
act in this way when ordinary diseases smote us. We were always calm
over such things, and sent for the doctors and nurses who knew just
what to do. But this was different. It struck so suddenly, and killed so
swiftly, and never missed a stroke. When the scarlet rash appeared on a
person's face, that person was marked by death. There was never a known
case of a recovery.

“I was alone in my big house. As I have told you often before, in those
days we could talk with one another over wires or through the air. The
telephone bell rang, and I found my brother talking to me. He told me
that he was not coming home for fear of catching the plague from me, and
that he had taken our two sisters to stop at Professor Bacon's home. He
advised me to remain where I was, and wait to find out whether or not I
had caught the plague.

[Illustration: The telephone bell rang 088]

“To all of this I agreed, staying in my house and for the first time in
my life attempting to cook. And the plague did not come out on me. By
means of the telephone I could talk with whomsoever I pleased and get
the news. Also, there were the newspapers, and I ordered all of them to
be thrown up to my door so that I could know what was happening with the
rest of the world.

“New York City and Chicago were in chaos. And what happened with them
was happening in all the large cities. A third of the New York police
were dead. Their chief was also dead, likewise the mayor. All law and
order had ceased. The bodies were lying in the streets un-buried. All
railroads and vessels carrying food and such things into the great
city had ceased runnings and mobs of the hungry poor were pillaging
the stores and warehouses. Murder and robbery and drunkenness were
everywhere. Already the people had fled from the city by millions--at
first the rich, in their private motor-cars and dirigibles, and then the
great mass of the population, on foot, carrying the plague with them,
themselves starving and pillaging the farmers and all the towns and
villages on the way.

[Illustration: Fled from the city by millions 092]

“The man who sent this news, the wireless operator, was alone with his
instrument on the top of a lofty building. The people remaining in the
city--he estimated them at several hundred thousand--had gone mad from
fear and drink, and on all sides of him great fires were raging. He was
a hero, that man who staid by his post--an obscure newspaperman, most
likely.

“For twenty-four hours, he said, no transatlantic airships had arrived,
and no more messages were coming from England. He did state, though,
that a message from Berlin--that's in Germany--announced that Hoffmeyer,
a bacteriologist of the Metchnikoff School, had discovered the serum for
the plague. That was the last word, to this day, that we of America
ever received from Europe. If Hoffmeyer discovered the serum, it was too
late, or otherwise, long ere this, explorers from Europe would have
come looking for us. We can only conclude that what happened in America
happened in Europe, and that, at the best, some several score may have
survived the Scarlet Death on that whole continent.

“For one day longer the despatches continued to come from New York.
Then they, too, ceased. The man who had sent them, perched in his lofty
building, had either died of the plague or been consumed in the great
conflagrations he had described as raging around him. And what had
occurred in New York had been duplicated in all the other cities. It was
the same in San Francisco, and Oakland, and Berkeley. By Thursday the
people were dying so rapidly that their corpses could not be handled,
and dead bodies lay everywhere. Thursday night the panic outrush for
the country began. Imagine, my grandsons, people, thicker than the
salmon-run you have seen on the Sacramento river, pouring out of the
cities by millions, madly over the country, in vain attempt to escape
the ubiquitous death. You see, they carried the germs with them. Even
the airships of the rich, fleeing for mountain and desert fastnesses,
carried the germs.

“Hundreds of these airships escaped to Hawaii, and not only did they
bring the plague with them, but they found the plague already there
before them. This we learned, by the despatches, until all order in San
Francisco vanished, and there were no operators left at their posts to
receive or send. It was amazing, astounding, this loss of communication
with the world. It was exactly as if the world had ceased, been blotted
out. For sixty years that world has no longer existed for me. I know
there must be such places as New York, Europe, Asia, and Africa; but not
one word has been heard of them--not in sixty years. With the coming of
the Scarlet Death the world fell apart, absolutely, irretrievably. Ten
thousand years of culture and civilization passed in the twinkling of an
eye, 'lapsed like foam.'

“I was telling about the airships of the rich. They carried the plague
with them and no matter where they fled, they died. I never encountered
but one survivor of any of them--Mungerson. He was afterwards a Santa
Rosan, and he married my eldest daughter. He came into the tribe eight
years after the plague. He was then nineteen years old, and he was
compelled to wait twelve years more before he could marry. You see,
there were no unmarried women, and some of the older daughters of the
Santa Rosans were already bespoken. So he was forced to wait until
my Mary had grown to sixteen years. It was his son, Gimp-Leg, who was
killed last year by the mountain lion.

“Mungerson was eleven years old at the time of the plague. His father
was one of the Industrial Magnates, a very wealthy, powerful man. It was
on his airship, the Condor, that they were fleeing, with all the family,
for the wilds of British Columbia, which is far to the north of here.
But there was some accident, and they were wrecked near Mount Shasta.
You have heard of that mountain. It is far to the north. The plague
broke out amongst them, and this boy of eleven was the only survivor.
For eight years he was alone, wandering over a deserted land and looking
vainly for his own kind. And at last, travelling south, he picked up
with us, the Santa Rosans.

“But I am ahead of my story. When the great exodus from the cities
around San Francisco Bay began, and while the telephones were still
working, I talked with my brother. I told him this flight from the
cities was insanity, that there were no symptoms of the plague in
me, and that the thing for us to do was to isolate ourselves and our
relatives in some safe place. We decided on the Chemistry Building, at
the university, and we planned to lay in a supply of provisions, and by
force of arms to prevent any other persons from forcing their presence
upon us after we had retired to our refuge.

“All this being arranged, my brother begged me to stay in my own
house for at least twenty-four hours more, on the chance of the plague
developing in me. To this I agreed, and he promised to come for me next
day. We talked on over the details of the provisioning and the defending
of the Chemistry Building until the telephone died. It died in the midst
of our conversation. That evening there were no electric lights, and
I was alone in my house in the darkness. No more newspapers were being
printed, so I had no knowledge of what was taking place outside.

[Illustration: I heard sounds of rioting and of pistol shots 098]

“I heard sounds of rioting and of pistol shots, and from my windows I
could see the glare of the sky of some conflagration in the direction
of Oakland. It was a night of terror. I did not sleep a wink. A man--why
and how I do not know--was killed on the sidewalk in front of the house.
I heard the rapid reports of an automatic pistol, and a few minutes
later the wounded wretch crawled up to my door, moaning and crying out
for help. Arming myself with two automatics, I went to him. By the light
of a match I ascertained that while he was dying of the bullet wounds,
at the same time the plague was on him. I fled indoors, whence I heard
him moan and cry out for half an hour longer.

“In the morning, my brother came to me. I had gathered into a handbag
what things of value I purposed taking, but when I saw his face I knew
that he would never accompany me to the Chemistry Building. The plague
was on him. He intended shaking my hand, but I went back hurriedly
before him.

“'Look at yourself in the mirror,' I commanded.

[Illustration: Look at yourself in the mirror 100]

“He did so, and at sight of his scarlet face, the color deepening as he
looked at it, he sank down nervelessly in a chair.

“'My God!' he said. 'I've got it. Don't come near me. I am a dead man.'

“Then the convulsions seized him. He was two hours in dying, and he
was conscious to the last, complaining about the coldness and loss of
sensation in his feet, his calves, his thighs, until at last it was his
heart and he was dead.

“That was the way the Scarlet Death slew. I caught up my handbag and
fled. The sights in the streets were terrible. One stumbled on bodies
everywhere. Some were not yet dead. And even as you looked, you saw men
sink down with the death fastened upon them. There were numerous fires
burning in Berkeley, while Oakland and San Francisco were apparently
being swept by vast conflagrations. The smoke of the burning filled the
heavens, so that the midday was as a gloomy twilight, and, in the shifts
of wind, sometimes the sun shone through dimly, a dull red orb. Truly,
my grandsons, it was like the last days of the end of the world.

“There were numerous stalled motor cars, showing that the gasoline and
the engine supplies of the garages had given out. I remember one such
car. A man and a woman lay back dead in the seats, and on the pavement
near it were two more women and a child. Strange and terrible sights
there were on every hand. People slipped by silently, furtively, like
ghosts--white-faced women carrying infants in their arms; fathers
leading children by the hand; singly, and in couples, and in
families--all fleeing out of the city of death. Some carried supplies
of food, others blankets and valuables, and there were many who carried
nothing.

“There was a grocery store--a place where food was sold. The man to whom
it belonged--I knew him well--a quiet, sober, but stupid and obstinate
fellow, was defending it. The windows and doors had been broken in, but
he, inside, hiding behind a counter, was discharging his pistol at a
number of men on the sidewalk who were breaking in. In the entrance were
several bodies--of men, I decided, whom he had killed earlier in the
day. Even as I looked on from a distance, I saw one of the robbers break
the windows of the adjoining store, a place where shoes were sold,
and deliberately set fire to it. I did not go to the groceryman's
assistance. The time for such acts had already passed. Civilization was
crumbling, and it was each for himself.”




IV

I WENT away hastily, down a cross-street, and at the first corner I saw
another tragedy. Two men of the working class had caught a man and a
woman with two children, and were robbing them. I knew the man by sight,
though I had never been introduced to him. He was a poet whose verses I
had long admired. Yet I did not go to his help, for at the moment I came
upon the scene there was a pistol shot, and I saw him sinking to the
ground. The woman screamed, and she was felled with a fist-blow by one
of the brutes. I cried out threateningly, whereupon they discharged
their pistols at me and I ran away around the corner. Here I was blocked
by an advancing conflagration. The buildings on both sides were burning,
and the street was filled with smoke and flame. From somewhere in that
murk came a woman's voice calling shrilly for help. But I did not go to
her. A man's heart turned to iron amid such scenes, and one heard all
too many appeals for help.

“Returning to the corner, I found the two robbers were gone. The poet
and his wife lay dead on the pavement. It was a shocking sight. The two
children had vanished--whither I could not tell. And I knew, now, why
it was that the fleeing persons I encountered slipped along so furtively
and with such white faces. In the midst of our civilization, down in our
slums and labor-ghettos, we had bred a race of barbarians, of savages;
and now, in the time of our calamity, they turned upon us like the wild
beasts they were and destroyed us. And they destroyed themselves as
well.

[Illustration: Now in the time of calamity they turned on us 108]

“They inflamed themselves with strong drink and committed a thousand
atrocities, quarreling and killing one another in the general madness.
One group of workingmen I saw, of the better sort, who had banded
together, and, with their women and children in their midst, the sick
and aged in litters and being carried, and with a number of horses
pulling a truck-load of provisions, they were fighting their way out
of the city. They made a fine spectacle as they came down the street
through the drifting smoke, though they nearly shot me when I first
appeared in their path. As they went by, one of their leaders shouted
out to me in apologetic explanation. He said they were killing the
robbers and looters on sight, and that they had thus banded together as
the only-means by which to escape the prowlers.

“It was here that I saw for the first time what I was soon to see so
often. One of the marching men had suddenly shown the unmistakable mark
of the plague. Immediately those about him drew away, and he, without
a remonstrance, stepped out of his place to let them pass on. A woman,
most probably his wife, attempted to follow him. She was leading a
little boy by the hand. But the husband commanded her sternly to go on,
while others laid hands on her and restrained her from following him.
This I saw, and I saw the man also, with his scarlet blaze of face, step
into a doorway on the opposite side of the street. I heard the report of
his pistol, and saw him sink lifeless to the ground.

“After being turned aside twice again by advancing fires, I succeeded in
getting through to the university. On the edge of the campus I came
upon a party of university folk who were going in the direction of the
Chemistry Building. They were all family men, and their families were
with them, including the nurses and the servants. Professor Badminton
greeted me, I had difficulty in recognizing him. Somewhere he had gone
through flames, and his beard was singed off. About his head was a
bloody bandage, and his clothes were filthy.

[Illustration: He told me he had been Cruelly Beaten 112]

“He told me he had prowlers, and that his brother had been killed the
previous night, in the defence of their dwelling.

“Midway across the campus, he pointed suddenly to Mrs. Swinton's face.
The unmistakable scarlet was there. Immediately all the other women set
up a screaming and began to run away from her. Her two children were
with a nurse, and these also ran with the women. But her husband, Doctor
Swinton, remained with her.

“'Go on, Smith,' he told me. 'Keep an eye on the children. As for me,
I shall stay with my wife. I know she is as already dead, but I can't
leave her. Afterwards, if I escape, I shall come to the Chemistry
Building, and do you watch for me and let me in.'

“I left him bending over his wife and soothing her last moments, while
I ran to overtake the party. We were the last to be admitted to the
Chemistry Building. After that, with our automatic rifles we maintained
our isolation. By our plans, we had arranged for a company of sixty to
be in this refuge. Instead, every one of the number originally planned
had added relatives and friends and whole families until there were over
four hundred souls. But the Chemistry Building was large, and, standing
by itself, was in no danger of being burned by the great fires that
raged everywhere in the city.

“A large quantity of provisions had been gathered, and a food committee
took charge of it, issuing rations daily to the various families and
groups that arranged themselves into messes. A number of committees were
appointed, and we developed a very efficient organization. I was on the
committee of defence, though for the first day no prowlers came near. We
could see them in the distance, however, and by the smoke of their fires
knew that several camps of them were occupying the far edge of the
campus. Drunkenness was rife, and often we heard them singing ribald
songs or insanely shouting. While the world crashed to ruin about them
and all the air was filled with the smoke of its burning, these low
creatures gave rein to their bestiality and fought and drank and died.
And after all, what did it matter? Everybody died anyway, the good and
the bad, the efficients and the weaklings, those that loved to live and
those that scorned to live. They passed. Everything passed.

“When twenty-four hours had gone by and no signs of the plague were
apparent, we congratulated ourselves and set about digging a well. You
have seen the great iron pipes which in those days carried water to all
the city-dwellers. We feared that the fires in the city would burst the
pipes and empty the reservoirs. So we tore up the cement floor of the
central court of the Chemistry Building and dug a well. There were many
young men, undergraduates, with us, and we worked night and day on the
well. And our fears were confirmed. Three hours before we reached water,
the pipes went dry.

“A second twenty-four hours passed, and still the plague did not
appear among us. We thought we were saved. But we did not know what I
afterwards decided to be true, namely, that the period of the incubation
of the plague germs in a human's body was a matter of a number of days.
It slew so swiftly when once it manifested itself, that we were led to
believe that the period of incubation was equally swift. So, when two
days had left us unscathed, we were elated with the idea that we were
free of the contagion.

“But the third day disillusioned us. I can never forget the night
preceding it. I had charge of the night guards from eight to twelve,
and from the roof of the building I watched the passing of all man's
glorious works. So terrible were the local conflagrations that all the
sky was lighted up. One could read the finest print in the red glare.
All the world seemed wrapped in flames. San Francisco spouted smoke and
fire from a score of vast conflagrations that were like so many active
volcanoes. Oakland, San Leandro, Haywards--all were burning; and to the
northward, clear to Point Richmond, other fires were at work. It was an
awe-inspiring spectacle. Civilization, my grandsons, civilization was
passing in a sheet of flame and a breath of death. At ten o'clock that
night, the great powder magazines at Point Pinole exploded in rapid
succession. So terrific were the concussions that the strong building
rocked as in an earthquake, while every pane of glass was broken. It was
then that I left the roof and went down the long corridors, from room to
room, quieting the alarmed women and telling them what had happened.

“An hour later, at a window on the ground floor, I heard pandemonium
break out in the camps of the prowlers. There were cries and screams,
and shots from many pistols. As we afterward conjectured, this fight had
been precipitated by an attempt on the part of those that were well
to drive out those that were sick. At any rate, a number of the
plague-stricken prowlers escaped across the campus and drifted against
our doors. We warned them back, but they cursed us and discharged a
fusillade from their pistols. Professor Merryweather, at one of the
windows, was instantly killed, the bullet striking him squarely between
the eyes. We opened fire in turn, and all the prowlers fled away with
the exception of three. One was a woman. The plague was on them and they
were reckless. Like foul fiends, there in the red glare from the skies,
with faces blazing, they continued to curse us and fire at us. One of
the men I shot with my own hand. After that the other man and the woman,
still cursing us, lay down under our windows, where we were compelled to
watch them die of the plague.

“The situation was critical. The explosions of the powder magazines
had broken all the windows of the Chemistry Building, so that we were
exposed to the germs from the corpses. The sanitary committee was called
upon to act, and it responded nobly. Two men were required to go out and
remove the corpses, and this meant the probable sacrifice of their own
lives, for, having performed the task, they were not to be permitted to
reenter the building. One of the professors, who was a bachelor, and
one of the undergraduates volunteered. They bade good-bye to us and
went forth. They were heroes. They gave up their lives that four hundred
others might live. After they had performed their work, they stood for
a moment, at a distance, looking at us wistfully. Then they waved their
hands in farewell and went away slowly across the campus toward the
burning city.

“And yet it was all useless. The next morning the first one of us was
smitten with the plague--a little nurse-girl in the family of Professor
Stout. It was no time for weak-kneed, sentimental policies. On the
chance that she might be the only one, we thrust her forth from the
building and commanded her to be gone.

[Illustration: We thrust her forth from the building 121]

“She went away slowly across the campus, wringing her hands and crying
pitifully. We felt like brutes, but what were we to do? There were four
hundred of us, and individuals had to be sacrificed.

“In one of the laboratories three families had domiciled themselves, and
that afternoon we found among them no less than four corpses and seven
cases of the plague in all its different stages.

“Then it was that the horror began. Leaving the dead lie, we forced the
living ones to segregate themselves in another room. The plague began to
break out among the rest of us, and as fast as the symptoms appeared, we
sent the stricken ones to these segregated rooms. We compelled them to
walk there by themselves, so as to avoid laying hands on them. It was
heartrending. But still the plague raged among us, and room after
room was filled with the dead and dying. And so we who were yet clean
retreated to the next floor and to the next, before this sea of the
dead, that, room by room and floor by floor, inundated the building.

“The place became a charnel house, and in the middle of the night
the survivors fled forth, taking nothing with them except arms and
ammunition and a heavy store of tinned foods. We camped on the opposite
side of the campus from the prowlers, and, while some stood guard,
others of us volunteered to scout into the city in quest of horses,
motor cars, carts, and wagons, or anything that would carry our
provisions and enable us to emulate the banded workingmen I had seen
fighting their way out to the open country.

“I was one of these scouts; and Doctor Hoyle, remembering that his motor
car had been left behind in his home garage, told me to look for it. We
scouted in pairs, and Dombey, a young undergraduate, accompanied me. We
had to cross half a mile of the residence portion of the city to get
to Doctor Hoyle's home. Here the buildings stood apart, in the midst of
trees and grassy lawns, and here the fires had played freaks, burning
whole blocks, skipping blocks and often skipping a single house in a
block. And here, too, the prowlers were still at their work. We carried
our automatic pistols openly in our hands, and looked desperate enough,
forsooth, to keep them from attacking us. But at Doctor Hoyle's house
the thing happened. Untouched by fire, even as we came to it the smoke
of flames burst forth.

“The miscreant who had set fire to it staggered down the steps and out
along the driveway. Sticking out of his coat pockets were bottles of
whiskey, and he was very drunk. My first impulse was to shoot him, and
I have never ceased regretting that I did not. Staggering and maundering
to himself, with bloodshot eyes, and a raw and bleeding slash down one
side of his bewhiskered face, he was altogether the most nauseating
specimen of degradation and filth I had ever encountered. I did not
shoot him, and he leaned against a tree on the lawn to let us go by.
It was the most absolute, wanton act. Just as we were opposite him,
he suddenly drew a pistol and shot Dombey through the head. The next
instant I shot him. But it was too late. Dombey expired without a groan,
immediately. I doubt if he even knew what had happened to him.

“Leaving the two corpses, I hurried on past the burning house to the
garage, and there found Doctor Hoyle's motor car. The tanks were filled
with gasoline, and it was ready for use. And it was in this car that I
threaded the streets of the ruined city and came back to the survivors
on the campus. The other scouts returned, but none had been so
fortunate. Professor Fairmead had found a Shetland pony, but the poor
creature, tied in a stable and abandoned for days, was so weak from want
of food and water that it could carry no burden at all. Some of the men
were for turning it loose, but I insisted that we should lead it along
with us, so that, if we got out of food, we would have it to eat.

“There were forty-seven of us when we started, many being women and
children. The President of the Faculty, an old man to begin with, and
now hopelessly broken by the awful happenings of the past week, rode
in the motor car with several young children and the aged mother of
Professor Fairmead. Wathope, a young professor of English, who had a
grievous bullet-wound in his leg, drove the car. The rest of us walked,
Professor Fairmead leading the pony.

“It was what should have been a bright summer day, but the smoke from
the burning world filled the sky, through which the sun shone murkily,
a dull and lifeless orb, blood-red and ominous. But we had grown
accustomed to that blood-red sun. With the smoke it was different. It
bit into our nostrils and eyes, and there was not one of us whose eyes
were not bloodshot. We directed our course to the southeast through the
endless miles of suburban residences, travelling along where the first
swells of low hills rose from the flat of the central city. It was by
this way, only, that we could expect to gain the country.

“Our progress was painfully slow. The women and children could not walk
fast. They did not dream of walking, my grandsons, in the way all people
walk to-day. In truth, none of us knew how to walk. It was not until
after the plague that I learned really to walk. So it was that the pace
of the slowest was the pace of all, for we dared not separate on account
of the prowlers. There were not so many now of these human beasts of
prey. The plague had already well diminished their numbers, but enough
still lived to be a constant menace to us. Many of the beautiful
residences were untouched by fire, yet smoking ruins were everywhere.
The prowlers, too, seemed to have got over their insensate desire to
burn, and it was more rarely that we saw houses freshly on fire.

“Several of us scouted among the private garages in search of motor cars
and gasoline. But in this we were unsuccessful. The first great flights
from the cities had swept all such utilities away. Calgan, a fine young
man, was lost in this work. He was shot by prowlers while crossing a
lawn. Yet this was our only casualty, though, once, a drunken brute
deliberately opened fire on all of us. Luckily, he fired wildly, and we
shot him before he had done any hurt.

“At Fruitvale, still in the heart of the magnificent residence section
of the city, the plague again smote us. Professor Fair-mead was the
victim. Making signs to us that his mother was not to know, he turned
aside into the grounds of a beautiful mansion. He sat down forlornly on
the steps of the front veranda, and I, having lingered, waved him a last
farewell. That night, several miles beyond Fruitvale and still in the
city, we made camp. And that night we shifted camp twice to get away
from our dead. In the morning there were thirty of us. I shall never
forget the President of the Faculty. During the morning's march his
wife, who was walking, betrayed the fatal symptoms, and when she
drew aside to let us go on, he insisted on leaving the motor car and
remaining with her. There was quite a discussion about this, but in the
end we gave in. It was just as well, for we knew not which ones of us,
if any, might ultimately escape.

“That night, the second of our march, we camped beyond Haywards in the
first stretches of country. And in the morning there were eleven of us
that lived. Also, during the night, Wathope, the professor with the
wounded leg, deserted us in the motor car. He took with him his sister
and his mother and most of our tinned provisions. It was that day, in
the afternoon, while resting by the wayside, that I saw the last airship
I shall ever see. The smoke was much thinner here in the country, and I
first sighted the ship drifting and veering helplessly at an elevation
of two thousand feet. What had happened I could not conjecture, but even
as we looked we saw her bow dip down lower and lower. Then the bulkheads
of the various gas-chambers must have burst, for, quite perpendicular,
she fell like a plummet to the earth.

[Illustration: She fell like a plummet to the earth 132]

“And from that day to this I have not seen another airship. Often and
often, during the next few years, I scanned the sky for them, hoping
against hope that somewhere in the world civilization had survived. But
it was not to be. What happened with us in California must have happened
with everybody everywhere.

“Another day, and at Niles there were three of us. Beyond Niles, in the
middle of the highway, we found Wathope. The motor car had broken down,
and there, on the rugs which they had spread on the ground, lay the
bodies of his sister, his mother, and himself.

“Wearied by the unusual exercise of continual walking, that night I
slept heavily. In the morning I was alone in the world. Canfield and
Parsons, my last companions, were dead of the plague. Of the four
hundred that sought shelter in the Chemistry Building, and of the
forty-seven that began the march, I alone remained--I and the Shetland
pony. Why this should be so there is no explaining. I did not catch the
plague, that is all. I was immune. I was merely the one lucky man in
a million--just as every survivor was one in a million, or, rather, in
several millions, for the proportion was at least that.”




V

“FOR two days I sheltered in a pleasant grove where there had been no
deaths. In those two days, while badly depressed and believing that my
turn would come at any moment, nevertheless I rested and recuperated. So
did the pony. And on the third day, putting what small store of tinned
provisions I possessed on the pony's back, I started on across a very
lonely land. Not a live man, woman, or child, did I encounter, though
the dead were everywhere. Food, however, was abundant. The land then
was not as it is now. It was all cleared of trees and brush, and it was
cultivated. The food for millions of mouths was growing, ripening, and
going to waste. From the fields and orchards I gathered vegetables,
fruits, and berries. Around the deserted farmhouses I got eggs and
caught chickens. And frequently I found supplies of tinned provisions in
the store-rooms.

“A strange thing was what was taking place with all the domestic
animals. Everywhere they were going wild and preying on one another. The
chickens and ducks were the first to be destroyed, while the pigs were
the first to go wild, followed by the cats. Nor were the dogs long in
adapting themselves to the changed conditions. There was a veritable
plague of dogs. They devoured the corpses, barked and howled during the
nights, and in the daytime slunk about in the distance. As the time went
by, I noticed a change in their behavior. At first they were apart from
one another, very suspicious and very prone to fight. But after a not
very long while they began to come together and run in packs. The dog,
you see, always was a social animal, and this was true before ever he
came to be domesticated by man. In the last days of the world before the
plague, there were many many very different kinds of dogs--dogs without
hair and dogs with warm fur, dogs so small that they would make scarcely
a mouthful for other dogs that were as large as mountain lions. Well,
all the small dogs, and the weak types, were killed by their fellows.
Also, the very large ones were not adapted for the wild life and bred
out. As a result, the many different kinds of dogs disappeared, and
there remained, running in packs, the medium-sized wolfish dogs that you
know to-day.”

“But the cats don't run in packs, Granser,” Hoo-Hoo objected.

“The cat was never a social animal. As one writer in the nineteenth
century said, the cat walks by himself. He always walked by himself,
from before the time he was tamed by man, down through the long ages of
domestication, to to-day when once more he is wild.

“The horses also went wild, and all the fine breeds we had degenerated
into the small mustang horse you know to-day. The cows likewise went
wild, as did the pigeons and the sheep. And that a few of the chickens
survived you know yourself. But the wild chicken of to-day is quite a
different thing from the chickens we had in those days.

“But I must go on with my story. I travelled through a deserted land. As
the time went by I began to yearn more and more for human beings. But I
never found one, and I grew lonelier and lonelier. I crossed Livermore
Valley and the mountains between it and the great valley of the San
Joaquin. You have never seen that valley, but it is very large and it is
the home of the wild horse. There are great droves there, thousands and
tens of thousands. I revisited it thirty years after, so I know. You
think there are lots of wild horses down here in the coast valleys, but
they are as nothing compared with those of the San Joaquin. Strange to
say, the cows, when they went wild, went back into the lower mountains.
Evidently they were better able to protect themselves there.

“In the country districts the ghouls and prowlers had been less in
evidence, for I found many villages and towns untouched by fire. But
they were filled by the pestilential dead, and I passed by without
exploring them. It was near Lathrop that, out of my loneliness, I picked
up a pair of collie dogs that were so newly free that they were urgently
willing to return to their allegiance to man. These collies accompanied
me for many years, and the strains of them are in those very dogs there
that you boys have to-day. But in sixty years the collie strain has
worked out. These brutes are more like domesticated wolves than anything
else.”

Hare-Lip rose to his feet, glanced to see that the goats were safe,
and looked at the sun's position in the afternoon sky, advertising
impatience at the prolixity of the old man's tale. Urged to hurry by
Edwin, Granser went on.

“There is little more to tell. With my two dogs and my pony, and riding
a horse I had managed to capture, I crossed the San Joaquin and went on
to a wonderful valley in the Sierras called Yosemite. In the great hotel
there I found a prodigious supply of tinned provisions. The pasture was
abundant, as was the game, and the river that ran through the valley was
full of trout. I remained there three years in an utter loneliness that
none but a man who has once been highly civilized can understand. Then
I could stand it no more. I felt that I was going crazy. Like the dog,
I was a social animal and I needed my kind. I reasoned that since I had
survived the plague, there was a possibility that others had survived.
Also, I reasoned that after three years the plague germs must all be
gone and the land be clean again.

[Illustration: With my horse and dogs and pony, I set out 144]

“With my horse and dogs and pony, I set out. Again I crossed the San
Joaquin Valley, the mountains beyond, and came down into Livermore
Valley. The change in those three years was amazing. All the land had
been splendidly tilled, and now I could scarcely recognize it, 'such was
the sea of rank vegetation that had overrun the agricultural handiwork
of man. You see, the wheat, the vegetables, and orchard trees had always
been cared for and nursed by man, so that they were soft and tender. The
weeds and wild bushes and such things, on the contrary, had always been
fought by man, so that they were tough and resistant. As a result, when
the hand of man was removed, the wild vegetation smothered and destroyed
practically all the domesticated vegetation. The coyotes were greatly
increased, and it was at this time that I first encountered wolves,
straying in twos and threes and small packs down from the regions where
they had always persisted.

“It was at Lake Temescal, not far from the one-time city of Oakland,
that I came upon the first live human beings. Oh, my grandsons, how can
I describe to you my emotion, when, astride my horse and dropping down
the hillside to the lake, I saw the smoke of a campfire rising through
the trees. Almost did my heart stop beating. I felt that I was going
crazy. Then I heard the cry of a babe--a human babe. And dogs barked,
and my dogs answered. I did not know but what I was the one human alive
in the whole world. It could not be true that here were others--smoke,
and the cry of a babe.

“Emerging on the lake, there, before my eyes, not a hundred yards away,
I saw a man, a large man. He was standing on an outjutting rock and
fishing. I was overcome. I stopped my horse. I tried to call out but
could not. I waved my hand. It seemed to me that the man looked at me,
but he did not appear to wave. Then I laid my head on my arms there
in the saddle. I was afraid to look again, for I knew it was an
hallucination, and I knew that if I looked the man would be gone. And so
precious was the hallucination, that I wanted it to persist yet a little
while. I knew, too, that as long as I did not look it would persist.

“Thus I remained, until I heard my dogs snarling, and a man's voice.
What do you think the voice said? I will tell you. It said: '_Where in
hell did you come from??_'

“Those were the words, the exact words. That was what your other
grandfather said to me, Hare-Lip, when he greeted me there on the shore
of Lake Temescal fifty-seven years ago. And they were the most ineffable
words I have ever heard. I opened my eyes, and there he stood before me,
a large, dark, hairy man, heavy-jawed, slant-browed, fierce-eyed. How I
got off my horse I do not know. But it seemed that the next I knew I was
clasping his hand with both of mine and crying. I would have embraced
him, but he was ever a narrow-minded, suspicious man, and he drew away
from me. Yet did I cling to his hand and cry.”

Granser's voice faltered and broke at the recollection, and the weak
tears streamed down his cheeks while the boys looked on and giggled.

“Yet did I cry,” he continued, “and desire to embrace him, though the
Chauffeur was a brute, a perfect brute--the most abhorrent man I have
ever known. His name was... strange, how I have forgotten his name.
Everybody called him Chauffeur--it was the name of his occupation, and
it stuck. That is how, to this day, the tribe he founded is called the
Chauffeur Tribe.

[Illustration: Everybody called him Chauffeur 149]

“He was a violent, unjust man. Why the plague germs spared him I can
never understand. It would seem, in spite of our old metaphysical
notions about absolute justice, that there is no justice in the
universe. Why did he live?--an iniquitous, moral monster, a blot on the
face of nature, a cruel, relentless, bestial cheat as well. All he
could talk about was motor cars, machinery, gasoline, and garages--and
especially, and with huge delight, of his mean pilferings and sordid
swindlings of the persons who had employed him in the days before the
coming of the plague. And yet he was spared, while hundreds of millions,
yea, billions, of better men were destroyed.

[Illustration: Vesta the one woman 150]

“I went on with him to his camp, and there I saw her, Vesta, the one
woman. It was glorious and... pitiful. There she was, Vesta Van Warden,
the young wife of John Van Warden, clad in rags, with marred and scarred
and toil-calloused hands, bending over the campfire and doing scullion
work--she, Vesta, who had been born to the purple of the greatest
baronage of wealth the world had ever known. John Van Warden, her
husband, worth one billion, eight hundred millions and President of the
Board of Industrial Magnates, had been the ruler of America. Also,
sitting on the International Board of Control, he had been one of the
seven men who ruled the world. And she herself had come of equally noble
stock. Her father, Philip Saxon, had been President of the Board of
Industrial Magnates up to the time of his death. This office was in
process of becoming hereditary, and had Philip Saxon had a son that son
would have succeeded him. But his only child was Vesta, the perfect
flower of generations of the highest culture this planet has ever
produced. It was not until the engagement between Vesta and Van Warden
took place, that Saxon indicated the latter as his successor. It was, I
am sure, a political marriage. I have reason to believe that Vesta never
really loved her husband in the mad passionate way of which the poets
used to sing. It was more like the marriages that obtained among crowned
heads in the days before they were displaced by the Magnates.

[Illustration: There she was, boiling fish-chowder 153]

“And there she was, boiling fish-chowder in a soot-covered pot, her
glorious eyes inflamed by the acrid smoke of the open fire. Hers was a
sad story. She was the one survivor in a million, as I had been, as
the Chauffeur had been. On a crowning eminence of the Alameda Hills,
overlooking San Francisco Bay, Van Warden had built a vast summer
palace. It was surrounded by a park of a thousand acres. When the
plague broke out, Van Warden sent her there. Armed guards patrolled the
boundaries of the park, and nothing entered in the way of provisions or
even mail matter that was not first fumigated. And yet did the plague
enter, killing the guards at their posts, the servants at their tasks,
sweeping away the whole army of retainers--or, at least, all of them who
did not flee to die elsewhere. So it was that Vesta found herself the
sole living person in the palace that had become a charnel house.

“Now the Chauffeur had been one of the servants that ran away.
Returning, two months afterward, he discovered Vesta in a little summer
pavilion where there had been no deaths and where she had established
herself. He was a brute. She was afraid, and she ran away and hid among
the trees. That night, on foot, she fled into the mountains--she, whose
tender feet and delicate body had never known the bruise of stones nor
the scratch of briars. He followed, and that night he caught her. He
struck her. Do you understand? He beat her with those terrible fists of
his and made her his slave. It was she who had to gather the firewood,
build the fires, cook, and do all the degrading camp-labor--she, who had
never performed a menial act in her life. These things he compelled her
to do, while he, a proper savage, elected to lie around camp and look
on. He did nothing, absolutely nothing, except on occasion to hunt meat
or catch fish.”

“Good for Chauffeur,” Hare-Lip commented in an undertone to the other
boys. “I remember him before he died. He was a corker. But he did
things, and he made things go. You know, Dad married his daughter, an'
you ought to see the way he knocked the spots outa Dad. The Chauffeur
was a son-of-a-gun. He made us kids stand around. Even when he was
croaking he reached out for me, once, an' laid my head open with that
long stick he kept always beside him.”

Hare-Lip rubbed his bullet head reminiscently, and the boys returned to
the old man, who was maundering ecstatically about Vesta, the squaw of
the founder of the Chauffeur Tribe.

“And so I say to you that you cannot understand the awfulness of the
situation. The Chauffeur was a servant, understand, a servant. And he
cringed, with bowed head, to such as she. She was a lord of life, both
by birth and by marriage. The destinies of millions, such as he, she
carried in the hollow of her pink-white hand. And, in the days before
the plague, the slightest contact with such as he would have been
pollution. Oh, I have seen it. Once, I remember, there was Mrs. Goldwin,
wife of one of the great magnates. It was on a landing stage, just
as she was embarking in her private dirigible, that she dropped her
parasol. A servant picked it up and made the mistake of handing it to
her--to her, one of the greatest royal ladies of the land! She shrank
back, as though he were a leper, and indicated her secretary to receive
it. Also, she ordered her secretary to ascertain the creature's name and
to see that he was immediately discharged from service. And such a woman
was Vesta Van Warden. And her the Chauffeur beat and made his slave.

[Illustration: And her the Chauffeur beat and made his slave 158]

“--Bill--that was it; Bill, the Chauffeur. That was his name. He was
a wretched, primitive man, wholly devoid of the finer instincts and
chivalrous promptings of a cultured soul. No, there is no absolute
justice, for to him fell that wonder of womanhood, Vesta Van Warden. The
grievous-ness of this you will never understand, my grandsons; for
you are yourselves primitive little savages, unaware of aught else but
savagery. Why should Vesta not have been mine? I was a man of culture
and refinement, a professor in a great university. Even so, in the time
before the plague, such was her exalted position, she would not have
deigned to know that I existed. Mark, then, the abysmal degradation
to which she fell at the hands of the Chauffeur. Nothing less than the
destruction of all mankind had made it possible that I should know her,
look in her eyes, converse with her, touch her hand--ay, and love her
and know that her feelings toward me were very kindly. I have reason to
believe that she, even she, would have loved me, there being no other
man in the world except the Chauffeur. Why, when it destroyed eight
billions of souls, did not the plague destroy just one more man, and
that man the Chauffeur?

“Once, when the Chauffeur was away fishing, she begged me to kill him.
With tears in her eyes she begged me to kill him. But he was a strong
and violent man, and I was afraid. Afterwards, I talked with him. I
offered him my horse, my pony, my dogs, all that I possessed, if he
would give Vesta to me. And he grinned in my face and shook his head. He
was very insulting. He said that in the old days he had been a servant,
had been dirt under the feet of men like me and of women like Vesta, and
that now he had the greatest lady in the land to be servant to him and
cook his food and nurse his brats. 'You had your day before the plague,'
he said; 'but this is my day, and a damned good day it is. I wouldn't
trade back to the old times for anything.' Such words he spoke, but they
are not his words. He was a vulgar, low-minded man, and vile oaths fell
continually from his lips.

“Also, he told me that if he caught me making eyes at his woman he'd
wring my neck and give her a beating as well. What was I to do? I was
afraid. He was a brute. That first night, when I discovered the camp,
Vesta and I had great talk about the things of our vanished world. We
talked of art, and books, and poetry; and the Chauffeur listened and
grinned and sneered. He was bored and angered by our way of speech which
he did not comprehend, and finally he spoke up and said: 'And this is
Vesta Van Warden, one-time wife of Van Warden the Magnate--a high and
stuck-up beauty, who is now my squaw. Eh, Professor Smith, times is
changed, times is changed. Here, you, woman, take off my moccasins,
and lively about it. I want Professor Smith to see how well I have you
trained.'

“I saw her clench her teeth, and the flame of revolt rise in her face.
He drew back his gnarled fist to strike, and I was afraid, and sick at
heart. I could do nothing to prevail against him. So I got up to go,
and not be witness to such indignity. But the Chauffeur laughed and
threatened me with a beating if I did not stay and behold. And I sat
there, perforce, by the campfire on the shore of Lake Temescal, and
saw Vesta, Vesta Van Warden, kneel and remove the moccasins of that
grinning, hairy, apelike human brute.

“--Oh, you do not understand, my grandsons. You have never known
anything else, and you do not understand.

“'Halter-broke and bridle-wise,' the Chauffeur gloated, while she
performed that dreadful, menial task. 'A trifle balky at times,
Professor, a trifle balky; but a clout alongside the jaw makes her as
meek and gentle as a lamb.'

“And another time he said: 'We've got to start all over and replenish
the earth and multiply. You're handicapped, Professor. You ain't got no
wife, and we're up against a regular Garden-of-Eden proposition. But I
ain't proud. I'll tell you what, Professor.' He pointed at their little
infant, barely a year old. 'There's your wife, though you'll have to
wait till she grows up. It's rich, ain't it? We're all equals here, and
I'm the biggest toad in the splash. But I ain't stuck up--not I. I do
you the honor, Professor Smith, the very great honor of betrothing to
you my and Vesta Van Warden's daughter. Ain't it cussed bad that Van
Warden ain't here to see?'”




VI

“I LIVED three weeks of infinite torment there in the Chauffeur's camp.
And then, one day, tiring of me, or of what to him was my bad effect
on Vesta, he told me that the year before, wandering through the Contra
Costa Hills to the Straits of Carquinez, across the Straits he had seen
a smoke. This meant that there were still other human beings, and that
for three weeks he had kept this inestimably precious information from
me. I departed at once, with my dogs and horses, and journeyed across
the Contra Costa Hills to the Straits. I saw no smoke on the other side,
but at Port Costa discovered a small steel barge on which I was able to
embark my animals. Old canvas which I found served me for a sail, and
a southerly breeze fanned me across the Straits and up to the ruins
of Vallejo. Here, on the outskirts of the city, I found evidences of a
recently occupied camp.

[Illustration: Found evidences of a recently occupied camp 169]

“Many clam-shells showed me why these humans had come to the shores of
the Bay. This was the Santa Rosa Tribe, and I followed its track along
the old railroad right of way across the salt marshes to Sonoma Valley.
Here, at the old brickyard at Glen Ellen, I came upon the camp. There
were eighteen souls all told. Two were old men, one of whom was Jones, a
banker. The other was Harrison, a retired pawnbroker, who had taken for
wife the matron of the State Hospital for the Insane at Napa. Of all the
persons of the city of Napa, and of all the other towns and villages
in that rich and populous valley, she had been the only-survivor. Next,
there were the three young men--Cardiff and Hale, who had been farmers,
and Wainwright, a common day-laborer. All three had found wives. To
Hale, a crude, illiterate farmer, had fallen Isadore, the greatest
prize, next to Vesta, of the women who came through the plague. She was
one of the world's most noted singers, and the plague had caught her at
San Francisco. She has talked with me for hours at a time, telling me of
her adventures, until, at last, rescued by Hale in the Mendocino Forest
Reserve, there had remained nothing for her to do but become his wife.
But Hale was a good fellow, in spite of his illiteracy. He had a keen
sense of justice and right-dealing, and she was far happier with him
than was Vesta with the Chauffeur.

“The wives of Cardiff and Wainwright were ordinary women, accustomed
to toil with strong constitutions--just the type for the wild new life
which they were compelled to live. In addition were two adult idiots
from the feeble-minded home at El-dredge, and five or six young children
and infants born after the formation of the Santa Rosa Tribe. Also,
there was Bertha. She was a good woman, Hare-Lip, in spite of the sneers
of your father. Her I took for wife. She was the mother of your father,
Edwin, and of yours, Hoo-Hoo. And it was our daughter, Vera, who married
your father, Hare-Lip--your father, Sandow, who was the oldest son of
Vesta Van Warden and the Chauffeur.

“And so it was that I became the nineteenth member of the Santa Rosa
Tribe. There were only two outsiders added after me. One was Mungerson,
descended from the Magnates, who wandered alone in the wilds of Northern
California for eight years before he came south and joined us. He it was
who waited twelve years more before he married my daughter, Mary. The
other was Johnson, the man who founded the Utah Tribe. That was where he
came from, Utah, a country that lies very far away from here, across the
great deserts, to the east. It was not until twenty-seven years after
the plague that Johnson reached California. In all that Utah region he
reported but three survivors, himself one, and all men. For many years
these three men lived and hunted together, until, at last, desperate,
fearing that with them the human race would perish utterly from the
planet, they headed westward on the possibility of finding women
survivors in California. Johnson alone came through the great desert,
where his two companions died. He was forty-six years old when he joined
us, and he married the fourth daughter of Isadore and Hale, and his
eldest son married your aunt, Hare-Lip, who was the third daughter of
Vesta and the Chauffeur. Johnson was a strong man, with a will of his
own. And it was because of this that he seceded from the Santa Rosans
and formed the Utah Tribe at San José. It is a small tribe--there are
only nine in it; but, though he is dead, such was his influence and the
strength of his breed, that it will grow into a strong tribe and play a
leading part in the recivilization of the planet.

“There are only two other tribes that we know of--the Los Angelitos
and the Carmelitos. The latter started from one man and woman. He was
called Lopez, and he was descended from the ancient Mexicans and was
very black. He was a cowherd in the ranges beyond Carmel, and his wife
was a maidservant in the great Del Monte Hotel. It was seven years
before we first got in touch with the Los Ange-litos. They have a
good country down there, but it is too warm. I estimate the present
population of the world at between three hundred and fifty and four
hundred--provided, of course, that there are no scattered little tribes
elsewhere in the world. If there be such, we have not heard from them.
Since Johnson crossed the desert from Utah, no word nor sign has come
from the East or anywhere else. The great world which I knew in my
boyhood and early manhood is gone. It has ceased to be. I am the last
man who was alive in the days of the plague and who knows the wonders of
that far-off time. We, who mastered the planet--its earth, and sea, and
sky--and who were as very gods, now live in primitive savagery along the
water courses of this California country.

“But we are increasing rapidly--your sister, Hare-Lip, already has four
children. We are increasing rapidly and making ready for a new climb
toward civilization. In time, pressure of population will compel us
to spread out, and a hundred generations from now we may expect our
descendants to start across the Sierras, oozing slowly along, generation
by generation, over the great continent to the colonization of the
East--a new Aryan drift around the world.

“But it will be slow, very slow; we have so far to climb. We fell so
hopelessly far. If only one physicist or one chemist had survived!
But it was not to be, and we have forgotten everything. The Chauffeur
started working in iron. He made the forge which we use to this day.
But he was a lazy man, and when he died he took with him all he knew
of metals and machinery. What was I to know of such things? I was a
classical scholar, not a chemist.. The other men who survived were not
educated. Only two things did the Chauffeur accomplish--the brewing
of strong drink and the growing of tobacco. It was while he was drunk,
once, that he killed Vesta. I firmly believe that he killed Vesta in a
fit of drunken cruelty though he always maintained that she fell into
the lake and was drowned.

“And, my grandsons, let me warn you against the medicine-men. They call
themselves _doctors_, travestying what was once a noble profession, but
in reality they are medicine-men, devil-devil men, and they make for
superstition and darkness. They are cheats and liars. But so debased and
degraded are we, that we believe their lies. They, too, will increase
in numbers as we increase, and they will strive to rule us. Yet are
they liars and charlatans. Look at young Cross-Eyes, posing as a
doctor, selling charms against sickness, giving good hunting,
exchanging promises of fair weather for good meat and skins, sending the
death-stick, performing a thousand abominations. Yet I say to you,
that when he says he can do these things, he lies. I, Professor Smith,
Professor James Howard Smith, say that he lies. I have told him so to
his teeth. Why has he not sent me the death-stick? Because he knows that
with me it is without avail. But you, Hare-Lip, so deeply are you
sunk in black superstition that did you awake this night and find the
death-stick beside you, you would surely die. And you would die, not
because of any virtues in the stick, but because you are a savage with
the dark and clouded mind of a savage.

“The doctors must be destroyed, and all that was lost must be discovered
over again. Wherefore, earnestly, I repeat unto you certain things which
you must remember and tell to your children after you. You must tell
them that when water is made hot by fire, there resides in it a
wonderful thing called steam, which is stronger than ten thousand men
and which can do all man's work for him. There are other very useful
things. In the lightning flash resides a similarly strong servant of
man, which was of old his slave and which some day will be his slave
again.

[Illustration: I have stored many books in a cave 179]

“Quite a different thing is the alphabet. It is what enables me to
know the meaning of fine markings, whereas you boys know only rude
picture-writing. In that dry cave on Telegraph Hill, where you see me
often go when the tribe is down by the sea, I have stored many books.
In them is great wisdom. Also, with them, I have placed a key to the
alphabet, so that one who knows picture-writing may also know print.
Some day men will read again; and then, if no accident has befallen my
cave, they will know that Professor James Howard Smith once lived and
saved for them the knowledge of the ancients.

“There is another little device that men inevitably will rediscover. It
is called gunpowder. It was what enabled us to kill surely and at long
distances. Certain things which are found in the ground, when combined
in the right proportions, will make this gunpowder. What these things
are, I have forgotten, or else I never knew. But I wish I did know. Then
would I make powder, and then would I certainly kill Cross-Eyes and rid
the land of superstition--”

“After I am man-grown I am going to give Cross-Eyes all the goats,
and meat, and skins I can get, so that he'll teach me to be a doctor,”
 Hoo-Hoo asserted. “And when I know, I'll make everybody else sit up and
take notice. They'll get down in the dirt to me, you bet.”

The old man nodded his head solemnly, and murmured:

“Strange it is to hear the vestiges and remnants of the complicated
Aryan speech falling from the lips of a filthy little skin-clad savage.
All the world is topsy-turvy. And it has been topsy-turvy ever since the
plague.”

“You won't make me sit up,” Hare-Lip boasted to the would-be
medicine-man. “If I paid you for a sending of the death-stick and it
didn't work, I'd bust in your head--understand, you Hoo-Hoo, you?”

“I'm going to get Granser to remember this here gunpowder stuff,” Edwin
said softly, “and then I'll have you all on the run. You, Hare-Lip, will
do my fighting for me and get my meat for me, and you, Hoo-Hoo, will
send the death-stick for me and make everybody afraid. And if I catch
Hare-Lip trying to bust your head, Hoo-Hoo, I'll fix him with that same
gunpowder. Granser ain't such a fool as you think, and I'm going to
listen to him and some day I'll be boss over the whole bunch of you.”

The old man shook his head sadly, and said:

“The gunpowder will come. Nothing can stop it--the same old story over
and over. Man will increase, and men will fight. The gunpowder will
enable men to kill millions of men, and in this way only, by fire and
blood, will a new civilization, in some remote day, be evolved. And of
what profit will it be? Just as the old civilization passed, so will the
new. It may take fifty thousand years to build, but it will pass. All
things pass. Only remain cosmic force and matter, ever in flux, ever
acting and reacting and realizing the eternal types--the priest, the
soldier, and the king. Out of the mouths of babes comes the wisdom of
all the ages. Some will fight, some will rule, some will pray; and all
the rest will toil and suffer sore while on their bleeding carcasses
is reared again, and yet again, without end, the amazing beauty and
surpassing wonder of the civilized state. It were just as well that I
destroyed those cave-stored books--whether they remain or perish, all
their old truths will be discovered, their old lies lived and handed
down. What is the profit--”

Hare-Lip leaped to his feet, giving a quick glance at the pasturing
goats and the afternoon sun.

“Gee!” he muttered to Edwin, “The old geezer gets more long-winded every
day. Let's pull for camp.”

While the other two, aided by the dogs, assembled the goats and started
them for the trail through the forest, Edwin stayed by the old man and
guided him in the same direction. When they reached the old right of
way, Edwin stopped suddenly and looked back. Hare-Lip and Hoo-Hoo and
the dogs and the goats passed on. Edwin was looking at a small herd of
wild horses which had come down on the hard sand. There were at least
twenty of them, young colts and yearlings and mares, led by a beautiful
stallion which stood in the foam at the edge of the surf, with arched
neck and bright wild eyes, sniffing the salt air from off the sea.

“What is it?” Granser queried.

“Horses,” was the answer. “First time I ever seen 'em on the beach. It's
the mountain lions getting thicker and thicker and driving 'em down.”

The low sun shot red shafts of light, fan-shaped, up from a
cloud-tumbled horizon. And close at hand, in the white waste of
shore-lashed waters, the sea-lions, bellowing their old primeval chant,
hauled up out of the sea on the black rocks and fought and loved.

“Come on, Granser,” Edwin prompted. And old man and boy, skin-clad and
barbaric, turned and went along the right of way into the forest in the
wake of the goats.

THE END

6xxxxxxxxx

                               THE SEA-WOLF


                                    BY
                               JACK LONDON

                                AUTHOR OF
               “THE CALL OF THE WILD,” “THE FAITH OF MEN,”
                                   ETC.

                                * * * * *

                            _POPULAR EDITION_.

                                * * * * *

                                  LONDON
                            WILLIAM HEINEMANN
                                   1917

                                * * * * *

_First published_, _November_ 1904.

_New Impression_, _December_ 1904, _April_ 1908.

_Popular Edition_, _July_ 1910; _New Impressions_, _March_ 1912,
_September_ 1912, _November_ 1913, _May_ 1915, _May_ 1916, _July_ 1917.

                                * * * * *

             _Copyright_, _London_, _William Heinemann_, 1904




CHAPTER I


I scarcely know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the
cause of it all to Charley Furuseth’s credit.  He kept a summer cottage
in Mill Valley, under the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, and never occupied
it except when he loafed through the winter months and read Nietzsche and
Schopenhauer to rest his brain.  When summer came on, he elected to sweat
out a hot and dusty existence in the city and to toil incessantly.  Had
it not been my custom to run up to see him every Saturday afternoon and
to stop over till Monday morning, this particular January Monday morning
would not have found me afloat on San Francisco Bay.

Not but that I was afloat in a safe craft, for the _Martinez_ was a new
ferry-steamer, making her fourth or fifth trip on the run between
Sausalito and San Francisco.  The danger lay in the heavy fog which
blanketed the bay, and of which, as a landsman, I had little
apprehension.  In fact, I remember the placid exaltation with which I
took up my position on the forward upper deck, directly beneath the
pilot-house, and allowed the mystery of the fog to lay hold of my
imagination.  A fresh breeze was blowing, and for a time I was alone in
the moist obscurity—yet not alone, for I was dimly conscious of the
presence of the pilot, and of what I took to be the captain, in the glass
house above my head.

I remember thinking how comfortable it was, this division of labour which
made it unnecessary for me to study fogs, winds, tides, and navigation,
in order to visit my friend who lived across an arm of the sea.  It was
good that men should be specialists, I mused.  The peculiar knowledge of
the pilot and captain sufficed for many thousands of people who knew no
more of the sea and navigation than I knew.  On the other hand, instead
of having to devote my energy to the learning of a multitude of things, I
concentrated it upon a few particular things, such as, for instance, the
analysis of Poe’s place in American literature—an essay of mine, by the
way, in the current _Atlantic_.  Coming aboard, as I passed through the
cabin, I had noticed with greedy eyes a stout gentleman reading the
_Atlantic_, which was open at my very essay.  And there it was again, the
division of labour, the special knowledge of the pilot and captain which
permitted the stout gentleman to read my special knowledge on Poe while
they carried him safely from Sausalito to San Francisco.

A red-faced man, slamming the cabin door behind him and stumping out on
the deck, interrupted my reflections, though I made a mental note of the
topic for use in a projected essay which I had thought of calling “The
Necessity for Freedom: A Plea for the Artist.”  The red-faced man shot a
glance up at the pilot-house, gazed around at the fog, stumped across the
deck and back (he evidently had artificial legs), and stood still by my
side, legs wide apart, and with an expression of keen enjoyment on his
face.  I was not wrong when I decided that his days had been spent on the
sea.

“It’s nasty weather like this here that turns heads grey before their
time,” he said, with a nod toward the pilot-house.

“I had not thought there was any particular strain,” I answered.  “It
seems as simple as A, B, C.  They know the direction by compass, the
distance, and the speed.  I should not call it anything more than
mathematical certainty.”

“Strain!” he snorted.  “Simple as A, B, C!  Mathematical certainty!”

He seemed to brace himself up and lean backward against the air as he
stared at me.  “How about this here tide that’s rushin’ out through the
Golden Gate?” he demanded, or bellowed, rather.  “How fast is she ebbin’?
What’s the drift, eh?  Listen to that, will you?  A bell-buoy, and we’re
a-top of it!  See ’em alterin’ the course!”

From out of the fog came the mournful tolling of a bell, and I could see
the pilot turning the wheel with great rapidity.  The bell, which had
seemed straight ahead, was now sounding from the side.  Our own whistle
was blowing hoarsely, and from time to time the sound of other whistles
came to us from out of the fog.

“That’s a ferry-boat of some sort,” the new-comer said, indicating a
whistle off to the right.  “And there!  D’ye hear that?  Blown by mouth.
Some scow schooner, most likely.  Better watch out, Mr. Schooner-man.
Ah, I thought so.  Now hell’s a poppin’ for somebody!”

The unseen ferry-boat was blowing blast after blast, and the mouth-blown
horn was tooting in terror-stricken fashion.

“And now they’re payin’ their respects to each other and tryin’ to get
clear,” the red-faced man went on, as the hurried whistling ceased.

His face was shining, his eyes flashing with excitement as he translated
into articulate language the speech of the horns and sirens.  “That’s a
steam-siren a-goin’ it over there to the left.  And you hear that fellow
with a frog in his throat—a steam schooner as near as I can judge,
crawlin’ in from the Heads against the tide.”

A shrill little whistle, piping as if gone mad, came from directly ahead
and from very near at hand.  Gongs sounded on the _Martinez_.  Our
paddle-wheels stopped, their pulsing beat died away, and then they
started again.  The shrill little whistle, like the chirping of a cricket
amid the cries of great beasts, shot through the fog from more to the
side and swiftly grew faint and fainter.  I looked to my companion for
enlightenment.

“One of them dare-devil launches,” he said.  “I almost wish we’d sunk
him, the little rip!  They’re the cause of more trouble.  And what good
are they?  Any jackass gets aboard one and runs it from hell to
breakfast, blowin’ his whistle to beat the band and tellin’ the rest of
the world to look out for him, because he’s comin’ and can’t look out for
himself!  Because he’s comin’!  And you’ve got to look out, too!  Right
of way!  Common decency!  They don’t know the meanin’ of it!”

I felt quite amused at his unwarranted choler, and while he stumped
indignantly up and down I fell to dwelling upon the romance of the fog.
And romantic it certainly was—the fog, like the grey shadow of infinite
mystery, brooding over the whirling speck of earth; and men, mere motes
of light and sparkle, cursed with an insane relish for work, riding their
steeds of wood and steel through the heart of the mystery, groping their
way blindly through the Unseen, and clamouring and clanging in confident
speech the while their hearts are heavy with incertitude and fear.

The voice of my companion brought me back to myself with a laugh.  I too
had been groping and floundering, the while I thought I rode clear-eyed
through the mystery.

“Hello! somebody comin’ our way,” he was saying.  “And d’ye hear that?
He’s comin’ fast.  Walking right along.  Guess he don’t hear us yet.
Wind’s in wrong direction.”

The fresh breeze was blowing right down upon us, and I could hear the
whistle plainly, off to one side and a little ahead.

“Ferry-boat?” I asked.

He nodded, then added, “Or he wouldn’t be keepin’ up such a clip.”  He
gave a short chuckle.  “They’re gettin’ anxious up there.”

I glanced up.  The captain had thrust his head and shoulders out of the
pilot-house, and was staring intently into the fog as though by sheer
force of will he could penetrate it.  His face was anxious, as was the
face of my companion, who had stumped over to the rail and was gazing
with a like intentness in the direction of the invisible danger.

Then everything happened, and with inconceivable rapidity.  The fog
seemed to break away as though split by a wedge, and the bow of a
steamboat emerged, trailing fog-wreaths on either side like seaweed on
the snout of Leviathan.  I could see the pilot-house and a white-bearded
man leaning partly out of it, on his elbows.  He was clad in a blue
uniform, and I remember noting how trim and quiet he was.  His quietness,
under the circumstances, was terrible.  He accepted Destiny, marched hand
in hand with it, and coolly measured the stroke.  As he leaned there, he
ran a calm and speculative eye over us, as though to determine the
precise point of the collision, and took no notice whatever when our
pilot, white with rage, shouted, “Now you’ve done it!”

On looking back, I realize that the remark was too obvious to make
rejoinder necessary.

“Grab hold of something and hang on,” the red-faced man said to me.  All
his bluster had gone, and he seemed to have caught the contagion of
preternatural calm.  “And listen to the women scream,” he said
grimly—almost bitterly, I thought, as though he had been through the
experience before.

The vessels came together before I could follow his advice.  We must have
been struck squarely amidships, for I saw nothing, the strange steamboat
having passed beyond my line of vision.  The _Martinez_ heeled over,
sharply, and there was a crashing and rending of timber.  I was thrown
flat on the wet deck, and before I could scramble to my feet I heard the
scream of the women.  This it was, I am certain,—the most indescribable
of blood-curdling sounds,—that threw me into a panic.  I remembered the
life-preservers stored in the cabin, but was met at the door and swept
backward by a wild rush of men and women.  What happened in the next few
minutes I do not recollect, though I have a clear remembrance of pulling
down life-preservers from the overhead racks, while the red-faced man
fastened them about the bodies of an hysterical group of women.  This
memory is as distinct and sharp as that of any picture I have seen.  It
is a picture, and I can see it now,—the jagged edges of the hole in the
side of the cabin, through which the grey fog swirled and eddied; the
empty upholstered seats, littered with all the evidences of sudden
flight, such as packages, hand satchels, umbrellas, and wraps; the stout
gentleman who had been reading my essay, encased in cork and canvas, the
magazine still in his hand, and asking me with monotonous insistence if I
thought there was any danger; the red-faced man, stumping gallantly
around on his artificial legs and buckling life-preservers on all comers;
and finally, the screaming bedlam of women.

This it was, the screaming of the women, that most tried my nerves.  It
must have tried, too, the nerves of the red-faced man, for I have another
picture which will never fade from my mind.  The stout gentleman is
stuffing the magazine into his overcoat pocket and looking on curiously.
A tangled mass of women, with drawn, white faces and open mouths, is
shrieking like a chorus of lost souls; and the red-faced man, his face
now purplish with wrath, and with arms extended overhead as in the act of
hurling thunderbolts, is shouting, “Shut up!  Oh, shut up!”

I remember the scene impelled me to sudden laughter, and in the next
instant I realized I was becoming hysterical myself; for these were women
of my own kind, like my mother and sisters, with the fear of death upon
them and unwilling to die.  And I remember that the sounds they made
reminded me of the squealing of pigs under the knife of the butcher, and
I was struck with horror at the vividness of the analogy.  These women,
capable of the most sublime emotions, of the tenderest sympathies, were
open-mouthed and screaming.  They wanted to live, they were helpless,
like rats in a trap, and they screamed.

The horror of it drove me out on deck.  I was feeling sick and squeamish,
and sat down on a bench.  In a hazy way I saw and heard men rushing and
shouting as they strove to lower the boats.  It was just as I had read
descriptions of such scenes in books.  The tackles jammed.  Nothing
worked.  One boat lowered away with the plugs out, filled with women and
children and then with water, and capsized.  Another boat had been
lowered by one end, and still hung in the tackle by the other end, where
it had been abandoned.  Nothing was to be seen of the strange steamboat
which had caused the disaster, though I heard men saying that she would
undoubtedly send boats to our assistance.

I descended to the lower deck.  The _Martinez_ was sinking fast, for the
water was very near.  Numbers of the passengers were leaping overboard.
Others, in the water, were clamouring to be taken aboard again.  No one
heeded them.  A cry arose that we were sinking.  I was seized by the
consequent panic, and went over the side in a surge of bodies.  How I
went over I do not know, though I did know, and instantly, why those in
the water were so desirous of getting back on the steamer.  The water was
cold—so cold that it was painful.  The pang, as I plunged into it, was as
quick and sharp as that of fire.  It bit to the marrow.  It was like the
grip of death.  I gasped with the anguish and shock of it, filling my
lungs before the life-preserver popped me to the surface.  The taste of
the salt was strong in my mouth, and I was strangling with the acrid
stuff in my throat and lungs.

But it was the cold that was most distressing.  I felt that I could
survive but a few minutes.  People were struggling and floundering in the
water about me.  I could hear them crying out to one another.  And I
heard, also, the sound of oars.  Evidently the strange steamboat had
lowered its boats.  As the time went by I marvelled that I was still
alive.  I had no sensation whatever in my lower limbs, while a chilling
numbness was wrapping about my heart and creeping into it.  Small waves,
with spiteful foaming crests, continually broke over me and into my
mouth, sending me off into more strangling paroxysms.

The noises grew indistinct, though I heard a final and despairing chorus
of screams in the distance, and knew that the _Martinez_ had gone down.
Later,—how much later I have no knowledge,—I came to myself with a start
of fear.  I was alone.  I could hear no calls or cries—only the sound of
the waves, made weirdly hollow and reverberant by the fog.  A panic in a
crowd, which partakes of a sort of community of interest, is not so
terrible as a panic when one is by oneself; and such a panic I now
suffered.  Whither was I drifting?  The red-faced man had said that the
tide was ebbing through the Golden Gate.  Was I, then, being carried out
to sea?  And the life-preserver in which I floated?  Was it not liable to
go to pieces at any moment?  I had heard of such things being made of
paper and hollow rushes which quickly became saturated and lost all
buoyancy.  And I could not swim a stroke.  And I was alone, floating,
apparently, in the midst of a grey primordial vastness.  I confess that a
madness seized me, that I shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked, and
beat the water with my numb hands.

How long this lasted I have no conception, for a blankness intervened, of
which I remember no more than one remembers of troubled and painful
sleep.  When I aroused, it was as after centuries of time; and I saw,
almost above me and emerging from the fog, the bow of a vessel, and three
triangular sails, each shrewdly lapping the other and filled with wind.
Where the bow cut the water there was a great foaming and gurgling, and I
seemed directly in its path.  I tried to cry out, but was too exhausted.
The bow plunged down, just missing me and sending a swash of water clear
over my head.  Then the long, black side of the vessel began slipping
past, so near that I could have touched it with my hands.  I tried to
reach it, in a mad resolve to claw into the wood with my nails, but my
arms were heavy and lifeless.  Again I strove to call out, but made no
sound.

The stern of the vessel shot by, dropping, as it did so, into a hollow
between the waves; and I caught a glimpse of a man standing at the wheel,
and of another man who seemed to be doing little else than smoke a cigar.
I saw the smoke issuing from his lips as he slowly turned his head and
glanced out over the water in my direction.  It was a careless,
unpremeditated glance, one of those haphazard things men do when they
have no immediate call to do anything in particular, but act because they
are alive and must do something.

But life and death were in that glance.  I could see the vessel being
swallowed up in the fog; I saw the back of the man at the wheel, and the
head of the other man turning, slowly turning, as his gaze struck the
water and casually lifted along it toward me.  His face wore an absent
expression, as of deep thought, and I became afraid that if his eyes did
light upon me he would nevertheless not see me.  But his eyes did light
upon me, and looked squarely into mine; and he did see me, for he sprang
to the wheel, thrusting the other man aside, and whirled it round and
round, hand over hand, at the same time shouting orders of some sort.
The vessel seemed to go off at a tangent to its former course and leapt
almost instantly from view into the fog.

I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness, and tried with all the power
of my will to fight above the suffocating blankness and darkness that was
rising around me.  A little later I heard the stroke of oars, growing
nearer and nearer, and the calls of a man.  When he was very near I heard
him crying, in vexed fashion, “Why in hell don’t you sing out?”  This
meant me, I thought, and then the blankness and darkness rose over me.




CHAPTER II


I seemed swinging in a mighty rhythm through orbit vastness.  Sparkling
points of light spluttered and shot past me.  They were stars, I knew,
and flaring comets, that peopled my flight among the suns.  As I reached
the limit of my swing and prepared to rush back on the counter swing, a
great gong struck and thundered.  For an immeasurable period, lapped in
the rippling of placid centuries, I enjoyed and pondered my tremendous
flight.

But a change came over the face of the dream, for a dream I told myself
it must be.  My rhythm grew shorter and shorter.  I was jerked from swing
to counter swing with irritating haste.  I could scarcely catch my
breath, so fiercely was I impelled through the heavens.  The gong
thundered more frequently and more furiously.  I grew to await it with a
nameless dread.  Then it seemed as though I were being dragged over
rasping sands, white and hot in the sun.  This gave place to a sense of
intolerable anguish.  My skin was scorching in the torment of fire.  The
gong clanged and knelled.  The sparkling points of light flashed past me
in an interminable stream, as though the whole sidereal system were
dropping into the void.  I gasped, caught my breath painfully, and opened
my eyes.  Two men were kneeling beside me, working over me.  My mighty
rhythm was the lift and forward plunge of a ship on the sea.  The
terrific gong was a frying-pan, hanging on the wall, that rattled and
clattered with each leap of the ship.  The rasping, scorching sands were
a man’s hard hands chafing my naked chest.  I squirmed under the pain of
it, and half lifted my head.  My chest was raw and red, and I could see
tiny blood globules starting through the torn and inflamed cuticle.

“That’ll do, Yonson,” one of the men said.  “Carn’t yer see you’ve
bloomin’ well rubbed all the gent’s skin orf?”

The man addressed as Yonson, a man of the heavy Scandinavian type, ceased
chafing me, and arose awkwardly to his feet.  The man who had spoken to
him was clearly a Cockney, with the clean lines and weakly pretty, almost
effeminate, face of the man who has absorbed the sound of Bow Bells with
his mother’s milk.  A draggled muslin cap on his head and a dirty
gunny-sack about his slim hips proclaimed him cook of the decidedly dirty
ship’s galley in which I found myself.

“An’ ’ow yer feelin’ now, sir?” he asked, with the subservient smirk
which comes only of generations of tip-seeking ancestors.

For reply, I twisted weakly into a sitting posture, and was helped by
Yonson to my feet.  The rattle and bang of the frying-pan was grating
horribly on my nerves.  I could not collect my thoughts.  Clutching the
woodwork of the galley for support,—and I confess the grease with which
it was scummed put my teeth on edge,—I reached across a hot cooking-range
to the offending utensil, unhooked it, and wedged it securely into the
coal-box.

The cook grinned at my exhibition of nerves, and thrust into my hand a
steaming mug with an “’Ere, this’ll do yer good.”  It was a nauseous
mess,—ship’s coffee,—but the heat of it was revivifying.  Between gulps
of the molten stuff I glanced down at my raw and bleeding chest and
turned to the Scandinavian.

“Thank you, Mr. Yonson,” I said; “but don’t you think your measures were
rather heroic?”

It was because he understood the reproof of my action, rather than of my
words, that he held up his palm for inspection.  It was remarkably
calloused.  I passed my hand over the horny projections, and my teeth
went on edge once more from the horrible rasping sensation produced.

“My name is Johnson, not Yonson,” he said, in very good, though slow,
English, with no more than a shade of accent to it.

There was mild protest in his pale blue eyes, and withal a timid
frankness and manliness that quite won me to him.

“Thank you, Mr. Johnson,” I corrected, and reached out my hand for his.

He hesitated, awkward and bashful, shifted his weight from one leg to the
other, then blunderingly gripped my hand in a hearty shake.

“Have you any dry clothes I may put on?” I asked the cook.

“Yes, sir,” he answered, with cheerful alacrity.  “I’ll run down an’ tyke
a look over my kit, if you’ve no objections, sir, to wearin’ my things.”

He dived out of the galley door, or glided rather, with a swiftness and
smoothness of gait that struck me as being not so much cat-like as oily.
In fact, this oiliness, or greasiness, as I was later to learn, was
probably the most salient expression of his personality.

“And where am I?” I asked Johnson, whom I took, and rightly, to be one of
the sailors.  “What vessel is this, and where is she bound?”

“Off the Farallones, heading about sou-west,” he answered, slowly and
methodically, as though groping for his best English, and rigidly
observing the order of my queries.  “The schooner _Ghost_, bound
seal-hunting to Japan.”

“And who is the captain?  I must see him as soon as I am dressed.”

Johnson looked puzzled and embarrassed.  He hesitated while he groped in
his vocabulary and framed a complete answer.  “The cap’n is Wolf Larsen,
or so men call him.  I never heard his other name.  But you better speak
soft with him.  He is mad this morning.  The mate—”

But he did not finish.  The cook had glided in.

“Better sling yer ’ook out of ’ere, Yonson,” he said.  “The old man’ll be
wantin’ yer on deck, an’ this ayn’t no d’y to fall foul of ’im.”

Johnson turned obediently to the door, at the same time, over the cook’s
shoulder, favouring me with an amazingly solemn and portentous wink as
though to emphasize his interrupted remark and the need for me to be
soft-spoken with the captain.

Hanging over the cook’s arm was a loose and crumpled array of
evil-looking and sour-smelling garments.

“They was put aw’y wet, sir,” he vouchsafed explanation.  “But you’ll
’ave to make them do till I dry yours out by the fire.”

Clinging to the woodwork, staggering with the roll of the ship, and aided
by the cook, I managed to slip into a rough woollen undershirt.  On the
instant my flesh was creeping and crawling from the harsh contact.  He
noticed my involuntary twitching and grimacing, and smirked:

“I only ’ope yer don’t ever ’ave to get used to such as that in this
life, ’cos you’ve got a bloomin’ soft skin, that you ’ave, more like a
lydy’s than any I know of.  I was bloomin’ well sure you was a gentleman
as soon as I set eyes on yer.”

I had taken a dislike to him at first, and as he helped to dress me this
dislike increased.  There was something repulsive about his touch.  I
shrank from his hand; my flesh revolted.  And between this and the smells
arising from various pots boiling and bubbling on the galley fire, I was
in haste to get out into the fresh air.  Further, there was the need of
seeing the captain about what arrangements could be made for getting me
ashore.

A cheap cotton shirt, with frayed collar and a bosom discoloured with
what I took to be ancient blood-stains, was put on me amid a running and
apologetic fire of comment.  A pair of workman’s brogans encased my feet,
and for trousers I was furnished with a pair of pale blue, washed-out
overalls, one leg of which was fully ten inches shorter than the other.
The abbreviated leg looked as though the devil had there clutched for the
Cockney’s soul and missed the shadow for the substance.

“And whom have I to thank for this kindness?” I asked, when I stood
completely arrayed, a tiny boy’s cap on my head, and for coat a dirty,
striped cotton jacket which ended at the small of my back and the sleeves
of which reached just below my elbows.

The cook drew himself up in a smugly humble fashion, a deprecating smirk
on his face.  Out of my experience with stewards on the Atlantic liners
at the end of the voyage, I could have sworn he was waiting for his tip.
From my fuller knowledge of the creature I now know that the posture was
unconscious.  An hereditary servility, no doubt, was responsible.

“Mugridge, sir,” he fawned, his effeminate features running into a greasy
smile.  “Thomas Mugridge, sir, an’ at yer service.”

“All right, Thomas,” I said.  “I shall not forget you—when my clothes are
dry.”

A soft light suffused his face and his eyes glistened, as though
somewhere in the deeps of his being his ancestors had quickened and
stirred with dim memories of tips received in former lives.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, very gratefully and very humbly indeed.

Precisely in the way that the door slid back, he slid aside, and I
stepped out on deck.  I was still weak from my prolonged immersion.  A
puff of wind caught me,—and I staggered across the moving deck to a
corner of the cabin, to which I clung for support.  The schooner, heeled
over far out from the perpendicular, was bowing and plunging into the
long Pacific roll.  If she were heading south-west as Johnson had said,
the wind, then, I calculated, was blowing nearly from the south.  The fog
was gone, and in its place the sun sparkled crisply on the surface of the
water, I turned to the east, where I knew California must lie, but could
see nothing save low-lying fog-banks—the same fog, doubtless, that had
brought about the disaster to the _Martinez_ and placed me in my present
situation.  To the north, and not far away, a group of naked rocks thrust
above the sea, on one of which I could distinguish a lighthouse.  In the
south-west, and almost in our course, I saw the pyramidal loom of some
vessel’s sails.

Having completed my survey of the horizon, I turned to my more immediate
surroundings.  My first thought was that a man who had come through a
collision and rubbed shoulders with death merited more attention than I
received.  Beyond a sailor at the wheel who stared curiously across the
top of the cabin, I attracted no notice whatever.

Everybody seemed interested in what was going on amid ships.  There, on a
hatch, a large man was lying on his back.  He was fully clothed, though
his shirt was ripped open in front.  Nothing was to be seen of his chest,
however, for it was covered with a mass of black hair, in appearance like
the furry coat of a dog.  His face and neck were hidden beneath a black
beard, intershot with grey, which would have been stiff and bushy had it
not been limp and draggled and dripping with water.  His eyes were
closed, and he was apparently unconscious; but his mouth was wide open,
his breast, heaving as though from suffocation as he laboured noisily for
breath.  A sailor, from time to time and quite methodically, as a matter
of routine, dropped a canvas bucket into the ocean at the end of a rope,
hauled it in hand under hand, and sluiced its contents over the prostrate
man.

Pacing back and forth the length of the hatchways and savagely chewing
the end of a cigar, was the man whose casual glance had rescued me from
the sea.  His height was probably five feet ten inches, or ten and a
half; but my first impression, or feel of the man, was not of this, but
of his strength.  And yet, while he was of massive build, with broad
shoulders and deep chest, I could not characterize his strength as
massive.  It was what might be termed a sinewy, knotty strength, of the
kind we ascribe to lean and wiry men, but which, in him, because of his
heavy build, partook more of the enlarged gorilla order.  Not that in
appearance he seemed in the least gorilla-like.  What I am striving to
express is this strength itself, more as a thing apart from his physical
semblance.  It was a strength we are wont to associate with things
primitive, with wild animals, and the creatures we imagine our
tree-dwelling prototypes to have been—a strength savage, ferocious, alive
in itself, the essence of life in that it is the potency of motion, the
elemental stuff itself out of which the many forms of life have been
moulded; in short, that which writhes in the body of a snake when the
head is cut off, and the snake, as a snake, is dead, or which lingers in
the shapeless lump of turtle-meat and recoils and quivers from the prod
of a finger.

Such was the impression of strength I gathered from this man who paced up
and down.  He was firmly planted on his legs; his feet struck the deck
squarely and with surety; every movement of a muscle, from the heave of
the shoulders to the tightening of the lips about the cigar, was
decisive, and seemed to come out of a strength that was excessive and
overwhelming.  In fact, though this strength pervaded every action of
his, it seemed but the advertisement of a greater strength that lurked
within, that lay dormant and no more than stirred from time to time, but
which might arouse, at any moment, terrible and compelling, like the rage
of a lion or the wrath of a storm.

The cook stuck his head out of the galley door and grinned encouragingly
at me, at the same time jerking his thumb in the direction of the man who
paced up and down by the hatchway.  Thus I was given to understand that
he was the captain, the “Old Man,” in the cook’s vernacular, the
individual whom I must interview and put to the trouble of somehow
getting me ashore.  I had half started forward, to get over with what I
was certain would be a stormy five minutes, when a more violent
suffocating paroxysm seized the unfortunate person who was lying on his
back.  He wrenched and writhed about convulsively.  The chin, with the
damp black beard, pointed higher in the air as the back muscles stiffened
and the chest swelled in an unconscious and instinctive effort to get
more air.  Under the whiskers, and all unseen, I knew that the skin was
taking on a purplish hue.

The captain, or Wolf Larsen, as men called him, ceased pacing and gazed
down at the dying man.  So fierce had this final struggle become that the
sailor paused in the act of flinging more water over him and stared
curiously, the canvas bucket partly tilted and dripping its contents to
the deck.  The dying man beat a tattoo on the hatch with his heels,
straightened out his legs, and stiffened in one great tense effort, and
rolled his head from side to side.  Then the muscles relaxed, the head
stopped rolling, and a sigh, as of profound relief, floated upward from
his lips.  The jaw dropped, the upper lip lifted, and two rows of
tobacco-discoloured teeth appeared.  It seemed as though his features had
frozen into a diabolical grin at the world he had left and outwitted.

Then a most surprising thing occurred.  The captain broke loose upon the
dead man like a thunderclap.  Oaths rolled from his lips in a continuous
stream.  And they were not namby-pamby oaths, or mere expressions of
indecency.  Each word was a blasphemy, and there were many words.  They
crisped and crackled like electric sparks.  I had never heard anything
like it in my life, nor could I have conceived it possible.  With a turn
for literary expression myself, and a penchant for forcible figures and
phrases, I appreciated, as no other listener, I dare say, the peculiar
vividness and strength and absolute blasphemy of his metaphors.  The
cause of it all, as near as I could make out, was that the man, who was
mate, had gone on a debauch before leaving San Francisco, and then had
the poor taste to die at the beginning of the voyage and leave Wolf
Larsen short-handed.

It should be unnecessary to state, at least to my friends, that I was
shocked.  Oaths and vile language of any sort had always been repellent
to me.  I felt a wilting sensation, a sinking at the heart, and, I might
just as well say, a giddiness.  To me, death had always been invested
with solemnity and dignity.  It had been peaceful in its occurrence,
sacred in its ceremonial.  But death in its more sordid and terrible
aspects was a thing with which I had been unacquainted till now.  As I
say, while I appreciated the power of the terrific denunciation that
swept out of Wolf Larsen’s mouth, I was inexpressibly shocked.  The
scorching torrent was enough to wither the face of the corpse.  I should
not have been surprised if the wet black beard had frizzled and curled
and flared up in smoke and flame.  But the dead man was unconcerned.  He
continued to grin with a sardonic humour, with a cynical mockery and
defiance.  He was master of the situation.




CHAPTER III


Wolf Larsen ceased swearing as suddenly as he had begun.  He relighted
his cigar and glanced around.  His eyes chanced upon the cook.

“Well, Cooky?” he began, with a suaveness that was cold and of the temper
of steel.

“Yes, sir,” the cook eagerly interpolated, with appeasing and apologetic
servility.

“Don’t you think you’ve stretched that neck of yours just about enough?
It’s unhealthy, you know.  The mate’s gone, so I can’t afford to lose you
too.  You must be very, very careful of your health, Cooky.  Understand?”

His last word, in striking contrast with the smoothness of his previous
utterance, snapped like the lash of a whip.  The cook quailed under it.

“Yes, sir,” was the meek reply, as the offending head disappeared into
the galley.

At this sweeping rebuke, which the cook had only pointed, the rest of the
crew became uninterested and fell to work at one task or another.  A
number of men, however, who were lounging about a companion-way between
the galley and hatch, and who did not seem to be sailors, continued
talking in low tones with one another.  These, I afterward learned, were
the hunters, the men who shot the seals, and a very superior breed to
common sailor-folk.

“Johansen!” Wolf Larsen called out.  A sailor stepped forward obediently.
“Get your palm and needle and sew the beggar up.  You’ll find some old
canvas in the sail-locker.  Make it do.”

“What’ll I put on his feet, sir?” the man asked, after the customary “Ay,
ay, sir.”

“We’ll see to that,” Wolf Larsen answered, and elevated his voice in a
call of “Cooky!”

Thomas Mugridge popped out of his galley like a jack-in-the-box.

“Go below and fill a sack with coal.”

“Any of you fellows got a Bible or Prayer-book?” was the captain’s next
demand, this time of the hunters lounging about the companion-way.

They shook their heads, and some one made a jocular remark which I did
not catch, but which raised a general laugh.

Wolf Larsen made the same demand of the sailors.  Bibles and Prayer-books
seemed scarce articles, but one of the men volunteered to pursue the
quest amongst the watch below, returning in a minute with the information
that there was none.

The captain shrugged his shoulders.  “Then we’ll drop him over without
any palavering, unless our clerical-looking castaway has the burial
service at sea by heart.”

By this time he had swung fully around and was facing me.  “You’re a
preacher, aren’t you?” he asked.

The hunters,—there were six of them,—to a man, turned and regarded me.  I
was painfully aware of my likeness to a scarecrow.  A laugh went up at my
appearance,—a laugh that was not lessened or softened by the dead man
stretched and grinning on the deck before us; a laugh that was as rough
and harsh and frank as the sea itself; that arose out of coarse feelings
and blunted sensibilities, from natures that knew neither courtesy nor
gentleness.

Wolf Larsen did not laugh, though his grey eyes lighted with a slight
glint of amusement; and in that moment, having stepped forward quite
close to him, I received my first impression of the man himself, of the
man as apart from his body, and from the torrent of blasphemy I had heard
him spew forth.  The face, with large features and strong lines, of the
square order, yet well filled out, was apparently massive at first sight;
but again, as with the body, the massiveness seemed to vanish, and a
conviction to grow of a tremendous and excessive mental or spiritual
strength that lay behind, sleeping in the deeps of his being.  The jaw,
the chin, the brow rising to a goodly height and swelling heavily above
the eyes,—these, while strong in themselves, unusually strong, seemed to
speak an immense vigour or virility of spirit that lay behind and beyond
and out of sight.  There was no sounding such a spirit, no measuring, no
determining of metes and bounds, nor neatly classifying in some
pigeon-hole with others of similar type.

The eyes—and it was my destiny to know them well—were large and handsome,
wide apart as the true artist’s are wide, sheltering under a heavy brow
and arched over by thick black eyebrows.  The eyes themselves were of
that baffling protean grey which is never twice the same; which runs
through many shades and colourings like intershot silk in sunshine; which
is grey, dark and light, and greenish-grey, and sometimes of the clear
azure of the deep sea.  They were eyes that masked the soul with a
thousand guises, and that sometimes opened, at rare moments, and allowed
it to rush up as though it were about to fare forth nakedly into the
world on some wonderful adventure,—eyes that could brood with the
hopeless sombreness of leaden skies; that could snap and crackle points
of fire like those which sparkle from a whirling sword; that could grow
chill as an arctic landscape, and yet again, that could warm and soften
and be all a-dance with love-lights, intense and masculine, luring and
compelling, which at the same time fascinate and dominate women till they
surrender in a gladness of joy and of relief and sacrifice.

But to return.  I told him that, unhappily for the burial service, I was
not a preacher, when he sharply demanded:

“What do you do for a living?”

I confess I had never had such a question asked me before, nor had I ever
canvassed it.  I was quite taken aback, and before I could find myself
had sillily stammered, “I—I am a gentleman.”

His lip curled in a swift sneer.

“I have worked, I do work,” I cried impetuously, as though he were my
judge and I required vindication, and at the same time very much aware of
my arrant idiocy in discussing the subject at all.

“For your living?”

There was something so imperative and masterful about him that I was
quite beside myself—“rattled,” as Furuseth would have termed it, like a
quaking child before a stern school-master.

“Who feeds you?” was his next question.

“I have an income,” I answered stoutly, and could have bitten my tongue
the next instant.  “All of which, you will pardon my observing, has
nothing whatsoever to do with what I wish to see you about.”

But he disregarded my protest.

“Who earned it?  Eh?  I thought so.  Your father.  You stand on dead
men’s legs.  You’ve never had any of your own.  You couldn’t walk alone
between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly for three meals.
Let me see your hand.”

His tremendous, dormant strength must have stirred, swiftly and
accurately, or I must have slept a moment, for before I knew it he had
stepped two paces forward, gripped my right hand in his, and held it up
for inspection.  I tried to withdraw it, but his fingers tightened,
without visible effort, till I thought mine would be crushed.  It is hard
to maintain one’s dignity under such circumstances.  I could not squirm
or struggle like a schoolboy.  Nor could I attack such a creature who had
but to twist my arm to break it.  Nothing remained but to stand still and
accept the indignity.  I had time to notice that the pockets of the dead
man had been emptied on the deck, and that his body and his grin had been
wrapped from view in canvas, the folds of which the sailor, Johansen, was
sewing together with coarse white twine, shoving the needle through with
a leather contrivance fitted on the palm of his hand.

Wolf Larsen dropped my hand with a flirt of disdain.

“Dead men’s hands have kept it soft.  Good for little else than
dish-washing and scullion work.”

“I wish to be put ashore,” I said firmly, for I now had myself in
control.  “I shall pay you whatever you judge your delay and trouble to
be worth.”

He looked at me curiously.  Mockery shone in his eyes.

“I have a counter proposition to make, and for the good of your soul.  My
mate’s gone, and there’ll be a lot of promotion.  A sailor comes aft to
take mate’s place, cabin-boy goes for’ard to take sailor’s place, and you
take the cabin-boy’s place, sign the articles for the cruise, twenty
dollars per month and found.  Now what do you say?  And mind you, it’s
for your own soul’s sake.  It will be the making of you.  You might learn
in time to stand on your own legs, and perhaps to toddle along a bit.”

But I took no notice.  The sails of the vessel I had seen off to the
south-west had grown larger and plainer.  They were of the same
schooner-rig as the _Ghost_, though the hull itself, I could see, was
smaller.  She was a pretty sight, leaping and flying toward us, and
evidently bound to pass at close range.  The wind had been momentarily
increasing, and the sun, after a few angry gleams, had disappeared.  The
sea had turned a dull leaden grey and grown rougher, and was now tossing
foaming whitecaps to the sky.  We were travelling faster, and heeled
farther over.  Once, in a gust, the rail dipped under the sea, and the
decks on that side were for the moment awash with water that made a
couple of the hunters hastily lift their feet.

“That vessel will soon be passing us,” I said, after a moment’s pause.
“As she is going in the opposite direction, she is very probably bound
for San Francisco.”

“Very probably,” was Wolf Larsen’s answer, as he turned partly away from
me and cried out, “Cooky!  Oh, Cooky!”

The Cockney popped out of the galley.

“Where’s that boy?  Tell him I want him.”

“Yes, sir;” and Thomas Mugridge fled swiftly aft and disappeared down
another companion-way near the wheel.  A moment later he emerged, a
heavy-set young fellow of eighteen or nineteen, with a glowering,
villainous countenance, trailing at his heels.

“’Ere ’e is, sir,” the cook said.

But Wolf Larsen ignored that worthy, turning at once to the cabin-boy.

“What’s your name, boy?”

“George Leach, sir,” came the sullen answer, and the boy’s bearing showed
clearly that he divined the reason for which he had been summoned.

“Not an Irish name,” the captain snapped sharply.  “O’Toole or McCarthy
would suit your mug a damn sight better.  Unless, very likely, there’s an
Irishman in your mother’s woodpile.”

I saw the young fellow’s hands clench at the insult, and the blood crawl
scarlet up his neck.

“But let that go,” Wolf Larsen continued.  “You may have very good
reasons for forgetting your name, and I’ll like you none the worse for it
as long as you toe the mark.  Telegraph Hill, of course, is your port of
entry.  It sticks out all over your mug.  Tough as they make them and
twice as nasty.  I know the kind.  Well, you can make up your mind to
have it taken out of you on this craft.  Understand?  Who shipped you,
anyway?”

“McCready and Swanson.”

“Sir!” Wolf Larsen thundered.

“McCready and Swanson, sir,” the boy corrected, his eyes burning with a
bitter light.

“Who got the advance money?”

“They did, sir.”

“I thought as much.  And damned glad you were to let them have it.
Couldn’t make yourself scarce too quick, with several gentlemen you may
have heard of looking for you.”

The boy metamorphosed into a savage on the instant.  His body bunched
together as though for a spring, and his face became as an infuriated
beast’s as he snarled, “It’s a—”

“A what?” Wolf Larsen asked, a peculiar softness in his voice, as though
he were overwhelmingly curious to hear the unspoken word.

The boy hesitated, then mastered his temper.  “Nothin’, sir.  I take it
back.”

“And you have shown me I was right.”  This with a gratified smile.  “How
old are you?”

“Just turned sixteen, sir,”

“A lie.  You’ll never see eighteen again.  Big for your age at that, with
muscles like a horse.  Pack up your kit and go for’ard into the fo’c’sle.
You’re a boat-puller now.  You’re promoted; see?”

Without waiting for the boy’s acceptance, the captain turned to the
sailor who had just finished the gruesome task of sewing up the corpse.
“Johansen, do you know anything about navigation?”

“No, sir,”

“Well, never mind; you’re mate just the same.  Get your traps aft into
the mate’s berth.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” was the cheery response, as Johansen started forward.

In the meantime the erstwhile cabin-boy had not moved.  “What are you
waiting for?” Wolf Larsen demanded.

“I didn’t sign for boat-puller, sir,” was the reply.  “I signed for
cabin-boy.  An’ I don’t want no boat-pullin’ in mine.”

“Pack up and go for’ard.”

This time Wolf Larsen’s command was thrillingly imperative.  The boy
glowered sullenly, but refused to move.

Then came another stirring of Wolf Larsen’s tremendous strength.  It was
utterly unexpected, and it was over and done with between the ticks of
two seconds.  He had sprung fully six feet across the deck and driven his
fist into the other’s stomach.  At the same moment, as though I had been
struck myself, I felt a sickening shock in the pit of my stomach.  I
instance this to show the sensitiveness of my nervous organization at the
time, and how unused I was to spectacles of brutality.  The cabin-boy—and
he weighed one hundred and sixty-five at the very least—crumpled up.  His
body wrapped limply about the fist like a wet rag about a stick.  He
lifted into the air, described a short curve, and struck the deck
alongside the corpse on his head and shoulders, where he lay and writhed
about in agony.

“Well?” Larsen asked of me.  “Have you made up your mind?”

I had glanced occasionally at the approaching schooner, and it was now
almost abreast of us and not more than a couple of hundred yards away.
It was a very trim and neat little craft.  I could see a large, black
number on one of its sails, and I had seen pictures of pilot-boats.

“What vessel is that?” I asked.

“The pilot-boat _Lady Mine_,” Wolf Larsen answered grimly.  “Got rid of
her pilots and running into San Francisco.  She’ll be there in five or
six hours with this wind.”

“Will you please signal it, then, so that I may be put ashore.”

“Sorry, but I’ve lost the signal book overboard,” he remarked, and the
group of hunters grinned.

I debated a moment, looking him squarely in the eyes.  I had seen the
frightful treatment of the cabin-boy, and knew that I should very
probably receive the same, if not worse.  As I say, I debated with
myself, and then I did what I consider the bravest act of my life.  I ran
to the side, waving my arms and shouting:

“_Lady Mine_ ahoy!  Take me ashore!  A thousand dollars if you take me
ashore!”

I waited, watching two men who stood by the wheel, one of them steering.
The other was lifting a megaphone to his lips.  I did not turn my head,
though I expected every moment a killing blow from the human brute behind
me.  At last, after what seemed centuries, unable longer to stand the
strain, I looked around.  He had not moved.  He was standing in the same
position, swaying easily to the roll of the ship and lighting a fresh
cigar.

“What is the matter?  Anything wrong?”

This was the cry from the _Lady Mine_.

“Yes!” I shouted, at the top of my lungs.  “Life or death!  One thousand
dollars if you take me ashore!”

“Too much ’Frisco tanglefoot for the health of my crew!” Wolf Larsen
shouted after.  “This one”—indicating me with his thumb—“fancies
sea-serpents and monkeys just now!”

The man on the _Lady Mine_ laughed back through the megaphone.  The
pilot-boat plunged past.

“Give him hell for me!” came a final cry, and the two men waved their
arms in farewell.

I leaned despairingly over the rail, watching the trim little schooner
swiftly increasing the bleak sweep of ocean between us.  And she would
probably be in San Francisco in five or six hours!  My head seemed
bursting.  There was an ache in my throat as though my heart were up in
it.  A curling wave struck the side and splashed salt spray on my lips.
The wind puffed strongly, and the _Ghost_ heeled far over, burying her
lee rail.  I could hear the water rushing down upon the deck.

When I turned around, a moment later, I saw the cabin-boy staggering to
his feet.  His face was ghastly white, twitching with suppressed pain.
He looked very sick.

“Well, Leach, are you going for’ard?” Wolf Larsen asked.

“Yes, sir,” came the answer of a spirit cowed.

“And you?” I was asked.

“I’ll give you a thousand—” I began, but was interrupted.

“Stow that!  Are you going to take up your duties as cabin-boy?  Or do I
have to take you in hand?”

What was I to do?  To be brutally beaten, to be killed perhaps, would not
help my case.  I looked steadily into the cruel grey eyes.  They might
have been granite for all the light and warmth of a human soul they
contained.  One may see the soul stir in some men’s eyes, but his were
bleak, and cold, and grey as the sea itself.

“Well?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Say ‘yes, sir.’”

“Yes, sir,” I corrected.

“What is your name?”

“Van Weyden, sir.”

“First name?”

“Humphrey, sir; Humphrey Van Weyden.”

“Age?”

“Thirty-five, sir.”

“That’ll do.  Go to the cook and learn your duties.”

And thus it was that I passed into a state of involuntary servitude to
Wolf Larsen.  He was stronger than I, that was all.  But it was very
unreal at the time.  It is no less unreal now that I look back upon it.
It will always be to me a monstrous, inconceivable thing, a horrible
nightmare.

“Hold on, don’t go yet.”

I stopped obediently in my walk toward the galley.

“Johansen, call all hands.  Now that we’ve everything cleaned up, we’ll
have the funeral and get the decks cleared of useless lumber.”

While Johansen was summoning the watch below, a couple of sailors, under
the captain’s direction, laid the canvas-swathed corpse upon a
hatch-cover.  On either side the deck, against the rail and bottoms up,
were lashed a number of small boats.  Several men picked up the
hatch-cover with its ghastly freight, carried it to the lee side, and
rested it on the boats, the feet pointing overboard.  To the feet was
attached the sack of coal which the cook had fetched.

I had always conceived a burial at sea to be a very solemn and
awe-inspiring event, but I was quickly disillusioned, by this burial at
any rate.  One of the hunters, a little dark-eyed man whom his mates
called “Smoke,” was telling stories, liberally intersprinkled with oaths
and obscenities; and every minute or so the group of hunters gave mouth
to a laughter that sounded to me like a wolf-chorus or the barking of
hell-hounds.  The sailors trooped noisily aft, some of the watch below
rubbing the sleep from their eyes, and talked in low tones together.
There was an ominous and worried expression on their faces.  It was
evident that they did not like the outlook of a voyage under such a
captain and begun so inauspiciously.  From time to time they stole
glances at Wolf Larsen, and I could see that they were apprehensive of
the man.

He stepped up to the hatch-cover, and all caps came off.  I ran my eyes
over them—twenty men all told; twenty-two including the man at the wheel
and myself.  I was pardonably curious in my survey, for it appeared my
fate to be pent up with them on this miniature floating world for I knew
not how many weeks or months.  The sailors, in the main, were English and
Scandinavian, and their faces seemed of the heavy, stolid order.  The
hunters, on the other hand, had stronger and more diversified faces, with
hard lines and the marks of the free play of passions.  Strange to say,
and I noted it all once, Wolf Larsen’s features showed no such evil
stamp.  There seemed nothing vicious in them.  True, there were lines,
but they were the lines of decision and firmness.  It seemed, rather, a
frank and open countenance, which frankness or openness was enhanced by
the fact that he was smooth-shaven.  I could hardly believe—until the
next incident occurred—that it was the face of a man who could behave as
he had behaved to the cabin-boy.

At this moment, as he opened his mouth to speak, puff after puff struck
the schooner and pressed her side under.  The wind shrieked a wild song
through the rigging.  Some of the hunters glanced anxiously aloft.  The
lee rail, where the dead man lay, was buried in the sea, and as the
schooner lifted and righted the water swept across the deck wetting us
above our shoe-tops.  A shower of rain drove down upon us, each drop
stinging like a hailstone.  As it passed, Wolf Larsen began to speak, the
bare-headed men swaying in unison, to the heave and lunge of the deck.

“I only remember one part of the service,” he said, “and that is, ‘And
the body shall be cast into the sea.’  So cast it in.”

He ceased speaking.  The men holding the hatch-cover seemed perplexed,
puzzled no doubt by the briefness of the ceremony.  He burst upon them in
a fury.

“Lift up that end there, damn you!  What the hell’s the matter with you?”

They elevated the end of the hatch-cover with pitiful haste, and, like a
dog flung overside, the dead man slid feet first into the sea.  The coal
at his feet dragged him down.  He was gone.

“Johansen,” Wolf Larsen said briskly to the new mate, “keep all hands on
deck now they’re here.  Get in the topsails and jibs and make a good job
of it.  We’re in for a sou’-easter.  Better reef the jib and mainsail
too, while you’re about it.”

In a moment the decks were in commotion, Johansen bellowing orders and
the men pulling or letting go ropes of various sorts—all naturally
confusing to a landsman such as myself.  But it was the heartlessness of
it that especially struck me.  The dead man was an episode that was past,
an incident that was dropped, in a canvas covering with a sack of coal,
while the ship sped along and her work went on.  Nobody had been
affected.  The hunters were laughing at a fresh story of Smoke’s; the men
pulling and hauling, and two of them climbing aloft; Wolf Larsen was
studying the clouding sky to windward; and the dead man, dying obscenely,
buried sordidly, and sinking down, down—

Then it was that the cruelty of the sea, its relentlessness and
awfulness, rushed upon me.  Life had become cheap and tawdry, a beastly
and inarticulate thing, a soulless stirring of the ooze and slime.  I
held on to the weather rail, close by the shrouds, and gazed out across
the desolate foaming waves to the low-lying fog-banks that hid San
Francisco and the California coast.  Rain-squalls were driving in
between, and I could scarcely see the fog.  And this strange vessel, with
its terrible men, pressed under by wind and sea and ever leaping up and
out, was heading away into the south-west, into the great and lonely
Pacific expanse.




CHAPTER IV


What happened to me next on the sealing-schooner _Ghost_, as I strove to
fit into my new environment, are matters of humiliation and pain.  The
cook, who was called “the doctor” by the crew, “Tommy” by the hunters,
and “Cooky” by Wolf Larsen, was a changed person.  The difference worked
in my status brought about a corresponding difference in treatment from
him.  Servile and fawning as he had been before, he was now as
domineering and bellicose.  In truth, I was no longer the fine gentleman
with a skin soft as a “lydy’s,” but only an ordinary and very worthless
cabin-boy.

He absurdly insisted upon my addressing him as Mr. Mugridge, and his
behaviour and carriage were insufferable as he showed me my duties.
Besides my work in the cabin, with its four small state-rooms, I was
supposed to be his assistant in the galley, and my colossal ignorance
concerning such things as peeling potatoes or washing greasy pots was a
source of unending and sarcastic wonder to him.  He refused to take into
consideration what I was, or, rather, what my life and the things I was
accustomed to had been.  This was part of the attitude he chose to adopt
toward me; and I confess, ere the day was done, that I hated him with
more lively feelings than I had ever hated any one in my life before.

This first day was made more difficult for me from the fact that the
_Ghost_, under close reefs (terms such as these I did not learn till
later), was plunging through what Mr. Mugridge called an “’owlin’
sou’-easter.”  At half-past five, under his directions, I set the table
in the cabin, with rough-weather trays in place, and then carried the tea
and cooked food down from the galley.  In this connection I cannot
forbear relating my first experience with a boarding sea.

“Look sharp or you’ll get doused,” was Mr. Mugridge’s parting injunction,
as I left the galley with a big tea-pot in one hand, and in the hollow of
the other arm several loaves of fresh-baked bread.  One of the hunters, a
tall, loose-jointed chap named Henderson, was going aft at the time from
the steerage (the name the hunters facetiously gave their midships
sleeping quarters) to the cabin.  Wolf Larsen was on the poop, smoking
his everlasting cigar.

“’Ere she comes.  Sling yer ’ook!” the cook cried.

I stopped, for I did not know what was coming, and saw the galley door
slide shut with a bang.  Then I saw Henderson leaping like a madman for
the main rigging, up which he shot, on the inside, till he was many feet
higher than my head.  Also I saw a great wave, curling and foaming,
poised far above the rail.  I was directly under it.  My mind did not
work quickly, everything was so new and strange.  I grasped that I was in
danger, but that was all.  I stood still, in trepidation.  Then Wolf
Larsen shouted from the poop:

“Grab hold something, you—you Hump!”

But it was too late.  I sprang toward the rigging, to which I might have
clung, and was met by the descending wall of water.  What happened after
that was very confusing.  I was beneath the water, suffocating and
drowning.  My feet were out from under me, and I was turning over and
over and being swept along I knew not where.  Several times I collided
against hard objects, once striking my right knee a terrible blow.  Then
the flood seemed suddenly to subside and I was breathing the good air
again.  I had been swept against the galley and around the steerage
companion-way from the weather side into the lee scuppers.  The pain from
my hurt knee was agonizing.  I could not put my weight on it, or, at
least, I thought I could not put my weight on it; and I felt sure the leg
was broken.  But the cook was after me, shouting through the lee galley
door:

“’Ere, you!  Don’t tyke all night about it!  Where’s the pot?  Lost
overboard?  Serve you bloody well right if yer neck was broke!”

I managed to struggle to my feet.  The great tea-pot was still in my
hand.  I limped to the galley and handed it to him.  But he was consumed
with indignation, real or feigned.

“Gawd blime me if you ayn’t a slob.  Wot ’re you good for anyw’y, I’d
like to know?  Eh?  Wot ’re you good for any’wy?  Cawn’t even carry a bit
of tea aft without losin’ it.  Now I’ll ’ave to boil some more.

“An’ wot ’re you snifflin’ about?” he burst out at me, with renewed rage.
“’Cos you’ve ’urt yer pore little leg, pore little mamma’s darlin’.”

I was not sniffling, though my face might well have been drawn and
twitching from the pain.  But I called up all my resolution, set my
teeth, and hobbled back and forth from galley to cabin and cabin to
galley without further mishap.  Two things I had acquired by my accident:
an injured knee-cap that went undressed and from which I suffered for
weary months, and the name of “Hump,” which Wolf Larsen had called me
from the poop.  Thereafter, fore and aft, I was known by no other name,
until the term became a part of my thought-processes and I identified it
with myself, thought of myself as Hump, as though Hump were I and had
always been I.

It was no easy task, waiting on the cabin table, where sat Wolf Larsen,
Johansen, and the six hunters.  The cabin was small, to begin with, and
to move around, as I was compelled to, was not made easier by the
schooner’s violent pitching and wallowing.  But what struck me most
forcibly was the total lack of sympathy on the part of the men whom I
served.  I could feel my knee through my clothes, swelling, and swelling,
and I was sick and faint from the pain of it.  I could catch glimpses of
my face, white and ghastly, distorted with pain, in the cabin mirror.
All the men must have seen my condition, but not one spoke or took notice
of me, till I was almost grateful to Wolf Larsen, later on (I was washing
the dishes), when he said:

“Don’t let a little thing like that bother you.  You’ll get used to such
things in time.  It may cripple you some, but all the same you’ll be
learning to walk.

“That’s what you call a paradox, isn’t it?” he added.

He seemed pleased when I nodded my head with the customary “Yes, sir.”

“I suppose you know a bit about literary things?  Eh?  Good.  I’ll have
some talks with you some time.”

And then, taking no further account of me, he turned his back and went up
on deck.

That night, when I had finished an endless amount of work, I was sent to
sleep in the steerage, where I made up a spare bunk.  I was glad to get
out of the detestable presence of the cook and to be off my feet.  To my
surprise, my clothes had dried on me and there seemed no indications of
catching cold, either from the last soaking or from the prolonged soaking
from the foundering of the _Martinez_.  Under ordinary circumstances,
after all that I had undergone, I should have been fit for bed and a
trained nurse.

But my knee was bothering me terribly.  As well as I could make out, the
kneecap seemed turned up on edge in the midst of the swelling.  As I sat
in my bunk examining it (the six hunters were all in the steerage,
smoking and talking in loud voices), Henderson took a passing glance at
it.

“Looks nasty,” he commented.  “Tie a rag around it, and it’ll be all
right.”

That was all; and on the land I would have been lying on the broad of my
back, with a surgeon attending on me, and with strict injunctions to do
nothing but rest.  But I must do these men justice.  Callous as they were
to my suffering, they were equally callous to their own when anything
befell them.  And this was due, I believe, first, to habit; and second,
to the fact that they were less sensitively organized.  I really believe
that a finely-organized, high-strung man would suffer twice and thrice as
much as they from a like injury.

Tired as I was,—exhausted, in fact,—I was prevented from sleeping by the
pain in my knee.  It was all I could do to keep from groaning aloud.  At
home I should undoubtedly have given vent to my anguish; but this new and
elemental environment seemed to call for a savage repression.  Like the
savage, the attitude of these men was stoical in great things, childish
in little things.  I remember, later in the voyage, seeing Kerfoot,
another of the hunters, lose a finger by having it smashed to a jelly;
and he did not even murmur or change the expression on his face.  Yet I
have seen the same man, time and again, fly into the most outrageous
passion over a trifle.

He was doing it now, vociferating, bellowing, waving his arms, and
cursing like a fiend, and all because of a disagreement with another
hunter as to whether a seal pup knew instinctively how to swim.  He held
that it did, that it could swim the moment it was born.  The other
hunter, Latimer, a lean, Yankee-looking fellow with shrewd,
narrow-slitted eyes, held otherwise, held that the seal pup was born on
the land for no other reason than that it could not swim, that its mother
was compelled to teach it to swim as birds were compelled to teach their
nestlings how to fly.

For the most part, the remaining four hunters leaned on the table or lay
in their bunks and left the discussion to the two antagonists.  But they
were supremely interested, for every little while they ardently took
sides, and sometimes all were talking at once, till their voices surged
back and forth in waves of sound like mimic thunder-rolls in the confined
space.  Childish and immaterial as the topic was, the quality of their
reasoning was still more childish and immaterial.  In truth, there was
very little reasoning or none at all.  Their method was one of assertion,
assumption, and denunciation.  They proved that a seal pup could swim or
not swim at birth by stating the proposition very bellicosely and then
following it up with an attack on the opposing man’s judgment, common
sense, nationality, or past history.  Rebuttal was precisely similar.  I
have related this in order to show the mental calibre of the men with
whom I was thrown in contact.  Intellectually they were children,
inhabiting the physical forms of men.

And they smoked, incessantly smoked, using a coarse, cheap, and
offensive-smelling tobacco.  The air was thick and murky with the smoke
of it; and this, combined with the violent movement of the ship as she
struggled through the storm, would surely have made me sea-sick had I
been a victim to that malady.  As it was, it made me quite squeamish,
though this nausea might have been due to the pain of my leg and
exhaustion.

As I lay there thinking, I naturally dwelt upon myself and my situation.
It was unparalleled, undreamed-of, that I, Humphrey Van Weyden, a scholar
and a dilettante, if you please, in things artistic and literary, should
be lying here on a Bering Sea seal-hunting schooner.  Cabin-boy!  I had
never done any hard manual labour, or scullion labour, in my life.  I had
lived a placid, uneventful, sedentary existence all my days—the life of a
scholar and a recluse on an assured and comfortable income.  Violent life
and athletic sports had never appealed to me.  I had always been a
book-worm; so my sisters and father had called me during my childhood.  I
had gone camping but once in my life, and then I left the party almost at
its start and returned to the comforts and conveniences of a roof.  And
here I was, with dreary and endless vistas before me of table-setting,
potato-peeling, and dish-washing.  And I was not strong.  The doctors had
always said that I had a remarkable constitution, but I had never
developed it or my body through exercise.  My muscles were small and
soft, like a woman’s, or so the doctors had said time and again in the
course of their attempts to persuade me to go in for physical-culture
fads.  But I had preferred to use my head rather than my body; and here I
was, in no fit condition for the rough life in prospect.

These are merely a few of the things that went through my mind, and are
related for the sake of vindicating myself in advance in the weak and
helpless _rôle_ I was destined to play.  But I thought, also, of my
mother and sisters, and pictured their grief.  I was among the missing
dead of the _Martinez_ disaster, an unrecovered body.  I could see the
head-lines in the papers; the fellows at the University Club and the
Bibelot shaking their heads and saying, “Poor chap!”  And I could see
Charley Furuseth, as I had said good-bye to him that morning, lounging in
a dressing-gown on the be-pillowed window couch and delivering himself of
oracular and pessimistic epigrams.

And all the while, rolling, plunging, climbing the moving mountains and
falling and wallowing in the foaming valleys, the schooner _Ghost_ was
fighting her way farther and farther into the heart of the Pacific—and I
was on her.  I could hear the wind above.  It came to my ears as a
muffled roar.  Now and again feet stamped overhead.  An endless creaking
was going on all about me, the woodwork and the fittings groaning and
squeaking and complaining in a thousand keys.  The hunters were still
arguing and roaring like some semi-human amphibious breed.  The air was
filled with oaths and indecent expressions.  I could see their faces,
flushed and angry, the brutality distorted and emphasized by the sickly
yellow of the sea-lamps which rocked back and forth with the ship.
Through the dim smoke-haze the bunks looked like the sleeping dens of
animals in a menagerie.  Oilskins and sea-boots were hanging from the
walls, and here and there rifles and shotguns rested securely in the
racks.  It was a sea-fitting for the buccaneers and pirates of by-gone
years.  My imagination ran riot, and still I could not sleep.  And it was
a long, long night, weary and dreary and long.




CHAPTER V


But my first night in the hunters’ steerage was also my last.  Next day
Johansen, the new mate, was routed from the cabin by Wolf Larsen, and
sent into the steerage to sleep thereafter, while I took possession of
the tiny cabin state-room, which, on the first day of the voyage, had
already had two occupants.  The reason for this change was quickly
learned by the hunters, and became the cause of a deal of grumbling on
their part.  It seemed that Johansen, in his sleep, lived over each night
the events of the day.  His incessant talking and shouting and bellowing
of orders had been too much for Wolf Larsen, who had accordingly foisted
the nuisance upon his hunters.

After a sleepless night, I arose weak and in agony, to hobble through my
second day on the _Ghost_.  Thomas Mugridge routed me out at half-past
five, much in the fashion that Bill Sykes must have routed out his dog;
but Mr. Mugridge’s brutality to me was paid back in kind and with
interest.  The unnecessary noise he made (I had lain wide-eyed the whole
night) must have awakened one of the hunters; for a heavy shoe whizzed
through the semi-darkness, and Mr. Mugridge, with a sharp howl of pain,
humbly begged everybody’s pardon.  Later on, in the galley, I noticed
that his ear was bruised and swollen.  It never went entirely back to its
normal shape, and was called a “cauliflower ear” by the sailors.

The day was filled with miserable variety.  I had taken my dried clothes
down from the galley the night before, and the first thing I did was to
exchange the cook’s garments for them.  I looked for my purse.  In
addition to some small change (and I have a good memory for such things),
it had contained one hundred and eighty-five dollars in gold and paper.
The purse I found, but its contents, with the exception of the small
silver, had been abstracted.  I spoke to the cook about it, when I went
on deck to take up my duties in the galley, and though I had looked
forward to a surly answer, I had not expected the belligerent harangue
that I received.

“Look ’ere, ’Ump,” he began, a malicious light in his eyes and a snarl in
his throat; “d’ye want yer nose punched?  If you think I’m a thief, just
keep it to yerself, or you’ll find ’ow bloody well mistyken you are.
Strike me blind if this ayn’t gratitude for yer!  ’Ere you come, a pore
mis’rable specimen of ’uman scum, an’ I tykes yer into my galley an’
treats yer ’ansom, an’ this is wot I get for it.  Nex’ time you can go to
’ell, say I, an’ I’ve a good mind to give you what-for anyw’y.”

So saying, he put up his fists and started for me.  To my shame be it, I
cowered away from the blow and ran out the galley door.  What else was I
to do?  Force, nothing but force, obtained on this brute-ship.  Moral
suasion was a thing unknown.  Picture it to yourself: a man of ordinary
stature, slender of build, and with weak, undeveloped muscles, who has
lived a peaceful, placid life, and is unused to violence of any sort—what
could such a man possibly do?  There was no more reason that I should
stand and face these human beasts than that I should stand and face an
infuriated bull.

So I thought it out at the time, feeling the need for vindication and
desiring to be at peace with my conscience.  But this vindication did not
satisfy.  Nor, to this day can I permit my manhood to look back upon
those events and feel entirely exonerated.  The situation was something
that really exceeded rational formulas for conduct and demanded more than
the cold conclusions of reason.  When viewed in the light of formal
logic, there is not one thing of which to be ashamed; but nevertheless a
shame rises within me at the recollection, and in the pride of my manhood
I feel that my manhood has in unaccountable ways been smirched and
sullied.

All of which is neither here nor there.  The speed with which I ran from
the galley caused excruciating pain in my knee, and I sank down
helplessly at the break of the poop.  But the Cockney had not pursued me.

“Look at ’im run!  Look at ’im run!” I could hear him crying.  “An’ with
a gyme leg at that!  Come on back, you pore little mamma’s darling.  I
won’t ’it yer; no, I won’t.”

I came back and went on with my work; and here the episode ended for the
time, though further developments were yet to take place.  I set the
breakfast-table in the cabin, and at seven o’clock waited on the hunters
and officers.  The storm had evidently broken during the night, though a
huge sea was still running and a stiff wind blowing.  Sail had been made
in the early watches, so that the _Ghost_ was racing along under
everything except the two topsails and the flying jib.  These three
sails, I gathered from the conversation, were to be set immediately after
breakfast.  I learned, also, that Wolf Larsen was anxious to make the
most of the storm, which was driving him to the south-west into that
portion of the sea where he expected to pick up with the north-east
trades.  It was before this steady wind that he hoped to make the major
portion of the run to Japan, curving south into the tropics and north
again as he approached the coast of Asia.

After breakfast I had another unenviable experience.  When I had finished
washing the dishes, I cleaned the cabin stove and carried the ashes up on
deck to empty them.  Wolf Larsen and Henderson were standing near the
wheel, deep in conversation.  The sailor, Johnson, was steering.  As I
started toward the weather side I saw him make a sudden motion with his
head, which I mistook for a token of recognition and good-morning.  In
reality, he was attempting to warn me to throw my ashes over the lee
side.  Unconscious of my blunder, I passed by Wolf Larsen and the hunter
and flung the ashes over the side to windward.  The wind drove them back,
and not only over me, but over Henderson and Wolf Larsen.  The next
instant the latter kicked me, violently, as a cur is kicked.  I had not
realized there could be so much pain in a kick.  I reeled away from him
and leaned against the cabin in a half-fainting condition.  Everything
was swimming before my eyes, and I turned sick.  The nausea overpowered
me, and I managed to crawl to the side of the vessel.  But Wolf Larsen
did not follow me up.  Brushing the ashes from his clothes, he had
resumed his conversation with Henderson.  Johansen, who had seen the
affair from the break of the poop, sent a couple of sailors aft to clean
up the mess.

Later in the morning I received a surprise of a totally different sort.
Following the cook’s instructions, I had gone into Wolf Larsen’s
state-room to put it to rights and make the bed.  Against the wall, near
the head of the bunk, was a rack filled with books.  I glanced over them,
noting with astonishment such names as Shakespeare, Tennyson, Poe, and De
Quincey.  There were scientific works, too, among which were represented
men such as Tyndall, Proctor, and Darwin.  Astronomy and physics were
represented, and I remarked Bulfinch’s _Age of Fable_, Shaw’s _History of
English and American Literature_, and Johnson’s _Natural History_ in two
large volumes.  Then there were a number of grammars, such as Metcalf’s,
and Reed and Kellogg’s; and I smiled as I saw a copy of _The Dean’s
English_.

I could not reconcile these books with the man from what I had seen of
him, and I wondered if he could possibly read them.  But when I came to
make the bed I found, between the blankets, dropped apparently as he had
sunk off to sleep, a complete Browning, the Cambridge Edition.  It was
open at “In a Balcony,” and I noticed, here and there, passages
underlined in pencil.  Further, letting drop the volume during a lurch of
the ship, a sheet of paper fell out.  It was scrawled over with
geometrical diagrams and calculations of some sort.

It was patent that this terrible man was no ignorant clod, such as one
would inevitably suppose him to be from his exhibitions of brutality.  At
once he became an enigma.  One side or the other of his nature was
perfectly comprehensible; but both sides together were bewildering.  I
had already remarked that his language was excellent, marred with an
occasional slight inaccuracy.  Of course, in common speech with the
sailors and hunters, it sometimes fairly bristled with errors, which was
due to the vernacular itself; but in the few words he had held with me it
had been clear and correct.

This glimpse I had caught of his other side must have emboldened me, for
I resolved to speak to him about the money I had lost.

“I have been robbed,” I said to him, a little later, when I found him
pacing up and down the poop alone.

“Sir,” he corrected, not harshly, but sternly.

“I have been robbed, sir,” I amended.

“How did it happen?” he asked.

Then I told him the whole circumstance, how my clothes had been left to
dry in the galley, and how, later, I was nearly beaten by the cook when I
mentioned the matter.

He smiled at my recital.  “Pickings,” he concluded; “Cooky’s pickings.
And don’t you think your miserable life worth the price?  Besides,
consider it a lesson.  You’ll learn in time how to take care of your
money for yourself.  I suppose, up to now, your lawyer has done it for
you, or your business agent.”

I could feel the quiet sneer through his words, but demanded, “How can I
get it back again?”

“That’s your look-out.  You haven’t any lawyer or business agent now, so
you’ll have to depend on yourself.  When you get a dollar, hang on to it.
A man who leaves his money lying around, the way you did, deserves to
lose it.  Besides, you have sinned.  You have no right to put temptation
in the way of your fellow-creatures.  You tempted Cooky, and he fell.
You have placed his immortal soul in jeopardy.  By the way, do you
believe in the immortal soul?”

His lids lifted lazily as he asked the question, and it seemed that the
deeps were opening to me and that I was gazing into his soul.  But it was
an illusion.  Far as it might have seemed, no man has ever seen very far
into Wolf Larsen’s soul, or seen it at all,—of this I am convinced.  It
was a very lonely soul, I was to learn, that never unmasked, though at
rare moments it played at doing so.

“I read immortality in your eyes,” I answered, dropping the “sir,”—an
experiment, for I thought the intimacy of the conversation warranted it.

He took no notice.  “By that, I take it, you see something that is alive,
but that necessarily does not have to live for ever.”

“I read more than that,” I continued boldly.

“Then you read consciousness.  You read the consciousness of life that it
is alive; but still no further away, no endlessness of life.”

How clearly he thought, and how well he expressed what he thought!  From
regarding me curiously, he turned his head and glanced out over the
leaden sea to windward.  A bleakness came into his eyes, and the lines of
his mouth grew severe and harsh.  He was evidently in a pessimistic mood.

“Then to what end?” he demanded abruptly, turning back to me.  “If I am
immortal—why?”

I halted.  How could I explain my idealism to this man?  How could I put
into speech a something felt, a something like the strains of music heard
in sleep, a something that convinced yet transcended utterance?

“What do you believe, then?” I countered.

“I believe that life is a mess,” he answered promptly.  “It is like
yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour,
a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move.  The
big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the
weak that they may retain their strength.  The lucky eat the most and
move the longest, that is all.  What do you make of those things?”

He swept his arm in an impatient gesture toward a number of the sailors
who were working on some kind of rope stuff amidships.

“They move, so does the jelly-fish move.  They move in order to eat in
order that they may keep moving.  There you have it.  They live for their
belly’s sake, and the belly is for their sake.  It’s a circle; you get
nowhere.  Neither do they.  In the end they come to a standstill.  They
move no more.  They are dead.”

“They have dreams,” I interrupted, “radiant, flashing dreams—”

“Of grub,” he concluded sententiously.

“And of more—”

“Grub.  Of a larger appetite and more luck in satisfying it.”  His voice
sounded harsh.  There was no levity in it.  “For, look you, they dream of
making lucky voyages which will bring them more money, of becoming the
mates of ships, of finding fortunes—in short, of being in a better
position for preying on their fellows, of having all night in, good grub
and somebody else to do the dirty work.  You and I are just like them.
There is no difference, except that we have eaten more and better.  I am
eating them now, and you too.  But in the past you have eaten more than I
have.  You have slept in soft beds, and worn fine clothes, and eaten good
meals.  Who made those beds? and those clothes? and those meals?  Not
you.  You never made anything in your own sweat.  You live on an income
which your father earned.  You are like a frigate bird swooping down upon
the boobies and robbing them of the fish they have caught.  You are one
with a crowd of men who have made what they call a government, who are
masters of all the other men, and who eat the food the other men get and
would like to eat themselves.  You wear the warm clothes.  They made the
clothes, but they shiver in rags and ask you, the lawyer, or business
agent who handles your money, for a job.”

“But that is beside the matter,” I cried.

“Not at all.”  He was speaking rapidly now, and his eyes were flashing.
“It is piggishness, and it is life.  Of what use or sense is an
immortality of piggishness?  What is the end?  What is it all about?  You
have made no food.  Yet the food you have eaten or wasted might have
saved the lives of a score of wretches who made the food but did not eat
it.  What immortal end did you serve? or did they?  Consider yourself and
me.  What does your boasted immortality amount to when your life runs
foul of mine?  You would like to go back to the land, which is a
favourable place for your kind of piggishness.  It is a whim of mine to
keep you aboard this ship, where my piggishness flourishes.  And keep you
I will.  I may make or break you.  You may die to-day, this week, or next
month.  I could kill you now, with a blow of my fist, for you are a
miserable weakling.  But if we are immortal, what is the reason for this?
To be piggish as you and I have been all our lives does not seem to be
just the thing for immortals to be doing.  Again, what’s it all about?
Why have I kept you here?—”

“Because you are stronger,” I managed to blurt out.

“But why stronger?” he went on at once with his perpetual queries.
“Because I am a bigger bit of the ferment than you?  Don’t you see?
Don’t you see?”

“But the hopelessness of it,” I protested.

“I agree with you,” he answered.  “Then why move at all, since moving is
living?  Without moving and being part of the yeast there would be no
hopelessness.  But,—and there it is,—we want to live and move, though we
have no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life to
live and move, to want to live and move.  If it were not for this, life
would be dead.  It is because of this life that is in you that you dream
of your immortality.  The life that is in you is alive and wants to go on
being alive for ever.  Bah!  An eternity of piggishness!”

He abruptly turned on his heel and started forward.  He stopped at the
break of the poop and called me to him.

“By the way, how much was it that Cooky got away with?” he asked.

“One hundred and eighty-five dollars, sir,” I answered.

He nodded his head.  A moment later, as I started down the companion
stairs to lay the table for dinner, I heard him loudly cursing some men
amidships.




CHAPTER VI


By the following morning the storm had blown itself quite out and the
_Ghost_ was rolling slightly on a calm sea without a breath of wind.
Occasional light airs were felt, however, and Wolf Larsen patrolled the
poop constantly, his eyes ever searching the sea to the north-eastward,
from which direction the great trade-wind must blow.

The men were all on deck and busy preparing their various boats for the
season’s hunting.  There are seven boats aboard, the captain’s dingey,
and the six which the hunters will use.  Three, a hunter, a boat-puller,
and a boat-steerer, compose a boat’s crew.  On board the schooner the
boat-pullers and steerers are the crew.  The hunters, too, are supposed
to be in command of the watches, subject, always, to the orders of Wolf
Larsen.

All this, and more, I have learned.  The _Ghost_ is considered the
fastest schooner in both the San Francisco and Victoria fleets.  In fact,
she was once a private yacht, and was built for speed.  Her lines and
fittings—though I know nothing about such things—speak for themselves.
Johnson was telling me about her in a short chat I had with him during
yesterday’s second dog-watch.  He spoke enthusiastically, with the love
for a fine craft such as some men feel for horses.  He is greatly
disgusted with the outlook, and I am given to understand that Wolf Larsen
bears a very unsavoury reputation among the sealing captains.  It was the
_Ghost_ herself that lured Johnson into signing for the voyage, but he is
already beginning to repent.

As he told me, the _Ghost_ is an eighty-ton schooner of a remarkably fine
model.  Her beam, or width, is twenty-three feet, and her length a little
over ninety feet.  A lead keel of fabulous but unknown weight makes her
very stable, while she carries an immense spread of canvas.  From the
deck to the truck of the maintopmast is something over a hundred feet,
while the foremast with its topmast is eight or ten feet shorter.  I am
giving these details so that the size of this little floating world which
holds twenty-two men may be appreciated.  It is a very little world, a
mote, a speck, and I marvel that men should dare to venture the sea on a
contrivance so small and fragile.

Wolf Larsen has, also, a reputation for reckless carrying on of sail.  I
overheard Henderson and another of the hunters, Standish, a Californian,
talking about it.  Two years ago he dismasted the _Ghost_ in a gale on
Bering Sea, whereupon the present masts were put in, which are stronger
and heavier in every way.  He is said to have remarked, when he put them
in, that he preferred turning her over to losing the sticks.

Every man aboard, with the exception of Johansen, who is rather overcome
by his promotion, seems to have an excuse for having sailed on the
_Ghost_.  Half the men forward are deep-water sailors, and their excuse
is that they did not know anything about her or her captain.  And those
who do know, whisper that the hunters, while excellent shots, were so
notorious for their quarrelsome and rascally proclivities that they could
not sign on any decent schooner.

I have made the acquaintance of another one of the crew,—Louis he is
called, a rotund and jovial-faced Nova Scotia Irishman, and a very
sociable fellow, prone to talk as long as he can find a listener.  In the
afternoon, while the cook was below asleep and I was peeling the
everlasting potatoes, Louis dropped into the galley for a “yarn.”  His
excuse for being aboard was that he was drunk when he signed.  He assured
me again and again that it was the last thing in the world he would dream
of doing in a sober moment.  It seems that he has been seal-hunting
regularly each season for a dozen years, and is accounted one of the two
or three very best boat-steerers in both fleets.

“Ah, my boy,” he shook his head ominously at me, “’tis the worst schooner
ye could iv selected, nor were ye drunk at the time as was I.  ’Tis
sealin’ is the sailor’s paradise—on other ships than this.  The mate was
the first, but mark me words, there’ll be more dead men before the trip
is done with.  Hist, now, between you an’ meself and the stanchion there,
this Wolf Larsen is a regular devil, an’ the _Ghost’ll_ be a hell-ship
like she’s always ben since he had hold iv her.  Don’t I know?  Don’t I
know?  Don’t I remember him in Hakodate two years gone, when he had a row
an’ shot four iv his men?  Wasn’t I a-layin’ on the _Emma L._, not three
hundred yards away?  An’ there was a man the same year he killed with a
blow iv his fist.  Yes, sir, killed ’im dead-oh.  His head must iv
smashed like an eggshell.  An’ wasn’t there the Governor of Kura Island,
an’ the Chief iv Police, Japanese gentlemen, sir, an’ didn’t they come
aboard the _Ghost_ as his guests, a-bringin’ their wives along—wee an’
pretty little bits of things like you see ’em painted on fans.  An’ as he
was a-gettin’ under way, didn’t the fond husbands get left astern-like in
their sampan, as it might be by accident?  An’ wasn’t it a week later
that the poor little ladies was put ashore on the other side of the
island, with nothin’ before ’em but to walk home acrost the mountains on
their weeny-teeny little straw sandals which wouldn’t hang together a
mile?  Don’t I know?  ’Tis the beast he is, this Wolf Larsen—the great
big beast mentioned iv in Revelation; an’ no good end will he ever come
to.  But I’ve said nothin’ to ye, mind ye.  I’ve whispered never a word;
for old fat Louis’ll live the voyage out if the last mother’s son of yez
go to the fishes.”

“Wolf Larsen!” he snorted a moment later.  “Listen to the word, will ye!
Wolf—’tis what he is.  He’s not black-hearted like some men.  ’Tis no
heart he has at all.  Wolf, just wolf, ’tis what he is.  D’ye wonder he’s
well named?”

“But if he is so well-known for what he is,” I queried, “how is it that
he can get men to ship with him?”

“An’ how is it ye can get men to do anything on God’s earth an’ sea?”
Louis demanded with Celtic fire.  “How d’ye find me aboard if ’twasn’t
that I was drunk as a pig when I put me name down?  There’s them that
can’t sail with better men, like the hunters, and them that don’t know,
like the poor devils of wind-jammers for’ard there.  But they’ll come to
it, they’ll come to it, an’ be sorry the day they was born.  I could weep
for the poor creatures, did I but forget poor old fat Louis and the
troubles before him.  But ’tis not a whisper I’ve dropped, mind ye, not a
whisper.”

“Them hunters is the wicked boys,” he broke forth again, for he suffered
from a constitutional plethora of speech.  “But wait till they get to
cutting up iv jinks and rowin’ ’round.  He’s the boy’ll fix ’em.  ’Tis
him that’ll put the fear of God in their rotten black hearts.  Look at
that hunter iv mine, Horner.  ‘Jock’ Horner they call him, so quiet-like
an’ easy-goin’, soft-spoken as a girl, till ye’d think butter wouldn’t
melt in the mouth iv him.  Didn’t he kill his boat-steerer last year?
’Twas called a sad accident, but I met the boat-puller in Yokohama an’
the straight iv it was given me.  An’ there’s Smoke, the black little
devil—didn’t the Roosians have him for three years in the salt mines of
Siberia, for poachin’ on Copper Island, which is a Roosian preserve?
Shackled he was, hand an’ foot, with his mate.  An’ didn’t they have
words or a ruction of some kind?—for ’twas the other fellow Smoke sent up
in the buckets to the top of the mine; an’ a piece at a time he went up,
a leg to-day, an’ to-morrow an arm, the next day the head, an’ so on.”

“But you can’t mean it!” I cried out, overcome with the horror of it.

“Mean what!” he demanded, quick as a flash.  “’Tis nothin’ I’ve said.
Deef I am, and dumb, as ye should be for the sake iv your mother; an’
never once have I opened me lips but to say fine things iv them an’ him,
God curse his soul, an’ may he rot in purgatory ten thousand years, and
then go down to the last an’ deepest hell iv all!”

Johnson, the man who had chafed me raw when I first came aboard, seemed
the least equivocal of the men forward or aft.  In fact, there was
nothing equivocal about him.  One was struck at once by his
straightforwardness and manliness, which, in turn, were tempered by a
modesty which might be mistaken for timidity.  But timid he was not.  He
seemed, rather, to have the courage of his convictions, the certainty of
his manhood.  It was this that made him protest, at the commencement of
our acquaintance, against being called Yonson.  And upon this, and him,
Louis passed judgment and prophecy.

“’Tis a fine chap, that squarehead Johnson we’ve for’ard with us,” he
said.  “The best sailorman in the fo’c’sle.  He’s my boat-puller.  But
it’s to trouble he’ll come with Wolf Larsen, as the sparks fly upward.
It’s meself that knows.  I can see it brewin’ an’ comin’ up like a storm
in the sky.  I’ve talked to him like a brother, but it’s little he sees
in takin’ in his lights or flyin’ false signals.  He grumbles out when
things don’t go to suit him, and there’ll be always some tell-tale
carryin’ word iv it aft to the Wolf.  The Wolf is strong, and it’s the
way of a wolf to hate strength, an’ strength it is he’ll see in
Johnson—no knucklin’ under, and a ‘Yes, sir, thank ye kindly, sir,’ for a
curse or a blow.  Oh, she’s a-comin’!  She’s a-comin’!  An’ God knows
where I’ll get another boat-puller!  What does the fool up an’ say, when
the old man calls him Yonson, but ‘Me name is Johnson, sir,’ an’ then
spells it out, letter for letter.  Ye should iv seen the old man’s face!
I thought he’d let drive at him on the spot.  He didn’t, but he will, an’
he’ll break that squarehead’s heart, or it’s little I know iv the ways iv
men on the ships iv the sea.”

Thomas Mugridge is becoming unendurable.  I am compelled to Mister him
and to Sir him with every speech.  One reason for this is that Wolf
Larsen seems to have taken a fancy to him.  It is an unprecedented thing,
I take it, for a captain to be chummy with the cook; but this is
certainly what Wolf Larsen is doing.  Two or three times he put his head
into the galley and chaffed Mugridge good-naturedly, and once, this
afternoon, he stood by the break of the poop and chatted with him for
fully fifteen minutes.  When it was over, and Mugridge was back in the
galley, he became greasily radiant, and went about his work, humming
coster songs in a nerve-racking and discordant falsetto.

“I always get along with the officers,” he remarked to me in a
confidential tone.  “I know the w’y, I do, to myke myself uppreci-yted.
There was my last skipper—w’y I thought nothin’ of droppin’ down in the
cabin for a little chat and a friendly glass.  ‘Mugridge,’ sez ’e to me,
‘Mugridge,’ sez ’e, ‘you’ve missed yer vokytion.’  ‘An’ ’ow’s that?’ sez
I.  ‘Yer should ’a been born a gentleman, an’ never ’ad to work for yer
livin’.’  God strike me dead, ’Ump, if that ayn’t wot ’e sez, an’ me
a-sittin’ there in ’is own cabin, jolly-like an’ comfortable, a-smokin’
’is cigars an’ drinkin’ ’is rum.”

This chitter-chatter drove me to distraction.  I never heard a voice I
hated so.  His oily, insinuating tones, his greasy smile and his
monstrous self-conceit grated on my nerves till sometimes I was all in a
tremble.  Positively, he was the most disgusting and loathsome person I
have ever met.  The filth of his cooking was indescribable; and, as he
cooked everything that was eaten aboard, I was compelled to select what I
ate with great circumspection, choosing from the least dirty of his
concoctions.

My hands bothered me a great deal, unused as they were to work.  The
nails were discoloured and black, while the skin was already grained with
dirt which even a scrubbing-brush could not remove.  Then blisters came,
in a painful and never-ending procession, and I had a great burn on my
forearm, acquired by losing my balance in a roll of the ship and pitching
against the galley stove.  Nor was my knee any better.  The swelling had
not gone down, and the cap was still up on edge.  Hobbling about on it
from morning till night was not helping it any.  What I needed was rest,
if it were ever to get well.

Rest!  I never before knew the meaning of the word.  I had been resting
all my life and did not know it.  But now, could I sit still for one
half-hour and do nothing, not even think, it would be the most
pleasurable thing in the world.  But it is a revelation, on the other
hand.  I shall be able to appreciate the lives of the working people
hereafter.  I did not dream that work was so terrible a thing.  From
half-past five in the morning till ten o’clock at night I am everybody’s
slave, with not one moment to myself, except such as I can steal near the
end of the second dog-watch.  Let me pause for a minute to look out over
the sea sparkling in the sun, or to gaze at a sailor going aloft to the
gaff-topsails, or running out the bowsprit, and I am sure to hear the
hateful voice, “’Ere, you, ’Ump, no sodgerin’.  I’ve got my peepers on
yer.”

There are signs of rampant bad temper in the steerage, and the gossip is
going around that Smoke and Henderson have had a fight.  Henderson seems
the best of the hunters, a slow-going fellow, and hard to rouse; but
roused he must have been, for Smoke had a bruised and discoloured eye,
and looked particularly vicious when he came into the cabin for supper.

A cruel thing happened just before supper, indicative of the callousness
and brutishness of these men.  There is one green hand in the crew,
Harrison by name, a clumsy-looking country boy, mastered, I imagine, by
the spirit of adventure, and making his first voyage.  In the light
baffling airs the schooner had been tacking about a great deal, at which
times the sails pass from one side to the other and a man is sent aloft
to shift over the fore-gaff-topsail.  In some way, when Harrison was
aloft, the sheet jammed in the block through which it runs at the end of
the gaff.  As I understood it, there were two ways of getting it
cleared,—first, by lowering the foresail, which was comparatively easy
and without danger; and second, by climbing out the peak-halyards to the
end of the gaff itself, an exceedingly hazardous performance.

Johansen called out to Harrison to go out the halyards.  It was patent to
everybody that the boy was afraid.  And well he might be, eighty feet
above the deck, to trust himself on those thin and jerking ropes.  Had
there been a steady breeze it would not have been so bad, but the _Ghost_
was rolling emptily in a long sea, and with each roll the canvas flapped
and boomed and the halyards slacked and jerked taut.  They were capable
of snapping a man off like a fly from a whip-lash.

Harrison heard the order and understood what was demanded of him, but
hesitated.  It was probably the first time he had been aloft in his life.
Johansen, who had caught the contagion of Wolf Larsen’s masterfulness,
burst out with a volley of abuse and curses.

“That’ll do, Johansen,” Wolf Larsen said brusquely.  “I’ll have you know
that I do the swearing on this ship.  If I need your assistance, I’ll
call you in.”

“Yes, sir,” the mate acknowledged submissively.

In the meantime Harrison had started out on the halyards.  I was looking
up from the galley door, and I could see him trembling, as if with ague,
in every limb.  He proceeded very slowly and cautiously, an inch at a
time.  Outlined against the clear blue of the sky, he had the appearance
of an enormous spider crawling along the tracery of its web.

It was a slight uphill climb, for the foresail peaked high; and the
halyards, running through various blocks on the gaff and mast, gave him
separate holds for hands and feet.  But the trouble lay in that the wind
was not strong enough nor steady enough to keep the sail full.  When he
was half-way out, the _Ghost_ took a long roll to windward and back again
into the hollow between two seas.  Harrison ceased his progress and held
on tightly.  Eighty feet beneath, I could see the agonized strain of his
muscles as he gripped for very life.  The sail emptied and the gaff swung
amid-ships.  The halyards slackened, and, though it all happened very
quickly, I could see them sag beneath the weight of his body.  Then the
gag swung to the side with an abrupt swiftness, the great sail boomed
like a cannon, and the three rows of reef-points slatted against the
canvas like a volley of rifles.  Harrison, clinging on, made the giddy
rush through the air.  This rush ceased abruptly.  The halyards became
instantly taut.  It was the snap of the whip.  His clutch was broken.
One hand was torn loose from its hold.  The other lingered desperately
for a moment, and followed.  His body pitched out and down, but in some
way he managed to save himself with his legs.  He was hanging by them,
head downward.  A quick effort brought his hands up to the halyards
again; but he was a long time regaining his former position, where he
hung, a pitiable object.

“I’ll bet he has no appetite for supper,” I heard Wolf Larsen’s voice,
which came to me from around the corner of the galley.  “Stand from
under, you, Johansen!  Watch out!  Here she comes!”

In truth, Harrison was very sick, as a person is sea-sick; and for a long
time he clung to his precarious perch without attempting to move.
Johansen, however, continued violently to urge him on to the completion
of his task.

“It is a shame,” I heard Johnson growling in painfully slow and correct
English.  He was standing by the main rigging, a few feet away from me.
“The boy is willing enough.  He will learn if he has a chance.  But this
is—”  He paused awhile, for the word “murder” was his final judgment.

“Hist, will ye!” Louis whispered to him, “For the love iv your mother
hold your mouth!”

But Johnson, looking on, still continued his grumbling.

“Look here,” the hunter Standish spoke to Wolf Larsen, “that’s my
boat-puller, and I don’t want to lose him.”

“That’s all right, Standish,” was the reply.  “He’s your boat-puller when
you’ve got him in the boat; but he’s my sailor when I have him aboard,
and I’ll do what I damn well please with him.”

“But that’s no reason—” Standish began in a torrent of speech.

“That’ll do, easy as she goes,” Wolf Larsen counselled back.  “I’ve told
you what’s what, and let it stop at that.  The man’s mine, and I’ll make
soup of him and eat it if I want to.”

There was an angry gleam in the hunter’s eye, but he turned on his heel
and entered the steerage companion-way, where he remained, looking
upward.  All hands were on deck now, and all eyes were aloft, where a
human life was at grapples with death.  The callousness of these men, to
whom industrial organization gave control of the lives of other men, was
appalling.  I, who had lived out of the whirl of the world, had never
dreamed that its work was carried on in such fashion.  Life had always
seemed a peculiarly sacred thing, but here it counted for nothing, was a
cipher in the arithmetic of commerce.  I must say, however, that the
sailors themselves were sympathetic, as instance the case of Johnson; but
the masters (the hunters and the captain) were heartlessly indifferent.
Even the protest of Standish arose out of the fact that he did not wish
to lose his boat-puller.  Had it been some other hunter’s boat-puller,
he, like them, would have been no more than amused.

But to return to Harrison.  It took Johansen, insulting and reviling the
poor wretch, fully ten minutes to get him started again.  A little later
he made the end of the gaff, where, astride the spar itself, he had a
better chance for holding on.  He cleared the sheet, and was free to
return, slightly downhill now, along the halyards to the mast.  But he
had lost his nerve.  Unsafe as was his present position, he was loath to
forsake it for the more unsafe position on the halyards.

He looked along the airy path he must traverse, and then down to the
deck.  His eyes were wide and staring, and he was trembling violently.  I
had never seen fear so strongly stamped upon a human face.  Johansen
called vainly for him to come down.  At any moment he was liable to be
snapped off the gaff, but he was helpless with fright.  Wolf Larsen,
walking up and down with Smoke and in conversation, took no more notice
of him, though he cried sharply, once, to the man at the wheel:

“You’re off your course, my man!  Be careful, unless you’re looking for
trouble!”

“Ay, ay, sir,” the helmsman responded, putting a couple of spokes down.

He had been guilty of running the _Ghost_ several points off her course
in order that what little wind there was should fill the foresail and
hold it steady.  He had striven to help the unfortunate Harrison at the
risk of incurring Wolf Larsen’s anger.

The time went by, and the suspense, to me, was terrible.  Thomas
Mugridge, on the other hand, considered it a laughable affair, and was
continually bobbing his head out the galley door to make jocose remarks.
How I hated him!  And how my hatred for him grew and grew, during that
fearful time, to cyclopean dimensions.  For the first time in my life I
experienced the desire to murder—“saw red,” as some of our picturesque
writers phrase it.  Life in general might still be sacred, but life in
the particular case of Thomas Mugridge had become very profane indeed.  I
was frightened when I became conscious that I was seeing red, and the
thought flashed through my mind: was I, too, becoming tainted by the
brutality of my environment?—I, who even in the most flagrant crimes had
denied the justice and righteousness of capital punishment?

Fully half-an-hour went by, and then I saw Johnson and Louis in some sort
of altercation.  It ended with Johnson flinging off Louis’s detaining arm
and starting forward.  He crossed the deck, sprang into the fore rigging,
and began to climb.  But the quick eye of Wolf Larsen caught him.

“Here, you, what are you up to?” he cried.

Johnson’s ascent was arrested.  He looked his captain in the eyes and
replied slowly:

“I am going to get that boy down.”

“You’ll get down out of that rigging, and damn lively about it!  D’ye
hear?  Get down!”

Johnson hesitated, but the long years of obedience to the masters of
ships overpowered him, and he dropped sullenly to the deck and went on
forward.

At half after five I went below to set the cabin table, but I hardly knew
what I did, for my eyes and my brain were filled with the vision of a
man, white-faced and trembling, comically like a bug, clinging to the
thrashing gaff.  At six o’clock, when I served supper, going on deck to
get the food from the galley, I saw Harrison, still in the same position.
The conversation at the table was of other things.  Nobody seemed
interested in the wantonly imperilled life.  But making an extra trip to
the galley a little later, I was gladdened by the sight of Harrison
staggering weakly from the rigging to the forecastle scuttle.  He had
finally summoned the courage to descend.

Before closing this incident, I must give a scrap of conversation I had
with Wolf Larsen in the cabin, while I was washing the dishes.

“You were looking squeamish this afternoon,” he began.  “What was the
matter?”

I could see that he knew what had made me possibly as sick as Harrison,
that he was trying to draw me, and I answered, “It was because of the
brutal treatment of that boy.”

He gave a short laugh.  “Like sea-sickness, I suppose.  Some men are
subject to it, and others are not.”

“Not so,” I objected.

“Just so,” he went on.  “The earth is as full of brutality as the sea is
full of motion.  And some men are made sick by the one, and some by the
other.  That’s the only reason.”

“But you, who make a mock of human life, don’t you place any value upon
it whatever?” I demanded.

“Value?  What value?”  He looked at me, and though his eyes were steady
and motionless, there seemed a cynical smile in them.  “What kind of
value?  How do you measure it?  Who values it?”

“I do,” I made answer.

“Then what is it worth to you?  Another man’s life, I mean.  Come now,
what is it worth?”

The value of life?  How could I put a tangible value upon it?  Somehow,
I, who have always had expression, lacked expression when with Wolf
Larsen.  I have since determined that a part of it was due to the man’s
personality, but that the greater part was due to his totally different
outlook.  Unlike other materialists I had met and with whom I had
something in common to start on, I had nothing in common with him.
Perhaps, also, it was the elemental simplicity of his mind that baffled
me.  He drove so directly to the core of the matter, divesting a question
always of all superfluous details, and with such an air of finality, that
I seemed to find myself struggling in deep water, with no footing under
me.  Value of life?  How could I answer the question on the spur of the
moment?  The sacredness of life I had accepted as axiomatic.  That it was
intrinsically valuable was a truism I had never questioned.  But when he
challenged the truism I was speechless.

“We were talking about this yesterday,” he said.  “I held that life was a
ferment, a yeasty something which devoured life that it might live, and
that living was merely successful piggishness.  Why, if there is anything
in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world.  There is
only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is
demanding to be born is limitless.  Nature is a spendthrift.  Look at the
fish and their millions of eggs.  For that matter, look at you and me.
In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives.  Could we but
find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the
unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and
populate continents.  Life?  Bah!  It has no value.  Of cheap things it
is the cheapest.  Everywhere it goes begging.  Nature spills it out with
a lavish hand.  Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand
lives, and it’s life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life
is left.”

“You have read Darwin,” I said.  “But you read him misunderstandingly
when you conclude that the struggle for existence sanctions your wanton
destruction of life.”

He shrugged his shoulders.  “You know you only mean that in relation to
human life, for of the flesh and the fowl and the fish you destroy as
much as I or any other man.  And human life is in no wise different,
though you feel it is and think that you reason why it is.  Why should I
be parsimonious with this life which is cheap and without value?  There
are more sailors than there are ships on the sea for them, more workers
than there are factories or machines for them.  Why, you who live on the
land know that you house your poor people in the slums of cities and
loose famine and pestilence upon them, and that there still remain more
poor people, dying for want of a crust of bread and a bit of meat (which
is life destroyed), than you know what to do with.  Have you ever seen
the London dockers fighting like wild beasts for a chance to work?”

He started for the companion stairs, but turned his head for a final
word.  “Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon
itself?  And it is of course over-estimated since it is of necessity
prejudiced in its own favour.  Take that man I had aloft.  He held on as
if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies.  To
you?  No.  To me?  Not at all.  To himself?  Yes.  But I do not accept
his estimate.  He sadly overrates himself.  There is plenty more life
demanding to be born.  Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck
like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world.  He
was worth nothing to the world.  The supply is too large.  To himself
only was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was,
being dead he is unconscious that he has lost himself.  He alone rated
himself beyond diamonds and rubies.  Diamonds and rubies are gone, spread
out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of sea-water, and he does
not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone.  He does not lose
anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss.
Don’t you see?  And what have you to say?”

“That you are at least consistent,” was all I could say, and I went on
washing the dishes.




CHAPTER VII


At last, after three days of variable winds, we have caught the
north-east trades.  I came on deck, after a good night’s rest in spite of
my poor knee, to find the _Ghost_ foaming along, wing-and-wing, and every
sail drawing except the jibs, with a fresh breeze astern.  Oh, the wonder
of the great trade-wind!  All day we sailed, and all night, and the next
day, and the next, day after day, the wind always astern and blowing
steadily and strong.  The schooner sailed herself.  There was no pulling
and hauling on sheets and tackles, no shifting of topsails, no work at
all for the sailors to do except to steer.  At night when the sun went
down, the sheets were slackened; in the morning, when they yielded up the
damp of the dew and relaxed, they were pulled tight again—and that was
all.

Ten knots, twelve knots, eleven knots, varying from time to time, is the
speed we are making.  And ever out of the north-east the brave wind
blows, driving us on our course two hundred and fifty miles between the
dawns.  It saddens me and gladdens me, the gait with which we are leaving
San Francisco behind and with which we are foaming down upon the tropics.
Each day grows perceptibly warmer.  In the second dog-watch the sailors
come on deck, stripped, and heave buckets of water upon one another from
overside.  Flying-fish are beginning to be seen, and during the night the
watch above scrambles over the deck in pursuit of those that fall aboard.
In the morning, Thomas Mugridge being duly bribed, the galley is
pleasantly areek with the odour of their frying; while dolphin meat is
served fore and aft on such occasions as Johnson catches the blazing
beauties from the bowsprit end.

Johnson seems to spend all his spare time there or aloft at the
crosstrees, watching the _Ghost_ cleaving the water under press of sail.
There is passion, adoration, in his eyes, and he goes about in a sort of
trance, gazing in ecstasy at the swelling sails, the foaming wake, and
the heave and the run of her over the liquid mountains that are moving
with us in stately procession.

The days and nights are “all a wonder and a wild delight,” and though I
have little time from my dreary work, I steal odd moments to gaze and
gaze at the unending glory of what I never dreamed the world possessed.
Above, the sky is stainless blue—blue as the sea itself, which under the
forefoot is of the colour and sheen of azure satin.  All around the
horizon are pale, fleecy clouds, never changing, never moving, like a
silver setting for the flawless turquoise sky.

I do not forget one night, when I should have been asleep, of lying on
the forecastle-head and gazing down at the spectral ripple of foam thrust
aside by the _Ghost’s_ forefoot.  It sounded like the gurgling of a brook
over mossy stones in some quiet dell, and the crooning song of it lured
me away and out of myself till I was no longer Hump the cabin-boy, nor
Van Weyden, the man who had dreamed away thirty-five years among books.
But a voice behind me, the unmistakable voice of Wolf Larsen, strong with
the invincible certitude of the man and mellow with appreciation of the
words he was quoting, aroused me.

   “‘O the blazing tropic night, when the wake’s a welt of light
      That holds the hot sky tame,
   And the steady forefoot snores through the planet-powdered floors
      Where the scared whale flukes in flame.
   Her plates are scarred by the sun, dear lass,
      And her ropes are taut with the dew,
   For we’re booming down on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
      We’re sagging south on the Long Trail—the trail that is always
   new.’”

“Eh, Hump?  How’s it strike you?” he asked, after the due pause which
words and setting demanded.

I looked into his face.  It was aglow with light, as the sea itself, and
the eyes were flashing in the starshine.

“It strikes me as remarkable, to say the least, that you should show
enthusiasm,” I answered coldly.

“Why, man, it’s living! it’s life!” he cried.

“Which is a cheap thing and without value.”  I flung his words at him.

He laughed, and it was the first time I had heard honest mirth in his
voice.

“Ah, I cannot get you to understand, cannot drive it into your head, what
a thing this life is.  Of course life is valueless, except to itself.
And I can tell you that my life is pretty valuable just now—to myself.
It is beyond price, which you will acknowledge is a terrific overrating,
but which I cannot help, for it is the life that is in me that makes the
rating.”

He appeared waiting for the words with which to express the thought that
was in him, and finally went on.

“Do you know, I am filled with a strange uplift; I feel as if all time
were echoing through me, as though all powers were mine.  I know truth,
divine good from evil, right from wrong.  My vision is clear and far.  I
could almost believe in God.  But,” and his voice changed and the light
went out of his face,—“what is this condition in which I find myself?
this joy of living? this exultation of life? this inspiration, I may well
call it?  It is what comes when there is nothing wrong with one’s
digestion, when his stomach is in trim and his appetite has an edge, and
all goes well.  It is the bribe for living, the champagne of the blood,
the effervescence of the ferment—that makes some men think holy thoughts,
and other men to see God or to create him when they cannot see him.  That
is all, the drunkenness of life, the stirring and crawling of the yeast,
the babbling of the life that is insane with consciousness that it is
alive.  And—bah!  To-morrow I shall pay for it as the drunkard pays.  And
I shall know that I must die, at sea most likely, cease crawling of
myself to be all a-crawl with the corruption of the sea; to be fed upon,
to be carrion, to yield up all the strength and movement of my muscles
that it may become strength and movement in fin and scale and the guts of
fishes.  Bah!  And bah! again.  The champagne is already flat.  The
sparkle and bubble has gone out and it is a tasteless drink.”

He left me as suddenly as he had come, springing to the deck with the
weight and softness of a tiger.  The _Ghost_ ploughed on her way.  I
noted the gurgling forefoot was very like a snore, and as I listened to
it the effect of Wolf Larsen’s swift rush from sublime exultation to
despair slowly left me.  Then some deep-water sailor, from the waist of
the ship, lifted a rich tenor voice in the “Song of the Trade Wind”:

   “Oh, I am the wind the seamen love—
      I am steady, and strong, and true;
   They follow my track by the clouds above,
      O’er the fathomless tropic blue.

                                  * * * * *

   Through daylight and dark I follow the bark
      I keep like a hound on her trail;
   I’m strongest at noon, yet under the moon,
      I stiffen the bunt of her sail.”




CHAPTER VIII


Sometimes I think Wolf Larsen mad, or half-mad at least, what of his
strange moods and vagaries.  At other times I take him for a great man, a
genius who has never arrived.  And, finally, I am convinced that he is
the perfect type of the primitive man, born a thousand years or
generations too late and an anachronism in this culminating century of
civilization.  He is certainly an individualist of the most pronounced
type.  Not only that, but he is very lonely.  There is no congeniality
between him and the rest of the men aboard ship.  His tremendous virility
and mental strength wall him apart.  They are more like children to him,
even the hunters, and as children he treats them, descending perforce to
their level and playing with them as a man plays with puppies.  Or else
he probes them with the cruel hand of a vivisectionist, groping about in
their mental processes and examining their souls as though to see of what
soul-stuff is made.

I have seen him a score of times, at table, insulting this hunter or
that, with cool and level eyes and, withal, a certain air of interest,
pondering their actions or replies or petty rages with a curiosity almost
laughable to me who stood onlooker and who understood.  Concerning his
own rages, I am convinced that they are not real, that they are sometimes
experiments, but that in the main they are the habits of a pose or
attitude he has seen fit to take toward his fellow-men.  I know, with the
possible exception of the incident of the dead mate, that I have not seen
him really angry; nor do I wish ever to see him in a genuine rage, when
all the force of him is called into play.

While on the question of vagaries, I shall tell what befell Thomas
Mugridge in the cabin, and at the same time complete an incident upon
which I have already touched once or twice.  The twelve o’clock dinner
was over, one day, and I had just finished putting the cabin in order,
when Wolf Larsen and Thomas Mugridge descended the companion stairs.
Though the cook had a cubby-hole of a state-room opening off from the
cabin, in the cabin itself he had never dared to linger or to be seen,
and he flitted to and fro, once or twice a day, a timid spectre.

“So you know how to play ‘Nap,’” Wolf Larsen was saying in a pleased sort
of voice.  “I might have guessed an Englishman would know.  I learned it
myself in English ships.”

Thomas Mugridge was beside himself, a blithering imbecile, so pleased was
he at chumming thus with the captain.  The little airs he put on and the
painful striving to assume the easy carriage of a man born to a dignified
place in life would have been sickening had they not been ludicrous.  He
quite ignored my presence, though I credited him with being simply unable
to see me.  His pale, wishy-washy eyes were swimming like lazy summer
seas, though what blissful visions they beheld were beyond my
imagination.

“Get the cards, Hump,” Wolf Larsen ordered, as they took seats at the
table.  “And bring out the cigars and the whisky you’ll find in my
berth.”

I returned with the articles in time to hear the Cockney hinting broadly
that there was a mystery about him, that he might be a gentleman’s son
gone wrong or something or other; also, that he was a remittance man and
was paid to keep away from England—“p’yed ’ansomely, sir,” was the way he
put it; “p’yed ’ansomely to sling my ’ook an’ keep slingin’ it.”

I had brought the customary liquor glasses, but Wolf Larsen frowned,
shook his head, and signalled with his hands for me to bring the
tumblers.  These he filled two-thirds full with undiluted whisky—“a
gentleman’s drink?” quoth Thomas Mugridge,—and they clinked their glasses
to the glorious game of “Nap,” lighted cigars, and fell to shuffling and
dealing the cards.

They played for money.  They increased the amounts of the bets.  They
drank whisky, they drank it neat, and I fetched more.  I do not know
whether Wolf Larsen cheated or not,—a thing he was thoroughly capable of
doing,—but he won steadily.  The cook made repeated journeys to his bunk
for money.  Each time he performed the journey with greater swagger, but
he never brought more than a few dollars at a time.  He grew maudlin,
familiar, could hardly see the cards or sit upright.  As a preliminary to
another journey to his bunk, he hooked Wolf Larsen’s buttonhole with a
greasy forefinger and vacuously proclaimed and reiterated, “I got money,
I got money, I tell yer, an’ I’m a gentleman’s son.”

Wolf Larsen was unaffected by the drink, yet he drank glass for glass,
and if anything his glasses were fuller.  There was no change in him.  He
did not appear even amused at the other’s antics.

In the end, with loud protestations that he could lose like a gentleman,
the cook’s last money was staked on the game—and lost.  Whereupon he
leaned his head on his hands and wept.  Wolf Larsen looked curiously at
him, as though about to probe and vivisect him, then changed his mind, as
from the foregone conclusion that there was nothing there to probe.

“Hump,” he said to me, elaborately polite, “kindly take Mr. Mugridge’s
arm and help him up on deck.  He is not feeling very well.”

“And tell Johnson to douse him with a few buckets of salt water,” he
added, in a lower tone for my ear alone.

I left Mr. Mugridge on deck, in the hands of a couple of grinning sailors
who had been told off for the purpose.  Mr. Mugridge was sleepily
spluttering that he was a gentleman’s son.  But as I descended the
companion stairs to clear the table I heard him shriek as the first
bucket of water struck him.

Wolf Larsen was counting his winnings.

“One hundred and eighty-five dollars even,” he said aloud.  “Just as I
thought.  The beggar came aboard without a cent.”

“And what you have won is mine, sir,” I said boldly.

He favoured me with a quizzical smile.  “Hump, I have studied some
grammar in my time, and I think your tenses are tangled.  ‘Was mine,’ you
should have said, not ’is mine.’”

“It is a question, not of grammar, but of ethics,” I answered.

It was possibly a minute before he spoke.

“D’ye know, Hump,” he said, with a slow seriousness which had in it an
indefinable strain of sadness, “that this is the first time I have heard
the word ‘ethics’ in the mouth of a man.  You and I are the only men on
this ship who know its meaning.”

“At one time in my life,” he continued, after another pause, “I dreamed
that I might some day talk with men who used such language, that I might
lift myself out of the place in life in which I had been born, and hold
conversation and mingle with men who talked about just such things as
ethics.  And this is the first time I have ever heard the word
pronounced.  Which is all by the way, for you are wrong.  It is a
question neither of grammar nor ethics, but of fact.”

“I understand,” I said.  “The fact is that you have the money.”

His face brightened.  He seemed pleased at my perspicacity.  “But it is
avoiding the real question,” I continued, “which is one of right.”

“Ah,” he remarked, with a wry pucker of his mouth, “I see you still
believe in such things as right and wrong.”

“But don’t you?—at all?” I demanded.

“Not the least bit.  Might is right, and that is all there is to it.
Weakness is wrong.  Which is a very poor way of saying that it is good
for oneself to be strong, and evil for oneself to be weak—or better yet,
it is pleasurable to be strong, because of the profits; painful to be
weak, because of the penalties.  Just now the possession of this money is
a pleasurable thing.  It is good for one to possess it.  Being able to
possess it, I wrong myself and the life that is in me if I give it to you
and forego the pleasure of possessing it.”

“But you wrong me by withholding it,” I objected.

“Not at all.  One man cannot wrong another man.  He can only wrong
himself.  As I see it, I do wrong always when I consider the interests of
others.  Don’t you see?  How can two particles of the yeast wrong each
other by striving to devour each other?  It is their inborn heritage to
strive to devour, and to strive not to be devoured.  When they depart
from this they sin.”

“Then you don’t believe in altruism?” I asked.

He received the word as if it had a familiar ring, though he pondered it
thoughtfully.  “Let me see, it means something about coöperation, doesn’t
it?”

“Well, in a way there has come to be a sort of connection,” I answered
unsurprised by this time at such gaps in his vocabulary, which, like his
knowledge, was the acquirement of a self-read, self-educated man, whom no
one had directed in his studies, and who had thought much and talked
little or not at all.  “An altruistic act is an act performed for the
welfare of others.  It is unselfish, as opposed to an act performed for
self, which is selfish.”

He nodded his head.  “Oh, yes, I remember it now.  I ran across it in
Spencer.”

“Spencer!” I cried.  “Have you read him?”

“Not very much,” was his confession.  “I understood quite a good deal of
_First Principles_, but his _Biology_ took the wind out of my sails, and
his _Psychology_ left me butting around in the doldrums for many a day.
I honestly could not understand what he was driving at.  I put it down to
mental deficiency on my part, but since then I have decided that it was
for want of preparation.  I had no proper basis.  Only Spencer and myself
know how hard I hammered.  But I did get something out of his _Data of
Ethics_.  There’s where I ran across ‘altruism,’ and I remember now how
it was used.”

I wondered what this man could have got from such a work.  Spencer I
remembered enough to know that altruism was imperative to his ideal of
highest conduct.  Wolf Larsen, evidently, had sifted the great
philosopher’s teachings, rejecting and selecting according to his needs
and desires.

“What else did you run across?” I asked.

His brows drew in slightly with the mental effort of suitably phrasing
thoughts which he had never before put into speech.  I felt an elation of
spirit.  I was groping into his soul-stuff as he made a practice of
groping in the soul-stuff of others.  I was exploring virgin territory.
A strange, a terribly strange, region was unrolling itself before my
eyes.

“In as few words as possible,” he began, “Spencer puts it something like
this: First, a man must act for his own benefit—to do this is to be moral
and good.  Next, he must act for the benefit of his children.  And third,
he must act for the benefit of his race.”

“And the highest, finest, right conduct,” I interjected, “is that act
which benefits at the same time the man, his children, and his race.”

“I wouldn’t stand for that,” he replied.  “Couldn’t see the necessity for
it, nor the common sense.  I cut out the race and the children.  I would
sacrifice nothing for them.  It’s just so much slush and sentiment, and
you must see it yourself, at least for one who does not believe in
eternal life.  With immortality before me, altruism would be a paying
business proposition.  I might elevate my soul to all kinds of altitudes.
But with nothing eternal before me but death, given for a brief spell
this yeasty crawling and squirming which is called life, why, it would be
immoral for me to perform any act that was a sacrifice.  Any sacrifice
that makes me lose one crawl or squirm is foolish,—and not only foolish,
for it is a wrong against myself and a wicked thing.  I must not lose one
crawl or squirm if I am to get the most out of the ferment.  Nor will the
eternal movelessness that is coming to me be made easier or harder by the
sacrifices or selfishnesses of the time when I was yeasty and acrawl.”

“Then you are an individualist, a materialist, and, logically, a
hedonist.”

“Big words,” he smiled.  “But what is a hedonist?”

He nodded agreement when I had given the definition.  “And you are also,”
I continued, “a man one could not trust in the least thing where it was
possible for a selfish interest to intervene?”

“Now you’re beginning to understand,” he said, brightening.

“You are a man utterly without what the world calls morals?”

“That’s it.”

“A man of whom to be always afraid—”

“That’s the way to put it.”

“As one is afraid of a snake, or a tiger, or a shark?”

“Now you know me,” he said.  “And you know me as I am generally known.
Other men call me ‘Wolf.’”

“You are a sort of monster,” I added audaciously, “a Caliban who has
pondered Setebos, and who acts as you act, in idle moments, by whim and
fancy.”

His brow clouded at the allusion.  He did not understand, and I quickly
learned that he did not know the poem.

“I’m just reading Browning,” he confessed, “and it’s pretty tough.  I
haven’t got very far along, and as it is I’ve about lost my bearings.”

Not to be tiresome, I shall say that I fetched the book from his
state-room and read “Caliban” aloud.  He was delighted.  It was a
primitive mode of reasoning and of looking at things that he understood
thoroughly.  He interrupted again and again with comment and criticism.
When I finished, he had me read it over a second time, and a third.  We
fell into discussion—philosophy, science, evolution, religion.  He
betrayed the inaccuracies of the self-read man, and, it must be granted,
the sureness and directness of the primitive mind.  The very simplicity
of his reasoning was its strength, and his materialism was far more
compelling than the subtly complex materialism of Charley Furuseth.  Not
that I—a confirmed and, as Furuseth phrased it, a temperamental
idealist—was to be compelled; but that Wolf Larsen stormed the last
strongholds of my faith with a vigour that received respect, while not
accorded conviction.

Time passed.  Supper was at hand and the table not laid.  I became
restless and anxious, and when Thomas Mugridge glared down the
companion-way, sick and angry of countenance, I prepared to go about my
duties.  But Wolf Larsen cried out to him:

“Cooky, you’ve got to hustle to-night.  I’m busy with Hump, and you’ll do
the best you can without him.”

And again the unprecedented was established.  That night I sat at table
with the captain and the hunters, while Thomas Mugridge waited on us and
washed the dishes afterward—a whim, a Caliban-mood of Wolf Larsen’s, and
one I foresaw would bring me trouble.  In the meantime we talked and
talked, much to the disgust of the hunters, who could not understand a
word.




CHAPTER IX


Three days of rest, three blessed days of rest, are what I had with Wolf
Larsen, eating at the cabin table and doing nothing but discuss life,
literature, and the universe, the while Thomas Mugridge fumed and raged
and did my work as well as his own.

“Watch out for squalls, is all I can say to you,” was Louis’s warning,
given during a spare half-hour on deck while Wolf Larsen was engaged in
straightening out a row among the hunters.

“Ye can’t tell what’ll be happenin’,” Louis went on, in response to my
query for more definite information.  “The man’s as contrary as air
currents or water currents.  You can never guess the ways iv him.  ’Tis
just as you’re thinkin’ you know him and are makin’ a favourable slant
along him, that he whirls around, dead ahead and comes howlin’ down upon
you and a-rippin’ all iv your fine-weather sails to rags.”

So I was not altogether surprised when the squall foretold by Louis smote
me.  We had been having a heated discussion,—upon life, of course,—and,
grown over-bold, I was passing stiff strictures upon Wolf Larsen and the
life of Wolf Larsen.  In fact, I was vivisecting him and turning over his
soul-stuff as keenly and thoroughly as it was his custom to do it to
others.  It may be a weakness of mine that I have an incisive way of
speech; but I threw all restraint to the winds and cut and slashed until
the whole man of him was snarling.  The dark sun-bronze of his face went
black with wrath, his eyes were ablaze.  There was no clearness or sanity
in them—nothing but the terrific rage of a madman.  It was the wolf in
him that I saw, and a mad wolf at that.

He sprang for me with a half-roar, gripping my arm.  I had steeled myself
to brazen it out, though I was trembling inwardly; but the enormous
strength of the man was too much for my fortitude.  He had gripped me by
the biceps with his single hand, and when that grip tightened I wilted
and shrieked aloud.  My feet went out from under me.  I simply could not
stand upright and endure the agony.  The muscles refused their duty.  The
pain was too great.  My biceps was being crushed to a pulp.

He seemed to recover himself, for a lucid gleam came into his eyes, and
he relaxed his hold with a short laugh that was more like a growl.  I
fell to the floor, feeling very faint, while he sat down, lighted a
cigar, and watched me as a cat watches a mouse.  As I writhed about I
could see in his eyes that curiosity I had so often noted, that wonder
and perplexity, that questing, that everlasting query of his as to what
it was all about.

I finally crawled to my feet and ascended the companion stairs.  Fair
weather was over, and there was nothing left but to return to the galley.
My left arm was numb, as though paralysed, and days passed before I could
use it, while weeks went by before the last stiffness and pain went out
of it.  And he had done nothing but put his hand upon my arm and squeeze.
There had been no wrenching or jerking.  He had just closed his hand with
a steady pressure.  What he might have done I did not fully realize till
next day, when he put his head into the galley, and, as a sign of renewed
friendliness, asked me how my arm was getting on.

“It might have been worse,” he smiled.

I was peeling potatoes.  He picked one up from the pan.  It was
fair-sized, firm, and unpeeled.  He closed his hand upon it, squeezed,
and the potato squirted out between his fingers in mushy streams.  The
pulpy remnant he dropped back into the pan and turned away, and I had a
sharp vision of how it might have fared with me had the monster put his
real strength upon me.

But the three days’ rest was good in spite of it all, for it had given my
knee the very chance it needed.  It felt much better, the swelling had
materially decreased, and the cap seemed descending into its proper
place.  Also, the three days’ rest brought the trouble I had foreseen.
It was plainly Thomas Mugridge’s intention to make me pay for those three
days.  He treated me vilely, cursed me continually, and heaped his own
work upon me.  He even ventured to raise his fist to me, but I was
becoming animal-like myself, and I snarled in his face so terribly that
it must have frightened him back.  It is no pleasant picture I can
conjure up of myself, Humphrey Van Weyden, in that noisome ship’s galley,
crouched in a corner over my task, my face raised to the face of the
creature about to strike me, my lips lifted and snarling like a dog’s, my
eyes gleaming with fear and helplessness and the courage that comes of
fear and helplessness.  I do not like the picture.  It reminds me too
strongly of a rat in a trap.  I do not care to think of it; but it was
elective, for the threatened blow did not descend.

Thomas Mugridge backed away, glaring as hatefully and viciously as I
glared.  A pair of beasts is what we were, penned together and showing
our teeth.  He was a coward, afraid to strike me because I had not
quailed sufficiently in advance; so he chose a new way to intimidate me.
There was only one galley knife that, as a knife, amounted to anything.
This, through many years of service and wear, had acquired a long, lean
blade.  It was unusually cruel-looking, and at first I had shuddered
every time I used it.  The cook borrowed a stone from Johansen and
proceeded to sharpen the knife.  He did it with great ostentation,
glancing significantly at me the while.  He whetted it up and down all
day long.  Every odd moment he could find he had the knife and stone out
and was whetting away.  The steel acquired a razor edge.  He tried it
with the ball of his thumb or across the nail.  He shaved hairs from the
back of his hand, glanced along the edge with microscopic acuteness, and
found, or feigned that he found, always, a slight inequality in its edge
somewhere.  Then he would put it on the stone again and whet, whet, whet,
till I could have laughed aloud, it was so very ludicrous.

It was also serious, for I learned that he was capable of using it, that
under all his cowardice there was a courage of cowardice, like mine, that
would impel him to do the very thing his whole nature protested against
doing and was afraid of doing.  “Cooky’s sharpening his knife for Hump,”
was being whispered about among the sailors, and some of them twitted him
about it.  This he took in good part, and was really pleased, nodding his
head with direful foreknowledge and mystery, until George Leach, the
erstwhile cabin-boy, ventured some rough pleasantry on the subject.

Now it happened that Leach was one of the sailors told off to douse
Mugridge after his game of cards with the captain.  Leach had evidently
done his task with a thoroughness that Mugridge had not forgiven, for
words followed and evil names involving smirched ancestries.  Mugridge
menaced with the knife he was sharpening for me.  Leach laughed and
hurled more of his Telegraph Hill Billingsgate, and before either he or I
knew what had happened, his right arm had been ripped open from elbow to
wrist by a quick slash of the knife.  The cook backed away, a fiendish
expression on his face, the knife held before him in a position of
defence.  But Leach took it quite calmly, though blood was spouting upon
the deck as generously as water from a fountain.

“I’m goin’ to get you, Cooky,” he said, “and I’ll get you hard.  And I
won’t be in no hurry about it.  You’ll be without that knife when I come
for you.”

So saying, he turned and walked quietly forward.  Mugridge’s face was
livid with fear at what he had done and at what he might expect sooner or
later from the man he had stabbed.  But his demeanour toward me was more
ferocious than ever.  In spite of his fear at the reckoning he must
expect to pay for what he had done, he could see that it had been an
object-lesson to me, and he became more domineering and exultant.  Also
there was a lust in him, akin to madness, which had come with sight of
the blood he had drawn.  He was beginning to see red in whatever
direction he looked.  The psychology of it is sadly tangled, and yet I
could read the workings of his mind as clearly as though it were a
printed book.

Several days went by, the _Ghost_ still foaming down the trades, and I
could swear I saw madness growing in Thomas Mugridge’s eyes.  And I
confess that I became afraid, very much afraid.  Whet, whet, whet, it
went all day long.  The look in his eyes as he felt the keen edge and
glared at me was positively carnivorous.  I was afraid to turn my
shoulder to him, and when I left the galley I went out backwards—to the
amusement of the sailors and hunters, who made a point of gathering in
groups to witness my exit.  The strain was too great.  I sometimes
thought my mind would give way under it—a meet thing on this ship of
madmen and brutes.  Every hour, every minute of my existence was in
jeopardy.  I was a human soul in distress, and yet no soul, fore or aft,
betrayed sufficient sympathy to come to my aid.  At times I thought of
throwing myself on the mercy of Wolf Larsen, but the vision of the
mocking devil in his eyes that questioned life and sneered at it would
come strong upon me and compel me to refrain.  At other times I seriously
contemplated suicide, and the whole force of my hopeful philosophy was
required to keep me from going over the side in the darkness of night.

Several times Wolf Larsen tried to inveigle me into discussion, but I
gave him short answers and eluded him.  Finally, he commanded me to
resume my seat at the cabin table for a time and let the cook do my work.
Then I spoke frankly, telling him what I was enduring from Thomas
Mugridge because of the three days of favouritism which had been shown
me.  Wolf Larsen regarded me with smiling eyes.

“So you’re afraid, eh?” he sneered.

“Yes,” I said defiantly and honestly, “I am afraid.”

“That’s the way with you fellows,” he cried, half angrily,
“sentimentalizing about your immortal souls and afraid to die.  At sight
of a sharp knife and a cowardly Cockney the clinging of life to life
overcomes all your fond foolishness.  Why, my dear fellow, you will live
for ever.  You are a god, and God cannot be killed.  Cooky cannot hurt
you.  You are sure of your resurrection.  What’s there to be afraid of?

“You have eternal life before you.  You are a millionaire in immortality,
and a millionaire whose fortune cannot be lost, whose fortune is less
perishable than the stars and as lasting as space or time.  It is
impossible for you to diminish your principal.  Immortality is a thing
without beginning or end.  Eternity is eternity, and though you die here
and now you will go on living somewhere else and hereafter.  And it is
all very beautiful, this shaking off of the flesh and soaring of the
imprisoned spirit.  Cooky cannot hurt you.  He can only give you a boost
on the path you eternally must tread.

“Or, if you do not wish to be boosted just yet, why not boost Cooky?
According to your ideas, he, too, must be an immortal millionaire.  You
cannot bankrupt him.  His paper will always circulate at par.  You cannot
diminish the length of his living by killing him, for he is without
beginning or end.  He’s bound to go on living, somewhere, somehow.  Then
boost him.  Stick a knife in him and let his spirit free.  As it is, it’s
in a nasty prison, and you’ll do him only a kindness by breaking down the
door.  And who knows?—it may be a very beautiful spirit that will go
soaring up into the blue from that ugly carcass.  Boost him along, and
I’ll promote you to his place, and he’s getting forty-five dollars a
month.”

It was plain that I could look for no help or mercy from Wolf Larsen.
Whatever was to be done I must do for myself; and out of the courage of
fear I evolved the plan of fighting Thomas Mugridge with his own weapons.
I borrowed a whetstone from Johansen.  Louis, the boat-steerer, had
already begged me for condensed milk and sugar.  The lazarette, where
such delicacies were stored, was situated beneath the cabin floor.
Watching my chance, I stole five cans of the milk, and that night, when
it was Louis’s watch on deck, I traded them with him for a dirk as lean
and cruel-looking as Thomas Mugridge’s vegetable knife.  It was rusty and
dull, but I turned the grindstone while Louis gave it an edge.  I slept
more soundly than usual that night.

Next morning, after breakfast, Thomas Mugridge began his whet, whet,
whet.  I glanced warily at him, for I was on my knees taking the ashes
from the stove.  When I returned from throwing them overside, he was
talking to Harrison, whose honest yokel’s face was filled with
fascination and wonder.

“Yes,” Mugridge was saying, “an’ wot does ’is worship do but give me two
years in Reading.  But blimey if I cared.  The other mug was fixed
plenty.  Should ’a seen ’im.  Knife just like this.  I stuck it in, like
into soft butter, an’ the w’y ’e squealed was better’n a tu-penny gaff.”
He shot a glance in my direction to see if I was taking it in, and went
on.  “‘I didn’t mean it Tommy,’ ’e was snifflin’; ‘so ’elp me Gawd, I
didn’t mean it!’  ‘I’ll fix yer bloody well right,’ I sez, an’ kept right
after ’im.  I cut ’im in ribbons, that’s wot I did, an’ ’e a-squealin’
all the time.  Once ’e got ’is ’and on the knife an’ tried to ’old it.
‘Ad ’is fingers around it, but I pulled it through, cuttin’ to the bone.
O, ’e was a sight, I can tell yer.”

A call from the mate interrupted the gory narrative, and Harrison went
aft.  Mugridge sat down on the raised threshold to the galley and went on
with his knife-sharpening.  I put the shovel away and calmly sat down on
the coal-box facing him.  He favoured me with a vicious stare.  Still
calmly, though my heart was going pitapat, I pulled out Louis’s dirk and
began to whet it on the stone.  I had looked for almost any sort of
explosion on the Cockney’s part, but to my surprise he did not appear
aware of what I was doing.  He went on whetting his knife.  So did I.
And for two hours we sat there, face to face, whet, whet, whet, till the
news of it spread abroad and half the ship’s company was crowding the
galley doors to see the sight.

Encouragement and advice were freely tendered, and Jock Horner, the
quiet, self-spoken hunter who looked as though he would not harm a mouse,
advised me to leave the ribs alone and to thrust upward for the abdomen,
at the same time giving what he called the “Spanish twist” to the blade.
Leach, his bandaged arm prominently to the fore, begged me to leave a few
remnants of the cook for him; and Wolf Larsen paused once or twice at the
break of the poop to glance curiously at what must have been to him a
stirring and crawling of the yeasty thing he knew as life.

And I make free to say that for the time being life assumed the same
sordid values to me.  There was nothing pretty about it, nothing
divine—only two cowardly moving things that sat whetting steel upon
stone, and a group of other moving things, cowardly and otherwise, that
looked on.  Half of them, I am sure, were anxious to see us shedding each
other’s blood.  It would have been entertainment.  And I do not think
there was one who would have interfered had we closed in a
death-struggle.

On the other hand, the whole thing was laughable and childish.  Whet,
whet, whet,—Humphrey Van Weyden sharpening his knife in a ship’s galley
and trying its edge with his thumb!  Of all situations this was the most
inconceivable.  I know that my own kind could not have believed it
possible.  I had not been called “Sissy” Van Weyden all my days without
reason, and that “Sissy” Van Weyden should be capable of doing this thing
was a revelation to Humphrey Van Weyden, who knew not whether to be
exultant or ashamed.

But nothing happened.  At the end of two hours Thomas Mugridge put away
knife and stone and held out his hand.

“Wot’s the good of mykin’ a ’oly show of ourselves for them mugs?” he
demanded.  “They don’t love us, an’ bloody well glad they’d be a-seein’
us cuttin’ our throats.  Yer not ’arf bad, ’Ump!  You’ve got spunk, as
you Yanks s’y, an’ I like yer in a w’y.  So come on an’ shyke.”

Coward that I might be, I was less a coward than he.  It was a distinct
victory I had gained, and I refused to forego any of it by shaking his
detestable hand.

“All right,” he said pridelessly, “tyke it or leave it, I’ll like yer
none the less for it.”  And to save his face he turned fiercely upon the
onlookers.  “Get outa my galley-doors, you bloomin’ swabs!”

This command was reinforced by a steaming kettle of water, and at sight
of it the sailors scrambled out of the way.  This was a sort of victory
for Thomas Mugridge, and enabled him to accept more gracefully the defeat
I had given him, though, of course, he was too discreet to attempt to
drive the hunters away.

“I see Cooky’s finish,” I heard Smoke say to Horner.

“You bet,” was the reply.  “Hump runs the galley from now on, and Cooky
pulls in his horns.”

Mugridge heard and shot a swift glance at me, but I gave no sign that the
conversation had reached me.  I had not thought my victory was so
far-reaching and complete, but I resolved to let go nothing I had gained.
As the days went by, Smoke’s prophecy was verified.  The Cockney became
more humble and slavish to me than even to Wolf Larsen.  I mistered him
and sirred him no longer, washed no more greasy pots, and peeled no more
potatoes.  I did my own work, and my own work only, and when and in what
fashion I saw fit.  Also I carried the dirk in a sheath at my hip,
sailor-fashion, and maintained toward Thomas Mugridge a constant attitude
which was composed of equal parts of domineering, insult, and contempt.




CHAPTER X


My intimacy with Wolf Larsen increases—if by intimacy may be denoted
those relations which exist between master and man, or, better yet,
between king and jester.  I am to him no more than a toy, and he values
me no more than a child values a toy.  My function is to amuse, and so
long as I amuse all goes well; but let him become bored, or let him have
one of his black moods come upon him, and at once I am relegated from
cabin table to galley, while, at the same time, I am fortunate to escape
with my life and a whole body.

The loneliness of the man is slowly being borne in upon me.  There is not
a man aboard but hates or fears him, nor is there a man whom he does not
despise.  He seems consuming with the tremendous power that is in him and
that seems never to have found adequate expression in works.  He is as
Lucifer would be, were that proud spirit banished to a society of
soulless, Tomlinsonian ghosts.

This loneliness is bad enough in itself, but, to make it worse, he is
oppressed by the primal melancholy of the race.  Knowing him, I review
the old Scandinavian myths with clearer understanding.  The
white-skinned, fair-haired savages who created that terrible pantheon
were of the same fibre as he.  The frivolity of the laughter-loving
Latins is no part of him.  When he laughs it is from a humour that is
nothing else than ferocious.  But he laughs rarely; he is too often sad.
And it is a sadness as deep-reaching as the roots of the race.  It is the
race heritage, the sadness which has made the race sober-minded,
clean-lived and fanatically moral, and which, in this latter connection,
has culminated among the English in the Reformed Church and Mrs. Grundy.

In point of fact, the chief vent to this primal melancholy has been
religion in its more agonizing forms.  But the compensations of such
religion are denied Wolf Larsen.  His brutal materialism will not permit
it.  So, when his blue moods come on, nothing remains for him, but to be
devilish.  Were he not so terrible a man, I could sometimes feel sorry
for him, as instance three mornings ago, when I went into his stateroom
to fill his water-bottle and came unexpectedly upon him.  He did not see
me.  His head was buried in his hands, and his shoulders were heaving
convulsively as with sobs.  He seemed torn by some mighty grief.  As I
softly withdrew I could hear him groaning, “God!  God!  God!”  Not that
he was calling upon God; it was a mere expletive, but it came from his
soul.

At dinner he asked the hunters for a remedy for headache, and by evening,
strong man that he was, he was half-blind and reeling about the cabin.

“I’ve never been sick in my life, Hump,” he said, as I guided him to his
room.  “Nor did I ever have a headache except the time my head was
healing after having been laid open for six inches by a capstan-bar.”

For three days this blinding headache lasted, and he suffered as wild
animals suffer, as it seemed the way on ship to suffer, without plaint,
without sympathy, utterly alone.

This morning, however, on entering his state-room to make the bed and put
things in order, I found him well and hard at work.  Table and bunk were
littered with designs and calculations.  On a large transparent sheet,
compass and square in hand, he was copying what appeared to be a scale of
some sort or other.

“Hello, Hump,” he greeted me genially.  “I’m just finishing the finishing
touches.  Want to see it work?”

“But what is it?” I asked.

“A labour-saving device for mariners, navigation reduced to kindergarten
simplicity,” he answered gaily.  “From to-day a child will be able to
navigate a ship.  No more long-winded calculations.  All you need is one
star in the sky on a dirty night to know instantly where you are.  Look.
I place the transparent scale on this star-map, revolving the scale on
the North Pole.  On the scale I’ve worked out the circles of altitude and
the lines of bearing.  All I do is to put it on a star, revolve the scale
till it is opposite those figures on the map underneath, and presto!
there you are, the ship’s precise location!”

There was a ring of triumph in his voice, and his eyes, clear blue this
morning as the sea, were sparkling with light.

“You must be well up in mathematics,” I said.  “Where did you go to
school?”

“Never saw the inside of one, worse luck,” was the answer.  “I had to dig
it out for myself.”

“And why do you think I have made this thing?” he demanded, abruptly.
“Dreaming to leave footprints on the sands of time?”  He laughed one of
his horrible mocking laughs.  “Not at all.  To get it patented, to make
money from it, to revel in piggishness with all night in while other men
do the work.  That’s my purpose.  Also, I have enjoyed working it out.”

“The creative joy,” I murmured.

“I guess that’s what it ought to be called.  Which is another way of
expressing the joy of life in that it is alive, the triumph of movement
over matter, of the quick over the dead, the pride of the yeast because
it is yeast and crawls.”

I threw up my hands with helpless disapproval of his inveterate
materialism and went about making the bed.  He continued copying lines
and figures upon the transparent scale.  It was a task requiring the
utmost nicety and precision, and I could not but admire the way he
tempered his strength to the fineness and delicacy of the need.

When I had finished the bed, I caught myself looking at him in a
fascinated sort of way.  He was certainly a handsome man—beautiful in the
masculine sense.  And again, with never-failing wonder, I remarked the
total lack of viciousness, or wickedness, or sinfulness in his face.  It
was the face, I am convinced, of a man who did no wrong.  And by this I
do not wish to be misunderstood.  What I mean is that it was the face of
a man who either did nothing contrary to the dictates of his conscience,
or who had no conscience.  I am inclined to the latter way of accounting
for it.  He was a magnificent atavism, a man so purely primitive that he
was of the type that came into the world before the development of the
moral nature.  He was not immoral, but merely unmoral.

As I have said, in the masculine sense his was a beautiful face.
Smooth-shaven, every line was distinct, and it was cut as clear and sharp
as a cameo; while sea and sun had tanned the naturally fair skin to a
dark bronze which bespoke struggle and battle and added both to his
savagery and his beauty.  The lips were full, yet possessed of the
firmness, almost harshness, which is characteristic of thin lips.  The
set of his mouth, his chin, his jaw, was likewise firm or harsh, with all
the fierceness and indomitableness of the male—the nose also.  It was the
nose of a being born to conquer and command.  It just hinted of the eagle
beak.  It might have been Grecian, it might have been Roman, only it was
a shade too massive for the one, a shade too delicate for the other.  And
while the whole face was the incarnation of fierceness and strength, the
primal melancholy from which he suffered seemed to greaten the lines of
mouth and eye and brow, seemed to give a largeness and completeness which
otherwise the face would have lacked.

And so I caught myself standing idly and studying him.  I cannot say how
greatly the man had come to interest me.  Who was he?  What was he?  How
had he happened to be?  All powers seemed his, all potentialities—why,
then, was he no more than the obscure master of a seal-hunting schooner
with a reputation for frightful brutality amongst the men who hunted
seals?

My curiosity burst from me in a flood of speech.

“Why is it that you have not done great things in this world?  With the
power that is yours you might have risen to any height.  Unpossessed of
conscience or moral instinct, you might have mastered the world, broken
it to your hand.  And yet here you are, at the top of your life, where
diminishing and dying begin, living an obscure and sordid existence,
hunting sea animals for the satisfaction of woman’s vanity and love of
decoration, revelling in a piggishness, to use your own words, which is
anything and everything except splendid.  Why, with all that wonderful
strength, have you not done something?  There was nothing to stop you,
nothing that could stop you.  What was wrong?  Did you lack ambition?
Did you fall under temptation?  What was the matter?  What was the
matter?”

He had lifted his eyes to me at the commencement of my outburst, and
followed me complacently until I had done and stood before him breathless
and dismayed.  He waited a moment, as though seeking where to begin, and
then said:

“Hump, do you know the parable of the sower who went forth to sow?  If
you will remember, some of the seed fell upon stony places, where there
was not much earth, and forthwith they sprung up because they had no
deepness of earth.  And when the sun was up they were scorched, and
because they had no root they withered away.  And some fell among thorns,
and the thorns sprung up and choked them.”

“Well?” I said.

“Well?” he queried, half petulantly.  “It was not well.  I was one of
those seeds.”

He dropped his head to the scale and resumed the copying.  I finished my
work and had opened the door to leave, when he spoke to me.

“Hump, if you will look on the west coast of the map of Norway you will
see an indentation called Romsdal Fiord.  I was born within a hundred
miles of that stretch of water.  But I was not born Norwegian.  I am a
Dane.  My father and mother were Danes, and how they ever came to that
bleak bight of land on the west coast I do not know.  I never heard.
Outside of that there is nothing mysterious.  They were poor people and
unlettered.  They came of generations of poor unlettered people—peasants
of the sea who sowed their sons on the waves as has been their custom
since time began.  There is no more to tell.”

“But there is,” I objected.  “It is still obscure to me.”

“What can I tell you?” he demanded, with a recrudescence of fierceness.
“Of the meagreness of a child’s life? of fish diet and coarse living? of
going out with the boats from the time I could crawl? of my brothers, who
went away one by one to the deep-sea farming and never came back? of
myself, unable to read or write, cabin-boy at the mature age of ten on
the coastwise, old-country ships? of the rough fare and rougher usage,
where kicks and blows were bed and breakfast and took the place of
speech, and fear and hatred and pain were my only soul-experiences?  I do
not care to remember.  A madness comes up in my brain even now as I think
of it.  But there were coastwise skippers I would have returned and
killed when a man’s strength came to me, only the lines of my life were
cast at the time in other places.  I did return, not long ago, but
unfortunately the skippers were dead, all but one, a mate in the old
days, a skipper when I met him, and when I left him a cripple who would
never walk again.”

“But you who read Spencer and Darwin and have never seen the inside of a
school, how did you learn to read and write?” I queried.

“In the English merchant service.  Cabin-boy at twelve, ship’s boy at
fourteen, ordinary seamen at sixteen, able seaman at seventeen, and cock
of the fo’c’sle, infinite ambition and infinite loneliness, receiving
neither help nor sympathy, I did it all for myself—navigation,
mathematics, science, literature, and what not.  And of what use has it
been?  Master and owner of a ship at the top of my life, as you say, when
I am beginning to diminish and die.  Paltry, isn’t it?  And when the sun
was up I was scorched, and because I had no root I withered away.”

“But history tells of slaves who rose to the purple,” I chided.

“And history tells of opportunities that came to the slaves who rose to
the purple,” he answered grimly.  “No man makes opportunity.  All the
great men ever did was to know it when it came to them.  The Corsican
knew.  I have dreamed as greatly as the Corsican.  I should have known
the opportunity, but it never came.  The thorns sprung up and choked me.
And, Hump, I can tell you that you know more about me than any living
man, except my own brother.”

“And what is he?  And where is he?”

“Master of the steamship _Macedonia_, seal-hunter,” was the answer.  “We
will meet him most probably on the Japan coast.  Men call him ‘Death’
Larsen.”

“Death Larsen!” I involuntarily cried.  “Is he like you?”

“Hardly.  He is a lump of an animal without any head.  He has all my—my—”

“Brutishness,” I suggested.

“Yes,—thank you for the word,—all my brutishness, but he can scarcely
read or write.”

“And he has never philosophized on life,” I added.

“No,” Wolf Larsen answered, with an indescribable air of sadness.  “And
he is all the happier for leaving life alone.  He is too busy living it
to think about it.  My mistake was in ever opening the books.”




CHAPTER XI


The _Ghost_ has attained the southernmost point of the arc she is
describing across the Pacific, and is already beginning to edge away to
the west and north toward some lone island, it is rumoured, where she
will fill her water-casks before proceeding to the season’s hunt along
the coast of Japan.  The hunters have experimented and practised with
their rifles and shotguns till they are satisfied, and the boat-pullers
and steerers have made their spritsails, bound the oars and rowlocks in
leather and sennit so that they will make no noise when creeping on the
seals, and put their boats in apple-pie order—to use Leach’s homely
phrase.

His arm, by the way, has healed nicely, though the scar will remain all
his life.  Thomas Mugridge lives in mortal fear of him, and is afraid to
venture on deck after dark.  There are two or three standing quarrels in
the forecastle.  Louis tells me that the gossip of the sailors finds its
way aft, and that two of the telltales have been badly beaten by their
mates.  He shakes his head dubiously over the outlook for the man
Johnson, who is boat-puller in the same boat with him.  Johnson has been
guilty of speaking his mind too freely, and has collided two or three
times with Wolf Larsen over the pronunciation of his name.  Johansen he
thrashed on the amidships deck the other night, since which time the mate
has called him by his proper name.  But of course it is out of the
question that Johnson should thrash Wolf Larsen.

Louis has also given me additional information about Death Larsen, which
tallies with the captain’s brief description.  We may expect to meet
Death Larsen on the Japan coast.  “And look out for squalls,” is Louis’s
prophecy, “for they hate one another like the wolf whelps they are.”
Death Larsen is in command of the only sealing steamer in the fleet, the
_Macedonia_, which carries fourteen boats, whereas the rest of the
schooners carry only six.  There is wild talk of cannon aboard, and of
strange raids and expeditions she may make, ranging from opium smuggling
into the States and arms smuggling into China, to blackbirding and open
piracy.  Yet I cannot but believe for I have never yet caught him in a
lie, while he has a cyclopædic knowledge of sealing and the men of the
sealing fleets.

As it is forward and in the galley, so it is in the steerage and aft, on
this veritable hell-ship.  Men fight and struggle ferociously for one
another’s lives.  The hunters are looking for a shooting scrape at any
moment between Smoke and Henderson, whose old quarrel has not healed,
while Wolf Larsen says positively that he will kill the survivor of the
affair, if such affair comes off.  He frankly states that the position he
takes is based on no moral grounds, that all the hunters could kill and
eat one another so far as he is concerned, were it not that he needs them
alive for the hunting.  If they will only hold their hands until the
season is over, he promises them a royal carnival, when all grudges can
he settled and the survivors may toss the non-survivors overboard and
arrange a story as to how the missing men were lost at sea.  I think even
the hunters are appalled at his cold-bloodedness.  Wicked men though they
be, they are certainly very much afraid of him.

Thomas Mugridge is cur-like in his subjection to me, while I go about in
secret dread of him.  His is the courage of fear,—a strange thing I know
well of myself,—and at any moment it may master the fear and impel him to
the taking of my life.  My knee is much better, though it often aches for
long periods, and the stiffness is gradually leaving the arm which Wolf
Larsen squeezed.  Otherwise I am in splendid condition, feel that I am in
splendid condition.  My muscles are growing harder and increasing in
size.  My hands, however, are a spectacle for grief.  They have a
parboiled appearance, are afflicted with hang-nails, while the nails are
broken and discoloured, and the edges of the quick seem to be assuming a
fungoid sort of growth.  Also, I am suffering from boils, due to the
diet, most likely, for I was never afflicted in this manner before.

I was amused, a couple of evenings back, by seeing Wolf Larsen reading
the Bible, a copy of which, after the futile search for one at the
beginning of the voyage, had been found in the dead mate’s sea-chest.  I
wondered what Wolf Larsen could get from it, and he read aloud to me from
Ecclesiastes.  I could imagine he was speaking the thoughts of his own
mind as he read to me, and his voice, reverberating deeply and mournfully
in the confined cabin, charmed and held me.  He may be uneducated, but he
certainly knows how to express the significance of the written word.  I
can hear him now, as I shall always hear him, the primal melancholy
vibrant in his voice as he read:

    “I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of
    kings and of the provinces; I gat me men singers and women singers,
    and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that
    of all sorts.

    “So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in
    Jerusalem; also my wisdom returned with me.

    “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought and on the
    labour that I had laboured to do; and behold, all was vanity and
    vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.

    “All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous
    and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean;
    to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not; as is the
    good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an
    oath.

    “This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that
    there is one event unto all; yea, also the heart of the sons of men
    is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and
    after that they go to the dead.

    “For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope; for a
    living dog is better than a dead lion.

    “For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not
    anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them
    is forgotten.

    “Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished;
    neither have they any more a portion for ever in anything that is
    done under the sun.”

“There you have it, Hump,” he said, closing the book upon his finger and
looking up at me.  “The Preacher who was king over Israel in Jerusalem
thought as I think.  You call me a pessimist.  Is not this pessimism of
the blackest?—‘All is vanity and vexation of spirit,’ ‘There is no profit
under the sun,’ ‘There is one event unto all,’ to the fool and the wise,
the clean and the unclean, the sinner and the saint, and that event is
death, and an evil thing, he says.  For the Preacher loved life, and did
not want to die, saying, ‘For a living dog is better than a dead lion.’
He preferred the vanity and vexation to the silence and unmovableness of
the grave.  And so I.  To crawl is piggish; but to not crawl, to be as
the clod and rock, is loathsome to contemplate.  It is loathsome to the
life that is in me, the very essence of which is movement, the power of
movement, and the consciousness of the power of movement.  Life itself is
unsatisfaction, but to look ahead to death is greater unsatisfaction.”

“You are worse off than Omar,” I said.  “He, at least, after the
customary agonizing of youth, found content and made of his materialism a
joyous thing.”

“Who was Omar?” Wolf Larsen asked, and I did no more work that day, nor
the next, nor the next.

In his random reading he had never chanced upon the Rubáiyát, and it was
to him like a great find of treasure.  Much I remembered, possibly
two-thirds of the quatrains, and I managed to piece out the remainder
without difficulty.  We talked for hours over single stanzas, and I found
him reading into them a wail of regret and a rebellion which, for the
life of me, I could not discover myself.  Possibly I recited with a
certain joyous lilt which was my own, for—his memory was good, and at a
second rendering, very often the first, he made a quatrain his own—he
recited the same lines and invested them with an unrest and passionate
revolt that was well-nigh convincing.

I was interested as to which quatrain he would like best, and was not
surprised when he hit upon the one born of an instant’s irritability, and
quite at variance with the Persian’s complacent philosophy and genial
code of life:

   “What, without asking, hither hurried _Whence_?
   And, without asking, _Whither_ hurried hence!
      Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine
   Must drown the memory of that insolence!”

“Great!” Wolf Larsen cried.  “Great!  That’s the keynote.  Insolence!  He
could not have used a better word.”

In vain I objected and denied.  He deluged me, overwhelmed me with
argument.

“It’s not the nature of life to be otherwise.  Life, when it knows that
it must cease living, will always rebel.  It cannot help itself.  The
Preacher found life and the works of life all a vanity and vexation, an
evil thing; but death, the ceasing to be able to be vain and vexed, he
found an eviler thing.  Through chapter after chapter he is worried by
the one event that cometh to all alike.  So Omar, so I, so you, even you,
for you rebelled against dying when Cooky sharpened a knife for you.  You
were afraid to die; the life that was in you, that composes you, that is
greater than you, did not want to die.  You have talked of the instinct
of immortality.  I talk of the instinct of life, which is to live, and
which, when death looms near and large, masters the instinct, so called,
of immortality.  It mastered it in you (you cannot deny it), because a
crazy Cockney cook sharpened a knife.

“You are afraid of him now.  You are afraid of me.  You cannot deny it.
If I should catch you by the throat, thus,”—his hand was about my throat
and my breath was shut off,—“and began to press the life out of you thus,
and thus, your instinct of immortality will go glimmering, and your
instinct of life, which is longing for life, will flutter up, and you
will struggle to save yourself.  Eh?  I see the fear of death in your
eyes.  You beat the air with your arms.  You exert all your puny strength
to struggle to live.  Your hand is clutching my arm, lightly it feels as
a butterfly resting there.  Your chest is heaving, your tongue
protruding, your skin turning dark, your eyes swimming.  ‘To live!  To
live!  To live!’ you are crying; and you are crying to live here and now,
not hereafter.  You doubt your immortality, eh?  Ha! ha!  You are not
sure of it.  You won’t chance it.  This life only you are certain is
real.  Ah, it is growing dark and darker.  It is the darkness of death,
the ceasing to be, the ceasing to feel, the ceasing to move, that is
gathering about you, descending upon you, rising around you.  Your eyes
are becoming set.  They are glazing.  My voice sounds faint and far.  You
cannot see my face.  And still you struggle in my grip.  You kick with
your legs.  Your body draws itself up in knots like a snake’s.  Your
chest heaves and strains.  To live!  To live!  To live—”

I heard no more.  Consciousness was blotted out by the darkness he had so
graphically described, and when I came to myself I was lying on the floor
and he was smoking a cigar and regarding me thoughtfully with that old
familiar light of curiosity in his eyes.

“Well, have I convinced you?” he demanded.  “Here take a drink of this.
I want to ask you some questions.”

I rolled my head negatively on the floor.  “Your arguments are
too—er—forcible,” I managed to articulate, at cost of great pain to my
aching throat.

“You’ll be all right in half-an-hour,” he assured me.  “And I promise I
won’t use any more physical demonstrations.  Get up now.  You can sit on
a chair.”

And, toy that I was of this monster, the discussion of Omar and the
Preacher was resumed.  And half the night we sat up over it.




CHAPTER XII


The last twenty-four hours have witnessed a carnival of brutality.  From
cabin to forecastle it seems to have broken out like a contagion.  I
scarcely know where to begin.  Wolf Larsen was really the cause of it.
The relations among the men, strained and made tense by feuds, quarrels
and grudges, were in a state of unstable equilibrium, and evil passions
flared up in flame like prairie-grass.

Thomas Mugridge is a sneak, a spy, an informer.  He has been attempting
to curry favour and reinstate himself in the good graces of the captain
by carrying tales of the men forward.  He it was, I know, that carried
some of Johnson’s hasty talk to Wolf Larsen.  Johnson, it seems, bought a
suit of oilskins from the slop-chest and found them to be of greatly
inferior quality.  Nor was he slow in advertising the fact.  The
slop-chest is a sort of miniature dry-goods store which is carried by all
sealing schooners and which is stocked with articles peculiar to the
needs of the sailors.  Whatever a sailor purchases is taken from his
subsequent earnings on the sealing grounds; for, as it is with the
hunters so it is with the boat-pullers and steerers—in the place of wages
they receive a “lay,” a rate of so much per skin for every skin captured
in their particular boat.

But of Johnson’s grumbling at the slop-chest I knew nothing, so that what
I witnessed came with a shock of sudden surprise.  I had just finished
sweeping the cabin, and had been inveigled by Wolf Larsen into a
discussion of Hamlet, his favourite Shakespearian character, when
Johansen descended the companion stairs followed by Johnson.  The
latter’s cap came off after the custom of the sea, and he stood
respectfully in the centre of the cabin, swaying heavily and uneasily to
the roll of the schooner and facing the captain.

“Shut the doors and draw the slide,” Wolf Larsen said to me.

As I obeyed I noticed an anxious light come into Johnson’s eyes, but I
did not dream of its cause.  I did not dream of what was to occur until
it did occur, but he knew from the very first what was coming and awaited
it bravely.  And in his action I found complete refutation of all Wolf
Larsen’s materialism.  The sailor Johnson was swayed by idea, by
principle, and truth, and sincerity.  He was right, he knew he was right,
and he was unafraid.  He would die for the right if needs be, he would be
true to himself, sincere with his soul.  And in this was portrayed the
victory of the spirit over the flesh, the indomitability and moral
grandeur of the soul that knows no restriction and rises above time and
space and matter with a surety and invincibleness born of nothing else
than eternity and immortality.

But to return.  I noticed the anxious light in Johnson’s eyes, but
mistook it for the native shyness and embarrassment of the man.  The
mate, Johansen, stood away several feet to the side of him, and fully
three yards in front of him sat Wolf Larsen on one of the pivotal cabin
chairs.  An appreciable pause fell after I had closed the doors and drawn
the slide, a pause that must have lasted fully a minute.  It was broken
by Wolf Larsen.

“Yonson,” he began.

“My name is Johnson, sir,” the sailor boldly corrected.

“Well, Johnson, then, damn you!  Can you guess why I have sent for you?”

“Yes, and no, sir,” was the slow reply.  “My work is done well.  The mate
knows that, and you know it, sir.  So there cannot be any complaint.”

“And is that all?” Wolf Larsen queried, his voice soft, and low, and
purring.

“I know you have it in for me,” Johnson continued with his unalterable
and ponderous slowness.  “You do not like me.  You—you—”

“Go on,” Wolf Larsen prompted.  “Don’t be afraid of my feelings.”

“I am not afraid,” the sailor retorted, a slight angry flush rising
through his sunburn.  “If I speak not fast, it is because I have not been
from the old country as long as you.  You do not like me because I am too
much of a man; that is why, sir.”

“You are too much of a man for ship discipline, if that is what you mean,
and if you know what I mean,” was Wolf Larsen’s retort.

“I know English, and I know what you mean, sir,” Johnson answered, his
flush deepening at the slur on his knowledge of the English language.

“Johnson,” Wolf Larsen said, with an air of dismissing all that had gone
before as introductory to the main business in hand, “I understand you’re
not quite satisfied with those oilskins?”

“No, I am not.  They are no good, sir.”

“And you’ve been shooting off your mouth about them.”

“I say what I think, sir,” the sailor answered courageously, not failing
at the same time in ship courtesy, which demanded that “sir” be appended
to each speech he made.

It was at this moment that I chanced to glance at Johansen.  His big
fists were clenching and unclenching, and his face was positively
fiendish, so malignantly did he look at Johnson.  I noticed a black
discoloration, still faintly visible, under Johansen’s eye, a mark of the
thrashing he had received a few nights before from the sailor.  For the
first time I began to divine that something terrible was about to be
enacted,—what, I could not imagine.

“Do you know what happens to men who say what you’ve said about my
slop-chest and me?” Wolf Larsen was demanding.

“I know, sir,” was the answer.

“What?” Wolf Larsen demanded, sharply and imperatively.

“What you and the mate there are going to do to me, sir.”

“Look at him, Hump,” Wolf Larsen said to me, “look at this bit of
animated dust, this aggregation of matter that moves and breathes and
defies me and thoroughly believes itself to be compounded of something
good; that is impressed with certain human fictions such as righteousness
and honesty, and that will live up to them in spite of all personal
discomforts and menaces.  What do you think of him, Hump?  What do you
think of him?”

“I think that he is a better man than you are,” I answered, impelled,
somehow, with a desire to draw upon myself a portion of the wrath I felt
was about to break upon his head.  “His human fictions, as you choose to
call them, make for nobility and manhood.  You have no fictions, no
dreams, no ideals.  You are a pauper.”

He nodded his head with a savage pleasantness.  “Quite true, Hump, quite
true.  I have no fictions that make for nobility and manhood.  A living
dog is better than a dead lion, say I with the Preacher.  My only
doctrine is the doctrine of expediency, and it makes for surviving.  This
bit of the ferment we call ‘Johnson,’ when he is no longer a bit of the
ferment, only dust and ashes, will have no more nobility than any dust
and ashes, while I shall still be alive and roaring.”

“Do you know what I am going to do?” he questioned.

I shook my head.

“Well, I am going to exercise my prerogative of roaring and show you how
fares nobility.  Watch me.”

Three yards away from Johnson he was, and sitting down.  Nine feet!  And
yet he left the chair in full leap, without first gaining a standing
position.  He left the chair, just as he sat in it, squarely, springing
from the sitting posture like a wild animal, a tiger, and like a tiger
covered the intervening space.  It was an avalanche of fury that Johnson
strove vainly to fend off.  He threw one arm down to protect the stomach,
the other arm up to protect the head; but Wolf Larsen’s fist drove midway
between, on the chest, with a crushing, resounding impact.  Johnson’s
breath, suddenly expelled, shot from his mouth and as suddenly checked,
with the forced, audible expiration of a man wielding an axe.  He almost
fell backward, and swayed from side to side in an effort to recover his
balance.

I cannot give the further particulars of the horrible scene that
followed.  It was too revolting.  It turns me sick even now when I think
of it.  Johnson fought bravely enough, but he was no match for Wolf
Larsen, much less for Wolf Larsen and the mate.  It was frightful.  I had
not imagined a human being could endure so much and still live and
struggle on.  And struggle on Johnson did.  Of course there was no hope
for him, not the slightest, and he knew it as well as I, but by the
manhood that was in him he could not cease from fighting for that
manhood.

It was too much for me to witness.  I felt that I should lose my mind,
and I ran up the companion stairs to open the doors and escape on deck.
But Wolf Larsen, leaving his victim for the moment, and with one of his
tremendous springs, gained my side and flung me into the far corner of
the cabin.

“The phenomena of life, Hump,” he girded at me.  “Stay and watch it.  You
may gather data on the immortality of the soul.  Besides, you know, we
can’t hurt Johnson’s soul.  It’s only the fleeting form we may demolish.”

It seemed centuries—possibly it was no more than ten minutes that the
beating continued.  Wolf Larsen and Johansen were all about the poor
fellow.  They struck him with their fists, kicked him with their heavy
shoes, knocked him down, and dragged him to his feet to knock him down
again.  His eyes were blinded so that he could not see, and the blood
running from ears and nose and mouth turned the cabin into a shambles.
And when he could no longer rise they still continued to beat and kick
him where he lay.

“Easy, Johansen; easy as she goes,” Wolf Larsen finally said.

But the beast in the mate was up and rampant, and Wolf Larsen was
compelled to brush him away with a back-handed sweep of the arm, gentle
enough, apparently, but which hurled Johansen back like a cork, driving
his head against the wall with a crash.  He fell to the floor, half
stunned for the moment, breathing heavily and blinking his eyes in a
stupid sort of way.

“Jerk open the doors,—Hump,” I was commanded.

I obeyed, and the two brutes picked up the senseless man like a sack of
rubbish and hove him clear up the companion stairs, through the narrow
doorway, and out on deck.  The blood from his nose gushed in a scarlet
stream over the feet of the helmsman, who was none other than Louis, his
boat-mate.  But Louis took and gave a spoke and gazed imperturbably into
the binnacle.

Not so was the conduct of George Leach, the erstwhile cabin-boy.  Fore
and aft there was nothing that could have surprised us more than his
consequent behaviour.  He it was that came up on the poop without orders
and dragged Johnson forward, where he set about dressing his wounds as
well as he could and making him comfortable.  Johnson, as Johnson, was
unrecognizable; and not only that, for his features, as human features at
all, were unrecognizable, so discoloured and swollen had they become in
the few minutes which had elapsed between the beginning of the beating
and the dragging forward of the body.

But of Leach’s behaviour—By the time I had finished cleansing the cabin
he had taken care of Johnson.  I had come up on deck for a breath of
fresh air and to try to get some repose for my overwrought nerves.  Wolf
Larsen was smoking a cigar and examining the patent log which the _Ghost_
usually towed astern, but which had been hauled in for some purpose.
Suddenly Leach’s voice came to my ears.  It was tense and hoarse with an
overmastering rage.  I turned and saw him standing just beneath the break
of the poop on the port side of the galley.  His face was convulsed and
white, his eyes were flashing, his clenched fists raised overhead.

“May God damn your soul to hell, Wolf Larsen, only hell’s too good for
you, you coward, you murderer, you pig!” was his opening salutation.

I was thunderstruck.  I looked for his instant annihilation.  But it was
not Wolf Larsen’s whim to annihilate him.  He sauntered slowly forward to
the break of the poop, and, leaning his elbow on the corner of the cabin,
gazed down thoughtfully and curiously at the excited boy.

And the boy indicted Wolf Larsen as he had never been indicted before.
The sailors assembled in a fearful group just outside the forecastle
scuttle and watched and listened.  The hunters piled pell-mell out of the
steerage, but as Leach’s tirade continued I saw that there was no levity
in their faces.  Even they were frightened, not at the boy’s terrible
words, but at his terrible audacity.  It did not seem possible that any
living creature could thus beard Wolf Larsen in his teeth.  I know for
myself that I was shocked into admiration of the boy, and I saw in him
the splendid invincibleness of immortality rising above the flesh and the
fears of the flesh, as in the prophets of old, to condemn
unrighteousness.

And such condemnation!  He haled forth Wolf Larsen’s soul naked to the
scorn of men.  He rained upon it curses from God and High Heaven, and
withered it with a heat of invective that savoured of a mediæval
excommunication of the Catholic Church.  He ran the gamut of
denunciation, rising to heights of wrath that were sublime and almost
Godlike, and from sheer exhaustion sinking to the vilest and most
indecent abuse.

His rage was a madness.  His lips were flecked with a soapy froth, and
sometimes he choked and gurgled and became inarticulate.  And through it
all, calm and impassive, leaning on his elbow and gazing down, Wolf
Larsen seemed lost in a great curiosity.  This wild stirring of yeasty
life, this terrific revolt and defiance of matter that moved, perplexed
and interested him.

Each moment I looked, and everybody looked, for him to leap upon the boy
and destroy him.  But it was not his whim.  His cigar went out, and he
continued to gaze silently and curiously.

Leach had worked himself into an ecstasy of impotent rage.

“Pig!  Pig!  Pig!” he was reiterating at the top of his lungs.  “Why
don’t you come down and kill me, you murderer?  You can do it!  I ain’t
afraid!  There’s no one to stop you!  Damn sight better dead and outa
your reach than alive and in your clutches!  Come on, you coward!  Kill
me!  Kill me!  Kill me!”

It was at this stage that Thomas Mugridge’s erratic soul brought him into
the scene.  He had been listening at the galley door, but he now came
out, ostensibly to fling some scraps over the side, but obviously to see
the killing he was certain would take place.  He smirked greasily up into
the face of Wolf Larsen, who seemed not to see him.  But the Cockney was
unabashed, though mad, stark mad.  He turned to Leach, saying:

“Such langwidge!  Shockin’!”

Leach’s rage was no longer impotent.  Here at last was something ready to
hand.  And for the first time since the stabbing the Cockney had appeared
outside the galley without his knife.  The words had barely left his
mouth when he was knocked down by Leach.  Three times he struggled to his
feet, striving to gain the galley, and each time was knocked down.

“Oh, Lord!” he cried.  “’Elp!  ’Elp!  Tyke ’im aw’y, carn’t yer?  Tyke
’im aw’y!”

The hunters laughed from sheer relief.  Tragedy had dwindled, the farce
had begun.  The sailors now crowded boldly aft, grinning and shuffling,
to watch the pummelling of the hated Cockney.  And even I felt a great
joy surge up within me.  I confess that I delighted in this beating Leach
was giving to Thomas Mugridge, though it was as terrible, almost, as the
one Mugridge had caused to be given to Johnson.  But the expression of
Wolf Larsen’s face never changed.  He did not change his position either,
but continued to gaze down with a great curiosity.  For all his pragmatic
certitude, it seemed as if he watched the play and movement of life in
the hope of discovering something more about it, of discerning in its
maddest writhings a something which had hitherto escaped him,—the key to
its mystery, as it were, which would make all clear and plain.

But the beating!  It was quite similar to the one I had witnessed in the
cabin.  The Cockney strove in vain to protect himself from the infuriated
boy.  And in vain he strove to gain the shelter of the cabin.  He rolled
toward it, grovelled toward it, fell toward it when he was knocked down.
But blow followed blow with bewildering rapidity.  He was knocked about
like a shuttlecock, until, finally, like Johnson, he was beaten and
kicked as he lay helpless on the deck.  And no one interfered.  Leach
could have killed him, but, having evidently filled the measure of his
vengeance, he drew away from his prostrate foe, who was whimpering and
wailing in a puppyish sort of way, and walked forward.

But these two affairs were only the opening events of the day’s
programme.  In the afternoon Smoke and Henderson fell foul of each other,
and a fusillade of shots came up from the steerage, followed by a
stampede of the other four hunters for the deck.  A column of thick,
acrid smoke—the kind always made by black powder—was arising through the
open companion-way, and down through it leaped Wolf Larsen.  The sound of
blows and scuffling came to our ears.  Both men were wounded, and he was
thrashing them both for having disobeyed his orders and crippled
themselves in advance of the hunting season.  In fact, they were badly
wounded, and, having thrashed them, he proceeded to operate upon them in
a rough surgical fashion and to dress their wounds.  I served as
assistant while he probed and cleansed the passages made by the bullets,
and I saw the two men endure his crude surgery without anæsthetics and
with no more to uphold them than a stiff tumbler of whisky.

Then, in the first dog-watch, trouble came to a head in the forecastle.
It took its rise out of the tittle-tattle and tale-bearing which had been
the cause of Johnson’s beating, and from the noise we heard, and from the
sight of the bruised men next day, it was patent that half the forecastle
had soundly drubbed the other half.

The second dog-watch and the day were wound up by a fight between
Johansen and the lean, Yankee-looking hunter, Latimer.  It was caused by
remarks of Latimer’s concerning the noises made by the mate in his sleep,
and though Johansen was whipped, he kept the steerage awake for the rest
of the night while he blissfully slumbered and fought the fight over and
over again.

As for myself, I was oppressed with nightmare.  The day had been like
some horrible dream.  Brutality had followed brutality, and flaming
passions and cold-blooded cruelty had driven men to seek one another’s
lives, and to strive to hurt, and maim, and destroy.  My nerves were
shocked.  My mind itself was shocked.  All my days had been passed in
comparative ignorance of the animality of man.  In fact, I had known life
only in its intellectual phases.  Brutality I had experienced, but it was
the brutality of the intellect—the cutting sarcasm of Charley Furuseth,
the cruel epigrams and occasional harsh witticisms of the fellows at the
Bibelot, and the nasty remarks of some of the professors during my
undergraduate days.

That was all.  But that men should wreak their anger on others by the
bruising of the flesh and the letting of blood was something strangely
and fearfully new to me.  Not for nothing had I been called “Sissy” Van
Weyden, I thought, as I tossed restlessly on my bunk between one
nightmare and another.  And it seemed to me that my innocence of the
realities of life had been complete indeed.  I laughed bitterly to
myself, and seemed to find in Wolf Larsen’s forbidding philosophy a more
adequate explanation of life than I found in my own.

And I was frightened when I became conscious of the trend of my thought.
The continual brutality around me was degenerative in its effect.  It bid
fair to destroy for me all that was best and brightest in life.  My
reason dictated that the beating Thomas Mugridge had received was an ill
thing, and yet for the life of me I could not prevent my soul joying in
it.  And even while I was oppressed by the enormity of my sin,—for sin it
was,—I chuckled with an insane delight.  I was no longer Humphrey Van
Weyden.  I was Hump, cabin-boy on the schooner _Ghost_.  Wolf Larsen was
my captain, Thomas Mugridge and the rest were my companions, and I was
receiving repeated impresses from the die which had stamped them all.




CHAPTER XIII


For three days I did my own work and Thomas Mugridge’s too; and I flatter
myself that I did his work well.  I know that it won Wolf Larsen’s
approval, while the sailors beamed with satisfaction during the brief
time my _régime_ lasted.

“The first clean bite since I come aboard,” Harrison said to me at the
galley door, as he returned the dinner pots and pans from the forecastle.
“Somehow Tommy’s grub always tastes of grease, stale grease, and I reckon
he ain’t changed his shirt since he left ’Frisco.”

“I know he hasn’t,” I answered.

“And I’ll bet he sleeps in it,” Harrison added.

“And you won’t lose,” I agreed.  “The same shirt, and he hasn’t had it
off once in all this time.”

But three days was all Wolf Larsen allowed him in which to recover from
the effects of the beating.  On the fourth day, lame and sore, scarcely
able to see, so closed were his eyes, he was haled from his bunk by the
nape of the neck and set to his duty.  He sniffled and wept, but Wolf
Larsen was pitiless.

“And see that you serve no more slops,” was his parting injunction.  “No
more grease and dirt, mind, and a clean shirt occasionally, or you’ll get
a tow over the side.  Understand?”

Thomas Mugridge crawled weakly across the galley floor, and a short lurch
of the _Ghost_ sent him staggering.  In attempting to recover himself, he
reached for the iron railing which surrounded the stove and kept the pots
from sliding off; but he missed the railing, and his hand, with his
weight behind it, landed squarely on the hot surface.  There was a sizzle
and odour of burning flesh, and a sharp cry of pain.

“Oh, Gawd, Gawd, wot ’ave I done?” he wailed; sitting down in the
coal-box and nursing his new hurt by rocking back and forth.  “W’y ’as
all this come on me?  It mykes me fair sick, it does, an’ I try so ’ard
to go through life ’armless an’ ’urtin’ nobody.”

The tears were running down his puffed and discoloured cheeks, and his
face was drawn with pain.  A savage expression flitted across it.

“Oh, ’ow I ’ate ’im!  ’Ow I ’ate ’im!” he gritted out.

“Whom?” I asked; but the poor wretch was weeping again over his
misfortunes.  Less difficult it was to guess whom he hated than whom he
did not hate.  For I had come to see a malignant devil in him which
impelled him to hate all the world.  I sometimes thought that he hated
even himself, so grotesquely had life dealt with him, and so monstrously.
At such moments a great sympathy welled up within me, and I felt shame
that I had ever joyed in his discomfiture or pain.  Life had been unfair
to him.  It had played him a scurvy trick when it fashioned him into the
thing he was, and it had played him scurvy tricks ever since.  What
chance had he to be anything else than he was?  And as though answering
my unspoken thought, he wailed:

“I never ’ad no chance, not ’arf a chance!  ’Oo was there to send me to
school, or put tommy in my ’ungry belly, or wipe my bloody nose for me,
w’en I was a kiddy?  ’Oo ever did anything for me, heh?  ’Oo, I s’y?”

“Never mind, Tommy,” I said, placing a soothing hand on his shoulder.
“Cheer up.  It’ll all come right in the end.  You’ve long years before
you, and you can make anything you please of yourself.”

“It’s a lie! a bloody lie!” he shouted in my face, flinging off the hand.
“It’s a lie, and you know it.  I’m already myde, an’ myde out of leavin’s
an’ scraps.  It’s all right for you, ’Ump.  You was born a gentleman.
You never knew wot it was to go ’ungry, to cry yerself asleep with yer
little belly gnawin’ an’ gnawin’, like a rat inside yer.  It carn’t come
right.  If I was President of the United Stytes to-morrer, ’ow would it
fill my belly for one time w’en I was a kiddy and it went empty?

“’Ow could it, I s’y?  I was born to sufferin’ and sorrer.  I’ve had more
cruel sufferin’ than any ten men, I ’ave.  I’ve been in orspital arf my
bleedin’ life.  I’ve ’ad the fever in Aspinwall, in ’Avana, in New
Orleans.  I near died of the scurvy and was rotten with it six months in
Barbadoes.  Smallpox in ’Onolulu, two broken legs in Shanghai, pnuemonia
in Unalaska, three busted ribs an’ my insides all twisted in ’Frisco.
An’ ’ere I am now.  Look at me!  Look at me!  My ribs kicked loose from
my back again.  I’ll be coughin’ blood before eyght bells.  ’Ow can it be
myde up to me, I arsk?  ’Oo’s goin’ to do it?  Gawd?  ’Ow Gawd must ’ave
’ated me w’en ’e signed me on for a voyage in this bloomin’ world of
’is!”

This tirade against destiny went on for an hour or more, and then he
buckled to his work, limping and groaning, and in his eyes a great hatred
for all created things.  His diagnosis was correct, however, for he was
seized with occasional sicknesses, during which he vomited blood and
suffered great pain.  And as he said, it seemed God hated him too much to
let him die, for he ultimately grew better and waxed more malignant than
ever.

Several days more passed before Johnson crawled on deck and went about
his work in a half-hearted way.  He was still a sick man, and I more than
once observed him creeping painfully aloft to a topsail, or drooping
wearily as he stood at the wheel.  But, still worse, it seemed that his
spirit was broken.  He was abject before Wolf Larsen and almost grovelled
to Johansen.  Not so was the conduct of Leach.  He went about the deck
like a tiger cub, glaring his hatred openly at Wolf Larsen and Johansen.

“I’ll do for you yet, you slab-footed Swede,” I heard him say to Johansen
one night on deck.

The mate cursed him in the darkness, and the next moment some missile
struck the galley a sharp rap.  There was more cursing, and a mocking
laugh, and when all was quiet I stole outside and found a heavy knife
imbedded over an inch in the solid wood.  A few minutes later the mate
came fumbling about in search of it, but I returned it privily to Leach
next day.  He grinned when I handed it over, yet it was a grin that
contained more sincere thanks than a multitude of the verbosities of
speech common to the members of my own class.

Unlike any one else in the ship’s company, I now found myself with no
quarrels on my hands and in the good graces of all.  The hunters possibly
no more than tolerated me, though none of them disliked me; while Smoke
and Henderson, convalescent under a deck awning and swinging day and
night in their hammocks, assured me that I was better than any hospital
nurse, and that they would not forget me at the end of the voyage when
they were paid off.  (As though I stood in need of their money!  I, who
could have bought them out, bag and baggage, and the schooner and its
equipment, a score of times over!)  But upon me had devolved the task of
tending their wounds, and pulling them through, and I did my best by
them.

Wolf Larsen underwent another bad attack of headache which lasted two
days.  He must have suffered severely, for he called me in and obeyed my
commands like a sick child.  But nothing I could do seemed to relieve
him.  At my suggestion, however, he gave up smoking and drinking; though
why such a magnificent animal as he should have headaches at all puzzles
me.

“’Tis the hand of God, I’m tellin’ you,” is the way Louis sees it.  “’Tis
a visitation for his black-hearted deeds, and there’s more behind and
comin’, or else—”

“Or else,” I prompted.

“God is noddin’ and not doin’ his duty, though it’s me as shouldn’t say
it.”

I was mistaken when I said that I was in the good graces of all.  Not
only does Thomas Mugridge continue to hate me, but he has discovered a
new reason for hating me.  It took me no little while to puzzle it out,
but I finally discovered that it was because I was more luckily born than
he—“gentleman born,” he put it.

“And still no more dead men,” I twitted Louis, when Smoke and Henderson,
side by side, in friendly conversation, took their first exercise on
deck.

Louis surveyed me with his shrewd grey eyes, and shook his head
portentously.  “She’s a-comin’, I tell you, and it’ll be sheets and
halyards, stand by all hands, when she begins to howl.  I’ve had the feel
iv it this long time, and I can feel it now as plainly as I feel the
rigging iv a dark night.  She’s close, she’s close.”

“Who goes first?” I queried.

“Not fat old Louis, I promise you,” he laughed.  “For ’tis in the bones
iv me I know that come this time next year I’ll be gazin’ in the old
mother’s eyes, weary with watchin’ iv the sea for the five sons she gave
to it.”

“Wot’s ’e been s’yin’ to yer?” Thomas Mugridge demanded a moment later.

“That he’s going home some day to see his mother,” I answered
diplomatically.

“I never ’ad none,” was the Cockney’s comment, as he gazed with
lustreless, hopeless eyes into mine.




CHAPTER XIV


It has dawned upon me that I have never placed a proper valuation upon
womankind.  For that matter, though not amative to any considerable
degree so far as I have discovered, I was never outside the atmosphere of
women until now.  My mother and sisters were always about me, and I was
always trying to escape them; for they worried me to distraction with
their solicitude for my health and with their periodic inroads on my den,
when my orderly confusion, upon which I prided myself, was turned into
worse confusion and less order, though it looked neat enough to the eye.
I never could find anything when they had departed.  But now, alas, how
welcome would have been the feel of their presence, the frou-frou and
swish-swish of their skirts which I had so cordially detested!  I am
sure, if I ever get home, that I shall never be irritable with them
again.  They may dose me and doctor me morning, noon, and night, and dust
and sweep and put my den to rights every minute of the day, and I shall
only lean back and survey it all and be thankful in that I am possessed
of a mother and some several sisters.

All of which has set me wondering.  Where are the mothers of these twenty
and odd men on the _Ghost_?  It strikes me as unnatural and unhealthful
that men should be totally separated from women and herd through the
world by themselves.  Coarseness and savagery are the inevitable results.
These men about me should have wives, and sisters, and daughters; then
would they be capable of softness, and tenderness, and sympathy.  As it
is, not one of them is married.  In years and years not one of them has
been in contact with a good woman, or within the influence, or
redemption, which irresistibly radiates from such a creature.  There is
no balance in their lives.  Their masculinity, which in itself is of the
brute, has been over-developed.  The other and spiritual side of their
natures has been dwarfed—atrophied, in fact.

They are a company of celibates, grinding harshly against one another and
growing daily more calloused from the grinding.  It seems to me
impossible sometimes that they ever had mothers.  It would appear that
they are a half-brute, half-human species, a race apart, wherein there is
no such thing as sex; that they are hatched out by the sun like turtle
eggs, or receive life in some similar and sordid fashion; and that all
their days they fester in brutality and viciousness, and in the end die
as unlovely as they have lived.

Rendered curious by this new direction of ideas, I talked with Johansen
last night—the first superfluous words with which he has favoured me
since the voyage began.  He left Sweden when he was eighteen, is now
thirty-eight, and in all the intervening time has not been home once.  He
had met a townsman, a couple of years before, in some sailor
boarding-house in Chile, so that he knew his mother to be still alive.

“She must be a pretty old woman now,” he said, staring meditatively into
the binnacle and then jerking a sharp glance at Harrison, who was
steering a point off the course.

“When did you last write to her?”

He performed his mental arithmetic aloud.  “Eighty-one; no—eighty-two,
eh? no—eighty-three?  Yes, eighty-three.  Ten years ago.  From some
little port in Madagascar.  I was trading.

“You see,” he went on, as though addressing his neglected mother across
half the girth of the earth, “each year I was going home.  So what was
the good to write?  It was only a year.  And each year something
happened, and I did not go.  But I am mate, now, and when I pay off at
’Frisco, maybe with five hundred dollars, I will ship myself on a
windjammer round the Horn to Liverpool, which will give me more money;
and then I will pay my passage from there home.  Then she will not do any
more work.”

“But does she work? now?  How old is she?”

“About seventy,” he answered.  And then, boastingly, “We work from the
time we are born until we die, in my country.  That’s why we live so
long.  I will live to a hundred.”

I shall never forget this conversation.  The words were the last I ever
heard him utter.  Perhaps they were the last he did utter, too.  For,
going down into the cabin to turn in, I decided that it was too stuffy to
sleep below.  It was a calm night.  We were out of the Trades, and the
_Ghost_ was forging ahead barely a knot an hour.  So I tucked a blanket
and pillow under my arm and went up on deck.

As I passed between Harrison and the binnacle, which was built into the
top of the cabin, I noticed that he was this time fully three points off.
Thinking that he was asleep, and wishing him to escape reprimand or
worse, I spoke to him.  But he was not asleep.  His eyes were wide and
staring.  He seemed greatly perturbed, unable to reply to me.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.  “Are you sick?”

He shook his head, and with a deep sign as of awakening, caught his
breath.

“You’d better get on your course, then,” I chided.

He put a few spokes over, and I watched the compass-card swing slowly to
N.N.W. and steady itself with slight oscillations.

I took a fresh hold on my bedclothes and was preparing to start on, when
some movement caught my eye and I looked astern to the rail.  A sinewy
hand, dripping with water, was clutching the rail.  A second hand took
form in the darkness beside it.  I watched, fascinated.  What visitant
from the gloom of the deep was I to behold?  Whatever it was, I knew that
it was climbing aboard by the log-line.  I saw a head, the hair wet and
straight, shape itself, and then the unmistakable eyes and face of Wolf
Larsen.  His right cheek was red with blood, which flowed from some wound
in the head.

He drew himself inboard with a quick effort, and arose to his feet,
glancing swiftly, as he did so, at the man at the wheel, as though to
assure himself of his identity and that there was nothing to fear from
him.  The sea-water was streaming from him.  It made little audible
gurgles which distracted me.  As he stepped toward me I shrank back
instinctively, for I saw that in his eyes which spelled death.

“All right, Hump,” he said in a low voice.  “Where’s the mate?”

I shook my head.

“Johansen!” he called softly.  “Johansen!”

“Where is he?” he demanded of Harrison.

The young fellow seemed to have recovered his composure, for he answered
steadily enough, “I don’t know, sir.  I saw him go for’ard a little while
ago.”

“So did I go for’ard.  But you will observe that I didn’t come back the
way I went.  Can you explain it?”

“You must have been overboard, sir.”

“Shall I look for him in the steerage, sir?” I asked.

Wolf Larsen shook his head.  “You wouldn’t find him, Hump.  But you’ll
do.  Come on.  Never mind your bedding.  Leave it where it is.”

I followed at his heels.  There was nothing stirring amidships.

“Those cursed hunters,” was his comment.  “Too damned fat and lazy to
stand a four-hour watch.”

But on the forecastle-head we found three sailors asleep.  He turned them
over and looked at their faces.  They composed the watch on deck, and it
was the ship’s custom, in good weather, to let the watch sleep with the
exception of the officer, the helmsman, and the look-out.

“Who’s look-out?” he demanded.

“Me, sir,” answered Holyoak, one of the deep-water sailors, a slight
tremor in his voice.  “I winked off just this very minute, sir.  I’m
sorry, sir.  It won’t happen again.”

“Did you hear or see anything on deck?”

“No, sir, I—”

But Wolf Larsen had turned away with a snort of disgust, leaving the
sailor rubbing his eyes with surprise at having been let of so easily.

“Softly, now,” Wolf Larsen warned me in a whisper, as he doubled his body
into the forecastle scuttle and prepared to descend.

I followed with a quaking heart.  What was to happen I knew no more than
did I know what had happened.  But blood had been shed, and it was
through no whim of Wolf Larsen that he had gone over the side with his
scalp laid open.  Besides, Johansen was missing.

It was my first descent into the forecastle, and I shall not soon forget
my impression of it, caught as I stood on my feet at the bottom of the
ladder.  Built directly in the eyes of the schooner, it was of the shape
of a triangle, along the three sides of which stood the bunks, in
double-tier, twelve of them.  It was no larger than a hall bedroom in
Grub Street, and yet twelve men were herded into it to eat and sleep and
carry on all the functions of living.  My bedroom at home was not large,
yet it could have contained a dozen similar forecastles, and taking into
consideration the height of the ceiling, a score at least.

It smelled sour and musty, and by the dim light of the swinging sea-lamp
I saw every bit of available wall-space hung deep with sea-boots,
oilskins, and garments, clean and dirty, of various sorts.  These swung
back and forth with every roll of the vessel, giving rise to a brushing
sound, as of trees against a roof or wall.  Somewhere a boot thumped
loudly and at irregular intervals against the wall; and, though it was a
mild night on the sea, there was a continual chorus of the creaking
timbers and bulkheads and of abysmal noises beneath the flooring.

The sleepers did not mind.  There were eight of them,—the two watches
below,—and the air was thick with the warmth and odour of their
breathing, and the ear was filled with the noise of their snoring and of
their sighs and half-groans, tokens plain of the rest of the animal-man.
But were they sleeping? all of them?  Or had they been sleeping?  This
was evidently Wolf Larsen’s quest—to find the men who appeared to be
asleep and who were not asleep or who had not been asleep very recently.
And he went about it in a way that reminded me of a story out of
Boccaccio.

He took the sea-lamp from its swinging frame and handed it to me.  He
began at the first bunks forward on the star-board side.  In the top one
lay Oofty-Oofty, a Kanaka and splendid seaman, so named by his mates.  He
was asleep on his back and breathing as placidly as a woman.  One arm was
under his head, the other lay on top of the blankets.  Wolf Larsen put
thumb and forefinger to the wrist and counted the pulse.  In the midst of
it the Kanaka roused.  He awoke as gently as he slept.  There was no
movement of the body whatever.  The eyes, only, moved.  They flashed wide
open, big and black, and stared, unblinking, into our faces.  Wolf Larsen
put his finger to his lips as a sign for silence, and the eyes closed
again.

In the lower bunk lay Louis, grossly fat and warm and sweaty, asleep
unfeignedly and sleeping laboriously.  While Wolf Larsen held his wrist
he stirred uneasily, bowing his body so that for a moment it rested on
shoulders and heels.  His lips moved, and he gave voice to this enigmatic
utterance:

“A shilling’s worth a quarter; but keep your lamps out for
thruppenny-bits, or the publicans ’ll shove ’em on you for sixpence.”

Then he rolled over on his side with a heavy, sobbing sigh, saying:

“A sixpence is a tanner, and a shilling a bob; but what a pony is I don’t
know.”

Satisfied with the honesty of his and the Kanaka’s sleep, Wolf Larsen
passed on to the next two bunks on the starboard side, occupied top and
bottom, as we saw in the light of the sea-lamp, by Leach and Johnson.

As Wolf Larsen bent down to the lower bunk to take Johnson’s pulse, I,
standing erect and holding the lamp, saw Leach’s head rise stealthily as
he peered over the side of his bunk to see what was going on.  He must
have divined Wolf Larsen’s trick and the sureness of detection, for the
light was at once dashed from my hand and the forecastle was left in
darkness.  He must have leaped, also, at the same instant, straight down
on Wolf Larsen.

The first sounds were those of a conflict between a bull and a wolf.  I
heard a great infuriated bellow go up from Wolf Larsen, and from Leach a
snarling that was desperate and blood-curdling.  Johnson must have joined
him immediately, so that his abject and grovelling conduct on deck for
the past few days had been no more than planned deception.

I was so terror-stricken by this fight in the dark that I leaned against
the ladder, trembling and unable to ascend.  And upon me was that old
sickness at the pit of the stomach, caused always by the spectacle of
physical violence.  In this instance I could not see, but I could hear
the impact of the blows—the soft crushing sound made by flesh striking
forcibly against flesh.  Then there was the crashing about of the
entwined bodies, the laboured breathing, the short quick gasps of sudden
pain.

There must have been more men in the conspiracy to murder the captain and
mate, for by the sounds I knew that Leach and Johnson had been quickly
reinforced by some of their mates.

“Get a knife somebody!” Leach was shouting.

“Pound him on the head!  Mash his brains out!” was Johnson’s cry.

But after his first bellow, Wolf Larsen made no noise.  He was fighting
grimly and silently for life.  He was sore beset.  Down at the very
first, he had been unable to gain his feet, and for all of his tremendous
strength I felt that there was no hope for him.

The force with which they struggled was vividly impressed on me; for I
was knocked down by their surging bodies and badly bruised.  But in the
confusion I managed to crawl into an empty lower bunk out of the way.

“All hands!  We’ve got him!  We’ve got him!” I could hear Leach crying.

“Who?” demanded those who had been really asleep, and who had wakened to
they knew not what.

“It’s the bloody mate!” was Leach’s crafty answer, strained from him in a
smothered sort of way.

This was greeted with whoops of joy, and from then on Wolf Larsen had
seven strong men on top of him, Louis, I believe, taking no part in it.
The forecastle was like an angry hive of bees aroused by some marauder.

“What ho! below there!” I heard Latimer shout down the scuttle, too
cautious to descend into the inferno of passion he could hear raging
beneath him in the darkness.

“Won’t somebody get a knife?  Oh, won’t somebody get a knife?” Leach
pleaded in the first interval of comparative silence.

The number of the assailants was a cause of confusion.  They blocked
their own efforts, while Wolf Larsen, with but a single purpose, achieved
his.  This was to fight his way across the floor to the ladder.  Though
in total darkness, I followed his progress by its sound.  No man less
than a giant could have done what he did, once he had gained the foot of
the ladder.  Step by step, by the might of his arms, the whole pack of
men striving to drag him back and down, he drew his body up from the
floor till he stood erect.  And then, step by step, hand and foot, he
slowly struggled up the ladder.

The very last of all, I saw.  For Latimer, having finally gone for a
lantern, held it so that its light shone down the scuttle.  Wolf Larsen
was nearly to the top, though I could not see him.  All that was visible
was the mass of men fastened upon him.  It squirmed about, like some huge
many-legged spider, and swayed back and forth to the regular roll of the
vessel.  And still, step by step with long intervals between, the mass
ascended.  Once it tottered, about to fall back, but the broken hold was
regained and it still went up.

“Who is it?” Latimer cried.

In the rays of the lantern I could see his perplexed face peering down.

“Larsen,” I heard a muffled voice from within the mass.

Latimer reached down with his free hand.  I saw a hand shoot up to clasp
his.  Latimer pulled, and the next couple of steps were made with a rush.
Then Wolf Larsen’s other hand reached up and clutched the edge of the
scuttle.  The mass swung clear of the ladder, the men still clinging to
their escaping foe.  They began to drop off, to be brushed off against
the sharp edge of the scuttle, to be knocked off by the legs which were
now kicking powerfully.  Leach was the last to go, falling sheer back
from the top of the scuttle and striking on head and shoulders upon his
sprawling mates beneath.  Wolf Larsen and the lantern disappeared, and we
were left in darkness.




CHAPTER XV


There was a deal of cursing and groaning as the men at the bottom of the
ladder crawled to their feet.

“Somebody strike a light, my thumb’s out of joint,” said one of the men,
Parsons, a swarthy, saturnine man, boat-steerer in Standish’s boat, in
which Harrison was puller.

“You’ll find it knockin’ about by the bitts,” Leach said, sitting down on
the edge of the bunk in which I was concealed.

There was a fumbling and a scratching of matches, and the sea-lamp flared
up, dim and smoky, and in its weird light bare-legged men moved about
nursing their bruises and caring for their hurts.  Oofty-Oofty laid hold
of Parsons’s thumb, pulling it out stoutly and snapping it back into
place.  I noticed at the same time that the Kanaka’s knuckles were laid
open clear across and to the bone.  He exhibited them, exposing beautiful
white teeth in a grin as he did so, and explaining that the wounds had
come from striking Wolf Larsen in the mouth.

“So it was you, was it, you black beggar?” belligerently demanded one
Kelly, an Irish-American and a longshoreman, making his first trip to
sea, and boat-puller for Kerfoot.

As he made the demand he spat out a mouthful of blood and teeth and
shoved his pugnacious face close to Oofty-Oofty.  The Kanaka leaped
backward to his bunk, to return with a second leap, flourishing a long
knife.

“Aw, go lay down, you make me tired,” Leach interfered.  He was
evidently, for all of his youth and inexperience, cock of the forecastle.
“G’wan, you Kelly.  You leave Oofty alone.  How in hell did he know it
was you in the dark?”

Kelly subsided with some muttering, and the Kanaka flashed his white
teeth in a grateful smile.  He was a beautiful creature, almost feminine
in the pleasing lines of his figure, and there was a softness and
dreaminess in his large eyes which seemed to contradict his well-earned
reputation for strife and action.

“How did he get away?” Johnson asked.

He was sitting on the side of his bunk, the whole pose of his figure
indicating utter dejection and hopelessness.  He was still breathing
heavily from the exertion he had made.  His shirt had been ripped
entirely from him in the struggle, and blood from a gash in the cheek was
flowing down his naked chest, marking a red path across his white thigh
and dripping to the floor.

“Because he is the devil, as I told you before,” was Leach’s answer; and
thereat he was on his feet and raging his disappointment with tears in
his eyes.

“And not one of you to get a knife!” was his unceasing lament.

But the rest of the hands had a lively fear of consequences to come and
gave no heed to him.

“How’ll he know which was which?” Kelly asked, and as he went on he
looked murderously about him—“unless one of us peaches.”

“He’ll know as soon as ever he claps eyes on us,” Parsons replied.  “One
look at you’d be enough.”

“Tell him the deck flopped up and gouged yer teeth out iv yer jaw,” Louis
grinned.  He was the only man who was not out of his bunk, and he was
jubilant in that he possessed no bruises to advertise that he had had a
hand in the night’s work.  “Just wait till he gets a glimpse iv yer mugs
to-morrow, the gang iv ye,” he chuckled.

“We’ll say we thought it was the mate,” said one.  And another, “I know
what I’ll say—that I heered a row, jumped out of my bunk, got a jolly
good crack on the jaw for my pains, and sailed in myself.  Couldn’t tell
who or what it was in the dark and just hit out.”

“An’ ’twas me you hit, of course,” Kelly seconded, his face brightening
for the moment.

Leach and Johnson took no part in the discussion, and it was plain to see
that their mates looked upon them as men for whom the worst was
inevitable, who were beyond hope and already dead.  Leach stood their
fears and reproaches for some time.  Then he broke out:

“You make me tired!  A nice lot of gazabas you are!  If you talked less
with yer mouth and did something with yer hands, he’d a-ben done with by
now.  Why couldn’t one of you, just one of you, get me a knife when I
sung out?  You make me sick!  A-beefin’ and bellerin’ ’round, as though
he’d kill you when he gets you!  You know damn well he wont.  Can’t
afford to.  No shipping masters or beach-combers over here, and he wants
yer in his business, and he wants yer bad.  Who’s to pull or steer or
sail ship if he loses yer?  It’s me and Johnson have to face the music.
Get into yer bunks, now, and shut yer faces; I want to get some sleep.”

“That’s all right all right,” Parsons spoke up.  “Mebbe he won’t do for
us, but mark my words, hell ’ll be an ice-box to this ship from now on.”

All the while I had been apprehensive concerning my own predicament.
What would happen to me when these men discovered my presence?  I could
never fight my way out as Wolf Larsen had done.  And at this moment
Latimer called down the scuttles:

“Hump!  The old man wants you!”

“He ain’t down here!” Parsons called back.

“Yes, he is,” I said, sliding out of the bunk and striving my hardest to
keep my voice steady and bold.

The sailors looked at me in consternation.  Fear was strong in their
faces, and the devilishness which comes of fear.

“I’m coming!” I shouted up to Latimer.

“No you don’t!” Kelly cried, stepping between me and the ladder, his
right hand shaped into a veritable strangler’s clutch.  “You damn little
sneak!  I’ll shut yer mouth!”

“Let him go,” Leach commanded.

“Not on yer life,” was the angry retort.

Leach never changed his position on the edge of the bunk.  “Let him go, I
say,” he repeated; but this time his voice was gritty and metallic.

The Irishman wavered.  I made to step by him, and he stood aside.  When I
had gained the ladder, I turned to the circle of brutal and malignant
faces peering at me through the semi-darkness.  A sudden and deep
sympathy welled up in me.  I remembered the Cockney’s way of putting it.
How God must have hated them that they should be tortured so!

“I have seen and heard nothing, believe me,” I said quietly.

“I tell yer, he’s all right,” I could hear Leach saying as I went up the
ladder.  “He don’t like the old man no more nor you or me.”

I found Wolf Larsen in the cabin, stripped and bloody, waiting for me.
He greeted me with one of his whimsical smiles.

“Come, get to work, Doctor.  The signs are favourable for an extensive
practice this voyage.  I don’t know what the _Ghost_ would have been
without you, and if I could only cherish such noble sentiments I would
tell you her master is deeply grateful.”

I knew the run of the simple medicine-chest the _Ghost_ carried, and
while I was heating water on the cabin stove and getting the things ready
for dressing his wounds, he moved about, laughing and chatting, and
examining his hurts with a calculating eye.  I had never before seen him
stripped, and the sight of his body quite took my breath away.  It has
never been my weakness to exalt the flesh—far from it; but there is
enough of the artist in me to appreciate its wonder.

I must say that I was fascinated by the perfect lines of Wolf Larsen’s
figure, and by what I may term the terrible beauty of it.  I had noted
the men in the forecastle.  Powerfully muscled though some of them were,
there had been something wrong with all of them, an insufficient
development here, an undue development there, a twist or a crook that
destroyed symmetry, legs too short or too long, or too much sinew or bone
exposed, or too little.  Oofty-Oofty had been the only one whose lines
were at all pleasing, while, in so far as they pleased, that far had they
been what I should call feminine.

But Wolf Larsen was the man-type, the masculine, and almost a god in his
perfectness.  As he moved about or raised his arms the great muscles
leapt and moved under the satiny skin.  I have forgotten to say that the
bronze ended with his face.  His body, thanks to his Scandinavian stock,
was fair as the fairest woman’s.  I remember his putting his hand up to
feel of the wound on his head, and my watching the biceps move like a
living thing under its white sheath.  It was the biceps that had nearly
crushed out my life once, that I had seen strike so many killing blows.
I could not take my eyes from him.  I stood motionless, a roll of
antiseptic cotton in my hand unwinding and spilling itself down to the
floor.

He noticed me, and I became conscious that I was staring at him.

“God made you well,” I said.

“Did he?” he answered.  “I have often thought so myself, and wondered
why.”

“Purpose—” I began.

“Utility,” he interrupted.  “This body was made for use.  These muscles
were made to grip, and tear, and destroy living things that get between
me and life.  But have you thought of the other living things?  They,
too, have muscles, of one kind and another, made to grip, and tear, and
destroy; and when they come between me and life, I out-grip them,
out-tear them, out-destroy them.  Purpose does not explain that.  Utility
does.”

“It is not beautiful,” I protested.

“Life isn’t, you mean,” he smiled.  “Yet you say I was made well.  Do you
see this?”

He braced his legs and feet, pressing the cabin floor with his toes in a
clutching sort of way.  Knots and ridges and mounds of muscles writhed
and bunched under the skin.

“Feel them,” he commanded.

They were hard as iron.  And I observed, also, that his whole body had
unconsciously drawn itself together, tense and alert; that muscles were
softly crawling and shaping about the hips, along the back, and across
the shoulders; that the arms were slightly lifted, their muscles
contracting, the fingers crooking till the hands were like talons; and
that even the eyes had changed expression and into them were coming
watchfulness and measurement and a light none other than of battle.

“Stability, equilibrium,” he said, relaxing on the instant and sinking
his body back into repose.  “Feet with which to clutch the ground, legs
to stand on and to help withstand, while with arms and hands, teeth and
nails, I struggle to kill and to be not killed.  Purpose?  Utility is the
better word.”

I did not argue.  I had seen the mechanism of the primitive fighting
beast, and I was as strongly impressed as if I had seen the engines of a
great battleship or Atlantic liner.

I was surprised, considering the fierce struggle in the forecastle, at
the superficiality of his hurts, and I pride myself that I dressed them
dexterously.  With the exception of several bad wounds, the rest were
merely severe bruises and lacerations.  The blow which he had received
before going overboard had laid his scalp open several inches.  This,
under his direction, I cleansed and sewed together, having first shaved
the edges of the wound.  Then the calf of his leg was badly lacerated and
looked as though it had been mangled by a bulldog.  Some sailor, he told
me, had laid hold of it by his teeth, at the beginning of the fight, and
hung on and been dragged to the top of the forecastle ladder, when he was
kicked loose.

“By the way, Hump, as I have remarked, you are a handy man,” Wolf Larsen
began, when my work was done.  “As you know, we’re short a mate.
Hereafter you shall stand watches, receive seventy-five dollars per
month, and be addressed fore and aft as Mr. Van Weyden.”

“I—I don’t understand navigation, you know,” I gasped.

“Not necessary at all.”

“I really do not care to sit in the high places,” I objected.  “I find
life precarious enough in my present humble situation.  I have no
experience.  Mediocrity, you see, has its compensations.”

He smiled as though it were all settled.

“I won’t be mate on this hell-ship!” I cried defiantly.

I saw his face grow hard and the merciless glitter come into his eyes.
He walked to the door of his room, saying:

“And now, Mr. Van Weyden, good-night.”

“Good-night, Mr. Larsen,” I answered weakly.




CHAPTER XVI


I cannot say that the position of mate carried with it anything more
joyful than that there were no more dishes to wash.  I was ignorant of
the simplest duties of mate, and would have fared badly indeed, had the
sailors not sympathized with me.  I knew nothing of the minutiæ of ropes
and rigging, of the trimming and setting of sails; but the sailors took
pains to put me to rights,—Louis proving an especially good teacher,—and
I had little trouble with those under me.

With the hunters it was otherwise.  Familiar in varying degree with the
sea, they took me as a sort of joke.  In truth, it was a joke to me, that
I, the veriest landsman, should be filling the office of mate; but to be
taken as a joke by others was a different matter.  I made no complaint,
but Wolf Larsen demanded the most punctilious sea etiquette in my
case,—far more than poor Johansen had ever received; and at the expense
of several rows, threats, and much grumbling, he brought the hunters to
time.  I was “Mr. Van Weyden” fore and aft, and it was only unofficially
that Wolf Larsen himself ever addressed me as “Hump.”

It was amusing.  Perhaps the wind would haul a few points while we were
at dinner, and as I left the table he would say, “Mr. Van Weyden, will
you kindly put about on the port tack.”  And I would go on deck, beckon
Louis to me, and learn from him what was to be done.  Then, a few minutes
later, having digested his instructions and thoroughly mastered the
manœuvre, I would proceed to issue my orders.  I remember an early
instance of this kind, when Wolf Larsen appeared on the scene just as I
had begun to give orders.  He smoked his cigar and looked on quietly till
the thing was accomplished, and then paced aft by my side along the
weather poop.

“Hump,” he said, “I beg pardon, Mr. Van Weyden, I congratulate you.  I
think you can now fire your father’s legs back into the grave to him.
You’ve discovered your own and learned to stand on them.  A little
rope-work, sail-making, and experience with storms and such things, and
by the end of the voyage you could ship on any coasting schooner.”

It was during this period, between the death of Johansen and the arrival
on the sealing grounds, that I passed my pleasantest hours on the
_Ghost_.  Wolf Larsen was quite considerate, the sailors helped me, and I
was no longer in irritating contact with Thomas Mugridge.  And I make
free to say, as the days went by, that I found I was taking a certain
secret pride in myself.  Fantastic as the situation was,—a land-lubber
second in command,—I was, nevertheless, carrying it off well; and during
that brief time I was proud of myself, and I grew to love the heave and
roll of the _Ghost_ under my feet as she wallowed north and west through
the tropic sea to the islet where we filled our water-casks.

But my happiness was not unalloyed.  It was comparative, a period of less
misery slipped in between a past of great miseries and a future of great
miseries.  For the _Ghost_, so far as the seamen were concerned, was a
hell-ship of the worst description.  They never had a moment’s rest or
peace.  Wolf Larsen treasured against them the attempt on his life and
the drubbing he had received in the forecastle; and morning, noon, and
night, and all night as well, he devoted himself to making life unlivable
for them.

He knew well the psychology of the little thing, and it was the little
things by which he kept the crew worked up to the verge of madness.  I
have seen Harrison called from his bunk to put properly away a misplaced
paintbrush, and the two watches below haled from their tired sleep to
accompany him and see him do it.  A little thing, truly, but when
multiplied by the thousand ingenious devices of such a mind, the mental
state of the men in the forecastle may be slightly comprehended.

Of course much grumbling went on, and little outbursts were continually
occurring.  Blows were struck, and there were always two or three men
nursing injuries at the hands of the human beast who was their master.
Concerted action was impossible in face of the heavy arsenal of weapons
carried in the steerage and cabin.  Leach and Johnson were the two
particular victims of Wolf Larsen’s diabolic temper, and the look of
profound melancholy which had settled on Johnson’s face and in his eyes
made my heart bleed.

With Leach it was different.  There was too much of the fighting beast in
him.  He seemed possessed by an insatiable fury which gave no time for
grief.  His lips had become distorted into a permanent snarl, which at
mere sight of Wolf Larsen broke out in sound, horrible and menacing and,
I do believe, unconsciously.  I have seen him follow Wolf Larsen about
with his eyes, like an animal its keeper, the while the animal-like snarl
sounded deep in his throat and vibrated forth between his teeth.

I remember once, on deck, in bright day, touching him on the shoulder as
preliminary to giving an order.  His back was toward me, and at the first
feel of my hand he leaped upright in the air and away from me, snarling
and turning his head as he leaped.  He had for the moment mistaken me for
the man he hated.

Both he and Johnson would have killed Wolf Larsen at the slightest
opportunity, but the opportunity never came.  Wolf Larsen was too wise
for that, and, besides, they had no adequate weapons.  With their fists
alone they had no chance whatever.  Time and again he fought it out with
Leach who fought back always, like a wildcat, tooth and nail and fist,
until stretched, exhausted or unconscious, on the deck.  And he was never
averse to another encounter.  All the devil that was in him challenged
the devil in Wolf Larsen.  They had but to appear on deck at the same
time, when they would be at it, cursing, snarling, striking; and I have
seen Leach fling himself upon Wolf Larsen without warning or provocation.
Once he threw his heavy sheath-knife, missing Wolf Larsen’s throat by an
inch.  Another time he dropped a steel marlinspike from the mizzen
crosstree.  It was a difficult cast to make on a rolling ship, but the
sharp point of the spike, whistling seventy-five feet through the air,
barely missed Wolf Larsen’s head as he emerged from the cabin
companion-way and drove its length two inches and over into the solid
deck-planking.  Still another time, he stole into the steerage, possessed
himself of a loaded shot-gun, and was making a rush for the deck with it
when caught by Kerfoot and disarmed.

I often wondered why Wolf Larsen did not kill him and make an end of it.
But he only laughed and seemed to enjoy it.  There seemed a certain spice
about it, such as men must feel who take delight in making pets of
ferocious animals.

“It gives a thrill to life,” he explained to me, “when life is carried in
one’s hand.  Man is a natural gambler, and life is the biggest stake he
can lay.  The greater the odds, the greater the thrill.  Why should I
deny myself the joy of exciting Leach’s soul to fever-pitch?  For that
matter, I do him a kindness.  The greatness of sensation is mutual.  He
is living more royally than any man for’ard, though he does not know it.
For he has what they have not—purpose, something to do and be done, an
all-absorbing end to strive to attain, the desire to kill me, the hope
that he may kill me.  Really, Hump, he is living deep and high.  I doubt
that he has ever lived so swiftly and keenly before, and I honestly envy
him, sometimes, when I see him raging at the summit of passion and
sensibility.”

“Ah, but it is cowardly, cowardly!” I cried.  “You have all the
advantage.”

“Of the two of us, you and I, who is the greater coward?” he asked
seriously.  “If the situation is unpleasing, you compromise with your
conscience when you make yourself a party to it.  If you were really
great, really true to yourself, you would join forces with Leach and
Johnson.  But you are afraid, you are afraid.  You want to live.  The
life that is in you cries out that it must live, no matter what the cost;
so you live ignominiously, untrue to the best you dream of, sinning
against your whole pitiful little code, and, if there were a hell,
heading your soul straight for it.  Bah!  I play the braver part.  I do
no sin, for I am true to the promptings of the life that is in me.  I am
sincere with my soul at least, and that is what you are not.”

There was a sting in what he said.  Perhaps, after all, I was playing a
cowardly part.  And the more I thought about it the more it appeared that
my duty to myself lay in doing what he had advised, lay in joining forces
with Johnson and Leach and working for his death.  Right here, I think,
entered the austere conscience of my Puritan ancestry, impelling me
toward lurid deeds and sanctioning even murder as right conduct.  I dwelt
upon the idea.  It would be a most moral act to rid the world of such a
monster.  Humanity would be better and happier for it, life fairer and
sweeter.

I pondered it long, lying sleepless in my bunk and reviewing in endless
procession the facts of the situation.  I talked with Johnson and Leach,
during the night watches when Wolf Larsen was below.  Both men had lost
hope—Johnson, because of temperamental despondency; Leach, because he had
beaten himself out in the vain struggle and was exhausted.  But he caught
my hand in a passionate grip one night, saying:

“I think yer square, Mr. Van Weyden.  But stay where you are and keep yer
mouth shut.  Say nothin’ but saw wood.  We’re dead men, I know it; but
all the same you might be able to do us a favour some time when we need
it damn bad.”

It was only next day, when Wainwright Island loomed to windward, close
abeam, that Wolf Larsen opened his mouth in prophecy.  He had attacked
Johnson, been attacked by Leach, and had just finished whipping the pair
of them.

“Leach,” he said, “you know I’m going to kill you some time or other,
don’t you?”

A snarl was the answer.

“And as for you, Johnson, you’ll get so tired of life before I’m through
with you that you’ll fling yourself over the side.  See if you don’t.”

“That’s a suggestion,” he added, in an aside to me.  “I’ll bet you a
month’s pay he acts upon it.”

I had cherished a hope that his victims would find an opportunity to
escape while filling our water-barrels, but Wolf Larsen had selected his
spot well.  The _Ghost_ lay half-a-mile beyond the surf-line of a lonely
beach.  Here debauched a deep gorge, with precipitous, volcanic walls
which no man could scale.  And here, under his direct supervision—for he
went ashore himself—Leach and Johnson filled the small casks and rolled
them down to the beach.  They had no chance to make a break for liberty
in one of the boats.

Harrison and Kelly, however, made such an attempt.  They composed one of
the boats’ crews, and their task was to ply between the schooner and the
shore, carrying a single cask each trip.  Just before dinner, starting
for the beach with an empty barrel, they altered their course and bore
away to the left to round the promontory which jutted into the sea
between them and liberty.  Beyond its foaming base lay the pretty
villages of the Japanese colonists and smiling valleys which penetrated
deep into the interior.  Once in the fastnesses they promised, and the
two men could defy Wolf Larsen.

I had observed Henderson and Smoke loitering about the deck all morning,
and I now learned why they were there.  Procuring their rifles, they
opened fire in a leisurely manner, upon the deserters.  It was a
cold-blooded exhibition of marksmanship.  At first their bullets zipped
harmlessly along the surface of the water on either side the boat; but,
as the men continued to pull lustily, they struck closer and closer.

“Now, watch me take Kelly’s right oar,” Smoke said, drawing a more
careful aim.

I was looking through the glasses, and I saw the oar-blade shatter as he
shot.  Henderson duplicated it, selecting Harrison’s right oar.  The boat
slewed around.  The two remaining oars were quickly broken.  The men
tried to row with the splinters, and had them shot out of their hands.
Kelly ripped up a bottom board and began paddling, but dropped it with a
cry of pain as its splinters drove into his hands.  Then they gave up,
letting the boat drift till a second boat, sent from the shore by Wolf
Larsen, took them in tow and brought them aboard.

Late that afternoon we hove up anchor and got away.  Nothing was before
us but the three or four months’ hunting on the sealing grounds.  The
outlook was black indeed, and I went about my work with a heavy heart.
An almost funereal gloom seemed to have descended upon the _Ghost_.  Wolf
Larsen had taken to his bunk with one of his strange, splitting
headaches.  Harrison stood listlessly at the wheel, half supporting
himself by it, as though wearied by the weight of his flesh.  The rest of
the men were morose and silent.  I came upon Kelly crouching to the lee
of the forecastle scuttle, his head on his knees, his arms about his
head, in an attitude of unutterable despondency.

Johnson I found lying full length on the forecastle head, staring at the
troubled churn of the forefoot, and I remembered with horror the
suggestion Wolf Larsen had made.  It seemed likely to bear fruit.  I
tried to break in on the man’s morbid thoughts by calling him away, but
he smiled sadly at me and refused to obey.

Leach approached me as I returned aft.

“I want to ask a favour, Mr. Van Weyden,” he said.  “If it’s yer luck to
ever make ’Frisco once more, will you hunt up Matt McCarthy?  He’s my old
man.  He lives on the Hill, back of the Mayfair bakery, runnin’ a
cobbler’s shop that everybody knows, and you’ll have no trouble.  Tell
him I lived to be sorry for the trouble I brought him and the things I
done, and—and just tell him ‘God bless him,’ for me.”

I nodded my head, but said, “We’ll all win back to San Francisco, Leach,
and you’ll be with me when I go to see Matt McCarthy.”

“I’d like to believe you,” he answered, shaking my hand, “but I can’t.
Wolf Larsen ’ll do for me, I know it; and all I can hope is, he’ll do it
quick.”

And as he left me I was aware of the same desire at my heart.  Since it
was to be done, let it be done with despatch.  The general gloom had
gathered me into its folds.  The worst appeared inevitable; and as I
paced the deck, hour after hour, I found myself afflicted with Wolf
Larsen’s repulsive ideas.  What was it all about?  Where was the grandeur
of life that it should permit such wanton destruction of human souls?  It
was a cheap and sordid thing after all, this life, and the sooner over
the better.  Over and done with!  I, too, leaned upon the rail and gazed
longingly into the sea, with the certainty that sooner or later I should
be sinking down, down, through the cool green depths of its oblivion.




CHAPTER XVII


Strange to say, in spite of the general foreboding, nothing of especial
moment happened on the _Ghost_.  We ran on to the north and west till we
raised the coast of Japan and picked up with the great seal herd.  Coming
from no man knew where in the illimitable Pacific, it was travelling
north on its annual migration to the rookeries of Bering Sea.  And north
we travelled with it, ravaging and destroying, flinging the naked
carcasses to the shark and salting down the skins so that they might
later adorn the fair shoulders of the women of the cities.

It was wanton slaughter, and all for woman’s sake.  No man ate of the
seal meat or the oil.  After a good day’s killing I have seen our decks
covered with hides and bodies, slippery with fat and blood, the scuppers
running red; masts, ropes, and rails spattered with the sanguinary
colour; and the men, like butchers plying their trade, naked and red of
arm and hand, hard at work with ripping and flensing-knives, removing the
skins from the pretty sea-creatures they had killed.

It was my task to tally the pelts as they came aboard from the boats, to
oversee the skinning and afterward the cleansing of the decks and
bringing things ship-shape again.  It was not pleasant work.  My soul and
my stomach revolted at it; and yet, in a way, this handling and directing
of many men was good for me.  It developed what little executive ability
I possessed, and I was aware of a toughening or hardening which I was
undergoing and which could not be anything but wholesome for “Sissy” Van
Weyden.

One thing I was beginning to feel, and that was that I could never again
be quite the same man I had been.  While my hope and faith in human life
still survived Wolf Larsen’s destructive criticism, he had nevertheless
been a cause of change in minor matters.  He had opened up for me the
world of the real, of which I had known practically nothing and from
which I had always shrunk.  I had learned to look more closely at life as
it was lived, to recognize that there were such things as facts in the
world, to emerge from the realm of mind and idea and to place certain
values on the concrete and objective phases of existence.

I saw more of Wolf Larsen than ever when we had gained the grounds.  For
when the weather was fair and we were in the midst of the herd, all hands
were away in the boats, and left on board were only he and I, and Thomas
Mugridge, who did not count.  But there was no play about it.  The six
boats, spreading out fan-wise from the schooner until the first weather
boat and the last lee boat were anywhere from ten to twenty miles apart,
cruised along a straight course over the sea till nightfall or bad
weather drove them in.  It was our duty to sail the _Ghost_ well to
leeward of the last lee boat, so that all the boats should have fair wind
to run for us in case of squalls or threatening weather.

It is no slight matter for two men, particularly when a stiff wind has
sprung up, to handle a vessel like the _Ghost_, steering, keeping
look-out for the boats, and setting or taking in sail; so it devolved
upon me to learn, and learn quickly.  Steering I picked up easily, but
running aloft to the crosstrees and swinging my whole weight by my arms
when I left the ratlines and climbed still higher, was more difficult.
This, too, I learned, and quickly, for I felt somehow a wild desire to
vindicate myself in Wolf Larsen’s eyes, to prove my right to live in ways
other than of the mind.  Nay, the time came when I took joy in the run of
the masthead and in the clinging on by my legs at that precarious height
while I swept the sea with glasses in search of the boats.

I remember one beautiful day, when the boats left early and the reports
of the hunters’ guns grew dim and distant and died away as they scattered
far and wide over the sea.  There was just the faintest wind from the
westward; but it breathed its last by the time we managed to get to
leeward of the last lee boat.  One by one—I was at the masthead and
saw—the six boats disappeared over the bulge of the earth as they
followed the seal into the west.  We lay, scarcely rolling on the placid
sea, unable to follow.  Wolf Larsen was apprehensive.  The barometer was
down, and the sky to the east did not please him.  He studied it with
unceasing vigilance.

“If she comes out of there,” he said, “hard and snappy, putting us to
windward of the boats, it’s likely there’ll be empty bunks in steerage
and fo’c’sle.”

By eleven o’clock the sea had become glass.  By midday, though we were
well up in the northerly latitudes, the heat was sickening.  There was no
freshness in the air.  It was sultry and oppressive, reminding me of what
the old Californians term “earthquake weather.”  There was something
ominous about it, and in intangible ways one was made to feel that the
worst was about to come.  Slowly the whole eastern sky filled with clouds
that over-towered us like some black sierra of the infernal regions.  So
clearly could one see cañon, gorge, and precipice, and the shadows that
lie therein, that one looked unconsciously for the white surf-line and
bellowing caverns where the sea charges on the land.  And still we rocked
gently, and there was no wind.

“It’s no square” Wolf Larsen said.  “Old Mother Nature’s going to get up
on her hind legs and howl for all that’s in her, and it’ll keep us
jumping, Hump, to pull through with half our boats.  You’d better run up
and loosen the topsails.”

“But if it is going to howl, and there are only two of us?” I asked, a
note of protest in my voice.

“Why we’ve got to make the best of the first of it and run down to our
boats before our canvas is ripped out of us.  After that I don’t give a
rap what happens.  The sticks ’ll stand it, and you and I will have to,
though we’ve plenty cut out for us.”

Still the calm continued.  We ate dinner, a hurried and anxious meal for
me with eighteen men abroad on the sea and beyond the bulge of the earth,
and with that heaven-rolling mountain range of clouds moving slowly down
upon us.  Wolf Larsen did not seem affected, however; though I noticed,
when we returned to the deck, a slight twitching of the nostrils, a
perceptible quickness of movement.  His face was stern, the lines of it
had grown hard, and yet in his eyes—blue, clear blue this day—there was a
strange brilliancy, a bright scintillating light.  It struck me that he
was joyous, in a ferocious sort of way; that he was glad there was an
impending struggle; that he was thrilled and upborne with knowledge that
one of the great moments of living, when the tide of life surges up in
flood, was upon him.

Once, and unwitting that he did so or that I saw, he laughed aloud,
mockingly and defiantly, at the advancing storm.  I see him yet standing
there like a pigmy out of the _Arabian Nights_ before the huge front of
some malignant genie.  He was daring destiny, and he was unafraid.

He walked to the galley.  “Cooky, by the time you’ve finished pots and
pans you’ll be wanted on deck.  Stand ready for a call.”

“Hump,” he said, becoming cognizant of the fascinated gaze I bent upon
him, “this beats whisky and is where your Omar misses.  I think he only
half lived after all.”

The western half of the sky had by now grown murky.  The sun had dimmed
and faded out of sight.  It was two in the afternoon, and a ghostly
twilight, shot through by wandering purplish lights, had descended upon
us.  In this purplish light Wolf Larsen’s face glowed and glowed, and to
my excited fancy he appeared encircled by a halo.  We lay in the midst of
an unearthly quiet, while all about us were signs and omens of oncoming
sound and movement.  The sultry heat had become unendurable.  The sweat
was standing on my forehead, and I could feel it trickling down my nose.
I felt as though I should faint, and reached out to the rail for support.

And then, just then, the faintest possible whisper of air passed by.  It
was from the east, and like a whisper it came and went.  The drooping
canvas was not stirred, and yet my face had felt the air and been cooled.

“Cooky,” Wolf Larsen called in a low voice.  Thomas Mugridge turned a
pitiable scared face.  “Let go that foreboom tackle and pass it across,
and when she’s willing let go the sheet and come in snug with the tackle.
And if you make a mess of it, it will be the last you ever make.
Understand?”

“Mr. Van Weyden, stand by to pass the head-sails over.  Then jump for the
topsails and spread them quick as God’ll let you—the quicker you do it
the easier you’ll find it.  As for Cooky, if he isn’t lively bat him
between the eyes.”

I was aware of the compliment and pleased, in that no threat had
accompanied my instructions.  We were lying head to north-west, and it
was his intention to jibe over all with the first puff.

“We’ll have the breeze on our quarter,” he explained to me.  “By the last
guns the boats were bearing away slightly to the south’ard.”

He turned and walked aft to the wheel.  I went forward and took my
station at the jibs.  Another whisper of wind, and another, passed by.
The canvas flapped lazily.

“Thank Gawd she’s not comin’ all of a bunch, Mr. Van Weyden,” was the
Cockney’s fervent ejaculation.

And I was indeed thankful, for I had by this time learned enough to know,
with all our canvas spread, what disaster in such event awaited us.  The
whispers of wind became puffs, the sails filled, the _Ghost_ moved.  Wolf
Larsen put the wheel hard up, to port, and we began to pay off.  The wind
was now dead astern, muttering and puffing stronger and stronger, and my
head-sails were pounding lustily.  I did not see what went on elsewhere,
though I felt the sudden surge and heel of the schooner as the
wind-pressures changed to the jibing of the fore- and main-sails.  My
hands were full with the flying-jib, jib, and staysail; and by the time
this part of my task was accomplished the _Ghost_ was leaping into the
south-west, the wind on her quarter and all her sheets to starboard.
Without pausing for breath, though my heart was beating like a
trip-hammer from my exertions, I sprang to the topsails, and before the
wind had become too strong we had them fairly set and were coiling down.
Then I went aft for orders.

Wolf Larsen nodded approval and relinquished the wheel to me.  The wind
was strengthening steadily and the sea rising.  For an hour I steered,
each moment becoming more difficult.  I had not the experience to steer
at the gait we were going on a quartering course.

“Now take a run up with the glasses and raise some of the boats.  We’ve
made at least ten knots, and we’re going twelve or thirteen now.  The old
girl knows how to walk.”

I contested myself with the fore crosstrees, some seventy feet above the
deck.  As I searched the vacant stretch of water before me, I
comprehended thoroughly the need for haste if we were to recover any of
our men.  Indeed, as I gazed at the heavy sea through which we were
running, I doubted that there was a boat afloat.  It did not seem
possible that such frail craft could survive such stress of wind and
water.

I could not feel the full force of the wind, for we were running with it;
but from my lofty perch I looked down as though outside the _Ghost_ and
apart from her, and saw the shape of her outlined sharply against the
foaming sea as she tore along instinct with life.  Sometimes she would
lift and send across some great wave, burying her starboard-rail from
view, and covering her deck to the hatches with the boiling ocean.  At
such moments, starting from a windward roll, I would go flying through
the air with dizzying swiftness, as though I clung to the end of a huge,
inverted pendulum, the arc of which, between the greater rolls, must have
been seventy feet or more.  Once, the terror of this giddy sweep
overpowered me, and for a while I clung on, hand and foot, weak and
trembling, unable to search the sea for the missing boats or to behold
aught of the sea but that which roared beneath and strove to overwhelm
the _Ghost_.

But the thought of the men in the midst of it steadied me, and in my
quest for them I forgot myself.  For an hour I saw nothing but the naked,
desolate sea.  And then, where a vagrant shaft of sunlight struck the
ocean and turned its surface to wrathful silver, I caught a small black
speck thrust skyward for an instant and swallowed up.  I waited
patiently.  Again the tiny point of black projected itself through the
wrathful blaze a couple of points off our port-bow.  I did not attempt to
shout, but communicated the news to Wolf Larsen by waving my arm.  He
changed the course, and I signalled affirmation when the speck showed
dead ahead.

It grew larger, and so swiftly that for the first time I fully
appreciated the speed of our flight.  Wolf Larsen motioned for me to come
down, and when I stood beside him at the wheel gave me instructions for
heaving to.

“Expect all hell to break loose,” he cautioned me, “but don’t mind it.
Yours is to do your own work and to have Cooky stand by the fore-sheet.”

I managed to make my way forward, but there was little choice of sides,
for the weather-rail seemed buried as often as the lee.  Having
instructed Thomas Mugridge as to what he was to do, I clambered into the
fore-rigging a few feet.  The boat was now very close, and I could make
out plainly that it was lying head to wind and sea and dragging on its
mast and sail, which had been thrown overboard and made to serve as a
sea-anchor.  The three men were bailing.  Each rolling mountain whelmed
them from view, and I would wait with sickening anxiety, fearing that
they would never appear again.  Then, and with black suddenness, the boat
would shoot clear through the foaming crest, bow pointed to the sky, and
the whole length of her bottom showing, wet and dark, till she seemed on
end.  There would be a fleeting glimpse of the three men flinging water
in frantic haste, when she would topple over and fall into the yawning
valley, bow down and showing her full inside length to the stern upreared
almost directly above the bow.  Each time that she reappeared was a
miracle.

The _Ghost_ suddenly changed her course, keeping away, and it came to me
with a shock that Wolf Larsen was giving up the rescue as impossible.
Then I realized that he was preparing to heave to, and dropped to the
deck to be in readiness.  We were now dead before the wind, the boat far
away and abreast of us.  I felt an abrupt easing of the schooner, a loss
for the moment of all strain and pressure, coupled with a swift
acceleration of speed.  She was rushing around on her heel into the wind.

As she arrived at right angles to the sea, the full force of the wind
(from which we had hitherto run away) caught us.  I was unfortunately and
ignorantly facing it.  It stood up against me like a wall, filling my
lungs with air which I could not expel.  And as I choked and strangled,
and as the _Ghost_ wallowed for an instant, broadside on and rolling
straight over and far into the wind, I beheld a huge sea rise far above
my head.  I turned aside, caught my breath, and looked again.  The wave
over-topped the _Ghost_, and I gazed sheer up and into it.  A shaft of
sunlight smote the over-curl, and I caught a glimpse of translucent,
rushing green, backed by a milky smother of foam.

Then it descended, pandemonium broke loose, everything happened at once.
I was struck a crushing, stunning blow, nowhere in particular and yet
everywhere.  My hold had been broken loose, I was under water, and the
thought passed through my mind that this was the terrible thing of which
I had heard, the being swept in the trough of the sea.  My body struck
and pounded as it was dashed helplessly along and turned over and over,
and when I could hold my breath no longer, I breathed the stinging salt
water into my lungs.  But through it all I clung to the one idea—_I must
get the jib backed over to windward_.  I had no fear of death.  I had no
doubt but that I should come through somehow.  And as this idea of
fulfilling Wolf Larsen’s order persisted in my dazed consciousness, I
seemed to see him standing at the wheel in the midst of the wild welter,
pitting his will against the will of the storm and defying it.

I brought up violently against what I took to be the rail, breathed, and
breathed the sweet air again.  I tried to rise, but struck my head and
was knocked back on hands and knees.  By some freak of the waters I had
been swept clear under the forecastle-head and into the eyes.  As I
scrambled out on all fours, I passed over the body of Thomas Mugridge,
who lay in a groaning heap.  There was no time to investigate.  I must
get the jib backed over.

When I emerged on deck it seemed that the end of everything had come.  On
all sides there was a rending and crashing of wood and steel and canvas.
The _Ghost_ was being wrenched and torn to fragments.  The foresail and
fore-topsail, emptied of the wind by the manœuvre, and with no one to
bring in the sheet in time, were thundering into ribbons, the heavy boom
threshing and splintering from rail to rail.  The air was thick with
flying wreckage, detached ropes and stays were hissing and coiling like
snakes, and down through it all crashed the gaff of the foresail.

The spar could not have missed me by many inches, while it spurred me to
action.  Perhaps the situation was not hopeless.  I remembered Wolf
Larsen’s caution.  He had expected all hell to break loose, and here it
was.  And where was he?  I caught sight of him toiling at the main-sheet,
heaving it in and flat with his tremendous muscles, the stern of the
schooner lifted high in the air and his body outlined against a white
surge of sea sweeping past.  All this, and more,—a whole world of chaos
and wreck,—in possibly fifteen seconds I had seen and heard and grasped.

I did not stop to see what had become of the small boat, but sprang to
the jib-sheet.  The jib itself was beginning to slap, partially filling
and emptying with sharp reports; but with a turn of the sheet and the
application of my whole strength each time it slapped, I slowly backed
it.  This I know: I did my best.  I pulled till I burst open the ends of
all my fingers; and while I pulled, the flying-jib and staysail split
their cloths apart and thundered into nothingness.

Still I pulled, holding what I gained each time with a double turn until
the next slap gave me more.  Then the sheet gave with greater ease, and
Wolf Larsen was beside me, heaving in alone while I was busied taking up
the slack.

“Make fast!” he shouted.  “And come on!”

As I followed him, I noted that in spite of rack and ruin a rough order
obtained.  The _Ghost_ was hove to.  She was still in working order, and
she was still working.  Though the rest of her sails were gone, the jib,
backed to windward, and the mainsail hauled down flat, were themselves
holding, and holding her bow to the furious sea as well.

I looked for the boat, and, while Wolf Larsen cleared the boat-tackles,
saw it lift to leeward on a big sea an not a score of feet away.  And, so
nicely had he made his calculation, we drifted fairly down upon it, so
that nothing remained to do but hook the tackles to either end and hoist
it aboard.  But this was not done so easily as it is written.

In the bow was Kerfoot, Oofty-Oofty in the stern, and Kelly amidships.
As we drifted closer the boat would rise on a wave while we sank in the
trough, till almost straight above me I could see the heads of the three
men craned overside and looking down.  Then, the next moment, we would
lift and soar upward while they sank far down beneath us.  It seemed
incredible that the next surge should not crush the _Ghost_ down upon the
tiny eggshell.

But, at the right moment, I passed the tackle to the Kanaka, while Wolf
Larsen did the same thing forward to Kerfoot.  Both tackles were hooked
in a trice, and the three men, deftly timing the roll, made a
simultaneous leap aboard the schooner.  As the _Ghost_ rolled her side
out of water, the boat was lifted snugly against her, and before the
return roll came, we had heaved it in over the side and turned it bottom
up on the deck.  I noticed blood spouting from Kerfoot’s left hand.  In
some way the third finger had been crushed to a pulp.  But he gave no
sign of pain, and with his single right hand helped us lash the boat in
its place.

“Stand by to let that jib over, you Oofty!” Wolf Larsen commanded, the
very second we had finished with the boat.  “Kelly, come aft and slack
off the main-sheet!  You, Kerfoot, go for’ard and see what’s become of
Cooky!  Mr. Van Weyden, run aloft again, and cut away any stray stuff on
your way!”

And having commanded, he went aft with his peculiar tigerish leaps to the
wheel.  While I toiled up the fore-shrouds the _Ghost_ slowly paid off.
This time, as we went into the trough of the sea and were swept, there
were no sails to carry away.  And, halfway to the crosstrees and
flattened against the rigging by the full force of the wind so that it
would have been impossible for me to have fallen, the _Ghost_ almost on
her beam-ends and the masts parallel with the water, I looked, not down,
but at almost right angles from the perpendicular, to the deck of the
_Ghost_.  But I saw, not the deck, but where the deck should have been,
for it was buried beneath a wild tumbling of water.  Out of this water I
could see the two masts rising, and that was all.  The _Ghost_, for the
moment, was buried beneath the sea.  As she squared off more and more,
escaping from the side pressure, she righted herself and broke her deck,
like a whale’s back, through the ocean surface.

Then we raced, and wildly, across the wild sea, the while I hung like a
fly in the crosstrees and searched for the other boats.  In half-an-hour
I sighted the second one, swamped and bottom up, to which were
desperately clinging Jock Horner, fat Louis, and Johnson.  This time I
remained aloft, and Wolf Larsen succeeded in heaving to without being
swept.  As before, we drifted down upon it.  Tackles were made fast and
lines flung to the men, who scrambled aboard like monkeys.  The boat
itself was crushed and splintered against the schooner’s side as it came
inboard; but the wreck was securely lashed, for it could be patched and
made whole again.

Once more the _Ghost_ bore away before the storm, this time so submerging
herself that for some seconds I thought she would never reappear.  Even
the wheel, quite a deal higher than the waist, was covered and swept
again and again.  At such moments I felt strangely alone with God, alone
with him and watching the chaos of his wrath.  And then the wheel would
reappear, and Wolf Larsen’s broad shoulders, his hands gripping the
spokes and holding the schooner to the course of his will, himself an
earth-god, dominating the storm, flinging its descending waters from him
and riding it to his own ends.  And oh, the marvel of it! the marvel of
it!  That tiny men should live and breathe and work, and drive so frail a
contrivance of wood and cloth through so tremendous an elemental strife.

As before, the _Ghost_ swung out of the trough, lifting her deck again
out of the sea, and dashed before the howling blast.  It was now
half-past five, and half-an-hour later, when the last of the day lost
itself in a dim and furious twilight, I sighted a third boat.  It was
bottom up, and there was no sign of its crew.  Wolf Larsen repeated his
manœuvre, holding off and then rounding up to windward and drifting down
upon it.  But this time he missed by forty feet, the boat passing astern.

“Number four boat!” Oofty-Oofty cried, his keen eyes reading its number
in the one second when it lifted clear of the foam, and upside down.

It was Henderson’s boat and with him had been lost Holyoak and Williams,
another of the deep-water crowd.  Lost they indubitably were; but the
boat remained, and Wolf Larsen made one more reckless effort to recover
it.  I had come down to the deck, and I saw Horner and Kerfoot vainly
protest against the attempt.

“By God, I’ll not be robbed of my boat by any storm that ever blew out of
hell!” he shouted, and though we four stood with our heads together that
we might hear, his voice seemed faint and far, as though removed from us
an immense distance.

“Mr. Van Weyden!” he cried, and I heard through the tumult as one might
hear a whisper.  “Stand by that jib with Johnson and Oofty!  The rest of
you tail aft to the mainsheet!  Lively now! or I’ll sail you all into
Kingdom Come!  Understand?”

And when he put the wheel hard over and the _Ghost’s_ bow swung off,
there was nothing for the hunters to do but obey and make the best of a
risky chance.  How great the risk I realized when I was once more buried
beneath the pounding seas and clinging for life to the pinrail at the
foot of the foremast.  My fingers were torn loose, and I swept across to
the side and over the side into the sea.  I could not swim, but before I
could sink I was swept back again.  A strong hand gripped me, and when
the _Ghost_ finally emerged, I found that I owed my life to Johnson.  I
saw him looking anxiously about him, and noted that Kelly, who had come
forward at the last moment, was missing.

This time, having missed the boat, and not being in the same position as
in the previous instances, Wolf Larsen was compelled to resort to a
different manœuvre.  Running off before the wind with everything to
starboard, he came about, and returned close-hauled on the port tack.

“Grand!” Johnson shouted in my ear, as we successfully came through the
attendant deluge, and I knew he referred, not to Wolf Larsen’s
seamanship, but to the performance of the _Ghost_ herself.

It was now so dark that there was no sign of the boat; but Wolf Larsen
held back through the frightful turmoil as if guided by unerring
instinct.  This time, though we were continually half-buried, there was
no trough in which to be swept, and we drifted squarely down upon the
upturned boat, badly smashing it as it was heaved inboard.

Two hours of terrible work followed, in which all hands of us—two
hunters, three sailors, Wolf Larsen and I—reefed, first one and then the
other, the jib and mainsail.  Hove to under this short canvas, our decks
were comparatively free of water, while the _Ghost_ bobbed and ducked
amongst the combers like a cork.

I had burst open the ends of my fingers at the very first, and during the
reefing I had worked with tears of pain running down my cheeks.  And when
all was done, I gave up like a woman and rolled upon the deck in the
agony of exhaustion.

In the meantime Thomas Mugridge, like a drowned rat, was being dragged
out from under the forecastle head where he had cravenly ensconced
himself.  I saw him pulled aft to the cabin, and noted with a shock of
surprise that the galley had disappeared.  A clean space of deck showed
where it had stood.

In the cabin I found all hands assembled, sailors as well, and while
coffee was being cooked over the small stove we drank whisky and crunched
hard-tack.  Never in my life had food been so welcome.  And never had hot
coffee tasted so good.  So violently did the _Ghost_, pitch and toss and
tumble that it was impossible for even the sailors to move about without
holding on, and several times, after a cry of “Now she takes it!” we were
heaped upon the wall of the port cabins as though it had been the deck.

“To hell with a look-out,” I heard Wolf Larsen say when we had eaten and
drunk our fill.  “There’s nothing can be done on deck.  If anything’s
going to run us down we couldn’t get out of its way.  Turn in, all hands,
and get some sleep.”

The sailors slipped forward, setting the side-lights as they went, while
the two hunters remained to sleep in the cabin, it not being deemed
advisable to open the slide to the steerage companion-way.  Wolf Larsen
and I, between us, cut off Kerfoot’s crushed finger and sewed up the
stump.  Mugridge, who, during all the time he had been compelled to cook
and serve coffee and keep the fire going, had complained of internal
pains, now swore that he had a broken rib or two.  On examination we
found that he had three.  But his case was deferred to next day,
principally for the reason that I did not know anything about broken ribs
and would first have to read it up.

“I don’t think it was worth it,” I said to Wolf Larsen, “a broken boat
for Kelly’s life.”

“But Kelly didn’t amount to much,” was the reply.  “Good-night.”

After all that had passed, suffering intolerable anguish in my
finger-ends, and with three boats missing, to say nothing of the wild
capers the _Ghost_ was cutting, I should have thought it impossible to
sleep.  But my eyes must have closed the instant my head touched the
pillow, and in utter exhaustion I slept throughout the night, the while
the _Ghost_, lonely and undirected, fought her way through the storm.




CHAPTER XVIII


The next day, while the storm was blowing itself out, Wolf Larsen and I
crammed anatomy and surgery and set Mugridge’s ribs.  Then, when the
storm broke, Wolf Larsen cruised back and forth over that portion of the
ocean where we had encountered it, and somewhat more to the westward,
while the boats were being repaired and new sails made and bent.  Sealing
schooner after sealing schooner we sighted and boarded, most of which
were in search of lost boats, and most of which were carrying boats and
crews they had picked up and which did not belong to them.  For the thick
of the fleet had been to the westward of us, and the boats, scattered far
and wide, had headed in mad flight for the nearest refuge.

Two of our boats, with men all safe, we took off the _Cisco_, and, to
Wolf Larsen’s huge delight and my own grief, he culled Smoke, with Nilson
and Leach, from the _San Diego_.  So that, at the end of five days, we
found ourselves short but four men—Henderson, Holyoak, Williams, and
Kelly,—and were once more hunting on the flanks of the herd.

As we followed it north we began to encounter the dreaded sea-fogs.  Day
after day the boats lowered and were swallowed up almost ere they touched
the water, while we on board pumped the horn at regular intervals and
every fifteen minutes fired the bomb gun.  Boats were continually being
lost and found, it being the custom for a boat to hunt, on lay, with
whatever schooner picked it up, until such time it was recovered by its
own schooner.  But Wolf Larsen, as was to be expected, being a boat
short, took possession of the first stray one and compelled its men to
hunt with the _Ghost_, not permitting them to return to their own
schooner when we sighted it.  I remember how he forced the hunter and his
two men below, a rifle at their breasts, when their captain passed by at
biscuit-toss and hailed us for information.

Thomas Mugridge, so strangely and pertinaciously clinging to life, was
soon limping about again and performing his double duties of cook and
cabin-boy.  Johnson and Leach were bullied and beaten as much as ever,
and they looked for their lives to end with the end of the hunting
season; while the rest of the crew lived the lives of dogs and were
worked like dogs by their pitiless master.  As for Wolf Larsen and
myself, we got along fairly well; though I could not quite rid myself of
the idea that right conduct, for me, lay in killing him.  He fascinated
me immeasurably, and I feared him immeasurably.  And yet, I could not
imagine him lying prone in death.  There was an endurance, as of
perpetual youth, about him, which rose up and forbade the picture.  I
could see him only as living always, and dominating always, fighting and
destroying, himself surviving.

One diversion of his, when we were in the midst of the herd and the sea
was too rough to lower the boats, was to lower with two boat-pullers and
a steerer and go out himself.  He was a good shot, too, and brought many
a skin aboard under what the hunters termed impossible hunting
conditions.  It seemed the breath of his nostrils, this carrying his life
in his hands and struggling for it against tremendous odds.

I was learning more and more seamanship; and one clear day—a thing we
rarely encountered now—I had the satisfaction of running and handling the
_Ghost_ and picking up the boats myself.  Wolf Larsen had been smitten
with one of his headaches, and I stood at the wheel from morning until
evening, sailing across the ocean after the last lee boat, and heaving to
and picking it and the other five up without command or suggestion from
him.

Gales we encountered now and again, for it was a raw and stormy region,
and, in the middle of June, a typhoon most memorable to me and most
important because of the changes wrought through it upon my future.  We
must have been caught nearly at the centre of this circular storm, and
Wolf Larsen ran out of it and to the southward, first under a
double-reefed jib, and finally under bare poles.  Never had I imagined so
great a sea.  The seas previously encountered were as ripples compared
with these, which ran a half-mile from crest to crest and which upreared,
I am confident, above our masthead.  So great was it that Wolf Larsen
himself did not dare heave to, though he was being driven far to the
southward and out of the seal herd.

We must have been well in the path of the trans-Pacific steamships when
the typhoon moderated, and here, to the surprise of the hunters, we found
ourselves in the midst of seals—a second herd, or sort of rear-guard,
they declared, and a most unusual thing.  But it was “Boats over!” the
boom-boom of guns, and the pitiful slaughter through the long day.

It was at this time that I was approached by Leach.  I had just finished
tallying the skins of the last boat aboard, when he came to my side, in
the darkness, and said in a low tone:

“Can you tell me, Mr. Van Weyden, how far we are off the coast, and what
the bearings of Yokohama are?”

My heart leaped with gladness, for I knew what he had in mind, and I gave
him the bearings—west-north-west, and five hundred miles away.

“Thank you, sir,” was all he said as he slipped back into the darkness.

Next morning No. 3 boat and Johnson and Leach were missing.  The
water-breakers and grub-boxes from all the other boats were likewise
missing, as were the beds and sea bags of the two men.  Wolf Larsen was
furious.  He set sail and bore away into the west-north-west, two hunters
constantly at the mastheads and sweeping the sea with glasses, himself
pacing the deck like an angry lion.  He knew too well my sympathy for the
runaways to send me aloft as look-out.

The wind was fair but fitful, and it was like looking for a needle in a
haystack to raise that tiny boat out of the blue immensity.  But he put
the _Ghost_ through her best paces so as to get between the deserters and
the land.  This accomplished, he cruised back and forth across what he
knew must be their course.

On the morning of the third day, shortly after eight bells, a cry that
the boat was sighted came down from Smoke at the masthead.  All hands
lined the rail.  A snappy breeze was blowing from the west with the
promise of more wind behind it; and there, to leeward, in the troubled
silver of the rising sun, appeared and disappeared a black speck.

We squared away and ran for it.  My heart was as lead.  I felt myself
turning sick in anticipation; and as I looked at the gleam of triumph in
Wolf Larsen’s eyes, his form swam before me, and I felt almost
irresistibly impelled to fling myself upon him.  So unnerved was I by the
thought of impending violence to Leach and Johnson that my reason must
have left me.  I know that I slipped down into the steerage in a daze,
and that I was just beginning the ascent to the deck, a loaded shot-gun
in my hands, when I heard the startled cry:

“There’s five men in that boat!”

I supported myself in the companion-way, weak and trembling, while the
observation was being verified by the remarks of the rest of the men.
Then my knees gave from under me and I sank down, myself again, but
overcome by shock at knowledge of what I had so nearly done.  Also, I was
very thankful as I put the gun away and slipped back on deck.

No one had remarked my absence.  The boat was near enough for us to make
out that it was larger than any sealing boat and built on different
lines.  As we drew closer, the sail was taken in and the mast unstepped.
Oars were shipped, and its occupants waited for us to heave to and take
them aboard.

Smoke, who had descended to the deck and was now standing by my side,
began to chuckle in a significant way.  I looked at him inquiringly.

“Talk of a mess!” he giggled.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded.

Again he chuckled.  “Don’t you see there, in the stern-sheets, on the
bottom?  May I never shoot a seal again if that ain’t a woman!”

I looked closely, but was not sure until exclamations broke out on all
sides.  The boat contained four men, and its fifth occupant was certainly
a woman.  We were agog with excitement, all except Wolf Larsen, who was
too evidently disappointed in that it was not his own boat with the two
victims of his malice.

We ran down the flying jib, hauled the jib-sheets to wind-ward and the
main-sheet flat, and came up into the wind.  The oars struck the water,
and with a few strokes the boat was alongside.  I now caught my first
fair glimpse of the woman.  She was wrapped in a long ulster, for the
morning was raw; and I could see nothing but her face and a mass of light
brown hair escaping from under the seaman’s cap on her head.  The eyes
were large and brown and lustrous, the mouth sweet and sensitive, and the
face itself a delicate oval, though sun and exposure to briny wind had
burnt the face scarlet.

She seemed to me like a being from another world.  I was aware of a
hungry out-reaching for her, as of a starving man for bread.  But then, I
had not seen a woman for a very long time.  I know that I was lost in a
great wonder, almost a stupor,—this, then, was a woman?—so that I forgot
myself and my mate’s duties, and took no part in helping the new-comers
aboard.  For when one of the sailors lifted her into Wolf Larsen’s
downstretched arms, she looked up into our curious faces and smiled
amusedly and sweetly, as only a woman can smile, and as I had seen no one
smile for so long that I had forgotten such smiles existed.

“Mr. Van Weyden!”

Wolf Larsen’s voice brought me sharply back to myself.

“Will you take the lady below and see to her comfort?  Make up that spare
port cabin.  Put Cooky to work on it.  And see what you can do for that
face.  It’s burned badly.”

He turned brusquely away from us and began to question the new men.  The
boat was cast adrift, though one of them called it a “bloody shame” with
Yokohama so near.

I found myself strangely afraid of this woman I was escorting aft.  Also
I was awkward.  It seemed to me that I was realizing for the first time
what a delicate, fragile creature a woman is; and as I caught her arm to
help her down the companion stairs, I was startled by its smallness and
softness.  Indeed, she was a slender, delicate woman as women go, but to
me she was so ethereally slender and delicate that I was quite prepared
for her arm to crumble in my grasp.  All this, in frankness, to show my
first impression, after long denial of women in general and of Maud
Brewster in particular.

“No need to go to any great trouble for me,” she protested, when I had
seated her in Wolf Larsen’s arm-chair, which I had dragged hastily from
his cabin.  “The men were looking for land at any moment this morning,
and the vessel should be in by night; don’t you think so?”

Her simple faith in the immediate future took me aback.  How could I
explain to her the situation, the strange man who stalked the sea like
Destiny, all that it had taken me months to learn?  But I answered
honestly:

“If it were any other captain except ours, I should say you would be
ashore in Yokohama to-morrow.  But our captain is a strange man, and I
beg of you to be prepared for anything—understand?—for anything.”

“I—I confess I hardly do understand,” she hesitated, a perturbed but not
frightened expression in her eyes.  “Or is it a misconception of mine
that shipwrecked people are always shown every consideration?  This is
such a little thing, you know.  We are so close to land.”

“Candidly, I do not know,” I strove to reassure her.  “I wished merely to
prepare you for the worst, if the worst is to come.  This man, this
captain, is a brute, a demon, and one can never tell what will be his
next fantastic act.”

I was growing excited, but she interrupted me with an “Oh, I see,” and
her voice sounded weary.  To think was patently an effort.  She was
clearly on the verge of physical collapse.

She asked no further questions, and I vouchsafed no remark, devoting
myself to Wolf Larsen’s command, which was to make her comfortable.  I
bustled about in quite housewifely fashion, procuring soothing lotions
for her sunburn, raiding Wolf Larsen’s private stores for a bottle of
port I knew to be there, and directing Thomas Mugridge in the preparation
of the spare state-room.

The wind was freshening rapidly, the _Ghost_ heeling over more and more,
and by the time the state-room was ready she was dashing through the
water at a lively clip.  I had quite forgotten the existence of Leach and
Johnson, when suddenly, like a thunderclap, “Boat ho!” came down the open
companion-way.  It was Smoke’s unmistakable voice, crying from the
masthead.  I shot a glance at the woman, but she was leaning back in the
arm-chair, her eyes closed, unutterably tired.  I doubted that she had
heard, and I resolved to prevent her seeing the brutality I knew would
follow the capture of the deserters.  She was tired.  Very good.  She
should sleep.

There were swift commands on deck, a stamping of feet and a slapping of
reef-points as the _Ghost_ shot into the wind and about on the other
tack.  As she filled away and heeled, the arm-chair began to slide across
the cabin floor, and I sprang for it just in time to prevent the rescued
woman from being spilled out.

Her eyes were too heavy to suggest more than a hint of the sleepy
surprise that perplexed her as she looked up at me, and she half
stumbled, half tottered, as I led her to her cabin.  Mugridge grinned
insinuatingly in my face as I shoved him out and ordered him back to his
galley work; and he won his revenge by spreading glowing reports among
the hunters as to what an excellent “lydy’s-myde” I was proving myself to
be.

She leaned heavily against me, and I do believe that she had fallen
asleep again between the arm-chair and the state-room.  This I discovered
when she nearly fell into the bunk during a sudden lurch of the schooner.
She aroused, smiled drowsily, and was off to sleep again; and asleep I
left her, under a heavy pair of sailor’s blankets, her head resting on a
pillow I had appropriated from Wolf Larsen’s bunk.




CHAPTER XIX


I came on deck to find the _Ghost_ heading up close on the port tack and
cutting in to windward of a familiar spritsail close-hauled on the same
tack ahead of us.  All hands were on deck, for they knew that something
was to happen when Leach and Johnson were dragged aboard.

It was four bells.  Louis came aft to relieve the wheel.  There was a
dampness in the air, and I noticed he had on his oilskins.

“What are we going to have?” I asked him.

“A healthy young slip of a gale from the breath iv it, sir,” he answered,
“with a splatter iv rain just to wet our gills an’ no more.”

“Too bad we sighted them,” I said, as the _Ghost’s_ bow was flung off a
point by a large sea and the boat leaped for a moment past the jibs and
into our line of vision.

Louis gave a spoke and temporized.  “They’d never iv made the land, sir,
I’m thinkin’.”

“Think not?” I queried.

“No, sir.  Did you feel that?”  (A puff had caught the schooner, and he
was forced to put the wheel up rapidly to keep her out of the wind.)
“’Tis no egg-shell’ll float on this sea an hour come, an’ it’s a stroke
iv luck for them we’re here to pick ’em up.”

Wolf Larsen strode aft from amidships, where he had been talking with the
rescued men.  The cat-like springiness in his tread was a little more
pronounced than usual, and his eyes were bright and snappy.

“Three oilers and a fourth engineer,” was his greeting.  “But we’ll make
sailors out of them, or boat-pullers at any rate.  Now, what of the
lady?”

I know not why, but I was aware of a twinge or pang like the cut of a
knife when he mentioned her.  I thought it a certain silly fastidiousness
on my part, but it persisted in spite of me, and I merely shrugged my
shoulders in answer.

Wolf Larsen pursed his lips in a long, quizzical whistle.

“What’s her name, then?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” I replied.  “She is asleep.  She was very tired.  In
fact, I am waiting to hear the news from you.  What vessel was it?”

“Mail steamer,” he answered shortly.  “_The City of Tokio_, from ’Frisco,
bound for Yokohama.  Disabled in that typhoon.  Old tub.  Opened up top
and bottom like a sieve.  They were adrift four days.  And you don’t know
who or what she is, eh?—maid, wife, or widow?  Well, well.”

He shook his head in a bantering way, and regarded me with laughing eyes.

“Are you—” I began.  It was on the verge of my tongue to ask if he were
going to take the castaways into Yokohama.

“Am I what?” he asked.

“What do you intend doing with Leach and Johnson?”

He shook his head.  “Really, Hump, I don’t know.  You see, with these
additions I’ve about all the crew I want.”

“And they’ve about all the escaping they want,” I said.  “Why not give
them a change of treatment?  Take them aboard, and deal gently with them.
Whatever they have done they have been hounded into doing.”

“By me?”

“By you,” I answered steadily.  “And I give you warning, Wolf Larsen,
that I may forget love of my own life in the desire to kill you if you go
too far in maltreating those poor wretches.”

“Bravo!” he cried.  “You do me proud, Hump!  You’ve found your legs with
a vengeance.  You’re quite an individual.  You were unfortunate in having
your life cast in easy places, but you’re developing, and I like you the
better for it.”

His voice and expression changed.  His face was serious.  “Do you believe
in promises?” he asked.  “Are they sacred things?”

“Of course,” I answered.

“Then here’s a compact,” he went on, consummate actor.  “If I promise not
to lay my hands upon Leach will you promise, in turn, not to attempt to
kill me?”

“Oh, not that I’m afraid of you, not that I’m afraid of you,” he hastened
to add.

I could hardly believe my ears.  What was coming over the man?

“Is it a go?” he asked impatiently.

“A go,” I answered.

His hand went out to mine, and as I shook it heartily I could have sworn
I saw the mocking devil shine up for a moment in his eyes.

We strolled across the poop to the lee side.  The boat was close at hand
now, and in desperate plight.  Johnson was steering, Leach bailing.  We
overhauled them about two feet to their one.  Wolf Larsen motioned Louis
to keep off slightly, and we dashed abreast of the boat, not a score of
feet to windward.  The _Ghost_ blanketed it.  The spritsail flapped
emptily and the boat righted to an even keel, causing the two men swiftly
to change position.  The boat lost headway, and, as we lifted on a huge
surge, toppled and fell into the trough.

It was at this moment that Leach and Johnson looked up into the faces of
their shipmates, who lined the rail amidships.  There was no greeting.
They were as dead men in their comrades’ eyes, and between them was the
gulf that parts the living and the dead.

The next instant they were opposite the poop, where stood Wolf Larsen and
I.  We were falling in the trough, they were rising on the surge.
Johnson looked at me, and I could see that his face was worn and haggard.
I waved my hand to him, and he answered the greeting, but with a wave
that was hopeless and despairing.  It was as if he were saying farewell.
I did not see into the eyes of Leach, for he was looking at Wolf Larsen,
the old and implacable snarl of hatred strong as ever on his face.

Then they were gone astern.  The spritsail filled with the wind,
suddenly, careening the frail open craft till it seemed it would surely
capsize.  A whitecap foamed above it and broke across in a snow-white
smother.  Then the boat emerged, half swamped, Leach flinging the water
out and Johnson clinging to the steering-oar, his face white and anxious.

Wolf Larsen barked a short laugh in my ear and strode away to the weather
side of the poop.  I expected him to give orders for the _Ghost_ to heave
to, but she kept on her course and he made no sign.  Louis stood
imperturbably at the wheel, but I noticed the grouped sailors forward
turning troubled faces in our direction.  Still the _Ghost_ tore along,
till the boat dwindled to a speck, when Wolf Larsen’s voice rang out in
command and he went about on the starboard tack.

Back we held, two miles and more to windward of the struggling
cockle-shell, when the flying jib was run down and the schooner hove to.
The sealing boats are not made for windward work.  Their hope lies in
keeping a weather position so that they may run before the wind for the
schooner when it breezes up.  But in all that wild waste there was no
refuge for Leach and Johnson save on the _Ghost_, and they resolutely
began the windward beat.  It was slow work in the heavy sea that was
running.  At any moment they were liable to be overwhelmed by the hissing
combers.  Time and again and countless times we watched the boat luff
into the big whitecaps, lose headway, and be flung back like a cork.

Johnson was a splendid seaman, and he knew as much about small boats as
he did about ships.  At the end of an hour and a half he was nearly
alongside, standing past our stern on the last leg out, aiming to fetch
us on the next leg back.

“So you’ve changed your mind?” I heard Wolf Larsen mutter, half to
himself, half to them as though they could hear.  “You want to come
aboard, eh?  Well, then, just keep a-coming.”

“Hard up with that helm!” he commanded Oofty-Oofty, the Kanaka, who had
in the meantime relieved Louis at the wheel.

Command followed command.  As the schooner paid off, the fore- and
main-sheets were slacked away for fair wind.  And before the wind we
were, and leaping, when Johnson, easing his sheet at imminent peril, cut
across our wake a hundred feet away.  Again Wolf Larsen laughed, at the
same time beckoning them with his arm to follow.  It was evidently his
intention to play with them,—a lesson, I took it, in lieu of a beating,
though a dangerous lesson, for the frail craft stood in momentary danger
of being overwhelmed.

Johnson squared away promptly and ran after us.  There was nothing else
for him to do.  Death stalked everywhere, and it was only a matter of
time when some one of those many huge seas would fall upon the boat, roll
over it, and pass on.

“’Tis the fear iv death at the hearts iv them,” Louis muttered in my ear,
as I passed forward to see to taking in the flying jib and staysail.

“Oh, he’ll heave to in a little while and pick them up,” I answered
cheerfully.  “He’s bent upon giving them a lesson, that’s all.”

Louis looked at me shrewdly.  “Think so?” he asked.

“Surely,” I answered.  “Don’t you?”

“I think nothing but iv my own skin, these days,” was his answer.  “An’
’tis with wonder I’m filled as to the workin’ out iv things.  A pretty
mess that ’Frisco whisky got me into, an’ a prettier mess that woman’s
got you into aft there.  Ah, it’s myself that knows ye for a blitherin’
fool.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded; for, having sped his shaft, he was
turning away.

“What do I mean?” he cried.  “And it’s you that asks me!  ’Tis not what I
mean, but what the Wolf ’ll mean.  The Wolf, I said, the Wolf!”

“If trouble comes, will you stand by?” I asked impulsively, for he had
voiced my own fear.

“Stand by?  ’Tis old fat Louis I stand by, an’ trouble enough it’ll be.
We’re at the beginnin’ iv things, I’m tellin’ ye, the bare beginnin’ iv
things.”

“I had not thought you so great a coward,” I sneered.

He favoured me with a contemptuous stare.  “If I raised never a hand for
that poor fool,”—pointing astern to the tiny sail,—“d’ye think I’m
hungerin’ for a broken head for a woman I never laid me eyes upon before
this day?”

I turned scornfully away and went aft.

“Better get in those topsails, Mr. Van Weyden,” Wolf Larsen said, as I
came on the poop.

I felt relief, at least as far as the two men were concerned.  It was
clear he did not wish to run too far away from them.  I picked up hope at
the thought and put the order swiftly into execution.  I had scarcely
opened my mouth to issue the necessary commands, when eager men were
springing to halyards and downhauls, and others were racing aloft.  This
eagerness on their part was noted by Wolf Larsen with a grim smile.

Still we increased our lead, and when the boat had dropped astern several
miles we hove to and waited.  All eyes watched it coming, even Wolf
Larsen’s; but he was the only unperturbed man aboard.  Louis, gazing
fixedly, betrayed a trouble in his face he was not quite able to hide.

The boat drew closer and closer, hurling along through the seething green
like a thing alive, lifting and sending and uptossing across the
huge-backed breakers, or disappearing behind them only to rush into sight
again and shoot skyward.  It seemed impossible that it could continue to
live, yet with each dizzying sweep it did achieve the impossible.  A
rain-squall drove past, and out of the flying wet the boat emerged,
almost upon us.

“Hard up, there!” Wolf Larsen shouted, himself springing to the wheel and
whirling it over.

Again the _Ghost_ sprang away and raced before the wind, and for two
hours Johnson and Leach pursued us.  We hove to and ran away, hove to and
ran away, and ever astern the struggling patch of sail tossed skyward and
fell into the rushing valleys.  It was a quarter of a mile away when a
thick squall of rain veiled it from view.  It never emerged.  The wind
blew the air clear again, but no patch of sail broke the troubled
surface.  I thought I saw, for an instant, the boat’s bottom show black
in a breaking crest.  At the best, that was all.  For Johnson and Leach
the travail of existence had ceased.

The men remained grouped amidships.  No one had gone below, and no one
was speaking.  Nor were any looks being exchanged.  Each man seemed
stunned—deeply contemplative, as it were, and, not quite sure, trying to
realize just what had taken place.  Wolf Larsen gave them little time for
thought.  He at once put the _Ghost_ upon her course—a course which meant
the seal herd and not Yokohama harbour.  But the men were no longer eager
as they pulled and hauled, and I heard curses amongst them, which left
their lips smothered and as heavy and lifeless as were they.  Not so was
it with the hunters.  Smoke the irrepressible related a story, and they
descended into the steerage, bellowing with laughter.

As I passed to leeward of the galley on my way aft I was approached by
the engineer we had rescued.  His face was white, his lips were
trembling.

“Good God! sir, what kind of a craft is this?” he cried.

“You have eyes, you have seen,” I answered, almost brutally, what of the
pain and fear at my own heart.

“Your promise?” I said to Wolf Larsen.

“I was not thinking of taking them aboard when I made that promise,” he
answered.  “And anyway, you’ll agree I’ve not laid my hands upon them.”

“Far from it, far from it,” he laughed a moment later.

I made no reply.  I was incapable of speaking, my mind was too confused.
I must have time to think, I knew.  This woman, sleeping even now in the
spare cabin, was a responsibility, which I must consider, and the only
rational thought that flickered through my mind was that I must do
nothing hastily if I were to be any help to her at all.




CHAPTER XX


The remainder of the day passed uneventfully.  The young slip of a gale,
having wetted our gills, proceeded to moderate.  The fourth engineer and
the three oilers, after a warm interview with Wolf Larsen, were furnished
with outfits from the slop-chests, assigned places under the hunters in
the various boats and watches on the vessel, and bundled forward into the
forecastle.  They went protestingly, but their voices were not loud.
They were awed by what they had already seen of Wolf Larsen’s character,
while the tale of woe they speedily heard in the forecastle took the last
bit of rebellion out of them.

Miss Brewster—we had learned her name from the engineer—slept on and on.
At supper I requested the hunters to lower their voices, so she was not
disturbed; and it was not till next morning that she made her appearance.
It had been my intention to have her meals served apart, but Wolf Larsen
put down his foot.  Who was she that she should be too good for cabin
table and cabin society? had been his demand.

But her coming to the table had something amusing in it.  The hunters
fell silent as clams.  Jock Horner and Smoke alone were unabashed,
stealing stealthy glances at her now and again, and even taking part in
the conversation.  The other four men glued their eyes on their plates
and chewed steadily and with thoughtful precision, their ears moving and
wobbling, in time with their jaws, like the ears of so many animals.

Wolf Larsen had little to say at first, doing no more than reply when he
was addressed.  Not that he was abashed.  Far from it.  This woman was a
new type to him, a different breed from any he had ever known, and he was
curious.  He studied her, his eyes rarely leaving her face unless to
follow the movements of her hands or shoulders.  I studied her myself,
and though it was I who maintained the conversation, I know that I was a
bit shy, not quite self-possessed.  His was the perfect poise, the
supreme confidence in self, which nothing could shake; and he was no more
timid of a woman than he was of storm and battle.

“And when shall we arrive at Yokohama?” she asked, turning to him and
looking him squarely in the eyes.

There it was, the question flat.  The jaws stopped working, the ears
ceased wobbling, and though eyes remained glued on plates, each man
listened greedily for the answer.

“In four months, possibly three if the season closes early,” Wolf Larsen
said.

She caught her breath and stammered, “I—I thought—I was given to
understand that Yokohama was only a day’s sail away.  It—”  Here she
paused and looked about the table at the circle of unsympathetic faces
staring hard at the plates.  “It is not right,” she concluded.

“That is a question you must settle with Mr. Van Weyden there,” he
replied, nodding to me with a mischievous twinkle.  “Mr. Van Weyden is
what you may call an authority on such things as rights.  Now I, who am
only a sailor, would look upon the situation somewhat differently.  It
may possibly be your misfortune that you have to remain with us, but it
is certainly our good fortune.”

He regarded her smilingly.  Her eyes fell before his gaze, but she lifted
them again, and defiantly, to mine.  I read the unspoken question there:
was it right?  But I had decided that the part I was to play must be a
neutral one, so I did not answer.

“What do you think?” she demanded.

“That it is unfortunate, especially if you have any engagements falling
due in the course of the next several months.  But, since you say that
you were voyaging to Japan for your health, I can assure you that it will
improve no better anywhere than aboard the _Ghost_.”

I saw her eyes flash with indignation, and this time it was I who dropped
mine, while I felt my face flushing under her gaze.  It was cowardly, but
what else could I do?

“Mr. Van Weyden speaks with the voice of authority,” Wolf Larsen laughed.

I nodded my head, and she, having recovered herself, waited expectantly.

“Not that he is much to speak of now,” Wolf Larsen went on, “but he has
improved wonderfully.  You should have seen him when he came on board.  A
more scrawny, pitiful specimen of humanity one could hardly conceive.
Isn’t that so, Kerfoot?”

Kerfoot, thus directly addressed, was startled into dropping his knife on
the floor, though he managed to grunt affirmation.

“Developed himself by peeling potatoes and washing dishes.  Eh, Kerfoot?”

Again that worthy grunted.

“Look at him now.  True, he is not what you would term muscular, but
still he has muscles, which is more than he had when he came aboard.
Also, he has legs to stand on.  You would not think so to look at him,
but he was quite unable to stand alone at first.”

The hunters were snickering, but she looked at me with a sympathy in her
eyes which more than compensated for Wolf Larsen’s nastiness.  In truth,
it had been so long since I had received sympathy that I was softened,
and I became then, and gladly, her willing slave.  But I was angry with
Wolf Larsen.  He was challenging my manhood with his slurs, challenging
the very legs he claimed to be instrumental in getting for me.

“I may have learned to stand on my own legs,” I retorted.  “But I have
yet to stamp upon others with them.”

He looked at me insolently.  “Your education is only half completed,
then,” he said dryly, and turned to her.

“We are very hospitable upon the _Ghost_.  Mr. Van Weyden has discovered
that.  We do everything to make our guests feel at home, eh, Mr. Van
Weyden?”

“Even to the peeling of potatoes and the washing of dishes,” I answered,
“to say nothing to wringing their necks out of very fellowship.”

“I beg of you not to receive false impressions of us from Mr. Van
Weyden,” he interposed with mock anxiety.  “You will observe, Miss
Brewster, that he carries a dirk in his belt, a—ahem—a most unusual thing
for a ship’s officer to do.  While really very estimable, Mr. Van Weyden
is sometimes—how shall I say?—er—quarrelsome, and harsh measures are
necessary.  He is quite reasonable and fair in his calm moments, and as
he is calm now he will not deny that only yesterday he threatened my
life.”

I was well-nigh choking, and my eyes were certainly fiery.  He drew
attention to me.

“Look at him now.  He can scarcely control himself in your presence.  He
is not accustomed to the presence of ladies anyway.  I shall have to arm
myself before I dare go on deck with him.”

He shook his head sadly, murmuring, “Too bad, too bad,” while the hunters
burst into guffaws of laughter.

The deep-sea voices of these men, rumbling and bellowing in the confined
space, produced a wild effect.  The whole setting was wild, and for the
first time, regarding this strange woman and realizing how incongruous
she was in it, I was aware of how much a part of it I was myself.  I knew
these men and their mental processes, was one of them myself, living the
seal-hunting life, eating the seal-hunting fare, thinking, largely, the
seal-hunting thoughts.  There was for me no strangeness to it, to the
rough clothes, the coarse faces, the wild laughter, and the lurching
cabin walls and swaying sea-lamps.

As I buttered a piece of bread my eyes chanced to rest upon my hand.  The
knuckles were skinned and inflamed clear across, the fingers swollen, the
nails rimmed with black.  I felt the mattress-like growth of beard on my
neck, knew that the sleeve of my coat was ripped, that a button was
missing from the throat of the blue shirt I wore.  The dirk mentioned by
Wolf Larsen rested in its sheath on my hip.  It was very natural that it
should be there,—how natural I had not imagined until now, when I looked
upon it with her eyes and knew how strange it and all that went with it
must appear to her.

But she divined the mockery in Wolf Larsen’s words, and again favoured me
with a sympathetic glance.  But there was a look of bewilderment also in
her eyes.  That it was mockery made the situation more puzzling to her.

“I may be taken off by some passing vessel, perhaps,” she suggested.

“There will be no passing vessels, except other sealing-schooners,” Wolf
Larsen made answer.

“I have no clothes, nothing,” she objected.  “You hardly realize, sir,
that I am not a man, or that I am unaccustomed to the vagrant, careless
life which you and your men seem to lead.”

“The sooner you get accustomed to it, the better,” he said.

“I’ll furnish you with cloth, needles, and thread,” he added.  “I hope it
will not be too dreadful a hardship for you to make yourself a dress or
two.”

She made a wry pucker with her mouth, as though to advertise her
ignorance of dressmaking.  That she was frightened and bewildered, and
that she was bravely striving to hide it, was quite plain to me.

“I suppose you’re like Mr. Van Weyden there, accustomed to having things
done for you.  Well, I think doing a few things for yourself will hardly
dislocate any joints.  By the way, what do you do for a living?”

She regarded him with amazement unconcealed.

“I mean no offence, believe me.  People eat, therefore they must procure
the wherewithal.  These men here shoot seals in order to live; for the
same reason I sail this schooner; and Mr. Van Weyden, for the present at
any rate, earns his salty grub by assisting me.  Now what do you do?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Do you feed yourself?  Or does some one else feed you?”

“I’m afraid some one else has fed me most of my life,” she laughed,
trying bravely to enter into the spirit of his quizzing, though I could
see a terror dawning and growing in her eyes as she watched Wolf Larsen.

“And I suppose some one else makes your bed for you?”

“I _have_ made beds,” she replied.

“Very often?”

She shook her head with mock ruefulness.

“Do you know what they do to poor men in the States, who, like you, do
not work for their living?”

“I am very ignorant,” she pleaded.  “What do they do to the poor men who
are like me?”

“They send them to jail.  The crime of not earning a living, in their
case, is called vagrancy.  If I were Mr. Van Weyden, who harps eternally
on questions of right and wrong, I’d ask, by what right do you live when
you do nothing to deserve living?”

“But as you are not Mr. Van Weyden, I don’t have to answer, do I?”

She beamed upon him through her terror-filled eyes, and the pathos of it
cut me to the heart.  I must in some way break in and lead the
conversation into other channels.

“Have you ever earned a dollar by your own labour?” he demanded, certain
of her answer, a triumphant vindictiveness in his voice.

“Yes, I have,” she answered slowly, and I could have laughed aloud at his
crestfallen visage.  “I remember my father giving me a dollar once, when
I was a little girl, for remaining absolutely quiet for five minutes.”

He smiled indulgently.

“But that was long ago,” she continued.  “And you would scarcely demand a
little girl of nine to earn her own living.”

“At present, however,” she said, after another slight pause, “I earn
about eighteen hundred dollars a year.”

With one accord, all eyes left the plates and settled on her.  A woman
who earned eighteen hundred dollars a year was worth looking at.  Wolf
Larsen was undisguised in his admiration.

“Salary, or piece-work?” he asked.

“Piece-work,” she answered promptly.

“Eighteen hundred,” he calculated.  “That’s a hundred and fifty dollars a
month.  Well, Miss Brewster, there is nothing small about the _Ghost_.
Consider yourself on salary during the time you remain with us.”

She made no acknowledgment.  She was too unused as yet to the whims of
the man to accept them with equanimity.

“I forgot to inquire,” he went on suavely, “as to the nature of your
occupation.  What commodities do you turn out?  What tools and materials
do you require?”

“Paper and ink,” she laughed.  “And, oh! also a typewriter.”

“You are Maud Brewster,” I said slowly and with certainty, almost as
though I were charging her with a crime.

Her eyes lifted curiously to mine.  “How do you know?”

“Aren’t you?” I demanded.

She acknowledged her identity with a nod.  It was Wolf Larsen’s turn to
be puzzled.  The name and its magic signified nothing to him.  I was
proud that it did mean something to me, and for the first time in a weary
while I was convincingly conscious of a superiority over him.

“I remember writing a review of a thin little volume—” I had begun
carelessly, when she interrupted me.

“You!” she cried.  “You are—”

She was now staring at me in wide-eyed wonder.

I nodded my identity, in turn.

“Humphrey Van Weyden,” she concluded; then added with a sigh of relief,
and unaware that she had glanced that relief at Wolf Larsen, “I am so
glad.”

“I remember the review,” she went on hastily, becoming aware of the
awkwardness of her remark; “that too, too flattering review.”

“Not at all,” I denied valiantly.  “You impeach my sober judgment and
make my canons of little worth.  Besides, all my brother critics were
with me.  Didn’t Lang include your ‘Kiss Endured’ among the four supreme
sonnets by women in the English language?”

“But you called me the American Mrs. Meynell!”

“Was it not true?” I demanded.

“No, not that,” she answered.  “I was hurt.”

“We can measure the unknown only by the known,” I replied, in my finest
academic manner.  “As a critic I was compelled to place you.  You have
now become a yardstick yourself.  Seven of your thin little volumes are
on my shelves; and there are two thicker volumes, the essays, which, you
will pardon my saying, and I know not which is flattered more, fully
equal your verse.  The time is not far distant when some unknown will
arise in England and the critics will name her the English Maud
Brewster.”

“You are very kind, I am sure,” she murmured; and the very
conventionality of her tones and words, with the host of associations it
aroused of the old life on the other side of the world, gave me a quick
thrill—rich with remembrance but stinging sharp with home-sickness.

“And you are Maud Brewster,” I said solemnly, gazing across at her.

“And you are Humphrey Van Weyden,” she said, gazing back at me with equal
solemnity and awe.  “How unusual!  I don’t understand.  We surely are not
to expect some wildly romantic sea-story from your sober pen.”

“No, I am not gathering material, I assure you,” was my answer.  “I have
neither aptitude nor inclination for fiction.”

“Tell me, why have you always buried yourself in California?” she next
asked.  “It has not been kind of you.  We of the East have seen to very
little of you—too little, indeed, of the Dean of American Letters, the
Second.”

I bowed to, and disclaimed, the compliment.  “I nearly met you, once, in
Philadelphia, some Browning affair or other—you were to lecture, you
know.  My train was four hours late.”

And then we quite forgot where we were, leaving Wolf Larsen stranded and
silent in the midst of our flood of gossip.  The hunters left the table
and went on deck, and still we talked.  Wolf Larsen alone remained.
Suddenly I became aware of him, leaning back from the table and listening
curiously to our alien speech of a world he did not know.

I broke short off in the middle of a sentence.  The present, with all its
perils and anxieties, rushed upon me with stunning force.  It smote Miss
Brewster likewise, a vague and nameless terror rushing into her eyes as
she regarded Wolf Larsen.

He rose to his feet and laughed awkwardly.  The sound of it was metallic.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” he said, with a self-depreciatory wave of his hand.
“I don’t count.  Go on, go on, I pray you.”

But the gates of speech were closed, and we, too, rose from the table and
laughed awkwardly.




CHAPTER XXI


The chagrin Wolf Larsen felt from being ignored by Maud Brewster and me
in the conversation at table had to express itself in some fashion, and
it fell to Thomas Mugridge to be the victim.  He had not mended his ways
nor his shirt, though the latter he contended he had changed.  The
garment itself did not bear out the assertion, nor did the accumulations
of grease on stove and pot and pan attest a general cleanliness.

“I’ve given you warning, Cooky,” Wolf Larsen said, “and now you’ve got to
take your medicine.”

Mugridge’s face turned white under its sooty veneer, and when Wolf Larsen
called for a rope and a couple of men, the miserable Cockney fled wildly
out of the galley and dodged and ducked about the deck with the grinning
crew in pursuit.  Few things could have been more to their liking than to
give him a tow over the side, for to the forecastle he had sent messes
and concoctions of the vilest order.  Conditions favoured the
undertaking.  The _Ghost_ was slipping through the water at no more than
three miles an hour, and the sea was fairly calm.  But Mugridge had
little stomach for a dip in it.  Possibly he had seen men towed before.
Besides, the water was frightfully cold, and his was anything but a
rugged constitution.

As usual, the watches below and the hunters turned out for what promised
sport.  Mugridge seemed to be in rabid fear of the water, and he
exhibited a nimbleness and speed we did not dream he possessed.  Cornered
in the right-angle of the poop and galley, he sprang like a cat to the
top of the cabin and ran aft.  But his pursuers forestalling him, he
doubled back across the cabin, passed over the galley, and gained the
deck by means of the steerage-scuttle.  Straight forward he raced, the
boat-puller Harrison at his heels and gaining on him.  But Mugridge,
leaping suddenly, caught the jib-boom-lift.  It happened in an instant.
Holding his weight by his arms, and in mid-air doubling his body at the
hips, he let fly with both feet.  The oncoming Harrison caught the kick
squarely in the pit of the stomach, groaned involuntarily, and doubled up
and sank backward to the deck.

Hand-clapping and roars of laughter from the hunters greeted the exploit,
while Mugridge, eluding half of his pursuers at the foremast, ran aft and
through the remainder like a runner on the football field.  Straight aft
he held, to the poop and along the poop to the stern.  So great was his
speed that as he curved past the corner of the cabin he slipped and fell.
Nilson was standing at the wheel, and the Cockney’s hurtling body struck
his legs.  Both went down together, but Mugridge alone arose.  By some
freak of pressures, his frail body had snapped the strong man’s leg like
a pipe-stem.

Parsons took the wheel, and the pursuit continued.  Round and round the
decks they went, Mugridge sick with fear, the sailors hallooing and
shouting directions to one another, and the hunters bellowing
encouragement and laughter.  Mugridge went down on the fore-hatch under
three men; but he emerged from the mass like an eel, bleeding at the
mouth, the offending shirt ripped into tatters, and sprang for the
main-rigging.  Up he went, clear up, beyond the ratlines, to the very
masthead.

Half-a-dozen sailors swarmed to the crosstrees after him, where they
clustered and waited while two of their number, Oofty-Oofty and Black
(who was Latimer’s boat-steerer), continued up the thin steel stays,
lifting their bodies higher and higher by means of their arms.

It was a perilous undertaking, for, at a height of over a hundred feet
from the deck, holding on by their hands, they were not in the best of
positions to protect themselves from Mugridge’s feet.  And Mugridge
kicked savagely, till the Kanaka, hanging on with one hand, seized the
Cockney’s foot with the other.  Black duplicated the performance a moment
later with the other foot.  Then the three writhed together in a swaying
tangle, struggling, sliding, and falling into the arms of their mates on
the crosstrees.

The aërial battle was over, and Thomas Mugridge, whining and gibbering,
his mouth flecked with bloody foam, was brought down to deck.  Wolf
Larsen rove a bowline in a piece of rope and slipped it under his
shoulders.  Then he was carried aft and flung into the sea.
Forty,—fifty,—sixty feet of line ran out, when Wolf Larsen cried “Belay!”
Oofty-Oofty took a turn on a bitt, the rope tautened, and the _Ghost_,
lunging onward, jerked the cook to the surface.

It was a pitiful spectacle.  Though he could not drown, and was
nine-lived in addition, he was suffering all the agonies of
half-drowning.  The _Ghost_ was going very slowly, and when her stern
lifted on a wave and she slipped forward she pulled the wretch to the
surface and gave him a moment in which to breathe; but between each lift
the stern fell, and while the bow lazily climbed the next wave the line
slacked and he sank beneath.

I had forgotten the existence of Maud Brewster, and I remembered her with
a start as she stepped lightly beside me.  It was her first time on deck
since she had come aboard.  A dead silence greeted her appearance.

“What is the cause of the merriment?” she asked.

“Ask Captain Larsen,” I answered composedly and coldly, though inwardly
my blood was boiling at the thought that she should be witness to such
brutality.

She took my advice and was turning to put it into execution, when her
eyes lighted on Oofty-Oofty, immediately before her, his body instinct
with alertness and grace as he held the turn of the rope.

“Are you fishing?” she asked him.

He made no reply.  His eyes, fixed intently on the sea astern, suddenly
flashed.

“Shark ho, sir!” he cried.

“Heave in!  Lively!  All hands tail on!” Wolf Larsen shouted, springing
himself to the rope in advance of the quickest.

Mugridge had heard the Kanaka’s warning cry and was screaming madly.  I
could see a black fin cutting the water and making for him with greater
swiftness than he was being pulled aboard.  It was an even toss whether
the shark or we would get him, and it was a matter of moments.  When
Mugridge was directly beneath us, the stern descended the slope of a
passing wave, thus giving the advantage to the shark.  The fin
disappeared.  The belly flashed white in swift upward rush.  Almost
equally swift, but not quite, was Wolf Larsen.  He threw his strength
into one tremendous jerk.  The Cockney’s body left the water; so did part
of the shark’s.  He drew up his legs, and the man-eater seemed no more
than barely to touch one foot, sinking back into the water with a splash.
But at the moment of contact Thomas Mugridge cried out.  Then he came in
like a fresh-caught fish on a line, clearing the rail generously and
striking the deck in a heap, on hands and knees, and rolling over.

But a fountain of blood was gushing forth.  The right foot was missing,
amputated neatly at the ankle.  I looked instantly to Maud Brewster.  Her
face was white, her eyes dilated with horror.  She was gazing, not at
Thomas Mugridge, but at Wolf Larsen.  And he was aware of it, for he
said, with one of his short laughs:

“Man-play, Miss Brewster.  Somewhat rougher, I warrant, than what you
have been used to, but still-man-play.  The shark was not in the
reckoning.  It—”

But at this juncture, Mugridge, who had lifted his head and ascertained
the extent of his loss, floundered over on the deck and buried his teeth
in Wolf Larsen’s leg.  Wolf Larsen stooped, coolly, to the Cockney, and
pressed with thumb and finger at the rear of the jaws and below the ears.
The jaws opened with reluctance, and Wolf Larsen stepped free.

“As I was saying,” he went on, as though nothing unwonted had happened,
“the shark was not in the reckoning.  It was—ahem—shall we say
Providence?”

She gave no sign that she had heard, though the expression of her eyes
changed to one of inexpressible loathing as she started to turn away.
She no more than started, for she swayed and tottered, and reached her
hand weakly out to mine.  I caught her in time to save her from falling,
and helped her to a seat on the cabin.  I thought she might faint
outright, but she controlled herself.

“Will you get a tourniquet, Mr. Van Weyden,” Wolf Larsen called to me.

I hesitated.  Her lips moved, and though they formed no words, she
commanded me with her eyes, plainly as speech, to go to the help of the
unfortunate man.  “Please,” she managed to whisper, and I could but obey.

By now I had developed such skill at surgery that Wolf Larsen, with a few
words of advice, left me to my task with a couple of sailors for
assistants.  For his task he elected a vengeance on the shark.  A heavy
swivel-hook, baited with fat salt-pork, was dropped overside; and by the
time I had compressed the severed veins and arteries, the sailors were
singing and heaving in the offending monster.  I did not see it myself,
but my assistants, first one and then the other, deserted me for a few
moments to run amidships and look at what was going on.  The shark, a
sixteen-footer, was hoisted up against the main-rigging.  Its jaws were
pried apart to their greatest extension, and a stout stake, sharpened at
both ends, was so inserted that when the pries were removed the spread
jaws were fixed upon it.  This accomplished, the hook was cut out.  The
shark dropped back into the sea, helpless, yet with its full strength,
doomed—to lingering starvation—a living death less meet for it than for
the man who devised the punishment.




CHAPTER XXII


I knew what it was as she came toward me.  For ten minutes I had watched
her talking earnestly with the engineer, and now, with a sign for
silence, I drew her out of earshot of the helmsman.  Her face was white
and set; her large eyes, larger than usual what of the purpose in them,
looked penetratingly into mine.  I felt rather timid and apprehensive,
for she had come to search Humphrey Van Weyden’s soul, and Humphrey Van
Weyden had nothing of which to be particularly proud since his advent on
the _Ghost_.

We walked to the break of the poop, where she turned and faced me.  I
glanced around to see that no one was within hearing distance.

“What is it?” I asked gently; but the expression of determination on her
face did not relax.

“I can readily understand,” she began, “that this morning’s affair was
largely an accident; but I have been talking with Mr. Haskins.  He tells
me that the day we were rescued, even while I was in the cabin, two men
were drowned, deliberately drowned—murdered.”

There was a query in her voice, and she faced me accusingly, as though I
were guilty of the deed, or at least a party to it.

“The information is quite correct,” I answered.  “The two men were
murdered.”

“And you permitted it!” she cried.

“I was unable to prevent it, is a better way of phrasing it,” I replied,
still gently.

“But you tried to prevent it?”  There was an emphasis on the “tried,” and
a pleading little note in her voice.

“Oh, but you didn’t,” she hurried on, divining my answer.  “But why
didn’t you?”

I shrugged my shoulders.  “You must remember, Miss Brewster, that you are
a new inhabitant of this little world, and that you do not yet understand
the laws which operate within it.  You bring with you certain fine
conceptions of humanity, manhood, conduct, and such things; but here you
will find them misconceptions.  I have found it so,” I added, with an
involuntary sigh.

She shook her head incredulously.

“What would you advise, then?” I asked.  “That I should take a knife, or
a gun, or an axe, and kill this man?”

She half started back.

“No, not that!”

“Then what should I do?  Kill myself?”

“You speak in purely materialistic terms,” she objected.  “There is such
a thing as moral courage, and moral courage is never without effect.”

“Ah,” I smiled, “you advise me to kill neither him nor myself, but to let
him kill me.”  I held up my hand as she was about to speak.  “For moral
courage is a worthless asset on this little floating world.  Leach, one
of the men who were murdered, had moral courage to an unusual degree.  So
had the other man, Johnson.  Not only did it not stand them in good
stead, but it destroyed them.  And so with me if I should exercise what
little moral courage I may possess.

“You must understand, Miss Brewster, and understand clearly, that this
man is a monster.  He is without conscience.  Nothing is sacred to him,
nothing is too terrible for him to do.  It was due to his whim that I was
detained aboard in the first place.  It is due to his whim that I am
still alive.  I do nothing, can do nothing, because I am a slave to this
monster, as you are now a slave to him; because I desire to live, as you
will desire to live; because I cannot fight and overcome him, just as you
will not be able to fight and overcome him.”

She waited for me to go on.

“What remains?  Mine is the role of the weak.  I remain silent and suffer
ignominy, as you will remain silent and suffer ignominy.  And it is well.
It is the best we can do if we wish to live.  The battle is not always to
the strong.  We have not the strength with which to fight this man; we
must dissimulate, and win, if win we can, by craft.  If you will be
advised by me, this is what you will do.  I know my position is perilous,
and I may say frankly that yours is even more perilous.  We must stand
together, without appearing to do so, in secret alliance.  I shall not be
able to side with you openly, and, no matter what indignities may be put
upon me, you are to remain likewise silent.  We must provoke no scenes
with this man, nor cross his will.  And we must keep smiling faces and be
friendly with him no matter how repulsive it may be.”

She brushed her hand across her forehead in a puzzled way, saying, “Still
I do not understand.”

“You must do as I say,” I interrupted authoritatively, for I saw Wolf
Larsen’s gaze wandering toward us from where he paced up and down with
Latimer amidships.  “Do as I say, and ere long you will find I am right.”

“What shall I do, then?” she asked, detecting the anxious glance I had
shot at the object of our conversation, and impressed, I flatter myself,
with the earnestness of my manner.

“Dispense with all the moral courage you can,” I said briskly.  “Don’t
arouse this man’s animosity.  Be quite friendly with him, talk with him,
discuss literature and art with him—he is fond of such things.  You will
find him an interested listener and no fool.  And for your own sake try
to avoid witnessing, as much as you can, the brutalities of the ship.  It
will make it easier for you to act your part.”

“I am to lie,” she said in steady, rebellious tones, “by speech and
action to lie.”

Wolf Larsen had separated from Latimer and was coming toward us.  I was
desperate.

“Please, please understand me,” I said hurriedly, lowering my voice.
“All your experience of men and things is worthless here.  You must begin
over again.  I know,—I can see it—you have, among other ways, been used
to managing people with your eyes, letting your moral courage speak out
through them, as it were.  You have already managed me with your eyes,
commanded me with them.  But don’t try it on Wolf Larsen.  You could as
easily control a lion, while he would make a mock of you.  He would—I
have always been proud of the fact that I discovered him,” I said,
turning the conversation as Wolf Larsen stepped on the poop and joined
us.  “The editors were afraid of him and the publishers would have none
of him.  But I knew, and his genius and my judgment were vindicated when
he made that magnificent hit with his ‘Forge.’”

“And it was a newspaper poem,” she said glibly.

“It did happen to see the light in a newspaper,” I replied, “but not
because the magazine editors had been denied a glimpse at it.”

“We were talking of Harris,” I said to Wolf Larsen.

“Oh, yes,” he acknowledged.  “I remember the ‘Forge.’  Filled with pretty
sentiments and an almighty faith in human illusions.  By the way, Mr. Van
Weyden, you’d better look in on Cooky.  He’s complaining and restless.”

Thus was I bluntly dismissed from the poop, only to find Mugridge
sleeping soundly from the morphine I had given him.  I made no haste to
return on deck, and when I did I was gratified to see Miss Brewster in
animated conversation with Wolf Larsen.  As I say, the sight gratified
me.  She was following my advice.  And yet I was conscious of a slight
shock or hurt in that she was able to do the thing I had begged her to do
and which she had notably disliked.




CHAPTER XXIII


Brave winds, blowing fair, swiftly drove the _Ghost_ northward into the
seal herd.  We encountered it well up to the forty-fourth parallel, in a
raw and stormy sea across which the wind harried the fog-banks in eternal
flight.  For days at a time we could never see the sun nor take an
observation; then the wind would sweep the face of the ocean clean, the
waves would ripple and flash, and we would learn where we were.  A day of
clear weather might follow, or three days or four, and then the fog would
settle down upon us, seemingly thicker than ever.

The hunting was perilous; yet the boats, lowered day after day, were
swallowed up in the grey obscurity, and were seen no more till nightfall,
and often not till long after, when they would creep in like sea-wraiths,
one by one, out of the grey.  Wainwright—the hunter whom Wolf Larsen had
stolen with boat and men—took advantage of the veiled sea and escaped.
He disappeared one morning in the encircling fog with his two men, and we
never saw them again, though it was not many days when we learned that
they had passed from schooner to schooner until they finally regained
their own.

This was the thing I had set my mind upon doing, but the opportunity
never offered.  It was not in the mate’s province to go out in the boats,
and though I manœuvred cunningly for it, Wolf Larsen never granted me the
privilege.  Had he done so, I should have managed somehow to carry Miss
Brewster away with me.  As it was, the situation was approaching a stage
which I was afraid to consider.  I involuntarily shunned the thought of
it, and yet the thought continually arose in my mind like a haunting
spectre.

I had read sea-romances in my time, wherein figured, as a matter of
course, the lone woman in the midst of a shipload of men; but I learned,
now, that I had never comprehended the deeper significance of such a
situation—the thing the writers harped upon and exploited so thoroughly.
And here it was, now, and I was face to face with it.  That it should be
as vital as possible, it required no more than that the woman should be
Maud Brewster, who now charmed me in person as she had long charmed me
through her work.

No one more out of environment could be imagined.  She was a delicate,
ethereal creature, swaying and willowy, light and graceful of movement.
It never seemed to me that she walked, or, at least, walked after the
ordinary manner of mortals.  Hers was an extreme lithesomeness, and she
moved with a certain indefinable airiness, approaching one as down might
float or as a bird on noiseless wings.

She was like a bit of Dresden china, and I was continually impressed with
what I may call her fragility.  As at the time I caught her arm when
helping her below, so at any time I was quite prepared, should stress or
rough handling befall her, to see her crumble away.  I have never seen
body and spirit in such perfect accord.  Describe her verse, as the
critics have described it, as sublimated and spiritual, and you have
described her body.  It seemed to partake of her soul, to have analogous
attributes, and to link it to life with the slenderest of chains.
Indeed, she trod the earth lightly, and in her constitution there was
little of the robust clay.

She was in striking contrast to Wolf Larsen.  Each was nothing that the
other was, everything that the other was not.  I noted them walking the
deck together one morning, and I likened them to the extreme ends of the
human ladder of evolution—the one the culmination of all savagery, the
other the finished product of the finest civilization.  True, Wolf Larsen
possessed intellect to an unusual degree, but it was directed solely to
the exercise of his savage instincts and made him but the more formidable
a savage.  He was splendidly muscled, a heavy man, and though he strode
with the certitude and directness of the physical man, there was nothing
heavy about his stride.  The jungle and the wilderness lurked in the
uplift and downput of his feet.  He was cat-footed, and lithe, and
strong, always strong.  I likened him to some great tiger, a beast of
prowess and prey.  He looked it, and the piercing glitter that arose at
times in his eyes was the same piercing glitter I had observed in the
eyes of caged leopards and other preying creatures of the wild.

But this day, as I noted them pacing up and down, I saw that it was she
who terminated the walk.  They came up to where I was standing by the
entrance to the companion-way.  Though she betrayed it by no outward
sign, I felt, somehow, that she was greatly perturbed.  She made some
idle remark, looking at me, and laughed lightly enough; but I saw her
eyes return to his, involuntarily, as though fascinated; then they fell,
but not swiftly enough to veil the rush of terror that filled them.

It was in his eyes that I saw the cause of her perturbation.  Ordinarily
grey and cold and harsh, they were now warm and soft and golden, and all
a-dance with tiny lights that dimmed and faded, or welled up till the
full orbs were flooded with a glowing radiance.  Perhaps it was to this
that the golden colour was due; but golden his eyes were, enticing and
masterful, at the same time luring and compelling, and speaking a demand
and clamour of the blood which no woman, much less Maud Brewster, could
misunderstand.

Her own terror rushed upon me, and in that moment of fear—the most
terrible fear a man can experience—I knew that in inexpressible ways she
was dear to me.  The knowledge that I loved her rushed upon me with the
terror, and with both emotions gripping at my heart and causing my blood
at the same time to chill and to leap riotously, I felt myself drawn by a
power without me and beyond me, and found my eyes returning against my
will to gaze into the eyes of Wolf Larsen.  But he had recovered himself.
The golden colour and the dancing lights were gone.  Cold and grey and
glittering they were as he bowed brusquely and turned away.

“I am afraid,” she whispered, with a shiver.  “I am so afraid.”

I, too, was afraid, and what of my discovery of how much she meant to me
my mind was in a turmoil; but, I succeeded in answering quite calmly:

“All will come right, Miss Brewster.  Trust me, it will come right.”

She answered with a grateful little smile that sent my heart pounding,
and started to descend the companion-stairs.

For a long while I remained standing where she had left me.  There was
imperative need to adjust myself, to consider the significance of the
changed aspect of things.  It had come, at last, love had come, when I
least expected it and under the most forbidding conditions.  Of course,
my philosophy had always recognized the inevitableness of the love-call
sooner or later; but long years of bookish silence had made me
inattentive and unprepared.

And now it had come!  Maud Brewster!  My memory flashed back to that
first thin little volume on my desk, and I saw before me, as though in
the concrete, the row of thin little volumes on my library shelf.  How I
had welcomed each of them!  Each year one had come from the press, and to
me each was the advent of the year.  They had voiced a kindred intellect
and spirit, and as such I had received them into a camaraderie of the
mind; but now their place was in my heart.

My heart?  A revulsion of feeling came over me.  I seemed to stand
outside myself and to look at myself incredulously.  Maud Brewster!
Humphrey Van Weyden, “the cold-blooded fish,” the “emotionless monster,”
the “analytical demon,” of Charley Furuseth’s christening, in love!  And
then, without rhyme or reason, all sceptical, my mind flew back to a
small biographical note in the red-bound _Who’s Who_, and I said to
myself, “She was born in Cambridge, and she is twenty-seven years old.”
And then I said, “Twenty-seven years old and still free and fancy free?”
But how did I know she was fancy free?  And the pang of new-born jealousy
put all incredulity to flight.  There was no doubt about it.  I was
jealous; therefore I loved.  And the woman I loved was Maud Brewster.

I, Humphrey Van Weyden, was in love!  And again the doubt assailed me.
Not that I was afraid of it, however, or reluctant to meet it.  On the
contrary, idealist that I was to the most pronounced degree, my
philosophy had always recognized and guerdoned love as the greatest thing
in the world, the aim and the summit of being, the most exquisite pitch
of joy and happiness to which life could thrill, the thing of all things
to be hailed and welcomed and taken into the heart.  But now that it had
come I could not believe.  I could not be so fortunate.  It was too good,
too good to be true.  Symons’s lines came into my head:

   “I wandered all these years among
   A world of women, seeking you.”

And then I had ceased seeking.  It was not for me, this greatest thing in
the world, I had decided.  Furuseth was right; I was abnormal, an
“emotionless monster,” a strange bookish creature, capable of pleasuring
in sensations only of the mind.  And though I had been surrounded by
women all my days, my appreciation of them had been æsthetic and nothing
more.  I had actually, at times, considered myself outside the pale, a
monkish fellow denied the eternal or the passing passions I saw and
understood so well in others.  And now it had come!  Undreamed of and
unheralded, it had come.  In what could have been no less than an
ecstasy, I left my post at the head of the companion-way and started
along the deck, murmuring to myself those beautiful lines of Mrs.
Browning:

   “I lived with visions for my company
   Instead of men and women years ago,
   And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
   A sweeter music than they played to me.”

But the sweeter music was playing in my ears, and I was blind and
oblivious to all about me.  The sharp voice of Wolf Larsen aroused me.

“What the hell are you up to?” he was demanding.

I had strayed forward where the sailors were painting, and I came to
myself to find my advancing foot on the verge of overturning a paint-pot.

“Sleep-walking, sunstroke,—what?” he barked.

“No; indigestion,” I retorted, and continued my walk as if nothing
untoward had occurred.




CHAPTER XXIV


Among the most vivid memories of my life are those of the events on the
_Ghost_ which occurred during the forty hours succeeding the discovery of
my love for Maud Brewster.  I, who had lived my life in quiet places,
only to enter at the age of thirty-five upon a course of the most
irrational adventure I could have imagined, never had more incident and
excitement crammed into any forty hours of my experience.  Nor can I
quite close my ears to a small voice of pride which tells me I did not do
so badly, all things considered.

To begin with, at the midday dinner, Wolf Larsen informed the hunters
that they were to eat thenceforth in the steerage.  It was an
unprecedented thing on sealing-schooners, where it is the custom for the
hunters to rank, unofficially as officers.  He gave no reason, but his
motive was obvious enough.  Horner and Smoke had been displaying a
gallantry toward Maud Brewster, ludicrous in itself and inoffensive to
her, but to him evidently distasteful.

The announcement was received with black silence, though the other four
hunters glanced significantly at the two who had been the cause of their
banishment.  Jock Horner, quiet as was his way, gave no sign; but the
blood surged darkly across Smoke’s forehead, and he half opened his mouth
to speak.  Wolf Larsen was watching him, waiting for him, the steely
glitter in his eyes; but Smoke closed his mouth again without having said
anything.

“Anything to say?” the other demanded aggressively.

It was a challenge, but Smoke refused to accept it.

“About what?” he asked, so innocently that Wolf Larsen was disconcerted,
while the others smiled.

“Oh, nothing,” Wolf Larsen said lamely.  “I just thought you might want
to register a kick.”

“About what?” asked the imperturbable Smoke.

Smoke’s mates were now smiling broadly.  His captain could have killed
him, and I doubt not that blood would have flowed had not Maud Brewster
been present.  For that matter, it was her presence which enabled Smoke
to act as he did.  He was too discreet and cautious a man to incur Wolf
Larsen’s anger at a time when that anger could be expressed in terms
stronger than words.  I was in fear that a struggle might take place, but
a cry from the helmsman made it easy for the situation to save itself.

“Smoke ho!” the cry came down the open companion-way.

“How’s it bear?” Wolf Larsen called up.

“Dead astern, sir.”

“Maybe it’s a Russian,” suggested Latimer.

His words brought anxiety into the faces of the other hunters.  A Russian
could mean but one thing—a cruiser.  The hunters, never more than roughly
aware of the position of the ship, nevertheless knew that we were close
to the boundaries of the forbidden sea, while Wolf Larsen’s record as a
poacher was notorious.  All eyes centred upon him.

“We’re dead safe,” he assured them with a laugh.  “No salt mines this
time, Smoke.  But I’ll tell you what—I’ll lay odds of five to one it’s
the _Macedonia_.”

No one accepted his offer, and he went on: “In which event, I’ll lay ten
to one there’s trouble breezing up.”

“No, thank you,” Latimer spoke up.  “I don’t object to losing my money,
but I like to get a run for it anyway.  There never was a time when there
wasn’t trouble when you and that brother of yours got together, and I’ll
lay twenty to one on that.”

A general smile followed, in which Wolf Larsen joined, and the dinner
went on smoothly, thanks to me, for he treated me abominably the rest of
the meal, sneering at me and patronizing me till I was all a-tremble with
suppressed rage.  Yet I knew I must control myself for Maud Brewster’s
sake, and I received my reward when her eyes caught mine for a fleeting
second, and they said, as distinctly as if she spoke, “Be brave, be
brave.”

We left the table to go on deck, for a steamer was a welcome break in the
monotony of the sea on which we floated, while the conviction that it was
Death Larsen and the _Macedonia_ added to the excitement.  The stiff
breeze and heavy sea which had sprung up the previous afternoon had been
moderating all morning, so that it was now possible to lower the boats
for an afternoon’s hunt.  The hunting promised to be profitable.  We had
sailed since daylight across a sea barren of seals, and were now running
into the herd.

The smoke was still miles astern, but overhauling us rapidly, when we
lowered our boats.  They spread out and struck a northerly course across
the ocean.  Now and again we saw a sail lower, heard the reports of the
shot-guns, and saw the sail go up again.  The seals were thick, the wind
was dying away; everything favoured a big catch.  As we ran off to get
our leeward position of the last lee boat, we found the ocean fairly
carpeted with sleeping seals.  They were all about us, thicker than I had
ever seen them before, in twos and threes and bunches, stretched full
length on the surface and sleeping for all the world like so many lazy
young dogs.

Under the approaching smoke the hull and upper-works of a steamer were
growing larger.  It was the _Macedonia_.  I read her name through the
glasses as she passed by scarcely a mile to starboard.  Wolf Larsen
looked savagely at the vessel, while Maud Brewster was curious.

“Where is the trouble you were so sure was breezing up, Captain Larsen?”
she asked gaily.

He glanced at her, a moment’s amusement softening his features.

“What did you expect?  That they’d come aboard and cut our throats?”

“Something like that,” she confessed.  “You understand, seal-hunters are
so new and strange to me that I am quite ready to expect anything.”

He nodded his head.  “Quite right, quite right.  Your error is that you
failed to expect the worst.”

“Why, what can be worse than cutting our throats?” she asked, with pretty
naïve surprise.

“Cutting our purses,” he answered.  “Man is so made these days that his
capacity for living is determined by the money he possesses.”

“’Who steals my purse steals trash,’” she quoted.

“Who steals my purse steals my right to live,” was the reply, “old saws
to the contrary.  For he steals my bread and meat and bed, and in so
doing imperils my life.  There are not enough soup-kitchens and
bread-lines to go around, you know, and when men have nothing in their
purses they usually die, and die miserably—unless they are able to fill
their purses pretty speedily.”

“But I fail to see that this steamer has any designs on your purse.”

“Wait and you will see,” he answered grimly.

We did not have long to wait.  Having passed several miles beyond our
line of boats, the _Macedonia_ proceeded to lower her own.  We knew she
carried fourteen boats to our five (we were one short through the
desertion of Wainwright), and she began dropping them far to leeward of
our last boat, continued dropping them athwart our course, and finished
dropping them far to windward of our first weather boat.  The hunting,
for us, was spoiled.  There were no seals behind us, and ahead of us the
line of fourteen boats, like a huge broom, swept the herd before it.

Our boats hunted across the two or three miles of water between them and
the point where the _Macedonia’s_ had been dropped, and then headed for
home.  The wind had fallen to a whisper, the ocean was growing calmer and
calmer, and this, coupled with the presence of the great herd, made a
perfect hunting day—one of the two or three days to be encountered in the
whole of a lucky season.  An angry lot of men, boat-pullers and steerers
as well as hunters, swarmed over our side.  Each man felt that he had
been robbed; and the boats were hoisted in amid curses, which, if curses
had power, would have settled Death Larsen for all eternity—“Dead and
damned for a dozen iv eternities,” commented Louis, his eyes twinkling up
at me as he rested from hauling taut the lashings of his boat.

“Listen to them, and find if it is hard to discover the most vital thing
in their souls,” said Wolf Larsen.  “Faith? and love? and high ideals?
The good? the beautiful? the true?”

“Their innate sense of right has been violated,” Maud Brewster said,
joining the conversation.

She was standing a dozen feet away, one hand resting on the main-shrouds
and her body swaying gently to the slight roll of the ship.  She had not
raised her voice, and yet I was struck by its clear and bell-like tone.
Ah, it was sweet in my ears!  I scarcely dared look at her just then, for
the fear of betraying myself.  A boy’s cap was perched on her head, and
her hair, light brown and arranged in a loose and fluffy order that
caught the sun, seemed an aureole about the delicate oval of her face.
She was positively bewitching, and, withal, sweetly spirituelle, if not
saintly.  All my old-time marvel at life returned to me at sight of this
splendid incarnation of it, and Wolf Larsen’s cold explanation of life
and its meaning was truly ridiculous and laughable.

“A sentimentalist,” he sneered, “like Mr. Van Weyden.  Those men are
cursing because their desires have been outraged.  That is all.  What
desires?  The desires for the good grub and soft beds ashore which a
handsome pay-day brings them—the women and the drink, the gorging and the
beastliness which so truly expresses them, the best that is in them,
their highest aspirations, their ideals, if you please.  The exhibition
they make of their feelings is not a touching sight, yet it shows how
deeply they have been touched, how deeply their purses have been touched,
for to lay hands on their purses is to lay hands on their souls.”

“’You hardly behave as if your purse had been touched,” she said,
smilingly.

“Then it so happens that I am behaving differently, for my purse and my
soul have both been touched.  At the current price of skins in the London
market, and based on a fair estimate of what the afternoon’s catch would
have been had not the _Macedonia_ hogged it, the _Ghost_ has lost about
fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of skins.”

“You speak so calmly—” she began.

“But I do not feel calm; I could kill the man who robbed me,” he
interrupted.  “Yes, yes, I know, and that man my brother—more sentiment!
Bah!”

His face underwent a sudden change.  His voice was less harsh and wholly
sincere as he said:

“You must be happy, you sentimentalists, really and truly happy at
dreaming and finding things good, and, because you find some of them
good, feeling good yourself.  Now, tell me, you two, do you find me
good?”

“You are good to look upon—in a way,” I qualified.

“There are in you all powers for good,” was Maud Brewster’s answer.

“There you are!” he cried at her, half angrily.  “Your words are empty to
me.  There is nothing clear and sharp and definite about the thought you
have expressed.  You cannot pick it up in your two hands and look at it.
In point of fact, it is not a thought.  It is a feeling, a sentiment, a
something based upon illusion and not a product of the intellect at all.”

As he went on his voice again grew soft, and a confiding note came into
it.  “Do you know, I sometimes catch myself wishing that I, too, were
blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and illusions.
They’re wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the
face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and
live illusions gives greater delight.  And after all, delight is the wage
for living.  Without delight, living is a worthless act.  To labour at
living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead.  He who delights the most
lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to
you and more gratifying than are my facts to me.”

He shook his head slowly, pondering.

“I often doubt, I often doubt, the worthwhileness of reason.  Dreams must
be more substantial and satisfying.  Emotional delight is more filling
and lasting than intellectual delight; and, besides, you pay for your
moments of intellectual delight by having the blues.  Emotional delight
is followed by no more than jaded senses which speedily recuperate.  I
envy you, I envy you.”

He stopped abruptly, and then on his lips formed one of his strange
quizzical smiles, as he added:

“It’s from my brain I envy you, take notice, and not from my heart.  My
reason dictates it.  The envy is an intellectual product.  I am like a
sober man looking upon drunken men, and, greatly weary, wishing he, too,
were drunk.”

“Or like a wise man looking upon fools and wishing he, too, were a fool,”
I laughed.

“Quite so,” he said.  “You are a blessed, bankrupt pair of fools.  You
have no facts in your pocketbook.”

“Yet we spend as freely as you,” was Maud Brewster’s contribution.

“More freely, because it costs you nothing.”

“And because we draw upon eternity,” she retorted.

“Whether you do or think you do, it’s the same thing.  You spend what you
haven’t got, and in return you get greater value from spending what you
haven’t got than I get from spending what I have got, and what I have
sweated to get.”

“Why don’t you change the basis of your coinage, then?” she queried
teasingly.

He looked at her quickly, half-hopefully, and then said, all regretfully:
“Too late.  I’d like to, perhaps, but I can’t.  My pocketbook is stuffed
with the old coinage, and it’s a stubborn thing.  I can never bring
myself to recognize anything else as valid.”

He ceased speaking, and his gaze wandered absently past her and became
lost in the placid sea.  The old primal melancholy was strong upon him.
He was quivering to it.  He had reasoned himself into a spell of the
blues, and within few hours one could look for the devil within him to be
up and stirring.  I remembered Charley Furuseth, and knew this man’s
sadness as the penalty which the materialist ever pays for his
materialism.




CHAPTER XXV


“You’ve been on deck, Mr. Van Weyden,” Wolf Larsen said, the following
morning at the breakfast-table, “How do things look?”

“Clear enough,” I answered, glancing at the sunshine which streamed down
the open companion-way.  “Fair westerly breeze, with a promise of
stiffening, if Louis predicts correctly.”

He nodded his head in a pleased way.  “Any signs of fog?”

“Thick banks in the north and north-west.”

He nodded his head again, evincing even greater satisfaction than before.

“What of the _Macedonia_?”

“Not sighted,” I answered.

I could have sworn his face fell at the intelligence, but why he should
be disappointed I could not conceive.

I was soon to learn.  “Smoke ho!” came the hail from on deck, and his
face brightened.

“Good!” he exclaimed, and left the table at once to go on deck and into
the steerage, where the hunters were taking the first breakfast of their
exile.

Maud Brewster and I scarcely touched the food before us, gazing, instead,
in silent anxiety at each other, and listening to Wolf Larsen’s voice,
which easily penetrated the cabin through the intervening bulkhead.  He
spoke at length, and his conclusion was greeted with a wild roar of
cheers.  The bulkhead was too thick for us to hear what he said; but
whatever it was it affected the hunters strongly, for the cheering was
followed by loud exclamations and shouts of joy.

From the sounds on deck I knew that the sailors had been routed out and
were preparing to lower the boats.  Maud Brewster accompanied me on deck,
but I left her at the break of the poop, where she might watch the scene
and not be in it.  The sailors must have learned whatever project was on
hand, and the vim and snap they put into their work attested their
enthusiasm.  The hunters came trooping on deck with shot-guns and
ammunition-boxes, and, most unusual, their rifles.  The latter were
rarely taken in the boats, for a seal shot at long range with a rifle
invariably sank before a boat could reach it.  But each hunter this day
had his rifle and a large supply of cartridges.  I noticed they grinned
with satisfaction whenever they looked at the _Macedonia’s_ smoke, which
was rising higher and higher as she approached from the west.

The five boats went over the side with a rush, spread out like the ribs
of a fan, and set a northerly course, as on the preceding afternoon, for
us to follow.  I watched for some time, curiously, but there seemed
nothing extraordinary about their behaviour.  They lowered sails, shot
seals, and hoisted sails again, and continued on their way as I had
always seen them do.  The _Macedonia_ repeated her performance of
yesterday, “hogging” the sea by dropping her line of boats in advance of
ours and across our course.  Fourteen boats require a considerable spread
of ocean for comfortable hunting, and when she had completely lapped our
line she continued steaming into the north-east, dropping more boats as
she went.

“What’s up?” I asked Wolf Larsen, unable longer to keep my curiosity in
check.

“Never mind what’s up,” he answered gruffly.  “You won’t be a thousand
years in finding out, and in the meantime just pray for plenty of wind.”

“Oh, well, I don’t mind telling you,” he said the next moment.  “I’m
going to give that brother of mine a taste of his own medicine.  In
short, I’m going to play the hog myself, and not for one day, but for the
rest of the season,—if we’re in luck.”

“And if we’re not?” I queried.

“Not to be considered,” he laughed.  “We simply must be in luck, or it’s
all up with us.”

He had the wheel at the time, and I went forward to my hospital in the
forecastle, where lay the two crippled men, Nilson and Thomas Mugridge.
Nilson was as cheerful as could be expected, for his broken leg was
knitting nicely; but the Cockney was desperately melancholy, and I was
aware of a great sympathy for the unfortunate creature.  And the marvel
of it was that still he lived and clung to life.  The brutal years had
reduced his meagre body to splintered wreckage, and yet the spark of life
within burned brightly as ever.

“With an artificial foot—and they make excellent ones—you will be
stumping ships’ galleys to the end of time,” I assured him jovially.

But his answer was serious, nay, solemn.  “I don’t know about wot you
s’y, Mr. Van W’yden, but I do know I’ll never rest ’appy till I see that
’ell-’ound bloody well dead.  ’E cawn’t live as long as me.  ’E’s got no
right to live, an’ as the Good Word puts it, ‘’E shall shorely die,’ an’
I s’y, ‘Amen, an’ damn soon at that.’”

When I returned on deck I found Wolf Larsen steering mainly with one
hand, while with the other hand he held the marine glasses and studied
the situation of the boats, paying particular attention to the position
of the _Macedonia_.  The only change noticeable in our boats was that
they had hauled close on the wind and were heading several points west of
north.  Still, I could not see the expediency of the manœuvre, for the
free sea was still intercepted by the _Macedonia’s_ five weather boats,
which, in turn, had hauled close on the wind.  Thus they slowly diverged
toward the west, drawing farther away from the remainder of the boats in
their line.  Our boats were rowing as well as sailing.  Even the hunters
were pulling, and with three pairs of oars in the water they rapidly
overhauled what I may appropriately term the enemy.

The smoke of the _Macedonia_ had dwindled to a dim blot on the
north-eastern horizon.  Of the steamer herself nothing was to be seen.
We had been loafing along, till now, our sails shaking half the time and
spilling the wind; and twice, for short periods, we had been hove to.
But there was no more loafing.  Sheets were trimmed, and Wolf Larsen
proceeded to put the _Ghost_ through her paces.  We ran past our line of
boats and bore down upon the first weather boat of the other line.

“Down that flying jib, Mr. Van Weyden,” Wolf Larsen commanded.  “And
stand by to back over the jibs.”

I ran forward and had the downhaul of the flying jib all in and fast as
we slipped by the boat a hundred feet to leeward.  The three men in it
gazed at us suspiciously.  They had been hogging the sea, and they knew
Wolf Larsen, by reputation at any rate.  I noted that the hunter, a huge
Scandinavian sitting in the bow, held his rifle, ready to hand, across
his knees.  It should have been in its proper place in the rack.  When
they came opposite our stern, Wolf Larsen greeted them with a wave of the
hand, and cried:

“Come on board and have a ’gam’!”

“To gam,” among the sealing-schooners, is a substitute for the verbs “to
visit,” “to gossip.”  It expresses the garrulity of the sea, and is a
pleasant break in the monotony of the life.

The _Ghost_ swung around into the wind, and I finished my work forward in
time to run aft and lend a hand with the mainsheet.

“You will please stay on deck, Miss Brewster,” Wolf Larsen said, as he
started forward to meet his guest.  “And you too, Mr. Van Weyden.”

The boat had lowered its sail and run alongside.  The hunter, golden
bearded like a sea-king, came over the rail and dropped on deck.  But his
hugeness could not quite overcome his apprehensiveness.  Doubt and
distrust showed strongly in his face.  It was a transparent face, for all
of its hairy shield, and advertised instant relief when he glanced from
Wolf Larsen to me, noted that there was only the pair of us, and then
glanced over his own two men who had joined him.  Surely he had little
reason to be afraid.  He towered like a Goliath above Wolf Larsen.  He
must have measured six feet eight or nine inches in stature, and I
subsequently learned his weight—240 pounds.  And there was no fat about
him.  It was all bone and muscle.

A return of apprehension was apparent when, at the top of the
companion-way, Wolf Larsen invited him below.  But he reassured himself
with a glance down at his host—a big man himself but dwarfed by the
propinquity of the giant.  So all hesitancy vanished, and the pair
descended into the cabin.  In the meantime, his two men, as was the wont
of visiting sailors, had gone forward into the forecastle to do some
visiting themselves.

Suddenly, from the cabin came a great, choking bellow, followed by all
the sounds of a furious struggle.  It was the leopard and the lion, and
the lion made all the noise.  Wolf Larsen was the leopard.

“You see the sacredness of our hospitality,” I said bitterly to Maud
Brewster.

She nodded her head that she heard, and I noted in her face the signs of
the same sickness at sight or sound of violent struggle from which I had
suffered so severely during my first weeks on the _Ghost_.

“Wouldn’t it be better if you went forward, say by the steerage
companion-way, until it is over?” I suggested.

She shook her head and gazed at me pitifully.  She was not frightened,
but appalled, rather, at the human animality of it.

“You will understand,” I took advantage of the opportunity to say,
“whatever part I take in what is going on and what is to come, that I am
compelled to take it—if you and I are ever to get out of this scrape with
our lives.”

“It is not nice—for me,” I added.

“I understand,” she said, in a weak, far-away voice, and her eyes showed
me that she did understand.

The sounds from below soon died away.  Then Wolf Larsen came alone on
deck.  There was a slight flush under his bronze, but otherwise he bore
no signs of the battle.

“Send those two men aft, Mr. Van Weyden,” he said.

I obeyed, and a minute or two later they stood before him.  “Hoist in
your boat,” he said to them.  “Your hunter’s decided to stay aboard
awhile and doesn’t want it pounding alongside.”

“Hoist in your boat, I said,” he repeated, this time in sharper tones as
they hesitated to do his bidding.

“Who knows? you may have to sail with me for a time,” he said, quite
softly, with a silken threat that belied the softness, as they moved
slowly to comply, “and we might as well start with a friendly
understanding.  Lively now!  Death Larsen makes you jump better than
that, and you know it!”

Their movements perceptibly quickened under his coaching, and as the boat
swung inboard I was sent forward to let go the jibs.  Wolf Larsen, at the
wheel, directed the _Ghost_ after the _Macedonia’s_ second weather boat.

Under way, and with nothing for the time being to do, I turned my
attention to the situation of the boats.  The _Macedonia’s_ third weather
boat was being attacked by two of ours, the fourth by our remaining
three; and the fifth, turn about, was taking a hand in the defence of its
nearest mate.  The fight had opened at long distance, and the rifles were
cracking steadily.  A quick, snappy sea was being kicked up by the wind,
a condition which prevented fine shooting; and now and again, as we drew
closer, we could see the bullets zip-zipping from wave to wave.

The boat we were pursuing had squared away and was running before the
wind to escape us, and, in the course of its flight, to take part in
repulsing our general boat attack.

Attending to sheets and tacks now left me little time to see what was
taking place, but I happened to be on the poop when Wolf Larsen ordered
the two strange sailors forward and into the forecastle.  They went
sullenly, but they went.  He next ordered Miss Brewster below, and smiled
at the instant horror that leapt into her eyes.

“You’ll find nothing gruesome down there,” he said, “only an unhurt man
securely made fast to the ring-bolts.  Bullets are liable to come aboard,
and I don’t want you killed, you know.”

Even as he spoke, a bullet was deflected by a brass-capped spoke of the
wheel between his hands and screeched off through the air to windward.

“You see,” he said to her; and then to me, “Mr. Van Weyden, will you take
the wheel?”

Maud Brewster had stepped inside the companion-way so that only her head
was exposed.  Wolf Larsen had procured a rifle and was throwing a
cartridge into the barrel.  I begged her with my eyes to go below, but
she smiled and said:

“We may be feeble land-creatures without legs, but we can show Captain
Larsen that we are at least as brave as he.”

He gave her a quick look of admiration.

“I like you a hundred per cent. better for that,” he said.  “Books, and
brains, and bravery.  You are well-rounded, a blue-stocking fit to be the
wife of a pirate chief.  Ahem, we’ll discuss that later,” he smiled, as a
bullet struck solidly into the cabin wall.

I saw his eyes flash golden as he spoke, and I saw the terror mount in
her own.

“We are braver,” I hastened to say.  “At least, speaking for myself, I
know I am braver than Captain Larsen.”

It was I who was now favoured by a quick look.  He was wondering if I
were making fun of him.  I put three or four spokes over to counteract a
sheer toward the wind on the part of the _Ghost_, and then steadied her.
Wolf Larsen was still waiting an explanation, and I pointed down to my
knees.

“You will observe there,” I said, “a slight trembling.  It is because I
am afraid, the flesh is afraid; and I am afraid in my mind because I do
not wish to die.  But my spirit masters the trembling flesh and the
qualms of the mind.  I am more than brave.  I am courageous.  Your flesh
is not afraid.  You are not afraid.  On the one hand, it costs you
nothing to encounter danger; on the other hand, it even gives you
delight.  You enjoy it.  You may be unafraid, Mr. Larsen, but you must
grant that the bravery is mine.”

“You’re right,” he acknowledged at once.  “I never thought of it in that
way before.  But is the opposite true?  If you are braver than I, am I
more cowardly than you?”

We both laughed at the absurdity, and he dropped down to the deck and
rested his rifle across the rail.  The bullets we had received had
travelled nearly a mile, but by now we had cut that distance in half.  He
fired three careful shots.  The first struck fifty feet to windward of
the boat, the second alongside; and at the third the boat-steerer let
loose his steering-oar and crumpled up in the bottom of the boat.

“I guess that’ll fix them,” Wolf Larsen said, rising to his feet.  “I
couldn’t afford to let the hunter have it, and there is a chance the
boat-puller doesn’t know how to steer.  In which case, the hunter cannot
steer and shoot at the same time.”

His reasoning was justified, for the boat rushed at once into the wind
and the hunter sprang aft to take the boat-steerer’s place.  There was no
more shooting, though the rifles were still cracking merrily from the
other boats.

The hunter had managed to get the boat before the wind again, but we ran
down upon it, going at least two feet to its one.  A hundred yards away,
I saw the boat-puller pass a rifle to the hunter.  Wolf Larsen went
amidships and took the coil of the throat-halyards from its pin.  Then he
peered over the rail with levelled rifle.  Twice I saw the hunter let go
the steering-oar with one hand, reach for his rifle, and hesitate.  We
were now alongside and foaming past.

“Here, you!” Wolf Larsen cried suddenly to the boat-puller.  “Take a
turn!”

At the same time he flung the coil of rope.  It struck fairly, nearly
knocking the man over, but he did not obey.  Instead, he looked to his
hunter for orders.  The hunter, in turn, was in a quandary.  His rifle
was between his knees, but if he let go the steering-oar in order to
shoot, the boat would sweep around and collide with the schooner.  Also
he saw Wolf Larsen’s rifle bearing upon him and knew he would be shot ere
he could get his rifle into play.

“Take a turn,” he said quietly to the man.

The boat-puller obeyed, taking a turn around the little forward thwart
and paying the line as it jerked taut.  The boat sheered out with a rush,
and the hunter steadied it to a parallel course some twenty feet from the
side of the _Ghost_.

“Now, get that sail down and come alongside!” Wolf Larsen ordered.

He never let go his rifle, even passing down the tackles with one hand.
When they were fast, bow and stern, and the two uninjured men prepared to
come aboard, the hunter picked up his rifle as if to place it in a secure
position.

“Drop it!” Wolf Larsen cried, and the hunter dropped it as though it were
hot and had burned him.

Once aboard, the two prisoners hoisted in the boat and under Wolf
Larsen’s direction carried the wounded boat-steerer down into the
forecastle.

“If our five boats do as well as you and I have done, we’ll have a pretty
full crew,” Wolf Larsen said to me.

“The man you shot—he is—I hope?” Maud Brewster quavered.

“In the shoulder,” he answered.  “Nothing serious, Mr. Van Weyden will
pull him around as good as ever in three or four weeks.”

“But he won’t pull those chaps around, from the look of it,” he added,
pointing at the _Macedonia’s_ third boat, for which I had been steering
and which was now nearly abreast of us.  “That’s Horner’s and Smoke’s
work.  I told them we wanted live men, not carcasses.  But the joy of
shooting to hit is a most compelling thing, when once you’ve learned how
to shoot.  Ever experienced it, Mr. Van Weyden?”

I shook my head and regarded their work.  It had indeed been bloody, for
they had drawn off and joined our other three boats in the attack on the
remaining two of the enemy.  The deserted boat was in the trough of the
sea, rolling drunkenly across each comber, its loose spritsail out at
right angles to it and fluttering and flapping in the wind.  The hunter
and boat-puller were both lying awkwardly in the bottom, but the
boat-steerer lay across the gunwale, half in and half out, his arms
trailing in the water and his head rolling from side to side.

“Don’t look, Miss Brewster, please don’t look,” I had begged of her, and
I was glad that she had minded me and been spared the sight.

“Head right into the bunch, Mr. Van Weyden,” was Wolf Larsen’s command.

As we drew nearer, the firing ceased, and we saw that the fight was over.
The remaining two boats had been captured by our five, and the seven were
grouped together, waiting to be picked up.

“Look at that!” I cried involuntarily, pointing to the north-east.

The blot of smoke which indicated the _Macedonia’s_ position had
reappeared.

“Yes, I’ve been watching it,” was Wolf Larsen’s calm reply.  He measured
the distance away to the fog-bank, and for an instant paused to feel the
weight of the wind on his cheek.  “We’ll make it, I think; but you can
depend upon it that blessed brother of mine has twigged our little game
and is just a-humping for us.  Ah, look at that!”

The blot of smoke had suddenly grown larger, and it was very black.

“I’ll beat you out, though, brother mine,” he chuckled.  “I’ll beat you
out, and I hope you no worse than that you rack your old engines into
scrap.”

When we hove to, a hasty though orderly confusion reigned.  The boats
came aboard from every side at once.  As fast as the prisoners came over
the rail they were marshalled forward to the forecastle by our hunters,
while our sailors hoisted in the boats, pell-mell, dropping them anywhere
upon the deck and not stopping to lash them.  We were already under way,
all sails set and drawing, and the sheets being slacked off for a wind
abeam, as the last boat lifted clear of the water and swung in the
tackles.

There was need for haste.  The _Macedonia_, belching the blackest of
smoke from her funnel, was charging down upon us from out of the
north-east.  Neglecting the boats that remained to her, she had altered
her course so as to anticipate ours.  She was not running straight for
us, but ahead of us.  Our courses were converging like the sides of an
angle, the vertex of which was at the edge of the fog-bank.  It was
there, or not at all, that the _Macedonia_ could hope to catch us.  The
hope for the _Ghost_ lay in that she should pass that point before the
_Macedonia_ arrived at it.

Wolf Larsen was steering, his eyes glistening and snapping as they dwelt
upon and leaped from detail to detail of the chase.  Now he studied the
sea to windward for signs of the wind slackening or freshening, now the
_Macedonia_; and again, his eyes roved over every sail, and he gave
commands to slack a sheet here a trifle, to come in on one there a
trifle, till he was drawing out of the _Ghost_ the last bit of speed she
possessed.  All feuds and grudges were forgotten, and I was surprised at
the alacrity with which the men who had so long endured his brutality
sprang to execute his orders.  Strange to say, the unfortunate Johnson
came into my mind as we lifted and surged and heeled along, and I was
aware of a regret that he was not alive and present; he had so loved the
_Ghost_ and delighted in her sailing powers.

“Better get your rifles, you fellows,” Wolf Larsen called to our hunters;
and the five men lined the lee rail, guns in hand, and waited.

The _Macedonia_ was now but a mile away, the black smoke pouring from her
funnel at a right angle, so madly she raced, pounding through the sea at
a seventeen-knot gait—“’Sky-hooting through the brine,” as Wolf Larsen
quoted while gazing at her.  We were not making more than nine knots, but
the fog-bank was very near.

A puff of smoke broke from the _Macedonia’s_ deck, we heard a heavy
report, and a round hole took form in the stretched canvas of our
mainsail.  They were shooting at us with one of the small cannon which
rumour had said they carried on board.  Our men, clustering amidships,
waved their hats and raised a derisive cheer.  Again there was a puff of
smoke and a loud report, this time the cannon-ball striking not more than
twenty feet astern and glancing twice from sea to sea to windward ere it
sank.

But there was no rifle-firing for the reason that all their hunters were
out in the boats or our prisoners.  When the two vessels were half-a-mile
apart, a third shot made another hole in our mainsail.  Then we entered
the fog.  It was about us, veiling and hiding us in its dense wet gauze.

The sudden transition was startling.  The moment before we had been
leaping through the sunshine, the clear sky above us, the sea breaking
and rolling wide to the horizon, and a ship, vomiting smoke and fire and
iron missiles, rushing madly upon us.  And at once, as in an instant’s
leap, the sun was blotted out, there was no sky, even our mastheads were
lost to view, and our horizon was such as tear-blinded eyes may see.  The
grey mist drove by us like a rain.  Every woollen filament of our
garments, every hair of our heads and faces, was jewelled with a crystal
globule.  The shrouds were wet with moisture; it dripped from our rigging
overhead; and on the underside of our booms drops of water took shape in
long swaying lines, which were detached and flung to the deck in mimic
showers at each surge of the schooner.  I was aware of a pent, stifled
feeling.  As the sounds of the ship thrusting herself through the waves
were hurled back upon us by the fog, so were one’s thoughts.  The mind
recoiled from contemplation of a world beyond this wet veil which wrapped
us around.  This was the world, the universe itself, its bounds so near
one felt impelled to reach out both arms and push them back.  It was
impossible, that the rest could be beyond these walls of grey.  The rest
was a dream, no more than the memory of a dream.

It was weird, strangely weird.  I looked at Maud Brewster and knew that
she was similarly affected.  Then I looked at Wolf Larsen, but there was
nothing subjective about his state of consciousness.  His whole concern
was with the immediate, objective present.  He still held the wheel, and
I felt that he was timing Time, reckoning the passage of the minutes with
each forward lunge and leeward roll of the _Ghost_.

“Go for’ard and hard alee without any noise,” he said to me in a low
voice.  “Clew up the topsails first.  Set men at all the sheets.  Let
there be no rattling of blocks, no sound of voices.  No noise,
understand, no noise.”

When all was ready, the word “hard-a-lee” was passed forward to me from
man to man; and the _Ghost_ heeled about on the port tack with
practically no noise at all.  And what little there was,—the slapping of
a few reef-points and the creaking of a sheave in a block or two,—was
ghostly under the hollow echoing pall in which we were swathed.

We had scarcely filled away, it seemed, when the fog thinned abruptly and
we were again in the sunshine, the wide-stretching sea breaking before us
to the sky-line.  But the ocean was bare.  No wrathful _Macedonia_ broke
its surface nor blackened the sky with her smoke.

Wolf Larsen at once squared away and ran down along the rim of the
fog-bank.  His trick was obvious.  He had entered the fog to windward of
the steamer, and while the steamer had blindly driven on into the fog in
the chance of catching him, he had come about and out of his shelter and
was now running down to re-enter to leeward.  Successful in this, the old
simile of the needle in the haystack would be mild indeed compared with
his brother’s chance of finding him.  He did not run long.  Jibing the
fore- and main-sails and setting the topsails again, we headed back into
the bank.  As we entered I could have sworn I saw a vague bulk emerging
to windward.  I looked quickly at Wolf Larsen.  Already we were ourselves
buried in the fog, but he nodded his head.  He, too, had seen it—the
_Macedonia_, guessing his manœuvre and failing by a moment in
anticipating it.  There was no doubt that we had escaped unseen.

“He can’t keep this up,” Wolf Larsen said.  “He’ll have to go back for
the rest of his boats.  Send a man to the wheel, Mr. Van Weyden, keep
this course for the present, and you might as well set the watches, for
we won’t do any lingering to-night.”

“I’d give five hundred dollars, though,” he added, “just to be aboard the
_Macedonia_ for five minutes, listening to my brother curse.”

“And now, Mr. Van Weyden,” he said to me when he had been relieved from
the wheel, “we must make these new-comers welcome.  Serve out plenty of
whisky to the hunters and see that a few bottles slip for’ard.  I’ll
wager every man Jack of them is over the side to-morrow, hunting for Wolf
Larsen as contentedly as ever they hunted for Death Larsen.”

“But won’t they escape as Wainwright did?” I asked.

He laughed shrewdly.  “Not as long as our old hunters have anything to
say about it.  I’m dividing amongst them a dollar a skin for all the
skins shot by our new hunters.  At least half of their enthusiasm to-day
was due to that.  Oh, no, there won’t be any escaping if they have
anything to say about it.  And now you’d better get for’ard to your
hospital duties.  There must be a full ward waiting for you.”




CHAPTER XXVI


Wolf Larsen took the distribution of the whisky off my hands, and the
bottles began to make their appearance while I worked over the fresh
batch of wounded men in the forecastle.  I had seen whisky drunk, such as
whisky-and-soda by the men of the clubs, but never as these men drank it,
from pannikins and mugs, and from the bottles—great brimming drinks, each
one of which was in itself a debauch.  But they did not stop at one or
two.  They drank and drank, and ever the bottles slipped forward and they
drank more.

Everybody drank; the wounded drank; Oofty-Oofty, who helped me, drank.
Only Louis refrained, no more than cautiously wetting his lips with the
liquor, though he joined in the revels with an abandon equal to that of
most of them.  It was a saturnalia.  In loud voices they shouted over the
day’s fighting, wrangled about details, or waxed affectionate and made
friends with the men whom they had fought.  Prisoners and captors
hiccoughed on one another’s shoulders, and swore mighty oaths of respect
and esteem.  They wept over the miseries of the past and over the
miseries yet to come under the iron rule of Wolf Larsen.  And all cursed
him and told terrible tales of his brutality.

It was a strange and frightful spectacle—the small, bunk-lined space, the
floor and walls leaping and lurching, the dim light, the swaying shadows
lengthening and fore-shortening monstrously, the thick air heavy with
smoke and the smell of bodies and iodoform, and the inflamed faces of the
men—half-men, I should call them.  I noted Oofty-Oofty, holding the end
of a bandage and looking upon the scene, his velvety and luminous eyes
glistening in the light like a deer’s eyes, and yet I knew the barbaric
devil that lurked in his breast and belied all the softness and
tenderness, almost womanly, of his face and form.  And I noticed the
boyish face of Harrison,—a good face once, but now a demon’s,—convulsed
with passion as he told the new-comers of the hell-ship they were in and
shrieked curses upon the head of Wolf Larsen.

Wolf Larsen it was, always Wolf Larsen, enslaver and tormentor of men, a
male Circe and these his swine, suffering brutes that grovelled before
him and revolted only in drunkenness and in secrecy.  And was I, too, one
of his swine? I thought.  And Maud Brewster?  No!  I ground my teeth in
my anger and determination till the man I was attending winced under my
hand and Oofty-Oofty looked at me with curiosity.  I felt endowed with a
sudden strength.  What of my new-found love, I was a giant.  I feared
nothing.  I would work my will through it all, in spite of Wolf Larsen
and of my own thirty-five bookish years.  All would be well.  I would
make it well.  And so, exalted, upborne by a sense of power, I turned my
back on the howling inferno and climbed to the deck, where the fog
drifted ghostly through the night and the air was sweet and pure and
quiet.

The steerage, where were two wounded hunters, was a repetition of the
forecastle, except that Wolf Larsen was not being cursed; and it was with
a great relief that I again emerged on deck and went aft to the cabin.
Supper was ready, and Wolf Larsen and Maud were waiting for me.

While all his ship was getting drunk as fast as it could, he remained
sober.  Not a drop of liquor passed his lips.  He did not dare it under
the circumstances, for he had only Louis and me to depend upon, and Louis
was even now at the wheel.  We were sailing on through the fog without a
look-out and without lights.  That Wolf Larsen had turned the liquor
loose among his men surprised me, but he evidently knew their psychology
and the best method of cementing in cordiality, what had begun in
bloodshed.

His victory over Death Larsen seemed to have had a remarkable effect upon
him.  The previous evening he had reasoned himself into the blues, and I
had been waiting momentarily for one of his characteristic outbursts.
Yet nothing had occurred, and he was now in splendid trim.  Possibly his
success in capturing so many hunters and boats had counteracted the
customary reaction.  At any rate, the blues were gone, and the blue
devils had not put in an appearance.  So I thought at the time; but, ah
me, little I knew him or knew that even then, perhaps, he was meditating
an outbreak more terrible than any I had seen.

As I say, he discovered himself in splendid trim when I entered the
cabin.  He had had no headaches for weeks, his eyes were clear blue as
the sky, his bronze was beautiful with perfect health; life swelled
through his veins in full and magnificent flood.  While waiting for me he
had engaged Maud in animated discussion.  Temptation was the topic they
had hit upon, and from the few words I heard I made out that he was
contending that temptation was temptation only when a man was seduced by
it and fell.

“For look you,” he was saying, “as I see it, a man does things because of
desire.  He has many desires.  He may desire to escape pain, or to enjoy
pleasure.  But whatever he does, he does because he desires to do it.”

“But suppose he desires to do two opposite things, neither of which will
permit him to do the other?” Maud interrupted.

“The very thing I was coming to,” he said.

“And between these two desires is just where the soul of the man is
manifest,” she went on.  “If it is a good soul, it will desire and do the
good action, and the contrary if it is a bad soul.  It is the soul that
decides.”

“Bosh and nonsense!” he exclaimed impatiently.  “It is the desire that
decides.  Here is a man who wants to, say, get drunk.  Also, he doesn’t
want to get drunk.  What does he do?  How does he do it?  He is a puppet.
He is the creature of his desires, and of the two desires he obeys the
strongest one, that is all.  His soul hasn’t anything to do with it.  How
can he be tempted to get drunk and refuse to get drunk?  If the desire to
remain sober prevails, it is because it is the strongest desire.
Temptation plays no part, unless—” he paused while grasping the new
thought which had come into his mind—“unless he is tempted to remain
sober.

“Ha! ha!” he laughed.  “What do you think of that, Mr. Van Weyden?”

“That both of you are hair-splitting,” I said.  “The man’s soul is his
desires.  Or, if you will, the sum of his desires is his soul.  Therein
you are both wrong.  You lay the stress upon the desire apart from the
soul, Miss Brewster lays the stress on the soul apart from the desire,
and in point of fact soul and desire are the same thing.

“However,” I continued, “Miss Brewster is right in contending that
temptation is temptation whether the man yield or overcome.  Fire is
fanned by the wind until it leaps up fiercely.  So is desire like fire.
It is fanned, as by a wind, by sight of the thing desired, or by a new
and luring description or comprehension of the thing desired.  There lies
the temptation.  It is the wind that fans the desire until it leaps up to
mastery.  That’s temptation.  It may not fan sufficiently to make the
desire overmastering, but in so far as it fans at all, that far is it
temptation.  And, as you say, it may tempt for good as well as for evil.”

I felt proud of myself as we sat down to the table.  My words had been
decisive.  At least they had put an end to the discussion.

But Wolf Larsen seemed voluble, prone to speech as I had never seen him
before.  It was as though he were bursting with pent energy which must
find an outlet somehow.  Almost immediately he launched into a discussion
on love.  As usual, his was the sheer materialistic side, and Maud’s was
the idealistic.  For myself, beyond a word or so of suggestion or
correction now and again, I took no part.

He was brilliant, but so was Maud, and for some time I lost the thread of
the conversation through studying her face as she talked.  It was a face
that rarely displayed colour, but to-night it was flushed and vivacious.
Her wit was playing keenly, and she was enjoying the tilt as much as Wolf
Larsen, and he was enjoying it hugely.  For some reason, though I know
not why in the argument, so utterly had I lost it in the contemplation of
one stray brown lock of Maud’s hair, he quoted from Iseult at Tintagel,
where she says:

   “Blessed am I beyond women even herein,
   That beyond all born women is my sin,
   And perfect my transgression.”

As he had read pessimism into Omar, so now he read triumph, stinging
triumph and exultation, into Swinburne’s lines.  And he read rightly, and
he read well.  He had hardly ceased reading when Louis put his head into
the companion-way and whispered down:

“Be easy, will ye?  The fog’s lifted, an’ ’tis the port light iv a
steamer that’s crossin’ our bow this blessed minute.”

Wolf Larsen sprang on deck, and so swiftly that by the time we followed
him he had pulled the steerage-slide over the drunken clamour and was on
his way forward to close the forecastle-scuttle.  The fog, though it
remained, had lifted high, where it obscured the stars and made the night
quite black.  Directly ahead of us I could see a bright red light and a
white light, and I could hear the pulsing of a steamer’s engines.  Beyond
a doubt it was the _Macedonia_.

Wolf Larsen had returned to the poop, and we stood in a silent group,
watching the lights rapidly cross our bow.

“Lucky for me he doesn’t carry a searchlight,” Wolf Larsen said.

“What if I should cry out loudly?” I queried in a whisper.

“It would be all up,” he answered.  “But have you thought upon what would
immediately happen?”

Before I had time to express any desire to know, he had me by the throat
with his gorilla grip, and by a faint quiver of the muscles—a hint, as it
were—he suggested to me the twist that would surely have broken my neck.
The next moment he had released me and we were gazing at the
_Macedonia’s_ lights.

“What if I should cry out?” Maud asked.

“I like you too well to hurt you,” he said softly—nay, there was a
tenderness and a caress in his voice that made me wince.

“But don’t do it, just the same, for I’d promptly break Mr. Van Weyden’s
neck.”

“Then she has my permission to cry out,” I said defiantly.

“I hardly think you’ll care to sacrifice the Dean of American Letters the
Second,” he sneered.

We spoke no more, though we had become too used to one another for the
silence to be awkward; and when the red light and the white had
disappeared we returned to the cabin to finish the interrupted supper.

Again they fell to quoting, and Maud gave Dowson’s “Impenitentia Ultima.”
She rendered it beautifully, but I watched not her, but Wolf Larsen.  I
was fascinated by the fascinated look he bent upon Maud.  He was quite
out of himself, and I noticed the unconscious movement of his lips as he
shaped word for word as fast as she uttered them.  He interrupted her
when she gave the lines:

   “And her eyes should be my light while the sun went out behind me,
   And the viols in her voice be the last sound in my ear.”

“There are viols in your voice,” he said bluntly, and his eyes flashed
their golden light.

I could have shouted with joy at her control.  She finished the
concluding stanza without faltering and then slowly guided the
conversation into less perilous channels.  And all the while I sat in a
half-daze, the drunken riot of the steerage breaking through the
bulkhead, the man I feared and the woman I loved talking on and on.  The
table was not cleared.  The man who had taken Mugridge’s place had
evidently joined his comrades in the forecastle.

If ever Wolf Larsen attained the summit of living, he attained it then.
From time to time I forsook my own thoughts to follow him, and I followed
in amaze, mastered for the moment by his remarkable intellect, under the
spell of his passion, for he was preaching the passion of revolt.  It was
inevitable that Milton’s Lucifer should be instanced, and the keenness
with which Wolf Larsen analysed and depicted the character was a
revelation of his stifled genius.  It reminded me of Taine, yet I knew
the man had never heard of that brilliant though dangerous thinker.

“He led a lost cause, and he was not afraid of God’s thunderbolts,” Wolf
Larsen was saying.  “Hurled into hell, he was unbeaten.  A third of God’s
angels he had led with him, and straightway he incited man to rebel
against God, and gained for himself and hell the major portion of all the
generations of man.  Why was he beaten out of heaven?  Because he was
less brave than God? less proud? less aspiring?  No!  A thousand times
no!  God was more powerful, as he said, Whom thunder hath made greater.
But Lucifer was a free spirit.  To serve was to suffocate.  He preferred
suffering in freedom to all the happiness of a comfortable servility.  He
did not care to serve God.  He cared to serve nothing.  He was no
figure-head.  He stood on his own legs.  He was an individual.”

“The first Anarchist,” Maud laughed, rising and preparing to withdraw to
her state-room.

“Then it is good to be an anarchist!” he cried.  He, too, had risen, and
he stood facing her, where she had paused at the door of her room, as he
went on:

               “‘Here at least
   We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
   Here for his envy; will not drive us hence;
   Here we may reign secure; and in my choice
   To reign is worth ambition, though in hell:
   Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”

It was the defiant cry of a mighty spirit.  The cabin still rang with his
voice, as he stood there, swaying, his bronzed face shining, his head up
and dominant, and his eyes, golden and masculine, intensely masculine and
insistently soft, flashing upon Maud at the door.

Again that unnamable and unmistakable terror was in her eyes, and she
said, almost in a whisper, “You are Lucifer.”

The door closed and she was gone.  He stood staring after her for a
minute, then returned to himself and to me.

“I’ll relieve Louis at the wheel,” he said shortly, “and call upon you to
relieve at midnight.  Better turn in now and get some sleep.”

He pulled on a pair of mittens, put on his cap, and ascended the
companion-stairs, while I followed his suggestion by going to bed.  For
some unknown reason, prompted mysteriously, I did not undress, but lay
down fully clothed.  For a time I listened to the clamour in the steerage
and marvelled upon the love which had come to me; but my sleep on the
_Ghost_ had become most healthful and natural, and soon the songs and
cries died away, my eyes closed, and my consciousness sank down into the
half-death of slumber.

                                * * * * *

I knew not what had aroused me, but I found myself out of my bunk, on my
feet, wide awake, my soul vibrating to the warning of danger as it might
have thrilled to a trumpet call.  I threw open the door.  The cabin light
was burning low.  I saw Maud, my Maud, straining and struggling and
crushed in the embrace of Wolf Larsen’s arms.  I could see the vain beat
and flutter of her as she strove, pressing her face against his breast,
to escape from him.  All this I saw on the very instant of seeing and as
I sprang forward.

I struck him with my fist, on the face, as he raised his head, but it was
a puny blow.  He roared in a ferocious, animal-like way, and gave me a
shove with his hand.  It was only a shove, a flirt of the wrist, yet so
tremendous was his strength that I was hurled backward as from a
catapult.  I struck the door of the state-room which had formerly been
Mugridge’s, splintering and smashing the panels with the impact of my
body.  I struggled to my feet, with difficulty dragging myself clear of
the wrecked door, unaware of any hurt whatever.  I was conscious only of
an overmastering rage.  I think I, too, cried aloud, as I drew the knife
at my hip and sprang forward a second time.

But something had happened.  They were reeling apart.  I was close upon
him, my knife uplifted, but I withheld the blow.  I was puzzled by the
strangeness of it.  Maud was leaning against the wall, one hand out for
support; but he was staggering, his left hand pressed against his
forehead and covering his eyes, and with the right he was groping about
him in a dazed sort of way.  It struck against the wall, and his body
seemed to express a muscular and physical relief at the contact, as
though he had found his bearings, his location in space as well as
something against which to lean.

Then I saw red again.  All my wrongs and humiliations flashed upon me
with a dazzling brightness, all that I had suffered and others had
suffered at his hands, all the enormity of the man’s very existence.  I
sprang upon him, blindly, insanely, and drove the knife into his
shoulder.  I knew, then, that it was no more than a flesh wound,—I had
felt the steel grate on his shoulder-blade,—and I raised the knife to
strike at a more vital part.

But Maud had seen my first blow, and she cried, “Don’t!  Please don’t!”

I dropped my arm for a moment, and a moment only.  Again the knife was
raised, and Wolf Larsen would have surely died had she not stepped
between.  Her arms were around me, her hair was brushing my face.  My
pulse rushed up in an unwonted manner, yet my rage mounted with it.  She
looked me bravely in the eyes.

“For my sake,” she begged.

“I would kill him for your sake!” I cried, trying to free my arm without
hurting her.

“Hush!” she said, and laid her fingers lightly on my lips.  I could have
kissed them, had I dared, even then, in my rage, the touch of them was so
sweet, so very sweet.  “Please, please,” she pleaded, and she disarmed me
by the words, as I was to discover they would ever disarm me.

I stepped back, separating from her, and replaced the knife in its
sheath.  I looked at Wolf Larsen.  He still pressed his left hand against
his forehead.  It covered his eyes.  His head was bowed.  He seemed to
have grown limp.  His body was sagging at the hips, his great shoulders
were drooping and shrinking forward.

“Van, Weyden!” he called hoarsely, and with a note of fright in his
voice.  “Oh, Van Weyden! where are you?”

I looked at Maud.  She did not speak, but nodded her head.

“Here I am,” I answered, stepping to his side.  “What is the matter?”

“Help me to a seat,” he said, in the same hoarse, frightened voice.

“I am a sick man; a very sick man, Hump,” he said, as he left my
sustaining grip and sank into a chair.

His head dropped forward on the table and was buried in his hands.  From
time to time it rocked back and forward as with pain.  Once, when he half
raised it, I saw the sweat standing in heavy drops on his forehead about
the roots of his hair.

“I am a sick man, a very sick man,” he repeated again, and yet once
again.

“What is the matter?” I asked, resting my hand on his shoulder.  “What
can I do for you?”

But he shook my hand off with an irritated movement, and for a long time
I stood by his side in silence.  Maud was looking on, her face awed and
frightened.  What had happened to him we could not imagine.

“Hump,” he said at last, “I must get into my bunk.  Lend me a hand.  I’ll
be all right in a little while.  It’s those damn headaches, I believe.  I
was afraid of them.  I had a feeling—no, I don’t know what I’m talking
about.  Help me into my bunk.”

But when I got him into his bunk he again buried his face in his hands,
covering his eyes, and as I turned to go I could hear him murmuring, “I
am a sick man, a very sick man.”

Maud looked at me inquiringly as I emerged.  I shook my head, saying:

“Something has happened to him.  What, I don’t know.  He is helpless, and
frightened, I imagine, for the first time in his life.  It must have
occurred before he received the knife-thrust, which made only a
superficial wound.  You must have seen what happened.”

She shook her head.  “I saw nothing.  It is just as mysterious to me.  He
suddenly released me and staggered away.  But what shall we do?  What
shall I do?”

“If you will wait, please, until I come back,” I answered.

I went on deck.  Louis was at the wheel.

“You may go for’ard and turn in,” I said, taking it from him.

He was quick to obey, and I found myself alone on the deck of the
_Ghost_.  As quietly as was possible, I clewed up the topsails, lowered
the flying jib and staysail, backed the jib over, and flattened the
mainsail.  Then I went below to Maud.  I placed my finger on my lips for
silence, and entered Wolf Larsen’s room.  He was in the same position in
which I had left him, and his head was rocking—almost writhing—from side
to side.

“Anything I can do for you?” I asked.

He made no reply at first, but on my repeating the question he answered,
“No, no; I’m all right.  Leave me alone till morning.”

But as I turned to go I noted that his head had resumed its rocking
motion.  Maud was waiting patiently for me, and I took notice, with a
thrill of joy, of the queenly poise of her head and her glorious, calm
eyes.  Calm and sure they were as her spirit itself.

“Will you trust yourself to me for a journey of six hundred miles or so?”
I asked.

“You mean—?” she asked, and I knew she had guessed aright.

“Yes, I mean just that,” I replied.  “There is nothing left for us but
the open boat.”

“For me, you mean,” she said.  “You are certainly as safe here as you
have been.”

“No, there is nothing left for us but the open boat,” I iterated stoutly.
“Will you please dress as warmly as you can, at once, and make into a
bundle whatever you wish to bring with you.”

“And make all haste,” I added, as she turned toward her state-room.

The lazarette was directly beneath the cabin, and, opening the trap-door
in the floor and carrying a candle with me, I dropped down and began
overhauling the ship’s stores.  I selected mainly from the canned goods,
and by the time I was ready, willing hands were extended from above to
receive what I passed up.

We worked in silence.  I helped myself also to blankets, mittens,
oilskins, caps, and such things, from the slop-chest.  It was no light
adventure, this trusting ourselves in a small boat to so raw and stormy a
sea, and it was imperative that we should guard ourselves against the
cold and wet.

We worked feverishly at carrying our plunder on deck and depositing it
amidships, so feverishly that Maud, whose strength was hardly a positive
quantity, had to give over, exhausted, and sit on the steps at the break
of the poop.  This did not serve to recover her, and she lay on her back,
on the hard deck, arms stretched out, and whole body relaxed.  It was a
trick I remembered of my sister, and I knew she would soon be herself
again.  I knew, also, that weapons would not come in amiss, and I
re-entered Wolf Larsen’s state-room to get his rifle and shot-gun.  I
spoke to him, but he made no answer, though his head was still rocking
from side to side and he was not asleep.

“Good-bye, Lucifer,” I whispered to myself as I softly closed the door.

Next to obtain was a stock of ammunition,—an easy matter, though I had to
enter the steerage companion-way to do it.  Here the hunters stored the
ammunition-boxes they carried in the boats, and here, but a few feet from
their noisy revels, I took possession of two boxes.

Next, to lower a boat.  Not so simple a task for one man.  Having cast
off the lashings, I hoisted first on the forward tackle, then on the aft,
till the boat cleared the rail, when I lowered away, one tackle and then
the other, for a couple of feet, till it hung snugly, above the water,
against the schooner’s side.  I made certain that it contained the proper
equipment of oars, rowlocks, and sail.  Water was a consideration, and I
robbed every boat aboard of its breaker.  As there were nine boats all
told, it meant that we should have plenty of water, and ballast as well,
though there was the chance that the boat would be overloaded, what of
the generous supply of other things I was taking.

While Maud was passing me the provisions and I was storing them in the
boat, a sailor came on deck from the forecastle.  He stood by the weather
rail for a time (we were lowering over the lee rail), and then sauntered
slowly amidships, where he again paused and stood facing the wind, with
his back toward us.  I could hear my heart beating as I crouched low in
the boat.  Maud had sunk down upon the deck and was, I knew, lying
motionless, her body in the shadow of the bulwark.  But the man never
turned, and, after stretching his arms above his head and yawning
audibly, he retraced his steps to the forecastle scuttle and disappeared.

A few minutes sufficed to finish the loading, and I lowered the boat into
the water.  As I helped Maud over the rail and felt her form close to
mine, it was all I could do to keep from crying out, “I love you!  I love
you!”  Truly Humphrey Van Weyden was at last in love, I thought, as her
fingers clung to mine while I lowered her down to the boat.  I held on to
the rail with one hand and supported her weight with the other, and I was
proud at the moment of the feat.  It was a strength I had not possessed a
few months before, on the day I said good-bye to Charley Furuseth and
started for San Francisco on the ill-fated _Martinez_.

As the boat ascended on a sea, her feet touched and I released her hands.
I cast off the tackles and leaped after her.  I had never rowed in my
life, but I put out the oars and at the expense of much effort got the
boat clear of the _Ghost_.  Then I experimented with the sail.  I had
seen the boat-steerers and hunters set their spritsails many times, yet
this was my first attempt.  What took them possibly two minutes took me
twenty, but in the end I succeeded in setting and trimming it, and with
the steering-oar in my hands hauled on the wind.

“There lies Japan,” I remarked, “straight before us.”

“Humphrey Van Weyden,” she said, “you are a brave man.”

“Nay,” I answered, “it is you who are a brave woman.”

We turned our heads, swayed by a common impulse to see the last of the
_Ghost_.  Her low hull lifted and rolled to windward on a sea; her canvas
loomed darkly in the night; her lashed wheel creaked as the rudder
kicked; then sight and sound of her faded away, and we were alone on the
dark sea.




CHAPTER XXVII


Day broke, grey and chill.  The boat was close-hauled on a fresh breeze
and the compass indicated that we were just making the course which would
bring us to Japan.  Though stoutly mittened, my fingers were cold, and
they pained from the grip on the steering-oar.  My feet were stinging
from the bite of the frost, and I hoped fervently that the sun would
shine.

Before me, in the bottom of the boat, lay Maud.  She, at least, was warm,
for under her and over her were thick blankets.  The top one I had drawn
over her face to shelter it from the night, so I could see nothing but
the vague shape of her, and her light-brown hair, escaped from the
covering and jewelled with moisture from the air.

Long I looked at her, dwelling upon that one visible bit of her as only a
man would who deemed it the most precious thing in the world.  So
insistent was my gaze that at last she stirred under the blankets, the
top fold was thrown back and she smiled out on me, her eyes yet heavy
with sleep.

“Good-morning, Mr. Van Weyden,” she said.  “Have you sighted land yet?”

“No,” I answered, “but we are approaching it at a rate of six miles an
hour.”

She made a _mouè_ of disappointment.

“But that is equivalent to one hundred and forty-four miles in
twenty-four hours,” I added reassuringly.

Her face brightened.  “And how far have we to go?”

“Siberia lies off there,” I said, pointing to the west.  “But to the
south-west, some six hundred miles, is Japan.  If this wind should hold,
we’ll make it in five days.”

“And if it storms?  The boat could not live?”

She had a way of looking one in the eyes and demanding the truth, and
thus she looked at me as she asked the question.

“It would have to storm very hard,” I temporized.

“And if it storms very hard?”

I nodded my head.  “But we may be picked up any moment by a
sealing-schooner.  They are plentifully distributed over this part of the
ocean.”

“Why, you are chilled through!” she cried.  “Look!  You are shivering.
Don’t deny it; you are.  And here I have been lying warm as toast.”

“I don’t see that it would help matters if you, too, sat up and were
chilled,” I laughed.

“It will, though, when I learn to steer, which I certainly shall.”

She sat up and began making her simple toilet.  She shook down her hair,
and it fell about her in a brown cloud, hiding her face and shoulders.
Dear, damp brown hair!  I wanted to kiss it, to ripple it through my
fingers, to bury my face in it.  I gazed entranced, till the boat ran
into the wind and the flapping sail warned me I was not attending to my
duties.  Idealist and romanticist that I was and always had been in spite
of my analytical nature, yet I had failed till now in grasping much of
the physical characteristics of love.  The love of man and woman, I had
always held, was a sublimated something related to spirit, a spiritual
bond that linked and drew their souls together.  The bonds of the flesh
had little part in my cosmos of love.  But I was learning the sweet
lesson for myself that the soul transmuted itself, expressed itself,
through the flesh; that the sight and sense and touch of the loved one’s
hair was as much breath and voice and essence of the spirit as the light
that shone from the eyes and the thoughts that fell from the lips.  After
all, pure spirit was unknowable, a thing to be sensed and divined only;
nor could it express itself in terms of itself.  Jehovah was
anthropomorphic because he could address himself to the Jews only in
terms of their understanding; so he was conceived as in their own image,
as a cloud, a pillar of fire, a tangible, physical something which the
mind of the Israelites could grasp.

And so I gazed upon Maud’s light-brown hair, and loved it, and learned
more of love than all the poets and singers had taught me with all their
songs and sonnets.  She flung it back with a sudden adroit movement, and
her face emerged, smiling.

“Why don’t women wear their hair down always?” I asked.  “It is so much
more beautiful.”

“If it didn’t tangle so dreadfully,” she laughed.  “There!  I’ve lost one
of my precious hair-pins!”

I neglected the boat and had the sail spilling the wind again and again,
such was my delight in following her every movement as she searched
through the blankets for the pin.  I was surprised, and joyfully, that
she was so much the woman, and the display of each trait and mannerism
that was characteristically feminine gave me keener joy.  For I had been
elevating her too highly in my concepts of her, removing her too far from
the plane of the human, and too far from me.  I had been making of her a
creature goddess-like and unapproachable.  So I hailed with delight the
little traits that proclaimed her only woman after all, such as the toss
of the head which flung back the cloud of hair, and the search for the
pin.  She was woman, my kind, on my plane, and the delightful intimacy of
kind, of man and woman, was possible, as well as the reverence and awe in
which I knew I should always hold her.

She found the pin with an adorable little cry, and I turned my attention
more fully to my steering.  I proceeded to experiment, lashing and
wedging the steering-oar until the boat held on fairly well by the wind
without my assistance.  Occasionally it came up too close, or fell off
too freely; but it always recovered itself and in the main behaved
satisfactorily.

“And now we shall have breakfast,” I said.  “But first you must be more
warmly clad.”

I got out a heavy shirt, new from the slop-chest and made from blanket
goods.  I knew the kind, so thick and so close of texture that it could
resist the rain and not be soaked through after hours of wetting.  When
she had slipped this on over her head, I exchanged the boy’s cap she wore
for a man’s cap, large enough to cover her hair, and, when the flap was
turned down, to completely cover her neck and ears.  The effect was
charming.  Her face was of the sort that cannot but look well under all
circumstances.  Nothing could destroy its exquisite oval, its well-nigh
classic lines, its delicately stencilled brows, its large brown eyes,
clear-seeing and calm, gloriously calm.

A puff, slightly stronger than usual, struck us just then.  The boat was
caught as it obliquely crossed the crest of a wave.  It went over
suddenly, burying its gunwale level with the sea and shipping a bucketful
or so of water.  I was opening a can of tongue at the moment, and I
sprang to the sheet and cast it off just in time.  The sail flapped and
fluttered, and the boat paid off.  A few minutes of regulating sufficed
to put it on its course again, when I returned to the preparation of
breakfast.

“It does very well, it seems, though I am not versed in things nautical,”
she said, nodding her head with grave approval at my steering
contrivance.

“But it will serve only when we are sailing by the wind,” I explained.
“When running more freely, with the wind astern abeam, or on the quarter,
it will be necessary for me to steer.”

“I must say I don’t understand your technicalities,” she said, “but I do
your conclusion, and I don’t like it.  You cannot steer night and day and
for ever.  So I shall expect, after breakfast, to receive my first
lesson.  And then you shall lie down and sleep.  We’ll stand watches just
as they do on ships.”

“I don’t see how I am to teach you,” I made protest.  “I am just learning
for myself.  You little thought when you trusted yourself to me that I
had had no experience whatever with small boats.  This is the first time
I have ever been in one.”

“Then we’ll learn together, sir.  And since you’ve had a night’s start
you shall teach me what you have learned.  And now, breakfast.  My! this
air does give one an appetite!”

“No coffee,” I said regretfully, passing her buttered sea-biscuits and a
slice of canned tongue.  “And there will be no tea, no soups, nothing
hot, till we have made land somewhere, somehow.”

After the simple breakfast, capped with a cup of cold water, Maud took
her lesson in steering.  In teaching her I learned quite a deal myself,
though I was applying the knowledge already acquired by sailing the
_Ghost_ and by watching the boat-steerers sail the small boats.  She was
an apt pupil, and soon learned to keep the course, to luff in the puffs
and to cast off the sheet in an emergency.

Having grown tired, apparently, of the task, she relinquished the oar to
me.  I had folded up the blankets, but she now proceeded to spread them
out on the bottom.  When all was arranged snugly, she said:

“Now, sir, to bed.  And you shall sleep until luncheon.  Till
dinner-time,” she corrected, remembering the arrangement on the _Ghost_.

What could I do?  She insisted, and said, “Please, please,” whereupon I
turned the oar over to her and obeyed.  I experienced a positive sensuous
delight as I crawled into the bed she had made with her hands.  The calm
and control which were so much a part of her seemed to have been
communicated to the blankets, so that I was aware of a soft dreaminess
and content, and of an oval face and brown eyes framed in a fisherman’s
cap and tossing against a background now of grey cloud, now of grey sea,
and then I was aware that I had been asleep.

I looked at my watch.  It was one o’clock.  I had slept seven hours!  And
she had been steering seven hours!  When I took the steering-oar I had
first to unbend her cramped fingers.  Her modicum of strength had been
exhausted, and she was unable even to move from her position.  I was
compelled to let go the sheet while I helped her to the nest of blankets
and chafed her hands and arms.

“I am so tired,” she said, with a quick intake of the breath and a sigh,
drooping her head wearily.

But she straightened it the next moment.  “Now don’t scold, don’t you
dare scold,” she cried with mock defiance.

“I hope my face does not appear angry,” I answered seriously; “for I
assure you I am not in the least angry.”

“N-no,” she considered.  “It looks only reproachful.”

“Then it is an honest face, for it looks what I feel.  You were not fair
to yourself, nor to me.  How can I ever trust you again?”

She looked penitent.  “I’ll be good,” she said, as a naughty child might
say it.  “I promise—”

“To obey as a sailor would obey his captain?”

“Yes,” she answered.  “It was stupid of me, I know.”

“Then you must promise something else,” I ventured.

“Readily.”

“That you will not say, ‘Please, please,’ too often; for when you do you
are sure to override my authority.”

She laughed with amused appreciation.  She, too, had noticed the power of
the repeated “please.”

“It is a good word—” I began.

“But I must not overwork it,” she broke in.

But she laughed weakly, and her head drooped again.  I left the oar long
enough to tuck the blankets about her feet and to pull a single fold
across her face.  Alas! she was not strong.  I looked with misgiving
toward the south-west and thought of the six hundred miles of hardship
before us—ay, if it were no worse than hardship.  On this sea a storm
might blow up at any moment and destroy us.  And yet I was unafraid.  I
was without confidence in the future, extremely doubtful, and yet I felt
no underlying fear.  It must come right, it must come right, I repeated
to myself, over and over again.

The wind freshened in the afternoon, raising a stiffer sea and trying the
boat and me severely.  But the supply of food and the nine breakers of
water enabled the boat to stand up to the sea and wind, and I held on as
long as I dared.  Then I removed the sprit, tightly hauling down the peak
of the sail, and we raced along under what sailors call a leg-of-mutton.

Late in the afternoon I sighted a steamer’s smoke on the horizon to
leeward, and I knew it either for a Russian cruiser, or, more likely, the
_Macedonia_ still seeking the _Ghost_.  The sun had not shone all day,
and it had been bitter cold.  As night drew on, the clouds darkened and
the wind freshened, so that when Maud and I ate supper it was with our
mittens on and with me still steering and eating morsels between puffs.

By the time it was dark, wind and sea had become too strong for the boat,
and I reluctantly took in the sail and set about making a drag or
sea-anchor.  I had learned of the device from the talk of the hunters,
and it was a simple thing to manufacture.  Furling the sail and lashing
it securely about the mast, boom, sprit, and two pairs of spare oars, I
threw it overboard.  A line connected it with the bow, and as it floated
low in the water, practically unexposed to the wind, it drifted less
rapidly than the boat.  In consequence it held the boat bow on to the sea
and wind—the safest position in which to escape being swamped when the
sea is breaking into whitecaps.

“And now?” Maud asked cheerfully, when the task was accomplished and I
pulled on my mittens.

“And now we are no longer travelling toward Japan,” I answered.  “Our
drift is to the south-east, or south-south-east, at the rate of at least
two miles an hour.”

“That will be only twenty-four miles,” she urged, “if the wind remains
high all night.”

“Yes, and only one hundred and forty miles if it continues for three days
and nights.”

“But it won’t continue,” she said with easy confidence.  “It will turn
around and blow fair.”

“The sea is the great faithless one.”

“But the wind!” she retorted.  “I have heard you grow eloquent over the
brave trade-wind.”

“I wish I had thought to bring Wolf Larsen’s chronometer and sextant,” I
said, still gloomily.  “Sailing one direction, drifting another
direction, to say nothing of the set of the current in some third
direction, makes a resultant which dead reckoning can never calculate.
Before long we won’t know where we are by five hundred miles.”

Then I begged her pardon and promised I should not be disheartened any
more.  At her solicitation I let her take the watch till midnight,—it was
then nine o’clock, but I wrapped her in blankets and put an oilskin about
her before I lay down.  I slept only cat-naps.  The boat was leaping and
pounding as it fell over the crests, I could hear the seas rushing past,
and spray was continually being thrown aboard.  And still, it was not a
bad night, I mused—nothing to the nights I had been through on the
_Ghost_; nothing, perhaps, to the nights we should go through in this
cockle-shell.  Its planking was three-quarters of an inch thick.  Between
us and the bottom of the sea was less than an inch of wood.

And yet, I aver it, and I aver it again, I was unafraid.  The death which
Wolf Larsen and even Thomas Mugridge had made me fear, I no longer
feared.  The coming of Maud Brewster into my life seemed to have
transformed me.  After all, I thought, it is better and finer to love
than to be loved, if it makes something in life so worth while that one
is not loath to die for it.  I forget my own life in the love of another
life; and yet, such is the paradox, I never wanted so much to live as
right now when I place the least value upon my own life.  I never had so
much reason for living, was my concluding thought; and after that, until
I dozed, I contented myself with trying to pierce the darkness to where I
knew Maud crouched low in the stern-sheets, watchful of the foaming sea
and ready to call me on an instant’s notice.




CHAPTER XXVIII


There is no need of going into an extended recital of our suffering in
the small boat during the many days we were driven and drifted, here and
there, willy-nilly, across the ocean.  The high wind blew from the
north-west for twenty-four hours, when it fell calm, and in the night
sprang up from the south-west.  This was dead in our teeth, but I took in
the sea-anchor and set sail, hauling a course on the wind which took us
in a south-south-easterly direction.  It was an even choice between this
and the west-north-westerly course which the wind permitted; but the warm
airs of the south fanned my desire for a warmer sea and swayed my
decision.

In three hours—it was midnight, I well remember, and as dark as I had
ever seen it on the sea—the wind, still blowing out of the south-west,
rose furiously, and once again I was compelled to set the sea-anchor.

Day broke and found me wan-eyed and the ocean lashed white, the boat
pitching, almost on end, to its drag.  We were in imminent danger of
being swamped by the whitecaps.  As it was, spray and spume came aboard
in such quantities that I bailed without cessation.  The blankets were
soaking.  Everything was wet except Maud, and she, in oilskins, rubber
boots, and sou’wester, was dry, all but her face and hands and a stray
wisp of hair.  She relieved me at the bailing-hole from time to time, and
bravely she threw out the water and faced the storm.  All things are
relative.  It was no more than a stiff blow, but to us, fighting for life
in our frail craft, it was indeed a storm.

Cold and cheerless, the wind beating on our faces, the white seas roaring
by, we struggled through the day.  Night came, but neither of us slept.
Day came, and still the wind beat on our faces and the white seas roared
past.  By the second night Maud was falling asleep from exhaustion.  I
covered her with oilskins and a tarpaulin.  She was comparatively dry,
but she was numb with the cold.  I feared greatly that she might die in
the night; but day broke, cold and cheerless, with the same clouded sky
and beating wind and roaring seas.

I had had no sleep for forty-eight hours.  I was wet and chilled to the
marrow, till I felt more dead than alive.  My body was stiff from
exertion as well as from cold, and my aching muscles gave me the severest
torture whenever I used them, and I used them continually.  And all the
time we were being driven off into the north-east, directly away from
Japan and toward bleak Bering Sea.

And still we lived, and the boat lived, and the wind blew unabated.  In
fact, toward nightfall of the third day it increased a trifle and
something more.  The boat’s bow plunged under a crest, and we came
through quarter-full of water.  I bailed like a madman.  The liability of
shipping another such sea was enormously increased by the water that
weighed the boat down and robbed it of its buoyancy.  And another such
sea meant the end.  When I had the boat empty again I was forced to take
away the tarpaulin which covered Maud, in order that I might lash it down
across the bow.  It was well I did, for it covered the boat fully a third
of the way aft, and three times, in the next several hours, it flung off
the bulk of the down-rushing water when the bow shoved under the seas.

Maud’s condition was pitiable.  She sat crouched in the bottom of the
boat, her lips blue, her face grey and plainly showing the pain she
suffered.  But ever her eyes looked bravely at me, and ever her lips
uttered brave words.

The worst of the storm must have blown that night, though little I
noticed it.  I had succumbed and slept where I sat in the stern-sheets.
The morning of the fourth day found the wind diminished to a gentle
whisper, the sea dying down and the sun shining upon us.  Oh, the blessed
sun!  How we bathed our poor bodies in its delicious warmth, reviving
like bugs and crawling things after a storm.  We smiled again, said
amusing things, and waxed optimistic over our situation.  Yet it was, if
anything, worse than ever.  We were farther from Japan than the night we
left the _Ghost_.  Nor could I more than roughly guess our latitude and
longitude.  At a calculation of a two-mile drift per hour, during the
seventy and odd hours of the storm, we had been driven at least one
hundred and fifty miles to the north-east.  But was such calculated drift
correct?  For all I knew, it might have been four miles per hour instead
of two.  In which case we were another hundred and fifty miles to the
bad.

Where we were I did not know, though there was quite a likelihood that we
were in the vicinity of the _Ghost_.  There were seals about us, and I
was prepared to sight a sealing-schooner at any time.  We did sight one,
in the afternoon, when the north-west breeze had sprung up freshly once
more.  But the strange schooner lost itself on the sky-line and we alone
occupied the circle of the sea.

Came days of fog, when even Maud’s spirit drooped and there were no merry
words upon her lips; days of calm, when we floated on the lonely
immensity of sea, oppressed by its greatness and yet marvelling at the
miracle of tiny life, for we still lived and struggled to live; days of
sleet and wind and snow-squalls, when nothing could keep us warm; or days
of drizzling rain, when we filled our water-breakers from the drip of the
wet sail.

And ever I loved Maud with an increasing love.  She was so many-sided, so
many-mooded—“protean-mooded” I called her.  But I called her this, and
other and dearer things, in my thoughts only.  Though the declaration of
my love urged and trembled on my tongue a thousand times, I knew that it
was no time for such a declaration.  If for no other reason, it was no
time, when one was protecting and trying to save a woman, to ask that
woman for her love.  Delicate as was the situation, not alone in this but
in other ways, I flattered myself that I was able to deal delicately with
it; and also I flattered myself that by look or sign I gave no
advertisement of the love I felt for her.  We were like good comrades,
and we grew better comrades as the days went by.

One thing about her which surprised me was her lack of timidity and fear.
The terrible sea, the frail boat, the storms, the suffering, the
strangeness and isolation of the situation,—all that should have
frightened a robust woman,—seemed to make no impression upon her who had
known life only in its most sheltered and consummately artificial
aspects, and who was herself all fire and dew and mist, sublimated
spirit, all that was soft and tender and clinging in woman.  And yet I am
wrong.  She _was_ timid and afraid, but she possessed courage.  The flesh
and the qualms of the flesh she was heir to, but the flesh bore heavily
only on the flesh.  And she was spirit, first and always spirit,
etherealized essence of life, calm as her calm eyes, and sure of
permanence in the changing order of the universe.

Came days of storm, days and nights of storm, when the ocean menaced us
with its roaring whiteness, and the wind smote our struggling boat with a
Titan’s buffets.  And ever we were flung off, farther and farther, to the
north-east.  It was in such a storm, and the worst that we had
experienced, that I cast a weary glance to leeward, not in quest of
anything, but more from the weariness of facing the elemental strife, and
in mute appeal, almost, to the wrathful powers to cease and let us be.
What I saw I could not at first believe.  Days and nights of
sleeplessness and anxiety had doubtless turned my head.  I looked back at
Maud, to identify myself, as it were, in time and space.  The sight of
her dear wet cheeks, her flying hair, and her brave brown eyes convinced
me that my vision was still healthy.  Again I turned my face to leeward,
and again I saw the jutting promontory, black and high and naked, the
raging surf that broke about its base and beat its front high up with
spouting fountains, the black and forbidden coast-line running toward the
south-east and fringed with a tremendous scarf of white.

“Maud,” I said.  “Maud.”

She turned her head and beheld the sight.

“It cannot be Alaska!” she cried.

“Alas, no,” I answered, and asked, “Can you swim?”

She shook her head.

“Neither can I,” I said.  “So we must get ashore without swimming, in
some opening between the rocks through which we can drive the boat and
clamber out.  But we must be quick, most quick—and sure.”

I spoke with a confidence she knew I did not feel, for she looked at me
with that unfaltering gaze of hers and said:

“I have not thanked you yet for all you have done for me but—”

She hesitated, as if in doubt how best to word her gratitude.

“Well?” I said, brutally, for I was not quite pleased with her thanking
me.

“You might help me,” she smiled.

“To acknowledge your obligations before you die?  Not at all.  We are not
going to die.  We shall land on that island, and we shall be snug and
sheltered before the day is done.”

I spoke stoutly, but I did not believe a word.  Nor was I prompted to lie
through fear.  I felt no fear, though I was sure of death in that boiling
surge amongst the rocks which was rapidly growing nearer.  It was
impossible to hoist sail and claw off that shore.  The wind would
instantly capsize the boat; the seas would swamp it the moment it fell
into the trough; and, besides, the sail, lashed to the spare oars,
dragged in the sea ahead of us.

As I say, I was not afraid to meet my own death, there, a few hundred
yards to leeward; but I was appalled at the thought that Maud must die.
My cursed imagination saw her beaten and mangled against the rocks, and
it was too terrible.  I strove to compel myself to think we would make
the landing safely, and so I spoke, not what I believed, but what I
preferred to believe.

I recoiled before contemplation of that frightful death, and for a moment
I entertained the wild idea of seizing Maud in my arms and leaping
overboard.  Then I resolved to wait, and at the last moment, when we
entered on the final stretch, to take her in my arms and proclaim my
love, and, with her in my embrace, to make the desperate struggle and
die.

Instinctively we drew closer together in the bottom of the boat.  I felt
her mittened hand come out to mine.  And thus, without speech, we waited
the end.  We were not far off the line the wind made with the western
edge of the promontory, and I watched in the hope that some set of the
current or send of the sea would drift us past before we reached the
surf.

“We shall go clear,” I said, with a confidence which I knew deceived
neither of us.

“By God, we _will_ go clear!” I cried, five minutes later.

The oath left my lips in my excitement—the first, I do believe, in my
life, unless “trouble it,” an expletive of my youth, be accounted an
oath.

“I beg your pardon,” I said.

“You have convinced me of your sincerity,” she said, with a faint smile.
“I do know, now, that we shall go clear.”

I had seen a distant headland past the extreme edge of the promontory,
and as we looked we could see grow the intervening coastline of what was
evidently a deep cove.  At the same time there broke upon our ears a
continuous and mighty bellowing.  It partook of the magnitude and volume
of distant thunder, and it came to us directly from leeward, rising above
the crash of the surf and travelling directly in the teeth of the storm.
As we passed the point the whole cove burst upon our view, a half-moon of
white sandy beach upon which broke a huge surf, and which was covered
with myriads of seals.  It was from them that the great bellowing went
up.

“A rookery!” I cried.  “Now are we indeed saved.  There must be men and
cruisers to protect them from the seal-hunters.  Possibly there is a
station ashore.”

But as I studied the surf which beat upon the beach, I said, “Still bad,
but not so bad.  And now, if the gods be truly kind, we shall drift by
that next headland and come upon a perfectly sheltered beach, where we
may land without wetting our feet.”

And the gods were kind.  The first and second headlands were directly in
line with the south-west wind; but once around the second,—and we went
perilously near,—we picked up the third headland, still in line with the
wind and with the other two.  But the cove that intervened!  It
penetrated deep into the land, and the tide, setting in, drifted us under
the shelter of the point.  Here the sea was calm, save for a heavy but
smooth ground-swell, and I took in the sea-anchor and began to row.  From
the point the shore curved away, more and more to the south and west,
until at last it disclosed a cove within the cove, a little land-locked
harbour, the water level as a pond, broken only by tiny ripples where
vagrant breaths and wisps of the storm hurtled down from over the
frowning wall of rock that backed the beach a hundred feet inshore.

Here were no seals whatever.  The boat’s stern touched the hard shingle.
I sprang out, extending my hand to Maud.  The next moment she was beside
me.  As my fingers released hers, she clutched for my arm hastily.  At
the same moment I swayed, as about to fall to the sand.  This was the
startling effect of the cessation of motion.  We had been so long upon
the moving, rocking sea that the stable land was a shock to us.  We
expected the beach to lift up this way and that, and the rocky walls to
swing back and forth like the sides of a ship; and when we braced
ourselves, automatically, for these various expected movements, their
non-occurrence quite overcame our equilibrium.

“I really must sit down,” Maud said, with a nervous laugh and a dizzy
gesture, and forthwith she sat down on the sand.

I attended to making the boat secure and joined her.  Thus we landed on
Endeavour Island, as we came to it, land-sick from long custom of the
sea.




CHAPTER XXIX


“Fool!” I cried aloud in my vexation.

I had unloaded the boat and carried its contents high up on the beach,
where I had set about making a camp.  There was driftwood, though not
much, on the beach, and the sight of a coffee tin I had taken from the
_Ghost’s_ larder had given me the idea of a fire.

“Blithering idiot!” I was continuing.

But Maud said, “Tut, tut,” in gentle reproval, and then asked why I was a
blithering idiot.

“No matches,” I groaned.  “Not a match did I bring.  And now we shall
have no hot coffee, soup, tea, or anything!”

“Wasn’t it—er—Crusoe who rubbed sticks together?” she drawled.

“But I have read the personal narratives of a score of shipwrecked men
who tried, and tried in vain,” I answered.  “I remember Winters, a
newspaper fellow with an Alaskan and Siberian reputation.  Met him at the
Bibelot once, and he was telling us how he attempted to make a fire with
a couple of sticks.  It was most amusing.  He told it inimitably, but it
was the story of a failure.  I remember his conclusion, his black eyes
flashing as he said, ‘Gentlemen, the South Sea Islander may do it, the
Malay may do it, but take my word it’s beyond the white man.’”

“Oh, well, we’ve managed so far without it,” she said cheerfully.  “And
there’s no reason why we cannot still manage without it.”

“But think of the coffee!” I cried.  “It’s good coffee, too, I know.  I
took it from Larsen’s private stores.  And look at that good wood.”

I confess, I wanted the coffee badly; and I learned, not long afterward,
that the berry was likewise a little weakness of Maud’s.  Besides, we had
been so long on a cold diet that we were numb inside as well as out.
Anything warm would have been most gratifying.  But I complained no more
and set about making a tent of the sail for Maud.

I had looked upon it as a simple task, what of the oars, mast, boom, and
sprit, to say nothing of plenty of lines.  But as I was without
experience, and as every detail was an experiment and every successful
detail an invention, the day was well gone before her shelter was an
accomplished fact.  And then, that night, it rained, and she was flooded
out and driven back into the boat.

The next morning I dug a shallow ditch around the tent, and, an hour
later, a sudden gust of wind, whipping over the rocky wall behind us,
picked up the tent and smashed it down on the sand thirty yards away.

Maud laughed at my crestfallen expression, and I said, “As soon as the
wind abates I intend going in the boat to explore the island.  There must
be a station somewhere, and men.  And ships must visit the station.  Some
Government must protect all these seals.  But I wish to have you
comfortable before I start.”

“I should like to go with you,” was all she said.

“It would be better if you remained.  You have had enough of hardship.
It is a miracle that you have survived.  And it won’t be comfortable in
the boat rowing and sailing in this rainy weather.  What you need is
rest, and I should like you to remain and get it.”

Something suspiciously akin to moistness dimmed her beautiful eyes before
she dropped them and partly turned away her head.

“I should prefer going with you,” she said in a low voice, in which there
was just a hint of appeal.

“I might be able to help you a—” her voice broke,—“a little.  And if
anything should happen to you, think of me left here alone.”

“Oh, I intend being very careful,” I answered.  “And I shall not go so
far but what I can get back before night.  Yes, all said and done, I
think it vastly better for you to remain, and sleep, and rest and do
nothing.”

She turned and looked me in the eyes.  Her gaze was unfaltering, but
soft.

“Please, please,” she said, oh, so softly.

I stiffened myself to refuse, and shook my head.  Still she waited and
looked at me.  I tried to word my refusal, but wavered.  I saw the glad
light spring into her eyes and knew that I had lost.  It was impossible
to say no after that.

The wind died down in the afternoon, and we were prepared to start the
following morning.  There was no way of penetrating the island from our
cove, for the walls rose perpendicularly from the beach, and, on either
side of the cove, rose from the deep water.

Morning broke dull and grey, but calm, and I was awake early and had the
boat in readiness.

“Fool!  Imbecile!  Yahoo!” I shouted, when I thought it was meet to
arouse Maud; but this time I shouted in merriment as I danced about the
beach, bareheaded, in mock despair.

Her head appeared under the flap of the sail.

“What now?” she asked sleepily, and, withal, curiously.

“Coffee!” I cried.  “What do you say to a cup of coffee? hot coffee?
piping hot?”

“My!” she murmured, “you startled me, and you are cruel.  Here I have
been composing my soul to do without it, and here you are vexing me with
your vain suggestions.”

“Watch me,” I said.

From under clefts among the rocks I gathered a few dry sticks and chips.
These I whittled into shavings or split into kindling.  From my note-book
I tore out a page, and from the ammunition box took a shot-gun shell.
Removing the wads from the latter with my knife, I emptied the powder on
a flat rock.  Next I pried the primer, or cap, from the shell, and laid
it on the rock, in the midst of the scattered powder.  All was ready.
Maud still watched from the tent.  Holding the paper in my left hand, I
smashed down upon the cap with a rock held in my right.  There was a puff
of white smoke, a burst of flame, and the rough edge of the paper was
alight.

Maud clapped her hands gleefully.  “Prometheus!” she cried.

But I was too occupied to acknowledge her delight.  The feeble flame must
be cherished tenderly if it were to gather strength and live.  I fed it,
shaving by shaving, and sliver by sliver, till at last it was snapping
and crackling as it laid hold of the smaller chips and sticks.  To be
cast away on an island had not entered into my calculations, so we were
without a kettle or cooking utensils of any sort; but I made shift with
the tin used for bailing the boat, and later, as we consumed our supply
of canned goods, we accumulated quite an imposing array of cooking
vessels.

I boiled the water, but it was Maud who made the coffee.  And how good it
was!  My contribution was canned beef fried with crumbled sea-biscuit and
water.  The breakfast was a success, and we sat about the fire much
longer than enterprising explorers should have done, sipping the hot
black coffee and talking over our situation.

I was confident that we should find a station in some one of the coves,
for I knew that the rookeries of Bering Sea were thus guarded; but Maud
advanced the theory—to prepare me for disappointment, I do believe, if
disappointment were to come—that we had discovered an unknown rookery.
She was in very good spirits, however, and made quite merry in accepting
our plight as a grave one.

“If you are right,” I said, “then we must prepare to winter here.  Our
food will not last, but there are the seals.  They go away in the fall,
so I must soon begin to lay in a supply of meat.  Then there will be huts
to build and driftwood to gather.  Also we shall try out seal fat for
lighting purposes.  Altogether, we’ll have our hands full if we find the
island uninhabited.  Which we shall not, I know.”

But she was right.  We sailed with a beam wind along the shore, searching
the coves with our glasses and landing occasionally, without finding a
sign of human life.  Yet we learned that we were not the first who had
landed on Endeavour Island.  High up on the beach of the second cove from
ours, we discovered the splintered wreck of a boat—a sealer’s boat, for
the rowlocks were bound in sennit, a gun-rack was on the starboard side
of the bow, and in white letters was faintly visible _Gazelle_ No. 2.
The boat had lain there for a long time, for it was half filled with
sand, and the splintered wood had that weather-worn appearance due to
long exposure to the elements.  In the stern-sheets I found a rusty
ten-gauge shot-gun and a sailor’s sheath-knife broken short across and so
rusted as to be almost unrecognizable.

“They got away,” I said cheerfully; but I felt a sinking at the heart and
seemed to divine the presence of bleached bones somewhere on that beach.

I did not wish Maud’s spirits to be dampened by such a find, so I turned
seaward again with our boat and skirted the north-eastern point of the
island.  There were no beaches on the southern shore, and by early
afternoon we rounded the black promontory and completed the
circumnavigation of the island.  I estimated its circumference at
twenty-five miles, its width as varying from two to five miles; while my
most conservative calculation placed on its beaches two hundred thousand
seals.  The island was highest at its extreme south-western point, the
headlands and backbone diminishing regularly until the north-eastern
portion was only a few feet above the sea.  With the exception of our
little cove, the other beaches sloped gently back for a distance of
half-a-mile or so, into what I might call rocky meadows, with here and
there patches of moss and tundra grass.  Here the seals hauled out, and
the old bulls guarded their harems, while the young bulls hauled out by
themselves.

This brief description is all that Endeavour Island merits.  Damp and
soggy where it was not sharp and rocky, buffeted by storm winds and
lashed by the sea, with the air continually a-tremble with the bellowing
of two hundred thousand amphibians, it was a melancholy and miserable
sojourning-place.  Maud, who had prepared me for disappointment, and who
had been sprightly and vivacious all day, broke down as we landed in our
own little cove.  She strove bravely to hide it from me, but while I was
kindling another fire I knew she was stifling her sobs in the blankets
under the sail-tent.

It was my turn to be cheerful, and I played the part to the best of my
ability, and with such success that I brought the laughter back into her
dear eyes and song on her lips; for she sang to me before she went to an
early bed.  It was the first time I had heard her sing, and I lay by the
fire, listening and transported, for she was nothing if not an artist in
everything she did, and her voice, though not strong, was wonderfully
sweet and expressive.

I still slept in the boat, and I lay awake long that night, gazing up at
the first stars I had seen in many nights and pondering the situation.
Responsibility of this sort was a new thing to me.  Wolf Larsen had been
quite right.  I had stood on my father’s legs.  My lawyers and agents had
taken care of my money for me.  I had had no responsibilities at all.
Then, on the _Ghost_ I had learned to be responsible for myself.  And
now, for the first time in my life, I found myself responsible for some
one else.  And it was required of me that this should be the gravest of
responsibilities, for she was the one woman in the world—the one small
woman, as I loved to think of her.




CHAPTER XXX


No wonder we called it Endeavour Island.  For two weeks we toiled at
building a hut.  Maud insisted on helping, and I could have wept over her
bruised and bleeding hands.  And still, I was proud of her because of it.
There was something heroic about this gently-bred woman enduring our
terrible hardship and with her pittance of strength bending to the tasks
of a peasant woman.  She gathered many of the stones which I built into
the walls of the hut; also, she turned a deaf ear to my entreaties when I
begged her to desist.  She compromised, however, by taking upon herself
the lighter labours of cooking and gathering driftwood and moss for our
winter’s supply.

The hut’s walls rose without difficulty, and everything went smoothly
until the problem of the roof confronted me.  Of what use the four walls
without a roof?  And of what could a roof be made?  There were the spare
oars, very true.  They would serve as roof-beams; but with what was I to
cover them?  Moss would never do.  Tundra grass was impracticable.  We
needed the sail for the boat, and the tarpaulin had begun to leak.

“Winters used walrus skins on his hut,” I said.

“There are the seals,” she suggested.

So next day the hunting began.  I did not know how to shoot, but I
proceeded to learn.  And when I had expended some thirty shells for three
seals, I decided that the ammunition would be exhausted before I acquired
the necessary knowledge.  I had used eight shells for lighting fires
before I hit upon the device of banking the embers with wet moss, and
there remained not over a hundred shells in the box.

“We must club the seals,” I announced, when convinced of my poor
marksmanship.  “I have heard the sealers talk about clubbing them.”

“They are so pretty,” she objected.  “I cannot bear to think of it being
done.  It is so directly brutal, you know; so different from shooting
them.”

“That roof must go on,” I answered grimly.  “Winter is almost here.  It
is our lives against theirs.  It is unfortunate we haven’t plenty of
ammunition, but I think, anyway, that they suffer less from being clubbed
than from being all shot up.  Besides, I shall do the clubbing.”

“That’s just it,” she began eagerly, and broke off in sudden confusion.

“Of course,” I began, “if you prefer—”

“But what shall I be doing?” she interrupted, with that softness I knew
full well to be insistence.

“Gathering firewood and cooking dinner,” I answered lightly.

She shook her head.  “It is too dangerous for you to attempt alone.”

“I know, I know,” she waived my protest.  “I am only a weak woman, but
just my small assistance may enable you to escape disaster.”

“But the clubbing?” I suggested.

“Of course, you will do that.  I shall probably scream.  I’ll look away
when—”

“The danger is most serious,” I laughed.

“I shall use my judgment when to look and when not to look,” she replied
with a grand air.

The upshot of the affair was that she accompanied me next morning.  I
rowed into the adjoining cove and up to the edge of the beach.  There
were seals all about us in the water, and the bellowing thousands on the
beach compelled us to shout at each other to make ourselves heard.

“I know men club them,” I said, trying to reassure myself, and gazing
doubtfully at a large bull, not thirty feet away, upreared on his
fore-flippers and regarding me intently.  “But the question is, How do
they club them?”

“Let us gather tundra grass and thatch the roof,” Maud said.

She was as frightened as I at the prospect, and we had reason to be
gazing at close range at the gleaming teeth and dog-like mouths.

“I always thought they were afraid of men,” I said.

“How do I know they are not afraid?” I queried a moment later, after
having rowed a few more strokes along the beach.  “Perhaps, if I were to
step boldly ashore, they would cut for it, and I could not catch up with
one.”  And still I hesitated.

“I heard of a man, once, who invaded the nesting grounds of wild geese,”
Maud said.  “They killed him.”

“The geese?”

“Yes, the geese.  My brother told me about it when I was a little girl.”

“But I know men club them,” I persisted.

“I think the tundra grass will make just as good a roof,” she said.

Far from her intention, her words were maddening me, driving me on.  I
could not play the coward before her eyes.  “Here goes,” I said, backing
water with one oar and running the bow ashore.

I stepped out and advanced valiantly upon a long-maned bull in the midst
of his wives.  I was armed with the regular club with which the
boat-pullers killed the wounded seals gaffed aboard by the hunters.  It
was only a foot and a half long, and in my superb ignorance I never
dreamed that the club used ashore when raiding the rookeries measured
four to five feet.  The cows lumbered out of my way, and the distance
between me and the bull decreased.  He raised himself on his flippers
with an angry movement.  We were a dozen feet apart.  Still I advanced
steadily, looking for him to turn tail at any moment and run.

At six feet the panicky thought rushed into my mind, What if he will not
run?  Why, then I shall club him, came the answer.  In my fear I had
forgotten that I was there to get the bull instead of to make him run.
And just then he gave a snort and a snarl and rushed at me.  His eyes
were blazing, his mouth was wide open; the teeth gleamed cruelly white.
Without shame, I confess that it was I who turned and footed it.  He ran
awkwardly, but he ran well.  He was but two paces behind when I tumbled
into the boat, and as I shoved off with an oar his teeth crunched down
upon the blade.  The stout wood was crushed like an egg-shell.  Maud and
I were astounded.  A moment later he had dived under the boat, seized the
keel in his mouth, and was shaking the boat violently.

“My!” said Maud.  “Let’s go back.”

I shook my head.  “I can do what other men have done, and I know that
other men have clubbed seals.  But I think I’ll leave the bulls alone
next time.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said.

“Now don’t say, ‘Please, please,’” I cried, half angrily, I do believe.

She made no reply, and I knew my tone must have hurt her.

“I beg your pardon,” I said, or shouted, rather, in order to make myself
heard above the roar of the rookery.  “If you say so, I’ll turn and go
back; but honestly, I’d rather stay.”

“Now don’t say that this is what you get for bringing a woman along,” she
said.  She smiled at me whimsically, gloriously, and I knew there was no
need for forgiveness.

I rowed a couple of hundred feet along the beach so as to recover my
nerves, and then stepped ashore again.

“Do be cautious,” she called after me.

I nodded my head and proceeded to make a flank attack on the nearest
harem.  All went well until I aimed a blow at an outlying cow's head and
fell short.  She snorted and tried to scramble away.  I ran in close and
struck another blow, hitting the shoulder instead of the head.

“Watch out!” I heard Maud scream.

In my excitement I had not been taking notice of other things, and I
looked up to see the lord of the harem charging down upon me.  Again I
fled to the boat, hotly pursued; but this time Maud made no suggestion of
turning back.

“It would be better, I imagine, if you let harems alone and devoted your
attention to lonely and inoffensive-looking seals,” was what she said.
“I think I have read something about them.  Dr. Jordan’s book, I believe.
They are the young bulls, not old enough to have harems of their own.  He
called them the holluschickie, or something like that.  It seems to me if
we find where they haul out—”

“It seems to me that your fighting instinct is aroused,” I laughed.

She flushed quickly and prettily.  “I’ll admit I don’t like defeat any
more than you do, or any more than I like the idea of killing such
pretty, inoffensive creatures.”

“Pretty!” I sniffed.  “I failed to mark anything pre-eminently pretty
about those foamy-mouthed beasts that raced me.”

“Your point of view,” she laughed.  “You lacked perspective.  Now if you
did not have to get so close to the subject—”

“The very thing!” I cried.  “What I need is a longer club.  And there’s
that broken oar ready to hand.”

“It just comes to me,” she said, “that Captain Larsen was telling me how
the men raided the rookeries.  They drive the seals, in small herds, a
short distance inland before they kill them.”

“I don’t care to undertake the herding of one of those harems,” I
objected.

“But there are the holluschickie,” she said.  “The holluschickie haul out
by themselves, and Dr. Jordan says that paths are left between the
harems, and that as long as the holluschickie keep strictly to the path
they are unmolested by the masters of the harem.”

“There’s one now,” I said, pointing to a young bull in the water.  “Let’s
watch him, and follow him if he hauls out.”

He swam directly to the beach and clambered out into a small opening
between two harems, the masters of which made warning noises but did not
attack him.  We watched him travel slowly inward, threading about among
the harems along what must have been the path.

“Here goes,” I said, stepping out; but I confess my heart was in my mouth
as I thought of going through the heart of that monstrous herd.

“It would be wise to make the boat fast,” Maud said.

She had stepped out beside me, and I regarded her with wonderment.

She nodded her head determinedly.  “Yes, I’m going with you, so you may
as well secure the boat and arm me with a club.”

“Let’s go back,” I said dejectedly.  “I think tundra grass, will do,
after all.”

“You know it won’t,” was her reply.  “Shall I lead?”

With a shrug of the shoulders, but with the warmest admiration and pride
at heart for this woman, I equipped her with the broken oar and took
another for myself.  It was with nervous trepidation that we made the
first few rods of the journey.  Once Maud screamed in terror as a cow
thrust an inquisitive nose toward her foot, and several times I quickened
my pace for the same reason.  But, beyond warning coughs from either
side, there were no signs of hostility.  It was a rookery which had never
been raided by the hunters, and in consequence the seals were
mild-tempered and at the same time unafraid.

In the very heart of the herd the din was terrific.  It was almost
dizzying in its effect.  I paused and smiled reassuringly at Maud, for I
had recovered my equanimity sooner than she.  I could see that she was
still badly frightened.  She came close to me and shouted:

“I’m dreadfully afraid!”

And I was not.  Though the novelty had not yet worn off, the peaceful
comportment of the seals had quieted my alarm.  Maud was trembling.

“I’m afraid, and I’m not afraid,” she chattered with shaking jaws.  “It’s
my miserable body, not I.”

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” I reassured her, my arm passing
instinctively and protectingly around her.

I shall never forget, in that moment, how instantly conscious I became of
my manhood.  The primitive deeps of my nature stirred.  I felt myself
masculine, the protector of the weak, the fighting male.  And, best of
all, I felt myself the protector of my loved one.  She leaned against me,
so light and lily-frail, and as her trembling eased away it seemed as
though I became aware of prodigious strength.  I felt myself a match for
the most ferocious bull in the herd, and I know, had such a bull charged
upon me, that I should have met it unflinchingly and quite coolly, and I
know that I should have killed it.

“I am all right now,” she said, looking up at me gratefully.  “Let us go
on.”

And that the strength in me had quieted her and given her confidence,
filled me with an exultant joy.  The youth of the race seemed burgeoning
in me, over-civilized man that I was, and I lived for myself the old
hunting days and forest nights of my remote and forgotten ancestry.  I
had much for which to thank Wolf Larsen, was my thought as we went along
the path between the jostling harems.

A quarter of a mile inland we came upon the holluschickie—sleek young
bulls, living out the loneliness of their bachelorhood and gathering
strength against the day when they would fight their way into the ranks
of the Benedicts.

Everything now went smoothly.  I seemed to know just what to do and how
to do it.  Shouting, making threatening gestures with my club, and even
prodding the lazy ones, I quickly cut out a score of the young bachelors
from their companions.  Whenever one made an attempt to break back toward
the water, I headed it off.  Maud took an active part in the drive, and
with her cries and flourishings of the broken oar was of considerable
assistance.  I noticed, though, that whenever one looked tired and
lagged, she let it slip past.  But I noticed, also, whenever one, with a
show of fight, tried to break past, that her eyes glinted and showed
bright, and she rapped it smartly with her club.

“My, it’s exciting!” she cried, pausing from sheer weakness.  “I think
I’ll sit down.”

I drove the little herd (a dozen strong, now, what of the escapes she had
permitted) a hundred yards farther on; and by the time she joined me I
had finished the slaughter and was beginning to skin.  An hour later we
went proudly back along the path between the harems.  And twice again we
came down the path burdened with skins, till I thought we had enough to
roof the hut.  I set the sail, laid one tack out of the cove, and on the
other tack made our own little inner cove.

“It’s just like home-coming,” Maud said, as I ran the boat ashore.

I heard her words with a responsive thrill, it was all so dearly intimate
and natural, and I said:

“It seems as though I have lived this life always.  The world of books
and bookish folk is very vague, more like a dream memory than an
actuality.  I surely have hunted and forayed and fought all the days of
my life.  And you, too, seem a part of it.  You are—”  I was on the verge
of saying, “my woman, my mate,” but glibly changed it to—“standing the
hardship well.”

But her ear had caught the flaw.  She recognized a flight that midmost
broke.  She gave me a quick look.

“Not that.  You were saying—?”

“That the American Mrs. Meynell was living the life of a savage and
living it quite successfully,” I said easily.

“Oh,” was all she replied; but I could have sworn there was a note of
disappointment in her voice.

But “my woman, my mate” kept ringing in my head for the rest of the day
and for many days.  Yet never did it ring more loudly than that night, as
I watched her draw back the blanket of moss from the coals, blow up the
fire, and cook the evening meal.  It must have been latent savagery
stirring in me, for the old words, so bound up with the roots of the
race, to grip me and thrill me.  And grip and thrill they did, till I
fell asleep, murmuring them to myself over and over again.




CHAPTER XXXI


“It will smell,” I said, “but it will keep in the heat and keep out the
rain and snow.”

We were surveying the completed seal-skin roof.

“It is clumsy, but it will serve the purpose, and that is the main
thing,” I went on, yearning for her praise.

And she clapped her hands and declared that she was hugely pleased.

“But it is dark in here,” she said the next moment, her shoulders
shrinking with a little involuntary shiver.

“You might have suggested a window when the walls were going up,” I said.
“It was for you, and you should have seen the need of a window.”

“But I never do see the obvious, you know,” she laughed back.  “And
besides, you can knock a hole in the wall at any time.”

“Quite true; I had not thought of it,” I replied, wagging my head sagely.
“But have you thought of ordering the window-glass?  Just call up the
firm,—Red, 4451, I think it is,—and tell them what size and kind of glass
you wish.”

“That means—” she began.

“No window.”

It was a dark and evil-appearing thing, that hut, not fit for aught
better than swine in a civilized land; but for us, who had known the
misery of the open boat, it was a snug little habitation.  Following the
housewarming, which was accomplished by means of seal-oil and a wick made
from cotton calking, came the hunting for our winter’s meat and the
building of the second hut.  It was a simple affair, now, to go forth in
the morning and return by noon with a boatload of seals.  And then, while
I worked at building the hut, Maud tried out the oil from the blubber and
kept a slow fire under the frames of meat.  I had heard of jerking beef
on the plains, and our seal-meat, cut in thin strips and hung in the
smoke, cured excellently.

The second hut was easier to erect, for I built it against the first, and
only three walls were required.  But it was work, hard work, all of it.
Maud and I worked from dawn till dark, to the limit of our strength, so
that when night came we crawled stiffly to bed and slept the animal-like
sleep of exhaustion.  And yet Maud declared that she had never felt better
or stronger in her life.  I knew this was true of myself, but hers was
such a lily strength that I feared she would break down.  Often and
often, her last-reserve force gone, I have seen her stretched flat on her
back on the sand in the way she had of resting and recuperating.  And
then she would be up on her feet and toiling hard as ever.  Where she
obtained this strength was the marvel to me.

“Think of the long rest this winter,” was her reply to my remonstrances.
“Why, we’ll be clamorous for something to do.”

We held a housewarming in my hut the night it was roofed.  It was the end
of the third day of a fierce storm which had swung around the compass
from the south-east to the north-west, and which was then blowing
directly in upon us.  The beaches of the outer cove were thundering with
the surf, and even in our land-locked inner cove a respectable sea was
breaking.  No high backbone of island sheltered us from the wind, and it
whistled and bellowed about the hut till at times I feared for the
strength of the walls.  The skin roof, stretched tightly as a drumhead, I
had thought, sagged and bellied with every gust; and innumerable
interstices in the walls, not so tightly stuffed with moss as Maud had
supposed, disclosed themselves.  Yet the seal-oil burned brightly and we
were warm and comfortable.

It was a pleasant evening indeed, and we voted that as a social function
on Endeavour Island it had not yet been eclipsed.  Our minds were at
ease.  Not only had we resigned ourselves to the bitter winter, but we
were prepared for it.  The seals could depart on their mysterious journey
into the south at any time, now, for all we cared; and the storms held no
terror for us.  Not only were we sure of being dry and warm and sheltered
from the wind, but we had the softest and most luxurious mattresses that
could be made from moss.  This had been Maud’s idea, and she had herself
jealously gathered all the moss.  This was to be my first night on the
mattress, and I knew I should sleep the sweeter because she had made it.

As she rose to go she turned to me with the whimsical way she had, and
said:

“Something is going to happen—is happening, for that matter.  I feel it.
Something is coming here, to us.  It is coming now.  I don’t know what,
but it is coming.”

“Good or bad?” I asked.

She shook her head.  “I don’t know, but it is there, somewhere.”

She pointed in the direction of the sea and wind.

“It’s a lee shore,” I laughed, “and I am sure I’d rather be here than
arriving, a night like this.”

“You are not frightened?” I asked, as I stepped to open the door for her.

Her eyes looked bravely into mine.

“And you feel well? perfectly well?”

“Never better,” was her answer.

We talked a little longer before she went.

“Good-night, Maud,” I said.

“Good-night, Humphrey,” she said.

This use of our given names had come about quite as a matter of course,
and was as unpremeditated as it was natural.  In that moment I could have
put my arms around her and drawn her to me.  I should certainly have done
so out in that world to which we belonged.  As it was, the situation
stopped there in the only way it could; but I was left alone in my little
hut, glowing warmly through and through with a pleasant satisfaction; and
I knew that a tie, or a tacit something, existed between us which had not
existed before.




CHAPTER XXXII


I awoke, oppressed by a mysterious sensation.  There seemed something
missing in my environment.  But the mystery and oppressiveness vanished
after the first few seconds of waking, when I identified the missing
something as the wind.  I had fallen asleep in that state of nerve
tension with which one meets the continuous shock of sound or movement,
and I had awakened, still tense, bracing myself to meet the pressure of
something which no longer bore upon me.

It was the first night I had spent under cover in several months, and I
lay luxuriously for some minutes under my blankets (for once not wet with
fog or spray), analysing, first, the effect produced upon me by the
cessation of the wind, and next, the joy which was mine from resting on
the mattress made by Maud’s hands.  When I had dressed and opened the
door, I heard the waves still lapping on the beach, garrulously attesting
the fury of the night.  It was a clear day, and the sun was shining.  I
had slept late, and I stepped outside with sudden energy, bent upon
making up lost time as befitted a dweller on Endeavour Island.

And when outside, I stopped short.  I believed my eyes without question,
and yet I was for the moment stunned by what they disclosed to me.
There, on the beach, not fifty feet away, bow on, dismasted, was a
black-hulled vessel.  Masts and booms, tangled with shrouds, sheets, and
rent canvas, were rubbing gently alongside.  I could have rubbed my eyes
as I looked.  There was the home-made galley we had built, the familiar
break of the poop, the low yacht-cabin scarcely rising above the rail.
It was the _Ghost_.

What freak of fortune had brought it here—here of all spots? what chance
of chances?  I looked at the bleak, inaccessible wall at my back and know
the profundity of despair.  Escape was hopeless, out of the question.  I
thought of Maud, asleep there in the hut we had reared; I remembered her
“Good-night, Humphrey”; “my woman, my mate,” went ringing through my
brain, but now, alas, it was a knell that sounded.  Then everything went
black before my eyes.

Possibly it was the fraction of a second, but I had no knowledge of how
long an interval had lapsed before I was myself again.  There lay the
_Ghost_, bow on to the beach, her splintered bowsprit projecting over the
sand, her tangled spars rubbing against her side to the lift of the
crooning waves.  Something must be done, must be done.

It came upon me suddenly, as strange, that nothing moved aboard.  Wearied
from the night of struggle and wreck, all hands were yet asleep, I
thought.  My next thought was that Maud and I might yet escape.  If we
could take to the boat and make round the point before any one awoke?  I
would call her and start.  My hand was lifted at her door to knock, when
I recollected the smallness of the island.  We could never hide ourselves
upon it.  There was nothing for us but the wide raw ocean.  I thought of
our snug little huts, our supplies of meat and oil and moss and firewood,
and I knew that we could never survive the wintry sea and the great
storms which were to come.

So I stood, with hesitant knuckle, without her door.  It was impossible,
impossible.  A wild thought of rushing in and killing her as she slept
rose in my mind.  And then, in a flash, the better solution came to me.
All hands were asleep.  Why not creep aboard the _Ghost_,—well I knew the
way to Wolf Larsen’s bunk,—and kill him in his sleep?  After that—well,
we would see.  But with him dead there was time and space in which to
prepare to do other things; and besides, whatever new situation arose, it
could not possibly be worse than the present one.

My knife was at my hip.  I returned to my hut for the shot-gun, made sure
it was loaded, and went down to the _Ghost_.  With some difficulty, and
at the expense of a wetting to the waist, I climbed aboard.  The
forecastle scuttle was open.  I paused to listen for the breathing of the
men, but there was no breathing.  I almost gasped as the thought came to
me: What if the _Ghost_ is deserted?  I listened more closely.  There was
no sound.  I cautiously descended the ladder.  The place had the empty
and musty feel and smell usual to a dwelling no longer inhabited.
Everywhere was a thick litter of discarded and ragged garments, old
sea-boots, leaky oilskins—all the worthless forecastle dunnage of a long
voyage.

Abandoned hastily, was my conclusion, as I ascended to the deck.  Hope
was alive again in my breast, and I looked about me with greater
coolness.  I noted that the boats were missing.  The steerage told the
same tale as the forecastle.  The hunters had packed their belongings
with similar haste.  The _Ghost_ was deserted.  It was Maud’s and mine.
I thought of the ship’s stores and the lazarette beneath the cabin, and
the idea came to me of surprising Maud with something nice for breakfast.

The reaction from my fear, and the knowledge that the terrible deed I had
come to do was no longer necessary, made me boyish and eager.  I went up
the steerage companion-way two steps at a time, with nothing distinct in
my mind except joy and the hope that Maud would sleep on until the
surprise breakfast was quite ready for her.  As I rounded the galley, a
new satisfaction was mine at thought of all the splendid cooking utensils
inside.  I sprang up the break of the poop, and saw—Wolf Larsen.  What of
my impetus and the stunning surprise, I clattered three or four steps
along the deck before I could stop myself.  He was standing in the
companion-way, only his head and shoulders visible, staring straight at
me.  His arms were resting on the half-open slide.  He made no movement
whatever—simply stood there, staring at me.

I began to tremble.  The old stomach sickness clutched me.  I put one
hand on the edge of the house to steady myself.  My lips seemed suddenly
dry and I moistened them against the need of speech.  Nor did I for an
instant take my eyes off him.  Neither of us spoke.  There was something
ominous in his silence, his immobility.  All my old fear of him returned
and by my new fear was increased an hundred-fold.  And still we stood, the
pair of us, staring at each other.

I was aware of the demand for action, and, my old helplessness strong
upon me, I was waiting for him to take the initiative.  Then, as the
moments went by, it came to me that the situation was analogous to the
one in which I had approached the long-maned bull, my intention of
clubbing obscured by fear until it became a desire to make him run.  So
it was at last impressed upon me that I was there, not to have Wolf
Larsen take the initiative, but to take it myself.

I cocked both barrels and levelled the shot-gun at him.  Had he moved,
attempted to drop down the companion-way, I know I would have shot him.
But he stood motionless and staring as before.  And as I faced him, with
levelled gun shaking in my hands, I had time to note the worn and haggard
appearance of his face.  It was as if some strong anxiety had wasted it.
The cheeks were sunken, and there was a wearied, puckered expression on
the brow.  And it seemed to me that his eyes were strange, not only the
expression, but the physical seeming, as though the optic nerves and
supporting muscles had suffered strain and slightly twisted the eyeballs.

All this I saw, and my brain now working rapidly, I thought a thousand
thoughts; and yet I could not pull the triggers.  I lowered the gun and
stepped to the corner of the cabin, primarily to relieve the tension on
my nerves and to make a new start, and incidentally to be closer.  Again
I raised the gun.  He was almost at arm’s length.  There was no hope for
him.  I was resolved.  There was no possible chance of missing him, no
matter how poor my marksmanship.  And yet I wrestled with myself and
could not pull the triggers.

“Well?” he demanded impatiently.

I strove vainly to force my fingers down on the triggers, and vainly I
strove to say something.

“Why don’t you shoot?” he asked.

I cleared my throat of a huskiness which prevented speech.  “Hump,” he
said slowly, “you can’t do it.  You are not exactly afraid.  You are
impotent.  Your conventional morality is stronger than you.  You are the
slave to the opinions which have credence among the people you have known
and have read about.  Their code has been drummed into your head from the
time you lisped, and in spite of your philosophy, and of what I have
taught you, it won’t let you kill an unarmed, unresisting man.”

“I know it,” I said hoarsely.

“And you know that I would kill an unarmed man as readily as I would
smoke a cigar,” he went on.  “You know me for what I am,—my worth in the
world by your standard.  You have called me snake, tiger, shark, monster,
and Caliban.  And yet, you little rag puppet, you little echoing
mechanism, you are unable to kill me as you would a snake or a shark,
because I have hands, feet, and a body shaped somewhat like yours.  Bah!
I had hoped better things of you, Hump.”

He stepped out of the companion-way and came up to me.

“Put down that gun.  I want to ask you some questions.  I haven’t had a
chance to look around yet.  What place is this?  How is the _Ghost_
lying?  How did you get wet?  Where’s Maud?—I beg your pardon, Miss
Brewster—or should I say, ‘Mrs. Van Weyden’?”

I had backed away from him, almost weeping at my inability to shoot him,
but not fool enough to put down the gun.  I hoped, desperately, that he
might commit some hostile act, attempt to strike me or choke me; for in
such way only I knew I could be stirred to shoot.

“This is Endeavour Island,” I said.

“Never heard of it,” he broke in.

“At least, that’s our name for it,” I amended.

“Our?” he queried.  “Who’s our?”

“Miss Brewster and myself.  And the _Ghost_ is lying, as you can see for
yourself, bow on to the beach.”

“There are seals here,” he said.  “They woke me up with their barking, or
I’d be sleeping yet.  I heard them when I drove in last night.  They were
the first warning that I was on a lee shore.  It’s a rookery, the kind of
a thing I’ve hunted for years.  Thanks to my brother Death, I’ve lighted
on a fortune.  It’s a mint.  What’s its bearings?”

“Haven’t the least idea,” I said.  “But you ought to know quite closely.
What were your last observations?”

He smiled inscrutably, but did not answer.

“Well, where’s all hands?” I asked.  “How does it come that you are
alone?”

I was prepared for him again to set aside my question, and was surprised
at the readiness of his reply.

“My brother got me inside forty-eight hours, and through no fault of
mine.  Boarded me in the night with only the watch on deck.  Hunters went
back on me.  He gave them a bigger lay.  Heard him offering it.  Did it
right before me.  Of course the crew gave me the go-by.  That was to be
expected.  All hands went over the side, and there I was, marooned on my
own vessel.  It was Death’s turn, and it’s all in the family anyway.”

“But how did you lose the masts?” I asked.

“Walk over and examine those lanyards,” he said, pointing to where the
mizzen-rigging should have been.

“They have been cut with a knife!” I exclaimed.

“Not quite,” he laughed.  “It was a neater job.  Look again.”

I looked.  The lanyards had been almost severed, with just enough left to
hold the shrouds till some severe strain should be put upon them.

“Cooky did that,” he laughed again.  “I know, though I didn’t spot him at
it.  Kind of evened up the score a bit.”

“Good for Mugridge!” I cried.

“Yes, that’s what I thought when everything went over the side.  Only I
said it on the other side of my mouth.”

“But what were you doing while all this was going on?” I asked.

“My best, you may be sure, which wasn’t much under the circumstances.”

I turned to re-examine Thomas Mugridge’s work.

“I guess I’ll sit down and take the sunshine,” I heard Wolf Larsen
saying.

There was a hint, just a slight hint, of physical feebleness in his
voice, and it was so strange that I looked quickly at him.  His hand was
sweeping nervously across his face, as though he were brushing away
cobwebs.  I was puzzled.  The whole thing was so unlike the Wolf Larsen I
had known.

“How are your headaches?” I asked.

“They still trouble me,” was his answer.  “I think I have one coming on
now.”

He slipped down from his sitting posture till he lay on the deck.  Then
he rolled over on his side, his head resting on the biceps of the under
arm, the forearm shielding his eyes from the sun.  I stood regarding him
wonderingly.

“Now’s your chance, Hump,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” I lied, for I thoroughly understood.

“Oh, nothing,” he added softly, as if he were drowsing; “only you’ve got
me where you want me.”

“No, I haven’t,” I retorted; “for I want you a few thousand miles away
from here.”

He chuckled, and thereafter spoke no more.  He did not stir as I passed
by him and went down into the cabin.  I lifted the trap in the floor, but
for some moments gazed dubiously into the darkness of the lazarette
beneath.  I hesitated to descend.  What if his lying down were a ruse?
Pretty, indeed, to be caught there like a rat.  I crept softly up the
companion-way and peeped at him.  He was lying as I had left him.  Again
I went below; but before I dropped into the lazarette I took the
precaution of casting down the door in advance.  At least there would be
no lid to the trap.  But it was all needless.  I regained the cabin with
a store of jams, sea-biscuits, canned meats, and such things,—all I could
carry,—and replaced the trap-door.

A peep at Wolf Larsen showed me that he had not moved.  A bright thought
struck me.  I stole into his state-room and possessed myself of his
revolvers.  There were no other weapons, though I thoroughly ransacked
the three remaining state-rooms.  To make sure, I returned and went
through the steerage and forecastle, and in the galley gathered up all
the sharp meat and vegetable knives.  Then I bethought me of the great
yachtsman’s knife he always carried, and I came to him and spoke to him,
first softly, then loudly.  He did not move.  I bent over and took it
from his pocket.  I breathed more freely.  He had no arms with which to
attack me from a distance; while I, armed, could always forestall him
should he attempt to grapple me with his terrible gorilla arms.

Filling a coffee-pot and frying-pan with part of my plunder, and taking
some chinaware from the cabin pantry, I left Wolf Larsen lying in the sun
and went ashore.

Maud was still asleep.  I blew up the embers (we had not yet arranged a
winter kitchen), and quite feverishly cooked the breakfast.  Toward the
end, I heard her moving about within the hut, making her toilet.  Just as
all was ready and the coffee poured, the door opened and she came forth.

“It’s not fair of you,” was her greeting.  “You are usurping one of my
prerogatives.  You know you I agreed that the cooking should be mine,
and—”

“But just this once,” I pleaded.

“If you promise not to do it again,” she smiled.  “Unless, of course, you
have grown tired of my poor efforts.”

To my delight she never once looked toward the beach, and I maintained
the banter with such success all unconsciously she sipped coffee from the
china cup, ate fried evaporated potatoes, and spread marmalade on her
biscuit.  But it could not last.  I saw the surprise that came over her.
She had discovered the china plate from which she was eating.  She looked
over the breakfast, noting detail after detail.  Then she looked at me,
and her face turned slowly toward the beach.

“Humphrey!” she said.

The old unnamable terror mounted into her eyes.

“Is—he?” she quavered.

I nodded my head.




CHAPTER XXXIII


We waited all day for Wolf Larsen to come ashore.  It was an intolerable
period of anxiety.  Each moment one or the other of us cast expectant
glances toward the _Ghost_.  But he did not come.  He did not even appear
on deck.

“Perhaps it is his headache,” I said.  “I left him lying on the poop.  He
may lie there all night.  I think I’ll go and see.”

Maud looked entreaty at me.

“It is all right,” I assured her.  “I shall take the revolvers.  You know
I collected every weapon on board.”

“But there are his arms, his hands, his terrible, terrible hands!” she
objected.  And then she cried, “Oh, Humphrey, I am afraid of him!  Don’t
go—please don’t go!”

She rested her hand appealingly on mine, and sent my pulse fluttering.
My heart was surely in my eyes for a moment.  The dear and lovely woman!
And she was so much the woman, clinging and appealing, sunshine and dew
to my manhood, rooting it deeper and sending through it the sap of a new
strength.  I was for putting my arm around her, as when in the midst of
the seal herd; but I considered, and refrained.

“I shall not take any risks,” I said.  “I’ll merely peep over the bow and
see.”

She pressed my hand earnestly and let me go.  But the space on deck where
I had left him lying was vacant.  He had evidently gone below.  That
night we stood alternate watches, one of us sleeping at a time; for there
was no telling what Wolf Larsen might do.  He was certainly capable of
anything.

The next day we waited, and the next, and still he made no sign.

“These headaches of his, these attacks,” Maud said, on the afternoon of
the fourth day; “Perhaps he is ill, very ill.  He may be dead.”

“Or dying,” was her afterthought when she had waited some time for me to
speak.

“Better so,” I answered.

“But think, Humphrey, a fellow-creature in his last lonely hour.”

“Perhaps,” I suggested.

“Yes, even perhaps,” she acknowledged.  “But we do not know.  It would be
terrible if he were.  I could never forgive myself.  We must do
something.”

“Perhaps,” I suggested again.

I waited, smiling inwardly at the woman of her which compelled a
solicitude for Wolf Larsen, of all creatures.  Where was her solicitude
for me, I thought,—for me whom she had been afraid to have merely peep
aboard?

She was too subtle not to follow the trend of my silence.  And she was as
direct as she was subtle.

“You must go aboard, Humphrey, and find out,” she said.  “And if you want
to laugh at me, you have my consent and forgiveness.”

I arose obediently and went down the beach.

“Do be careful,” she called after me.

I waved my arm from the forecastle head and dropped down to the deck.
Aft I walked to the cabin companion, where I contented myself with
hailing below.  Wolf Larsen answered, and as he started to ascend the
stairs I cocked my revolver.  I displayed it openly during our
conversation, but he took no notice of it.  He appeared the same,
physically, as when last I saw him, but he was gloomy and silent.  In
fact, the few words we spoke could hardly be called a conversation.  I
did not inquire why he had not been ashore, nor did he ask why I had not
come aboard.  His head was all right again, he said, and so, without
further parley, I left him.

Maud received my report with obvious relief, and the sight of smoke which
later rose in the galley put her in a more cheerful mood.  The next day,
and the next, we saw the galley smoke rising, and sometimes we caught
glimpses of him on the poop.  But that was all.  He made no attempt to
come ashore.  This we knew, for we still maintained our night-watches.
We were waiting for him to do something, to show his hand, so to say, and
his inaction puzzled and worried us.

A week of this passed by.  We had no other interest than Wolf Larsen, and
his presence weighed us down with an apprehension which prevented us from
doing any of the little things we had planned.

But at the end of the week the smoke ceased rising from the galley, and
he no longer showed himself on the poop.  I could see Maud’s solicitude
again growing, though she timidly—and even proudly, I think—forbore a
repetition of her request.  After all, what censure could be put upon
her?  She was divinely altruistic, and she was a woman.  Besides, I was
myself aware of hurt at thought of this man whom I had tried to kill,
dying alone with his fellow-creatures so near.  He was right.  The code
of my group was stronger than I.  The fact that he had hands, feet, and a
body shaped somewhat like mine, constituted a claim which I could not
ignore.

So I did not wait a second time for Maud to send me.  I discovered that
we stood in need of condensed milk and marmalade, and announced that I
was going aboard.  I could see that she wavered.  She even went so far as
to murmur that they were non-essentials and that my trip after them might
be inexpedient.  And as she had followed the trend of my silence, she now
followed the trend of my speech, and she knew that I was going aboard,
not because of condensed milk and marmalade, but because of her and of
her anxiety, which she knew she had failed to hide.

I took off my shoes when I gained the forecastle head, and went
noiselessly aft in my stocking feet.  Nor did I call this time from the
top of the companion-way.  Cautiously descending, I found the cabin
deserted.  The door to his state-room was closed.  At first I thought of
knocking, then I remembered my ostensible errand and resolved to carry it
out.  Carefully avoiding noise, I lifted the trap-door in the floor and
set it to one side.  The slop-chest, as well as the provisions, was
stored in the lazarette, and I took advantage of the opportunity to lay
in a stock of underclothing.

As I emerged from the lazarette I heard sounds in Wolf Larsen’s
state-room.  I crouched and listened.  The door-knob rattled.  Furtively,
instinctively, I slunk back behind the table and drew and cocked my
revolver.  The door swung open and he came forth.  Never had I seen so
profound a despair as that which I saw on his face,—the face of Wolf
Larsen the fighter, the strong man, the indomitable one.  For all the
world like a woman wringing her hands, he raised his clenched fists and
groaned.  One fist unclosed, and the open palm swept across his eyes as
though brushing away cobwebs.

“God!  God!” he groaned, and the clenched fists were raised again to the
infinite despair with which his throat vibrated.

It was horrible.  I was trembling all over, and I could feel the shivers
running up and down my spine and the sweat standing out on my forehead.
Surely there can be little in this world more awful than the spectacle of
a strong man in the moment when he is utterly weak and broken.

But Wolf Larsen regained control of himself by an exertion of his
remarkable will.  And it was exertion.  His whole frame shook with the
struggle.  He resembled a man on the verge of a fit.  His face strove to
compose itself, writhing and twisting in the effort till he broke down
again.  Once more the clenched fists went upward and he groaned.  He
caught his breath once or twice and sobbed.  Then he was successful.  I
could have thought him the old Wolf Larsen, and yet there was in his
movements a vague suggestion of weakness and indecision.  He started for
the companion-way, and stepped forward quite as I had been accustomed to
see him do; and yet again, in his very walk, there seemed that suggestion
of weakness and indecision.

I was now concerned with fear for myself.  The open trap lay directly in
his path, and his discovery of it would lead instantly to his discovery
of me.  I was angry with myself for being caught in so cowardly a
position, crouching on the floor.  There was yet time.  I rose swiftly to
my feet, and, I know, quite unconsciously assumed a defiant attitude.  He
took no notice of me.  Nor did he notice the open trap.  Before I could
grasp the situation, or act, he had walked right into the trap.  One foot
was descending into the opening, while the other foot was just on the
verge of beginning the uplift.  But when the descending foot missed the
solid flooring and felt vacancy beneath, it was the old Wolf Larsen and
the tiger muscles that made the falling body spring across the opening,
even as it fell, so that he struck on his chest and stomach, with arms
outstretched, on the floor of the opposite side.  The next instant he had
drawn up his legs and rolled clear.  But he rolled into my marmalade and
underclothes and against the trap-door.

The expression on his face was one of complete comprehension.  But before
I could guess what he had comprehended, he had dropped the trap-door into
place, closing the lazarette.  Then I understood.  He thought he had me
inside.  Also, he was blind, blind as a bat.  I watched him, breathing
carefully so that he should not hear me.  He stepped quickly to his
state-room.  I saw his hand miss the door-knob by an inch, quickly fumble
for it, and find it.  This was my chance.  I tiptoed across the cabin and
to the top of the stairs.  He came back, dragging a heavy sea-chest,
which he deposited on top of the trap.  Not content with this he fetched
a second chest and placed it on top of the first.  Then he gathered up
the marmalade and underclothes and put them on the table.  When he
started up the companion-way, I retreated, silently rolling over on top
of the cabin.

He shoved the slide part way back and rested his arms on it, his body
still in the companion-way.  His attitude was of one looking forward the
length of the schooner, or staring, rather, for his eyes were fixed and
unblinking.  I was only five feet away and directly in what should have
been his line of vision.  It was uncanny.  I felt myself a ghost, what of
my invisibility.  I waved my hand back and forth, of course without
effect; but when the moving shadow fell across his face I saw at once
that he was susceptible to the impression.  His face became more
expectant and tense as he tried to analyze and identify the impression.
He knew that he had responded to something from without, that his
sensibility had been touched by a changing something in his environment;
but what it was he could not discover.  I ceased waving my hand, so that
the shadow remained stationary.  He slowly moved his head back and forth
under it and turned from side to side, now in the sunshine, now in the
shade, feeling the shadow, as it were, testing it by sensation.

I, too, was busy, trying to reason out how he was aware of the existence
of so intangible a thing as a shadow.  If it were his eyeballs only that
were affected, or if his optic nerve were not wholly destroyed, the
explanation was simple.  If otherwise, then the only conclusion I could
reach was that the sensitive skin recognized the difference of
temperature between shade and sunshine.  Or, perhaps,—who can tell?—it
was that fabled sixth sense which conveyed to him the loom and feel of an
object close at hand.

Giving over his attempt to determine the shadow, he stepped on deck and
started forward, walking with a swiftness and confidence which surprised
me.  And still there was that hint of the feebleness of the blind in his
walk.  I knew it now for what it was.

To my amused chagrin, he discovered my shoes on the forecastle head and
brought them back with him into the galley.  I watched him build the fire
and set about cooking food for himself; then I stole into the cabin for
my marmalade and underclothes, slipped back past the galley, and climbed
down to the beach to deliver my barefoot report.




CHAPTER XXXIV


“It’s too bad the _Ghost_ has lost her masts.  Why we could sail away in
her.  Don’t you think we could, Humphrey?”

I sprang excitedly to my feet.

“I wonder, I wonder,” I repeated, pacing up and down.

Maud’s eyes were shining with anticipation as they followed me.  She had
such faith in me!  And the thought of it was so much added power.  I
remembered Michelet’s “To man, woman is as the earth was to her legendary
son; he has but to fall down and kiss her breast and he is strong again.”
For the first time I knew the wonderful truth of his words.  Why, I was
living them.  Maud was all this to me, an unfailing, source of strength
and courage.  I had but to look at her, or think of her, and be strong
again.

“It can be done, it can be done,” I was thinking and asserting aloud.
“What men have done, I can do; and if they have never done this before,
still I can do it.”

“What? for goodness’ sake,” Maud demanded.  “Do be merciful.  What is it
you can do?”

“We can do it,” I amended.  “Why, nothing else than put the masts back
into the _Ghost_ and sail away.”

“Humphrey!” she exclaimed.

And I felt as proud of my conception as if it were already a fact
accomplished.

“But how is it possible to be done?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” was my answer.  “I know only that I am capable of doing
anything these days.”

I smiled proudly at her—too proudly, for she dropped her eyes and was for
the moment silent.

“But there is Captain Larsen,” she objected.

“Blind and helpless,” I answered promptly, waving him aside as a straw.

“But those terrible hands of his!  You know how he leaped across the
opening of the lazarette.”

“And you know also how I crept about and avoided him,” I contended gaily.

“And lost your shoes.”

“You’d hardly expect them to avoid Wolf Larsen without my feet inside of
them.”

We both laughed, and then went seriously to work constructing the plan
whereby we were to step the masts of the _Ghost_ and return to the world.
I remembered hazily the physics of my school days, while the last few
months had given me practical experience with mechanical purchases.  I
must say, though, when we walked down to the _Ghost_ to inspect more
closely the task before us, that the sight of the great masts lying in
the water almost disheartened me.  Where were we to begin?  If there had
been one mast standing, something high up to which to fasten blocks and
tackles!  But there was nothing.  It reminded me of the problem of
lifting oneself by one’s boot-straps.  I understood the mechanics of
levers; but where was I to get a fulcrum?

There was the mainmast, fifteen inches in diameter at what was now the
butt, still sixty-five feet in length, and weighing, I roughly
calculated, at least three thousand pounds.  And then came the foremast,
larger in diameter, and weighing surely thirty-five hundred pounds.
Where was I to begin?  Maud stood silently by my side, while I evolved in
my mind the contrivance known among sailors as “shears.”  But, though
known to sailors, I invented it there on Endeavour Island.  By crossing
and lashing the ends of two spars, and then elevating them in the air
like an inverted “V,” I could get a point above the deck to which to make
fast my hoisting tackle.  To this hoisting tackle I could, if necessary,
attach a second hoisting tackle.  And then there was the windlass!

Maud saw that I had achieved a solution, and her eyes warmed
sympathetically.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Clear that raffle,” I answered, pointing to the tangled wreckage
overside.

Ah, the decisiveness, the very sound of the words, was good in my ears.
“Clear that raffle!”  Imagine so salty a phrase on the lips of the
Humphrey Van Weyden of a few months gone!

There must have been a touch of the melodramatic in my pose and voice,
for Maud smiled.  Her appreciation of the ridiculous was keen, and in all
things she unerringly saw and felt, where it existed, the touch of sham,
the overshading, the overtone.  It was this which had given poise and
penetration to her own work and made her of worth to the world.  The
serious critic, with the sense of humour and the power of expression,
must inevitably command the world’s ear.  And so it was that she had
commanded.  Her sense of humour was really the artist’s instinct for
proportion.

“I’m sure I’ve heard it before, somewhere, in books,” she murmured
gleefully.

I had an instinct for proportion myself, and I collapsed forthwith,
descending from the dominant pose of a master of matter to a state of
humble confusion which was, to say the least, very miserable.

Her hand leapt out at once to mine.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“No need to be,” I gulped.  “It does me good.  There’s too much of the
schoolboy in me.  All of which is neither here nor there.  What we’ve got
to do is actually and literally to clear that raffle.  If you’ll come
with me in the boat, we’ll get to work and straighten things out.”

“‘When the topmen clear the raffle with their clasp-knives in their
teeth,’” she quoted at me; and for the rest of the afternoon we made
merry over our labour.

Her task was to hold the boat in position while I worked at the tangle.
And such a tangle—halyards, sheets, guys, down-hauls, shrouds, stays, all
washed about and back and forth and through, and twined and knotted by
the sea.  I cut no more than was necessary, and what with passing the
long ropes under and around the booms and masts, of unreeving the
halyards and sheets, of coiling down in the boat and uncoiling in order
to pass through another knot in the bight, I was soon wet to the skin.

The sails did require some cutting, and the canvas, heavy with water,
tried my strength severely; but I succeeded before nightfall in getting
it all spread out on the beach to dry.  We were both very tired when we
knocked off for supper, and we had done good work, too, though to the eye
it appeared insignificant.

Next morning, with Maud as able assistant, I went into the hold of the
_Ghost_ to clear the steps of the mast-butts.  We had no more than begun
work when the sound of my knocking and hammering brought Wolf Larsen.

“Hello below!” he cried down the open hatch.

The sound of his voice made Maud quickly draw close to me, as for
protection, and she rested one hand on my arm while we parleyed.

“Hello on deck,” I replied.  “Good-morning to you.”

“What are you doing down there?” he demanded.  “Trying to scuttle my ship
for me?”

“Quite the opposite; I’m repairing her,” was my answer.

“But what in thunder are you repairing?”  There was puzzlement in his
voice.

“Why, I’m getting everything ready for re-stepping the masts,” I replied
easily, as though it were the simplest project imaginable.

“It seems as though you’re standing on your own legs at last, Hump,” we
heard him say; and then for some time he was silent.

“But I say, Hump,” he called down.  “You can’t do it.”

“Oh, yes, I can,” I retorted.  “I’m doing it now.”

“But this is my vessel, my particular property.  What if I forbid you?”

“You forget,” I replied.  “You are no longer the biggest bit of the
ferment.  You were, once, and able to eat me, as you were pleased to
phrase it; but there has been a diminishing, and I am now able to eat
you.  The yeast has grown stale.”

He gave a short, disagreeable laugh.  “I see you’re working my philosophy
back on me for all it is worth.  But don’t make the mistake of
under-estimating me.  For your own good I warn you.”

“Since when have you become a philanthropist?” I queried.  “Confess, now,
in warning me for my own good, that you are very consistent.”

He ignored my sarcasm, saying, “Suppose I clap the hatch on, now?  You
won’t fool me as you did in the lazarette.”

“Wolf Larsen,” I said sternly, for the first time addressing him by this
his most familiar name, “I am unable to shoot a helpless, unresisting
man.  You have proved that to my satisfaction as well as yours.  But I
warn you now, and not so much for your own good as for mine, that I shall
shoot you the moment you attempt a hostile act.  I can shoot you now, as
I stand here; and if you are so minded, just go ahead and try to clap on
the hatch.”

“Nevertheless, I forbid you, I distinctly forbid your tampering with my
ship.”

“But, man!” I expostulated, “you advance the fact that it is your ship as
though it were a moral right.  You have never considered moral rights in
your dealings with others.  You surely do not dream that I’ll consider
them in dealing with you?”

I had stepped underneath the open hatchway so that I could see him.  The
lack of expression on his face, so different from when I had watched him
unseen, was enhanced by the unblinking, staring eyes.  It was not a
pleasant face to look upon.

“And none so poor, not even Hump, to do him reverence,” he sneered.

The sneer was wholly in his voice.  His face remained expressionless as
ever.

“How do you do, Miss Brewster,” he said suddenly, after a pause.

I started.  She had made no noise whatever, had not even moved.  Could it
be that some glimmer of vision remained to him? or that his vision was
coming back?

“How do you do, Captain Larsen,” she answered.  “Pray, how did you know I
was here?”

“Heard you breathing, of course.  I say, Hump’s improving, don’t you
think so?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, smiling at me.  “I have never seen him
otherwise.”

“You should have seen him before, then.”

“Wolf Larsen, in large doses,” I murmured, “before and after taking.”

“I want to tell you again, Hump,” he said threateningly, “that you’d
better leave things alone.”

“But don’t you care to escape as well as we?” I asked incredulously.

“No,” was his answer.  “I intend dying here.”

“Well, we don’t,” I concluded defiantly, beginning again my knocking and
hammering.




CHAPTER XXXV


Next day, the mast-steps clear and everything in readiness, we started to
get the two topmasts aboard.  The maintopmast was over thirty feet in
length, the foretopmast nearly thirty, and it was of these that I
intended making the shears.  It was puzzling work.  Fastening one end of
a heavy tackle to the windlass, and with the other end fast to the butt
of the foretopmast, I began to heave.  Maud held the turn on the windlass
and coiled down the slack.

We were astonished at the ease with which the spar was lifted.  It was an
improved crank windlass, and the purchase it gave was enormous.  Of
course, what it gave us in power we paid for in distance; as many times
as it doubled my strength, that many times was doubled the length of rope
I heaved in.  The tackle dragged heavily across the rail, increasing its
drag as the spar arose more and more out of the water, and the exertion
on the windlass grew severe.

But when the butt of the topmast was level with the rail, everything came
to a standstill.

“I might have known it,” I said impatiently.  “Now we have to do it all
over again.”

“Why not fasten the tackle part way down the mast?” Maud suggested.

“It’s what I should have done at first,” I answered, hugely disgusted
with myself.

Slipping off a turn, I lowered the mast back into the water and fastened
the tackle a third of the way down from the butt.  In an hour, what of
this and of rests between the heaving, I had hoisted it to the point
where I could hoist no more.  Eight feet of the butt was above the rail,
and I was as far away as ever from getting the spar on board.  I sat down
and pondered the problem.  It did not take long.  I sprang jubilantly to
my feet.

“Now I have it!” I cried.  “I ought to make the tackle fast at the point
of balance.  And what we learn of this will serve us with everything else
we have to hoist aboard.”

Once again I undid all my work by lowering the mast into the water.  But
I miscalculated the point of balance, so that when I heaved the top of
the mast came up instead of the butt.  Maud looked despair, but I laughed
and said it would do just as well.

Instructing her how to hold the turn and be ready to slack away at
command, I laid hold of the mast with my hands and tried to balance it
inboard across the rail.  When I thought I had it I cried to her to slack
away; but the spar righted, despite my efforts, and dropped back toward
the water.  Again I heaved it up to its old position, for I had now
another idea.  I remembered the watch-tackle—a small double and single
block affair—and fetched it.

While I was rigging it between the top of the spar and the opposite rail,
Wolf Larsen came on the scene.  We exchanged nothing more than
good-mornings, and, though he could not see, he sat on the rail out of
the way and followed by the sound all that I did.

Again instructing Maud to slack away at the windlass when I gave the
word, I proceeded to heave on the watch-tackle.  Slowly the mast swung in
until it balanced at right angles across the rail; and then I discovered
to my amazement that there was no need for Maud to slack away.  In fact,
the very opposite was necessary.  Making the watch-tackle fast, I hove on
the windlass and brought in the mast, inch by inch, till its top tilted
down to the deck and finally its whole length lay on the deck.

I looked at my watch.  It was twelve o’clock.  My back was aching sorely,
and I felt extremely tired and hungry.  And there on the deck was a
single stick of timber to show for a whole morning’s work.  For the first
time I thoroughly realized the extent of the task before us.  But I was
learning, I was learning.  The afternoon would show far more
accomplished.  And it did; for we returned at one o’clock, rested and
strengthened by a hearty dinner.

In less than an hour I had the maintopmast on deck and was constructing
the shears.  Lashing the two topmasts together, and making allowance for
their unequal length, at the point of intersection I attached the double
block of the main throat-halyards.  This, with the single block and the
throat-halyards themselves, gave me a hoisting tackle.  To prevent the
butts of the masts from slipping on the deck, I nailed down thick cleats.
Everything in readiness, I made a line fast to the apex of the shears and
carried it directly to the windlass.  I was growing to have faith in that
windlass, for it gave me power beyond all expectation.  As usual, Maud
held the turn while I heaved.  The shears rose in the air.

Then I discovered I had forgotten guy-ropes.  This necessitated my
climbing the shears, which I did twice, before I finished guying it fore
and aft and to either side.  Twilight had set in by the time this was
accomplished.  Wolf Larsen, who had sat about and listened all afternoon
and never opened his mouth, had taken himself off to the galley and
started his supper.  I felt quite stiff across the small of the back, so
much so that I straightened up with an effort and with pain.  I looked
proudly at my work.  It was beginning to show.  I was wild with desire,
like a child with a new toy, to hoist something with my shears.

“I wish it weren’t so late,” I said.  “I’d like to see how it works.”

“Don’t be a glutton, Humphrey,” Maud chided me.  “Remember, to-morrow is
coming, and you’re so tired now that you can hardly stand.”

“And you?” I said, with sudden solicitude.  “You must be very tired.  You
have worked hard and nobly.  I am proud of you, Maud.”

“Not half so proud as I am of you, nor with half the reason,” she
answered, looking me straight in the eyes for a moment with an expression
in her own and a dancing, tremulous light which I had not seen before and
which gave me a pang of quick delight, I know not why, for I did not
understand it.  Then she dropped her eyes, to lift them again, laughing.

“If our friends could see us now,” she said.  “Look at us.  Have you ever
paused for a moment to consider our appearance?”

“Yes, I have considered yours, frequently,” I answered, puzzling over
what I had seen in her eyes and puzzled by her sudden change of subject.

“Mercy!” she cried.  “And what do I look like, pray?”

“A scarecrow, I’m afraid,” I replied.  “Just glance at your draggled
skirts, for instance.  Look at those three-cornered tears.  And such a
waist!  It would not require a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that you have
been cooking over a camp-fire, to say nothing of trying out seal-blubber.
And to cap it all, that cap!  And all that is the woman who wrote ‘A Kiss
Endured.’”

She made me an elaborate and stately courtesy, and said, “As for you,
sir—”

And yet, through the five minutes of banter which followed, there was a
serious something underneath the fun which I could not but relate to the
strange and fleeting expression I had caught in her eyes.  What was it?
Could it be that our eyes were speaking beyond the will of our speech?
My eyes had spoken, I knew, until I had found the culprits out and
silenced them.  This had occurred several times.  But had she seen the
clamour in them and understood?  And had her eyes so spoken to me?  What
else could that expression have meant—that dancing, tremulous light, and
a something more which words could not describe.  And yet it could not
be.  It was impossible.  Besides, I was not skilled in the speech of
eyes.  I was only Humphrey Van Weyden, a bookish fellow who loved.  And
to love, and to wait and win love, that surely was glorious enough for
me.  And thus I thought, even as we chaffed each other’s appearance,
until we arrived ashore and there were other things to think about.

“It’s a shame, after working hard all day, that we cannot have an
uninterrupted night’s sleep,” I complained, after supper.

“But there can be no danger now? from a blind man?” she queried.

“I shall never be able to trust him,” I averred, “and far less now that
he is blind.  The liability is that his part helplessness will make him
more malignant than ever.  I know what I shall do to-morrow, the first
thing—run out a light anchor and kedge the schooner off the beach.  And
each night when we come ashore in the boat, Mr. Wolf Larsen will be left
a prisoner on board.  So this will be the last night we have to stand
watch, and because of that it will go the easier.”

We were awake early and just finishing breakfast as daylight came.

“Oh, Humphrey!” I heard Maud cry in dismay and suddenly stop.

I looked at her.  She was gazing at the _Ghost_.  I followed her gaze,
but could see nothing unusual.  She looked at me, and I looked inquiry
back.

“The shears,” she said, and her voice trembled.

I had forgotten their existence.  I looked again, but could not see them.

“If he has—” I muttered savagely.

She put her hand sympathetically on mine, and said, “You will have to
begin over again.”

“Oh, believe me, my anger means nothing; I could not hurt a fly,” I
smiled back bitterly.  “And the worst of it is, he knows it.  You are
right.  If he has destroyed the shears, I shall do nothing except begin
over again.”

“But I’ll stand my watch on board hereafter,” I blurted out a moment
later.  “And if he interferes—”

“But I dare not stay ashore all night alone,” Maud was saying when I came
back to myself.  “It would be so much nicer if he would be friendly with
us and help us.  We could all live comfortably aboard.”

“We will,” I asserted, still savagely, for the destruction of my beloved
shears had hit me hard.  “That is, you and I will live aboard, friendly
or not with Wolf Larsen.”

“It’s childish,” I laughed later, “for him to do such things, and for me
to grow angry over them, for that matter.”

But my heart smote me when we climbed aboard and looked at the havoc he
had done.  The shears were gone altogether.  The guys had been slashed
right and left.  The throat-halyards which I had rigged were cut across
through every part.  And he knew I could not splice.  A thought struck
me.  I ran to the windlass.  It would not work.  He had broken it.  We
looked at each other in consternation.  Then I ran to the side.  The
masts, booms, and gaffs I had cleared were gone.  He had found the lines
which held them, and cast them adrift.

Tears were in Maud’s eyes, and I do believe they were for me.  I could
have wept myself.  Where now was our project of remasting the _Ghost_?
He had done his work well.  I sat down on the hatch-combing and rested my
chin on my hands in black despair.

“He deserves to die,” I cried out; “and God forgive me, I am not man
enough to be his executioner.”

But Maud was by my side, passing her hand soothingly through my hair as
though I were a child, and saying, “There, there; it will all come right.
We are in the right, and it must come right.”

I remembered Michelet and leaned my head against her; and truly I became
strong again.  The blessed woman was an unfailing fount of power to me.
What did it matter?  Only a set-back, a delay.  The tide could not have
carried the masts far to seaward, and there had been no wind.  It meant
merely more work to find them and tow them back.  And besides, it was a
lesson.  I knew what to expect.  He might have waited and destroyed our
work more effectually when we had more accomplished.

“Here he comes now,” she whispered.

I glanced up.  He was strolling leisurely along the poop on the port
side.

“Take no notice of him,” I whispered.  “He’s coming to see how we take
it.  Don’t let him know that we know.  We can deny him that satisfaction.
Take off your shoes—that’s right—and carry them in your hand.”

And then we played hide-and-seek with the blind man.  As he came up the
port side we slipped past on the starboard; and from the poop we watched
him turn and start aft on our track.

He must have known, somehow, that we were on board, for he said
“Good-morning” very confidently, and waited, for the greeting to be
returned.  Then he strolled aft, and we slipped forward.

“Oh, I know you’re aboard,” he called out, and I could see him listen
intently after he had spoken.

It reminded me of the great hoot-owl, listening, after its booming cry,
for the stir of its frightened prey.  But we did not stir, and we moved
only when he moved.  And so we dodged about the deck, hand in hand, like
a couple of children chased by a wicked ogre, till Wolf Larsen, evidently
in disgust, left the deck for the cabin.  There was glee in our eyes, and
suppressed titters in our mouths, as we put on our shoes and clambered
over the side into the boat.  And as I looked into Maud’s clear brown
eyes I forgot the evil he had done, and I knew only that I loved her, and
that because of her the strength was mine to win our way back to the
world.




CHAPTER XXXVI


For two days Maud and I ranged the sea and explored the beaches in search
of the missing masts.  But it was not till the third day that we found
them, all of them, the shears included, and, of all perilous places, in
the pounding surf of the grim south-western promontory.  And how we
worked!  At the dark end of the first day we returned, exhausted, to our
little cove, towing the mainmast behind us.  And we had been compelled to
row, in a dead calm, practically every inch of the way.

Another day of heart-breaking and dangerous toil saw us in camp with the
two topmasts to the good.  The day following I was desperate, and I
rafted together the foremast, the fore and main booms, and the fore and
main gaffs.  The wind was favourable, and I had thought to tow them back
under sail, but the wind baffled, then died away, and our progress with
the oars was a snail’s pace.  And it was such dispiriting effort.  To
throw one’s whole strength and weight on the oars and to feel the boat
checked in its forward lunge by the heavy drag behind, was not exactly
exhilarating.

Night began to fall, and to make matters worse, the wind sprang up ahead.
Not only did all forward motion cease, but we began to drift back and out
to sea.  I struggled at the oars till I was played out.  Poor Maud, whom
I could never prevent from working to the limit of her strength, lay
weakly back in the stern-sheets.  I could row no more.  My bruised and
swollen hands could no longer close on the oar handles.  My wrists and
arms ached intolerably, and though I had eaten heartily of a
twelve-o’clock lunch, I had worked so hard that I was faint from hunger.

I pulled in the oars and bent forward to the line which held the tow.
But Maud’s hand leaped out restrainingly to mine.

“What are you going to do?” she asked in a strained, tense voice.

“Cast it off,” I answered, slipping a turn of the rope.

But her fingers closed on mine.

“Please don’t,” she begged.

“It is useless,” I answered.  “Here is night and the wind blowing us off
the land.”

“But think, Humphrey.  If we cannot sail away on the _Ghost_, we may
remain for years on the island—for life even.  If it has never been
discovered all these years, it may never be discovered.”

“You forget the boat we found on the beach,” I reminded her.

“It was a seal-hunting boat,” she replied, “and you know perfectly well
that if the men had escaped they would have been back to make their
fortunes from the rookery.  You know they never escaped.”

I remained silent, undecided.

“Besides,” she added haltingly, “it’s your idea, and I want to see you
succeed.”

Now I could harden my heart.  As soon as she put it on a flattering
personal basis, generosity compelled me to deny her.

“Better years on the island than to die to-night, or to-morrow, or the
next day, in the open boat.  We are not prepared to brave the sea.  We
have no food, no water, no blankets, nothing.  Why, you’d not survive the
night without blankets: I know how strong you are.  You are shivering
now.”

“It is only nervousness,” she answered.  “I am afraid you will cast off
the masts in spite of me.”

“Oh, please, please, Humphrey, don’t!” she burst out, a moment later.

And so it ended, with the phrase she knew had all power over me.  We
shivered miserably throughout the night.  Now and again I fitfully slept,
but the pain of the cold always aroused me.  How Maud could stand it was
beyond me.  I was too tired to thrash my arms about and warm myself, but
I found strength time and again to chafe her hands and feet to restore
the circulation.  And still she pleaded with me not to cast off the
masts.  About three in the morning she was caught by a cold cramp, and
after I had rubbed her out of that she became quite numb.  I was
frightened.  I got out the oars and made her row, though she was so weak
I thought she would faint at every stroke.

Morning broke, and we looked long in the growing light for our island.
At last it showed, small and black, on the horizon, fully fifteen miles
away.  I scanned the sea with my glasses.  Far away in the south-west I
could see a dark line on the water, which grew even as I looked at it.

“Fair wind!” I cried in a husky voice I did not recognize as my own.

Maud tried to reply, but could not speak.  Her lips were blue with cold,
and she was hollow-eyed—but oh, how bravely her brown eyes looked at me!
How piteously brave!

Again I fell to chafing her hands and to moving her arms up and down and
about until she could thrash them herself.  Then I compelled her to stand
up, and though she would have fallen had I not supported her, I forced
her to walk back and forth the several steps between the thwart and the
stern-sheets, and finally to spring up and down.

“Oh, you brave, brave woman,” I said, when I saw the life coming back
into her face.  “Did you know that you were brave?”

“I never used to be,” she answered.  “I was never brave till I knew you.
It is you who have made me brave.”

“Nor I, until I knew you,” I answered.

She gave me a quick look, and again I caught that dancing, tremulous
light and something more in her eyes.  But it was only for the moment.
Then she smiled.

“It must have been the conditions,” she said; but I knew she was wrong,
and I wondered if she likewise knew.  Then the wind came, fair and fresh,
and the boat was soon labouring through a heavy sea toward the island.
At half-past three in the afternoon we passed the south-western
promontory.  Not only were we hungry, but we were now suffering from
thirst.  Our lips were dry and cracked, nor could we longer moisten them
with our tongues.  Then the wind slowly died down.  By night it was dead
calm and I was toiling once more at the oars—but weakly, most weakly.  At
two in the morning the boat’s bow touched the beach of our own inner cove
and I staggered out to make the painter fast.  Maud could not stand, nor
had I strength to carry her.  I fell in the sand with her, and, when I
had recovered, contented myself with putting my hands under her shoulders
and dragging her up the beach to the hut.

The next day we did no work.  In fact, we slept till three in the
afternoon, or at least I did, for I awoke to find Maud cooking dinner.
Her power of recuperation was wonderful.  There was something tenacious
about that lily-frail body of hers, a clutch on existence which one could
not reconcile with its patent weakness.

“You know I was travelling to Japan for my health,” she said, as we
lingered at the fire after dinner and delighted in the movelessness of
loafing.  “I was not very strong.  I never was.  The doctors recommended
a sea voyage, and I chose the longest.”

“You little knew what you were choosing,” I laughed.

“But I shall be a different women for the experience, as well as a
stronger woman,” she answered; “and, I hope a better woman.  At least I
shall understand a great deal more of life.”

Then, as the short day waned, we fell to discussing Wolf Larsen’s
blindness.  It was inexplicable.  And that it was grave, I instanced his
statement that he intended to stay and die on Endeavour Island.  When he,
strong man that he was, loving life as he did, accepted his death, it was
plain that he was troubled by something more than mere blindness.  There
had been his terrific headaches, and we were agreed that it was some sort
of brain break-down, and that in his attacks he endured pain beyond our
comprehension.

I noticed as we talked over his condition, that Maud’s sympathy went out
to him more and more; yet I could not but love her for it, so sweetly
womanly was it.  Besides, there was no false sentiment about her feeling.
She was agreed that the most rigorous treatment was necessary if we were
to escape, though she recoiled at the suggestion that I might some time
be compelled to take his life to save my own—“our own,” she put it.

In the morning we had breakfast and were at work by daylight.  I found a
light kedge anchor in the fore-hold, where such things were kept; and
with a deal of exertion got it on deck and into the boat.  With a long
running-line coiled down in the stem, I rowed well out into our little
cove and dropped the anchor into the water.  There was no wind, the tide
was high, and the schooner floated.  Casting off the shore-lines, I
kedged her out by main strength (the windlass being broken), till she
rode nearly up and down to the small anchor—too small to hold her in any
breeze.  So I lowered the big starboard anchor, giving plenty of slack;
and by afternoon I was at work on the windlass.

Three days I worked on that windlass.  Least of all things was I a
mechanic, and in that time I accomplished what an ordinary machinist
would have done in as many hours.  I had to learn my tools to begin with,
and every simple mechanical principle which such a man would have at his
finger ends I had likewise to learn.  And at the end of three days I had
a windlass which worked clumsily.  It never gave the satisfaction the old
windlass had given, but it worked and made my work possible.

In half a day I got the two topmasts aboard and the shears rigged and
guyed as before.  And that night I slept on board and on deck beside my
work.  Maud, who refused to stay alone ashore, slept in the forecastle.
Wolf Larsen had sat about, listening to my repairing the windlass and
talking with Maud and me upon indifferent subjects.  No reference was
made on either side to the destruction of the shears; nor did he say
anything further about my leaving his ship alone.  But still I had feared
him, blind and helpless and listening, always listening, and I never let
his strong arms get within reach of me while I worked.

On this night, sleeping under my beloved shears, I was aroused by his
footsteps on the deck.  It was a starlight night, and I could see the
bulk of him dimly as he moved about.  I rolled out of my blankets and
crept noiselessly after him in my stocking feet.  He had armed himself
with a draw-knife from the tool-locker, and with this he prepared to cut
across the throat-halyards I had again rigged to the shears.  He felt the
halyards with his hands and discovered that I had not made them fast.
This would not do for a draw-knife, so he laid hold of the running part,
hove taut, and made fast.  Then he prepared to saw across with the
draw-knife.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” I said quietly.

He heard the click of my pistol and laughed.

“Hello, Hump,” he said.  “I knew you were here all the time.  You can’t
fool my ears.”

“That’s a lie, Wolf Larsen,” I said, just as quietly as before.
“However, I am aching for a chance to kill you, so go ahead and cut.”

“You have the chance always,” he sneered.

“Go ahead and cut,” I threatened ominously.

“I’d rather disappoint you,” he laughed, and turned on his heel and went
aft.

“Something must be done, Humphrey,” Maud said, next morning, when I had
told her of the night’s occurrence.  “If he has liberty, he may do
anything.  He may sink the vessel, or set fire to it.  There is no
telling what he may do.  We must make him a prisoner.”

“But how?” I asked, with a helpless shrug.  “I dare not come within reach
of his arms, and he knows that so long as his resistance is passive I
cannot shoot him.”

“There must be some way,” she contended.  “Let me think.”

“There is one way,” I said grimly.

She waited.

I picked up a seal-club.

“It won’t kill him,” I said.  “And before he could recover I’d have him
bound hard and fast.”

She shook her head with a shudder.  “No, not that.  There must be some
less brutal way.  Let us wait.”

But we did not have to wait long, and the problem solved itself.  In the
morning, after several trials, I found the point of balance in the
foremast and attached my hoisting tackle a few feet above it.  Maud held
the turn on the windlass and coiled down while I heaved.  Had the
windlass been in order it would not have been so difficult; as it was, I
was compelled to apply all my weight and strength to every inch of the
heaving.  I had to rest frequently.  In truth, my spells of resting were
longer than those of working.  Maud even contrived, at times when all my
efforts could not budge the windlass, to hold the turn with one hand and
with the other to throw the weight of her slim body to my assistance.

At the end of an hour the single and double blocks came together at the
top of the shears.  I could hoist no more.  And yet the mast was not
swung entirely inboard.  The butt rested against the outside of the port
rail, while the top of the mast overhung the water far beyond the
starboard rail.  My shears were too short.  All my work had been for
nothing.  But I no longer despaired in the old way.  I was acquiring more
confidence in myself and more confidence in the possibilities of
windlasses, shears, and hoisting tackles.  There was a way in which it
could be done, and it remained for me to find that way.

While I was considering the problem, Wolf Larsen came on deck.  We
noticed something strange about him at once.  The indecisiveness, or
feebleness, of his movements was more pronounced.  His walk was actually
tottery as he came down the port side of the cabin.  At the break of the
poop he reeled, raised one hand to his eyes with the familiar brushing
gesture, and fell down the steps—still on his feet—to the main deck,
across which he staggered, falling and flinging out his arms for support.
He regained his balance by the steerage companion-way and stood there
dizzily for a space, when he suddenly crumpled up and collapsed, his legs
bending under him as he sank to the deck.

“One of his attacks,” I whispered to Maud.

She nodded her head; and I could see sympathy warm in her eyes.

We went up to him, but he seemed unconscious, breathing spasmodically.
She took charge of him, lifting his head to keep the blood out of it and
despatching me to the cabin for a pillow.  I also brought blankets, and
we made him comfortable.  I took his pulse.  It beat steadily and strong,
and was quite normal.  This puzzled me.  I became suspicious.

“What if he should be feigning this?” I asked, still holding his wrist.

Maud shook her head, and there was reproof in her eyes.  But just then
the wrist I held leaped from my hand, and the hand clasped like a steel
trap about my wrist.  I cried aloud in awful fear, a wild inarticulate
cry; and I caught one glimpse of his face, malignant and triumphant, as
his other hand compassed my body and I was drawn down to him in a
terrible grip.

My wrist was released, but his other arm, passed around my back, held
both my arms so that I could not move.  His free hand went to my throat,
and in that moment I knew the bitterest foretaste of death earned by
one’s own idiocy.  Why had I trusted myself within reach of those
terrible arms?  I could feel other hands at my throat.  They were Maud’s
hands, striving vainly to tear loose the hand that was throttling me.
She gave it up, and I heard her scream in a way that cut me to the soul,
for it was a woman’s scream of fear and heart-breaking despair.  I had
heard it before, during the sinking of the _Martinez_.

My face was against his chest and I could not see, but I heard Maud turn
and run swiftly away along the deck.  Everything was happening quickly.
I had not yet had a glimmering of unconsciousness, and it seemed that an
interminable period of time was lapsing before I heard her feet flying
back.  And just then I felt the whole man sink under me.  The breath was
leaving his lungs and his chest was collapsing under my weight.  Whether
it was merely the expelled breath, or his consciousness of his growing
impotence, I know not, but his throat vibrated with a deep groan.  The
hand at my throat relaxed.  I breathed.  It fluttered and tightened
again.  But even his tremendous will could not overcome the dissolution
that assailed it.  That will of his was breaking down.  He was fainting.

Maud’s footsteps were very near as his hand fluttered for the last time
and my throat was released.  I rolled off and over to the deck on my
back, gasping and blinking in the sunshine.  Maud was pale but
composed,—my eyes had gone instantly to her face,—and she was looking at
me with mingled alarm and relief.  A heavy seal-club in her hand caught
my eyes, and at that moment she followed my gaze down to it.  The club
dropped from her hand as though it had suddenly stung her, and at the
same moment my heart surged with a great joy.  Truly she was my woman, my
mate-woman, fighting with me and for me as the mate of a caveman would
have fought, all the primitive in her aroused, forgetful of her culture,
hard under the softening civilization of the only life she had ever
known.

“Dear woman!” I cried, scrambling to my feet.

The next moment she was in my arms, weeping convulsively on my shoulder
while I clasped her close.  I looked down at the brown glory of her hair,
glinting gems in the sunshine far more precious to me than those in the
treasure-chests of kings.  And I bent my head and kissed her hair softly,
so softly that she did not know.

Then sober thought came to me.  After all, she was only a woman, crying
her relief, now that the danger was past, in the arms of her protector or
of the one who had been endangered.  Had I been father or brother, the
situation would have been in nowise different.  Besides, time and place
were not meet, and I wished to earn a better right to declare my love.
So once again I softly kissed her hair as I felt her receding from my
clasp.

“It was a real attack this time,” I said: “another shock like the one
that made him blind.  He feigned at first, and in doing so brought it
on.”

Maud was already rearranging his pillow.

“No,” I said, “not yet.  Now that I have him helpless, helpless he shall
remain.  From this day we live in the cabin.  Wolf Larsen shall live in
the steerage.”

I caught him under the shoulders and dragged him to the companion-way.
At my direction Maud fetched a rope.  Placing this under his shoulders, I
balanced him across the threshold and lowered him down the steps to the
floor.  I could not lift him directly into a bunk, but with Maud’s help I
lifted first his shoulders and head, then his body, balanced him across
the edge, and rolled him into a lower bunk.

But this was not to be all.  I recollected the handcuffs in his
state-room, which he preferred to use on sailors instead of the ancient
and clumsy ship irons.  So, when we left him, he lay handcuffed hand and
foot.  For the first time in many days I breathed freely.  I felt
strangely light as I came on deck, as though a weight had been lifted off
my shoulders.  I felt, also, that Maud and I had drawn more closely
together.  And I wondered if she, too, felt it, as we walked along the
deck side by side to where the stalled foremast hung in the shears.




CHAPTER XXXVII


At once we moved aboard the _Ghost_, occupying our old state-rooms and
cooking in the galley.  The imprisonment of Wolf Larsen had happened most
opportunely, for what must have been the Indian summer of this high
latitude was gone and drizzling stormy weather had set in.  We were very
comfortable, and the inadequate shears, with the foremast suspended from
them, gave a business-like air to the schooner and a promise of
departure.

And now that we had Wolf Larsen in irons, how little did we need it!
Like his first attack, his second had been accompanied by serious
disablement.  Maud made the discovery in the afternoon while trying to
give him nourishment.  He had shown signs of consciousness, and she had
spoken to him, eliciting no response.  He was lying on his left side at
the time, and in evident pain.  With a restless movement he rolled his
head around, clearing his left ear from the pillow against which it had
been pressed.  At once he heard and answered her, and at once she came to
me.

Pressing the pillow against his left ear, I asked him if he heard me, but
he gave no sign.  Removing the pillow and, repeating the question he
answered promptly that he did.

“Do you know you are deaf in the right ear?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered in a low, strong voice, “and worse than that.  My
whole right side is affected.  It seems asleep.  I cannot move arm or
leg.”

“Feigning again?” I demanded angrily.

He shook his head, his stern mouth shaping the strangest, twisted smile.
It was indeed a twisted smile, for it was on the left side only, the
facial muscles of the right side moving not at all.

“That was the last play of the Wolf,” he said.  “I am paralysed.  I shall
never walk again.  Oh, only on the other side,” he added, as though
divining the suspicious glance I flung at his left leg, the knee of which
had just then drawn up, and elevated the blankets.

“It’s unfortunate,” he continued.  “I’d liked to have done for you first,
Hump.  And I thought I had that much left in me.”

“But why?” I asked; partly in horror, partly out of curiosity.

Again his stern mouth framed the twisted smile, as he said:

“Oh, just to be alive, to be living and doing, to be the biggest bit of
the ferment to the end, to eat you.  But to die this way.”

He shrugged his shoulders, or attempted to shrug them, rather, for the
left shoulder alone moved.  Like the smile, the shrug was twisted.

“But how can you account for it?” I asked.  “Where is the seat of your
trouble?”

“The brain,” he said at once.  “It was those cursed headaches brought it
on.”

“Symptoms,” I said.

He nodded his head.  “There is no accounting for it.  I was never sick in
my life.  Something’s gone wrong with my brain.  A cancer, a tumour, or
something of that nature,—a thing that devours and destroys.  It’s
attacking my nerve-centres, eating them up, bit by bit, cell by cell—from
the pain.”

“The motor-centres, too,” I suggested.

“So it would seem; and the curse of it is that I must lie here,
conscious, mentally unimpaired, knowing that the lines are going down,
breaking bit by bit communication with the world.  I cannot see, hearing
and feeling are leaving me, at this rate I shall soon cease to speak; yet
all the time I shall be here, alive, active, and powerless.”

“When you say _you_ are here, I’d suggest the likelihood of the soul,” I
said.

“Bosh!” was his retort.  “It simply means that in the attack on my brain
the higher psychical centres are untouched.  I can remember, I can think
and reason.  When that goes, I go.  I am not.  The soul?”

He broke out in mocking laughter, then turned his left ear to the pillow
as a sign that he wished no further conversation.

Maud and I went about our work oppressed by the fearful fate which had
overtaken him,—how fearful we were yet fully to realize.  There was the
awfulness of retribution about it.  Our thoughts were deep and solemn,
and we spoke to each other scarcely above whispers.

“You might remove the handcuffs,” he said that night, as we stood in
consultation over him.  “It’s dead safe.  I’m a paralytic now.  The next
thing to watch out for is bed sores.”

He smiled his twisted smile, and Maud, her eyes wide with horror, was
compelled to turn away her head.

“Do you know that your smile is crooked?” I asked him; for I knew that
she must attend him, and I wished to save her as much as possible.

“Then I shall smile no more,” he said calmly.  “I thought something was
wrong.  My right cheek has been numb all day.  Yes, and I’ve had warnings
of this for the last three days; by spells, my right side seemed going to
sleep, sometimes arm or hand, sometimes leg or foot.”

“So my smile is crooked?” he queried a short while after.  “Well,
consider henceforth that I smile internally, with my soul, if you please,
my soul.  Consider that I am smiling now.”

And for the space of several minutes he lay there, quiet, indulging his
grotesque fancy.

The man of him was not changed.  It was the old, indomitable, terrible
Wolf Larsen, imprisoned somewhere within that flesh which had once been
so invincible and splendid.  Now it bound him with insentient fetters,
walling his soul in darkness and silence, blocking it from the world
which to him had been a riot of action.  No more would he conjugate the
verb “to do in every mood and tense.”  “To be” was all that remained to
him—to be, as he had defined death, without movement; to will, but not to
execute; to think and reason and in the spirit of him to be as alive as
ever, but in the flesh to be dead, quite dead.

And yet, though I even removed the handcuffs, we could not adjust
ourselves to his condition.  Our minds revolted.  To us he was full of
potentiality.  We knew not what to expect of him next, what fearful
thing, rising above the flesh, he might break out and do.  Our experience
warranted this state of mind, and we went about our work with anxiety
always upon us.

I had solved the problem which had arisen through the shortness of the
shears.  By means of the watch-tackle (I had made a new one), I heaved
the butt of the foremast across the rail and then lowered it to the deck.
Next, by means of the shears, I hoisted the main boom on board.  Its
forty feet of length would supply the height necessary properly to swing
the mast.  By means of a secondary tackle I had attached to the shears, I
swung the boom to a nearly perpendicular position, then lowered the butt
to the deck, where, to prevent slipping, I spiked great cleats around it.
The single block of my original shears-tackle I had attached to the end
of the boom.  Thus, by carrying this tackle to the windlass, I could
raise and lower the end of the boom at will, the butt always remaining
stationary, and, by means of guys, I could swing the boom from side to
side.  To the end of the boom I had likewise rigged a hoisting tackle;
and when the whole arrangement was completed I could not but be startled
by the power and latitude it gave me.

Of course, two days’ work was required for the accomplishment of this
part of my task, and it was not till the morning of the third day that I
swung the foremast from the deck and proceeded to square its butt to fit
the step.  Here I was especially awkward.  I sawed and chopped and
chiselled the weathered wood till it had the appearance of having been
gnawed by some gigantic mouse.  But it fitted.

“It will work, I know it will work,” I cried.

“Do you know Dr. Jordan’s final test of truth?” Maud asked.

I shook my head and paused in the act of dislodging the shavings which
had drifted down my neck.

“Can we make it work?  Can we trust our lives to it? is the test.”

“He is a favourite of yours,” I said.

“When I dismantled my old Pantheon and cast out Napoleon and Cæsar and
their fellows, I straightway erected a new Pantheon,” she answered
gravely, “and the first I installed was Dr. Jordan.”

“A modern hero.”

“And a greater because modern,” she added.  “How can the Old World heroes
compare with ours?”

I shook my head.  We were too much alike in many things for argument.
Our points of view and outlook on life at least were very alike.

“For a pair of critics we agree famously,” I laughed.

“And as shipwright and able assistant,” she laughed back.

But there was little time for laughter in those days, what of our heavy
work and of the awfulness of Wolf Larsen’s living death.

He had received another stroke.  He had lost his voice, or he was losing
it.  He had only intermittent use of it.  As he phrased it, the wires
were like the stock market, now up, now down.  Occasionally the wires
were up and he spoke as well as ever, though slowly and heavily.  Then
speech would suddenly desert him, in the middle of a sentence perhaps,
and for hours, sometimes, we would wait for the connection to be
re-established.  He complained of great pain in his head, and it was
during this period that he arranged a system of communication against the
time when speech should leave him altogether—one pressure of the hand for
“yes,” two for “no.”  It was well that it was arranged, for by evening
his voice had gone from him.  By hand pressures, after that, he answered
our questions, and when he wished to speak he scrawled his thoughts with
his left hand, quite legibly, on a sheet of paper.

The fierce winter had now descended upon us.  Gale followed gale, with
snow and sleet and rain.  The seals had started on their great southern
migration, and the rookery was practically deserted.  I worked
feverishly.  In spite of the bad weather, and of the wind which
especially hindered me, I was on deck from daylight till dark and making
substantial progress.

I profited by my lesson learned through raising the shears and then
climbing them to attach the guys.  To the top of the foremast, which was
just lifted conveniently from the deck, I attached the rigging, stays and
throat and peak halyards.  As usual, I had underrated the amount of work
involved in this portion of the task, and two long days were necessary to
complete it.  And there was so much yet to be done—the sails, for
instance, which practically had to be made over.

While I toiled at rigging the foremast, Maud sewed on canvas, ready
always to drop everything and come to my assistance when more hands than
two were required.  The canvas was heavy and hard, and she sewed with the
regular sailor’s palm and three-cornered sail-needle.  Her hands were
soon sadly blistered, but she struggled bravely on, and in addition doing
the cooking and taking care of the sick man.

“A fig for superstition,” I said on Friday morning.  “That mast goes in
to-day.”

Everything was ready for the attempt.  Carrying the boom-tackle to the
windlass, I hoisted the mast nearly clear of the deck.  Making this
tackle fast, I took to the windlass the shears-tackle (which was
connected with the end of the boom), and with a few turns had the mast
perpendicular and clear.

Maud clapped her hands the instant she was relieved from holding the
turn, crying:

“It works!  It works!  We’ll trust our lives to it!”

Then she assumed a rueful expression.

“It’s not over the hole,” she add.  “Will you have to begin all over?”

I smiled in superior fashion, and, slacking off on one of the boom-guys
and taking in on the other, swung the mast perfectly in the centre of the
deck.  Still it was not over the hole.  Again the rueful expression came
on her face, and again I smiled in a superior way.  Slacking away on the
boom-tackle and hoisting an equivalent amount on the shears-tackle, I
brought the butt of the mast into position directly over the hole in the
deck.  Then I gave Maud careful instructions for lowering away and went
into the hold to the step on the schooner’s bottom.

I called to her, and the mast moved easily and accurately.  Straight
toward the square hole of the step the square butt descended; but as it
descended it slowly twisted so that square would not fit into square.
But I had not even a moment’s indecision.  Calling to Maud to cease
lowering, I went on deck and made the watch-tackle fast to the mast with
a rolling hitch.  I left Maud to pull on it while I went below.  By the
light of the lantern I saw the butt twist slowly around till its sides
coincided with the sides of the step.  Maud made fast and returned to the
windlass.  Slowly the butt descended the several intervening inches, at
the same time slightly twisting again.  Again Maud rectified the twist
with the watch-tackle, and again she lowered away from the windlass.
Square fitted into square.  The mast was stepped.

I raised a shout, and she ran down to see.  In the yellow lantern light
we peered at what we had accomplished.  We looked at each other, and our
hands felt their way and clasped.  The eyes of both of us, I think, were
moist with the joy of success.

“It was done so easily after all,” I remarked.  “All the work was in the
preparation.”

“And all the wonder in the completion,” Maud added.  “I can scarcely
bring myself to realize that that great mast is really up and in; that
you have lifted it from the water, swung it through the air, and
deposited it here where it belongs.  It is a Titan’s task.”

“And they made themselves many inventions,” I began merrily, then paused
to sniff the air.

I looked hastily at the lantern.  It was not smoking.  Again I sniffed.

“Something is burning,” Maud said, with sudden conviction.

We sprang together for the ladder, but I raced past her to the deck.  A
dense volume of smoke was pouring out of the steerage companion-way.

“The Wolf is not yet dead,” I muttered to myself as I sprang down through
the smoke.

It was so thick in the confined space that I was compelled to feel my
way; and so potent was the spell of Wolf Larsen on my imagination, I was
quite prepared for the helpless giant to grip my neck in a strangle hold.
I hesitated, the desire to race back and up the steps to the deck almost
overpowering me.  Then I recollected Maud.  The vision of her, as I had
last seen her, in the lantern light of the schooner’s hold, her brown
eyes warm and moist with joy, flashed before me, and I knew that I could
not go back.

I was choking and suffocating by the time I reached Wolf Larsen’s bunk.
I reached my hand and felt for his.  He was lying motionless, but moved
slightly at the touch of my hand.  I felt over and under his blankets.
There was no warmth, no sign of fire.  Yet that smoke which blinded me
and made me cough and gasp must have a source.  I lost my head
temporarily and dashed frantically about the steerage.  A collision with
the table partially knocked the wind from my body and brought me to
myself.  I reasoned that a helpless man could start a fire only near to
where he lay.

I returned to Wolf Larsen’s bunk.  There I encountered Maud.  How long
she had been there in that suffocating atmosphere I could not guess.

“Go up on deck!” I commanded peremptorily.

“But, Humphrey—” she began to protest in a queer, husky voice.

“Please! please!” I shouted at her harshly.

She drew away obediently, and then I thought, What if she cannot find the
steps?  I started after her, to stop at the foot of the companion-way.
Perhaps she had gone up.  As I stood there, hesitant, I heard her cry
softly:

“Oh, Humphrey, I am lost.”

I found her fumbling at the wall of the after bulkhead, and, half leading
her, half carrying her, I took her up the companion-way.  The pure air
was like nectar.  Maud was only faint and dizzy, and I left her lying on
the deck when I took my second plunge below.

The source of the smoke must be very close to Wolf Larsen—my mind was
made up to this, and I went straight to his bunk.  As I felt about among
his blankets, something hot fell on the back of my hand.  It burned me,
and I jerked my hand away.  Then I understood.  Through the cracks in the
bottom of the upper bunk he had set fire to the mattress.  He still
retained sufficient use of his left arm to do this.  The damp straw of
the mattress, fired from beneath and denied air, had been smouldering all
the while.

As I dragged the mattress out of the bunk it seemed to disintegrate in
mid-air, at the same time bursting into flames.  I beat out the burning
remnants of straw in the bunk, then made a dash for the deck for fresh
air.

Several buckets of water sufficed to put out the burning mattress in the
middle of the steerage floor; and ten minutes later, when the smoke had
fairly cleared, I allowed Maud to come below.  Wolf Larsen was
unconscious, but it was a matter of minutes for the fresh air to restore
him.  We were working over him, however, when he signed for paper and
pencil.

“Pray do not interrupt me,” he wrote.  “I am smiling.”

“I am still a bit of the ferment, you see,” he wrote a little later.

“I am glad you are as small a bit as you are,” I said.

“Thank you,” he wrote.  “But just think of how much smaller I shall be
before I die.”

“And yet I am all here, Hump,” he wrote with a final flourish.  “I can
think more clearly than ever in my life before.  Nothing to disturb me.
Concentration is perfect.  I am all here and more than here.”

It was like a message from the night of the grave; for this man’s body
had become his mausoleum.  And there, in so strange sepulchre, his spirit
fluttered and lived.  It would flutter and live till the last line of
communication was broken, and after that who was to say how much longer
it might continue to flutter and live?




CHAPTER XXXVIII


“I think my left side is going,” Wolf Larsen wrote, the morning after his
attempt to fire the ship.  “The numbness is growing.  I can hardly move
my hand.  You will have to speak louder.  The last lines are going down.”

“Are you in pain?” I asked.

I was compelled to repeat my question loudly before he answered:

“Not all the time.”

The left hand stumbled slowly and painfully across the paper, and it was
with extreme difficulty that we deciphered the scrawl.  It was like a
“spirit message,” such as are delivered at séances of spiritualists for a
dollar admission.

“But I am still here, all here,” the hand scrawled more slowly and
painfully than ever.

The pencil dropped, and we had to replace it in the hand.

“When there is no pain I have perfect peace and quiet.  I have never
thought so clearly.  I can ponder life and death like a Hindoo sage.”

“And immortality?” Maud queried loudly in the ear.

Three times the hand essayed to write but fumbled hopelessly.  The pencil
fell.  In vain we tried to replace it.  The fingers could not close on
it.  Then Maud pressed and held the fingers about the pencil with her own
hand and the hand wrote, in large letters, and so slowly that the minutes
ticked off to each letter:

“B-O-S-H.”

It was Wolf Larsen’s last word, “bosh,” sceptical and invincible to the
end.  The arm and hand relaxed.  The trunk of the body moved slightly.
Then there was no movement.  Maud released the hand.  The fingers spread
slightly, falling apart of their own weight, and the pencil rolled away.

“Do you still hear?” I shouted, holding the fingers and waiting for the
single pressure which would signify “Yes.”  There was no response.  The
hand was dead.

“I noticed the lips slightly move,” Maud said.

I repeated the question.  The lips moved.  She placed the tips of her
fingers on them.  Again I repeated the question.  “Yes,” Maud announced.
We looked at each other expectantly.

“What good is it?” I asked.  “What can we say now?”

“Oh, ask him—”

She hesitated.

“Ask him something that requires no for an answer,” I suggested.  “Then
we will know for certainty.”

“Are you hungry?” she cried.

The lips moved under her fingers, and she answered, “Yes.”

“Will you have some beef?” was her next query.

“No,” she announced.

“Beef-tea?”

“Yes, he will have some beef-tea,” she said, quietly, looking up at me.
“Until his hearing goes we shall be able to communicate with him.  And
after that—”

She looked at me queerly.  I saw her lips trembling and the tears
swimming up in her eyes.  She swayed toward me and I caught her in my
arms.

“Oh, Humphrey,” she sobbed, “when will it all end?  I am so tired, so
tired.”

She buried her head on my shoulder, her frail form shaken with a storm of
weeping.  She was like a feather in my arms, so slender, so ethereal.
“She has broken down at last,” I thought.  “What can I do without her
help?”

But I soothed and comforted her, till she pulled herself bravely together
and recuperated mentally as quickly as she was wont to do physically.

“I ought to be ashamed of myself,” she said.  Then added, with the
whimsical smile I adored, “but I am only one, small woman.”

That phrase, the “one small woman,” startled me like an electric shock.
It was my own phrase, my pet, secret phrase, my love phrase for her.

“Where did you get that phrase?” I demanded, with an abruptness that in
turn startled her.

“What phrase?” she asked.

“One small woman.”

“Is it yours?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered.  “Mine.  I made it.”

“Then you must have talked in your sleep,” she smiled.

The dancing, tremulous light was in her eyes.  Mine, I knew, were
speaking beyond the will of my speech.  I leaned toward her.  Without
volition I leaned toward her, as a tree is swayed by the wind.  Ah, we
were very close together in that moment.  But she shook her head, as one
might shake off sleep or a dream, saying:

“I have known it all my life.  It was my father’s name for my mother.”

“It is my phrase too,” I said stubbornly.

“For your mother?”

“No,” I answered, and she questioned no further, though I could have
sworn her eyes retained for some time a mocking, teasing expression.

With the foremast in, the work now went on apace.  Almost before I knew
it, and without one serious hitch, I had the mainmast stepped.  A
derrick-boom, rigged to the foremast, had accomplished this; and several
days more found all stays and shrouds in place, and everything set up
taut.  Topsails would be a nuisance and a danger for a crew of two, so I
heaved the topmasts on deck and lashed them fast.

Several more days were consumed in finishing the sails and putting them
on.  There were only three—the jib, foresail, and mainsail; and, patched,
shortened, and distorted, they were a ridiculously ill-fitting suit for
so trim a craft as the _Ghost_.

“But they’ll work!” Maud cried jubilantly.  “We’ll make them work, and
trust our lives to them!”

Certainly, among my many new trades, I shone least as a sail-maker.  I
could sail them better than make them, and I had no doubt of my power to
bring the schooner to some northern port of Japan.  In fact, I had
crammed navigation from text-books aboard; and besides, there was Wolf
Larsen’s star-scale, so simple a device that a child could work it.

As for its inventor, beyond an increasing deafness and the movement of
the lips growing fainter and fainter, there had been little change in his
condition for a week.  But on the day we finished bending the schooner’s
sails, he heard his last, and the last movement of his lips died away—but
not before I had asked him, “Are you all there?” and the lips had
answered, “Yes.”

The last line was down.  Somewhere within that tomb of the flesh still
dwelt the soul of the man.  Walled by the living clay, that fierce
intelligence we had known burned on; but it burned on in silence and
darkness.  And it was disembodied.  To that intelligence there could be
no objective knowledge of a body.  It knew no body.  The very world was
not.  It knew only itself and the vastness and profundity of the quiet
and the dark.




CHAPTER XXXIX


The day came for our departure.  There was no longer anything to detain
us on Endeavour Island.  The _Ghost’s_ stumpy masts were in place, her
crazy sails bent.  All my handiwork was strong, none of it beautiful; but
I knew that it would work, and I felt myself a man of power as I looked
at it.

“I did it!  I did it!  With my own hands I did it!” I wanted to cry
aloud.

But Maud and I had a way of voicing each other’s thoughts, and she said,
as we prepared to hoist the mainsail:

“To think, Humphrey, you did it all with your own hands?”

“But there were two other hands,” I answered.  “Two small hands, and
don’t say that was a phrase, also, of your father.”

She laughed and shook her head, and held her hands up for inspection.

“I can never get them clean again,” she wailed, “nor soften the
weather-beat.”

“Then dirt and weather-beat shall be your guerdon of honour,” I said,
holding them in mine; and, spite of my resolutions, I would have kissed
the two dear hands had she not swiftly withdrawn them.

Our comradeship was becoming tremulous, I had mastered my love long and
well, but now it was mastering me.  Wilfully had it disobeyed and won my
eyes to speech, and now it was winning my tongue—ay, and my lips, for
they were mad this moment to kiss the two small hands which had toiled so
faithfully and hard.  And I, too, was mad.  There was a cry in my being
like bugles calling me to her.  And there was a wind blowing upon me
which I could not resist, swaying the very body of me till I leaned
toward her, all unconscious that I leaned.  And she knew it.  She could
not but know it as she swiftly drew away her hands, and yet, could not
forbear one quick searching look before she turned away her eyes.

By means of deck-tackles I had arranged to carry the halyards forward to
the windlass; and now I hoisted the mainsail, peak and throat, at the
same time.  It was a clumsy way, but it did not take long, and soon the
foresail as well was up and fluttering.

“We can never get that anchor up in this narrow place, once it has left
the bottom,” I said.  “We should be on the rocks first.”

“What can you do?” she asked.

“Slip it,” was my answer.  “And when I do, you must do your first work on
the windlass.  I shall have to run at once to the wheel, and at the same
time you must be hoisting the jib.”

This manœuvre of getting under way I had studied and worked out a score
of times; and, with the jib-halyard to the windlass, I knew Maud was
capable of hoisting that most necessary sail.  A brisk wind was blowing
into the cove, and though the water was calm, rapid work was required to
get us safely out.

When I knocked the shackle-bolt loose, the chain roared out through the
hawse-hole and into the sea.  I raced aft, putting the wheel up.  The
_Ghost_ seemed to start into life as she heeled to the first fill of her
sails.  The jib was rising.  As it filled, the _Ghost’s_ bow swung off
and I had to put the wheel down a few spokes and steady her.

I had devised an automatic jib-sheet which passed the jib across of
itself, so there was no need for Maud to attend to that; but she was
still hoisting the jib when I put the wheel hard down.  It was a moment
of anxiety, for the _Ghost_ was rushing directly upon the beach, a
stone’s throw distant.  But she swung obediently on her heel into the
wind.  There was a great fluttering and flapping of canvas and
reef-points, most welcome to my ears, then she filled away on the other
tack.

Maud had finished her task and come aft, where she stood beside me, a
small cap perched on her wind-blown hair, her cheeks flushed from
exertion, her eyes wide and bright with the excitement, her nostrils
quivering to the rush and bite of the fresh salt air.  Her brown eyes
were like a startled deer’s.  There was a wild, keen look in them I had
never seen before, and her lips parted and her breath suspended as the
_Ghost_, charging upon the wall of rock at the entrance to the inner
cove, swept into the wind and filled away into safe water.

My first mate’s berth on the sealing grounds stood me in good stead, and
I cleared the inner cove and laid a long tack along the shore of the
outer cove.  Once again about, and the _Ghost_ headed out to open sea.
She had now caught the bosom-breathing of the ocean, and was herself
a-breath with the rhythm of it as she smoothly mounted and slipped down
each broad-backed wave.  The day had been dull and overcast, but the sun
now burst through the clouds, a welcome omen, and shone upon the curving
beach where together we had dared the lords of the harem and slain the
holluschickie.  All Endeavour Island brightened under the sun.  Even the
grim south-western promontory showed less grim, and here and there, where
the sea-spray wet its surface, high lights flashed and dazzled in the
sun.

“I shall always think of it with pride,” I said to Maud.

She threw her head back in a queenly way but said, “Dear, dear Endeavour
Island!  I shall always love it.”

“And I,” I said quickly.

It seemed our eyes must meet in a great understanding, and yet, loath,
they struggled away and did not meet.

There was a silence I might almost call awkward, till I broke it, saying:

“See those black clouds to windward.  You remember, I told you last night
the barometer was falling.”

“And the sun is gone,” she said, her eyes still fixed upon our island,
where we had proved our mastery over matter and attained to the truest
comradeship that may fall to man and woman.

“And it’s slack off the sheets for Japan!” I cried gaily.  “A fair wind
and a flowing sheet, you know, or however it goes.”

Lashing the wheel I ran forward, eased the fore and mainsheets, took in
on the boom-tackles and trimmed everything for the quartering breeze
which was ours.  It was a fresh breeze, very fresh, but I resolved to run
as long as I dared.  Unfortunately, when running free, it is impossible
to lash the wheel, so I faced an all-night watch.  Maud insisted on
relieving me, but proved that she had not the strength to steer in a
heavy sea, even if she could have gained the wisdom on such short notice.
She appeared quite heart-broken over the discovery, but recovered her
spirits by coiling down tackles and halyards and all stray ropes.  Then
there were meals to be cooked in the galley, beds to make, Wolf Larsen to
be attended upon, and she finished the day with a grand house-cleaning
attack upon the cabin and steerage.

All night I steered, without relief, the wind slowly and steadily
increasing and the sea rising.  At five in the morning Maud brought me
hot coffee and biscuits she had baked, and at seven a substantial and
piping hot breakfast put new lift into me.

Throughout the day, and as slowly and steadily as ever, the wind
increased.  It impressed one with its sullen determination to blow, and
blow harder, and keep on blowing.  And still the _Ghost_ foamed along,
racing off the miles till I was certain she was making at least eleven
knots.  It was too good to lose, but by nightfall I was exhausted.
Though in splendid physical trim, a thirty-six-hour trick at the wheel
was the limit of my endurance.  Besides, Maud begged me to heave to, and
I knew, if the wind and sea increased at the same rate during the night,
that it would soon be impossible to heave to.  So, as twilight deepened,
gladly and at the same time reluctantly, I brought the _Ghost_ up on the
wind.

But I had not reckoned upon the colossal task the reefing of three sails
meant for one man.  While running away from the wind I had not
appreciated its force, but when we ceased to run I learned to my sorrow,
and well-nigh to my despair, how fiercely it was really blowing.  The
wind balked my every effort, ripping the canvas out of my hands and in an
instant undoing what I had gained by ten minutes of severest struggle.
At eight o’clock I had succeeded only in putting the second reef into the
foresail.  At eleven o’clock I was no farther along.  Blood dripped from
every finger-end, while the nails were broken to the quick.  From pain
and sheer exhaustion I wept in the darkness, secretly, so that Maud
should not know.

Then, in desperation, I abandoned the attempt to reef the mainsail and
resolved to try the experiment of heaving to under the close-reefed
foresail.  Three hours more were required to gasket the mainsail and jib,
and at two in the morning, nearly dead, the life almost buffeted and
worked out of me, I had barely sufficient consciousness to know the
experiment was a success.  The close-reefed foresail worked.  The _Ghost_
clung on close to the wind and betrayed no inclination to fall off
broadside to the trough.

I was famished, but Maud tried vainly to get me to eat.  I dozed with my
mouth full of food.  I would fall asleep in the act of carrying food to
my mouth and waken in torment to find the act yet uncompleted.  So
sleepily helpless was I that she was compelled to hold me in my chair to
prevent my being flung to the floor by the violent pitching of the
schooner.

Of the passage from the galley to the cabin I knew nothing.  It was a
sleep-walker Maud guided and supported.  In fact, I was aware of nothing
till I awoke, how long after I could not imagine, in my bunk with my
boots off.  It was dark.  I was stiff and lame, and cried out with pain
when the bed-clothes touched my poor finger-ends.

Morning had evidently not come, so I closed my eyes and went to sleep
again.  I did not know it, but I had slept the clock around and it was
night again.

Once more I woke, troubled because I could sleep no better.  I struck a
match and looked at my watch.  It marked midnight.  And I had not left
the deck until three!  I should have been puzzled had I not guessed the
solution.  No wonder I was sleeping brokenly.  I had slept twenty-one
hours.  I listened for a while to the behaviour of the _Ghost_, to the
pounding of the seas and the muffled roar of the wind on deck, and then
turned over on my side and slept peacefully until morning.

When I arose at seven I saw no sign of Maud and concluded she was in the
galley preparing breakfast.  On deck I found the _Ghost_ doing splendidly
under her patch of canvas.  But in the galley, though a fire was burning
and water boiling, I found no Maud.

I discovered her in the steerage, by Wolf Larsen’s bunk.  I looked at
him, the man who had been hurled down from the topmost pitch of life to
be buried alive and be worse than dead.  There seemed a relaxation of his
expressionless face which was new.  Maud looked at me and I understood.

“His life flickered out in the storm,” I said.

“But he still lives,” she answered, infinite faith in her voice.

“He had too great strength.”

“Yes,” she said, “but now it no longer shackles him.  He is a free
spirit.”

“He is a free spirit surely,” I answered; and, taking her hand, I led her
on deck.

The storm broke that night, which is to say that it diminished as slowly
as it had arisen.  After breakfast next morning, when I had hoisted Wolf
Larsen’s body on deck ready for burial, it was still blowing heavily and
a large sea was running.  The deck was continually awash with the sea
which came inboard over the rail and through the scuppers.  The wind
smote the schooner with a sudden gust, and she heeled over till her lee
rail was buried, the roar in her rigging rising in pitch to a shriek.  We
stood in the water to our knees as I bared my head.

“I remember only one part of the service,” I said, “and that is, ‘And the
body shall be cast into the sea.’”

Maud looked at me, surprised and shocked; but the spirit of something I
had seen before was strong upon me, impelling me to give service to Wolf
Larsen as Wolf Larsen had once given service to another man.  I lifted
the end of the hatch cover and the canvas-shrouded body slipped feet
first into the sea.  The weight of iron dragged it down.  It was gone.

“Good-bye, Lucifer, proud spirit,” Maud whispered, so low that it was
drowned by the shouting of the wind; but I saw the movement of her lips
and knew.

As we clung to the lee rail and worked our way aft, I happened to glance
to leeward.  The _Ghost_, at the moment, was uptossed on a sea, and I
caught a clear view of a small steamship two or three miles away, rolling
and pitching, head on to the sea, as it steamed toward us.  It was
painted black, and from the talk of the hunters of their poaching
exploits I recognized it as a United States revenue cutter.  I pointed it
out to Maud and hurriedly led her aft to the safety of the poop.

I started to rush below to the flag-locker, then remembered that in
rigging the _Ghost_.  I had forgotten to make provision for a
flag-halyard.

“We need no distress signal,” Maud said.  “They have only to see us.”

“We are saved,” I said, soberly and solemnly.  And then, in an exuberance
of joy, “I hardly know whether to be glad or not.”

I looked at her.  Our eyes were not loath to meet.  We leaned toward each
other, and before I knew it my arms were about her.

“Need I?” I asked.

And she answered, “There is no need, though the telling of it would be
sweet, so sweet.”

Her lips met the press of mine, and, by what strange trick of the
imagination I know not, the scene in the cabin of the _Ghost_ flashed
upon me, when she had pressed her fingers lightly on my lips and said,
“Hush, hush.”

“My woman, my one small woman,” I said, my free hand petting her shoulder
in the way all lovers know though never learn in school.

“My man,” she said, looking at me for an instant with tremulous lids
which fluttered down and veiled her eyes as she snuggled her head against
my breast with a happy little sigh.

I looked toward the cutter.  It was very close.  A boat was being
lowered.

“One kiss, dear love,” I whispered.  “One kiss more before they come.”

“And rescue us from ourselves,” she completed, with a most adorable
smile, whimsical as I had never seen it, for it was whimsical with love.

                                * * * * *

                                 THE END

7xxxxxxxxx

THE ROAD

by

JACK LONDON

(New York: Macmillan)

1907







TO

JOSIAH FLYNT

The Real Thing, Blowed in the Glass




CONTENTS

   CONFESSION

   HOLDING HER DOWN

   PICTURES

   "PINCHED"

   THE PEN

   HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT

   ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS

   TWO THOUSAND STIFFS

   BULLS




    "Speakin' in general, I 'ave tried 'em all,
    The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world.
    Speakin' in general, I 'ave found them good
    For such as cannot use one bed too long,
    But must get 'ence, the same as I 'ave done,
    An' go observin' matters till they die."

                   --Sestina of the Tramp-Royal




CONFESSION


There is a woman in the state of Nevada to whom I once lied
continuously, consistently, and shamelessly, for the matter of a
couple of hours. I don't want to apologize to her. Far be it from me.
But I do want to explain. Unfortunately, I do not know her name, much
less her present address. If her eyes should chance upon these lines,
I hope she will write to me.

It was in Reno, Nevada, in the summer of 1892. Also, it was fair-time,
and the town was filled with petty crooks and tin-horns, to say
nothing of a vast and hungry horde of hoboes. It was the hungry hoboes
that made the town a "hungry" town. They "battered" the back doors of
the homes of the citizens until the back doors became unresponsive.

A hard town for "scoffings," was what the hoboes called it at that
time. I know that I missed many a meal, in spite of the fact that I
could "throw my feet" with the next one when it came to "slamming a
gate" for a "poke-out" or a "set-down," or hitting for a "light piece"
on the street. Why, I was so hard put in that town, one day, that I
gave the porter the slip and invaded the private car of some itinerant
millionnaire. The train started as I made the platform, and I headed
for the aforesaid millionnaire with the porter one jump behind and
reaching for me. It was a dead heat, for I reached the millionnaire at
the same instant that the porter reached me. I had no time for
formalities. "Gimme a quarter to eat on," I blurted out. And as I
live, that millionnaire dipped into his pocket and gave me ... just
... precisely ... a quarter. It is my conviction that he was so
flabbergasted that he obeyed automatically, and it has been a matter
of keen regret ever since, on my part, that I didn't ask him for a
dollar. I know that I'd have got it. I swung off the platform of that
private car with the porter manoeuvring to kick me in the face. He
missed me. One is at a terrible disadvantage when trying to swing off
the lowest step of a car and not break his neck on the right of way,
with, at the same time, an irate Ethiopian on the platform above
trying to land him in the face with a number eleven. But I got the
quarter! I got it!

But to return to the woman to whom I so shamelessly lied. It was in
the evening of my last day in Reno. I had been out to the race-track
watching the ponies run, and had missed my dinner (_i.e._ the mid-day
meal). I was hungry, and, furthermore, a committee of public safety
had just been organized to rid the town of just such hungry mortals as
I. Already a lot of my brother hoboes had been gathered in by John
Law, and I could hear the sunny valleys of California calling to me
over the cold crests of the Sierras. Two acts remained for me to
perform before I shook the dust of Reno from my feet. One was to catch
the blind baggage on the westbound overland that night. The other was
first to get something to eat. Even youth will hesitate at an
all-night ride, on an empty stomach, outside a train that is tearing
the atmosphere through the snow-sheds, tunnels, and eternal snows of
heaven-aspiring mountains.

But that something to eat was a hard proposition. I was "turned down"
at a dozen houses. Sometimes I received insulting remarks and was
informed of the barred domicile that should be mine if I had my just
deserts. The worst of it was that such assertions were only too true.
That was why I was pulling west that night. John Law was abroad in the
town, seeking eagerly for the hungry and homeless, for by such was his
barred domicile tenanted.

At other houses the doors were slammed in my face, cutting short my
politely and humbly couched request for something to eat. At one house
they did not open the door. I stood on the porch and knocked, and they
looked out at me through the window. They even held one sturdy little
boy aloft so that he could see over the shoulders of his elders the
tramp who wasn't going to get anything to eat at their house.

It began to look as if I should be compelled to go to the very poor
for my food. The very poor constitute the last sure recourse of the
hungry tramp. The very poor can always be depended upon. They never
turn away the hungry. Time and again, all over the United States, have
I been refused food by the big house on the hill; and always have I
received food from the little shack down by the creek or marsh, with
its broken windows stuffed with rags and its tired-faced mother broken
with labor. Oh, you charity-mongers! Go to the poor and learn, for the
poor alone are the charitable. They neither give nor withhold from
their excess. They have no excess. They give, and they withhold never,
from what they need for themselves, and very often from what they
cruelly need for themselves. A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity
is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the
dog.

There was one house in particular where I was turned down that
evening. The porch windows opened on the dining room, and through them
I saw a man eating pie--a big meat-pie. I stood in the open door, and
while he talked with me, he went on eating. He was prosperous, and out
of his prosperity had been bred resentment against his less fortunate
brothers.

He cut short my request for something to eat, snapping out, "I don't
believe you want to work."

Now this was irrelevant. I hadn't said anything about work. The topic
of conversation I had introduced was "food." In fact, I didn't want to
work. I wanted to take the westbound overland that night.

"You wouldn't work if you had a chance," he bullied.

I glanced at his meek-faced wife, and knew that but for the presence
of this Cerberus I'd have a whack at that meat-pie myself. But
Cerberus sopped himself in the pie, and I saw that I must placate him
if I were to get a share of it. So I sighed to myself and accepted his
work-morality.

"Of course I want work," I bluffed.

"Don't believe it," he snorted.

"Try me," I answered, warming to the bluff.

"All right," he said. "Come to the corner of blank and blank
streets"--(I have forgotten the address)--"to-morrow morning. You know
where that burned building is, and I'll put you to work tossing
bricks."

"All right, sir; I'll be there."

He grunted and went on eating. I waited. After a couple of minutes he
looked up with an I-thought-you-were-gone expression on his face, and
demanded:--

"Well?"

"I ... I am waiting for something to eat," I said gently.

"I knew you wouldn't work!" he roared.

He was right, of course; but his conclusion must have been reached by
mind-reading, for his logic wouldn't bear it out. But the beggar at
the door must be humble, so I accepted his logic as I had accepted his
morality.

"You see, I am now hungry," I said still gently. "To-morrow morning I
shall be hungrier. Think how hungry I shall be when I have tossed
bricks all day without anything to eat. Now if you will give me
something to eat, I'll be in great shape for those bricks."

He gravely considered my plea, at the same time going on eating, while
his wife nearly trembled into propitiatory speech, but refrained.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said between mouthfuls. "You come to
work to-morrow, and in the middle of the day I'll advance you enough
for your dinner. That will show whether you are in earnest or not."

"In the meantime--" I began; but he interrupted.

"If I gave you something to eat now, I'd never see you again. Oh, I
know your kind. Look at me. I owe no man. I have never descended so
low as to ask any one for food. I have always earned my food. The
trouble with you is that you are idle and dissolute. I can see it in
your face. I have worked and been honest. I have made myself what I
am. And you can do the same, if you work and are honest."

"Like you?" I queried.

Alas, no ray of humor had ever penetrated the sombre work-sodden soul
of that man.

"Yes, like me," he answered.

"All of us?" I queried.

"Yes, all of you," he answered, conviction vibrating in his voice.

"But if we all became like you," I said, "allow me to point out that
there'd be nobody to toss bricks for you."

I swear there was a flicker of a smile in his wife's eye. As for him,
he was aghast--but whether at the awful possibility of a reformed
humanity that would not enable him to get anybody to toss bricks for
him, or at my impudence, I shall never know.

"I'll not waste words on you," he roared. "Get out of here, you
ungrateful whelp!"

I scraped my feet to advertise my intention of going, and queried:--

"And I don't get anything to eat?"

He arose suddenly to his feet. He was a large man. I was a stranger in
a strange land, and John Law was looking for me. I went away
hurriedly. "But why ungrateful?" I asked myself as I slammed his gate.
"What in the dickens did he give me to be ungrateful about?" I looked
back. I could still see him through the window. He had returned to his
pie.

By this time I had lost heart. I passed many houses by without
venturing up to them. All houses looked alike, and none looked "good."
After walking half a dozen blocks I shook off my despondency and
gathered my "nerve." This begging for food was all a game, and if I
didn't like the cards, I could always call for a new deal. I made up
my mind to tackle the next house. I approached it in the deepening
twilight, going around to the kitchen door.

I knocked softly, and when I saw the kind face of the middle-aged
woman who answered, as by inspiration came to me the "story" I was to
tell. For know that upon his ability to tell a good story depends the
success of the beggar. First of all, and on the instant, the beggar
must "size up" his victim. After that, he must tell a story that will
appeal to the peculiar personality and temperament of that particular
victim. And right here arises the great difficulty: in the instant
that he is sizing up the victim he must begin his story. Not a minute
is allowed for preparation. As in a lightning flash he must divine the
nature of the victim and conceive a tale that will hit home. The
successful hobo must be an artist. He must create spontaneously and
instantaneously--and not upon a theme selected from the plenitude of
his own imagination, but upon the theme he reads in the face of the
person who opens the door, be it man, woman, or child, sweet or
crabbed, generous or miserly, good-natured or cantankerous, Jew or
Gentile, black or white, race-prejudiced or brotherly, provincial or
universal, or whatever else it may be. I have often thought that to
this training of my tramp days is due much of my success as a
story-writer. In order to get the food whereby I lived, I was
compelled to tell tales that rang true. At the back door, out of
inexorable necessity, is developed the convincingness and sincerity
laid down by all authorities on the art of the short-story. Also, I
quite believe it was my tramp-apprenticeship that made a realist out
of me. Realism constitutes the only goods one can exchange at the
kitchen door for grub.

After all, art is only consummate artfulness, and artfulness saves
many a "story." I remember lying in a police station at Winnipeg,
Manitoba. I was bound west over the Canadian Pacific. Of course, the
police wanted my story, and I gave it to them--on the spur of the
moment. They were landlubbers, in the heart of the continent, and what
better story for them than a sea story? They could never trip me up on
that. And so I told a tearful tale of my life on the hell-ship
_Glenmore_. (I had once seen the _Glenmore_ lying at anchor in San
Francisco Bay.)

I was an English apprentice, I said. And they said that I didn't talk
like an English boy. It was up to me to create on the instant. I had
been born and reared in the United States. On the death of my parents,
I had been sent to England to my grandparents. It was they who had
apprenticed me on the _Glenmore_. I hope the captain of the _Glenmore_
will forgive me, for I gave him a character that night in the Winnipeg
police station. Such cruelty! Such brutality! Such diabolical
ingenuity of torture! It explained why I had deserted the _Glenmore_
at Montreal.

But why was I in the middle of Canada going west, when my grandparents
lived in England? Promptly I created a married sister who lived in
California. She would take care of me. I developed at length her
loving nature. But they were not done with me, those hard-hearted
policemen. I had joined the _Glenmore_ in England; in the two years
that had elapsed before my desertion at Montreal, what had the
_Glenmore_ done and where had she been? And thereat I took those
landlubbers around the world with me. Buffeted by pounding seas and
stung with flying spray, they fought a typhoon with me off the coast
of Japan. They loaded and unloaded cargo with me in all the ports of
the Seven Seas. I took them to India, and Rangoon, and China, and had
them hammer ice with me around the Horn and at last come to moorings
at Montreal.

And then they said to wait a moment, and one policeman went forth into
the night while I warmed myself at the stove, all the while racking my
brains for the trap they were going to spring on me.

I groaned to myself when I saw him come in the door at the heels of
the policeman. No gypsy prank had thrust those tiny hoops of gold
through the ears; no prairie winds had beaten that skin into wrinkled
leather; nor had snow-drift and mountain-slope put in his walk that
reminiscent roll. And in those eyes, when they looked at me, I saw the
unmistakable sun-wash of the sea. Here was a theme, alas! with half a
dozen policemen to watch me read--I who had never sailed the China
seas, nor been around the Horn, nor looked with my eyes upon India and
Rangoon.

I was desperate. Disaster stalked before me incarnate in the form of
that gold-ear-ringed, weather-beaten son of the sea. Who was he? What
was he? I must solve him ere he solved me. I must take a new
orientation, or else those wicked policemen would orientate me to a
cell, a police court, and more cells. If he questioned me first,
before I knew how much he knew, I was lost.

But did I betray my desperate plight to those lynx-eyed guardians of
the public welfare of Winnipeg? Not I. I met that aged sailorman
glad-eyed and beaming, with all the simulated relief at deliverance
that a drowning man would display on finding a life-preserver in his
last despairing clutch. Here was a man who understood and who would
verify my true story to the faces of those sleuth-hounds who did not
understand, or, at least, such was what I endeavored to play-act. I
seized upon him; I volleyed him with questions about himself. Before
my judges I would prove the character of my savior before he saved me.

He was a kindly sailorman--an "easy mark." The policemen grew
impatient while I questioned him. At last one of them told me to shut
up. I shut up; but while I remained shut up, I was busy creating, busy
sketching the scenario of the next act. I had learned enough to go on
with. He was a Frenchman. He had sailed always on French merchant
vessels, with the one exception of a voyage on a "lime-juicer." And
last of all--blessed fact!--he had not been on the sea for twenty
years.

The policeman urged him on to examine me.

"You called in at Rangoon?" he queried.

I nodded. "We put our third mate ashore there. Fever."

If he had asked me what kind of fever, I should have answered,
"Enteric," though for the life of me I didn't know what enteric was.
But he didn't ask me. Instead, his next question was:--

"And how is Rangoon?"

"All right. It rained a whole lot when we were there."

"Did you get shore-leave?"

"Sure," I answered. "Three of us apprentices went ashore together."

"Do you remember the temple?"

"Which temple?" I parried.

"The big one, at the top of the stairway."

If I remembered that temple, I knew I'd have to describe it. The gulf
yawned for me.

I shook my head.

"You can see it from all over the harbor," he informed me. "You don't
need shore-leave to see that temple."

I never loathed a temple so in my life. But I fixed that particular
temple at Rangoon.

"You can't see it from the harbor," I contradicted. "You can't see it
from the town. You can't see it from the top of the stairway.
Because--" I paused for the effect. "Because there isn't any temple
there."

"But I saw it with my own eyes!" he cried.

"That was in--?" I queried.

"Seventy-one."

"It was destroyed in the great earthquake of 1887," I explained. "It
was very old."

There was a pause. He was busy reconstructing in his old eyes the
youthful vision of that fair temple by the sea.

"The stairway is still there," I aided him. "You can see it from all
over the harbor. And you remember that little island on the right-hand
side coming into the harbor?" I guess there must have been one there
(I was prepared to shift it over to the left-hand side), for he
nodded. "Gone," I said. "Seven fathoms of water there now."

I had gained a moment for breath. While he pondered on time's changes,
I prepared the finishing touches of my story.

"You remember the custom-house at Bombay?"

He remembered it.

"Burned to the ground," I announced.

"Do you remember Jim Wan?" he came back at me.

"Dead," I said; but who the devil Jim Wan was I hadn't the slightest
idea.

I was on thin ice again.

"Do you remember Billy Harper, at Shanghai?" I queried back at him
quickly.

That aged sailorman worked hard to recollect, but the Billy Harper of
my imagination was beyond his faded memory.

"Of course you remember Billy Harper," I insisted. "Everybody knows
him. He's been there forty years. Well, he's still there, that's all."

And then the miracle happened. The sailorman remembered Billy Harper.
Perhaps there was a Billy Harper, and perhaps he had been in Shanghai
for forty years and was still there; but it was news to me.

For fully half an hour longer, the sailorman and I talked on in
similar fashion. In the end he told the policemen that I was what I
represented myself to be, and after a night's lodging and a breakfast
I was released to wander on westward to my married sister in San
Francisco.

But to return to the woman in Reno who opened her door to me in the
deepening twilight. At the first glimpse of her kindly face I took my
cue. I became a sweet, innocent, unfortunate lad. I couldn't speak. I
opened my mouth and closed it again. Never in my life before had I
asked any one for food. My embarrassment was painful, extreme. I was
ashamed. I, who looked upon begging as a delightful whimsicality,
thumbed myself over into a true son of Mrs. Grundy, burdened with all
her bourgeois morality. Only the harsh pangs of the belly-need could
compel me to do so degraded and ignoble a thing as beg for food. And
into my face I strove to throw all the wan wistfulness of famished and
ingenuous youth unused to mendicancy.

"You are hungry, my poor boy," she said.

I had made her speak first.

I nodded my head and gulped.

"It is the first time I have ever ... asked," I faltered.

"Come right in." The door swung open. "We have already finished
eating, but the fire is burning and I can get something up for you."

She looked at me closely when she got me into the light.

"I wish my boy were as healthy and strong as you," she said. "But he
is not strong. He sometimes falls down. He just fell down this
afternoon and hurt himself badly, the poor dear."

She mothered him with her voice, with an ineffable tenderness in it
that I yearned to appropriate. I glanced at him. He sat across the
table, slender and pale, his head swathed in bandages. He did not
move, but his eyes, bright in the lamplight, were fixed upon me in a
steady and wondering stare.

"Just like my poor father," I said. "He had the falling sickness. Some
kind of vertigo. It puzzled the doctors. They never could make out
what was the matter with him."

"He is dead?" she queried gently, setting before me half a dozen
soft-boiled eggs.

"Dead," I gulped. "Two weeks ago. I was with him when it happened. We
were crossing the street together. He fell right down. He was never
conscious again. They carried him into a drug-store. He died there."

And thereat I developed the pitiful tale of my father--how, after my
mother's death, he and I had gone to San Francisco from the ranch; how
his pension (he was an old soldier), and the little other money he
had, was not enough; and how he had tried book-canvassing. Also, I
narrated my own woes during the few days after his death that I had
spent alone and forlorn on the streets of San Francisco. While that
good woman warmed up biscuits, fried bacon, and cooked more eggs, and
while I kept pace with her in taking care of all that she placed
before me, I enlarged the picture of that poor orphan boy and filled
in the details. I became that poor boy. I believed in him as I
believed in the beautiful eggs I was devouring. I could have wept for
myself. I know the tears did get into my voice at times. It was very
effective.

In fact, with every touch I added to the picture, that kind soul gave
me something also. She made up a lunch for me to carry away. She put
in many boiled eggs, pepper and salt, and other things, and a big
apple. She provided me with three pairs of thick red woollen socks.
She gave me clean handkerchiefs and other things which I have since
forgotten. And all the time she cooked more and more and I ate more
and more. I gorged like a savage; but then it was a far cry across the
Sierras on a blind baggage, and I knew not when nor where I should
find my next meal. And all the while, like a death's-head at the
feast, silent and motionless, her own unfortunate boy sat and stared
at me across the table. I suppose I represented to him mystery, and
romance, and adventure--all that was denied the feeble flicker of life
that was in him. And yet I could not forbear, once or twice, from
wondering if he saw through me down to the bottom of my mendacious
heart.

"But where are you going to?" she asked me.

"Salt Lake City," said I. "I have a sister there--a married sister."
(I debated if I should make a Mormon out of her, and decided against
it.) "Her husband is a plumber--a contracting plumber."

Now I knew that contracting plumbers were usually credited with making
lots of money. But I had spoken. It was up to me to qualify.

"They would have sent me the money for my fare if I had asked for it,"
I explained, "but they have had sickness and business troubles. His
partner cheated him. And so I wouldn't write for the money. I knew I
could make my way there somehow. I let them think I had enough to get
me to Salt Lake City. She is lovely, and so kind. She was always kind
to me. I guess I'll go into the shop and learn the trade. She has two
daughters. They are younger than I. One is only a baby."

Of all my married sisters that I have distributed among the cities of
the United States, that Salt Lake sister is my favorite. She is quite
real, too. When I tell about her, I can see her, and her two little
girls, and her plumber husband. She is a large, motherly woman, just
verging on beneficent stoutness--the kind, you know, that always cooks
nice things and that never gets angry. She is a brunette. Her husband
is a quiet, easy-going fellow. Sometimes I almost know him quite
well. And who knows but some day I may meet him? If that aged
sailorman could remember Billy Harper, I see no reason why I should
not some day meet the husband of my sister who lives in Salt Lake
City.

On the other hand, I have a feeling of certitude within me that I
shall never meet in the flesh my many parents and grandparents--you
see, I invariably killed them off. Heart disease was my favorite way
of getting rid of my mother, though on occasion I did away with her by
means of consumption, pneumonia, and typhoid fever. It is true, as the
Winnipeg policemen will attest, that I have grandparents living in
England; but that was a long time ago and it is a fair assumption that
they are dead by now. At any rate, they have never written to me.

I hope that woman in Reno will read these lines and forgive me my
gracelessness and unveracity. I do not apologize, for I am unashamed.
It was youth, delight in life, zest for experience, that brought me to
her door. It did me good. It taught me the intrinsic kindliness of
human nature. I hope it did her good. Anyway, she may get a good laugh
out of it now that she learns the real inwardness of the situation.

To her my story was "true." She believed in me and all my family, and
she was filled with solicitude for the dangerous journey I must make
ere I won to Salt Lake City. This solicitude nearly brought me to
grief. Just as I was leaving, my arms full of lunch and my pockets
bulging with fat woollen socks, she bethought herself of a nephew, or
uncle, or relative of some sort, who was in the railway mail service,
and who, moreover, would come through that night on the very train on
which I was going to steal my ride. The very thing! She would take me
down to the depot, tell him my story, and get him to hide me in the
mail car. Thus, without danger or hardship, I would be carried
straight through to Ogden. Salt Lake City was only a few miles farther
on. My heart sank. She grew excited as she developed the plan and with
my sinking heart I had to feign unbounded gladness and enthusiasm at
this solution of my difficulties.

Solution! Why I was bound west that night, and here was I being
trapped into going east. It _was_ a trap, and I hadn't the heart to
tell her that it was all a miserable lie. And while I made believe
that I was delighted, I was busy cudgelling my brains for some way to
escape. But there was no way. She would see me into the mail-car--she
said so herself--and then that mail-clerk relative of hers would carry
me to Ogden. And then I would have to beat my way back over all those
hundreds of miles of desert.

But luck was with me that night. Just about the time she was getting
ready to put on her bonnet and accompany me, she discovered that she
had made a mistake. Her mail-clerk relative was not scheduled to come
through that night. His run had been changed. He would not come
through until two nights afterward. I was saved, for of course my
boundless youth would never permit me to wait those two days. I
optimistically assured her that I'd get to Salt Lake City quicker if I
started immediately, and I departed with her blessings and best wishes
ringing in my ears.

But those woollen socks were great. I know. I wore a pair of them that
night on the blind baggage of the overland, and that overland went
west.




HOLDING HER DOWN


Barring accidents, a good hobo, with youth and agility, can hold a
train down despite all the efforts of the train-crew to "ditch"
him--given, of course, night-time as an essential condition. When such
a hobo, under such conditions, makes up his mind that he is going to
hold her down, either he does hold her down, or chance trips him up.
There is no legitimate way, short of murder, whereby the train-crew
can ditch him. That train-crews have not stopped short of murder is a
current belief in the tramp world. Not having had that particular
experience in my tramp days I cannot vouch for it personally.

But this I have heard of the "bad" roads. When a tramp has "gone
underneath," on the rods, and the train is in motion, there is
apparently no way of dislodging him until the train stops. The tramp,
snugly ensconced inside the truck, with the four wheels and all the
framework around him, has the "cinch" on the crew--or so he thinks,
until some day he rides the rods on a bad road. A bad road is usually
one on which a short time previously one or several trainmen have been
killed by tramps. Heaven pity the tramp who is caught "underneath" on
such a road--for caught he is, though the train be going sixty miles
an hour.

The "shack" (brakeman) takes a coupling-pin and a length of bell-cord
to the platform in front of the truck in which the tramp is riding.
The shack fastens the coupling-pin to the bell-cord, drops the former
down between the platforms, and pays out the latter. The coupling-pin
strikes the ties between the rails, rebounds against the bottom of the
car, and again strikes the ties. The shack plays it back and forth,
now to this side, now to the other, lets it out a bit and hauls it in
a bit, giving his weapon opportunity for every variety of impact and
rebound. Every blow of that flying coupling-pin is freighted with
death, and at sixty miles an hour it beats a veritable tattoo of
death. The next day the remains of that tramp are gathered up along
the right of way, and a line in the local paper mentions the unknown
man, undoubtedly a tramp, assumably drunk, who had probably fallen
asleep on the track.

As a characteristic illustration of how a capable hobo can hold her
down, I am minded to give the following experience. I was in Ottawa,
bound west over the Canadian Pacific. Three thousand miles of that
road stretched before me; it was the fall of the year, and I had to
cross Manitoba and the Rocky Mountains. I could expect "crimpy"
weather, and every moment of delay increased the frigid hardships of
the journey. Furthermore, I was disgusted. The distance between
Montreal and Ottawa is one hundred and twenty miles. I ought to know,
for I had just come over it and it had taken me six days. By mistake I
had missed the main line and come over a small "jerk" with only two
locals a day on it. And during these six days I had lived on dry
crusts, and not enough of them, begged from the French peasants.

Furthermore, my disgust had been heightened by the one day I had spent
in Ottawa trying to get an outfit of clothing for my long journey. Let
me put it on record right here that Ottawa, with one exception, is the
hardest town in the United States and Canada to beg clothes in; the
one exception is Washington, D.C. The latter fair city is the limit. I
spent two weeks there trying to beg a pair of shoes, and then had to
go on to Jersey City before I got them.

But to return to Ottawa. At eight sharp in the morning I started out
after clothes. I worked energetically all day. I swear I walked forty
miles. I interviewed the housewives of a thousand homes. I did not
even knock off work for dinner. And at six in the afternoon, after ten
hours of unremitting and depressing toil, I was still shy one shirt,
while the pair of trousers I had managed to acquire was tight and,
moreover, was showing all the signs of an early disintegration.

At six I quit work and headed for the railroad yards, expecting to
pick up something to eat on the way. But my hard luck was still with
me. I was refused food at house after house. Then I got a "hand-out."
My spirits soared, for it was the largest hand-out I had ever seen in
a long and varied experience. It was a parcel wrapped in newspapers
and as big as a mature suit-case. I hurried to a vacant lot and opened
it. First, I saw cake, then more cake, all kinds and makes of cake,
and then some. It was all cake. No bread and butter with thick firm
slices of meat between--nothing but cake; and I who of all things
abhorred cake most! In another age and clime they sat down by the
waters of Babylon and wept. And in a vacant lot in Canada's proud
capital, I, too, sat down and wept ... over a mountain of cake. As one
looks upon the face of his dead son, so looked I upon that
multitudinous pastry. I suppose I was an ungrateful tramp, for I
refused to partake of the bounteousness of the house that had had a
party the night before. Evidently the guests hadn't liked cake either.

That cake marked the crisis in my fortunes. Than it nothing could be
worse; therefore things must begin to mend. And they did. At the very
next house I was given a "set-down." Now a "set-down" is the height of
bliss. One is taken inside, very often is given a chance to wash, and
is then "set-down" at a table. Tramps love to throw their legs under a
table. The house was large and comfortable, in the midst of spacious
grounds and fine trees, and sat well back from the street. They had
just finished eating, and I was taken right into the dining room--in
itself a most unusual happening, for the tramp who is lucky enough to
win a set-down usually receives it in the kitchen. A grizzled and
gracious Englishman, his matronly wife, and a beautiful young
Frenchwoman talked with me while I ate.

I wonder if that beautiful young Frenchwoman would remember, at this
late day, the laugh I gave her when I uttered the barbaric phrase,
"two-bits." You see, I was trying delicately to hit them for a "light
piece." That was how the sum of money came to be mentioned. "What?"
she said. "Two-bits," said I. Her mouth was twitching as she again
said, "What?" "Two-bits," said I. Whereat she burst into laughter.
"Won't you repeat it?" she said, when she had regained control of
herself. "Two-bits," said I. And once more she rippled into
uncontrollable silvery laughter. "I beg your pardon," said she; "but
what ... what was it you said?" "Two-bits," said I; "is there anything
wrong about it?" "Not that I know of," she gurgled between gasps; "but
what does it mean?" I explained, but I do not remember now whether or
not I got that two-bits out of her; but I have often wondered since
as to which of us was the provincial.

When I arrived at the depot, I found, much to my disgust, a bunch of
at least twenty tramps that were waiting to ride out the blind
baggages of the overland. Now two or three tramps on the blind baggage
are all right. They are inconspicuous. But a score! That meant
trouble. No train-crew would ever let all of us ride.

I may as well explain here what a blind baggage is. Some mail-cars are
built without doors in the ends; hence, such a car is "blind." The
mail-cars that possess end doors, have those doors always locked.
Suppose, after the train has started, that a tramp gets on to the
platform of one of these blind cars. There is no door, or the door is
locked. No conductor or brakeman can get to him to collect fare or
throw him off. It is clear that the tramp is safe until the next time
the train stops. Then he must get off, run ahead in the darkness, and
when the train pulls by, jump on to the blind again. But there are
ways and ways, as you shall see.

When the train pulled out, those twenty tramps swarmed upon the three
blinds. Some climbed on before the train had run a car-length. They
were awkward dubs, and I saw their speedy finish. Of course, the
train-crew was "on," and at the first stop the trouble began. I jumped
off and ran forward along the track. I noticed that I was accompanied
by a number of the tramps. They evidently knew their business. When
one is beating an overland, he must always keep well ahead of the
train at the stops. I ran ahead, and as I ran, one by one those that
accompanied me dropped out. This dropping out was the measure of their
skill and nerve in boarding a train.

For this is the way it works. When the train starts, the shack rides
out the blind. There is no way for him to get back into the train
proper except by jumping off the blind and catching a platform where
the car-ends are not "blind." When the train is going as fast as the
shack cares to risk, he therefore jumps off the blind, lets several
cars go by, and gets on to the train. So it is up to the tramp to run
so far ahead that before the blind is opposite him the shack will have
already vacated it.

I dropped the last tramp by about fifty feet, and waited. The train
started. I saw the lantern of the shack on the first blind. He was
riding her out. And I saw the dubs stand forlornly by the track as the
blind went by. They made no attempt to get on. They were beaten by
their own inefficiency at the very start. After them, in the line-up,
came the tramps that knew a little something about the game. They let
the first blind, occupied by the shack, go by, and jumped on the
second and third blinds. Of course, the shack jumped off the first and
on to the second as it went by, and scrambled around there, throwing
off the men who had boarded it. But the point is that I was so far
ahead that when the first blind came opposite me, the shack had
already left it and was tangled up with the tramps on the second
blind. A half dozen of the more skilful tramps, who had run far enough
ahead, made the first blind, too.

At the next stop, as we ran forward along the track, I counted but
fifteen of us. Five had been ditched. The weeding-out process had
begun nobly, and it continued station by station. Now we were
fourteen, now twelve, now eleven, now nine, now eight. It reminded me
of the ten little niggers of the nursery rhyme. I was resolved that I
should be the last little nigger of all. And why not? Was I not
blessed with strength, agility, and youth? (I was eighteen, and in
perfect condition.) And didn't I have my "nerve" with me? And
furthermore, was I not a tramp-royal? Were not these other tramps mere
dubs and "gay-cats" and amateurs alongside of me? If I weren't the
last little nigger, I might as well quit the game and get a job on an
alfalfa farm somewhere.

By the time our number had been reduced to four, the whole train-crew
had become interested. From then on it was a contest of skill and
wits, with the odds in favor of the crew. One by one the three other
survivors turned up missing, until I alone remained. My, but I was
proud of myself! No Croesus was ever prouder of his first million. I
was holding her down in spite of two brakemen, a conductor, a fireman,
and an engineer.

And here are a few samples of the way I held her down. Out ahead, in
the darkness,--so far ahead that the shack riding out the blind must
perforce get off before it reaches me,--I get on. Very well. I am
good for another station. When that station is reached, I dart ahead
again to repeat the manoeuvre. The train pulls out. I watch her
coming. There is no light of a lantern on the blind. Has the crew
abandoned the fight? I do not know. One never knows, and one must be
prepared every moment for anything. As the first blind comes opposite
me, and I run to leap aboard, I strain my eyes to see if the shack is
on the platform. For all I know he may be there, with his lantern
doused, and even as I spring upon the steps that lantern may smash
down upon my head. I ought to know. I have been hit by lanterns two or
three times.

But no, the first blind is empty. The train is gathering speed. I am
safe for another station. But am I? I feel the train slacken speed. On
the instant I am alert. A manoeuvre is being executed against me, and
I do not know what it is. I try to watch on both sides at once, not
forgetting to keep track of the tender in front of me. From any one,
or all, of these three directions, I may be assailed.

Ah, there it comes. The shack has ridden out the engine. My first
warning is when his feet strike the steps of the right-hand side of
the blind. Like a flash I am off the blind to the left and running
ahead past the engine. I lose myself in the darkness. The situation is
where it has been ever since the train left Ottawa. I am ahead, and
the train must come past me if it is to proceed on its journey. I have
as good a chance as ever for boarding her.

I watch carefully. I see a lantern come forward to the engine, and I
do not see it go back from the engine. It must therefore be still on
the engine, and it is a fair assumption that attached to the handle of
that lantern is a shack. That shack was lazy, or else he would have
put out his lantern instead of trying to shield it as he came forward.
The train pulls out. The first blind is empty, and I gain it. As
before the train slackens, the shack from the engine boards the blind
from one side, and I go off the other side and run forward.

As I wait in the darkness I am conscious of a big thrill of pride. The
overland has stopped twice for me--for me, a poor hobo on the bum. I
alone have twice stopped the overland with its many passengers and
coaches, its government mail, and its two thousand steam horses
straining in the engine. And I weigh only one hundred and sixty
pounds, and I haven't a five-cent piece in my pocket!

Again I see the lantern come forward to the engine. But this time it
comes conspicuously. A bit too conspicuously to suit me, and I wonder
what is up. At any rate I have something else to be afraid of than the
shack on the engine. The train pulls by. Just in time, before I make
my spring, I see the dark form of a shack, without a lantern, on the
first blind. I let it go by, and prepare to board the second blind.
But the shack on the first blind has jumped off and is at my heels.
Also, I have a fleeting glimpse of the lantern of the shack who rode
out the engine. He has jumped off, and now both shacks are on the
ground on the same side with me. The next moment the second blind
comes by and I am aboard it. But I do not linger. I have figured out
my countermove. As I dash across the platform I hear the impact of the
shack's feet against the steps as he boards. I jump off the other side
and run forward with the train. My plan is to run forward and get on
the first blind. It is nip and tuck, for the train is gathering speed.
Also, the shack is behind me and running after me. I guess I am the
better sprinter, for I make the first blind. I stand on the steps and
watch my pursuer. He is only about ten feet back and running hard; but
now the train has approximated his own speed, and, relative to me, he
is standing still. I encourage him, hold out my hand to him; but he
explodes in a mighty oath, gives up and makes the train several cars
back.

The train is speeding along, and I am still chuckling to myself, when,
without warning, a spray of water strikes me. The fireman is playing
the hose on me from the engine. I step forward from the car-platform
to the rear of the tender, where I am sheltered under the overhang.
The water flies harmlessly over my head. My fingers itch to climb up
on the tender and lam that fireman with a chunk of coal; but I know if
I do that, I'll be massacred by him and the engineer, and I refrain.

At the next stop I am off and ahead in the darkness. This time, when
the train pulls out, both shacks are on the first blind. I divine
their game. They have blocked the repetition of my previous play. I
cannot again take the second blind, cross over, and run forward to
the first. As soon as the first blind passes and I do not get on, they
swing off, one on each side of the train. I board the second blind,
and as I do so I know that a moment later, simultaneously, those two
shacks will arrive on both sides of me. It is like a trap. Both ways
are blocked. Yet there is another way out, and that way is up.

So I do not wait for my pursuers to arrive. I climb upon the upright
ironwork of the platform and stand upon the wheel of the hand-brake.
This has taken up the moment of grace and I hear the shacks strike the
steps on either side. I don't stop to look. I raise my arms overhead
until my hands rest against the down-curving ends of the roofs of the
two cars. One hand, of course, is on the curved roof of one car, the
other hand on the curved roof of the other car. By this time both
shacks are coming up the steps. I know it, though I am too busy to see
them. All this is happening in the space of only several seconds. I
make a spring with my legs and "muscle" myself up with my arms. As I
draw up my legs, both shacks reach for me and clutch empty air. I know
this, for I look down and see them. Also I hear them swear.

I am now in a precarious position, riding the ends of the down-curving
roofs of two cars at the same time. With a quick, tense movement, I
transfer both legs to the curve of one roof and both hands to the
curve of the other roof. Then, gripping the edge of that curving roof,
I climb over the curve to the level roof above, where I sit down to
catch my breath, holding on the while to a ventilator that projects
above the surface. I am on top of the train--on the "decks," as the
tramps call it, and this process I have described is by them called
"decking her." And let me say right here that only a young and
vigorous tramp is able to deck a passenger train, and also, that the
young and vigorous tramp must have his nerve with him as well.

The train goes on gathering speed, and I know I am safe until the next
stop--but only until the next stop. If I remain on the roof after the
train stops, I know those shacks will fusillade me with rocks. A
healthy shack can "dewdrop" a pretty heavy chunk of stone on top of a
car--say anywhere from five to twenty pounds. On the other hand, the
chances are large that at the next stop the shacks will be waiting for
me to descend at the place I climbed up. It is up to me to climb down
at some other platform.

Registering a fervent hope that there are no tunnels in the next half
mile, I rise to my feet and walk down the train half a dozen cars. And
let me say that one must leave timidity behind him on such a
_passear_. The roofs of passenger coaches are not made for midnight
promenades. And if any one thinks they are, let me advise him to try
it. Just let him walk along the roof of a jolting, lurching car, with
nothing to hold on to but the black and empty air, and when he comes
to the down-curving end of the roof, all wet and slippery with dew,
let him accelerate his speed so as to step across to the next roof,
down-curving and wet and slippery. Believe me, he will learn whether
his heart is weak or his head is giddy.

As the train slows down for a stop, half a dozen platforms from where
I had decked her I come down. No one is on the platform. When the
train comes to a standstill, I slip off to the ground. Ahead, and
between me and the engine, are two moving lanterns. The shacks are
looking for me on the roofs of the cars. I note that the car beside
which I am standing is a "four-wheeler"--by which is meant that it has
only four wheels to each truck. (When you go underneath on the rods,
be sure to avoid the "six-wheelers,"--they lead to disasters.)

I duck under the train and make for the rods, and I can tell you I am
mighty glad that the train is standing still. It is the first time I
have ever gone underneath on the Canadian Pacific, and the internal
arrangements are new to me. I try to crawl over the top of the truck,
between the truck and the bottom of the car. But the space is not
large enough for me to squeeze through. This is new to me. Down in the
United States I am accustomed to going underneath on rapidly moving
trains, seizing a gunnel and swinging my feet under to the brake-beam,
and from there crawling over the top of the truck and down inside the
truck to a seat on the cross-rod.

Feeling with my hands in the darkness, I learn that there is room
between the brake-beam and the ground. It is a tight squeeze. I have
to lie flat and worm my way through. Once inside the truck, I take my
seat on the rod and wonder what the shacks are thinking has become of
me. The train gets under way. They have given me up at last.

But have they? At the very next stop, I see a lantern thrust under
the next truck to mine at the other end of the car. They are searching
the rods for me. I must make my get-away pretty lively. I crawl on my
stomach under the brake-beam. They see me and run for me, but I crawl
on hands and knees across the rail on the opposite side and gain my
feet. Then away I go for the head of the train. I run past the engine
and hide in the sheltering darkness. It is the same old situation. I
am ahead of the train, and the train must go past me.

The train pulls out. There is a lantern on the first blind. I lie low,
and see the peering shack go by. But there is also a lantern on the
second blind. That shack spots me and calls to the shack who has gone
past on the first blind. Both jump off. Never mind, I'll take the
third blind and deck her. But heavens, there is a lantern on the third
blind, too. It is the conductor. I let it go by. At any rate I have
now the full train-crew in front of me. I turn and run back in the
opposite direction to what the train is going. I look over my
shoulder. All three lanterns are on the ground and wobbling along in
pursuit. I sprint. Half the train has gone by, and it is going quite
fast, when I spring aboard. I know that the two shacks and the
conductor will arrive like ravening wolves in about two seconds. I
spring upon the wheel of the hand-brake, get my hands on the curved
ends of the roofs, and muscle myself up to the decks; while my
disappointed pursuers, clustering on the platform beneath like dogs
that have treed a cat, howl curses up at me and say unsocial things
about my ancestors.

But what does that matter? It is five to one, including the engineer
and fireman, and the majesty of the law and the might of a great
corporation are behind them, and I am beating them out. I am too far
down the train, and I run ahead over the roofs of the coaches until I
am over the fifth or sixth platform from the engine. I peer down
cautiously. A shack is on that platform. That he has caught sight of
me, I know from the way he makes a swift sneak inside the car; and I
know, also, that he is waiting inside the door, all ready to pounce
out on me when I climb down. But I make believe that I don't know, and
I remain there to encourage him in his error. I do not see him, yet I
know that he opens the door once and peeps up to assure himself that I
am still there.

The train slows down for a station. I dangle my legs down in a
tentative way. The train stops. My legs are still dangling. I hear the
door unlatch softly. He is all ready for me. Suddenly I spring up and
run forward over the roof. This is right over his head, where he lurks
inside the door. The train is standing still; the night is quiet, and
I take care to make plenty of noise on the metal roof with my feet. I
don't know, but my assumption is that he is now running forward to
catch me as I descend at the next platform. But I don't descend there.
Halfway along the roof of the coach, I turn, retrace my way softly and
quickly to the platform both the shack and I have just abandoned. The
coast is clear. I descend to the ground on the off-side of the train
and hide in the darkness. Not a soul has seen me.

I go over to the fence, at the edge of the right of way, and watch.
Ah, ha! What's that? I see a lantern on top of the train, moving along
from front to rear. They think I haven't come down, and they are
searching the roofs for me. And better than that--on the ground on
each side of the train, moving abreast with the lantern on top, are
two other lanterns. It is a rabbit-drive, and I am the rabbit. When
the shack on top flushes me, the ones on each side will nab me. I roll
a cigarette and watch the procession go by. Once past me, I am safe to
proceed to the front of the train. She pulls out, and I make the front
blind without opposition. But before she is fully under way and just
as I am lighting my cigarette, I am aware that the fireman has climbed
over the coal to the back of the tender and is looking down at me. I
am filled with apprehension. From his position he can mash me to a
jelly with lumps of coal. Instead of which he addresses me, and I note
with relief the admiration in his voice.

"You son-of-a-gun," is what he says.

It is a high compliment, and I thrill as a schoolboy thrills on
receiving a reward of merit.

"Say," I call up to him, "don't you play the hose on me any more."

"All right," he answers, and goes back to his work.

I have made friends with the engine, but the shacks are still looking
for me. At the next stop, the shacks ride out all three blinds, and as
before, I let them go by and deck in the middle of the train. The
crew is on its mettle by now, and the train stops. The shacks are
going to ditch me or know the reason why. Three times the mighty
overland stops for me at that station, and each time I elude the
shacks and make the decks. But it is hopeless, for they have finally
come to an understanding of the situation. I have taught them that
they cannot guard the train from me. They must do something else.

And they do it. When the train stops that last time, they take after
me hot-footed. Ah, I see their game. They are trying to run me down.
At first they herd me back toward the rear of the train. I know my
peril. Once to the rear of the train, it will pull out with me left
behind. I double, and twist, and turn, dodge through my pursuers, and
gain the front of the train. One shack still hangs on after me. All
right, I'll give him the run of his life, for my wind is good. I run
straight ahead along the track. It doesn't matter. If he chases me ten
miles, he'll nevertheless have to catch the train, and I can board her
at any speed that he can.

So I run on, keeping just comfortably ahead of him and straining my
eyes in the gloom for cattle-guards and switches that may bring me to
grief. Alas! I strain my eyes too far ahead, and trip over something
just under my feet, I know not what, some little thing, and go down to
earth in a long, stumbling fall. The next moment I am on my feet, but
the shack has me by the collar. I do not struggle. I am busy with
breathing deeply and with sizing him up. He is narrow-shouldered, and
I have at least thirty pounds the better of him in weight. Besides, he
is just as tired as I am, and if he tries to slug me, I'll teach him a
few things.

But he doesn't try to slug me, and that problem is settled. Instead,
he starts to lead me back toward the train, and another possible
problem arises. I see the lanterns of the conductor and the other
shack. We are approaching them. Not for nothing have I made the
acquaintance of the New York police. Not for nothing, in box-cars, by
water-tanks, and in prison-cells, have I listened to bloody tales of
man-handling. What if these three men are about to man-handle me?
Heaven knows I have given them provocation enough. I think quickly. We
are drawing nearer and nearer to the other two trainmen. I line up the
stomach and the jaw of my captor, and plan the right and left I'll
give him at the first sign of trouble.

Pshaw! I know another trick I'd like to work on him, and I almost
regret that I did not do it at the moment I was captured. I could make
him sick, what of his clutch on my collar. His fingers,
tight-gripping, are buried inside my collar. My coat is tightly
buttoned. Did you ever see a tourniquet? Well, this is one. All I have
to do is to duck my head under his arm and begin to twist. I must
twist rapidly--very rapidly. I know how to do it; twisting in a
violent, jerky way, ducking my head under his arm with each
revolution. Before he knows it, those detaining fingers of his will be
detained. He will be unable to withdraw them. It is a powerful
leverage. Twenty seconds after I have started revolving, the blood
will be bursting out of his finger-ends, the delicate tendons will be
rupturing, and all the muscles and nerves will be mashing and crushing
together in a shrieking mass. Try it sometime when somebody has you by
the collar. But be quick--quick as lightning. Also, be sure to hug
yourself while you are revolving--hug your face with your left arm and
your abdomen with your right. You see, the other fellow might try to
stop you with a punch from his free arm. It would be a good idea, too,
to revolve away from that free arm rather than toward it. A punch
going is never so bad as a punch coming.

That shack will never know how near he was to being made very, very
sick. All that saves him is that it is not in their plan to man-handle
me. When we draw near enough, he calls out that he has me, and they
signal the train to come on. The engine passes us, and the three
blinds. After that, the conductor and the other shack swing aboard.
But still my captor holds on to me. I see the plan. He is going to
hold me until the rear of the train goes by. Then he will hop on, and
I shall be left behind--ditched.

But the train has pulled out fast, the engineer trying to make up for
lost time. Also, it is a long train. It is going very lively, and I
know the shack is measuring its speed with apprehension.

"Think you can make it?" I query innocently.

He releases my collar, makes a quick run, and swings aboard. A number
of coaches are yet to pass by. He knows it, and remains on the steps,
his head poked out and watching me. In that moment my next move comes
to me. I'll make the last platform. I know she's going fast and
faster, but I'll only get a roll in the dirt if I fail, and the
optimism of youth is mine. I do not give myself away. I stand with a
dejected droop of shoulder, advertising that I have abandoned hope.
But at the same time I am feeling with my feet the good gravel. It is
perfect footing. Also I am watching the poked-out head of the shack. I
see it withdrawn. He is confident that the train is going too fast for
me ever to make it.

And the train _is_ going fast--faster than any train I have ever
tackled. As the last coach comes by I sprint in the same direction
with it. It is a swift, short sprint. I cannot hope to equal the speed
of the train, but I can reduce the difference of our speed to the
minimum, and, hence, reduce the shock of impact, when I leap on board.
In the fleeting instant of darkness I do not see the iron hand-rail of
the last platform; nor is there time for me to locate it. I reach for
where I think it ought to be, and at the same instant my feet leave
the ground. It is all in the toss. The next moment I may be rolling in
the gravel with broken ribs, or arms, or head. But my fingers grip the
hand-hold, there is a jerk on my arms that slightly pivots my body,
and my feet land on the steps with sharp violence.

I sit down, feeling very proud of myself. In all my hoboing it is the
best bit of train-jumping I have done. I know that late at night one
is always good for several stations on the last platform, but I do not
care to trust myself at the rear of the train. At the first stop I run
forward on the off-side of the train, pass the Pullmans, and duck
under and take a rod under a day-coach. At the next stop I run forward
again and take another rod.

I am now comparatively safe. The shacks think I am ditched. But the
long day and the strenuous night are beginning to tell on me. Also, it
is not so windy nor cold underneath, and I begin to doze. This will
never do. Sleep on the rods spells death, so I crawl out at a station
and go forward to the second blind. Here I can lie down and sleep; and
here I do sleep--how long I do not know--for I am awakened by a
lantern thrust into my face. The two shacks are staring at me. I
scramble up on the defensive, wondering as to which one is going to
make the first "pass" at me. But slugging is far from their minds.

"I thought you was ditched," says the shack who had held me by the
collar.

"If you hadn't let go of me when you did, you'd have been ditched
along with me," I answer.

"How's that?" he asks.

"I'd have gone into a clinch with you, that's all," is my reply.

They hold a consultation, and their verdict is summed up in:--

"Well, I guess you can ride, Bo. There's no use trying to keep you
off."

And they go away and leave me in peace to the end of their division.

I have given the foregoing as a sample of what "holding her down"
means. Of course, I have selected a fortunate night out of my
experiences, and said nothing of the nights--and many of them--when I
was tripped up by accident and ditched.

In conclusion, I want to tell of what happened when I reached the end
of the division. On single-track, transcontinental lines, the freight
trains wait at the divisions and follow out after the passenger
trains. When the division was reached, I left my train, and looked for
the freight that would pull out behind it. I found the freight, made
up on a side-track and waiting. I climbed into a box-car half full of
coal and lay down. In no time I was asleep.

I was awakened by the sliding open of the door. Day was just dawning,
cold and gray, and the freight had not yet started. A "con"
(conductor) was poking his head inside the door.

"Get out of that, you blankety-blank-blank!" he roared at me.

I got, and outside I watched him go down the line inspecting every car
in the train. When he got out of sight I thought to myself that he
would never think I'd have the nerve to climb back into the very car
out of which he had fired me. So back I climbed and lay down again.

Now that con's mental processes must have been paralleling, mine, for
he reasoned that it was the very thing I would do. For back he came
and fired me out.

Now, surely, I reasoned, he will never dream that I'd do it a third
time. Back I went, into the very same car. But I decided to make sure.
Only one side-door could be opened. The other side-door was nailed up.
Beginning at the top of the coal, I dug a hole alongside of that door
and lay down in it. I heard the other door open. The con climbed up
and looked in over the top of the coal. He couldn't see me. He called
to me to get out. I tried to fool him by remaining quiet. But when he
began tossing chunks of coal into the hole on top of me, I gave up and
for the third time was fired out. Also, he informed me in warm terms
of what would happen to me if he caught me in there again.

I changed my tactics. When a man is paralleling your mental processes,
ditch him. Abruptly break off your line of reasoning, and go off on a
new line. This I did. I hid between some cars on an adjacent
side-track, and watched. Sure enough, that con came back again to the
car. He opened the door, he climbed up, he called, he threw coal into
the hole I had made. He even crawled over the coal and looked into the
hole. That satisfied him. Five minutes later the freight was pulling
out, and he was not in sight. I ran alongside the car, pulled the door
open, and climbed in. He never looked for me again, and I rode that
coal-car precisely one thousand and twenty-two miles, sleeping most of
the time and getting out at divisions (where the freights always stop
for an hour or so) to beg my food. And at the end of the thousand and
twenty-two miles I lost that car through a happy incident. I got a
"set-down," and the tramp doesn't live who won't miss a train for a
set-down any time.




PICTURES

    "What do it matter where or 'ow we die,
    So long as we've our 'ealth to watch it all?"

                  --Sestina of the Tramp-Royal


Perhaps the greatest charm of tramp-life is the absence of monotony.
In Hobo Land the face of life is protean--an ever changing
phantasmagoria, where the impossible happens and the unexpected jumps
out of the bushes at every turn of the road. The hobo never knows what
is going to happen the next moment; hence, he lives only in the
present moment. He has learned the futility of telic endeavor, and
knows the delight of drifting along with the whimsicalities of Chance.

Often I think over my tramp days, and ever I marvel at the swift
succession of pictures that flash up in my memory. It matters not
where I begin to think; any day of all the days is a day apart, with a
record of swift-moving pictures all its own. For instance, I remember
a sunny summer morning in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and immediately
comes to my mind the auspicious beginning of the day--a "set-down"
with two maiden ladies, and not in their kitchen, but in their dining
room, with them beside me at the table. We ate eggs, out of egg-cups!
It was the first time I had ever seen egg-cups, or heard of egg-cups!
I was a bit awkward at first, I'll confess; but I was hungry and
unabashed. I mastered the egg-cup, and I mastered the eggs in a way
that made those two maiden ladies sit up.

Why, they ate like a couple of canaries, dabbling with the one egg
each they took, and nibbling at tiny wafers of toast. Life was low in
their bodies; their blood ran thin; and they had slept warm all night.
I had been out all night, consuming much fuel of my body to keep warm,
beating my way down from a place called Emporium, in the northern part
of the state. Wafers of toast! Out of sight! But each wafer was no
more than a mouthful to me--nay, no more than a bite. It is tedious to
have to reach for another piece of toast each bite when one is
potential with many bites.

When I was a very little lad, I had a very little dog called Punch. I
saw to his feeding myself. Some one in the household had shot a lot of
ducks, and we had a fine meat dinner. When I had finished, I prepared
Punch's dinner--a large plateful of bones and tidbits. I went outside
to give it to him. Now it happened that a visitor had ridden over from
a neighboring ranch, and with him had come a Newfoundland dog as big
as a calf. I set the plate on the ground. Punch wagged his tail and
began. He had before him a blissful half-hour at least. There was a
sudden rush. Punch was brushed aside like a straw in the path of a
cyclone, and that Newfoundland swooped down upon the plate. In spite
of his huge maw he must have been trained to quick lunches, for, in
the fleeting instant before he received the kick in the ribs I aimed
at him, he completely engulfed the contents of the plate. He swept it
clean. One last lingering lick of his tongue removed even the grease
stains.

As that big Newfoundland behaved at the plate of my dog Punch, so
behaved I at the table of those two maiden ladies of Harrisburg. I
swept it bare. I didn't break anything, but I cleaned out the eggs and
the toast and the coffee. The servant brought more, but I kept her
busy, and ever she brought more and more. The coffee was delicious,
but it needn't have been served in such tiny cups. What time had I to
eat when it took all my time to prepare the many cups of coffee for
drinking?

At any rate, it gave my tongue time to wag. Those two maiden ladies,
with their pink-and-white complexions and gray curls, had never looked
upon the bright face of adventure. As the "Tramp-Royal" would have it,
they had worked all their lives "on one same shift." Into the sweet
scents and narrow confines of their uneventful existence I brought the
large airs of the world, freighted with the lusty smells of sweat and
strife, and with the tangs and odors of strange lands and soils. And
right well I scratched their soft palms with the callous on my own
palms--the half-inch horn that comes of pull-and-haul of rope and long
and arduous hours of caressing shovel-handles. This I did, not merely
in the braggadocio of youth, but to prove, by toil performed, the
claim I had upon their charity.

Ah, I can see them now, those dear, sweet ladies, just as I sat at
their breakfast table twelve years ago, discoursing upon the way of my
feet in the world, brushing aside their kindly counsel as a real
devilish fellow should, and thrilling them, not alone with my own
adventures, but with the adventures of all the other fellows with whom
I had rubbed shoulders and exchanged confidences. I appropriated them
all, the adventures of the other fellows, I mean; and if those maiden
ladies had been less trustful and guileless, they could have tangled
me up beautifully in my chronology. Well, well, and what of it? It was
fair exchange. For their many cups of coffee, and eggs, and bites of
toast, I gave full value. Right royally I gave them entertainment. My
coming to sit at their table was their adventure, and adventure is
beyond price anyway.

Coming along the street, after parting from the maiden ladies, I
gathered in a newspaper from the doorway of some late-riser, and in a
grassy park lay down to get in touch with the last twenty-four hours
of the world. There, in the park, I met a fellow-hobo who told me his
life-story and who wrestled with me to join the United States Army. He
had given in to the recruiting officer and was just about to join, and
he couldn't see why I shouldn't join with him. He had been a member of
Coxey's Army in the march to Washington several months before, and
that seemed to have given him a taste for army life. I, too, was a
veteran, for had I not been a private in Company L of the Second
Division of Kelly's Industrial Army?--said Company L being commonly
known as the "Nevada push." But my army experience had had the
opposite effect on me; so I left that hobo to go his way to the dogs
of war, while I "threw my feet" for dinner.

This duty performed, I started to walk across the bridge over the
Susquehanna to the west shore. I forget the name of the railroad that
ran down that side, but while lying in the grass in the morning the
idea had come to me to go to Baltimore; so to Baltimore I was going on
that railroad, whatever its name was. It was a warm afternoon, and
part way across the bridge I came to a lot of fellows who were in
swimming off one of the piers. Off went my clothes and in went I. The
water was fine; but when I came out and dressed, I found I had been
robbed. Some one had gone through my clothes. Now I leave it to you if
being robbed isn't in itself adventure enough for one day. I have
known men who have been robbed and who have talked all the rest of
their lives about it. True, the thief that went through my clothes
didn't get much--some thirty or forty cents in nickels and pennies,
and my tobacco and cigarette papers; but it was all I had, which is
more than most men can be robbed of, for they have something left at
home, while I had no home. It was a pretty tough gang in swimming
there. I sized up, and knew better than to squeal. So I begged "the
makings," and I could have sworn it was one of my own papers I rolled
the tobacco in.

Then on across the bridge I hiked to the west shore. Here ran the
railroad I was after. No station was in sight. How to catch a freight
without walking to a station was the problem. I noticed that the track
came up a steep grade, culminating at the point where I had tapped it,
and I knew that a heavy freight couldn't pull up there any too lively.
But how lively? On the opposite side of the track rose a high bank. On
the edge, at the top, I saw a man's head sticking up from the grass.
Perhaps he knew how fast the freights took the grade, and when the
next one went south. I called out my questions to him, and he motioned
to me to come up.

I obeyed, and when I reached the top, I found four other men lying in
the grass with him. I took in the scene and knew them for what they
were--American gypsies. In the open space that extended back among the
trees from the edge of the bank were several nondescript wagons.
Ragged, half-naked children swarmed over the camp, though I noticed
that they took care not to come near and bother the men-folk. Several
lean, unbeautiful, and toil-degraded women were pottering about with
camp-chores, and one I noticed who sat by herself on the seat of one
of the wagons, her head drooped forward, her knees drawn up to her
chin and clasped limply by her arms. She did not look happy. She
looked as if she did not care for anything--in this I was wrong, for
later I was to learn that there was something for which she did care.
The full measure of human suffering was in her face, and, in
addition, there was the tragic expression of incapacity for further
suffering. Nothing could hurt any more, was what her face seemed to
portray; but in this, too, I was wrong.

I lay in the grass on the edge of the steep and talked with the
men-folk. We were kin--brothers. I was the American hobo, and they
were the American gypsy. I knew enough of their argot for
conversation, and they knew enough of mine. There were two more in
their gang, who were across the river "mushing" in Harrisburg. A
"musher" is an itinerant fakir. This word is not to be confounded with
the Klondike "musher," though the origin of both terms may be the
same; namely, the corruption of the French _marche ons_, to march, to
walk, to "mush." The particular graft of the two mushers who had
crossed the river was umbrella-mending; but what real graft lay behind
their umbrella-mending, I was not told, nor would it have been polite
to ask.

It was a glorious day. Not a breath of wind was stirring, and we
basked in the shimmering warmth of the sun. From everywhere arose the
drowsy hum of insects, and the balmy air was filled with scents of the
sweet earth and the green growing things. We were too lazy to do more
than mumble on in intermittent conversation. And then, all abruptly,
the peace and quietude was jarred awry by man.

Two bare-legged boys of eight or nine in some minor way broke some
rule of the camp--what it was I did not know; and a man who lay beside
me suddenly sat up and called to them. He was chief of the tribe, a
man with narrow forehead and narrow-slitted eyes, whose thin lips and
twisted sardonic features explained why the two boys jumped and tensed
like startled deer at the sound of his voice. The alertness of fear
was in their faces, and they turned, in a panic, to run. He called to
them to come back, and one boy lagged behind reluctantly, his meagre
little frame portraying in pantomime the struggle within him between
fear and reason. He wanted to come back. His intelligence and past
experience told him that to come back was a lesser evil than to run
on; but lesser evil that it was, it was great enough to put wings to
his fear and urge his feet to flight.

Still he lagged and struggled until he reached the shelter of the
trees, where he halted. The chief of the tribe did not pursue. He
sauntered over to a wagon and picked up a heavy whip. Then he came
back to the centre of the open space and stood still. He did not
speak. He made no gestures. He was the Law, pitiless and omnipotent.
He merely stood there and waited. And I knew, and all knew, and the
two boys in the shelter of the trees knew, for what he waited.

The boy who had lagged slowly came back. His face was stamped with
quivering resolution. He did not falter. He had made up his mind to
take his punishment. And mark you, the punishment was not for the
original offence, but for the offence of running away. And in this,
that tribal chieftain but behaved as behaves the exalted society in
which he lived. We punish our criminals, and when they escape and run
away, we bring them back and add to their punishment.

Straight up to the chief the boy came, halting at the proper distance
for the swing of the lash. The whip hissed through the air, and I
caught myself with a start of surprise at the weight of the blow. The
thin little leg was so very thin and little. The flesh showed white
where the lash had curled and bitten, and then, where the white had
shown, sprang up the savage welt, with here and there along its length
little scarlet oozings where the skin had broken. Again the whip
swung, and the boy's whole body winced in anticipation of the blow,
though he did not move from the spot. His will held good. A second
welt sprang up, and a third. It was not until the fourth landed that
the boy screamed. Also, he could no longer stand still, and from then
on, blow after blow, he danced up and down in his anguish, screaming;
but he did not attempt to run away. If his involuntary dancing took
him beyond the reach of the whip, he danced back into range again. And
when it was all over--a dozen blows--he went away, whimpering and
squealing, among the wagons.

The chief stood still and waited. The second boy came out from the
trees. But he did not come straight. He came like a cringing dog,
obsessed by little panics that made him turn and dart away for half a
dozen steps. But always he turned and came back, circling nearer and
nearer to the man, whimpering, making inarticulate animal-noises in
his throat. I saw that he never looked at the man. His eyes always
were fixed upon the whip, and in his eyes was a terror that made me
sick--the frantic terror of an inconceivably maltreated child. I have
seen strong men dropping right and left out of battle and squirming in
their death-throes, I have seen them by scores blown into the air by
bursting shells and their bodies torn asunder; believe me, the
witnessing was as merrymaking and laughter and song to me in
comparison with the way the sight of that poor child affected me.

The whipping began. The whipping of the first boy was as play compared
with this one. In no time the blood was running down his thin little
legs. He danced and squirmed and doubled up till it seemed almost that
he was some grotesque marionette operated by strings. I say "seemed,"
for his screaming gave the lie to the seeming and stamped it with
reality. His shrieks were shrill and piercing; within them no hoarse
notes, but only the thin sexlessness of the voice of a child. The time
came when the boy could stand it no more. Reason fled, and he tried to
run away. But now the man followed up, curbing his flight, herding him
with blows back always into the open space.

Then came interruption. I heard a wild smothered cry. The woman who
sat in the wagon seat had got out and was running to interfere. She
sprang between the man and boy.

"You want some, eh?" said he with the whip. "All right, then."

He swung the whip upon her. Her skirts were long, so he did not try
for her legs. He drove the lash for her face, which she shielded as
best she could with her hands and forearms, drooping her head forward
between her lean shoulders, and on the lean shoulders and arms
receiving the blows. Heroic mother! She knew just what she was doing.
The boy, still shrieking, was making his get-away to the wagons.

And all the while the four men lay beside me and watched and made no
move. Nor did I move, and without shame I say it; though my reason was
compelled to struggle hard against my natural impulse to rise up and
interfere. I knew life. Of what use to the woman, or to me, would be
my being beaten to death by five men there on the bank of the
Susquehanna? I once saw a man hanged, and though my whole soul cried
protest, my mouth cried not. Had it cried, I should most likely have
had my skull crushed by the butt of a revolver, for it was the law
that the man should hang. And here, in this gypsy group, it was the
law that the woman should be whipped.

Even so, the reason in both cases that I did not interfere was not
that it was the law, but that the law was stronger than I. Had it not
been for those four men beside me in the grass, right gladly would I
have waded into the man with the whip. And, barring the accident of
the landing on me with a knife or a club in the hands of some of the
various women of the camp, I am confident that I should have beaten
him into a mess. But the four men _were_ beside me in the grass. They
made their law stronger than I.

Oh, believe me, I did my own suffering. I had seen women beaten
before, often, but never had I seen such a beating as this. Her dress
across the shoulders was cut into shreds. One blow that had passed her
guard, had raised a bloody welt from cheek to chin. Not one blow, nor
two, not one dozen, nor two dozen, but endlessly, infinitely, that
whip-lash smote and curled about her. The sweat poured from me, and I
breathed hard, clutching at the grass with my hands until I strained
it out by the roots. And all the time my reason kept whispering,
"Fool! Fool!" That welt on the face nearly did for me. I started to
rise to my feet; but the hand of the man next to me went out to my
shoulder and pressed me down.

"Easy, pardner, easy," he warned me in a low voice. I looked at him.
His eyes met mine unwaveringly. He was a large man, broad-shouldered
and heavy-muscled; and his face was lazy, phlegmatic, slothful, withal
kindly, yet without passion, and quite soulless--a dim soul,
unmalicious, unmoral, bovine, and stubborn. Just an animal he was,
with no more than a faint flickering of intelligence, a good-natured
brute with the strength and mental caliber of a gorilla. His hand
pressed heavily upon me, and I knew the weight of the muscles behind.
I looked at the other brutes, two of them unperturbed and incurious,
and one of them that gloated over the spectacle; and my reason came
back to me, my muscles relaxed, and I sank down in the grass.

My mind went back to the two maiden ladies with whom I had had
breakfast that morning. Less than two miles, as the crow flies,
separated them from this scene. Here, in the windless day, under a
beneficent sun, was a sister of theirs being beaten by a brother of
mine. Here was a page of life they could never see--and better so,
though for lack of seeing they would never be able to understand their
sisterhood, nor themselves, nor know the clay of which they were made.
For it is not given to woman to live in sweet-scented, narrow rooms
and at the same time be a little sister to all the world.

The whipping was finished, and the woman, no longer screaming, went
back to her seat in the wagon. Nor did the other women come to
her--just then. They were afraid. But they came afterward, when a
decent interval had elapsed. The man put the whip away and rejoined
us, flinging himself down on the other side of me. He was breathing
hard from his exertions. He wiped the sweat from his eyes on his
coat-sleeve, and looked challengingly at me. I returned his look
carelessly; what he had done was no concern of mine. I did not go away
abruptly. I lay there half an hour longer, which, under the
circumstances, was tact and etiquette. I rolled cigarettes from
tobacco I borrowed from them, and when I slipped down the bank to the
railroad, I was equipped with the necessary information for catching
the next freight bound south.

Well, and what of it? It was a page out of life, that's all; and there
are many pages worse, far worse, that I have seen. I have sometimes
held forth (facetiously, so my listeners believed) that the chief
distinguishing trait between man and the other animals is that man is
the only animal that maltreats the females of his kind. It is
something of which no wolf nor cowardly coyote is ever guilty. It is
something that even the dog, degenerated by domestication, will not
do. The dog still retains the wild instinct in this matter, while man
has lost most of his wild instincts--at least, most of the good ones.

Worse pages of life than what I have described? Read the reports on
child labor in the United States,--east, west, north, and south, it
doesn't matter where,--and know that all of us, profit-mongers that we
are, are typesetters and printers of worse pages of life than that
mere page of wife-beating on the Susquehanna.

I went down the grade a hundred yards to where the footing beside the
track was good. Here I could catch my freight as it pulled slowly up
the hill, and here I found half a dozen hoboes waiting for the same
purpose. Several were playing seven-up with an old pack of cards. I
took a hand. A coon began to shuffle the deck. He was fat, and young,
and moon-faced. He beamed with good-nature. It fairly oozed from him.
As he dealt the first card to me, he paused and said:--

"Say, Bo, ain't I done seen you befo'?"

"You sure have," I answered. "An' you didn't have those same duds on,
either."

He was puzzled.

"D'ye remember Buffalo?" I queried.

Then he knew me, and with laughter and ejaculation hailed me as a
comrade; for at Buffalo his clothes had been striped while he did his
bit of time in the Erie County Penitentiary. For that matter, my
clothes had been likewise striped, for I had been doing my bit of
time, too.

The game proceeded, and I learned the stake for which we played. Down
the bank toward the river descended a steep and narrow path that led
to a spring some twenty-five feet beneath. We played on the edge of
the bank. The man who was "stuck" had to take a small condensed-milk
can, and with it carry water to the winners.

The first game was played and the coon was stuck. He took the small
milk-tin and climbed down the bank, while we sat above and guyed him.
We drank like fish. Four round trips he had to make for me alone, and
the others were equally lavish with their thirst. The path was very
steep, and sometimes the coon slipped when part way up, spilled the
water, and had to go back for more. But he didn't get angry. He
laughed as heartily as any of us; that was why he slipped so often.
Also, he assured us of the prodigious quantities of water he would
drink when some one else got stuck.

When our thirst was quenched, another game was started. Again the coon
was stuck, and again we drank our fill. A third game and a fourth
ended the same way, and each time that moon-faced darky nearly died
with delight at appreciation of the fate that Chance was dealing out
to him. And we nearly died with him, what of our delight. We laughed
like careless children, or gods, there on the edge of the bank. I know
that I laughed till it seemed the top of my head would come off, and
I drank from the milk-tin till I was nigh waterlogged. Serious
discussion arose as to whether we could successfully board the freight
when it pulled up the grade, what of the weight of water secreted on
our persons. This particular phase of the situation just about
finished the coon. He had to break off from water-carrying for at
least five minutes while he lay down and rolled with laughter.

The lengthening shadows stretched farther and farther across the
river, and the soft, cool twilight came on, and ever we drank water,
and ever our ebony cup-bearer brought more and more. Forgotten was the
beaten woman of the hour before. That was a page read and turned over;
I was busy now with this new page, and when the engine whistled on the
grade, this page would be finished and another begun; and so the book
of life goes on, page after page and pages without end--when one is
young.

And then we played a game in which the coon failed to be stuck. The
victim was a lean and dyspeptic-looking hobo, the one who had laughed
least of all of us. We said we didn't want any water--which was the
truth. Not the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind, nor the pressure of a
pneumatic ram, could have forced another drop into my saturated
carcass. The coon looked disappointed, then rose to the occasion and
guessed he'd have some. He meant it, too. He had some, and then some,
and then some. Ever the melancholy hobo climbed down and up the steep
bank, and ever the coon called for more. He drank more water than all
the rest of us put together. The twilight deepened into night, the
stars came out, and he still drank on. I do believe that if the
whistle of the freight hadn't sounded, he'd be there yet, swilling
water and revenge while the melancholy hobo toiled down and up.

But the whistle sounded. The page was done. We sprang to our feet and
strung out alongside the track. There she came, coughing and
spluttering up the grade, the headlight turning night into day and
silhouetting us in sharp relief. The engine passed us, and we were all
running with the train, some boarding on the side-ladders, others
"springing" the side-doors of empty box-cars and climbing in. I caught
a flat-car loaded with mixed lumber and crawled away into a
comfortable nook. I lay on my back with a newspaper under my head for
a pillow. Above me the stars were winking and wheeling in squadrons
back and forth as the train rounded the curves, and watching them I
fell asleep. The day was done--one day of all my days. To-morrow would
be another day, and I was young.




"PINCHED"


I rode into Niagara Falls in a "side-door Pullman," or, in common
parlance, a box-car. A flat-car, by the way, is known amongst the
fraternity as a "gondola," with the second syllable emphasized and
pronounced long. But to return. I arrived in the afternoon and headed
straight from the freight train to the falls. Once my eyes were filled
with that wonder-vision of down-rushing water, I was lost. I could not
tear myself away long enough to "batter" the "privates" (domiciles)
for my supper. Even a "set-down" could not have lured me away. Night
came on, a beautiful night of moonlight, and I lingered by the falls
until after eleven. Then it was up to me to hunt for a place to "kip."

"Kip," "doss," "flop," "pound your ear," all mean the same thing;
namely, to sleep. Somehow, I had a "hunch" that Niagara Falls was a
"bad" town for hoboes, and I headed out into the country. I climbed a
fence and "flopped" in a field. John Law would never find me there, I
flattered myself. I lay on my back in the grass and slept like a babe.
It was so balmy warm that I woke up not once all night. But with the
first gray daylight my eyes opened, and I remembered the wonderful
falls. I climbed the fence and started down the road to have another
look at them. It was early--not more than five o'clock--and not until
eight o'clock could I begin to batter for my breakfast. I could spend
at least three hours by the river. Alas! I was fated never to see the
river nor the falls again.

The town was asleep when I entered it. As I came along the quiet
street, I saw three men coming toward me along the sidewalk. They were
walking abreast. Hoboes, I decided, like myself, who had got up early.
In this surmise I was not quite correct. I was only sixty-six and
two-thirds per cent correct. The men on each side were hoboes all
right, but the man in the middle wasn't. I directed my steps to the
edge of the sidewalk in order to let the trio go by. But it didn't go
by. At some word from the man in the centre, all three halted, and he
of the centre addressed me.

I piped the lay on the instant. He was a "fly-cop" and the two hoboes
were his prisoners. John Law was up and out after the early worm. I
was a worm. Had I been richer by the experiences that were to befall
me in the next several months, I should have turned and run like the
very devil. He might have shot at me, but he'd have had to hit me to
get me. He'd have never run after me, for two hoboes in the hand are
worth more than one on the get-away. But like a dummy I stood still
when he halted me. Our conversation was brief.

"What hotel are you stopping at?" he queried.

He had me. I wasn't stopping at any hotel, and, since I did not know
the name of a hotel in the place, I could not claim residence in any
of them. Also, I was up too early in the morning. Everything was
against me.

"I just arrived," I said.

"Well, you turn around and walk in front of me, and not too far in
front. There's somebody wants to see you."

I was "pinched." I knew who wanted to see me. With that "fly-cop" and
the two hoboes at my heels, and under the direction of the former, I
led the way to the city jail. There we were searched and our names
registered. I have forgotten, now, under which name I was registered.
I gave the name of Jack Drake, but when they searched me, they found
letters addressed to Jack London. This caused trouble and required
explanation, all of which has passed from my mind, and to this day I
do not know whether I was pinched as Jack Drake or Jack London. But
one or the other, it should be there to-day in the prison register of
Niagara Falls. Reference can bring it to light. The time was somewhere
in the latter part of June, 1894. It was only a few days after my
arrest that the great railroad strike began.

From the office we were led to the "Hobo" and locked in. The "Hobo" is
that part of a prison where the minor offenders are confined together
in a large iron cage. Since hoboes constitute the principal division
of the minor offenders, the aforesaid iron cage is called the Hobo.
Here we met several hoboes who had already been pinched that morning,
and every little while the door was unlocked and two or three more
were thrust in on us. At last, when we totalled sixteen, we were led
upstairs into the court-room. And now I shall faithfully describe
what took place in that court-room, for know that my patriotic
American citizenship there received a shock from which it has never
fully recovered.

In the court-room were the sixteen prisoners, the judge, and two
bailiffs. The judge seemed to act as his own clerk. There were no
witnesses. There were no citizens of Niagara Falls present to look on
and see how justice was administered in their community. The judge
glanced at the list of cases before him and called out a name. A hobo
stood up. The judge glanced at a bailiff. "Vagrancy, your Honor," said
the bailiff. "Thirty days," said his Honor. The hobo sat down, and the
judge was calling another name and another hobo was rising to his
feet.

The trial of that hobo had taken just about fifteen seconds. The trial
of the next hobo came off with equal celerity. The bailiff said,
"Vagrancy, your Honor," and his Honor said, "Thirty days." Thus it
went like clockwork, fifteen seconds to a hobo--and thirty days.

They are poor dumb cattle, I thought to myself. But wait till my turn
comes; I'll give his Honor a "spiel." Part way along in the
performance, his Honor, moved by some whim, gave one of us an
opportunity to speak. As chance would have it, this man was not a
genuine hobo. He bore none of the ear-marks of the professional
"stiff." Had he approached the rest of us, while waiting at a
water-tank for a freight, should have unhesitatingly classified him as
a "gay-cat." Gay-cat is the synonym for tenderfoot in Hobo Land. This
gay-cat was well along in years--somewhere around forty-five, I should
judge. His shoulders were humped a trifle, and his face was seamed by
weather-beat.

For many years, according to his story, he had driven team for some
firm in (if I remember rightly) Lockport, New York. The firm had
ceased to prosper, and finally, in the hard times of 1893, had gone
out of business. He had been kept on to the last, though toward the
last his work had been very irregular. He went on and explained at
length his difficulties in getting work (when so many were out of
work) during the succeeding months. In the end, deciding that he would
find better opportunities for work on the Lakes, he had started for
Buffalo. Of course he was "broke," and there he was. That was all.

"Thirty days," said his Honor, and called another hobo's name.

Said hobo got up. "Vagrancy, your Honor," said the bailiff, and his
Honor said, "Thirty days."

And so it went, fifteen seconds and thirty days to each hobo. The
machine of justice was grinding smoothly. Most likely, considering how
early it was in the morning, his Honor had not yet had his breakfast
and was in a hurry.

But my American blood was up. Behind me were the many generations of
my American ancestry. One of the kinds of liberty those ancestors of
mine had fought and died for was the right of trial by jury. This was
my heritage, stained sacred by their blood, and it devolved upon me to
stand up for it. All right, I threatened to myself; just wait till he
gets to me.

He got to me. My name, whatever it was, was called, and I stood up.
The bailiff said, "Vagrancy, your Honor," and I began to talk. But the
judge began talking at the same time, and he said, "Thirty days." I
started to protest, but at that moment his Honor was calling the name
of the next hobo on the list. His Honor paused long enough to say to
me, "Shut up!" The bailiff forced me to sit down. And the next moment
that next hobo had received thirty days and the succeeding hobo was
just in process of getting his.

When we had all been disposed of, thirty days to each stiff, his
Honor, just as he was about to dismiss us, suddenly turned to the
teamster from Lockport--the one man he had allowed to talk.

"Why did you quit your job?" his Honor asked.

Now the teamster had already explained how his job had quit him, and
the question took him aback.

"Your Honor," he began confusedly, "isn't that a funny question to
ask?"

"Thirty days more for quitting your job," said his Honor, and the
court was closed. That was the outcome. The teamster got sixty days
all together, while the rest of us got thirty days.

We were taken down below, locked up, and given breakfast. It was a
pretty good breakfast, as prison breakfasts go, and it was the best I
was to get for a month to come.

As for me, I was dazed. Here was I, under sentence, after a farce of a
trial wherein I was denied not only my right of trial by jury, but my
right to plead guilty or not guilty. Another thing my fathers had
fought for flashed through my brain--habeas corpus. I'd show them. But
when I asked for a lawyer, I was laughed at. Habeas corpus was all
right, but of what good was it to me when I could communicate with no
one outside the jail? But I'd show them. They couldn't keep me in jail
forever. Just wait till I got out, that was all. I'd make them sit up.
I knew something about the law and my own rights, and I'd expose their
maladministration of justice. Visions of damage suits and sensational
newspaper headlines were dancing before my eyes when the jailers came
in and began hustling us out into the main office.

A policeman snapped a handcuff on my right wrist. (Ah, ha, thought I,
a new indignity. Just wait till I get out.) On the left wrist of a
negro he snapped the other handcuff of that pair. He was a very tall
negro, well past six feet--so tall was he that when we stood side by
side his hand lifted mine up a trifle in the manacles. Also, he was
the happiest and the raggedest negro I have ever seen.

We were all handcuffed similarly, in pairs. This accomplished, a
bright nickel-steel chain was brought forth, run down through the
links of all the handcuffs, and locked at front and rear of the
double-line. We were now a chain-gang. The command to march was given,
and out we went upon the street, guarded by two officers. The tall
negro and I had the place of honor. We led the procession.

After the tomb-like gloom of the jail, the outside sunshine was
dazzling. I had never known it to be so sweet as now, a prisoner with
clanking chains, I knew that I was soon to see the last of it for
thirty days. Down through the streets of Niagara Falls we marched to
the railroad station, stared at by curious passers-by, and especially
by a group of tourists on the veranda of a hotel that we marched past.

There was plenty of slack in the chain, and with much rattling and
clanking we sat down, two and two, in the seats of the smoking-car.
Afire with indignation as I was at the outrage that had been
perpetrated on me and my forefathers, I was nevertheless too
prosaically practical to lose my head over it. This was all new to me.
Thirty days of mystery were before me, and I looked about me to find
somebody who knew the ropes. For I had already learned that I was not
bound for a petty jail with a hundred or so prisoners in it, but for a
full-grown penitentiary with a couple of thousand prisoners in it,
doing anywhere from ten days to ten years.

In the seat behind me, attached to the chain by his wrist, was a
squat, heavily-built, powerfully-muscled man. He was somewhere between
thirty-five and forty years of age. I sized him up. In the corners of
his eyes I saw humor and laughter and kindliness. As for the rest of
him, he was a brute-beast, wholly unmoral, and with all the passion
and turgid violence of the brute-beast. What saved him, what made him
possible for me, were those corners of his eyes--the humor and
laughter and kindliness of the beast when unaroused.

He was my "meat." I "cottoned" to him. While my cuff-mate, the tall
negro, mourned with chucklings and laughter over some laundry he was
sure to lose through his arrest, and while the train rolled on toward
Buffalo, I talked with the man in the seat behind me. He had an empty
pipe. I filled it for him with my precious tobacco--enough in a single
filling to make a dozen cigarettes. Nay, the more we talked the surer
I was that he was my meat, and I divided all my tobacco with him.

Now it happens that I am a fluid sort of an organism, with sufficient
kinship with life to fit myself in 'most anywhere. I laid myself out
to fit in with that man, though little did I dream to what
extraordinary good purpose I was succeeding. He had never been in the
particular penitentiary to which we were going, but he had done
"one-," "two-," and "five-spots" in various other penitentiaries (a
"spot" is a year), and he was filled with wisdom. We became pretty
chummy, and my heart bounded when he cautioned me to follow his lead.
He called me "Jack," and I called him "Jack."

The train stopped at a station about five miles from Buffalo, and we,
the chain-gang, got off. I do not remember the name of this station,
but I am confident that it is some one of the following: Rocklyn,
Rockwood, Black Rock, Rockcastle, or Newcastle. But whatever the name
of the place, we were walked a short distance and then put on a
street-car. It was an old-fashioned car, with a seat, running the full
length, on each side. All the passengers who sat on one side were
asked to move over to the other side, and we, with a great clanking of
chain, took their places. We sat facing them, I remember, and I
remember, too, the awed expression on the faces of the women, who took
us, undoubtedly, for convicted murderers and bank-robbers. I tried to
look my fiercest, but that cuff-mate of mine, the too happy negro,
insisted on rolling his eyes, laughing, and reiterating, "O Lawdy!
Lawdy!"

We left the car, walked some more, and were led into the office of the
Erie County Penitentiary. Here we were to register, and on that
register one or the other of my names will be found. Also, we were
informed that we must leave in the office all our valuables: money,
tobacco, matches, pocketknives, and so forth.

My new pal shook his head at me.

"If you do not leave your things here, they will be confiscated
inside," warned the official.

Still my pal shook his head. He was busy with his hands, hiding his
movements behind the other fellows. (Our handcuffs had been removed.)
I watched him, and followed suit, wrapping up in a bundle in my
handkerchief all the things I wanted to take in. These bundles the two
of us thrust into our shirts. I noticed that our fellow-prisoners,
with the exception of one or two who had watches, did not turn over
their belongings to the man in the office. They were determined to
smuggle them in somehow, trusting to luck; but they were not so wise
as my pal, for they did not wrap their things in bundles.

Our erstwhile guardians gathered up the handcuffs and chain and
departed for Niagara Falls, while we, under new guardians, were led
away into the prison. While we were in the office, our number had been
added to by other squads of newly arrived prisoners, so that we were
now a procession forty or fifty strong.

Know, ye unimprisoned, that traffic is as restricted inside a large
prison as commerce was in the Middle Ages. Once inside a penitentiary,
one cannot move about at will. Every few steps are encountered great
steel doors or gates which are always kept locked. We were bound for
the barber-shop, but we encountered delays in the unlocking of doors
for us. We were thus delayed in the first "hall" we entered. A "hall"
is not a corridor. Imagine an oblong cube, built out of bricks and
rising six stories high, each story a row of cells, say fifty cells in
a row--in short, imagine a cube of colossal honeycomb. Place this cube
on the ground and enclose it in a building with a roof overhead and
walls all around. Such a cube and encompassing building constitute a
"hall" in the Erie County Penitentiary. Also, to complete the picture,
see a narrow gallery, with steel railing, running the full length of
each tier of cells and at the ends of the oblong cube see all these
galleries, from both sides, connected by a fire-escape system of
narrow steel stairways.

We were halted in the first hall, waiting for some guard to unlock a
door. Here and there, moving about, were convicts, with close-cropped
heads and shaven faces, and garbed in prison stripes. One such convict
I noticed above us on the gallery of the third tier of cells. He was
standing on the gallery and leaning forward, his arms resting on the
railing, himself apparently oblivious of our presence. He seemed
staring into vacancy. My pal made a slight hissing noise. The convict
glanced down. Motioned signals passed between them. Then through the
air soared the handkerchief bundle of my pal. The convict caught it,
and like a flash it was out of sight in his shirt and he was staring
into vacancy. My pal had told me to follow his lead. I watched my
chance when the guard's back was turned, and my bundle followed the
other one into the shirt of the convict.

A minute later the door was unlocked, and we filed into the
barber-shop. Here were more men in convict stripes. They were the
prison barbers. Also, there were bath-tubs, hot water, soap, and
scrubbing-brushes. We were ordered to strip and bathe, each man to
scrub his neighbor's back--a needless precaution, this compulsory
bath, for the prison swarmed with vermin. After the bath, we were each
given a canvas clothes-bag.

"Put all your clothes in the bags," said the guard. "It's no good
trying to smuggle anything in. You've got to line up naked for
inspection. Men for thirty days or less keep their shoes and
suspenders. Men for more than thirty days keep nothing."

This announcement was received with consternation. How could naked men
smuggle anything past an inspection? Only my pal and I were safe. But
it was right here that the convict barbers got in their work. They
passed among the poor newcomers, kindly volunteering to take charge of
their precious little belongings, and promising to return them later
in the day. Those barbers were philanthropists--to hear them talk. As
in the case of Fra Lippo Lippi, never was there such prompt
disemburdening. Matches, tobacco, rice-paper, pipes, knives, money,
everything, flowed into the capacious shirts of the barbers. They
fairly bulged with the spoil, and the guards made believe not to see.
To cut the story short, nothing was ever returned. The barbers never
had any intention of returning what they had taken. They considered it
legitimately theirs. It was the barber-shop graft. There were many
grafts in that prison, as I was to learn; and I, too, was destined to
become a grafter--thanks to my new pal.

There were several chairs, and the barbers worked rapidly. The
quickest shaves and hair-cuts I have ever seen were given in that
shop. The men lathered themselves, and the barbers shaved them at the
rate of a minute to a man. A hair-cut took a trifle longer. In three
minutes the down of eighteen was scraped from my face, and my head was
as smooth as a billiard-ball just sprouting a crop of bristles.
Beards, mustaches, like our clothes and everything, came off. Take my
word for it, we were a villainous-looking gang when they got through
with us. I had not realized before how really altogether bad we were.

Then came the line-up, forty or fifty of us, naked as Kipling's heroes
who stormed Lungtungpen. To search us was easy. There were only our
shoes and ourselves. Two or three rash spirits, who had doubted the
barbers, had the goods found on them--which goods, namely, tobacco,
pipes, matches, and small change, were quickly confiscated. This over,
our new clothes were brought to us--stout prison shirts, and coats and
trousers conspicuously striped. I had always lingered under the
impression that the convict stripes were put on a man only after he
had been convicted of a felony. I lingered no longer, but put on the
insignia of shame and got my first taste of marching the lock-step.

In single file, close together, each man's hands on the shoulders of
the man in front, we marched on into another large hall. Here we were
ranged up against the wall in a long line and ordered to strip our
left arms. A youth, a medical student who was getting in his practice
on cattle such as we, came down the line. He vaccinated just about
four times as rapidly as the barbers shaved. With a final caution to
avoid rubbing our arms against anything, and to let the blood dry so
as to form the scab, we were led away to our cells. Here my pal and I
parted, but not before he had time to whisper to me, "Suck it out."

As soon as I was locked in, I sucked my arm clean. And afterward I saw
men who had not sucked and who had horrible holes in their arms into
which I could have thrust my fist. It was their own fault. They could
have sucked.

In my cell was another man. We were to be cell-mates. He was a young,
manly fellow, not talkative, but very capable, indeed as splendid a
fellow as one could meet with in a day's ride, and this in spite of
the fact that he had just recently finished a two-year term in some
Ohio penitentiary.

Hardly had we been in our cell half an hour, when a convict sauntered
down the gallery and looked in. It was my pal. He had the freedom of
the hall, he explained. He was unlocked at six in the morning and not
locked up again till nine at night. He was in with the "push" in that
hall, and had been promptly appointed a trusty of the kind technically
known as "hall-man." The man who had appointed him was also a prisoner
and a trusty, and was known as "First Hall-man." There were thirteen
hall-men in that hall. Ten of them had charge each of a gallery of
cells, and over them were the First, Second, and Third Hall-men.

We newcomers were to stay in our cells for the rest of the day, my pal
informed me, so that the vaccine would have a chance to take. Then
next morning we would be put to hard labor in the prison-yard.

"But I'll get you out of the work as soon as I can," he promised.
"I'll get one of the hall-men fired and have you put in his place."

He put his hand into his shirt, drew out the handkerchief containing
my precious belongings, passed it in to me through the bars, and went
on down the gallery.

I opened the bundle. Everything was there. Not even a match was
missing. I shared the makings of a cigarette with my cell-mate. When I
started to strike a match for a light, he stopped me. A flimsy, dirty
comforter lay in each of our bunks for bedding. He tore off a narrow
strip of the thin cloth and rolled it tightly and telescopically into
a long and slender cylinder. This he lighted with a precious match.
The cylinder of tight-rolled cotton cloth did not flame. On the end a
coal of fire slowly smouldered. It would last for hours, and my
cell-mate called it a "punk." And when it burned short, all that was
necessary was to make a new punk, put the end of it against the old,
blow on them, and so transfer the glowing coal. Why, we could have
given Prometheus pointers on the conserving of fire.

At twelve o'clock dinner was served. At the bottom of our cage door
was a small opening like the entrance of a runway in a chicken-yard.
Through this were thrust two hunks of dry bread and two pannikins of
"soup." A portion of soup consisted of about a quart of hot water with
floating on its surface a lonely drop of grease. Also, there was some
salt in that water.

We drank the soup, but we did not eat the bread. Not that we were not
hungry, and not that the bread was uneatable. It was fairly good
bread. But we had reasons. My cell-mate had discovered that our cell
was alive with bed-bugs. In all the cracks and interstices between the
bricks where the mortar had fallen out flourished great colonies. The
natives even ventured out in the broad daylight and swarmed over the
walls and ceiling by hundreds. My cell-mate was wise in the ways of
the beasts. Like Childe Roland, dauntless the slug-horn to his lips he
bore. Never was there such a battle. It lasted for hours. It was
shambles. And when the last survivors fled to their brick-and-mortar
fastnesses, our work was only half done. We chewed mouthfuls of our
bread until it was reduced to the consistency of putty. When a fleeing
belligerent escaped into a crevice between the bricks, we promptly
walled him in with a daub of the chewed bread. We toiled on until the
light grew dim and until every hole, nook, and cranny was closed. I
shudder to think of the tragedies of starvation and cannibalism that
must have ensued behind those bread-plastered ramparts.

We threw ourselves on our bunks, tired out and hungry, to wait for
supper. It was a good day's work well done. In the weeks to come we at
least should not suffer from the hosts of vermin. We had foregone our
dinner, saved our hides at the expense of our stomachs; but we were
content. Alas for the futility of human effort! Scarcely was our long
task completed when a guard unlocked our door. A redistribution of
prisoners was being made, and we were taken to another cell and locked
in two galleries higher up.

Early next morning our cells were unlocked, and down in the hall the
several hundred prisoners of us formed the lock-step and marched out
into the prison-yard to go to work. The Erie Canal runs right by the
back yard of the Erie County Penitentiary. Our task was to unload
canal-boats, carrying huge stay-bolts on our shoulders, like railroad
ties, into the prison. As I worked I sized up the situation and
studied the chances for a get-away. There wasn't the ghost of a show.
Along the tops of the walls marched guards armed with repeating
rifles, and I was told, furthermore, that there were machine-guns in
the sentry-towers.

I did not worry. Thirty days were not so long. I'd stay those thirty
days, and add to the store of material I intended to use, when I got
out, against the harpies of justice. I'd show what an American boy
could do when his rights and privileges had been trampled on the way
mine had. I had been denied my right of trial by jury; I had been
denied my right to plead guilty or not guilty; I had been denied a
trial even (for I couldn't consider that what I had received at
Niagara Falls was a trial); I had not been allowed to communicate with
a lawyer nor any one, and hence had been denied my right of suing for
a writ of habeas corpus; my face had been shaved, my hair cropped
close, convict stripes had been put upon my body; I was forced to toil
hard on a diet of bread and water and to march the shameful lock-step
with armed guards over me--and all for what? What had I done? What
crime had I committed against the good citizens of Niagara Falls that
all this vengeance should be wreaked upon me? I had not even violated
their "sleeping-out" ordinance. I had slept outside their
jurisdiction, in the country, that night. I had not even begged for a
meal, or battered for a "light piece" on their streets. All that I had
done was to walk along their sidewalk and gaze at their picayune
waterfall. And what crime was there in that? Technically I was guilty
of no misdemeanor. All right, I'd show them when I got out.

The next day I talked with a guard. I wanted to send for a lawyer. The
guard laughed at me. So did the other guards. I really was
_incommunicado_ so far as the outside world was concerned. I tried to
write a letter out, but I learned that all letters were read, and
censured or confiscated, by the prison authorities, and that
"short-timers" were not allowed to write letters anyway. A little
later I tried smuggling letters out by men who were released, but I
learned that they were searched and the letters found and destroyed.
Never mind. It all helped to make it a blacker case when I did get
out.

But as the prison days went by (which I shall describe in the next
chapter), I "learned a few." I heard tales of the police, and
police-courts, and lawyers, that were unbelievable and monstrous. Men,
prisoners, told me of personal experiences with the police of great
cities that were awful. And more awful were the hearsay tales they
told me concerning men who had died at the hands of the police and who
therefore could not testify for themselves. Years afterward, in the
report of the Lexow Committee, I was to read tales true and more awful
than those told to me. But in the meantime, during the first days of
my imprisonment, I scoffed at what I heard.

As the days went by, however, I began to grow convinced. I saw with my
own eyes, there in that prison, things unbelievable and monstrous. And
the more convinced I became, the profounder grew the respect in me for
the sleuth-hounds of the law and for the whole institution of criminal
justice.

My indignation ebbed away, and into my being rushed the tides of fear.
I saw at last, clear-eyed, what I was up against. I grew meek and
lowly. Each day I resolved more emphatically to make no rumpus when I
got out. All I asked, when I got out, was a chance to fade away from
the landscape. And that was just what I did do when I was released. I
kept my tongue between my teeth, walked softly, and sneaked for
Pennsylvania, a wiser and a humbler man.




THE PEN


For two days I toiled in the prison-yard. It was heavy work, and, in
spite of the fact that I malingered at every opportunity, I was played
out. This was because of the food. No man could work hard on such
food. Bread and water, that was all that was given us. Once a week we
were supposed to get meat; but this meat did not always go around, and
since all nutriment had first been boiled out of it in the making of
soup, it didn't matter whether one got a taste of it once a week or
not.

Furthermore, there was one vital defect in the bread-and-water diet.
While we got plenty of water, we did not get enough of the bread. A
ration of bread was about the size of one's two fists, and three
rations a day were given to each prisoner. There was one good thing, I
must say, about the water--it was hot. In the morning it was called
"coffee," at noon it was dignified as "soup," and at night it
masqueraded as "tea." But it was the same old water all the time. The
prisoners called it "water bewitched." In the morning it was black
water, the color being due to boiling it with burnt bread-crusts. At
noon it was served minus the color, with salt and a drop of grease
added. At night it was served with a purplish-auburn hue that defied
all speculation; it was darn poor tea, but it was dandy hot water.

We were a hungry lot in the Erie County Pen. Only the "long-timers"
knew what it was to have enough to eat. The reason for this was that
they would have died after a time on the fare we "short-timers"
received. I know that the long-timers got more substantial grub,
because there was a whole row of them on the ground floor in our hall,
and when I was a trusty, I used to steal from their grub while serving
them. Man cannot live on bread alone and not enough of it.

My pal delivered the goods. After two days of work in the yard I was
taken out of my cell and made a trusty, a "hall-man." At morning and
night we served the bread to the prisoners in their cells; but at
twelve o'clock a different method was used. The convicts marched in
from work in a long line. As they entered the door of our hall, they
broke the lock-step and took their hands down from the shoulders of
their line-mates. Just inside the door were piled trays of bread, and
here also stood the First Hall-man and two ordinary hall-men. I was
one of the two. Our task was to hold the trays of bread as the line of
convicts filed past. As soon as the tray, say, that I was holding was
emptied, the other hall-man took my place with a full tray. And when
his was emptied, I took his place with a full tray. Thus the line
tramped steadily by, each man reaching with his right hand and taking
one ration of bread from the extended tray.

The task of the First Hall-man was different. He used a club. He stood
beside the tray and watched. The hungry wretches could never get over
the delusion that sometime they could manage to get two rations of
bread out of the tray. But in my experience that sometime never came.
The club of the First Hall-man had a way of flashing out--quick as the
stroke of a tiger's claw--to the hand that dared ambitiously. The
First Hall-man was a good judge of distance, and he had smashed so
many hands with that club that he had become infallible. He never
missed, and he usually punished the offending convict by taking his
one ration away from him and sending him to his cell to make his meal
off of hot water.

And at times, while all these men lay hungry in their cells, I have
seen a hundred or so extra rations of bread hidden away in the cells
of the hall-men. It would seem absurd, our retaining this bread. But
it was one of our grafts. We were economic masters inside our hall,
turning the trick in ways quite similar to the economic masters of
civilization. We controlled the food-supply of the population, and,
just like our brother bandits outside, we made the people pay through
the nose for it. We peddled the bread. Once a week, the men who worked
in the yard received a five-cent plug of chewing tobacco. This chewing
tobacco was the coin of the realm. Two or three rations of bread for a
plug was the way we exchanged, and they traded, not because they loved
tobacco less, but because they loved bread more. Oh, I know, it was
like taking candy from a baby, but what would you? We had to live. And
certainly there should be some reward for initiative and enterprise.
Besides, we but patterned ourselves after our betters outside the
walls, who, on a larger scale, and under the respectable disguise of
merchants, bankers, and captains of industry, did precisely what we
were doing. What awful things would have happened to those poor
wretches if it hadn't been for us, I can't imagine. Heaven knows we
put bread into circulation in the Erie County Pen. Ay, and we
encouraged frugality and thrift ... in the poor devils who forewent
their tobacco. And then there was our example. In the breast of every
convict there we implanted the ambition to become even as we and run a
graft. Saviours of society--I guess yes.

Here was a hungry man without any tobacco. Maybe he was a profligate
and had used it all up on himself. Very good; he had a pair of
suspenders. I exchanged half a dozen rations of bread for it--or a
dozen rations if the suspenders were very good. Now I never wore
suspenders, but that didn't matter. Around the corner lodged a
long-timer, doing ten years for manslaughter. He wore suspenders, and
he wanted a pair. I could trade them to him for some of his meat. Meat
was what I wanted. Or perhaps he had a tattered, paper-covered novel.
That was treasure-trove. I could read it and then trade it off to the
bakers for cake, or to the cooks for meat and vegetables, or to the
firemen for decent coffee, or to some one or other for the newspaper
that occasionally filtered in, heaven alone knows how. The cooks,
bakers, and firemen were prisoners like myself, and they lodged in our
hall in the first row of cells over us.

In short, a full-grown system of barter obtained in the Erie County
Pen. There was even money in circulation. This money was sometimes
smuggled in by the short-timers, more frequently came from the
barber-shop graft, where the newcomers were mulcted, but most of all
flowed from the cells of the long-timers--though how they got it I
don't know.

What of his preeminent position, the First Hall-man was reputed to be
quite wealthy. In addition to his miscellaneous grafts, he grafted on
us. We farmed the general wretchedness, and the First Hall-man was
Farmer-General over all of us. We held our particular grafts by his
permission, and we had to pay for that permission. As I say, he was
reputed to be wealthy; but we never saw his money, and he lived in a
cell all to himself in solitary grandeur.

But that money was made in the Pen I had direct evidence, for I was
cell-mate quite a time with the Third Hall-man. He had over sixteen
dollars. He used to count his money every night after nine o'clock,
when we were locked in. Also, he used to tell me each night what he
would do to me if I gave away on him to the other hall-men. You see,
he was afraid of being robbed, and danger threatened him from three
different directions. There were the guards. A couple of them might
jump upon him, give him a good beating for alleged insubordination,
and throw him into the "solitaire" (the dungeon); and in the mix-up
that sixteen dollars of his would take wings. Then again, the First
Hall-man could have taken it all away from him by threatening to
dismiss him and fire him back to hard labor in the prison-yard. And
yet again, there were the ten of us who were ordinary hall-men. If we
got an inkling of his wealth, there was a large liability, some quiet
day, of the whole bunch of us getting him into a corner and dragging
him down. Oh, we were wolves, believe me--just like the fellows who do
business in Wall Street.

He had good reason to be afraid of us, and so had I to be afraid of
him. He was a huge, illiterate brute, an ex-Chesapeake-Bay-oyster-pirate,
an "ex-con" who had done five years in Sing Sing, and a general
all-around stupidly carnivorous beast. He used to trap sparrows that
flew into our hall through the open bars. When he made a capture, he
hurried away with it into his cell, where I have seen him crunching
bones and spitting out feathers as he bolted it raw. Oh, no, I never
gave away on him to the other hall-men. This is the first time I have
mentioned his sixteen dollars.

But I grafted on him just the same. He was in love with a woman
prisoner who was confined in the "female department." He could neither
read nor write, and I used to read her letters to him and write his
replies. And I made him pay for it, too. But they were good letters. I
laid myself out on them, put in my best licks, and furthermore, I won
her for him; though I shrewdly guess that she was in love, not with
him, but with the humble scribe. I repeat, those letters were great.

Another one of our grafts was "passing the punk." We were the
celestial messengers, the fire-bringers, in that iron world of bolt
and bar. When the men came in from work at night and were locked in
their cells, they wanted to smoke. Then it was that we restored the
divine spark, running the galleries, from cell to cell, with our
smouldering punks. Those who were wise, or with whom we did business,
had their punks all ready to light. Not every one got divine sparks,
however. The guy who refused to dig up, went sparkless and smokeless
to bed. But what did we care? We had the immortal cinch on him, and if
he got fresh, two or three of us would pitch on him and give him
"what-for."

You see, this was the working-theory of the hall-men. There were
thirteen of us. We had something like half a thousand prisoners in our
hall. We were supposed to do the work, and to keep order. The latter
was the function of the guards, which they turned over to us. It was
up to us to keep order; if we didn't, we'd be fired back to hard
labor, most probably with a taste of the dungeon thrown in. But so
long as we maintained order, that long could we work our own
particular grafts.

Bear with me a moment and look at the problem. Here were thirteen
beasts of us over half a thousand other beasts. It was a living hell,
that prison, and it was up to us thirteen there to rule. It was
impossible, considering the nature of the beasts, for us to rule by
kindness. We ruled by fear. Of course, behind us, backing us up, were
the guards. In extremity we called upon them for help; but it would
bother them if we called upon them too often, in which event we could
depend upon it that they would get more efficient trusties to take our
places. But we did not call upon them often, except in a quiet sort of
way, when we wanted a cell unlocked in order to get at a refractory
prisoner inside. In such cases all the guard did was to unlock the
door and walk away so as not to be a witness of what happened when
half a dozen hall-men went inside and did a bit of man-handling.

As regards the details of this man-handling I shall say nothing. And
after all, man-handling was merely one of the very minor unprintable
horrors of the Erie County Pen. I say "unprintable"; and in justice I
must also say "unthinkable." They were unthinkable to me until I saw
them, and I was no spring chicken in the ways of the world and the
awful abysses of human degradation. It would take a deep plummet to
reach bottom in the Erie County Pen, and I do but skim lightly and
facetiously the surface of things as I there saw them.

At times, say in the morning when the prisoners came down to wash, the
thirteen of us would be practically alone in the midst of them, and
every last one of them had it in for us. Thirteen against five
hundred, and we ruled by fear. We could not permit the slightest
infraction of rules, the slightest insolence. If we did, we were lost.
Our own rule was to hit a man as soon as he opened his mouth--hit him
hard, hit him with anything. A broom-handle, end-on, in the face, had
a very sobering effect. But that was not all. Such a man must be made
an example of; so the next rule was to wade right in and follow him
up. Of course, one was sure that every hall-man in sight would come on
the run to join in the chastisement; for this also was a rule.
Whenever any hall-man was in trouble with a prisoner, the duty of any
other hall-man who happened to be around was to lend a fist. Never
mind the merits of the case--wade in and hit, and hit with anything;
in short, lay the man out.

I remember a handsome young mulatto of about twenty who got the insane
idea into his head that he should stand for his rights. And he did
have the right of it, too; but that didn't help him any. He lived on
the topmost gallery. Eight hall-men took the conceit out of him in
just about a minute and a half--for that was the length of time
required to travel along his gallery to the end and down five flights
of steel stairs. He travelled the whole distance on every portion of
his anatomy except his feet, and the eight hall-men were not idle. The
mulatto struck the pavement where I was standing watching it all. He
regained his feet and stood upright for a moment. In that moment he
threw his arms wide apart and omitted an awful scream of terror and
pain and heartbreak. At the same instant, as in a transformation
scene, the shreds of his stout prison clothes fell from him, leaving
him wholly naked and streaming blood from every portion of the surface
of his body. Then he collapsed in a heap, unconscious. He had learned
his lesson, and every convict within those walls who heard him scream
had learned a lesson. So had I learned mine. It is not a nice thing to
see a man's heart broken in a minute and a half.

The following will illustrate how we drummed up business in the graft
of passing the punk. A row of newcomers is installed in your cells.
You pass along before the bars with your punk. "Hey, Bo, give us a
light," some one calls to you. Now this is an advertisement that that
particular man has tobacco on him. You pass in the punk and go your
way. A little later you come back and lean up casually against the
bars. "Say, Bo, can you let us have a little tobacco?" is what you
say. If he is not wise to the game, the chances are that he solemnly
avers that he hasn't any more tobacco. All very well. You condole with
him and go your way. But you know that his punk will last him only the
rest of that day. Next day you come by, and he says again, "Hey, Bo,
give us a light." And you say, "You haven't any tobacco and you don't
need a light." And you don't give him any, either. Half an hour after,
or an hour or two or three hours, you will be passing by and the man
will call out to you in mild tones, "Come here, Bo." And you come. You
thrust your hand between the bars and have it filled with precious
tobacco. Then you give him a light.

Sometimes, however, a newcomer arrives, upon whom no grafts are to be
worked. The mysterious word is passed along that he is to be treated
decently. Where this word originated I could never learn. The one
thing patent is that the man has a "pull." It may be with one of the
superior hall-men; it may be with one of the guards in some other part
of the prison; it may be that good treatment has been purchased from
grafters higher up; but be it as it may, we know that it is up to us
to treat him decently if we want to avoid trouble.

We hall-men were middle-men and common carriers. We arranged trades
between convicts confined in different parts of the prison, and we put
through the exchange. Also, we took our commissions coming and going.
Sometimes the objects traded had to go through the hands of half a
dozen middle-men, each of whom took his whack, or in some way or
another was paid for his service.

Sometimes one was in debt for services, and sometimes one had others
in his debt. Thus, I entered the prison in debt to the convict who
smuggled in my things for me. A week or so afterward, one of the
firemen passed a letter into my hand. It had been given to him by a
barber. The barber had received it from the convict who had smuggled
in my things. Because of my debt to him I was to carry the letter on.
But he had not written the letter. The original sender was a
long-timer in his hall. The letter was for a woman prisoner in the
female department. But whether it was intended for her, or whether
she, in turn, was one of the chain of go-betweens, I did not know. All
that I knew was her description, and that it was up to me to get it
into her hands.

Two days passed, during which time I kept the letter in my possession;
then the opportunity came. The women did the mending of all the
clothes worn by the convicts. A number of our hall-men had to go to
the female department to bring back huge bundles of clothes. I fixed
it with the First Hall-man that I was to go along. Door after door was
unlocked for us as we threaded our way across the prison to the
women's quarters. We entered a large room where the women sat working
at their mending. My eyes were peeled for the woman who had been
described to me. I located her and worked near to her. Two eagle-eyed
matrons were on watch. I held the letter in my palm, and I looked my
intention at the woman. She knew I had something for her; she must
have been expecting it, and had set herself to divining, at the moment
we entered, which of us was the messenger. But one of the matrons
stood within two feet of her. Already the hall-men were picking up the
bundles they were to carry away. The moment was passing. I delayed
with my bundle, making believe that it was not tied securely. Would
that matron ever look away? Or was I to fail? And just then another
woman cut up playfully with one of the hall-men--stuck out her foot
and tripped him, or pinched him, or did something or other. The matron
looked that way and reprimanded the woman sharply. Now I do not know
whether or not this was all planned to distract the matron's
attention, but I did know that it was my opportunity. My particular
woman's hand dropped from her lap down by her side. I stooped to pick
up my bundle. From my stooping position I slipped the letter into her
hand, and received another in exchange. The next moment the bundle
was on my shoulder, the matron's gaze had returned to me because I was
the last hall-man, and I was hastening to catch up with my companions.
The letter I had received from the woman I turned over to the fireman,
and thence it passed through the hands of the barber, of the convict
who had smuggled in my things, and on to the long-timer at the other
end.

Often we conveyed letters, the chain of communication of which was so
complex that we knew neither sender nor sendee. We were but links in
the chain. Somewhere, somehow, a convict would thrust a letter into my
hand with the instruction to pass it on to the next link. All such
acts were favors to be reciprocated later on, when I should be acting
directly with a principal in transmitting letters, and from whom I
should be receiving my pay. The whole prison was covered by a network
of lines of communication. And we who were in control of the system of
communication, naturally, since we were modelled after capitalistic
society, exacted heavy tolls from our customers. It was service for
profit with a vengeance, though we were at times not above giving
service for love.

And all the time I was in the Pen I was making myself solid with my
pal. He had done much for me, and in return he expected me to do as
much for him. When we got out, we were to travel together, and, it
goes without saying, pull off "jobs" together. For my pal was a
criminal--oh, not a jewel of the first water, merely a petty criminal
who would steal and rob, commit burglary, and, if cornered, not stop
short of murder. Many a quiet hour we sat and talked together. He had
two or three jobs in view for the immediate future, in which my work
was cut out for me, and in which I joined in planning the details. I
had been with and seen much of criminals, and my pal never dreamed
that I was only fooling him, giving him a string thirty days long. He
thought I was the real goods, liked me because I was not stupid, and
liked me a bit, too, I think, for myself. Of course I had not the
slightest intention of joining him in a life of sordid, petty crime;
but I'd have been an idiot to throw away all the good things his
friendship made possible. When one is on the hot lava of hell, he
cannot pick and choose his path, and so it was with me in the Erie
County Pen. I had to stay in with the "push," or do hard labor on
bread and water; and to stay in with the push I had to make good with
my pal.

Life was not monotonous in the Pen. Every day something was happening:
men were having fits, going crazy, fighting, or the hall-men were
getting drunk. Rover Jack, one of the ordinary hall-men, was our star
"oryide." He was a true "profesh," a "blowed-in-the-glass" stiff, and
as such received all kinds of latitude from the hall-men in authority.
Pittsburg Joe, who was Second Hall-man, used to join Rover Jack in his
jags; and it was a saying of the pair that the Erie County Pen was the
only place where a man could get "slopped" and not be arrested. I
never knew, but I was told that bromide of potassium, gained in
devious ways from the dispensary, was the dope they used. But I do
know, whatever their dope was, that they got good and drunk on
occasion.

Our hall was a common stews, filled with the ruck and the filth, the
scum and dregs, of society--hereditary inefficients, degenerates,
wrecks, lunatics, addled intelligences, epileptics, monsters,
weaklings, in short, a very nightmare of humanity. Hence, fits
flourished with us. These fits seemed contagious. When one man began
throwing a fit, others followed his lead. I have seen seven men down
with fits at the same time, making the air hideous with their cries,
while as many more lunatics would be raging and gibbering up and down.
Nothing was ever done for the men with fits except to throw cold water
on them. It was useless to send for the medical student or the doctor.
They were not to be bothered with such trivial and frequent
occurrences.

There was a young Dutch boy, about eighteen years of age, who had fits
most frequently of all. He usually threw one every day. It was for
that reason that we kept him on the ground floor farther down in the
row of cells in which we lodged. After he had had a few fits in the
prison-yard, the guards refused to be bothered with him any more, and
so he remained locked up in his cell all day with a Cockney cell-mate,
to keep him company. Not that the Cockney was of any use. Whenever the
Dutch boy had a fit, the Cockney became paralyzed with terror.

The Dutch boy could not speak a word of English. He was a farmer's
boy, serving ninety days as punishment for having got into a scrap
with some one. He prefaced his fits with howling. He howled like a
wolf. Also, he took his fits standing up, which was very inconvenient
for him, for his fits always culminated in a headlong pitch to the
floor. Whenever I heard the long wolf-howl rising, I used to grab a
broom and run to his cell. Now the trusties were not allowed keys to
the cells, so I could not get in to him. He would stand up in the
middle of his narrow cell, shivering convulsively, his eyes rolled
backward till only the whites were visible, and howling like a lost
soul. Try as I would, I could never get the Cockney to lend him a
hand. While he stood and howled, the Cockney crouched and trembled in
the upper bunk, his terror-stricken gaze fixed on that awful figure,
with eyes rolled back, that howled and howled. It was hard on him,
too, the poor devil of a Cockney. His own reason was not any too
firmly seated, and the wonder is that he did not go mad.

All that I could do was my best with the broom. I would thrust it
through the bars, train it on Dutchy's chest, and wait. As the crisis
approached he would begin swaying back and forth. I followed this
swaying with the broom, for there was no telling when he would take
that dreadful forward pitch. But when he did, I was there with the
broom, catching him and easing him down. Contrive as I would, he never
came down quite gently, and his face was usually bruised by the stone
floor. Once down and writhing in convulsions, I'd throw a bucket of
water over him. I don't know whether cold water was the right thing or
not, but it was the custom in the Erie County Pen. Nothing more than
that was ever done for him. He would lie there, wet, for an hour or
so, and then crawl into his bunk. I knew better than to run to a guard
for assistance. What was a man with a fit, anyway?

In the adjoining cell lived a strange character--a man who was doing
sixty days for eating swill out of Barnum's swill-barrel, or at least
that was the way he put it. He was a badly addled creature, and, at
first, very mild and gentle. The facts of his case were as he had
stated them. He had strayed out to the circus ground, and, being
hungry, had made his way to the barrel that contained the refuse from
the table of the circus people. "And it was good bread," he often
assured me; "and the meat was out of sight." A policeman had seen him
and arrested him, and there he was.

Once I passed his cell with a piece of stiff thin wire in my hand. He
asked me for it so earnestly that I passed it through the bars to him.
Promptly, and with no tool but his fingers, he broke it into short
lengths and twisted them into half a dozen very creditable safety
pins. He sharpened the points on the stone floor. Thereafter I did
quite a trade in safety pins. I furnished the raw material and peddled
the finished product, and he did the work. As wages, I paid him extra
rations of bread, and once in a while a chunk of meat or a piece of
soup-bone with some marrow inside.

But his imprisonment told on him, and he grew violent day by day. The
hall-men took delight in teasing him. They filled his weak brain with
stories of a great fortune that had been left him. It was in order to
rob him of it that he had been arrested and sent to jail. Of course,
as he himself knew, there was no law against eating out of a barrel.
Therefore he was wrongly imprisoned. It was a plot to deprive him of
his fortune.

The first I knew of it, I heard the hall-men laughing about the string
they had given him. Next he held a serious conference with me, in
which he told me of his millions and the plot to deprive him of them,
and in which he appointed me his detective. I did my best to let him
down gently, speaking vaguely of a mistake, and that it was another
man with a similar name who was the rightful heir. I left him quite
cooled down; but I couldn't keep the hall-men away from him, and they
continued to string him worse than ever. In the end, after a most
violent scene, he threw me down, revoked my private detectiveship, and
went on strike. My trade in safety pins ceased. He refused to make any
more safety pins, and he peppered me with raw material through the
bars of his cell when I passed by.

I could never make it up with him. The other hall-men told him that I
was a detective in the employ of the conspirators. And in the meantime
the hall-men drove him mad with their stringing. His fictitious wrongs
preyed upon his mind, and at last he became a dangerous and homicidal
lunatic. The guards refused to listen to his tale of stolen millions,
and he accused them of being in the plot. One day he threw a pannikin
of hot tea over one of them, and then his case was investigated. The
warden talked with him a few minutes through the bars of his cell.
Then he was taken away for examination before the doctors. He never
came back, and I often wonder if he is dead, or if he still gibbers
about his millions in some asylum for the insane.

At last came the day of days, my release. It was the day of release
for the Third Hall-man as well, and the short-timer girl I had won for
him was waiting for him outside the wall. They went away blissfully
together. My pal and I went out together, and together we walked down
into Buffalo. Were we not to be together always? We begged together on
the "main-drag" that day for pennies, and what we received was spent
for "shupers" of beer--I don't know how they are spelled, but they are
pronounced the way I have spelled them, and they cost three cents. I
was watching my chance all the time for a get-away. From some bo on
the drag I managed to learn what time a certain freight pulled out. I
calculated my time accordingly. When the moment came, my pal and I
were in a saloon. Two foaming shupers were before us. I'd have liked
to say good-by. He had been good to me. But I did not dare. I went out
through the rear of the saloon and jumped the fence. It was a swift
sneak, and a few minutes later I was on board a freight and heading
south on the Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad.




HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT


In the course of my tramping I encountered hundreds of hoboes, whom I
hailed or who hailed me, and with whom I waited at water-tanks,
"boiled-up," cooked "mulligans," "battered" the "drag" or "privates,"
and beat trains, and who passed and were seen never again. On the
other hand, there were hoboes who passed and repassed with amazing
frequency, and others, still, who passed like ghosts, close at hand,
unseen, and never seen.

It was one of the latter that I chased clear across Canada over three
thousand miles of railroad, and never once did I lay eyes on him. His
"monica" was Skysail Jack. I first ran into it at Montreal. Carved
with a jack-knife was the skysail-yard of a ship. It was perfectly
executed. Under it was "Skysail Jack." Above was "B.W. 9-15-94." This
latter conveyed the information that he had passed through Montreal
bound west, on October 15, 1894. He had one day the start of me.
"Sailor Jack" was my monica at that particular time, and promptly I
carved it alongside of his, along with the date and the information
that I, too, was bound west.

I had misfortune in getting over the next hundred miles, and eight
days later I picked up Skysail Jack's trail three hundred miles west
of Ottawa. There it was, carved on a water-tank, and by the date I saw
that he likewise had met with delay. He was only two days ahead of me.
I was a "comet" and "tramp-royal," so was Skysail Jack; and it was up
to my pride and reputation to catch up with him. I "railroaded" day
and night, and I passed him; then turn about he passed me. Sometimes
he was a day or so ahead, and sometimes I was. From hoboes, bound
east, I got word of him occasionally, when he happened to be ahead;
and from them I learned that he had become interested in Sailor Jack
and was making inquiries about me.

We'd have made a precious pair, I am sure, if we'd ever got together;
but get together we couldn't. I kept ahead of him clear across
Manitoba, but he led the way across Alberta, and early one bitter gray
morning, at the end of a division just east of Kicking Horse Pass, I
learned that he had been seen the night before between Kicking Horse
Pass and Rogers' Pass. It was rather curious the way the information
came to me. I had been riding all night in a "side-door Pullman"
(box-car), and nearly dead with cold had crawled out at the division
to beg for food. A freezing fog was drifting past, and I "hit" some
firemen I found in the round-house. They fixed me up with the leavings
from their lunch-pails, and in addition I got out of them nearly a
quart of heavenly "Java" (coffee). I heated the latter, and, as I sat
down to eat, a freight pulled in from the west. I saw a side-door open
and a road-kid climb out. Through the drifting fog he limped over to
me. He was stiff with cold, his lips blue. I shared my Java and grub
with him, learned about Skysail Jack, and then learned about him.
Behold, he was from my own town, Oakland, California, and he was a
member of the celebrated Boo Gang--a gang with which I had affiliated
at rare intervals. We talked fast and bolted the grub in the half-hour
that followed. Then my freight pulled out, and I was on it, bound west
on the trail of Skysail Jack.

I was delayed between the passes, went two days without food, and
walked eleven miles on the third day before I got any, and yet I
succeeded in passing Skysail Jack along the Fraser River in British
Columbia. I was riding "passengers" then and making time; but he must
have been riding passengers, too, and with more luck or skill than I,
for he got into Mission ahead of me.

Now Mission was a junction, forty miles east of Vancouver. From the
junction one could proceed south through Washington and Oregon over
the Northern Pacific. I wondered which way Skysail Jack would go, for
I thought I was ahead of him. As for myself I was still bound west to
Vancouver. I proceeded to the water-tank to leave that information,
and there, freshly carved, with that day's date upon it, was Skysail
Jack's monica. I hurried on into Vancouver. But he was gone. He had
taken ship immediately and was still flying west on his
world-adventure. Truly, Skysail Jack, you were a tramp-royal, and your
mate was the "wind that tramps the world." I take off my hat to you.
You were "blowed-in-the-glass" all right. A week later I, too, got my
ship, and on board the steamship Umatilla, in the forecastle, was
working my way down the coast to San Francisco. Skysail Jack and
Sailor Jack--gee! if we'd ever got together.

Water-tanks are tramp directories. Not all in idle wantonness do
tramps carve their monicas, dates, and courses. Often and often have I
met hoboes earnestly inquiring if I had seen anywhere such and such a
"stiff" or his monica. And more than once I have been able to give the
monica of recent date, the water-tank, and the direction in which he
was then bound. And promptly the hobo to whom I gave the information
lit out after his pal. I have met hoboes who, in trying to catch a
pal, had pursued clear across the continent and back again, and were
still going.

"Monicas" are the nom-de-rails that hoboes assume or accept when
thrust upon them by their fellows. Leary Joe, for instance, was timid,
and was so named by his fellows. No self-respecting hobo would select
Stew Bum for himself. Very few tramps care to remember their pasts
during which they ignobly worked, so monicas based upon trades are
very rare, though I remember having met the following: Moulder
Blackey, Painter Red, Chi Plumber, Boiler-Maker, Sailor Boy, and
Printer Bo. "Chi" (pronounced shy), by the way, is the argot for
"Chicago."

A favorite device of hoboes is to base their monicas on the localities
from which they hail, as: New York Tommy, Pacific Slim, Buffalo
Smithy, Canton Tim, Pittsburg Jack, Syracuse Shine, Troy Mickey, K.L.
Bill, and Connecticut Jimmy. Then there was "Slim Jim from Vinegar
Hill, who never worked and never will." A "shine" is always a negro,
so called, possibly, from the high lights on his countenance. Texas
Shine or Toledo Shine convey both race and nativity.

Among those that incorporated their race, I recollect the following:
Frisco Sheeny, New York Irish, Michigan French, English Jack, Cockney
Kid, and Milwaukee Dutch. Others seem to take their monicas in part
from the color-schemes stamped upon them at birth, such as: Chi
Whitey, New Jersey Red, Boston Blackey, Seattle Browney, and Yellow
Dick and Yellow Belly--the last a Creole from Mississippi, who, I
suspect, had his monica thrust upon him.

Texas Royal, Happy Joe, Bust Connors, Burley Bo, Tornado Blackey, and
Touch McCall used more imagination in rechristening themselves.
Others, with less fancy, carry the names of their physical
peculiarities, such as: Vancouver Slim, Detroit Shorty, Ohio Fatty,
Long Jack, Big Jim, Little Joe, New York Blink, Chi Nosey, and
Broken-backed Ben.

By themselves come the road-kids, sporting an infinite variety of
monicas. For example, the following, whom here and there I have
encountered: Buck Kid, Blind Kid, Midget Kid, Holy Kid, Bat Kid, Swift
Kid, Cookey Kid, Monkey Kid, Iowa Kid, Corduroy Kid, Orator Kid (who
could tell how it happened), and Lippy Kid (who was insolent, depend
upon it).

On the water-tank at San Marcial, New Mexico, a dozen years ago, was
the following hobo bill of fare:--

  (1) Main-drag fair.
  (2) Bulls not hostile.
  (3) Round-house good for kipping.
  (4) North-bound trains no good.
  (5) Privates no good.
  (6) Restaurants good for cooks only.
  (7) Railroad House good for night-work only.

Number one conveys the information that begging for money on the main
street is fair; number two, that the police will not bother hoboes;
number three, that one can sleep in the round-house. Number four,
however, is ambiguous. The north-bound trains may be no good to beat,
and they may be no good to beg. Number five means that the residences
are not good to beggars, and number six means that only hoboes that
have been cooks can get grub from the restaurants. Number seven
bothers me. I cannot make out whether the Railroad House is a good
place for any hobo to beg at night, or whether it is good only for
hobo-cooks to beg at night, or whether any hobo, cook or non-cook, can
lend a hand at night, helping the cooks of the Railroad House with
their dirty work and getting something to eat in payment.

But to return to the hoboes that pass in the night. I remember one I
met in California. He was a Swede, but he had lived so long in the
United States that one couldn't guess his nationality. He had to tell
it on himself. In fact, he had come to the United States when no more
than a baby. I ran into him first at the mountain town of Truckee.
"Which way, Bo?" was our greeting, and "Bound east" was the answer
each of us gave. Quite a bunch of "stiffs" tried to ride out the
overland that night, and I lost the Swede in the shuffle. Also, I lost
the overland.

I arrived in Reno, Nevada, in a box-car that was promptly
side-tracked. It was a Sunday morning, and after I threw my feet for
breakfast, I wandered over to the Piute camp to watch the Indians
gambling. And there stood the Swede, hugely interested. Of course we
got together. He was the only acquaintance I had in that region, and I
was his only acquaintance. We rushed together like a couple of
dissatisfied hermits, and together we spent the day, threw our feet
for dinner, and late in the afternoon tried to "nail" the same
freight. But he was ditched, and I rode her out alone, to be ditched
myself in the desert twenty miles beyond.

Of all desolate places, the one at which I was ditched was the limit.
It was called a flag-station, and it consisted of a shanty dumped
inconsequentially into the sand and sagebrush. A chill wind was
blowing, night was coming on, and the solitary telegraph operator who
lived in the shanty was afraid of me. I knew that neither grub nor bed
could I get out of him. It was because of his manifest fear of me that
I did not believe him when he told me that east-bound trains never
stopped there. Besides, hadn't I been thrown off of an east-bound
train right at that very spot not five minutes before? He assured me
that it had stopped under orders, and that a year might go by before
another was stopped under orders. He advised me that it was only a
dozen or fifteen miles on to Wadsworth and that I'd better hike. I
elected to wait, however, and I had the pleasure of seeing two
west-bound freights go by without stopping, and one east-bound
freight. I wondered if the Swede was on the latter. It was up to me to
hit the ties to Wadsworth, and hit them I did, much to the telegraph
operator's relief, for I neglected to burn his shanty and murder him.
Telegraph operators have much to be thankful for. At the end of half a
dozen miles, I had to get off the ties and let the east-bound overland
go by. She was going fast, but I caught sight of a dim form on the
first "blind" that looked like the Swede.

That was the last I saw of him for weary days. I hit the high places
across those hundreds of miles of Nevada desert, riding the overlands
at night, for speed, and in the day-time riding in box-cars and
getting my sleep. It was early in the year, and it was cold in those
upland pastures. Snow lay here and there on the level, all the
mountains were shrouded in white, and at night the most miserable wind
imaginable blew off from them. It was not a land in which to linger.
And remember, gentle reader, the hobo goes through such a land,
without shelter, without money, begging his way and sleeping at night
without blankets. This last is something that can be realized only by
experience.

In the early evening I came down to the depot at Ogden. The overland
of the Union Pacific was pulling east, and I was bent on making
connections. Out in the tangle of tracks ahead of the engine I
encountered a figure slouching through the gloom. It was the Swede. We
shook hands like long-lost brothers, and discovered that our hands
were gloved. "Where'd ye glahm 'em?" I asked. "Out of an engine-cab,"
he answered; "and where did you?" "They belonged to a fireman," said
I; "he was careless."

We caught the blind as the overland pulled out, and mighty cold we
found it. The way led up a narrow gorge between snow-covered
mountains, and we shivered and shook and exchanged confidences about
how we had covered the ground between Reno and Ogden. I had closed my
eyes for only an hour or so the previous night, and the blind was not
comfortable enough to suit me for a snooze. At a stop, I went forward
to the engine. We had on a "double-header" (two engines) to take us
over the grade.

The pilot of the head engine, because it "punched the wind," I knew
would be too cold; so I selected the pilot of the second engine, which
was sheltered by the first engine. I stepped on the cowcatcher and
found the pilot occupied. In the darkness I felt out the form of a
young boy. He was sound asleep. By squeezing, there was room for two
on the pilot, and I made the boy budge over and crawled up beside him.
It was a "good" night; the "shacks" (brakemen) didn't bother us, and
in no time we were asleep. Once in a while hot cinders or heavy jolts
aroused me, when I snuggled closer to the boy and dozed off to the
coughing of the engines and the screeching of the wheels.

The overland made Evanston, Wyoming, and went no farther. A wreck
ahead blocked the line. The dead engineer had been brought in, and his
body attested the peril of the way. A tramp, also, had been killed,
but his body had not been brought in. I talked with the boy. He was
thirteen years old. He had run away from his folks in some place in
Oregon, and was heading east to his grandmother. He had a tale of
cruel treatment in the home he had left that rang true; besides, there
was no need for him to lie to me, a nameless hobo on the track.

And that boy was going some, too. He couldn't cover the ground fast
enough. When the division superintendents decided to send the overland
back over the way it had come, then up on a cross "jerk" to the Oregon
Short Line, and back along that road to tap the Union Pacific the
other side of the wreck, that boy climbed upon the pilot and said he
was going to stay with it. This was too much for the Swede and me. It
meant travelling the rest of that frigid night in order to gain no
more than a dozen miles or so. We said we'd wait till the wreck was
cleared away, and in the meantime get a good sleep.

Now it is no snap to strike a strange town, broke, at midnight, in
cold weather, and find a place to sleep. The Swede hadn't a penny. My
total assets consisted of two dimes and a nickel. From some of the
town boys we learned that beer was five cents, and that the saloons
kept open all night. There was our meat. Two glasses of beer would
cost ten cents, there would be a stove and chairs, and we could sleep
it out till morning. We headed for the lights of a saloon, walking
briskly, the snow crunching under our feet, a chill little wind
blowing through us.

Alas, I had misunderstood the town boys. Beer was five cents in one
saloon only in the whole burg, and we didn't strike that saloon. But
the one we entered was all right. A blessed stove was roaring
white-hot; there were cosey, cane-bottomed arm-chairs, and a
none-too-pleasant-looking barkeeper who glared suspiciously at us as
we came in. A man cannot spend continuous days and nights in his
clothes, beating trains, fighting soot and cinders, and sleeping
anywhere, and maintain a good "front." Our fronts were decidedly
against us; but what did we care? I had the price in my jeans.

"Two beers," said I nonchalantly to the barkeeper, and while he drew
them, the Swede and I leaned against the bar and yearned secretly for
the arm-chairs by the stove.

The barkeeper set the two foaming glasses before us, and with pride I
deposited the ten cents. Now I was dead game. As soon as I learned my
error in the price I'd have dug up another ten cents. Never mind if it
did leave me only a nickel to my name, a stranger in a strange land.
I'd have paid it all right. But that barkeeper never gave me a chance.
As soon as his eyes spotted the dime I had laid down, he seized the
two glasses, one in each hand, and dumped the beer into the sink
behind the bar. At the same time, glaring at us malevolently, he
said:--

"You've got scabs on your nose. You've got scabs on your nose. You've
got scabs on your nose. See!"

I hadn't either, and neither had the Swede. Our noses were all right.
The direct bearing of his words was beyond our comprehension, but the
indirect bearing was clear as print: he didn't like our looks, and
beer was evidently ten cents a glass.

I dug down and laid another dime on the bar, remarking carelessly,
"Oh, I thought this was a five-cent joint."

"Your money's no good here," he answered, shoving the two dimes across
the bar to me.

Sadly I dropped them back into my pocket, sadly we yearned toward the
blessed stove and the arm-chairs, and sadly we went out the door into
the frosty night.

But as we went out the door, the barkeeper, still glaring, called
after us, "You've got scabs on your nose, see!"

I have seen much of the world since then, journeyed among strange
lands and peoples, opened many books, sat in many lecture-halls; but
to this day, though I have pondered long and deep, I have been unable
to divine the meaning in the cryptic utterance of that barkeeper in
Evanston, Wyoming. Our noses _were_ all right.

We slept that night over the boilers in an electric-lighting plant.
How we discovered that "kipping" place I can't remember. We must have
just headed for it, instinctively, as horses head for water or
carrier-pigeons head for the home-cote. But it was a night not
pleasant to remember. A dozen hoboes were ahead of us on top the
boilers, and it was too hot for all of us. To complete our misery, the
engineer would not let us stand around down below. He gave us our
choice of the boilers or the outside snow.

"You said you wanted to sleep, and so, damn you, sleep," said he to
me, when, frantic and beaten out by the heat, I came down into the
fire-room.

"Water," I gasped, wiping the sweat from my eyes, "water."

He pointed out of doors and assured me that down there somewhere in
the blackness I'd find the river. I started for the river, got lost in
the dark, fell into two or three drifts, gave it up, and returned
half-frozen to the top of the boilers. When I had thawed out, I was
thirstier than ever. Around me the hoboes were moaning, groaning,
sobbing, sighing, gasping, panting, rolling and tossing and
floundering heavily in their torment. We were so many lost souls
toasting on a griddle in hell, and the engineer, Satan Incarnate, gave
us the sole alternative of freezing in the outer cold. The Swede sat
up and anathematized passionately the wanderlust in man that sent him
tramping and suffering hardships such as that.

"When I get back to Chicago," he perorated, "I'm going to get a job
and stick to it till hell freezes over. Then I'll go tramping again."

And, such is the irony of fate, next day, when the wreck ahead was
cleared, the Swede and I pulled out of Evanston in the ice-boxes of an
"orange special," a fast freight laden with fruit from sunny
California. Of course, the ice-boxes were empty on account of the cold
weather, but that didn't make them any warmer for us. We entered them
through hatchways in the top of the car; the boxes were constructed of
galvanized iron, and in that biting weather were not pleasant to the
touch. We lay there, shivered and shook, and with chattering teeth
held a council wherein we decided that we'd stay by the ice-boxes day
and night till we got out of the inhospitable plateau region and down
into the Mississippi Valley.

But we must eat, and we decided that at the next division we would
throw our feet for grub and make a rush back to our ice-boxes. We
arrived in the town of Green River late in the afternoon, but too
early for supper. Before meal-time is the worst time for "battering"
back-doors; but we put on our nerve, swung off the side-ladders as the
freight pulled into the yards, and made a run for the houses. We were
quickly separated; but we had agreed to meet in the ice-boxes. I had
bad luck at first; but in the end, with a couple of "hand-outs" poked
into my shirt, I chased for the train. It was pulling out and going
fast. The particular refrigerator-car in which we were to meet had
already gone by, and half a dozen cars down the train from it I swung
on to the side-ladders, went up on top hurriedly, and dropped down
into an ice-box.

But a shack had seen me from the caboose, and at the next stop a few
miles farther on, Rock Springs, the shack stuck his head into my box
and said: "Hit the grit, you son of a toad! Hit the grit!" Also he
grabbed me by the heels and dragged me out. I hit the grit all right,
and the orange special and the Swede rolled on without me.

Snow was beginning to fall. A cold night was coming on. After dark I
hunted around in the railroad yards until I found an empty
refrigerator car. In I climbed--not into the ice-boxes, but into the
car itself. I swung the heavy doors shut, and their edges, covered
with strips of rubber, sealed the car air-tight. The walls were thick.
There was no way for the outside cold to get in. But the inside was
just as cold as the outside. How to raise the temperature was the
problem. But trust a "profesh" for that. Out of my pockets I dug up
three or four newspapers. These I burned, one at a time, on the floor
of the car. The smoke rose to the top. Not a bit of the heat could
escape, and, comfortable and warm, I passed a beautiful night. I
didn't wake up once.

In the morning it was still snowing. While throwing my feet for
breakfast, I missed an east-bound freight. Later in the day I nailed
two other freights and was ditched from both of them. All afternoon no
east-bound trains went by. The snow was falling thicker than ever, but
at twilight I rode out on the first blind of the overland. As I swung
aboard the blind from one side, somebody swung aboard from the other.
It was the boy who had run away from Oregon.

Now the first blind of a fast train in a driving snow-storm is no
summer picnic. The wind goes right through one, strikes the front of
the car, and comes back again. At the first stop, darkness having come
on, I went forward and interviewed the fireman. I offered to "shove"
coal to the end of his run, which was Rawlins, and my offer was
accepted. My work was out on the tender, in the snow, breaking the
lumps of coal with a sledge and shovelling it forward to him in the
cab. But as I did not have to work all the time, I could come into the
cab and warm up now and again.

"Say," I said to the fireman, at my first breathing spell, "there's a
little kid back there on the first blind. He's pretty cold."

The cabs on the Union Pacific engines are quite spacious, and we
fitted the kid into a warm nook in front of the high seat of the
fireman, where the kid promptly fell asleep. We arrived at Rawlins at
midnight. The snow was thicker than ever. Here the engine was to go
into the round-house, being replaced by a fresh engine. As the train
came to a stop, I dropped off the engine steps plump into the arms of
a large man in a large overcoat. He began asking me questions, and I
promptly demanded who he was. Just as promptly he informed me that he
was the sheriff. I drew in my horns and listened and answered.

He began describing the kid who was still asleep in the cab. I did
some quick thinking. Evidently the family was on the trail of the kid,
and the sheriff had received telegraphed instructions from Oregon.
Yes, I had seen the kid. I had met him first in Ogden. The date
tallied with the sheriff's information. But the kid was still behind
somewhere, I explained, for he had been ditched from that very
overland that night when it pulled out of Rock Springs. And all the
time I was praying that the kid wouldn't wake up, come down out of the
cab, and put the "kibosh" on me.

The sheriff left me in order to interview the shacks, but before he
left he said:--

"Bo, this town is no place for you. Understand? You ride this train
out, and make no mistake about it. If I catch you after it's gone ..."

I assured him that it was not through desire that I was in his town;
that the only reason I was there was that the train had stopped there;
and that he wouldn't see me for smoke the way I'd get out of his darn
town.

While he went to interview the shacks, I jumped back into the cab. The
kid was awake and rubbing his eyes. I told him the news and advised
him to ride the engine into the round-house. To cut the story short,
the kid made the same overland out, riding the pilot, with
instructions to make an appeal to the fireman at the first stop for
permission to ride in the engine. As for myself, I got ditched. The
new fireman was young and not yet lax enough to break the rules of the
Company against having tramps in the engine; so he turned down my
offer to shove coal. I hope the kid succeeded with him, for all night
on the pilot in that blizzard would have meant death.

Strange to say, I do not at this late day remember a detail of how I
was ditched at Rawlins. I remember watching the train as it was
immediately swallowed up in the snow-storm, and of heading for a
saloon to warm up. Here was light and warmth. Everything was in full
blast and wide open. Faro, roulette, craps, and poker tables were
running, and some mad cow-punchers were making the night merry. I had
just succeeded in fraternizing with them and was downing my first
drink at their expense, when a heavy hand descended on my shoulder. I
looked around and sighed. It was the sheriff.

Without a word he led me out into the snow.

"There's an orange special down there in the yards," said he.

"It's a damn cold night," said I.

"It pulls out in ten minutes," said he.

That was all. There was no discussion. And when that orange special
pulled out, I was in the ice-boxes. I thought my feet would freeze
before morning, and the last twenty miles into Laramie I stood upright
in the hatchway and danced up and down. The snow was too thick for the
shacks to see me, and I didn't care if they did.

My quarter of a dollar bought me a hot breakfast at Laramie, and
immediately afterward I was on board the blind baggage of an overland
that was climbing to the pass through the backbone of the Rockies. One
does not ride blind baggages in the daytime; but in this blizzard at
the top of the Rocky Mountains I doubted if the shacks would have the
heart to put me off. And they didn't. They made a practice of coming
forward at every stop to see if I was frozen yet.

At Ames' Monument, at the summit of the Rockies,--I forget the
altitude,--the shack came forward for the last time.

"Say, Bo," he said, "you see that freight side-tracked over there to
let us go by?"

I saw. It was on the next track, six feet away. A few feet more in
that storm and I could not have seen it.

"Well, the 'after-push' of Kelly's Army is in one of them cars.
They've got two feet of straw under them, and there's so many of them
that they keep the car warm."

His advice was good, and I followed it, prepared, however, if it was a
"con game" the shack had given me, to take the blind as the overland
pulled out. But it was straight goods. I found the car--a big
refrigerator car with the leeward door wide open for ventilation. Up I
climbed and in. I stepped on a man's leg, next on some other man's
arm. The light was dim, and all I could make out was arms and legs and
bodies inextricably confused. Never was there such a tangle of
humanity. They were all lying in the straw, and over, and under, and
around one another. Eighty-four husky hoboes take up a lot of room
when they are stretched out. The men I stepped on were resentful.
Their bodies heaved under me like the waves of the sea, and imparted
an involuntary forward movement to me. I could not find any straw to
step upon, so I stepped upon more men. The resentment increased, so
did my forward movement. I lost my footing and sat down with sharp
abruptness. Unfortunately, it was on a man's head. The next moment he
had risen on his hands and knees in wrath, and I was flying through
the air. What goes up must come down, and I came down on another man's
head.

What happened after that is very vague in my memory. It was like going
through a threshing-machine. I was bandied about from one end of the
car to the other. Those eighty-four hoboes winnowed me out till what
little was left of me, by some miracle, found a bit of straw to rest
upon. I was initiated, and into a jolly crowd. All the rest of that
day we rode through the blizzard, and to while the time away it was
decided that each man was to tell a story. It was stipulated that
each story must be a good one, and, furthermore, that it must be a
story no one had ever heard before. The penalty for failure was the
threshing-machine. Nobody failed. And I want to say right here that
never in my life have I sat at so marvellous a story-telling debauch.
Here were eighty-four men from all the world--I made eighty-five; and
each man told a masterpiece. It had to be, for it was either
masterpiece or threshing-machine.

Late in the afternoon we arrived in Cheyenne. The blizzard was at its
height, and though the last meal of all of us had been breakfast, no
man cared to throw his feet for supper. All night we rolled on through
the storm, and next day found us down on the sweet plains of Nebraska
and still rolling. We were out of the storm and the mountains. The
blessed sun was shining over a smiling land, and we had eaten nothing
for twenty-four hours. We found out that the freight would arrive
about noon at a town, if I remember right, that was called Grand
Island.

We took up a collection and sent a telegram to the authorities of that
town. The text of the message was that eighty-five healthy, hungry
hoboes would arrive about noon and that it would be a good idea to
have dinner ready for them. The authorities of Grand Island had two
courses open to them. They could feed us, or they could throw us in
jail. In the latter event they'd have to feed us anyway, and they
decided wisely that one meal would be the cheaper way.

When the freight rolled into Grand Island at noon, we were sitting on
the tops of the cars and dangling our legs in the sunshine. All the
police in the burg were on the reception committee. They marched us in
squads to the various hotels and restaurants, where dinners were
spread for us. We had been thirty-six hours without food, and we
didn't have to be taught what to do. After that we were marched back
to the railroad station. The police had thoughtfully compelled the
freight to wait for us. She pulled out slowly, and the eighty-five of
us, strung out along the track, swarmed up the side-ladders. We
"captured" the train.

We had no supper that evening--at least the "push" didn't, but I did.
Just at supper time, as the freight was pulling out of a small town,
a man climbed into the car where I was playing pedro with three other
stiffs. The man's shirt was bulging suspiciously. In his hand he
carried a battered quart-measure from which arose steam. I smelled
"Java." I turned my cards over to one of the stiffs who was looking
on, and excused myself. Then, in the other end of the car, pursued by
envious glances, I sat down with the man who had climbed aboard and
shared his "Java" and the hand-outs that had bulged his shirt. It was
the Swede.

At about ten o'clock in the evening, we arrived at Omaha.

"Let's shake the push," said the Swede to me.

"Sure," said I.

As the freight pulled into Omaha, we made ready to do so. But the
people of Omaha were also ready. The Swede and I hung upon the
side-ladders, ready to drop off. But the freight did not stop.
Furthermore, long rows of policemen, their brass buttons and stars
glittering in the electric lights, were lined up on each side of the
track. The Swede and I knew what would happen to us if we ever dropped
off into their arms. We stuck by the side-ladders, and the train
rolled on across the Missouri River to Council Bluffs.

"General" Kelly, with an army of two thousand hoboes, lay in camp at
Chautauqua Park, several miles away. The after-push we were with was
General Kelly's rear-guard, and, detraining at Council Bluffs, it
started to march to camp. The night had turned cold, and heavy
wind-squalls, accompanied by rain, were chilling and wetting us. Many
police were guarding us and herding us to the camp. The Swede and I
watched our chance and made a successful get-away.

The rain began coming down in torrents, and in the darkness, unable to
see our hands in front of our faces, like a pair of blind men we
fumbled about for shelter. Our instinct served us, for in no time we
stumbled upon a saloon--not a saloon that was open and doing business,
not merely a saloon that was closed for the night, and not even a
saloon with a permanent address, but a saloon propped up on big
timbers, with rollers underneath, that was being moved from somewhere
to somewhere. The doors were locked. A squall of wind and rain drove
down upon us. We did not hesitate. Smash went the door, and in we
went.

I have made some tough camps in my time, "carried the banner" in
infernal metropolises, bedded in pools of water, slept in the snow
under two blankets when the spirit thermometer registered seventy-four
degrees below zero (which is a mere trifle of one hundred and six
degrees of frost); but I want to say right here that never did I make
a tougher camp, pass a more miserable night, than that night I passed
with the Swede in the itinerant saloon at Council Bluffs. In the first
place, the building, perched up as it was in the air, had exposed a
multitude of openings in the floor through which the wind whistled. In
the second place, the bar was empty; there was no bottled fire-water
with which we could warm ourselves and forget our misery. We had no
blankets, and in our wet clothes, wet to the skin, we tried to sleep.
I rolled under the bar, and the Swede rolled under the table. The
holes and crevices in the floor made it impossible, and at the end of
half an hour I crawled up on top the bar. A little later the Swede
crawled up on top his table.

And there we shivered and prayed for daylight. I know, for one, that I
shivered until I could shiver no more, till the shivering muscles
exhausted themselves and merely ached horribly. The Swede moaned and
groaned, and every little while, through chattering teeth, he
muttered, "Never again; never again." He muttered this phrase
repeatedly, ceaselessly, a thousand times; and when he dozed, he went
on muttering it in his sleep.

At the first gray of dawn we left our house of pain, and outside,
found ourselves in a mist, dense and chill. We stumbled on till we
came to the railroad track. I was going back to Omaha to throw my feet
for breakfast; my companion was going on to Chicago. The moment for
parting had come. Our palsied hands went out to each other. We were
both shivering. When we tried to speak, our teeth chattered us back
into silence. We stood alone, shut off from the world; all that we
could see was a short length of railroad track, both ends of which
were lost in the driving mist. We stared dumbly at each other, our
clasped hands shaking sympathetically. The Swede's face was blue with
the cold, and I know mine must have been.

"Never again what?" I managed to articulate.

Speech strove for utterance in the Swede's throat; then faint and
distant, in a thin whisper from the very bottom of his frozen soul,
came the words:--

"Never again a hobo."

He paused, and, as he went on again, his voice gathered strength and
huskiness as it affirmed his will.

"Never again a hobo. I'm going to get a job. You'd better do the same.
Nights like this make rheumatism."

He wrung my hand.

"Good-by, Bo," said he.

"Good-by, Bo," said I.

The next we were swallowed up from each other by the mist. It was our
final passing. But here's to you, Mr. Swede, wherever you are. I hope
you got that job.




ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS


Every once in a while, in newspapers, magazines, and biographical
dictionaries, I run upon sketches of my life, wherein, delicately
phrased, I learn that it was in order to study sociology that I became
a tramp. This is very nice and thoughtful of the biographers, but it
is inaccurate. I became a tramp--well, because of the life that was in
me, of the wanderlust in my blood that would not let me rest.
Sociology was merely incidental; it came afterward, in the same manner
that a wet skin follows a ducking. I went on "The Road" because I
couldn't keep away from it; because I hadn't the price of the railroad
fare in my jeans; because I was so made that I couldn't work all my
life on "one same shift"; because--well, just because it was easier to
than not to.

It happened in my own town, in Oakland, when I was sixteen. At that
time I had attained a dizzy reputation in my chosen circle of
adventurers, by whom I was known as the Prince of the Oyster Pirates.
It is true, those immediately outside my circle, such as honest
bay-sailors, longshoremen, yachtsmen, and the legal owners of the
oysters, called me "tough," "hoodlum," "smoudge," "thief," "robber,"
and various other not nice things--all of which was complimentary and
but served to increase the dizziness of the high place in which I sat.
At that time I had not read "Paradise Lost," and later, when I read
Milton's "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," I was fully
convinced that great minds run in the same channels.

It was at this time that the fortuitous concatenation of events sent
me upon my first adventure on The Road. It happened that there was
nothing doing in oysters just then; that at Benicia, forty miles away,
I had some blankets I wanted to get; and that at Port Costa, several
miles from Benicia, a stolen boat lay at anchor in charge of the
constable. Now this boat was owned by a friend of mine, by name Dinny
McCrea. It had been stolen and left at Port Costa by Whiskey Bob,
another friend of mine. (Poor Whiskey Bob! Only last winter his body
was picked up on the beach shot full of holes by nobody knows whom.)
I had come down from "up river" some time before, and reported to
Dinny McCrea the whereabouts of his boat; and Dinny McCrea had
promptly offered ten dollars to me if I should bring it down to
Oakland to him.

Time was heavy on my hands. I sat on the dock and talked it over with
Nickey the Greek, another idle oyster pirate. "Let's go," said I, and
Nickey was willing. He was "broke." I possessed fifty cents and a
small skiff. The former I invested and loaded into the latter in the
form of crackers, canned corned beef, and a ten-cent bottle of French
mustard. (We were keen on French mustard in those days.) Then, late in
the afternoon, we hoisted our small spritsail and started. We sailed
all night, and next morning, on the first of a glorious flood-tide, a
fair wind behind us, we came booming up the Carquinez Straits to Port
Costa. There lay the stolen boat, not twenty-five feet from the wharf.
We ran alongside and doused our little spritsail. I sent Nickey
forward to lift the anchor, while I began casting off the gaskets.

A man ran out on the wharf and hailed us. It was the constable. It
suddenly came to me that I had neglected to get a written
authorization from Dinny McCrea to take possession of his boat. Also,
I knew that constable wanted to charge at least twenty-five dollars in
fees for capturing the boat from Whiskey Bob and subsequently taking
care of it. And my last fifty cents had been blown in for corned beef
and French mustard, and the reward was only ten dollars anyway. I shot
a glance forward to Nickey. He had the anchor up-and-down and was
straining at it. "Break her out," I whispered to him, and turned and
shouted back to the constable. The result was that he and I were
talking at the same time, our spoken thoughts colliding in mid-air and
making gibberish.

The constable grew more imperative, and perforce I had to listen.
Nickey was heaving on the anchor till I thought he'd burst a
blood-vessel. When the constable got done with his threats and
warnings, I asked him who he was. The time he lost in telling me
enabled Nickey to break out the anchor. I was doing some quick
calculating. At the feet of the constable a ladder ran down the dock
to the water, and to the ladder was moored a skiff. The oars were in
it. But it was padlocked. I gambled everything on that padlock. I
felt the breeze on my cheek, saw the surge of the tide, looked at the
remaining gaskets that confined the sail, ran my eyes up the halyards
to the blocks and knew that all was clear, and then threw off all
dissimulation.

"In with her!" I shouted to Nickey, and sprang to the gaskets, casting
them loose and thanking my stars that Whiskey Bob had tied them in
square-knots instead of "grannies."

The constable had slid down the ladder and was fumbling with a key at
the padlock. The anchor came aboard and the last gasket was loosed at
the same instant that the constable freed the skiff and jumped to the
oars.

"Peak-halyards!" I commanded my crew, at the same time swinging on to
the throat-halyards. Up came the sail on the run. I belayed and ran
aft to the tiller.

"Stretch her!" I shouted to Nickey at the peak. The constable was just
reaching for our stern. A puff of wind caught us, and we shot away. It
was great. If I'd had a black flag, I know I'd have run it up in
triumph. The constable stood up in the skiff, and paled the glory of
the day with the vividness of his language. Also, he wailed for a gun.
You see, that was another gamble we had taken.

Anyway, we weren't stealing the boat. It wasn't the constable's. We
were merely stealing his fees, which was his particular form of graft.
And we weren't stealing the fees for ourselves, either; we were
stealing them for my friend, Dinny McCrea.

Benicia was made in a few minutes, and a few minutes later my blankets
were aboard. I shifted the boat down to the far end of Steamboat
Wharf, from which point of vantage we could see anybody coming after
us. There was no telling. Maybe the Port Costa constable would
telephone to the Benicia constable. Nickey and I held a council of
war. We lay on deck in the warm sun, the fresh breeze on our cheeks,
the flood-tide rippling and swirling past. It was impossible to start
back to Oakland till afternoon, when the ebb would begin to run. But
we figured that the constable would have an eye out on the Carquinez
Straits when the ebb started, and that nothing remained for us but to
wait for the following ebb, at two o'clock next morning, when we
could slip by Cerberus in the darkness.

So we lay on deck, smoked cigarettes, and were glad that we were
alive. I spat over the side and gauged the speed of the current.

"With this wind, we could run this flood clear to Rio Vista," I said.

"And it's fruit-time on the river," said Nickey.

"And low water on the river," said I. "It's the best time of the year
to make Sacramento."

We sat up and looked at each other. The glorious west wind was pouring
over us like wine. We both spat over the side and gauged the current.
Now I contend that it was all the fault of that flood-tide and fair
wind. They appealed to our sailor instinct. If it had not been for
them, the whole chain of events that was to put me upon The Road would
have broken down.

We said no word, but cast off our moorings and hoisted sail. Our
adventures up the Sacramento River are no part of this narrative. We
subsequently made the city of Sacramento and tied up at a wharf. The
water was fine, and we spent most of our time in swimming. On the
sand-bar above the railroad bridge we fell in with a bunch of boys
likewise in swimming. Between swims we lay on the bank and talked.
They talked differently from the fellows I had been used to herding
with. It was a new vernacular. They were road-kids, and with every
word they uttered the lure of The Road laid hold of me more
imperiously.

"When I was down in Alabama," one kid would begin; or, another,
"Coming up on the C. & A. from K.C."; whereat, a third kid, "On the C.
& A. there ain't no steps to the 'blinds.'" And I would lie silently
in the sand and listen. "It was at a little town in Ohio on the Lake
Shore and Michigan Southern," a kid would start; and another, "Ever
ride the Cannonball on the Wabash?"; and yet another, "Nope, but I've
been on the White Mail out of Chicago." "Talk about railroadin'--wait
till you hit the Pennsylvania, four tracks, no water tanks, take water
on the fly, that's goin' some." "The Northern Pacific's a bad road
now." "Salinas is on the 'hog,' the 'bulls' is 'horstile.'" "I got
'pinched' at El Paso, along with Moke Kid." "Talkin' of 'poke-outs,'
wait till you hit the French country out of Montreal--not a word of
English--you say, 'Mongee, Madame, mongee, no spika da French,' an'
rub your stomach an' look hungry, an' she gives you a slice of
sow-belly an' a chunk of dry 'punk.'"

And I continued to lie in the sand and listen. These wanderers made my
oyster-piracy look like thirty cents. A new world was calling to me in
every word that was spoken--a world of rods and gunnels, blind
baggages and "side-door Pullmans," "bulls" and "shacks," "floppings"
and "chewin's," "pinches" and "get-aways," "strong arms" and
"bindle-stiffs," "punks" and "profesh." And it all spelled Adventure.
Very well; I would tackle this new world. I "lined" myself up
alongside those road-kids. I was just as strong as any of them, just
as quick, just as nervy, and my brain was just as good.

After the swim, as evening came on, they dressed and went up town. I
went along. The kids began "battering" the "main-stem" for "light
pieces," or, in other words, begging for money on the main street. I
had never begged in my life, and this was the hardest thing for me to
stomach when I first went on The Road. I had absurd notions about
begging. My philosophy, up to that time, was that it was finer to
steal than to beg; and that robbery was finer still because the risk
and the penalty were proportionately greater. As an oyster pirate I
had already earned convictions at the hands of justice, which, if I
had tried to serve them, would have required a thousand years in
state's prison. To rob was manly; to beg was sordid and despicable.
But I developed in the days to come all right, all right, till I came
to look upon begging as a joyous prank, a game of wits, a
nerve-exerciser.

That first night, however, I couldn't rise to it; and the result was
that when the kids were ready to go to a restaurant and eat, I wasn't.
I was broke. Meeny Kid, I think it was, gave me the price, and we all
ate together. But while I ate, I meditated. The receiver, it was said,
was as bad as the thief; Meeny Kid had done the begging, and I was
profiting by it. I decided that the receiver was a whole lot worse
than the thief, and that it shouldn't happen again. And it didn't. I
turned out next day and threw my feet as well as the next one.

Nickey the Greek's ambition didn't run to The Road. He was not a
success at throwing his feet, and he stowed away one night on a barge
and went down river to San Francisco. I met him, only a week ago, at a
pugilistic carnival. He has progressed. He sat in a place of honor at
the ring-side. He is now a manager of prize-fighters and proud of it.
In fact, in a small way, in local sportdom, he is quite a shining
light.

"No kid is a road-kid until he has gone over 'the hill'"--such was the
law of The Road I heard expounded in Sacramento. All right, I'd go
over the hill and matriculate. "The hill," by the way, was the Sierra
Nevadas. The whole gang was going over the hill on a jaunt, and of
course I'd go along. It was French Kid's first adventure on The Road.
He had just run away from his people in San Francisco. It was up to
him and me to deliver the goods. In passing, I may remark that my old
title of "Prince" had vanished. I had received my "monica." I was now
"Sailor Kid," later to be known as "'Frisco Kid," when I had put the
Rockies between me and my native state.

At 10.20 P.M. the Central Pacific overland pulled out of the depot at
Sacramento for the East--that particular item of time-table is
indelibly engraved on my memory. There were about a dozen in our gang,
and we strung out in the darkness ahead of the train ready to take her
out. All the local road-kids that we knew came down to see us
off--also, to "ditch" us if they could. That was their idea of a joke,
and there were only about forty of them to carry it out. Their
ring-leader was a crackerjack road-kid named Bob. Sacramento was his
home town, but he'd hit The Road pretty well everywhere over the whole
country. He took French Kid and me aside and gave us advice something
like this: "We're goin' to try an' ditch your bunch, see? Youse two
are weak. The rest of the push can take care of itself. So, as soon as
youse two nail a blind, deck her. An' stay on the decks till youse
pass Roseville Junction, at which burg the constables are horstile,
sloughin' in everybody on sight."

The engine whistled and the overland pulled out. There were three
blinds on her--room for all of us. The dozen of us who were trying to
make her out would have preferred to slip aboard quietly; but our
forty friends crowded on with the most amazing and shameless
publicity and advertisement. Following Bob's advice, I immediately
"decked her," that is, climbed up on top of the roof of one of the
mail-cars. There I lay down, my heart jumping a few extra beats, and
listened to the fun. The whole train crew was forward, and the
ditching went on fast and furious. After the train had run half a
mile, it stopped, and the crew came forward again and ditched the
survivors. I, alone, had made the train out.

Back at the depot, about him two or three of the push that had
witnessed the accident, lay French Kid with both legs off. French Kid
had slipped or stumbled--that was all, and the wheels had done the
rest. Such was my initiation to The Road. It was two years afterward
when I next saw French Kid and examined his "stumps." This was an act
of courtesy. "Cripples" always like to have their stumps examined. One
of the entertaining sights on The Road is to witness the meeting of
two cripples. Their common disability is a fruitful source of
conversation; and they tell how it happened, describe what they know
of the amputation, pass critical judgment on their own and each
other's surgeons, and wind up by withdrawing to one side, taking off
bandages and wrappings, and comparing stumps.

But it was not until several days later, over in Nevada, when the push
caught up with me, that I learned of French Kid's accident. The push
itself arrived in bad condition. It had gone through a train-wreck in
the snow-sheds; Happy Joe was on crutches with two mashed legs, and
the rest were nursing skins and bruises.

In the meantime, I lay on the roof of the mail-car, trying to remember
whether Roseville Junction, against which burg Bob had warned me, was
the first stop or the second stop. To make sure, I delayed descending
to the platform of the blind until after the second stop. And then I
didn't descend. I was new to the game, and I felt safer where I was.
But I never told the push that I held down the decks the whole night,
clear across the Sierras, through snow-sheds and tunnels, and down to
Truckee on the other side, where I arrived at seven in the morning.
Such a thing was disgraceful, and I'd have been a common
laughing-stock. This is the first time I have confessed the truth
about that first ride over the hill. As for the push, it decided that
I was all right, and when I came back over the hill to Sacramento, I
was a full-fledged road-kid.

Yet I had much to learn. Bob was my mentor, and he was all right. I
remember one evening (it was fair-time in Sacramento, and we were
knocking about and having a good time) when I lost my hat in a fight.
There was I bare-headed in the street, and it was Bob to the rescue.
He took me to one side from the push and told me what to do. I was a
bit timid of his advice. I had just come out of jail, where I had been
three days, and I knew that if the police "pinched" me again, I'd get
good and "soaked." On the other hand, I couldn't show the white
feather. I'd been over the hill, I was running full-fledged with the
push, and it was up to me to deliver the goods. So I accepted Bob's
advice, and he came along with me to see that I did it up brown.

We took our position on K Street, on the corner, I think, of Fifth. It
was early in the evening and the street was crowded. Bob studied the
head-gear of every Chinaman that passed. I used to wonder how the
road-kids all managed to wear "five-dollar Stetson stiff-rims," and
now I knew. They got them, the way I was going to get mine, from the
Chinese. I was nervous--there were so many people about; but Bob was
cool as an iceberg. Several times, when I started forward toward a
Chinaman, all nerved and keyed up, Bob dragged me back. He wanted me
to get a good hat, and one that fitted. Now a hat came by that was the
right size but not new; and, after a dozen impossible hats, along
would come one that was new but not the right size. And when one did
come by that was new and the right size, the rim was too large or not
large enough. My, Bob was finicky. I was so wrought up that I'd have
snatched any kind of a head-covering.

At last came the hat, the one hat in Sacramento for me. I knew it was
a winner as soon as I looked at it. I glanced at Bob. He sent a
sweeping look-about for police, then nodded his head. I lifted the hat
from the Chinaman's head and pulled it down on my own. It was a
perfect fit. Then I started. I heard Bob crying out, and I caught a
glimpse of him blocking the irate Mongolian and tripping him up. I ran
on. I turned up the next corner, and around the next. This street was
not so crowded as K, and I walked along in quietude, catching my
breath and congratulating myself upon my hat and my get-away.

And then, suddenly, around the corner at my back, came the bare-headed
Chinaman. With him were a couple more Chinamen, and at their heels
were half a dozen men and boys. I sprinted to the next corner, crossed
the street, and rounded the following corner. I decided that I had
surely played him out, and I dropped into a walk again. But around the
corner at my heels came that persistent Mongolian. It was the old
story of the hare and the tortoise. He could not run so fast as I, but
he stayed with it, plodding along at a shambling and deceptive trot,
and wasting much good breath in noisy imprecations. He called all
Sacramento to witness the dishonor that had been done him, and a
goodly portion of Sacramento heard and flocked at his heels. And I ran
on like the hare, and ever that persistent Mongolian, with the
increasing rabble, overhauled me. But finally, when a policeman had
joined his following, I let out all my links. I twisted and turned,
and I swear I ran at least twenty blocks on the straight away. And I
never saw that Chinaman again. The hat was a dandy, a brand-new
Stetson, just out of the shop, and it was the envy of the whole push.
Furthermore, it was the symbol that I had delivered the goods. I wore
it for over a year.

Road-kids are nice little chaps--when you get them alone and they are
telling you "how it happened"; but take my word for it, watch out for
them when they run in pack. Then they are wolves, and like wolves they
are capable of dragging down the strongest man. At such times they are
not cowardly. They will fling themselves upon a man and hold on with
every ounce of strength in their wiry bodies, till he is thrown and
helpless. More than once have I seen them do it, and I know whereof I
speak. Their motive is usually robbery. And watch out for the "strong
arm." Every kid in the push I travelled with was expert at it. Even
French Kid mastered it before he lost his legs.

I have strong upon me now a vision of what I once saw in "The
Willows." The Willows was a clump of trees in a waste piece of land
near the railway depot and not more than five minutes walk from the
heart of Sacramento. It is night-time and the scene is illumined by
the thin light of stars. I see a husky laborer in the midst of a pack
of road-kids. He is infuriated and cursing them, not a bit afraid,
confident of his own strength. He weighs about one hundred and eighty
pounds, and his muscles are hard; but he doesn't know what he is up
against. The kids are snarling. It is not pretty. They make a rush
from all sides, and he lashes out and whirls. Barber Kid is standing
beside me. As the man whirls, Barber Kid leaps forward and does the
trick. Into the man's back goes his knee; around the man's neck, from
behind, passes his right hand, the bone of the wrist pressing against
the jugular vein. Barber Kid throws his whole weight backward. It is a
powerful leverage. Besides, the man's wind has been shut off. It is
the strong arm.

The man resists, but he is already practically helpless. The road-kids
are upon him from every side, clinging to arms and legs and body, and
like a wolf at the throat of a moose Barber Kid hangs on and drags
backward. Over the man goes, and down under the heap. Barber Kid
changes the position of his own body, but never lets go. While some of
the kids are "going through" the victim, others are holding his legs
so that he cannot kick and thresh about. They improve the opportunity
by taking off the man's shoes. As for him, he has given in. He is
beaten. Also, what of the strong arm at his throat, he is short of
wind. He is making ugly choking noises, and the kids hurry. They
really don't want to kill him. All is done. At a word all holds are
released at once, and the kids scatter, one of them lugging the
shoes--he knows where he can get half a dollar for them. The man sits
up and looks about him, dazed and helpless. Even if he wanted to,
barefooted pursuit in the darkness would be hopeless. I linger a
moment and watch him. He is feeling at his throat, making dry, hawking
noises, and jerking his head in a quaint way as though to assure
himself that the neck is not dislocated. Then I slip away to join the
push, and see that man no more--though I shall always see him, sitting
there in the starlight, somewhat dazed, a bit frightened, greatly
dishevelled, and making quaint jerking movements of head and neck.

Drunken men are the especial prey of the road-kids. Robbing a drunken
man they call "rolling a stiff"; and wherever they are, they are on
the constant lookout for drunks. The drunk is their particular meat,
as the fly is the particular meat of the spider. The rolling of a
stiff is ofttimes an amusing sight, especially when the stiff is
helpless and when interference is unlikely. At the first swoop the
stiff's money and jewellery go. Then the kids sit around their victim
in a sort of pow-wow. A kid generates a fancy for the stiff's necktie.
Off it comes. Another kid is after underclothes. Off they come, and a
knife quickly abbreviates arms and legs. Friendly hoboes may be called
in to take the coat and trousers, which are too large for the kids.
And in the end they depart, leaving beside the stiff the heap of their
discarded rags.

Another vision comes to me. It is a dark night. My push is coming
along the sidewalk in the suburbs. Ahead of us, under an electric
light, a man crosses the street diagonally. There is something
tentative and desultory in his walk. The kids scent the game on the
instant. The man is drunk. He blunders across the opposite sidewalk
and is lost in the darkness as he takes a short-cut through a vacant
lot. No hunting cry is raised, but the pack flings itself forward in
quick pursuit. In the middle of the vacant lot it comes upon him. But
what is this?--snarling and strange forms, small and dim and menacing,
are between the pack and its prey. It is another pack of road-kids,
and in the hostile pause we learn that it is their meat, that they
have been trailing it a dozen blocks and more and that we are butting
in. But it is the world primeval. These wolves are baby wolves. (As a
matter of fact, I don't think one of them was over twelve or thirteen
years of age. I met some of them afterward, and learned that they had
just arrived that day over the hill, and that they hailed from Denver
and Salt Lake City.) Our pack flings forward. The baby wolves squeal
and screech and fight like little demons. All about the drunken man
rages the struggle for the possession of him. Down he goes in the
thick of it, and the combat rages over his body after the fashion of
the Greeks and Trojans over the body and armor of a fallen hero. Amid
cries and tears and wailings the baby wolves are dispossessed, and my
pack rolls the stiff. But always I remember the poor stiff and his
befuddled amazement at the abrupt eruption of battle in the vacant
lot. I see him now, dim in the darkness, titubating in stupid wonder,
good-naturedly essaying the role of peacemaker in that multitudinous
scrap the significance of which he did not understand, and the really
hurt expression on his face when he, unoffending he, was clutched at
by many hands and dragged down in the thick of the press.

"Bindle-stiffs" are favorite prey of the road-kids. A bindle-stiff is
a working tramp. He takes his name from the roll of blankets he
carries, which is known as a "bindle." Because he does work, a
bindle-stiff is expected usually to have some small change about him,
and it is after that small change that the road-kids go. The best
hunting-ground for bindle-stiffs is in the sheds, barns, lumber-yards,
railroad-yards, etc., on the edges of a city, and the time for hunting
is the night, when the bindle-stiff seeks these places to roll up in
his blankets and sleep.

"Gay-cats" also come to grief at the hands of the road-kid. In more
familiar parlance, gay-cats are short-horns, _chechaquos_, new chums,
or tenderfeet. A gay-cat is a newcomer on The Road who is man-grown,
or, at least, youth-grown. A boy on The Road, on the other hand, no
matter how green he is, is never a gay-cat; he is a road-kid or a
"punk," and if he travels with a "profesh," he is known possessively
as a "prushun." I was never a prushun, for I did not take kindly to
possession. I was first a road-kid and then a profesh. Because I
started in young, I practically skipped my gay-cat apprenticeship. For
a short period, during the time I was exchanging my 'Frisco Kid monica
for that of Sailor Jack, I labored under the suspicion of being a
gay-cat. But closer acquaintance on the part of those that suspected
me quickly disabused their minds, and in a short time I acquired the
unmistakable airs and ear-marks of the blowed-in-the-glass profesh.
And be it known, here and now, that the profesh are the aristocracy of
The Road. They are the lords and masters, the aggressive men, the
primordial noblemen, the _blond beasts_ so beloved of Nietzsche.

When I came back over the hill from Nevada, I found that some river
pirate had stolen Dinny McCrea's boat. (A funny thing at this day is
that I cannot remember what became of the skiff in which Nickey the
Greek and I sailed from Oakland to Port Costa. I know that the
constable didn't get it, and I know that it didn't go with us up the
Sacramento River, and that is all I do know.) With the loss of Dinny
McCrea's boat, I was pledged to The Road; and when I grew tired of
Sacramento, I said good-by to the push (which, in its friendly way,
tried to ditch me from a freight as I left town) and started on a
_passear_ down the valley of the San Joaquin. The Road had gripped me
and would not let me go; and later, when I had voyaged to sea and done
one thing and another, I returned to The Road to make longer flights,
to be a "comet" and a profesh, and to plump into the bath of sociology
that wet me to the skin.




TWO THOUSAND STIFFS


A "stiff" is a tramp. It was once my fortune to travel a few weeks
with a "push" that numbered two thousand. This was known as "Kelly's
Army." Across the wild and woolly West, clear from California, General
Kelly and his heroes had captured trains; but they fell down when they
crossed the Missouri and went up against the effete East. The East
hadn't the slightest intention of giving free transportation to two
thousand hoboes. Kelly's Army lay helplessly for some time at Council
Bluffs. The day I joined it, made desperate by delay, it marched out
to capture a train.

It was quite an imposing sight. General Kelly sat a magnificent black
charger, and with waving banners, to the martial music of fife and
drum corps, company by company, in two divisions, his two thousand
stiffs countermarched before him and hit the wagon-road to the little
burg of Weston, seven miles away. Being the latest recruit, I was in
the last company, of the last regiment, of the Second Division, and,
furthermore, in the last rank of the rear-guard. The army went into
camp at Weston beside the railroad track--beside the tracks, rather,
for two roads went through: the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, and
the Rock Island.

Our intention was to take the first train out, but the railroad
officials "coppered" our play--and won. There was no first train. They
tied up the two lines and stopped running trains. In the meantime,
while we lay by the dead tracks, the good people of Omaha and Council
Bluffs were bestirring themselves. Preparations were making to form a
mob, capture a train in Council Bluffs, run it down to us, and make us
a present of it. The railroad officials coppered that play, too. They
didn't wait for the mob. Early in the morning of the second day, an
engine, with a single private car attached, arrived at the station and
side-tracked. At this sign that life had renewed in the dead roads,
the whole army lined up beside the track.

But never did life renew so monstrously on a dead railroad as it did
on those two roads. From the west came the whistle of a locomotive.
It was coming in our direction, bound east. We were bound east. A stir
of preparation ran down our ranks. The whistle tooted fast and
furiously, and the train thundered at top speed. The hobo didn't live
that could have boarded it. Another locomotive whistled, and another
train came through at top speed, and another, and another, train after
train, train after train, till toward the last the trains were
composed of passenger coaches, box-cars, flat-cars, dead engines,
cabooses, mail-cars, wrecking appliances, and all the riff-raff of
worn-out and abandoned rolling-stock that collects in the yards of
great railways. When the yards at Council Bluffs had been completely
cleaned, the private car and engine went east, and the tracks died for
keeps.

That day went by, and the next, and nothing moved, and in the
meantime, pelted by sleet, and rain, and hail, the two thousand hoboes
lay beside the track. But that night the good people of Council Bluffs
went the railroad officials one better. A mob formed in Council
Bluffs, crossed the river to Omaha, and there joined with another mob
in a raid on the Union Pacific yards. First they captured an engine,
next they knocked a train together, and then the united mobs piled
aboard, crossed the Missouri, and ran down the Rock Island right of
way to turn the train over to us. The railway officials tried to
copper this play, but fell down, to the mortal terror of the section
boss and one member of the section gang at Weston. This pair, under
secret telegraphic orders, tried to wreck our train-load of
sympathizers by tearing up the track. It happened that we were
suspicious and had our patrols out. Caught red-handed at
train-wrecking, and surrounded by twenty hundred infuriated hoboes,
that section-gang boss and assistant prepared to meet death. I don't
remember what saved them, unless it was the arrival of the train.

It was our turn to fall down, and we did, hard. In their haste, the
two mobs had neglected to make up a sufficiently long train. There
wasn't room for two thousand hoboes to ride. So the mobs and the
hoboes had a talkfest, fraternized, sang songs, and parted, the mobs
going back on their captured train to Omaha, the hoboes pulling out
next morning on a hundred-and-forty-mile march to Des Moines. It was
not until Kelly's Army crossed the Missouri that it began to walk,
and after that it never rode again. It cost the railroads slathers of
money, but they were acting on principle, and they won.

Underwood, Leola, Menden, Avoca, Walnut, Marno, Atlantic, Wyoto,
Anita, Adair, Adam, Casey, Stuart, Dexter, Carlham, De Soto, Van
Meter, Booneville, Commerce, Valley Junction--how the names of the
towns come back to me as I con the map and trace our route through the
fat Iowa country! And the hospitable Iowa farmer-folk! They turned out
with their wagons and carried our baggage; gave us hot lunches at noon
by the wayside; mayors of comfortable little towns made speeches of
welcome and hastened us on our way; deputations of little girls and
maidens came out to meet us, and the good citizens turned out by
hundreds, locked arms, and marched with us down their main streets. It
was circus day when we came to town, and every day was circus day, for
there were many towns.

In the evenings our camps were invaded by whole populations. Every
company had its campfire, and around each fire something was doing.
The cooks in my company, Company L, were song-and-dance artists and
contributed most of our entertainment. In another part of the
encampment the glee club would be singing--one of its star voices was
the "Dentist," drawn from Company L, and we were mighty proud of him.
Also, he pulled teeth for the whole army, and, since the extractions
usually occurred at meal-time, our digestions were stimulated by
variety of incident. The Dentist had no anaesthetics, but two or three
of us were always on tap to volunteer to hold down the patient. In
addition to the stunts of the companies and the glee club, church
services were usually held, local preachers officiating, and always
there was a great making of political speeches. All these things ran
neck and neck; it was a full-blown Midway. A lot of talent can be dug
out of two thousand hoboes. I remember we had a picked baseball nine,
and on Sundays we made a practice of putting it all over the local
nines. Sometimes we did it twice on Sundays.

Last year, while on a lecturing trip, I rode into Des Moines in a
Pullman--I don't mean a "side-door Pullman," but the real thing. On
the outskirts of the city I saw the old stove-works, and my heart
leaped. It was there, at the stove-works, a dozen years before, that
the Army lay down and swore a mighty oath that its feet were sore and
that it would walk no more. We took possession of the stove-works and
told Des Moines that we had come to stay--that we'd walked in, but
we'd be blessed if we'd walk out. Des Moines was hospitable, but this
was too much of a good thing. Do a little mental arithmetic, gentle
reader. Two thousand hoboes, eating three square meals, make six
thousand meals per day, forty-two thousand meals per week, or one
hundred and sixty-eight thousand meals per shortest month in the
calendar. That's going some. We had no money. It was up to Des Moines.

Des Moines was desperate. We lay in camp, made political speeches,
held sacred concerts, pulled teeth, played baseball and seven-up, and
ate our six thousand meals per day, and Des Moines paid for it. Des
Moines pleaded with the railroads, but they were obdurate; they had
said we shouldn't ride, and that settled it. To permit us to ride
would be to establish a precedent, and there weren't going to be any
precedents. And still we went on eating. That was the terrifying
factor in the situation. We were bound for Washington, and Des Moines
would have had to float municipal bonds to pay all our railroad fares,
even at special rates, and if we remained much longer, she'd have to
float bonds anyway to feed us.

Then some local genius solved the problem. We wouldn't walk. Very
good. We should ride. From Des Moines to Keokuk on the Mississippi
flowed the Des Moines River. This particular stretch of river was
three hundred miles long. We could ride on it, said the local genius;
and, once equipped with floating stock, we could ride on down the
Mississippi to the Ohio, and thence up the Ohio, winding up with a
short portage over the mountains to Washington.

Des Moines took up a subscription. Public-spirited citizens
contributed several thousand dollars. Lumber, rope, nails, and cotton
for calking were bought in large quantities, and on the banks of the
Des Moines was inaugurated a tremendous era of shipbuilding. Now the
Des Moines is a picayune stream, unduly dignified by the appellation
of "river." In our spacious western land it would be called a "creek."
The oldest inhabitants shook their heads and said we couldn't make it,
that there wasn't enough water to float us. Des Moines didn't care,
so long as it got rid of us, and we were such well-fed optimists that
we didn't care either.

On Wednesday, May 9, 1894, we got under way and started on our
colossal picnic. Des Moines had got off pretty easily, and she
certainly owes a statue in bronze to the local genius who got her out
of her difficulty. True, Des Moines had to pay for our boats; we had
eaten sixty-six thousand meals at the stove-works; and we took twelve
thousand additional meals along with us in our commissary--as a
precaution against famine in the wilds; but then, think what it would
have meant if we had remained at Des Moines eleven months instead of
eleven days. Also, when we departed, we promised Des Moines we'd come
back if the river failed to float us.

It was all very well having twelve thousand meals in the commissary,
and no doubt the commissary "ducks" enjoyed them; for the commissary
promptly got lost, and my boat, for one, never saw it again. The
company formation was hopelessly broken up during the river-trip. In
any camp of men there will always be found a certain percentage of
shirks, of helpless, of just ordinary, and of hustlers. There were ten
men in my boat, and they were the cream of Company L. Every man was a
hustler. For two reasons I was included in the ten. First, I was as
good a hustler as ever "threw his feet," and next, I was "Sailor
Jack." I understood boats and boating. The ten of us forgot the
remaining forty men of Company L, and by the time we had missed one
meal we promptly forgot the commissary. We were independent. We went
down the river "on our own," hustling our "chewin's," beating every
boat in the fleet, and, alas that I must say it, sometimes taking
possession of the stores the farmer-folk had collected for the Army.

For a good part of the three hundred miles we were from half a day to
a day or so in advance of the Army. We had managed to get hold of
several American flags. When we approached a small town, or when we
saw a group of farmers gathered on the bank, we ran up our flags,
called ourselves the "advance boat," and demanded to know what
provisions had been collected for the Army. We represented the Army,
of course, and the provisions were turned over to us. But there
wasn't anything small about us. We never took more than we could get
away with. But we did take the cream of everything. For instance, if
some philanthropic farmer had donated several dollars' worth of
tobacco, we took it. So, also, we took butter and sugar, coffee and
canned goods; but when the stores consisted of sacks of beans and
flour, or two or three slaughtered steers, we resolutely refrained and
went our way, leaving orders to turn such provisions over to the
commissary boats whose business was to follow behind us.

My, but the ten of us did live on the fat of the land! For a long time
General Kelly vainly tried to head us off. He sent two rowers, in a
light, round-bottomed boat, to overtake us and put a stop to our
piratical careers. They overtook us all right, but they were two and
we were ten. They were empowered by General Kelly to make us
prisoners, and they told us so. When we expressed disinclination to
become prisoners, they hurried ahead to the next town to invoke the
aid of the authorities. We went ashore immediately and cooked an early
supper; and under the cloak of darkness we ran by the town and its
authorities.

I kept a diary on part of the trip, and as I read it over now I note
one persistently recurring phrase, namely, "Living fine." We did live
fine. We even disdained to use coffee boiled in water. We made our
coffee out of milk, calling the wonderful beverage, if I remember
rightly, "pale Vienna."

While we were ahead, skimming the cream, and while the commissary was
lost far behind, the main Army, coming along in the middle, starved.
This was hard on the Army, I'll allow; but then, the ten of us were
individualists. We had initiative and enterprise. We ardently believed
that the grub was to the man who got there first, the pale Vienna to
the strong. On one stretch the Army went forty-eight hours without
grub; and then it arrived at a small village of some three hundred
inhabitants, the name of which I do not remember, though I think it
was Red Rock. This town, following the practice of all towns through
which the Army passed, had appointed a committee of safety. Counting
five to a family, Red Rock consisted of sixty households. Her
committee of safety was scared stiff by the eruption of two thousand
hungry hoboes who lined their boats two and three deep along the
river bank. General Kelly was a fair man. He had no intention of
working a hardship on the village. He did not expect sixty households
to furnish two thousand meals. Besides, the Army had its
treasure-chest.

But the committee of safety lost its head. "No encouragement to the
invader" was its programme, and when General Kelly wanted to buy food,
the committee turned him down. It had nothing to sell; General Kelly's
money was "no good" in their burg. And then General Kelly went into
action. The bugles blew. The Army left the boats and on top of the
bank formed in battle array. The committee was there to see. General
Kelly's speech was brief.

"Boys," he said, "when did you eat last?"

"Day before yesterday," they shouted.

"Are you hungry?"

A mighty affirmation from two thousand throats shook the atmosphere.
Then General Kelly turned to the committee of safety:--

"You see, gentlemen, the situation. My men have eaten nothing in
forty-eight hours. If I turn them loose upon your town, I'll not be
responsible for what happens. They are desperate. I offered to buy
food for them, but you refused to sell. I now withdraw my offer.
Instead, I shall demand. I give you five minutes to decide. Either
kill me six steers and give me four thousand rations, or I turn the
men loose. Five minutes, gentlemen."

The terrified committee of safety looked at the two thousand hungry
hoboes and collapsed. It didn't wait the five minutes. It wasn't going
to take any chances. The killing of the steers and the collecting of
the requisition began forthwith, and the Army dined.

And still the ten graceless individualists soared along ahead and
gathered in everything in sight. But General Kelly fixed us. He sent
horsemen down each bank, warning farmers and townspeople against us.
They did their work thoroughly, all right. The erstwhile hospitable
farmers met us with the icy mit. Also, they summoned the constables
when we tied up to the bank, and loosed the dogs. I know. Two of the
latter caught me with a barbed-wire fence between me and the river. I
was carrying two buckets of milk for the pale Vienna. I didn't damage
the fence any; but we drank plebian coffee boiled with vulgar water,
and it was up to me to throw my feet for another pair of trousers. I
wonder, gentle reader, if you ever essayed hastily to climb a
barbed-wire fence with a bucket of milk in each hand. Ever since that
day I have had a prejudice against barbed wire, and I have gathered
statistics on the subject.

Unable to make an honest living so long as General Kelly kept his two
horsemen ahead of us, we returned to the Army and raised a revolution.
It was a small affair, but it devastated Company L of the Second
Division. The captain of Company L refused to recognize us; said we
were deserters, and traitors, and scalawags; and when he drew rations
for Company L from the commissary, he wouldn't give us any. That
captain didn't appreciate us, or he wouldn't have refused us grub.
Promptly we intrigued with the first lieutenant. He joined us with the
ten men in his boat, and in return we elected him captain of Company
M. The captain of Company L raised a roar. Down upon us came General
Kelly, Colonel Speed, and Colonel Baker. The twenty of us stood firm,
and our revolution was ratified.

But we never bothered with the commissary. Our hustlers drew better
rations from the farmers. Our new captain, however, doubted us. He
never knew when he'd see the ten of us again, once we got under way in
the morning, so he called in a blacksmith to clinch his captaincy. In
the stern of our boat, one on each side, were driven two heavy
eye-bolts of iron. Correspondingly, on the bow of his boat, were
fastened two huge iron hooks. The boats were brought together, end on,
the hooks dropped into the eye-bolts, and there we were, hard and
fast. We couldn't lose that captain. But we were irrepressible. Out of
our very manacles we wrought an invincible device that enabled us to
put it all over every other boat in the fleet.

Like all great inventions, this one of ours was accidental. We
discovered it the first time we ran on a snag in a bit of a rapid. The
head-boat hung up and anchored, and the tail-boat swung around in the
current, pivoting the head-boat on the snag. I was at the stern of the
tail-boat, steering. In vain we tried to shove off. Then I ordered the
men from the head-boat into the tail-boat. Immediately the head-boat
floated clear, and its men returned into it. After that, snags, reefs,
shoals, and bars had no terrors for us. The instant the head-boat
struck, the men in it leaped into the tail-boat. Of course, the
head-boat floated over the obstruction and the tail-boat then struck.
Like automatons, the twenty men now in the tail-boat leaped into the
head-boat, and the tail-boat floated past.

The boats used by the Army were all alike, made by the mile and sawed
off. They were flat-boats, and their lines were rectangles. Each boat
was six feet wide, ten feet long, and a foot and a half deep. Thus,
when our two boats were hooked together, I sat at the stern steering a
craft twenty feet long, containing twenty husky hoboes who "spelled"
each other at the oars and paddles, and loaded with blankets, cooking
outfit, and our own private commissary.

Still we caused General Kelly trouble. He had called in his horsemen,
and substituted three police-boats that travelled in the van and
allowed no boats to pass them. The craft containing Company M crowded
the police-boats hard. We could have passed them easily, but it was
against the rules. So we kept a respectful distance astern and waited.
Ahead we knew was virgin farming country, unbegged and generous; but
we waited. White water was all we needed, and when we rounded a bend
and a rapid showed up we knew what would happen. Smash! Police-boat
number one goes on a boulder and hangs up. Bang! Police-boat number
two follows suit. Whop! Police-boat number three encounters the common
fate of all. Of course our boat does the same things; but one, two,
the men are out of the head-boat and into the tail-boat; one, two,
they are out of the tail-boat and into the head-boat; and one, two,
the men who belong in the tail-boat are back in it and we are dashing
on. "Stop! you blankety-blank-blanks!" shriek the police-boats. "How
can we?--blank the blankety-blank river, anyway!" we wail plaintively
as we surge past, caught in that remorseless current that sweeps us on
out of sight and into the hospitable farmer-country that replenishes
our private commissary with the cream of its contributions. Again we
drink pale Vienna and realize that the grub is to the man who gets
there.

Poor General Kelly! He devised another scheme. The whole fleet
started ahead of us. Company M of the Second Division started in its
proper place in the line, which was last. And it took us only one day
to put the "kibosh" on that particular scheme. Twenty-five miles of
bad water lay before us--all rapids, shoals, bars, and boulders. It
was over that stretch of water that the oldest inhabitants of Des
Moines had shaken their heads. Nearly two hundred boats entered the
bad water ahead of us, and they piled up in the most astounding
manner. We went through that stranded fleet like hemlock through the
fire. There was no avoiding the boulders, bars, and snags except by
getting out on the bank. We didn't avoid them. We went right over
them, one, two, one, two, head-boat, tail-boat, head-boat, tail-boat,
all hands back and forth and back again. We camped that night alone,
and loafed in camp all of next day while the Army patched and repaired
its wrecked boats and straggled up to us.

There was no stopping our cussedness. We rigged up a mast, piled on
the canvas (blankets), and travelled short hours while the Army worked
over-time to keep us in sight. Then General Kelly had recourse to
diplomacy. No boat could touch us in the straight-away. Without
discussion, we were the hottest bunch that ever came down the Des
Moines. The ban of the police-boats was lifted. Colonel Speed was put
aboard, and with this distinguished officer we had the honor of
arriving first at Keokuk on the Mississippi. And right here I want to
say to General Kelly and Colonel Speed that here's my hand. You were
heroes, both of you, and you were men. And I'm sorry for at least ten
per cent of the trouble that was given you by the head-boat of Company
M.

At Keokuk the whole fleet was lashed together in a huge raft, and,
after being wind-bound a day, a steamboat took us in tow down the
Mississippi to Quincy, Illinois, where we camped across the river on
Goose Island. Here the raft idea was abandoned, the boats being joined
together in groups of four and decked over. Somebody told me that
Quincy was the richest town of its size in the United States. When I
heard this, I was immediately overcome by an irresistible impulse to
throw my feet. No "blowed-in-the-glass profesh" could possibly pass up
such a promising burg. I crossed the river to Quincy in a small
dug-out; but I came back in a large riverboat, down to the gunwales
with the results of my thrown feet. Of course I kept all the money I
had collected, though I paid the boat-hire; also I took my pick of the
underwear, socks, cast-off clothes, shirts, "kicks," and "sky-pieces";
and when Company M had taken all it wanted there was still a
respectable heap that was turned over to Company L. Alas, I was young
and prodigal in those days! I told a thousand "stories" to the good
people of Quincy, and every story was "good"; but since I have come to
write for the magazines I have often regretted the wealth of story,
the fecundity of fiction, I lavished that day in Quincy, Illinois.

It was at Hannibal, Missouri, that the ten invincibles went to pieces.
It was not planned. We just naturally flew apart. The Boiler-Maker and
I deserted secretly. On the same day Scotty and Davy made a swift
sneak for the Illinois shore; also McAvoy and Fish achieved their
get-away. This accounts for six of the ten; what became of the
remaining four I do not know. As a sample of life on The Road, I make
the following quotation from my diary of the several days following my
desertion.

"Friday, May 25th. Boiler-Maker and I left the camp on the island. We
went ashore on the Illinois side in a skiff and walked six miles on
the C.B. & Q. to Fell Creek. We had gone six miles out of our way, but
we got on a hand-car and rode six miles to Hull's, on the Wabash.
While there, we met McAvoy, Fish, Scotty, and Davy, who had also
pulled out from the Army.

"Saturday, May 26th. At 2.11 A.M. we caught the Cannonball as she
slowed up at the crossing. Scotty and Davy were ditched. The four of
us were ditched at the Bluffs, forty miles farther on. In the
afternoon Fish and McAvoy caught a freight while Boiler-Maker and I
were away getting something to eat.

"Sunday, May 27th. At 3.21 A.M. we caught the Cannonball and found
Scotty and Davy on the blind. We were all ditched at daylight at
Jacksonville. The C. & A. runs through here, and we're going to take
that. Boiler-Maker went off, but didn't return. Guess he caught a
freight.

"Monday, May 28th. Boiler-Maker didn't show up. Scotty and Davy went
off to sleep somewhere, and didn't get back in time to catch the K.C.
passenger at 3.30 A.M. I caught her and rode her till after sunrise to
Masson City, 25,000 inhabitants. Caught a cattle train and rode all
night.

"Tuesday, May 29th. Arrived in Chicago at 7 A.M...."

       *       *       *       *       *

And years afterward, in China, I had the grief of learning that the
device we employed to navigate the rapids of the Des Moines--the
one-two-one-two, head-boat-tail-boat proposition--was not originated
by us. I learned that the Chinese river-boatmen had for thousands of
years used a similar device to negotiate "bad water." It is a good
stunt all right, even if we don't get the credit. It answers Dr.
Jordan's test of truth: "Will it work? Will you trust your life to
it?"




BULLS


If the tramp were suddenly to pass away from the United States,
widespread misery for many families would follow. The tramp enables
thousands of men to earn honest livings, educate their children, and
bring them up God-fearing and industrious. I know. At one time my
father was a constable and hunted tramps for a living. The community
paid him so much per head for all the tramps he could catch, and also,
I believe, he got mileage fees. Ways and means was always a pressing
problem in our household, and the amount of meat on the table, the new
pair of shoes, the day's outing, or the text-book for school, were
dependent upon my father's luck in the chase. Well I remember the
suppressed eagerness and the suspense with which I waited to learn
each morning what the results of his past night's toil had been--how
many tramps he had gathered in and what the chances were for
convicting them. And so it was, when later, as a tramp, I succeeded in
eluding some predatory constable, I could not but feel sorry for the
little boys and girls at home in that constable's house; it seemed to
me in a way that I was defrauding those little boys and girls of some
of the good things of life.

But it's all in the game. The hobo defies society, and society's
watch-dogs make a living out of him. Some hoboes like to be caught by
the watch-dogs--especially in winter-time. Of course, such hoboes
select communities where the jails are "good," wherein no work is
performed and the food is substantial. Also, there have been, and most
probably still are, constables who divide their fees with the hoboes
they arrest. Such a constable does not have to hunt. He whistles, and
the game comes right up to his hand. It is surprising, the money that
is made out of stone-broke tramps. All through the South--at least
when I was hoboing--are convict camps and plantations, where the time
of convicted hoboes is bought by the farmers, and where the hoboes
simply have to work. Then there are places like the quarries at
Rutland, Vermont, where the hobo is exploited, the unearned energy in
his body, which he has accumulated by "battering on the drag" or
"slamming gates," being extracted for the benefit of that particular
community.

Now I don't know anything about the quarries at Rutland, Vermont. I'm
very glad that I don't, when I remember how near I was to getting into
them. Tramps pass the word along, and I first heard of those quarries
when I was in Indiana. But when I got into New England, I heard of
them continually, and always with danger-signals flying. "They want
men in the quarries," the passing hoboes said; "and they never give a
'stiff' less than ninety days." By the time I got into New Hampshire I
was pretty well keyed up over those quarries, and I fought shy of
railroad cops, "bulls," and constables as I never had before.

One evening I went down to the railroad yards at Concord and found a
freight train made up and ready to start. I located an empty box-car,
slid open the side-door, and climbed in. It was my hope to win across
to White River by morning; that would bring me into Vermont and not
more than a thousand miles from Rutland. But after that, as I worked
north, the distance between me and the point of danger would begin to
increase. In the car I found a "gay-cat," who displayed unusual
trepidation at my entrance. He took me for a "shack" (brakeman), and
when he learned I was only a stiff, he began talking about the
quarries at Rutland as the cause of the fright I had given him. He was
a young country fellow, and had beaten his way only over local
stretches of road.

The freight got under way, and we lay down in one end of the box-car
and went to sleep. Two or three hours afterward, at a stop, I was
awakened by the noise of the right-hand door being softly slid open.
The gay-cat slept on. I made no movement, though I veiled my eyes with
my lashes to a little slit through which I could see out. A lantern
was thrust in through the doorway, followed by the head of a shack. He
discovered us, and looked at us for a moment. I was prepared for a
violent expression on his part, or the customary "Hit the grit, you
son of a toad!" Instead of this he cautiously withdrew the lantern and
very, very softly slid the door to. This struck me as eminently
unusual and suspicious. I listened, and softly I heard the hasp drop
into place. The door was latched on the outside. We could not open it
from the inside. One way of sudden exit from that car was blocked. It
would never do. I waited a few seconds, then crept to the left-hand
door and tried it. It was not yet latched. I opened it, dropped to the
ground, and closed it behind me. Then I passed across the bumpers to
the other side of the train. I opened the door the shack had latched,
climbed in, and closed it behind me. Both exits were available again.
The gay-cat was still asleep.

The train got under way. It came to the next stop. I heard footsteps
in the gravel. Then the left-hand door was thrown open noisily. The
gay-cat awoke, I made believe to awake; and we sat up and stared at
the shack and his lantern. He didn't waste any time getting down to
business.

"I want three dollars," he said.

We got on our feet and came nearer to him to confer. We expressed an
absolute and devoted willingness to give him three dollars, but
explained our wretched luck that compelled our desire to remain
unsatisfied. The shack was incredulous. He dickered with us. He would
compromise for two dollars. We regretted our condition of poverty. He
said uncomplimentary things, called us sons of toads, and damned us
from hell to breakfast. Then he threatened. He explained that if we
didn't dig up, he'd lock us in and carry us on to White River and turn
us over to the authorities. He also explained all about the quarries
at Rutland.

Now that shack thought he had us dead to rights. Was not he guarding
the one door, and had he not himself latched the opposite door but a
few minutes before? When he began talking about quarries, the
frightened gay-cat started to sidle across to the other door. The
shack laughed loud and long. "Don't be in a hurry," he said; "I locked
that door on the outside at the last stop." So implicitly did he
believe the door to be locked that his words carried conviction. The
gay-cat believed and was in despair.

The shack delivered his ultimatum. Either we should dig up two
dollars, or he would lock us in and turn us over to the constable at
White River--and that meant ninety days and the quarries. Now, gentle
reader, just suppose that the other door had been locked. Behold the
precariousness of human life. For lack of a dollar, I'd have gone to
the quarries and served three months as a convict slave. So would the
gay-cat. Count me out, for I was hopeless; but consider the gay-cat.
He might have come out, after those ninety days, pledged to a life of
crime. And later he might have broken your skull, even your skull,
with a blackjack in an endeavor to take possession of the money on
your person--and if not your skull, then some other poor and
unoffending creature's skull.

But the door was unlocked, and I alone knew it. The gay-cat and I
begged for mercy. I joined in the pleading and wailing out of sheer
cussedness, I suppose. But I did my best. I told a "story" that would
have melted the heart of any mug; but it didn't melt the heart of that
sordid money-grasper of a shack. When he became convinced that we
didn't have any money, he slid the door shut and latched it, then
lingered a moment on the chance that we had fooled him and that we
would now offer him the two dollars.

Then it was that I let out a few links. I called him a son of a toad.
I called him all the other things he had called me. And then I called
him a few additional things. I came from the West, where men knew how
to swear, and I wasn't going to let any mangy shack on a measly New
England "jerk" put it over me in vividness and vigor of language. At
first the shack tried to laugh it down. Then he made the mistake of
attempting to reply. I let out a few more links, and I cut him to the
raw and therein rubbed winged and flaming epithets. Nor was my fine
frenzy all whim and literary; I was indignant at this vile creature,
who, in default of a dollar, would consign me to three months of
slavery. Furthermore, I had a sneaking idea that he got a "drag" out
of the constable fees.

But I fixed him. I lacerated his feelings and pride several dollars'
worth. He tried to scare me by threatening to come in after me and
kick the stuffing out of me. In return, I promised to kick him in the
face while he was climbing in. The advantage of position was with me,
and he saw it. So he kept the door shut and called for help from the
rest of the train-crew. I could hear them answering and crunching
through the gravel to him. And all the time the other door was
unlatched, and they didn't know it; and in the meantime the gay-cat
was ready to die with fear.

Oh, I was a hero--with my line of retreat straight behind me. I
slanged the shack and his mates till they threw the door open and I
could see their infuriated faces in the shine of the lanterns. It was
all very simple to them. They had us cornered in the car, and they
were going to come in and man-handle us. They started. I didn't kick
anybody in the face. I jerked the opposite door open, and the gay-cat
and I went out. The train-crew took after us.

We went over--if I remember correctly--a stone fence. But I have no
doubts of recollection about where we found ourselves. In the darkness
I promptly fell over a grave-stone. The gay-cat sprawled over another.
And then we got the chase of our lives through that graveyard. The
ghosts must have thought we were going some. So did the train-crew,
for when we emerged from the graveyard and plunged across a road into
a dark wood, the shacks gave up the pursuit and went back to their
train. A little later that night the gay-cat and I found ourselves at
the well of a farmhouse. We were after a drink of water, but we
noticed a small rope that ran down one side of the well. We hauled it
up and found on the end of it a gallon-can of cream. And that is as
near as I got to the quarries of Rutland, Vermont.

When hoboes pass the word along, concerning a town, that "the bulls is
horstile," avoid that town, or, if you must, go through softly. There
are some towns that one must always go through softly. Such a town was
Cheyenne, on the Union Pacific. It had a national reputation for being
"horstile,"--and it was all due to the efforts of one Jeff Carr (if I
remember his name aright). Jeff Carr could size up the "front" of a
hobo on the instant. He never entered into discussion. In the one
moment he sized up the hobo, and in the next he struck out with both
fists, a club, or anything else he had handy. After he had man-handled
the hobo, he started him out of town with a promise of worse if he
ever saw him again. Jeff Carr knew the game. North, south, east, and
west to the uttermost confines of the United States (Canada and Mexico
included), the man-handled hoboes carried the word that Cheyenne was
"horstile." Fortunately, I never encountered Jeff Carr. I passed
through Cheyenne in a blizzard. There were eighty-four hoboes with me
at the time. The strength of numbers made us pretty nonchalant on
most things, but not on Jeff Carr. The connotation of "Jeff Carr"
stunned our imagination, numbed our virility, and the whole gang was
mortally scared of meeting him.

It rarely pays to stop and enter into explanations with bulls when
they look "horstile." A swift get-away is the thing to do. It took me
some time to learn this; but the finishing touch was put upon me by a
bull in New York City. Ever since that time it has been an automatic
process with me to make a run for it when I see a bull reaching for
me. This automatic process has become a mainspring of conduct in me,
wound up and ready for instant release. I shall never get over it.
Should I be eighty years old, hobbling along the street on crutches,
and should a policeman suddenly reach out for me, I know I'd drop the
crutches and run like a deer.

The finishing touch to my education in bulls was received on a hot
summer afternoon in New York City. It was during a week of scorching
weather. I had got into the habit of throwing my feet in the morning,
and of spending the afternoon in the little park that is hard by
Newspaper Row and the City Hall. It was near there that I could buy
from pushcart men current books (that had been injured in the making
or binding) for a few cents each. Then, right in the park itself, were
little booths where one could buy glorious, ice-cold, sterilized milk
and buttermilk at a penny a glass. Every afternoon I sat on a bench
and read, and went on a milk debauch. I got away with from five to ten
glasses each afternoon. It was dreadfully hot weather.

So here I was, a meek and studious milk-drinking hobo, and behold what
I got for it. One afternoon I arrived at the park, a fresh
book-purchase under my arm and a tremendous buttermilk thirst under my
shirt. In the middle of the street, in front of the City Hall, I
noticed, as I came along heading for the buttermilk booth, that a
crowd had formed. It was right where I was crossing the street, so I
stopped to see the cause of the collection of curious men. At first I
could see nothing. Then, from the sounds I heard and from a glimpse I
caught, I knew that it was a bunch of gamins playing pee-wee. Now
pee-wee is not permitted in the streets of New York. I didn't know
that, but I learned pretty lively. I had paused possibly thirty
seconds, in which time I had learned the cause of the crowd, when I
heard a gamin yell "Bull!" The gamins knew their business. They ran. I
didn't.

The crowd broke up immediately and started for the sidewalk on both
sides of the street. I started for the sidewalk on the park-side.
There must have been fifty men, who had been in the original crowd,
who were heading in the same direction. We were loosely strung out. I
noticed the bull, a strapping policeman in a gray suit. He was coming
along the middle of the street, without haste, merely sauntering. I
noticed casually that he changed his course, and was heading obliquely
for the same sidewalk that I was heading for directly. He sauntered
along, threading the strung-out crowd, and I noticed that his course
and mine would cross each other. I was so innocent of wrong-doing
that, in spite of my education in bulls and their ways, I apprehended
nothing. I never dreamed that bull was after me. Out of my respect for
the law I was actually all ready to pause the next moment and let him
cross in front of me. The pause came all right, but it was not of my
volition; also it was a backward pause. Without warning, that bull had
suddenly launched out at me on the chest with both hands. At the same
moment, verbally, he cast the bar sinister on my genealogy.

All my free American blood boiled. All my liberty-loving ancestors
clamored in me. "What do you mean?" I demanded. You see, I wanted an
explanation. And I got it. Bang! His club came down on top of my head,
and I was reeling backward like a drunken man, the curious faces of
the onlookers billowing up and down like the waves of the sea, my
precious book falling from under my arm into the dirt, the bull
advancing with the club ready for another blow. And in that dizzy
moment I had a vision. I saw that club descending many times upon my
head; I saw myself, bloody and battered and hard-looking, in a
police-court; I heard a charge of disorderly conduct, profane
language, resisting an officer, and a few other things, read by a
clerk; and I saw myself across in Blackwell's Island. Oh, I knew the
game. I lost all interest in explanations. I didn't stop to pick up my
precious, unread book. I turned and ran. I was pretty sick, but I
ran. And run I shall, to my dying day, whenever a bull begins to
explain with a club.

Why, years after my tramping days, when I was a student in the
University of California, one night I went to the circus. After the
show and the concert I lingered on to watch the working of the
transportation machinery of a great circus. The circus was leaving
that night. By a bonfire I came upon a bunch of small boys. There were
about twenty of them, and as they talked with one another I learned
that they were going to run away with the circus. Now the circus-men
didn't want to be bothered with this mess of urchins, and a telephone
to police headquarters had "coppered" the play. A squad of ten
policemen had been despatched to the scene to arrest the small boys
for violating the nine o'clock curfew ordinance. The policemen
surrounded the bonfire, and crept up close to it in the darkness. At
the signal, they made a rush, each policeman grabbing at the
youngsters as he would grab into a basket of squirming eels.

Now I didn't know anything about the coming of the police; and when I
saw the sudden eruption of brass-buttoned, helmeted bulls, each of
them reaching with both hands, all the forces and stability of my
being were overthrown. Remained only the automatic process to run. And
I ran. I didn't know I was running. I didn't know anything. It was, as
I have said, automatic. There was no reason for me to run. I was not a
hobo. I was a citizen of that community. It was my home town. I was
guilty of no wrong-doing. I was a college man. I had even got my name
in the papers, and I wore good clothes that had never been slept in.
And yet I ran--blindly, madly, like a startled deer, for over a block.
And when I came to myself, I noted that I was still running. It
required a positive effort of will to stop those legs of mine.

No, I'll never get over it. I can't help it. When a bull reaches, I
run. Besides, I have an unhappy faculty for getting into jail. I have
been in jail more times since I was a hobo than when I was one. I
start out on a Sunday morning with a young lady on a bicycle ride.
Before we can get outside the city limits we are arrested for passing
a pedestrian on the sidewalk. I resolve to be more careful. The next
time I am on a bicycle it is night-time and my acetylene-gas-lamp is
misbehaving. I cherish the sickly flame carefully, because of the
ordinance. I am in a hurry, but I ride at a snail's pace so as not to
jar out the flickering flame. I reach the city limits; I am beyond the
jurisdiction of the ordinance; and I proceed to scorch to make up for
lost time. And half a mile farther on I am "pinched" by a bull, and
the next morning I forfeit my bail in the police court. The city had
treacherously extended its limits into a mile of the country, and I
didn't know, that was all. I remember my inalienable right of free
speech and peaceable assemblage, and I get up on a soap-box to trot
out the particular economic bees that buzz in my bonnet, and a bull
takes me off that box and leads me to the city prison, and after that
I get out on bail. It's no use. In Korea I used to be arrested about
every other day. It was the same thing in Manchuria. The last time I
was in Japan I broke into jail under the pretext of being a Russian
spy. It wasn't my pretext, but it got me into jail just the same.
There is no hope for me. I am fated to do the Prisoner-of-Chillon
stunt yet. This is prophecy.

I once hypnotized a bull on Boston Common. It was past midnight and he
had me dead to rights; but before I got done with him he had ponied up
a silver quarter and given me the address of an all-night restaurant.
Then there was a bull in Bristol, New Jersey, who caught me and let me
go, and heaven knows he had provocation enough to put me in jail. I
hit him the hardest I'll wager he was ever hit in his life. It
happened this way. About midnight I nailed a freight out of
Philadelphia. The shacks ditched me. She was pulling out slowly
through the maze of tracks and switches of the freight-yards. I nailed
her again, and again I was ditched. You see, I had to nail her
"outside," for she was a through freight with every door locked and
sealed.

The second time I was ditched the shack gave me a lecture. He told me
I was risking my life, that it was a fast freight and that she went
some. I told him I was used to going some myself, but it was no go. He
said he wouldn't permit me to commit suicide, and I hit the grit. But
I nailed her a third time, getting in between on the bumpers. They
were the most meagre bumpers I had ever seen--I do not refer to the
real bumpers, the iron bumpers that are connected by the
coupling-link and that pound and grind on each other; what I refer to
are the beams, like huge cleats, that cross the ends of freight cars
just above the bumpers. When one rides the bumpers, he stands on these
cleats, one foot on each, the bumpers between his feet and just
beneath.

But the beams or cleats I found myself on were not the broad, generous
ones that at that time were usually on box-cars. On the contrary, they
were very narrow--not more than an inch and a half in breadth. I
couldn't get half of the width of my sole on them. Then there was
nothing to which to hold with my hands. True, there were the ends of
the two box-cars; but those ends were flat, perpendicular surfaces.
There were no grips. I could only press the flats of my palms against
the car-ends for support. But that would have been all right if the
cleats for my feet had been decently wide.

As the freight got out of Philadelphia she began to hit up speed. Then
I understood what the shack had meant by suicide. The freight went
faster and faster. She was a through freight, and there was nothing to
stop her. On that section of the Pennsylvania four tracks run side by
side, and my east-bound freight didn't need to worry about passing
west-bound freights, nor about being overtaken by east-bound
expresses. She had the track to herself, and she used it. I was in a
precarious situation. I stood with the mere edges of my feet on the
narrow projections, the palms of my hands pressing desperately against
the flat, perpendicular ends of each car. And those cars moved, and
moved individually, up and down and back and forth. Did you ever see a
circus rider, standing on two running horses, with one foot on the
back of each horse? Well, that was what I was doing, with several
differences. The circus rider had the reins to hold on to, while I had
nothing; he stood on the broad soles of his feet, while I stood on the
edges of mine; he bent his legs and body, gaining the strength of the
arch in his posture and achieving the stability of a low centre of
gravity, while I was compelled to stand upright and keep my legs
straight; he rode face forward, while I was riding sidewise; and also,
if he fell off, he'd get only a roll in the sawdust, while I'd have
been ground to pieces beneath the wheels.

And that freight was certainly going some, roaring and shrieking,
swinging madly around curves, thundering over trestles, one car-end
bumping up when the other was jarring down, or jerking to the right at
the same moment the other was lurching to the left, and with me all
the while praying and hoping for the train to stop. But she didn't
stop. She didn't have to. For the first, last, and only time on The
Road, I got all I wanted. I abandoned the bumpers and managed to get
out on a side-ladder; it was ticklish work, for I had never
encountered car-ends that were so parsimonious of hand-holds and
foot-holds as those car-ends were.

I heard the engine whistling, and I felt the speed easing down. I knew
the train wasn't going to stop, but my mind was made up to chance it
if she slowed down sufficiently. The right of way at this point took a
curve, crossed a bridge over a canal, and cut through the town of
Bristol. This combination compelled slow speed. I clung on to the
side-ladder and waited. I didn't know it was the town of Bristol we
were approaching. I did not know what necessitated slackening in
speed. All I knew was that I wanted to get off. I strained my eyes in
the darkness for a street-crossing on which to land. I was pretty well
down the train, and before my car was in the town the engine was past
the station and I could feel her making speed again.

Then came the street. It was too dark to see how wide it was or what
was on the other side. I knew I needed all of that street if I was to
remain on my feet after I struck. I dropped off on the near side. It
sounds easy. By "dropped off" I mean just this: I first of all, on the
side-ladder, thrust my body forward as far as I could in the direction
the train was going--this to give as much space as possible in which
to gain backward momentum when I swung off. Then I swung, swung out
and backward, backward with all my might, and let go--at the same time
throwing myself backward as if I intended to strike the ground on the
back of my head. The whole effort was to overcome as much as possible
the primary forward momentum the train had imparted to my body. When
my feet hit the grit, my body was lying backward on the air at an
angle of forty-five degrees. I had reduced the forward momentum some,
for when my feet struck, I did not immediately pitch forward on my
face. Instead, my body rose to the perpendicular and began to incline
forward. In point of fact, my body proper still retained much
momentum, while my feet, through contact with the earth, had lost all
their momentum. This momentum the feet had lost I had to supply anew
by lifting them as rapidly as I could and running them forward in
order to keep them under my forward-moving body. The result was that
my feet beat a rapid and explosive tattoo clear across the street. I
didn't dare stop them. If I had, I'd have pitched forward. It was up
to me to keep on going.

I was an involuntary projectile, worrying about what was on the other
side of the street and hoping that it wouldn't be a stone wall or a
telegraph pole. And just then I hit something. Horrors! I saw it just
the instant before the disaster--of all things, a bull, standing there
in the darkness. We went down together, rolling over and over; and the
automatic process was such in that miserable creature that in the
moment of impact he reached out and clutched me and never let go. We
were both knocked out, and he held on to a very lamb-like hobo while
he recovered.

If that bull had any imagination, he must have thought me a traveller
from other worlds, the man from Mars just arriving; for in the
darkness he hadn't seen me swing from the train. In fact, his first
words were: "Where did you come from?" His next words, and before I
had time to answer, were: "I've a good mind to run you in." This
latter, I am convinced, was likewise automatic. He was a really good
bull at heart, for after I had told him a "story" and helped brush off
his clothes, he gave me until the next freight to get out of town. I
stipulated two things: first, that the freight be east-bound, and
second, that it should not be a through freight with all doors sealed
and locked. To this he agreed, and thus, by the terms of the Treaty of
Bristol, I escaped being pinched.

I remember another night, in that part of the country, when I just
missed another bull. If I had hit him, I'd have telescoped him, for I
was coming down from above, all holds free, with several other bulls
one jump behind and reaching for me. This is how it happened. I had
been lodging in a livery stable in Washington. I had a box-stall and
unnumbered horse-blankets all to myself. In return for such sumptuous
accommodation I took care of a string of horses each morning. I might
have been there yet, if it hadn't been for the bulls.

One evening, about nine o'clock, I returned to the stable to go to
bed, and found a crap game in full blast. It had been a market day,
and all the negroes had money. It would be well to explain the lay of
the land. The livery stable faced on two streets. I entered the front,
passed through the office, and came to the alley between two rows of
stalls that ran the length of the building and opened out on the other
street. Midway along this alley, beneath a gas-jet and between the
rows of horses, were about forty negroes. I joined them as an
onlooker. I was broke and couldn't play. A coon was making passes and
not dragging down. He was riding his luck, and with each pass the
total stake doubled. All kinds of money lay on the floor. It was
fascinating. With each pass, the chances increased tremendously
against the coon making another pass. The excitement was intense. And
just then there came a thundering smash on the big doors that opened
on the back street.

A few of the negroes bolted in the opposite direction. I paused from
my flight a moment to grab at the all kinds of money on the floor.
This wasn't theft: it was merely custom. Every man who hadn't run was
grabbing. The doors crashed open and swung in, and through them surged
a squad of bulls. We surged the other way. It was dark in the office,
and the narrow door would not permit all of us to pass out to the
street at the same time. Things became congested. A coon took a dive
through the window, taking the sash along with him and followed by
other coons. At our rear, the bulls were nailing prisoners. A big coon
and myself made a dash at the door at the same time. He was bigger
than I, and he pivoted me and got through first. The next instant a
club swatted him on the head and he went down like a steer. Another
squad of bulls was waiting outside for us. They knew they couldn't
stop the rush with their hands, and so they were swinging their clubs.
I stumbled over the fallen coon who had pivoted me, ducked a swat from
a club, dived between a bull's legs, and was free. And then how I ran!
There was a lean mulatto just in front of me, and I took his pace. He
knew the town better than I did, and I knew that in the way he ran lay
safety. But he, on the other hand, took me for a pursuing bull. He
never looked around. He just ran. My wind was good, and I hung on to
his pace and nearly killed him. In the end he stumbled weakly, went
down on his knees, and surrendered to me. And when he discovered I
wasn't a bull, all that saved me was that he didn't have any wind left
in him.

That was why I left Washington--not on account of the mulatto, but on
account of the bulls. I went down to the depot and caught the first
blind out on a Pennsylvania Railroad express. After the train got good
and under way and I noted the speed she was making, a misgiving smote
me. This was a four-track railroad, and the engines took water on the
fly. Hoboes had long since warned me never to ride the first blind on
trains where the engines took water on the fly. And now let me
explain. Between the tracks are shallow metal troughs. As the engine,
at full speed, passes above, a sort of chute drops down into the
trough. The result is that all the water in the trough rushes up the
chute and fills the tender.

Somewhere along between Washington and Baltimore, as I sat on the
platform of the blind, a fine spray began to fill the air. It did no
harm. Ah, ha, thought I; it's all a bluff, this taking water on the
fly being bad for the bo on the first blind. What does this little
spray amount to? Then I began to marvel at the device. This was
railroading! Talk about your primitive Western railroading--and just
then the tender filled up, and it hadn't reached the end of the
trough. A tidal wave of water poured over the back of the tender and
down upon me. I was soaked to the skin, as wet as if I had fallen
overboard.

The train pulled into Baltimore. As is the custom in the great Eastern
cities, the railroad ran beneath the level of the streets on the
bottom of a big "cut." As the train pulled into the lighted depot, I
made myself as small as possible on the blind. But a railroad bull saw
me, and gave chase. Two more joined him. I was past the depot, and I
ran straight on down the track. I was in a sort of trap. On each side
of me rose the steep walls of the cut, and if I ever essayed them and
failed, I knew that I'd slide back into the clutches of the bulls. I
ran on and on, studying the walls of the cut for a favorable place to
climb up. At last I saw such a place. It came just after I had passed
under a bridge that carried a level street across the cut. Up the
steep slope I went, clawing hand and foot. The three railroad bulls
were clawing up right after me.

At the top, I found myself in a vacant lot. On one side was a low wall
that separated it from the street. There was no time for minute
investigation. They were at my heels. I headed for the wall and
vaulted it. And right there was where I got the surprise of my life.
One is used to thinking that one side of a wall is just as high as the
other side. But that wall was different. You see, the vacant lot was
much higher than the level of the street. On my side the wall was low,
but on the other side--well, as I came soaring over the top, all holds
free, it seemed to me that I was falling feet-first, plump into an
abyss. There beneath me, on the sidewalk, under the light of a
street-lamp was a bull. I guess it was nine or ten feet down to the
sidewalk; but in the shock of surprise in mid-air it seemed twice that
distance.

I straightened out in the air and came down. At first I thought I was
going to land on the bull. My clothes did brush him as my feet struck
the sidewalk with explosive impact. It was a wonder he didn't drop
dead, for he hadn't heard me coming. It was the man-from-Mars stunt
over again. The bull did jump. He shied away from me like a horse from
an auto; and then he reached for me. I didn't stop to explain. I left
that to my pursuers, who were dropping over the wall rather gingerly.
But I got a chase all right. I ran up one street and down another,
dodged around corners, and at last got away.

After spending some of the coin I'd got from the crap game and killing
off an hour of time, I came back to the railroad cut, just outside the
lights of the depot, and waited for a train. My blood had cooled down,
and I shivered miserably, what of my wet clothes. At last a train
pulled into the station. I lay low in the darkness, and successfully
boarded her when she pulled out, taking good care this time to make
the second blind. No more water on the fly in mine. The train ran
forty miles to the first stop. I got off in a lighted depot that was
strangely familiar. I was back in Washington. In some way, during the
excitement of the get-away in Baltimore, running through strange
streets, dodging and turning and retracing, I had got turned around. I
had taken the train out the wrong way. I had lost a night's sleep, I
had been soaked to the skin, I had been chased for my life; and for
all my pains I was back where I had started. Oh, no, life on The Road
is not all beer and skittles. But I didn't go back to the livery
stable. I had done some pretty successful grabbing, and I didn't want
to reckon up with the coons. So I caught the next train out, and ate
my breakfast in Baltimore.


8xxxxxxxxx

THE VALLEY OF THE MOON

By Jack London




BOOK I



CHAPTER 1

“You hear me, Saxon? Come on along. What if it is the Bricklayers? I'll
have gentlemen friends there, and so'll you. The Al Vista band'll be
along, an' you know it plays heavenly. An' you just love dancin'---”

Twenty feet away, a stout, elderly woman interrupted the girl's
persuasions. The elderly woman's back was turned, and the back--loose,
bulging, and misshapen--began a convulsive heaving.

“Gawd!” she cried out. “O Gawd!”

She flung wild glances, like those of an entrapped animal, up and down
the big whitewashed room that panted with heat and that was thickly
humid with the steam that sizzled from the damp cloth under the irons of
the many ironers. From the girls and women near her, all swinging irons
steadily but at high pace, came quick glances, and labor efficiency
suffered to the extent of a score of suspended or inadequate movements.
The elderly woman's cry had caused a tremor of money-loss to pass among
the piece-work ironers of fancy starch.

She gripped herself and her iron with a visible effort, and dabbed
futilely at the frail, frilled garment on the board under her hand.

“I thought she'd got'em again--didn't you?” the girl said.

“It's a shame, a woman of her age, and... condition,” Saxon answered,
as she frilled a lace ruffle with a hot fluting-iron. Her movements were
delicate, safe, and swift, and though her face was wan with fatigue and
exhausting heat, there was no slackening in her pace.

“An' her with seven, an' two of 'em in reform school,” the girl at the
next board sniffed sympathetic agreement. “But you just got to come
to Weasel Park to-morrow, Saxon. The Bricklayers' is always
lively--tugs-of-war, fat-man races, real Irish jiggin', an'... an'
everything. An' the floor of the pavilion's swell.”

But the elderly woman brought another interruption. She dropped her iron
on the shirtwaist, clutched at the board, fumbled it, caved in at the
knees and hips, and like a half-empty sack collapsed on the floor, her
long shriek rising in the pent room to the acrid smell of scorching
cloth. The women at the boards near to her scrambled, first, to the hot
iron to save the cloth, and then to her, while the forewoman hurried
belligerently down the aisle. The women farther away continued
unsteadily at their work, losing movements to the extent of a minute's
set-back to the totality of the efficiency of the fancy-starch room.

“Enough to kill a dog,” the girl muttered, thumping her iron down on its
rest with reckless determination. “Workin' girls' life ain't what it's
cracked up. Me to quit--that's what I'm comin' to.”

“Mary!” Saxon uttered the other's name with a reproach so profound that
she was compelled to rest her own iron for emphasis and so lose a dozen
movements.

Mary flashed a half-frightened look across.

“I didn't mean it, Saxon,” she whimpered. “Honest, I didn't. I wouldn't
never go that way. But I leave it to you, if a day like this don't get
on anybody's nerves. Listen to that!”

The stricken woman, on her back, drumming her heels on the floor, was
shrieking persistently and monotonously, like a mechanical siren. Two
women, clutching her under the arms, were dragging her down the aisle.
She drummed and shrieked the length of it. The door opened, and a vast,
muffled roar of machinery burst in; and in the roar of it the drumming
and the shrieking were drowned ere the door swung shut. Remained of the
episode only the scorch of cloth drifting ominously through the air.

“It's sickenin',” said Mary.

And thereafter, for a long time, the many irons rose and fell, the pace
of the room in no wise diminished; while the forewoman strode the
aisles with a threatening eye for incipient breakdown and hysteria.
Occasionally an ironer lost the stride for an instant, gasped or sighed,
then caught it up again with weary determination. The long summer day
waned, but not the heat, and under the raw flare of electric light the
work went on.

By nine o'clock the first women began to go home. The mountain of fancy
starch had been demolished--all save the few remnants, here and there,
on the boards, where the ironers still labored.

Saxon finished ahead of Mary, at whose board she paused on the way out.

“Saturday night an' another week gone,” Mary said mournfully, her young
cheeks pallid and hollowed, her black eyes blue-shadowed and tired.
“What d'you think you've made, Saxon?”

“Twelve and a quarter,” was the answer, just touched with pride. “And I'd
a-made more if it wasn't for that fake bunch of starchers.”

“My! I got to pass it to you,” Mary congratulated. “You're a sure fierce
hustler--just eat it up. Me--I've only ten an' a half, an' for a hard
week... See you on the nine-forty. Sure now. We can just fool around
until the dancin' begins. A lot of my gentlemen friends'll be there in
the afternoon.”

Two blocks from the laundry, where an arc-light showed a gang of toughs
on the corner, Saxon quickened her pace. Unconsciously her face set
and hardened as she passed. She did not catch the words of the muttered
comment, but the rough laughter it raised made her guess and warmed her
checks with resentful blood. Three blocks more, turning once to left and
once to right, she walked on through the night that was already growing
cool. On either side were workingmen's houses, of weathered wood,
the ancient paint grimed with the dust of years, conspicuous only for
cheapness and ugliness.

Dark it was, but she made no mistake, the familiar sag and screeching
reproach of the front gate welcome under her hand. She went along the
narrow walk to the rear, avoided the missing step without thinking about
it, and entered the kitchen, where a solitary gas-jet flickered.
She turned it up to the best of its flame. It was a small room, not
disorderly, because of lack of furnishings to disorder it. The plaster,
discolored by the steam of many wash-days, was crisscrossed with cracks
from the big earthquake of the previous spring. The floor was ridged,
wide-cracked, and uneven, and in front of the stove it was worn through
and repaired with a five-gallon oil-can hammered flat and double. A
sink, a dirty roller-towel, several chairs, and a wooden table completed
the picture.

An apple-core crunched under her foot as she drew a chair to the table.
On the frayed oilcloth, a supper waited. She attempted the cold beans,
thick with grease, but gave them up, and buttered a slice of bread.

The rickety house shook to a heavy, prideless tread, and through the
inner door came Sarah, middle-aged, lop-breasted, hair-tousled, her face
lined with care and fat petulance.

“Huh, it's you,” she grunted a greeting. “I just couldn't keep things
warm. Such a day! I near died of the heat. An' little Henry cut his lip
awful. The doctor had to put four stitches in it.”

Sarah came over and stood mountainously by the table.

“What's the matter with them beans?” she challenged.

“Nothing, only...” Saxon caught her breath and avoided the threatened
outburst. “Only I'm not hungry. It's been so hot all day. It was
terrible in the laundry.”

Recklessly she took a mouthful of the cold tea that had been steeped so
long that it was like acid in her mouth, and recklessly, under the eye
of her sister-in-law, she swallowed it and the rest of the cupful. She
wiped her mouth on her handkerchief and got up.

“I guess I'll go to bed.”

“Wonder you ain't out to a dance,” Sarah sniffed. “Funny, ain't it, you
come home so dead tired every night, an' yet any night in the week you
can get out an' dance unearthly hours.”

Saxon started to speak, suppressed herself with tightened lips, then
lost control and blazed out. “Wasn't you ever young?”

Without waiting for reply, she turned to her bedroom, which opened
directly off the kitchen. It was a small room, eight by twelve, and the
earthquake had left its marks upon the plaster. A bed and chair of cheap
pine and a very ancient chest of drawers constituted the furniture.
Saxon had known this chest of drawers all her life. The vision of it
was woven into her earliest recollections. She knew it had crossed the
plains with her people in a prairie schooner. It was of solid mahogany.
One end was cracked and dented from the capsize of the wagon in Rock
Canyon. A bullet-hole, plugged, in the face of the top drawer, told of
the fight with the Indians at Little Meadow. Of these happenings her
mother had told her; also had she told that the chest had come with the
family originally from England in a day even earlier than the day on
which George Washington was born.

Above the chest of drawers, on the wall, hung a small looking-glass.
Thrust under the molding were photographs of young men and women, and of
picnic groups wherein the young men, with hats rakishly on the backs of
their heads, encircled the girls with their arms. Farther along on the
wall were a colored calendar and numerous colored advertisements and
sketches torn out of magazines. Most of these sketches were of horses.
From the gas-fixture hung a tangled bunch of well-scribbled dance
programs.

Saxon started to take off her hat, but suddenly sat down on the bed.
She sobbed softly, with considered repression, but the weak-latched
door swung noiselessly open, and she was startled by her sister-in-law's
voice.

“NOW what's the matter with you? If you didn't like them beans--”

“No, no,” Saxon explained hurriedly. “I'm just tired, that's all, and my
feet hurt. I wasn't hungry, Sarah. I'm just beat out.”

“If you took care of this house,” came the retort, “an' cooked an'
baked, an' washed, an' put up with what I put up, you'd have something
to be beat out about. You've got a snap, you have. But just wait.” Sarah
broke off to cackle gloatingly. “Just wait, that's all, an' you'll
be fool enough to get married some day, like me, an' then you'll get
yours--an' it'll be brats, an' brats, an' brats, an' no more dancin',
an' silk stockin's, an' three pairs of shoes at one time. You've got a
cinch--nobody to think of but your own precious self--an' a lot of young
hoodlums makin' eyes at you an' tellin' you how beautiful your eyes
are. Huh! Some fine day you'll tie up to one of 'em, an' then, mebbe, on
occasion, you'll wear black eyes for a change.”

“Don't say that, Sarah,” Saxon protested. “My brother never laid hands
on you. You know that.”

“No more he didn't. He never had the gumption. Just the same, he's
better stock than that tough crowd you run with, if he can't make a
livin' an' keep his wife in three pairs of shoes. Just the same he's
oodles better'n your bunch of hoodlums that no decent woman'd wipe her
one pair of shoes on. How you've missed trouble this long is beyond me.
Mebbe the younger generation is wiser in such things--I don't know. But I
do know that a young woman that has three pairs of shoes ain't thinkin'
of anything but her own enjoyment, an' she's goin' to get hers, I can
tell her that much. When I was a girl there wasn't such doin's. My
mother'd taken the hide off me if I done the things you do. An' she
was right, just as everything in the world is wrong now. Look at your
brother, a-runnin' around to socialist meetin's, an' chewin' hot air,
an' diggin' up extra strike dues to the union that means so much bread
out of the mouths of his children, instead of makin' good with his
bosses. Why, the dues he pays would keep me in seventeen pairs of shoes
if I was nannygoat enough to want 'em. Some day, mark my words, he'll
get his time, an' then what'll we do? What'll I do, with five mouths to
feed an' nothin' comin' in?”

She stopped, out of breath but seething with the tirade yet to come.

“Oh, Sarah, please won't you shut the door?” Saxon pleaded.

The door slammed violently, and Saxon, ere she fell to crying again,
could hear her sister-in-law lumbering about the kitchen and talking
loudly to herself.



CHAPTER II

Each bought her own ticket at the entrance to Weasel Park. And each, as
she laid her half-dollar down, was distinctly aware of how many pieces
of fancy starch were represented by the coin. It was too early for the
crowd, but bricklayers and their families, laden with huge lunch-baskets
and armfuls of babies, were already going in--a healthy, husky race
of workmen, well-paid and robustly fed. And with them, here and there,
undisguised by their decent American clothing, smaller in bulk and
stature, weazened not alone by age but by the pinch of lean years and
early hardship, were grandfathers and mothers who had patently first
seen the light of day on old Irish soil. Their faces showed content and
pride as they limped along with this lusty progeny of theirs that had
fed on better food.

Not with these did Mary and Saxon belong. They knew them not, had no
acquaintances among them. It did not matter whether the festival were
Irish, German, or Slavonian; whether the picnic was the Bricklayers',
the Brewers', or the Butchers'. They, the girls, were of the dancing
crowd that swelled by a certain constant percentage the gate receipts of
all the picnics.

They strolled about among the booths where peanuts were grinding
and popcorn was roasting in preparation for the day, and went on
and inspected the dance floor of the pavilion. Saxon, clinging to an
imaginary partner, essayed a few steps of the dip-waltz. Mary clapped
her hands.

“My!” she cried. “You're just swell! An' them stockin's is peaches.”

Saxon smiled with appreciation, pointed out her foot, velvet-slippered
with high Cuban heels, and slightly lifted the tight black skirt,
exposing a trim ankle and delicate swell of calf, the white flesh
gleaming through the thinnest and flimsiest of fifty-cent black silk
stockings. She was slender, not tall, yet the due round lines of
womanhood were hers. On her white shirtwaist was a pleated jabot of
cheap lace, caught with a large novelty pin of imitation coral. Over the
shirtwaist was a natty jacket, elbow-sleeved, and to the elbows she wore
gloves of imitation suede. The one essentially natural touch about her
appearance was the few curls, strangers to curling-irons, that escaped
from under the little naughty hat of black velvet pulled low over the
eyes.

Mary's dark eyes flashed with joy at the sight, and with a swift
little run she caught the other girl in her arms and kissed her in
a breast-crushing embrace. She released her, blushing at her own
extravagance.

“You look good to me,” she cried, in extenuation. “If I was a man I
couldn't keep my hands off you. I'd eat you, I sure would.”

They went out of the pavilion hand in hand, and on through the sunshine
they strolled, swinging hands gaily, reacting exuberantly from the week
of deadening toil. They hung over the railing of the bear-pit, shivering
at the huge and lonely denizen, and passed quickly on to ten minutes of
laughter at the monkey cage. Crossing the grounds, they looked down into
the little race track on the bed of a natural amphitheater where the
early afternoon games were to take place. After that they explored the
woods, threaded by countless paths, ever opening out in new surprises
of green-painted rustic tables and benches in leafy nooks, many of
which were already pre-empted by family parties. On a grassy slope,
tree-surrounded, they spread a newspaper and sat down on the short grass
already tawny-dry under the California sun. Half were they minded to
do this because of the grateful indolence after six days of insistent
motion, half in conservation for the hours of dancing to come.

“Bert Wanhope'll be sure to come,” Mary chattered. “An' he said he was
going to bring Billy Roberts--'Big Bill,' all the fellows call him. He's
just a big boy, but he's awfully tough. He's a prizefighter, an' all the
girls run after him. I'm afraid of him. He ain't quick in talkin'. He's
more like that big bear we saw. Brr-rf! Brr-rf!--bite your head
off, just like that. He ain't really a prize-fighter. He's a
teamster--belongs to the union. Drives for Coberly and Morrison. But
sometimes he fights in the clubs. Most of the fellows are scared of him.
He's got a bad temper, an' he'd just as soon hit a fellow as eat, just
like that. You won't like him, but he's a swell dancer. He's heavy,
you know, an' he just slides and glides around. You wanta have a dance
with'm anyway. He's a good spender, too. Never pinches. But my!--he's
got one temper.”

The talk wandered on, a monologue on Mary's part, that centered always
on Bert Wanhope.

“You and he are pretty thick,” Saxon ventured.

“I'd marry'm to-morrow,” Mary flashed out impulsively. Then her face
went bleakly forlorn, hard almost in its helpless pathos. “Only, he
never asks me. He's...” Her pause was broken by sudden passion. “You
watch out for him, Saxon, if he ever comes foolin' around you. He's no
good. Just the same, I'd marry him to-morrow. He'll never get me any
other way.” Her mouth opened, but instead of speaking she drew a long
sigh. “It's a funny world, ain't it?” she added. “More like a scream.
And all the stars are worlds, too. I wonder where God hides. Bert
Wanhope says there ain't no God. But he's just terrible. He says the
most terrible things. I believe in God. Don't you? What do you think
about God, Saxon?”

Saxon shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

“But if we do wrong we get ours, don't we?” Mary persisted. “That's what
they all say, except Bert. He says he don't care what he does, he'll
never get his, because when he dies he's dead, an' when he's dead he'd
like to see any one put anything across on him that'd wake him up. Ain't
he terrible, though? But it's all so funny. Sometimes I get scared when
I think God's keepin' an eye on me all the time. Do you think he knows
what I'm sayin' now? What do you think he looks like, anyway?”

“I don't know,” Saxon answered. “He's just a funny proposition.”

“Oh!” the other gasped.

“He IS, just the same, from what all people say of him,” Saxon went on
stoutly. “My brother thinks he looks like Abraham Lincoln. Sarah thinks
he has whiskers.”

“An' I never think of him with his hair parted,” Mary confessed, daring
the thought and shivering with apprehension. “He just couldn't have his
hair parted. THAT'D be funny.”

“You know that little, wrinkly Mexican that sells wire puzzles?” Saxon
queried. “Well, God somehow always reminds me of him.”

Mary laughed outright.

“Now that IS funny. I never thought of him like that. How do you make it
out?”

“Well, just like the little Mexican, he seems to spend his time peddling
puzzles. He passes a puzzle out to everybody, and they spend all their
lives tryin' to work it out. They all get stuck. I can't work mine out.
I don't know where to start. And look at the puzzle he passed Sarah. And
she's part of Tom's puzzle, and she only makes his worse. And they all,
an' everybody I know--you, too--are part of my puzzle.”

“Mebbe the puzzles is all right,” Mary considered. “But God don't look
like that yellow little Greaser. THAT I won't fall for. God don't look
like anybody. Don't you remember on the wall at the Salvation Army it
says 'God is a spirit'?”

“That's another one of his puzzles, I guess, because nobody knows what a
spirit looks like.”

“That's right, too.” Mary shuddered with reminiscent fear. “Whenever I
try to think of God as a spirit, I can see Hen Miller all wrapped up in
a sheet an' runnin' us girls. We didn't know, an' it scared the life out
of us. Little Maggie Murphy fainted dead away, and Beatrice Peralta fell
an' scratched her face horrible. When I think of a spirit all I can see
is a white sheet runnin' in the dark. Just the same, God don't look like
a Mexican, an' he don't wear his hair parted.”

A strain of music from the dancing pavilion brought both girls
scrambling to their feet.

“We can get a couple of dances in before we eat,” Mary proposed. “An'
then it'll be afternoon an' all the fellows 'll be here. Most of them
are pinchers--that's why they don't come early, so as to get out of
taking the girls to dinner. But Bert's free with his money, an' so is
Billy. If we can beat the other girls to it, they'll take us to the
restaurant. Come on, hurry, Saxon.”

There were few couples on the floor when they arrived at the pavilion,
and the two girls essayed the first waltz together.

“There's Bert now,” Saxon whispered, as they came around the second
time.

“Don't take any notice of them,” Mary whispered back. “We'll just keep
on goin'. They needn't think we're chasin' after them.”

But Saxon noted the heightened color in the other's cheek, and felt her
quicker breathing.

“Did you see that other one?” Mary asked, as she backed Saxon in a long
slide across the far end of the pavilion. “That was Billy Roberts. Bert
said he'd come. He'll take you to dinner, and Bert'll take me. It's
goin' to be a swell day, you'll see. My! I only wish the music'll hold
out till we can get back to the other end.”

Down the floor they danced, on man-trapping and dinner-getting intent,
two fresh young things that undeniably danced well and that were
delightfully surprised when the music stranded them perilously near to
their desire.

Bert and Mary addressed each other by their given names, but to Saxon
Bert was “Mr. Wanhope,” though he called her by her first name. The only
introduction was of Saxon and Billy Roberts. Mary carried it off with a
flurry of nervous carelessness.

“Mr. Robert--Miss Brown. She's my best friend. Her first name's Saxon.
Ain't it a scream of a name?”

“Sounds good to me,” Billy retorted, hat off and hand extended. “Pleased
to meet you, Miss Brown.”

As their hands clasped and she felt the teamster callouses on his palm,
her quick eyes saw a score of things. About all that he saw was her
eyes, and then it was with a vague impression that they were blue. Not
till later in the day did he realize that they were gray. She, on
the contrary, saw his eyes as they really were--deep blue, wide,
and handsome in a sullen-boyish way. She saw that they were
straight-looking, and she liked them, as she had liked the glimpse she
had caught of his hand, and as she liked the contact of his hand itself.
Then, too, but not sharply, she had perceived the short, square-set
nose, the rosiness of cheek, and the firm, short upper lip, ere delight
centered her flash of gaze on the well-modeled, large clean mouth where
red lips smiled clear of the white, enviable teeth. A BOY, A GREAT BIG
MAN-BOY, was her thought; and, as they smiled at each other and their
hands slipped apart, she was startled by a glimpse of his hair--short
and crisp and sandy, hinting almost of palest gold save that it was too
flaxen to hint of gold at all.

So blond was he that she was reminded of stage-types she had seen, such
as Ole Olson and Yon Yonson; but there resemblance ceased. It was a
matter of color only, for the eyes were dark-lashed and -browed, and
were cloudy with temperament rather than staring a child-gaze of wonder,
and the suit of smooth brown cloth had been made by a tailor. Saxon
appraised the suit on the instant, and her secret judgment was NOT A
CENT LESS THAN FIFTY DOLLARS. Further, he had none of the awkwardness
of the Scandinavian immigrant. On the contrary, he was one of those
rare individuals that radiate muscular grace through the ungraceful
man-garments of civilization. Every movement was supple, slow, and
apparently considered. This she did not see nor analyze. She saw only a
clothed man with grace of carriage and movement. She felt, rather than
perceived, the calm and certitude of all the muscular play of him, and
she felt, too, the promise of easement and rest that was especially
grateful and craved-for by one who had incessantly, for six days and at
top-speed, ironed fancy starch. As the touch of his hand had been good,
so, to her, this subtler feel of all of him, body and mind, was good.

As he took her program and skirmished and joked after the way of young
men, she realized the immediacy of delight she had taken in him.
Never in her life had she been so affected by any man. She wondered to
herself: IS THIS THE MAN?

He danced beautifully. The joy was hers that good dancers take when they
have found a good dancer for a partner. The grace of those slow-moving,
certain muscles of his accorded perfectly with the rhythm of the music.
There was never doubt, never a betrayal of indecision. She glanced at
Bert, dancing “tough” with Mary, caroming down the long floor with more
than one collision with the increasing couples. Graceful himself in his
slender, tall, lean-stomached way, Bert was accounted a good dancer; yet
Saxon did not remember ever having danced with him with keen pleasure.
Just a hit of a jerk spoiled his dancing--a jerk that did not occur,
usually, but that always impended. There was something spasmodic in his
mind. He was too quick, or he continually threatened to be too quick.
He always seemed just on the verge of overrunning the time. It was
disquieting. He made for unrest.

“You're a dream of a dancer,” Billy Roberts was saying. “I've heard lots
of the fellows talk about your dancing.”

“I love it,” she answered.

But from the way she said it he sensed her reluctance to speak, and
danced on in silence, while she warmed with the appreciation of a
woman for gentle consideration. Gentle consideration was a thing rarely
encountered in the life she lived. IS THIS THE MAN? She remembered
Mary's “I'd marry him to-morrow,” and caught herself speculating on
marrying Billy Roberts by the next day--if he asked her.

With eyes that dreamily desired to close, she moved on in the arms of
this masterful, guiding pressure. A PRIZE-FIGHTER! She experienced a
thrill of wickedness as she thought of what Sarah would say could she
see her now. Only he wasn't a prizefighter, but a teamster.

Came an abrupt lengthening of step, the guiding pressure grew more
compelling, and she was caught up and carried along, though her
velvet-shod feet never left the floor. Then came the sudden control down
to the shorter step again, and she felt herself being held slightly from
him so that he might look into her face and laugh with her in joy at
the exploit. At the end, as the band slowed in the last bars, they, too,
slowed, their dance fading with the music in a lengthening glide that
ceased with the last lingering tone.

“We're sure cut out for each other when it comes to dancin',” he said,
as they made their way to rejoin the other couple.

“It was a dream,” she replied.

So low was her voice that he bent to hear, and saw the flush in her
cheeks that seemed communicated to her eyes, which were softly warm
and sensuous. He took the program from her and gravely and gigantically
wrote his name across all the length of it.

“An' now it's no good,” he dared. “Ain't no need for it.”

He tore it across and tossed it aside.

“Me for you, Saxon, for the next,” was Bert's greeting, as they came up.
“You take Mary for the next whirl, Bill.”

“Nothin' doin', Bo,” was the retort. “Me an' Saxon's framed up to last
the day.”

“Watch out for him, Saxon,” Mary warned facetiously. “He's liable to get
a crush on you.”

“I guess I know a good thing when I see it,” Billy responded gallantly.

“And so do I,” Saxon aided and abetted.

“I'd 'a' known you if I'd seen you in the dark,” Billy added.

Mary regarded them with mock alarm, and Bert said good-naturedly:

“All I got to say is you ain't wastin' any time gettin' together. Just
the same, if' you can spare a few minutes from each other after a couple
more whirls, Mary an' me'd be complimented to have your presence at
dinner.”

“Just like that,” chimed Mary.

“Quit your kiddin',” Billy laughed back, turning his head to look into
Saxon's eyes. “Don't listen to 'em. They're grouched because they got to
dance together. Bert's a rotten dancer, and Mary ain't so much. Come on,
there she goes. See you after two more dances.”



CHAPTER III

They had dinner in the open-air, tree-walled dining-room, and Saxon
noted that it was Billy who paid the reckoning for the four. They knew
many of the young men and women at the other tables, and greetings and
fun flew back and forth. Bert was very possessive with Mary, almost
roughly so, resting his hand on hers, catching and holding it, and,
once, forcibly slipping off her two rings and refusing to return them
for a long while. At times, when he put his arm around her waist, Mary
promptly disengaged it; and at other times, with elaborate obliviousness
that deceived no one, she allowed it to remain.

And Saxon, talking little but studying Billy Roberts very intently, was
satisfied that there would be an utter difference in the way he would do
such things... if ever he would do them. Anyway, he'd never paw a girl
as Bert and lots of the other fellows did. She measured the breadth of
Billy's heavy shoulders.

“Why do they call you 'Big' Bill?” she asked. “You're not so very tall.”

“Nope,” he agreed. “I'm only five feet eight an' three-quarters. I guess
it must be my weight.”

“He fights at a hundred an' eighty,” Bert interjected.

“Oh, cut it,” Billy said quickly, a cloud-rift of displeasure showing
in his eyes. “I ain't a fighter. I ain't fought in six months. I've quit
it. It don't pay.”

“Yon got two hundred the night you put the Frisco Slasher to the bad,”
 Bert urged proudly.

“Cut it. Cut it now.--Say, Saxon, you ain't so big yourself, are you?
But you're built just right if anybody should ask you. You're round an'
slender at the same time. I bet I can guess your weight.”

“Everybody guesses over it,” she warned, while inwardly she was puzzled
that she should at the same time be glad and regretful that he did not
fight any more.

“Not me,” he was saying. “I'm a wooz at weight-guessin'. Just you watch
me.” He regarded her critically, and it was patent that warm approval
played its little rivalry with the judgment of his gaze. “Wait a
minute.”

He reached over to her and felt her arm at the biceps. The pressure of
the encircling fingers was firm and honest, and Saxon thrilled to it.
There was magic in this man-boy. She would have known only irritation
had Bert or any other man felt her arm. But this man! IS HE THE MAN? she
was questioning, when he voiced his conclusion.

“Your clothes don't weigh more'n seven pounds. And seven from--hum--say
one hundred an' twenty-three--one hundred an' sixteen is your stripped
weight.”

But at the penultimate word, Mary cried out with sharp reproof:

“Why, Billy Roberts, people don't talk about such things.”

He looked at her with slow-growing, uncomprehending surprise.

“What things?” he demanded finally.

“There you go again! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Look! You've
got Saxon blushing!”

“I am not,” Saxon denied indignantly.

“An' if you keep on, Mary, you'll have me blushing,” Billy growled. “I
guess I know what's right an' what ain't. It ain't what a guy says, but
what he thinks. An' I'm thinkin' right, an' Saxon knows it. An' she an'
I ain't thinkin' what you're thinkin' at all.”

“Oh! Oh!” Mary cried. “You're gettin' worse an' worse. I never think
such things.”

“Whoa, Mary! Back up!” Bert checked her peremptorily. “You're in the
wrong stall. Billy never makes mistakes like that.”

“But he needn't be so raw,” she persisted.

“Come on, Mary, an' be good, an' cut that stuff,” was Billy's dismissal
of her, as he turned to Saxon. “How near did I come to it?”

“One hundred and twenty-two,” she answered, looking deliberately at
Mary. “One twenty two with my clothes.”

Billy burst into hearty laughter, in which Bert joined.

“I don't care,” Mary protested, “You're terrible, both of you--an' you,
too, Saxon. I'd never a-thought it of you.”

“Listen to me, kid,” Bert began soothingly, as his arm slipped around
her waist.

But in the false excitement she had worked herself into, Mary rudely
repulsed the arm, and then, fearing that she had wounded her lover's
feelings, she took advantage of the teasing and banter to recover
her good humor. His arm was permitted to return, and with heads bent
together, they talked in whispers.

Billy discreetly began to make conversation with Saxon.

“Say, you know, your name is a funny one. I never heard it tagged on
anybody before. But it's all right. I like it.”

“My mother gave it to me. She was educated, and knew all kinds of words.
She was always reading books, almost until she died. And she wrote lots
and lots. I've got some of her poetry published in a San Jose newspaper
long ago. The Saxons were a race of people--she told me all about them
when I was a little girl. They were wild, like Indians, only they were
white. And they had blue eyes, and yellow hair, and they were awful
fighters.”

As she talked, Billy followed her solemnly, his eyes steadily turned on
hers.

“Never heard of them,” he confessed. “Did they live anywhere around
here?”

She laughed.

“No. They lived in England. They were the first English, and you know
the Americans came from the English. We're Saxons, you an' me, an' Mary,
an' Bert, and all the Americans that are real Americans, you know, and
not Dagoes and Japs and such.”

“My folks lived in America a long time,” Billy said slowly, digesting
the information she had given and relating himself to it. “Anyway, my
mother's folks did. They crossed to Maine hundreds of years ago.”

“My father was 'State of Maine,” she broke in, with a little gurgle of
joy. “And my mother was born in Ohio, or where Ohio is now. She used to
call it the Great Western Reserve. What was your father?”

“Don't know.” Billy shrugged his shoulders. “He didn't know himself.
Nobody ever knew, though he was American, all right, all right.”

“His name's regular old American,” Saxon suggested. “There's a big
English general right now whose name is Roberts. I've read it in the
papers.”

“But Roberts wasn't my father's name. He never knew what his name was.
Roberts was the name of a gold-miner who adopted him. You see, it was
this way. When they was Indian-fightin' up there with the Modoc Indians,
a lot of the miners an' settlers took a hand. Roberts was captain of one
outfit, and once, after a fight, they took a lot of prisoners--squaws,
an' kids an' babies. An' one of the kids was my father. They figured he
was about five years old. He didn't know nothin' but Indian.”

Saxon clapped her hands, and her eyes sparkled: “He'd been captured on
an Indian raid!”

“That's the way they figured it,” Billy nodded. “They recollected a
wagon-train of Oregon settlers that'd been killed by the Modocs four
years before. Roberts adopted him, and that's why I don't know his real
name. But you can bank on it, he crossed the plains just the same.”

“So did my father,” Saxon said proudly.

“An' my mother, too,” Billy added, pride touching his own voice.
“Anyway, she came pretty close to crossin' the plains, because she was
born in a wagon on the River Platte on the way out.”

“My mother, too,” said Saxon. “She was eight years old, an' she walked
most of the way after the oxen began to give out.”

Billy thrust out his hand.

“Put her there, kid,” he said. “We're just like old friends, what with
the same kind of folks behind us.”

With shining eyes, Saxon extended her hand to his, and gravely they
shook.

“Isn't it wonderful?” she murmured. “We're both old American stock. And
if you aren't a Saxon there never was one--your hair, your eyes, your
skin, everything. And you're a fighter, too.”

“I guess all our old folks was fighters when it comes to that. It come
natural to 'em, an' dog-gone it, they just had to fight or they'd never
come through.”

“What are you two talkin' about?” Mary broke in upon them.

“They're thicker'n mush in no time,” Bert girded. “You'd think they'd
known each other a week already.”

“Oh, we knew each other longer than that,” Saxon returned. “Before ever
we were born our folks were walkin' across the plains together.”

“When your folks was waitin' for the railroad to be built an' all the
Indians killed off before they dasted to start for California,” was
Billy's way of proclaiming the new alliance. “We're the real goods,
Saxon an' me, if anybody should ride up on a buzz-wagon an' ask you.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Mary boasted with quiet petulance. “My father stayed
behind to fight in the Civil War. He was a drummer-boy. That's why he
didn't come to California until afterward.”

“And my father went back to fight in the Civil War,” Saxon said.

“And mine, too,” said Billy.

They looked at each other gleefully. Again they had found a new contact.

“Well, they're all dead, ain't they?” was Bert's saturnine comment.
“There ain't no difference dyin' in battle or in the poorhouse. The
thing is they're deado. I wouldn't care a rap if my father'd been
hanged. It's all the same in a thousand years. This braggin' about folks
makes me tired. Besides, my father couldn't a-fought. He wasn't born
till two years after the war. Just the same, two of my uncles were
killed at Gettysburg. Guess we done our share.”

“Just like that,” Mary applauded.

Bert's arm went around her waist again.

“We're here, ain't we?” he said. “An' that's what counts. The dead are
dead, an' you can bet your sweet life they just keep on stayin' dead.”

Mary put her hand over his mouth and began to chide him for his
awfulness, whereupon he kissed the palm of her hand and put his head
closer to hers.

The merry clatter of dishes was increasing as the dining-room filled up.
Here and there voices were raised in snatches of song. There were
shrill squeals and screams and bursts of heavier male laughter as the
everlasting skirmishing between the young men and girls played on. Among
some of the men the signs of drink were already manifest. At a near
table girls were calling out to Billy. And Saxon, the sense of temporary
possession already strong on her, noted with jealous eyes that he was a
favorite and desired object to them.

“Ain't they awful?” Mary voiced her disapproval. “They got a nerve. I
know who they are. No respectable girl 'd have a thing to do with them.
Listen to that!”

“Oh, you Bill, you,” one of them, a buxom young brunette, was calling.
“Hope you ain't forgotten me, Bill.”

“Oh, you chicken,” he called back gallantly.

Saxon flattered herself that he showed vexation, and she conceived an
immense dislike for the brunette.

“Goin' to dance?” the latter called.

“Mebbe,” he answered, and turned abruptly to Saxon. “Say, we old
Americans oughta stick together, don't you think? They ain't many of us
left. The country's fillin' up with all kinds of foreigners.”

He talked on steadily, in a low, confidential voice, head close to hers,
as advertisement to the other girl that he was occupied.

From the next table on the opposite side, a young man had singled out
Saxon. His dress was tough. His companions, male and female, were tough.
His face was inflamed, his eyes touched with wildness.

“Hey, you!” he called. “You with the velvet slippers. Me for you.”

The girl beside him put her arm around his neck and tried to hush him,
and through the mufflement of her embrace they could hear him gurgling:

“I tell you she's some goods. Watch me go across an' win her from them
cheap skates.”

“Butchertown hoodlums,” Mary sniffed.

Saxon's eyes encountered the eyes of the girl, who glared hatred across
at her. And in Billy's eyes she saw moody anger smouldering. The eyes
were more sullen, more handsome than ever, and clouds and veils and
lights and shadows shifted and deepened in the blue of them until they
gave her a sense of unfathomable depth. He had stopped talking, and he
made no effort to talk.

“Don't start a rough house, Bill,” Bert cautioned. “They're from across
the bay an' they don't know you, that's all.”

Bert stood up suddenly, stepped over to the other table, whispered
briefly, and came back. Every face at the table was turned on Billy. The
offender arose brokenly, shook off the detaining hand of his girl, and
came over. He was a large man, with a hard, malignant face and bitter
eyes. Also, he was a subdued man.

“You're Big Bill Roberts,” he said thickly, clinging to the table as he
reeled. “I take my hat off to you. I apologize. I admire your taste in
skirts, an' take it from me that's a compliment; but I didn't know who
you was. If I'd knowed you was Bill Roberts there wouldn't been a peep
from my fly-trap. D'ye get me? I apologize. Will you shake hands?”

Gruffly, Billy said, “It's all right--forget it, sport;” and sullenly
he shook hands and with a slow, massive movement thrust the other back
toward his own table.

Saxon was glowing. Here was a man, a protector, something to lean
against, of whom even the Butchertown toughs were afraid as soon as his
name was mentioned.



CHAPTER IV

After dinner there were two dances in the pavilion, and then the band
led the way to the race track for the games. The dancers followed, and
all through the grounds the picnic parties left their tables to join in.
Five thousand packed the grassy slopes of the amphitheater and swarmed
inside the race track. Here, first of the events, the men were lining
up for a tug of war. The contest was between the Oakland Bricklayers and
the San Francisco Bricklayers, and the picked braves, huge and heavy,
were taking their positions along the rope. They kicked heel-holds in
the soft earth, rubbed their hands with the soil from underfoot, and
laughed and joked with the crowd that surged about them.

The judges and watchers struggled vainly to keep back this crowd of
relatives and friends. The Celtic blood was up, and the Celtic faction
spirit ran high. The air was filled with cries of cheer, advice,
warning, and threat. Many elected to leave the side of their own team
and go to the side of the other team with the intention of circumventing
foul play. There were as many women as men among the jostling
supporters. The dust from the trampling, scuffling feet rose in the air,
and Mary gasped and coughed and begged Bert to take her away. But he,
the imp in him elated with the prospect of trouble, insisted on urging
in closer. Saxon clung to Billy, who slowly and methodically elbowed and
shouldered a way for her.

“No place for a girl,” he grumbled, looking down at her with a masked
expression of absent-mindedness, while his elbow powerfully crushed on
the ribs of a big Irishman who gave room. “Things'll break loose when
they start pullin'. They's been too much drink, an' you know what the
Micks are for a rough house.”

Saxon was very much out of place among these large-bodied men and women.
She seemed very small and childlike, delicate and fragile, a creature
from another race. Only Billy's skilled bulk and muscle saved her.
He was continually glancing from face to face of the women and always
returning to study her face, nor was she unaware of the contrast he was
making.

Some excitement occurred a score of feet away from them, and to the
sound of exclamations and blows a surge ran through the crowd. A large
man, wedged sidewise in the jam, was shoved against Saxon, crushing her
closely against Billy, who reached across to the man's shoulder with a
massive thrust that was not so slow as usual. An involuntary grunt came
from the victim, who turned his head, showing sun-reddened blond skin
and unmistakable angry Irish eyes.

“What's eatin' yeh?” he snarled.

“Get off your foot; you're standin' on it,” was Billy's contemptuous
reply, emphasized by an increase of thrust.

The Irishman grunted again and made a frantic struggle to twist his body
around, but the wedging bodies on either side held him in a vise.

“I'll break yer ugly face for yeh in a minute,” he announced in
wrath-thick tones.

Then his own face underwent transformation. The snarl left the lips, and
the angry eyes grew genial.

“An' sure an' it's yerself,” he said. “I didn't know it was yeh
a-shovin'. I seen yeh lick the Terrible Swede, if yeh WAS robbed on the
decision.”

“No, you didn't, Bo,” Billy answered pleasantly. “You saw me take a good
beatin' that night. The decision was all right.”

The Irishman was now beaming. He had endeavored to pay a compliment with
a lie, and the prompt repudiation of the lie served only to increase his
hero-worship.

“Sure, an' a bad beatin' it was,” he acknowledged, “but yeh showed the
grit of a bunch of wildcats. Soon as I can get me arm free I'm goin' to
shake yeh by the hand an' help yeh aise yer young lady.”

Frustrated in the struggle to get the crowd back, the referee fired his
revolver in the air, and the tug-of-war was on. Pandemonium broke loose.
Saxon, protected by the two big men, was near enough to the front to
see much that ensued. The men on the rope pulled and strained till their
faces were red with effort and their joints crackled. The rope was
new, and, as their hands slipped, their wives and daughters sprang in,
scooping up the earth in double handfuls and pouring it on the rope and
the hands of their men to give them better grip.

A stout, middle-aged woman, carried beyond herself by the passion of the
contest, seized the rope and pulled beside her husband, encouraged him
with loud cries. A watcher from the opposing team dragged her screaming
away and was dropped like a steer by an ear-blow from a partisan from
the woman's team. He, in turn, went down, and brawny women joined with
their men in the battle. Vainly the judges and watchers begged,
pleaded, yelled, and swung with their fists. Men, as well as women,
were springing in to the rope and pulling. No longer was it team against
team, but all Oakland against all San Francisco, festooned with a
free-for-all fight. Hands overlaid hands two and three deep in the
struggle to grasp the rope. And hands that found no holds, doubled into
bunches of knuckles that impacted on the jaws of the watchers who strove
to tear hand-holds from the rope.

Bert yelped with joy, while Mary clung to him, mad with fear. Close to
the rope the fighters were going down and being trampled. The dust arose
in clouds, while from beyond, all around, unable to get into the battle,
could be heard the shrill and impotent rage-screams and rage-yells of
women and men.

“Dirty work, dirty work,” Billy muttered over and over; and, though he
saw much that occurred, assisted by the friendly Irishman he was coolly
and safely working Saxon back out of the melee.

At last the break came. The losing team, accompanied by its host of
volunteers, was dragged in a rush over the ground and disappeared under
the avalanche of battling forms of the onlookers.

Leaving Saxon under the protection of the Irishman in an outer eddy
of calm, Billy plunged back into the mix-up. Several minutes later he
emerged with the missing couple--Bert bleeding from a blow on the ear,
but hilarious, and Mary rumpled and hysterical.

“This ain't sport,” she kept repeating. “It's a shame, a dirty shame.”

“We got to get outa this,” Billy said. “The fun's only commenced.”

“Aw, wait,” Bert begged. “It's worth eight dollars. It's cheap at any
price. I ain't seen so many black eyes and bloody noses in a month of
Sundays.”

“Well, go on back an' enjoy yourself,” Billy commended. “I'll take the
girls up there on the side hill where we can look on. But I won't give
much for your good looks if some of them Micks lands on you.”

The trouble was over in an amazingly short time, for from the judges'
stand beside the track the announcer was bellowing the start of the
boys' foot-race; and Bert, disappointed, joined Billy and the two girls
on the hillside looking down upon the track.

There were boys' races and girls' races, races of young women and old
women, of fat men and fat women, sack races and three-legged races,
and the contestants strove around the small track through a Bedlam of
cheering supporters. The tug-of-war was already forgotten, and good
nature reigned again.

Five young men toed the mark, crouching with fingertips to the
ground and waiting the starter's revolver-shot. Three were in their
stocking-feet, and the remaining two wore spiked running-shoes.

“Young men's race,” Bert read from the program. “An' only one
prize--twenty-five dollars. See the red-head with the spikes--the one
next to the outside. San Francisco's set on him winning. He's their
crack, an' there's a lot of bets up.”

“Who's goin' to win?” Mary deferred to Billy's superior athletic
knowledge.

“How can I tell!” he answered. “I never saw any of 'em before. But they
all look good to me. May the best one win, that's all.”

The revolver was fired, and the five runners were off and away. Three
were outdistanced at the start. Redhead led, with a black-haired young
man at his shoulder, and it was plain that the race lay between these
two. Halfway around, the black-haired one took the lead in a spurt
that was intended to last to the finish. Ten feet he gained, nor could
Red-head cut it down an inch.

“The boy's a streak,” Billy commented. “He ain't tryin' his hardest, an'
Red-head's just bustin' himself.”

Still ten feet in the lead, the black-haired one breasted the tape in a
hubbub of cheers. Yet yells of disapproval could be distinguished. Bert
hugged himself with joy.

“Mm-mm,” he gloated. “Ain't Frisco sore? Watch out for fireworks now.
See! He's bein' challenged. The judges ain't payin' him the money. An'
he's got a gang behind him. Oh! Oh! Oh! Ain't had so much fun since my
old woman broke her leg!”

“Why don't they pay him, Billy?” Saxon asked. “He won.”

“The Frisco bunch is challengin' him for a professional,” Billy
elucidated. “That's what they're all beefin' about. But it ain't right.
They all ran for that money, so they're all professional.”

The crowd surged and argued and roared in front of the judges' stand.
The stand was a rickety, two-story affair, the second story open at the
front, and here the judges could be seen debating as heatedly as the
crowd beneath them.

“There she starts!” Bert cried. “Oh, you rough-house!”

The black-haired racer, backed by a dozen supporters, was climbing the
outside stairs to the judges.

“The purse-holder's his friend,” Billy said. “See, he's paid him, an'
some of the judges is willin' an' some are beefin'. An' now that
other gang's going up--they're Redhead's.” He turned to Saxon with a
reassuring smile. “We're well out of it this time. There's goin' to be
rough stuff down there in a minute.”

“The judges are tryin' to make him give the money back,” Bert explained.
“An' if he don't the other gang'll take it away from him. See! They're
reachin' for it now.”

High above his head, the winner held the roll of paper containing the
twenty-five silver dollars. His gang, around him, was shouldering back
those who tried to seize the money. No blows had been struck yet, but
the struggle increased until the frail structure shook and swayed. From
the crowd beneath the winner was variously addressed: “Give it back, you
dog!” “Hang on to it, Tim!” “You won fair, Timmy!” “Give it back, you
dirty robber!” Abuse unprintable as well as friendly advice was hurled
at him.

The struggle grew more violent. Tim's supporters strove to hold him off
the floor so that his hand would still be above the grasping hands that
shot up. Once, for an instant, his arm was jerked down. Again it went
up. But evidently the paper had broken, and with a last desperate
effort, before he went down, Tim flung the coin out in a silvery shower
upon the heads of the crowd beneath. Then ensued a weary period of
arguing and quarreling.

“I wish they'd finish, so as we could get back to the dancin',” Mary
complained. “This ain't no fun.”

Slowly and painfully the judges' stand was cleared, and an announcer,
stepping to the front of the stand, spread his arms appealing for
silence. The angry clamor died down.

 “The judges have decided,” he shouted, “that this day of good
fellowship an' brotherhood--”

“Hear! Hear!” Many of the cooler heads applauded. “That's the stuff!”
 “No fightin'!” “No hard feelin's!”

“An' therefore,” the announcer became audible again, “the judges have
decided to put up another purse of twenty-five dollars an' run the race
over again!”

“An' Tim?” bellowed scores of throats. “What about Tim?” “He's been
robbed!” “The judges is rotten!”

Again the announcer stilled the tumult with his arm appeal.

“The judges have decided, for the sake of good feelin', that Timothy
McManus will also run. If he wins, the money's his.”

“Now wouldn't that jar you?” Billy grumbled disgustedly. “If Tim's
eligible now, he was eligible the first time. An' if he was eligible the
first time, then the money was his.”

“Red-head'll bust himself wide open this time,” Bert jubilated.

“An' so will Tim,” Billy rejoined. “You can bet he's mad clean through,
and he'll let out the links he was holdin' in last time.”

Another quarter of an hour was spent in clearing the track of the
excited crowd, and this time only Tim and Red-head toed the mark. The
other three young men had abandoned the contest.

The leap of Tim, at the report of the revolver, put him a clean yard in
the lead.

“I guess he's professional, all right, all right,” Billy remarked. “An'
just look at him go!”

Half-way around, Tim led by fifty feet, and, running swiftly,
maintaining the same lead, he came down the homestretch an easy winner.
When directly beneath the group on the hillside, the incredible and
unthinkable happened. Standing close to the inside edge of the track was
a dapper young man with a light switch cane. He was distinctly out of
place in such a gathering, for upon him was no ear-mark of the working
class. Afterward, Bert was of the opinion that he looked like a swell
dancing master, while Billy called him “the dude.”

So far as Timothy McManus was concerned, the dapper young man was
destiny; for as Tim passed him, the young man, with utmost deliberation,
thrust his cane between Tim's flying legs. Tim sailed through the air in
a headlong pitch, struck spread-eagled on his face, and plowed along in
a cloud of dust.

There was an instant of vast and gasping silence. The young man, too,
seemed petrified by the ghastliness of his deed. It took an appreciable
interval of time for him, as well as for the onlookers, to realize what
he had done. They recovered first, and from a thousand throats the wild
Irish yell went up. Red-head won the race without a cheer. The storm
center had shifted to the young man with the cane. After the yell, he
had one moment of indecision; then he turned and darted up the track.

“Go it, sport!” Bert cheered, waving his hat in the air. “You're the
goods for me! Who'd a-thought it? Who'd a-thought it? Say!--wouldn't it,
now? Just wouldn't it?”

“Phew! He's a streak himself,” Billy admired. “But what did he do it
for? He's no bricklayer.”

Like a frightened rabbit, the mad roar at his heels, the young man tore
up the track to an open space on the hillside, up which he clawed
and disappeared among the trees. Behind him toiled a hundred vengeful
runners.

“It's too bad he's missing the rest of it,” Billy said. “Look at 'em
goin' to it.”

Bert was beside himself. He leaped up and down and cried continuously.

“Look at 'em! Look at 'em! Look at 'em!”

The Oakland faction was outraged. Twice had its favorite runner been
jobbed out of the race. This last was only another vile trick of the
Frisco faction. So Oakland doubled its brawny fists and swung into San
Francisco for blood. And San Francisco, consciously innocent, was no
less willing to join issues. To be charged with such a crime was no less
monstrous than the crime itself. Besides, for too many tedious hours
had the Irish heroically suppressed themselves. Five thousands of them
exploded into joyous battle. The women joined with them. The whole
amphitheater was filled with the conflict. There were rallies, retreats,
charges, and counter-charges. Weaker groups were forced fighting up
the hillsides. Other groups, bested, fled among the trees to carry
on guerrilla warfare, emerging in sudden dashes to overwhelm isolated
enemies. Half a dozen special policemen, hired by the Weasel Park
management, received an impartial trouncing from both sides.

“Nobody's the friend of a policeman,” Bert chortled, dabbing his
handkerchief to his injured ear, which still bled.

The bushes crackled behind him, and he sprang aside to let the locked
forms of two men go by, rolling over and over down the hill, each
striking when uppermost, and followed by a screaming woman who rained
blows on the one who was patently not of her clan.

The judges, in the second story of the stand, valiantly withstood
a fierce assault until the frail structure toppled to the ground in
splinters.

“What's that woman doing?” Saxon asked, calling attention to an elderly
woman beneath them on the track, who had sat down and was pulling from
her foot an elastic-sided shoe of generous dimensions.

“Goin' swimming,” Bert chuckled, as the stocking followed.

They watched, fascinated. The shoe was pulled on again over the bare
foot. Then the woman slipped a rock the size of her fist into the
stocking, and, brandishing this ancient and horrible weapon, lumbered
into the nearest fray.

“Oh!--Oh!--Oh!” Bert screamed, with every blow she struck. “Hey, old
flannel-mouth! Watch out! You'll get yours in a second. Oh! Oh! A peach!
Did you see it? Hurray for the old lady! Look at her tearin' into 'em!
Watch out, old girl!... Ah-h-h.”

His voice died away regretfully, as the one with the stocking, whose
hair had been clutched from behind by another Amazon, was whirled about
in a dizzy semicircle.

Vainly Mary clung to his arm, shaking him back and forth and
remonstrating.

“Can't you be sensible?” she cried. “It's awful! I tell you it's awful!”

But Bert was irrepressible.

“Go it, old girl!” he encouraged. “You win! Me for you every time! Now's
your chance! Swat! Oh! My! A peach! A peach!”

“It's the biggest rough-house I ever saw,” Billy confided to Saxon. “It
sure takes the Micks to mix it. But what did that dude wanta do it for?
That's what gets me. He wasn't a bricklayer--not even a workingman--just
a regular sissy dude that didn't know a livin' soul in the grounds. But
if he wanted to raise a rough-house he certainly done it. Look at 'em.
They're fightin' everywhere.”

He broke into sudden laughter, so hearty that the tears came into his
eyes.

“What is it?” Saxon asked, anxious not to miss anything.

“It's that dude,” Billy explained between gusts. “What did he wanta do
it for? That's what gets my goat. What'd he wanta do it for?”

There was more crashing in the brush, and two women erupted upon the
scene, one in flight, the other pursuing. Almost ere they could realize
it, the little group found itself merged in the astounding conflict that
covered, if not the face of creation, at least all the visible landscape
of Weasel Park.

The fleeing woman stumbled in rounding the end of a picnic bench, and
would have been caught had she not seized Mary's arm to recover balance,
and then flung Mary full into the arms of the woman who pursued. This
woman, largely built, middle-aged, and too irate to comprehend, clutched
Mary's hair by one hand and lifted the other to smack her. Before the
blow could fall, Billy had seized both the woman's wrists.

“Come on, old girl, cut it out,” he said appeasingly. “You're in wrong.
She ain't done nothin'.”

Then the woman did a strange thing. Making no resistance, but
maintaining her hold on the girl's hair, she stood still and calmly
began to scream. The scream was hideously compounded of fright and fear.
Yet in her face was neither fright nor fear. She regarded Billy coolly
and appraisingly, as if to see how he took it--her scream merely the cry
to the clan for help.

“Aw, shut up, you battleax!” Bert vociferated, trying to drag her off by
the shoulders.

The result was that the four rocked back and forth, while the woman
calmly went on screaming. The scream became touched with triumph as more
crashing was heard in the brush.

Saxon saw Billy's slow eyes glint suddenly to the hardness of steel, and
at the same time she saw him put pressure on his wrist-holds. The woman
released her grip on Mary and was shoved back and free. Then the first
man of the rescue was upon them. He did not pause to inquire into the
merits of the affair. It was sufficient that he saw the woman reeling
away from Billy and screaming with pain that was largely feigned.

“It's all a mistake,” Billy cried hurriedly. “We apologize, sport--”

The Irishman swung ponderously. Billy ducked, cutting his apology short,
and as the sledge-like fist passed over his head, he drove his left to
the other's jaw. The big Irishman toppled over sidewise and sprawled
on the edge of the slope. Half-scrambled back to his feet and out of
balance, he was caught by Bert's fist, and this time went clawing down
the slope that was slippery with short, dry grass. Bert was redoubtable.
“That for you, old girl--my compliments,” was his cry, as he shoved the
woman over the edge on to the treacherous slope. Three more men were
emerging from the brush.

In the meantime, Billy had put Saxon in behind the protection of the
picnic table. Mary, who was hysterical, had evinced a desire to cling to
him, and he had sent her sliding across the top of the table to Saxon.

“Come on, you flannel-mouths!” Bert yelled at the newcomers, himself
swept away by passion, his black eyes flashing wildly, his dark face
inflamed by the too-ready blood. “Come on, you cheap skates! Talk about
Gettysburg. We'll show you all the Americans ain't dead yet!”

“Shut your trap--we don't want a scrap with the girls here,” Billy
growled harshly, holding his position in front of the table. He turned
to the three rescuers, who were bewildered by the lack of anything
visible to rescue. “Go on, sports. We don't want a row. You're in wrong.
They ain't nothin' doin' in the fight line. We don't wanta fight--d'ye
get me?”

They still hesitated, and Billy might have succeeded in avoiding trouble
had not the man who had gone down the bank chosen that unfortunate
moment to reappear, crawling groggily on hands and knees and showing a
bleeding face. Again Bert reached him and sent him downslope, and the
other three, with wild yells, sprang in on Billy, who punched, shifted
position, ducked and punched, and shifted again ere he struck the third
time. His blows were clean and hard, scientifically delivered, with the
weight of his body behind.

Saxon, looking on, saw his eyes and learned more about him. She was
frightened, but clear-seeing, and she was startled by the disappearance
of all depth of light and shadow in his eyes. They showed surface
only--a hard, bright surface, almost glazed, devoid of all expression
save deadly seriousness. Bert's eyes showed madness. The eyes of the
Irishmen were angry and serious, and yet not all serious. There was a
wayward gleam in them, as if they enjoyed the fracas. But in Billy's
eyes was no enjoyment. It was as if he had certain work to do and had
doggedly settled down to do it.

Scarcely more expression did she note in the face, though there was
nothing in common between it and the one she had seen all day. The
boyishness had vanished. This face was mature in a terrifying, ageless
way. There was no anger in it, nor was it even pitiless. It seemed to
have glazed as hard and passionlessly as his eyes. Something came to her
of her wonderful mother's tales of the ancient Saxons, and he seemed to
her one of those Saxons, and she caught a glimpse, on the well of her
consciousness, of a long, dark boat, with a prow like the beak of a bird
of prey, and of huge, half-naked men, wing-helmeted, and one of their
faces, it seemed to her, was his face. She did not reason this. She felt
it, and visioned it as by an unthinkable clairvoyance, and gasped, for
the flurry of war was over. It had lasted only seconds, Bert was dancing
on the edge of the slippery slope and mocking the vanquished who had
slid impotently to the bottom. But Billy took charge.

“Come on, you girls,” he commanded. “Get onto yourself, Bert. We got to
get outa this. We can't fight an army.”

He led the retreat, holding Saxon's arm, and Bert, giggling and
jubilant, brought up the rear with an indignant Mary who protested
vainly in his unheeding ears.

For a hundred yards they ran and twisted through the trees, and then,
no signs of pursuit appearing, they slowed down to a dignified saunter.
Bert, the trouble-seeker, pricked his ears to the muffled sound of blows
and sobs, and stepped aside to investigate.

“Oh! look what I've found!” he called.

They joined him on the edge of a dry ditch and looked down. In the
bottom were two men, strays from the fight, grappled together and still
fighting. They were weeping out of sheer fatigue and helplessness,
and the blows they only occasionally struck were open-handed and
ineffectual.

“Hey, you, sport--throw sand in his eyes,” Bert counseled. “That's it,
blind him an' he's your'n.”

“Stop that!” Billy shouted at the man, who was following instructions,
“Or I'll come down there an' beat you up myself. It's all over--d'ye get
me? It's all over an' everybody's friends. Shake an' make up. The drinks
are on both of you. That's right--here, gimme your hand an' I'll pull
you out.”

They left them shaking hands and brushing each other's clothes.

“It soon will be over,” Billy grinned to Saxon. “I know 'em. Fight's fun
with them. An' this big scrap's made the day a howlin' success. What did
I tell you!--look over at that table there.”

A group of disheveled men and women, still breathing heavily, were
shaking hands all around.

“Come on, let's dance,” Mary pleaded, urging them in the direction of
the pavilion.

All over the park the warring bricklayers were shaking hands and making
up, while the open-air bars were crowded with the drinkers.

Saxon walked very close to Billy. She was proud of him. He could fight,
and he could avoid trouble. In all that had occurred he had striven
to avoid trouble. And, also, consideration for her and Mary had been
uppermost in his mind.

“You are brave,” she said to him.

“It's like takin' candy from a baby,” he disclaimed. “They only
rough-house. They don't know boxin'. They're wide open, an' all you
gotta do is hit 'em. It ain't real fightin', you know.” With a troubled,
boyish look in his eyes, he stared at his bruised knuckles. “An' I'll
have to drive team to-morrow with 'em,” he lamented. “Which ain't fun,
I'm tellin' you, when they stiffen up.”



CHAPTER V

At eight o'clock the Al Vista band played “Home, Sweet Home,” and,
following the hurried rush through the twilight to the picnic train, the
four managed to get double seats facing each other. When the aisles and
platforms were packed by the hilarious crowd, the train pulled out for
the short run from the suburbs into Oakland. All the car was singing
a score of songs at once, and Bert, his head pillowed on Mary's breast
with her arms around him, started “On the Banks of the Wabash.” And he
sang the song through, undeterred by the bedlam of two general fights,
one on the adjacent platform, the other at the opposite end of the car,
both of which were finally subdued by special policemen to the screams
of women and the crash of glass.

Billy sang a lugubrious song of many stanzas about a cowboy, the refrain
of which was, “Bury me out on the lone pr-rairie.”

“That's one you never heard before; my father used to sing it,” he told
Saxon, who was glad that it was ended.

She had discovered the first flaw in him. He was tonedeaf. Not once had
he been on the key.

“I don't sing often,” he added.

“You bet your sweet life he don't,” Bert exclaimed. “His friends'd kill
him if he did.”

“They all make fun of my singin',” he complained to Saxon. “Honest, now,
do you find it as rotten as all that?”

“It's... it's maybe flat a bit,” she admitted reluctantly.

“It don't sound flat to me,” he protested. “It's a regular josh on me.
I'll bet Bert put you up to it. You sing something now, Saxon. I bet you
sing good. I can tell it from lookin' at you.”

She began “When the Harvest Days Are Over.” Bert and Mary joined in; but
when Billy attempted to add his voice he was dissuaded by a shin-kick
from Bert. Saxon sang in a clear, true soprano, thin but sweet, and she
was aware that she was singing to Billy.

“Now THAT is singing what is,” he proclaimed, when she had finished.
“Sing it again. Aw, go on. You do it just right. It's great.”

His hand slipped to hers and gathered it in, and as she sang again she
felt the tide of his strength flood warmingly through her.

“Look at 'em holdin' hands,” Bert jeered. “Just a-holdin' hands
like they was afraid. Look at Mary an' me. Come on an' kick in, you
cold-feets. Get together. If you don't, it'll look suspicious. I got my
suspicions already. You're framin' somethin' up.”

There was no mistaking his innuendo, and Saxon felt her cheeks flaming.

“Get onto yourself, Bert,” Billy reproved.

“Shut up!” Mary added the weight of her indignation. “You're
awfully raw, Bert Wanhope, an' I won't have anything more to do with
you--there!”

She withdrew her arms and shoved him away, only to receive him
forgivingly half a dozen seconds afterward.

 “Come on, the four of us,” Bert went on irrepressibly. “The
night's young. Let's make a time of it--Pabst's Cafe first, and then
some. What you say, Bill? What you say, Saxon? Mary's game.”

Saxon waited and wondered, half sick with apprehension of this man
beside her whom she had known so short a time.

“Nope,” he said slowly. “I gotta get up to a hard day's work to-morrow,
and I guess the girls has got to, too.”

Saxon forgave him his tone-deafness. Here was the kind of man she always
had known existed. It was for some such man that she had waited. She was
twenty-two, and her first marriage offer had come when she was sixteen.
The last had occurred only the month before, from the foreman of the
washing-room, and he had been good and kind, but not young. But this
one beside her--he was strong and kind and good, and YOUNG. She was too
young herself not to desire youth. There would have been rest from fancy
starch with the foreman, but there would have been no warmth. But this
man beside her.... She caught herself on the verge involuntarily of
pressing his hand that held hers.

“No, Bert, don't tease; he's right,” Mary was saying. “We've got to get
some sleep. It's fancy starch to-morrow, and all day on our feet.”

It came to Saxon with a chill pang that she was surely older than Billy.
She stole glances at the smoothness of his face, and the essential
boyishness of him, so much desired, shocked her. Of course he would
marry some girl years younger than himself, than herself. How old was
he? Could it be that he was too young for her? As he seemed to grow
inaccessible, she was drawn toward him more compellingly. He was so
strong, so gentle. She lived over the events of the day. There was no
flaw there. He had considered her and Mary, always. And he had torn
the program up and danced only with her. Surely he had liked her, or he
would not have done it.

She slightly moved her hand in his and felt the harsh contact of his
teamster callouses. The sensation was exquisite. He, too, moved his
hand, to accommodate the shift of hers, and she waited fearfully. She
did not want him to prove like other men, and she could have hated him
had he dared to take advantage of that slight movement of her fingers
and put his arm around her. He did not, and she flamed toward him.
There was fineness in him. He was neither rattle-brained, like Bert, nor
coarse like other men she had encountered. For she had had experiences,
not nice, and she had been made to suffer by the lack of what was termed
chivalry, though she, in turn, lacked that word to describe what she
divined and desired.

And he was a prizefighter. The thought of it almost made her gasp. Yet
he answered not at all to her conception of a prizefighter. But, then,
he wasn't a prizefighter. He had said he was not. She resolved to ask
him about it some time if... if he took her out again. Yet there was
little doubt of that, for when a man danced with one girl a whole day
he did not drop her immediately. Almost she hoped that he was a
prizefighter. There was a delicious tickle of wickedness about it.
Prizefighters were such terrible and mysterious men. In so far as they
were out of the ordinary and were not mere common workingmen such as
carpenters and laundrymen, they represented romance. Power also they
represented. They did not work for bosses, but spectacularly and
magnificently, with their own might, grappled with the great world and
wrung splendid living from its reluctant hands. Some of them even
owned automobiles and traveled with a retinue of trainers and servants.
Perhaps it had been only Billy's modesty that made him say he had quit
fighting. And yet, there were the callouses on his hands. That showed he
had quit.



CHAPTER VI

They said good-bye at the gate. Billy betrayed awkwardness that was
sweet to Saxon. He was not one of the take-it-for-granted young men.
There was a pause, while she feigned desire to go into the house, yet
waited in secret eagerness for the words she wanted him to say.

“When am I goin' to see you again?” he asked, holding her hand in his.

She laughed consentingly.

“I live 'way up in East Oakland,” he explained. “You know there's where
the stable is, an' most of our teaming is done in that section, so I
don't knock around down this way much. But, say--” His hand tightened
on hers. “We just gotta dance together some more. I'll tell you, the
Orindore Club has its dance Wednesday. If you haven't a date--have you?”

“No,” she said.

“Then Wednesday. What time'll I come for you?”

And when they had arranged the details, and he had agreed that she
should dance some of the dances with the other fellows, and said good
night again, his hand closed more tightly on hers and drew her toward
him. She resisted slightly, but honestly. It was the custom, but she
felt she ought not for fear he might misunderstand. And yet she wanted
to kiss him as she had never wanted to kiss a man. When it came, her
face upturned to his, she realized that on his part it was an honest
kiss. There hinted nothing behind it. Rugged and kind as himself, it
was virginal almost, and betrayed no long practice in the art of saying
good-bye. All men were not brutes after all, was her thought.

“Good night,” she murmured; the gate screeched under her hand; and
she hurried along the narrow walk that led around to the corner of the
house.

“Wednesday,” he called softly.

“Wednesday,” she answered.

But in the shadow of the narrow alley between the two houses she stood
still and pleasured in the ring of his foot falls down the cement
sidewalk. Not until they had quite died away did she go on. She crept
up the back stairs and across the kitchen to her room, registering her
thanksgiving that Sarah was asleep.

She lighted the gas, and, as she removed the little velvet hat, she felt
her lips still tingling with the kiss. Yet it had meant nothing. It was
the way of the young men. They all did it. But their good-night kisses
had never tingled, while this one tingled in her brain as well as on her
lip. What was it? What did it mean? With a sudden impulse she looked
at herself in the glass. The eyes were happy and bright. The color that
tinted her cheeks so easily was in them and glowing. It was a pretty
reflection, and she smiled, partly in joy, partly in appreciation, and
the smile grew at sight of the even rows of strong white teeth. Why
shouldn't Billy like that face? was her unvoiced query. Other men had
liked it. Other men did like it. Even the other girls admitted she was
a good-looker. Charley Long certainly liked it from the way he made life
miserable for her.

She glanced aside to the rim of the looking-glass where his photograph
was wedged, shuddered, and made a moue of distaste. There was cruelty
in those eyes, and brutishness. He was a brute. For a year, now, he had
bullied her. Other fellows were afraid to go with her. He warned them
off. She had been forced into almost slavery to his attentions. She
remembered the young bookkeeper at the laundry--not a workingman, but
a soft-handed, soft-voiced gentleman--whom Charley had beaten up at
the corner because he had been bold enough to come to take her to the
theater. And she had been helpless. For his own sake she had never dared
accept another invitation to go out with him.

And now, Wednesday night, she was going with Billy. Billy! Her heart
leaped. There would be trouble, but Billy would save her from him. She'd
like to see him try and beat Billy up.

With a quick movement, she jerked the photograph from its niche and
threw it face down upon the chest of drawers. It fell beside a small
square case of dark and tarnished leather. With a feeling as of
profanation she again seized the offending photograph and flung it
across the room into a corner. At the same time she picked up the
leather case. Springing it open, she gazed at the daguerreotype of a
worn little woman with steady gray eyes and a hopeful, pathetic mouth.
Opposite, on the velvet lining, done in gold lettering, was, CARLTON
FROM DAISY. She read it reverently, for it represented the father she
had never known, and the mother she had so little known, though she
could never forget that those wise sad eyes were gray.

Despite lack of conventional religion, Saxon's nature was deeply
religious. Her thoughts of God were vague and nebulous, and there
she was frankly puzzled. She could not vision God. Here, in the
daguerreotype, was the concrete; much she had grasped from it, and
always there seemed an infinite more to grasp. She did not go to church.
This was her high altar and holy of holies. She came to it in trouble,
in loneliness, for counsel, divination, and comfort. In so far as she
found herself different from the girls of her acquaintance, she quested
here to try to identify her characteristics in the pictured face. Her
mother had been different from other women, too. This, forsooth, meant
to her what God meant to others. To this she strove to be true, and not
to hurt nor vex. And how little she really knew of her mother, and of
how much was conjecture and surmise, she was unaware; for it was through
many years she had erected this mother-myth.

Yet was it all myth? She resented the doubt with quick jealousy, and,
opening the bottom drawer of the chest, drew forth a battered portfolio.
Out rolled manuscripts, faded and worn, and arose a faint far scent of
sweet-kept age. The writing was delicate and curled, with the quaint
fineness of half a century before. She read a stanza to herself:

“Sweet as a wind-lute's airy strains Your gentle muse has learned to
sing, And California's boundless plains Prolong the soft notes echoing.”

She wondered, for the thousandth time, what a windlute was; yet much
of beauty, much of beyondness, she sensed of this dimly remembered
beautiful mother of hers. She communed a while, then unrolled a second
manuscript. “To C. B.,” it read. To Carlton Brown, she knew, to her
father, a love-poem from her mother. Saxon pondered the opening lines:

“I have stolen away from the crowd in the groves, Where the nude statues
stand, and the leaves point and shiver At ivy-crowned Bacchus, the Queen
of the Loves, Pandora and Psyche, struck voiceless forever.”

This, too, was beyond her. But she breathed the beauty of it. Bacchus,
and Pandora and Psyche--talismans to conjure with! But alas! the
necromancy was her mother's. Strange, meaningless words that meant so
much! Her marvelous mother had known their meaning. Saxon spelled
the three words aloud, letter by letter, for she did not dare their
pronunciation; and in her consciousness glimmered august connotations,
profound and unthinkable. Her mind stumbled and halted on the
star-bright and dazzling boundaries of a world beyond her world in which
her mother had roamed at will. Again and again, solemnly, she went over
the four lines. They were radiance and light to the world, haunted with
phantoms of pain and unrest, in which she had her being. There, hidden
among those cryptic singing lines, was the clue. If she could only grasp
it, all would be made clear. Of this she was sublimely confident. She
would understand Sarah's sharp tongue, her unhappy brother, the cruelty
of Charley Long, the justness of the bookkeeper's beating, the day-long,
month-long, year-long toil at the ironing-board.

She skipped a stanza that she knew was hopelessly beyond her, and tried
again:

     “The dusk of the greenhouse is luminous yet
     With quivers of opal and tremors of gold;
     For the sun is at rest, and the light from the west,
     Like delicate wine that is mellow and old,

“Flushes faintly the brow of a naiad that stands In the spray of a
fountain, whose seed-amethysts Tremble lightly a moment on bosom and
hands, Then dip in their basin from bosom and wrists.”

“It's beautiful, just beautiful,” she sighed. And then, appalled at the
length of all the poem, at the volume of the mystery, she rolled the
manuscript and put it away. Again she dipped in the drawer, seeking the
clue among the cherished fragments of her mother's hidden soul.

This time it was a small package, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with
ribbon. She opened it carefully, with the deep gravity and circumstance
of a priest before an altar. Appeared a little red-satin Spanish
girdle, whale-boned like a tiny corset, pointed, the pioneer finery of
a frontier woman who had crossed the plains. It was hand-made after the
California-Spanish model of forgotten days. The very whalebone had been
home-shaped of the raw material from the whaleships traded for in hides
and tallow. The black lace trimming her mother had made. The triple
edging of black velvet strips--her mother's hands had sewn the stitches.

Saxon dreamed over it in a maze of incoherent thought. This was
concrete. This she understood. This she worshiped as man-created gods
have been worshiped on less tangible evidence of their sojourn on earth.

Twenty-two inches it measured around. She knew it out of many
verifications. She stood up and put it about her waist. This was part of
the ritual. It almost met. In places it did meet. Without her dress it
would meet everywhere as it had met on her mother. Closest of all, this
survival of old California-Ventura days brought Saxon in touch. Hers was
her mother's form. Physically, she was like her mother. Her grit, her
ability to turn off work that was such an amazement to others, were
her mother's. Just so had her mother been an amazement to her
generation--her mother, the toy-like creature, the smallest and the
youngest of the strapping pioneer brood, who nevertheless had mothered
the brood. Always it had been her wisdom that was sought, even by the
brothers and sisters a dozen years her senior. Daisy, it was, who
had put her tiny foot down and commanded the removal from the fever
flatlands of Colusa to the healthy mountains of Ventura; who had backed
the savage old Indian-fighter of a father into a corner and fought the
entire family that Vila might marry the man of her choice; who had flown
in the face of the family and of community morality and demanded the
divorce of Laura from her criminally weak husband; and who on the
other hand, had held the branches of the family together when only
misunderstanding and weak humanness threatened to drive them apart.

The peacemaker and the warrior! All the old tales trooped before Saxon's
eyes. They were sharp with detail, for she had visioned them many times,
though their content was of things she had never seen. So far as details
were concerned, they were her own creation, for she had never seen an
ox, a wild Indian, nor a prairie schooner. Yet, palpitating and real,
shimmering in the sun-flashed dust of ten thousand hoofs, she saw
pass, from East to West, across a continent, the great hegira of the
land-hungry Anglo-Saxon. It was part and fiber of her. She had been
nursed on its traditions and its facts from the lips of those who had
taken part. Clearly she saw the long wagon-train, the lean, gaunt men
who walked before, the youths goading the lowing oxen that fell and
were goaded to their feet to fall again. And through it all, a flying
shuttle, weaving the golden dazzling thread of personality, moved the
form of her little, indomitable mother, eight years old, and nine ere
the great traverse was ended, a necromancer and a law-giver, willing her
way, and the way and the willing always good and right.

Saxon saw Punch, the little, rough-coated Skye-terrier with the honest
eyes (who had plodded for weary months), gone lame and abandoned; she
saw Daisy, the chit of a child, hide Punch in the wagon. She saw the
savage old worried father discover the added burden of the several
pounds to the dying oxen. She saw his wrath, as he held Punch by
the scruff of the neck. And she saw Daisy, between the muzzle of the
long-barreled rifle and the little dog. And she saw Daisy thereafter,
through days of alkali and heat, walking, stumbling, in the dust of the
wagons, the little sick dog, like a baby, in her arms.

But most vivid of all, Saxon saw the fight at Little Meadow--and Daisy,
dressed as for a gala day, in white, a ribbon sash about her waist,
ribbons and a round-comb in her hair, in her hands small water-pails,
step forth into the sunshine on the flower-grown open ground from the
wagon circle, wheels interlocked, where the wounded screamed their
delirium and babbled of flowing fountains, and go on, through the
sunshine and the wonder-inhibition of the bullet-dealing Indians, a
hundred yards to the waterhole and back again.

Saxon kissed the little, red satin Spanish girdle passionately, and
wrapped it up in haste, with dewy eyes, abandoning the mystery and
godhead of mother and all the strange enigma of living.

In bed, she projected against her closed eyelids the few rich scenes of
her mother that her child-memory retained. It was her favorite way
of wooing sleep. She had done it all her life--sunk into the
death-blackness of sleep with her mother limned to the last on her
fading consciousness. But this mother was not the Daisy of the plains
nor of the daguerreotype. They had been before Saxon's time. This that
she saw nightly was an older mother, broken with insomnia and brave
with sorrow, who crept, always crept, a pale, frail creature, gentle
and unfaltering, dying from lack of sleep, living by will, and by will
refraining from going mad, who, nevertheless, could not will sleep, and
whom not even the whole tribe of doctors could make sleep. Crept--always
she crept, about the house, from weary bed to weary chair and back again
through long days and weeks of torment, never complaining, though her
unfailing smile was twisted with pain, and the wise gray eyes, still
wise and gray, were grown unutterably larger and profoundly deep.

But on this night Saxon did not win to sleep quickly; the little
creeping mother came and went; and in the intervals the face of Billy,
with the cloud-drifted, sullen, handsome eyes, burned against her
eyelids. And once again, as sleep welled up to smother her, she put to
herself the question IS THIS THE MAN?



CHAPTER VII

The work in the ironing-room slipped off, but the three days until
Wednesday night were very long. She hummed over the fancy starch that
flew under the iron at an astounding rate.

“I can't see how you do it,” Mary admired. “You'll make thirteen or
fourteen this week at that rate.”

Saxon laughed, and in the steam from the iron she saw dancing golden
letters that spelled WEDNESDAY.

“What do you think of Billy?” Mary asked.

“I like him,” was the frank answer.

“Well, don't let it go farther than that.”

“I will if I want to,” Saxon retorted gaily.

“Better not,” came the warning. “You'll only make trouble for yourself.
He ain't marryin'. Many a girl's found that out. They just throw
themselves at his head, too.”

“I'm not going to throw myself at him, or any other man.”

“Just thought I'd tell you,” Mary concluded. “A word to the wise.”

Saxon had become grave.

“He's not... not...” she began, than looked the significance of the
question she could not complete.

“Oh, nothin' like that--though there's nothin' to stop him. He's
straight, all right, all right. But he just won't fall for anything
in skirts. He dances, an' runs around, an' has a good time, an' beyond
that--nitsky. A lot of 'em's got fooled on him. I bet you there's a
dozen girls in love with him right now. An' he just goes on turnin'
'em down. There was Lily Sanderson--you know her. You seen her at that
Slavonic picnic last summer at Shellmound--that tall, nice-lookin'
blonde that was with Butch Willows?”

“Yes, I remember her,” Saxon said. “What about her?”

“Well, she'd been runnin' with Butch Willows pretty steady, an' just
because she could dance, Billy dances a lot with her. Butch ain't afraid
of nothin'. He wades right in for a showdown, an' nails Billy outside,
before everybody, an' reads the riot act. An' Billy listens in that
slow, sleepy way of his, an' Butch gets hotter an' hotter, an' everybody
expects a scrap.

“An' then Billy says to Butch, 'Are you done?' 'Yes,' Butch says; 'I've
said my say, an' what are you goin' to do about it?' An' Billy says--an'
what d'ye think he said, with everybody lookin' on an' Butch with blood
in his eye? Well, he said, 'I guess nothin', Butch.' Just like that.
Butch was that surprised you could knocked him over with a feather. 'An'
never dance with her no more?' he says. 'Not if you say I can't, Butch,'
Billy says. Just like that.

“Well, you know, any other man to take water the way he did from
Butch--why, everybody'd despise him. But not Billy. You see, he can
afford to. He's got a rep as a fighter, an' when he just stood back
'an' let Butch have his way, everybody knew he wasn't scared, or backin'
down, or anything. He didn't care a rap for Lily Sanderson, that was
all, an' anybody could see she was just crazy after him.”

The telling of this episode caused Saxon no little worry. Hers was the
average woman's pride, but in the matter of man-conquering prowess
she was not unduly conceited. Billy had enjoyed her dancing, and she
wondered if that were all. If Charley Long bullied up to him would he
let her go as he had let Lily Sanderson go? He was not a marrying
man; nor could Saxon blind her eyes to the fact that he was eminently
marriageable. No wonder the girls ran after him. And he was a
man-subduer as well as a woman-subduer. Men liked him. Bert Wanhope
seemed actually to love him. She remembered the Butchertown tough in the
dining-room at Weasel Park who had come over to the table to apologize,
and the Irishman at the tug-of-war who had abandoned all thought of
fighting with him the moment he learned his identity.

A very much spoiled young man was a thought that flitted frequently
through Saxon's mind; and each time she condemned it as ungenerous. He
was gentle in that tantalizing slow way of his. Despite his strength,
he did not walk rough-shod over others. There was the affair with Lily
Sanderson. Saxon analysed it again and again. He had not cared for the
girl, and he had immediately stepped from between her and Butch. It was
just the thing that Bert, out of sheer wickedness and love of trouble,
would not have done. There would have been a fight, hard feelings, Butch
turned into an enemy, and nothing profited to Lily. But Billy had done
the right thing--done it slowly and imperturbably and with the least
hurt to everybody. All of which made him more desirable to Saxon and
less possible.

She bought another pair of silk stockings that she had hesitated at
for weeks, and on Tuesday night sewed and drowsed wearily over a new
shirtwaist and earned complaint from Sarah concerning her extravagant
use of gas.

Wednesday night, at the Orindore dance, was not all undiluted pleasure.
It was shameless the way the girls made up to Billy, and, at times,
Saxon found his easy consideration for them almost irritating. Yet she
was compelled to acknowledge to herself that he hurt none of the other
fellows' feelings in the way the girls hurt hers. They all but asked
him outright to dance with them, and little of their open pursuit of him
escaped her eyes. She resolved that she would not be guilty of throwing
herself at him, and withheld dance after dance, and yet was secretly
and thrillingly aware that she was pursuing the right tactics. She
deliberately demonstrated that she was desirable to other men, as he
involuntarily demonstrated his own desirableness to the women.

Her happiness came when he coolly overrode her objections and insisted
on two dances more than she had allotted him. And she was pleased, as
well as angered, when she chanced to overhear two of the strapping young
cannery girls. “The way that little sawed-off is monopolizin' him,” said
one. And the other: “You'd think she might have the good taste to run
after somebody of her own age.” “Cradle-snatcher,” was the final sting
that sent the angry blood into Saxon's cheeks as the two girls moved
away, unaware that they had been overheard.

Billy saw her home, kissed her at the gate, and got her consent to go
with him to the dance at Germania Hall on Friday night.

“I wasn't thinkin' of goin',” he said. “But if you'll say the word...
Bert's goin' to be there.”

Next day, at the ironing boards, Mary told her that she and Bert were
dated for Germania Hall.

“Are you goin'?” Mary asked.

Saxon nodded.

“Billy Roberts?”

The nod was repeated, and Mary, with suspended iron, gave her a long and
curious look.

“Say, an' what if Charley Long butts in?”

Saxon shrugged her shoulders.

They ironed swiftly and silently for a quarter of an hour.

“Well,” Mary decided, “if he does butt in maybe he'll get his. I'd like
to see him get it--the big stiff! It all depends how Billy feels--about
you, I mean.”

“I'm no Lily Sanderson,” Saxon answered indignantly. “I'll never give
Billy Roberts a chance to turn me down.”

“You will, if Charley Long butts in. Take it from me, Saxon, he ain't no
gentleman. Look what he done to Mr. Moody. That was a awful beatin'.
An' Mr. Moody only a quiet little man that wouldn't harm a fly. Well, he
won't find Billy Roberts a sissy by a long shot.”

That night, outside the laundry entrance, Saxon found Charley Long
waiting. As he stepped forward to greet her and walk alongside, she felt
the sickening palpitation that he had so thoroughly taught her to
know. The blood ebbed from her face with the apprehension and fear his
appearance caused. She was afraid of the rough bulk of the man; of the
heavy brown eyes, dominant and confident; of the big blacksmith-hands
and the thick strong fingers with the hair-pads on the back to every
first joint. He was unlovely to the eye, and he was unlovely to all her
finer sensibilities. It was not his strength itself, but the quality of
it and the misuse of it, that affronted her. The beating he had given
the gentle Mr. Moody had meant half-hours of horror to her afterward.
Always did the memory of it come to her accompanied by a shudder. And
yet, without shock, she had seen Billy fight at Weasel Park in the same
primitive man-animal way. But it had been different. She recognized, but
could not analyze, the difference. She was aware only of the brutishness
of this man's hands and mind.

“You're lookin' white an' all beat to a frazzle,” he was saying. “Why
don't you cut the work? You got to some time, anyway. You can't lose me,
kid.”

“I wish I could,” she replied.

He laughed with harsh joviality. “Nothin' to it, Saxon. You're just cut
out to be Mrs. Long, an' you're sure goin' to be.”

“I wish I was as certain about all things as you are,” she said with
mild sarcasm that missed.

“Take it from me,” he went on, “there's just one thing you can be
certain of--an' that is that I am certain.” He was pleased with the
cleverness of his idea and laughed approvingly. “When I go after
anything I get it, an' if anything gets in between it gets hurt. D'ye
get that? It's me for you, an' that's all there is to it, so you might
as well make up your mind and go to workin' in my home instead of the
laundry. Why, it's a snap. There wouldn't be much to do. I make good
money, an' you wouldn't want for anything. You know, I just washed up
from work an' skinned over here to tell it to you once more, so you
wouldn't forget. I ain't ate yet, an' that shows how much I think of
you.”

“You'd better go and eat then,” she advised, though she knew the
futility of attempting to get rid of him.

She scarcely heard what he said. It had come upon her suddenly that she
was very tired and very small and very weak alongside this colossus of
a man. Would he dog her always? she asked despairingly, and seemed to
glimpse a vision of all her future life stretched out before her, with
always the form and face of the burly blacksmith pursuing her.

“Come on, kid, an' kick in,” he continued. “It's the good old summer
time, an' that's the time to get married.”

“But I'm not going to marry you,” she protested. “I've told you a
thousand times already.”

“Aw, forget it. You want to get them ideas out of your think-box. Of
course, you're goin' to marry me. It's a pipe. An' I'll tell you another
pipe. You an' me's goin' acrost to Frisco Friday night. There's goin' to
be big doin's with the Horseshoers.”

“Only I'm not,” she contradicted.

“Oh, yes you are,” he asserted with absolute assurance. “We'll catch the
last boat back, an' you'll have one fine time. An' I'll put you next
to some of the good dancers. Oh, I ain't a pincher, an' I know you like
dancin'.”

“But I tell you I can't,” she reiterated.

He shot a glance of suspicion at her from under the black thatch of
brows that met above his nose and were as one brow.

“Why can't you?”

“A date,” she said.

“Who's the bloke?”

“None of your business, Charley Long. I've got a date, that's all.”

“I'll make it my business. Remember that lah-de-dah bookkeeper rummy?
Well, just keep on rememberin' him an' what he got.”

“I wish you'd leave me alone,” she pleaded resentfully. “Can't you be
kind just for once?”

The blacksmith laughed unpleasantly.

“If any rummy thinks he can butt in on you an' me, he'll learn
different, an' I'm the little boy that'll learn 'm.--Friday night, eh?
Where?”

“I won't tell you.”

“Where?” he repeated.

Her lips were drawn in tight silence, and in her cheeks were little
angry spots of blood.

“Huh!--As if I couldn't guess! Germania Hall. Well, I'll be there, an'
I'll take you home afterward. D'ye get that? An' you'd better tell the
rummy to beat it unless you want to see'm get his face hurt.”

Saxon, hurt as a prideful woman can be hurt by cavalier treatment, was
tempted to cry out the name and prowess of her new-found protector. And
then came fear. This was a big man, and Billy was only a boy. That was
the way he affected her. She remembered her first impression of his
hands and glanced quickly at the hands of the man beside her. They
seemed twice as large as Billy's, and the mats of hair seemed to
advertise a terrible strength. No, Billy could not fight this big brute.
He must not. And then to Saxon came a wicked little hope that by the
mysterious and unthinkable ability that prizefighters possessed, Billy
might be able to whip this bully and rid her of him. With the next
glance doubt came again, for her eye dwelt on the blacksmith's broad
shoulders, the cloth of the coat muscle-wrinkled and the sleeves bulging
above the biceps.

“If you lay a hand on anybody I'm going with again---” she began.

“Why, they'll get hurt, of course,” Long grinned. “And they'll deserve
it, too. Any rummy that comes between a fellow an' his girl ought to get
hurt.”

“But I'm not your girl, and all your saying so doesn't make it so.”

“That's right, get mad,” he approved. “I like you for that, too. You've
got spunk an' fight. I like to see it. It's what a man needs in his
wife--and not these fat cows of women. They're the dead ones. Now you're
a live one, all wool, a yard long and a yard wide.”

She stopped before the house and put her hand on the gate.

“Good-bye,” she said. “I'm going in.”

“Come on out afterward for a run to Idora Park,” he suggested.

“No, I'm not feeling good, and I'm going straight to bed as soon as I
eat supper.”

“Huh!” he sneered. “Gettin' in shape for the fling to-morrow night, eh?”

With an impatient movement she opened the gate and stepped inside.

“I've given it to you straight,” he went on. “If you don't go with me
to-morrow night somebody'll get hurt.”

“I hope it will be you,” she cried vindictively.

He laughed as he threw his head back, stretched his big chest, and
half-lifted his heavy arms. The action reminded her disgustingly of a
great ape she had once seen in a circus.

“Well, good-bye,” he said. “See you to-morrow night at Germania Hall.”

“I haven't told you it was Germania Hall.”

“And you haven't told me it wasn't. All the same, I'll be there. And
I'll take you home, too. Be sure an' keep plenty of round dances open
fer me. That's right. Get mad. It makes you look fine.”



CHAPTER VIII

The music stopped at the end of the waltz, leaving Billy and Saxon at
the big entrance doorway of the ballroom. Her hand rested lightly on
his arm, and they were promenading on to find seats, when Charley Long,
evidently just arrived, thrust his way in front of them.

“So you're the buttinsky, eh?” he demanded, his face malignant with
passion and menace.

“Who?--me?” Billy queried gently. “Some mistake, sport. I never butt
in.”

“You're goin' to get your head beaten off if you don't make yourself
scarce pretty lively.”

“I wouldn't want that to happen for the world,” Billy drawled. “Come on,
Saxon. This neighborhood's unhealthy for us.”

He started to go on with her, but Long thrust in front again.

“You're too fresh to keep, young fellow,” he snarled. “You need saltin'
down. D'ye get me?”

Billy scratched his head, on his face exaggerated puzzlement.

“No, I don't get you,” he said. “Now just what was it you said?”

But the big blacksmith turned contemptuously away from him to Saxon.

“Come here, you. Let's see your program.”

“Do you want to dance with him?” Billy asked.

She shook her head.

“Sorry, sport, nothin' doin',” Billy said, again making to start on.

For the third time the blacksmith blocked the way.

“Get off your foot,” said Billy. “You're standin' on it.”

Long all but sprang upon him, his hands clenched, one arm just starting
back for the punch while at the same instant shoulders and chest were
coming forward. But he restrained himself at sight of Billy's unstartled
body and cold and cloudy eyes. He had made no move of mind or muscle.
It was as if he were unaware of the threatened attack. All of which
constituted a new thing in Long's experience.

“Maybe you don't know who I am,” he bullied.

“Yep, I do,” Billy answered airily. “You're a record-breaker at
rough-housin'.” (Here Long's face showed pleasure.) “You ought to have
the Police Gazette diamond belt for rough-housin' baby buggies'. I guess
there ain't a one you're afraid to tackle.”

“Leave 'm alone, Charley,” advised one of the young men who had crowded
about them. “He's Bill Roberts, the fighter. You know'm. Big Bill.”

“I don't care if he's Jim Jeffries. He can't butt in on me this way.”

Nevertheless it was noticeable, even to Saxon, that the fire had gone
out of his fierceness. Billy's name seemed to have a quieting effect on
obstreperous males.

“Do you know him?” Billy asked her.

She signified yes with her eyes, though it seemed she must cry out a
thousand things against this man who so steadfastly persecuted her.
Billy turned to the blacksmith.

“Look here, sport, you don't want trouble with me. I've got your number.
Besides, what do we want to fight for? Hasn't she got a say so in the
matter?”

“No, she hasn't. This is my affair an' yourn.”

Billy shook his head slowly. “No; you're in wrong. I think she has a say
in the matter.”

“Well, say it then,” Long snarled at Saxon, “who're you goin' to go
with?--me or him? Let's get it settled.”

For reply, Saxon reached her free hand over to the hand that rested on
Billy's arm.

“Nuff said,” was Billy's remark.

Long glared at Saxon, then transferred the glare to her protector.

“I've a good mind to mix it with you anyway,” Long gritted through his
teeth.

Saxon was elated as they started to move away. Lily Sanderson's fate had
not been hers, and her wonderful man-boy, without the threat of a blow,
slow of speech and imperturbable, had conquered the big blacksmith.

“He's forced himself upon me all the time,” she whispered to Billy.
“He's tried to run me, and beaten up every man that came near me. I
never want to see him again.”

Billy halted immediately. Long, who was reluctantly moving to get out of
the way, also halted.

“She says she don't want anything more to do with you,” Billy said to
him. “An' what she says goes. If I get a whisper any time that you've
been botherin' her, I'll attend to your case. D'ye get that?”

Long glowered and remained silent.

“D'ye get that?” Billy repeated, more imperatively.

A growl of assent came from the blacksmith

“All right, then. See you remember it. An' now get outa the way or I'll
walk over you.”

Long slunk back, muttering inarticulate threats, and Saxon moved on as
in a dream. Charley Long had taken water. He had been afraid of this
smooth-skinned, blue-eyed boy. She was quit of him--something no other
man had dared attempt for her. And Billy had liked her better than Lily
Sanderson.

Twice Saxon tried to tell Billy the details of her acquaintance with
Long, but each time was put off.

“I don't care a rap about it,” Billy said the second time. “You're here,
ain't you?”

But she insisted, and when, worked up and angry by the recital, she had
finished, he patted her hand soothingly.

“It's all right, Saxon,” he said. “He's just a big stiff. I took his
measure as soon as I looked at him. He won't bother you again. I know
his kind. He's a dog. Roughhouse? He couldn't rough-house a milk wagon.”

“But how do you do it?” she asked breathlessly. “Why are men so afraid
of you? You're just wonderful.”

He smiled in an embarrassed way and changed the subject.

“Say,” he said, “I like your teeth. They're so white an' regular, an'
not big, an' not dinky little baby's teeth either. They're ... they're
just right, an' they fit you. I never seen such fine teeth on a girl
yet. D'ye know, honest, they kind of make me hungry when I look at 'em.
They're good enough to eat.”

At midnight, leaving the insatiable Bert and Mary still dancing, Billy
and Saxon started for home. It was on his suggestion that they left
early, and he felt called upon to explain.

“It's one thing the fightin' game's taught me,” he said. “To take care
of myself. A fellow can't work all day and dance all night and keep in
condition. It's the same way with drinkin'--an' not that I'm a little
tin angel. I know what it is. I've been soused to the guards an' all the
rest of it. I like my beer--big schooners of it; but I don't drink all
I want of it. I've tried, but it don't pay. Take that big stiff to-night
that butted in on us. He ought to had my number. He's a dog anyway, but
besides he had beer bloat. I sized that up the first rattle, an' that's
the difference about who takes the other fellow's number. Condition,
that's what it is.”

“But he is so big,” Saxon protested. “Why, his fists are twice as big as
yours.”

“That don't mean anything. What counts is what's behind the fists. He'd
turn loose like a buckin' bronco. If I couldn't drop him at the start,
all I'd do is to keep away, smother up, an' wait. An' all of a sudden
he'd blow up--go all to pieces, you know, wind, heart, everything, and
then I'd have him where I wanted him. And the point is he knows it,
too.”

“You're the first prizefighter I ever knew,” Saxon said, after a pause.

“I'm not any more,” he disclaimed hastily. “That's one thing the
fightin' game taught me--to leave it alone. It don't pay. A fellow
trains as fine as silk--till he's all silk, his skin, everything, and
he's fit to live for a hundred years; an' then he climbs through the
ropes for a hard twenty rounds with some tough customer that's just as
good as he is, and in those twenty rounds he frazzles out all his silk
an' blows in a year of his life. Yes, sometimes he blows in five years
of it, or cuts it in half, or uses up all of it. I've watched 'em. I've
seen fellows strong as bulls fight a hard battle and die inside the year
of consumption, or kidney disease, or anything else. Now what's the good
of it? Money can't buy what they throw away. That's why I quit the game
and went back to drivin' team. I got my silk, an' I'm goin' to keep it,
that's all.”

“It must make you feel proud to know you are the master of other men,”
 she said softly, aware herself of pride in the strength and skill of
him.

“It does,” he admitted frankly. “I'm glad I went into the game--just as
glad as I am that I pulled out of it.... Yep, it's taught me a lot--to
keep my eyes open an' my head cool. Oh, I've got a temper, a peach of a
temper. I get scared of myself sometimes. I used to be always breakin'
loose. But the fightin' taught me to keep down the steam an' not do
things I'd be sorry for afterward.”

“Why, you're the sweetest, easiest tempered man I know,” she
interjected.

“Don't you believe it. Just watch me, and sometime you'll see me break
out that bad that I won't know what I'm doin' myself. Oh, I'm a holy
terror when I get started!”

This tacit promise of continued acquaintance gave Saxon a little
joy-thrill.

“Say,” he said, as they neared her neighborhood, “what are you doin'
next Sunday?”

“Nothing. No plans at all.”

“Well, suppose you an' me go buggy-riding all day out in the hills?”

She did not answer immediately, and for the moment she was seeing the
nightmare vision of her last buggy-ride; of her fear and her leap from
the buggy; and of the long miles and the stumbling through the darkness
in thin-soled shoes that bruised her feet on every rock. And then it
came to her with a great swell of joy that this man beside her was not
such a man.

“I love horses,” she said. “I almost love them better than I do dancing,
only I don't know anything about them. My father rode a great roan
war-horse. He was a captain of cavalry, you know. I never saw him, but
somehow I always can see him on that big horse, with a sash around his
waist and his sword at his side. My brother George has the sword now,
but Tom--he's the brother I live with says it is mine because it wasn't
his father's. You see, they're only my half-brothers. I was the only
child by my mother's second marriage. That was her real marriage--her
love-marriage, I mean.”

Saxon ceased abruptly, embarrassed by her own garrulity; and yet the
impulse was strong to tell this young man all about herself, and it
seemed to her that these far memories were a large part of her.

“Go on an' tell me about it,” Billy urged. “I like to hear about the old
people of the old days. My people was along in there, too, an' somehow
I think it was a better world to live in than now. Things was more
sensible and natural. I don't exactly say what I mean. But it's like
this: I don't understand life to-day. There's the labor unions an'
employers' associations, an' strikes', an' hard times, an' huntin'
for jobs, an' all the rest. Things wasn't like that in the old days.
Everybody farmed, an' shot their meat, an' got enough to eat, an'
took care of their old folks. But now it's all a mix-up that I can't
understand. Mebbe I'm a fool, I don't know. But, anyway, go ahead an'
tell us about your mother.”

“Well, you see, when she was only a young woman she and Captain Brown
fell in love. He was a soldier then, before the war. And he was ordered
East for the war when she was away nursing her sister Laura. And then
came the news that he was killed at Shiloh. And she married a man who
had loved her for years and years. He was a boy in the same wagon-train
coming across the plains. She liked him, but she didn't love him. And
afterward came the news that my father wasn't killed after all. So it
made her very sad, but it did not spoil her life. She was a good mother
and a good wife and all that, but she was always sad, and sweet, and
gentle, and I think her voice was the most beautiful in the world.”

“She was game, all right,” Billy approved.

“And my father never married. He loved her all the time. I've got a
lovely poem home that she wrote to him. It's just wonderful, and it
sings like music. Well, long, long afterward her husband died, and then
she and my father made their love marriage. They didn't get married
until 1882, and she was pretty well along.”

More she told him, as they stood by the gate, and Saxon tried to think
that the good-bye kiss was a trifle longer than just ordinary.

“How about nine o'clock?” he queried across the gate. “Don't bother
about lunch or anything. I'll fix all that up. You just be ready at
nine.”



CHAPTER IX

Sunday morning Saxon was beforehand in getting ready, and on her
return to the kitchen from her second journey to peep through the front
windows, Sarah began her customary attack.

“It's a shame an' a disgrace the way some people can afford silk
stockings,” she began. “Look at me, a-toilin' and a-stewin' day an'
night, and I never get silk stockings--nor shoes, three pairs of them
all at one time. But there's a just God in heaven, and there'll be some
mighty big surprises for some when the end comes and folks get passed
out what's comin' to them.”

Tom, smoking his pipe and cuddling his youngest-born on his knees,
dropped an eyelid surreptitiously on his cheek in token that Sarah was
in a tantrum. Saxon devoted herself to tying a ribbon in the hair of one
of the little girls. Sarah lumbered heavily about the kitchen, washing
and putting away the breakfast dishes. She straightened her back from
the sink with a groan and glared at Saxon with fresh hostility.

“You ain't sayin' anything, eh? An' why don't you? Because I guess you
still got some natural shame in you a-runnin' with a prizefighter. Oh,
I've heard about your goings-on with Bill Roberts. A nice specimen he
is. But just you wait till Charley Long gets his hands on him, that's
all.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Tom intervened. “Bill Roberts is a pretty good boy
from what I hear.”

Saxon smiled with superior knowledge, and Sarah, catching her, was
infuriated.

“Why don't you marry Charley Long? He's crazy for you, and he ain't a
drinkin' man.”

“I guess he gets outside his share of beer,” Saxon retorted.

“That's right,” her brother supplemented. “An' I know for a fact that he
keeps a keg in the house all the time as well.”

“Maybe you've been guzzling from it,” Sarah snapped.

“Maybe I have,” Tom said, wiping his mouth reminiscently with the back
of his hand.

“Well, he can afford to keep a keg in the house if he wants to,” she
returned to the attack, which now was directed at her husband as well.
“He pays his bills, and he certainly makes good money--better than most
men, anyway.”

“An' he hasn't a wife an' children to watch out for,” Tom said.

“Nor everlastin' dues to unions that don't do him no good.”

“Oh, yes, he has,” Tom urged genially. “Blamed little he'd work in that
shop, or any other shop in Oakland, if he didn't keep in good standing
with the Blacksmiths. You don't understand labor conditions, Sarah. The
unions have got to stick, if the men aren't to starve to death.”

“Oh, of course not,” Sarah sniffed. “I don't understand anything.
I ain't got a mind. I'm a fool, an' you tell me so right before the
children.” She turned savagely on her eldest, who startled and shrank
away. “Willie, your mother is a fool. Do you get that? Your father says
she's a fool--says it right before her face and yourn. She's just a
plain fool. Next he'll be sayin' she's crazy an' puttin' her away in
the asylum. An' how will you like that, Willie? How will you like to see
your mother in a straitjacket an' a padded cell, shut out from the light
of the sun an' beaten like a nigger before the war, Willie, beaten an'
clubbed like a regular black nigger? That's the kind of a father you've
got, Willie. Think of it, Willie, in a padded cell, the mother that
bore you, with the lunatics screechin' an' screamin' all around, an' the
quick-lime eatin' into the dead bodies of them that's beaten to death by
the cruel wardens--”

She continued tirelessly, painting with pessimistic strokes the growing
black future her husband was meditating for her, while the boy, fearful
of some vague, incomprehensible catastrophe, began to weep silently,
with a pendulous, trembling underlip. Saxon, for the moment, lost
control of herself.

“Oh, for heaven's sake, can't we be together five minutes without
quarreling?” she blazed.

Sarah broke off from asylum conjurations and turned upon her
sister-in-law.

“Who's quarreling? Can't I open my head without bein' jumped on by the
two of you?”

Saxon shrugged her shoulders despairingly, and Sarah swung about on her
husband.

“Seein' you love your sister so much better than your wife, why did you
want to marry me, that's borne your children for you, an' slaved for
you, an' toiled for you, an' worked her fingernails off for you, with
no thanks, an 'insultin' me before the children, an' sayin' I'm crazy
to their faces. An' what have you ever did for me? That's what I want to
know--me, that's cooked for you, an' washed your stinkin' clothes,
and fixed your socks, an' sat up nights with your brats when they was
ailin'. Look at that!”

She thrust out a shapeless, swollen foot, encased in a monstrous,
untended shoe, the dry, raw leather of which showed white on the edges
of bulging cracks.

“Look at that! That's what I say. Look at that!” Her voice was
persistently rising and at the same time growing throaty. “The only
shoes I got. Me. Your wife. Ain't you ashamed? Where are my three pairs?
Look at that stockin'.”

Speech failed her, and she sat down suddenly on a chair at the table,
glaring unutterable malevolence and misery. She arose with the abrupt
stiffness of an automaton, poured herself a cup of cold coffee, and
in the same jerky way sat down again. As if too hot for her lips,
she filled her saucer with the greasy-looking, nondescript fluid, and
continued her set glare, her breast rising and falling with staccato,
mechanical movement.

“Now, Sarah, be c'am, be c'am,” Tom pleaded anxiously.

In response, slowly, with utmost deliberation, as if the destiny of
empires rested on the certitude of her act, she turned the saucer of
coffee upside down on the table. She lifted her right hand, slowly,
hugely, and in the same slow, huge way landed the open palm with a
sounding slap on Tom's astounded cheek. Immediately thereafter she
raised her voice in the shrill, hoarse, monotonous madness of hysteria,
sat down on the floor, and rocked back and forth in the throes of an
abysmal grief.

Willie's silent weeping turned to noise, and the two little girls, with
the fresh ribbons in their hair, joined him. Tom's face was drawn and
white, though the smitten cheek still blazed, and Saxon wanted to put
her arms comfortingly around him, yet dared not. He bent over his wife.

“Sarah, you ain't feelin' well. Let me put you to bed, and I'll finish
tidying up.”

“Don't touch me!--don't touch me!” she screamed, jerking violently away
from him.

“Take the children out in the yard, Tom, for a walk, anything--get them
away,” Saxon said. She was sick, and white, and trembling. “Go, Tom,
please, please. There's your hat. I'll take care of her. I know just
how.”

Left to herself, Saxon worked with frantic haste, assuming the calm she
did not possess, but which she must impart to the screaming bedlamite
upon the floor. The light frame house leaked the noise hideously, and
Saxon knew that the houses on either side were hearing, and the street
itself and the houses across the street. Her fear was that Billy should
arrive in the midst of it. Further, she was incensed, violated. Every
fiber rebelled, almost in a nausea; yet she maintained cool control and
stroked Sarah's forehead and hair with slow, soothing movements. Soon,
with one arm around her, she managed to win the first diminution in
the strident, atrocious, unceasing scream. A few minutes later, sobbing
heavily, the elder woman lay in bed, across her forehead and eyes a
wet-pack of towel for easement of the headache she and Saxon tacitly
accepted as substitute for the brain-storm.

When a clatter of hoofs came down the street and stopped, Saxon was able
to slip to the front door and wave her hand to Billy. In the kitchen she
found Tom waiting in sad anxiousness.

“It's all right,” she said. “Billy Roberts has come, and I've got to go.
You go in and sit beside her for a while, and maybe she'll go to sleep.
But don't rush her. Let her have her own way. If she'll let you take her
hand, why do it. Try it, anyway. But first of all, as an opener and just
as a matter of course, start wetting the towel over her eyes.”

He was a kindly, easy-going man; but, after the way of a large
percentage of the Western stock, he was undemonstrative. He nodded,
turned toward the door to obey, and paused irresolutely. The look he
gave back to Saxon was almost dog-like in gratitude and all-brotherly in
love. She felt it, and in spirit leapt toward it.

“It's all right--everything's all right,” she cried hastily.

Tom shook his head.

“No, it ain't. It's a shame, a blamed shame, that's what it is.” He
shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, I don't care for myself. But it's for you.
You got your life before you yet, little kid sister. You'll get old,
and all that means, fast enough. But it's a bad start for a day off.
The thing for you to do is to forget all this, and skin out with your
fellow, an' have a good time.” In the open door, his hand on the knob
to close it after him, he halted a second time. A spasm contracted his
brow. “Hell! Think of it! Sarah and I used to go buggy-riding once on
a time. And I guess she had her three pairs of shoes, too. Can you beat
it?”

In her bedroom Saxon completed her dressing, for an instant stepping
upon a chair so as to glimpse critically in the small wall-mirror
the hang of her ready-made linen skirt. This, and the jacket, she had
altered to fit, and she had double-stitched the seams to achieve the
coveted tailored effect. Still on the chair, all in the moment of quick
clear-seeing, she drew the skirt tightly back and raised it. The sight
was good to her, nor did she under-appraise the lines of the slender
ankle above the low tan tie nor did she under-appraise the delicate
yet mature swell of calf outlined in the fresh brown of a new cotton
stocking. Down from the chair, she pinned on a firm sailor hat of white
straw with a brown ribbon around the crown that matched her ribbon belt.
She rubbed her cheeks quickly and fiercely to bring back the color Sarah
had driven out of them, and delayed a moment longer to put on her tan
lisle-thread gloves. Once, in the fashion-page of a Sunday supplement,
she had read that no lady ever put on her gloves after she left the
door.

With a resolute self-grip, as she crossed the parlor and passed the
door to Sarah's bedroom, through the thin wood of which came elephantine
moanings and low slubberings, she steeled herself to keep the color in
her cheeks and the brightness in her eyes. And so well did she succeed
that Billy never dreamed that the radiant, live young thing, tripping
lightly down the steps to him, had just come from a bout with
soul-sickening hysteria and madness.

To her, in the bright sun, Billy's blondness was startling. His cheeks,
smooth as a girl's, were touched with color. The blue eyes seemed more
cloudily blue than usual, and the crisp, sandy hair hinted more than
ever of the pale straw-gold that was not there. Never had she seen him
quite so royally young. As he smiled to greet her, with a slow white
flash of teeth from between red lips, she caught again the promise
of easement and rest. Fresh from the shattering chaos of her
sister-in-law's mind, Billy's tremendous calm was especially satisfying,
and Saxon mentally laughed to scorn the terrible temper he had charged
to himself.

She had been buggy-riding before, but always behind one horse, jaded,
and livery, in a top-buggy, heavy and dingy, such as livery stables
rent because of sturdy unbreakableness. But here stood two horses,
head-tossing and restless, shouting in every high-light glint of their
satin, golden-sorrel coats that they had never been rented out in
all their glorious young lives. Between them was a pole inconceivably
slender, on them were harnesses preposterously string-like and fragile.
And Billy belonged here, by elemental right, a part of them and of it,
a master-part and a component, along with the spidery-delicate,
narrow-boxed, wide- and yellow-wheeled, rubber-tired rig, efficient and
capable, as different as he was different from the other man who had
taken her out behind stolid, lumbering horses. He held the reins in
one hand, yet, with low, steady voice, confident and assuring, held the
nervous young animals more by the will and the spirit of him.

It was no time for lingering. With the quick glance and fore-knowledge
of a woman, Saxon saw, not merely the curious children clustering about,
but the peering of adult faces from open doors and windows, and past
window-shades lifted up or held aside. With his free hand, Billy
drew back the linen robe and helped her to a place beside him. The
high-backed, luxuriously upholstered seat of brown leather gave her
a sense of great comfort; yet even greater, it seemed to her, was the
nearness and comfort of the man himself and of his body.

“How d'ye like 'em?” he asked, changing the reins to both hands and
chirruping the horses, which went out with a jerk in an immediacy of
action that was new to her. “They're the boss's, you know. Couldn't rent
animals like them. He lets me take them out for exercise sometimes. If
they ain't exercised regular they're a handful.--Look at King, there,
prancin'. Some style, eh? Some style! The other one's the real goods,
though. Prince is his name. Got to have some bit on him to hold'm.--Ah!
Would you?--Did you see'm, Saxon? Some horse! Some horse!”

From behind came the admiring cheer of the neighborhood children, and
Saxon, with a sigh of content, knew that the happy day had at last
begun.



CHAPTER X

“I don't know horses,” Saxon said. “I've never been on one's back,
and the only ones I've tried to drive were single, and lame, or almost
falling down, or something. But I'm not afraid of horses. I just love
them. I was born loving them, I guess.”

Billy threw an admiring, appreciative glance at her.

“That's the stuff. That's what I like in a woman--grit. Some of the
girls I've had out--well, take it from me, they made me sick. Oh, I'm
hep to 'em. Nervous, an' trembly, an' screechy, an' wabbly. I reckon
they come out on my account an' not for the ponies. But me for the brave
kid that likes the ponies. You're the real goods, Saxon, honest to God
you are. Why, I can talk like a streak with you. The rest of 'em make me
sick. I'm like a clam. They don't know nothin', an' they're that scared
all the time--well, I guess you get me.”

“You have to be born to love horses, maybe,” she answered. “Maybe it's
because I always think of my father on his roan war-horse that makes me
love horses. But, anyway, I do. When I was a little girl I was drawing
horses all the time. My mother always encouraged me. I've a scrapbook
mostly filled with horses I drew when I was little. Do you know, Billy,
sometimes I dream I actually own a horse, all my own. And lots of times
I dream I'm on a horse's back, or driving him.”

“I'll let you drive 'em, after a while, when they've worked their edge
off. They're pullin' now.--There, put your hands in front of mine--take
hold tight. Feel that? Sure you feel it. An' you ain't feelin' it all by
a long shot. I don't dast slack, you bein' such a lightweight.”

Her eyes sparkled as she felt the apportioned pull of the mouths of the
beautiful, live things; and he, looking at her, sparkled with her in her
delight.

“What's the good of a woman if she can't keep up with a man?” he broke
out enthusiastically.

“People that like the same things always get along best together,” she
answered, with a triteness that concealed the joy that was hers at being
so spontaneously in touch with him.

“Why, Saxon, I've fought battles, good ones, frazzlin' my silk away
to beat the band before whisky-soaked, smokin' audiences of rotten
fight-fans, that just made me sick clean through. An' them, that
couldn't take just one stiff jolt or hook to jaw or stomach, a-cheerin'
me an' yellin' for blood. Blood, mind you! An' them without the blood of
a shrimp in their bodies. Why, honest, now, I'd sooner fight before an
audience of one--you for instance, or anybody I liked. It'd do me proud.
But them sickenin', sap-headed stiffs, with the grit of rabbits and the
silk of mangy ky-yi's, a-cheerin' me--ME! Can you blame me for quittin'
the dirty game?--Why, I'd sooner fight before broke-down old plugs of
work-horses that's candidates for chicken-meat, than before them rotten
bunches of stiffs with nothin' thicker'n water in their veins, an'
Contra Costa water at that when the rains is heavy on the hills.”

“I... I didn't know prizefighting was like that,” she faltered, as she
released her hold on the lines and sank back again beside him.

“It ain't the fightin', it's the fight-crowds,” he defended with instant
jealousy. “Of course, fightin' hurts a young fellow because it frazzles
the silk outa him an' all that. But it's the low-lifers in the audience
that gets me. Why the good things they say to me, the praise an'
that, is insulting. Do you get me? It makes me cheap. Think of
it--booze-guzzlin' stiffs that 'd be afraid to mix it with a sick cat,
not fit to hold the coat of any decent man, think of them a-standin' up
on their hind legs an' yellin' an' cheerin' me--ME!”

“Ha! ha! What d'ye think of that? Ain't he a rogue?”

A big bulldog, sliding obliquely and silently across the street,
unconcerned with the team he was avoiding, had passed so close that
Prince, baring his teeth like a stallion, plunged his head down against
reins and check in an effort to seize the dog.

“Now he's some fighter, that Prince. An' he's natural. He didn't make
that reach just for some low-lifer to yell'm on. He just done it outa
pure cussedness and himself. That's clean. That's right. Because it's
natural. But them fight-fans! Honest to God, Saxon....”

And Saxon, glimpsing him sidewise, as he watched the horses and their
way on the Sunday morning streets, checking them back suddenly and
swerving to avoid two boys coasting across street on a toy wagon, saw
in him deeps and intensities, all the magic connotations of temperament,
the glimmer and hint of rages profound, bleaknesses as cold and far as
the stars, savagery as keen as a wolf's and clean as a stallion's, wrath
as implacable as a destroying angel's, and youth that was fire and life
beyond time and place. She was awed and fascinated, with the hunger of
woman bridging the vastness to him, daring to love him with arms and
breast that ached to him, murmuring to herself and through all the halls
of her soul, “You dear, you dear.”

“Honest to God, Saxon,” he took up the broken thread, “they's times
when I've hated them, when I wanted to jump over the ropes and wade into
them, knock-down and drag-out, an' show'm what fightin' was. Take that
night with Billy Murphy. Billy Murphy!--if you only knew him. My friend.
As clean an' game a boy as ever jumped inside the ropes to take the
decision. Him! We went to the Durant School together. We grew up chums.
His fight was my fight. My trouble was his trouble. We both took to the
fightin' game. They matched us. Not the first time. Twice we'd fought
draws. Once the decision was his; once it was mine. The fifth fight of
two lovin' men that just loved each other. He's three years older'n me.
He's a wife and two or three kids, an' I know them, too. And he's my
friend. Get it?

“I'm ten pounds heavier--but with heavyweights that 's all right. He
can't time an' distance as good as me, an' I can keep set better, too.
But he's cleverer an' quicker. I never was quick like him. We both can
take punishment, an' we're both two-handed, a wallop in all our fists.
I know the kick of his, an' he knows my kick, an' we're both real
respectful. And we're even-matched. Two draws, and a decision to each.
Honest, I ain't any kind of a hunch who's goin' to win, we're that even.

“Now, the fight.--You ain't squeamish, are you?”

“No, no,” she cried. “I'd just love to hear--you are so wonderful.”

He took the praise with a clear, unwavering look, and without hint of
acknowledgment.

“We go along--six rounds--seven rounds--eight rounds; an' honors even.
I've been timin' his rushes an' straight-leftin' him, an' meetin' his
duck with a wicked little right upper-cut, an' he's shaken me on the
jaw an' walloped my ears till my head's all singin' an' buzzin'. An'
everything lovely with both of us, with a noise like a draw decision in
sight. Twenty rounds is the distance, you know.

“An' then his bad luck comes. We're just mixin' into a clinch that ain't
arrived yet, when he shoots a short hook to my head--his left, an' a
real hay-maker if it reaches my jaw. I make a forward duck, not quick
enough, an' he lands bingo on the side of my head. Honest to God, Saxon,
it's that heavy I see some stars. But it don't hurt an' ain't serious,
that high up where the bone's thick. An' right there he finishes
himself, for his bad thumb, which I've known since he first got it as a
kid fightin' in the sandlot at Watts Tract--he smashes that thumb right
there, on my hard head, back into the socket with an out-twist, an' all
the old cords that'd never got strong gets theirs again. I didn't mean
it. A dirty trick, fair in the game, though, to make a guy smash his
hand on your head. But not between friends. I couldn't a-done that to
Bill Murphy for a million dollars. It was a accident, just because I was
slow, because I was born slow.

“The hurt of it! Honest, Saxon, you don't know what hurt is till you've
got a old hurt like that hurt again. What can Billy Murphy do but slow
down? He's got to. He ain't fightin' two-handed any more. He knows it; I
know it; The referee knows it; but nobody else. He goes on a-moving that
left of his like it's all right. But it ain't. It's hurtin' him like a
knife dug into him. He don't dast strike a real blow with that left of
his. But it hurts, anyway. Just to move it or not move it hurts, an'
every little dab-feint that I'm too wise to guard, knowin' there's no
weight behind, why them little dab-touches on that poor thumb goes right
to the heart of him, an' hurts worse than a thousand boils or a thousand
knockouts--just hurts all over again, an' worse, each time an' touch.

“Now suppose he an' me was boxin' for fun, out in the back yard, an' he
hurts his thumb that way, why we'd have the gloves off in a jiffy an'
I'd be putting cold compresses on that poor thumb of his an' bandagin'
it that tight to keep the inflammation down. But no. This is a fight
for fight-fans that's paid their admission for blood, an' blood they're
goin' to get. They ain't men. They're wolves.

“He has to go easy, now, an' I ain't a-forcin' him none. I'm all shot to
pieces. I don't know what to do. So I slow down, an' the fans get hep to
it. 'Why don't you fight?' they begin to yell; 'Fake! Fake!' 'Why don't
you kiss'm?' 'Lovin' cup for yours, Bill Roberts!' an' that sort of
bunk.

“'Fight!' says the referee to me, low an' savage. 'Fight, or I'll
disqualify you--you, Bill, I mean you.' An' this to me, with a touch on
the shoulder so they's no mistakin'.

“It ain't pretty. It ain't right. D'ye know what we was fightin' for? A
hundred bucks. Think of it! An' the game is we got to do our best to
put our man down for the count because of the fans has bet on us. Sweet,
ain't it? Well, that's my last fight. It finishes me deado. Never again
for yours truly.

“'Quit,' I says to Billy Murphy in a clinch; 'for the love of God, Bill,
quit.' An' he says back, in a whisper, 'I can't, Bill--you know that.'

“An' then the referee drags us apart, an' a lot of the fans begins to
hoot an' boo.

“'Now kick in, damn you, Bill Roberts, an' finish'm' the referee says to
me, an' I tell'm to go to hell as Bill an' me flop into the next clinch,
not hittin', an' Bill touches his thumb again, an' I see the pain shoot
across his face. Game? That good boy's the limit. An' to look into the
eyes of a brave man that's sick with pain, an' love 'm, an' see love
in them eyes of his, an' then have to go on givin' 'm pain--call that
sport? I can't see it. But the crowd's got its money on us. We don't
count. We've sold ourselves for a hundred bucks, an' we gotta deliver
the goods.

“Let me tell you, Saxon, honest to God, that was one of the times I
wanted to go through the ropes an' drop them fans a-yellin' for blood
an' show 'em what blood is.

“'For God's sake finish me, Bill,' Bill says to me in that clinch; 'put
her over an' I'll fall for it, but I can't lay down.'

“D'ye want to know? I cry there, right in the ring, in that clinch. The
weeps for me. 'I can't do it, Bill,' I whisper back, hangin' onto'm like
a brother an' the referee ragin' an' draggin' at us to get us apart, an'
all the wolves in the house snarlin'.

“'You got 'm!' the audience is yellin'. 'Go in an' finish 'm!' 'The hay
for him, Bill; put her across to the jaw an' see 'm fall!'

“'You got to, Bill, or you're a dog,' Bill says, lookin' love at me in
his eyes as the referee's grip untangles us clear.

“An' them wolves of fans yellin': 'Fake! Fake! Fake!' like that, an'
keepin' it up.

“Well, I done it. They's only that way out. I done it. By God, I done
it. I had to. I feint for 'm, draw his left, duck to the right past it,
takin' it across my shoulder, an come up with my right to his jaw. An'
he knows the trick. He's hep. He's beaten me to it an' blocked it with
his shoulder a thousan' times. But this time he don't. He keeps himself
wide open on purpose. Blim! It lands. He's dead in the air, an' he goes
down sideways, strikin' his face first on the rosin-canvas an' then
layin' dead, his head twisted under 'm till you'd a-thought his neck was
broke. ME--I did that for a hundred bucks an' a bunch of stiffs I'd
be ashamed to wipe my feet on. An' then I pick Bill up in my arms an'
carry'm to his corner, an' help bring'm around. Well, they ain't no kick
comin'. They pay their money an' they get their blood, an' a knockout.
An' a better man than them, that I love, layin' there dead to the world
with a skinned face on the mat.”

For a moment he was still, gazing straight before him at the horses, his
face hard and angry. He sighed, looked at Saxon, and smiled.

“An' I quit the game right there. An' Billy Murphy's laughed at me for
it. He still follows it. A side-line, you know, because he works at a
good trade. But once in a while, when the house needs paintin', or the
doctor bills are up, or his oldest kid wants a bicycle, he jumps out an'
makes fifty or a hundred bucks before some of the clubs. I want you to
meet him when it comes handy. He's some boy I'm tellin' you. But it did
make me sick that night.”

Again the harshness and anger were in his face, and Saxon amazed herself
by doing unconsciously what women higher in the social scale have done
with deliberate sincerity. Her hand went out impulsively to his holding
the lines, resting on top of it for a moment with quick, firm pressure.
Her reward was a smile from lips and eyes, as his face turned toward
her.

“Gee!” he exclaimed. “I never talk a streak like this to anybody. I just
hold my hush an' keep my thinks to myself. But, somehow, I guess it's
funny, I kind of have a feelin' I want to make good with you. An' that's
why I'm tellin' you my thinks. Anybody can dance.”

The way led uptown, past the City Hall and the Fourteenth Street
skyscrapers, and out Broadway to Mountain View. Turning to the right
at the cemetery, they climbed the Piedmont Heights to Blair Park and
plunged into the green coolness of Jack Hayes Canyon. Saxon could not
suppress her surprise and joy at the quickness with which they covered
the ground.

“They are beautiful,” she said. “I never dreamed I'd ever ride behind
horses like them. I'm afraid I'll wake up now and find it's a dream.
You know, I dream horses all the time. I'd give anything to own one some
time.”

“It's funny, ain't it?” Billy answered. “I like horses that way. The
boss says I'm a wooz at horses. An' I know he's a dub. He don't know the
first thing. An' yet he owns two hundred big heavy draughts besides this
light drivin' pair, an' I don't own one.”

“Yet God makes the horses,” Saxon said.

“It's a sure thing the boss don't. Then how does he have so many?--two
hundred of 'em, I'm tellin' you. He thinks he likes horses. Honest to
God, Saxon, he don't like all his horses as much as I like the last
hair on the last tail of the scrubbiest of the bunch. Yet they're his.
Wouldn't it jar you?”

“Wouldn't it?” Saxon laughed appreciatively. “I just love fancy
shirtwaists, an' I spent my life ironing some of the beautifullest I've
ever seen. It's funny, an' it isn't fair.”

Billy gritted his teeth in another of his rages.

“An' the way some of them women gets their shirtwaists. It makes me
sick, thinkin' of you ironin' 'em. You know what I mean, Saxon. They
ain't no use wastin' words over it. You know. I know. Everybody knows.
An' it's a hell of a world if men an' women sometimes can't talk to each
other about such things.” His manner was almost apologetic yet it was
defiantly and assertively right. “I never talk this way to other girls.
They'd think I'm workin up to designs on 'em. They make me sick the way
they're always lookin' for them designs. But you're different. I can talk
to you that way. I know I've got to. It's the square thing. You're like
Billy Murphy, or any other man a man can talk to.”

She sighed with a great happiness, and looked at him with unconscious,
love-shining eyes.

“It's the same way with me,” she said. “The fellows I've run with I've
never dared let talk about such things, because I knew they'd take
advantage of it. Why, all the time, with them, I've a feeling that we're
cheating and lying to each other, playing a game like at a masquerade
ball.” She paused for a moment, hesitant and debating, then went on in
a queer low voice. “I haven't been asleep. I've seen... and heard.
I've had my chances, when I was that tired of the laundry I'd have done
almost anything. I could have got those fancy shirtwaists... an' all the
rest... and maybe a horse to ride. There was a bank cashier... married,
too, if you please. He talked to me straight out. I didn't count,
you know. I wasn't a girl, with a girl's feelings, or anything. I was
nobody. It was just like a business talk. I learned about men from him.
He told me what he'd do. He...”

Her voice died away in sadness, and in the silence she could hear Billy
grit his teeth.

“You can't tell me,” he cried. “I know. It's a dirty world--an unfair,
lousy world. I can't make it out. They's no squareness in it.--Women,
with the best that's in 'em, bought an' sold like horses. I don't
understand women that way. I don't understand men that way. I can't
see how a man gets anything but cheated when he buys such things. It's
funny, ain't it? Take my boss an' his horses. He owns women, too. He
might a-owned you, just because he's got the price. An', Saxon, you was
made for fancy shirtwaists an' all that, but, honest to God, I can't see
you payin' for them that way. It'd be a crime--”

He broke off abruptly and reined in the horses. Around a sharp turn,
speeding down the grade upon them, had appeared an automobile. With
slamming of brakes it was brought to a stop, while the faces of the
occupants took new lease of interest of life and stared at the young man
and woman in the light rig that barred the way. Billy held up his hand.

“Take the outside, sport,” he said to the chauffeur.

“Nothin' doin', kiddo,” came the answer, as the chauffeur measured with
hard, wise eyes the crumbling edge of the road and the downfall of the
outside bank.

“Then we camp,” Billy announced cheerfully. “I know the rules of the
road. These animals ain't automobile broke altogether, an' if you think
I'm goin' to have 'em shy off the grade you got another guess comin'.”

A confusion of injured protestation arose from those that sat in the
car.

“You needn't be a road-hog because you're a Rube,” said the chauffeur.
“We ain't a-goin' to hurt your horses. Pull out so we can pass. If you
don't...”

“That'll do you, sport,” was Billy's retort. “You can't talk that way to
yours truly. I got your number an' your tag, my son. You're standin' on
your foot. Back up the grade an' get off of it. Stop on the outside at
the first psssin'-place an' we'll pass you. You've got the juice. Throw
on the reverse.”

After a nervous consultation, the chauffeur obeyed, and the car backed
up the hill and out of sight around the turn.

“Them cheap skates,” Billy sneered to Saxon, “with a couple of gallons
of gasoline an' the price of a machine a-thinkin' they own the roads
your folks an' my folks made.”

“Talkin' all night about it?” came the chauffeur's voice from around the
bend. “Get a move on. You can pass.”

“Get off your foot,” Billy retorted contemptuously. “I'm a-comin' when
I'm ready to come, an' if you ain't given room enough I'll go clean over
you an' your load of chicken meat.”

He slightly slacked the reins on the restless, head-tossing animals, and
without need of chirrup they took the weight of the light vehicle and
passed up the hill and apprehensively on the inside of the purring
machine.

“Where was we?” Billy queried, as the clear road showed in front. “Yep,
take my boss. Why should he own two hundred horses, an' women, an' the
rest, an' you an' me own nothin'?”

“You own your silk, Billy,” she said softly.

“An' you yours. Yet we sell it to 'em like it was cloth across the
counter at so much a yard. I guess you're hep to what a few more years
in the laundry'll do to you. Take me. I'm sellin' my silk slow every day
I work. See that little finger?” He shifted the reins to one hand for a
moment and held up the free hand for inspection. “I can't straighten
it like the others, an' it's growin'. I never put it out fightin'. The
teamin's done it. That's silk gone across the counter, that's all. Ever
see a old four-horse teamster's hands? They look like claws they're that
crippled an' twisted.”

“Things weren't like that in the old days when our folks crossed the
plains,” she answered. “They might a-got their fingers twisted, but they
owned the best goin' in the way of horses and such.”

“Sure. They worked for themselves. They twisted their fingers for
themselves. But I'm twistin' my fingers for my boss. Why, d'ye know,
Saxon, his hands is soft as a woman's that's never done any work. Yet
he owns the horses an' the stables, an' never does a tap of work, an'
I manage to scratch my meal-ticket an' my clothes. It's got my goat
the way things is run. An' who runs 'em that way? That's what I want to
know. Times has changed. Who changed 'em?”

“God didn't.”

“You bet your life he didn't. An' that's another thing that gets me.
Who's God anyway? If he's runnin' things--an' what good is he if he
ain't?--then why does he let my boss, an' men like that cashier you
mentioned, why does he let them own the horses, an' buy the women, the
nice little girls that oughta be lovin' their own husbands, an' havin'
children they're not ashamed of, an' just bein' happy accordin' to their
nature?”



CHAPTER XI

The horses, resting frequently and lathered by the work, had climbed the
steep grade of the old road to Moraga Valley, and on the divide of the
Contra Costa hills the way descended sharply through the green and sunny
stillness of Redwood Canyon.

“Say, ain't it swell?” Billy queried, with a wave of his hand indicating
the circled tree-groups, the trickle of unseen water, and the summer hum
of bees.

“I love it,” Saxon affirmed. “It makes me want to live in the country,
and I never have.”

“Me, too, Saxon. I've never lived in the country in my life--an' all my
folks was country folks.”

“No cities then. Everybody lived in the country.”

“I guess you're right,” he nodded. “They just had to live in the
country.”

There was no brake on the light carriage, and Billy became absorbed in
managing his team down the steep, winding road. Saxon leaned back, eyes
closed, with a feeling of ineffable rest. Time and again he shot glances
at her closed eyes.

“What's the matter?” he asked finally, in mild alarm. “You ain't sick?”

“It's so beautiful I'm afraid to look,” she answered. “It's so brave it
hurts.”

“BRAVE?--now that's funny.”

“Isn't it? But it just makes me feel that way. It's brave. Now the
houses and streets and things in the city aren't brave. But this is. I
don't know why. It just is.”

“By golly, I think you're right,” he exclaimed. “It strikes me that way,
now you speak of it. They ain't no games or tricks here, no cheatin'
an' no lyin'. Them trees just stand up natural an' strong an' clean
like young boys their first time in the ring before they've learned its
rottenness an' how to double-cross an' lay down to the bettin' odds an'
the fight-fans. Yep; it is brave. Say, Saxon, you see things, don't you?”
 His pause was almost wistful, and he looked at her and studied her with
a caressing softness that ran through her in resurgent thrills. “D'ye
know, I'd just like you to see me fight some time--a real fight, with
something doin' every moment. I'd be proud to death to do it for you.
An' I'd sure fight some with you lookin' on an' understandin'. That'd be
a fight what is, take it from me. An' that's funny, too. I never wanted
to fight before a woman in my life. They squeal and screech an' don't
understand. But you'd understand. It's dead open an' shut you would.”

A little later, swinging along the flat of the valley, through the
little clearings of the farmers and the ripe grain-stretches golden in
the sunshine, Billy turned to Saxon again.

“Say, you've ben in love with fellows, lots of times. Tell me about it.
What's it like?”

She shook her head slowly.

“I only thought I was in love--and not many times, either--”

“Many times!” he cried.

“Not really ever,” she assured him, secretly exultant at his unconscious
jealousy. “I never was really in love. If I had been I'd be married
now. You see, I couldn't see anything else to it but to marry a man if I
loved him.”

“But suppose he didn't love you?”

“Oh, I don't know,” she smiled, half with facetiousness and half with
certainty and pride. “I think I could make him love me.”

“I guess you sure could,” Billy proclaimed enthusiastically.

“The trouble is,” she went on, “the men that loved me I never cared for
that way.--Oh, look!”

A cottontail rabbit had scuttled across the road, and a tiny dust cloud
lingered like smoke, marking the way of his flight. At the next turn a
dozen quail exploded into the air from under the noses of the horses.
Billy and Saxon exclaimed in mutual delight.

“Gee,” he muttered, “I almost wisht I'd ben born a farmer. Folks wasn't
made to live in cities.”

“Not our kind, at least,” she agreed. Followed a pause and a long sigh.
“It's all so beautiful. It would be a dream just to live all your life
in it. I'd like to be an Indian squaw sometimes.”

Several times Billy checked himself on the verge of speech.

“About those fellows you thought you was in love with,” he said finally.
“You ain't told me, yet.”

“You want to know?” she asked. “They didn't amount to anything.”

“Of course I want to know. Go ahead. Fire away.”

“Well, first there was Al Stanley--”

“What did he do for a livin'?” Billy demanded, almost as with authority.

“He was a gambler.”

Billy's face abruptly stiffened, and she could see his eyes cloudy with
doubt in the quick glance he flung at her.

“Oh, it was all right,” she laughed. “I was only eight years old. You
see, I'm beginning at the beginning. It was after my mother died and
when I was adopted by Cady. He kept a hotel and saloon. It was down
in Los Angeles. Just a small hotel. Workingmen, just common laborers,
mostly, and some railroad men, stopped at it, and I guess Al Stanley
got his share of their wages. He was so handsome and so quiet and
soft-spoken. And he had the nicest eyes and the softest, cleanest hands.
I can see them now. He played with me sometimes, in the afternoon, and
gave me candy and little presents. He used to sleep most of the day. I
didn't know why, then. I thought he was a fairy prince in disguise. And
then he got killed, right in the bar-room, but first he killed the man
that killed him. So that was the end of that love affair.

“Next was after the asylum, when I was thirteen and living with my
brother--I've lived with him ever since. He was a boy that drove a
bakery wagon. Almost every morning, on the way to school, I used to
pass him. He would come driving down Wood Street and turn in on Twelfth.
Maybe it was because he drove a horse that attracted me. Anyway, I
must have loved him for a couple of months. Then he lost his job, or
something, for another boy drove the wagon. And we'd never even spoken
to each other.

“Then there was a bookkeeper when I was sixteen. I seem to run to
bookkeepers. It was a bookkeeper at the laundry that Charley Long beat
up. This other one was when I was working in Hickmeyer's Cannery. He had
soft hands, too. But I quickly got all I wanted of him. He was... well,
anyway, he had ideas like your boss. And I never really did love him,
truly and honest, Billy. I felt from the first that he wasn't just
right. And when I was working in the paper-box factory I thought I loved
a clerk in Kahn's Emporium--you know, on Eleventh and Washington. He was
all right. That was the trouble with him. He was too much all right. He
didn't have any life in him, any go. He wanted to marry me, though.
But somehow I couldn't see it. That shows I didn't love him. He was
narrow-chested and skinny, and his hands were always cold and fishy. But
my! he could dress--just like he came out of a bandbox. He said he was
going to drown himself, and all kinds of things, but I broke with him
just the same.

“And after that... well, there isn't any after that. I must have got
particular, I guess, but I didn't see anybody I could love. It seemed
more like a game with the men I met, or a fight. And we never fought
fair on either side. Seemed as if we always had cards up our sleeves. We
weren't honest or outspoken, but instead it seemed as if we were trying
to take advantage of each other. Charley Long was honest, though. And
so was that bank cashier. And even they made me have the fight feeling
harder than ever. All of them always made me feel I had to take care of
myself. They wouldn't. That was sure.”

She stopped and looked with interest at the clean profile of his face as
he watched and guided the horses. He looked at her inquiringly, and her
eyes laughed lazily into his as she stretched her arms.

“That's all,” she concluded. “I've told you everything, which I've never
done before to any one. And it's your turn now.”

“Not much of a turn, Saxon. I've never cared for girls--that is, not
enough to want to marry 'em. I always liked men better--fellows like
Billy Murphy. Besides, I guess I was too interested in trainin' an'
fightin' to bother with women much. Why, Saxon, honest, while I ain't
ben altogether good--you understand what I mean--just the same I ain't
never talked love to a girl in my life. They was no call to.”

“The girls have loved you just the same,” she teased, while in her heart
was a curious elation at his virginal confession.

He devoted himself to the horses.

“Lots of them,” she urged.

Still he did not reply.

“Now, haven't they?”

“Well, it wasn't my fault,” he said slowly. “If they wanted to look
sideways at me it was up to them. And it was up to me to sidestep if I
wanted to, wasn't it? You've no idea, Saxon, how a prizefighter is run
after. Why, sometimes it's seemed to me that girls an' women ain't got
an ounce of natural shame in their make-up. Oh, I was never afraid of
them, believe muh, but I didn't hanker after 'em. A man's a fool that'd
let them kind get his goat.”

“Maybe you haven't got love in you,” she challenged.

“Maybe I haven't,” was his discouraging reply. “Anyway, I don't
see myself lovin' a girl that runs after me. It's all right for
Charley-boys, but a man that is a man don't like bein' chased by women.”

“My mother always said that love was the greatest thing in the world,”
 Saxon argued. “She wrote poems about it, too. Some of them were
published in the San Jose Mercury.”

“What do you think about it?”

“Oh, I don't know,” she baffled, meeting his eyes with another lazy
smile. “All I know is it's pretty good to be alive a day like this.”

“On a trip like this--you bet it is,” he added promptly.

At one o'clock Billy turned off the road and drove into an open space
among the trees.

“Here's where we eat,” he announced. “I thought it'd be better to have
a lunch by ourselves than stop at one of these roadside dinner counters.
An' now, just to make everything safe an' comfortable, I'm goin' to
unharness the horses. We got lots of time. You can get the lunch basket
out an' spread it on the lap-robe.”

As Saxon unpacked the basket she was appalled at his extravagance.
She spread an amazing array of ham and chicken sandwiches, crab salad,
hard-boiled eggs, pickled pigs' feet, ripe olives and dill pickles,
Swiss cheese, salted almonds, oranges and bananas, and several pint
bottles of beer. It was the quantity as well as the variety that
bothered her. It had the appearance of a reckless attempt to buy out a
whole delicatessen shop.

“You oughtn't to blow yourself that way,” she reproved him as he sat
down beside her. “Why it's enough for half a dozen bricklayers.”

“It's all right, isn't it?”

“Yes,” she acknowledged. “But that's the trouble. It's too much so.”

“Then it's all right,” he concluded. “I always believe in havin' plenty.
Have some beer to wash the dust away before we begin? Watch out for the
glasses. I gotta return them.”

Later, the meal finished, he lay on his back, smoking a cigarette, and
questioned her about her earlier history. She had been telling him of
her life in her brother's house, where she paid four dollars and a half
a week board. At fifteen she had graduated from grammar school and gone
to work in the jute mills for four dollars a week, three of which she
had paid to Sarah.

“How about that saloonkeeper?” Billy asked. “How come it he adopted
you?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don't know, except that all my relatives
were hard up. It seemed they just couldn't get on. They managed to
scratch a lean living for themselves, and that was all. Cady--he was the
saloonkeeper--had been a soldier in my father's company, and he always
swore by Captain Kit, which was their nickname for him. My father had
kept the surgeons from amputating his leg in the war, and he never
forgot it. He was making money in the hotel and saloon, and I found out
afterward he helped out a lot to pay the doctors and to bury my mother
alongside of father. I was to go to Uncle Will--that was my mother's
wish; but there had been fighting up in the Ventura Mountains where his
ranch was, and men had been killed. It was about fences and cattlemen
or something, and anyway he was in jail a long time, and when he got
his freedom the lawyers had got his ranch. He was an old man, then, and
broken, and his wife took sick, and he got a job as night watchman
for forty dollars a month. So he couldn't do anything for me, and Cady
adopted me.

“Cady was a good man, if he did run a saloon. His wife was a big,
handsome-looking woman. I don't think she was all right... and I've
heard so since. But she was good to me. I don't care what they say about
her, or what she was. She was awful good to me. After he died, she went
altogether bad, and so I went into the orphan asylum. It wasn't any too
good there, and I had three years of it. And then Tom had married
and settled down to steady work, and he took me out to live with him.
And--well, I've been working pretty steady ever since.”

She gazed sadly away across the fields until her eyes came to rest on
a fence bright-splashed with poppies at its base. Billy, who from his
supine position had been looking up at her, studying and pleasuring in
the pointed oval of her woman's face, reached his hand out slowly as he
murmured:

“You poor little kid.”

His hand closed sympathetically on her bare forearm, and as she looked
down to greet his eyes she saw in them surprise and delight.

“Say, ain't your skin cool though,” he said. “Now me, I'm always warm.
Feel my hand.”

It was warmly moist, and she noted microscopic beads of sweat on his
forehead and clean-shaven upper lip.

“My, but you are sweaty.”

She bent to him and with her handkerchief dabbed his lip and forehead
dry, then dried his palms.

“I breathe through my skin, I guess,” he explained. “The wise guys in
the trainin' camps and gyms say it's a good sign for health. But somehow
I'm sweatin' more than usual now. Funny, ain't it?”

She had been forced to unclasp his hand from her arm in order to dry it,
and when she finished, it returned to its old position.

“But, say, ain't your skin cool,” he repeated with renewed wonder. “Soft
as velvet, too, an' smooth as silk. It feels great.”

Gently explorative, he slid his hand from wrist to elbow and came to
rest half way back. Tired and languid from the morning in the sun, she
found herself thrilling to his touch and half-dreamily deciding that
here was a man she could love, hands and all.

“Now I've taken the cool all out of that spot.” He did not look up to
her, and she could see the roguish smile that curled on his lips. “So I
guess I'll try another.”

He shifted his hand along her arm with soft sensuousness, and she,
looking down at his lips, remembered the long tingling they had given
hers the first time they had met.

“Go on and talk,” he urged, after a delicious five minutes of silence.
“I like to watch your lips talking. It's funny, but every move they make
looks like a tickly kiss.”

Greatly she wanted to stay where she was. Instead, she said:

“If I talk, you won't like what I say.”

“Go on,” he insisted. “You can't say anything I won't like.”

“Well, there's some poppies over there by the fence I want to pick. And
then it's time for us to be going.”

“I lose,” he laughed. “But you made twenty-five tickle kisses just the
same. I counted 'em. I'll tell you what: you sing 'When the Harvest Days
Are Over,' and let me have your other cool arm while you're doin' it,
and then we'll go.”

She sang looking down into his eyes, which were centered, not on hers,
but on her lips. When she finished, she slipped his hands from her arms
and got up. He was about to start for the horses, when she held her
jacket out to him. Despite the independence natural to a girl who
earned her own living, she had an innate love of the little services and
finenesses; and, also, she remembered from her childhood the talk by the
pioneer women of the courtesy and attendance of the caballeros of the
Spanish-California days.

Sunset greeted them when, after a wide circle to the east and south,
they cleared the divide of the Contra Costa hills and began dropping
down the long grade that led past Redwood Peak to Fruitvale. Beneath
them stretched the flatlands to the bay, checkerboarded into fields and
broken by the towns of Elmhurst, San Leandro, and Haywards. The smoke of
Oakland filled the western sky with haze and murk, while beyond, across
the bay, they could see the first winking lights of San Francisco.

Darkness was on them, and Billy had become curiously silent. For half
an hour he had given no recognition of her existence save once, when
the chill evening wind caused him to tuck the robe tightly about her
and himself. Half a dozen times Saxon found herself on the verge of the
remark, “What's on your mind?” but each time let it remain unuttered.
She sat very close to him. The warmth of their bodies intermingled, and
she was aware of a great restfulness and content.

“Say, Saxon,” he began abruptly. “It's no use my holdin' it in any
longer. It's ben in my mouth all day, ever since lunch. What's the
matter with you an' me gettin' married?”

She knew, very quietly and very gladly, that he meant it. Instinctively
she was impelled to hold off, to make him woo her, to make herself more
desirably valuable ere she yielded. Further, her woman's sensitiveness
and pride were offended. She had never dreamed of so forthright and bald
a proposal from the man to whom she would give herself. The simplicity
and directness of Billy's proposal constituted almost a hurt. On the
other hand she wanted him so much--how much she had not realized until
now, when he had so unexpectedly made himself accessible.

“Well you gotta say something, Saxon. Hand it to me, good or bad; but
anyway hand it to me. An' just take into consideration that I love you.
Why, I love you like the very devil, Saxon. I must, because I'm askin'
you to marry me, an' I never asked any girl that before.”

Another silence fell, and Saxon found herself dwelling on the warmth,
tingling now, under the lap-robe. When she realized whither her thoughts
led, she blushed guiltily in the darkness.

“How old are you, Billy?” she questioned, with a suddenness and
irrelevance as disconcerting as his first words had been.

“Twenty-two,” he answered.

“I am twenty-four.”

“As if I didn't know. When you left the orphan asylum and how old you
were, how long you worked in the jute mills, the cannery, the paper-box
factory, the laundry--maybe you think I can't do addition. I knew how
old you was, even to your birthday.”

“That doesn't change the fact that I'm two years older.”

“What of it? If it counted for anything, I wouldn't be lovin' you, would
I? Your mother was dead right. Love's the big stuff. It's what counts.
Don't you see? I just love you, an' I gotta have you. It's natural, I
guess; and I've always found with horses, dogs, and other folks, that
what's natural is right. There's no gettin' away from it, Saxon; I gotta
have you, an' I'm just hopin' hard you gotta have me. Maybe my hands
ain't soft like bookkeepers' an' clerks, but they can work for you, an'
fight like Sam Hill for you, and, Saxon, they can love you.”

The old sex antagonism which she had always experienced with men seemed
to have vanished. She had no sense of being on the defensive. This was
no game. It was what she had been looking for and dreaming about. Before
Billy she was defenseless, and there was an all-satisfaction in the
knowledge. She could deny him nothing. Not even if he proved to be
like the others. And out of the greatness of the thought rose a greater
thought--he would not so prove himself.

She did not speak. Instead, in a glow of spirit and flesh, she reached
out to his left hand and gently tried to remove it from the rein. He did
not understand; but when she persisted he shifted the rein to his right
and let her have her will with the other hand. Her head bent over it,
and she kissed the teamster callouses.

For the moment he was stunned.

“You mean it?” he stammered.

For reply, she kissed the hand again and murmured:

“I love your hands, Billy. To me they are the most beautiful hands in
the world, and it would take hours of talking to tell you all they mean
to me.”

“Whoa!” he called to the horses.

He pulled them in to a standstill, soothed them with his voice, and made
the reins fast around the whip. Then he turned to her with arms around
her and lips to lips.

“Oh, Billy, I'll make you a good wife,” she sobbed, when the kiss was
broken.

He kissed her wet eyes and found her lips again.

“Now you know what I was thinkin' and why I was sweatin' when we was
eatin' lunch. Just seemed I couldn't hold in much longer from tellin'
you. Why, you know, you looked good to me from the first moment I
spotted you.”

“And I think I loved you from that first day, too, Billy. And I was so
proud of you all that day, you were so kind and gentle, and so strong,
and the way the men all respected you and the girls all wanted you, and
the way you fought those three Irishmen when I was behind the picnic
table. I couldn't love or marry a man I wasn't proud of, and I'm so
proud of you, so proud.”

“Not half as much as I am right now of myself,” he answered, “for having
won you. It's too good to be true. Maybe the alarm clock'll go off and
wake me up in a couple of minutes. Well, anyway, if it does, I'm goin'
to make the best of them two minutes first. Watch out I don't eat you,
I'm that hungry for you.”

He smothered her in an embrace, holding her so tightly to him that it
almost hurt. After what was to her an age-long period of bliss, his arms
relaxed and he seemed to make an effort to draw himself together.

 “An' the clock ain't gone off yet,” he whispered against her
cheek. “And it's a dark night, an' there's Fruitvale right ahead, an' if
there ain't King and Prince standin' still in the middle of the road. I
never thought the time'd come when I wouldn't want to take the ribbons
on a fine pair of horses. But this is that time. I just can't let go
of you, and I've gotta some time to-night. It hurts worse'n poison, but
here goes.”

He restored her to herself, tucked the disarranged robe about her, and
chirruped to the impatient team.

Half an hour later he called “Whoa!”

“I know I'm awake now, but I don't know but maybe I dreamed all the
rest, and I just want to make sure.”

And again he made the reins fast and took her in his arms.



CHAPTER XII

The days flew by for Saxon. She worked on steadily at the laundry,
even doing more overtime than usual, and all her free waking hours were
devoted to preparations for the great change and to Billy. He had proved
himself God's own impetuous lover by insisting on getting married
the next day after the proposal, and then by resolutely refusing to
compromise on more than a week's delay.

“Why wait?” he demanded. “We're not gettin' any younger so far as I can
notice, an' think of all we lose every day we wait.”

In the end, he gave in to a month, which was well, for in two weeks he
was transferred, with half a dozen other drivers, to work from the big
stables of Corberly and Morrison in West Oakland. House-hunting in the
other end of town ceased, and on Pine Street, between Fifth and Fourth,
and in immediate proximity to the great Southern Pacific railroad
yards, Billy and Saxon rented a neat cottage of four small rooms for ten
dollars a month.

“Dog-cheap is what I call it, when I think of the small rooms I've ben
soaked for,” was Billy's judgment. “Look at the one I got now, not as
big as the smallest here, an' me payin' six dollars a month for it.”

“But it's furnished,” Saxon reminded him. “You see, that makes a
difference.”

But Billy didn't see.

“I ain't much of a scholar, Saxon, but I know simple arithmetic; I've
soaked my watch when I was hard up, and I can calculate interest. How
much do you figure it will cost to furnish the house, carpets on the
floor, linoleum on the kitchen, and all?”

“We can do it nicely for three hundred dollars,” she answered. “I've
been thinking it over and I'm sure we can do it for that.”

“Three hundred,” he muttered, wrinkling his brows with concentration.
“Three hundred, say at six per cent.--that'd be six cents on the dollar,
sixty cents on ten dollars, six dollars on the hundred, on three hundred
eighteen dollars. Say--I'm a bear at multiplyin' by ten. Now divide
eighteen by twelve, that'd be a dollar an' a half a month interest.”
 He stopped, satisfied that he had proved his contention. Then his face
quickened with a fresh thought. “Hold on! That ain't all. That'd be
the interest on the furniture for four rooms. Divide by four. What's a
dollar an' a half divided by four?”

“Four into fifteen, three times and three to carry,” Saxon recited
glibly. “Four into thirty is seven, twenty-eight, two to carry; and
two-fourths is one-half. There you are.”

“Gee! You're the real bear at figures.” He hesitated. “I didn't follow
you. How much did you say it was?”

“Thirty-seven and a half cents.”

“Ah, ha! Now we'll see how much I've ben gouged for my one room.
Ten dollars a month for four rooms is two an' a half for one. Add
thirty-seven an' a half cents interest on furniture, an' that makes
two dollars an' eighty-seven an' a half cents. Subtract from six
dollars....”

“Three dollars and twelve and a half cents,” she supplied quickly.

“There we are! Three dollars an' twelve an' a half cents I'm jiggered
out of on the room I'm rentin'. Say! Bein' married is like savin' money,
ain't it?”

“But furniture wears out, Billy.”

“By golly, I never thought of that. It ought to be figured, too. Anyway,
we've got a snap here, and next Saturday afternoon you've gotta get off
from the laundry so as we can go an' buy our furniture. I saw Salinger's
last night. I give'm fifty down, and the rest installment plan, ten
dollars a month. In twenty-five months the furniture's ourn. An'
remember, Saxon, you wanta buy everything you want, no matter how much
it costs. No scrimpin' on what's for you an' me. Get me?”

She nodded, with no betrayal on her face of the myriad secret economies
that filled her mind. A hint of moisture glistened in her eyes.

“You're so good to me, Billy,” she murmured, as she came to him and was
met inside his arms.

“So you've gone an' done it,” Mary commented, one morning in the
laundry. They had not been at work ten minutes ere her eye had glimpsed
the topaz ring on the third finger of Saxon's left hand. “Who's the
lucky one? Charley Long or Billy Roberts?”

“Billy,” was the answer.

“Huh! Takin' a young boy to raise, eh?”

Saxon showed that the stab had gone home, and Mary was all contrition.

“Can't you take a josh? I'm glad to death at the news. Billy's a awful
good man, and I'm glad to see you get him. There ain't many like him
knockin' 'round, an' they ain't to be had for the askin'. An' you're
both lucky. You was just made for each other, an' you'll make him a
better wife than any girl I know. When is it to be?”

Going home from the laundry a few days later, Saxon encountered Charley
Long. He blocked the sidewalk, and compelled speech with her.

“So you're runnin' with a prizefighter,” he sneered. “A blind man can
see your finish.”

For the first time she was unafraid of this big-bodied, black-browed man
with the hairy-matted hands and fingers. She held up her left hand.

“See that? It's something, with all your strength, that you could never
put on my finger. Billy Roberts put it on inside a week. He got your
number, Charley Long, and at the same time he got me.”

“Skiddoo for you,” Long retorted. “Twenty-three's your number.”

“He's not like you,” Saxon went on. “He's a man, every bit of him, a
fine, clean man.”

Long laughed hoarsely.

“He's got your goat all right.”

“And yours,” she flashed back.

“I could tell you things about him. Saxon, straight, he ain't no good.
If I was to tell you--”

“You'd better get out of my way,” she interrupted, “or I'll tell him,
and you know what you'll get, you great big bully.”

Long shuffled uneasily, then reluctantly stepped aside.

“You're a caution,” he said, half admiringly.

“So's Billy Roberts,” she laughed, and continued on her way. After half
a dozen steps she stopped. “Say,” she called.

The big blacksmith turned toward her with eagerness.

“About a block back,” she said, “I saw a man with hip disease. You might
go and beat him up.”

Of one extravagance Saxon was guilty in the course of the brief
engagement period. A full day's wages she spent in the purchase of half
a dozen cabinet photographs of herself. Billy had insisted that life was
unendurable could he not look upon her semblance the last thing when he
went to bed at night and the first thing when he got up in the morning.
In return, his photographs, one conventional and one in the stripped
fighting costume of the ring, ornamented her looking glass. It was while
gazing at the latter that she was reminded of her wonderful mother's
tales of the ancient Saxons and sea-foragers of the English coasts. From
the chest of drawers that had crossed the plains she drew forth another
of her several precious heirlooms--a scrap-book of her mother's in which
was pasted much of the fugitive newspaper verse of pioneer California
days. Also, there were copies of paintings and old wood engravings from
the magazines of a generation and more before.

Saxon ran the pages with familiar fingers and stopped at the picture she
was seeking. Between bold headlands of rock and under a gray cloud-blown
sky, a dozen boats, long and lean and dark, beaked like monstrous birds,
were landing on a foam-whitened beach of sand. The men in the boats,
half naked, huge-muscled and fair-haired, wore winged helmets. In their
hands were swords and spears, and they were leaping, waist-deep, into
the sea-wash and wading ashore. Opposed to them, contesting the landing,
were skin-clad savages, unlike Indians, however, who clustered on the
beach or waded into the water to their knees. The first blows were being
struck, and here and there the bodies of the dead and wounded rolled in
the surf. One fair-haired invader lay across the gunwale of a boat, the
manner of his death told by the arrow that transfixed his breast. In the
air, leaping past him into the water, sword in hand, was Billy. There
was no mistaking it. The striking blondness, the face, the eyes, the
mouth were the same. The very expression on the face was what had been
on Billy's the day of the picnic when he faced the three wild Irishmen.

Somewhere out of the ruck of those warring races had emerged Billy's
ancestors, and hers, was her afterthought, as she closed the book and
put it back in the drawer. And some of those ancestors had made this
ancient and battered chest of drawers which had crossed the salt ocean
and the plains and been pierced by a bullet in the fight with the
Indians at Little Meadow. Almost, it seemed, she could visualize the
women who had kept their pretties and their family homespun in its
drawers--the women of those wandering generations who were grandmothers
and greater great grandmothers of her own mother. Well, she sighed, it
was a good stock to be born of, a hard-working, hard-fighting stock. She
fell to wondering what her life would have been like had she been born
a Chinese woman, or an Italian woman like those she saw, head-shawled
or bareheaded, squat, ungainly and swarthy, who carried great loads
of driftwood on their heads up from the beach. Then she laughed at
her foolishness, remembered Billy and the four-roomed cottage on Pine
Street, and went to bed with her mind filled for the hundredth time with
the details of the furniture.



CHAPTER XIII

“Our cattle were all played out,” Saxon was saying, “and winter was so
near that we couldn't dare try to cross the Great American Desert, so
our train stopped in Salt Lake City that winter. The Mormons hadn't got
bad yet, and they were good to us.”

“You talk as though you were there,” Bert commented.

“My mother was,” Saxon answered proudly. “She was nine years old that
winter.”

They were seated around the table in the kitchen of the little Pine
Street cottage, making a cold lunch of sandwiches, tamales, and bottled
beer. It being Sunday, the four were free from work, and they had come
early, to work harder than on any week day, washing walls and windows,
scrubbing floors, laying carpets and linoleum, hanging curtains, setting
up the stove, putting the kitchen utensils and dishes away, and placing
the furniture.

“Go on with the story, Saxon,” Mary begged. “I'm just dyin' to hear. And
Bert, you just shut up and listen.”

“Well, that winter was when Del Hancock showed up. He was Kentucky born,
but he'd been in the West for years. He was a scout, like Kit Carson,
and he knew him well. Many's a time Kit Carson and he slept under the
same blankets. They were together to California and Oregon with General
Fremont. Well, Del Hancock was passing on his way through Salt Lake,
going I don't know where to raise a company of Rocky Mountain trappers
to go after beaver some new place he knew about. He was a handsome man.
He wore his hair long like in pictures, and had a silk sash around
his waist he'd learned to wear in California from the Spanish, and two
revolvers in his belt. Any woman 'd fall in love with him first sight.
Well, he saw Sadie, who was my mother's oldest sister, and I guess she
looked good to him, for he stopped right there in Salt Lake and didn't
go a step. He was a great Indian fighter, too, and I heard my Aunt Villa
say, when I was a little girl, that he had the blackest, brightest eyes,
and that the way he looked was like an eagle. He'd fought duels, too,
the way they did in those days, and he wasn't afraid of anything.

“Sadie was a beauty, and she flirted with him and drove him crazy. Maybe
she wasn't sure of her own mind, I don't know. But I do know that she
didn't give in as easy as I did to Billy. Finally, he couldn't stand it
any more. He rode up that night on horseback, wild as could be. 'Sadie,'
he said, 'if you don't promise to marry me to-morrow, I'll shoot myself
to-night right back of the corral.' And he'd have done it, too, and
Sadie knew it, and said she would. Didn't they make love fast in those
days?”

“Oh, I don't know,” Mary sniffed. “A week after you first laid eyes on
Billy you was engaged. Did Billy say he was going to shoot himself back
of the laundry if you turned him down?”

“I didn't give him a chance,” Saxon confessed. “Anyway Del Hancock and
Aunt Sadie got married next day. And they were very happy afterward,
only she died. And after that he was killed, with General Custer and all
the rest, by the Indians. He was an old man by then, but I guess he
got his share of Indians before they got him. Men like him always died
fighting, and they took their dead with them. I used to know Al Stanley
when I was a little girl. He was a gambler, but he was game. A railroad
man shot him in the back when he was sitting at a table. That shot
killed him, too. He died in about two seconds. But before he died he'd
pulled his gun and put three bullets into the man that killed him.”

“I don't like fightin',” Mary protested. “It makes me nervous. Bert
gives me the willies the way he's always lookin' for trouble. There
ain't no sense in it.”

“And I wouldn't give a snap of my fingers for a man without fighting
spirit,” Saxon answered. “Why, we wouldn't be here to-day if it wasn't
for the fighting spirit of our people before us.”

“You've got the real goods of a fighter in Billy,” Bert assured her; “a
yard long and a yard wide and genuine A Number One, long-fleeced wool.
Billy's a Mohegan with a scalp-lock, that's what he is. And when he gets
his mad up it's a case of get out from under or something will fall on
you--hard.”

“Just like that,” Mary added.

Billy, who had taken no part in the conversation, got up, glanced into
the bedroom off the kitchen, went into the parlor and the bedroom off
the parlor, then returned and stood gazing with puzzled brows into the
kitchen bedroom.

“What's eatin' you, old man,” Bert queried. “You look as though you'd
lost something or was markin' a three-way ticket. What you got on your
chest? Cough it up.”

“Why, I'm just thinkin' where in Sam Hill's the bed an' stuff for the
back bedroom.”

“There isn't any,” Saxon explained. “We didn't order any.”

“Then I'll see about it to-morrow.”

“What d'ye want another bed for?” asked Bert. “Ain't one bed enough for
the two of you?”

“You shut up, Bert!” Mary cried. “Don't get raw.”

“Whoa, Mary!” Bert grinned. “Back up. You're in the wrong stall as
usual.”

“We don't need that room,” Saxon was saying to Billy. “And so I didn't
plan any furniture. That money went to buy better carpets and a better
stove.”

Billy came over to her, lifted her from the chair, and seated himself
with her on his knees.

“That's right, little girl. I'm glad you did. The best for us every
time. And to-morrow night I want you to run up with me to Salinger's
an' pick out a good bedroom set an' carpet for that room. And it must be
good. Nothin' snide.”

“It will cost fifty dollars,” she objected.

“That's right,” he nodded. “Make it cost fifty dollars and not a cent
less. We're goin' to have the best. And what's the good of an empty
room? It'd make the house look cheap. Why, I go around now, seein' this
little nest just as it grows an' softens, day by day, from the day we
paid the cash money down an' nailed the keys. Why, almost every moment
I'm drivin' the horses, all day long, I just keep on seein' this nest.
And when we're married, I'll go on seein' it. And I want to see it
complete. If that room'd be bare-floored an' empty, I'd see nothin' but
it and its bare floor all day long. I'd be cheated. The house'd be
a lie. Look at them curtains you put up in it, Saxon. That's to make
believe to the neighbors that it's furnished. Saxon, them curtains are
lyin' about that room, makin' a noise for every one to hear that that
room's furnished. Nitsky for us. I'm goin' to see that them curtains
tell the truth.”

“You might rent it,” Bert suggested. “You're close to the railroad
yards, and it's only two blocks to a restaurant.”

“Not on your life. I ain't marryin' Saxon to take in lodgers. If I can't
take care of her, d'ye know what I'll do? Go down to Long Wharf, say
'Here goes nothin',' an' jump into the bay with a stone tied to my neck.
Ain't I right, Saxon?”

It was contrary to her prudent judgment, but it fanned her pride. She
threw her arms around her lover's neck, and said, ere she kissed him:

“You're the boss, Billy. What you say goes, and always will go.”

“Listen to that!” Bert gibed to Mary. “That's the stuff. Saxon's onto
her job.”

“I guess we'll talk things over together first before ever I do
anything,” Billy was saying to Saxon.

“Listen to that,” Mary triumphed. “You bet the man that marries me'll
have to talk things over first.”

“Billy's only givin' her hot air,” Bert plagued. “They all do it before
they're married.”

Mary sniffed contemptuously.

“I'll bet Saxon leads him around by the nose. And I'm goin' to say, loud
an' strong, that I'll lead the man around by the nose that marries me.”

“Not if you love him,” Saxon interposed.

“All the more reason,” Mary pursued.

Bert assumed an expression and attitude of mournful dejection.

“Now you see why me an' Mary don't get married,” he said. “I'm some big
Indian myself, an' I'll be everlastingly jiggerooed if I put up for a
wigwam I can't be boss of.”

“And I'm no squaw,” Mary retaliated, “an' I wouldn't marry a big buck
Indian if all the rest of the men in the world was dead.”

“Well this big buck Indian ain't asked you yet.”

“He knows what he'd get if he did.”

“And after that maybe he'll think twice before he does ask you.”

Saxon, intent on diverting the conversation into pleasanter channels,
clapped her hands as if with sudden recollection.

“Oh! I forgot! I want to show you something.” From her purse she drew
a slender ring of plain gold and passed it around. “My mother's wedding
ring. I've worn it around my neck always, like a locket. I cried for it
so in the orphan asylum that the matron gave it back for me to wear. And
now, just to think, after next Tuesday I'll be wearing it on my finger.
Look, Billy, see the engraving on the inside.”

“C to D, 1879,” he read.

“Carlton to Daisy--Carlton was my father's first name. And now, Billy,
you've got to get it engraved for you and me.”

Mary was all eagerness and delight.

“Oh, it's fine,” she cried. “W to S, 1907.”

Billy considered a moment.

“No, that wouldn't be right, because I'm not giving it to Saxon.”

“I'll tell you what,” Saxon said. “W and S.”

“Nope.” Billy shook his head. “S and W, because you come first with me.”

“If I come first with you, you come first with us. Billy, dear, I insist
on W and S.”

“You see,” Mary said to Bert. “Having her own way and leading him by the
nose already.”

Saxon acknowledged the sting.

“Anyway you want, Billy,” she surrendered. His arms tightened about her.

“We'll talk it over first, I guess.”



CHAPTER XIV

Sarah was conservative. Worse, she had crystallized at the end of her
love-time with the coming of her first child. After that she was as
set in her ways as plaster in a mold. Her mold was the prejudices and
notions of her girlhood and the house she lived in. So habitual was
she that any change in the customary round assumed the proportions of
a revolution. Tom had gone through many of these revolutions, three of
them when he moved house. Then his stamina broke, and he never moved
house again.

So it was that Saxon had held back the announcement of her approaching
marriage until it was unavoidable. She expected a scene, and she got it.

“A prizefighter, a hoodlum, a plug-ugly,” Sarah sneered, after she had
exhausted herself of all calamitous forecasts of her own future and the
future of her children in the absence of Saxon's weekly four dollars and
a half. “I don't know what your mother'd thought if she lived to see
the day when you took up with a tough like Bill Roberts. Bill! Why, your
mother was too refined to associate with a man that was called Bill. And
all I can say is you can say good-bye to silk stockings and your three
pair of shoes. It won't be long before you'll think yourself lucky to go
sloppin' around in Congress gaiters and cotton stockin's two pair for a
quarter.”

“Oh, I'm not afraid of Billy not being able to keep me in all kinds of
shoes,” Saxon retorted with a proud toss of her head.

“You don't know what you're talkin' about.” Sarah paused to laugh in
mirthless discordance. “Watch for the babies to come. They come faster
than wages raise these days.”

“But we're not going to have any babies... that is, at first. Not until
after the furniture is all paid for anyway.”

“Wise in your generation, eh? In my days girls were more modest than to
know anything about disgraceful subjects.”

“As babies?” Saxon queried, with a touch of gentle malice.

“Yes, as babies.”

“The first I knew that babies were disgraceful. Why, Sarah, you, with
your five, how disgraceful you have been. Billy and I have decided not
to be half as disgraceful. We're only going to have two--a boy and a
girl.”

Tom chuckled, but held the peace by hiding his face in his coffee cup.
Sarah, though checked by this flank attack, was herself an old hand
in the art. So temporary was the setback that she scarcely paused ere
hurling her assault from a new angle.

“An' marryin' so quick, all of a sudden, eh? If that ain't suspicious,
nothin' is. I don't know what young women's comin' to. They ain't
decent, I tell you. They ain't decent. That's what comes of Sunday
dancin' an' all the rest. Young women nowadays are like a lot of
animals. Such fast an' looseness I never saw....”

Saxon was white with anger, but while Sarah wandered on in her diatribe,
Tom managed to wink privily and prodigiously at his sister and to
implore her to help in keeping the peace.

“It's all right, kid sister,” he comforted Saxon when they were alone.
“There's no use talkin' to Sarah. Bill Roberts is a good boy. I know a
lot about him. It does you proud to get him for a husband. You're bound
to be happy with him...” His voice sank, and his face seemed suddenly to
be very old and tired as he went on anxiously. “Take warning from Sarah.
Don't nag. Whatever you do, don't nag. Don't give him a perpetual-motion
line of chin. Kind of let him talk once in a while. Men have some horse
sense, though Sarah don't know it. Why, Sarah actually loves me, though
she don't make a noise like it. The thing for you is to love your
husband, and, by thunder, to make a noise of lovin' him, too. And then
you can kid him into doing 'most anything you want. Let him have his way
once in a while, and he'll let you have yourn. But you just go on lovin'
him, and leanin' on his judgement--he's no fool--and you'll be all
hunky-dory. I'm scared from goin' wrong, what of Sarah. But I'd sooner
be loved into not going wrong.”

“Oh, I'll do it, Tom,” Saxon nodded, smiling through the tears his
sympathy had brought into her eyes. “And on top of it I'm going to do
something else, I'm going to make Billy love me and just keep on loving
me. And then I won't have to kid him into doing some of the things I
want. He'll do them because he loves me, you see.”

“You got the right idea, Saxon. Stick with it, an' you'll win out.”

Later, when she had put on her hat to start for the laundry, she found
Tom waiting for her at the corner.

“An', Saxon,” he said, hastily and haltingly, “you won't take anything
I've said... you know... --about Sarah... as bein' in any way disloyal
to her? She's a good woman, an' faithful. An' her life ain't so easy by
a long shot. I'd bite out my tongue before I'd say anything against her.
I guess all folks have their troubles. It's hell to be poor, ain't it?”

“You've been awful good to me, Tom. I can never forget it. And I know
Sarah means right. She does do her best.”

“I won't be able to give you a wedding present,” her brother ventured
apologetically. “Sarah won't hear of it. Says we didn't get none from my
folks when we got married. But I got something for you just the same. A
surprise. You'd never guess it.”

Saxon waited.

“When you told me you was goin' to get married, I just happened to think
of it, an' I wrote to brother George, askin' him for it for you. An' by
thunder he sent it by express. I didn't tell you because I didn't know
but maybe he'd sold it. He did sell the silver spurs. He needed the
money, I guess. But the other, I had it sent to the shop so as not
to bother Sarah, an' I sneaked it in last night an' hid it in the
woodshed.”

“Oh, it is something of my father's! What is it? Oh, what is it?”

“His army sword.”

“The one he wore on his roan war horse! Oh, Tom, you couldn't give me a
better present. Let's go back now. I want to see it. We can slip in the
back way. Sarah's washing in the kitchen, and she won't begin hanging
out for an hour.”

“I spoke to Sarah about lettin' you take the old chest of drawers that
was your mother's,” Tom whispered, as they stole along the narrow alley
between the houses. “Only she got on her high horse. Said that Daisy was
as much my mother as yourn, even if we did have different fathers, and
that the chest had always belonged in Daisy's family and not Captain
Kit's, an' that it was mine, an' what was mine she had some say-so
about.”

“It's all right,” Saxon reassured him. “She sold it to me last night.
She was waiting up for me when I got home with fire in her eye.”

“Yep, she was on the warpath all day after I mentioned it. How much did
you give her for it?”

“Six dollars.”

“Robbery--it ain't worth it,” Tom groaned. “It's all cracked at one end
and as old as the hills.”

“I'd have given ten dollars for it. I'd have given 'most anything for
it, Tom. It was mother's, you know. I remember it in her room when she
was still alive.”

In the woodshed Tom resurrected the hidden treasure and took off the
wrapping paper. Appeared a rusty, steel-scabbarded saber of the heavy
type carried by cavalry officers in Civil War days. It was attached to
a moth-eaten sash of thick-woven crimson silk from which hung heavy silk
tassels. Saxon almost seized it from her brother in her eagerness. She
drew forth the blade and pressed her lips to the steel.

It was her last day at the laundry. She was to quit work that evening
for good. And the next afternoon, at five, she and Billy were to go
before a justice of the peace and be married. Bert and Mary were to be
the witnesses, and after that the four were to go to a private room in
Barnum's Restaurant for the wedding supper. That over, Bert and Mary
would proceed to a dance at Myrtle Hall, while Billy and Saxon
would take the Eighth Street car to Seventh and Pine. Honeymoons are
infrequent in the working class. The next morning Billy must be at the
stable at his regular hour to drive his team out.

All the women in the fancy starch room knew it was Saxon's last day.
Many exulted for her, and not a few were envious of her, in that she had
won a husband and to freedom from the suffocating slavery of the ironing
board. Much of bantering she endured; such was the fate of every girl
who married out of the fancy starch room. But Saxon was too happy to be
hurt by the teasing, a great deal of which was gross, but all of which
was good-natured.

In the steam that arose from under her iron, and on the surfaces of the
dainty lawns and muslins that flew under her hands, she kept visioning
herself in the Pine Street cottage; and steadily she hummed under her
breath her paraphrase of the latest popular song:

“And when I work, and when I work, I'll always work for Billy.”

By three in the afternoon the strain of the piece-workers in the humid,
heated room grew tense. Elderly women gasped and sighed; the color went
out of the cheeks of the young women, their faces became drawn and dark
circles formed under their eyes; but all held on with weary, unabated
speed. The tireless, vigilant forewoman kept a sharp lookout for
incipient hysteria, and once led a narrow-chested, stoop-shouldered
young thing out of the place in time to prevent a collapse.

Saxon was startled by the wildest scream of terror she had ever heard.
The tense thread of human resolution snapped; wills and nerves broke
down, and a hundred women suspended their irons or dropped them. It was
Mary who had screamed so terribly, and Saxon saw a strange black animal
flapping great claw-like wings and nestling on Mary's shoulder. With the
scream, Mary crouched down, and the strange creature, darting into the
air, fluttered full into the startled face of a woman at the next board.
This woman promptly screamed and fainted. Into the air again, the flying
thing darted hither and thither, while the shrieking, shrinking women
threw up their arms, tried to run away along the aisles, or cowered
under their ironing boards.

“It's only a bat!” the forewoman shouted. She was furious. “Ain't you
ever seen a bat? It won't eat you!”

But they were ghetto people, and were not to be quieted. Some woman
who could not see the cause of the uproar, out of her overwrought
apprehension raised the cry of fire and precipitated the panic rush for
the doors. All of them were screaming the stupid, soul-sickening high
note of terror, drowning the forewoman's voice. Saxon had been merely
startled at first, but the screaming panic broke her grip on herself and
swept her away. Though she did not scream, she fled with the rest. When
this horde of crazed women debouched on the next department, those who
worked there joined in the stampede to escape from they knew not what
danger. In ten minutes the laundry was deserted, save for a few men
wandering about with hand grenades in futile search for the cause of the
disturbance.

The forewoman was stout, but indomitable. Swept along half the length
of an aisle by the terror-stricken women, she had broken her way back
through the rout and quickly caught the light-blinded visitant in a
clothes basket.

“Maybe I don't know what God looks like, but take it from me I've seen
a tintype of the devil,” Mary gurgled, emotionally fluttering back and
forth between laughter and tears.

But Saxon was angry with herself, for she had been as frightened as the
rest in that wild flight for out-of-doors.

“We're a lot of fools,” she said. “It was only a bat. I've heard about
them. They live in the country. They wouldn't hurt a fly. They can't see
in the daytime. That was what was the matter with this one. It was only
a bat.”

“Huh, you can't string me,” Mary replied. “It was the devil.” She
sobbed a moment, and then laughed hysterically again. “Did you see Mrs.
Bergstrom faint? And it only touched her in the face. Why, it was on
my shoulder and touching my bare neck like the hand of a corpse. And I
didn't faint.” She laughed again. “I guess, maybe, I was too scared to
faint.”

“Come on back,” Saxon urged. “We've lost half an hour.”

“Not me. I'm goin' home after that, if they fire me. I couldn't iron for
sour apples now, I'm that shaky.”

One woman had broken a leg, another an arm, and a number nursed milder
bruises and bruises. No bullying nor entreating of the forewoman could
persuade the women to return to work. They were too upset and nervous,
and only here and there could one be found brave enough to re-enter the
building for the hats and lunch baskets of the others. Saxon was one of
the handful that returned and worked till six o'clock.



CHAPTER XV

“Why, Bert!--you're squiffed!” Mary cried reproachfully.

The four were at the table in the private room at Barnum's. The wedding
supper, simple enough, but seemingly too expensive to Saxon, had been
eaten. Bert, in his hand a glass of California red wine, which
the management supplied for fifty cents a bottle, was on his feet
endeavoring a speech. His face was flushed; his black eyes were
feverishly bright.

“You've ben drinkin' before you met me,” Mary continued. “I can see it
stickin' out all over you.”

“Consult an oculist, my dear,” he replied. “Bertram is himself to-night.
An' he is here, arisin' to his feet to give the glad hand to his old
pal. Bill, old man, here's to you. It's how-de-do an' good-bye, I guess.
You're a married man now, Bill, an' you got to keep regular hours. No
more runnin' around with the boys. You gotta take care of yourself,
an' get your life insured, an' take out an accident policy, an' join a
buildin' an' loan society, an' a buryin' association--”

“Now you shut up, Bert,” Mary broke in. “You don't talk about buryin's
at weddings. You oughta be ashamed of yourself.”

“Whoa, Mary! Back up! I said what I said because I meant it. I ain't
thinkin' what Mary thinks. What I was thinkin'.... Let me tell you what
I was thinkin'. I said buryin' association, didn't I? Well, it was not
with the idea of castin' gloom over this merry gatherin'. Far be it....”

He was so evidently seeking a way out of his predicament, that Mary
tossed her head triumphantly. This acted as a spur to his reeling wits.

“Let me tell you why,” he went on. “Because, Bill, you got such an
all-fired pretty wife, that's why. All the fellows is crazy over her,
an' when they get to runnin' after her, what'll you be doin'? You'll be
gettin' busy. And then won't you need a buryin' association to bury 'em?
I just guess yes. That was the compliment to your good taste in skirts I
was tryin' to come across with when Mary butted in.”

His glittering eyes rested for a moment in bantering triumph on Mary.

“Who says I'm squiffed? Me? Not on your life. I'm seein' all things in a
clear white light. An' I see Bill there, my old friend Bill. An' I don't
see two Bills. I see only one. Bill was never two-faced in his life.
Bill, old man, when I look at you there in the married harness, I'm
sorry--” He ceased abruptly and turned on Mary. “Now don't go up in the
air, old girl. I'm onto my job. My grandfather was a state senator, and
he could spiel graceful an' pleasin' till the cows come home. So can
I.--Bill, when I look at you, I'm sorry. I repeat, I'm sorry.” He glared
challengingly at Mary. “For myself when I look at you an' know all the
happiness you got a hammerlock on. Take it from me, you're a wise guy,
bless the women. You've started well. Keep it up. Marry 'em all, bless
'em. Bill, here's to you. You're a Mohegan with a scalplock. An' you
got a squaw that is some squaw, take it from me. Minnehaha, here's to
you--to the two of you--an' to the papooses, too, gosh-dang them!”

He drained the glass suddenly and collapsed in his chair, blinking his
eyes across at the wedded couple while tears trickled unheeded down
his cheeks. Mary's hand went out soothingly to his, completing his
break-down.

“By God, I got a right to cry,” he sobbed. “I'm losin' my best friend,
ain't I? It'll never be the same again never. When I think of the fun,
an' scrapes, an' good times Bill an' me has had together, I could darn
near hate you, Saxon, sittin' there with your hand in his.”

“Cheer up, Bert,” she laughed gently. “Look at whose hand you are
holding.”

“Aw, it's only one of his cryin' jags,” Mary said, with a harshness
that her free hand belied as it caressed his hair with soothing strokes.
“Buck up, Bert. Everything's all right. And now it's up to Bill to say
something after your dandy spiel.”

Bert recovered himself quickly with another glass of wine.

“Kick in, Bill,” he cried. “It's your turn now.”

“I'm no hotair artist,” Billy grumbled. “What'll I say, Saxon? They
ain't no use tellin' 'em how happy we are. They know that.”

“Tell them we're always going to be happy,” she said. “And thank them
for all their good wishes, and we both wish them the same. And we're
always going to be together, like old times, the four of us. And tell
them they're invited down to 507 Pine Street next Sunday for Sunday
dinner.--And, Mary, if you want to come Saturday night you can sleep in
the spare bedroom.”

“You've told'm yourself, better'n I could.” Billy clapped his hands.
“You did yourself proud, an' I guess they ain't much to add to it, but
just the same I'm goin' to pass them a hot one.”

He stood up, his hand on his glass. His clear blue eyes under the
dark brows and framed by the dark lashes, seemed a deeper blue, and
accentuated the blondness of hair and skin. The smooth cheeks were
rosy--not with wine, for it was only his second glass--but with health
and joy. Saxon, looking up at him, thrilled with pride in him, he was so
well-dressed, so strong, so handsome, so clean-looking--her man-boy. And
she was aware of pride in herself, in her woman's desirableness that had
won for her so wonderful a lover.

“Well, Bert an' Mary, here you are at Saxon's and my wedding supper.
We're just goin' to take all your good wishes to heart, we wish you the
same back, and when we say it we mean more than you think we mean. Saxon
an' I believe in tit for tat. So we're wishin' for the day when the
table is turned clear around an' we're sittin' as guests at your weddin'
supper. And then, when you come to Sunday dinner, you can both stop
Saturday night in the spare bedroom. I guess I was wised up when I
furnished it, eh?”

“I never thought it of you, Billy!” Mary exclaimed. “You're every bit as
raw as Bert. But just the same...”

There was a rush of moisture to her eyes. Her voice faltered and broke.
She smiled through her tears at them, then turned to look at Bert, who
put his arm around her and gathered her on to his knees.

When they left the restaurant, the four walked to Eighth and Broadway,
where they stopped beside the electric car. Bert and Billy were awkward
and silent, oppressed by a strange aloofness. But Mary embraced Saxon
with fond anxiousness.

“It's all right, dear,” Mary whispered. “Don't be scared. It's all
right. Think of all the other women in the world.”

The conductor clanged the gong, and the two couples separated in a
sudden hubbub of farewell.

“Oh, you Mohegan!” Bert called after, as the car got under way. “Oh, you
Minnehaha!”

“Remember what I said,” was Mary's parting to Saxon.


The car stopped at Seventh and Pine, the terminus of the line. It was
only a little over two blocks to the cottage. On the front steps Billy
took the key from his pocket.

“Funny, isn't it?” he said, as the key turned in the lock. “You an' me.
Just you an' me.”

While he lighted the lamp in the parlor, Saxon was taking off her hat.
He went into the bedroom and lighted the lamp there, then turned back
and stood in the doorway. Saxon, still unaccountably fumbling with her
hatpins, stole a glance at him. He held out his arms.

“Now,” he said.

She came to him, and in his arms he could feel her trembling.




BOOK II



CHAPTER I

The first evening after the marriage night Saxon met Billy at the door
as he came up the front steps. After their embrace, and as they crossed
the parlor hand in hand toward the kitchen, he filled his lungs through
his nostrils with audible satisfaction.

“My, but this house smells good, Saxon! It ain't the coffee--I can smell
that, too. It's the whole house. It smells... well, it just smells good
to me, that's all.”

He washed and dried himself at the sink, while she heated the frying pan
on the front hole of the stove with the lid off. As he wiped his hands
he watched her keenly, and cried out with approbation as she dropped the
steak in the frying pan.

“Where'd you learn to cook steak on a dry, hot pan? It's the only way,
but darn few women seem to know about it.”

As she took the cover off a second frying pan and stirred the savory
contents with a kitchen knife, he came behind her, passed his arms under
her arm-pits with down-drooping hands upon her breasts, and bent his
head over her shoulder till cheek touched cheek.

“Um-um-um-m-m! Fried potatoes with onions like mother used to make. Me
for them. Don't they smell good, though! Um-um-m-m-m!”

The pressure of his hands relaxed, and his cheek slid caressingly past
hers as he started to release her. Then his hands closed down again.
She felt his lips on her hair and heard his advertised inhalation of
delight.

“Um-um-m-m-m! Don't you smell good--yourself, though! I never understood
what they meant when they said a girl was sweet. I know, now. And you're
the sweetest I ever knew.”

His joy was boundless. When he returned from combing his hair in the
bedroom and sat down at the small table opposite her, he paused with
knife and fork in hand.

“Say, bein' married is a whole lot more than it's cracked up to be by
most married folks. Honest to God, Saxon, we can show 'em a few. We can
give 'em cards and spades an' little casino an' win out on big casino
and the aces. I've got but one kick comin'.”

The instant apprehension in her eyes provoked a chuckle from him.

“An' that is that we didn't get married quick enough. Just think. I've
lost a whole week of this.”

Her eyes shone with gratitude and happiness, and in her heart she
solemnly pledged herself that never in all their married life would it
be otherwise.

Supper finished, she cleared the table and began washing the dishes at
the sink. When he evinced the intention of wiping them, she caught him
by the lapels of the coat and backed him into a chair.

“You'll sit right there, if you know what's good for you. Now be good
and mind what I say. Also, you will smoke a cigarette.--No; you're not
going to watch me. There's the morning paper beside you. And if you
don't hurry to read it, I'll be through these dishes before you've
started.”

As he smoked and read, she continually glanced across at him from her
work. One thing more, she thought--slippers; and then the picture of
comfort and content would be complete.

Several minutes later Billy put the paper aside with a sigh.

“It's no use,” he complained. “I can't read.”

“What's the matter?” she teased. “Eyes weak?”

“Nope. They're sore, and there's only one thing to do 'em any good, an'
that's lookin' at you.”

“All right, then, baby Billy; I'll be through in a jiffy.”

When she had washed the dish towel and scalded out the sink, she took
off her kitchen apron, came to him, and kissed first one eye and then
the other.

“How are they now. Cured?”

“They feel some better already.”

She repeated the treatment.

“And now?”

“Still better.”

“And now?”

“Almost well.”

After he had adjudged them well, he ouched and informed her that there
was still some hurt in the right eye.

In the course of treating it, she cried out as in pain. Billy was all
alarm.

“What is it? What hurt you?”

“My eyes. They're hurting like sixty.”

And Billy became physician for a while and she the patient. When the
cure was accomplished, she led him into the parlor, where, by the open
window, they succeeded in occupying the same Morris chair. It was the
most expensive comfort in the house. It had cost seven dollars and
a half, and, though it was grander than anything she had dreamed of
possessing, the extravagance of it had worried her in a half-guilty way
all day.

The salt chill of the air that is the blessing of all the bay cities
after the sun goes down crept in about them. They heard the switch
engines puffing in the railroad yards, and the rumbling thunder of the
Seventh Street local slowing down in its run from the Mole to stop at
West Oakland station. From the street came the noise of children playing
in the summer night, and from the steps of the house next door the low
voices of gossiping housewives.

“Can you beat it?” Billy murmured. “When I think of that six-dollar
furnished room of mine, it makes me sick to think what I was missin'
all the time. But there's one satisfaction. If I'd changed it sooner
I wouldn't a-had you. You see, I didn't know you existed only until a
couple of weeks ago.”

His hand crept along her bare forearm and up and partly under the
elbow-sleeve.

“Your skin's so cool,” he said. “It ain't cold; it's cool. It feels good
to the hand.”

“Pretty soon you'll be calling me your cold-storage baby,” she laughed.

“And your voice is cool,” he went on. “It gives me the feeling just
as your hand does when you rest it on my forehead. It's funny. I can't
explain it. But your voice just goes all through me, cool and fine.
It's like a wind of coolness--just right. It's like the first of the
sea-breeze settin' in in the afternoon after a scorchin' hot morning.
An' sometimes, when you talk low, it sounds round and sweet like the
'cello in the Macdonough Theater orchestra. And it never goes high up,
or sharp, or squeaky, or scratchy, like some women's voices when they're
mad, or fresh, or excited, till they remind me of a bum phonograph
record. Why, your voice, it just goes through me till I'm all
trembling--like with the everlastin' cool of it. It's -- it's straight
delicious. I guess angels in heaven, if they is any, must have voices
like that.”

After a few minutes, in which, so inexpressible was her happiness that
she could only pass her hand through his hair and cling to him, he broke
out again.

“I'll tell you what you remind me of. Did you ever see a thoroughbred
mare, all shinin' in the sun, with hair like satin an' skin so thin an'
tender that the least touch of the whip leaves a mark--all fine nerves,
an' delicate an' sensitive, that'll kill the toughest bronco when it
comes to endurance an' that can strain a tendon in a flash or catch
death-of-cold without a blanket for a night? I wanta tell you they ain't
many beautifuler sights in this world. An' they're that fine-strung, an'
sensitive, an' delicate. You gotta handle 'em right-side up, glass, with
care. Well, that's what you remind me of. And I'm goin' to make it
my job to see you get handled an' gentled in the same way. You're
as different from other women as that kind of a mare is from scrub
work-horse mares. You're a thoroughbred. You're clean-cut an' spirited,
an' your lines...

“Say, d'ye know you've got some figure? Well, you have. Talk about
Annette Kellerman. You can give her cards and spades. She's Australian,
an' you're American, only your figure ain't. You're different. You're
nifty--I don't know how to explain it. Other women ain't built like you.
You belong in some other country. You're Frenchy, that's what. You're
built like a French woman an' more than that--the way you walk, move,
stand up or sit down, or don't do anything.”

And he, who had never been out of California, or, for that matter, had
never slept a night away from his birthtown of Oakland, was right in
his judgment. She was a flower of Anglo-Saxon stock, a rarity in the
exceptional smallness and fineness of hand and foot and bone and grace
of flesh and carriage--some throw-back across the face of time to the
foraying Norman-French that had intermingled with the sturdy Saxon
breed.

“And in the way you carry your clothes. They belong to you. They seem
just as much part of you as the cool of your voice and skin. They're
always all right an' couldn't be better. An' you know, a fellow kind of
likes to be seen taggin' around with a woman like you, that wears her
clothes like a dream, an' hear the other fellows say: 'Who's Bill's new
skirt? She's a peach, ain't she? Wouldn't I like to win her, though.'
And all that sort of talk.”

And Saxon, her cheek pressed to his, knew that she was paid in full for
all her midnight sewings and the torturing hours of drowsy stitching
when her head nodded with the weariness of the day's toil, while she
recreated for herself filched ideas from the dainty garments that had
steamed under her passing iron.

“Say, Saxon, I got a new name for you. You're my Tonic Kid. That's what
you are, the Tonic Kid.”

“And you'll never get tired of me?” she queried.

“Tired? Why we was made for each other.”

“Isn't it wonderful, our meeting, Billy? We might never have met. It was
just by accident that we did.”

“We was born lucky,” he proclaimed. “That's a cinch.”

“Maybe it was more than luck,” she ventured.

“Sure. It just had to be. It was fate. Nothing could a-kept us apart.”

They sat on in a silence that was quick with unuttered love, till she
felt him slowly draw her more closely and his lips come near to her ear
as they whispered: “What do you say we go to bed?”


Many evenings they spent like this, varied with an occasional dance,
with trips to the Orpheum and to Bell's Theater, or to the moving
picture shows, or to the Friday night band concerts in City Hall Park.
Often, on Sunday, she prepared a lunch, and he drove her out into the
hills behind Prince and King, whom Billy's employer was still glad to
have him exercise.

Each morning Saxon was called by the alarm clock. The first morning
he had insisted upon getting up with her and building the fire in the
kitchen stove. She gave in the first morning, but after that she laid
the fire in the evening, so that all that was required was the touching
of a match to it. And in bed she compelled him to remain for a last
little doze ere she called him for breakfast. For the first several
weeks she prepared his lunch for him. Then, for a week, he came down
to dinner. After that he was compelled to take his lunch with him. It
depended on how far distant the teaming was done.

“You're not starting right with a man,” Mary cautioned. “You wait on him
hand and foot. You'll spoil him if you don't watch out. It's him that
ought to be waitin' on you.”

“He's the bread-winner,” Saxon replied. “He works harder than I, and
I've got more time than I know what to do with--time to burn. Besides,
I want to wait on him because I love to, and because... well, anyway, I
want to.”



CHAPTER II

Despite the fastidiousness of her housekeeping, Saxon, once she had
systematized it, found time and to spare on her hands. Especially during
the periods in which her husband carried his lunch and there was no
midday meal to prepare, she had a number of hours each day to herself.
Trained for years to the routine of factory and laundry work, she could
not abide this unaccustomed idleness. She could not bear to sit and do
nothing, while she could not pay calls on her girlhood friends, for they
still worked in factory and laundry. Nor was she acquainted with the
wives of the neighborhood, save for one strange old woman who lived
in the house next door and with whom Saxon had exchanged snatches of
conversation over the backyard division fence.

One time-consuming diversion of which Saxon took advantage was free and
unlimited baths. In the orphan asylum and in Sarah's house she had been
used to but one bath a week. As she grew to womanhood she had attempted
more frequent baths. But the effort proved disastrous, arousing, first,
Sarah's derision, and next, her wrath. Sarah had crystallized in the era
of the weekly Saturday night bath, and any increase in this cleansing
function was regarded by her as putting on airs and as an insinuation
against her own cleanliness. Also, it was an extravagant misuse of fuel,
and occasioned extra towels in the family wash. But now, in Billy's
house, with her own stove, her own tub and towels and soap, and no one
to say her nay, Saxon was guilty of a daily orgy. True, it was only a
common washtub that she placed on the kitchen floor and filled by hand;
but it was a luxury that had taken her twenty-four years to achieve. It
was from the strange woman next door that Saxon received a hint, dropped
in casual conversation, of what proved the culminating joy of bathing. A
simple thing--a few drops of druggist's ammonia in the water; but Saxon
had never heard of it before.

She was destined to learn much from the strange woman. The acquaintance
had begun one day when Saxon, in the back yard, was hanging out a couple
of corset covers and several pieces of her finest undergarments. The
woman leaning on the rail of her back porch, had caught her eye, and
nodded, as it seemed to Saxon, half to her and half to the underlinen on
the line.

“You're newly married, aren't you?” the woman asked. “I'm Mrs. Higgins.
I prefer my first name, which is Mercedes.”

“And I'm Mrs. Roberts,” Saxon replied, thrilling to the newness of the
designation on her tongue. “My first name is Saxon.”

“Strange name for a Yankee woman,” the other commented.

“Oh, but I'm not Yankee,” Saxon exclaimed. “I'm Californian.”

“La la,” laughed Mercedes Higgins. “I forgot I was in America. In other
lands all Americans are called Yankees. It is true that you are newly
married?”

Saxon nodded with a happy sigh. Mercedes sighed, too.

“Oh, you happy, soft, beautiful young thing. I could envy you to
hatred--you with all the man-world ripe to be twisted about your pretty
little fingers. And you don't realize your fortune. No one does until
it's too late.”

Saxon was puzzled and disturbed, though she answered readily:

“Oh, but I do know how lucky I am. I have the finest man in the world.”

Mercedes Higgins sighed again and changed the subject. She nodded her
head at the garments.

“I see you like pretty things. It is good judgment for a young woman.
They're the bait for men--half the weapons in the battle. They win men,
and they hold men--” She broke off to demand almost fiercely: “And you,
you would keep your husband?--always, always--if you can?”

“I intend to. I will make him love me always and always.”

Saxon ceased, troubled and surprised that she should be so intimate with
a stranger.

“'Tis a queer thing, this love of men,” Mercedes said. “And a failing of
all women is it to believe they know men like books. And with breaking
hearts, die they do, most women, out of their ignorance of men and still
foolishly believing they know all about them. Oh, la la, the little
fools. And so you say, little new-married woman, that you will make your
man love you always and always? And so they all say it, knowing men and
the queerness of men's love the way they think they do. Easier it is
to win the capital prize in the Little Louisiana, but the little
new-married women never know it until too late. But you--you have begun
well. Stay by your pretties and your looks. 'Twas so you won your man,
'tis so you'll hold him. But that is not all. Some time I will talk with
you and tell what few women trouble to know, what few women ever come to
know.--Saxon!--'tis a strong, handsome name for a woman. But you don't
look it. Oh, I've watched you. French you are, with a Frenchiness beyond
dispute. Tell Mr. Roberts I congratulate him on his good taste.”

She paused, her hand on the knob of her kitchen door.

“And come and see me some time. You will never be sorry. I can teach you
much. Come in the afternoon. My man is night watchman in the yards and
sleeps of mornings. He's sleeping now.”

Saxon went into the house puzzling and pondering. Anything but ordinary
was this lean, dark-skinned woman, with the face withered as if scorched
in great heats, and the eyes, large and black, that flashed and flamed
with advertisement of an unquenched inner conflagration. Old she
was--Saxon caught herself debating anywhere between fifty and seventy;
and her hair, which had once been blackest black, was streaked
plentifully with gray. Especially noteworthy to Saxon was her speech.
Good English it was, better than that to which Saxon was accustomed. Yet
the woman was not American. On the other hand, she had no perceptible
accent. Rather were her words touched by a foreignness so elusive that
Saxon could not analyze nor place it.

“Uh, huh,” Billy said, when she had told him that evening of the day's
event. “So SHE'S Mrs. Higgins? He's a watchman. He's got only one arm.
Old Higgins an' her--a funny bunch, the two of them. The people's scared
of her--some of 'em. The Dagoes an' some of the old Irish dames thinks
she's a witch. Won't have a thing to do with her. Bert was tellin' me
about it. Why, Saxon, d'ye know, some of 'em believe if she was to get
mad at 'em, or didn't like their mugs, or anything, that all she's got
to do is look at 'em an' they'll curl up their toes an' croak. One of
the fellows that works at the stable--you've seen 'm--Henderson--he
lives around the corner on Fifth--he says she's bughouse.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Saxon defended her new acquaintance. “She may be
crazy, but she says the same thing you're always saying. She says my
form is not American but French.”

“Then I take my hat off to her,” Billy responded. “No wheels in her head
if she says that. Take it from me, she's a wise gazabo.”

“And she speaks good English, Billy, like a school teacher, like what I
guess my mother used to speak. She's educated.”

“She ain't no fool, or she wouldn't a-sized you up the way she did.”

“She told me to congratulate you on your good taste in marrying me,”
 Saxon laughed.

“She did, eh? Then give her my love. Me for her, because she knows a
good thing when she sees it, an' she ought to be congratulating you on
your good taste in me.”

It was on another day that Mercedes Higgins nodded, half to Saxon, and
half to the dainty women's things Saxon was hanging on the line.

“I've been worrying over your washing, little new-wife,” was her
greeting.

“Oh, but I've worked in the laundry for years,” Saxon said quickly.

Mercedes sneered scornfully.

“Steam laundry. That's business, and it's stupid. Only common things
should go to a steam laundry. That is their punishment for being common.
But the pretties! the dainties! the flimsies!--la la, my dear, their
washing is an art. It requires wisdom, genius, and discretion fine as
the clothes are fine. I will give you a recipe for homemade soap. It
will not harden the texture. It will give whiteness, and softness, and
life. You can wear them long, and fine white clothes are to be loved a
long time. Oh, fine washing is a refinement, an art. It is to be done as
an artist paints a picture, or writes a poem, with love, holily, a true
sacrament of beauty.

“I shall teach you better ways, my dear, better ways than you Yankees
know. I shall teach you new pretties.” She nodded her head to Saxon's
underlinen on the line. “I see you make little laces. I know all
laces--the Belgian, the Maltese, the Mechlin--oh, the many, many loves
of laces! I shall teach you some of the simpler ones so that you can
make them for yourself, for your brave man you are to make love you
always and always.”

On her first visit to Mercedes Higgins, Saxon received the recipe for
home-made soap and her head was filled with a minutiae of instruction in
the art of fine washing. Further, she was fascinated and excited by all
the newness and strangeness of the withered old woman who blew upon her
the breath of wider lands and seas beyond the horizon.

“You are Spanish?” Saxon ventured.

“No, and yes, and neither, and more. My father was Irish, my mother
Peruvian-Spanish. 'Tis after her I took, in color and looks. In other
ways after my father, the blue-eyed Celt with the fairy song on
his tongue and the restless feet that stole the rest of him away to
far-wandering. And the feet of him that he lent me have led me away on
as wide far roads as ever his led him.”

Saxon remembered her school geography, and with her mind's eye she saw
a certain outline map of a continent with jiggly wavering parallel lines
that denoted coast.

“Oh,” she cried, “then you are South American.”

Mercedes shrugged her shoulders.

“I had to be born somewhere. It was a great ranch, my mother's. You
could put all Oakland in one of its smallest pastures.”

Mercedes Higgins sighed cheerfully and for the time was lost in
retrospection. Saxon was curious to hear more about this woman who must
have lived much as the Spanish-Californians had lived in the old days.

“You received a good education,” she said tentatively. “Your English is
perfect.”

“Ah, the English came afterward, and not in school. But, as it goes,
yes, a good education in all things but the most important--men. That,
too, came afterward. And little my mother dreamed--she was a grand lady,
what you call a cattle-queen--little she dreamed my fine education was
to fit me in the end for a night watchman's wife.” She laughed genuinely
at the grotesqueness of the idea. “Night watchman, laborers, why, we had
hundreds, yes, thousands that toiled for us. The peons--they are like
what you call slaves, almost, and the cowboys, who could ride two
hundred miles between side and side of the ranch. And in the big house
servants beyond remembering or counting. La la, in my mother's house
were many servants.”

Mercedes Higgins was voluble as a Greek, and wandered on in
reminiscence.

“But our servants were lazy and dirty. The Chinese are the servants par
excellence. So are the Japanese, when you find a good one, but not so
good as the Chinese. The Japanese maidservants are pretty and merry, but
you never know the moment they'll leave you. The Hindoos are not strong,
but very obedient. They look upon sahibs and memsahibs as gods! I was a
memsahib--which means woman. I once had a Russian cook who always spat
in the soup for luck. It was very funny. But we put up with it. It was
the custom.”

“How you must have traveled to have such strange servants!” Saxon
encouraged.

The old woman laughed corroboration.

“And the strangest of all, down in the South Seas, black slaves, little
kinky-haired cannibals with bones through their noses. When they did not
mind, or when they stole, they were tied up to a cocoanut palm behind
the compound and lashed with whips of rhinoceros hide. They were from an
island of cannibals and head-hunters, and they never cried out. It was
their pride. There was little Vibi, only twelve years old--he waited on
me--and when his back was cut in shreds and I wept over him, he would
only laugh and say, 'Short time little bit I take 'm head belong big
fella white marster.' That was Bruce Anstey, the Englishman who whipped
him. But little Vibi never got the head. He ran away and the bushmen cut
off his own head and ate every bit of him.”

Saxon chilled, and her face was grave; but Mercedes Higgins rattled on.

“Ah, those were wild, gay, savage days. Would you believe it, my dear,
in three years those Englishmen of the plantation drank up oceans of
champagne and Scotch whisky and dropped thirty thousand pounds on
the adventure. Not dollars--pounds, which means one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. They were princes while it lasted. It was splendid,
glorious. It was mad, mad. I sold half my beautiful jewels in New
Zealand before I got started again. Bruce Anstey blew out his brains at
the end. Roger went mate on a trader with a black crew, for eight pounds
a month. And Jack Gilbraith--he was the rarest of them all. His people
were wealthy and titled, and he went home to England and sold cat's
meat, sat around their big house till they gave him more money to
start a rubber plantation in the East Indies somewhere, on Sumatra, I
think--or was it New Guinea?”

And Saxon, back in her own kitchen and preparing supper for Billy,
wondered what lusts and rapacities had led the old, burnt-faced woman
from the big Peruvian ranch, through all the world, to West Oakland and
Barry Higgins. Old Barry was not the sort who would fling away his share
of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, much less ever attain to such
opulence. Besides, she had mentioned the names of other men, but not
his.

Much more Mercedes had talked, in snatches and fragments. There seemed
no great country nor city of the old world or the new in which she
had not been. She had even been in Klondike, ten years before, in a
half-dozen flashing sentences picturing the fur-clad, be-moccasined
miners sowing the barroom floors with thousands of dollars' worth of
gold dust. Always, so it seemed to Saxon, Mrs. Higgins had been with men
to whom money was as water.



CHAPTER III

Saxon, brooding over her problem of retaining Billy's love, of never
staling the freshness of their feeling for each other and of never
descending from the heights which at present they were treading, felt
herself impelled toward Mrs. Higgins. SHE knew; surely she must know.
Had she not hinted knowledge beyond ordinary women's knowledge?

Several weeks went by, during which Saxon was often with her. But Mrs.
Higgins talked of all other matters, taught Saxon the making of
certain simple laces, and instructed her in the arts of washing and
of marketing. And then, one afternoon, Saxon found Mrs. Higgins more
voluble than usual, with words, clean-uttered, that rippled and tripped
in their haste to escape. Her eyes were flaming. So flamed her face. Her
words were flames. There was a smell of liquor in the air and Saxon knew
that the old woman had been drinking. Nervous and frightened, at the
same time fascinated, Saxon hemstitched a linen handkerchief intended
for Billy and listened to Mercedes' wild flow of speech.

“Listen, my dear. I shall tell you about the world of men. Do not be
stupid like all your people, who think me foolish and a witch with the
evil eye. Ha! ha! When I think of silly Maggie Donahue pulling the shawl
across her baby's face when we pass each other on the sidewalk! A witch
I have been, 'tis true, but my witchery was with men. Oh, I am wise,
very wise, my dear. I shall tell you of women's ways with men, and of
men's ways with women, the best of them and the worst of them. Of the
brute that is in all men, of the queerness of them that breaks the
hearts of stupid women who do not understand. And all women are stupid.
I am not stupid. La la, listen.

“I am an old woman. And like a woman, I'll not tell you how old I am.
Yet can I hold men. Yet would I hold men, toothless and a hundred, my
nose touching my chin. Not the young men. They were mine in my young
days. But the old men, as befits my years. And well for me the power is
mine. In all this world I am without kin or cash. Only have I wisdom and
memories--memories that are ashes, but royal ashes, jeweled ashes. Old
women, such as I, starve and shiver, or accept the pauper's dole and
the pauper's shroud. Not I. I hold my man. True, 'tis only Barry
Higgins--old Barry, heavy, an ox, but a male man, my dear, and queer
as all men are queer. 'Tis true, he has one arm.” She shrugged her
shoulders. “A compensation. He cannot beat me, and old bones are tender
when the round flesh thins to strings.

“But when I think of my wild young lovers, princes, mad with the madness
of youth! I have lived. It is enough. I regret nothing. And with old
Barry I have my surety of a bite to eat and a place by the fire. And
why? Because I know men, and shall never lose my cunning to hold them.
'Tis bitter sweet, the knowledge of them, more sweet than bitter--men
and men and men! Not stupid dolts, nor fat bourgeois swine of business
men, but men of temperament, of flame and fire; madmen, maybe, but a
lawless, royal race of madmen.

“Little wife-woman, you must learn. Variety! There lies the magic. 'Tis
the golden key. 'Tis the toy that amuses. Without it in the wife, the
man is a Turk; with it, he is her slave, and faithful. A wife must be
many wives. If you would have your husband's love you must be all women
to him. You must be ever new, with the dew of newness ever sparkling, a
flower that never blooms to the fulness that fades. You must be a garden
of flowers, ever new, ever fresh, ever different. And in your garden the
man must never pluck the last of your posies.

“Listen, little wife-woman. In the garden of love is a snake. It is the
commonplace. Stamp on its head, or it will destroy the garden. Remember
the name. Commonplace. Never be too intimate. Men only seem gross. Women
are more gross than men.--No, do not argue, little new-wife. You are an
infant woman. Women are less delicate than men. Do I not know? Of their
own husbands they will relate the most intimate love-secrets to other
women. Men never do this of their wives. Explain it. There is only one
way. In all things of love women are less delicate. It is their mistake.
It is the father and the mother of the commonplace, and it is the
commonplace, like a loathsome slug, that beslimes and destroys love.

“Be delicate, little wife-woman. Never be without your veil, without
many veils. Veil yourself in a thousand veils, all shimmering and
glittering with costly textures and precious jewels. Never let the last
veil be drawn. Against the morrow array yourself with more veils, ever
more veils, veils without end. Yet the many veils must not seem many.
Each veil must seem the only one between you and your hungry lover who
will have nothing less than all of you. Each time he must seem to get
all, to tear aside the last veil that hides you. He must think so. It
must not be so. Then there will be no satiety, for on the morrow he will
find another last veil that has escaped him.

“Remember, each veil must seem the last and only one. Always you must
seem to abandon all to his arms; always you must reserve more that on
the morrow and on all the morrows you may abandon. Of such is variety,
surprise, so that your man's pursuit will be everlasting, so that his
eyes will look to you for newness, and not to other women. It was the
freshness and the newness of your beauty and you, the mystery of you,
that won your man. When a man has plucked and smelled all the sweetness
of a flower, he looks for other flowers. It is his queerness. You must
ever remain a flower almost plucked yet never plucked, stored with vats
of sweet unbroached though ever broached.

“Stupid women, and all are stupid, think the first winning of the man
the final victory. Then they settle down and grow fat, and stale,
and dead, and heartbroken. Alas, they are so stupid. But you, little
infant-woman with your first victory, you must make your love-life an
unending chain of victories. Each day you must win your man again. And
when you have won the last victory, when you can find no more to win,
then ends love. Finis is written, and your man wanders in strange
gardens. Remember, love must be kept insatiable. It must have an
appetite knife-edged and never satisfied. You must feed your lover well,
ah, very well, most well; give, give, yet send him away hungry to come
back to you for more.”

Mrs. Higgins stood up suddenly and crossed out of the room. Saxon had
not failed to note the litheness and grace in that lean and withered
body. She watched for Mrs. Higgins' return, and knew that the litheness
and grace had not been imagined.

“Scarcely have I told you the first letter in love's alphabet,” said
Mercedes Higgins, as she reseated herself.

In her hands was a tiny instrument, beautifully grained and richly
brown, which resembled a guitar save that it bore four strings. She
swept them back and forth with rhythmic forefinger and lifted a voice,
thin and mellow, in a fashion of melody that was strange, and in a
foreign tongue, warm-voweled, all-voweled, and love-exciting. Softly
throbbing, voice and strings arose on sensuous crests of song, died away
to whisperings and caresses, drifted through love-dusks and twilights,
or swelled again to love-cries barbarically imperious in which were
woven plaintive calls and madnesses of invitation and promise. It went
through Saxon until she was as this instrument, swept with passional
strains. It seemed to her a dream, and almost was she dizzy, when
Mercedes Higgins ceased.

“If your man had clasped the last of you, and if all of you were known
to him as an old story, yet, did you sing that one song, as I have sung
it, yet would his arms again go out to you and his eyes grow warm with
the old mad lights. Do you see? Do you understand, little wife-woman?”

Saxon could only nod, her lips too dry for speech.

“The golden koa, the king of woods,” Mercedes was crooning over the
instrument. “The ukulele--that is what the Hawaiians call it, which
means, my dear, the jumping flea. They are golden-fleshed, the
Hawaiians, a race of lovers, all in the warm cool of the tropic night
where the trade winds blow.”

Again she struck the strings. She sang in another language, which
Saxon deemed must be French. It was a gayly-devilish lilt, tripping
and tickling. Her large eyes at times grew larger and wilder, and again
narrowed in enticement and wickedness. When she ended, she looked to
Saxon for a verdict.

“I don't like that one so well,” Saxon said.

Mercedes shrugged her shoulders.

“They all have their worth, little infant-woman with so much to learn.
There are times when men may be won with wine. There are times when
men may be won with the wine of song, so queer they are. La la, so many
ways, so many ways. There are your pretties, my dear, your dainties.
They are magic nets. No fisherman upon the sea ever tangled fish more
successfully than we women with our flimsies. You are on the right path.
I have seen men enmeshed by a corset cover no prettier, no daintier,
than these of yours I have seen on the line.

“I have called the washing of fine linen an art. But it is not for
itself alone. The greatest of the arts is the conquering of men. Love
is the sum of all the arts, as it is the reason for their existence.
Listen. In all times and ages have been women, great wise women. They
did not need to be beautiful. Greater than all woman's beauty was their
wisdom. Princes and potentates bowed down before them. Nations battled
over them. Empires crashed because of them. Religions were founded
on them. Aphrodite, Astarte, the worships of the night--listen,
infant-woman, of the great women who conquered worlds of men.”

And thereafter Saxon listened, in a maze, to what almost seemed a wild
farrago, save that the strange meaningless phrases were fraught with
dim, mysterious significance. She caught glimmerings of profounds
inexpressible and unthinkable that hinted connotations lawless and
terrible. The woman's speech was a lava rush, scorching and searing;
and Saxon's cheeks, and forehead, and neck burned with a blush that
continuously increased. She trembled with fear, suffered qualms of
nausea, thought sometimes that she would faint, so madly reeled her
brain; yet she could not tear herself away, and sat on and on, her
sewing forgotten on her lap, staring with inward sight upon a nightmare
vision beyond all imagining. At last, when it seemed she could endure
no more, and while she was wetting her dry lips to cry out in protest,
Mercedes ceased.

“And here endeth the first lesson,” she said quite calmly, then laughed
with a laughter that was tantalizing and tormenting. “What is the
matter? You are not shocked?”

“I am frightened,” Saxon quavered huskily, with a half-sob of
nervousness. “You frighten me. I am very foolish, and I know so little,
that I had never dreamed... THAT.”

Mercedes nodded her head comprehendingly.

“It is indeed to be frightened at,” she said. “It is solemn; it is
terrible; it is magnificent!”



CHAPTER IV

Saxon had been clear-eyed all her days, though her field of vision
had been restricted. Clear-eyed, from her childhood days with the
saloonkeeper Cady and Cady's good-natured but unmoral spouse, she
had observed, and, later, generalized much upon sex. She knew the
post-nuptial problem of retaining a husband's love, as few wives of any
class knew it, just as she knew the pre-nuptial problem of selecting a
husband, as few girls of the working class knew it.

She had of herself developed an eminently rational philosophy of love.
Instinctively, and consciously, too, she had made toward delicacy, and
shunned the perils of the habitual and commonplace. Thoroughly aware she
was that as she cheapened herself so did she cheapen love. Never, in
the weeks of their married life, had Billy found her dowdy, or harshly
irritable, or lethargic. And she had deliberately permeated her
house with her personal atmosphere of coolness, and freshness, and
equableness. Nor had she been ignorant of such assets as surprise and
charm. Her imagination had not been asleep, and she had been born with
wisdom. In Billy she had won a prize, and she knew it. She appreciated
his lover's ardor and was proud. His open-handed liberality, his desire
for everything of the best, his own personal cleanliness and care of
himself she recognized as far beyond the average. He was never coarse.
He met delicacy with delicacy, though it was obvious to her that the
initiative in all such matters lay with her and must lie with her
always. He was largely unconscious of what he did and why. But she knew
in all full clarity of judgment. And he was such a prize among men.

Despite her clear sight of her problem of keeping Billy a lover, and
despite the considerable knowledge and experience arrayed before her
mental vision, Mercedes Higgins had spread before her a vastly wider
panorama. The old woman had verified her own conclusions, given her
new ideas, clinched old ones, and even savagely emphasized the tragic
importance of the whole problem. Much Saxon remembered of that mad
preachment, much she guessed and felt, and much had been beyond her
experience and understanding. But the metaphors of the veils and the
flowers, and the rules of giving to abandonment with always more to
abandon, she grasped thoroughly, and she was enabled to formulate a
bigger and stronger love-philosophy. In the light of the revelation she
re-examined the married lives of all she had ever known, and, with sharp
definiteness as never before, she saw where and why so many of them had
failed.

With renewed ardor Saxon devoted herself to her household, to her
pretties, and to her charms. She marketed with a keener desire for the
best, though never ignoring the need for economy. From the women's pages
of the Sunday supplements, and from the women's magazines in the
free reading room two blocks away, she gleaned many ideas for the
preservation of her looks. In a systematic way she exercised the various
parts of her body, and a certain period of time each day she employed in
facial exercises and massage for the purpose of retaining the roundness
and freshness, and firmness and color. Billy did not know. These
intimacies of the toilette were not for him. The results, only, were
his. She drew books from the Carnegie Library and studied physiology and
hygiene, and learned a myriad of things about herself and the ways of
woman's health that she had never been taught by Sarah, the women of the
orphan asylum, nor by Mrs. Cady.

After long debate she subscribed to a woman's magazine, the patterns
and lessons of which she decided were the best suited to her taste and
purse. The other woman's magazines she had access to in the free reading
room, and more than one pattern of lace and embroidery she copied by
means of tracing paper. Before the lingerie windows of the uptown shops
she often stood and studied; nor was she above taking advantage,
when small purchases were made, of looking over the goods at the
hand-embroidered underwear counters. Once, she even considered taking
up with hand-painted china, but gave over the idea when she learned its
expensiveness.

She slowly replaced all her simple maiden underlinen with garments
which, while still simple, were wrought with beautiful French
embroidery, tucks, and drawnwork. She crocheted fine edgings on the
inexpensive knitted underwear she wore in winter. She made little corset
covers and chemises of fine but fairly inexpensive lawns, and, with
simple flowered designs and perfect laundering, her nightgowns were
always sweetly fresh and dainty. In some publication she ran across a
brief printed note to the effect that French women were just beginning
to wear fascinating beruffled caps at the breakfast table. It meant
nothing to her that in her case she must first prepare the breakfast.
Promptly appeared in the house a yard of dotted Swiss muslin, and Saxon
was deep in experimenting on patterns for herself, and in sorting her
bits of laces for suitable trimmings. The resultant dainty creation won
Mercedes Higgins' enthusiastic approval.

Saxon made for herself simple house slips of pretty gingham, with neat
low collars turned back from her fresh round throat. She crocheted yards
of laces for her underwear, and made Battenberg in abundance for her
table and for the bureau. A great achievement, that aroused Billy's
applause, was an Afghan for the bed. She even ventured a rag carpet,
which, the women's magazines informed her, had newly returned into
fashion. As a matter of course she hemstitched the best table linen and
bed linen they could afford.

As the happy months went by she was never idle. Nor was Billy forgotten.
When the cold weather came on she knitted him wristlets, which he always
religiously wore from the house and pocketed immediately thereafter. The
two sweaters she made for him, however, received a better fate, as did
the slippers which she insisted on his slipping into, on the evenings
they remained at home.

The hard practical wisdom of Mercedes Higgins proved of immense help,
for Saxon strove with a fervor almost religious to have everything of
the best and at the same time to be saving. Here she faced the financial
and economic problem of keeping house in a society where the cost of
living rose faster than the wages of industry. And here the old woman
taught her the science of marketing so thoroughly that she made a dollar
of Billy's go half as far again as the wives of the neighborhood made
the dollars of their men go.

Invariably, on Saturday night, Billy poured his total wages into her
lap. He never asked for an accounting of what she did with it, though
he continually reiterated that he had never fed so well in his life. And
always, the wages still untouched in her lap, she had him take out what
he estimated he would need for spending money for the week to come.
Not only did she bid him take plenty but she insisted on his taking any
amount extra that he might desire at any time through the week. And,
further, she insisted he should not tell her what it was for.

“You've always had money in your pocket,” she reminded him, “and there's
no reason marriage should change that. If it did, I'd wish I'd never
married you. Oh, I know about men when they get together. First one
treats and then another, and it takes money. Now if you can't treat just
as freely as the rest of them, why I know you so well that I know you'd
stay away from them. And that wouldn't be right... to you, I mean. I
want you to be together with men. It's good for a man.”

And Billy buried her in his arms and swore she was the greatest little
bit of woman that ever came down the pike.

“Why,” he jubilated; “not only do I feed better, and live more
comfortable, and hold up my end with the fellows; but I'm actually
saving money--or you are for me. Here I am, with furniture being paid
for regular every month, and a little woman I'm mad over, and on top of
it money in the bank. How much is it now?”

“Sixty-two dollars,” she told him. “Not so bad for a rainy day. You
might get sick, or hurt, or something happen.”

It was in mid-winter, when Billy, with quite a deal of obvious
reluctance, broached a money matter to Saxon. His old friend, Billy
Murphy, was laid up with la grippe, and one of his children, playing in
the street, had been seriously injured by a passing wagon. Billy Murphy,
still feeble after two weeks in bed, had asked Billy for the loan of
fifty dollars.

“It's perfectly safe,” Billy concluded to Saxon. “I've known him since
we was kids at the Durant School together. He's straight as a die.”

“That's got nothing to do with it,” Saxon chided. “If you were single
you'd have lent it to him immediately, wouldn't you?”

Billy nodded.

“Then it's no different because you're married. It's your money, Billy.”

“Not by a damn sight,” he cried. “It ain't mine. It's ourn. And I
wouldn't think of lettin' anybody have it without seein' you first.”

“I hope you didn't tell him that,” she said with quick concern.

“Nope,” Billy laughed. “I knew, if I did, you'd be madder'n a hatter.
I just told him I'd try an' figure it out. After all, I was sure you'd
stand for it if you had it.”

“Oh, Billy,” she murmured, her voice rich and low with love; “maybe you
don't know it, but that's one of the sweetest things you've said since
we got married.”

The more Saxon saw of Mercedes Higgins the less did she understand her.
That the old woman was a close-fisted miser, Saxon soon learned. And
this trait she found hard to reconcile with her tales of squandering.
On the other hand, Saxon was bewildered by Mercedes' extravagance in
personal matters. Her underlinen, hand-made of course, was very costly.
The table she set for Barry was good, but the table for herself was
vastly better. Yet both tables were set on the same table. While Barry
contented himself with solid round steak, Mercedes ate tenderloin. A
huge, tough muttonchop on Barry's plate would be balanced by tiny
French chops on Mercedes' plate. Tea was brewed in separate pots. So was
coffee. While Barry gulped twenty-five cent tea from a large and heavy
mug, Mercedes sipped three-dollar tea from a tiny cup of Belleek,
rose-tinted, fragile as all egg-shell. In the same manner, his
twenty-five cent coffee was diluted with milk, her eighty cent Turkish
with cream.

“'Tis good enough for the old man,” she told Saxon. “He knows no better,
and it would be a wicked sin to waste it on him.”

Little traffickings began between the two women. After Mercedes had
freely taught Saxon the loose-wristed facility of playing accompaniments
on the ukulele, she proposed an exchange. Her time was past, she said,
for such frivolities, and she offered the instrument for the breakfast
cap of which Saxon had made so good a success.

“It's worth a few dollars,” Mercedes said. “It cost me twenty, though
that was years ago. Yet it is well worth the value of the cap.”

“But wouldn't the cap be frivolous, too?” Saxon queried, though herself
well pleased with the bargain.

“'Tis not for my graying hair,” Mercedes frankly disclaimed. “I shall
sell it for the money. Much that I do, when the rheumatism is not
maddening my fingers, I sell. La la, my dear, 'tis not old Barry's fifty
a month that'll satisfy all my expensive tastes. 'Tis I that make up the
difference. And old age needs money as never youth needs it. Some day
you will learn for yourself.”

“I am well satisfied with the trade,” Saxon said. “And I shall make me
another cap when I can lay aside enough for the material.”

“Make several,” Mercedes advised. “I'll sell them for you, keeping, of
course, a small commission for my services. I can give you six dollars
apiece for them. We will consult about them. The profit will more than
provide material for your own.”



CHAPTER V

Four eventful things happened in the course of the winter. Bert and Mary
got married and rented a cottage in the neighborhood three blocks away.
Billy's wages were cut, along with the wages of all the teamsters in
Oakland. Billy took up shaving with a safety razor. And, finally, Saxon
was proven a false prophet and Sarah a true one.

Saxon made up her mind, beyond any doubt, ere she confided the news
to Billy. At first, while still suspecting, she had felt a frightened
sinking of the heart and fear of the unknown and unexperienced. Then had
come economic fear, as she contemplated the increased expense entailed.
But by the time she had made surety doubly sure, all was swept away
before a wave of passionate gladness. HERS AND BILLY'S! The phrase was
continually in her mind, and each recurrent thought of it brought an
actual physical pleasure-pang to her heart.

The night she told the news to Billy, he withheld his own news of the
wage-cut, and joined with her in welcoming the little one.

“What'll we do? Go to the theater to celebrate?” he asked, relaxing the
pressure of his embrace so that she might speak. “Or suppose we stay in,
just you and me, and... and the three of us?”

“Stay in,” was her verdict. “I just want you to hold me, and hold me,
and hold me.”

“That's what I wanted, too, only I wasn't sure, after bein' in the house
all day, maybe you'd want to go out.”

There was frost in the air, and Billy brought the Morris chair in by the
kitchen stove. She lay cuddled in his arms, her head on his shoulder,
his cheek against her hair.

“We didn't make no mistake in our lightning marriage with only a week's
courtin',” he reflected aloud. “Why, Saxon, we've been courtin' ever
since just the same. And now... my God, Saxon, it's too wonderful to be
true. Think of it! Ourn! The three of us! The little rascal! I bet he's
goin' to be a boy. An' won't I learn 'm to put up his fists an' take
care of himself! An' swimmin' too. If he don't know how to swim by the
time he's six...”

“And if HE'S a girl?”

“SHE'S goin' to be a boy,” Billy retorted, joining in the playful misuse
of pronouns.

And both laughed and kissed, and sighed with content. “I'm goin' to turn
pincher, now,” he announced, after quite an interval of meditation. “No
more drinks with the boys. It's me for the water wagon. And I'm goin' to
ease down on smokes. Huh! Don't see why I can't roll my own cigarettes.
They're ten times cheaper'n tailor-mades. An' I can grow a beard. The
amount of money the barbers get out of a fellow in a year would keep a
baby.”

“Just you let your beard grow, Mister Roberts, and I'll get a divorce,”
 Saxon threatened. “You're just too handsome and strong with a smooth
face. I love your face too much to have it covered up.--Oh, you dear!
you dear! Billy, I never knew what happiness was until I came to live
with you.”

“Nor me neither.”

“And it's always going to be so?”

“You can just bet,” he assured her.

“I thought I was going to be happy married,” she went on; “but I never
dreamed it would be like this.” She turned her head on his shoulder and
kissed his cheek. “Billy, it isn't happiness. It's heaven.”

And Billy resolutely kept undivulged the cut in wages. Not until two
weeks later, when it went into effect, and he poured the diminished
sum into her lap, did he break it to her. The next day, Bert and Mary,
already a month married, had Sunday dinner with them, and the matter
came up for discussion. Bert was particularly pessimistic, and muttered
dark hints of an impending strike in the railroad shops.

“If you'd all shut your traps, it'd be all right,” Mary criticized.
“These union agitators get the railroad sore. They give me the cramp,
the way they butt in an' stir up trouble. If I was boss I'd cut the
wages of any man that listened to them.”

“Yet you belonged to the laundry workers' union,” Saxon rebuked gently.

“Because I had to or I wouldn't a-got work. An' much good it ever done
me.”

“But look at Billy,” Bert argued. “The teamsters ain't ben sayin' a word,
not a peep, an' everything lovely, and then, bang, right in the neck,
a ten per cent cut. Oh, hell, what chance have we got? We lose. There's
nothin' left for us in this country we've made and our fathers an'
mothers before us. We're all shot to pieces. We can see our finish--we,
the old stock, the children of the white people that broke away from
England an' licked the tar outa her, that freed the slaves, an' fought
the Indians, 'an made the West! Any gink with half an eye can see it
comin'.”

“But what are we going to do about it?” Saxon questioned anxiously.

“Fight. That's all. The country's in the hands of a gang of robbers.
Look at the Southern Pacific. It runs California.”

“Aw, rats, Bert,” Billy interrupted. “You're talkin' through your lid. No
railroad can ran the government of California.”

“You're a bonehead,” Bert sneered. “And some day, when it's too late,
you an' all the other boneheads'll realize the fact. Rotten? I tell you
it stinks. Why, there ain't a man who wants to go to state legislature
but has to make a trip to San Francisco, an' go into the S. P. offices,
an' take his hat off, an' humbly ask permission. Why, the governors of
California has been railroad governors since before you and I was born.
Huh! You can't tell me. We're finished. We're licked to a frazzle. But
it'd do my heart good to help string up some of the dirty thieves before
I passed out. D'ye know what we are?--we old white stock that fought in
the wars, an' broke the land, an' made all this? I'll tell you. We're
the last of the Mohegans.”

“He scares me to death, he's so violent,” Mary said with unconcealed
hostility. “If he don't quit shootin' off his mouth he'll get fired from
the shops. And then what'll we do? He don't consider me. But I can tell
you one thing all right, all right. I'll not go back to the laundry.”
 She held her right hand up and spoke with the solemnity of an oath. “Not
so's you can see it. Never again for yours truly.”

“Oh, I know what you're drivin' at,” Bert said with asperity. “An' all I
can tell you is, livin' or dead, in a job or out, no matter what happens
to me, if you will lead that way, you will, an' there's nothin' else to
it.”

“I guess I kept straight before I met you,” she came back with a toss of
the head. “And I kept straight after I met you, which is going some if
anybody should ask you.”

Hot words were on Bert's tongue, but Saxon intervened and brought about
peace. She was concerned over the outcome of their marriage. Both were
highstrung, both were quick and irritable, and their continual clashes
did not augur well for their future.

The safety razor was a great achievement for Saxon. Privily she
conferred with a clerk she knew in Pierce's hardware store and made the
purchase. On Sunday morning, after breakfast, when Billy was starting
to go to the barber shop, she led him into the bedroom, whisked a towel
aside, and revealed the razor box, shaving mug, soap, brush, and lather
all ready. Billy recoiled, then came back to make curious investigation.
He gazed pityingly at the safety razor.

“Huh! Call that a man's tool!”

“It'll do the work,” she said. “It does it for thousands of men every
day.”

But Billy shook his head and backed away.

“You shave three times a week,” she urged. “That's forty-five cents.
Call it half a dollar, and there are fifty-two weeks in the year.
Twenty-six dollars a year just for shaving. Come on, dear, and try it.
Lots of men swear by it.”

He shook his head mutinously, and the cloudy deeps of his eyes grew more
cloudy. She loved that sullen handsomeness that made him look so boyish,
and, laughing and kissing him, she forced him into a chair, got off his
coat, and unbuttoned shirt and undershirt and turned them in.

Threatening him with, “If you open your mouth to kick I'll shove it in,”
 she coated his face with lather.

“Wait a minute,” she checked him, as he reached desperately for the
razor. “I've been watching the barbers from the sidewalk. This is what
they do after the lather is on.”

And thereupon she proceeded to rub the lather in with her fingers.

“There,” she said, when she had coated his face a second time. “You're
ready to begin. Only remember, I'm not always going to do this for you.
I'm just breaking you in, you see.”

With great outward show of rebellion, half genuine, half facetious, he
made several tentative scrapes with the razor. He winced violently, and
violently exclaimed:

“Holy jumping Jehosaphat!”

He examined his face in the glass, and a streak of blood showed in the
midst of the lather.

“Cut!--by a safety razor, by God! Sure, men swear by it. Can't blame
'em. Cut! By a safety!”

“But wait a second,” Saxon pleaded. “They have to be regulated. The
clerk told me. See those little screws. There.... That's it... turn them
around.”

Again Billy applied the blade to his face. After a couple of scrapes, he
looked at himself closely in the mirror, grinned, and went on shaving.
With swiftness and dexterity he scraped his face clean of lather. Saxon
clapped her hands.

“Fine,” Billy approved. “Great! Here. Give me your hand. See what a good
job it made.”

He started to rub her hand against his cheek. Saxon jerked away with a
little cry of disappointment, then examined him closely.

“It hasn't shaved at all,” she said.

“It's a fake, that's what it is. It cuts the hide, but not the hair. Me
for the barber.”

But Saxon was persistent.

“You haven't given it a fair trial yet. It was regulated too much. Let
me try my hand at it. There, that's it, betwixt and between. Now, lather
again and try it.”

This time the unmistakable sand-papery sound of hair-severing could be
heard.

“How is it?” she fluttered anxiously.

“It gets the--ouch!--hair,” Billy grunted, frowning and making faces.
“But it--gee!--say!--ouch!--pulls like Sam Hill.”

“Stay with it,” she encouraged. “Don't give up the ship, big Injun with
a scalplock. Remember what Bert says and be the last of the Mohegans.”

At the end of fifteen minutes he rinsed his face and dried it, sighing
with relief.

“It's a shave, in a fashion, Saxon, but I can't say I'm stuck on it. It
takes out the nerve. I'm as weak as a cat.”

He groaned with sudden discovery of fresh misfortune.

“What's the matter now?” she asked.

“The back of my neck--how can I shave the back of my neck? I'll have to
pay a barber to do it.”

Saxon's consternation was tragic, but it only lasted a moment. She took
the brush in her hand.

“Sit down, Billy.”

“What?--you?” he demanded indignantly.

“Yes; me. If any barber is good enough to shave your neck, and then I
am, too.”

Billy moaned and groaned in the abjectness of humility and surrender,
and let her have her way.

“There, and a good job,” she informed him when she had finished. “As
easy as falling off a log. And besides, it means twenty-six dollars a
year. And you'll buy the crib, the baby buggy, the pinning blankets, and
lots and lots of things with it. Now sit still a minute longer.”

She rinsed and dried the back of his neck and dusted it with talcum
powder.

“You're as sweet as a clean little baby, Billy Boy.”

The unexpected and lingering impact of her lips on the back of his neck
made him writhe with mingled feelings not all unpleasant.

Two days later, though vowing in the intervening time to have nothing
further to do with the instrument of the devil, he permitted Saxon to
assist him to a second shave. This time it went easier.

“It ain't so bad,” he admitted. “I'm gettin' the hang of it. It's all
in the regulating. You can shave as close as you want an' no more close
than you want. Barbers can't do that. Every once an' awhile they get my
face sore.”

The third shave was an unqualified success, and the culminating bliss
was reached when Saxon presented him with a bottle of witch hazel. After
that he began active proselyting. He could not wait a visit from Bert,
but carried the paraphernalia to the latter's house to demonstrate.

“We've ben boobs all these years, Bert, runnin' the chances of barber's
itch an' everything. Look at this, eh? See her take hold. Smooth as
silk. Just as easy.... There! Six minutes by the clock. Can you beat it?
When I get my hand in, I can do it in three. It works in the dark. It
works under water. You couldn't cut yourself if you tried. And it saves
twenty-six dollars a year. Saxon figured it out, and she's a wonder, I
tell you.”



CHAPTER VI

The trafficking between Saxon and Mercedes increased. The latter
commanded a ready market for all the fine work Saxon could supply, while
Saxon was eager and happy in the work. The expected babe and the cut in
Billy's wages had caused her to regard the economic phase of existence
more seriously than ever. Too little money was being laid away in the
bank, and her conscience pricked her as she considered how much she
was laying out on the pretty necessaries for the household and herself.
Also, for the first time in her life she was spending another's
earnings. Since a young girl she had been used to spending her own, and
now, thanks to Mercedes she was doing it again, and, out of her profits,
assaying more expensive and delightful adventures in lingerie.

Mercedes suggested, and Saxon carried out and even bettered, the dainty
things of thread and texture. She made ruffled chemises of sheer linen,
with her own fine edgings and French embroidery on breast and shoulders;
linen hand-made combination undersuits; and nightgowns, fairy and
cobwebby, embroidered, trimmed with Irish lace. On Mercedes' instigation
she executed an ambitious and wonderful breakfast cap for which the old
woman returned her twelve dollars after deducting commission.

She was happy and busy every waking moment, nor was preparation for the
little one neglected. The only ready made garments she bought were three
fine little knit shirts. As for the rest, every bit was made by her own
hands--featherstitched pinning blankets, a crocheted jacket and cap,
knitted mittens, embroidered bonnets; slim little princess slips
of sensible length; underskirts on absurd Lilliputian yokes;
silk-embroidered white flannel petticoats; stockings and crocheted
boots, seeming to burgeon before her eyes with wriggly pink toes and
plump little calves; and last, but not least, many deliciously soft
squares of bird's-eye linen. A little later, as a crowning masterpiece,
she was guilty of a dress coat of white silk, embroidered. And into all
the tiny garments, with every stitch, she sewed love. Yet this love,
so unceasingly sewn, she knew when she came to consider and marvel, was
more of Billy than of the nebulous, ungraspable new bit of life that
eluded her fondest attempts at visioning.

“Huh,” was Billy's comment, as he went over the mite's wardrobe and came
back to center on the little knit shirts, “they look more like a real
kid than the whole kit an' caboodle. Why, I can see him in them regular
manshirts.”

Saxon, with a sudden rush of happy, unshed tears, held one of the
little shirts up to his lips. He kissed it solemnly, his eyes resting on
Saxon's.

“That's some for the boy,” he said, “but a whole lot for you.”

But Saxon's money-earning was doomed to cease ignominiously and
tragically. One day, to take advantage of a department store bargain
sale, she crossed the bay to San Francisco. Passing along Sutter Street,
her eye was attracted by a display in the small window of a small shop.
At first she could not believe it; yet there, in the honored place of
the window, was the wonderful breakfast cap for which she had received
twelve dollars from Mercedes. It was marked twenty-eight dollars. Saxon
went in and interviewed the shopkeeper, an emaciated, shrewd-eyed and
middle-aged woman of foreign extraction.

“Oh, I don't want to buy anything,” Saxon said. “I make nice things
like you have here, and I wanted to know what you pay for them--for that
breakfast cap in the window, for instance.”

The woman darted a keen glance to Saxon's left hand, noted the
innumerable tiny punctures in the ends of the first and second fingers,
then appraised her clothing and her face.

“Can you do work like that?”

Saxon nodded.

“I paid twenty dollars to the woman that made that.” Saxon repressed
an almost spasmodic gasp, and thought coolly for a space. Mercedes had
given her twelve. Then Mercedes had pocketed eight, while she, Saxon,
had furnished the material and labor.

“Would you please show me other hand-made things -- nightgowns, chemises,
and such things, and tell me the prices you pay?”

“Can you do such work?”

“Yes.”

“And will you sell to me?”

“Certainly,” Saxon answered. “That is why I am here.”

“We add only a small amount when we sell,” the woman went on; “you see,
light and rent and such things, as well as a profit or else we could not
be here.”

“It's only fair,” Saxon agreed.

Amongst the beautiful stuff Saxon went over, she found a nightgown and
a combination undersuit of her own manufacture. For the former she had
received eight dollars from Mercedes, it was marked eighteen, and the
woman had paid fourteen; for the latter Saxon received six, it was
marked fifteen, and the woman had paid eleven.

“Thank you,” Saxon said, as she drew on her gloves. “I should like to
bring you some of my work at those prices.”

“And I shall be glad to buy it... if it is up to the mark.” The woman
looked at her severely. “Mind you, it must be as good as this. And if it
is, I often get special orders, and I'll give you a chance at them.”

Mercedes was unblushingly candid when Saxon reproached her.

“You told me you took only a commission,” was Saxon's accusation.

“So I did; and so I have.”

“But I did all the work and bought all the materials, yet you actually
cleared more out of it than I did. You got the lion's share.”

“And why shouldn't I, my dear? I was the middleman. It's the way of the
world. 'Tis the middlemen that get the lion's share.”

“It seems to me most unfair,” Saxon reflected, more in sadness than
anger.

“That is your quarrel with the world, not with me,” Mercedes rejoined
sharply, then immediately softened with one of her quick changes. “We
mustn't quarrel, my dear. I like you so much. La la, it is nothing to
you, who are young and strong with a man young and strong. Listen, I
am an old woman. And old Barry can do little for me. He is on his last
legs. His kidneys are 'most gone. Remember, 'tis I must bury him. And
I do him honor, for beside me he'll have his last long sleep. A stupid,
dull old man, heavy, an ox, 'tis true; but a good old fool with no trace
of evil in him. The plot is bought and paid for--the final installment
was made up, in part, out of my commissions from you. Then there are the
funeral expenses. It must be done nicely. I have still much to save. And
Barry may turn up his toes any day.”

Saxon sniffed the air carefully, and knew the old woman had been
drinking again.

“Come, my dear, let me show you.” Leading Saxon to a large sea chest
in the bedroom, Mercedes lifted the lid. A faint perfume, as of
rose-petals, floated up. “Behold, my burial trousseau. Thus I shall wed
the dust.”

Saxon's amazement increased, as, article by article, the old woman
displayed the airiest, the daintiest, the most delicious and most
complete of bridal outfits. Mercedes held up an ivory fan.

“In Venice 'twas given me, my dear.--See, this comb, turtle shell;
Bruce Anstey made it for me the week before he drank his last bottle and
scattered his brave mad brains with a Colt's 44.--This scarf. La la, a
Liberty scarf--”

“And all that will be buried with you,” Saxon mused, “Oh, the
extravagance of it!”

Mercedes laughed.

“Why not? I shall die as I have lived. It is my pleasure. I go to the
dust as a bride. No cold and narrow bed for me. I would it were a coach,
covered with the soft things of the East, and pillows, pillows, without
end.”

“It would buy you twenty funerals and twenty plots,” Saxon protested,
shocked by this blasphemy of conventional death. “It is downright
wicked.”

“'Twill be as I have lived,” Mercedes said complacently. “And it's a
fine bride old Barry'll have to come and lie beside him.” She closed the
lid and sighed. “Though I wish it were Bruce Anstey, or any of the pick
of my young men to lie with me in the great dark and to crumble with me
to the dust that is the real death.”

She gazed at Saxon with eyes heated by alcohol and at the same time cool
with the coolness of content.

“In the old days the great of earth were buried with their live slaves
with them. I but take my flimsies, my dear.”

“Then you aren't afraid of death?... in the least?”

Mercedes shook her head emphatically.

“Death is brave, and good, and kind. I do not fear death. 'Tis of men I
am afraid when I am dead. So I prepare. They shall not have me when I am
dead.”

Saxon was puzzled.

“They would not want you then,” she said.

“Many are wanted,” was the answer. “Do you know what becomes of the aged
poor who have no money for burial? They are not buried. Let me tell you.
We stood before great doors. He was a queer man, a professor who ought
to have been a pirate, a man who lectured in class rooms when he ought
to have been storming walled cities or robbing banks. He was slender,
like Don Juan. His hands were strong as steel. So was his spirit. And he
was mad, a bit mad, as all my young men have been. 'Come, Mercedes,' he
said; 'we will inspect our brethren and become humble, and glad that we
are not as they--as yet not yet. And afterward, to-night, we will dine
with a more devilish taste, and we will drink to them in golden wine
that will be the more golden for having seen them. Come, Mercedes.'

“He thrust the great doors open, and by the hand led me in. It was a sad
company. Twenty-four, that lay on marble slabs, or sat, half erect and
propped, while many young men, bright of eye, bright little knives in
their hands, glanced curiously at me from their work.”

“They were dead?” Saxon interrupted to gasp.

“They were the pauper dead, my dear. 'Come, Mercedes,' said he. 'There
is more to show you that will make us glad we are alive.' And he took me
down, down to the vats. The salt vats, my dear. I was not afraid. But
it was in my mind, then, as I looked, how it would be with me when I was
dead. And there they were, so many lumps of pork. And the order came, 'A
woman; an old woman.' And the man who worked there fished in the vats.
The first was a man he drew to see. Again he fished and stirred. Again
a man. He was impatient, and grumbled at his luck. And then, up through
the brine, he drew a woman, and by the face of her she was old, and he
was satisfied.”

“It is not true!” Saxon cried out.

“I have seen, my dear, I know. And I tell you fear not the wrath of God
when you are dead. Fear only the salt vats. And as I stood and looked,
and as he who led me there looked at me and smiled and questioned and
bedeviled me with those mad, black, tired-scholar's eyes of his, I knew
that that was no way for my dear clay. Dear it is, my clay to me; dear
it has been to others. La la, the salt vat is no place for my kissed
lips and love-lavished body.” Mercedes lifted the lid of the chest and
gazed fondly at her burial pretties. “So I have made my bed. So I shall
lie in it. Some old philosopher said we know we must die; we do not
believe it. But the old do believe. I believe.

“My dear, remember the salt vats, and do not be angry with me because my
commissions have been heavy. To escape the vats I would stop at nothing
 -- steal the widow's mite, the orphan's crust, and pennies from a dead
man's eyes.”

“Do you believe in God?” Saxon asked abruptly, holding herself together
despite cold horror.

Mercedes dropped the lid and shrugged her shoulders.

“Who knows? I shall rest well.”

“And punishment?” Saxon probed, remembering the unthinkable tale of the
other's life.

“Impossible, my dear. As some old poet said, 'God's a good fellow.' Some
time I shall talk to you about God. Never be afraid of him. Be afraid
only of the salt vats and the things men may do with your pretty flesh
after you are dead.”



CHAPTER VII

Billy quarreled with good fortune. He suspected he was too prosperous on
the wages he received. What with the accumulating savings account, the
paying of the monthly furniture installment and the house rent, the
spending money in pocket, and the good fare he was eating, he was
puzzled as to how Saxon managed to pay for the goods used in her fancy
work. Several times he had suggested his inability to see how she did
it, and been baffled each time by Saxon's mysterious laugh.

“I can't see how you do it on the money,” he was contending one evening.

He opened his mouth to speak further, then closed it and for five
minutes thought with knitted brows.

“Say,” he said, “what's become of that frilly breakfast cap you was
workin' on so hard, I ain't never seen you wear it, and it was sure too
big for the kid.”

Saxon hesitated, with pursed lips and teasing eyes. With her,
untruthfulness had always been a difficult matter. To Billy it was
impossible. She could see the cloud-drift in his eyes deepening and his
face hardening in the way she knew so well when he was vexed.

“Say, Saxon, you ain't... you ain't... sellin' your work?”

And thereat she related everything, not omitting Mercedes Higgins' part
in the transaction, nor Mercedes Higgins' remarkable burial trousseau.
But Billy was not to be led aside by the latter. In terms anything but
uncertain he told Saxon that she was not to work for money.

“But I have so much spare time, Billy, dear,” she pleaded.

He shook his head.

“Nothing doing. I won't listen to it. I married you, and I'll take care
of you. Nobody can say Bill Roberts' wife has to work. And I don't want
to think it myself. Besides, it ain't necessary.”

“But Billy--” she began again.

“Nope. That's one thing I won't stand for, Saxon. Not that I don't like
fancy work. I do. I like it like hell, every bit you make, but I like it
on YOU. Go ahead and make all you want of it, for yourself, an' I'll
put up for the goods. Why, I'm just whistlin' an' happy all day long,
thinkin' of the boy an' seein' you at home here workin' away on all them
nice things. Because I know how happy you are a-doin' it. But honest to
God, Saxon, it'd all be spoiled if I knew you was doin' it to sell. You
see, Bill Roberts' wife don't have to work. That's my brag--to myself,
mind you. An' besides, it ain't right.”

“You're a dear,” she whispered, happy despite her disappointment.

“I want you to have all you want,” he continued. “An' you're goin' to
get it as long as I got two hands stickin' on the ends of my arms. I
guess I know how good the things are you wear--good to me, I mean, too.
I'm dry behind the ears, an' maybe I've learned a few things I oughtn't
to before I knew you. But I know what I'm talkin' about, and I want
to say that outside the clothes down underneath, an' the clothes down
underneath the outside ones, I never saw a woman like you. Oh--”

He threw up his hands as if despairing of ability to express what he
thought and felt, then essayed a further attempt.

“It's not a matter of bein' only clean, though that's a whole lot. Lots
of women are clean. It ain't that. It's something more, an' different.
It's... well, it's the look of it, so white, an' pretty, an' tasty. It
gets on the imagination. It's something I can't get out of my thoughts
of you. I want to tell you lots of men can't strip to advantage, an'
lots of women, too. But you--well, you're a wonder, that's all, and you
can't get too many of them nice things to suit me, and you can't get
them too nice.

“For that matter, Saxon, you can just blow yourself. There's lots of
easy money layin' around. I'm in great condition. Billy Murphy pulled
down seventy-five round iron dollars only last week for puttin' away the
Pride of North Beach. That's what ha paid us the fifty back out of.”

But this time it was Saxon who rebelled.

“There's Carl Hansen,” Billy argued. “The second Sharkey, the alfalfa
sportin' writers are callin' him. An' he calls himself Champion of the
United States Navy. Well, I got his number. He's just a big stiff. I've
seen 'm fight, an' I can pass him the sleep medicine just as easy. The
Secretary of the Sportin' Life Club offered to match me. An' a hundred
iron dollars in it for the winner. And it'll all be yours to blow in any
way you want. What d'ye say?”

“If I can't work for money, you can't fight,” was Saxon's ultimatum,
immediately withdrawn. “But you and I don't drive bargains. Even if
you'd let me work for money, I wouldn't let you fight. I've never
forgotten what you told me about how prizefighters lose their silk.
Well, you're not going to lose yours. It's half my silk, you know.
And if you won't fight, I won't work--there. And more, I'll never do
anything you don't want me to, Billy.”

“Same here,” Billy agreed. “Though just the same I'd like most to death
to have just one go at that squarehead Hansen.” He smiled with pleasure
at the thought. “Say, let's forget it all now, an' you sing me 'Harvest
Days' on that dinky what-you-may-call-it.”

When she had complied, accompanying herself on the ukulele, she
suggested his weird “Cowboy's Lament.” In some inexplicable way of love,
she had come to like her husband's one song. Because he sang it, she
liked its inanity and monotonousness; and most of all, it seemed to her,
she loved his hopeless and adorable flatting of every note. She could
even sing with him, flatting as accurately and deliciously as he. Nor
did she undeceive him in his sublime faith.

“I guess Bert an' the rest have joshed me all the time,” he said.

“You and I get along together with it fine,” she equivocated; for in
such matters she did not deem the untruth a wrong.

Spring was on when the strike came in the railroad shops. The Sunday
before it was called, Saxon and Billy had dinner at Bert's house.
Saxon's brother came, though he had found it impossible to bring
Sarah, who refused to budge from her household rut. Bert was blackly
pessimistic, and they found him singing with sardonic glee:

“Nobody loves a mil-yun-aire. Nobody likes his looks. Nobody'll share
his slightest care, He classes with thugs and crooks. Thriftiness has
become a crime, So spend everything you earn; We're living now in a
funny time, When money is made to burn.”

Mary went about the dinner preparation, flaunting unmistakable signals
of rebellion; and Saxon, rolling up her sleeves and tying on an apron,
washed the breakfast dishes. Bert fetched a pitcher of steaming beer
from the corner saloon, and the three men smoked and talked about the
coming strike.

“It oughta come years ago,” was Bert's dictum. “It can't come any too
quick now to suit me, but it's too late. We're beaten thumbs down.
Here's where the last of the Mohegans gets theirs, in the neck,
ker-whop!”

“Oh, I don't know,” Tom, who had been smoking his pipe gravely, began
to counsel. “Organized labor's gettin' stronger every day. Why, I
can remember when there wasn't any unions in California. Look at us
now--wages, an' hours, an' everything.”

“You talk like an organizer,” Bert sneered, “shovin' the bull con on the
boneheads. But we know different. Organized wages won't buy as much
now as unorganized wages used to buy. They've got us whipsawed. Look at
Frisco, the labor leaders doin' dirtier politics than the old parties,
pawin' an' squabblin' over graft, an' goin' to San Quentin, while--what
are the Frisco carpenters doin'? Let me tell you one thing, Tom Brown,
if you listen to all you hear you'll hear that every Frisco carpenter is
union an' gettin' full union wages. Do you believe it? It's a damn lie.
There ain't a carpenter that don't rebate his wages Saturday night to
the contractor. An' that's your buildin' trades in San Francisco,
while the leaders are makin' trips to Europe on the earnings of the
tenderloin--when they ain't coughing it up to the lawyers to get out of
wearin' stripes.”

“That's all right,” Tom concurred. “Nobody's denyin' it. The trouble is
labor ain't quite got its eyes open. It ought to play politics, but the
politics ought to be the right kind.”

“Socialism, eh?” Bert caught him up with scorn. “Wouldn't they sell us
out just as the Ruefs and Schmidts have?”

“Get men that are honest,” Billy said. “That's the whole trouble. Not
that I stand for socialism. I don't. All our folks was a long time in
America, an' I for one won't stand for a lot of fat Germans an' greasy
Russian Jews tellin' me how to run my country when they can't speak
English yet.”

“Your country!” Bert cried. “Why, you bonehead, you ain't got a country.
That's a fairy story the grafters shove at you every time they want to
rob you some more.”

“But don't vote for the grafters,” Billy contended. “If we selected
honest men we'd get honest treatment.”

“I wish you'd come to some of our meetings, Billy,” Tom said wistfully.
“If you would, you'd get your eyes open an' vote the socialist ticket
next election.”

“Not on your life,” Billy declined. “When you catch me in a socialist
meeting'll be when they can talk like white men.”

Bert was humming:

“We're living now in a funny time, When money is made to burn.”

Mary was too angry with her husband, because of the impending strike
and his incendiary utterances, to hold conversation with Saxon, and the
latter, bepuzzled, listened to the conflicting opinions of the men.

“Where are we at?” she asked them, with a merriness that concealed her
anxiety at heart.

“We ain't at,” Bert snarled. “We're gone.”

“But meat and oil have gone up again,” she chafed. “And Billy's wages
have been cut, and the shop men's were cut last year. Something must be
done.”

“The only thing to do is fight like hell,” Bert answered. “Fight, an' go
down fightin'. That's all. We're licked anyhow, but we can have a last
run for our money.”

“That's no way to talk,” Tom rebuked.

“The time for talkin' 's past, old cock. The time for fightin' 's come.”

“A hell of a chance you'd have against regular troops and machine guns,”
 Billy retorted.

“Oh, not that way. There's such things as greasy sticks that go up with
a loud noise and leave holes. There's such things as emery powder--”

“Oh, ho!” Mary burst out upon him, arms akimbo. “So that's what it
means. That's what the emery in your vest pocket meant.”

Her husband ignored her. Tom smoked with a troubled air. Billy was hurt.
It showed plainly in his face.

“You ain't ben doin' that, Bert?” he asked, his manner showing his
expectancy of his friend's denial.

“Sure thing, if you want to know. I'd see'm all in hell if I could,
before I go.”

“He's a bloody-minded anarchist,” Mary complained. “Men like him killed
McKinley, and Garfield, an'--an' an' all the rest. He'll be hung. You'll
see. Mark my words. I'm glad there's no children in sight, that's all.”

“It's hot air,” Billy comforted her.

“He's just teasing you,” Saxon soothed. “He always was a josher.”

But Mary shook her head.

“I know. I hear him talkin' in his sleep. He swears and curses something
awful, an' grits his teeth. Listen to him now.”

Bert, his handsome face bitter and devil-may-care, had tilted his chair
back against the wall and was singing

“Nobody loves a mil-yun-aire, Nobody likes his looks, Nobody'll share
his slightest care, He classes with thugs and crooks.”

Tom was saying something about reasonableness and justice, and Bert
ceased from singing to catch him up.

“Justice, eh? Another pipe-dream. I'll show you where the working class
gets justice. You remember Forbes--J. Alliston Forbes--wrecked the Alta
California Trust Company an' salted down two cold millions. I saw him
yesterday, in a big hell-bent automobile. What'd he get? Eight years'
sentence. How long did he serve? Less'n two years. Pardoned out on
account of ill health. Ill hell! We'll be dead an' rotten before he
kicks the bucket. Here. Look out this window. You see the back of that
house with the broken porch rail. Mrs. Danaker lives there. She takes
in washin'. Her old man was killed on the railroad. Nitsky on
damages--contributory negligence, or fellow-servant-something-or-other
flimflam. That's what the courts handed her. Her boy, Archie, was
sixteen. He was on the road, a regular road-kid. He blew into Fresno
an' rolled a drunk. Do you want to know how much he got? Two dollars
and eighty cents. Get that?--Two-eighty. And what did the alfalfa judge
hand'm? Fifty years. He's served eight of it already in San Quentin. And
he'll go on serving it till he croaks. Mrs. Danaker says he's bad with
consumption--caught it inside, but she ain't got the pull to get'm
pardoned. Archie the Kid steals two dollars an' eighty cents from a
drunk and gets fifty years. J. Alliston Forbes sticks up the Alta
Trust for two millions en' gets less'n two years. Who's country is
this anyway? Yourn an' Archie the Kid's? Guess again. It's J. Alliston
Forbes'--Oh:

“Nobody likes a mil-yun-aire, Nobody likes his looks, Nobody'll share
his slightest care, He classes with thugs and crooks.”

Mary, at the sink, where Saxon was just finishing the last dish, untied
Saxon's apron and kissed her with the sympathy that women alone feel for
each other under the shadow of maternity.

“Now you sit down, dear. You mustn't tire yourself, and it's a long way
to go yet. I'll get your sewing for you, and you can listen to the men
talk. But don't listen to Bert. He's crazy.”

Saxon sewed and listened, and Bert's face grew bleak and bitter as he
contemplated the baby clothes in her lap.

“There you go,” he blurted out, “bringin' kids into the world when you
ain't got any guarantee you can feed em.”

“You must a-had a souse last night,” Tom grinned.

Bert shook his head.

“Aw, what's the use of gettin' grouched?” Billy cheered. “It's a pretty
good country.”

“It WAS a pretty good country,” Bert replied, “when we was all Mohegans.
But not now. We're jiggerooed. We're hornswoggled. We're backed to a
standstill. We're double-crossed to a fare-you-well. My folks fought for
this country. So did yourn, all of you. We freed the niggers, killed the
Indians, an starved, an' froze, an' sweat, an' fought. This land looked
good to us. We cleared it, an' broke it, an' made the roads, an' built
the cities. And there was plenty for everybody. And we went on fightin'
for it. I had two uncles killed at Gettysburg. All of us was mixed up in
that war. Listen to Saxon talk any time what her folks went through to
get out here an' get ranches, an' horses, an' cattle, an' everything.
And they got 'em. All our folks' got 'em, Mary's, too--”

“And if they'd ben smart they'd a-held on to them,” she interpolated.

“Sure thing,” Bert continued. “That's the very point. We're the losers.
We've ben robbed. We couldn't mark cards, deal from the bottom, an' ring
in cold decks like the others. We're the white folks that failed. You
see, times changed, and there was two kinds of us, the lions and the
plugs. The plugs only worked, the lions only gobbled. They gobbled the
farms, the mines, the factories, an' now they've gobbled the government.
We're the white folks an' the children of white folks, that was too busy
being good to be smart. We're the white folks that lost out. We're the
ones that's ben skinned. D'ye get me?”

“You'd make a good soap-boxer,” Tom commended, “if only you'd get the
kinks straightened out in your reasoning.”

“It sounds all right, Bert,” Billy said, “only it ain't. Any man can get
rich to-day--”

“Or be president of the United States,” Bert snapped. “Sure thing--if
he's got it in him. Just the same I ain't heard you makin' a noise like
a millionaire or a president. Why? You ain't got it in you. You're a
bonehead. A plug. That's why. Skiddoo for you. Skiddoo for all of us.”

At the table, while they ate, Tom talked of the joys of farm-life he had
known as a boy and as a young man, and confided that it was his dream to
go and take up government land somewhere as his people had done before
him. Unfortunately, as he explained, Sarah was set, so that the dream
must remain a dream.

“It's all in the game,” Billy sighed. “It's played to rules. Some one
has to get knocked out, I suppose.”

A little later, while Bert was off on a fresh diatribe, Billy became
aware that he was making comparisons. This house was not like his house.
Here was no satisfying atmosphere. Things seemed to run with a jar. He
recollected that when they arrived the breakfast dishes had not yet been
washed. With a man's general obliviousness of household affairs, he had
not noted details; yet it had been borne in on him, all morning, in a
myriad ways, that Mary was not the housekeeper Saxon was. He glanced
proudly across at her, and felt the spur of an impulse to leave his
seat, go around, and embrace her. She was a wife. He remembered her
dainty undergarmenting, and on the instant, into his brain, leaped the
image of her so appareled, only to be shattered by Bert.

“Hey, Bill, you seem to think I've got a grouch. Sure thing. I have.
You ain't had my experiences. You've always done teamin' an' pulled
down easy money prizefightin'. You ain't known hard times. You ain't ben
through strikes. You ain't had to take care of an old mother an' swallow
dirt on her account. It wasn't until after she died that I could rip
loose an' take or leave as I felt like it.

“Take that time I tackled the Niles Electric an' see what a work-plug
gets handed out to him. The Head Cheese sizes me up, pumps me a lot of
questions, an' gives me an application blank. I make it out, payin' a
dollar to a doctor they sent me to for a health certificate. Then I got
to go to a picture garage an' get my mug taken for the Niles Electric
rogues' gallery. And I cough up another dollar for the mug. The Head
Squirt takes the blank, the health certificate, and the mug, an' fires
more questions. DID I BELONG TO A LABOR UNION?--ME? Of course I told'm
the truth I guess nit. I needed the job. The grocery wouldn't give me
any more tick, and there was my mother.

“Huh, thinks I, here's where I'm a real carman. Back platform for me,
where I can pick up the fancy skirts. Nitsky. Two dollars, please.
Me--my two dollars. All for a pewter badge. Then there was the
uniform--nineteen fifty, and get it anywhere else for fifteen. Only that
was to be paid out of my first month. And then five dollars in change in
my pocket, my own money. That was the rule.--I borrowed that five from
Tom Donovan, the policeman. Then what? They worked me for two weeks
without pay, breakin' me in.”

“Did you pick up any fancy skirts?” Saxon queried teasingly.

Bert shook his head glumly.

“I only worked a month. Then we organized, and they busted our union
higher'n a kite.”

“And you boobs in the shops will be busted the same way if you go out on
strike,” Mary informed him.

“That's what I've ben tellin' you all along,” Bert replied. “We ain't
got a chance to win.”

“Then why go out?” was Saxon's question.

He looked at her with lackluster eyes for a moment, then answered

“Why did my two uncles get killed at Gettysburg?”



CHAPTER VIII

Saxon went about her housework greatly troubled. She no longer devoted
herself to the making of pretties. The materials cost money, and she
did not dare. Bert's thrust had sunk home. It remained in her quivering
consciousness like a shaft of steel that ever turned and rankled. She
and Billy were responsible for this coming young life. Could they be
sure, after all, that they could adequately feed and clothe it and
prepare it for its way in the world? Where was the guaranty? She
remembered, dimly, the blight of hard times in the past, and the
plaints of fathers and mothers in those days returned to her with a new
significance. Almost could she understand Sarah's chronic complaining.

Hard times were already in the neighborhood, where lived the families
of the shopmen who had gone out on strike. Among the small storekeepers,
Saxon, in the course of the daily marketing, could sense the air of
despondency. Light and geniality seemed to have vanished. Gloom pervaded
everywhere. The mothers of the children that played in the streets
showed the gloom plainly in their faces. When they gossiped in the
evenings, over front gates and on door stoops, their voices were subdued
and less of laughter rang out.

Mary Donahue, who had taken three pints from the milkman, now took
one pint. There were no more family trips to the moving picture shows.
Scrap-meat was harder to get from the butcher. Nora Delaney, in the
third house, no longer bought fresh fish for Friday. Salted codfish, not
of the best quality, was now on her table. The sturdy children that ran
out upon the street between meals with huge slices of bread and butter
and sugar now came out with no sugar and with thinner slices spread more
thinly with butter. The very custom was dying out, and some children
already had desisted from piecing between meals.

Everywhere was manifest a pinching and scraping, a tightning and
shortening down of expenditure. And everywhere was more irritation.
Women became angered with one another, and with the children, more
quickly than of yore; and Saxon knew that Bert and Mary bickered
incessantly.

“If she'd only realize I've got troubles of my own,” Bert complained to
Saxon.

She looked at him closely, and felt fear for him in a vague, numb way.
His black eyes seemed to burn with a continuous madness. The brown face
was leaner, the skin drawn tightly across the cheekbones. A slight twist
had come to the mouth, which seemed frozen into bitterness. The
very carriage of his body and the way he wore his hat advertised a
recklessness more intense than had been his in the past.

Sometimes, in the long afternoons, sitting by the window with
idle hands, she caught herself reconstructing in her vision that
folk-migration of her people across the plains and mountains and deserts
to the sunset land by the Western sea. And often she found herself
dreaming of the arcadian days of her people, when they had not lived in
cities nor been vexed with labor unions and employers' associations. She
would remember the old people's tales of self-sufficingness, when they
shot or raised their own meat, grew their own vegetables, were their
own blacksmiths and carpenters, made their own shoes--yes, and spun
the cloth of the clothes they wore. And something of the wistfulness
in Tom's face she could see as she recollected it when he talked of his
dream of taking up government land.

A farmer's life must be fine, she thought. Why was it that people had to
live in cities? Why had times changed? If there had been enough in the
old days, why was there not enough now? Why was it necessary for men
to quarrel and jangle, and strike and fight, all about the matter of
getting work? Why wasn't there work for all?--Only that morning, and she
shuddered with the recollection, she had seen two scabs, on their way to
work, beaten up by the strikers, by men she knew by sight, and some by
name, who lived in the neighhorhood. It had happened directly across the
street. It had been cruel, terrible--a dozen men on two. The children
had begun it by throwing rocks at the scabs and cursing them in ways
children should not know. Policemen had run upon the scene with drawn
revolvers, and the strikers had retreated into the houses and through
the narrow alleys between the houses. One of the scabs, unconscious,
had been carried away in an ambulance; the other, assisted by special
railroad police, had been taken away to the shops. At him, Mary Donahue,
standing on her front stoop, her child in her arms, had hurled such vile
abuse that it had brought the blush of shame to Saxon's cheeks. On the
stoop of the house on the other side, Saxon had noted Mercedes, in the
height of the beating up, looking on with a queer smile. She had seemed
very eager to witness, her nostrils dilated and swelling like the beat
of pulses as she watched. It had struck Saxon at the time that the old
woman was quite unalarmed and only curious to see.

To Mercedes, who was so wise in love, Saxon went for explanation of what
was the matter with the world. But the old woman's wisdom in affairs
industrial and economic was cryptic and unpalatable.

“La la, my dear, it is so simple. Most men are born stupid. They are the
slaves. A few are born clever. They are the masters. God made men so, I
suppose.”

“Then how about God and that terrible beating across the street this
morning?”

“I'm afraid he was not interested,” Mercedes smiled. “I doubt he even
knows that it happened.”

“I was frightened to death,” Saxon declared. “I was made sick by it. And
yet you--I saw you--you looked on as cool as you please, as if it was a
show.”

“It was a show, my dear.”

“Oh, how could you?”

“La la, I have seen men killed. It is nothing strange. All men die. The
stupid ones die like oxen, they know not why. It is quite funny to see.
They strike each other with fists and clubs, and break each other's
heads. It is gross. They are like a lot of animals. They are like dogs
wrangling over bones. Jobs are bones, you know. Now, if they fought
for women, or ideas, or bars of gold, or fabulous diamonds, it would be
splendid. But no; they are only hungry, and fight over scraps for their
stomach.”

“Oh, if I could only understand!” Saxon murmured, her hands tightly
clasped in anguish of incomprehension and vital need to know.

“There is nothing to understand. It is clear as print. There have always
been the stupid and the clever, the slave and the master, the peasant
and the prince. There always will be.”

“But why?”

“Why is a peasant a peasant, my dear? Because he is a peasant. Why is a
flea a flea?”

Saxon tossed her head fretfully.

“Oh, but my dear, I have answered. The philosophies of the world can
give no better answer. Why do you like your man for a husband rather
than any other man? Because you like him that way, that is all. Why do
you like? Because you like. Why does fire burn and frost bite? Why
are there clever men and stupid men? masters and slaves? employers and
workingmen? Why is black black? Answer that and you answer everything.”

“But it is not right that men should go hungry and without work when
they want to work if only they can get a square deal,” Saxon protested.

“Oh, but it is right, just as it is right that stone won't burn like
wood, that sea sand isn't sugar, that thorns prick, that water is wet,
that smoke rises, that things fall down and not up.”

But such doctrine of reality made no impression on Saxon. Frankly, she
could not comprehend. It seemed like so much nonsense.

“Then we have no liberty and independence,” she cried passionately. “One
man is not as good as another. My child has not the right to live that a
rich mother's child has.”

“Certainly not,” Mercedes answered.

“Yet all my people fought for these things,” Saxon urged, remembering
her school history and the sword of her father.

“Democracy--the dream of the stupid peoples. Oh, la la, my dear,
democracy is a lie, an enchantment to keep the work brutes content, just
as religion used to keep them content. When they groaned in their misery
and toil, they were persuaded to keep on in their misery and toil by
pretty tales of a land beyond the skies where they would live famously
and fat while the clever ones roasted in everlasting fire. Ah, how
the clever ones must have chuckled! And when that lie wore out, and
democracy was dreamed, the clever ones saw to it that it should be in
truth a dream, nothing but a dream. The world belongs to the great and
clever.”

“But you are of the working people,” Saxon charged.

The old woman drew herself up, and almost was angry.

“I? Of the working people? My dear, because I had misfortune with moneys
invested, because I am old and can no longer win the brave young men,
because I have outlived the men of my youth and there is no one to go
to, because I live here in the ghetto with Barry Higgins and prepare
to die--why, my dear, I was born with the masters, and have trod all
my days on the necks of the stupid. I have drunk rare wines and sat at
feasts that would have supported this neighborhood for a lifetime. Dick
Golden and I--it was Dickie's money, but I could have had it -- Dick Golden
and I dropped four hundred thousand francs in a week's play at Monte
Carlo. He was a Jew, but he was a spender. In India I have worn jewels
that could have saved the lives of ten thousand families dying before my
eyes.”

“You saw them die?... and did nothing?” Saxon asked aghast.

“I kept my jewels--la la, and was robbed of them by a brute of a Russian
officer within the year.”

“And you let them die,” Saxon reiterated.

“They were cheap spawn. They fester and multiply like maggots. They
meant nothing--nothing, my dear, nothing. No more than your work people
mean here, whose crowning stupidity is their continuing to beget more
stupid spawn for the slavery of the masters.”

So it was that while Saxon could get little glimmering of common sense
from others, from the terrible old woman she got none at all. Nor could
Saxon bring herself to believe much of what she considered Mercedes'
romancing. As the weeks passed, the strike in the railroad shops grew
bitter and deadly. Billy shook his head and confessed his inability
to make head or tail of the troubles that were looming on the labor
horizon.

“I don't get the hang of it,” he told Saxon. “It's a mix-up. It's like
a roughhouse with the lights out. Look at us teamsters. Here we are,
the talk just starting of going out on sympathetic strike for the
mill-workers. They've ben out a week, most of their places is filled,
an' if us teamsters keep on haulin' the mill-work the strike's lost.”

“Yet you didn't consider striking for yourselves when your wages were
cut,” Saxon said with a frown.

“Oh, we wasn't in position then. But now the Frisco teamsters and the
whole Frisco Water Front Confederation is liable to back us up. Anyway,
we're just talkin' about it, that's all. But if we do go out, we'll try
to get back that ten per cent cut.”

“It's rotten politics,” he said another time. “Everybody's rotten. If
we'd only wise up and agree to pick out honest men--”

“But if you, and Bert, and Tom can't agree, how do you expect all the
rest to agree?” Saxon asked.

“It gets me,” he admitted. “It's enough to give a guy the willies
thinkin' about it. And yet it's plain as the nose on your face. Get
honest men for politics, an' the whole thing's straightened out. Honest
men'd make honest laws, an' then honest men'd get their dues. But Bert
wants to smash things, an' Tom smokes his pipe and dreams pipe dreams
about by an' by when everybody votes the way he thinks. But this by an'
by ain't the point. We want things now. Tom says we can't get them now,
an' Bert says we ain't never goin' to get them. What can a fellow do
when everybody's of different minds? Look at the socialists themselves.
They're always disagreeing, splittin' up, an' firin' each other out of
the party. The whole thing's bughouse, that's what, an' I almost get
dippy myself thinkin' about it. The point I can't get out of my mind is
that we want things now.”

He broke off abruptly and stared at Saxon.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice husky with anxiety. “You ain't sick...
or... or anything?”

One hand she had pressed to her heart; but the startle and fright in her
eyes was changing into a pleased intentness, while on her mouth was
a little mysterious smile. She seemed oblivious to her husband, as if
listening to some message from afar and not for his ears. Then wonder
and joy transfused her face, and she looked at Billy, and her hand went
out to his.

“It's life,” she whispered. “I felt life. I am so glad, so glad.”

The next evening when Billy came home from work, Saxon caused him to
know and undertake more of the responsibilities of fatherhood.

“I've been thinking it over, Billy,” she began, “and I'm such a healthy,
strong woman that it won't have to be very expensive. There's Martha
Skelton--she's a good midwife.”

But Billy shook his head.

“Nothin' doin' in that line, Saxon. You're goin' to have Doc Hentley.
He's Bill Murphy's doc, an' Bill swears by him. He's an old cuss, but
he's a wooz.”

“She confined Maggie Donahue,” Saxon argued; “and look at her and her
baby.”

“Well, she won't confine you--not so as you can notice it.”

“But the doctor will charge twenty dollars,” Saxon pursued, “and make
me get a nurse because I haven't any womenfolk to come in. But Martha
Skelton would do everything, and it would be so much cheaper.”

But Billy gathered her tenderly in his arms and laid down the law.

“Listen to me, little wife. The Roberts family ain't on the cheap. Never
forget that. You've gotta have the baby. That's your business, an' it's
enough for you. My business is to get the money an' take care of you.
An' the best ain't none too good for you. Why, I wouldn't run the chance
of the teeniest accident happenin' to you for a million dollars. It's
you that counts. An' dollars is dirt. Maybe you think I like that kid
some. I do. Why, I can't get him outa my head. I'm thinkin' about'm all
day long. If I get fired, it'll be his fault. I'm clean dotty over him.
But just the same, Saxon, honest to God, before I'd have anything happen
to you, break your little finger, even, I'd see him dead an' buried
first. That'll give you something of an idea what you mean to me.

“Why, Saxon, I had the idea that when folks got married they just
settled down, and after a while their business was to get along with
each other. Maybe it's the way it is with other people; but it ain't
that way with you an' me. I love you more 'n more every day. Right now
I love you more'n when I began talkin' to you five minutes ago. An' you
won't have to get a nurse. Doc Hentley'll come every day, an' Mary'll
come in an' do the housework, an' take care of you an' all that, just as
you'll do for her if she ever needs it.”

As the days and weeks passed, Saxon was possessed by a conscious feeling
of proud motherhood in her swelling breasts. So essentially a normal
woman was she, that motherhood was a satisfying and passionate
happiness. It was true that she had her moments of apprehension, but
they were so momentary and faint that they tended, if anything, to give
zest to her happiness.

Only one thing troubled her, and that was the puzzling and perilous
situation of labor which no one seemed to understand, her self least of
all.

“They're always talking about how much more is made by machinery than by
the old ways,” she told her brother Tom. “Then, with all the machinery
we've got now, why don't we get more?”

“Now you're talkin',” he answered. “It wouldn't take you long to
understand socialism.”

But Saxon had a mind to the immediate need of things.

“Tom, how long have you been a socialist?”

“Eight years.”

“And you haven't got anything by it?”

“But we will... in time.”

“At that rate you'll be dead first,” she challenged.

Tom sighed.

“I'm afraid so. Things move so slow.”

Again he sighed. She noted the weary, patient look in his face, the bent
shoulders, the labor-gnarled hands, and it all seemed to symbolize the
futility of his social creed.



CHAPTER IX

It began quietly, as the fateful unexpected so often begins. Children,
of all ages and sizes, were playing in the street, and Saxon, by the
open front window, was watching them and dreaming day dreams of her
child soon to be. The sunshine mellowed peacefully down, and a light
wind from the bay cooled the air and gave to it a tang of salt. One of
the children pointed up Pine Street toward Seventh. All the children
ceased playing, and stared and pointed. They formed into groups, the
larger boys, of from ten to twelve, by themselves, the older girls
anxiously clutching the small children by the hands or gathering them
into their arms.

Saxon could not see the cause of all this, but she could guess when she
saw the larger boys rush to the gutter, pick up stones, and sneak into
the alleys between the houses. Smaller boys tried to imitate them. The
girls, dragging the tots by the arms, banged gates and clattered up the
front steps of the small houses. The doors slammed behind them, and the
street was deserted, though here and there front shades were drawn aside
so that anxious-faced women might peer forth. Saxon heard the uptown
train puffing and snorting as it pulled out from Center Street. Then,
from the direction of Seventh, came a hoarse, throaty manroar. Still,
she could see nothing, and she remembered Mercedes Higgins' words “THEY
ARE LIKE DOGS WRANGLING OVER BONES. JOBS ARE BONES, YOU KNOW.”

The roar came closer, and Saxon, leaning out, saw a dozen scabs,
conveyed by as many special police and Pinkertons, coming down the
sidewalk on her side of the street. They came compactly, as if with
discipline, while behind, disorderly, yelling confusedly, stooping to
pick up rocks, were seventy-five or a hundred of the striking shopmen.
Saxon discovered herself trembling with apprehension, knew that she must
not, and controlled herself. She was helped in this by the conduct of
Mercedes Higgins. The old woman came out of her front door, dragging a
chair, on which she coolly seated herself on the tiny stoop at the top
of the steps.

In the hands of the special police were clubs. The Pinkertons carried
no visible weapons. The strikers, urging on from behind, seemed content
with yelling their rage and threats, and it remained for the children to
precipitate the conflict. From across the street, between the Olsen and
the Isham houses, came a shower of stones. Most of these fell short,
though one struck a scab on the head. The man was no more than twenty
feet away from Saxon. He reeled toward her front picket fence, drawing a
revolver. With one hand he brushed the blood from his eyes and with
the other he discharged the revolver into the Isham house. A Pinkerton
seized his arm to prevent a second shot, and dragged him along. At the
same instant a wilder roar went up from the strikers, while a volley of
stones came from between Saxon's house and Maggie Donahue's. The scabs
and their protectors made a stand, drawing revolvers. From their hard,
determined faces--fighting men by profession--Saxon could augur nothing
but bloodshed and death. An elderly man, evidently the leader, lifted a
soft felt hat and mopped the perspiration from the bald top of his head.
He was a large man, very rotund of belly and helpless looking. His gray
beard was stained with streaks of tobacco juice, and he was smoking
a cigar. He was stoop-shouldered, and Saxon noted the dandruff on the
collar of his coat.

One of the men pointed into the street, and several of his companions
laughed. The cause of it was the little Olsen boy, barely four years
old, escaped somehow from his mother and toddling toward his economic
enemies. In his right he bore a rock so heavy that he could scarcely
lift it. With this he feebly threatened them. His rosy little face was
convulsed with rage, and he was screaming over and over “Dam scabs!
Dam scabs! Dam scabs!” The laughter with which they greeted him only
increased his fury. He toddled closer, and with a mighty exertion threw
the rock. It fell a scant six feet beyond his hand.

This much Saxon saw, and also Mrs. Olsen rushing into the street for
her child. A rattling of revolver-shots from the strikers drew Saxon's
attention to the men beneath her. One of them cursed sharply and
examined the biceps of his left arm, which hung limply by his side. Down
the hand she saw the blood beginning to drip. She knew she ought not
remain and watch, but the memory of her fighting forefathers was with
her, while she possessed no more than normal human fear--if anything,
less. She forgot her child in the eruption of battle that had broken
upon her quiet street. And she forgot the strikers, and everything else,
in amazement at what had happened to the round-bellied, cigar-smoking
leader. In some strange way, she knew not how, his head had become
wedged at the neck between the tops of the pickets of her fence. His
body hung down outside, the knees not quite touching the ground. His hat
had fallen off, and the sun was making an astounding high light on his
bald spot. The cigar, too, was gone. She saw he was looking at her. One
hand, between the pickets, seemed waving at her, and almost he seemed to
wink at her jocosely, though she knew it to be the contortion of deadly
pain.

Possibly a second, or, at most, two seconds, she gazed at this, when she
was aroused by Bert's voice. He was running along the sidewalk, in front
of her house, and behind him charged several more strikers, while he
shouted: “Come on, you Mohegans! We got 'em nailed to the cross!”

In his left hand he carried a pick-handle, in his right a revolver,
already empty, for he clicked the cylinder vainly around as he ran. With
an abrupt stop, dropping the pick-handle, he whirled half about, facing
Saxon's gate. He was sinking down, when he straightened himself to throw
the revolver into the face of a scab who was jumping toward him. Then he
began swaying, at the same time sagging at the knees and waist. Slowly,
with infinite effort, he caught a gate picket in his right hand, and,
still slowly, as if lowering himself, sank down, while past him leaped
the crowd of strikers he had led.

It was battle without quarter--a massacre. The scabs and their
protectors, surrounded, backed against Saxon's fence, fought like
cornered rats, but could not withstand the rush of a hundred men.
Clubs and pick-handles were swinging, revolvers were exploding, and
cobblestones were flung with crushing effect at arm's distance. Saxon
saw young Frank Davis, a friend of Bert's and a father of several
months' standing, press the muzzle of his revolver against a scab's
stomach and fire. There were curses and snarls of rage, wild cries of
terror and pain. Mercedes was right. These things were not men. They
were beasts, fighting over bones, destroying one another for bones.

JOBS ARE BONES; JOBS ARE BONES. The phrase was an incessant iteration in
Saxon's brain. Much as she might have wished it, she was powerless now
to withdraw from the window. It was as if she were paralyzed. Her brain
no longer worked. She sat numb, staring, incapable of anything save
seeing the rapid horror before her eyes that flashed along like a moving
picture film gone mad. She saw Pinkertons, special police, and strikers
go down. One scab, terribly wounded, on his knees and begging for
mercy, was kicked in the face. As he sprawled backward another striker,
standing over him, fired a revolver into his chest, quickly and
deliberately, again and again, until the weapon was empty. Another scab,
backed over the pickets by a hand clutching his throat, had his face
pulped by a revolver butt. Again and again, continually, the revolver
rose and fell, and Saxon knew the man who wielded it--Chester Johnson.
She had met him at dances and danced with him in the days before she was
married. He had always been kind and good natured. She remembered the
Friday night, after a City Hall band concert, when he had taken her and
two other girls to Tony's Tamale Grotto on Thirteenth street. And after
that they had all gone to Pabst's Cafe and drunk a glass of beer before
they went home. It was impossible that this could be the same Chester
Johnson. And as she looked, she saw the round-bellied leader, still
wedged by the neck between the pickets, draw a revolver with his
free hand, and, squinting horribly sidewise, press the muzzle against
Chester's side. She tried to scream a warning. She did scream, and
Chester looked up and saw her. At that moment the revolver went off, and
he collapsed prone upon the body of the scab. And the bodies of three
men hung on her picket fence.

Anything could happen now. Quite without surprise, she saw the strikers
leaping the fence, trampling her few little geraniums and pansies into
the earth as they fled between Mercedes' house and hers. Up Pine street,
from the railroad yards, was coming a rush of railroad police and
Pinkertons, firing as they ran. While down Pine street, gongs clanging,
horses at a gallop, came three patrol wagons packed with police. The
strikers were in a trap. The only way out was between the houses and
over the back yard fences. The jam in the narrow alley prevented them
all from escaping. A dozen were cornered in the angle between the front
of her house and the steps. And as they had done, so were they done by.
No effort was made to arrest. They were clubbed down and shot down to
the last man by the guardians of the peace who were infuriated by what
had been wreaked on their brethren.

It was all over, and Saxon, moving as in a dream, clutching the banister
tightly, came down the front steps. The round-bellied leader still
leered at her and fluttered one hand, though two big policemen were
just bending to extricate him. The gate was off its hinges, which seemed
strange, for she had been watching all the time and had not seen it
happen.

Bert's eyes were closed. His lips were blood-flecked, and there was a
gurgling in his throat as if he were trying to say something. As she
stooped above him, with her handkerchief brushing the blood from his
cheek where some one had stepped on him, his eyes opened. The old
defiant light was in them. He did not know her. The lips moved, and
faintly, almost reminiscently, he murmured, “The last of the Mohegans,
the last of the Mohegans.” Then he groaned, and the eyelids drooped down
again. He was not dead. She knew that, the chest still rose and fell,
and the gurgling still continued in his throat.

She looked up. Mercedes stood beside her. The old woman's eyes were very
bright, her withered cheeks flushed.

“Will you help me carry him into the house?” Saxon asked.

Mercedes nodded, turned to a sergeant of police, and made the request to
him. The sergeant gave a swift glance at Bert, and his eyes were bitter
and ferocious as he refused.

“To hell with'm. We'll care for our own.”

“Maybe you and I can do it,” Saxon said.

“Don't be a fool.” Mercedes was beckoning to Mrs. Olsen across the
street. “You go into the house, little mother that is to be. This is bad
for you. We'll carry him in. Mrs. Olsen is coming, and we'll get Maggie
Donahue.”

Saxon led the way into the back bedroom which Billy had insisted on
furnishing. As she opened the door, the carpet seemed to fly up into her
face as with the force of a blow, for she remembered Bert had laid that
carpet. And as the women placed him on the bed she recalled that it was
Bert and she, between them, who had set the bed up one Sunday morning.

And then she felt very queer, and was surprised to see Mercedes
regarding her with questioning, searching eyes. After that her queerness
came on very fast, and she descended into the hell of pain that is given
to women alone to know. She was supported, half-carried, to the front
bedroom. Many faces were about her--Mercedes, Mrs. Olsen, Maggie
Donahue. It seemed she must ask Mrs. Olsen if she had saved little Emil
from the street, but Mercedes cleared Mrs. Olsen out to look after Bert,
and Maggie Donahue went to answer a knock at the front door. From the
street came a loud hum of voices, punctuated by shouts and commands, and
from time to time there was a clanging of the gongs of ambulances
and patrol wagons. Then appeared the fat, comfortable face of Martha
Shelton, and, later, Dr. Hentley came. Once, in a clear interval,
through the thin wall Saxon heard the high opening notes of Mary's
hysteria. And, another time, she heard Mary repeating over and over.
“I'll never go back to the laundry. Never. Never.”



CHAPTER X

Billy could never get over the shock, during that period, of Saxon's
appearance. Morning after morning, and evening after evening when he
came home from work, he would enter the room where she lay and fight a
royal battle to hide his feelings and make a show of cheerfulness and
geniality. She looked so small lying there so small and shrunken and
weary, and yet so child-like in her smallness. Tenderly, as he sat
beside her, he would take up her pale hand and stroke the slim,
transparent arm, marveling at the smallness and delicacy of the bones.

One of her first questions, puzzling alike to Billy and Mary, was:

“Did they save little Emil Olsen?”

And when she told them how he had attacked, singlehanded, the whole
twenty-four fighting men, Billy's face glowed with appreciation.

“The little cuss!” he said. “That's the kind of a kid to be proud of.”

He halted awkwardly, and his very evident fear that he had hurt her
touched Saxon. She put her hand out to his.

“Billy,” she began; then waited till Mary left the room.

“I never asked before--not that it matters... now. But I waited for you
to tell me. Was it...?”

He shook his head.

“No; it was a girl. A perfect little girl. Only... it was too soon.”

She pressed his hand, and almost it was she that sympathized with him in
his affliction.

“I never told you, Billy--you were so set on a boy; but I planned, just
the same, if it was a girl, to call her Daisy. You remember, that was my
mother's name.”

He nodded his approbation.

“Say, Saxon, you know I did want a boy like the very dickens... well,
I don't care now. I think I'm set just as hard on a girl, an', well,
here's hopin' the next will be called... you wouldn't mind, would you?”

“What?”

“If we called it the same name, Daisy?”

“Oh, Billy! I was thinking the very same thing.”

Then his face grew stern as he went on.

“Only there ain't goin' to be a next. I didn't know what havin' children
was like before. You can't run any more risks like that.”

“Hear the big, strong, afraid-man talk!” she jeered, with a wan smile.
“You don't know anything about it. How can a man? I am a healthy,
natural woman. Everything would have been all right this time if... if
all that fighting hadn't happened. Where did they bury Bert?”

“You knew?”

“All the time. And where is Mercedes? She hasn't been in for two days.”

“Old Barry's sick. She's with him.”

He did not tell her that the old night watchman was dying, two thin
walls and half a dozen feet away.

Saxon's lips were trembling, and she began to cry weakly, clinging to
Billy's hand with both of hers.

“I--I can't help it,” she sobbed. “I'll be all right in a minute.... Our
little girl, Billy. Think of it! And I never saw her!”


She was still lying on her bed, when, one evening, Mary saw fit to break
out in bitter thanksgiving that she had escaped, and was destined to
escape, what Saxon had gone through.

“Aw, what are you talkin' about?” Billy demanded. “You'll get married
some time again as sure as beans is beans.”

“Not to the best man living,” she proclaimed. “And there ain't no call
for it. There's too many people in the world now, else why are there
two or three men for every job? And, besides, havin' children is too
terrible.”

Saxon, with a look of patient wisdom in her face that became glorified
as she spoke, made answer:

“I ought to know what it means. I've been through it, and I'm still in
the thick of it, and I want to say to you right now, out of all the pain
and the ache and the sorrow, that it is the most beautiful, wonderful
thing in the world.”


As Saxon's strength came back to her (and when Doctor Hentley had
privily assured Billy that she was sound as a dollar), she herself took
up the matter of the industrial tragedy that had taken place before her
door. The militia had been called out immediately, Billy informed her,
and was encamped then at the foot of Pine street on the waste ground
next to the railroad yards. As for the strikers, fifteen of them were in
jail. A house to house search had been made in the neighborhood by the
police, and in this way nearly the whole fifteen, all wounded, had been
captured. It would go hard with them, Billy foreboded gloomily. The
newspapers were demanding blood for blood, and all the ministers in
Oakland had preached fierce sermons against the strikers. The railroad
had filled every place, and it was well known that the striking shopmen
not only would never get their old jobs back but were blacklisted in
every railroad in the United States. Already they were beginning to
scatter. A number had gone to Panama, and four were talking of going to
Ecuador to work in the shops of the railroad that ran over the Andes to
Quito.

With anxiety keenly concealed, she tried to feel out Billy's opinion on
what had happened.

“That shows what Bert's violent methods come to,” she said.

He shook his head slowly and gravely.

“They'll hang Chester Johnson, anyway,” he answered indirectly.
“You know him. You told me you used to dance with him. He was caught
red-handed, lyin' on the body of a scab he beat to death. Old Jelly
Belly's got three bullet holes in him, but he ain't goin' to die, and
he's got Chester's number. They'll hang'm on Jelly Belly's evidence. It
was all in the papers. Jelly Belly shot him, too, a-hangin' by the neck
on our pickets.”

Saxon shuddered. Jelly Belly must be the man with the bald spot and the
tobacco-stained whiskers.

“Yes,” she said. “I saw it all. It seemed he must have hung there for
hours.”

“It was all over, from first to last, in five minutes.”

“It seemed ages and ages.”

“I guess that's the way it seemed to Jelly Belly, stuck on the pickets,”
 Billy smiled grimly. “But he's a hard one to kill. He's been shot an'
cut up a dozen different times. But they say now he'll be crippled for
life--have to go around on crutches, or in a wheel-chair. That'll stop
him from doin' any more dirty work for the railroad. He was one of their
top gun-fighters--always up to his ears in the thick of any fightin'
that was goin' on. He never was leery of anything on two feet, I'll say
that much for'm.”

“Where does he live?” Saxon inquired.

“Up on Adeline, near Tenth--fine neighborhood an' fine two-storied
house. He must pay thirty dollars a month rent. I guess the railroad
paid him pretty well.”

“Then he must be married?”

“Yep. I never seen his wife, but he's got one son, Jack, a passenger
engineer. I used to know him. He was a nifty boxer, though he never
went into the ring. An' he's got another son that's teacher in the
high school. His name's Paul. We're about the same age. He was great
at baseball. I knew him when we was kids. He pitched me out three times
hand-runnin' once, when the Durant played the Cole School.”

Saxon sat back in the Morris chair, resting and thinking. The problem
was growing more complicated than ever. This elderly, round-bellied, and
bald-headed gunfighter, too, had a wife and family. And there was Frank
Davis, married barely a year and with a baby boy. Perhaps the scab
he shot in the stomach had a wife and children. All seemed to be
acquainted, members of a very large family, and yet, because of their
particular families, they battered and killed each other. She had seen
Chester Johnson kill a scab, and now they were going to hang Chester
Johnson, who had married Kittie Brady out of the cannery, and she and
Kittie Brady had worked together years before in the paper box factory.

Vainly Saxon waited for Billy to say something that would show he did not
countenance the killing of the scabs.

“It was wrong,” she ventured finally.

“They killed Bert,” he countered. “An' a lot of others. An' Frank Davis.
Did you know he was dead? Had his whole lower jaw shot away--died in the
ambulance before they could get him to the receiving hospital. There was
never so much killin' at one time in Oakland before.”

“But it was their fault,” she contended. “They began it. It was murder.”

Billy did not reply, but she heard him mutter hoarsely. She knew he said
“God damn them”; but when she asked, “What?” he made no answer. His eyes
were deep with troubled clouds, while the mouth had hardened, and all
his face was bleak.

To her it was a heart-stab. Was he, too, like the rest? Would he kill
other men who had families, like Bert, and Frank Davis, and Chester
Johnson had killed? Was he, too, a wild beast, a dog that would snarl
over a bone?

She sighed. Life was a strange puzzle. Perhaps Mercedes Higgins was
right in her cruel statement of the terms of existence.

“What of it,” Billy laughed harshly, as if in answer to her unuttered
questions. “It's dog eat dog, I guess, and it's always ben that way.
Take that scrap outside there. They killed each other just like the
North an' South did in the Civil War.”

“But workingmen can't win that way, Billy. You say yourself that it
spoiled their chance of winning.”

“I suppose not,” he admitted reluctantly. “But what other chance they've
got to win I don't see. Look at 'us. We'll be up against it next.”

“Not the teamsters?” she cried.

He nodded gloomily.

“The bosses are cuttin' loose all along the line for a high old time.
Say they're goin' to beat us to our knees till we come crawlin' back
a-beggin' for our jobs. They've bucked up real high an' mighty what of
all that killin' the other day. Havin' the troops out is half the fight,
along with havin' the preachers an' the papers an' the public behind
'em. They're shootin' off their mouths already about what they're goin'
to do. They're sure gunning for trouble. First, they're goin' to hang
Chester Johnson an' as many more of the fifteen as they can. They say
that flat. The Tribune, an' the Enquirer an' the Times keep sayin' it
over an over every day. They're all union-bustin' to beat the band. No
more closed shop. To hell with organized labor. Why, the dirty little
Intelligencer come out this morning an' said that every union official
in Oakland ought to be run outa town or stretched up. Fine, eh? You bet
it's fine.

“Look at us. It ain't a case any more of sympathetic strike for the
mill-workers. We got our own troubles. They've fired our four best
men--the ones that was always on the conference committees. Did it
without cause. They're lookin' for trouble, as I told you, an' they'll
get it, too, if they don't watch out. We got our tip from the Frisco
Water Front Confederation. With them backin' us we'll go some.”

“You mean you'll... strike?” Saxon asked.

He bent his head.

“But isn't that what they want you to do?--from the way they're acting?”

“What's the difference?” Billy shrugged his shoulders, then continued.
“It's better to strike than to get fired. We beat 'em to it, that's all,
an' we catch 'em before they're ready. Don't we know what they're doin'?
They're collectin' gradin'-camp drivers an' mule-skinners all up
an' down the state. They got forty of 'em, feedin' 'em in a hotel in
Stockton right now, an' ready to rush 'em in on us an' hundreds more
like 'em. So this Saturday's the last wages I'll likely bring home for
some time.”

Saxon closed her eyes and thought quietly for five minutes. It was not
her way to take things excitedly. The coolness of poise that Billy so
admired never deserted her in time of emergency. She realized that
she herself was no more than a mote caught up in this tangled,
nonunderstandable conflict of many motes.

“We'll have to draw from our savings to pay for this month's rent,” she
said brightly.

Billy's face fell.

“We ain't got as much in the bank as you think,” he confessed. “Bert had
to be buried, you know, an I coughed up what the others couldn't raise.”

“How much was it?”

“Forty dollars. I was goin' to stand off the butcher an' the rest for a
while. They knew I was good pay. But they put it to me straight. They'd
been carryin' the shopmen right along an was up against it themselves.
An' now with that strike smashed they're pretty much smashed themselves.
So I took it all out of the bank. I knew you wouldn't mind. You don't,
do you?”

She smiled bravely, and bravely overcame the sinking feeling at her
heart.

“It was the only right thing to do, Billy. I would have done it if you
were lying sick, and Bert would have done it for you an' me if it had
been the other way around.”

His face was glowing.

“Gee, Saxon, a fellow can always count on you. You're like my right
hand. That's why I say no more babies. If I lose you I'm crippled for
life.”

“We've got to economize,” she mused, nodding her appreciation. “How much
is in bank?”

“Just about thirty dollars. You see, I had to pay Martha Skelton an' for
the... a few other little things. An' the union took time by the neck
and levied a four dollar emergency assessment on every member just to be
ready if the strike was pulled off. But Doc Hentley can wait. He said as
much. He's the goods, if anybody should ask you. How'd you like'm?”

“I liked him. But I don't know about doctors. He's the first I ever
had--except when I was vaccinated once, and then the city did that.”

“Looks like the street car men are goin' out, too. Dan Fallon's come to
town. Came all the way from New York. Tried to sneak in on the quiet,
but the fellows knew when he left New York, an' kept track of him all
the way acrost. They have to. He's Johnny-on-the-Spot whenever street
car men are licked into shape. He's won lots of street car strikes for
the bosses. Keeps an army of strike breakers an' ships them all over the
country on special trains wherever they're needed. Oakland's never seen
labor troubles like she's got and is goin' to get. All hell's goin' to
break loose from the looks of it.”

“Watch out for yourself, then, Billy. I don't want to lose you either.”

“Aw, that's all right. I can take care of myself. An' besides, it ain't
as though we was licked. We got a good chance.”

“But you'll lose if there is any killing.”

“Yep; we gotta keep an eye out against that.”

“No violence.”

“No gun-fighting or dynamite,” he assented. “But a heap of scabs'll get
their heads broke. That has to be.”

“But you won't do any of that, Billy.”

“Not so as any slob can testify before a court to havin' seen me.” Then,
with a quick shift, he changed the subject. “Old Barry Higgins is dead.
I didn't want to tell you till you was outa bed. Buried'm a week ago.
An' the old woman's movin' to Frisco. She told me she'd be in to say
good-bye. She stuck by you pretty well them first couple of days,
an' she showed Martha Shelton a few that made her hair curl. She got
Martha's goat from the jump.”



CHAPTER XI

With Billy on strike and away doing picket duty, and with the departure
of Mercedes and the death of Bert, Saxon was left much to herself in a
loneliness that even in one as healthy-minded as she could not fail to
produce morbidness. Mary, too, had left, having spoken vaguely of taking
a job at housework in Piedmont.

Billy could help Saxon little in her trouble. He dimly sensed her
suffering, without comprehending the scope and intensity of it. He was
too man-practical, and, by his very sex, too remote from the intimate
tragedy that was hers. He was an outsider at the best, a friendly
onlooker who saw little. To her the baby had been quick and real. It was
still quick and real. That was her trouble. By no deliberate effort of
will could she fill the aching void of its absence. Its reality became,
at times, an hallucination. Somewhere it still was, and she must find
it. She would catch herself, on occasion, listening with strained ears
for the cry she had never heard, yet which, in fancy, she had heard a
thousand times in the happy months before the end. Twice she left her
bed in her sleep and went searching--each time coming to herself beside
her mother's chest of drawers in which were the tiny garments. To
herself, at such moments, she would say, “I had a baby once.” And she
would say it, aloud, as she watched the children playing in the street.

One day, on the Eighth street cars, a young mother sat beside her, a
crowing infant in her arms. And Saxon said to her:

“I had a baby once. It died.”

The mother looked at her, startled, half-drew the baby tighter in her
arms, jealously, or as if in fear; then she softened as she said:

“You poor thing.”

“Yes,” Saxon nodded. “It died.”

Tears welled into her eyes, and the telling of her grief seemed to have
brought relief. But all the day she suffered from an almost overwhelming
desire to recite her sorrow to the world--to the paying teller at the
bank, to the elderly floor-walker in Salinger's, to the blind woman,
guided by a little boy, who played on the concertina--to every one save
the policeman. The police were new and terrible creatures to her now.
She had seen them kill the strikers as mercilessly as the strikers had
killed the scabs. And, unlike the strikers, the police were professional
killers. They were not fighting for jobs. They did it as a business.
They could have taken prisoners that day, in the angle of her front
steps and the house. But they had not. Unconsciously, whenever
approaching one, she edged across the sidewalk so as to get as far
as possible away from him. She did not reason it out, but deeper than
consciousness was the feeling that they were typical of something
inimical to her and hers.

At Eighth and Broadway, waiting for her car to return home, the
policeman on the corner recognized her and greeted her. She turned
white to the lips, and her heart fluttered painfully. It was only Ned
Hermanmann, fatter, broader-faced, jollier looking than ever. He had sat
across the aisle from her for three terms at school. He and she had been
monitors together of the composition books for one term. The day the
powder works blew up at Pinole, breaking every window in the school,
he and she had not joined in the panic rush for out-of-doors. Both had
remained in the room, and the irate principal had exhibited them, from
room to room, to the cowardly classes, and then rewarded them with a
month's holiday from school. And after that Ned Hermanmann had become a
policeman, and married Lena Highland, and Saxon had heard they had five
children.

But, in spite of all that, he was now a policeman, and Billy was now a
striker. Might not Ned Hermanmann some day club and shoot Billy just as
those other policemen clubbed and shot the strikers by her front steps?

“What's the matter, Saxon?” he asked. “Sick?”

She nodded and choked, unable to speak, and started to move toward her
car which was coming to a stop.

“I'll help you,” he offered.

She shrank away from his hand.

“No; I'm all right,” she gasped hurriedly. “I'm not going to take it.
I've forgotten something.”

She turned away dizzily, up Broadway to Ninth. Two blocks along Ninth,
she turned down Clay and back to Eighth street, where she waited for
another car.


As the summer months dragged along, the industrial situation in Oakland
grew steadily worse. Capital everywhere seemed to have selected this
city for the battle with organized labor. So many men in Oakland were
out on strike, or were locked out, or were unable to work because of the
dependence of their trades on the other tied-up trades, that odd jobs
at common labor were hard to obtain. Billy occasionally got a day's work
to do, but did not earn enough to make both ends meet, despite the small
strike wages received at first, and despite the rigid economy he and
Saxon practiced.

The table she set had scarcely anything in common with that of their
first married year. Not alone was every item of cheaper quality, but
many items had disappeared. Meat, and the poorest, was very seldom on
the table. Cow's milk had given place to condensed milk, and even the
sparing use of the latter had ceased. A roll of butter, when they had
it, lasted half a dozen times as long as formerly. Where Billy had been
used to drinking three cups of coffee for breakfast, he now drank one.
Saxon boiled this coffee an atrocious length of time, and she paid
twenty cents a pound for it.

The blight of hard times was on all the neighborhood. The families
not involved in one strike were touched by some other strike or by the
cessation of work in some dependent trade. Many single young men who
were lodgers had drifted away, thus increasing the house rent of the
families which had sheltered them.

“Gott!” said the butcher to Saxon. “We working class all suffer
together. My wife she cannot get her teeth fixed now. Pretty soon I go
smash broke maybe.”

Once, when Billy was preparing to pawn his watch, Saxon suggested his
borrowing the money from Billy Murphy.

“I was plannin' that,” Billy answered, “only I can't now. I didn't tell
you what happened Tuesday night at the Sporting Life Club. You remember
that squarehead Champion of the United States Navy? Bill was matched
with him, an' it was sure easy money. Bill had 'm goin' south by the
end of the sixth round, an' at the seventh went in to finish 'm. And
then--just his luck, for his trade's idle now--he snaps his right
forearm. Of course the squarehead comes back at 'm on the jump, an' it's
good night for Bill. Gee! Us Mohegans are gettin' our bad luck handed to
us in chunks these days.”

“Don't!” Saxon cried, shuddering involuntarily.

“What?” Billy asked with open mouth of surprise.

“Don't say that word again. Bert was always saying it.”

“Oh, Mohegans. All right, I won't. You ain't superstitious, are you?”

“No; but just the same there's too much truth in the word for me to
like it. Sometimes it seems as though he was right. Times have changed.
They've changed even since I was a little girl. We crossed the plains
and opened up this country, and now we're losing even the chance to work
for a living in it. And it's not my fault, it's not your fault. We've
got to live well or bad just by luck, it seems. There's no other way to
explain it.”

“It beats me,” Billy concurred. “Look at the way I worked last year.
Never missed a day. I'd want to never miss a day this year, an' here
I haven't done a tap for weeks an' weeks an' weeks. Say! Who runs this
country anyway?”

Saxon had stopped the morning paper, but frequently Maggie Donahue's
boy, who served a Tribune route, tossed an “extra” on her steps. From
its editorials Saxon gleaned that organized labor was trying to run the
country and that it was making a mess of it. It was all the fault of
domineering labor--so ran the editorials, column by column, day by day;
and Saxon was convinced, yet remained unconvinced. The social puzzle of
living was too intricate.

The teamsters' strike, backed financially by the teamsters of San
Francisco and by the allied unions of the San Francisco Water Front
Confederation, promised to be long-drawn, whether or not it was
successful. The Oakland harness-washers and stablemen, with few
exceptions, had gone out with the teamsters. The teaming firms were not
half-filling their contracts, but the employers' association was helping
them. In fact, half the employers' associations of the Pacific Coast
were helping the Oakland Employers' Association.

Saxon was behind a month's rent, which, when it is considered that rent
was paid in advance, was equivalent to two months. Likewise, she was
two months behind in the installments on the furniture. Yet she was not
pressed very hard by Salinger's, the furniture dealers.

“We're givin' you all the rope we can,” said their collector. “My orders
is to make you dig up every cent I can and at the same time not to be
too hard. Salinger's are trying to do the right thing, but they're up
against it, too. You've no idea how many accounts like yours they're
carrying along. Sooner or later they'll have to call a halt or get it in
the neck themselves. And in the meantime just see if you can't scrape up
five dollars by next week--just to cheer them along, you know.”

One of the stablemen who had not gone out, Henderson by name, worked at
Billy's stables. Despite the urging of the bosses to eat and sleep in
the stable like the other men, Henderson had persisted in coming home
each morning to his little house around the corner from Saxon's on Fifth
street. Several times she had seen him swinging along defiantly, his
dinner pail in his hand, while the neighborhood boys dogged his heels
at a safe distance and informed him in yapping chorus that he was a scab
and no good. But one evening, on his way to work, in a spirit of bravado
he went into the Pile-Drivers' Home, the saloon at Seventh and Pine.
There it was his mortal mischance to encounter Otto Frank, a striker
who drove from the same stable. Not many minutes later an ambulance was
hurrying Henderson to the receiving hospital with a fractured skull,
while a patrol wagon was no less swiftly carrying Otto Frank to the city
prison.

Maggie Donahue it was, eyes shining with gladness, who told Saxon of the
happening.

“Served him right, too, the dirty scab,” Maggie concluded.

“But his poor wife!” was Saxon's cry. “She's not strong. And then the
children. She'll never be able to take care of them if her husband
dies.”

“An' serve her right, the damned slut!”

Saxon was both shocked and hurt by the Irishwoman's brutality. But
Maggie was implacable.

“'Tis all she or any woman deserves that'll put up an' live with a scab.
What about her children? Let'm starve, an' her man a-takin' the food out
of other children's mouths.”

Mrs. Olsen's attitude was different. Beyond passive sentimental pity
for Henderson's wife and children, she gave them no thought, her chief
concern being for Otto Frank and Otto Frank's wife and children--herself
and Mrs. Frank being full sisters.

“If he dies, they will hang Otto,” she said. “And then what will poor
Hilda do? She has varicose veins in both legs, and she never can stand
on her feet all day an' work for wages. And me, I cannot help. Ain't
Carl out of work, too?”

Billy had still another point of view.

“It will give the strike a black eye, especially if Henderson croaks,”
 he worried, when he came home. “They'll hang Frank on record time.
Besides, we'll have to put up a defense, an' lawyers charge like Sam
Hill. They'll eat a hole in our treasury you could drive every team in
Oakland through. An' if Frank hadn't ben screwed up with whisky he'd
never a-done it. He's the mildest, good-naturedest man sober you ever
seen.”

Twice that evening Billy left the house to find out if Henderson was
dead yet. In the morning the papers gave little hope, and the evening
papers published his death. Otto Frank lay in jail without bail. The
Tribune demanded a quick trial and summary execution, calling on the
prospective jury manfully to do its duty and dwelling at length on the
moral effect that would be so produced upon the lawless working class.
It went further, emphasizing the salutary effect machine guns would have
on the mob that had taken the fair city of Oakland by the throat.

And all such occurrences struck at Saxon personally. Practically alone
in the world, save for Billy, it was her life, and his, and their mutual
love-life, that was menaced. From the moment he left the house to the
moment of his return she knew no peace of mind. Rough work was afoot, of
which he told her nothing, and she knew he was playing his part in it.
On more than one occasion she noticed fresh-broken skin on his knuckles.
At such times he was remarkably taciturn, and would sit in brooding
silence or go almost immediately to bed. She was afraid to have this
habit of reticence grow on him, and bravely she bid for his confidence.
She climbed into his lap and inside his arms, one of her arms around
his neck, and with the free hand she caressed his hair back from the
forehead and smoothed out the moody brows.

“Now listen to me, Billy Boy,” she began lightly. “You haven't been
playing fair, and I won't have it. No!” She pressed his lips shut with
her fingers. “I'm doing the talking now, and because you haven't been
doing your share of the talking for some time. You remember we agreed
at the start to always talk things over. I was the first to break this,
when I sold my fancy work to Mrs. Higgins without speaking to you about
it. And I was very sorry. I am still sorry. And I've never done it
since. Now it's your turn. You're not talking things over with me. You
are doing things you don't tell me about.

“Billy, you're dearer to me than anything else in the world. You
know that. We're sharing each other's lives, only, just now, there's
something you're not sharing. Every time your knuckles are sore, there's
something you don't share. If you can't trust me, you can't trust
anybody. And, besides, I love you so that no matter what you do I'll go
on loving you just the same.”

Billy gazed at her with fond incredulity.

“Don't be a pincher,” she teased. “Remember, I stand for whatever you
do.”

“And you won't buck against me?” he queried.

“How can I? I'm not your boss, Billy. I wouldn't boss you for anything
in the world. And if you'd let me boss you, I wouldn't love you half as
much.”

He digested this slowly, and finally nodded.

“An' you won't be mad?”

“With you? You've never seen me mad yet. Now come on and be generous and
tell me how you hurt your knuckles. It's fresh to-day. Anybody can see
that.”

“All right. I'll tell you how it happened.” He stopped and giggled with
genuine boyish glee at some recollection. “It's like this. You won't be
mad, now? We gotta do these sort of things to hold our own. Well, here's
the show, a regular movin' picture except for file talkin'. Here's a big
rube comin' along, hayseed stickin' out all over, hands like hams an'
feet like Mississippi gunboats. He'd make half as much again as me in
size an' he's young, too. Only he ain't lookin' for trouble, an' he's as
innocent as... well, he's the innocentest scab that ever come down the
pike an' bumped into a couple of pickets. Not a regular strike-breaker,
you see, just a big rube that's read the bosses' ads an' come a-humpin'
to town for the big wages.

“An' here's Bud Strothers an' me comin' along. We always go in pairs
that way, an' sometimes bigger bunches. I flag the rube. 'Hello,' says
I, 'lookin' for a job?' 'You bet,' says he. 'Can you drive?' 'Yep.'
'Four horses!' 'Show me to 'em,' says he. 'No josh, now,' says I;
'you're sure wantin' to drive?' 'That's what I come to town for,' he
says. 'You're the man we're lookin' for,' says I. 'Come along, an' we'll
have you busy in no time.'

“You see, Saxon, we can't pull it off there, because there's Tom
Scanlon--you know, the red-headed cop only a couple of blocks away an'
pipin' us off though not recognizin' us. So away we go, the three of us,
Bud an' me leadin' that boob to take our jobs away from us I guess nit.
We turn into the alley back of Campwell's grocery. Nobody in sight. Bud
stops short, and the rube an' me stop.

“'I don't think he wants to drive,' Bud says, considerin'. An' the rube
says quick, 'You betcher life I do.' 'You're dead sure you want that
job?' I says. Yes, he's dead sure. Nothin's goin' to keep him away from
that job. Why, that job's what he come to town for, an' we can't lead
him to it too quick.

“'Well, my friend,' says I, 'it's my sad duty to inform you that
you've made a mistake.' 'How's that?' he says. 'Go on,' I says; 'you're
standin' on your foot.' And, honest to God, Saxon, that gink looks down
at his feet to see. 'I don't understand,' says he. 'We're goin' to show
you,' says I.

“An' then--Biff! Bang! Bingo! Swat! Zooie! Ker-slambango-blam!
Fireworks, Fourth of July, Kingdom Come, blue lights, sky-rockets, an'
hell fire--just like that. It don't take long when you're scientific an'
trained to tandem work. Of course it's hard on the knuckles. But say,
Saxon, if you'd seen that rube before an' after you'd thought he was a
lightnin' change artist. Laugh? You'd a-busted.”

Billy halted to give vent to his own mirth. Saxon forced herself to
join with him, but down in her heart was horror. Mercedes was right. The
stupid workers wrangled and snarled over jobs. The clever masters rode
in automobiles and did not wrangle and snarl. They hired other stupid
ones to do the wrangling and snarling for them. It was men like Bert and
Frank Davis, like Chester Johnson and Otto Frank, like Jelly Belly and
the Pinkertons, like Henderson and all the rest of the scabs, who were
beaten up, shot, clubbed, or hanged. Ah, the clever ones were very
clever. Nothing happened to them. They only rode in their automobiles.

“'You big stiffs,' the rube snivels as he crawls to his feet at the
end,” Billy was continuing. “'You think you still want that job?' I ask.
He shakes his head. Then I read'm the riot act 'They's only one thing
for you to do, old hoss, an' that's beat it. D'ye get me? Beat it. Back
to the farm for YOU. An' if you come monkeyin' around town again, we'll
be real mad at you. We was only foolin' this time. But next time we
catch you your own mother won't know you when we get done with you.'

“An'--say!--you oughta seen'm beat it. I bet he's goin' yet. Ah' when he
gets back to Milpitas, or Sleepy Hollow, or wherever he hangs out, an'
tells how the boys does things in Oakland, it's dollars to doughnuts
they won't be a rube in his district that'd come to town to drive if
they offered ten dollars an hour.”

“It was awful,” Saxon said, then laughed well-simulated appreciation.

“But that was nothin',” Billy went on. “A bunch of the boys caught
another one this morning. They didn't do a thing to him. My goodness
gracious, no. In less'n two minutes he was the worst wreck they ever
hauled to the receivin' hospital. The evenin' papers gave the score:
nose broken, three bad scalp wounds, front teeth out, a broken
collarbone, an' two broken ribs. Gee! He certainly got all that was
comin' to him. But that's nothin'. D'ye want to know what the Frisco
teamsters did in the big strike before the Earthquake? They took every
scab they caught an' broke both his arms with a crowbar. That was so he
couldn't drive, you see. Say, the hospitals was filled with 'em. An' the
teamsters won that strike, too.”

“But is it necessary, Billy, to be so terrible? I know they're scabs,
and that they're taking the bread out of the strikers' children's mouths
to put in their own children's mouths, and that it isn't fair and all
that; but just the same is it necessary to be so... terrible?”

“Sure thing,” Billy answered confidently. “We just gotta throw the fear
of God into them--when we can do it without bein' caught.”

“And if you're caught?”

“Then the union hires the lawyers to defend us, though that ain't
much good now, for the judges are pretty hostyle, an' the papers keep
hammerin' away at them to give stiffer an' stiffer sentences. Just
the same, before this strike's over there'll be a whole lot of guys
a-wishin' they'd never gone scabbin'.”

Very cautiously, in the next half hour, Saxon tried to feel out her
husband's attitude, to find if he doubted the rightness of the violence
he and his brother teamsters committed. But Billy's ethical sanction
was rock-bedded and profound. It never entered his head that he was
not absolutely right. It was the game. Caught in its tangled meshes, he
could see no other way to play it than the way all men played it. He did
not stand for dynamite and murder, however. But then the unions did not
stand for such. Quite naive was his explanation that dynamite and murder
did not pay; that such actions always brought down the condemnation of
the public and broke the strikes. But the healthy beating up of a scab,
he contended--the “throwing of the fear of God into a scab,” as he
expressed it--was the only right and proper thing to do.

“Our folks never had to do such things,” Saxon said finally. “They never
had strikes nor scabs in those times.”

“You bet they didn't,” Billy agreed. “Them was the good old days. I'd
liked to a-lived then.” He drew a long breath and sighed. “But them
times will never come again.”

“Would you have liked living in the country?” Saxon asked.

“Sure thing.”

“There's lots of men living in the country now,” she suggested.

“Just the same I notice them a-hikin' to town to get our jobs,” was his
reply.



CHAPTER XII

A gleam of light came, when Billy got a job driving a grading team for
the contractors of the big bridge then building at Niles. Before he went
he made certain that it was a union job. And a union job it was for two
days, when the concrete workers threw down their tools. The contractors,
evidently prepared for such happening, immediately filled the places
of the concrete men with nonunion Italians. Whereupon the carpenters,
structural ironworkers and teamsters walked out; and Billy, lacking
train fare, spent the rest of the day in walking home.

“I couldn't work as a scab,” he concluded his tale.

“No,” Saxon said; “you couldn't work as a scab.”

But she wondered why it was that when men wanted to work, and there was
work to do, yet they were unable to work because their unions said
no. Why were there unions? And, if unions had to be, why were not all
workingmen in them? Then there would be no scabs, and Billy could work
every day. Also, she wondered where she was to get a sack of flour, for
she had long since ceased the extravagance of baker's bread. And so many
other of the neighborhood women had done this, that the little Welsh
baker had closed up shop and gone away, taking his wife and two little
daughters with him. Look where she would, everybody was being hurt by
the industrial strife.

One afternoon came a caller at her door, and that evening came Billy
with dubious news. He had been approached that day. All he had to do,
he told Saxon, was to say the word, and he could go into the stable as
foreman at one hundred dollars a month.

The nearness of such a sum, the possibility of it, was almost stunning
to Saxon, sitting at a supper which consisted of boiled potatoes,
warmed-over beans, and a small dry onion which they were eating raw.
There was neither bread, coffee, nor butter. The onion Billy had pulled
from his pocket, having picked it up in the street. One hundred dollars
a month! She moistened her lips and fought for control.

“What made them offer it to you?” she questioned.

“That's easy,” was his answer. “They got a dozen reasons. The guy the
boss has had exercisin' Prince and King is a dub. King has gone lame in
the shoulders. Then they're guessin' pretty strong that I'm the party
that's put a lot of their scabs outa commission. Macklin's ben their
foreman for years an' years--why I was in knee pants when he was
foreman. Well, he's sick an' all in. They gotta have somebody to take
his place. Then, too, I've been with 'em a long time. An' on top of
that, I'm the man for the job. They know I know horses from the ground
up. Hell, it's all I'm good for, except sluggin'.”

“Think of it, Billy!” she breathed. “A hundred dollars a month! A
hundred dollars a month!”

“An' throw the fellows down,” he said.

It was not a question. Nor was it a statement. It was anything Saxon
chose to make of it. They looked at each other. She waited for him to
speak; but he continued merely to look. It came to her that she was
facing one of the decisive moments of her life, and she gripped herself
to face it in all coolness. Nor would Billy proffer her the slightest
help. Whatever his own judgment might be, he masked it with an
expressionless face. His eyes betrayed nothing. He looked and waited.

“You... you can't do that, Billy,” she said finally. “You can't throw
the fellows down.”

His hand shot out to hers, and his face was a sudden, radiant dawn.

“Put her there!” he cried, their hands meeting and clasping. “You're the
truest true blue wife a man ever had. If all the other fellows' wives
was like you, we could win any strike we tackled.”

“What would you have done if you weren't married, Billy?”

“Seen 'em in hell first.”

“Than it doesn't make any difference being married. I've got to stand by
you in everything you stand for. I'd be a nice wife if I didn't.”

She remembered her caller of the afternoon, and knew the moment was too
propitious to let pass.

“There was a man here this afternoon, Billy. He wanted a room. I told
him I'd speak to you. He said he would pay six dollars a month for the
back bedroom. That would pay half a month's installment on the furniture
and buy a sack of flour, and we're all out of flour.”

Billy's old hostility to the idea was instantly uppermost, and Saxon
watched him anxiously.

“Some scab in the shops, I suppose?”

“No; he's firing on the freight run to San Jose. Harmon, he said his
name was, James Harmon. They've just transferred him from the Truckee
division. He'll sleep days mostly, he said; and that's why he wanted a
quiet house without children in it.”

In the end, with much misgiving, and only after Saxon had insistently
pointed out how little work it entailed on her, Billy consented, though
he continued to protest, as an afterthought:

“But I don't want you makin' beds for any man. It ain't right, Saxon. I
oughta take care of you.”

“And you would,” she flashed back at him, “if you'd take the
foremanship. Only you can't. It wouldn't be right. And if I'm to stand
by you it's only fair to let me do what I can.”

James Harmon proved even less a bother than Saxon had anticipated. For
a fireman he was scrupulously clean, always washing up in the roundhouse
before he came home. He used the key to the kitchen door, coming and
going by the back steps. To Saxon he barely said how-do-you-do or good
day; and, sleeping in the day time and working at night, he was in the
house a week before Billy laid eyes on him.

Billy had taken to coming home later and later, and to going out after
supper by himself. He did not offer to tell Saxon where he went. Nor did
she ask. For that matter it required little shrewdness on her part to
guess. The fumes of whisky were on his lips at such times. His slow,
deliberate ways were even slower, even more deliberate. Liquor did
not affect his legs. He walked as soberly as any man. There was no
hesitancy, no faltering, in his muscular movements. The whisky went to
his brain, making his eyes heavy-lidded and the cloudiness of them
more cloudy. Not that he was flighty, nor quick, nor irritable. On the
contrary, the liquor imparted to his mental processes a deep gravity and
brooding solemnity. He talked little, but that little was ominous
and oracular. At such times there was no appeal from his judgment, no
discussion. He knew, as God knew. And when he chose to speak a harsh
thought, it was ten-fold harsher than ordinarily, because it seemed
to proceed out of such profundity of cogitation, because it was as
prodigiously deliberate in its incubation as it was in its enunciation.

It was not a nice side he was showing to Saxon. It was, almost, as if a
stranger had come to live with her. Despite herself, she found herself
beginning to shrink from him. And little could she comfort herself
with the thought that it was not his real self, for she remembered his
gentleness and considerateness, all his finenesses of the past. Then
he had made a continual effort to avoid trouble and fighting. Now he
enjoyed it, exulted in it, went looking for it. All this showed in
his face. No longer was he the smiling, pleasant-faced boy. He smiled
infrequently now. His face was a man's face. The lips, the eyes, the
lines were harsh as his thoughts were harsh.

He was rarely unkind to Saxon; but, on the other hand he was
rarely kind. His attitude toward her was growing negative. He was
disinterested. Despite the fight for the union she was enduring with
him, putting up with him shoulder to shoulder, she occupied but little
space in his mind. When he acted toward her gently, she could see that
it was merely mechanical, just as she was well aware that the endearing
terms he used, the endearing caresses he gave, were only habitual. The
spontaneity and warmth had gone out. Often, when he was not in liquor,
flashes of the old Billy came back, but even such flashes dwindled in
frequency. He was growing preoccupied, moody. Hard times and the bitter
stresses of industrial conflict strained him. Especially was this
apparent in his sleep, when he suffered paroxysms of lawless dreams,
groaning and muttering, clenching his fists, grinding his teeth,
twisting with muscular tensions, his face writhing with passions and
violences, his throat guttering with terrible curses that rasped and
aborted on his lips. And Saxon, lying beside him, afraid of this visitor
to her bed whom she did not know, remembered what Mary had told her of
Bert. He, too, had cursed and clenched his fists, in his nights fought
out the battles of his days.

One thing, however, Saxon saw clearly. By no deliberate act of Billy's
was he becoming this other and unlovely Billy. Were there no strike, no
snarling and wrangling over jobs, there would be only the old Billy she
had loved in all absoluteness. This sleeping terror in him would have
lain asleep. It was something that was being awakened in him, an image
incarnate of outward conditions, as cruel, as ugly, as maleficent as
were those outward conditions. But if the strike continued, then,
she feared, with reason, would this other and grisly self of Billy
strengthen to fuller and more forbidding stature. And this, she knew,
would mean the wreck of their love-life. Such a Billy she could not
love; in its nature such a Billy was not lovable nor capable of love.
And then, at the thought of offspring, she shuddered. It was too
terrible. And at such moments of contemplation, from her soul the
inevitable plaint of the human went up: WHY? WHY? WHY?

Billy, too, had his unanswerable queries.

“Why won't the building trades come out?” he demanded wrathfuly of the
obscurity that veiled the ways of living and the world. “But no; O'Brien
won't stand for a strike, and he has the Building Trades Council under
his thumb. But why don't they chuck him and come out anyway? We'd win
hands down all along the line. But no, O'Brien's got their goat, an' him
up to his dirty neck in politics an' graft! An' damn the Federation of
Labor! If all the railroad boys had come out, wouldn't the shop men have
won instead of bein' licked to a frazzle? Lord, I ain't had a smoke of
decent tobacco or a cup of decent coffee in a coon's age. I've forgotten
what a square meal tastes like. I weighed myself yesterday. Fifteen
pounds lighter than when the strike begun. If it keeps on much more I
can fight middleweight. An' this is what I get after payin' dues into
the union for years and years. I can't get a square meal, an' my wife
has to make other men's beds. It makes my tired ache. Some day I'll get
real huffy an' chuck that lodger out.”

“But it's not his fault, Billy,” Saxon protested.

“Who said it was?” Billy snapped roughly. “Can't I kick in general if
I want to? Just the same it makes me sick. What's the good of organized
labor if it don't stand together? For two cents I'd chuck the whole
thing up an' go over to the employers. Only I wouldn't, God damn them!
If they think they can beat us down to our knees, let 'em go ahead an'
try it, that's all. But it gets me just the same. The whole world's
clean dippy. They ain't no sense in anything. What's the good of
supportin' a union that can't win a strike? What's the good of knockin'
the blocks off of scabs when they keep a-comin' thick as ever? The whole
thing's bughouse, an' I guess I am, too.”

Such an outburst on Billy's part was so unusual that it was the only
time Saxon knew it to occur. Always he was sullen, and dogged, and
unwhipped; while whisky only served to set the maggots of certitude
crawling in his brain.

One night Billy did not get home till after twelve. Saxon's anxiety was
increased by the fact that police fighting and head breaking had been
reported to have occurred. When Billy came, his appearance verified
the report. His coatsleeves were half torn off. The Windsor tie had
disappeared from under his soft turned-down collar, and every button had
been ripped off the front of the shirt. When he took his hat off, Saxon
was frightened by a lump on his head the size of an apple.

“D'ye know who did that? That Dutch slob Hermanmann, with a riot club.
An' I'll get'm for it some day, good an' plenty. An' there's another
fellow I got staked out that'll be my meat when this strike's over an'
things is settled down. Blanchard's his name, Roy Blanchard.”

“Not of Blanchard, Perkins and Company?” Saxon asked, busy washing
Billy's hurt and making her usual fight to keep him calm.

“Yep; except he's the son of the old man. What's he do, that ain't done
a tap of work in all his life except to blow the old man's money? He
goes strike-breakin'. Grandstand play, that's what I call it. Gets his
name in the papers an makes all the skirts he runs with fluster up an'
say: 'My! Some bear, that Roy Blanchard, some bear.' Some bear--the
gazabo! He'll be bear-meat for me some day. I never itched so hard to
lick a man in my life.

“And--oh, I guess I'll pass that Dutch cop up. He got his already.
Somebody broke his head with a lump of coal the size of a water bucket.
That was when the wagons was turnin' into Franklin, just off Eighth, by
the old Galindo Hotel. They was hard fightin' there, an' some guy in the
hotel lams that coal down from the second story window.

“They was fightin' every block of the way--bricks, cobblestones, an'
police-clubs to beat the band. They don't dast call out the troops. An'
they was afraid to shoot. Why, we tore holes through the police force,
an' the ambulances and patrol wagons worked over-time. But say, we got
the procession blocked at Fourteenth and Broadway, right under the
nose of the City Hall, rushed the rear end, cut out the horses of five
wagons, an' handed them college guys a few love-pats in passin'. All
that saved 'em from hospital was the police reserves. Just the same we
had 'em jammed an hour there. You oughta seen the street cars blocked,
too--Broadway, Fourteenth, San Pablo, as far as you could see.”

“But what did Blanchard do?” Saxon called him back.

“He led the procession, an' he drove my team. All the teams was from my
stable. He rounded up a lot of them college fellows--fraternity guys,
they're called--yaps that live off their fathers' money. They come to
the stable in big tourin' cars an' drove out the wagons with half the
police of Oakland to help them. Say, it was sure some day. The
sky rained cobblestones. An' you oughta heard the clubs on our
heads--rat-tat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat-tat! An' say, the chief of police,
in a police auto, sittin' up like God Almighty--just before we got to
Peralta street they was a block an' the police chargin', an' an old
woman, right from her front gate, lammed the chief of police full in the
face with a dead cat. Phew! You could hear it. 'Arrest that woman!' he
yells, with his handkerchief out. But the boys beat the cops to her an'
got her away. Some day? I guess yes. The receivin' hospital went outa
commission on the jump, an' the overflow was spilled into St. Mary's
Hospital, an' Fabiola, an' I don't know where else. Eight of our men was
pulled, an' a dozen of the Frisco teamsters that's come over to
help. They're holy terrors, them Frisco teamsters. It seemed half the
workingmen of Oakland was helpin' us, an' they must be an army of them
in jail. Our lawyers'll have to take their cases, too.

“But take it from me, it's the last we'll see of Roy Blanchard an'
yaps of his kidney buttin' into our affairs. I guess we showed 'em some
football. You know that brick buildin' they're puttin' up on Bay
street? That's where we loaded up first, an', say, you couldn't see the
wagon-seats for bricks when they started from the stables. Blanchard
drove the first wagon, an' he was knocked clean off the seat once, but
he stayed with it.”

“He must have been brave,” Saxon commented.

“Brave?” Billy flared. “With the police, an' the army an' navy behind
him? I suppose you'll be takin' their part next. Brave? A-takin' the
food outa the mouths of our women an children. Didn't Curley Jones's
little kid die last night? Mother's milk not nourishin', that's what it
was, because she didn't have the right stuff to eat. An' I know, an'
you know, a dozen old aunts, an' sister-in-laws, an' such, that's had to
hike to the poorhouse because their folks couldn't take care of 'em in
these times.”

In the morning paper Saxon read the exciting account of the futile
attempt to break the teamsters' strike. Roy Blanchard was hailed a hero
and held up as a model of wealthy citizenship. And to save herself
she could not help glowing with appreciation of his courage. There was
something fine in his going out to face the snarling pack. A brigadier
general of the regular army was quoted as lamenting the fact that the
troops had not been called out to take the mob by the throat and
shake law and order into it. “This is the time for a little healthful
bloodletting,” was the conclusion of his remarks, after deploring
the pacific methods of the police. “For not until the mob has been
thoroughly beaten and cowed will tranquil industrial conditions obtain.”

That evening Saxon and Billy went up town. Returning home and finding
nothing to eat, he had taken her on one arm, his overcoat on the other.
The overcoat he had pawned at Uncle Sam's, and he and Saxon had eaten
drearily at a Japanese restaurant which in some miraculous way managed
to set a semi-satisfying meal for ten cents. After eating, they started
on their way to spend an additional five cents each on a moving picture
show.

At the Central Bank Building, two striking teamsters accosted Billy
and took him away with them. Saxon waited on the corner, and when
he returned, three quarters of an hour later, she knew he had been
drinking.

Half a block on, passing the Forum Cafe, he stopped suddenly. A
limousine stood at the curb, and into it a young man was helping several
wonderfully gowned women. A chauffeur sat in the driver's sent. Billy
touched the young man on the arm. He was as broad-shouldered as Billy
and slightly taller. Blue-eyed, strong-featured, in Saxon's opinion he
was undeniably handsome.

“Just a word, sport,” Billy said, in a low, slow voice.

The young man glanced quickly at Billy and Saxon, and asked impatiently:

“Well, what is it?”

“You're Blanchard,” Billy began. “I seen you yesterday lead out that
bunch of teams.”

“Didn't I do it all right?” Blanchard asked gaily, with a flash of
glance to Saxon and back again.

“Sure. But that ain't what I want to talk about.”

“Who are you?” the other demanded with sudden suspicion.

“A striker. It just happens you drove my team, that's all. No; don't
move for a gun.” (As Blanchard half reached toward his hip pocket.) “I
ain't startin' anythin' here. But I just want to tell you something.”

“Be quick, then.”

Blanchard lifted one foot to step into the machine.

“Sure,” Billy went on without any diminution of his exasperating
slowness. “What I want to tell you is that I'm after you. Not now, when
the strike's on, but some time later I'm goin' to get you an' give you
the beatin' of your life.”

Blanchard looked Billy over with new interest and measuring eyes that
sparkled with appreciation.

“You are a husky yourself,” he said. “But do you think you can do it?”

“Sure. You're my meat.”

“All right, then, my friend. Look me up after the strike is settled, and
I'll give you a chance at me.”

“Remember,” Billy added, “I got you staked out.”

Blanchard nodded, smiled genially to both of them, raised his hat to
Saxon, and stepped into the machine.



CHAPTER XIII

From now on, to Saxon, life seemed bereft of its last reason and rhyme.
It had become senseless, nightmarish. Anything irrational was possible.
There was nothing stable in the anarchic flux of affairs that swept her
on she knew not to what catastrophic end. Had Billy been dependable, all
would still have been well. With him to cling to she would have faced
everything fearlessly. But he had been whirled away from her in the
prevailing madness. So radical was the change in him that he seemed
almost an intruder in the house. Spiritually he was such an intruder.
Another man looked out of his eyes--a man whose thoughts were of
violence and hatred; a man to whom there was no good in anything, and
who had become an ardent protagonist of the evil that was rampant and
universal. This man no longer condemned Bert, himself muttering vaguely
of dynamite, and sabotage, and revolution.

Saxon strove to maintain that sweetness and coolness of flesh and spirit
that Billy had praised in the old days. Once, only, she lost control.
He had been in a particularly ugly mood, and a final harshness and
unfairness cut her to the quick.

“Who are you speaking to?” she flamed out at him.

He was speechless and abashed, and could only stare at her face, which
was white with anger.

“Don't you ever speak to me like that again, Billy,” she commanded.

“Aw, can't you put up with a piece of bad temper?” he muttered, half
apologetically, yet half defiantly. “God knows I got enough to make me
cranky.”

After he left the house she flung herself on the bed and cried
heart-brokenly. For she, who knew so thoroughly the humility of love,
was a proud woman. Only the proud can be truly humble, as only the
strong may know the fullness of gentleness. But what was the use, she
demanded, of being proud and game, when the only person in the world who
mattered to her lost his own pride and gameness and fairness and gave
her the worse share of their mutual trouble?

And now, as she had faced alone the deeper, organic hurt of the loss
of her baby, she faced alone another, and, in a way, an even greater
personal trouble. Perhaps she loved Billy none the less, but her love
was changing into something less proud, less confident, less trusting;
it was becoming shot through with pity--with the pity that is parent to
contempt. Her own loyalty was threatening to weaken, and she shuddered
and shrank from the contempt she could see creeping in.

She struggled to steel herself to face the situation. Forgiveness stole
into her heart, and she knew relief until the thought came that in the
truest, highest love forgiveness should have no place. And again she
cried, and continued her battle. After all, one thing was incontestable:
THIS BILLY WAS NOT THE BILLY SHE HAD LOVED. This Billy was another man,
a sick man, and no more to be held responsible than a fever-patient
in the ravings of delirium. She must be Billy's nurse, without pride,
without contempt, with nothing to forgive. Besides, he was really
bearing the brunt of the fight, was in the thick of it, dizzy with the
striking of blows and the blows he received. If fault there was, it lay
elsewhere, somewhere in the tangled scheme of things that made men snarl
over jobs like dogs over bones.

So Saxon arose and buckled on her armor again for the hardest fight
of all in the world's arena--the woman's fight. She ejected from her
thought all doubting and distrust. She forgave nothing, for there was
nothing requiring forgiveness. She pledged herself to an absoluteness of
belief that her love and Billy's was unsullied, unperturbed--severe as
it had always been, as it would be when it came back again after the
world settled down once more to rational ways.

That night, when he came home, she proposed, as an emergency measure,
that she should resume her needlework and help keep the pot boiling
until the strike was over. But Billy would hear nothing of it.

“It's all right,” he assured her repeatedly. “They ain't no call for you
to work. I'm goin' to get some money before the week is out. An' I'll
turn it over to you. An' Saturday night we'll go to the show--a real
show, no movin' pictures. Harvey's nigger minstrels is comin' to town.
We'll go Saturday night. I'll have the money before that, as sure as
beans is beans.”

Friday evening he did not come home to supper, which Saxon regretted,
for Maggie Donahue had returned a pan of potatoes and two quarts of
flour (borrowed the week before), and it was a hearty meal that awaited
him. Saxon kept the stove going till nine o'clock, when, despite her
reluctance, she went to bed. Her preference would have been to wait up,
but she did not dare, knowing full well what the effect would be on him
did he come home in liquor.

The clock had just struck one, when she heard the click of the gate.
Slowly, heavily, ominously, she heard him come up the steps and fumble
with his key at the door. He entered the bedroom, and she heard him
sigh as he sat down. She remained quiet, for she had learned the
hypersensitiveness induced by drink and was fastidiously careful not to
hurt him even with the knowledge that she had lain awake for him. It was
not easy. Her hands were clenched till the nails dented the palms, and
her body was rigid in her passionate effort for control. Never had he
come home as bad as this.

“Saxon,” he called thickly. “Saxon.”

She stired and yawned.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Won't you strike a light? My fingers is all thumbs.”

Without looking at him, she complied; but so violent was the nervous
trembling of her hands that the glass chimney tinkled against the globe
and the match went out.

“I ain't drunk, Saxon,” he said in the darkness, a hint of amusement in
his thick voice. “I've only had two or three jolts ... of that sort.”

On her second attempt with the lamp she succeeded. When she turned to
look at him she screamed with fright. Though she had heard his voice
and knew him to be Billy, for the instant she did not recognize him. His
face was a face she had never known. Swollen, bruised, discolored, every
feature had been beaten out of all semblance of familiarity. One eye
was entirely closed, the other showed through a narrow slit of
blood-congested flesh. One ear seemed to have lost most of its skin. The
whole face was a swollen pulp. His right jaw, in particular, was twice
the size of the left. No wonder his speech had been thick, was her
thought, as she regarded the fearfully cut and swollen lips that still
bled. She was sickened by the sight, and her heart went out to him in
a great wave of tenderness. She wanted to put her arms around him, and
cuddle and soothe him; but her practical judgment bade otherwise.

“You poor, poor boy,” she cried. “Tell me what you want me to do first.
I don't know about such things.”

“If you could help me get my clothes off,” he suggested meekly and
thickly. “I got 'em on before I stiffened up.”

“And then hot water--that will be good,” she said, as she began gently
drawing his coat sleeve over a puffed and helpless hand.

“I told you they was all thumbs,” he grimaced, holding up his hand and
squinting at it with the fraction of sight remaining to him.

“You sit and wait,” she said, “till I start the fire and get the hot
water going. I won't be a minute. Then I'll finish getting your clothes
off.”

From the kitchen she could hear him mumbling to himself, and when she
returned he was repeating over and over:

“We needed the money, Saxon. We needed the money.”

Drunken he was not, she could see that, and from his babbling she knew
he was partly delirious.

“He was a surprise box,” he wandered on, while she proceeded to undress
him; and bit by bit she was able to piece together what had happened.
“He was an unknown from Chicago. They sprang him on me. The secretary
of the Acme Club warned me I'd have my hands full. An' I'd a-won if
I'd been in condition. But fifteen pounds off without trainin' ain't
condition. Then I'd been drinkin' pretty regular, an' I didn't have my
wind.”

But Saxon, stripping his undershirt, no longer heard him. As with his
face, she could not recognize his splendidly muscled back. The white
sheath of silken skin was torn and bloody. The lacerations occurred
oftenest in horizontal lines, though there were perpendicular lines as
well.

“How did you get all that?” she asked.

“The ropes. I was up against 'em more times than I like to remember.
Gee! He certainly gave me mine. But I fooled 'm. He couldn't put me out.
I lasted the twenty rounds, an' I wanta tell you he's got some marks to
remember me by. If he ain't got a couple of knuckles broke in the left
hand I'm a geezer.--Here, feel my head here. Swollen, eh? Sure thing. He
hit that more times than he's wishin' he had right now. But, oh, what a
lacin'! What a lacin'! I never had anything like it before. The Chicago
Terror, they call 'm. I take my hat off to 'm. He's some bear. But
I could a-made 'm take the count if I'd ben in condition an' had my
wind.--Oh! Ouch! Watch out! It's like a boil!”

Fumbling at his waistband, Saxon's hand had come in contact with a
brightly inflamed surface larger than a soup plate.

“That's from the kidney blows,” Billy explained. “He was a regular devil
at it. 'Most every clench, like clock work, down he'd chop one on me. It
got so sore I was wincin'... until I got groggy an' didn't know much of
anything. It ain't a knockout blow, you know, but it's awful wearin' in
a long fight. It takes the starch out of you.”

When his knees were bared, Saxon could see the skin across the knee-caps
was broken and gone.

“The skin ain't made to stand a heavy fellow like me on the knees,” he
volunteered. “An' the rosin in the canvas cuts like Sam Hill.”

The tears were in Saxon's eyes, and she could have cried over the
manhandled body of her beautiful sick boy.

As she carried his pants across the room to hang them up, a jingle of
money came from them. He called her back, and from the pocket drew forth
a handful of silver.

“We needed the money, we needed the money,” he kept muttering, as
he vainly tried to count the coins; and Saxon knew that his mind was
wandering again.

It cut her to the heart, for she could not but remember the harsh
thoughts that had threatened her loyalty during the week past. After
all, Billy, the splendid physical man, was only a boy, her boy. And
he had faced and endured all this terrible punishment for her, for the
house and the furniture that were their house and furniture. He said so,
now, when he scarcely knew what he said. He said “WE needed the money.”
 She was not so absent from his thoughts as she had fancied. Here, down
to the naked tie-ribs of his soul, when he was half unconscious, the
thought of her persisted, was uppermost. We needed the money. WE!

The tears were trickling down her checks as she bent over him, and it
seemed she had never loved him so much as now.

“Here; you count,” he said, abandoning the effort and handing the money
to her. “... How much do you make it?”

“Nineteen dollars and thirty-five cents.”

“That's right... the loser's end... twenty dollars. I had some drinks,
an' treated a couple of the boys, an' then there was carfare. If I'd
a-won, I'd a-got a hundred. That's what I fought for. It'd a-put us
on Easy street for a while. You take it an' keep it. It's better 'n
nothin'.”

In bed, he could not sleep because of his pain, and hour by hour she
worked over him, renewing the hot compresses over his bruises, soothing
the lacerations with witch hazel and cold cream and the tenderest of
finger tips. And all the while, with broken intervals of groaning, he
babbled on, living over the fight, seeking relief in telling her his
trouble, voicing regret at loss of the money, and crying out the hurt
to his pride. Far worse than the sum of his physical hurts was his hurt
pride.

“He couldn't put me out, anyway. He had full swing at me in the times
when I was too much in to get my hands up. The crowd was crazy. I
showed 'em some stamina. They was times when he only rocked me, for I'd
evaporated plenty of his steam for him in the openin' rounds. I don't
know how many times he dropped me. Things was gettin' too dreamy....

“Sometimes, toward the end, I could see three of him in the ring at
once, an' I wouldn't know which to hit an' which to duck....

“But I fooled 'm. When I couldn't see, or feel, an' when my knees
was shakin an my head goin' like a merry-go-round, I'd fall safe into
clenches just the same. I bet the referee's arms is tired from draggin'
us apart....

“But what a lacin'! What a lacin'! Say, Saxon... where are you? Oh,
there, eh? I guess I was dreamin'. But, say, let this be a lesson to
you. I broke my word an' went fightin', an' see what I got. Look at me,
an' take warnin' so you won't make the same mistake an' go to makin' an'
sellin' fancy work again....

“But I fooled 'em--everybody. At the beginnin' the bettin' was even. By
the sixth round the wise gazabos was offerin' two to one against me. I
was licked from the first drop outa the box--anybody could see that;
but he couldn't put me down for the count. By the tenth round they was
offerin' even that I wouldn't last the round. At the eleventh they was
offerin' I wouldn't last the fifteenth. An' I lasted the whole twenty.
But some punishment, I want to tell you, some punishment.

“Why, they was four rounds I was in dreamland all the time... only I
kept on my feet an' fought, or took the count to eight an' got up, an'
stalled an' covered an' whanged away. I don't know what I done, except I
must a-done like that, because I wasn't there. I don't know a thing
from the thirteenth, when he sent me to the mat on my head, till the
eighteenth.

“Where was I? Oh, yes. I opened my eyes, or one eye, because I had only
one that would open. An' there I was, in my corner, with the towels
goin' an' ammonia in my nose an' Bill Murphy with a chunk of ice at the
back of my neck. An' there, across the ring, I could see the Chicago
Terror, an' I had to do some thinkin' to remember I was fightin' him. It
was like I'd been away somewhere an' just got back. 'What round's this
comin'?' I ask Bill. 'The eighteenth,' says he. 'The hell,' I says.
'What's come of all the other rounds? The last I was fightin' in was the
thirteenth.' 'You're a wonder,' says Bill. 'You've ben out four rounds,
only nobody knows it except me. I've ben tryin' to get you to quit all
the time.' Just then the gong sounds, an' I can see the Terror startin'
for me. 'Quit,' says Bill, makin' a move to throw in the towel. 'Not on
your life,' I says. 'Drop it, Bill.' But he went on wantin' me to quit.
By that time the Terror had come across to my corner an' was standin'
with his hands down, lookin' at me. The referee was lookin', too, an'
the house was that quiet, lookin', you could hear a pin drop. An' my
head was gettin' some clearer, but not much.

“'You can't win,' Bill says.

“'Watch me,' says I. An' with that I make a rush for the Terror,
catchin' him unexpected. I'm that groggy I can't stand, but I just keep
a-goin', wallopin' the Terror clear across the ring to his corner, where
he slips an' falls, an' I fall on top of 'm. Say, that crowd goes crazy.

“Where was I?--My head's still goin' round I guess. It's buzzin' like a
swarm of bees.”

“You'd just fallen on top of him in his corner,” Saxon prompted.

“Oh, yes. Well, no sooner are we on our feet--an' I can't stand--I rush
'm the same way back across to my corner an' fall on 'm. That was luck.
We got up, an' I'd a-fallen, only I clenched an' held myself up by him.
'I got your goat,' I says to him. 'An' now I'm goin' to eat you up.'

“I hadn't his goat, but I was playin' to get a piece of it, an' I got
it, rushin' 'm as soon as the referee drags us apart an' fetchin' 'm
a lucky wallop in the stomach that steadied 'm an' made him almighty
careful. Too almighty careful. He was afraid to chance a mix with me.
He thought I had more fight left in me than I had. So you see I got that
much of his goat anyway.

“An' he couldn't get me. He didn't get me. An' in the twentieth we stood
in the middle of the ring an' exchanged wallops even. Of course, I'd
made a fine showin' for a licked man, but he got the decision, which
was right. But I fooled 'm. He couldn't get me. An' I fooled the gazabos
that was bettin' he would on short order.”

At last, as dawn came on, Billy slept. He groaned and moaned, his face
twisting with pain, his body vainly moving and tossing in quest of
easement.

So this was prizefighting, Saxon thought. It was much worse than she
had dreamed. She had had no idea that such damage could be wrought with
padded gloves. He must never fight again. Street rioting was preferable.
She was wondering how much of his silk had been lost, when he mumbled
and opened his eyes.

“What is it?” she asked, ere it came to her that his eyes were unseeing
and that he was in delirium.

“Saxon!... Saxon!” he called.

“Yes, Billy. What is it?”

His hand fumbled over the bed where ordinarily it would have encountered
her.

Again he called her, and she cried her presence loudly in his ear. He
sighed with relief and muttered brokenly:

“I had to do it.... We needed the money.”

His eyes closed, and he slept more soundly, though his muttering
continued. She had heard of congestion of the brain, and was frightened.
Then she remembered his telling her of the ice Billy Murphy had held
against his head.

Throwing a shawl over her head, she ran to the Pile Drivers' Home on
Seventh street. The barkeeper had just opened, and was sweeping out.
From the refrigerator he gave her all the ice she wished to carry,
breaking it into convenient pieces for her. Back in the house, she
applied the ice to the base of Billy's brain, placed hot irons to his
feet, and bathed his head with witch hazel made cold by resting on the
ice.

He slept in the darkened room until late afternoon, when, to Saxon's
dismay, he insisted on getting up.

“Gotta make a showin',” he explained. “They ain't goin' to have the
laugh on me.”

In torment he was helped by her to dress, and in torment he went forth
from the house so that his world should have ocular evidence that the
beating he had received did not keep him in bed.

It was another kind of pride, different from a woman's, and Saxon
wondered if it were the less admirable for that.



CHAPTER XIV

In the days that followed Billy's swellings went down and the bruises
passed away with surprising rapidity. The quick healing of the
lacerations attested the healthiness of his blood. Only remained
the black eyes, unduly conspicuous on a face as blond as his. The
discoloration was stubborn, persisting half a month, in which time
happened divers events of importance.

Otto Frank's trial had been expeditious. Found guilty by a jury notable
for the business and professional men on it, the death sentence was
passed upon him and he was removed to San Quentin for execution.

The case of Chester Johnson and the fourteen others had taken longer,
but within the same week, it, too, was finished. Chester Johnson was
sentenced to be hanged. Two got life; three, twenty years. Only two were
acquitted. The remaining seven received terms of from two to ten years.

The effect on Saxon was to throw her into deep depression. Billy was
made gloomy, but his fighting spirit was not subdued.

“Always some men killed in battle,” he said. “That's to be expected. But
the way of sentencin' 'em gets me. All found guilty was responsible for
the killin'; or none was responsible. If all was, then they should get
the same sentence. They oughta hang like Chester Johnson, or else he
oughtn't to hang. I'd just like to know how the judge makes up his mind.
It must be like markin' China lottery tickets. He plays hunches. He
looks at a guy an' waits for a spot or a number to come into his head.
How else could he give Johnny Black four years an' Cal Hutchins twenty
years? He played the hunches as they came into his head, an' it might
just as easy ben the other way around an' Cal Hutchins got four years
an' Johnny Black twenty.

“I know both them boys. They hung out with the Tenth an' Kirkham gang
mostly, though sometimes they ran with my gang. We used to go swimmin'
after school down to Sandy Beach on the marsh, an' in the Transit slip
where they said the water was sixty feet deep, only it wasn't. An' once,
on a Thursday, we dug a lot of clams together, an' played hookey Friday
to peddle them. An' we used to go out on the Rock Wall an' catch pogies
an' rock cod. One day--the day of the eclipse--Cal caught a perch half
as big as a door. I never seen such a fish. An' now he's got to wear the
stripes for twenty years. Lucky he wasn't married. If he don't get the
consumption he'll be an old man when he comes out. Cal's mother wouldn't
let 'm go swimmin', an' whenever she suspected she always licked his
hair with her tongue. If it tasted salty, he got a beltin'. But he was
onto himself. Comin' home, he'd jump somebody's front fence an' hold his
head under a faucet.”

“I used to dance with Chester Johnson,” Saxon said. “And I knew his
wife, Kittie Brady, long and long ago. She had next place at the table
to me in the paper-box factory. She's gone to San Francisco to her
married sister's. She's going to have a baby, too. She was awfully
pretty, and there was always a string of fellows after her.”

The effect of the conviction and severe sentences was a bad one on
the union men. Instead of being disheartening, it intensified the
bitterness. Billy's repentance for having fought and the sweetness and
affection which had flashed up in the days of Saxon's nursing of him
were blotted out. At home, he scowled and brooded, while his talk took
on the tone of Bert's in the last days ere that Mohegan died. Also,
Billy stayed away from home longer hours, and was again steadily
drinking.

Saxon well-nigh abandoned hope. Almost was she steeled to the inevitable
tragedy which her morbid fancy painted in a thousand guises. Oftenest,
it was of Billy being brought home on a stretcher. Sometimes it was a
call to the telephone in the corner grocery and the curt information by
a strange voice that her husband was lying in the receiving hospital or
the morgue. And when the mysterious horse-poisoning cases occurred, and
when the residence of one of the teaming magnates was half destroyed by
dynamite, she saw Billy in prison, or wearing stripes, or mounting to
the scaffold at San Quentin while at the same time she could see the
little cottage on Pine street besieged by newspaper reporters and
photographers.

Yet her lively imagination failed altogether to anticipate the real
catastrophe. Harmon, the fireman lodger, passing through the kitchen on
his way out to work, had paused to tell Saxon about the previous day's
train-wreck in the Alviso marshes, and of how the engineer, imprisoned
under the overturned engine and unhurt, being drowned by the rising
tide, had begged to be shot. Billy came in at the end of the narrative,
and from the somber light in his heavy-lidded eyes Saxon knew he had
been drinking. He glowered at Harmon, and, without greeting to him or
Saxon, leaned his shoulder against the wall.

Harmon felt the awkwardness of the situation, and did his best to appear
oblivious.

“I was just telling your wife--” he began, but was savagely interrupted.

“I don't care what you was tellin' her. But I got something to tell you,
Mister Man. My wife's made up your bed too many times to suit me.”

“Billy!” Saxon cried, her face scarlet with resentment, and hurt, and
shame.

Billy ignored her. Harmon was saying:

“I don't understand--”

“Well, I don't like your mug,” Billy informed him. “You're standin' on
your foot. Get off of it. Get out. Beat it. D'ye understand that?”

“I don't know what's got into him,” Saxon gasped hurriedly to the
fireman. “He's not himself. Oh, I am so ashamed, so ashamed.”

Billy turned on her.

“You shut your mouth an' keep outa this.”

“But, Billy,” she remonstrated.

“An' get outa here. You go into the other room.”

“Here, now,” Harmon broke in. “This is a fine way to treat a fellow.”

“I've given you too much rope as it is,” was Billy's answer.

“I've paid my rent regularly, haven't I?”

“An' I oughta knock your block off for you. Don't see any reason I
shouldn't, for that matter.”

“If you do anything like that, Billy--” Saxon began.

“You here still? Well, if you won't go into the other room, I'll see
that you do.”

His hand clutched her arm. For one instant she resisted his strength;
and in that instant, the flesh crushed under his fingers, she realized
the fullness of his strength.

In the front room she could only lie back in the Morris chair sobbing,
and listen to what occurred in the kitchen. “I'll stay to the end of the
week,” the fireman was saying. “I've paid in advance.”

“Don't make no mistake,” came Billy's voice, so slow that it was almost
a drawl, yet quivering with rage. “You can't get out too quick if you
wanta stay healthy--you an' your traps with you. I'm likely to start
something any moment.”

“Oh, I know you're a slugger--” the fireman's voice began.

Then came the unmistakable impact of a blow; the crash of glass; a
scuffle on the back porch; and, finally, the heavy bumps of a body down
the steps. She heard Billy reenter the kitchen, move about, and knew
he was sweeping up the broken glass of the kitchen door. Then he washed
himself at the sink, whistling while he dried his face and hands, and
walked into the front room. She did not look at him. She was too sick
and sad. He paused irresolutely, seeming to make up his mind.

“I'm goin' up town,” he stated. “They's a meeting of the union. If I
don't come back it'll be because that geezer's sworn out a warrant.”

He opened the front door and paused. She knew he was looking at her.
Then the door closed and she heard him go down the steps.

Saxon was stunned. She did not think. She did not know what to think.
The whole thing was incomprehensible, incredible. She lay back in the
chair, her eyes closed, her mind almost a blank, crushed by a leaden
feeling that the end had come to everything.

The voices of children playing in the street aroused her. Night had
fallen. She groped her way to a lamp and lighted it. In the kitchen she
stared, lips trembling, at the pitiful, half prepared meal. The fire had
gone out. The water had boiled away from the potatoes. When she lifted
the lid, a burnt smell arose. Methodically she scraped and cleaned the
pot, put things in order, and peeled and sliced the potatoes for next
day's frying. And just as methodically she went to bed. Her lack of
nervousness, her placidity, was abnormal, so abnormal that she closed
her eyes and was almost immediately asleep. Nor did she awaken till the
sunshine was streaming into the room.

It was the first night she and Billy had slept apart. She was amazed
that she had not lain awake worrying about him. She lay with eyes wide
open, scarcely thinking, until pain in her arm attracted her attention.
It was where Billy had gripped her. On examination she found the bruised
flesh fearfully black and blue. She was astonished, not by the spiritual
fact that such bruise had been administered by the one she loved most in
the world, but by the sheer physical fact that an instant's pressure had
inflicted so much damage. The strength of a man was a terrible thing.
Quite impersonally, she found herself wondering if Charley Long were as
strong as Billy.

It was not until she dressed and built the fire that she began to
think about more immediate things. Billy had not returned. Then he was
arrested. What was she to do?--leave him in jail, go away, and start
life afresh? Of course it was impossible to go on living with a man
who had behaved as he had. But then, came another thought, WAS it
impossible? After all, he was her husband. FOR BETTER OR WORSE--the
phrase reiterated itself, a monotonous accompaniment to her thoughts,
at the back of her consciousness. To leave him was to surrender. She
carried the matter before the tribunal of her mother's memory. No; Daisy
would never have surrendered. Daisy was a fighter. Then she, Saxon, must
fight. Besides--and she acknowledged it--readily, though in a cold, dead
way--besides, Billy was better than most husbands. Better than any other
husband she had heard of, she concluded, as she remembered many of his
earlier nicenesses and finenesses, and especially his eternal chant:
NOTHING IS TOO GOOD FOR US. THE ROBERTSES AIN'T ON THE CHEAP.

At eleven o'clock she had a caller. It was Bud Strothers, Billy's mate
on strike duty. Billy, he told her, had refused bail, refused a lawyer,
had asked to be tried by the Court, had pleaded guilty, and had received
a sentence of sixty dollars or thirty days. Also, he had refused to let
the boys pay his fine.

“He's clean looney,” Strothers summed up. “Won't listen to reason. Says
he'll serve the time out. He's been tankin' up too regular, I guess.
His wheels are buzzin'. Here, he give me this note for you. Any time
you want anything send for me. The boys'll all stand by Bill's wife. You
belong to us, you know. How are you off for money?”

Proudly she disclaimed any need for money, and not until her visitor
departed did she read Billy's note:

Dear Saxon--Bud Strothers is going to give you this. Don't worry about
me. I am going to take my medicine. I deserve it--you know that. I guess
I am gone bughouse. Just the same, I am sorry for what I done. Don't
come to see me. I don't want you to. If you need money, the union will
give you some. The business agent is all right. I will be out in a
month. Now, Saxon, you know I love you, and just say to yourself that
you forgive me this time, and you won't never have to do it again.

                                  Billy.

Bud Strothers was followed by Maggie Donahue, and Mrs. Olsen, who paid
neighborly calls of cheer and were tactful in their offers of help and
in studiously avoiding more reference than was necessary to Billy's
predicament.

In the afternoon James Harmon arrived. He limped slightly, and Saxon
divined that he was doing his best to minimize that evidence of hurt.
She tried to apologize to him, but he would not listen.

“I don't blame you, Mrs. Roberts,” he said. “I know it wasn't your
doing. But your husband wasn't just himself, I guess. He was fightin'
mad on general principles, and it was just my luck to get in the way,
that was all.”

“But just the same--”

The fireman shook his head.

“I know all about it. I used to punish the drink myself, and I done some
funny things in them days. And I'm sorry I swore that warrant out and
testified. But I was hot in the collar. I'm cooled down now, an' I'm
sorry I done it.”

“You're awfully good and kind,” she said, and then began hesitantly on
what was bothering her. “You... you can't stay now, with him... away,
you know.”

“Yes; that wouldn't do, would it? I'll tell you: I'll pack up right now,
and skin out, and then, before six o'clock, I'll send a wagon for my
things. Here's the key to the kitchen door.”

Much as he demurred, she compelled him to receive back the unexpired
portion of his rent. He shook her hand heartily at leaving, and tried to
get her to promise to call upon him for a loan any time she might be in
need.

“It's all right,” he assured her. “I'm married, and got two boys. One of
them's got his lungs touched, and she's with 'em down in Arizona campin'
out. The railroad helped with passes.”

And as he went down the steps she wondered that so kind a man should be
in so madly cruel a world.

The Donahue boy threw in a spare evening paper, and Saxon found half a
column devoted to Billy. It was not nice. The fact that he had stood
up in the police court with his eyes blacked from some other fray
was noted. He was described as a bully, a hoodlum, a rough-neck, a
professional slugger whose presence in the ranks was a disgrace to
organized labor. The assault he had pleaded guilty of was atrocious and
unprovoked, and if he were a fair sample of a striking teamster, the
only wise thing for Oakland to do was to break up the union and drive
every member from the city. And, finally, the paper complained at the
mildness of the sentence. It should have been six months at least. The
judge was quoted as expressing regret that he had been unable to impose
a six months' sentence, this inability being due to the condition of
the jails, already crowded beyond capacity by the many cases of assault
committed in the course of the various strikes.

That night, in bed, Saxon experienced her first loneliness. Her brain
seemed in a whirl, and her sleep was broken by vain gropings for the
form of Billy she imagined at her side. At last, she lighted the lamp
and lay staring at the ceiling, wide-eyed, conning over and over the
details of the disaster that had overwhelmed her. She could forgive, and
she could not forgive. The blow to her love-life had been too savage,
too brutal. Her pride was too lacerated to permit her wholly to return
in memory to the other Billy whom she loved. Wine in, wit out, she
repeated to herself; but the phrase could not absolve the man who had
slept by her side, and to whom she had consecrated herself. She wept
in the loneliness of the all-too-spacious bed, strove to forget Billy's
incomprehensible cruelty, even pillowed her cheek with numb fondness
against the bruise of her arm; but still resentment burned within her,
a steady flame of protest against Billy and all that Billy had done. Her
throat was parched, a dull ache never ceased in her breast, and she was
oppressed by a feeling of goneness. WHY, WHY?--And from the puzzle of
the world came no solution.

In the morning she received a visit from Sarah--the second in all the
period of her marriage; and she could easily guess her sister-in-law's
ghoulish errand. No exertion was required for the assertion of all of
Saxon's pride. She refused to be in the slightest on the defensive.
There was nothing to defend, nothing to explain. Everything was all
right, and it was nobody's business anyway. This attitude but served to
vex Sarah.

“I warned you, and you can't say I didn't,” her diatribe ran. “I always
knew he was no good, a jailbird, a hoodlum, a slugger. My heart sunk
into my boots when I heard you was runnin' with a prizefighter. I
told you so at the time. But no; you wouldn't listen, you with your
highfalutin' notions an' more pairs of shoes than any decent woman
should have. You knew better'n me. An' I said then, to Tom, I said,
'It's all up with Saxon now.' Them was my very words. Them that touches
pitch is defiled. If you'd only a-married Charley Long! Then the family
wouldn't a-ben disgraced. An' this is only the beginnin', mark me, only
the beginnin'. Where it'll end, God knows. He'll kill somebody yet, that
plug-ugly of yourn, an' be hanged for it. You wait an' see, that's all,
an' then you'll remember my words. As you make your bed, so you will lay
in it”

“Best bed I ever had,” Saxon commented.

“So you can say, so you can say,” Sarah snorted.

“I wouldn't trade it for a queen's bed,” Saxon added.

“A jailbird's bed,” Sarah rejoined witheringly.

“Oh, it's the style,” Saxon retorted airily. “Everybody's getting
a taste of jail. Wasn't Tom arrested at some street meeting of the
socialists? Everybody goes to jail these days.”

The barb had struck home.

“But Tom was acquitted,” Sarah hastened to proclaim.

“Just the same he lay in jail all night without bail.”

This was unanswerable, and Sarah executed her favorite tactic of attack
in flank.

“A nice come-down for you, I must say, that was raised straight an'
right, a-cuttin' up didoes with a lodger.”

“Who says so?” Saxon blazed with an indignation quickly mastered.

“Oh, a blind man can read between the lines. A lodger, a young married
woman with no self respect, an' a prizefighter for a husband--what else
would they fight about?”

“Just like any family quarrel, wasn't it?” Saxon smiled placidly.

Sarah was shocked into momentary speechlessness.

“And I want you to understand it,” Saxon continued. “It makes a woman
proud to have men fight over her. I am proud. Do you hear? I am proud.
I want you to tell them so. I want you to tell all your neighbors. Tell
everybody. I am no cow. Men like me. Men fight for me. Men go to jail
for me. What is a woman in the world for, if it isn't to have men like
her? Now, go, Sarah; go at once, and tell everybody what you've read
between the lines. Tell them Billy is a jailbird and that I am a bad
woman whom all men desire. Shout it out, and good luck to you. And get
out of my house. And never put your feet in it again. You are too decent
a woman to come here. You might lose your reputation. And think of your
children. Now get out. Go.”

Not until Sarah had taken an amazed and horrified departure did Saxon
fling herself on the bed in a convulsion of tears. She had been ashamed,
before, merely of Billy's inhospitality, and surliness, and unfairness.
But she could see, now, the light in which others looked on the affair.
It had not entered Saxon's head. She was confident that it had not
entered Billy's. She knew his attitude from the first. Always he had
opposed taking a lodger because of his proud faith that his wife should
not work. Only hard times had compelled his consent, and, now that she
looked back, almost had she inveigled him into consenting.

But all this did not alter the viewpoint the neighborhood must hold,
that every one who had ever known her must hold. And for this, too,
Billy was responsible. It was more terrible than all the other things
he had been guilty of put together. She could never look any one in the
face again. Maggie Donahue and Mrs. Olsen had been very kind, but of
what must they have been thinking all the time they talked with her? And
what must they have said to each other? What was everybody saying?--over
front gates and back fences,--the men standing on the corners or talking
in saloons?

Later, exhausted by her grief, when the tears no longer fell, she grew
more impersonal, and dwelt on the disasters that had befallen so many
women since the strike troubles began--Otto Frank's wife, Henderson's
widow, pretty Kittie Brady, Mary, all the womenfolk of the other workmen
who were now wearing the stripes in San Quentin. Her world was crashing
about her ears. No one was exempt. Not only had she not escaped, but
hers was the worst disgrace of all. Desperately she tried to hug the
delusion that she was asleep, that it was all a nightmare, and that soon
the alarm would go off and she would get up and cook Billy's breakfast
so that he could go to work.

She did not leave the bed that day. Nor did she sleep. Her brain whirled
on and on, now dwelling at insistent length upon her misfortunes, now
pursuing the most fantastic ramifications of what she considered her
disgrace, and, again, going back to her childhood and wandering through
endless trivial detail. She worked at all the tasks she had ever done,
performing, in fancy, the myriads of mechanical movements peculiar to
each occupation--shaping and pasting in the paper box factory, ironing
in the laundry, weaving in the jute mill, peeling fruit in the cannery
and countless boxes of scalded tomatoes. She attended all her dances and
all her picnics over again; went through her school days, recalling the
face and name and seat of every schoolmate; endured the gray bleakness
of the years in the orphan asylum; revisioned every memory of her
mother, every tale; and relived all her life with Billy. But ever--and
here the torment lay--she was drawn back from these far-wanderings
to her present trouble, with its parch in the throat, its ache in the
breast, and its gnawing, vacant goneness.



CHAPTER XV

All that night Saxon lay, unsleeping, without taking off her clothes,
and when she arose in the morning and washed her face and dressed her
hair she was aware of a strange numbness, of a feeling of constriction
about her head as if it were bound by a heavy band of iron. It seemed
like a dull pressure upon her brain. It was the beginning of an illness
that she did not know as illness. All she knew was that she felt queer.
It was not fever. It was not cold. Her bodily health was as it should
be, and, when she thought about it, she put her condition down to
nerves--nerves, according to her ideas and the ideas of her class, being
unconnected with disease.

She had a strange feeling of loss of self, of being a stranger to
herself, and the world in which she moved seemed a vague and shrouded
world. It lacked sharpness of definition. Its customary vividness was
gone. She had lapses of memory, and was continually finding herself
doing unplanned things. Thus, to her astonishment, she came to in the
back yard hanging up the week's wash. She had no recollection of having
done it, yet it had been done precisely as it should have been done.
She had boiled the sheets and pillow-slips and the table linen. Billy's
woolens had been washed in warm water only, with the home-made soap, the
recipe of which Mercedes had given her. On investigation, she found she
had eaten a mutton chop for breakfast. This meant that she had been to
the butcher shop, yet she had no memory of having gone. Curiously, she
went into the bedroom. The bed was made up and everything in order.

At twilight she came upon herself in the front room, seated by the
window, crying in an ecstasy of joy. At first she did not know what this
joy was; then it came to her that it was because she had lost her baby.
“A blessing, a blessing,” she was chanting aloud, wringing her hands,
but with joy, she knew it was with joy that she wrung her hands.

The days came and went. She had little notion of time. Sometimes,
centuries agone, it seemed to her it was since Billy had gone to jail.
At other times it was no more than the night before. But through it
all two ideas persisted: she must not go to see Billy in jail; it was a
blessing she had lost her baby.

Once, Bud Strothers came to see her. She sat in the front room and
talked with him, noting with fascination that there were fringes to
the heels of his trousers. Another day, the business agent of the union
called. She told him, as she had told Bud Strothers, that everything was
all right, that she needed nothing, that she could get along comfortably
until Billy came out.

A fear began to haunt her. WHEN HE CAME OUT. No; it must not be. There
must not be another baby. It might LIVE. No, no, a thousand times no. It
must not be. She would run away first. She would never see Billy again.
Anything but that. Anything but that.

This fear persisted. In her nightmare-ridden sleep it became an
accomplished fact, so that she would awake, trembling, in a cold sweat,
crying out. Her sleep had become wretched. Sometimes she was convinced
that she did not sleep at all, and she knew that she had insomnia, and
remembered that it was of insomnia her mother had died.

She came to herself one day, sitting in Doctor Hentley's office. He was
looking at her in a puzzled way.

“Got plenty to eat?” he was asking.

She nodded.

“Any serious trouble?”

She shook her head.

“Everything's all right, doctor... except...”

“Yes, yes,” he encouraged.

And then she knew why she had come. Simply, explicitly, she told him. He
shook his head slowly.

“It can't be done, little woman,” he said

“Oh, but it can!” she cried. “I know it can.”

“I don't mean that,” he answered. “I mean I can't tell you. I dare not.
It is against the law. There is a doctor in Leavenworth prison right now
for that.”

In vain she pleaded with him. He instanced his own wife and children
whose existence forbade his imperiling.

“Besides, there is no likelihood now,” he told her.

“But there will be, there is sure to be,” she urged.

But he could only shake his head sadly.

“Why do you want to know?” he questioned finally.

Saxon poured her heart out to him. She told of her first year of
happiness with Billy, of the hard times caused by the labor troubles, of
the change in Billy so that there was no love-life left, of her own deep
horror. Not if it died, she concluded. She could go through that again.
But if it should live. Billy would soon be out of jail, and then the
danger would begin. It was only a few words. She would never tell any
one. Wild horses could not drag it out of her.

But Doctor Hentley continued to shake his head. “I can't tell you,
little woman. It's a shame, but I can't take the risk. My hands are
tied. Our laws are all wrong. I have to consider those who are dear to
me.”

It was when she got up to go that he faltered. “Come here,” he said.
“Sit closer.”

He prepared to whisper in her ear, then, with a sudden excess of
caution, crossed the room swiftly, opened the door, and looked out.
When he sat down again he drew his chair so close to hers that the arms
touched, and when he whispered his beard tickled her ear.

“No, no,” he shut her off when she tried to voice her gratitude. “I have
told you nothing. You were here to consult me about your general health.
You are run down, out of condition--”

As he talked he moved her toward the door. When he opened it, a patient
for the dentist in the adjoining office was standing in the hall. Doctor
Hentley lifted his voice.

“What you need is that tonic I prescribed. Remember that. And don't
pamper your appetite when it comes back. Eat strong, nourishing food,
and beefsteak, plenty of beefsteak. And don't cook it to a cinder. Good
day.”

At times the silent cottage became unendurable, and Saxon would throw
a shawl about her head and walk out the Oakland Mole, or cross the
railroad yards and the marshes to Sandy Beach where Billy had said he
used to swim. Also, by going out the Transit slip, by climbing down the
piles on a precarious ladder of iron spikes, and by crossing a boom of
logs, she won access to the Rock Wall that extended far out into the bay
and that served as a barrier between the mudflats and the tide-scoured
channel of Oakland Estuary. Here the fresh sea breezes blew and Oakland
sank down to a smudge of smoke behind her, while across the bay she
could see the smudge that represented San Francisco. Ocean steamships
passed up and down the estuary, and lofty-masted ships, towed by
red-stacked tugs.

She gazed at the sailors on the ships, wondered on what far voyages and
to what far lands they went, wondered what freedoms were theirs. Or
were they girt in by as remorseless and cruel a world as the dwellers
in Oakland were? Were they as unfair, as unjust, as brutal, in their
dealings with their fellows as were the city dwellers? It did not
seem so, and sometimes she wished herself on board, out-bound, going
anywhere, she cared not where, so long as it was away from the world to
which she had given her best and which had trampled her in return.

She did not know always when she left the house, nor where her feet took
her. Once, she came to herself in a strange part of Oakland. The street
was wide and lined with rows of shade trees. Velvet lawns, broken only
by cement sidewalks, ran down to the gutters. The houses stood apart and
were large. In her vocabulary they were mansions. What had shocked her
to consciousness of herself was a young man in the driver's seat of a
touring car standing at the curb. He was looking at her curiously and
she recognized him as Roy Blanchard, whom, in front of the Forum, Billy
had threatened to whip. Beside the car, bareheaded, stood another young
man. He, too, she remembered. He it was, at the Sunday picnic where she
first met Billy, who had thrust his cane between the legs of the flying
foot-racer and precipitated the free-for-all fight. Like Blanchard, he
was looking at her curiously, and she became aware that she had been
talking to herself. The babble of her lips still beat in her ears. She
blushed, a rising tide of shame heating her face, and quickened her
pace. Blanchard sprang out of the car and came to her with lifted hat.
“Is anything the matter?” he asked.

She shook her head, and, though she had stopped, she evinced her desire
to go on.

“I know you,” he said, studying her face. “You were with the striker who
promised me a licking.”

“He is my husband,” she said.

“Oh! Good for him.” He regarded her pleasantly and frankly. “But about
yourself? Isn't there anything I can do for you? Something IS the
matter.”

“No, I'm all right,” she answered. “I have been sick,” she lied; for she
never dreamed of connecting her queerness with sickness.

“You look tired,” he pressed her. “I can take you in the machine and run
you anywhere you want. It won't be any trouble. I've plenty of time.”

Saxon shook her head.

“If... if you would tell me where I can catch the Eighth street cars. I
don't often come to this part of town.”

He told her where to find an electric car and what transfers to make,
and she was surprised at the distance she had wandered.

“Thank you,” she said. “And good bye.”

“Sure I can't do anything now?”

“Sure.”

“Well, good bye,” he smiled good humoredly. “And tell that husband of
yours to keep in good condition. I'm likely to make him need it all when
he tangles up with me.”

“Oh, but you can't fight with him,” she warned. “You mustn't. You
haven't got a show.”

“Good for you,” he admired. “That's the way for a woman to stand up for
her man. Now the average woman would be so afraid he was going to get
licked--”

“But I'm not afraid... for him. It's for you. He's a terrible fighter.
You wouldn't have any chance. It would be like... like...”

“Like taking candy from a baby?” Blanchard finished for her.

“Yes,” she nodded. “That's just what he would call it. And whenever he
tells you you are standing on your foot watch out for him. Now I must
go. Good bye, and thank you again.”

She went on down the sidewalk, his cheery good bye ringing in her ears.
He was kind--she admitted it honestly; yet he was one of the clever
ones, one of the masters, who, according to Billy, were responsible
for all the cruelty to labor, for the hardships of the women, for the
punishment of the labor men who were wearing stripes in San Quentin or
were in the death cells awaiting the scaffold. Yet he was kind, sweet
natured, clean, good. She could read his character in his face. But how
could this be, if he were responsible for so much evil? She shook her
head wearily. There was no explanation, no understanding of this world
which destroyed little babes and bruised women's breasts.

As for her having strayed into that neighborhood of fine residences,
she was unsurprised. It was in line with her queerness. She did so many
things without knowing that she did them. But she must be careful. It
was better to wander on the marshes and the Rock Wall.

Especially she liked the Rock Wall. There was a freedom about it, a wide
spaciousness that she found herself instinctively trying to breathe,
holding her arms out to embrace and make part of herself. It was a
more natural world, a more rational world. She could understand
it--understand the green crabs with white-bleached claws that scuttled
before her and which she could see pasturing on green-weeded rocks
when the tide was low. Here, hopelessly man-made as the great wall was,
nothing seemed artificial. There were no men here, no laws nor conflicts
of men. The tide flowed and ebbed; the sun rose and set; regularly each
afternoon the brave west wind came romping in through the Golden Gate,
darkening the water, cresting tiny wavelets, making the sailboats fly.
Everything ran with frictionless order. Everything was free. Firewood
lay about for the taking. No man sold it by the sack. Small boys fished
with poles from the rocks, with no one to drive them away for trespass,
catching fish as Billy had caught fish, as Cal Hutchins had caught fish.
Billy had told her of the great perch Cal Hutchins caught on the day of
the eclipse, when he had little dreamed the heart of his manhood would
be spent in convict's garb.

And here was food, food that was free. She watched the small boys on
a day when she had eaten nothing, and emulated them, gathering mussels
from the rocks at low water, cooking them by placing them among the
coals of a fire she built on top of the wall. They tasted particularly
good. She learned to knock the small oysters from the rocks, and once
she found a string of fresh-caught fish some small boy had forgotten to
take home with him.

Here drifted evidences of man's sinister handiwork--from a distance,
from the cities. One flood tide she found the water covered with
muskmelons. They bobbed and bumped along up the estuary in countless
thousands. Where they stranded against the rocks she was able to get
them. But each and every melon--and she patiently tried scores of
them--had been spoiled by a sharp gash that let in the salt water.
She could not understand. She asked an old Portuguese woman gathering
driftwood.

“They do it, the people who have too much,” the old woman explained,
straightening her labor-stiffened back with such an effort that almost
Saxon could hear it creak. The old woman's black eyes flashed angrily,
and her wrinkled lips, drawn tightly across toothless gums, wry with
bitterness. “The people that have too much. It is to keep up the price.
They throw them overboard in San Francisco.”

“But why don't they give them away to the poor people?” Saxon asked.

“They must keep up the price.”

“But the poor people cannot buy them anyway,” Saxon objected. “It would
not hurt the price.”

The old woman shrugged her shoulders.

“I do not know. It is their way. They chop each melon so that the poor
people cannot fish them out and eat anyway. They do the same with the
oranges, with the apples. Ah, the fishermen! There is a trust. When
the boats catch too much fish, the trust throws them overboard from
Fisherman Wharf, boat-loads, and boat-loads, and boatloads of the
beautiful fish. And the beautiful good fish sink and are gone. And no
one gets them. Yet they are dead and only good to eat. Fish are very
good to eat.”

And Saxon could not understand a world that did such things--a world in
which some men possessed so much food that they threw it away, paying
men for their labor of spoiling it before they threw it away; and in
the same world so many people who did not have enough food, whose babies
died because their mothers' milk was not nourishing, whose young men
fought and killed one another for the chance to work, whose old men and
women went to the poorhouse because there was no food for them in the
little shacks they wept at leaving. She wondered if all the world were
that way, and remembered Mercedes' tales. Yes; all the world was that
way. Had not Mercedes seen ten thousand families starve to death in
that far away India, when, as she had said, her own jewels that she wore
would have fed and saved them all? It was the poorhouse and the salt
vats for the stupid, jewels and automobiles for the clever ones.

She was one of the stupid. She must be. The evidence all pointed that
way. Yet Saxon refused to accept it. She was not stupid. Her mother had
not been stupid, nor had the pioneer stock before her. Still it must be
so. Here she sat, nothing to eat at home, her love-husband changed to a
brute beast and lying in jail, her arms and heart empty of the babe that
would have been there if only the stupid ones had not made a shambles of
her front yard in their wrangling over jobs.

She sat there, racking her brain, the smudge of Oakland at her back,
staring across the bay at the smudge of San Francisco. Yet the sun was
good; the wind was good, as was the keen salt air in her nostrils;
the blue sky, flecked with clouds, was good. All the natural world
was right, and sensible, and beneficent. It was the man-world that was
wrong, and mad, and horrible. Why were the stupid stupid? Was it a law
of God? No; it could not be. God had made the wind, and air, and sun.
The man-world was made by man, and a rotten job it was. Yet, and she
remembered it well, the teaching in the orphan asylum, God had made
everything. Her mother, too, had believed this, had believed in this
God. Things could not be different. It was ordained.

For a time Saxon sat crushed, helpless. Then smoldered protest, revolt.
Vainly she asked why God had it in for her. What had she done to
deserve such fate? She briefly reviewed her life in quest of deadly sins
committed, and found them not. She had obeyed her mother; obeyed Cady,
the saloon-keeper, and Cady's wife; obeyed the matron and the other
women in the orphan asylum; obeyed Tom when she came to live in his
house, and never run in the streets because he didn't wish her to.
At school she had always been honorably promoted, and never had her
deportment report varied from one hundred per cent. She had worked from
the day she left school to the day of her marriage. She had been a good
worker, too. The little Jew who ran the paper box factory had almost
wept when she quit. It was the same at the cannery. She was among the
high-line weavers when the jute mills closed down. And she had kept
straight. It was not as if she had been ugly or unattractive. She had
known her temptations and encountered her dangers. The fellows had been
crazy about her. They had run after her, fought over her, in a way to
turn most girls' heads. But she had kept straight. And then had come
Billy, her reward. She had devoted herself to him, to his house, to all
that would nourish his love; and now she and Billy were sinking down
into this senseless vortex of misery and heartbreak of the man-made
world.

No, God was not responsible. She could have made a better world
herself--a finer, squarer world. This being so, then there was no God.
God could not make a botch. The matron had been wrong, her mother had
been wrong. Then there was no immortality, and Bert, wild and crazy
Bert, falling at her front gate with his foolish death-cry, was right.
One was a long time dead.

Looking thus at life, shorn of its superrational sanctions, Saxon
floundered into the morass of pessimism. There was no justification for
right conduct in the universe, no square deal for her who had earned
reward, for the millions who worked like animals, died like animals,
and were a long time and forever dead. Like the hosts of more learned
thinkers before her, she concluded that the universe was unmoral and
without concern for men.

And now she sat crushed in greater helplessness than when she had
included God in the scheme of injustice. As long as God was, there was
always chance for a miracle, for some supernatural intervention, some
rewarding with ineffable bliss. With God missing, the world was a
trap. Life was a trap. She was like a linnet, caught by small boys and
imprisoned in a cage. That was because the linnet was stupid. But she
rebelled. She fluttered and beat her soul against the hard face of
things as did the linnet against the bars of wire. She was not stupid.
She did not belong in the trap. She would fight her way out of the trap.
There must be such a way out. When canal boys and rail-splitters, the
lowliest of the stupid lowly, as she had read in her school history,
could find their way out and become presidents of the nation and rule
over even the clever ones in their automobiles, then could she find her
way out and win to the tiny reward she craved--Billy, a little love, a
little happiness. She would not mind that the universe was unmoral, that
there was no God, no immortality. She was willing to go into the black
grave and remain in its blackness forever, to go into the salt vats and
let the young men cut her dead flesh to sausage-meat, if--if only she
could get her small meed of happiness first.

How she would work for that happiness! How she would appreciate it, make
the most of each least particle of it! But how was she to do it. Where
was the path? She could not vision it. Her eyes showed her only the
smudge of San Francisco, the smudge of Oakland, where men were breaking
heads and killing one another, where babies were dying, born and unborn,
and where women were weeping with bruised breasts.



CHAPTER XVI

Her vague, unreal existence continued. It seemed in some previous
life-time that Billy had gone away, that another life-time would have to
come before he returned. She still suffered from insomnia. Long nights
passed in succession, during which she never closed her eyes. At
other times she slept through long stupors, waking stunned and numbed,
scarcely able to open her heavy eyes, to move her weary limbs. The
pressure of the iron band on her head never relaxed. She was poorly
nourished. Nor had she a cent of money. She often went a whole day
without eating. Once, seventy-two hours elapsed without food passing
her lips. She dug clams in the marsh, knocked the tiny oysters from the
rocks, and gathered mussels.

And yet, when Bud Strothers came to see how she was getting along, she
convinced him that all was well. One evening after work, Tom came, and
forced two dollars upon her. He was terribly worried. He would like to
help more, but Sarah was expecting another baby. There had been slack
times in his trade because of the strikes in the other trades. He did
not know what the country was coming to. And it was all so simple. All
they had to do was see things in his way and vote the way he voted. Then
everybody would get a square deal. Christ was a Socialist, he told her.

“Christ died two thousand years ago,” Saxon said.

“Well?” Tom queried, not catching her implication.

“Think,” she said, “think of all the men and women who died in those
two thousand years, and socialism has not come yet. And in two thousand
years more it may be as far away as ever. Tom, your socialism never did
you any good. It is a dream.”

“It wouldn't be if--” he began with a flash of resentment.

“If they believed as you do. Only they don't. You don't succeed in
making them.”

“But we are increasing every year,” he argued.

“Two thousand years is an awfully long time,” she said quietly.

Her brother's tired face saddened as he noted. Then he sighed:

“Well, Saxon, if it's a dream, it is a good dream.”

“I don't want to dream,” was her reply. “I want things real. I want them
now.”

And before her fancy passed the countless generations of the stupid
lowly, the Billys and Saxons, the Berts and Marys, the Toms and Sarahs.
And to what end? The salt vats and the grave. Mercedes was a hard and
wicked woman, but Mercedes was right. The stupid must always be under
the heels of the clever ones. Only she, Saxon, daughter of Daisy who
had written wonderful poems and of a soldier-father on a roan war-horse,
daughter of the strong generations who had won half a world from wild
nature and the savage Indian--no, she was not stupid. It was as if she
suffered false imprisonment. There was some mistake. She would find the
way out.

With the two dollars she bought a sack of flour and half a sack of
potatoes. This relieved the monotony of her clams and mussels. Like
the Italian and Portuguese women, she gathered driftwood and carried it
home, though always she did it with shamed pride, timing her arrival so
that it would be after dark. One day, on the mud-flat side of the Rock
Wall, an Italian fishing boat hauled up on the sand dredged from the
channel. From the top of the wall Saxon watched the men grouped about
the charcoal brazier, eating crusty Italian bread and a stew of meat and
vegetables, washed down with long draughts of thin red wine. She envied
them their freedom that advertised itself in the heartiness of their
meal, in the tones of their chatter and laughter, in the very boat
itself that was not tied always to one place and that carried them
wherever they willed. Afterward, they dragged a seine across the
mud-flats and up on the sand, selecting for themselves only the larger
kinds of fish. Many thousands of small fish, like sardines, they left
dying on the sand when they sailed away. Saxon got a sackful of the
fish, and was compelled to make two trips in order to carry them home,
where she salted them down in a wooden washtub.

Her lapses of consciousness continued. The strangest thing she did while
in such condition was on Sandy Beach. There she discovered herself, one
windy afternoon, lying in a hole she had dug, with sacks for blankets.
She had even roofed the hole in rough fashion by means of drift wood and
marsh grass. On top of the grass she had piled sand.

Another time she came to herself walking across the marshes, a bundle
of driftwood, tied with bale-rope, on her shoulder. Charley Long
was walking beside her. She could see his face in the starlight. She
wondered dully how long he had been talking, what he had said. Then she
was curious to hear what he was saying. She was not afraid, despite
his strength, his wicked nature, and the loneliness and darkness of the
marsh.

“It's a shame for a girl like you to have to do this,” he was saying,
apparently in repetition of what he had already urged. “Come on an' say
the word, Saxon. Come on an' say the word.”

Saxon stopped and quietly faced him.

“Listen, Charley Long. Billy's only doing thirty days, and his time is
almost up. When he gets out your life won't be worth a pinch of salt
if I tell him you've been bothering me. Now listen. If you go right now
away from here, and stay away, I won't tell him. That's all I've got to
say.”

The big blacksmith stood in scowling indecision, his face pathetic
in its fierce yearning, his hands making unconscious, clutching
contractions.

“Why, you little, small thing,” he said desperately, “I could break you
in one hand. I could--why, I could do anything I wanted. I don't want to
hurt you, Saxon. You know that. Just say the word--”

“I've said the only word I'm going to say.”

“God!” he muttered in involuntary admiration. “You ain't afraid. You
ain't afraid.”

They faced each other for long silent minutes.

“Why ain't you afraid?” he demanded at last, after peering into the
surrounding darkness as if searching for her hidden allies.

“Because I married a man,” Saxon said briefly. “And now you'd better
go.”

When he had gone she shifted the load of wood to her other shoulder
and started on, in her breast a quiet thrill of pride in Billy. Though
behind prison bars, still she leaned against his strength. The mere
naming of him was sufficient to drive away a brute like Charley Long.

On the day that Otto Frank was hanged she remained indoors. The evening
papers published the account. There had been no reprieve. In Sacramento
was a railroad Governor who might reprieve or even pardon bank-wreckers
and grafters, but who dared not lift his finger for a workingman. All
this was the talk of the neighborhood. It had been Billy's talk. It had
been Bert's talk.

The next day Saxon started out the Rock Wall, and the specter of Otto
Frank walked by her side. And with him was a dimmer, mistier specter
that she recognized as Billy. Was he, too, destined to tread his way to
Otto Frank's dark end? Surely so, if the blood and strike continued. He
was a fighter. He felt he was right in fighting. It was easy to kill
a man. Even if he did not intend it, some time, when he was slugging a
scab, the scab would fracture his skull on a stone curbing or a cement
sidewalk. And then Billy would hang. That was why Otto Frank hanged.
He had not intended to kill Henderson. It was only by accident that
Henderson's skull was fractured. Yet Otto Frank had been hanged for it
just the same.

She wrung her hands and wept loudly as she stumbled among the windy
rocks. The hours passed, and she was lost to herself and her grief. When
she came to she found herself on the far end of the wall where it jutted
into the bay between the Oakland and Alameda Moles. But she could see
no wall. It was the time of the full moon, and the unusual high tide
covered the rocks. She was knee deep in the water, and about her knees
swam scores of big rock rats, squeaking and fighting, scrambling to
climb upon her out of the flood. She screamed with fright and horror,
and kicked at them. Some dived and swam away under water; others circled
about her warily at a distance; and one big fellow laid his teeth into
her shoe. Him she stepped on and crushed with her free foot. By this
time, though still trembling, she was able coolly to consider the
situation. She waded to a stout stick of driftwood a few feet away, and
with this quickly cleared a space about herself.

A grinning small boy, in a small, bright-painted and half-decked skiff,
sailed close in to the wall and let go his sheet to spill the wind.
“Want to get aboard?” he called.

“Yes,” she answered. “There are thousands of big rats here. I'm afraid
of them.”

He nodded, ran close in, spilled the wind from his sail, the boat's way
carrying it gently to her.

“Shove out its bow,” he commanded. “That's right. I don't want to break
my centerboard.... An' then jump aboard in the stern--quick!--alongside
of me.”

She obeyed, stepping in lightly beside him. He held the tiller up with
his elbow, pulled in on the sheet, and as the sail filled the boat
sprang away over the rippling water.

“You know boats,” the boy said approvingly.

He was a slender, almost frail lad, of twelve or thirteen years, though
healthy enough, with sunburned freckled face and large gray eyes that
were clear and wistful.

Despite his possession of the pretty boat, Saxon was quick to sense that
he was one of them, a child of the people.

“First boat I was ever in, except ferryboats,” Saxon laughed.

He looked at her keenly. “Well, you take to it like a duck to water is
all I can say about it. Where d'ye want me to land you?”

“Anywhere.”

He opened his mouth to speak, gave her another long look, considered for
a space, then asked suddenly: “Got plenty of time?”

She nodded.

“All day?”

Again she nodded.

“Say--I'll tell you, I'm goin' out on this ebb to Goat Island for
rockcod, an' I'll come in on the flood this evening. I got plenty of
lines an' bait. Want to come along? We can both fish. And what you catch
you can have.”

Saxon hesitated. The freedom and motion of the small boat appealed to
her. Like the ships she had envied, it was outbound.

“Maybe you'll drown me,” she parleyed.

The boy threw back his head with pride.

“I guess I've been sailin' many a long day by myself, an' I ain't
drowned yet.”

“All right,” she consented. “Though remember, I don't know anything
about boats.”

“Aw, that's all right.--Now I'm goin' to go about. When I say 'Hard
a-lee!' like that, you duck your head so the boom don't hit you, an'
shift over to the other side.”

He executed the maneuver, Saxon obeyed, and found herself sitting beside
him on the opposite side of the boat, while the boat itself, on the
other tack, was heading toward Long Wharf where the coal bunkers were.
She was aglow with admiration, the more so because the mechanics of
boat-sailing was to her a complex and mysterious thing.

“Where did you learn it all?” she inquired.

“Taught myself, just naturally taught myself. I liked it, you see, an'
what a fellow likes he's likeliest to do. This is my second boat. My
first didn't have a centerboard. I bought it for two dollars an' learned
a lot, though it never stopped leaking. What d 'ye think I paid for this
one? It's worth twenty-five dollars right now. What d 'ye think I paid
for it?”

“I give up,” Saxon said. “How much?”

“Six dollars. Think of it! A boat like this! Of course I done a lot of
work, an' the sail cost two dollars, the oars one forty, an' the paint
one seventy-five. But just the same eleven dollars and fifteen cents is
a real bargain. It took me a long time saving for it, though. I carry
papers morning and evening--there's a boy taking my route for me this
afternoon--I give 'm ten cents, an' all the extras he sells is his; and
I'd a-got the boat sooner only I had to pay for my shorthand lessons. My
mother wants me to become a court reporter. They get sometimes as much
as twenty dollars a day. Gee! But I don't want it. It's a shame to waste
the money on the lessons.”

“What do you want?” she asked, partly from idleness, and yet with
genuine curiosity; for she felt drawn to this boy in knee pants who was
so confident and at the same time so wistful.

“What do I want?” he repeated after her.

Turning his head slowly, he followed the sky-line, pausing especially
when his eyes rested landward on the brown Contra Costa hills, and
seaward, past Alcatraz, on the Golden Gate. The wistfulness in his eyes
was overwhelming and went to her heart.

“That,” he said, sweeping the circle of the world with a wave of his
arm.

“That?” she queried.

He looked at her, perplexed in that he had not made his meaning clear.

“Don't you ever feel that way?” he asked, bidding for sympathy with his
dream. “Don't you sometimes feel you'd die if you didn't know what's
beyond them hills an' what's beyond the other hills behind them hills?
An' the Golden Gate! There's the Pacific Ocean beyond, and China, an'
Japan, an' India, an'... an' all the coral islands. You can go anywhere
out through the Golden Gate--to Australia, to Africa, to the seal
islands, to the North Pole, to Cape Horn. Why, all them places are just
waitin' for me to come an' see 'em. I've lived in Oakland all my life,
but I'm not going to live in Oakland the rest of my life, not by a long
shot. I'm goin' to get away... away....”

Again, as words failed to express the vastness of his desire, the wave
of his arm swept the circle of the world.

Saxon thrilled with him. She too, save for her earlier childhood, had
lived in Oakland all her life. And it had been a good place in which to
live... until now. And now, in all its nightmare horror, it was a place
to get away from, as with her people the East had been a place to get
away from. And why not? The world tugged at her, and she felt in touch
with the lad's desire. Now that she thought of it, her race had never
been given to staying long in one place. Always it had been on the move.
She remembered back to her mother's tales, and to the wood engraving in
her scrapbook where her half-clad forebears, sword in hand, leaped from
their lean beaked boats to do battle on the blood-drenched sands of
England.

“Did you ever hear about the Anglo-Saxons?” she asked the boy.

“You bet!” His eyes glistened, and he looked at her with new interest.
“I'm an Anglo-Saxon, every inch of me. Look at the color of my eyes, my
skin. I'm awful white where I ain't sunburned. An' my hair was yellow
when I was a baby. My mother says it'll be dark brown by the time I'm
grown up, worse luck. Just the same, I'm Anglo-Saxon. I am of a fighting
race. We ain't afraid of nothin'. This bay--think I'm afraid of it!” He
looked out over the water with flashing eye of scorn. “Why, I've crossed
it when it was howlin' an' when the scow schooner sailors said I lied
an' that I didn't. Huh! They were only squareheads. Why, we licked their
kind thousands of years ago. We lick everything we go up against. We've
wandered all over the world, licking the world. On the sea, on the land,
it's all the same. Look at Ivory Nelson, look at Davy Crockett, look at
Paul Jones, look at Clive, an' Kitchener, an' Fremont, an' Kit Carson,
an' all of 'em.”

Saxon nodded, while he continued, her own eyes shining, and it came to
her what a glory it would be to be the mother of a man-child like this.
Her body ached with the fancied quickening of unborn life. A good stock,
a good stock, she thought to herself. Then she thought of herself and
Billy, healthy shoots of that same stock, yet condemned to childlessness
because of the trap of the manmade world and the curse of being herded
with the stupid ones.

She came back to the boy.

“My father was a soldier in the Civil War,” he was telling her, “a scout
an' a spy. The rebels were going to hang him twice for a spy. At the
battle of Wilson's Creek he ran half a mile with his captain wounded on
his back. He's got a bullet in his leg right now, just above the knee.
It's been there all these years. He let me feel it once. He was a
buffalo hunter and a trapper before the war. He was sheriff of his
county when he was twenty years old. An' after the war, when he was
marshal of Silver City, he cleaned out the bad men an' gun-fighters.
He's been in almost every state in the Union. He could wrestle any man
at the railings in his day, an' he was bully of the raftsmen of the
Susquehanna when he was only a youngster. His father killed a man in a
standup fight with a blow of his fist when he was sixty years old. An'
when he was seventy-four, his second wife had twins, an' he died when he
was plowing in the field with oxen when he was ninety-nine years old. He
just unyoked the oxen, an' sat down under a tree, an' died there sitting
up. An' my father's just like him. He's pretty old now, but he ain't
afraid of nothing. He's a regular Anglo-Saxon, you see. He's a special
policeman, an' he didn't do a thing to the strikers in some of the
fightin'. He had his face all cut up with a rock, but he broke his club
short off over some hoodlum's head.”

He paused breathlessly and looked at her.

“Gee!” he said. “I'd hate to a-ben that hoodlum.”

“My name is Saxon,” she said.

“Your name?”

“My first name.”

“Gee!” he cried. “You're lucky. Now if mine had been only Erling--you
know, Erling the Bold--or Wolf, or Swen, or Jarl!”

“What is it?” she asked.

“Only John,” he admitted sadly. “But I don't let 'em call me John.
Everybody's got to call me Jack. I've scrapped with a dozen fellows
that tried to call me John, or Johnnie--wouldn't that make you
sick?--Johnnie!”

They were now off the coal bunkers of Long Wharf, and the boy put the
skiff about, heading toward San Francisco. They were well out in the
open bay. The west wind had strengthened and was whitecapping the strong
ebb tide. The boat drove merrily along. When splashes of spray flew
aboard, wetting them, Saxon laughed, and the boy surveyed her with
approval. They passed a ferryboat, and the passengers on the upper deck
crowded to one side to watch them. In the swell of the steamer's wake,
the skiff shipped quarter-full of water. Saxon picked up an empty can
and looked at the boy.

“That's right,” he said. “Go ahead an' bale out.” And, when she had
finished: “We'll fetch Goat Island next tack. Right there off the
Torpedo Station is where we fish, in fifty feet of water an' the tide
runnin' to beat the band. You're wringing wet, ain't you? Gee! You're
like your name. You're a Saxon, all right. Are you married?”

Saxon nodded, and the boy frowned.

“What'd you want to do that for? Now you can't wander over the world
like I'm going to. You're tied down. You're anchored for keeps.”

“It's pretty good to be married, though,” she smiled.

“Sure, everybody gets married. But that's no reason to be in a rush
about it. Why couldn't you wait a while, like me. I'm goin' to get
married, too, but not until I'm an old man an' have been everywheres.”

Under the lee of Goat Island, Saxon obediently sitting still, he took in
the sail, and, when the boat had drifted to a position to suit him, he
dropped a tiny anchor. He got out the fish lines and showed Saxon how
to bait her hooks with salted minnows. Then they dropped the lines to
bottom, where they vibrated in the swift tide, and waited for bites.

“They'll bite pretty soon,” he encouraged. “I've never failed but twice
to catch a mess here. What d'ye say we eat while we're waiting?”

Vainly she protested she was not hungry. He shared his lunch with her
with a boy's rigid equity, even to the half of a hard-boiled egg and the
half of a big red apple.

Still the rockcod did not bite. From under the stern-sheets he drew out
a cloth-bound book.

“Free Library,” he vouchsafed, as he began to read, with one hand
holding the place while with the other he waited for the tug on the
fishline that would announce rockcod.

Saxon read the title. It was “Afloat in the Forest.”

“Listen to this,” he said after a few minutes, and he read several pages
descriptive of a great flooded tropical forest being navigated by boys
on a raft.

“Think of that!” he concluded. “That's the Amazon river in flood time
in South America. And the world's full of places like that--everywhere,
most likely, except Oakland. Oakland's just a place to start from, I
guess. Now that's adventure, I want to tell you. Just think of the luck
of them boys! All the same, some day I'm going to go over the Andes to
the headwaters of the Amazon, all through the rubber country, an' canoe
down the Amazon thousands of miles to its mouth where it's that wide you
can't see one bank from the other an' where you can scoop up perfectly
fresh water out of the ocean a hundred miles from land.”

But Saxon was not listening. One pregnant sentence had caught her fancy.
Oakland just a place to start from. She had never viewed the city in
that light. She had accepted it as a place to live in, as an end in
itself. But a place to start from! Why not! Why not like any railroad
station or ferry depot! Certainly, as things were going, Oakland was not
a place to stop in. The boy was right. It was a place to start from. But
to go where? Here she was halted, and she was driven from the train of
thought by a strong pull and a series of jerks on the line. She began to
haul in, hand under hand, rapidly and deftly, the boy encouraging her,
until hooks, sinker, and a big gasping rockcod tumbled into the bottom
of the boat. The fish was free of the hook, and she baited afresh and
dropped the line over. The boy marked his place and closed the book.

“They'll be biting soon as fast as we can haul 'em in,” he said.

But the rush of fish did not come immediately.

“Did you ever read Captain Mayne Reid?” he asked. “Or Captain Marryatt?
Or Ballantyne?”

She shook her head.

“And you an Anglo-Saxon!” he cried derisively. “Why, there's stacks of
'em in the Free Library. I have two cards, my mother's an' mine, an'
I draw 'em out all the time, after school, before I have to carry
my papers. I stick the books inside my shirt, in front, under the
suspenders. That holds 'em. One time, deliverin' papers at Second an'
Market--there's an awful tough gang of kids hang out there--I got into a
fight with the leader. He hauled off to knock my wind out, an' he landed
square on a book. You ought to seen his face. An' then I landed on
him. An' then his whole gang was goin' to jump on me, only a couple
of iron-molders stepped in an' saw fair play. I gave 'em the books to
hold.”

“Who won?” Saxon asked.

“Nobody,” the boy confessed reluctantly. “I think I was lickin' him, but
the molders called it a draw because the policeman on the beat stopped
us when we'd only ben fightin' half an hour. But you ought to seen the
crowd. I bet there was five hundred--”

He broke off abruptly and began hauling in his line. Saxon, too, was
hauling in. And in the next couple of hours they caught twenty pounds of
fish between them.

That night, long after dark, the little, half-decked skiff sailed up the
Oakland Estuary. The wind was fair but light, and the boat moved slowly,
towing a long pile which the boy had picked up adrift and announced
as worth three dollars anywhere for the wood that was in it. The tide
flooded smoothly under the full moon, and Saxon recognized the points
they passed--the Transit slip, Sandy Beach, the shipyards, the nail
works, Market street wharf. The boy took the skiff in to a dilapidated
boat-wharf at the foot of Castro street, where the scow schooners, laden
with sand and gravel, lay hauled to the shore in a long row. He insisted
upon an equal division of the fish, because Saxon had helped catch them,
though he explained at length the ethics of flotsam to show her that the
pile was wholly his.

At Seventh and Poplar they separated, Saxon walking on alone to Pine
street with her load of fish. Tired though she was from the long day,
she had a strange feeling of well-being, and, after cleaning the fish,
she fell asleep wondering, when good times came again, if she could
persuade Billy to get a boat and go out with her on Sundays as she had
gone out that day.



CHAPTER XVII

She slept all night, without stirring, without dreaming, and awoke
naturally and, for the first time in weeks, refreshed. She felt her old
self, as if some depressing weight had been lifted, or a shadow had been
swept away from between her and the sun. Her head was clear. The seeming
iron band that had pressed it so hard was gone. She was cheerful. She
even caught herself humming aloud as she divided the fish into messes
for Mrs. Olsen, Maggie Donahue, and herself. She enjoyed her gossip with
each of them, and, returning home, plunged joyfully into the task of
putting the neglected house in order. She sang as she worked, and ever
as she sang the magic words of the boy danced and sparkled among the
notes: OAKLAND IS JUST A PLACE TO START FROM.

Everything was clear as print. Her and Billy's problem was as simple as
an arithmetic problem at school: to carpet a room so many feet long, so
many feet wide, to paper a room so many feet high, so many feet around.
She had been sick in her head, she had had strange lapses, she had
been irresponsible. Very well. All this had been because of her
troubles--troubles in which she had had no hand in the making. Billy's
case was hers precisely. He had behaved strangely because he had been
irresponsible. And all their troubles were the troubles of the trap.
Oakland was the trap. Oakland was a good place to start from.

She reviewed the events of her married life. The strikes and the hard
times had caused everything. If it had not been for the strike of the
shopmen and the fight in her front yard, she would not have lost her
baby. If Billy had not been made desperate by the idleness and the
hopeless fight of the teamsters, he would not have taken to drinking. If
they had not been hard up, they would not have taken a lodger, and Billy
would not be in jail.

Her mind was made up. The city was no place for her and Billy, no
place for love nor for babies. The way out was simple. They would leave
Oakland. It was the stupid that remained and bowed their heads to fate.
But she and Billy were not stupid. They would not bow their heads. They
would go forth and face fate.--Where, she did not know. But that would
come. The world was large. Beyond the encircling hills, out through the
Golden Gate, somewhere they would find what they desired. The boy had
been wrong in one thing. She was not tied to Oakland, even if she was
married. The world was free to her and Billy as it had been free to the
wandering generations before them. It was only the stupid who had been
left behind everywhere in the race's wandering. The strong had gone on.
Well, she and Billy were strong. They would go on, over the brown Contra
Costa hills or out through the Golden Gate.

The day before Billy's release Saxon completed her meager preparations
to receive him. She was without money, and, except for her resolve not
to offend Billy in that way again, she would have borrowed ferry fare
from Maggie Donahue and journeyed to San Francisco to sell some of
her personal pretties. As it was, with bread and potatoes and salted
sardines in the house, she went out at the afternoon low tide and dug
clams for a chowder. Also, she gathered a load of driftwood, and it was
nine in the evening when she emerged from the marsh, on her shoulder a
bundle of wood and a short-handled spade, in her free hand the pail
of clams. She sought the darker side of the street at the corner and
hurried across the zone of electric light to avoid detection by the
neighbors. But a woman came toward her, looked sharply and stopped in
front of her. It was Mary.

“My God, Saxon!” she exclaimed. “Is it as bad as this?”

Saxon looked at her old friend curiously, with a swift glance that
sketched all the tragedy. Mary was thinner, though there was more color
in her cheeks--color of which Saxon had her doubts. Mary's bright eyes
were handsomer, larger--too large, too feverish bright, too restless.
She was well dressed--too well dressed; and she was suffering from
nerves. She turned her head apprehensively to glance into the darkness
behind her.

“My God!” Saxon breathed. “And you...” She shut her lips, then began
anew. “Come along to the house,” she said.

“If you're ashamed to be seen with me--” Mary blurted, with one of her
old quick angers.

“No, no,” Saxon disclaimed. “It's the driftwood and the clams. I don't
want the neighbors to know. Come along.”

“No; I can't, Saxon. I'd like to, but I can't. I've got to catch the
next train to Frisco. I've ben waitin' around. I knocked at your back
door. But the house was dark. Billy's still in, ain't he?”

“Yes, he gets out to-morrow.”

“I read about it in the papers,” Mary went on hurriedly, looking behind
her. “I was in Stockton when it happened.” She turned upon Saxon almost
savagely. “You don't blame me, do you? I just couldn't go back to work
after bein' married. I was sick of work. Played out, I guess, an' no
good anyway. But if you only knew how I hated the laundry even before I
got married. It's a dirty world. You don't dream. Saxon, honest to God,
you could never guess a hundredth part of its dirtiness. Oh, I wish I
was dead, I wish I was dead an' out of it all. Listen--no, I can't now.
There's the down train puffin' at Adeline. I'll have to run for it. Can
I come--”

“Aw, get a move on, can't you?” a man's voice interrupted.

Behind her the speaker had partly emerged from the darkness. No
workingman, Saxon could see that--lower in the world scale, despite his
good clothes, than any workingman.

“I'm comin', if you'll only wait a second,” Mary placated.

And by her answer and its accents Saxon knew that Mary was afraid of
this man who prowled on the rim of light.

Mary turned to her.

“I got to beat it; good bye,” she said, fumbling in the palm of her
glove.

She caught Saxon's free hand, and Saxon felt a small hot coin pressed
into it. She tried to resist, to force it back.

“No, no,” Mary pleaded. “For old times. You can do as much for me some
day. I'll see you again. Good bye.”

Suddenly, sobbing, she threw her arms around Saxon's waist, crushing
the feathers of her hat against the load of wood as she pressed her
face against Saxon's breast. Then she tore herself away to arm's length,
passionate, quivering, and stood gazing at Saxon.

“Aw, get a hustle, get a hustle,” came from the darkness the peremptory
voice of the man.

“Oh, Saxon!” Mary sobbed; and was gone.

In the house, the lamp lighted, Saxon looked at the coin. It was a
five-dollar piece--to her, a fortune. Then she thought of Mary, and
of the man of whom she was afraid. Saxon registered another black mark
against Oakland. Mary was one more destroyed. They lived only five
years, on the average, Saxon had heard somewhere. She looked at the coin
and tossed it into the kitchen sink. When she cleaned the clams, she
heard the coin tinkle down the vent pipe.

It was the thought of Billy, next morning, that led Saxon to go under
the sink, unscrew the cap to the catchtrap, and rescue the five-dollar
piece. Prisoners were not well fed, she had been told; and the thought
of placing clams and dry bread before Billy, after thirty days of prison
fare, was too appalling for her to contemplate. She knew how he liked
to spread his butter on thick, how he liked thick, rare steak fried on a
dry hot pan, and how he liked coffee that was coffee and plenty of it.

Not until after nine o'clock did Billy arrive, and she was dressed in
her prettiest house gingham to meet him. She peeped on him as he came
slowly up the front steps, and she would have run out to him except
for a group of neighborhood children who were staring from across the
street. The door opened before him as his hand reached for the knob,
and, inside, he closed it by backing against it, for his arms were
filled with Saxon. No, he had not had breakfast, nor did he want any
now that he had her. He had only stopped for a shave. He had stood the
barber off, and he had walked all the way from the City Hall because of
lack of the nickel carfare. But he'd like a bath most mighty well, and a
change of clothes. She mustn't come near him until he was clean.

When all this was accomplished, he sat in the kitchen and watched her
cook, noting the driftwood she put in the stove and asking about it.
While she moved about, she told how she had gathered the wood, how she
had managed to live and not be beholden to the union, and by the time
they were seated at the table she was telling him about her meeting with
Mary the night before. She did not mention the five dollars.

Billy stopped chewing the first mouthful of steak. His expression
frightened her. He spat the meat out on his plate.

“You got the money to buy the meat from her,” he accused slowly. “You
had no money, no more tick with the butcher, yet here's meat. Am I
right?”

Saxon could only bend her head.

The terrifying, ageless look had come into his face, the bleak and
passionless glaze into his eyes, which she had first seen on the day at
Weasel Park when he had fought with the three Irishmen.

“What else did you buy?” he demanded--not roughly, not angrily, but with
the fearful coldness of a rage that words could not express.

To her surprise, she had grown calm. What did it matter? It was merely
what one must expect, living in Oakland--something to be left behind
when Oakland was a thing behind, a place started from.

“The coffee,” she answered. “And the butter.”

He emptied his plate of meat and her plate into the frying pan, likewise
the roll of butter and the slice on the table, and on top he poured the
contents of the coffee canister. All this he carried into the back yard
and dumped in the garbage can. The coffee pot he emptied into the sink.
“How much of the money you got left?” he next wanted to know.

Saxon had already gone to her purse and taken it out.

“Three dollars and eighty cents,” she counted, handing it to him. “I
paid forty-five cents for the steak.”

He ran his eye over the money, counted it, and went to the front door.
She heard the door open and close, and knew that the silver had been
flung into the street. When he came back to the kitchen, Saxon was
already serving him fried potatoes on a clean plate.

“Nothin's too good for the Robertses,” he said; “but, by God, that sort
of truck is too high for my stomach. It's so high it stinks.”

He glanced at the fried potatoes, the fresh slice of dry bread, and the
glass of water she was placing by his plate.

“It's all right,” she smiled, as he hesitated. “There's nothing left
that's tainted.”

He shot a swift glance at her face, as if for sarcasm, then sighed and
sat down. Almost immediately he was up again and holding out his arms to
her.

“I'm goin' to eat in a minute, but I want to talk to you first,” he
said, sitting down and holding her closely. “Besides, that water ain't
like coffee. Gettin' cold won't spoil it none. Now, listen. You're the
only one I got in this world. You wasn't afraid of me an' what I just
done, an' I'm glad of that. Now we'll forget all about Mary. I got
charity enough. I'm just as sorry for her as you. I'd do anything for
her. I'd wash her feet for her like Christ did. I'd let her eat at my
table, an' sleep under my roof. But all that ain't no reason I should
touch anything she's earned. Now forget her. It's you an' me, Saxon,
only you an' me an' to hell with the rest of the world. Nothing else
counts. You won't never have to be afraid of me again. Whisky an' I
don't mix very well, so I'm goin' to cut whisky out. I've been clean off
my nut, an' I ain't treated you altogether right. But that's all past.
It won't never happen again. I'm goin' to start out fresh.

“Now take this thing. I oughtn't to acted so hasty. But I did. I oughta
talked it over. But I didn't. My damned temper got the best of me, an'
you know I got one. If a fellow can keep his temper in boxin', why he
can keep it in bein' married, too. Only this got me too sudden-like.
It's something I can't stomach, that I never could stomach. An' you
wouldn't want me to any more'n I'd want you to stomach something you
just couldn't.”

She sat up straight on his knees and looked at him, afire with an idea.

“You mean that, Billy?”

“Sure I do.”

“Then I'll tell you something I can't stomach any more. I'll die if I
have to.”

“Well?” he questioned, after a searching pause.

“It's up to you,” she said.

“Then fire away.”

“You don't know what you're letting yourself in for,” she warned. “Maybe
you'd better back out before it's too late.”

He shook his head stubbornly.

“What you don't want to stomach you ain't goin' to stomach. Let her go.”

“First,” she commenced, “no more slugging of scabs.”

His mouth opened, but he checked the involuntary protest.

“And, second, no more Oakland.”

“I don't get that last.”

“No more Oakland. No more living in Oakland. I'll die if I have to. It's
pull up stakes and get out.”

He digested this slowly.

“Where?” he asked finally.

“Anywhere. Everywhere. Smoke a cigarette and think it over.”

He shook his head and studied her.

“You mean that?” he asked at length.

“I do. I want to chuck Oakland just as hard as you wanted to chuck the
beefsteak, the coffee, and the butter.”

She could see him brace himself. She could feel him brace his very body
ere he answered.

“All right then, if that's what you want. We'll quit Oakland. We'll quit
it cold. God damn it, anyway, it never done nothin' for me, an' I
guess I'm husky enough to scratch for us both anywheres. An' now that's
settled, just tell me what you got it in for Oakland for.”

And she told him all she had thought out, marshaled all the facts in
her indictment of Oakland, omitting nothing, not even her last visit to
Doctor Hentley's office nor Billy's drinking. He but drew her closer and
proclaimed his resolves anew. The time passed. The fried potatoes grew
cold, and the stove went out.

When a pause came, Billy stood up, still holding her. He glanced at the
fried potatoes.

“Stone cold,” he said, then turned to her. “Come on. Put on your
prettiest. We're goin' up town for something to eat an' to celebrate.
I guess we got a celebration comin', seein' as we're going to pull up
stakes an' pull our freight from the old burg. An' we won't have to
walk. I can borrow a dime from the barber, an' I got enough junk to hock
for a blowout.”

His junk proved to be several gold medals won in his amateur days at
boxing tournaments. Once up town and in the pawnshop, Uncle Sam seemed
thoroughly versed in the value of the medals, and Billy jingled a
handful of silver in his pocket as they walked out.

He was as hilarious as a boy, and she joined in his good spirits. When
he stopped at a corner cigar store to buy a sack of Bull Durham, he
changed his mind and bought Imperials.

“Oh, I'm a regular devil,” he laughed. “Nothing's too good to-day--not
even tailor-made smokes. An' no chop houses nor Jap joints for you an'
me. It's Barnum's.”

They strolled to the restaurant at Seventh and Broadway where they had
had their wedding supper.

“Let's make believe we're not married,” Saxon suggested.

“Sure,” he agreed, “--an' take a private room so as the waiter'll have
to knock on the door each time he comes in.”

Saxon demurred at that.

“It will be too expensive, Billy. You'll have to tip him for the
knocking. We'll take the regular dining room.”

“Order anything you want,” Billy said largely, when they were seated.
“Here's family porterhouse, a dollar an' a half. What d'ye say?”

“And hash-browned,” she abetted, “and coffee extra special, and some
oysters first--I want to compare them with the rock oysters.”

Billy nodded, and looked up from the bill of fare.

“Here's mussels bordelay. Try an order of them, too, an' see if they
beat your Rock Wall ones.”

“Why not?” Saxon cried, her eyes dancing. “The world is ours. We're just
travelers through this town.”

“Yep, that's the stuff,” Billy muttered absently. He was looking at the
theater column. He lifted his eyes from the paper. “Matinee at Bell's.
We can get reserved seats for a quarter.--Doggone the luck anyway!”

His exclamation was so aggrieved and violent that it brought alarm into
her eyes.

“If I'd only thought,” he regretted, “we could a-gone to the Forum for
grub. That's the swell joint where fellows like Roy Blanchard hangs out,
blowin' the money we sweat for them.”

They bought reserved tickets at Bell's Theater; but it was too early
for the performance, and they went down Broadway and into the Electric
Theater to while away the time on a moving picture show. A cowboy
film was run off, and a French comic; then came a rural drama situated
somewhere in the Middle West. It began with a farm yard scene. The sun
blazed down on a corner of a barn and on a rail fence where the ground
lay in the mottled shade of large trees overhead. There were chickens,
ducks, and turkeys, scratching, waddling, moving about. A big
sow, followed by a roly-poly litter of seven little ones, marched
majestically through the chickens, rooting them out of the way. The
hens, in turn, took it out on the little porkers, pecking them when they
strayed too far from their mother. And over the top rail a horse
looked drowsily on, ever and anon, at mathematically precise intervals,
switching a lazy tail that flashed high lights in the sunshine.

“It's a warm day and there are flies--can't you just feel it?” Saxon
whispered.

“Sure. An' that horse's tail! It's the most natural ever. Gee! I bet he
knows the trick of clampin' it down over the reins. I wouldn't wonder if
his name was Iron Tail.”

A dog ran upon the scene. The mother pig turned tail and with short
ludicrous jumps, followed by her progeny and pursued by the dog, fled
out of the film. A young girl came on, a sunbonnet hanging down her
back, her apron caught up in front and filled with grain which she threw
to the fluttering fowls. Pigeons flew down from the top of the film
and joined in the scrambling feast. The dog returned, wading scarcely
noticed among the feathered creatures, to wag his tail and laugh up at
the girl. And, behind, the horse nodded over the rail and switched on. A
young man entered, his errand immediately known to an audience educated
in moving pictures. But Saxon had no eyes for the love-making, the
pleading forcefulness, the shy reluctance, of man and maid. Ever her
gaze wandered back to the chickens, to the mottled shade under the
trees, to the warm wall of the barn, to the sleepy horse with its ever
recurrent whisk of tail.

She drew closer to Billy, and her hand, passed around his arm, sought
his hand.

“Oh, Billy,” she sighed. “I'd just die of happiness in a place like
that.” And, when the film was ended. “We got lots of time for Bell's.
Let's stay and see that one over again.”

They sat through a repetition of the performance, and when the farm yard
scene appeared, the longer Saxon looked at it the more it affected
her. And this time she took in further details. She saw fields beyond,
rolling hills in the background, and a cloud-flecked sky. She identified
some of the chickens, especially an obstreperous old hen who resented
the thrust of the sow's muzzle, particularly pecked at the little pigs,
and laid about her with a vengeance when the grain fell. Saxon looked
back across the fields to the hills and sky, breathing the spaciousness
of it, the freedom, the content. Tears welled into her eyes and she wept
silently, happily.

“I know a trick that'd fix that old horse if he ever clamped his tail
down on me,” Billy whispered.

“Now I know where we're going when we leave Oakland,” she informed him.

“Where?”

“There.”

He looked at her, and followed her gaze to the screen. “Oh,” he said,
and cogitated. “An' why shouldn't we?” he added.

“Oh, Billy, will you?”

Her lips trembled in her eagerness, and her whisper broke and was almost
inaudible “Sure,” he said. It was his day of royal largess.

“What you want is yourn, an' I'll scratch my fingers off for it. An'
I've always had a hankerin' for the country myself. Say! I've known
horses like that to sell for half the price, an' I can sure cure 'em of
the habit.”



CHAPTER XVIII

It was early evening when they got off the car at Seventh and Pine on
their way home from Bell's Theater. Billy and Saxon did their little
marketing together, then separated at the corner, Saxon to go on to the
house and prepare supper, Billy to go and see the boys--the teamsters
who had fought on in the strike during his month of retirement.

“Take care of yourself, Billy,” she called, as he started off.

“Sure,” he answered, turning his face to her over his shoulder.

Her heart leaped at the smile. It was his old, unsullied love-smile
which she wanted always to see on his face--for which, armed with her
own wisdom and the wisdom of Mercedes, she would wage the utmost woman's
war to possess. A thought of this flashed brightly through her brain,
and it was with a proud little smile that she remembered all her pretty
equipment stored at home in the bureau and the chest of drawers.

Three-quarters of an hour later, supper ready, all but the putting on
of the lamb chops at the sound of his step, Saxon waited. She heard the
gate click, but instead of his step she heard a curious and confused
scraping of many steps. She flew to open the door. Billy stood there,
but a different Billy from the one she had parted from so short a
time before. A small boy, beside him, held his hat. His face had been
fresh-washed, or, rather, drenched, for his shirt and shoulders were
wet. His pale hair lay damp and plastered against his forehead, and was
darkened by oozing blood. Both arms hung limply by his side. But his
face was composed, and he even grinned.

“It's all right,” he reassured Saxon. “The joke's on me. Somewhat
damaged but still in the ring.” He stepped gingerly across the
threshold. “--Come on in, you fellows. We're all mutts together.”

He was followed in by the boy with his hat, by Bud Strothers and
another teamster she knew, and by two strangers. The latter were big,
hard-featured, sheepish-faced men, who stared at Saxon as if afraid of
her.

“It's all right, Saxon,” Billy began, but was interrupted by Bud.

“First thing is to get him on the bed an' cut his clothes off him. Both
arms is broke, and here are the ginks that done it.”

He indicated the two strangers, who shuffled their feet with
embarrassment and looked more sheepish than ever.

Billy sat down on the bed, and while Saxon held the lamp, Bud and the
strangers proceeded to cut coat, shirt, and undershirt from him.

“He wouldn't go to the receivin' hospital,” Bud said to Saxon.

“Not on your life,” Billy concurred. “I had 'em send for Doc Hentley.
He'll be here any minute. Them two arms is all I got. They've done
pretty well by me, an' I gotta do the same by them.--No medical students
a-learnin' their trade on me.”

“But how did it happen?” Saxon demanded, looking from Billy to the two
strangers, puzzled by the amity that so evidently existed among them
all.

“Oh, they're all right,” Billy dashed in. “They done it through mistake.
They're Frisco teamsters, an' they come over to help us--a lot of 'em.”

The two teamsters seemed to cheer up at this, and nodded their heads.

“Yes, missus,” one of them rumbled hoarsely. “It's all a mistake, an'...
well, the joke's on us.”

“The drinks, anyway,” Billy grinned.

Not only was Saxon not excited, but she was scarcely perturbed. What had
happened was only to be expected.

It was in line with all that Oakland had already done to her and hers,
and, besides, Billy was not dangerously hurt. Broken arms and a sore
head would heal. She brought chairs and seated everybody.

“Now tell me what happened,” she begged. “I'm all at sea, what of you
two burleys breaking my husband's arms, then seeing him home and holding
a love-fest with him.”

“An' you got a right,” Bud Strothers assured her. “You see, it happened
this way--”

“You shut up, Bud,” Billy broke it. “You didn't see anything of it.”

Saxon looked to the San Francisco teamsters.

“We'd come over to lend a hand, seein' as the Oakland boys was gettin'
some the short end of it,” one spoke up, “an' we've sure learned some
scabs there's better trades than drivin' team. Well, me an' Jackson
here was nosin' around to see what we can see, when your husband comes
moseyin' along. When he--”

“Hold on,” Jackson interrupted. “Get it straight as you go along. We
reckon we know the boys by sight. But your husband we ain't never seen
around, him bein'...”

“As you might say, put away for a while,” the first teamster took up the
tale. “So, when we sees what we thinks is a scab dodgin' away from us
an' takin' the shortcut through the alley--”

“The alley back of Campbell's grocery,” Billy elucidated.

“Yep, back of the grocery,” the first teamster went on; “why, we're
sure he's one of them squarehead scabs, hired through Murray an' Ready,
makin' a sneak to get into the stables over the back fences.”

“We caught one there, Billy an' me,” Bud interpolated.

“So we don't waste any time,” Jackson said, addressing himself to Saxon.
“We've done it before, an' we know how to do 'em up brown an' tie 'em
with baby ribbon. So we catch your husband right in the alley.”

“I was lookin' for Bud,” said Billy. “The boys told me I'd find him
somewhere around the other end of the alley. An' the first thing I know,
Jackson, here, asks me for a match.”

“An' right there's where I get in my fine work,” resumed the first
teamster.

“What?” asked Saxon.

“That.” The man pointed to the wound in Billy's scalp. “I laid 'm out.
He went down like a steer, an' got up on his knees dippy, a-gabblin'
about somebody standin' on their foot. He didn't know where he was at,
you see, clean groggy. An' then we done it.”

The man paused, the tale told.

“Broke both his arms with the crowbar,” Bud supplemented.

“That's when I come to myself, when the bones broke,” Billy
corroborated. “An' there was the two of 'em givin' me the ha-ha.
'That'll last you some time,' Jackson was sayin'. An' Anson says, 'I'd
like to see you drive horses with them arms.' An' then Jackson says,
'let's give 'm something for luck.' An' with that he fetched me a wallop
on the jaw--”

“No,” corrected Anson. “That wallop was mine.”

“Well, it sent me into dreamland over again,” Billy sighed. “An' when
I come to, here was Bud an' Anson an' Jackson dousin' me at a water
trough. An' then we dodged a reporter an' all come home together.”

Bud Strothers held up his fist and indicated freshly abraded skin.

“The reporter-guy just insisted on samplin' it,” he said. Then, to
Billy: “That's why I cut around Ninth an' caught up with you down on
Sixth.”

A few minutes later Doctor Hentley arrived, and drove the men from the
rooms. They waited till he had finished, to assure themselves of Billy's
well being, and then departed. In the kitchen Doctor Hentley washed his
hands and gave Saxon final instructions. As he dried himself he sniffed
the air and looked toward the stove where a pot was simmering.

“Clams,” he said. “Where did you buy them?”

“I didn't buy them,” replied Saxon. “I dug them myself.”

“Not in the marsh?” he asked with quickened interest.

“Yes.”

“Throw them away. Throw them out. They're death and corruption.
Typhoid--I've got three cases now, all traced to the clams and the
marsh.”

When he had gone, Saxon obeyed. Still another mark against Oakland,
she reflected--Oakland, the man-trap, that poisoned those it could not
starve.

“If it wouldn't drive a man to drink,” Billy groaned, when Saxon
returned to him. “Did you ever dream such luck? Look at all my fights in
the ring, an' never a broken bone, an' here, snap, snap, just like that,
two arms smashed.”

“Oh, it might be worse,” Saxon smiled cheerfully.

“I'd like to know how.

“It might have been your neck.”

“An' a good job. I tell you, Saxon, you gotta show me anything worse.”

“I can,” she said confidently.

“Well?”

“Well, wouldn't it be worse if you intended staying on in Oakland where
it might happen again?”

“I can see myself becomin' a farmer an' plowin' with a pair of
pipe-stems like these,” he persisted.

“Doctor Hentley says they'll be stronger at the break than ever before.
And you know yourself that's true of clean-broken bones. Now you close
your eyes and go to sleep. You're all done up, and you need to keep your
brain quiet and stop thinking.”

He closed his eyes obediently. She slipped a cool hand under the nape of
his neck and let it rest.

“That feels good,” he murmured. “You're so cool, Saxon. Your hand, and
you, all of you. Bein' with you is like comin' out into the cool night
after dancin' in a hot room.”

After several minutes of quiet, he began to giggle.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Oh, nothin'. I was just thinkin'--thinking of them mutts doin' me
up--me, that's done up more scabs than I can remember.”

Next morning Billy awoke with his blues dissipated. From the kitchen
Saxon heard him painfully wrestling strange vocal acrobatics.

“I got a new song you never heard,” he told her when she came in with
a cup of coffee. “I only remember the chorus though. It's the old man
talkin' to some hobo of a hired man that wants to marry his daughter.
Mamie, that Billy Murphy used to run with before he got married, used to
sing it. It's a kind of a sobby song. It used to always give Mamie the
weeps. Here's the way the chorus goes--an' remember, it's the old man
spielin'.”

And with great solemnity and excruciating flatting, Billy sang:

“O treat my daughter kind-i-ly; An' say you'll do no harm, An' when I
die I'll will to you My little house an' farm--My horse, my plow, my
sheep, my cow, An' all them little chickens in the ga-a-rden.

“It's them little chickens in the garden that gets me,” he explained.
“That's how I remembered it--from the chickens in the movin' pictures
yesterday. An' some day we'll have little chickens in the garden, won't
we, old girl?”

“And a daughter, too,” Saxon amplified.

“An' I'll be the old geezer sayin' them same words to the hired man,”
 Billy carried the fancy along. “It don't take long to raise a daughter
if you ain't in a hurry.”

Saxon took her long-neglected ukulele from its case and strummed it into
tune.

“And I've a song you never heard, Billy. Tom's always singing it. He's
crazy about taking up government land and going farming, only Sarah
won't think of it. He sings it something like this:

“We'll have a little farm, A pig, a horse, a cow, And you will drive the
wagon, And I will drive the plow.”

“Only in this case I guess it's me that'll do the plowin',” Billy
approved. “Say, Saxon, sing 'Harvest Days.' That's a farmer's song,
too.”

After that she feared the coffee was growing cold and compelled Billy to
take it. In the helplessness of two broken arms, he had to be fed like a
baby, and as she fed him they talked.

“I'll tell you one thing,” Billy said, between mouthfuls. “Once we get
settled down in the country you'll have that horse you've been wishin'
for all your life. An' it'll be all your own, to ride, drive, sell, or
do anything you want with.”

And, again, he ruminated: “One thing that'll come handy in the country
is that I know horses; that's a big start. I can always get a job at
that--if it ain't at union wages. An' the other things about farmin' I
can learn fast enough.--Say, d'ye remember that day you first told me
about wantin' a horse to ride all your life?”

Saxon remembered, and it was only by a severe struggle that she was able
to keep the tears from welling into her eyes. She seemed bursting with
happiness, and she was remembering many things--all the warm promise of
life with Billy that had been hers in the days before hard times. And
now the promise was renewed again. Since its fulfillment had not come
to them, they were going away to fulfill it for themselves and make the
moving pictures come true.

Impelled by a half-feigned fear, she stole away into the kitchen bedroom
where Bert had died, to study her face in the bureau mirror. No,
she decided; she was little changed. She was still equipped for the
battlefield of love. Beautiful she was not. She knew that. But had not
Mercedes said that the great women of history who had won men had not
been beautiful? And yet, Saxon insisted, as she gazed at her reflection,
she was anything but unlovely. She studied her wide gray eyes that were
so very gray, that were always alive with light and vivacities, where,
in the surface and depths, always swam thoughts unuttered, thoughts that
sank down and dissolved to give place to other thoughts. The brows were
excellent--she realized that. Slenderly penciled, a little darker than
her light brown hair, they just fitted her irregular nose that
was feminine but not weak, that if anything was piquant and that
picturesquely might be declared impudent.

She could see that her face was slightly thin, that the red of her lips
was not quite so red, and that she had lost some of her quick coloring.
But all that would come back again. Her mouth was not of the rosebud
type she saw in the magazines. She paid particular attention to it. A
pleasant mouth it was, a mouth to be joyous with, a mouth for laughter
and to make laughter in others. She deliberately experimented with it,
smiled till the corners dented deeper. And she knew that when she smiled
her smile was provocative of smiles. She laughed with her eyes alone--a
trick of hers. She threw back her head and laughed with eyes and mouth
together, between her spread lips showing the even rows of strong white
teeth.

And she remembered Billy's praise of her teeth, the night at Germanic
Hall after he had told Charley Long he was standing on his foot. “Not
big, and not little dinky baby's teeth either,” Billy had said, “...
just right, and they fit you.” Also, he had said that to look at them
made him hungry, and that they were good enough to eat.

She recollected all the compliments he had ever paid her. Beyond all
treasures, these were treasures to her--the love phrases, praises, and
admirations. He had said her skin was cool--soft as velvet, too, and
smooth as silk. She rolled up her sleeve to the shoulder, brushed her
cheek with the white skin for a test, with deep scrutiny examined the
fineness of its texture. And he had told her that she was sweet; that he
hadn't known what it meant when they said a girl was sweet, not until he
had known her. And he had told her that her voice was cool, that it gave
him the feeling her hand did when it rested on his forehead. Her
voice went all through him, he had said, cool and fine, like a wind of
coolness. And he had likened it to the first of the sea breeze setting
in the afternoon after a scorching hot morning. And, also, when
she talked low, that it was round and sweet, like the 'cello in the
Macdonough Theater orchestra.

He had called her his Tonic Kid. He had called her a thoroughbred,
clean-cut and spirited, all fine nerves and delicate and sensitive.
He had liked the way she carried her clothes. She carried them like a
dream, had been his way of putting it. They were part of her, just as
much as the cool of her voice and skin and the scent of her hair.

And her figure! She got upon a chair and tilted the mirror so that she
could see herself from hips to feet. She drew her skirt back and up.
The slender ankle was just as slender. The calf had lost none of its
delicately mature swell. She studied her hips, her waist, her bosom,
her neck, the poise of her head, and sighed contentedly. Billy must be
right, and he had said that she was built like a French woman, and that
in the matter of lines and form she could give Annette Kellerman cards
and spades.

He had said so many things, now that she recalled them all at one time.
Her lips! The Sunday he proposed he had said: “I like to watch your lips
talking. It's funny, but every move they make looks like a tickly kiss.”
 And afterward, that same day: “You looked good to me from the first
moment I spotted you.” He had praised her housekeeping. He had said he
fed better, lived more comfortably, held up his end with the fellows,
and saved money. And she remembered that day when he had crushed her in
his arms and declared she was the greatest little bit of a woman that
had ever come down the pike.

She ran her eyes over all herself in the mirror again, gathered herself
together into a whole, compact and good to look upon--delicious, she
knew. Yes, she would do. Magnificent as Billy was in his man way, in her
own way she was a match for him. Yes, she had done well by Billy. She
deserved much--all he could give her, the best he could give her. But
she made no blunder of egotism. Frankly valuing herself, she as frankly
valued him. When he was himself, his real self, not harassed by trouble,
not pinched by the trap, not maddened by drink, her man-boy and lover,
he was well worth all she gave him or could give him.

Saxon gave herself a farewell look. No. She was not dead, any more than
was Billy's love dead, than was her love dead. All that was needed was
the proper soil, and their love would grow and blossom. And they were
turning their backs upon Oakland to go and seek that proper soil.

“Oh, Billy!” she called through the partition, still standing on the
chair, one hand tipping the mirror forward and back, so that she was
able to run her eyes from the reflection of her ankles and calves to her
face, warm with color and roguishly alive.

“Yes?” she heard him answer.

“I'm loving myself,” she called back.

“What's the game?” came his puzzled query. “What are you so stuck on
yourself for!”

“Because you love me,” she answered. “I love every bit of me, Billy,
because... because... well, because you love every bit of me.”



CHAPTER XIX

Between feeding and caring for Billy, doing the housework, making plans,
and selling her store of pretty needlework, the days flew happily for
Saxon. Billy's consent to sell her pretties had been hard to get, but at
last she succeeded in coaxing it out of him.

“It's only the ones I haven't used,” she urged; “and I can always make
more when we get settled somewhere.”

What she did not sell, along with the household linen and hers and
Billy's spare clothing, she arranged to store with Tom.

“Go ahead,” Billy said. “This is your picnic. What you say goes. You're
Robinson Crusoe an' I'm your man Friday. Make up your mind yet which way
you're goin' to travel?”

Saxon shook her head.

“Or how?”

She held up one foot and then the other, encased in stout walking shoes
which she had begun that morning to break in about the house. “Shank's
mare, eh?”

“It's the way our people came into the West,” she said proudly.

“It'll be regular trampin', though,” he argued. “An' I never heard of a
woman tramp.”

“Then here's one. Why, Billy, there's no shame in tramping. My mother
tramped most of the way across the Plains. And 'most everybody else's
mother tramped across in those days. I don't care what people will
think. I guess our race has been on the tramp since the beginning of
creation, just like we'll be, looking for a piece of land that looked
good to settle down on.”

After a few days, when his scalp was sufficiently healed and the
bone-knitting was nicely in process, Billy was able to be up and about.
He was still quite helpless, however, with both his arms in splints.

Doctor Hentley not only agreed, but himself suggested, that his bill
should wait against better times for settlement. Of government land, in
response to Saxon's eager questioning, he knew nothing, except that he
had a hazy idea that the days of government land were over.

Tom, on the contrary, was confident that there was plenty of government
land. He talked of Honey Lake, of Shasta County, and of Humboldt.

“But you can't tackle it at this time of year, with winter comin' on,”
 he advised Saxon. “The thing for you to do is head south for warmer
weather--say along the coast. It don't snow down there. I tell you what
you do. Go down by San Jose and Salinas an' come out on the coast at
Monterey. South of that you'll find government land mixed up with forest
reserves and Mexican rancheros. It's pretty wild, without any roads to
speak of. All they do is handle cattle. But there's some fine redwood
canyons, with good patches of farming ground that run right down to the
ocean. I was talkin' last year with a fellow that's been all through
there. An' I'd a-gone, like you an' Billy, only Sarah wouldn't hear of
it. There's gold down there, too. Quite a bunch is in there prospectin',
an' two or three good mines have opened. But that's farther along and in
a ways from the coast. You might take a look.”

Saxon shook her head. “We're not looking for gold but for chickens and
a place to grow vegetables. Our folks had all the chance for gold in the
early days, and what have they got to show for it?”

“I guess you're right,” Tom conceded. “They always played too big a
game, an' missed the thousand little chances right under their nose.
Look at your pa. I've heard him tell of selling three Market street
lots in San Francisco for fifty dollars each. They're worth five hundred
thousand right now. An' look at Uncle Will. He had ranches till the
cows come home. Satisfied? No. He wanted to be a cattle king, a regular
Miller and Lux. An' when he died he was a night watchman in Los Angeles
at forty dollars a month. There's a spirit of the times, an' the spirit
of the times has changed. It's all big business now, an' we're the
small potatoes. Why, I've heard our folks talk of livin' in the Western
Reserve. That was all around what's Ohio now. Anybody could get a farm
them days. All they had to do was yoke their oxen an' go after it, an'
the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles to the west, an' all them thousands
of miles an' millions of farms just waitin' to be took up. A hundred an'
sixty acres? Shucks. In the early days in Oregon they talked six hundred
an' forty acres. That was the spirit of them times--free land, an'
plenty of it. But when we reached the Pacific Ocean them times was
ended. Big business begun; an' big business means big business men;
an' every big business man means thousands of little men without any
business at all except to work for the big ones. They're the losers,
don't you see? An' if they don't like it they can lump it, but it won't
do them no good. They can't yoke up their oxen an' pull on. There's no
place to pull on. China's over there, an' in between's a mighty lot of
salt water that's no good for farmin' purposes.”

“That's all clear enough,” Saxon commented.

“Yes,” her brother went on. “We can all see it after it's happened, when
it's too late.”

“But the big men were smarter,” Saxon remarked.

“They were luckier,” Tom contended. “Some won, but most lost, an' just
as good men lost. It was almost like a lot of boys scramblin' on the
sidewalk for a handful of small change. Not that some didn't have
far-seein'. But just take your pa, for example. He come of good Down
East stock that's got business instinct an' can add to what it's got.
Now suppose your pa had developed a weak heart, or got kidney disease,
or caught rheumatism, so he couldn't go gallivantin' an' rainbow
chasin', an' fightin' an' explorin' all over the West. Why, most likely
he'd a settled down in San Francisco--he'd a-had to--an' held onto them
three Market street lots, an' bought more lots, of course, an' gone
into steamboat companies, an' stock gamblin', an' railroad buildin', an'
Comstock-tunnelin'.

“Why, he'd a-become big business himself. I know 'm. He was the most
energetic man I ever saw, think quick as a wink, as cool as an icicle
an' as wild as a Comanche. Why, he'd a-cut a swath through the free an'
easy big business gamblers an' pirates of them days; just as he cut a
swath through the hearts of the ladies when he went gallopin' past on
that big horse of his, sword clatterin', spurs jinglin', his long hair
flyin', straight as an Indian, clean-built an' graceful as a blue-eyed
prince out of a fairy book an' a Mexican caballero all rolled into
one; just as he cut a swath through the Johnny Rebs in Civil War days,
chargin' with his men all the way through an' back again, an' yellin'
like a wild Indian for more. Cady, that helped raise you, told me about
that. Cady rode with your pa.

“Why, if your pa'd only got laid up in San Francisco, he would a-ben one
of the big men of the West. An' in that case, right now, you'd be a rich
young woman, travelin' in Europe, with a mansion on Nob Hill along with
the Floods and Crockers, an' holdin' majority stock most likely in the
Fairmount Hotel an' a few little concerns like it. An' why ain't you?
Because your pa wasn't smart? No. His mind was like a steel trap. It's
because he was filled to burstin' an' spillin' over with the spirit of
the times; because he was full of fire an' vinegar an' couldn't set down
in one place. That's all the difference between you an' the young women
right now in the Flood and Crocker families. Your father didn't catch
rheumatism at the right time, that's all.”

Saxon sighed, then smiled.

“Just the same, I've got them beaten,” she said. “The Miss Floods and
Miss Crockers can't marry prize-fighters, and I did.”

Tom looked at her, taken aback for the moment, with admiration, slowly
at first, growing in his face.

“Well, all I got to say,” he enunciated solemnly, “is that Billy's so
lucky he don't know how lucky he is.”


Not until Doctor Hentley gave the word did the splints come off Billy's
arms, and Saxon insisted upon an additional two weeks' delay so that no
risk would be run. These two weeks would complete another month's rent,
and the landlord had agreed to wait payment for the last two months
until Billy was on his feet again.

Salinger's awaited the day set by Saxon for taking back their furniture.
Also, they had returned to Billy seventy-five dollars.

“The rest you've paid will be rent,” the collector told Saxon. “And the
furniture's second hand now, too. The deal will be a loss to Salinger's'
and they didn't have to do it, either; you know that. So just remember
they've been pretty square with you, and if you start over again don't
forget them.”

Out of this sum, and out of what was realized from Saxon's pretties,
they were able to pay all their small bills and yet have a few dollars
remaining in pocket.

“I hate owin' things worse 'n poison,” Billy said to Saxon. “An' now we
don't owe a soul in this world except the landlord an' Doc Hentley.”

“And neither of them can afford to wait longer than they have to,” she
said.

“And they won't,” Billy answered quietly.

She smiled her approval, for she shared with Billy his horror of debt,
just as both shared it with that early tide of pioneers with a Puritan
ethic, which had settled the West.

Saxon timed her opportunity when Billy was out of the house to pack the
chest of drawers which had crossed the Atlantic by sailing ship and the
Plains by ox team. She kissed the bullet hole in it, made in the fight
at Little Meadow, as she kissed her father's sword, the while she
visioned him, as she always did, astride his roan warhorse. With the old
religious awe, she pored over her mother's poems in the scrap-book, and
clasped her mother's red satin Spanish girdle about her in a farewell
embrace. She unpacked the scrap-book in order to gaze a last time at the
wood engraving of the Vikings, sword in hand, leaping upon the English
sands. Again she identified Billy as one of the Vikings, and pondered
for a space on the strange wanderings of the seed from which she sprang.
Always had her race been land-hungry, and she took delight in believing
she had bred true; for had not she, despite her life passed in a city,
found this same land-hunger in her? And was she not going forth to
satisfy that hunger, just as her people of old time had done, as her
father and mother before her? She remembered her mother's tale of how
the promised land looked to them as their battered wagons and weary oxen
dropped down through the early winter snows of the Sierras to the vast
and flowering sun-land of California: In fancy, herself a child of nine,
she looked down from the snowy heights as her mother must have looked
down. She recalled and repeated aloud one of her mother's stanzas:

“'Sweet as a wind-lute's airy strains Your gentle muse has learned to
sing And California's boundless plains Prolong the soft notes echoing.'”

She sighed happily and dried her eyes. Perhaps the hard times were
past. Perhaps they had constituted HER Plains, and she and Billy had won
safely across and were even then climbing the Sierras ere they dropped
down into the pleasant valley land.

Salinger's wagon was at the house, taking out the furniture, the morning
they left. The landlord, standing at the gate, received the keys, shook
hands with them, and wished them luck. “You're goin' at it right,” he
congratulated them. “Sure an' wasn't it under me roll of blankets I
tramped into Oakland meself forty year ago! Buy land, like me, when it's
cheap. It'll keep you from the poorhouse in your old age. There's plenty
of new towns springin' up. Get in on the ground floor. The work of your
hands'll keep you in food an' under a roof, an' the land 'll make you
well to do. An' you know me address. When you can spare send me along
that small bit of rent. An' good luck. An' don't mind what people think.
'Tis them that looks that finds.”

Curious neighbors peeped from behind the blinds as Billy and Saxon
strode up the street, while the children gazed at them in gaping
astonishment. On Billy's back, inside a painted canvas tarpaulin, was
slung the roll of bedding. Inside the roll were changes of underclothing
and odds and ends of necessaries. Outside, from the lashings, depended
a frying pan and cooking pail. In his hand he carried the coffee pot.
Saxon carried a small telescope basket protected by black oilcloth, and
across her back was the tiny ukulele case.

“We must look like holy frights,” Billy grumbled, shrinking from every
gaze that was bent upon him.

“It'd be all right, if we were going camping,” Saxon consoled. “Only
we're not.”

“But they don't know that,” she continued. “It's only you know that, and
what you think they're thinking isn't what they're thinking at all. Most
probably they think we're going camping. And the best of it is we are
going camping. We are! We are!”

At this Billy cheered up, though he muttered his firm intention to knock
the block off of any guy that got fresh. He stole a glance at Saxon. Her
cheeks were red, her eyes glowing.

“Say,” he said suddenly. “I seen an opera once, where fellows wandered
over the country with guitars slung on their backs just like you with
that strummy-strum. You made me think of them. They was always singin'
songs.”

“That's what I brought it along for,” Saxon answered.

“And when we go down country roads we'll sing as we go along, and we'll
sing by the campfires, too. We're going camping, that's all. Taking a
vacation and seeing the country. So why shouldn't we have a good time?
Why, we don't even know where we're going to sleep to-night, or any
night. Think of the fun!”

“It's a sporting proposition all right, all right,” Billy considered.
“But, just the same, let's turn off an' go around the block. There's
some fellows I know, standin' up there on the next corner, an' I don't
want to knock THEIR blocks off.”




BOOK III



CHAPTER I

The car ran as far as Hayward's, but at Saxon's suggestion they got off
at San Leandro.

“It doesn't matter where we start walking,” she said, “for start to walk
somewhere we must. And as we're looking for land and finding out about
land, the quicker we begin to investigate the better. Besides, we want
to know all about all kinds of land, close to the big cities as well as
back in the mountains.”

“Gee!--this must be the Porchugeeze headquarters,” was Billy's
reiterated comment, as they walked through San Leandro.

“It looks as though they'd crowd our kind out,” Saxon adjudged.

“Some tall crowdin', I guess,” Billy grumbled. “It looks like the
free-born American ain't got no room left in his own land.”

“Then it's his own fault,” Saxon said, with vague asperity, resenting
conditions she was just beginning to grasp.

“Oh, I don't know about that. I reckon the American could do what the
Porchugeeze do if he wanted to. Only he don't want to, thank God. He
ain't much given to livin' like a pig offen leavin's.”

“Not in the country, maybe,” Saxon controverted. “But I've seen an awful
lot of Americans living like pigs in the cities.”

Billy grunted unwilling assent. “I guess they quit the farms an' go to
the city for something better, an' get it in the neck.”

“Look at all the children!” Saxon cried. “School's letting out. And
nearly all are Portuguese, Billy, NOT Porchugeeze. Mercedes taught me
the right way.”

“They never wore glad rags like them in the old country,” Billy sneered.
“They had to come over here to get decent clothes and decent grub.
They're as fat as butterballs.”

Saxon nodded affirmation, and a great light seemed suddenly to kindle in
her understanding.

“That's the very point, Billy. They're doing it--doing it farming, too.
Strikes don't bother THEM.”

“You don't call that dinky gardening farming,” he objected, pointing to
a piece of land barely the size of an acre, which they were passing.

“Oh, your ideas are still big,” she laughed. “You're like Uncle Will,
who owned thousands of acres and wanted to own a million, and who wound
up as night watchman. That's what was the trouble with all us Americans.
Everything large scale. Anything less than one hundred and sixty acres
was small scale.”

“Just the same,” Billy held stubbornly, “large scale's a whole lot
better'n small scale like all these dinky gardens.”

Saxon sighed. “I don't know which is the dinkier,” she observed finally,
“--owning a few little acres and the team you're driving, or not owning
any acres and driving a team somebody else owns for wages.”

Billy winced.

“Go on, Robinson Crusoe,” he growled good naturedly. “Rub it in good
an' plenty. An' the worst of it is it's correct. A hell of a free-born
American I've been, adrivin' other folkses' teams for a livin',
a-strikin' and a-sluggin' scabs, an' not bein' able to keep up with the
installments for a few sticks of furniture. Just the same I was sorry
for one thing. I hated worse 'n Sam Hill to see that Morris chair go
back--you liked it so. We did a lot of honeymoonin' in that chair.”

They were well out of San Leandro, walking through a region of tiny
holdings--“farmlets,” Billy called them; and Saxon got out her ukulele
to cheer him with a song.

First, it was “Treat my daughter kind-i-ly,” and then she swung into
old-fashioned darky camp-meeting hymns, beginning with:

“Oh! de Judgmen' Day am rollin' roun', Rollin', yes, a-rollin', I hear
the trumpets' awful soun', Rollin', yes, a-rollin'.”

A big touring car, dashing past, threw a dusty pause in her singing, and
Saxon delivered herself of her latest wisdom.

“Now, Billy, remember we're not going to take up with the first piece of
land we see. We've got to go into this with our eyes open--”

“An' they ain't open yet,” he agreed.

“And we've got to get them open. ''Tis them that looks that finds.'
There's lots of time to learn things. We don't care if it takes months
and months. We're footloose. A good start is better than a dozen bad
ones. We've got to talk and find out. We'll talk with everybody we meet.
Ask questions. Ask everybody. It's the only way to find out.”

“I ain't much of a hand at askin' questions,” Billy demurred.

“Then I'll ask,” she cried. “We've got to win out at this game, and
the way is to know. Look at all these Portuguese. Where are all the
Americans? They owned the land first, after the Mexicans. What made the
Americans clear out? How do the Portuguese make it go? Don't you see?
We've got to ask millions of questions.”

She strummed a few chords, and then her clear sweet voice rang out
gaily:

“I's g'wine back to Dixie, I's g'wine back to Dixie, I's g'wine where de
orange blossoms grow, For I hear de chillun callin', I see de sad tears
fallin'--My heart's turned back to Dixie, An' I mus'go.”

She broke off to exclaim: “Oh! What a lovely place! See that arbor--just
covered with grapes!”

Again and again she was attracted by the small places they passed. Now
it was: “Look at the flowers!” or: “My! those vegetables!” or: “See!
They've got a cow!”

Men--Americans--driving along in buggies or runabouts looked at Saxon
and Billy curiously. This Saxon could brook far easier than could Billy,
who would mutter and grumble deep in his throat.

Beside the road they came upon a lineman eating his lunch.

“Stop and talk,” Saxon whispered.

“Aw, what's the good? He's a lineman. What'd he know about farmin'?”

“You never can tell. He's our kind. Go ahead, Billy. You just speak to
him. He isn't working now anyway, and he'll be more likely to talk. See
that tree in there, just inside the gate, and the way the branches are
grown together. It's a curiosity. Ask him about it. That's a good way to
get started.”

Billy stopped, when they were alongside.

“How do you do,” he said gruffly.

The lineman, a young fellow, paused in the cracking of a hard-boiled egg
to stare up at the couple.

“How do you do,” he said.

Billy swung his pack from his shoulders to the ground, and Saxon rested
her telescope basket.

“Peddlin'?” the young man asked, too discreet to put his question
directly to Saxon, yet dividing it between her and Billy, and cocking
his eye at the covered basket.

“No,” she spoke up quickly. “We're looking for land. Do you know of any
around here?”

Again he desisted from the egg, studying them with sharp eyes as if to
fathom their financial status.

“Do you know what land sells for around here?” he asked.

“No,” Saxon answered. “Do you?”

“I guess I ought to. I was born here. And land like this all around you
runs at from two to three hundred to four an' five hundred dollars an
acre.”

“Whew!” Billy whistled. “I guess we don't want none of it.”

“But what makes it that high? Town lots?” Saxon wanted to know.

“Nope. The Porchugeeze make it that high, I guess.”

“I thought it was pretty good land that fetched a hundred an acre,”
 Billy said.

“Oh, them times is past. They used to give away land once, an' if you
was good, throw in all the cattle runnin' on it.”

“How about government land around here?” was Billy'a next query.

“Ain't none, an' never was. This was old Mexican grants. My grandfather
bought sixteen hundred of the best acres around here for fifteen
hundred dollars--five hundred down an' the balance in five years without
interest. But that was in the early days. He come West in '48, tryin' to
find a country without chills an' fever.”

“He found it all right,” said Billy.

“You bet he did. An' if him an' father 'd held onto the land it'd been
better than a gold mine, an' I wouldn't be workin' for a livin'. What's
your business?”

“Teamster.”

“Ben in the strike in Oakland?”

“Sure thing. I've teamed there most of my life.”

Here the two men wandered off into a discussion of union affairs and the
strike situation; but Saxon refused to be balked, and brought back the
talk to the land.

“How was it the Portuguese ran up the price of land?” she asked.

The young fellow broke away from union matters with an effort, and for a
moment regarded her with lack luster eyes, until the question sank into
his consciousness.

“Because they worked the land overtime. Because they worked mornin',
noon, an' night, all hands, women an' kids. Because they could get more
out of twenty acres than we could out of a hundred an' sixty. Look at
old Silva--Antonio Silva. I've known him ever since I was a shaver.
He didn't have the price of a square meal when he hit this section and
begun leasin' land from my folks. Look at him now--worth two hundred
an' fifty thousan' cold, an' I bet he's got credit for a million, an'
there's no tellin' what the rest of his family owns.”

“And he made all that out of your folks' land?” Saxon demanded.

The young man nodded his head with evident reluctance.

“Then why didn't your folks do it?” she pursued.

The lineman shrugged his shoulders.

“Search me,” he said.

“But the money was in the land,” she persisted.

“Blamed if it was,” came the retort, tinged slightly with color. “We
never saw it stickin' out so as you could notice it. The money was in
the hands of the Porchugeeze, I guess. They knew a few more 'n we did,
that's all.”

Saxon showed such dissatisfaction with his explanation that he was stung
to action. He got up wrathfully. “Come on, an' I'll show you,” he
said. “I'll show you why I'm workin' for wages when I might a-ben a
millionaire if my folks hadn't been mutts. That's what we old Americans
are, Mutts, with a capital M.”

He led them inside the gate, to the fruit tree that had first attracted
Saxon's attention. From the main crotch diverged the four main branches
of the tree. Two feet above the crotch the branches were connected, each
to the ones on both sides, by braces of living wood.

“You think it growed that way, eh? Well, it did. But it was old Silva
that made it just the same--caught two sprouts, when the tree was young,
an' twisted 'em together. Pretty slick, eh? You bet. That tree'll never
blow down. It's a natural, springy brace, an' beats iron braces stiff.
Look along all the rows. Every tree's that way. See? An' that's just one
trick of the Porchugeeze. They got a million like it.

“Figure it out for yourself. They don't need props when the crop's
heavy. Why, when we had a heavy crop, we used to use five props to
a tree. Now take ten acres of trees. That'd be some several thousan'
props. Which cost money, an' labor to put in an' take out every year.
These here natural braces don't have to have a thing done. They're
Johnny-on-the-spot all the time. Why, the Porchugeeze has got us skinned
a mile. Come on, I'll show you.”

Billy, with city notions of trespass, betrayed perturbation at the
freedom they were making of the little farm.

“Oh, it's all right, as long as you don't step on nothin',” the lineman
reassured him. “Besides, my grandfather used to own this. They know me.
Forty years ago old Silva come from the Azores. Went sheep-herdin' in
the mountains for a couple of years, then blew in to San Leandro. These
five acres was the first land he leased. That was the beginnin'. Then he
began leasin' by the hundreds of acres, an' by the hundred-an'-sixties.
An' his sisters an' his uncles an' his aunts begun pourin' in from the
Azores--they're all related there, you know; an' pretty soon San Leandro
was a regular Porchugeeze settlement.

“An' old Silva wound up by buyin' these five acres from grandfather.
Pretty soon--an' father by that time was in the hole to the neck--he was
buyin' father's land by the hundred-an'-sixties. An' all the rest of
his relations was doin' the same thing. Father was always gettin' rich
quick, an' he wound up by dyin' in debt. But old Silva never overlooked
a bet, no matter how dinky. An' all the rest are just like him. You
see outside the fence there, clear to the wheel-tracks in the
road--horse-beans. We'd a-scorned to do a picayune thing like that. Not
Silva. Why he's got a town house in San Leandro now. An' he rides around
in a four-thousan'-dollar tourin' car. An' just the same his front door
yard grows onions clear to the sidewalk. He clears three hundred a year
on that patch alone. I know ten acres of land he bought last year,--a
thousan' an acre they asked'm, an' he never batted an eye. He knew it
was worth it, that's all. He knew he could make it pay. Back in the
hills, there, he's got a ranch of five hundred an' eighty acres, bought
it dirt cheap, too; an' I want to tell you I could travel around in a
different tourin' car every day in the week just outa the profits he
makes on that ranch from the horses all the way from heavy draughts to
fancy steppers.

“But how?--how?--how did he get it all?” Saxon clamored.

“By bein' wise to farmin'. Why, the whole blame family works. They
ain't ashamed to roll up their sleeves an' dig--sons an' daughters an'
daughter-in-laws, old man, old woman, an' the babies. They have a sayin'
that a kid four years old that can't pasture one cow on the county road
an' keep it fat ain't worth his salt. Why, the Silvas, the whole tribe
of 'em, works a hundred acres in peas, eighty in tomatoes, thirty in
asparagus, ten in pie-plant, forty in cucumbers, an'--oh, stacks of
other things.”

“But how do they do it?” Saxon continued to demand. “We've never been
ashamed to work. We've worked hard all our lives. I can out-work any
Portuguese woman ever born. And I've done it, too, in the jute mills.
There were lots of Portuguese girls working at the looms all around me,
and I could out-weave them, every day, and I did, too. It isn't a case
of work. What is it?”

The lineman looked at her in a troubled way.

“Many's the time I've asked myself that same question. 'We're better'n
these cheap emigrants,' I'd say to myself. 'We was here first, an' owned
the land. I can lick any Dago that ever hatched in the Azores. I got a
better education. Then how in thunder do they put it all over us, get
our land, an' start accounts in the banks?' An' the only answer I know
is that we ain't got the sabe. We don't use our head-pieces right.
Something's wrong with us. Anyway, we wasn't wised up to farming. We
played at it. Show you? That's what I brung you in for--the way old
Silva an' all his tribe farms. Look at this place. Some cousin of his,
just out from the Azores, is makin' a start on it, an' payin' good rent
to Silva. Pretty soon he'll be up to snuff an' buyin' land for himself
from some perishin' American farmer.

“Look at that--though you ought to see it in summer. Not an inch wasted.
Where we got one thin crop, they get four fat crops. An' look at the way
they crowd it--currants between the tree rows, beans between the currant
rows, a row of beans close on each side of the trees, an' rows of beans
along the ends of the tree rows. Why, Silva wouldn't sell these five
acres for five hundred an acre cash down. He gave grandfather fifty
an acre for it on long time, an' here am I, workin' for the telephone
company an' putting' in a telephone for old Silva's cousin from the
Azores that can't speak American yet. Horse-beans along the road--say,
when Silva swung that trick he made more outa fattenin' hogs with 'em
than grandfather made with all his farmin'. Grandfather stuck up his
nose at horse-beans. He died with it stuck up, an' with more mortgages
on the land he had left than you could shake a stick at. Plantin'
tomatoes wrapped up in wrappin' paper--ever heard of that? Father
snorted when he first seen the Porchugeeze doin' it. An' he went on
snortin'. Just the same they got bumper crops, an' father's house-patch
of tomatoes was eaten by the black beetles. We ain't got the sabe,
or the knack, or something or other. Just look at this piece of
ground--four crops a year, an' every inch of soil workin' over time.
Why, back in town there, there's single acres that earns more than fifty
of ours in the old days. The Porchugeeze is natural-born farmers, that's
all, an' we don't know nothin' about farmin' an' never did.”

Saxon talked with the lineman, following him about, till one o'clock,
when he looked at his watch, said good bye, and returned to his task of
putting in a telephone for the latest immigrant from the Azores.

When in town, Saxon carried her oilcloth-wrapped telescope in her hand;
but it was so arranged with loops, that, once on the road, she could
thrust her arms through the loops and carry it on her back. When she did
this, the tiny ukulele case was shifted so that it hung under her left
arm.

A mile on from the lineman, they stopped where a small creek, fringed
with brush, crossed the county road. Billy was for the cold lunch, which
was the last meal Saxon had prepared in the Pine street cottage; but
she was determined upon building a fire and boiling coffee. Not that she
desired it for herself, but that she was impressed with the idea
that everything at the starting of their strange wandering must be as
comfortable as possible for Billy's sake. Bent on inspiring him with
enthusiasm equal to her own, she declined to dampen what sparks he had
caught by anything so uncheerful as a cold meal.

“Now one thing we want to get out of our heads right at the start,
Billy, is that we're in a hurry. We're not in a hurry, and we don't care
whether school keeps or not. We're out to have a good time, a regular
adventure like you read about in books.--My! I wish that boy that took
me fishing to Goat Island could see me now. Oakland was just a place
to start from, he said. And, well, we've started, haven't we? And right
here's where we stop and boil coffee. You get the fire going, Billy, and
I'll get the water and the things ready to spread out.”

“Say,” Billy remarked, while they waited for the water to boil, “d'ye
know what this reminds me of?”

Saxon was certain she did know, but she shook her head. She wanted to
hear him say it.

“Why, the second Sunday I knew you, when we drove out to Moraga Valley
behind Prince and King. You spread the lunch that day.”

“Only it was a more scrumptious lunch,” she added, with a happy smile.

“But I wonder why we didn't have coffee that day,” he went on.

“Perhaps it would have been too much like housekeeping,” she laughed;
“kind of what Mary would call indelicate--”

“Or raw,” Billy interpolated. “She was always springin' that word.”

“And yet look what became of her.”

“That's the way with all of them,” Billy growled somberly. “I've always
noticed it's the fastidious, la-de-da ones that turn out the rottenest.
They're like some horses I know, a-shyin' at the things they're the
least afraid of.”

Saxon was silent, oppressed by a sadness, vague and remote, which the
mention of Bert's widow had served to bring on.

“I know something else that happened that day which you'd never guess,”
 Billy reminisced. “I bet you couldn't.

“I wonder,” Saxon murmured, and guessed it with her eyes.

Billy's eyes answered, and quite spontaneously he reached over, caught
her hand, and pressed it caressingly to his cheek.

“It's little, but oh my,” he said, addressing the imprisoned hand.
Then he gazed at Saxon, and she warmed with his words. “We're beginnin'
courtin' all over again, ain't we?”

Both ate heartily, and Billy was guilty of three cups of coffee.

“Say, this country air gives some appetite,” he mumbled, as he sank his
teeth into his fifth bread-and-meat sandwich. “I could eat a horse, an'
drown his head off in coffee afterward.”

Saxon's mind had reverted to all the young lineman had told her, and
she completed a sort of general resume of the information. “My!” she
exclaimed, “but we've learned a lot!”

“An' we've sure learned one thing,” Billy said. “An' that is that this
is no place for us, with land a thousan' an acre an' only twenty dollars
in our pockets.”

“Oh, we're not going to stop here,” she hastened to say.

“But just the same it's the Portuguese that gave it its price, and they
make things go on it--send their children to school... and have them;
and, as you said yourself, they're as fat as butterballs.”

“An' I take my hat off to them,” Billy responded.

“But all the same, I'd sooner have forty acres at a hundred an acre than
four at a thousan' an acre. Somehow, you know, I'd be scared stiff on
four acres--scared of fallin' off, you know.”

She was in full sympathy with him. In her heart of hearts the forty
acres tugged much the harder. In her way, allowing for the difference
of a generation, her desire for spaciousness was as strong as her Uncle
Will's.

“Well, we're not going to stop here,” she assured Billy. “We're going
in, not for forty acres, but for a hundred and sixty acres free from the
government.”

“An' I guess the government owes it to us for what our fathers an'
mothers done. I tell you, Saxon, when a woman walks across the plains
like your mother done, an' a man an' wife gets massacred by the Indians
like my grandfather an' mother done, the government does owe them
something.”

“Well, it's up to us to collect.”

“An' we'll collect all right, all right, somewhere down in them redwood
mountains south of Monterey.”



CHAPTER II

It was a good afternoon's tramp to Niles, passing through the town of
Haywards; yet Saxon and Billy found time to diverge from the main county
road and take the parallel roads through acres of intense cultivation
where the land was farmed to the wheel-tracks. Saxon looked with
amazement at these small, brown-skinned immigrants who came to the soil
with nothing and yet made the soil pay for itself to the tune of two
hundred, of five hundred, and of a thousand dollars an acre.

On every hand was activity. Women and children were in the fields as
well as men. The land was turned endlessly over and over. They seemed
never to let it rest. And it rewarded them. It must reward them, or
their children would not be able to go to school, nor would so many of
them be able to drive by in rattletrap, second-hand buggies or in stout
light wagons.

“Look at their faces,” Saxon said. “They are happy and contented. They
haven't faces like the people in our neighborhood after the strikes
began.”

“Oh, sure, they got a good thing,” Billy agreed. “You can see it
stickin' out all over them. But they needn't get chesty with ME, I can
tell you that much--just because they've jiggerooed us out of our land
an' everything.”

“But they're not showing any signs of chestiness,” Saxon demurred.

“No, they're not, come to think of it. All the same, they ain't so wise.
I bet I could tell 'em a few about horses.”

It was sunset when they entered the little town of Niles. Billy, who had
been silent for the last half mile, hesitantly ventured a suggestion.

“Say... I could put up for a room in the hotel just as well as not. What
d 'ye think?”

But Saxon shook her head emphatically.

“How long do you think our twenty dollars will last at that rate?
Besides, the only way to begin is to begin at the beginning. We didn't
plan sleeping in hotels.”

“All right,” he gave in. “I'm game. I was just thinkin' about you.”

“Then you'd better think I'm game, too,” she flashed forgivingly. “And
now we'll have to see about getting things for supper.”

They bought a round steak, potatoes, onions, and a dozen eating apples,
then went out from the town to the fringe of trees and brush that
advertised a creek. Beside the trees, on a sand bank, they pitched
camp. Plenty of dry wood lay about, and Billy whistled genially while he
gathered and chopped. Saxon, keen to follow his every mood, was cheered
by the atrocious discord on his lips. She smiled to herself as she
spread the blankets, with the tarpaulin underneath, for a table, having
first removed all twigs from the sand. She had much to learn in the
matter of cooking over a camp-fire, and made fair progress, discovering,
first of all, that control of the fire meant far more than the size of
it. When the coffee was boiled, she settled the grounds with a part-cup
of cold water and placed the pot on the edge of the coals where it would
keep hot and yet not boil. She fried potato dollars and onions in the
same pan, but separately, and set them on top of the coffee pot in the
tin plate she was to eat from, covering it with Billy's inverted plate.
On the dry hot pan, in the way that delighted Billy, she fried the
steak. This completed, and while Billy poured the coffee, she served
the steak, putting the dollars and onions back into the frying pan for a
moment to make them piping hot again.

“What more d'ye want than this?” Billy challenged with deep-toned
satisfaction, in the pause after his final cup of coffee, while he
rolled a cigarette. He lay on his side, full length, resting on his
elbow. The fire was burning brightly, and Saxon's color was heightened
by the flickering flames. “Now our folks, when they was on the move, had
to be afraid for Indians, and wild animals and all sorts of things; an'
here we are, as safe as bugs in a rug. Take this sand. What better bed
could you ask? Soft as feathers. Say--you look good to me, heap little
squaw. I bet you don't look an inch over sixteen right now, Mrs.
Babe-in-the-Woods.”

“Don't I?” she glowed, with a flirt of the head sideward and a white
flash of teeth. “If you weren't smoking a cigarette I'd ask you if your
mother knew you're out, Mr. Babe-in-the-Sandbank.”

“Say,” he began, with transparently feigned seriousness. “I want to ask
you something, if you don't mind. Now, of course, I don't want to hurt
your feelin's or nothin', but just the same there's something important
I'd like to know.”

“Well, what is it?” she inquired, after a fruitless wait.

“Well, it's just this, Saxon. I like you like anything an' all that,
but here's night come on, an' we're a thousand miles from anywhere,
and--well, what I wanta know is: are we really an' truly married, you
an' me?”

“Really and truly,” she assured him. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing; but I'd kind a-forgotten, an' I was gettin' embarrassed,
you know, because if we wasn't, seein' the way I was brought up, this'd
be no place--”

“That will do you,” she said severely. “And this is just the time and
place for you to get in the firewood for morning while I wash up the
dishes and put the kitchen in order.”

He started to obey, but paused to throw his arm about her and draw
her close. Neither spoke, but when he went his way Saxon's breast was
fluttering and a song of thanksgiving breathed on her lips.

The night had come on, dim with the light of faint stars. But these had
disappeared behind clouds that seemed to have arisen from nowhere. It
was the beginning of California Indian summer. The air was warm, with
just the first hint of evening chill, and there was no wind.

“I've a feeling as if we've just started to live,” Saxon said, when
Billy, his firewood collected, joined her on the blankets before the
fire. “I've learned more to-day than ten years in Oakland.” She drew a
long breath and braced her shoulders. “Farming's a bigger subject than I
thought.”

Billy said nothing. With steady eyes he was staring into the fire, and
she knew he was turning something over in his mind.

“What is it,” she asked, when she saw he had reached a conclusion, at
the same time resting her hand on the back of his.

“Just been framin' up that ranch of ourn,” he answered. “It's all
well enough, these dinky farmlets. They'll do for foreigners. But we
Americans just gotta have room. I want to be able to look at a hilltop
an' know it's my land, and know it's my land down the other side an' up
the next hilltop, an' know that over beyond that, down alongside some
creek, my mares are most likely grazin', an' their little colts grazin'
with 'em or kickin' up their heels. You know, there's money in raisin'
horses--especially the big workhorses that run to eighteen hundred an'
two thousand pounds. They're payin' for 'em, in the cities, every day in
the year, seven an' eight hundred a pair, matched geldings, four years
old. Good pasture an' plenty of it, in this kind of a climate, is all
they need, along with some sort of shelter an' a little hay in long
spells of bad weather. I never thought of it before, but let me tell you
that this ranch proposition is beginnin' to look good to ME.”

Saxon was all excitement. Here was new information on the cherished
subject, and, best of all, Billy was the authority. Still better, he was
taking an interest himself.

“There'll be room for that and for everything on a quarter section,” she
encouraged.

“Sure thing. Around the house we'll have vegetables an' fruit and
chickens an' everything, just like the Porchugeeze, an' plenty of room
beside to walk around an' range the horses.”

“But won't the colts cost money, Billy?”

“Not much. The cobblestones eat horses up fast. That's where I'll get my
brood mares, from the ones knocked out by the city. I know THAT end of
it. They sell 'em at auction, an' they're good for years an' years, only
no good on the cobbles any more.”

There ensued a long pause. In the dying fire both were busy visioning
the farm to be.

“It's pretty still, ain't it?” Billy said, rousing himself at last.
He gazed about him. “An' black as a stack of black cats.” He shivered,
buttoned his coat, and tossed several sticks on the fire. “Just the
same, it's the best kind of a climate in the world. Many's the time,
when I was a little kid, I've heard my father brag about California's
bein' a blanket climate. He went East, once, an' staid a summer an' a
winter, an' got all he wanted. Never again for him.”

“My mother said there never was such a land for climate. How wonderful
it must have seemed to them after crossing the deserts and mountains.
They called it the land of milk and honey. The ground was so rich that
all they needed to do was scratch it, Cady used to say.”

“And wild game everywhere,” Billy contributed. “Mr. Roberts, the one
that adopted my father, he drove cattle from the San Joaquin to the
Columbia river. He had forty men helpin' him, an' all they took along
was powder an' salt. They lived off the game they shot.”

“The hills were full of deer, and my mother saw whole herds of elk
around Santa Rosa. Some time we'll go there, Billy. I've always wanted
to.”

“And when my father was a young man, somewhere up north of Sacramento,
in a creek called Cache Slough, the tules was full of grizzlies. He used
to go in an' shoot 'em. An' when they caught 'em in the open, he an'
the Mexicans used to ride up an' rope them--catch them with lariats, you
know. He said a horse that wasn't afraid of grizzlies fetched ten times
as much as any other horse. An' panthers!--all the old folks called 'em
painters an' catamounts an' varmints. Yes, we'll go to Santa Rosa some
time. Maybe we won't like that land down the coast, an' have to keep on
hikin'.”

By this time the fire had died down, and Saxon had finished brushing and
braiding her hair. Their bed-going preliminaries were simple, and in a
few minutes they were side by side under the blankets. Saxon closed her
eyes, but could not sleep. On the contrary, she had never been more wide
awake. She had never slept out of doors in her life, and by no exertion
of will could she overcome the strangeness of it. In addition, she
was stiffened from the long trudge, and the sand, to her surprise, was
anything but soft. An hour passed. She tried to believe that Billy was
asleep, but felt certain he was not. The sharp crackle of a dying ember
startled her. She was confident that Billy had moved slightly.

“Billy,” she whispered, “are you awake?”

“Yep,” came his low answer, “--an' thinkin' this sand is harder'n a
cement floor. It's one on me, all right. But who'd a-thought it?”

Both shifted their postures slightly, but vain was the attempt to escape
from the dull, aching contact of the sand.

An abrupt, metallic, whirring noise of some nearby cricket gave Saxon
another startle. She endured the sound for some minutes, until Billy
broke forth.

“Say, that gets my goat whatever it is.”

“Do you think it's a rattlesnake?” she asked, maintaining a calmness she
did not feel.

“Just what I've been thinkin'.”

“I saw two, in the window of Bowman's Drug Store. An' you know, Billy,
they've got a hollow fang, and when they stick it into you the poison
runs down the hollow.”

“Br-r-r-r,” Billy shivered, in fear that was not altogether mockery.
“Certain death, everybody says, unless you're a Bosco. Remember him?”

“He eats 'em alive! He eats 'em alive! Bosco! Bosco!” Saxon responded,
mimicking the cry of a side-show barker. “Just the same, all Bosco's
rattlers had the poison-sacs cut outa them. They must a-had. Gee! It's
funny I can't get asleep. I wish that damned thing'd close its trap. I
wonder if it is a rattlesnake.”

“No; it can't be,” Saxon decided. “All the rattlesnakes are killed off
long ago.”

“Then where did Bosco get his?” Billy demanded with unimpeachable logic.
“An' why don't you get to sleep?”

“Because it's all new, I guess,” was her reply. “You see, I never camped
out in my life.”

“Neither did I. An' until now I always thought it was a lark.” He
changed his position on the maddening sand and sighed heavily. “But
we'll get used to it in time, I guess. What other folks can do, we can,
an' a mighty lot of 'em has camped out. It's all right. Here we are,
free an' independent, no rent to pay, our own bosses--”

He stopped abruptly. From somewhere in the brush came an intermittent
rustling. When they tried to locate it, it mysteriously ceased, and
when the first hint of drowsiness stole upon them the rustling as
mysteriously recommenced.

“It sounds like something creeping up on us,” Saxon suggested, snuggling
closer to Billy.

“Well, it ain't a wild Indian, at all events,” was the best he could
offer in the way of comfort. He yawned deliberately. “Aw, shucks! What's
there to be scared of? Think of what all the pioneers went through.”

Several minutes later his shoulders began to shake, and Saxon knew he
was giggling.

“I was just thinkin' of a yarn my father used to tell about,” he
explained. “It was about old Susan Kleghorn, one of the Oregon pioneer
women. Wall-Eyed Susan, they used to call her; but she could shoot to
beat the band. Once, on the Plains, the wagon train she was in, was
attacked by Indians. They got all the wagons in a circle, an' all hands
an' the oxen inside, an' drove the Indians off, killin' a lot of 'em.
They was too strong that way, so what'd the Indians do, to draw 'em out
into the open, but take two white girls, captured from some other train,
an' begin to torture 'em. They done it just out of gunshot, but so
everybody could see. The idea was that the white men couldn't stand it,
an' would rush out, an' then the Indians'd have 'em where they wanted
'em.

“The white men couldn't do a thing. If they rushed out to save the
girls, they'd be finished, an' then the Indians'd rush the train. It
meant death to everybody. But what does old Susan do, but get out an
old, long-barreled Kentucky rifle. She rams down about three times the
regular load of powder, takes aim at a big buck that's pretty busy at
the torturin', an' bangs away. It knocked her clean over backward, an'
her shoulder was lame all the rest of the way to Oregon, but she dropped
the big Indian deado. He never knew what struck 'm.

“But that wasn't the yarn I wanted to tell. It seems old Susan liked
John Barleycorn. She'd souse herself to the ears every chance she got.
An' her sons an' daughters an' the old man had to be mighty careful not
to leave any around where she could get hands on it.”

“On what?” asked Saxon.

“On John Barleycorn.--Oh, you ain't on to that. It's the old fashioned
name for whisky. Well, one day all the folks was goin' away--that was
over somewhere at a place called Bodega, where they'd settled after
comin' down from Oregon. An' old Susan claimed her rheumatics was
hurtin' her an' so she couldn't go. But the family was on. There was
a two-gallon demijohn of whisky in the house. They said all right, but
before they left they sent one of the grandsons to climb a big tree in
the barnyard, where he tied the demijohn sixty feet from the ground.
Just the same, when they come home that night they found Susan on the
kitchen floor dead to the world.”

“And she'd climbed the tree after all,” Saxon hazarded, when Billy had
shown no inclination of going on.

“Not on your life,” he laughed jubilantly. “All she'd done was to put
a washtub on the ground square under the demijohn. Then she got out her
old rifle an' shot the demijohn to smithereens, an' all she had to do
was lap the whisky outa the tub.”

Again Saxon was drowsing, when the rustling sound was heard, this time
closer. To her excited apprehension there was something stealthy about
it, and she imagined a beast of prey creeping upon them. “Billy,” she
whispered.

“Yes, I'm a-listenin' to it,” came his wide awake answer.

“Mightn't that be a panther, or maybe... a wildcat?”

“It can't be. All the varmints was killed off long ago. This is
peaceable farmin' country.”

A vagrant breeze sighed through the trees and made Saxon shiver. The
mysterious cricket-noise ceased with suspicious abruptness. Then, from
the rustling noise, ensued a dull but heavy thump that caused both Saxon
and Billy to sit up in the blankets. There were no further sounds, and
they lay down again, though the very silence now seemed ominous.

“Huh,” Billy muttered with relief. “As though I don't know what it was.
It was a rabbit. I've heard tame ones bang their hind feet down on the
floor that way.”

In vain Saxon tried to win sleep. The sand grew harder with the passage
of time. Her flesh and her bones ached from contact with it. And, though
her reason flouted any possibility of wild dangers, her fancy went on
picturing them with unflagging zeal.

A new sound commenced. It was neither a rustling nor a rattling, and
it tokened some large body passing through the brush. Sometimes twigs
crackled and broke, and, once, they heard bush-branches press aside and
spring back into place.

“If that other thing was a panther, this is an elephant,” was Billy's
uncheering opinion. “It's got weight. Listen to that. An' it's comin'
nearer.”

There were frequent stoppages, then the sounds would begin again, always
louder, always closer. Billy sat up in the blankets once more, passing
one arm around Saxon, who had also sat up.

“I ain't slept a wink,” he complained. “--There it goes again. I wish I
could see.”

“It makes a noise big enough for a grizzly,” Saxon chattered, partly
from nervousness, partly from the chill of the night.

“It ain't no grasshopper, that's sure.”

Billy started to leave the blankets, but Saxon caught his arm.

“What are you going to do?”

“Oh, I ain't scairt none,” he answered. “But, honest to God, this is
gettin' on my nerves. If I don't find what that thing is, it'll give me
the willies. I'm just goin' to reconnoiter. I won't go close.”

So intensely dark was the night, that the moment Billy crawled beyond
the reach of her hand he was lost to sight. She sat and waited. The
sound had ceased, though she could follow Billy's progress by the
cracking of dry twigs and limbs. After a few moments he returned and
crawled under the blankets.

“I scared it away, I guess. It's got better ears, an' when it heard me
comin' it skinned out most likely. I did my dangdest, too, not to make a
sound.--O Lord, there it goes again.”

They sat up. Saxon nudged Billy.

“There,” she warned, in the faintest of whispers. “I can hear it
breathing. It almost made a snort.”

A dead branch cracked loudly, and so near at hand, that both of them
jumped shamelessly.

“I ain't goin' to stand any more of its foolin',” Billy declared
wrathfully. “It'll be on top of us if I don't.”

“What are you going to do?” she queried anxiously.

“Yell the top of my head off. I'll get a fall outa whatever it is.”

He drew a deep breath and emitted a wild yell.

The result far exceeded any expectation he could have entertained, and
Saxon's heart leaped up in sheer panic. On the instant the darkness
erupted into terrible sound and movement. There were trashings
of underbrush and lunges and plunges of heavy bodies in different
directions. Fortunately for their ease of mind, all these sounds receded
and died away.

“An' what d'ye think of that?” Billy broke the silence.

“Gee! all the fight fans used to say I was scairt of nothin'. Just the
same I'm glad they ain't seein' me to-night.”

He groaned. “I've got all I want of that blamed sand. I'm goin' to get
up and start the fire.”

This was easy. Under the ashes were live embers which quickly ignited
the wood he threw on. A few stars were peeping out in the misty zenith.
He looked up at them, deliberated, and started to move away.

“Where are you going now?” Saxon called.

“Oh, I've got an idea,” he replied noncommittally, and walked boldly
away beyond the circle of the firelight.

Saxon sat with the blankets drawn closely under her chin, and admired
his courage. He had not even taken the hatchet, and he was going in the
direction in which the disturbance had died away.

Ten minutes later he came back chuckling.

“The sons-of-guns, they got my goat all right. I'll be scairt of my
own shadow next.--What was they? Huh! You couldn't guess in a thousand
years. A bunch of half-grown calves, an' they was worse scairt than us.”

He smoked a cigarette by the fire, then rejoined Saxon under the
blankets.

“A hell of a farmer I'll make,” he chafed, “when a lot of little calves
can scare the stuffin' outa me. I bet your father or mine wouldn't
a-batted an eye. The stock has gone to seed, that's what it has.”

“No, it hasn't,” Saxon defended. “The stock is all right. We're just
as able as our folks ever were, and we're healthier on top of it. We've
been brought up different, that's all. We've lived in cities all our
lives. We know the city sounds and thugs, but we don't know the country
ones. Our training has been unnatural, that's the whole thing in a
nutshell. Now we're going in for natural training. Give us a little
time, and we'll sleep as sound out of doors as ever your father or mine
did.”

“But not on sand,” Billy groaned.

“We won't try. That's one thing, for good and all, we've learned the
very first time. And now hush up and go to sleep.”

Their fears had vanished, but the sand, receiving now their undivided
attention, multiplied its unyieldingness. Billy dozed off first, and
roosters were crowing somewhere in the distance when Saxon's eyes
closed. But they could not escape the sand, and their sleep was fitful.

At the first gray of dawn, Billy crawled out and built a roaring fire.
Saxon drew up to it shiveringly. They were hollow-eyed and weary. Saxon
began to laugh. Billy joined sulkily, then brightened up as his eyes
chanced upon the coffee pot, which he immediately put on to boil.



CHAPTER III

It is forty miles from Oakland to San Jose, and Saxon and Billy
accomplished it in three easy days. No more obliging and angrily
garrulous linemen were encountered, and few were the opportunities for
conversation with chance wayfarers. Numbers of tramps, carrying rolls of
blankets, were met, traveling both north and south on the county road;
and from talks with them Saxon quickly learned that they knew little or
nothing about farming. They were mostly old men, feeble or besotted, and
all they knew was work--where jobs might be good, where jobs had been
good; but the places they mentioned were always a long way off. One
thing she did glean from them, and that was that the district she and
Billy were passing through was “small-farmer” country in which labor was
rarely hired, and that when it was it generally was Portuguese.

The farmers themselves were unfriendly. They drove by Billy and Saxon,
often with empty wagons, but never invited them to ride. When chance
offered and Saxon did ask questions, they looked her over curiously, or
suspiciously, and gave ambiguous and facetious answers.

“They ain't Americans, damn them,” Billy fretted. “Why, in the old days
everybody was friendly to everybody.”

But Saxon remembered her last talk with her brother.

“It's the spirit of the times, Billy. The spirit has changed. Besides,
these people are too near. Wait till we get farther away from the
cities, then we'll find them more friendly.”

“A measly lot these ones are,” he sneered.

“Maybe they've a right to be,” she laughed. “For all you know, more than
one of the scabs you've slugged were sons of theirs.”

“If I could only hope so,” Billy said fervently. “But I don't care if I
owned ten thousand acres, any man hikin' with his blankets might be just
as good a man as me, an' maybe better, for all I'd know. I'd give 'm the
benefit of the doubt, anyway.”

Billy asked for work, at first, indiscriminately, later, only at the
larger farms. The unvarying reply was that there was no work. A few said
there would be plowing after the first rains. Here and there, in a small
way, dry plowing was going on. But in the main the farmers were waiting.

“But do you know how to plow?” Saxon asked Billy.

“No; but I guess it ain't much of a trick to turn. Besides, next man I
see plowing I'm goin' to get a lesson from.”

In the mid-afternoon of the second day his opportunity came. He climbed
on top of the fence of a small field and watched an old man plow round
and round it.

“Aw, shucks, just as easy as easy,” Billy commented scornfully. “If an
old codger like that can handle one plow, I can handle two.”

“Go on and try it,” Saxon urged.

“What's the good?”

“Cold feet,” she jeered, but with a smiling face. “All you have to do
is ask him. All he can do is say no. And what if he does? You faced the
Chicago Terror twenty rounds without flinching.”

“Aw, but it's different,” he demurred, then dropped to the ground inside
the fence. “Two to one the old geezer turns me down.”

“No, he won't. Just tell him you want to learn, and ask him if he'll let
you drive around a few times. Tell him it won't cost him anything.”

“Huh! If he gets chesty I'll take his blamed plow away from him.”

From the top of the fence, but too far away to hear, Saxon watched the
colloquy. After several minutes, the lines were transferred to Billy's
neck, the handles to his hands. Then the team started, and the old man,
delivering a rapid fire of instructions, walked alongside of Billy. When
a few turns had been made, the farmer crossed the plowed strip to Saxon,
and joined her on the rail.

“He's plowed before, a little mite, ain't he?”

Saxon shook her head.

“Never in his life. But he knows how to drive horses.”

“He showed he wasn't all greenhorn, an' he learns pretty quick.” Here
the farmer chuckled and cut himself a chew from a plug of tobacco. “I
reckon he won't tire me out a-settin' here.”

The unplowed area grew smaller and smaller, but Billy evinced no
intention of quitting, and his audience on the fence was deep in
conversation. Saxon's questions flew fast and furious, and she was not
long in concluding that the old man bore a striking resemblance to the
description the lineman had given of his father.

Billy persisted till the field was finished, and the old man invited him
and Saxon to stop for the night. There was a disused outbuilding where
they would find a small cook stove, he said, and also he would give them
fresh milk. Further, if Saxon wanted to test HER desire for farming, she
could try her hand on the cow.

The milking lesson did not prove as successful as Billy's plowing; but
when he had mocked sufficiently, Saxon challenged him to try, and
he failed as grievously as she. Saxon had eyes and questions for
everything, and it did not take her long to realize that she was
looking upon the other side of the farming shield. Farm and farmer were
old-fashioned. There was no intensive cultivation. There was too much
land too little farmed. Everything was slipshod. House and barn and
outbuildings were fast falling into ruin. The front yard was weed-grown.
There was no vegetable garden. The small orchard was old, sickly, and
neglected. The trees were twisted, spindling, and overgrown with a gray
moss. The sons and daughters were away in the cities, Saxon found out.
One daughter had married a doctor, the other was a teacher in the state
normal school; one son was a locomotive engineer, the second was an
architect, and the third was a police court reporter in San Francisco.
On occasion, the father said, they helped out the old folks.

“What do you think?” Saxon asked Billy as he smoked his after-supper
cigarette.

His shoulders went up in a comprehensive shrug.

“Huh! That's easy. The old geezer's like his orchard--covered with moss.
It's plain as the nose on your face, after San Leandro, that he don't
know the first thing. An' them horses. It'd be a charity to him, an' a
savin' of money for him, to take 'em out an' shoot 'em both. You bet you
don't see the Porchugeeze with horses like them. An' it ain't a case of
bein' proud, or puttin' on side, to have good horses. It's brass tacks
an' business. It pays. That's the game. Old horses eat more 'n young
ones to keep in condition an' they can't do the same amount of work. But
you bet it costs just as much to shoe them. An' his is scrub on top of
it. Every minute he has them horses he's losin' money. You oughta see
the way they work an' figure horses in the city.”

They slept soundly, and, after an early breakfast, prepared to start.

“I'd like to give you a couple of days' work,” the old man regretted, at
parting, “but I can't see it. The ranch just about keeps me and the old
woman, now that the children are gone. An' then it don't always. Seems
times have been bad for a long spell now. Ain't never been the same
since Grover Cleveland.”

Early in the afternoon, on the outskirts of San Jose, Saxon called a
halt.

“I'm going right in there and talk,” she declared, “unless they set the
dogs on me. That's the prettiest place yet, isn't it?”

Billy, who was always visioning hills and spacious ranges for his
horses, mumbled unenthusiastic assent.

“And the vegetables! Look at them! And the flowers growing along the
borders! That beats tomato plants in wrapping paper.”

“Don't see the sense of it,” Billy objected. “Where's the money come
in from flowers that take up the ground that good vegetables might be
growin' on?”

“And that's what I'm going to find out.” She pointed to a woman, stooped
to the ground and working with a trowel; in front of the tiny bungalow.
“I don't know what she's like, but at the worst she can only be mean.
See! She's looking at us now. Drop your load alongside of mine, and come
on in.”

Billy slung the blankets from his shoulder to the ground, but elected to
wait. As Saxon went up the narrow, flower-bordered walk, she noted two
men at work among the vegetables--one an old Chinese, the other old and
of some dark-eyed foreign breed. Here were neatness, efficiency, and
intensive cultivation with a vengeance--even her untrained eye could see
that. The woman stood up and turned from her flowers, and Saxon saw that
she was middle-aged, slender, and simply but nicely dressed. She wore
glasses, and Saxon's reading of her face was that it was kind but
nervous looking.

“I don't want anything to-day,” she said, before Saxon could speak,
administering the rebuff with a pleasant smile.

Saxon groaned inwardly over the black-covered telescope basket.
Evidently the woman had seen her put it down.

“We're not peddling,” she explained quickly.

“Oh, I am sorry for the mistake.”

This time the woman's smile was even pleasanter, and she waited for
Saxon to state her errand.

Nothing loath, Saxon took it at a plunge.

“We're looking for land. We want to be farmers, you know, and before we
get the land we want to find out what kind of land we want. And seeing
your pretty place has just filled me up with questions. You see, we
don't know anything about farming. We've lived in the city all our life,
and now we've given it up and are going to live in the country and be
happy.”

She paused. The woman's face seemed to grow quizzical, though the
pleasantness did not abate.

“But how do you know you will be happy in the country?” she asked.

“I don't know. All I do know is that poor people can't be happy in the
city where they have labor troubles all the time. If they can't be happy
in the country, then there's no happiness anywhere, and that doesn't
seem fair, does it?”

“It is sound reasoning, my dear, as far as it goes. But you must
remember that there are many poor people in the country and many unhappy
people.”

“You look neither poor nor unhappy,” Saxon challenged.

“You ARE a dear.”

Saxon saw the pleased flush in the other's face, which lingered as she
went on.

“But still, I may be peculiarly qualified to live and succeed in the
country. As you say yourself, you've spent your life in the city. You
don't know the first thing about the country. It might even break your
heart.”

Saxon's mind went back to the terrible months in the Pine street
cottage.

“I know already that the city will break my heart. Maybe the country
will, too, but just the same it's my only chance, don't you see. It's
that or nothing. Besides, our folks before us were all of the country.
It seems the more natural way. And better, here I am, which proves
that 'way down inside I must want the country, must, as you call it, be
peculiarly qualified for the country, or else I wouldn't be here.”

The other nodded approval, and looked at her with growing interest.

“That young man--” she began.

“Is my husband. He was a teamster until the big strike came. My name is
Roberts, Saxon Roberts, and my husband is William Roberts.”

“And I am Mrs. Mortimer,” the other said, with a bow of acknowledgment.
“I am a widow. And now, if you will ask your husband in, I shall try to
answer some of your many questions. Tell him to put the bundles inside
the gate.. .. And now what are all the questions you are filled with?”

“Oh, all kinds. How does it pay? How did you manage it all? How much did
the land cost? Did you build that beautiful house? How much do you pay
the men? How did you learn all the different kinds of things, and which
grew best and which paid best? What is the best way to sell them? How do
you sell them?” Saxon paused and laughed. “Oh, I haven't begun yet.
Why do you have flowers on the borders everywhere? I looked over the
Portuguese farms around San Leandro, but they never mixed flowers and
vegetables.”

Mrs. Mortimer held up her hand. “Let me answer the last first. It is the
key to almost everything.”

But Billy arrived, and the explanation was deferred until after his
introduction.

“The flowers caught your eyes, didn't they, my dear?” Mrs. Mortimer
resumed. “And brought you in through my gate and right up to me. And
that's the very reason they were planted with the vegetables--to catch
eyes. You can't imagine how many eyes they have caught, nor how many
owners of eyes they have lured inside my gate. This is a good road, and
is a very popular short country drive for townsfolk. Oh, no; I've never
had any luck with automobiles. They can't see anything for dust. But I
began when nearly everybody still used carriages. The townswomen would
drive by. My flowers, and then my place, would catch their eyes. They
would tell their drivers to stop. And--well, somehow, I managed to be in
the front within speaking distance. Usually I succeeded in inviting them
in to see my flowers... and vegetables, of course. Everything was
sweet, clean, pretty. It all appealed. And--” Mrs. Mortimer shrugged her
shoulders. “It is well known that the stomach sees through the eyes. The
thought of vegetables growing among flowers pleased their fancy. They
wanted my vegetables. They must have them. And they did, at double the
market price, which they were only too glad to pay. You see, I became
the fashion, or a fad, in a small way. Nobody lost. The vegetables were
certainly good, as good as any on the market and often fresher. And,
besides, my customers killed two birds with one stone; for they were
pleased with themselves for philanthropic reasons. Not only did they
obtain the finest and freshest possible vegetables, but at the same time
they were happy with the knowledge that they were helping a deserving
widow-woman. Yes, and it gave a certain tone to their establishments to
be able to say they bought Mrs. Mortimer's vegetables. But that's
too big a side to go into. In short, my little place became a show
place--anywhere to go, for a drive or anything, you know, when time has
to be killed. And it became noised about who I was, and who my
husband had been, what I had been. Some of the townsladies I had known
personally in the old days. They actually worked for my success. And
then, too, I used to serve tea. My patrons became my guests for the time
being. I still serve it, when they drive out to show me off to their
friends. So you see, the flowers are one of the ways I succeeded.”

Saxon was glowing with appreciation, but Mrs. Mortimer, glancing at
Billy, noted not entire approval. His blue eyes were clouded.

“Well, out with it,” she encouraged. “What are you thinking?”

To Saxon's surprise, he answered directly, and to her double surprise,
his criticism was of a nature which had never entered her head.

“It's just a trick,” Billy expounded. “That's what I was gettin' at--”

“But a paying trick,” Mrs. Mortimer interrupted, her eyes dancing and
vivacious behind the glasses.

“Yes, and no,” Billy said stubbornly, speaking in his slow, deliberate
fashion. “If every farmer was to mix flowers an' vegetables, then every
farmer would get double the market price, an' then there wouldn't be any
double market price. Everything'd be as it was before.”

“You are opposing a theory to a fact,” Mrs. Mortimer stated. “The fact
is that all the farmers do not do it. The fact is that I do receive
double the price. You can't get away from that.”

Billy was unconvinced, though unable to reply.

“Just the same,” he muttered, with a slow shake of the head, “I
don't get the hang of it. There's something wrong so far as we're
concerned--my wife an' me, I mean. Maybe I'll get hold of it after a
while.”

“And in the meantime, we'll look around,” Mrs. Mortimer invited. “I want
to show you everything, and tell you how I make it go. Afterward, we'll
sit down, and I'll tell you about the beginning. You see--” she bent her
gaze on Saxon--“I want you thoroughly to understand that you can succeed
in the country if you go about it right. I didn't know a thing about
it when I began, and I didn't have a fine big man like yours. I was all
alone. But I'll tell you about that.”


For the next hour, among vegetables, berry-bushes and fruit trees, Saxon
stored her brain with a huge mass of information to be digested at her
leisure. Billy, too, was interested, but he left the talking to Saxon,
himself rarely asking a question. At the rear of the bungalow, where
everything was as clean and orderly as the front, they were shown
through the chicken yard. Here, in different runs, were kept several
hundred small and snow-white hens.

“White Leghorns,” said Mrs. Mortimer. “You have no idea what they netted
me this year. I never keep a hen a moment past the prime of her laying
period--”

“Just what I was tellin' you, Saxon, about horses,” Billy broke in.

“And by the simplest method of hatching them at the right time, which
not one farmer in ten thousand ever dreams of doing, I have them laying
in the winter when most hens stop laying and when eggs are highest.
Another thing: I have my special customers. They pay me ten cents a
dozen more than the market price, because my specialty is one-day eggs.”

Here she chanced to glance at Billy, and guessed that he was still
wrestling with his problem.

“Same old thing?” she queried.

He nodded. “Same old thing. If every farmer delivered day-old eggs,
there wouldn't be no ten cents higher 'n the top price. They'd be no
better off than they was before.”

“But the eggs would be one-day eggs, all the eggs would be one-day eggs,
you mustn't forget that,” Mrs. Mortimer pointed out.

“But that don't butter no toast for my wife an' me,” he objected. “An'
that's what I've been tryin' to get the hang of, an' now I got it. You
talk about theory an' fact. Ten cents higher than top price is a theory
to Saxon an' me. The fact is, we ain't got no eggs, no chickens, an' no
land for the chickens to run an' lay eggs on.”

Their hostess nodded sympathetically.

“An' there's something else about this outfit of yourn that I don't get
the hang of,” he pursued. “I can't just put my finger on it, but it's
there all right.”

They were shown over the cattery, the piggery, the milkers, and the
kennelry, as Mrs. Mortimer called her live stock departments. None
was large. All were moneymakers, she assured them, and rattled off her
profits glibly. She took their breaths away by the prices given and
received for pedigreed Persians, pedigreed Ohio Improved Chesters,
pedigreed Scotch collies, and pedigreed Jerseys. For the milk of the
last she also had a special private market, receiving five cents more a
quart than was fetched by the best dairy milk. Billy was quick to point
out the difference between the look of her orchard and the look of the
orchard they had inspected the previous afternoon, and Mrs. Mortimer
showed him scores of other differences, many of which he was compelled
to accept on faith.

Then she told them of another industry, her home-made jams and jellies,
always contracted for in advance, and at prices dizzyingly beyond the
regular market. They sat in comfortable rattan chairs on the veranda,
while she told the story of how she had drummed up the jam and jelly
trade, dealing only with the one best restaurant and one best club
in San Jose. To the proprietor and the steward she had gone with her
samples, in long discussions beaten down their opposition, overcome
their reluctance, and persuaded the proprietor, in particular, to make
a “special” of her wares, to boom them quietly with his patrons, and,
above all, to charge stiffly for dishes and courses in which they
appeared.

Throughout the recital Billy's eyes were moody with dissatisfaction.
Mrs. Mortimer saw, and waited.

“And now, begin at the beginning,” Saxon begged.

But Mrs. Mortimer refused unless they agreed to stop for supper. Saxon
frowned Billy's reluctance away, and accepted for both of them.

“Well, then,” Mrs. Mortimer took up her tale, “in the beginning I was a
greenhorn, city born and bred. All I knew of the country was that it
was a place to go to for vacations, and I always went to springs and
mountain and seaside resorts. I had lived among books almost all my
life. I was head librarian of the Doncaster Library for years. Then
I married Mr. Mortimer. He was a book man, a professor in San Miguel
University. He had a long sickness, and when he died there was nothing
left. Even his life insurance was eaten into before I could be free
of creditors. As for myself, I was worn out, on the verge of nervous
prostration, fit for nothing. I had five thousand dollars left, however,
and, without going into the details, I decided to go farming. I found
this place, in a delightful climate, close to San Jose--the end of the
electric line is only a quarter of a mile on--and I bought it. I paid
two thousand cash, and gave a mortgage for two thousand. It cost two
hundred an acre, you see.”

“Twenty acres!” Saxon cried.

“Wasn't that pretty small?” Billy ventured.

“Too large, oceans too large. I leased ten acres of it the first thing.
And it's still leased after all this time. Even the ten I'd retained was
much too large for a long, long time. It's only now that I'm beginning
to feel a tiny mite crowded.”

“And ten acres has supported you an' two hired men?” Billy demanded,
amazed.

Mrs. Mortimer clapped her hands delightedly.

“Listen. I had been a librarian. I knew my way among books. First of all
I'd read everything written on the subject, and subscribed to some of
the best farm magazines and papers. And you ask if my ten acres have
supported me and two hired men. Let me tell you. I have four hired men.
The ten acres certainly must support them, as it supports Hannah--she's
a Swedish widow who runs the house and who is a perfect Trojan during
the jam and jelly season--and Hannah's daughter, who goes to school
and lends a hand, and my nephew whom I have taken to raise and educate.
Also, the ten acres have come pretty close to paying for the whole
twenty, as well as for this house, and all the outbuildings, and all the
pedigreed stock.”

Saxon remembered what the young lineman had said about the Portuguese.

“The ten acres didn't do a bit of it,” she cried. “It was your head that
did it all, and you know it.”

“And that's the point, my dear. It shows the right kind of person can
succeed in the country. Remember, the soil is generous. But it must be
treated generously, and that is something the old style American farmer
can't get into his head. So it IS head that counts. Even when his
starving acres have convinced him of the need for fertilizing, he can't
see the difference between cheap fertilizer and good fertilizer.”

“And that's something I want to know about,” Saxon exclaimed. “And I'll
tell you all I know, but, first, you must be very tired. I noticed you
were limping. Let me take you in--never mind your bundles; I'll send
Chang for them.”

To Saxon, with her innate love of beauty and charm in all personal
things, the interior of the bungalow was a revelation. Never before
had she been inside a middle class home, and what she saw not only far
exceeded anything she had imagined, but was vastly different from her
imaginings. Mrs. Mortimer noted her sparkling glances which took in
everything, and went out of her way to show Saxon around, doing it
under the guise of gleeful boastings, stating the costs of the different
materials, explaining how she had done things with her own hands, such
as staining the doors, weathering the bookcases, and putting together
the big Mission Morris chair. Billy stepped gingerly behind, and though
it never entered his mind to ape to the manner born, he succeeded in
escaping conspicuous awkwardness, even at the table where he and Saxon
had the unique experience of being waited on in a private house by a
servant.

“If you'd only come along next year,” Mrs. Mortimer mourned; “then I
should have had the spare room I had planned--”

“That's all right,” Billy spoke up; “thank you just the same. But we'll
catch the electric cars into San Jose an' get a room.”

Mrs. Mortimer was still disturbed at her inability to put them up for
the night, and Saxon changed the conversation by pleading to be told
more.

“You remember, I told you I'd paid only two thousand down on the land,”
 Mrs. Mortimer complied. “That left me three thousand to experiment with.
Of course, all my friends and relatives prophesied failure. And, of
course, I made my mistakes, plenty of them, but I was saved from still
more by the thorough study I had made and continued to make.” She
indicated shelves of farm books and files of farm magazines that lined
the walls. “And I continued to study. I was resolved to be up to
date, and I sent for all the experiment station reports. I went almost
entirely on the basis that whatever the old type farmer did was wrong,
and, do you know, in doing that I was not so far wrong myself. It's
almost unthinkable, the stupidity of the old-fashioned farmers. Oh,
I consulted with them, talked things over with them, challenged
their stereotyped ways, demanded demonstration of their dogmatic and
prejudiced beliefs, and quite succeeded in convincing the last of them
that I was a fool and doomed to come to grief.”

“But you didn't! You didn't!”

Mrs. Mortimer smiled gratefully.

“Sometimes, even now, I'm amazed that I didn't. But I came of a
hard-headed stock which had been away from the soil long enough to
gain a new perspective. When a thing satisfied my judgment, I did it
forthwith and downright, no matter how extravagant it seemed. Take the
old orchard. Worthless! Worse than worthless! Old Calkins nearly died
of heart disease when he saw the devastation I had wreaked upon it. And
look at it now. There was an old rattletrap ruin where the bungalow now
stands. I put up with it, but I immediately pulled down the cow barn,
the pigsties, the chicken houses, everything--made a clean sweep. They
shook their heads and groaned when they saw such wanton waste by a widow
struggling to make a living. But worse was to come. They were paralyzed
when I told them the price of the three beautiful O.I.C.'s--pigs, you
know, Chesters--which I bought, sixty dollars for the three, and
only just weaned. Then I hustled the nondescript chickens to market,
replacing them with the White Leghorns. The two scrub cows that came
with the place I sold to the butcher for thirty dollars each, paying
two hundred and fifty for two blue-blooded Jersey heifers... and coined
money on the exchange, while Calkins and the rest went right on with
their scrubs that couldn't give enough milk to pay for their board.”

Billy nodded approval.

“Remember what I told you about horses,” he reiterated to Saxon; and,
assisted by his hostess, he gave a very creditable disquisition on
horseflesh and its management from a business point of view.

When he went out to smoke Mrs. Mortimer led Saxon into talking about
herself and Billy, and betrayed not the slightest shock when she learned
of his prizefighting and scab-slugging proclivities.

“He's a splendid young man, and good,” she assured Saxon. “His face
shows that. And, best of all, he loves you and is proud of you. You
can't imagine how I have enjoyed watching the way he looks at you,
especially when you are talking. He respects your judgment. Why, he
must, for here he is with you on this pilgrimage which is wholly your
idea.” Mrs. Mortimer sighed. “You are very fortunate, dear child, very
fortunate. And you don't yet know what a man's brain is. Wait till he is
quite fired with enthusiasm for your project. You will be astounded by
the way he takes hold. You will have to exert yourself to keep up with
him. In the meantime, you must lead. Remember, he is city bred. It will
be a struggle to wean him from the only life he's known.”

“Oh, but he's disgusted with the city, too--” Saxon began.

“But not as you are. Love is not the whole of man, as it is of woman.
The city hurt you more than it hurt him. It was you who lost the dear
little babe. His interest, his connection, was no more than casual and
incidental compared with the depth and vividness of yours.”

Mrs. Mortimer turned her head to Billy, who was just entering.

“Have you got the hang of what was bothering you?” she asked.

“Pretty close to it,” he answered, taking the indicated big Morris
chair. “It's this--”

“One moment,” Mrs. Mortimer checked him. “That is a beautiful, big,
strong chair, and so are you, at any rate big and strong, and your
little wife is very weary--no, no; sit down, it's your strength she
needs. Yes, I insist. Open your arms.”

And to him she led Saxon, and into his arms placed her. “Now, sir--and
you look delicious, the pair of you--register your objections to my way
of earning a living.”

“It ain't your way,” Billy repudiated quickly. “Your way's all right.
It's great. What I'm trying to get at is that your way don't fit us.
We couldn't make a go of it your way. Why you had pull--well-to-do
acquaintances, people that knew you'd been a librarian an' your husband
a professor. An' you had....” Here he floundered a moment, seeking
definiteness for the idea he still vaguely grasped. “Well, you had a way
we couldn't have. You were educated, an'... an'--I don't know, I guess
you knew society ways an' business ways we couldn't know.”

“But, my dear boy, you could learn what was necessary,” she contended.

Billy shook his head.

“No. You don't quite get me. Let's take it this way. Just suppose it's
me, with jam an' jelly, a-wadin' into that swell restaurant like you did
to talk with the top guy. Why, I'd be outa place the moment I stepped
into his office. Worse'n that, I'd feel outa place. That'd make me have
a chip on my shoulder an' lookin' for trouble, which is a poor way to do
business. Then, too, I'd be thinkin' he was thinkin' I was a whole lot
of a husky to be peddlin' jam. What'd happen, I'd be chesty at the drop
of the hat. I'd be thinkin' he was thinkin' I was standin' on my foot,
an' I'd beat him to it in tellin' him he was standin' on HIS foot. Don't
you see? It's because I was raised that way. It'd be take it or leave it
with me, an' no jam sold.”

“What you say is true,” Mrs. Mortimer took up brightly. “But there is
your wife. Just look at her. She'd make an impression on any business
man. He'd be only too willing to listen to her.”

Billy stiffened, a forbidding expression springing into his eyes.

“What have I done now?” their hostess laughed.

“I ain't got around yet to tradin' on my wife's looks,” he rumbled
gruffly.

“Right you are. The only trouble is that you, both of you, are fifty
years behind the times. You're old American. How you ever got here in
the thick of modern conditions is a miracle. You're Rip Van Winkles. Who
ever heard, in these degenerate times, of a young man and woman of the
city putting their blankets on their backs and starting out in search of
land? Why, it's the old Argonaut spirit. You're as like as peas in a
pod to those who yoked their oxen and held west to the lands beyond
the sunset. I'll wager your fathers and mothers, or grandfathers and
grandmothers, were that very stock.”

Saxon's eyes were glistening, and Billy's were friendly once more. Both
nodded their heads.

“I'm of the old stock myself,” Mrs. Mortimer went on proudly.
“My grandmother was one of the survivors of the Donner Party. My
grandfather, Jason Whitney, came around the Horn and took part in
the raising of the Bear Flag at Sonoma. He was at Monterey when John
Marshall discovered gold in Sutter's mill-race. One of the streets in
San Francisco is named after him.”

“I know it,” Billy put in. “Whitney Street. It's near Russian Hill.
Saxon's mother walked across the Plains.”

“And Billy's grandfather and grandmother were massacred by the Indians,”
 Saxon contributed. “His father was a little baby boy, and lived with the
Indians, until captured by the whites. He didn't even know his name and
was adopted by a Mr. Roberts.”

“Why, you two dear children, we're almost like relatives,” Mrs. Mortimer
beamed. “It's a breath of old times, alas! all forgotten in these
fly-away days. I am especially interested, because I've catalogued and
read everything covering those times. You--” she indicated Billy, “you
are historical, or at least your father is. I remember about him. The
whole thing is in Bancroft's History. It was the Modoc Indians. There
were eighteen wagons. Your father was the only survivor, a mere baby
at the time, with no knowledge of what happened. He was adopted by the
leader of the whites.”

“That's right,” said Billy. “It was the Modocs. His train must have ben
bound for Oregon. It was all wiped out. I wonder if you know anything
about Saxon's mother. She used to write poetry in the early days.”

“Was any of it printed?”

“Yes,” Saxon answered. “In the old San Jose papers.”

“And do you know any of it?”

“Yes, there's one beginning:

“'Sweet as the wind-lute's airy strains Your gentle muse has learned
to sing, And California's boundless plains Prolong the soft notes
echoing.'”

“It sounds familiar,” Mrs. Mortimer said, pondering.

“And there was another I remember that began:

“'I've stolen away from the crowd in the groves, Where the nude statues
stand, and the leaves point and shiver,'--

“And it run on like that. I don't understand it all. It was written to
my father--”

“A love poem!” Mrs. Mortimer broke in. “I remember it. Wait a minute....
Da-da-dah, da-da-dah, da-da-dah, da-da--STANDS--

“'In the spray of a fountain, whose seed-amethysts Tremble lightly
a moment on bosom and hands, Then drip in their basin from bosom and
wrists.'

“I've never forgotten the drip of the seed-amethysts, though I don't
remember your mother's name.”

“It was Daisy--” Saxon began.

“No; Dayelle,” Mrs. Mortimer corrected with quickening recollection.

“Oh, but nobody called her that.”

“But she signed it that way. What is the rest?”

“Daisy Wiley Brown.”

Mrs. Mortimer went to the bookshelves and quickly returned with a large,
soberly-bound volume.

“It's 'The Story of the Files,'” she explained. “Among other things, all
the good fugitive verse was gathered here from the old newspaper files.”
 Her eyes running down the index suddenly stopped. “I was right. Dayelle
Wiley Brown. There it is. Ten of her poems, too: 'The Viking's Quest';
'Days of Gold'; 'Constancy'; 'The Caballero'; 'Graves at Little
Meadow'--”

“We fought off the Indians there,” Saxon interrupted in her excitement.
“And mother, who was only a little girl, went out and got water for the
wounded. And the Indians wouldn't shoot at her. Everybody said it was
a miracle.” She sprang out of Billy's arms, reaching for the book and
crying: “Oh, let me see it! Let me see it! It's all new to me. I don't
know these poems. Can I copy them? I'll learn them by heart. Just to
think, my mother's!”

Mrs. Mortimer's glasses required repolishing; and for half an hour she
and Billy remained silent while Saxon devoured her mother's lines. At
the end, staring at the book which she had closed on her finger, she
could only repeat in wondering awe:

“And I never knew, I never knew.”

But during that half hour Mrs. Mortimer's mind had not been idle. A
little later, she broached her plan. She believed in intensive dairying
as well as intensive farming, and intended, as soon as the lease
expired, to establish a Jersey dairy on the other ten acres. This, like
everything she had done, would be model, and it meant that she would
require more help. Billy and Saxon were just the two. By next summer she
could have them installed in the cottage she intended building. In the
meantime she could arrange, one way and another, to get work for Billy
through the winter. She would guarantee this work, and she knew a
small house they could rent just at the end of the car-line. Under
her supervision Billy could take charge from the very beginning of the
building. In this way they would be earning money, preparing themselves
for independent farming life, and have opportunity to look about them.

But her persuasions were in vain. In the end Saxon succinctly epitomized
their point of view.

“We can't stop at the first place, even if it is as beautiful and kind
as yours and as nice as this valley is. We don't even know what we want.
We've got to go farther, and see all kinds of places and all kinds of
ways, in order to find out. We're not in a hurry to make up our minds.
We want to make, oh, so very sure! And besides....” She hesitated.
“Besides, we don't like altogether flat land. Billy wants some hills in
his. And so do I.”

When they were ready to leave Mrs. Mortimer offered to present Saxon
with “The Story of the Files”; but Saxon shook her head and got some
money from Billy.

“It says it costs two dollars,” she said. “Will you buy me one, and keep
it till we get settled? Then I'll write, and you can send it to me.”

“Oh, you Americans,” Mrs. Mortimer chided, accepting the money. “But you
must promise to write from time to time before you're settled.”

She saw them to the county road.

“You are brave young things,” she said at parting. “I only wish I were
going with you, my pack upon my back. You're perfectly glorious, the
pair of you. If ever I can do anything for you, just let me know. You're
bound to succeed, and I want a hand in it myself. Let me know how that
government land turns out, though I warn you I haven't much faith in its
feasibility. It's sure to be too far away from markets.”

She shook hands with Billy. Saxon she caught into her arms and kissed.

“Be brave,” she said, with low earnestness, in Saxon's ear. “You'll win.
You are starting with the right ideas. And you were right not to accept
my proposition. But remember, it, or better, will always be open to you.
You're young yet, both of you. Don't be in a hurry. Any time you
stop anywhere for a while, let me know, and I'll mail you heaps of
agricultural reports and farm publications. Good-bye. Heaps and heaps
and heaps of luck.”



CHAPTER IV

Billy sat motionless on the edge of the bed in their little room in San
Jose that night, a musing expression in his eyes.

“Well,” he remarked at last, with a long-drawn breath, “all I've got
to say is there's some pretty nice people in this world after all. Take
Mrs. Mortimer. Now she's the real goods--regular old American.”

“A fine, educated lady,” Saxon agreed, “and not a bit ashamed to work at
farming herself. And she made it go, too.”

“On twenty acres--no, ten; and paid for 'em, an' all improvements, an'
supported herself, four hired men, a Swede woman an' daughter, an' her
own nephew. It gets me. Ten acres! Why, my father never talked less'n
one hundred an' sixty acres. Even your brother Tom still talks in
quarter sections.--An' she was only a woman, too. We was lucky in
meetin' her.”

“Wasn't it an adventure!” Saxon cried. “That's what comes of traveling.
You never know what's going to happen next. It jumped right out at us,
just when we were tired and wondering how much farther to San Jose.
We weren't expecting it at all. And she didn't treat us as if we were
tramping. And that house--so clean and beautiful. You could eat off the
floor. I never dreamed of anything so sweet and lovely as the inside of
that house.”

“It smelt good,” Billy supplied.

“That's the very thing. It's what the women's pages call atmosphere.
I didn't know what they meant before. That house has beautiful, sweet
atmosphere--”

“Like all your nice underthings,” said Billy.

“And that's the next step after keeping your body sweet and clean and
beautiful. It's to have your house sweet and clean and beautiful.”

“But it can't be a rented one, Saxon. You've got to own it. Landlords
don't build houses like that. Just the same, one thing stuck out plain:
that house was not expensive. It wasn't the cost. It was the way. The
wood was ordinary wood you can buy in any lumber yard. Why, our house
on Pine street was made out of the same kind of wood. But the way it was
made was different. I can't explain, but you can see what I'm drivin'
at.”

Saxon, revisioning the little bungalow they had just left, repeated
absently: “That's it--the way.”

The next morning they were early afoot, seeking through the suburbs of
San Jose the road to San Juan and Monterey. Saxon's limp had increased.
Beginning with a burst blister, her heel was skinning rapidly. Billy
remembered his father's talks about care of the feet, and stopped at a
butcher shop to buy five cents' worth of mutton tallow.

“That's the stuff,” he told Saxon. “Clean foot-gear and the feet well
greased. We'll put some on as soon as we're clear of town. An' we might
as well go easy for a couple of days. Now, if I could get a little work
so as you could rest up several days it'd be just the thing. I 'll keep
my eye peeled.”

Almost on the outskirts of town he left Saxon on the county road and
went up a long driveway to what appeared a large farm. He came back
beaming.

“It's all hunkydory,” he called as he approached. “We'll just go down
to that clump of trees by the creek an' pitch camp. I start work in the
mornin', two dollars a day an' board myself. It'd been a dollar an' a
half if he furnished the board. I told 'm I liked the other way best,
an' that I had my camp with me. The weather's fine, an' we can make out
a few days till your foot's in shape. Come on. We'll pitch a regular,
decent camp.”

“How did you get the job,” Saxon asked, as they cast about, determining
their camp-site.

“Wait till we get fixed an' I'll tell you all about it. It was a dream,
a cinch.”

Not until the bed was spread, the fire built, and a pot of beans boiling
did Billy throw down the last armful of wood and begin.

“In the first place, Benson's no old-fashioned geezer. You wouldn't
think he was a farmer to look at 'm. He's up to date, sharp as tacks,
talks an' acts like a business man. I could see that, just by lookin' at
his place, before I seen HIM. He took about fifteen seconds to size me
up.

“'Can you plow?' says he.

“'Sure thing,' I told 'm.

“'Know horses?'

“'I was hatched in a box-stall,' says I.

“An' just then--you remember that four-horse load of machinery that come
in after me?--just then it drove up.

“'How about four horses?' he asks, casual-like.

“'Right to home. I can drive 'm to a plow, a sewin' machine, or a
merry-go-round.'

“'Jump up an' take them lines, then,' he says, quick an' sharp, not
wastin' seconds. 'See that shed. Go 'round the barn to the right an'
back in for unloadin'.'

“An' right here I wanta tell you it was some nifty drivin' he was
askin'. I could see by the tracks the wagons'd all ben goin' around the
barn to the left. What he was askin' was too close work for comfort--a
double turn, like an S, between a corner of a paddock an' around the
corner of the barn to the last swing. An', to eat into the little room
there was, there was piles of manure just thrown outa the barn an' not
hauled away yet. But I wasn't lettin' on nothin'. The driver gave me the
lines, an' I could see he was grinnin', sure I'd make a mess of it. I
bet he couldn't a-done it himself. I never let on, an' away we went,
me not even knowin' the horses--but, say, if you'd seen me throw them
leaders clean to the top of the manure till the nigh horse was scrapin'
the side of the barn to make it, an' the off hind hub was cuttin' the
corner post of the paddock to miss by six inches. It was the only way.
An' them horses was sure beauts. The leaders slacked back an' darn near
sat down on their singletrees when I threw the back into the wheelers
an' slammed on the brake an' stopped on the very precise spot.

“'You'll do,' Benson says. 'That was good work.'

“'Aw, shucks,' I says, indifferent as hell. 'Gimme something real hard.'

“He smiles an' understands.

“'You done that well,' he says. 'An' I'm particular about who handles
my horses. The road ain't no place for you. You must be a good man gone
wrong. Just the same you can plow with my horses, startin' in to-morrow
mornin'.'

“Which shows how wise he wasn't. I hadn't showed I could plow.”

When Saxon had served the beans, and Billy the coffee, she stood still
a moment and surveyed the spread meal on the blankets--the canister of
sugar, the condensed milk tin, the sliced corned beef, the lettuce salad
and sliced tomatoes, the slices of fresh French bread, and the steaming
plates of beans and mugs of coffee.

“What a difference from last night!” Saxon exclaimed, clapping her
hands. “It's like an adventure out of a book. Oh, that boy I went
fishing with! Think of that beautiful table and that beautiful house
last night, and then look at this. Why, we could have lived a thousand
years on end in Oakland and never met a woman like Mrs. Mortimer nor
dreamed a house like hers existed. And, Billy, just to think, we've only
just started.”

Billy worked for three days, and while insisting that he was doing very
well, he freely admitted that there was more in plowing than he had
thought. Saxon experienced quiet satisfaction when she learned he was
enjoying it.

“I never thought I'd like plowin'--much,” he observed. “But it's fine.
It's good for the leg-muscles, too. They don't get exercise enough in
teamin'. If ever I trained for another fight, you bet I'd take a whack
at plowin'. An', you know, the ground has a regular good smell to it,
a-turnin' over an' turnin' over. Gosh, it's good enough to eat, that
smell. An' it just goes on, turnin' up an' over, fresh an' thick an'
good, all day long. An' the horses are Joe-dandies. They know their
business as well as a man. That's one thing, Benson ain't got a scrub
horse on the place.”

The last day Billy worked, the sky clouded over, the air grew damp, a
strong wind began to blow from the southeast, and all the signs were
present of the first winter rain. Billy came back in the evening with a
small roll of old canvas he had borrowed, which he proceeded to arrange
over their bed on a framework so as to shed rain. Several times he
complained about the little finger of his left hand. It had been
bothering him all day he told Saxon, for several days slightly, in fact,
and it was as tender as a boil--most likely a splinter, but he had been
unable to locate it.

He went ahead with storm preparations, elevating the bed on old boards
which he lugged from a disused barn falling to decay on the opposite
bank of the creek. Upon the boards he heaped dry leaves for a mattress.
He concluded by reinforcing the canvas with additional guys of odd
pieces of rope and bailing-wire.

When the first splashes of rain arrived Saxon was delighted. Billy
betrayed little interest. His finger was hurting too much, he said.
Neither he nor Saxon could make anything of it, and both scoffed at the
idea of a felon.

“It might be a run-around,” Saxon hazarded.

“What's that?”

“I don't know. I remember Mrs. Cady had one once, but I was too small.
It was the little finger, too. She poulticed it, I think. And I remember
she dressed it with some kind of salve. It got awful bad, and finished
by her losing the nail. After that it got well quick, and a new nail
grew out. Suppose I make a hot bread poultice for yours.”

Billy declined, being of the opinion that it would be better in the
morning. Saxon was troubled, and as she dozed off she knew that he was
lying restlessly wide awake. A few minutes afterward, roused by a heavy
blast of wind and rain on the canvas, she heard Billy softly groaning.
She raised herself on her elbow and with her free hand, in the way
she knew, manipulating his forehead and the surfaces around his eyes,
soothed him off to sleep.

Again she slept. And again she was aroused, this time not by the storm,
but by Billy. She could not see, but by feeling she ascertained his
strange position. He was outside the blankets and on his knees, his
forehead resting on the boards, his shoulders writhing with suppressed
anguish.

“She's pulsin' to beat the band,” he said, when she spoke. “It's worsen
a thousand toothaches. But it ain't nothin'... if only the canvas don't
blow down. Think what our folks had to stand,” he gritted out between
groans. “Why, my father was out in the mountains, an' the man with 'm
got mauled by a grizzly--clean clawed to the bones all over. An' they
was outa grub an' had to travel. Two times outa three, when my father
put 'm on the horse, he'd faint away. Had to be tied on. An' that lasted
five weeks, an' HE pulled through. Then there was Jack Quigley. He
blowed off his whole right hand with the burstin' of his shotgun, an'
the huntin' dog pup he had with 'm ate up three of the fingers. An' he
was all alone in the marsh, an'--”

But Saxon heard no more of the adventures of Jack Quigley. A terrific
blast of wind parted several of the guys, collapsed the framework,
and for a moment buried them under the canvas. The next moment canvas,
framework, and trailing guys were whisked away into the darkness, and
Saxon and Billy were deluged with rain.

“Only one thing to do,” he yelled in her ear. “--Gather up the things
an' get into that old barn.”

They accomplished this in the drenching darkness, making two trips
across the stepping stones of the shallow creek and soaking themselves
to the knees. The old barn leaked like a sieve, but they managed to find
a dry space on which to spread their anything but dry bedding. Billy's
pain was heart-rending to Saxon. An hour was required to subdue him to a
doze, and only by continuously stroking his forehead could she keep him
asleep. Shivering and miserable, she accepted a night of wakefulness
gladly with the knowledge that she kept him from knowing the worst of
his pain.

At the time when she had decided it must be past midnight, there was an
interruption. From the open doorway came a flash of electric light, like
a tiny searchlight, which quested about the barn and came to rest on her
and Billy. From the source of light a harsh voice said:

“Ah! ha! I've got you! Come out of that!”

Billy sat up, his eyes dazzled by the light. The voice behind the light
was approaching and reiterating its demand that they come out of that.

“What's up?” Billy asked.

“Me,” was the answer; “an' wide awake, you bet.”

The voice was now beside them, scarcely a yard away, yet they could
see nothing on account of the light, which was intermittent, frequently
going out for an instant as the operator's thumb tired on the switch.

“Come on, get a move on,” the voice went on. “Roll up your blankets an'
trot along. I want you.”

“Who in hell are you?” Billy demanded.

“I'm the constable. Come on.”

“Well, what do you want?”

“You, of course, the pair of you.”

“What for?”

“Vagrancy. Now hustle. I ain't goin' to loaf here all night.”

“Aw, chase yourself,” Billy advised. “I ain't a vag. I'm a workingman.”

“Maybe you are an' maybe you ain't,” said the constable; “but you can
tell all that to Judge Neusbaumer in the mornin'.”

“Why you... you stinkin', dirty cur, you think you're goin' to pull me,”
 Billy began. “Turn the light on yourself. I want to see what kind of an
ugly mug you got. Pull me, eh? Pull me? For two cents I'd get up there
an' beat you to a jelly, you--”

“No, no, Billy,” Saxon pleaded. “Don't make trouble. It would mean
jail.”

“That's right,” the constable approved, “listen to your woman.”

“She's my wife, an' see you speak of her as such,” Billy warned. “Now
get out, if you know what's good for yourself.”

“I've seen your kind before,” the constable retorted. “An' I've got my
little persuader with me. Take a squint.”

The shaft of light shifted, and out of the darkness, illuminated with
ghastly brilliance, they saw thrust a hand holding a revolver. This hand
seemed a thing apart, self-existent, with no corporeal attachment, and
it appeared and disappeared like an apparition as the thumb-pressure
wavered on the switch. One moment they were staring at the hand and
revolver, the next moment at impenetrable darkness, and the next moment
again at the hand and revolver.

“Now, I guess you'll come,” the constable gloated.

“You got another guess comin',” Billy began.

But at that moment the light went out. They heard a quick movement on
the officer's part and the thud of the light-stick on the ground. Both
Billy and the constable fumbled for it, but Billy found it and flashed
it on the other. They saw a gray-bearded man clad in streaming oilskins.
He was an old man, and reminded Saxon of the sort she had been used to
see in Grand Army processions on Decoration Day.

“Give me that stick,” he bullied.

Billy sneered a refusal.

“Then I'll put a hole through you, by criminy.”

He leveled the revolver directly at Billy, whose thumb on the switch did
not waver, and they could see the gleaming bullet-tips in the chambers
of the cylinder.

“Why, you whiskery old skunk, you ain't got the grit to shoot sour
apples,” was Billy's answer. “I know your kind--brave as lions when it
comes to pullin' miserable, broken-spirited bindle stiffs, but as
leery as a yellow dog when you face a man. Pull that trigger! Why, you
pusillanimous piece of dirt, you'd run with your tail between your legs
if I said boo!”

Suiting action to the word, Billy let out an explosive “BOO!” and Saxon
giggled involuntarily at the startle it caused in the constable.

“I'll give you a last chance,” the latter grated through his teeth.
“Turn over that light-stick an' come along peaceable, or I'll lay you
out.”

Saxon was frightened for Billy's sake, and yet only half frightened. She
had a faith that the man dared not fire, and she felt the old familiar
thrills of admiration for Billy's courage. She could not see his face,
but she knew in all certitude that it was bleak and passionless in the
terrifying way she had seen it when he fought the three Irishmen.

“You ain't the first man I killed,” the constable threatened. “I'm an
old soldier, an' I ain't squeamish over blood--”

“And you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Saxon broke in, “trying to
shame and disgrace peaceable people who've done no wrong.”

“You've done wrong sleepin' here,” was his vindication. “This ain't your
property. It's agin the law. An' folks that go agin the law go to jail,
as the two of you'll go. I've sent many a tramp up for thirty days for
sleepin' in this very shack. Why, it's a regular trap for 'em. I got a
good glimpse of your faces an' could see you was tough characters.” He
turned on Billy. “I've fooled enough with you. Are you goin' to give in
an' come peaceable?”

“I'm goin' to tell you a couple of things, old hoss,” Billy answered.
“Number one: you ain't goin' to pull us. Number two: we're goin' to
sleep the night out here.”

“Gimme that light-stick,” the constable demanded peremptorily.

“G'wan, Whiskers. You're standin' on your foot. Beat it. Pull your
freight. As for your torch you'll find it outside in the mud.”

Billy shifted the light until it illuminated the doorway, and then threw
the stick as he would pitch a baseball. They were now in total darkness,
and they could hear the intruder gritting his teeth in rage.

“Now start your shootin' an' see what'll happen to you,” Billy advised
menacingly.

Saxon felt for Billy's hand and squeezed it proudly. The constable
grumbled some threat.

“What's that?” Billy demanded sharply. “Ain't you gone yet? Now listen
to me, Whiskers. I've put up with all your shenanigan I'm goin' to. Now
get out or I'll throw you out. An' if you come monkeyin' around here
again you'll get yours. Now get!”

So great was the roar of the storm that they could hear nothing. Billy
rolled a cigarette. When he lighted it, they saw the barn was empty.
Billy chuckled.

“Say, I was so mad I clean forgot my run-around. It's only just
beginnin' to tune up again.”

Saxon made him lie down and receive her soothing ministrations.

“There is no use moving till morning,” she said. “Then, just as soon
as it's light, we'll catch a car into San Jose, rent a room, get a hot
breakfast, and go to a drug store for the proper stuff for poulticing or
whatever treatment's needed.”

“But Benson,” Billy demurred.

“I'll telephone him from town. It will only cost five cents. I saw he
had a wire. And you couldn't plow on account of the rain, even if your
finger was well. Besides, we'll both be mending together. My heel will
be all right by the time it clears up and we can start traveling.”



CHAPTER V

Early on Monday morning, three days later, Saxon and Billy took an
electric car to the end of the line, and started a second time for San
Juan. Puddles were standing in the road, but the sun shone from a blue
sky, and everywhere, on the ground, was a faint hint of budding green.
At Benson's Saxon waited while Billy went in to get his six dollars for
the three days' plowing.

“Kicked like a steer because I was quittin',” he told her when he came
back. “He wouldn't listen at first. Said he'd put me to drivin' in a
few days, an' that there wasn't enough good four-horse men to let one go
easily.”

“And what did you say?”

“Oh, I just told 'm I had to be movin' along. An' when he tried to argue
I told 'm my wife was with me, an' she was blamed anxious to get along.”

“But so are you, Billy.”

“Sure, Pete; but just the same I wasn't as keen as you. Doggone it, I
was gettin' to like that plowin'. I'll never be scairt to ask for a job
at it again. I've got to where I savvy the burro, an' you bet I can plow
against most of 'm right now.”

An hour afterward, with a good three miles to their credit, they edged
to the side of the road at the sound of an automobile behind them. But
the machine did not pass. Benson was alone in it, and he came to a stop
alongside.

“Where are you bound?” he inquired of Billy, with a quick, measuring
glance at Saxon.

“Monterey--if you're goin' that far,” Billy answered with a chuckle.

“I can give you a lift as far as Watsonville. It would take you several
days on shank's mare with those loads. Climb in.” He addressed Saxon
directly. “Do you want to ride in front?”

Saxon glanced to Billy.

“Go on,” he approved. “It's fine in front.--This is my wife, Mr.
Benson--Mrs. Roberts.”

“Oh, ho, so you're the one that took your husband away from me,” Benson
accused good humoredly, as he tucked the robe around her.

Saxon shouldered the responsibility and became absorbed in watching him
start the car.

“I'd be a mighty poor farmer if I owned no more land than you'd plowed
before you came to me,” Benson, with a twinkling eye, jerked over his
shoulder to Billy.

“I'd never had my hands on a plow but once before,” Billy confessed.
“But a fellow has to learn some time.”

“At two dollars a day?”

“If he can get some alfalfa artist to put up for it,” Billy met him
complacently.

Benson laughed heartily.

“You're a quick learner,” he complimented. “I could see that you and
plows weren't on speaking acquaintance. But you took hold right. There
isn't one man in ten I could hire off the county road that could do as
well as you were doing on the third day. But your big asset is that you
know horses. It was half a joke when I told you to take the lines that
morning. You're a trained horseman and a born horseman as well.”

“He's very gentle with horses,” Saxon said.

“But there's more than that to it,” Benson took her up. “Your husband's
got the WAY with him. It's hard to explain. But that's what it is--the
WAY. It's an instinct almost. Kindness is necessary. But GRIP is more
so. Your husband grips his horses. Take the test I gave him with the
four-horse load. It was too complicated and severe. Kindness couldn't
have done it. It took grip. I could see it the moment he started. There
wasn't any doubt in his mind. There wasn't any doubt in the horses. They
got the feel of him. They just knew the thing was going to be done and
that it was up to them to do it. They didn't have any fear, but just
the same they knew the boss was in the seat. When he took hold of those
lines, he took hold of the horses. He gripped them, don't you see. He
picked them up and put them where he wanted them, swung them up and down
and right and left, made them pull, and slack, and back--and they knew
everything was going to come out right. Oh, horses may be stupid, but
they're not altogether fools. They know when the proper horseman has
hold of them, though how they know it so quickly is beyond me.”

Benson paused, half vexed at his volubility, and gazed keenly at
Saxon to see if she had followed him. What he saw in her face and eyes
satisfied him, and he added, with a short laugh:

“Horseflesh is a hobby of mine. Don't think otherwise because I am
running a stink engine. I'd rather be streaking along here behind a pair
of fast-steppers. But I'd lose time on them, and, worse than that, I'd
be too anxious about them all the time. As for this thing, why, it has
no nerves, no delicate joints nor tendons; it's a case of let her rip.”

The miles flew past and Saxon was soon deep in talk with her host. Here
again, she discerned immediately, was a type of the new farmer. The
knowledge she had picked up enabled her to talk to advantage, and when
Benson talked she was amazed that she could understand so much. In
response to his direct querying, she told him her and Billy's plans,
sketching the Oakland life vaguely, and dwelling on their future
intentions.

Almost as in a dream, when they passed the nurseries at Morgan Hill, she
learned they had come twenty miles, and realized that it was a longer
stretch than they had planned to walk that day. And still the machine
hummed on, eating up the distance as ever it flashed into view.

“I wondered what so good a man as your husband was doing on the road,”
 Benson told her.

“Yes,” she smiled. “He said you said he must be a good man gone wrong.”

“But you see, I didn't know about YOU. Now I understand. Though I must
say it's extraordinary in these days for a young couple like you to pack
your blankets in search of land. And, before I forget it, I want to tell
you one thing.” He turned to Billy. “I am just telling your wife that
there's an all-the-year job waiting for you on my ranch. And there's
a tight little cottage of three rooms the two of you can housekeep in.
Don't forget.”

Among other things Saxon discovered that Benson had gone through the
College of Agriculture at the University of California--a branch of
learning she had not known existed. He gave her small hope in her search
for government land.

“The only government land left,” he informed her, “is what is not good
enough to take up for one reason or another. If it's good land down
there where you're going, then the market is inaccessible. I know no
railroads tap in there.”

“Wait till we strike Pajaro Valley,” he said, when they had passed
Gilroy and were booming on toward Sargent's. “I'll show you what can be
done with the soil--and not by cow-college graduates but by uneducated
foreigners that the high and mighty American has always sneered at. I'll
show you. It's one of the most wonderful demonstrations in the state.”

At Sargent's he left them in the machine a few minutes while he
transacted business.

“Whew! It beats hikin',” Billy said. “The day's young yet and when he
drops us we'll be fresh for a few miles on our own. Just the same,
when we get settled an' well off, I guess I'll stick by horses. They'll
always be good enough for me.”

“A machine's only good to get somewhere in a hurry,” Saxon agreed. “Of
course, if we got very, very rich--”

“Say, Saxon,” Billy broke in, suddenly struck with an idea. “I've
learned one thing. I ain't afraid any more of not gettin' work in the
country. I was at first, but I didn't tell you. Just the same I was dead
leery when we pulled out on the San Leandro pike. An' here, already,
is two places open--Mrs. Mortimer's an' Benson's; an' steady jobs, too.
Yep, a man can get work in the country.”

“Ah,” Saxon amended, with a proud little smile, “you haven't said it
right. Any GOOD man can get work in the country. The big farmers don't
hire men out of charity.”

“Sure; they ain't in it for their health,” he grinned.

“And they jump at you. That's because you are a good man. They can see
it with half an eye. Why, Billy, take all the working tramps we've met
on the road already. There wasn't one to compare with you. I looked them
over. They're all weak--weak in their bodies, weak in their heads, weak
both ways.”

“Yep, they are a pretty measly bunch,” Billy admitted modestly.

“It's the wrong time of the year to see Pajaro Valley,” Benson said,
when he again sat beside Saxon and Sargent's was a thing of the past.
“Just the same, it's worth seeing any time. Think of it--twelve thousand
acres of apples! Do you know what they call Pajaro Valley now? New
Dalmatia. We're being squeezed out. We Yankees thought we were smart.
Well, the Dalmatians came along and showed they were smarter. They were
miserable immigrants--poorer than Job's turkey. First, they worked
at day's labor in the fruit harvest. Next they began, in a small way,
buying the apples on the trees. The more money they made the bigger
became their deals. Pretty soon they were renting the orchards on long
leases. And now, they are beginning to buy the land. It won't be long
before they own the whole valley, and the last American will be gone.

“Oh, our smart Yankees! Why, those first ragged Slavs in their first
little deals with us only made something like two and three thousand
per cent. profits. And now they're satisfied to make a hundred per cent.
It's a calamity if their profits sink to twenty-five or fifty per cent.”

“It's like San Leandro,” Saxon said. “The original owners of the land
are about all gone already. It's intensive cultivation.” She liked that
phrase. “It isn't a case of having a lot of acres, but of how much they
can get out of one acre.”

“Yes, and more than that,” Benson answered, nodding his head
emphatically. “Lots of them, like Luke Scurich, are in it on a large
scale. Several of them are worth a quarter of a million already. I know
ten of them who will average one hundred and fifty thousand each. They
have a WAY with apples. It's almost a gift. They KNOW trees in much
the same way your husband knows horses. Each tree is just as much an
individual to them as a horse is to me. They know each tree, its whole
history, everything that ever happened to it, its every idiosyncrasy.
They have their fingers on its pulse. They can tell if it's feeling as
well to-day as it felt yesterday. And if it isn't, they know why and
proceed to remedy matters for it. They can look at a tree in bloom and
tell how many boxes of apples it will pack, and not only that--they'll
know what the quality and grades of those apples are going to be. Why,
they know each individual apple, and they pick it tenderly, with love,
never hurting it, and pack it and ship it tenderly and with love, and
when it arrives at market, it isn't bruised nor rotten, and it fetches
top price.

“Yes, it's more than intensive. These Adriatic Slavs are long-headed in
business. Not only can they grow apples, but they can sell apples. No
market? What does it matter? Make a market. That's their way, while our
kind let the crops rot knee-deep under the trees. Look at Peter Mengol.
Every year he goes to England, and he takes a hundred carloads of yellow
Newton pippins with him. Why, those Dalmatians are showing Pajaro apples
on the South African market right now, and coining money out of it hand
over fist.”

“What do they do with all the money?” Saxon queried.

“Buy the Americans of Pajaro Valley out, of course, as they are already
doing.”

“And then?” she questioned.

Benson looked at her quickly.

“Then they'll start buying the Americans out of some other valley. And
the Americans will spend the money and by the second generation start
rotting in the cities, as you and your husband would have rotted if you
hadn't got out.”

Saxon could not repress a shudder.--As Mary had rotted, she thought; as
Bert and all the rest had rotted; as Tom and all the rest were rotting.

“Oh, it's a great country,” Benson was continuing. “But we're not a
great people. Kipling is right. We're crowded out and sitting on the
stoop. And the worst of it is there's no reason we shouldn't know
better. We're teaching it in all our agricultural colleges, experiment
stations, and demonstration trains. But the people won't take hold, and
the immigrant, who has learned in a hard school, beats them out. Why,
after I graduated, and before my father died--he was of the old school
and laughed at what he called my theories--I traveled for a couple of
years. I wanted to see how the old countries farmed. Oh, I saw.

“We'll soon enter the valley. You bet I saw. First thing, in Japan, the
terraced hillsides. Take a hill so steep you couldn't drive a horse up
it. No bother to them. They terraced it--a stone wall, and good masonry,
six feet high, a level terrace six feet wide; up and up, walls and
terraces, the same thing all the way, straight into the air, walls upon
walls, terraces upon terraces, until I've seen ten-foot walls built to
make three-foot terraces, and twenty-foot walls for four or five feet
of soil they could grow things on. And that soil, packed up the
mountainsides in baskets on their backs!

“Same thing everywhere I went, in Greece, in Ireland, in Dalmatia--I
went there, too. They went around and gathered every bit of soil they
could find, gleaned it and even stole it by the shovelful or handful,
and carried it up the mountains on their backs and built farms--BUILT
them, MADE them, on the naked rock. Why, in France, I've seen hill
peasants mining their stream-beds for soil as our fathers mined the
streams of California for gold. Only our gold's gone, and the peasants'
soil remains, turning over and over, doing something, growing something,
all the time. Now, I guess I'll hush.”

“My God!” Billy muttered in awe-stricken tones. “Our folks never done
that. No wonder they lost out.”

“There's the valley now,” Benson said. “Look at those trees! Look at
those hillsides! That's New Dalmatia. Look at it! An apple paradise!
Look at that soil! Look at the way it's worked!”

It was not a large valley that Saxon saw. But everywhere, across the
flat-lands and up the low rolling hills, the industry of the Dalmatians
was evident. As she looked she listened to Benson.

“Do you know what the old settlers did with this beautiful soil? Planted
the flats in grain and pastured cattle on the hills. And now twelve
thousand acres of it are in apples. It's a regular show place for the
Eastern guests at Del Monte, who run out here in their machines to see
the trees in bloom or fruit. Take Matteo Lettunich--he's one of the
originals. Entered through Castle Garden and became a dish-washer.
When he laid eyes on this valley he knew it was his Klondike. To-day he
leases seven hundred acres and owns a hundred and thirty of his own--the
finest orchard in the valley, and he packs from forty to fifty thousand
boxes of export apples from it every year. And he won't let a soul but a
Dalmatian pick a single apple of all those apples. One day, in a banter,
I asked him what he'd sell his hundred and thirty acres for. He answered
seriously. He told me what it had netted him, year by year, and struck
an average. He told me to calculate the principal from that at six per
cent. I did. It came to over three thousand dollars an acre.”

“What are all the Chinks doin' in the Valley?” Billy asked. “Growin'
apples, too?”

Benson shook his head.

“But that's another point where we Americans lose out. There isn't
anything wasted in this valley, not a core nor a paring; and it isn't
the Americans who do the saving. There are fifty-seven apple-evaporating
furnaces, to say nothing of the apple canneries and cider and vinegar
factories. And Mr. John Chinaman owns them. They ship fifteen thousand
barrels of cider and vinegar each year.”

“It was our folks that made this country,” Billy reflected. “Fought for
it, opened it up, did everything--”

“But develop it,” Benson caught him up. “We did our best to destroy it,
as we destroyed the soil of New England.” He waved his hand, indicating
some place beyond the hills. “Salinas lies over that way. If you went
through there you'd think you were in Japan. And more than one fat
little fruit valley in California has been taken over by the Japanese.
Their method is somewhat different from the Dalmatians'. First they
drift in fruit picking at day's wages. They give better satisfaction
than the American fruit-pickers, too, and the Yankee grower is glad to
get them. Next, as they get stronger, they form in Japanese unions
and proceed to run the American labor out. Still the fruit-growers are
satisfied. The next step is when the Japs won't pick. The American labor
is gone. The fruit-grower is helpless. The crop perishes. Then in step
the Jap labor bosses. They're the masters already. They contract for
the crop. The fruit-growers are at their mercy, you see. Pretty soon
the Japs are running the valley. The fruit-growers have become absentee
landlords and are busy learning higher standards of living in the cities
or making trips to Europe. Remains only one more step. The Japs buy
them out. They've got to sell, for the Japs control the labor market and
could bankrupt them at will.”

“But if this goes on, what is left for us?” asked Saxon.

“What is happening. Those of us who haven't anything rot in the cities.
Those of us who have land, sell it and go to the cities. Some become
larger capitalists; some go into the professions; the rest spend the
money and start rotting when it's gone, and if it lasts their life-time
their children do the rotting for them.”

Their long ride was soon over, and at parting Benson reminded Billy of
the steady job that awaited him any time he gave the word.

“I guess we'll take a peep at that government land first,” Billy
answered. “Don't know what we'll settle down to, but there's one thing
sure we won't tackle.”

“What's that?”

“Start in apple-growin' at three thousan' dollars an acre.”

Billy and Saxon, their packs upon the backs, trudged along a hundred
yards. He was the first to break silence.

“An' I tell you another thing, Saxon. We'll never be goin' around
smellin' out an' swipin' bits of soil an' carryin' it up a hill in a
basket. The United States is big yet. I don't care what Benson or any of
'em says, the United States ain't played out. There's millions of acres
untouched an' waitin', an' it's up to us to find 'em.”

“And I'll tell you one thing,” Saxon said. “We're getting an education.
Tom was raised on a ranch, yet he doesn't know right now as much about
farming conditions as we do. And I'll tell you another thing. The more
I think of it, the more it seems we are going to be disappointed about
that government land.”

“Ain't no use believin' what everybody tells you,” he protested.

“Oh, it isn't that. It's what I think. I leave it to you. If this land
around here is worth three thousand an acre, why is it that government
land, if it's any good, is waiting there, only a short way off, to be
taken for the asking.”

Billy pondered this for a quarter of a mile, but could come to no
conclusion. At last he cleared his throat and remarked:

“Well, we can wait till we see it first, can't we?”

“All right,” Saxon agreed. “We'll wait till we see it.”



CHAPTER VI

They had taken the direct county road across the hills from Monterey,
instead of the Seventeen Mile Drive around by the coast, so that Carmel
Bay came upon them without any fore-glimmerings of its beauty. Dropping
down through the pungent pines, they passed woods-embowered cottages,
quaint and rustic, of artists and writers, and went on across wind-blown
rolling sandhills held to place by sturdy lupine and nodding with pale
California poppies. Saxon screamed in sudden wonder of delight, then
caught her breath and gazed at the amazing peacock-blue of a breaker,
shot through with golden sunlight, overfalling in a mile-long sweep and
thundering into white ruin of foam on a crescent beach of sand scarcely
less white.

How long they stood and watched the stately procession of breakers,
rising from out the deep and wind-capped sea to froth and thunder at
their feet, Saxon did not know. She was recalled to herself when Billy,
laughing, tried to remove the telescope basket from her shoulders.

“You kind of look as though you was goin' to stop a while,” he said. “So
we might as well get comfortable.”

“I never dreamed it, I never dreamed it,” she repeated, with
passionately clasped hands. “I... I thought the surf at the Cliff House
was wonderful, but it gave no idea of this.--Oh! Look! LOOK! Did you
ever see such an unspeakable color? And the sunlight flashing right
through it! Oh! Oh! Oh!”

At last she was able to take her eyes from the surf and gaze at the
sea-horizon of deepest peacock-blue and piled with cloud-masses, at the
curve of the beach south to the jagged point of rocks, and at the rugged
blue mountains seen across soft low hills, landward, up Carmel Valley.

“Might as well sit down an' take it easy,” Billy indulged her. “This is
too good to want to run away from all at once.”

Saxon assented, but began immediately to unlace her shoes.

“You ain't a-goin' to?” Billy asked in surprised delight, then began
unlacing his own.

But before they were ready to run barefooted on the perilous fringe
of cream-wet sand where land and ocean met, a new and wonderful thing
attracted their attention. Down from the dark pines and across the
sandhills ran a man, naked save for narrow trunks. He was smooth and
rosy-skinned, cherubic-faced, with a thatch of curly yellow hair, but
his body was hugely thewed as a Hercules'.

“Gee!--must be Sandow,” Billy muttered low to Saxon.

But she was thinking of the engraving in her mother's scrapbook and of
the Vikings on the wet sands of England.

The runner passed them a dozen feet away, crossed the wet sand, never
pausing, till the froth wash was to his knees while above him, ten feet
at least, upreared a wall of overtopping water. Huge and powerful as
his body had seemed, it was now white and fragile in the face of that
imminent, great-handed buffet of the sea. Saxon gasped with anxiety, and
she stole a look at Billy to note that he was tense with watching.

But the stranger sprang to meet the blow, and, just when it seemed he
must be crushed, he dived into the face of the breaker and disappeared.
The mighty mass of water fell in thunder on the beach, but beyond
appeared a yellow head, one arm out-reaching, and a portion of a
shoulder. Only a few strokes was he able to make ere he was compelled
to dive through another breaker. This was the battle--to win seaward
against the sweep of the shoreward hastening sea. Each time he dived
and was lost to view Saxon caught her breath and clenched her hands.
Sometimes, after the passage of a breaker, they could not find him, and
when they did he would be scores of feet away, flung there like a chip
by a smoke-bearded breaker. Often it seemed he must fail and be thrown
upon the beach, but at the end of half an hour he was beyond the outer
edge of the surf and swimming strong, no longer diving, but topping the
waves. Soon he was so far away that only at intervals could they find
the speck of him. That, too, vanished, and Saxon and Billy looked at
each other, she with amazement at the swimmer's valor, Billy with blue
eyes flashing.

“Some swimmer, that boy, some swimmer,” he praised. “Nothing
chicken-hearted about him.--Say, I only know tank-swimmin', an'
bay-swimmin', but now I'm goin' to learn ocean-swimmin'. If I could do
that I'd be so proud you couldn't come within forty feet of me. Why,
Saxon, honest to God, I'd sooner do what he done than own a thousan'
farms. Oh, I can swim, too, I'm tellin' you, like a fish--I swum,
one Sunday, from the Narrow Gauge Pier to Sessions' Basin, an' that's
miles--but I never seen anything like that guy in the swimmin' line.
An' I'm not goin' to leave this beach until he comes back.--All by his
lonely out there in a mountain sea, think of it! He's got his nerve all
right, all right.”

Saxon and Billy ran barefooted up and down the beach, pursuing each
other with brandished snakes of seaweed and playing like children for
an hour. It was not until they were putting on their shoes that they
sighted the yellow head bearing shoreward. Billy was at the edge of the
surf to meet him, emerging, not white-skinned as he had entered, but red
from the pounding he had received at the hands of the sea.

“You're a wonder, and I just got to hand it to you,” Billy greeted him
in outspoken admiration.

“It was a big surf to-day,” the young man replied, with a nod of
acknowledgment.

“It don't happen that you are a fighter I never heard of?” Billy
queried, striving to get some inkling of the identity of the physical
prodigy.

The other laughed and shook his head, and Billy could not guess that he
was an ex-captain of a 'Varsity Eleven, and incidentally the father of
a family and the author of many books. He looked Billy over with an eye
trained in measuring freshmen aspirants for the gridiron.

“You're some body of a man,” he appreciated. “You'd strip with the best
of them. Am I right in guessing that you know your way about in the
ring?”

Billy nodded. “My name's Roberts.”

The swimmer scowled with a futile effort at recollection.

“Bill--Bill Roberts,” Billy supplemented.

“Oh, ho!--Not BIG Bill Roberts? Why, I saw you fight, before the
earthquake, in the Mechanic's Pavilion. It was a preliminary to Eddie
Hanlon and some other fellow. You're a two-handed fighter, I remember
that, with an awful wallop, but slow. Yes, I remember, you were slow
that night, but you got your man.” He put out a wet hand. “My name's
Hazard--Jim Hazard.”

“An' if you're the football coach that was, a couple of years ago, I've
read about you in the papers. Am I right?”

They shook hands heartily, and Saxon was introduced. She felt very small
beside the two young giants, and very proud, withal, that she belonged
to the race that gave them birth. She could only listen to them talk.

“I'd like to put on the gloves with you every day for half an hour,”
 Hazard said. “You could teach me a lot. Are you going to stay around
here?”

“No. We're goin' on down the coast, lookin' for land. Just the same, I
could teach you a few, and there's one thing you could teach me--surf
swimmin'.”

“I'll swap lessons with you any time,” Hazard offered. He turned to
Saxon. “Why don't you stop in Carmel for a while? It isn't so bad.”

“It's beautiful,” she acknowledged, with a grateful smile, “but--” She
turned and pointed to their packs on the edge of the lupine. “We're on
the tramp, and lookin' for government land.”

“If you're looking down past the Sur for it, it will keep,” he laughed.
“Well, I've got to run along and get some clothes on. If you come back
this way, look me up. Anybody will tell you where I live. So long.”

And, as he had first arrived, he departed, crossing the sandhills on the
run.

Billy followed him with admiring eyes.

“Some boy, some boy,” he murmured. “Why, Saxon, he's famous. If I've
seen his face in the papers once, I've seen it a thousand times. An' he
ain't a bit stuck on himself. Just man to man. Say!--I'm beginnin' to
have faith in the old stock again.”

They turned their backs on the beach and in the tiny main street bought
meat, vegetables, and half a dozen eggs. Billy had to drag Saxon away
from the window of a fascinating shop where were iridescent pearls of
abalone, set and unset.

“Abalones grow here, all along the coast,” Billy assured her; “an' I'll
get you all you want. Low tide's the time.”

“My father had a set of cuff-buttons made of abalone shell,” she said.
“They were set in pure, soft gold. I haven't thought about them for
years, and I wonder who has them now.”

They turned south. Everywhere from among the pines peeped the quaint
pretty houses of the artist folk, and they were not prepared, where the
road dipped to Carmel River, for the building that met their eyes.

“I know what it is,” Saxon almost whispered. “It's an old Spanish
Mission. It's the Carmel Mission, of course. That's the way the
Spaniards came up from Mexico, building missions as they came and
converting the Indians.”

“Until we chased them out, Spaniards an' Indians, whole kit an'
caboodle,” Billy observed with calm satisfaction.

“Just the same, it's wonderful,” Saxon mused, gazing at the big,
half-ruined adobe structure. “There is the Mission Dolores, in San
Francisco, but it's smaller than this and not as old.”

Hidden from the sea by low hillocks, forsaken by human being and human
habitation, the church of sun-baked clay and straw and chalk-rock stood
hushed and breathless in the midst of the adobe ruins which once had
housed its worshiping thousands. The spirit of the place descended upon
Saxon and Billy, and they walked softly, speaking in whispers, almost
afraid to go in through the open ports. There was neither priest nor
worshiper, yet they found all the evidences of use, by a congregation
which Billy judged must be small from the number of the benches. Later
they climbed the earthquake-racked belfry, noting the hand-hewn timbers;
and in the gallery, discovering the pure quality of their voices, Saxon,
trembling at her own temerity, softly sang the opening bars of “Jesus
Lover of My Soul.” Delighted with the result, she leaned over the
railing, gradually increasing her voice to its full strength as she
sang:

“Jesus, Lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly, While the nearer
waters roll, While the tempest still is nigh. Hide me, O my Saviour,
hide, Till the storm of life is past; Safe into the haven guide And
receive my soul at last.”

Billy leaned against the ancient wall and loved her with his eyes, and,
when she had finished, he murmured, almost in a whisper:

“That was beautiful--just beautiful. An' you ought to a-seen your face
when you sang. It was as beautiful as your voice. Ain't it funny?--I
never think of religion except when I think of you.”

They camped in the willow bottom, cooked dinner, and spent the afternoon
on the point of low rocks north of the mouth of the river. They had not
intended to spend the afternoon, but found themselves too fascinated to
turn away from the breakers bursting upon the rocks and from the many
kinds of colorful sea life -- starfish, crabs, mussels, sea anemones, and,
once, in a rock-pool, a small devilfish that chilled their blood when
it cast the hooded net of its body around the small crabs they tossed
to it. As the tide grew lower, they gathered a mess of mussels--huge
fellows, five and six inches long and bearded like patriarchs. Then,
while Billy wandered in a vain search for abalones, Saxon lay and
dabbled in the crystal-clear water of a rock-pool, dipping up handfuls
of glistening jewels--ground bits of shell and pebble of flashing rose
and blue and green and violet. Billy came back and lay beside her,
lazying in the sea-cool sunshine, and together they watched the sun sink
into the horizon where the ocean was deepest peacock-blue.

She reached out her hand to Billy's and sighed with sheer repletion of
content. It seemed she had never lived such a wonderful day. It was as
if all old dreams were coming true. Such beauty of the world she had
never guessed in her fondest imagining. Billy pressed her hand tenderly.

“What was you thinkin' of?” he asked, as they arose finally to go.

“Oh, I don't know, Billy. Perhaps that it was better, one day like this,
than ten thousand years in Oakland.”



CHAPTER VII

They left Carmel River and Carmel Valley behind, and with a rising sun
went south across the hills between the mountains and the sea. The road
was badly washed and gullied and showed little sign of travel.

“It peters out altogether farther down,” Billy said. “From there on it's
only horse trails. But I don't see much signs of timber, an' this soil's
none so good. It's only used for pasture--no farmin' to speak of.”

The hills were bare and grassy. Only the canyons were wooded, while the
higher and more distant hills were furry with chaparral. Once they saw
a coyote slide into the brush, and once Billy wished for a gun when
a large wildcat stared at them malignantly and declined to run until
routed by a clod of earth that burst about its ears like shrapnel.

Several miles along Saxon complained of thirst. Where the road dipped
nearly at sea level to cross a small gulch Billy looked for water. The
bed of the gulch was damp with hill-drip, and he left her to rest while
he sought a spring.

“Say,” he hailed a few minutes afterward. “Come on down. You just gotta
see this. It'll 'most take your breath away.”

Saxon followed the faint path that led steeply down through the thicket.
Midway along, where a barbed wire fence was strung high across the mouth
of the gulch and weighted down with big rocks, she caught her first
glimpse of the tiny beach. Only from the sea could one guess its
existence, so completely was it tucked away on three precipitous sides
by the land, and screened by the thicket. Furthermore, the beach was the
head of a narrow rock cove, a quarter of a mile long, up which pent way
the sea roared and was subdued at the last to a gentle pulse of surf.
Beyond the mouth many detached rocks, meeting the full force of the
breakers, spouted foam and spray high in the air. The knees of these
rocks, seen between the surges, were black with mussels. On their
tops sprawled huge sea-lions tawny-wet and roaring in the sun, while
overhead, uttering shrill cries, darted and wheeled a multitude of sea
birds.

The last of the descent, from the barbed wire fence, was a sliding fall
of a dozen feet, and Saxon arrived on the soft dry sand in a sitting
posture.

“Oh, I tell you it's just great,” Billy bubbled. “Look at it for a
camping spot. In among the trees there is the prettiest spring you
ever saw. An' look at all the good firewood, an'...” He gazed about and
seaward with eyes that saw what no rush of words could compass. “...
An', an' everything. We could live here. Look at the mussels out
there. An' I bet you we could catch fish. What d'ye say we stop a few
days?--It's vacation anyway--an' I could go back to Carmel for hooks an'
lines.”

Saxon, keenly appraising his glowing face, realized that he was indeed
being won from the city.

“An' there ain't no wind here,” he was recommending. “Not a breath. An'
look how wild it is. Just as if we was a thousand miles from anywhere.”

The wind, which had been fresh and raw across the bare hills, gained no
entrance to the cove; and the beach was warm and balmy, the air sweetly
pungent with the thicket odors. Here and there, in the midst of the
thicket, severe small oak trees and other small trees of which Saxon did
not know the names. Her enthusiasm now vied with Billy's, and, hand in
hand, they started to explore.

“Here's where we can play real Robinson Crusoe,” Billy cried, as they
crossed the hard sand from highwater mark to the edge of the water.
“Come on, Robinson. Let's stop over. Of course, I'm your Man Friday, an'
what you say goes.”

“But what shall we do with Man Saturday!” She pointed in mock
consternation to a fresh footprint in the sand. “He may be a savage
cannibal, you know.”

“No chance. It's not a bare foot but a tennis shoe.”

“But a savage could get a tennis shoe from a drowned or eaten sailor,
couldn't he?” she contended.

“But sailors don't wear tennis shoes,” was Billy's prompt refutation.

“You know too much for Man Friday,” she chided; “but, just the same; if
you'll fetch the packs we'll make camp. Besides, it mightn't have been a
sailor that was eaten. It might have been a passenger.”

By the end of an hour a snug camp was completed. The blankets were
spread, a supply of firewood was chopped from the seasoned driftwood,
and over a fire the coffee pot had begun to sing. Saxon called to
Billy, who was improvising a table from a wave-washed plank. She pointed
seaward. On the far point of rocks, naked except for swimming trunks,
stood a man. He was gazing toward them, and they could see his long
mop of dark hair blown by the wind. As he started to climb the rocks
landward Billy called Saxon's attention to the fact that the stranger
wore tennis shoes. In a few minutes he dropped down from the rock to the
beach and walked up to them.

“Gosh!” Billy whispered to Saxon. “He's lean enough, but look at his
muscles. Everybody down here seems to go in for physical culture.”

As the newcomer approached, Saxon glimpsed sufficient of his face to
be reminded of the old pioneers and of a certain type of face seen
frequently among the old soldiers: Young though he was--not more than
thirty, she decided--this man had the same long and narrow face, with
the high cheekbones, high and slender forehead, and nose high, lean,
and almost beaked. The lips were thin and sensitive; but the eyes were
different from any she had ever seen in pioneer or veteran or any
man. They were so dark a gray that they seemed brown, and there were a
farness and alertness of vision in them as of bright questing through
profounds of space. In a misty way Saxon felt that she had seen him
before.

“Hello,” he greeted. “You ought to be comfortable here.” He threw down a
partly filled sack. “Mussels. All I could get. The tide's not low enough
yet.”

Saxon heard Billy muffle an ejaculation, and saw painted on his face the
extremest astonishment.

“Well, honest to God, it does me proud to meet you,” he blurted out.
“Shake hands. I always said if I laid eyes on you I'd shake.--Say!”

But Billy's feelings mastered him, and, beginning with a choking giggle,
he roared into helpless mirth.

The stranger looked at him curiously across their clasped hands, and
glanced inquiringly to Saxon.

“You gotta excuse me,” Billy gurgled, pumping the other's hand up and
down. “But I just gotta laugh. Why, honest to God, I've woke up nights
an' laughed an' gone to sleep again. Don't you recognize 'm, Saxon? He's
the same identical dude -- say, friend, you're some punkins at a hundred
yards dash, ain't you?”

And then, in a sudden rush, Saxon placed him. He it was who had stood
with Roy Blanchard alongside the automobile on the day she had wandered,
sick and unwitting, into strange neighborhoods. Nor had that day been
the first time she had seen him.

“Remember the Bricklayers' Picnic at Weasel Park?” Billy was asking.
“An' the foot race? Why, I'd know that nose of yours anywhere among a
million. You was the guy that stuck your cane between Timothy McManus's
legs an' started the grandest roughhouse Weasel Park or any other park
ever seen.”

The visitor now commenced to laugh. He stood on one leg as he laughed
harder, then stood on the other leg. Finally he sat down on a log of
driftwood.

“And you were there,” he managed to gasp to Billy at last. “You saw it.
You saw it.” He turned to Saxon. “--And you?”

She nodded.

“Say,” Billy began again, as their laughter eased down, “what I wanta
know is what'd you wanta do it for. Say, what'd you wanta do it for?
I've been askin' that to myself ever since.”

“So have I,” was the answer.

“You didn't know Timothy McManus, did you?”

“No; I'd never seen him before, and I've never seen him since.”

“But what'd you wanta do it for?” Billy persisted.

The young man laughed, then controlled himself.

“To save my life, I don't know. I have one friend, a most intelligent
chap that writes sober, scientific books, and he's always aching to
throw an egg into an electric fan to see what will happen. Perhaps
that's the way it was with me, except that there was no aching. When I
saw those legs flying past, I merely stuck my stick in between. I didn't
know I was going to do it. I just did it. Timothy McManus was no more
surprised than I was.”

“Did they catch you?” Billy asked.

“Do I look as if they did? I was never so scared in my life. Timothy
McManus himself couldn't have caught me that day. But what happened
afterward? I heard they had a fearful roughhouse, but I couldn't stop to
see.”

It was not until a quarter of an hour had passed, during which Billy
described the fight, that introductions took place. Mark Hall was their
visitor's name, and he lived in a bungalow among the Carmel pines.

“But how did you ever find your way to Bierce's Cove?” he was curious to
know. “Nobody ever dreams of it from the road.”

“So that's its name?” Saxon said.

“It's the name we gave it. One of our crowd camped here one summer,
and we named it after him. I'll take a cup of that coffee, if you don't
mind.”--This to Saxon. “And then I'll show your husband around. We're
pretty proud of this cove. Nobody ever comes here but ourselves.”

“You didn't get all that muscle from bein' chased by McManus,” Billy
observed over the coffee.

“Massage under tension,” was the cryptic reply.

“Yes,” Billy said, pondering vacantly. “Do you eat it with a spoon?”

Hall laughed.

“I'll show you. Take any muscle you want, tense it, then manipulate it
with your fingers, so, and so.”

“An' that done all that?” Billy asked skeptically.

“All that!” the other scorned proudly. “For one muscle you see, there's
five tucked away but under command. Touch your finger to any part of me
and see.”

Billy complied, touching the right breast.

“You know something about anatomy, picking a muscleless spot,” scolded
Hall.

Billy grinned triumphantly, then, to his amazement, saw a muscle grow up
under his finger. He prodded it, and found it hard and honest.

“Massage under tension!” Hall exulted. “Go on--anywhere you want.”

And anywhere and everywhere Billy touched, muscles large and small rose
up, quivered, and sank down, till the whole body was a ripple of willed
quick.

“Never saw anything like it,” Billy marveled at the end; “an' I've seen
some few good men stripped in my time. Why, you're all living silk.”

“Massage under tension did it, my friend. The doctors gave me up. My
friends called me the sick rat, and the mangy poet, and all that. Then
I quit the city, came down to Carmel, and went in for the open air--and
massage under tension.”

“Jim Hazard didn't get his muscles that way,” Billy challenged.

“Certainly not, the lucky skunk; he was born with them. Mine's made.
That's the difference. I'm a work of art. He's a cave bear. Come along.
I'll show you around now. You'd better get your clothes off. Keep on
only your shoes and pants, unless you've got a pair of trunks.”

“My mother was a poet,” Saxon said, while Billy was getting himself
ready in the thicket. She had noted Hall's reference to himself.

He seemed incurious, and she ventured further.

“Some of it was printed.”

“What was her name?” he asked idly.

“Dayelle Wiley Brown. She wrote: 'The Viking's Quest'; 'Days of Gold';
'Constancy'; 'The Caballero'; 'Graves at Little Meadow'; and a lot more.
Ten of them are in 'The Story of the Files.'”

“I've the book at home,” he remarked, for the first time showing real
interest. “She was a pioneer, of course--before my time. I'll look her
up when I get back to the house. My people were pioneers. They came by
Panama, in the Fifties, from Long Island. My father was a doctor, but
he went into business in San Francisco and robbed his fellow men out of
enough to keep me and the rest of a large family going ever since.--Say,
where are you and your husband bound?”

When Saxon had told him of their attempt to get away from Oakland and of
their quest for land, he sympathized with the first and shook his head
over the second.

“It's beautiful down beyond the Sur,” he told her. “I've been all over
those redwood canyons, and the place is alive with game. The government
land is there, too. But you'd be foolish to settle. It's too remote. And
it isn't good farming land, except in patches in the canyons. I know
a Mexican there who is wild to sell his five hundred acres for fifteen
hundred dollars. Three dollars an acre! And what does that mean? That
it isn't worth more. That it isn't worth so much; because he can find no
takers. Land, you know, is worth what they buy and sell it for.”

Billy, emerging from the thicket, only in shoes and in pants rolled to
the knees, put an end to the conversation; and Saxon watched the two
men, physically so dissimilar, climb the rocks and start out the south
side of the cove. At first her eyes followed them lazily, but soon she
grew interested and worried. Hall was leading Billy up what seemed a
perpendicular wall in order to gain the backbone of the rock. Billy
went slowly, displaying extreme caution; but twice she saw him slip, the
weather-eaten stone crumbling away in his hand and rattling beneath him
into the cove. When Hall reached the top, a hundred feet above the sea,
she saw him stand upright and sway easily on the knife-edge which
she knew fell away as abruptly on the other side. Billy, once on top,
contented himself with crouching on hands and knees. The leader went
on, upright, walking as easily as on a level floor. Billy abandoned the
hands and knees position, but crouched closely and often helped himself
with his hands.

The knife-edge backbone was deeply serrated, and into one of the notches
both men disappeared. Saxon could not keep down her anxiety, and climbed
out on the north side of the cove, which was less rugged and far less
difficult to travel. Even so, the unaccustomed height, the crumbling
surface, and the fierce buffets of the wind tried her nerve. Soon she
was opposite the men. They had leaped a narrow chasm and were scaling
another tooth. Already Billy was going more nimbly, but his leader often
paused and waited for him. The way grew severer, and several times the
clefts they essayed extended down to the ocean level and spouted spray
from the growling breakers that burst through. At other times, standing
erect, they would fall forward across deep and narrow clefts until their
palms met the opposing side; then, clinging with their fingers, their
bodies would be drawn across and up.

Near the end, Hall and Billy went out of sight over the south side
of the backbone, and when Saxon saw them again they were rounding the
extreme point of rock and coming back on the cove side. Here the way
seemed barred. A wide fissure, with hopelessly vertical sides, yawned
skywards from a foam-white vortex where the mad waters shot their level
a dozen feet upward and dropped it as abruptly to the black depths of
battered rock and writhing weed.

Clinging precariously, the men descended their side till the spray was
flying about them. Here they paused. Saxon could see Hall pointing down
across the fissure and imagined he was showing some curious thing to
Billy. She was not prepared for what followed. The surf-level sucked and
sank away, and across and down Hall jumped to a narrow foothold where
the wash had roared yards deep the moment before. Without pause, as
the returning sea rushed up, he was around the sharp corner and clawing
upward hand and foot to escape being caught. Billy was now left alone.
He could not even see Hall, much less be further advised by him, and so
tensely did Saxon watch, that the pain in her finger-tips, crushed
to the rock by which she held, warned her to relax. Billy waited his
chance, twice made tentative preparations to leap and sank back, then
leaped across and down to the momentarily exposed foothold, doubled the
corner, and as he clawed up to join Hall was washed to the waist but not
torn away.

Saxon did not breathe easily till they rejoined her at the fire. One
glance at Billy told her that he was exceedingly disgusted with himself.

“You'll do, for a beginner,” Hall cried, slapping him jovially on the
bare shoulder. “That climb is a stunt of mine. Many's the brave lad
that's started with me and broken down before we were half way out. I've
had a dozen balk at that big jump. Only the athletes make it.”

“I ain't ashamed of admittin' I was scairt,” Billy growled. “You're a
regular goat, an' you sure got my goat half a dozen times. But I'm mad
now. It's mostly trainin', an' I'm goin' to camp right here an' train
till I can challenge you to a race out an' around an' back to the
beach.”

“Done,” said Hall, putting out his hand in ratification. “And some
time, when we get together in San Francisco, I'll lead you up against
Bierce--the one this cove is named after. His favorite stunt, when
he isn't collecting rattlesnakes, is to wait for a forty-mile-an-hour
breeze, and then get up and walk on the parapet of a skyscraper--on the
lee side, mind you, so that if he blows off there's nothing to fetch him
up but the street. He sprang that on me once.”

“Did you do it?” Billy asked eagerly.

“I wouldn't have if I hadn't been on. I'd been practicing it secretly
for a week. And I got twenty dollars out of him on the bet.”

The tide was now low enough for mussel gathering and Saxon accompanied
the men out the north wall. Hall had several sacks to fill. A rig was
coming for him in the afternoon, he explained, to cart the mussels back
to Carmel. When the sacks were full they ventured further among the
rock crevices and were rewarded with three abalones, among the shells
of which Saxon found one coveted blister-pearl. Hall initiated them into
the mysteries of pounding and preparing the abalone meat for cooking.

By this time it seemed to Saxon that they had known him a long time. It
reminded her of the old times when Bert had been with them, singing his
songs or ranting about the last of the Mohicans.

“Now, listen; I'm going to teach you something,” Hall commanded, a large
round rock poised in his hand above the abalone meat. “You must never,
never pound abalone without singing this song. Nor must you sing this
song at any other time. It would be the rankest sacrilege. Abalone
is the food of the gods. Its preparation is a religious function. Now
listen, and follow, and remember that it is a very solemn occasion.”

The stone came down with a thump on the white meat, and thereafter arose
and fell in a sort of tom-tom accompaniment to the poet's song:

“Oh! some folks boast of quail on toast, Because they think it's tony;
But I'm content to owe my rent And live on abalone.

“Oh! Mission Point's a friendly joint Where every crab's a crony, And
true and kind you'll ever find The clinging abalone.

“He wanders free beside the sea Where 'er the coast is stony; He flaps
his wings and madly sings--The plaintive abalone.

“Some stick to biz, some flirt with Liz Down on the sands of Coney; But
we, by hell, stay in Carmel, And whang the abalone.”

He paused with his mouth open and stone upraised. There was a rattle
of wheels and a voice calling from above where the sacks of mussels had
been carried. He brought the stone down with a final thump and stood up.

“There's a thousand more verses like those,” he said. “Sorry I hadn't
time to teach you them.” He held out his hand, palm downward. “And now,
children, bless you, you are now members of the clan of Abalone Eaters,
and I solemnly enjoin you, never, no matter what the circumstances,
pound abalone meat without chanting the sacred words I have revealed
unto you.”

“But we can't remember the words from only one hearing,” Saxon
expostulated.

“That shall be attended to. Next Sunday the Tribe of Abalone Eaters will
descend upon you here in Bierce's Cove, and you will be able to see the
rites, the writers and writeresses, down even to the Iron Man with the
basilisk eyes, vulgarly known as the King of the Sacerdotal Lizards.”

“Will Jim Hazard come?” Billy called, as Hall disappeared into the
thicket.

“He will certainly come. Is he not the Cave-Bear Pot-Walloper and
Gridironer, the most fearsome, and, next to me, the most exalted, of all
the Abalone Eaters?”

Saxon and Billy could only look at each other till they heard the wheels
rattle away.

“Well, I'll be doggoned,” Billy let out. “He's some boy, that. Nothing
stuck up about him. Just like Jim Hazard, comes along and makes himself
at home, you're as good as he is an' he's as good as you, an' we're all
friends together, just like that, right off the bat.”

“He's old stock, too,” Saxon said. “He told me while you were
undressing. His folks came by Panama before the railroad was built, and
from what he said I guess he's got plenty of money.”

“He sure don't act like it.”

“And isn't he full of fun!” Saxon cried.

“A regular josher. An' HIM!--a POET!”

“Oh, I don't know, Billy. I've heard that plenty of poets are odd.”

“That's right, come to think of it. There's Joaquin Miller, lives out
in the hills back of Fruitvale. He's certainly odd. It's right near
his place where I proposed to you. Just the same I thought poets wore
whiskers and eyeglasses, an' never tripped up foot-racers at Sunday
picnics, nor run around with as few clothes on as the law allows,
gatherin' mussels an' climbin' like goats.”

That night, under the blankets, Saxon lay awake, looking at the stars,
pleasuring in the balmy thicket-scents, and listening to the dull rumble
of the outer surf and the whispering ripples on the sheltered beach a
few feet away. Billy stirred, and she knew he was not yet asleep.

“Glad you left Oakland, Billy?” she snuggled.

“Huh!” came his answer. “Is a clam happy?”



CHAPTER VIII

Every half tide Billy raced out the south wall over the dangerous course
he and Hall had traveled, and each trial found him doing it in faster
time.

“Wait till Sunday,” he said to Saxon. “I'll give that poet a run for his
money. Why, they ain't a place that bothers me now. I've got the head
confidence. I run where I went on hands an' knees. I figured it out this
way: Suppose you had a foot to fall on each side, an' it was soft
hay. They'd be nothing to stop you. You wouldn't fall. You'd go like a
streak. Then it's just the same if it's a mile down on each side. That
ain't your concern. Your concern is to stay on top and go like a streak.
An', d'ye know, Saxon, when I went at it that way it never bothered me
at all. Wait till he comes with his crowd Sunday. I'm ready for him.”

“I wonder what the crowd will be like,” Saxon speculated.

“Like him, of course. Birds of a feather flock together. They won't be
stuck up, any of them, you'll see.”

Hall had sent out fish-lines and a swimming suit by a Mexican cowboy
bound south to his ranch, and from the latter they learned much of the
government land and how to get it. The week flew by; each day Saxon
sighed a farewell of happiness to the sun; each morning they greeted its
return with laughter of joy in that another happy day had begun. They
made no plans, but fished, gathered mussels and abalones, and climbed
among the rocks as the moment moved them. The abalone meat they pounded
religiously to a verse of doggerel improvised by Saxon. Billy prospered.
Saxon had never seen him at so keen a pitch of health. As for herself,
she scarcely needed the little hand-mirror to know that never, since
she was a young girl, had there been such color in her cheeks, such
spontaneity of vivacity.

“It's the first time in my life I ever had real play,” Billy said. “An'
you an' me never played at all all the time we was married. This beats
bein' any kind of a millionaire.”

“No seven o'clock whistle,” Saxon exulted. “I'd lie abed in the mornings
on purpose, only everything is too good not to be up. And now you
just play at chopping some firewood and catching a nice big perch, Man
Friday, if you expect to get any dinner.”

Billy got up, hatchet in hand, from where he had been lying prone,
digging holes in the sand with his bare toes.

“But it ain't goin' to last,” he said, with a deep sigh of regret. “The
rains'll come any time now. The good weather's hangin' on something
wonderful.”

On Saturday morning, returning from his run out the south wall, he
missed Saxon. After helloing for her without result, he climbed to the
road. Half a mile away, he saw her astride an unsaddled, unbridled horse
that moved unwillingly, at a slow walk, across the pasture.

“Lucky for you it was an old mare that had been used to ridin'--see them
saddle marks,” he grumbled, when she at last drew to a halt beside him
and allowed him to help her down.

“Oh, Billy,” she sparkled, “I was never on a horse before. It was
glorious! I felt so helpless, too, and so brave.”

“I'm proud of you, just the same,” he said, in more grumbling tones than
before. “'Tain't every married woman'd tackle a strange horse that way,
especially if she'd never ben on one. An' I ain't forgot that you're
goin' to have a saddle animal all to yourself some day--a regular Joe
dandy.”

The Abalone Eaters, in two rigs and on a number of horses, descended
in force on Bierce's Cove. There were half a score of men and almost as
many women. All were young, between the ages of twenty-five and forty,
and all seemed good friends. Most of them were married. They arrived in
a roar of good spirits, tripping one another down the slippery trail and
engulfing Saxon and Billy in a comradeship as artless and warm as the
sunshine itself. Saxon was appropriated by the girls--she could not
realize them women; and they made much of her, praising her camping and
traveling equipment and insisting on hearing some of her tale. They were
experienced campers themselves, as she quickly discovered when she saw
the pots and pans and clothes-boilers for the mussels which they had
brought.

In the meantime Billy and the men had undressed and scattered out after
mussels and abalones. The girls lighted on Saxon's ukulele and nothing
would do but she must play and sing. Several of them had been to
Honolulu, and knew the instrument, confirming Mercedes' definition
of ukulele as “jumping flea.” Also, they knew Hawaiian songs she had
learned from Mercedes, and soon, to her accompaniment, all were
singing: “Aloha Oe,” “Honolulu Tomboy,” and “Sweet Lei Lehua.” Saxon
was genuinely shocked when some of them, even the more matronly, danced
hulas on the sand.

When the men returned, burdened with sacks of shellfish, Mark Hall, as
high priest, commanded the due and solemn rite of the tribe. At a wave
of his hand, the many poised stones came down in unison on the white
meat, and all voices were uplifted in the Hymn to the Abalone. Old
verses all sang, occasionally some one sang a fresh verse alone,
whereupon it was repeated in chorus. Billy betrayed Saxon by begging her
in an undertone to sing the verse she had made, and her pretty voice was
timidly raised in:

“We sit around and gaily pound, And bear no acrimony Because our
ob--ject is a gob Of sizzling abalone.”

“Great!” cried the poet, who had winced at ob--ject. “She speaks the
language of the tribe! Come on, children--now!”

And all chanted Saxon's lines. Then Jim Hazard had a new verse, and one
of the girls, and the Iron Man with the basilisk eyes of greenish-gray,
whom Saxon recognized from Hall's description. To her it seemed he had
the face of a priest.

“Oh! some like ham and some like lamb And some like macaroni; But bring
me in a pail of gin And a tub of abalone.

“Oh! some drink rain and some champagne Or brandy by the pony; But I
will try a little rye With a dash of abalone.

“Some live on hope and some on dope And some on alimony. But our
tom-cat, he lives on fat And tender abalone.”

A black-haired, black-eyed man with the roguish face of a satyr, who,
Saxon learned, was an artist who sold his paintings at five hundred
apiece, brought on himself universal execration and acclamation by
singing:

“The more we take, the more they make In deep sea matrimony; Race
suicide cannot betide The fertile abalone.”

And so it went, verses new and old, verses without end, all in
glorification of the succulent shellfish of Carmel. Saxon's enjoyment
was keen, almost ecstatic, and she had difficulty in convincing herself
of the reality of it all. It seemed like some fairy tale or book story
come true. Again, it seemed more like a stage, and these the actors, she
and Billy having blundered into the scene in some incomprehensible
way. Much of wit she sensed which she did not understand. Much she did
understand. And she was aware that brains were playing as she had
never seen brains play before. The puritan streak in her training was
astonished and shocked by some of the broadness; but she refused to sit
in judgment. They SEEMED good, these light-hearted young people; they
certainly were not rough or gross as were many of the crowds she had
been with on Sunday picnics. None of the men got drunk, although there
were cocktails in vacuum bottles and red wine in a huge demijohn.

What impressed Saxon most was their excessive jollity, their childlike
joy, and the childlike things they did. This effect was heightened
by the fact that they were novelists and painters, poets and critics,
sculptors and musicians. One man, with a refined and delicate face--a
dramatic critic on a great San Francisco daily, she was told--introduced
a feat which all the men tried and failed at most ludicrously. On the
beach, at regular intervals, planks were placed as obstacles. Then the
dramatic critic, on all fours, galloped along the sand for all the
world like a horse, and for all the world like a horse taking hurdles he
jumped the planks to the end of the course.

Quoits had been brought along, and for a while these were pitched with
zest. Then jumping was started, and game slid into game. Billy took part
in everything, but did not win first place as often as he had expected.
An English writer beat him a dozen feet at tossing the caber. Jim Hazard
beat him in putting the heavy “rock.” Mark Hall out-jumped him standing
and running. But at the standing high back-jump Billy did come first.
Despite the handicap of his weight, this victory was due to his splendid
back and abdominal lifting muscles. Immediately after this, however, he
was brought to grief by Mark Hall's sister, a strapping young amazon in
cross-saddle riding costume, who three times tumbled him ignominiously
heels over head in a bout of Indian wrestling.

“You're easy,” jeered the Iron Man, whose name they had learned was Pete
Bideaux. “I can put you down myself, catch-as-catch-can.”

Billy accepted the challenge, and found in all truth that the other was
rightly nicknamed. In the training camps Billy had sparred and clinched
with giant champions like Jim Jeffries and Jack Johnson, and met the
weight of their strength, but never had he encountered strength like
this of the Iron Man. Do what he could, Billy was powerless, and twice
his shoulders were ground into the sand in defeat.

“You'll get a chance back at him,” Hazard whispered to Billy, off at one
side. “I've brought the gloves along. Of course, you had no chance with
him at his own game. He's wrestled in the music halls in London with
Hackenschmidt. Now you keep quiet, and we'll lead up to it in a casual
sort of way. He doesn't know about you.”

Soon, the Englishman who had tossed the caber was sparring with the
dramatic critic, Hazard and Hall boxed in fantastic burlesque, then,
gloves in hand, looked for the next appropriately matched couple. The
choice of Bideaux and Billy was obvious.

“He's liable to get nasty if he's hurt,” Hazard warned Billy, as he tied
on the gloves for him. “He's old American French, and he's got a devil
of a temper. But just keep your head and tap him--whatever you do, keep
tapping him.”

“Easy sparring now”; “No roughhouse, Bideaux”; “Just light tapping, you
know,” were admonitions variously addressed to the Iron Man.

“Hold on a second,” he said to Billy, dropping his hands. “When I get
rapped I do get a bit hot. But don't mind me. I can't help it, you know.
It's only for the moment, and I don't mean it.”

Saxon felt very nervous, visions of Billy's bloody fights and all the
scabs he had slugged rising in her brain; but she had never seen her
husband box, and but few seconds were required to put her at ease. The
Iron Man had no chance. Billy was too completely the master, guarding
every blow, himself continually and almost at will tapping the other's
face and body. There was no weight in Billy's blows, only a light and
snappy tingle; but their incessant iteration told on the Iron Man's
temper. In vain the onlookers warned him to go easy. His face purpled
with anger, and his blows became savage. But Billy went on, tap, tap,
tap, calmly, gently, imperturbably. The Iron Man lost control,
and rushed and plunged, delivering great swings and upper-cuts of
man-killing quality. Billy ducked, side-stepped, blocked, stalled, and
escaped all damage. In the clinches, which were unavoidable, he locked
the Iron Man's arms, and in the clinches the Iron Man invariably laughed
and apologized, only to lose his head with the first tap the instant
they separated and be more infuriated than ever.

And when it was over and Billy's identity had been divulged, the Iron
Man accepted the joke on himself with the best of humor. It had been a
splendid exhibition on Billy's part. His mastery of the sport, coupled
with his self-control, had most favorably impressed the crowd, and
Saxon, very proud of her man boy, could not but see the admiration all
had for him.

Nor did she prove in any way a social failure. When the tired and
sweating players lay down in the dry sand to cool off, she was persuaded
into accompanying their nonsense songs with the ukulele. Nor was it
long, catching their spirit, ere she was singing to them and teaching
them quaint songs of early days which she had herself learned as
a little girl from Cady--Cady, the saloonkeeper, pioneer, and
ex-cavalryman, who had been a bull-whacker on the Salt Intake Trail in
the days before the railroad.

One song which became an immediate favorite was:

“Oh! times on Bitter Creek, they never can be beat, Root hog or die is
on every wagon sheet; The sand within your throat, the dust within your
eye, Bend your back and stand it--root hog or die.”

After the dozen verses of “Root Hog or Die,” Mark Hall claimed to be
especially infatuated with:

“Obadier, he dreampt a dream, Dreampt he was drivin' a ten-mule team,
But when he woke he heaved a sigh, The lead-mule kicked e-o-wt the
swing-mule's eye.”

It was Mark Hall who brought up the matter of Billy's challenge to race
out the south wall of the cove, though he referred to the test as lying
somewhere in the future. Billy surprised him by saying he was ready at
any time. Forthwith the crowd clamored for the race. Hall offered to
bet on himself, but there were no takers. He offered two to one to Jim
Hazard, who shook his head and said he would accept three to one as a
sporting proposition. Billy heard and gritted his teeth.

“I'll take you for five dollars,” he said to Hall, “but not at those
odds. I'll back myself even.”

“It isn't your money I want; it's Hazard's,” Hall demurred. “Though I'll
give either of you three to one.”

“Even or nothing,” Billy held out obstinately.

Hall finally closed both bets--even with Billy, and three to one with
Hazard.

The path along the knife-edge was so narrow that it was impossible for
runners to pass each other, so it was arranged to time the men, Hall to
go first and Billy to follow after an interval of half a minute.

Hall toed the mark and at the word was off with the form of a sprinter.
Saxon's heart sank. She knew Billy had never crossed the stretch of sand
at that speed. Billy darted forward thirty seconds later, and reached
the foot of the rock when Hall was half way up. When both were on top
and racing from notch to notch, the Iron Man announced that they had
scaled the wall in the same time to a second.

“My money still looks good,” Hazard remarked, “though I hope neither of
them breaks a neck. I wouldn't take that run that way for all the gold
that would fill the cove.”

“But you'll take bigger chances swimming in a storm on Carmel Beach,”
 his wife chided.

“Oh, I don't know,” he retorted. “You haven't so far to fall when
swimming.”

Billy and Hall had disappeared and were making the circle around the
end. Those on the beach were certain that the poet had gained in the
dizzy spurts of flight along the knife-edge. Even Hazard admitted it.

“What price for my money now?” he cried excitedly, dancing up and down.

Hall had reappeared, the great jump accomplished, and was running
shoreward. But there was no gap. Billy was on his heels, and on his
heels he stayed, in to shore, down the wall, and to the mark on the
beach. Billy had won by half a minute.

“Only by the watch,” he panted. “Hall was over half a minute ahead of me
out to the end. I'm not slower than I thought, but he's faster. He's
a wooz of a sprinter. He could beat me ten times outa ten, except for
accident. He was hung up at the jump by a big sea. That's where I caught
'm. I jumped right after 'm on the same sea, then he set the pace home,
and all I had to do was take it.”

“That's all right,” said Hall. “You did better than beat me. That's the
first time in the history of Bierce's Cove that two men made that jump
on the same sea. And all the risk was yours, coming last.”

“It was a fluke,” Billy insisted.

And at that point Saxon settled the dispute of modesty and raised a
general laugh by rippling chords on the ukulele and parodying an old
hymn in negro minstrel fashion:

“De Lawd move in er mischievous way His blunders to perform.”

In the afternoon Jim Hazard and Hall dived into the breakers and swam
to the outlying rocks, routing the protesting sea-lions and taking
possession of their surf-battered stronghold. Billy followed the
swimmers with his eyes, yearning after them so undisguisedly that Mrs.
Hazard said to him:

“Why don't you stop in Carmel this winter? Jim will teach you all he
knows about the surf. And he's wild to box with you. He works long hours
at his desk, and he really needs exercise.”


Not until sunset did the merry crowd carry their pots and pans and
trove of mussels up to the road and depart. Saxon and Billy watched them
disappear, on horses and behind horses, over the top of the first hill,
and then descended hand in hand through the thicket to the camp. Billy
threw himself on the sand and stretched out.

“I don't know when I've been so tired,” he yawned. “An' there's one
thing sure: I never had such a day. It's worth livin' twenty years for
an' then some.”

He reached out his hand to Saxon, who lay beside him.

“And, oh, I was so proud of you, Billy,” she said. “I never saw you box
before. I didn't know it was like that. The Iron Man was at your mercy
all the time, and you kept it from being violent or terrible. Everybody
could look on and enjoy--and they did, too.”

“Huh, I want to say you was goin' some yourself. They just took to you.
Why, honest to God, Saxon, in the singin' you was the whole show, along
with the ukulele. All the women liked you, too, an' that's what counts.”

It was their first social triumph, and the taste of it was sweet:

“Mr. Hall said he'd looked up the 'Story of the Files,'” Saxon
recounted. “And he said mother was a true poet. He said it was
astonishing the fine stock that had crossed the Plains. He told me a lot
about those times and the people I didn't know. And he's read all about
the fight at Little Meadow. He says he's got it in a book at home, and
if we come back to Carmel he'll show it to me.”

“He wants us to come back all right. D'ye know what he said to me,
Saxon? He gave me a letter to some guy that's down on the government
land--some poet that's holdin' down a quarter of a section--so we'll be
able to stop there, which'll come in handy if the big rains catch us.
An'--Oh! that's what I was drivin' at. He said he had a little shack he
lived in while the house was buildin'. The Iron Man's livin' in it now,
but he's goin' away to some Catholic college to study to be a priest,
an' Hall said the shack'd be ours as long as we wanted to use it. An' he
said I could do what the Iron Man was doin' to make a livin'. Hall was
kind of bashful when he was offerin' me work. Said it'd be only odd
jobs, but that we'd make out. I could help'm plant potatoes, he said;
an' he got half savage when he said I couldn't chop wood. That was his
job, he said; an' you could see he was actually jealous over it.”

“And Mrs. Hall said just about the same to me, Billy. Carmel wouldn't be
so bad to pass the rainy season in. And then, too, you could go swimming
with Mr. Hazard.”

“Seems as if we could settle down wherever we've a mind to,” Billy
assented. “Carmel's the third place now that's offered. Well, after
this, no man need be afraid of makin' a go in the country.”

“No good man,” Saxon corrected.

“I guess you're right.” Billy thought for a moment. “Just the same a
dub, too, has a better chance in the country than in the city.”

“Who'd have ever thought that such fine people existed?” Saxon pondered.
“It's just wonderful, when you come to think of it.”

“It's only what you'd expect from a rich poet that'd trip up a
foot-racer at an Irish picnic,” Billy exposited.

“The only crowd such a guy'd run with would be like himself, or he'd
make a crowd that was. I wouldn't wonder that he'd make this crowd. Say,
he's got some sister, if anybody'd ride up on a sea-lion an' ask you.
She's got that Indian wrestlin' down pat, an' she's built for it. An'
say, ain't his wife a beaut?”

A little longer they lay in the warm sand. It was Billy who broke the
silence, and what he said seemed to proceed out of profound meditation.

“Say, Saxon, d'ye know I don't care if I never see movie pictures
again.”



CHAPTER IX

Saxon and Billy were gone weeks on the trip south, but in the end they
came back to Carmel. They had stopped with Hafler, the poet in the
Marble House, which he had built with his own hands. This queer dwelling
was all in one room, built almost entirely of white marble. Hafler
cooked, as over a campfire, in the huge marble fireplace, which he used
in all ways as a kitchen. There were divers shelves of books, and the
massive furniture he had made from redwood, as he had made the shakes
for the roof. A blanket, stretched across a corner, gave Saxon privacy.
The poet was on the verge of departing for San Francisco and New York,
but remained a day over with them to explain the country and run over
the government land with Billy. Saxon had wanted to go along that
morning, but Hafler scornfully rejected her, telling her that her legs
were too short. That night, when the men returned, Billy was played out
to exhaustion. He frankly acknowledged that Hafler had walked him into
the ground, and that his tongue had been hanging out from the first
hour. Hafler estimated that they had covered fifty-five miles.

“But such miles!” Billy enlarged. “Half the time up or down, an' 'most
all the time without trails. An' such a pace. He was dead right about
your short legs, Saxon. You wouldn't a-lasted the first mile. An' such
country! We ain't seen anything like it yet.”

Hafler left the next day to catch the train at Monterey. He gave them
the freedom of the Marble House, and told them to stay the whole winter
if they wanted. Billy elected to loaf around and rest up that day.
He was stiff and sore. Moreover, he was stunned by the exhibition of
walking prowess on the part of the poet.

“Everybody can do something top-notch down in this country,” he
marveled. “Now take that Hafler. He's a bigger man than me, an' a
heavier. An' weight's against walkin', too. But not with him. He's done
eighty miles inside twenty-four hours, he told me, an' once a hundred
an' seventy in three days. Why, he made a show outa me. I felt ashamed
as a little kid.”

“Remember, Billy,” Saxon soothed him, “every man to his own game. And
down here you're a top-notcher at your own game. There isn't one you're
not the master of with the gloves.”

“I guess that's right,” he conceded. “But just the same it goes against
the grain to be walked off my legs by a poet--by a poet, mind you.”

They spent days in going over the government land, and in the end
reluctantly decided against taking it up. The redwood canyons and great
cliffs of the Santa Lucia Mountains fascinated Saxon; but she remembered
what Hafler had told her of the summer fogs which hid the sun sometimes
for a week or two at a time, and which lingered for months. Then, too,
there was no access to market. It was many miles to where the nearest
wagon road began, at Post's, and from there on, past Point Sur to
Carmel, it was a weary and perilous way. Billy, with his teamster
judgment, admitted that for heavy hauling it was anything but a picnic.
There was the quarry of perfect marble on Hafler's quarter section. He
had said that it would be worth a fortune if near a railroad; but, as it
was, he'd make them a present of it if they wanted it.

Billy visioned the grassy slopes pastured with his horses and cattle,
and found it hard to turn his back; but he listened with a willing ear
to Saxon's argument in favor of a farm-home like the one they had seen
in the moving pictures in Oakland. Yes, he agreed, what they wanted was
an all-around farm, and an all-around farm they would have if they hiked
forty years to find it.

“But it must have redwoods on it,” Saxon hastened to stipulate. “I've
fallen in love with them. And we can get along without fog. And there
must be good wagon-roads, and a railroad not more than a thousand miles
away.”

Heavy winter rains held them prisoners for two weeks in the Marble
House. Saxon browsed among Hafler's books, though most of them were
depressingly beyond her, while Billy hunted with Hafler's guns. But he
was a poor shot and a worse hunter. His only success was with rabbits,
which he managed to kill on occasions when they stood still. With the
rifle he got nothing, although he fired at half a dozen different deer,
and, once, at a huge cat-creature with a long tail which he was certain
was a mountain lion. Despite the way he grumbled at himself, Saxon could
see the keen joy he was taking. This belated arousal of the hunting
instinct seemed to make almost another man of him. He was out early and
late, compassing prodigious climbs and tramps--once reaching as far as
the gold mines Tom had spoken of, and being away two days.

“Talk about pluggin' away at a job in the city, an' goin' to movie'
pictures and Sunday picnics for amusement!” he would burst out. “I can't
see what was eatin' me that I ever put up with such truck. Here's where
I oughta ben all the time, or some place like it.”

He was filled with this new mode of life, and was continually recalling
old hunting tales of his father and telling them to Saxon.

“Say, I don't get stiffened any more after an all-day tramp,” he
exulted. “I'm broke in. An' some day, if I meet up with that Hafler,
I'll challenge'm to a tramp that'll break his heart.”

“Foolish boy, always wanting to play everybody's game and beat them at
it,” Saxon laughed delightedly.

“Aw, I guess you're right,” he growled. “Hafler can always out-walk me.
He's made that way. But some day, just the same, if I ever see 'm again,
I'll invite 'm to put on the gloves.. .. though I won't be mean enough
to make 'm as sore as he made me.”

After they left Post's on the way back to Carmel, the condition of the
road proved the wisdom of their rejection of the government land. They
passed a rancher's wagon overturned, a second wagon with a broken
axle, and the stage a hundred yards down the mountainside, where it had
fallen, passengers, horses, road, and all.

“I guess they just about quit tryin' to use this road in the winter,”
 Billy said. “It's horse-killin' an' man-killin', an' I can just see 'm
freightin' that marble out over it I don't think.”

Settling down at Carmel was an easy matter. The Iron Man had already
departed to his Catholic college, and the “shack” turned out to be a
three-roomed house comfortably furnished for housekeeping. Hall put
Billy to work on the potato patch--a matter of three acres which the
poet farmed erratically to the huge delight of his crowd. He planted at
all seasons, and it was accepted by the community that what did not rot
in the ground was evenly divided between the gophers and trespassing
cows. A plow was borrowed, a team of horses hired, and Billy took
hold. Also he built a fence around the patch, and after that was set
to staining the shingled roof of the bungalow. Hall climbed to the
ridge-pole to repeat his warning that Billy must keep away from his
wood-pile. One morning Hall came over and watched Billy chopping wood
for Saxon. The poet looked on covetously as long as he could restrain
himself.

“It's plain you don't know how to use an axe,” he sneered. “Here, let me
show you.”

He worked away for an hour, all the while delivering an exposition on
the art of chopping wood.

“Here,” Billy expostulated at last, taking hold of the axe. “I'll have
to chop a cord of yours now in order to make this up to you.”

Hall surrendered the axe reluctantly.

“Don't let me catch you around my wood-pile, that's all,” he threatened.
“My wood-pile is my castle, and you've got to understand that.”

From a financial standpoint, Saxon and Billy were putting aside much
money. They paid no rent, their simple living was cheap, and Billy had
all the work he cared to accept. The various members of the crowd seemed
in a conspiracy to keep him busy. It was all odd jobs, but he preferred
it so, for it enabled him to suit his time to Jim Hazard's. Each day
they boxed and took a long swim through the surf. When Hazard finished
his morning's writing, he would whoop through the pines to Billy, who
dropped whatever work he was doing. After the swim, they would take a
fresh shower at Hazard's house, rub each other down in training camp
style, and be ready for the noon meal. In the afternoon Hazard returned
to his desk, and Billy to his outdoor work, although, still later, they
often met for a few miles' run over the hills. Training was a matter
of habit to both men. Hazard, when he had finished with seven years of
football, knowing the dire death that awaits the big-muscled athlete who
ceases training abruptly, had been compelled to keep it up. Not only was
it a necessity, but he had grown to like it. Billy also liked it, for he
took great delight in the silk of his body.

Often, in the early morning, gun in hand, he was off with Mark Hall, who
taught him to shoot and hunt. Hall had dragged a shotgun around from the
days when he wore knee pants, and his keen observing eyes and knowledge
of the habits of wild life were a revelation to Billy. This part of the
country was too settled for large game, but Billy kept Saxon supplied
with squirrels and quail, cottontails and jackrabbits, snipe and wild
ducks. And they learned to eat roasted mallard and canvasback in the
California style of sixteen minutes in a hot oven. As he became expert
with shotgun and rifle, he began to regret the deer and the mountain
lion he had missed down below the Sur; and to the requirements of the
farm he and Saxon sought he added plenty of game.

But it was not all play in Carmel. That portion of the community which
Saxon and Billy came to know, “the crowd,” was hard-working. Some worked
regularly, in the morning or late at night. Others worked spasmodically,
like the wild Irish playwright, who would shut himself up for a week at
a time, then emerge, pale and drawn, to play like a madman against the
time of his next retirement. The pale and youthful father of a family,
with the face of Shelley, who wrote vaudeville turns for a living and
blank verse tragedies and sonnet cycles for the despair of managers and
publishers, hid himself in a concrete cell with three-foot walls, so
piped, that, by turning a lever, the whole structure spouted water upon
the impending intruder. But in the main, they respected each other's
work-time. They drifted into one another's houses as the spirit
prompted, but if they found a man at work they went their way. This
obtained to all except Mark Hall, who did not have to work for a living;
and he climbed trees to get away from popularity and compose in peace.

The crowd was unique in its democracy and solidarity. It had little
intercourse with the sober and conventional part of Carmel. This section
constituted the aristocracy of art and letters, and was sneered at as
bourgeois. In return, it looked askance at the crowd with its rampant
bohemianism. The taboo extended to Billy and Saxon. Billy took up the
attitude of the clan and sought no work from the other camp. Nor was
work offered him.

Hall kept open house. The big living room, with its huge fireplace,
divans, shelves and tables of books and magazines, was the center of
things. Here, Billy and Saxon were expected to be, and in truth
found themselves to be, as much at home as anybody. Here, when wordy
discussions on all subjects under the sun were not being waged, Billy
played at cut-throat Pedro, horrible fives, bridge, and pinochle. Saxon,
a favorite of the young women, sewed with them, teaching them pretties
and being taught in fair measure in return.

It was Billy, before they had been in Carmel a week, who said shyly to
Saxon:

“Say, you can't guess how I'm missin' all your nice things. What's
the matter with writin' Tom to express 'm down? When we start trampin'
again, we'll express 'm back.”

Saxon wrote the letter, and all that day her heart was singing. Her man
was still her lover. And there were in his eyes all the old lights which
had been blotted out during the nightmare period of the strike.

“Some pretty nifty skirts around here, but you've got 'em all beat, or
I'm no judge,” he told her. And again: “Oh, I love you to death anyway.
But if them things ain't shipped down there'll be a funeral.”

Hall and his wife owned a pair of saddle horses which were kept at the
livery stable, and here Billy naturally gravitated. The stable operated
the stage and carried the mails between Carmel and Monterey. Also, it
rented out carriages and mountain wagons that seated nine persons.
With carriages and wagons a driver was furnished. The stable often found
itself short a driver, and Billy was quickly called upon. He became an
extra man at the stable. He received three dollars a day at such times,
and drove many parties around the Seventeen Mile Drive, up Carmel
Valley, and down the coast to the various points and beaches.

“But they're a pretty uppish sort, most of 'em,” he said to Saxon,
referring to the persons he drove. “Always MISTER Roberts this, an'
MISTER Roberts that--all kinds of ceremony so as to make me not forget
they consider themselves better 'n me. You see, I ain't exactly a
servant, an' yet I ain't good enough for them. I'm the driver--something
half way between a hired man and a chauffeur. Huh! When they eat they
give me my lunch off to one side, or afterward. No family party like
with Hall an' HIS kind. An' that crowd to-day, why, they just naturally
didn't have no lunch for me at all. After this, always, you make me
up my own lunch. I won't be be holdin' to 'em for nothin', the damned
geezers. An' you'd a-died to seen one of 'em try to give me a tip. I
didn't say nothin'. I just looked at 'm like I didn't see 'm, an' turned
away casual-like after a moment, leavin' him as embarrassed as hell.”

Nevertheless, Billy enjoyed the driving, never more so than when he held
the reins, not of four plodding workhorses, but of four fast driving
animals, his foot on the powerful brake, and swung around curves and
along dizzy cliff-rims to a frightened chorus of women passengers. And
when it came to horse judgment and treatment of sick and injured horses
even the owner of the stable yielded place to Billy.

“I could get a regular job there any time,” he boasted quietly to Saxon.
“Why, the country's just sproutin' with jobs for any so-so sort of a
fellow. I bet anything, right now, if I said to the boss that I'd
take sixty dollars an' work regular, he'd jump for me. He's hinted as
much.--And, say! Are you onta the fact that yours truly has learnt a new
trade. Well he has. He could take a job stage-drivin' anywheres. They
drive six on some of the stages up in Lake County. If we ever get there,
I'll get thick with some driver, just to get the reins of six in my
hands. An' I'll have you on the box beside me. Some goin' that! Some
goin'!”

Billy took little interest in the many discussions waged in Hall's big
living room. “Wind-chewin',” was his term for it. To him it was so much
good time wasted that might be employed at a game of Pedro, or going
swimming, or wrestling in the sand. Saxon, on the contrary, delighted
in the logomachy, though little enough she understood of it, following
mainly by feeling, and once in a while catching a high light.

But what she could never comprehend was the pessimism that so often
cropped up. The wild Irish playwright had terrible spells of depression.
Shelley, who wrote vaudeville turns in the concrete cell, was a chronic
pessimist. St. John, a young magazine writer, was an anarchic disciple
of Nietzsche. Masson, a painter, held to a doctrine of eternal
recurrence that was petrifying. And Hall, usually so merry, could
outfoot them all when he once got started on the cosmic pathos of
religion and the gibbering anthropomorphisms of those who loved not to
die. At such times Saxon was oppressed by these sad children of art. It
was inconceivable that they, of all people, should be so forlorn.

One night Hall turned suddenly upon Billy, who had been following dimly
and who only comprehended that to them everything in life was rotten and
wrong.

“Here, you pagan, you, you stolid and flesh-fettered ox, you monstrosity
of over-weening and perennial health and joy, what do you think of it?”
 Hall demanded.

“Oh, I've had my troubles,” Billy answered, speaking in his wonted slow
way. “I've had my hard times, an' fought a losin' strike, an' soaked my
watch, an' ben unable to pay my rent or buy grub, an' slugged scabs, an'
ben slugged, and ben thrown into jail for makin' a fool of myself. If
I get you, I'd be a whole lot better to be a swell hog fattenin' for
market an' nothin' worryin', than to be a guy sick to his stomach from
not savvyin' how the world is made or from wonderin' what's the good of
anything.”

“That's good, that prize hog,” the poet laughed. “Least irritation,
least effort--a compromise of Nirvana and life. Least irritation, least
effort, the ideal existence: a jellyfish floating in a tideless, tepid,
twilight sea.”

“But you're missin' all the good things,” Billy objected.

“Name them,” came the challenge.

Billy was silent a moment. To him life seemed a large and generous
thing. He felt as if his arms ached from inability to compass it all,
and he began, haltingly at first, to put his feeling into speech.

“If you'd ever stood up in the ring an' out-gamed an' out-fought a man
as good as yourself for twenty rounds, you'd get what I'm drivin' at.
Jim Hazard an' I get it when we swim out through the surf an' laugh in
the teeth of the biggest breakers that ever pounded the beach, an'
when we come out from the shower, rubbed down and dressed, our skin an'
muscles like silk, our bodies an' brains all a-tinglin' like silk.. ..”

He paused and gave up from sheer inability to express ideas that were
nebulous at best and that in reality were remembered sensations.

“Silk of the body, can you beat it?” he concluded lamely, feeling that
he had failed to make his point, embarrassed by the circle of listeners.

“We know all that,” Hall retorted. “The lies of the flesh. Afterward
come rheumatism and diabetes. The wine of life is heady, but all too
quickly it turns to--”

“Uric acid,” interpolated the wild Irish playwright.

“They's plenty more of the good things,” Billy took up with a sudden
rush of words. “Good things all the way up from juicy porterhouse and
the kind of coffee Mrs. Hall makes to....” He hesitated at what he was
about to say, then took it at a plunge. “To a woman you can love an'
that loves you. Just take a look at Saxon there with the ukulele in her
lap. There's where I got the jellyfish in the dishwater an' the prize
hog skinned to death.”

A shout of applause and great hand-clapping went up from the girls, and
Billy looked painfully uncomfortable.

“But suppose the silk goes out of your body till you creak like a rusty
wheelbarrow?” Hall pursued. “Suppose, just suppose, Saxon went away with
another man. What then?”

Billy considered a space.

“Then it'd be me for the dishwater an' the jellyfish, I guess.” He
straightened up in his chair and threw back his shoulders unconsciously
as he ran a hand over his biceps and swelled it. Then he took another
look at Saxon. “But thank the Lord I still got a wallop in both my arms
an' a wife to fill 'em with love.”

Again the girls applauded, and Mrs. Hall cried:

“Look at Saxon! She blushing! What have you to say for yourself?”

“That no woman could be happier,” she stammered, “and no queen as proud.
And that--”

She completed the thought by strumming on the ukulele and singing:

“De Lawd move in er mischievous way His blunders to perform.”

“I give you best,” Hall grinned to Billy.

“Oh, I don't know,” Billy disclaimed modestly. “You've read so much I
guess you know more about everything than I do.”

“Oh! Oh!” “Traitor!” “Taking it all back!” the girls cried variously.

Billy took heart of courage, reassured them with a slow smile, and said:

“Just the same I'd sooner be myself than have book indigestion. An' as
for Saxon, why, one kiss of her lips is worth more'n all the libraries
in the world.”



CHAPTER X

“There must be hills and valleys, and rich land, and streams of clear water,
good wagon roads and a railroad not too far away, plenty of sunshine,
and cold enough at night to need blankets, and not only pines but plenty
of other kinds of trees, with open spaces to pasture Billy's horses
and cattle, and deer and rabbits for him to shoot, and lots and lots
of redwood trees, and... and... well, and no fog,” Saxon concluded the
description of the farm she and Billy sought.

Mark Hall laughed delightedly.

“And nightingales roosting in all the trees,” he cried; “flowers that
neither fail nor fade, bees without stings, honey dew every morning,
showers of manna betweenwhiles, fountains of youth and quarries of
philosopher's stones--why, I know the very place. Let me show you.”

She waited while he pored over road-maps of the state. Failing in them,
he got out a big atlas, and, though all the countries of the world were
in it, he could not find what he was after.

“Never mind,” he said. “Come over to-night and I'll be able to show
you.”

That evening he led her out on the veranda to the telescope, and she
found herself looking through it at the full moon.

“Somewhere up there in some valley you'll find that farm,” he teased.

Mrs. Hall looked inquiringly at them as they returned inside.

“I've been showing her a valley in the moon where she expects to go
farming,” he laughed.

“We started out prepared to go any distance,” Saxon said. “And if it's
to the moon, I expect we can make it.”

“But my dear child, you can't expect to find such a paradise on the
earth,” Hall continued. “For instance, you can't have redwoods without
fog. They go together. The redwoods grow only in the fog belt.”

Saxon debated a while.

“Well, we could put up with a little fog,” she conceded, “--almost
anything to have redwoods. I don't know what a quarry of philosopher's
stones is like, but if it's anything like Mr. Hafler's marble quarry,
and there's a railroad handy, I guess we could manage to worry along.
And you don't have to go to the moon for honey dew. They scrape it off
of the leaves of the bushes up in Nevada County. I know that for a fact,
because my father told my mother about it, and she told me.”

A little later in the evening, the subject of farming having remained
uppermost, Hall swept off into a diatribe against the “gambler's
paradise,” which was his epithet for the United States.

“When you think of the glorious chance,” he said. “A new country,
bounded by the oceans, situated just right in latitude, with the richest
land and vastest natural resources of any country in the world, settled
by immigrants who had thrown off all the leading strings of the Old
World and were in the humor for democracy. There was only one thing to
stop them from perfecting the democracy they started, and that thing was
greediness.

“They started gobbling everything in sight like a lot of swine, and
while they gobbled democracy went to smash. Gobbling became gambling. It
was a nation of tin horns. Whenever a man lost his stake, all he had
to do was to chase the frontier west a few miles and get another
stake. They moved over the face of the land like so many locusts. They
destroyed everything--the Indians, the soil, the forests, just as
they destroyed the buffalo and the passenger pigeon. Their morality in
business and politics was gambler morality. Their laws were gambling
laws--how to play the game. Everybody played. Therefore, hurrah for the
game. Nobody objected, because nobody was unable to play. As I said, the
losers chased the frontier for fresh stakes. The winner of to-day,
broke to-morrow, on the day following might be riding his luck to royal
flushes on five-card draws.

“So they gobbled and gambled from the Atlantic to the Pacific, until
they'd swined a whole continent. When they'd finished with the lands
and forests and mines, they turned back, gambling for any little
stakes they'd overlooked, gambling for franchises and monopolies, using
politics to protect their crooked deals and brace games. And democracy
gone clean to smash.

“And then was the funniest time of all. The losers couldn't get any more
stakes, while the winners went on gambling among themselves. The losers
could only stand around with their hands in their pockets and look on.
When they got hungry, they went, hat in hand, and begged the successful
gamblers for a job. The losers went to work for the winners, and they've
been working for them ever since, and democracy side-tracked up Salt
Creek. You, Billy Roberts, have never had a hand in the game in your
life. That's because your people were among the also-rans.”

“How about yourself?” Billy asked. “I ain't seen you holdin' any hands.”

“I don't have to. I don't count. I am a parasite.”

“What's that?”

“A flea, a woodtick, anything that gets something for nothing. I batten
on the mangy hides of the workingmen. I don't have to gamble. I don't
have to work. My father left me enough of his winnings.--Oh, don't preen
yourself, my boy. Your folks were just as bad as mine. But yours lost,
and mine won, and so you plow in my potato patch.”

“I don't see it,” Billy contended stoutly. “A man with gumption can win
out to-day--”

“On government land?” Hall asked quickly.

Billy swallowed and acknowledged the stab.

“Just the same he can win out,” he reiterated.

“Surely--he can win a job from some other fellow? A young husky with a
good head like yours can win jobs anywhere. But think of the handicaps
on the fellows who lose. How many tramps have you met along the road who
could get a job driving four horses for the Carmel Livery Stable? And
some of them were as husky as you when they were young. And on top of
it all you've got no shout coming. It's a mighty big come-down from
gambling for a continent to gambling for a job.”

“Just the same--” Billy recommenced.

“Oh, you've got it in your blood,” Hall cut him off cavalierly. “And why
not? Everybody in this country has been gambling for generations. It was
in the air when you were born. You've breathed it all your life. You,
who 've never had a white chip in the game, still go on shouting for it
and capping for it.”

“But what are all of us losers to do?” Saxon inquired.

“Call in the police and stop the game,” Hall recommended. “It's
crooked.”

Saxon frowned.

“Do what your forefathers didn't do,” he amplified. “Go ahead and
perfect democracy.”

She remembered a remark of Mercedes. “A friend of mine says that
democracy is an enchantment.”

“It is--in a gambling joint. There are a million boys in our public
schools right now swallowing the gump of canal boy to President, and
millions of worthy citizens who sleep sound every night in the belief
that they have a say in running the country.”

“You talk like my brother Tom,” Saxon said, failing to comprehend. “If
we all get into politics and work hard for something better maybe we'll
get it after a thousand years or so. But I want it now.” She clenched
her hands passionately. “I can't wait; I want it now.”

“But that is just what I've been telling you, my dear girl. That's
what's the trouble with all the losers. They can't wait. They want it
now--a stack of chips and a fling at the game. Well, they won't get it
now. That's what's the matter with you, chasing a valley in the moon.
That's what's the matter with Billy, aching right now for a chance to
win ten cents from me at Pedro cussing wind-chewing under his breath.”

“Gee! you'd make a good soap-boxer,” commented Billy.

“And I'd be a soap-boxer if I didn't have the spending of my father's
ill-gotten gains. It's none of my affair. Let them rot. They'd be just
as bad if they were on top. It's all a mess--blind bats, hungry swine,
and filthy buzzards--”

Here Mrs. Hall interfered.

“Now, Mark, you stop that, or you'll be getting the blues.”

He tossed his mop of hair and laughed with an effort.

“No I won't,” he denied. “I'm going to get ten cents from Billy at a
game of Pedro. He won't have a look in.”

Saxon and Billy flourished in the genial human atmosphere of Carmel.
They appreciated in their own estimation. Saxon felt that she was
something more than a laundry girl and the wife of a union teamster.
She was no longer pent in the narrow working class environment of a
Pine street neighborhood. Life had grown opulent. They fared better
physically, materially, and spiritually; and all this was reflected
in their features, in the carriage of their bodies. She knew Billy had
never been handsomer nor in more splendid bodily condition. He swore he
had a harem, and that she was his second wife--twice as beautiful as the
first one he had married. And she demurely confessed to him that Mrs.
Hall and several others of the matrons had enthusiastically admired her
form one day when in for a cold dip in Carmel river. They had got around
her, and called her Venus, and made her crouch and assume different
poses.

Billy understood the Venus reference; for a marble one, with broken
arms, stood in Hall's living room, and the poet had told him the world
worshiped it as the perfection of female form.

“I always said you had Annette Kellerman beat a mile,” Billy said; and
so proud was his air of possession that Saxon blushed and trembled, and
hid her hot face against his breast.

The men in the crowd were open in their admiration of Saxon, in an
above-board manner. But she made no mistake. She did not lose her head.
There was no chance of that, for her love for Billy beat more strongly
than ever. Nor was she guilty of over-appraisal. She knew him for what
he was, and loved him with open eyes. He had no book learning, no art,
like the other men. His grammar was bad; she knew that, just as she knew
that he would never mend it. Yet she would not have exchanged him for
any of the others, not even for Mark Hall with the princely heart whom
she loved much in the same way that she loved his wife.

For that matter, she found in Billy a certain health and rightness, a
certain essential integrity, which she prized more highly than all
book learning and bank accounts. It was by virtue of this health, and
rightness, and integrity, that he had beaten Hall in argument the night
the poet was on the pessimistic rampage. Billy had beaten him, not with
the weapons of learning, but just by being himself and by speaking out
the truth that was in him. Best of all, he had not even known that he
had beaten, and had taken the applause as good-natured banter. But Saxon
knew, though she could scarcely tell why; and she would always remember
how the wife of Shelley had whispered to her afterward with shining
eyes: “Oh, Saxon, you must be so happy.”

Were Saxon driven to speech to attempt to express what Billy meant to
her, she would have done it with the simple word “man.” Always he was
that to her. Always in glowing splendor, that was his connotation--MAN.
Sometimes, by herself, she would all but weep with joy at recollection
of his way of informing some truculent male that he was standing on his
foot. “Get off your foot. You're standin' on it.” It was Billy! It was
magnificently Billy. And it was this Billy who loved her. She knew it.
She knew it by the pulse that only a woman knows how to gauge. He loved
her less wildly, it was true; but more fondly, more maturely. It was
the love that lasted--if only they did not go back to the city where the
beautiful things of the spirit perished and the beast bared its fangs.

In the early spring, Mark Hall and his wife went to New York, the two
Japanese servants of the bungalow were dismissed, and Saxon and Billy
were installed as caretakers. Jim Hazard, too, departed on his yearly
visit to Paris; and though Billy missed him, he continued his long swims
out through the breakers. Hall's two saddle horses had been left in his
charge, and Saxon made herself a pretty cross-saddle riding costume
of tawny-brown corduroy that matched the glints in her hair. Billy no
longer worked at odd jobs. As extra driver at the stable he earned more
than they spent, and, in preference to cash, he taught Saxon to ride,
and was out and away with her over the country on all-day trips. A
favorite ride was around by the coast to Monterey, where he taught her
to swim in the big Del Monte tank. They would come home in the evening
across the hills. Also, she took to following him on his early morning
hunts, and life seemed one long vacation.

“I'll tell you one thing,” he said to Saxon, one day, as they drew their
horses to a halt and gazed down into Carmel Valley. “I ain't never going
to work steady for another man for wages as long as I live.”

“Work isn't everything,” she acknowledged.

“I should guess not. Why, look here, Saxon, what'd it mean if I worked
teamin' in Oakland for a million dollars a day for a million years and
just had to go on stayin' there an' livin' the way we used to? It'd mean
work all day, three squares, an' movin' pictures for recreation. Movin'
pictures! Huh! We're livin' movin' pictures these days. I'd sooner have
one year like what we're havin' here in Carmel and then die, than a
thousan' million years like on Pine street.”

Saxon had warned the Halls by letter that she and Billy intended
starting on their search for the valley in the moon as soon as the first
of summer arrived. Fortunately, the poet was put to no inconvenience,
for Bideaux, the Iron Man with the basilisk eyes, had abandoned his
dreams of priesthood and decided to become an actor. He arrived at
Carmel from the Catholic college in time to take charge of the bungalow.

Much to Saxon's gratification, the crowd was loth to see them depart.
The owner of the Carmel stable offered to put Billy in charge at ninety
dollars a month. Also, he received a similar offer from the stable in
Pacific Grove.

“Whither away,” the wild Irish playwright hailed them on the station
platform at Monterey. He was just returning from New York.

“To a valley in the moon,” Saxon answered gaily.

He regarded their business-like packs.

“By George!” he cried. “I'll do it! By George! Let me come along.” Then
his face fell. “And I've signed the contract,” he groaned. “Three acts!
Say, you're lucky. And this time of year, too.”



CHAPTER XI

“We hiked into Monterey last winter, but we're ridin' out now, b 'gosh!”
 Billy said as the train pulled out and they leaned back in their seats.

They had decided against retracing their steps over the ground already
traveled, and took the train to San Francisco. They had been warned by
Mark Hall of the enervation of the south, and were bound north for their
blanket climate. Their intention was to cross the Bay to Sausalito and
wander up through the coast counties. Here, Hall had told them, they
would find the true home of the redwood. But Billy, in the smoking car
for a cigarette, seated himself beside a man who was destined to deflect
them from their course. He was a keen-faced, dark-eyed man, undoubtedly
a Jew; and Billy, remembering Saxon's admonition always to ask
questions, watched his opportunity and started a conversation. It took
but a little while to learn that Gunston was a commission merchant, and
to realize that the content of his talk was too valuable for Saxon to
lose. Promptly, when he saw that the other's cigar was finished, Billy
invited him into the next car to meet Saxon. Billy would have been
incapable of such an act prior to his sojourn in Carmel. That much at
least he had acquired of social facility.

“He's just ben tellin' me about the potato kings, and I wanted him to
tell you,” Billy explained to Saxon after the introduction. “Go on and
tell her, Mr. Gunston, about that fan tan sucker that made nineteen
thousan' last year in celery an' asparagus.”

“I was just telling your husband about the way the Chinese make things
go up the San Joaquin river. It would be worth your while to go up there
and look around. It's the good season now--too early for mosquitoes.
You can get off the train at Black Diamond or Antioch and travel around
among the big farming islands on the steamers and launches. The fares
are cheap, and you'll find some of those big gasoline boats, like the
Duchess and Princess, more like big steamboats.”

“Tell her about Chow Lam,” Billy urged.

The commission merchant leaned back and laughed.

“Chow Lam, several years ago, was a broken-down fan tan player. He
hadn't a cent, and his health was going back on him. He had worn out
his back with twenty years' work in the gold mines, washing over the
tailings of the early miners. And whatever he'd made he'd lost at
gambling. Also, he was in debt three hundred dollars to the Six
Companies--you know, they're Chinese affairs. And, remember, this was
only seven years ago--health breaking down, three hundred in debt, and
no trade. Chow Lam blew into Stockton and got a job on the peat lands at
day's wages. It was a Chinese company, down on Middle River, that farmed
celery and asparagus. This was when he got onto himself and took stock
of himself. A quarter of a century in the United States, back not so
strong as it used to was, and not a penny laid by for his return to
China. He saw how the Chinese in the company had done it--saved their
wages and bought a share.

“He saved his wages for two years, and bought one share in a
thirty-share company. That was only five years ago. They leased three
hundred acres of peat land from a white man who preferred traveling
in Europe. Out of the profits of that one share in the first year, he
bought two shares in another company. And in a year more, out of the
three shares, he organized a company of his own. One year of this, with
bad luck, and he just broke even. That brings it up to three years ago.
The following year, bumper crops, he netted four thousand. The next
year it was five thousand. And last year he cleaned up nineteen thousand
dollars. Pretty good, eh, for old broken-down Chow Lam?”

“My!” was all Saxon could say.

Her eager interest, however, incited the commission merchant to go on.

“Look at Sing Kee--the Potato King of Stockton. I know him well. I've
had more large deals with him and made less money than with any man
I know. He was only a coolie, and he smuggled himself into the United
States twenty years ago. Started at day's wages, then peddled vegetables
in a couple of baskets slung on a stick, and after that opened up a
store in Chinatown in San Francisco. But he had a head on him, and he
was soon onto the curves of the Chinese farmers that dealt at his store.
The store couldn't make money fast enough to suit him. He headed up the
San Joaquin. Didn't do much for a couple of years except keep his eyes
peeled. Then he jumped in and leased twelve hundred acres at seven
dollars an acre.”

“My God!” Billy said in an awe-struck voice. “Eight thousan', four
hundred dollars just for rent the first year. I know five hundred acres
I can buy for three dollars an acre.”

“Will it grow potatoes?” Gunston asked.

Billy shook his head. “Nor nothin' else, I guess.”

All three laughed heartily and the commission merchant resumed:

“That seven dollars was only for the land. Possibly you know what it
costs to plow twelve hundred acres?”

Billy nodded solemnly.

“And he got a hundred and sixty sacks to the acre that year,” Gunston
continued. “Potatoes were selling at fifty cents. My father was at the
head of our concern at the time, so I know for a fact. And Sing Kee
could have sold at fifty cents and made money. But did he? Trust a
Chinaman to know the market. They can skin the commission merchants at
it. Sing Kee held on. When 'most everybody else had sold, potatoes began
to climb. He laughed at our buyers when we offered him sixty cents,
seventy cents, a dollar. Do you want to know what he finally did sell
for? One dollar and sixty-five a sack. Suppose they actually cost him
forty cents. A hundred and sixty times twelve hundred... let me see...
twelve times nought is nought and twelve times sixteen is a hundred and
ninety-two... a hundred and ninety-two thousand sacks at a dollar and a
quarter net... four into a hundred and ninety-two is forty-eight, plus,
is two hundred and forty--there you are, two hundred and forty thousand
dollars clear profit on that year's deal.”

“An' him a Chink,” Billy mourned disconsolately. He turned to Saxon.
“They ought to be some new country for us white folks to go to.
Gosh!--we're settin' on the stoop all right, all right.”

“But, of course, that was unusual,” Gunston hastened to qualify. “There
was a failure of potatoes in other districts, and a corner, and in some
strange way Sing Kee was dead on. He never made profits like that again.
But he goes ahead steadily. Last year he had four thousand acres in
potatoes, a thousand in asparagus, five hundred in celery and five
hundred in beans. And he's running six hundred acres in seeds. No matter
what happens to one or two crops, he can't lose on all of them.”

“I've seen twelve thousand acres of apple trees,” Saxon said. “And I'd
like to see four thousand acres in potatoes.”

“And we will,” Billy rejoined with great positiveness. “It's us for the
San Joaquin. We don't know what's in our country. No wonder we're out on
the stoop.”

“You'll find lots of kings up there,” Gunston related. “Yep Hong
Lee--they call him 'Big Jim,' and Ah Pock, and Ah Whang, and--then
there's Shima, the Japanese potato king. He's worth several millions.
Lives like a prince.”

“Why don't Americans succeed like that?” asked Saxon.

“Because they won't, I guess. There's nothing to stop them except
themselves. I'll tell you one thing, though--give me the Chinese to deal
with. He's honest. His word is as good as his bond. If he says he'll
do a thing, he'll do it. And, anyway, the white man doesn't know how
to farm. Even the up-to-date white farmer is content with one crop at a
time and rotation of crops. Mr. John Chinaman goes him one better, and
grows two crops at one time on the same soil. I've seen it--radishes and
carrots, two crops, sown at one time.”

“Which don't stand to reason,” Billy objected. “They'd be only a half
crop of each.”

“Another guess coming,” Gunston jeered. “Carrots have to be thinned when
they're so far along. So do radishes. But carrots grow slow. Radishes
grow fast. The slow-going carrots serve the purpose of thinning the
radishes. And when the radishes are pulled, ready for market, that thins
the carrots, which come along later. You can't beat the Chink.”

“Don't see why a white man can't do what a Chink can,” protested Billy.

“That sounds all right,” Gunston replied. “The only objection is that
the white man doesn't. The Chink is busy all the time, and he keeps
the ground just as busy. He has organization, system. Who ever heard of
white farmers keeping books? The Chink does. No guess work with him. He
knows just where he stands, to a cent, on any crop at any moment. And he
knows the market. He plays both ends. How he does it is beyond me, but
he knows the market better than we commission merchants.

“Then, again, he's patient but not stubborn. Suppose he does make a
mistake, and gets in a crop, and then finds the market is wrong. In such
a situation the white man gets stubborn and hangs on like a bulldog. But
not the Chink. He's going to minimize the losses of that mistake. That
land has got to work, and make money. Without a quiver or a regret, the
moment he's learned his error, he puts his plows into that crop, turns
it under, and plants something else. He has the savve. He can look at a
sprout, just poked up out of the ground, and tell how it's going to turn
out--whether it will head up or won't head up; or if it's going to head
up good, medium, or bad. That's one end. Take the other end. He controls
his crop. He forces it or holds it back with an eye on the market. And
when the market is just right, there's his crop, ready to deliver, timed
to the minute.”

The conversation with Gunston lasted hours, and the more he talked of
the Chinese and their farming ways the more Saxon became aware of a
growing dissatisfaction. She did not question the facts. The trouble was
that they were not alluring. Somehow, she could not find place for them
in her valley of the moon. It was not until the genial Jew left the
train that Billy gave definite statement to what was vaguely bothering
her.

“Huh! We ain't Chinks. We're white folks. Does a Chink ever want to ride
a horse, hell-bent for election an' havin' a good time of it? Did you
ever see a Chink go swimmin' out through the breakers at Carmel?--or
boxin', wrestlin', runnin' an' jumpin' for the sport of it? Did you ever
see a Chink take a shotgun on his arm, tramp six miles, an' come back
happy with one measly rabbit? What does a Chink do? Work his damned head
off. That's all he's good for. To hell with work, if that's the whole
of the game--an' I've done my share of work, an' I can work alongside of
any of 'em. But what's the good? If they's one thing I've learned solid
since you an' me hit the road, Saxon, it is that work's the least part
of life. God!--if it was all of life I couldn't cut my throat quick
enough to get away from it. I want shotguns an' rifles, an' a horse
between my legs. I don't want to be so tired all the time I can't love
my wife. Who wants to be rich an' clear two hundred an' forty thousand
on a potato deal! Look at Rockefeller. Has to live on milk. I want
porterhouse and a stomach that can bite sole-leather. An' I want you,
an' plenty of time along with you, an' fun for both of us. What's the
good of life if they ain't no fun?”

“Oh, Billy!” Saxon cried. “It's just what I've been trying to get
straightened out in my head. It's been worrying me for ever so long. I
was afraid there was something wrong with me--that I wasn't made for
the country after all. All the time I didn't envy the San Leandro
Portuguese. I didn't want to be one, nor a Pajaro Valley Dalmatian, nor
even a Mrs. Mortimer. And you didn't either. What we want is a valley
of the moon, with not too much work, and all the fun we want. And we'll
just keep on looking until we find it. And if we don't find it, we'll
go on having the fun just as we have ever since we left Oakland. And,
Billy... we're never, never going to work our damned heads off, are we?”

“Not on your life,” Billy growled in fierce affirmation.

They walked into Black Diamond with their packs on their backs. It was a
scattered village of shabby little cottages, with a main street that
was a wallow of black mud from the last late spring rain. The sidewalks
bumped up and down in uneven steps and landings. Everything seemed
un-American. The names on the strange dingy shops were unspeakably
foreign. The one dingy hotel was run by a Greek. Greeks were
everywhere--swarthy men in sea-boots and tam-o'-shanters, hatless
women in bright colors, hordes of sturdy children, and all speaking in
outlandish voices, crying shrilly and vivaciously with the volubility of
the Mediterranean.

“Huh!--this ain't the United States,” Billy muttered. Down on the water
front they found a fish cannery and an asparagus cannery in the height
of the busy season, where they looked in vain among the toilers for
familiar American faces. Billy picked out the bookkeepers and foremen
for Americans. All the rest were Greeks, Italians, and Chinese.

At the steamboat wharf, they watched the bright-painted Greek boats
arriving, discharging their loads of glorious salmon, and departing. New
York Cut-Off, as the slough was called, curved to the west and north and
flowed into a vast body of water which was the united Sacramento and San
Joaquin rivers.

Beyond the steamboat wharf, the fishing wharves dwindled to stages for
the drying of nets; and here, away from the noise and clatter of the
alien town, Saxon and Billy took off their packs and rested. The tall,
rustling tules grew out of the deep water close to the dilapidated
boat-landing where they sat. Opposite the town lay a long flat island,
on which a row of ragged poplars leaned against the sky.

“Just like in that Dutch windmill picture Mark Hall has,” Saxon said.

Billy pointed out the mouth of the slough and across the broad reach
of water to a cluster of tiny white buildings, behind which, like a
glimmering mirage, rolled the low Montezuma Hills.

“Those houses is Collinsville,” he informed her. “The Sacramento river
comes in there, and you go up it to Rio Vista an' Isleton, and Walnut
Grove, and all those places Mr. Gunston was tellin' us about. It's
all islands and sloughs, connectin' clear across an' back to the San
Joaquin.”

“Isn't the sun good,” Saxon yawned. “And how quiet it is here, so short
a distance away from those strange foreigners. And to think! in the
cities, right now, men are beating and killing each other for jobs.”

Now and again an overland passenger train rushed by in the distance,
echoing along the background of foothills of Mt. Diablo, which bulked,
twin-peaked, greencrinkled, against the sky. Then the slumbrous quiet
would fall, to be broken by the far call of a foreign tongue or by a
gasoline fishing boat chugging in through the mouth of the slough.

Not a hundred feet away, anchored close in the tules, lay a beautiful
white yacht. Despite its tininess, it looked broad and comfortable.
Smoke was rising for'ard from its stovepipe. On its stern, in gold
letters, they read Roamer. On top of the cabin, basking in the sunshine,
lay a man and woman, the latter with a pink scarf around her head. The
man was reading aloud from a book, while she sewed. Beside them sprawled
a fox terrier.

“Gosh! they don't have to stick around cities to be happy,” Billy
commented.

A Japanese came on deck from the cabin, sat down for'ard, and began
picking a chicken. The feathers floated away in a long line toward the
mouth of the slough.

“Oh! Look!” Saxon pointed in her excitement. “He's fishing! And the line
is fast to his toe!”

The man had dropped the book face-downward on the cabin and reached for
the line, while the woman looked up from her sewing, and the terrier
began to bark. In came the line, hand under hand, and at the end a
big catfish. When this was removed, and the line rebaited and dropped
overboard, the man took a turn around his toe and went on reading.

A Japanese came down on the landing-stage beside Saxon and Billy, and
hailed the yacht. He carried parcels of meat and vegetables; one coat
pocket bulged with letters, the other with morning papers. In response
to his hail, the Japanese on the yacht stood up with the part-plucked
chicken. The man said something to him, put aside the book, got into the
white skiff lying astern, and rowed to the landing. As he came alongside
the stage, he pulled in his oars, caught hold, and said good morning
genially.

“Why, I know you,” Saxon said impulsively, to Billy's amazement. “You
are.. ..”

Here she broke off in confusion.

“Go on,” the man said, smiling reassurance.

“You are Jack Hastings, I 'm sure of it. I used to see your photograph
in the papers all the time you were war correspondent in the
Japanese-Russian War. You've written lots of books, though I've never
read them.”

 “Right you are,” he ratified. “And what's your name?”

Saxon introduced herself and Billy, and, when she noted the writer's
observant eye on their packs, she sketched the pilgrimage they were
on. The farm in the valley of the moon evidently caught his fancy, and,
though the Japanese and his parcels were safely in the skiff, Hastings
still lingered. When Saxon spoke of Carmel, he seemed to know everybody
in Hall's crowd, and when he heard they were intending to go to Rio
Vista, his invitation was immediate.

“Why, we're going that way ourselves, inside an hour, as soon as slack
water comes,” he exclaimed. “It's just the thing. Come on on board.
We'll be there by four this afternoon if there's any wind at all. Come
on. My wife's on board, and Mrs. Hall is one of her best chums. We've
been away to South America--just got back; or you'd have seen us in
Carmel. Hal wrote to us about the pair of you.”

It was the second time in her life that Saxon had been in a small boat,
and the Roamer was the first yacht she had ever been on board. The
writer's wife, whom he called Clara, welcomed them heartily, and Saxon
lost no time in falling in love with her and in being fallen in love
with in return. So strikingly did they resemble each other, that
Hastings was not many minutes in calling attention to it. He made them
stand side by side, studied their eyes and mouths and ears, compared
their hands, their hair, their ankles, and swore that his fondest
dream was shattered--namely, that when Clara had been made the mold was
broken.

On Clara's suggestion that it might have been pretty much the same mold,
they compared histories. Both were of the pioneer stock. Clara's mother,
like Saxon's, had crossed the Plains with ox-teams, and, like Saxon's,
had wintered in Salt Intake City--in fact, had, with her sisters, opened
the first Gentile school in that Mormon stronghold. And, if Saxon's
father had helped raise the Bear Flag rebellion at Sonoma, it was at
Sonoma that Clara's father had mustered in for the War of the Rebellion
and ridden as far east with his troop as Salt Lake City, of which
place he had been provost marshal when the Mormon trouble flared up.
To complete it all, Clara fetched from the cabin an ukulele of boa wood
that was the twin to Saxon's, and together they sang “Honolulu Tomboy.”

Hastings decided to eat dinner--he called the midday meal by its
old-fashioned name--before sailing; and down below Saxon was surprised
and delighted by the measure of comfort in so tiny a cabin. There was
just room for Billy to stand upright. A centerboard-case divided the
room in half longitudinally, and to this was attached the hinged
table from which they ate. Low bunks that ran the full cabin length,
upholstered in cheerful green, served as seats. A curtain, easily
attached by hooks between the centerboard-case and the roof, at night
screened Mrs. Hastings' sleeping quarters. On the opposite side the two
Japanese bunked, while for'ard, under the deck, was the galley. So
small was it that there was just room beside it for the cook, who was
compelled by the low deck to squat on his hands. The other Japanese, who
had brought the parcels on board, waited on the table.

“They are looking for a ranch in the valley of the moon,” Hastings
concluded his explanation of the pilgrimage to Clara.

“Oh!--don't you know--” she cried; but was silenced by her husband.

“Hush,” he said peremptorily, then turned to their guests. “Listen.
There's something in that valley of the moon idea, but I won't tell you
what. It is a secret. Now we've a ranch in Sonoma Valley about eight
miles from the very town of Sonoma where you two girls' fathers took up
soldiering; and if you ever come to our ranch you'll learn the secret.
Oh, believe me, it's connected with your valley of the moon.--Isn't it,
Mate?”

This last was the mutual name he and Clara had for each other.

She smiled and laughed and nodded her head.

“You might find our valley the very one you are looking for,” she said.

But Hastings shook his head at her to check further speech. She turned
to the fox terrier and made it speak for a piece of meat.

“Her name's Peggy,” she told Saxon. “We had two Irish terriers down in
the South Seas, brother and sister, but they died. We called them Peggy
and Possum. So she's named after the original Peggy.”

Billy was impressed by the ease with which the Roamer was operated.
While they lingered at table, at a word from Hastings the two Japanese
had gone on deck. Billy could hear them throwing down the halyards,
casting off gaskets, and heaving the anchor short on the tiny winch. In
several minutes one called down that everything was ready, and all went
on deck. Hoisting mainsail and jigger was a matter of minutes. Then
the cook and cabin-boy broke out anchor, and, while one hove it up, the
other hoisted the jib. Hastings, at the wheel, trimmed the sheet. The
Roamer paid off, filled her sails, slightly heeling, and slid across the
smooth water and out the mouth of New York Slough. The Japanese coiled
the halyards and went below for their own dinner.

“The flood is just beginning to make,” said Hastings, pointing to a
striped spar-buoy that was slightly tipping up-stream on the edge of the
channel.

The tiny white houses of Collinsville, which they were nearing,
disappeared behind a low island, though the Montezuma Hills, with their
long, low, restful lines, slumbered on the horizon apparently as far
away as ever.

As the Roamer passed the mouth of Montezuma Slough and entered the
Sacramento, they came upon Collinsville close at hand. Saxon clapped her
hands.

“It's like a lot of toy houses,” she said, “cut out of cardboard. And
those hilly fields are just painted up behind.”

They passed many arks and houseboats of fishermen moored among the
tules, and the women and children, like the men in the boats, were
dark-skinned, black-eyed, foreign. As they proceeded up the river, they
began to encounter dredges at work, biting out mouthfuls of the sandy
river bottom and heaping it on top of the huge levees. Great mats of
willow brush, hundreds of yards in length, were laid on top of the
river-slope of the levees and held in place by steel cables and
thousands of cubes of cement. The willows soon sprouted, Hastings told
them, and by the time the mats were rotted away the sand was held in
place by the roots of the trees.

“It must cost like Sam Hill,” Billy observed.

“But the land is worth it,” Hastings explained. “This island land is
the most productive in the world. This section of California is like
Holland. You wouldn't think it, but this water we're sailing on
is higher than the surface of the islands. They're like leaky
boats--calking, patching, pumping, night and day and all the time. But
it pays. It pays.”

Except for the dredgers, the fresh-piled sand, the dense willow
thickets, and always Mt. Diablo to the south, nothing was to be seen.
Occasionally a river steamboat passed, and blue herons flew into the
trees.

“It must be very lonely,” Saxon remarked.

Hastings laughed and told her she would change her mind later. Much
he related to them of the river lands, and after a while he got on the
subject of tenant farming. Saxon had started him by speaking of the
land-hungry Anglo-Saxons.

“Land-hogs,” he snapped. “That's our record in this country. As one old
Reuben told a professor of an agricultural experiment station: 'They
ain't no sense in tryin' to teach me farmin'. I know all about it. Ain't
I worked out three farms?' It was his kind that destroyed New England.
Back there great sections are relapsing to wilderness. In one state,
at least, the deer have increased until they are a nuisance. There are
abandoned farms by the tens of thousands. I've gone over the lists of
them--farms in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut.
Offered for sale on easy payment. The prices asked wouldn't pay for the
improvements, while the land, of course, is thrown in for nothing.

“And the same thing is going on, in one way or another, the same
land-robbing and hogging, over the rest of the country--down in Texas,
in Missouri, and Kansas, out here in California. Take tenant farming.
I know a ranch in my county where the land was worth a hundred and
twenty-five an acre. And it gave its return at that valuation. When the
old man died, the son leased it to a Portuguese and went to live in the
city. In five years the Portuguese skimmed the cream and dried up the
udder. The second lease, with another Portuguese for three years, gave
one-quarter the former return. No third Portuguese appeared to offer
to lease it. There wasn't anything left. That ranch was worth fifty
thousand when the old man died. In the end the son got eleven thousand
for it. Why, I've seen land that paid twelve per cent., that, after the
skimming of a five-years' lease, paid only one and a quarter per cent.”

“It's the same in our valley,” Mrs. Hastings supplemented. “All the old
farms are dropping into ruin. Take the Ebell Place, Mate.” Her husband
nodded emphatic indorsement. “When we used to know it, it was a perfect
paradise of a farm. There were dams and lakes, beautiful meadows, lush
hayfields, red hills of grape-lands, hundreds of acres of good pasture,
heavenly groves of pines and oaks, a stone winery, stone barns,
grounds--oh, I couldn't describe it in hours. When Mrs. Bell died, the
family scattered, and the leasing began. It's a ruin to-day. The trees
have been cut and sold for firewood. There's only a little bit of the
vineyard that isn't abandoned--just enough to make wine for the present
Italian lessees, who are running a poverty-stricken milk ranch on the
leavings of the soil. I rode over it last year, and cried. The beautiful
orchard is a horror. The grounds have gone back to the wild. Just
because they didn't keep the gutters cleaned out, the rain trickled down
and dry-rotted the timbers, and the big stone barn is caved in. The same
with part of the winery--the other part is used for stabling the cows.
And the house!--words can't describe!”

“It's become a profession,” Hastings went on. “The 'movers.' They lease,
clean out and gut a place in several years, and then move on. They're
not like the foreigners, the Chinese, and Japanese, and the rest. In the
main they're a lazy, vagabond, poor-white sort, who do nothing else but
skin the soil and move, skin the soil and move. Now take the Portuguese
and Italians in our country. They are different. They arrive in the
country without a penny and work for others of their countrymen until
they've learned the language and their way about. Now they're not
movers. What they are after is land of their own, which they will love
and care for and conserve. But, in the meantime, how to get it? Saving
wages is slow. There is a quicker way. They lease. In three years they
can gut enough out of somebody else's land to set themselves up for
life. It is sacrilege, a veritable rape of the land; but what of it?
It's the way of the United States.”

He turned suddenly on Billy.

“Look here, Roberts. You and your wife are looking for your bit of land.
You want it bad. Now take my advice. It's cold, hard advice. Become a
tenant farmer. Lease some place, where the old folks have died and the
country isn't good enough for the sons and daughters. Then gut it. Wring
the last dollar out of the soil, repair nothing, and in three years
you'll have your own place paid for. Then turn over a new leaf, and love
your soil. Nourish it. Every dollar you feed it will return you two.
And have nothing scrub about the place. If it's a horse, a cow, a pig,
a chicken, or a blackberry vine, see that it's thoroughbred.”

“But it's wicked!” Saxon wrung out. “It's wicked advice.”

“We live in a wicked age,” Hastings countered, smiling grimly. “This
wholesale land-skinning is the national crime of the United States
to-day. Nor would I give your husband such advice if I weren't
absolutely certain that the land he skins would be skinned by some
Portuguese or Italian if he refused. As fast as they arrive and settle
down, they send for their sisters and their cousins and their aunts. If
you were thirsty, if a warehouse were burning and beautiful Rhine wine
were running to waste, would you stay your hand from scooping a drink?
Well, the national warehouse is afire in many places, and no end of
the good things are running to waste. Help yourself. If you don't, the
immigrants will.”

“Oh, you don't know him,” Mrs. Hastings hurried to explain. “He spends
all his time on the ranch in conserving the soil. There are over a
thousand acres of woods alone, and, though he thins and forests like
a surgeon, he won't let a tree be chopped without his permission. He's
even planted a hundred thousand trees. He's always draining and ditching
to stop erosion, and experimenting with pasture grasses. And every
little while he buys some exhausted adjoining ranch and starts building
up the soil.”

“Wherefore I know what I 'm talking about,” Hastings broke in. “And my
advice holds. I love the soil, yet to-morrow, things being as they
are and if I were poor, I'd gut five hundred acres in order to buy
twenty-five for myself. When you get into Sonoma Valley, look me up,
and I'll put you onto the whole game, and both ends of it. I'll show you
construction as well as destruction. When you find a farm doomed to be
gutted anyway, why jump in and do it yourself.”

“Yes, and he mortgaged himself to the eyes,” laughed Mrs. Hastings,
“to keep five hundred acres of woods out of the hands of the charcoal
burners.”

Ahead, on the left bank of the Sacramento, just at the fading end of
the Montezuma Hills, Rio Vista appeared. The Roamer slipped through the
smooth water, past steamboat wharves, landing stages, and warehouses.
The two Japanese went for'ard on deck. At command of Hastings, the jib
ran down, and he shot the Roomer into the wind, losing way, until he
called, “Let go the hook!” The anchor went down, and the yacht swung to
it, so close to shore that the skiff lay under overhanging willows.

“Farther up the river we tie to the bank,” Mrs. Hastings said, “so that
when you wake in the morning you find the branches of trees sticking
down into the cabin.”

“Ooh!” Saxon murmured, pointing to a lump on her wrist. “Look at that. A
mosquito.”

“Pretty early for them,” Hastings said. “But later on they're terrible.
I've seen them so thick I couldn't back the jib against them.”

Saxon was not nautical enough to appreciate his hyperbole, though Billy
grinned.

“There are no mosquitoes in the valley of the moon,” she said.

“No, never,” said Mrs. Hastings, whose husband began immediately to
regret the smallness of the cabin which prevented him from offering
sleeping accommodations.

An automobile bumped along on top of the levee, and the young boys and
girls in it cried, “Oh, you kid!” to Saxon and Billy, and Hastings, who
was rowing them ashore in the skiff. Hastings called, “Oh, you kid!”
 back to them; and Saxon, pleasuring in the boyishness of his sunburned
face, was reminded of the boyishness of Mark Hall and his Carmel crowd.



CHAPTER XII

Crossing the Sacramento on an old-fashioned ferry a short distance above
Rio Vista, Saxon and Billy entered the river country. From the top
of the levee she got her revelation. Beneath, lower than the river,
stretched broad, flat land, far as the eye could see. Roads ran in
every direction, and she saw countless farmhouses of which she had never
dreamed when sailing on the lonely river a few feet the other side of
the willowy fringe.

Three weeks they spent among the rich farm islands, which heaped up
levees and pumped day and night to keep afloat. It was a monotonous
land, with an unvarying richness of soil and with only one landmark--Mt.
Diablo, ever to be seen, sleeping in the midday azure, limping its
crinkled mass against the sunset sky, or forming like a dream out of the
silver dawn. Sometimes on foot, often by launch, they criss-crossed and
threaded the river region as far as the peat lands of the Middle River,
down the San Joaquin to Antioch, and up Georgiana Slough to Walnut Grove
on the Sacramento. And it proved a foreign land. The workers of the soil
teemed by thousands, yet Saxon and Billy knew what it was to go a
whole day without finding any one who spoke English. They
encountered--sometimes in whole villages--Chinese, Japanese, Italians,
Portuguese, Swiss, Hindus, Koreans, Norwegians, Danes, French,
Armenians, Slavs, almost every nationality save American. One American
they found on the lower reaches of Georgiana who eked an illicit
existence by fishing with traps. Another American, who spouted blood and
destruction on all political subjects, was an itinerant bee-farmer. At
Walnut Grove, bustling with life, the few Americans consisted of
the storekeeper, the saloonkeeper, the butcher, the keeper of the
drawbridge, and the ferryman. Yet two thriving towns were in Walnut
Grove, one Chinese, one Japanese. Most of the land was owned by
Americans, who lived away from it and were continually selling it to the
foreigners.

A riot, or a merry-making--they could not tell which--was taking place
in the Japanese town, as Saxon and Billy steamed out on the Apache,
bound for Sacramento.

“We're settin' on the stoop,” Billy railed. “Pretty soon they'll crowd
us off of that.”

“There won't be any stoop in the valley of the moon,” Saxon cheered him.

But he was inconsolable, remarking bitterly:

“An' they ain't one of them damn foreigners that can handle four horses
like me.

“But they can everlastingly farm,” he added.

And Saxon, looking at his moody face, was suddenly reminded of a
lithograph she had seen in her childhood. It was of a Plains Indian, in
paint and feathers, astride his horse and gazing with wondering eye at a
railroad train rushing along a fresh-made track. The Indian had passed,
she remembered, before the tide of new life that brought the railroad.
And were Billy and his kind doomed to pass, she pondered, before this
new tide of life, amazingly industrious, that was flooding in from Asia
and Europe?

At Sacramento they stopped two weeks, where Billy drove team and earned
the money to put them along on their travels. Also, life in Oakland and
Carmel, close to the salt edge of the coast, had spoiled them for the
interior. Too warm, was their verdict of Sacramento and they followed
the railroad west, through a region of swamp-land, to Davisville. Here
they were lured aside and to the north to pretty Woodland, where Billy
drove team for a fruit farm, and where Saxon wrung from him a reluctant
consent for her to work a few days in the fruit harvest. She made an
important and mystifying secret of what she intended doing with her
earnings, and Billy teased her about it until the matter passed from his
mind. Nor did she tell him of a money order inclosed with a certain blue
slip of paper in a letter to Bud Strothers.

They began to suffer from the heat. Billy declared they had strayed out
of the blanket climate.

“There are no redwoods here,” Saxon said. “We must go west toward the
coast. It is there we'll find the valley of the moon.”

From Woodland they swung west and south along the county roads to the
fruit paradise of Vacaville. Here Billy picked fruit, then drove team;
and here Saxon received a letter and a tiny express package from Bud
Strothers. When Billy came into camp from the day's work, she bade him
stand still and shut his eyes. For a few seconds she fumbled and did
something to the breast of his cotton work-shirt. Once, he felt a slight
prick, as of a pin point, and grunted, while she laughed and bullied him
to continue keeping his eyes shut.

“Close your eyes and give me a kiss,” she sang, “and then I'll show you
what iss.”

She kissed him and when he looked down he saw, pinned to his shirt, the
gold medals he had pawned the day they had gone to the moving picture
show and received their inspiration to return to the land.

“You darned kid!” he exclaimed, as he caught her to him. “So that's
what you blew your fruit money in on? An' I never guessed!--Come here to
you.”

And thereupon she suffered the pleasant mastery of his brawn, and was
hugged and wrestled with until the coffee pot boiled over and she darted
from him to the rescue.

“I kinda always been a mite proud of 'em,” he confessed, as he rolled
his after-supper cigarette. “They take me back to my kid days when I
amateured it to beat the band. I was some kid in them days, believe
muh.--But say, d'ye know, they'd clean slipped my recollection.
Oakland's a thousan' years away from you an' me, an' ten thousan'
miles.”

“Then this will bring you back to it,” Saxon said, opening Bud's letter
and reading it aloud.

Bud had taken it for granted that Billy knew the wind-up of the strike;
so he devoted himself to the details as to which men had got back their
jobs, and which had been blacklisted. To his own amazement he had been
taken back, and was now driving Billy's horses. Still more amazing was
the further information he had to impart. The old foreman of the West
Oakland stables had died, and since then two other foremen had done
nothing but make messes of everything. The point of all which was that
the Boss had spoken that day to Bud, regretting the disappearance of
Billy.

“Don't make no mistake,” Bud wrote. “The Boss is onto all your curves.
I bet he knows every scab you slugged. Just the same he says to
me--Strothers, if you ain't at liberty to give me his address, just
write yourself and tell him for me to come a running. I'll give him a
hundred and twenty-five a month to take hold the stables.”

Saxon waited with well-concealed anxiety when the letter was finished.
Billy, stretched out, leaning on one elbow, blew a meditative ring of
smoke. His cheap workshirt, incongruously brilliant with the gold of
the medals that flashed in the firelight, was open in front, showing
the smooth skin and splendid swell of chest. He glanced around--at the
blankets bowered in a green screen and waiting, at the campfire and the
blackened, battered coffee pot, at the well-worn hatchet, half buried in
a tree trunk, and lastly at Saxon. His eyes embraced her; then into them
came a slow expression of inquiry. But she offered no help.

“Well,” he uttered finally, “all you gotta do is write Bud Strothers,
an' tell 'm not on the Boss's ugly tintype.--An' while you're about it,
I'll send 'm the money to get my watch out. You work out the interest.
The overcoat can stay there an' rot.”

But they did not prosper in the interior heat. They lost weight. The
resilience went out of their minds and bodies. As Billy expressed it,
their silk was frazzled. So they shouldered their packs and headed west
across the wild mountains. In the Berryessa Valley, the shimmering heat
waves made their eyes ache, and their heads; so that they traveled on in
the early morning and late afternoon. Still west they headed, over more
mountains, to beautiful Napa Valley. The next valley beyond was Sonoma,
where Hastings had invited them to his ranch. And here they would have
gone, had not Billy chanced upon a newspaper item which told of the
writer's departure to cover some revolution that was breaking out
somewhere in Mexico.

“We'll see 'm later on,” Billy said, as they turned northwest, through
the vineyards and orchards of Napa Valley. “We're like that millionaire
Bert used to sing about, except it's time that we've got to burn. Any
direction is as good as any other, only west is best.”

Three times in the Napa Valley Billy refused work. Past St. Helena,
Saxon hailed with joy the unmistakable redwoods they could see growing
up the small canyons that penetrated the western wall of the valley.
At Calistoga, at the end of the railroad, they saw the six-horse stages
leaving for Middletown and Lower Lake. They debated their route. That
way led to Lake County and not toward the coast, so Saxon and Billy
swung west through the mountains to the valley of the Russian River,
coming out at Healdsburg. They lingered in the hop-fields on the
rich bottoms, where Billy scorned to pick hops alongside of Indians,
Japanese, and Chinese.

“I couldn't work alongside of 'em an hour before I'd be knockin' their
blocks off,” he explained. “Besides, this Russian River's some nifty.
Let's pitch camp and go swimmin'.”

So they idled their way north up the broad, fertile valley, so happy
that they forgot that work was ever necessary, while the valley of the
moon was a golden dream, remote, but sure, some day of realization.
At Cloverdale, Billy fell into luck. A combination of sickness and
mischance found the stage stables short a driver. Each day the train
disgorged passengers for the Geysers, and Billy, as if accustomed to it
all his life, took the reins of six horses and drove a full load over
the mountains in stage time. The second trip he had Saxon beside him on
the high boxseat. By the end of two weeks the regular driver was back.
Billy declined a stable-job, took his wages, and continued north.

Saxon had adopted a fox terrier puppy and named him Possum, after the
dog Mrs. Hastings had told them about. So young was he that he quickly
became footsore, and she carried him until Billy perched him on top
of his pack and grumbled that Possum was chewing his back hair to a
frazzle.

They passed through the painted vineyards of Asti at the end of the
grape-picking, and entered Ukiah drenched to the skin by the first
winter rain.

“Say,” Billy said, “you remember the way the Roamer just skated along.
Well, this summer's done the same thing--gone by on wheels. An' now it's
up to us to find some place to winter. This Ukiah looks like a pretty
good burg. We'll get a room to-night an' dry out. An' to-morrow I'll
hustle around to the stables, an' if I locate anything we can rent a
shack an' have all winter to think about where we'll go next year.”



CHAPTER XIII

The winter proved much less exciting than the one spent in Carmel, and
keenly as Saxon had appreciated the Carmel folk, she now appreciated
them more keenly than ever. In Ukiah she formed nothing more than
superficial acquaintances. Here people were more like those of the
working class she had known in Oakland, or else they were merely
wealthy and herded together in automobiles. There was no democratic
artist-colony that pursued fellowship disregardful of the caste of
wealth.

Yet it was a more enjoyable winter than any she had spent in Oakland.
Billy had failed to get regular employment; so she saw much of him, and
they lived a prosperous and happy hand-to-mouth existence in the tiny
cottage they rented. As extra man at the biggest livery stable, Billy's
spare time was so great that he drifted into horse-trading. It was
hazardous, and more than once he was broke, but the table never wanted
for the best of steak and coffee, nor did they stint themselves for
clothes.

“Them blamed farmers--I gotta pass it to 'em,” Billy grinned one day,
when he had been particularly bested in a horse deal. “They won't tear
under the wings, the sons of guns. In the summer they take in boarders,
an' in the winter they make a good livin' doin' each other up at tradin'
horses. An' I just want to tell YOU, Saxon, they've sure shown me a few.
An' I 'm gettin' tough under the wings myself. I'll never tear again
so as you can notice it. Which means one more trade learned for yours
truly. I can make a livin' anywhere now tradin' horses.”

Often Billy had Saxon out on spare saddle horses from the stable, and
his horse deals took them on many trips into the surrounding country.
Likewise she was with him when he was driving horses to sell on
commission; and in both their minds, independently, arose a new idea
concerning their pilgrimage. Billy was the first to broach it.

“I run into an outfit the other day, that's stored in town,” he said,
“an' it's kept me thinkin' ever since. Ain't no use tryin' to get you to
guess it, because you can't. I'll tell you--the swellest wagon-campin'
outfit anybody ever heard of. First of all, the wagon's a peacherino.
Strong as they make 'em. It was made to order, upon Puget Sound, an' it
was tested out all the way down here. No load an' no road can strain it.
The guy had consumption that had it built. A doctor an' a cook traveled
with 'm till he passed in his checks here in Ukiah two years ago. But
say--if you could see it. Every kind of a contrivance--a place for
everything--a regular home on wheels. Now, if we could get that, an' a
couple of plugs, we could travel like kings, an' laugh at the weather.”

“Oh! Billy! it's just what I've been dreamin' all winter. It would
be ideal. And... well, sometimes on the road I 'm sure you can't help
forgetting what a nice little wife you've got... and with a wagon I
could have all kinds of pretty clothes along.”

Billy's blue eyes glowed a caress, cloudy and warm; as he said quietly:

“I've ben thinkin' about that.”

“And you can carry a rifle and shotgun and fishing poles and
everything,” she rushed along. “And a good big axe, man-size, instead of
that hatchet you're always complaining about. And Possum can lift up
his legs and rest. And--but suppose you can't buy it? How much do they
want?”

“One hundred an' fifty big bucks,” he answered. “But dirt cheap at that.
It's givin' it away. I tell you that rig wasn't built for a cent less
than four hundred, an' I know wagon-work in the dark. Now, if I can put
through that dicker with Caswell's six horses--say, I just got onto that
horse-buyer to-day. If he buys 'em, who d'ye think he'll ship 'em to?
To the Boss, right to the West Oakland stables. I 'm goin' to get you to
write to him. Travelin', as we're goin' to, I can pick up bargains. An'
if the Boss'll talk, I can make the regular horse-buyer's commissions.
He'll have to trust me with a lot of money, though, which most likely he
won't, knowin' all his scabs I beat up.”

“If he could trust you to run his stable, I guess he isn't afraid to let
you handle his money,” Saxon said.

Billy shrugged his shoulders in modest dubiousness.

“Well, anyway, as I was sayin' if I can sell Caswell's six horses, why,
we can stand off this month's bills an' buy the wagon.”

“But horses!” Saxon queried anxiously.

“They'll come later--if I have to take a regular job for two or three
months. The only trouble with that 'd be that it'd run us pretty well
along into summer before we could pull out. But come on down town an'
I'll show you the outfit right now.”

Saxon saw the wagon and was so infatuated with it that she lost a
night's sleep from sheer insomnia of anticipation. Then Caswell's six
horses were sold, the month's bills held over, and the wagon became
theirs. One rainy morning, two weeks later, Billy had scarcely left the
house, to be gone on an all-day trip into the country after horses, when
he was back again.

“Come on!” he called to Saxon from the street. “Get your things on an'
come along. I want to show you something.”

He drove down town to a board stable, and took her through to a large,
roofed inclosure in the rear. There he led to her a span of sturdy
dappled chestnuts, with cream-colored manes and tails.

“Oh, the beauties! the beauties!” Saxon cried, resting her cheek against
the velvet muzzle of one, while the other roguishly nuzzled for a share.

“Ain't they, though?” Billy reveled, leading them up and down before her
admiring gaze. “Thirteen hundred an' fifty each, an' they don't look the
weight, they're that slick put together. I couldn't believe it myself,
till I put 'em on the scales. Twenty-seven hundred an' seven pounds,
the two of 'em. An' I tried 'em out--that was two days ago. Good
dispositions, no faults, an' true-pullers, automobile broke an' all
the rest. I'd back 'em to out-pull any team of their weight I ever
seen.--Say, how'd they look hooked up to that wagon of ourn?”

Saxon visioned the picture, and shook her head slowly in a reaction of
regret.

“Three hundred spot cash buys 'em,” Billy went on. “An' that's bed-rock.
The owner wants the money so bad he's droolin' for it. Just gotta sell,
an' sell quick. An' Saxon, honest to God, that pair'd fetch five hundred
at auction down in the city. Both mares, full sisters, five an' six
years old, registered Belgian sire, out of a heavy standard-bred mare
that I know. Three hundred takes 'em, an' I got the refusal for three
days.”

Saxon's regret changed to indignation.

“Oh, why did you show them to me? We haven't any three hundred, and you
know it. All I've got in the house is six dollars, and you haven't that
much.”

“Maybe you think that's all I brought you down town for,” he replied
enigmatically. “Well, it ain't.”

He paused, licked his lips, and shifted his weight uneasily from one leg
to the other.

“Now you listen till I get all done before you say anything. Ready?”

She nodded.

“Won't open your mouth?”

This time she obediently shook her head.

“Well, it's this way,” he began haltingly. “They's a youngster come up
from Frisco, Young Sandow they call 'm, an' the Pride of Telegraph Hill.
He's the real goods of a heavyweight, an' he was to fight Montana
Red Saturday night, only Montana Red, just in a little trainin' bout,
snapped his forearm yesterday. The managers has kept it quiet. Now
here's the proposition. Lots of tickets sold, an' they'll be a big crowd
Saturday night. At the last moment, so as not to disappoint 'em, they'll
spring me to take Montana's place. I 'm the dark horse. Nobody knows
me--not even Young Sandow. He's come up since my time. I'll be a rube
fighter. I can fight as Horse Roberts.

“Now, wait a minute. The winner'll pull down three hundred big round
iron dollars. Wait, I 'm tellin' you! It's a lead-pipe cinch. It's
like robbin' a corpse. Sandow's got all the heart in the world--regular
knock-down-an'-drag-out-an'-hang-on fighter. I've followed 'm in the
papers. But he ain't clever. I 'm slow, all right, all right, but I 'm
clever, an' I got a hay-maker in each arm. I got Sandow's number an' I
know it.

“Now, you got the say-so in this. If you say yes, the nags is ourn. If
you say no, then it's all bets off, an' everything all right, an' I'll
take to harness-washin' at the stable so as to buy a couple of plugs.
Remember, they'll only be plugs, though. But don't look at me while
you're makin' up your mind. Keep your lamps on the horses.”

It was with painful indecision that she looked at the beautiful animals.

“Their names is Hazel an' Hattie,” Billy put in a sly wedge. “If we get
'em we could call it the 'Double H' outfit.”

But Saxon forgot the team and could only see Billy's frightfully bruised
body the night he fought the Chicago Terror. She was about to speak,
when Billy, who had been hanging on her lips, broke in:

“Just hitch 'em up to our wagon in your mind an' look at the outfit. You
got to go some to beat it.”

“But you're not in training, Billy,” she said suddenly and without
having intended to say it.

“Huh!” he snorted. “I've been in half trainin' for the last year. My
legs is like iron. They'll hold me up as long as I've got a punch left
in my arms, and I always have that. Besides, I won't let 'm make a long
fight. He's a man-eater, an' man-eaters is my meat. I eat 'm alive. It's
the clever boys with the stamina an' endurance that I can't put away.
But this young Sandow's my meat. I'll get 'm maybe in the third or
fourth round--you know, time 'm in a rush an' hand it to 'm just as
easy. It's a lead-pipe cinch, I tell you. Honest to God, Saxon, it's a
shame to take the money.”

“But I hate to think of you all battered up,” she temporized. “If I
didn't love you so, it might be different. And then, too, you might get
hurt.”

Billy laughed in contemptuous pride of youth and brawn.

“You won't know I've been in a fight, except that we'll own Hazel
an' Hattie there. An' besides, Saxon, I just gotta stick my fist in
somebody's face once in a while. You know I can go for months peaceable
an' gentle as a lamb, an' then my knuckles actually begin to itch to
land on something. Now, it's a whole lot sensibler to land on Young
Sandow an' get three hundred for it, than to land on some hayseed an'
get hauled up an' fined before some justice of the peace. Now take
another squint at Hazel an' Hattie. They're regular farm furniture, good
to breed from when we get to that valley of the moon. An' they're heavy
enough to turn right into the plowin', too.”


The evening of the fight at quarter past eight, Saxon parted from Billy.
At quarter past nine, with hot water, ice, and everything ready in
anticipation, she heard the gate click and Billy's step come up the
porch. She had agreed to the fight much against her better judgment, and
had regretted her consent every minute of the hour she had just waited;
so that, as she opened the front door, she was expectant of any sort of
a terrible husband-wreck. But the Billy she saw was precisely the Billy
she had parted from.

“There was no fight?” she cried, in so evident disappointment that he
laughed.

“They was all yellin' 'Fake! Fake!' when I left, an' wantin' their money
back.”

“Well, I've got YOU,” she laughed, leading him in, though secretly she
sighed farewell to Hazel and Hattie.

“I stopped by the way to get something for you that you've been wantin'
some time,” Billy said casually. “Shut your eyes an' open your hand; an'
when you open your eyes you'll find it grand,” he chanted.

Into her hand something was laid that was very heavy and very cold, and
when her eyes opened she saw it was a stack of fifteen twenty-dollar
gold pieces.

“I told you it was like takin' money from a corpse,” he exulted, as
he emerged grinning from the whirlwind of punches, whacks, and hugs in
which she had enveloped him. “They wasn't no fight at all. D 'ye want
to know how long it lasted? Just twenty-seven seconds--less 'n half
a minute. An' how many blows struck? One. An' it was me that done it.
Here, I'll show you. It was just like this--a regular scream.”

Billy had taken his place in the middle of the room, slightly crouching,
chin tucked against the sheltering left shoulder, fists closed, elbows
in so as to guard left side and abdomen, and forearms close to the body.

“It's the first round,” he pictured. “Gong's sounded, an' we've shook
hands. Of course, seein' as it's a long fight an' we've never seen each
other in action, we ain't in no rush. We're just feelin' each other out
an' fiddlin' around. Seventeen seconds like that. Not a blow struck.
Nothin'. An' then it's all off with the big Swede. It takes some time to
tell it, but it happened in a jiffy, in less'n a tenth of a second. I
wasn't expectin' it myself. We're awful close together. His left glove
ain't a foot from my jaw, an' my left glove ain't a foot from his. He
feints with his right, an' I know it's a feint, an' just hunch up my
left shoulder a bit an' feint with my right. That draws his guard over
just about an inch, an' I see my openin'. My left ain't got a foot
to travel. I don't draw it back none. I start it from where it is,
corkscrewin' around his right guard an' pivotin' at the waist to put the
weight of my shoulder into the punch. An' it connects!--Square on the
point of the chin, sideways. He drops deado. I walk back to my corner,
an', honest to God, Saxon, I can't help gigglin' a little, it was that
easy. The referee stands over 'm an' counts 'm out. He never quivers.
The audience don't know what to make of it an' sits paralyzed. His
seconds carry 'm to his corner an' set 'm on the stool. But they gotta
hold 'm up. Five minutes afterward he opens his eyes--but he ain't
seein' nothing. They're glassy. Five minutes more, an' he stands
up. They got to help hold 'm, his legs givin' under 'm like they was
sausages. An' the seconds has to help 'm through the ropes, an' they
go down the aisle to his dressin' room a-helpin' 'm. An' the
crowd beginning to yell fake an' want its money back. Twenty-seven
seconds--one punch--n' a spankin' pair of horses for the best wife Billy
Roberts ever had in his long experience.”

All of Saxon's old physical worship of her husband revived and doubled
on itself many times. He was in all truth a hero, worthy to be of that
wing-helmeted company leaping from the beaked boats upon the bloody
English sands. The next morning he was awakened by her lips pressed on
his left hand.

“Hey!--what are you doin'?'” he demanded.

“Kissing Hazel and Hattie good morning,” she answered demurely. “And now
I 'm going to kiss you good morning.. .. And just where did your punch
land? Show me.”

Billy complied, touching the point of her chin with his knuckles. With
both her hands on his arm, she shoved it back and tried to draw it
forward sharply in similitude of a punch. But Billy withstrained her.

“Wait,” he said. “You don't want to knock your jaw off. I'll show you. A
quarter of an inch will do.”

And at a distance of a quarter of an inch from her chin he administered
the slightest flick of a tap.

On the instant Saxon's brain snapped with a white flash of light, while
her whole body relaxed, numb and weak, volitionless, sad her vision
reeled and blurred. The next instant she was herself again, in her eyes
terror and understanding.

“And it was at a foot that you struck him,” she murmured in a voice of
awe.

“Yes, and with the weight of my shoulders behind it,” Billy laughed.
“Oh, that's nothing.--Here, let me show you something else.”

He searched out her solar plexus, and did no more than snap his middle
finger against it. This time she experienced a simple paralysis,
accompanied by a stoppage of breath, but with a brain and vision
that remained perfectly clear. In a moment, however, all the unwonted
sensations were gone.

“Solar Plexus,” Billy elucidated. “Imagine what it's like when the other
fellow lifts a wallop to it all the way from his knees. That's the punch
that won the championship of the world for Bob Fitzsimmons.”

Saxon shuddered, then resigned herself to Billy's playful demonstration
of the weak points in the human anatomy. He pressed the tip of a finger
into the middle of her forearm, and she knew excruciating agony. On
either side of her neck, at the base, he dented gently with his thumbs,
and she felt herself quickly growing unconscious.

“That's one of the death touches of the Japs,” he told her, and went
on, accompanying grips and holds with a running exposition. “Here's
the toe-hold that Notch defeated Hackenschmidt with. I learned it
from Farmer Burns.--An' here's a half-Nelson.--An' here's you makin'
roughhouse at a dance, an' I 'm the floor manager, an' I gotta put you
out.”

One hand grasped her wrist, the other hand passed around and under her
forearm and grasped his own wrist. And at the first hint of pressure she
felt that her arm was a pipe-stem about to break.

“That's called the 'come along.'--An' here's the strong arm. A boy
can down a man with it. An' if you ever get into a scrap an' the other
fellow gets your nose between his teeth--you don't want to lose your
nose, do you? Well, this is what you do, quick as a flash.”

Involuntarily she closed her eyes as Billy's thumb-ends pressed into
them. She could feel the fore-running ache of a dull and terrible hurt.

“If he don't let go, you just press real hard, an' out pop his eyes, an'
he's blind as a bat for the rest of his life. Oh, he'll let go all right
all right.”

He released her and lay back laughing.

“How d'ye feel?” he asked. “Those ain't boxin' tricks, but they're all
in the game of a roughhouse.”

“I feel like revenge,” she said, trying to apply the “come along” to his
arm.

When she exerted the pressure she cried out with pain, for she had
succeeded only in hurting herself. Billy grinned at her futility. She
dug her thumbs into his neck in imitation of the Japanese death touch,
then gazed ruefully at the bent ends of her nails. She punched him
smartly on the point of the chin, and again cried out, this time to the
bruise of her knuckles.

“Well, this can't hurt me,” she gritted through her teeth, as she
assailed his solar plexus with her doubled fists.

By this time he was in a roar of laughter. Under the sheaths of muscles
that were as armor, the fatal nerve center remained impervious.

“Go on, do it some more,” he urged, when she had given up, breathing
heavily. “It feels fine, like you was ticklin' me with a feather.”

“All right, Mister Man,” she threatened balefully. “You can talk about
your grips and death touches and all the rest, but that's all man's
game. I know something that will beat them all, that will make a strong
man as helpless as a baby. Wait a minute till I get it. There. Shut your
eyes. Ready? I won't be a second.”

He waited with closed eyes, and then, softly as rose petals fluttering
down, he felt her lips on his mouth.

“You win,” he said in solemn ecstasy, and passed his arms around her.



CHAPTER XIV

In the morning Billy went down town to pay for Hazel and Hattie. It was
due to Saxon's impatient desire to see them, that he seemed to take a
remarkably long time about so simple a transaction. But she forgave him
when he arrived with the two horses hitched to the camping wagon.

“Had to borrow the harness,” he said. “Pass Possum up and climb in, an'
I'll show you the Double H Outfit, which is some outfit, I'm tellin'
you.”

Saxon's delight was unbounded and almost speechless as they drove out
into the country behind the dappled chestnuts with the cream-colored
tails and manes. The seat was upholstered, high-backed, and comfortable;
and Billy raved about the wonders of the efficient brake. He trotted the
team along the hard county road to show the standard-going in them, and
put them up a steep earthroad, almost hub-deep with mud, to prove that
the light Belgian sire was not wanting in their make-up.

When Saxon at last lapsed into complete silence, he studied her
anxiously, with quick sidelong glances. She sighed and asked:

“When do you think we'll be able to start?”

“Maybe in two weeks... or, maybe in two or three months.” He sighed with
solemn deliberation. “We're like the Irishman with the trunk an' nothin'
to put in it. Here's the wagon, here's the horses, an' nothin' to pull.
I know a peach of a shotgun I can get, second-hand, eighteen dollars;
but look at the bills we owe. Then there's a new '22 Automatic rifle I
want for you. An' a 30-30 I've had my eye on for deer. An' you want a
good jointed pole as well as me. An' tackle costs like Sam Hill. An'
harness like I want will cost fifty bucks cold. An' the wagon ought to
be painted. Then there's pasture ropes, an' nose-bags, an' a harness
punch, an' all such things. An' Hazel an' Hattie eatin' their heads off
all the time we're waitin'. An' I 'm just itchin' to be started myself.”

He stopped abruptly and confusedly.

“Now, Billy, what have you got up your sleeve?--I can see it in your
eyes,” Saxon demanded and indicted in mixed metaphors.

“Well, Saxon, you see, it's like this. Sandow ain't satisfied. He's
madder 'n a hatter. Never got one punch at me. Never had a chance to
make a showin', an' he wants a return match. He's blattin' around town
that he can lick me with one hand tied behind 'm, an' all that kind of
hot air. Which ain't the point. The point is, the fight-fans is wild
to see a return-match. They didn't get a run for their money last time.
They'll fill the house. The managers has seen me already. That was why
I was so long. They's three hundred more waitin' on the tree for me to
pick two weeks from last night if you'll say the word. It's just the
same as I told you before. He's my meat. He still thinks I 'm a rube,
an' that it was a fluke punch.”

“But, Billy, you told me long ago that fighting took the silk out of
you. That was why you'd quit it and stayed by teaming.”

“Not this kind of fightin',” he answered. “I got this one all doped out.
I'll let 'm last till about the seventh. Not that it'll be necessary,
but just to give the audience a run for its money. Of course, I'll get a
lump or two, an' lose some skin. Then I'll time 'm to that glass jaw
of his an' drop 'm for the count. An' we'll be all packed up, an' next
mornin' we'll pull out. What d'ye say? Aw, come on.”


Saturday night, two weeks later, Saxon ran to the door when the gate
clicked. Billy looked tired. His hair was wet, his nose swollen, one
cheek was puffed, there was skin missing from his ears, and both eyes
were slightly bloodshot.

“I 'm darned if that boy didn't fool me,” he said, as he placed the roll
of gold pieces in her hand and sat down with her on his knees. “He's
some boy when he gets extended. Instead of stoppin' 'm at the seventh,
he kept me hustlin' till the fourteenth. Then I got 'm the way I said.
It's too bad he's got a glass jaw. He's quicker'n I thought, an' he's
got a wallop that made me mighty respectful from the second round--an'
the prettiest little chop an' come-again I ever saw. But that glass jaw!
He kept it in cotton wool till the fourteenth an' then I connected.

“--An', say. I 'm mighty glad it did last fourteen rounds. I still got
all my silk. I could see that easy. I wasn't breathin' much, an' every
round was fast. An' my legs was like iron. I could a-fought forty
rounds. You see, I never said nothin', but I've been suspicious all the
time after that beatin' the Chicago Terror gave me.”

“Nonsense!--you would have known it long before now,” Saxon cried. “Look
at all your boxing, and wrestling, and running at Carmel.”

“Nope.” Billy shook his head with the conviction of utter knowledge.
“That's different. It don't take it outa you. You gotta be up against
the real thing, fightin' for life, round after round, with a husky you
know ain't lost a thread of his silk yet--then, if you don't blow up, if
your legs is steady, an' your heart ain't burstin', an' you ain't wobbly
at all, an' no signs of queer street in your head--why, then you know
you still got all your silk. An' I got it, I got all mine, d'ye hear me,
an' I ain't goin' to risk it on no more fights. That's straight. Easy
money's hardest in the end. From now on it's horsebuyin' on commish, an'
you an' me on the road till we find that valley of the moon.”

Next morning, early, they drove out of Ukiah. Possum sat on the seat
between them, his rosy mouth agape with excitement. They had originally
planned to cross over to the coast from Ukiah, but it was too early
in the season for the soft earth-roads to be in shape after the winter
rains; so they turned east, for Lake County, their route to extend
north through the upper Sacramento Valley and across the mountains into
Oregon. Then they would circle west to the coast, where the roads by
that time would be in condition, and come down its length to the Golden
Gate.

All the land was green and flower-sprinkled, and each tiny valley, as
they entered the hills, was a garden.

“Huh!” Billy remarked scornfully to the general landscape. “They say a
rollin' stone gathers no moss. Just the same this looks like some outfit
we've gathered. Never had so much actual property in my life at one
time--an' them was the days when I wasn't rollin'. Hell--even the
furniture wasn't ourn. Only the clothes we stood up in, an' some old
socks an' things.”

Saxon reached out and touched his hand, and he knew that it was a hand
that loved his hand.

“I've only one regret,” she said. “You've earned it all yourself. I've
had nothing to do with it.”

“Huh!--you've had everything to do with it. You're like my second in a
fight. You keep me happy an' in condition. A man can't fight without
a good second to take care of him. Hell, I wouldn't a-ben here if it
wasn't for you. You made me pull up stakes an' head out. Why, if it
hadn't been for you I'd a-drunk myself dead an' rotten by this time, or
had my neck stretched at San Quentin over hittin' some scab too hard
or something or other. An' look at me now. Look at that roll of
greenbacks”--he tapped his breast--“to buy the Boss some horses. Why,
we're takin' an unendin' vacation, an' makin' a good livin' at the same
time. An' one more trade I got--horse-buyin' for Oakland. If I show I've
got the savve, an' I have, all the Frisco firms'll be after me to buy
for them. An' it's all your fault. You're my Tonic Kid all right, all
right, an' if Possum wasn't lookin', I'd--well, who cares if he does
look?”

And Billy leaned toward her sidewise and kissed her.

The way grew hard and rocky as they began to climb, but the divide was
an easy one, and they soon dropped down the canyon of the Blue Lakes
among lush fields of golden poppies. In the bottom of the canyon lay a
wandering sheet of water of intensest blue. Ahead, the folds of hills
interlaced the distance, with a remote blue mountain rising in the
center of the picture.

They asked questions of a handsome, black-eyed man with curly gray hair,
who talked to them in a German accent, while a cheery-faced woman smiled
down at them out of a trellised high window of the Swiss cottage perched
on the bank. Billy watered the horses at a pretty hotel farther on,
where the proprietor came out and talked and told him he had built it
himself, according to the plans of the black-eyed man with the curly
gray hair, who was a San Francisco architect.

“Goin' up, goin' up,” Billy chortled, as they drove on through the
winding hills past another lake of intensest blue. “D'ye notice the
difference in our treatment already between ridin' an' walkin' with
packs on our backs? With Hazel an' Hattie an' Saxon an' Possum, an'
yours truly, an' this high-toned wagon, folks most likely take us for
millionaires out on a lark.”

The way widened. Broad, oak-studded pastures with grazing livestock lay
on either hand. Then Clear Lake opened before them like an inland sea,
flecked with little squalls and flaws of wind from the high mountains on
the northern slopes of which still glistened white snow patches.

“I've heard Mrs. Hazard rave about Lake Geneva,” Saxon recalled; “but I
wonder if it is more beautiful than this.”

“That architect fellow called this the California Alps, you remember,”
 Billy confirmed. “An' if I don't mistake, that's Lakeport showin' up
ahead. An' all wild country, an' no railroads.”

“And no moon valleys here,” Saxon criticized. “But it is beautiful, oh,
so beautiful.”

“Hotter'n hell in the dead of summer, I'll bet,” was Billy's opinion.
“Nope, the country we're lookin' for lies nearer the coast. Just the
same it is beautiful... like a picture on the wall. What d'ye say we
stop off an' go for a swim this afternoon?”

Ten days later they drove into Williams, in Colusa County, and for the
first time again encountered a railroad. Billy was looking for it,
for the reason that at the rear of the wagon walked two magnificent
work-horses which he had picked up for shipment to Oakland.

“Too hot,” was Saxon's verdict, as she gazed across the shimmering level
of the vast Sacramento Valley. “No redwoods. No hills. No forests. No
manzanita. No madronos. Lonely, and sad--”

“An' like the river islands,” Billy interpolated. “Richer 'n hell, but
looks too much like hard work. It'll do for those that's stuck on hard
work--God knows, they's nothin' here to induce a fellow to knock off
ever for a bit of play. No fishin', no huntin', nothin' but work. I'd
work myself, if I had to live here.”

North they drove, through days of heat and dust, across the California
plains, and everywhere was manifest the “new” farming--great irrigation
ditches, dug and being dug, the land threaded by power-lines from the
mountains, and many new farmhouses on small holdings newly fenced. The
bonanza farms were being broken up. However, many of the great estates
remained, five to ten thousand acres in extent, running from the
Sacramento bank to the horizon dancing in the heat waves, and studded
with great valley oaks.

“It takes rich soil to make trees like those,” a ten-acre farmer told
them.

They had driven off the road a hundred feet to his tiny barn in order to
water Hazel and Hattie. A sturdy young orchard covered most of his ten
acres, though a goodly portion was devoted to whitewashed henhouses and
wired runways wherein hundreds of chickens were to be seen. He had just
begun work on a small frame dwelling.

“I took a vacation when I bought,” he explained, “and planted the trees.
Then I went back to work an' stayed with it till the place was cleared.
Now I 'm here for keeps, an' soon as the house is finished I'll send
for the wife. She's not very well, and it will do her good. We've been
planning and working for years to get away from the city.” He stopped in
order to give a happy sigh. “And now we're free.”

The water in the trough was warm from the sun.

“Hold on,” the man said. “Don't let them drink that. I'll give it to
them cool.”

Stepping into a small shed, he turned an electric switch, and a motor
the size of a fruit box hummed into action. A five-inch stream of
sparkling water splashed into the shallow main ditch of his irrigation
system and flowed away across the orchard through many laterals.

“Isn't it beautiful, eh?--beautiful! beautiful!” the man chanted in an
ecstasy. “It's bud and fruit. It's blood and life. Look at it! It makes
a gold mine laughable, and a saloon a nightmare. I know. I... I used to
be a barkeeper. In fact, I've been a barkeeper most of my life. That's
how I paid for this place. And I've hated the business all the time. I
was a farm boy, and all my life I've been wanting to get back to it. And
here I am at last.”

He wiped his glasses the better to behold his beloved water, then seized
a hoe and strode down the main ditch to open more laterals.

“He's the funniest barkeeper I ever seen,” Billy commented. “I took
him for a business man of some sort. Must a-ben in some kind of a quiet
hotel.”

“Don't drive on right away,” Saxon requested. “I want to talk with him.”

He came back, polishing his glasses, his face beaming, watching the
water as if fascinated by it. It required no more exertion on Saxon's
part to start him than had been required on his part to start the motor.

“The pioneers settled all this in the early fifties,” he said. “The
Mexicans never got this far, so it was government land. Everybody got a
hundred and sixty acres. And such acres! The stories they tell about how
much wheat they got to the acre are almost unbelievable. Then several
things happened. The sharpest and steadiest of the pioneers held what
they had and added to it from the other fellows. It takes a great many
quarter sections to make a bonanza farm. It wasn't long before it was
'most all bonanza farms.”

“They were the successful gamblers,” Saxon put in, remembering Mark
Hall's words.

The man nodded appreciatively and continued.

“The old folks schemed and gathered and added the land into the big
holdings, and built the great barns and mansions, and planted the house
orchards and flower gardens. The young folks were spoiled by so much
wealth and went away to the cities to spend it. And old folks and young
united in one thing: in impoverishing the soil. Year after year they
scratched it and took out bonanza crops. They put nothing back. All they
left was plow-sole and exhausted land. Why, there's big sections they
exhausted and left almost desert.

“The bonanza farmers are all gone now, thank the Lord, and here's where
we small farmers come into our own. It won't be many years before the
whole valley will be farmed in patches like mine. Look at what we're
doing! Worked-out land that had ceased to grow wheat, and we turn the
water on, treat the soil decently, and see our orchards!

“We've got the water--from the mountains, and from under the ground. I
was reading an account the other day. All life depends on food. All food
depends on water. It takes a thousand pounds of water to produce one
pound of food; ten thousand pounds to produce one pound of meat. How
much water do you drink in a year? About a ton. But you eat about
two hundred pounds of vegetables and two hundred pounds of meat
a year--which means you consume one hundred tons of water in the
vegetables and one thousand tons in the meat--which means that it takes
eleven hundred and one tons of water each year to keep a small woman
like you going.”

“Gee!” was all Billy could say.

“You see how population depends upon water,” the ex-barkeeper went on.
“Well, we've got the water, immense subterranean supplies, and in not
many years this valley will be populated as thick as Belgium.”

Fascinated by the five-inch stream, sluiced out of the earth and back
to the earth by the droning motor, he forgot his discourse and stood and
gazed, rapt and unheeding, while his visitors drove on.

“An' him a drink-slinger!” Billy marveled. “He can sure sling the
temperance dope if anybody should ask you.”

“It's lovely to think about--all that water, and all the happy people
that will come here to live--”

“But it ain't the valley of the moon!” Billy laughed.

“No,” she responded. “They don't have to irrigate in the valley of
the moon, unless for alfalfa and such crops. What we want is the water
bubbling naturally from the ground, and crossing the farm in little
brooks, and on the boundary a fine big creek--”

“With trout in it!” Billy took her up. “An' willows and trees of all
kinds growing along the edges, and here a riffle where you can flip
out trout, and there a deep pool where you can swim and high-dive. An'
kingfishers, an' rabbits comin' down to drink, an', maybe, a deer.”

“And meadowlarks in the pasture,” Saxon added. “And mourning doves
in the trees. We must have mourning doves--and the big, gray
tree-squirrels.”

“Gee!--that valley of the moon's goin' to be some valley,” Billy
meditated, flicking a fly away with his whip from Hattie's side. “Think
we'll ever find it?”

Saxon nodded her head with great certitude.

“Just as the Jews found the promised land, and the Mormons Utah, and the
Pioneers California. You remember the last advice we got when we left
Oakland? 'Tis them that looks that finds.'”



CHAPTER XV

Ever north, through a fat and flourishing rejuvenated land, stopping at
the towns of Willows, Red Bluff and Redding, crossing the counties of
Colusa, Glenn, Tehama, and Shasta, went the spruce wagon drawn by the
dappled chestnuts with cream-colored manes and tails. Billy picked up
only three horses for shipment, although he visited many farms; and
Saxon talked with the women while he looked over the stock with the men.
And Saxon grew the more convinced that the valley she sought lay not
there.

At Redding they crossed the Sacramento on a cable ferry, and made a
day's scorching traverse through rolling foot-hills and flat tablelands.
The heat grew more insupportable, and the trees and shrubs were blasted
and dead. Then they came again to the Sacramento, where the great
smelters of Kennett explained the destruction of the vegetation.

They climbed out of the smelting town, where eyrie houses perched
insecurely on a precipitous landscape. It was a broad, well-engineered
road that took them up a grade miles long and plunged down into the
Canyon of the Sacramento. The road, rock-surfaced and easy-graded, hewn
out of the canyon wall, grew so narrow that Billy worried for fear of
meeting opposite-bound teams. Far below, the river frothed and flowed
over pebbly shallows, or broke tumultuously over boulders and cascades,
in its race for the great valley they had left behind.

Sometimes, on the wider stretches of road, Saxon drove and Billy walked
to lighten the load. She insisted on taking her turns at walking, and
when he breathed the panting mares on the steep, and Saxon stood by
their heads caressing them and cheering them, Billy's joy was too deep
for any turn of speech as he gazed at his beautiful horses and his
glowing girl, trim and colorful in her golden brown corduroy, the brown
corduroy calves swelling sweetly under the abbreviated slim skirt. And
when her answering look of happiness came to him--a sudden dimness in
her straight gray eyes--he was overmastered by the knowledge that he
must say something or burst.

“O, you kid!” he cried.

And with radiant face she answered, “O, you kid!”

They camped one night in a deep dent in the canyon, where was snuggled
a box-factory village, and where a toothless ancient, gazing with faded
eyes at their traveling outfit, asked: “Be you showin'?”

They passed Castle Crags, mighty-bastioned and glowing red against the
palpitating blue sky. They caught their first glimpse of Mt. Shasta, a
rose-tinted snow-peak rising, a sunset dream, between and beyond green
interlacing walls of canyon--a landmark destined to be with them for
many days. At unexpected turns, after mounting some steep grade, Shasta
would appear again, still distant, now showing two peaks and glacial
fields of shimmering white. Miles and miles and days and days they
climbed, with Shasta ever developing new forms and phases in her summer
snows.

“A moving picture in the sky,” said Billy at last.

“Oh,--it is all so beautiful,” sighed Saxon. “But there are no
moon-valleys here.”

They encountered a plague of butterflies, and for days drove through
untold millions of the fluttering beauties that covered the road with
uniform velvet-brown. And ever the road seemed to rise under the noses
of the snorting mares, filling the air with noiseless flight, drifting
down the breeze in clouds of brown and yellow soft-flaked as snow, and
piling in mounds against the fences, ever driven to float helplessly on
the irrigation ditches along the roadside. Hazel and Hattie soon grew
used to them though Possum never ceased being made frantic.

“Huh!--who ever heard of butterfly-broke horses?” Billy chaffed. “That's
worth fifty bucks more on their price.”

“Wait till you get across the Oregon line into the Rogue River
Valley,” they were told. “There's God's Paradise--climate, scenery,
and fruit-farming; fruit ranches that yield two hundred per cent. on a
valuation of five hundred dollars an acre.”

“Gee!” Billy said, when he had driven on out of hearing; “that's too
rich for our digestion.”

And Saxon said, “I don't know about apples in the valley of the moon,
but I do know that the yield is ten thousand per cent. of happiness on a
valuation of one Billy, one Saxon, a Hazel, a Hattie, and a Possum.”

Through Siskiyou County and across high mountains, they came to Ashland
and Medford and camped beside the wild Rogue River.

“This is wonderful and glorious,” pronounced Saxon; “but it is not the
valley of the moon.”

“Nope, it ain't the valley of the moon,” agreed Billy, and he said it
on the evening of the day he hooked a monster steelhead, standing to his
neck in the ice-cold water of the Rogue and fighting for forty minutes,
with screaming reel, ere he drew his finny prize to the bank and with
the scalp-yell of a Comanche jumped and clutched it by the gills.

“'Them that looks finds,'” predicted Saxon, as they drew north out of
Grant's Pass, and held north across the mountains and fruitful Oregon
valleys.

One day, in camp by the Umpqua River, Billy bent over to begin skinning
the first deer he had ever shot. He raised his eyes to Saxon and
remarked:

“If I didn't know California, I guess Oregon'd suit me from the ground
up.”

In the evening, replete with deer meat, resting on his elbow and smoking
his after-supper cigarette, he said:

“Maybe they ain't no valley of the moon. An' if they ain't, what of it?
We could keep on this way forever. I don't ask nothing better.”

“There is a valley of the moon,” Saxon answered soberly. “And we are
going to find it. We've got to. Why Billy, it would never do, never to
settle down. There would be no little Hazels and little Hatties, nor
little... Billies--”

“Nor little Saxons,” Billy interjected.

“Nor little Possums,” she hurried on, nodding her head and reaching out
a caressing hand to where the fox terrier was ecstatically gnawing
a deer-rib. A vicious snarl and a wicked snap that barely missed her
fingers were her reward.

“Possum!” she cried in sharp reproof, again extending her hand.

“Don't,” Billy warned. “He can't help it, and he's likely to get you
next time.”

Even more compelling was the menacing threat that Possum growled, his
jaws close-guarding the bone, eyes blazing insanely, the hair rising
stiffly on his neck.

“It's a good dog that sticks up for its bone,” Billy championed. “I
wouldn't care to own one that didn't.”

“But it's my Possum,” Saxon protested. “And he loves me. Besides, he
must love me more than an old bone. And he must mind me.--Here, you,
Possum, give me that bone! Give me that bone, sir!”

Her hand went out gingerly, and the growl rose in volume and key till it
culminated in a snap.

“I tell you it's instinct,” Billy repeated. “He does love you, but he
just can't help doin' it.”

“He's got a right to defend his bones from strangers but not from his
mother,” Saxon argued. “I shall make him give up that bone to me.”

“Fox terriers is awful highstrung, Saxon. You'll likely get him
hysterical.”

But she was obstinately set in her purpose. She picked up a short stick
of firewood.

“Now, sir, give me that bone.”

She threatened with the stick, and the dog's growling became ferocious.
Again he snapped, then crouched back over his bone. Saxon raised the
stick as if to strike him, and he suddenly abandoned the bone, rolled
over on his back at her feet, four legs in the air, his ears lying
meekly back, his eyes swimming and eloquent with submission and appeal.

“My God!” Billy breathed in solemn awe. “Look at it!--presenting his
solar plexus to you, his vitals an' his life, all defense down, as much
as sayin': 'Here I am. Stamp on me. Kick the life outa me.' I love you,
I am your slave, but I just can't help defendin' my bone. My instinct's
stronger'n me. Kill me, but I can't help it.”

Saxon was melted. Tears were in her eyes as she stooped and gathered
the mite of an animal in her arms. Possum was in a frenzy of agitation,
whining, trembling, writhing, twisting, licking her face, all for
forgiveness.

“Heart of gold with a rose in his mouth,” Saxon crooned, burying her
face in the soft and quivering bundle of sensibilities. “Mother is
sorry. She'll never bother you again that way. There, there, little
love. See? There's your bone. Take it.”

She put him down, but he hesitated between her and the bone, patently
looking to her for surety of permission, yet continuing to tremble in
the terrible struggle between duty and desire that seemed tearing him
asunder. Not until she repeated that it was all right and nodded her
head consentingly did he go to the bone. And once, a minute later, he
raised his head with a sudden startle and gazed inquiringly at her.
She nodded and smiled, and Possum, with a happy sigh of satisfaction,
dropped his head down to the precious deer-rib.

“That Mercedes was right when she said men fought over jobs like dogs
over bones,” Billy enunciated slowly. “It's instinct. Why, I couldn't
no more help reaching my fist to the point of a scab's jaw than could
Possum from snappin' at you. They's no explainin' it. What a man has to
he has to. The fact that he does a thing shows he had to do it whether
he can explain it or not. You remember Hall couldn't explain why he
stuck that stick between Timothy McManus's legs in the foot race. What
a man has to, he has to. That's all I know about it. I never had no
earthly reason to beat up that lodger we had, Jimmy Harmon. He was a
good guy, square an' all right. But I just had to, with the strike goin'
to smash, an' everything so bitter inside me that I could taste it.
I never told you, but I saw 'm once after I got out--when my arms was
mendin'. I went down to the roundhouse an' waited for 'm to come in
off a run, an' apologized to 'm. Now why did I apologize? I don't know,
except for the same reason I punched 'm--I just had to.”

And so Billy expounded the why of like in terms of realism, in the camp
by the Umpqua River, while Possum expounded it, in similar terms of fang
and appetite, on the rib of deer.



CHAPTER XVI

With Possum on the seat beside her, Saxon drove into the town of
Roseburg. She drove at a walk. At the back of the wagon were tied two
heavy young work-horses. Behind, half a dozen more marched free, and
the rear was brought up by Billy, astride a ninth horse. All these he
shipped from Roseburg to the West Oakland stables.

It was in the Umpqua Valley that they heard the parable of the white
sparrow. The farmer who told it was elderly and flourishing. His farm
was a model of orderliness and system. Afterwards, Billy heard neighbors
estimate his wealth at a quarter of a million.

“You've heard the story of the farmer and the white sparrow'” he asked
Billy, at dinner.

“Never heard of a white sparrow even,” Billy answered.

“I must say they're pretty rare,” the farmer owned. “But here's the
story: Once there was a farmer who wasn't making much of a success.
Things just didn't seem to go right, till at last, one day, he heard
about the wonderful white sparrow. It seems that the white sparrow comes
out only just at daybreak with the first light of dawn, and that it
brings all kinds of good luck to the farmer that is fortunate enough
to catch it. Next morning our farmer was up at daybreak, and before,
looking for it. And, do you know, he sought for it continually, for
months and months, and never caught even a glimpse of it.” Their host
shook his head. “No; he never found it, but he found so many things
about the farm needing attention, and which he attended to before
breakfast, that before he knew it the farm was prospering, and it
wasn't long before the mortgage was paid off and he was starting a bank
account.”

That afternoon, as they drove along, Billy was plunged in a deep
reverie.

“Oh, I got the point all right,” he said finally. “An' yet I ain't
satisfied. Of course, they wasn't a white sparrow, but by getting up
early an' attendin' to things he'd been slack about before--oh, I got it
all right. An' yet, Saxon, if that's what a farmer's life means, I don't
want to find no moon valley. Life ain't hard work. Daylight to dark,
hard at it--might just as well be in the city. What's the difference?
Al' the time you've got to yourself is for sleepin', an' when you're
sleepin' you're not enjoyin' yourself. An' what's it matter where you
sleep, you're deado. Might as well be dead an' done with it as work your
head off that way. I'd sooner stick to the road, an' shoot a deer an'
catch a trout once in a while, an' lie on my back in the shade, an'
laugh with you an' have fun with you, an'... an' go swimmin'. An' I 'm a
willin' worker, too. But they's all the difference in the world between
a decent amount of work an' workin' your head off.”

Saxon was in full accord. She looked back on her years of toil and
contrasted them with the joyous life she had lived on the road.

“We don't want to be rich,” she said. “Let them hunt their white
sparrows in the Sacramento islands and the irrigation valleys. When we
get up early in the valley of the moon, it will be to hear the birds
sing and sing with them. And if we work hard at times, it will be only
so that we'll have more time to play. And when you go swimming I 'm
going with you. And we'll play so hard that we'll be glad to work for
relaxation.”


“I 'm gettin' plumb dried out,” Billy announced, mopping the sweat from
his sunburned forehead. “What d'ye say we head for the coast?”

West they turned, dropping down wild mountain gorges from the height
of land of the interior valleys. So fearful was the road, that, on one
stretch of seven miles, they passed ten broken-down automobiles. Billy
would not force the mares and promptly camped beside a brawling stream
from which he whipped two trout at a time. Here, Saxon caught her first
big trout. She had been accustomed to landing them up to nine and ten
inches, and the screech of the reel when the big one was hooked caused
her to cry out in startled surprise. Billy came up the riffle to her
and gave counsel. Several minutes later, cheeks flushed and eyes dancing
with excitement, Saxon dragged the big fellow carefully from the
water's edge into the dry sand. Here it threw the hook out and flopped
tremendously until she fell upon it and captured it in her hands.

“Sixteen inches,” Billy said, as she held it up proudly for inspection.
“--Hey!--what are you goin' to do?”

“Wash off the sand, of course,” was her answer.

“Better put it in the basket,” he advised, then closed his mouth and
grimly watched.

She stooped by the side of the stream and dipped in the splendid fish.
It flopped, there was a convulsive movement on her part, and it was
gone.

“Oh!” Saxon cried in chagrin.

“Them that finds should hold,” quoth Billy.

“I don't care,” she replied. “It was a bigger one than you ever caught
anyway.”

“Oh, I 'm not denyin' you're a peach at fishin',” he drawled. “You
caught me, didn't you?”

“I don't know about that,” she retorted. “Maybe it was like the man
who was arrested for catching trout out of season. His defense was self
defense.”

Billy pondered, but did not see.

“The trout attacked him,” she explained.

Billy grinned. Fifteen minutes later he said:

“You sure handed me a hot one.”


The sky was overcast, and, as they drove along the bank of the Coquille
River, the fog suddenly enveloped them.

“Whoof!” Billy exhaled joyfully. “Ain't it great! I can feel myself
moppin' it up like a dry sponge. I never appreciated fog before.”

Saxon held out her arms to receive it, making motions as if she were
bathing in the gray mist.

“I never thought I'd grow tired of the sun,” she said; “but we've had
more than our share the last few weeks.”

“Ever since we hit the Sacramento Valley,” Billy affirmed. “Too much sun
ain't good. I've worked that out. Sunshine is like liquor. Did you ever
notice how good you felt when the sun come out after a week of cloudy
weather. Well, that sunshine was just like a jolt of whiskey. Had the
same effect. Made you feel good all over. Now, when you're swimmin', an'
come out an' lay in the sun, how good you feel. That's because you're
lappin' up a sun-cocktail. But suppose you lay there in the sand a
couple of hours. You don't feel so good. You're so slow-movin' it takes
you a long time to dress. You go home draggin' your legs an' feelin'
rotten, with all the life sapped outa you. What's that? It's the
katzenjammer. You've been soused to the ears in sunshine, like so much
whiskey, an' now you're payin' for it. That's straight. That's why fog
in the climate is best.”

“Then we've been drunk for months,” Saxon said. “And now we're going to
sober up.”

“You bet. Why, Saxon, I can do two days' work in one in this
climate.--Look at the mares. Blame me if they ain't perkin' up already.”

Vainly Saxon's eye roved the pine forest in search of her beloved
redwoods. They would find them down in California, they were told in the
town of Bandon.

“Then we're too far north,” said Saxon. “We must go south to find our
valley of the moon.”

And south they went, along roads that steadily grew worse, through the
dairy country of Langlois and through thick pine forests to Port Orford,
where Saxon picked jeweled agates on the beach while Billy caught
enormous rockcod. No railroads had yet penetrated this wild region, and
the way south grew wilder and wilder. At Gold Beach they encountered
their old friend, the Rogue River, which they ferried across where
it entered the Pacific. Still wilder became the country, still more
terrible the road, still farther apart the isolated farms and clearings.

And here were neither Asiatics nor Europeans. The scant population
consisted of the original settlers and their descendants. More than one
old man or woman Saxon talked with, who could remember the trip across
the Plains with the plodding oxen. West they had fared until the Pacific
itself had stopped them, and here they had made their clearings, built
their rude houses, and settled. In them Farthest West had been reached.
Old customs had changed little. There were no railways. No automobile
as yet had ventured their perilous roads. Eastward, between them and the
populous interior valleys, lay the wilderness of the Coast Range--a game
paradise, Billy heard; though he declared that the very road he traveled
was game paradise enough for him. Had he not halted the horses, turned
the reins over to Saxon, and shot an eight-pronged buck from the
wagon-seat?

South of Gold Beach, climbing a narrow road through the virgin forest,
they heard from far above the jingle of bells. A hundred yards farther
on Billy found a place wide enough to turn out. Here he waited, while
the merry bells, descending the mountain, rapidly came near. They heard
the grind of brakes, the soft thud of horses' hoofs, once a sharp cry of
the driver, and once a woman's laughter.

“Some driver, some driver,” Billy muttered. “I take my hat off to 'm
whoever he is, hittin' a pace like that on a road like this.--Listen
to that! He's got powerful brakes.--Zocie! That WAS a chuck-hole! Some
springs, Saxon, some springs!”

Where the road zigzagged above, they glimpsed through the trees four
sorrel horses trotting swiftly, and the flying wheels of a small,
tan-painted trap.

At the bend of the road the leaders appeared again, swinging wide on
the curve, the wheelers flashed into view, and the light two-seated
rig; then the whole affair straightened out and thundered down upon them
across a narrow plank-bridge. In the front seat were a man and woman; in
the rear seat a Japanese was squeezed in among suit cases, rods, guns,
saddles, and a typewriter case, while above him and all about him,
fastened most intricately, sprouted a prodigious crop of deer- and
elk-horns.

“It's Mr. and Mrs. Hastings,” Saxon cried.

“Whoa!” Hastings yelled, putting on the brake and gathering his horses
in to a stop alongside. Greetings flew back and forth, in which the
Japanese, whom they had last seen on the Roamer at Rio Vista, gave and
received his share.

“Different from the Sacramento islands, eh?” Hastings said to Saxon.
“Nothing but old American stock in these mountains. And they haven't
changed any. As John Fox, Jr., said, they're our contemporary ancestors.
Our old folks were just like them.”

Mr. and Mrs. Hastings, between them, told of their long drive. They were
out two months then, and intended to continue north through Oregon and
Washington to the Canadian boundary.

“Then we'll ship our horses and come home by train,” concluded Hastings.

“But the way you drive you oughta be a whole lot further along than
this,” Billy criticized.

“But we keep stopping off everywhere,” Mrs. Hastings explained.

“We went in to the Hoopa Reservation,” said Mr. Hastings, “and canoed
down the Trinity and Klamath Rivers to the ocean. And just now we've
come out from two weeks in the real wilds of Curry County.”

“You must go in,” Hastings advised. “You'll get to Mountain Ranch
to-night. And you can turn in from there. No roads, though. You'll have
to pack your horses. But it's full of game. I shot five mountain lions
and two bear, to say nothing of deer. And there are small herds of elk,
too.--No; I didn't shoot any. They're protected. These horns I got from
the old hunters. I'll tell you all about it.”

And while the men talked, Saxon and Mrs. Hastings were not idle.

“Found your valley of the moon yet?” the writer's wife asked, as they
were saying good-by.

Saxon shook her head.

“You will find it if you go far enough; and be sure you go as far as
Sonoma Valley and our ranch. Then, if you haven't found it yet, we'll
see what we can do.”

Three weeks later, with a bigger record of mountain lions and bear
than Hastings' to his credit, Billy emerged from Curry County and drove
across the line into California. At once Saxon found herself among the
redwoods. But they were redwoods unbelievable. Billy stopped the wagon,
got out, and paced around one.

“Forty-five feet,” he announced. “That's fifteen in diameter. And
they're all like it only bigger. No; there's a runt. It's only about
nine feet through. An' they're hundreds of feet tall.”

“When I die, Billy, you must bury me in a redwood grove,” Saxon adjured.

“I ain't goin' to let you die before I do,” he assured her. “An' then
we'll leave it in our wills for us both to be buried that way.”



CHAPTER XVII

South they held along the coast, hunting, fishing, swimming, and
horse-buying. Billy shipped his purchases on the coasting steamers.
Through Del Norte and Humboldt counties they went, and through Mendocino
into Sonoma--counties larger than Eastern states--threading the giant
woods, whipping innumerable trout-streams, and crossing countless rich
valleys. Ever Saxon sought the valley of the moon. Sometimes, when all
seemed fair, the lack was a railroad, sometimes madrono and manzanita
trees, and, usually, there was too much fog.

“We do want a sun-cocktail once in a while,” she told Billy.

“Yep,” was his answer. “Too much fog might make us soggy. What we're
after is betwixt an' between, an' we'll have to get back from the coast
a ways to find it.”

This was in the fall of the year, and they turned their backs on the
Pacific at old Fort Ross and entered the Russian River Valley, far
below Ukiah, by way of Cazadero and Guerneville. At Santa Rosa Billy was
delayed with the shipping of several horses, so that it was not until
afternoon that he drove south and east for Sonoma Valley.

“I guess we'll no more than make Sonoma Valley when it'll be time to
camp,” he said, measuring the sun with his eye. “This is called Bennett
Valley. You cross a divide from it and come out at Glen Ellen. Now this
is a mighty pretty valley, if anybody should ask you. An' that's some
nifty mountain over there.”

“The mountain is all right,” Saxon adjudged. “But all the rest of the
hills are too bare. And I don't see any big trees. It takes rich soil to
make big trees.”

“Oh, I ain't sayin' it's the valley of the moon by a long ways. All
the same, Saxon, that's some mountain. Look at the timber on it. I bet
they's deer there.”

“I wonder where we'll spend this winter,” Saxon remarked.

“D'ye know, I've just been thinkin' the same thing. Let's winter at
Carmel. Mark Hall's back, an' so is Jim Hazard. What d'ye say?”

Saxon nodded.

“Only you won't be the odd-job man this time.”

“Nope. We can make trips in good weather horse-buyin',” Billy confirmed,
his face beaming with self-satisfaction. “An' if that walkin' poet of
the Marble House is around, I'll sure get the gloves on with 'm just in
memory of the time he walked me off my legs--”

“Oh! Oh!” Saxon cried. “Look, Billy! Look!”

Around a bend in the road came a man in a sulky, driving a heavy
stallion. The animal was a bright chestnut-sorrel, with cream-colored
mane and tail. The tail almost swept the ground, while the mane was so
thick that it crested out of the neck and flowed down, long and wavy. He
scented the mares and stopped short, head flung up and armfuls of creamy
mane tossing in the breeze. He bent his head until flaring nostrils
brushed impatient knees, and between the fine-pointed ears could be
seen a mighty and incredible curve of neck. Again he tossed his head,
fretting against the bit as the driver turned widely aside for safety
in passing. They could see the blue glaze like a sheen on the surface
of the horse's bright, wild eyes, and Billy closed a wary thumb on his
reins and himself turned widely. He held up his hand in signal, and the
driver of the stallion stopped when well past, and over his shoulder
talked draught-horses with Billy.

Among other things, Billy learned that the stallion's name was
Barbarossa, that the driver was the owner, and that Santa Rosa was his
headquarters.

“There are two ways to Sonoma Valley from here,” the man directed. “When
you come to the crossroads the turn to the left will take you to Glen
Ellen by Bennett Peak--that's it there.”

Rising from rolling stubble fields, Bennett Peak towered hot in the sun,
a row of bastion hills leaning against its base. But hills and mountains
on that side showed bare and heated, though beautiful with the sunburnt
tawniness of California.

“The turn to the right will take you to Glen Ellen, too, only it's
longer and steeper grades. But your mares don't look as though it'd
bother them.”

“Which is the prettiest way?” Saxon asked.

“Oh, the right hand road, by all means,” said the man. “That's Sonoma
Mountain there, and the road skirts it pretty well up, and goes through
Cooper's Grove.”

Billy did not start immediately after they had said good-by, and he
and Saxon, heads over shoulders, watched the roused Barbarossa plunging
mutinously on toward Santa Rosa.

“Gee!” Billy said. “I'd like to be up here next spring.”

At the crossroads Billy hesitated and looked at Saxon.

“What if it is longer?” she said. “Look how beautiful it is--all covered
with green woods; and I just know those are redwoods in the canyons.
You never can tell. The valley of the moon might be right up there
somewhere. And it would never do to miss it just in order to save half
an hour.”

They took the turn to the right and began crossing a series of steep
foothills. As they approached the mountain there were signs of a greater
abundance of water. They drove beside a running stream, and, though the
vineyards on the hills were summer-dry, the farmhouses in the hollows
and on the levels were grouped about with splendid trees.

“Maybe it sounds funny,” Saxon observed; “but I 'm beginning to love
that mountain already. It almost seems as if I'd seen it before,
somehow, it's so all-around satisfying--oh!”

Crossing a bridge and rounding a sharp turn, they were suddenly
enveloped in a mysterious coolness and gloom. All about them arose
stately trunks of redwood. The forest floor was a rosy carpet of autumn
fronds. Occasional shafts of sunlight, penetrating the deep shade,
warmed the somberness of the grove. Alluring paths led off among the
trees and into cozy nooks made by circles of red columns growing around
the dust of vanished ancestors--witnessing the titanic dimensions of
those ancestors by the girth of the circles in which they stood.

Out of the grove they pulled to the steep divide, which was no more than
a buttress of Sonoma Mountain. The way led on through rolling uplands
and across small dips and canyons, all well wooded and a-drip with
water. In places the road was muddy from wayside springs.

“The mountain's a sponge,” said Billy. “Here it is, the tail-end of dry
summer, an' the ground's just leakin' everywhere.”

“I know I've never been here before,” Saxon communed aloud. “But it's
all so familiar! So I must have dreamed it. And there's madronos!--a
whole grove! And manzanita! Why, I feel just as if I was coming home...
Oh, Billy, if it should turn out to be our valley.”

“Plastered against the side of a mountain?” he queried, with a skeptical
laugh.

“No; I don't mean that. I mean on the way to our valley. Because the
way--all ways--to our valley must be beautiful. And this; I've seen it
all before, dreamed it.”

“It's great,” he said sympathetically. “I wouldn't trade a square mile
of this kind of country for the whole Sacramento Valley, with the river
islands thrown in and Middle River for good measure. If they ain't deer
up there, I miss my guess. An' where they's springs they's streams, an'
streams means trout.”

They passed a large and comfortable farmhouse, surrounded by wandering
barns and cow-sheds, went on under forest arches, and emerged beside a
field with which Saxon was instantly enchanted. It flowed in a gentle
concave from the road up the mountain, its farther boundary an unbroken
line of timber. The field glowed like rough gold in the approaching
sunset, and near the middle of it stood a solitary great redwood, with
blasted top suggesting a nesting eyrie for eagles. The timber beyond
clothed the mountain in solid green to what they took to be the top.
But, as they drove on, Saxon, looking back upon what she called her
field, saw the real summit of Sonoma towering beyond, the mountain
behind her field a mere spur upon the side of the larger mass.

Ahead and toward the right, across sheer ridges of the mountains,
separated by deep green canyons and broadening lower down into rolling
orchards and vineyards, they caught their first sight of Sonoma Valley
and the wild mountains that rimmed its eastern side. To the left they
gazed across a golden land of small hills and valleys. Beyond, to the
north, they glimpsed another portion of the valley, and, still beyond,
the opposing wall of the valley--a range of mountains, the highest of
which reared its red and battered ancient crater against a rosy and
mellowing sky. From north to southeast, the mountain rim curved in the
brightness of the sun, while Saxon and Billy were already in the shadow
of evening. He looked at Saxon, noted the ravished ecstasy of her face,
and stopped the horses. All the eastern sky was blushing to rose, which
descended upon the mountains, touching them with wine and ruby. Sonoma
Valley began to fill with a purple flood, laving the mountain bases,
rising, inundating, drowning them in its purple. Saxon pointed in
silence, indicating that the purple flood was the sunset shadow of
Sonoma Mountain. Billy nodded, then chirruped to the mares, and the
descent began through a warm and colorful twilight.

On the elevated sections of the road they felt the cool, delicious
breeze from the Pacific forty miles away; while from each little dip and
hollow came warm breaths of autumn earth, spicy with sunburnt grass and
fallen leaves and passing flowers.

They came to the rim of a deep canyon that seemed to penetrate to
the heart of Sonoma Mountain. Again, with no word spoken, merely
from watching Saxon, Billy stopped the wagon. The canyon was wildly
beautiful. Tall redwoods lined its entire length. On its farther rim
stood three rugged knolls covered with dense woods of spruce and oak.
From between the knolls, a feeder to the main canyon and likewise
fringed with redwoods, emerged a smaller canyon. Billy pointed to a
stubble field that lay at the feet of the knolls.

“It's in fields like that I've seen my mares a-pasturing,” he said.

They dropped down into the canyon, the road following a stream that
sang under maples and alders. The sunset fires, refracted from the
cloud-driftage of the autumn sky, bathed the canyon with crimson,
in which ruddy-limbed madronos and wine-wooded manzanitas burned and
smoldered. The air was aromatic with laurel. Wild grape vines bridged
the stream from tree to tree. Oaks of many sorts were veiled in lacy
Spanish moss. Ferns and brakes grew lush beside the stream. From
somewhere came the plaint of a mourning dove. Fifty feet above the
ground, almost over their heads, a Douglas squirrel crossed the road--a
flash of gray between two trees; and they marked the continuance of its
aerial passage by the bending of the boughs.

“I've got a hunch,” said Billy.

“Let me say it first,” Saxon begged.

He waited, his eyes on her face as she gazed about her in rapture.

“We've found our valley,” she whispered. “Was that it?”

He nodded, but checked speech at sight of a small boy driving a cow
up the road, a preposterously big shotgun in one hand, in the other as
preposterously big a jackrabbit. “How far to Glen Ellen?” Billy asked.

“Mile an' a half,” was the answer.

“What creek is this?” inquired Saxon.

“Wild Water. It empties into Sonoma Creek half a mile down.”

“Trout?”--this from Billy.

“If you know how to catch 'em,” grinned the boy.

“Deer up the mountain?”

“It ain't open season,” the boy evaded.

“I guess you never shot a deer,” Billy slyly baited, and was rewarded
with:

“I got the horns to show.”

“Deer shed their horns,” Billy teased on. “Anybody can find 'em.”

“I got the meat on mine. It ain't dry yet--”

The boy broke off, gazing with shocked eyes into the pit Billy had dug
for him.

“It's all right, sonny,” Billy laughed, as he drove on. “I ain't the
game warden. I 'm buyin' horses.”

More leaping tree squirrels, more ruddy madronos and majestic oaks, more
fairy circles of redwoods, and, still beside the singing stream, they
passed a gate by the roadside. Before it stood a rural mail box, on
which was lettered “Edmund Hale.” Standing under the rustic arch,
leaning upon the gate, a man and woman composed a pieture so arresting
and beautiful that Saxon caught her breath. They were side by side, the
delicate hand of the woman curled in the hand of the man, which looked
as if made to confer benedictions. His face bore out this impression--a
beautiful-browed countenance, with large, benevolent gray eyes under a
wealth of white hair that shone like spun glass. He was fair and large;
the little woman beside him was daintily wrought. She was saffron-brown,
as a woman of the white race can well be, with smiling eyes of bluest
blue. In quaint sage-green draperies, she seemed a flower, with
her small vivid face irresistibly reminding Saxon of a springtime
wake-robin.

Perhaps the picture made by Saxon and Billy was equally arresting and
beautiful, as they drove down through the golden end of day. The two
couples had eyes only for each other. The little woman beamed joyously.
The man's face glowed into the benediction that had trembled there.
To Saxon, like the field up the mountain, like the mountain itself, it
seemed that she had always known this adorable pair. She knew that she
loved them.

“How d'ye do,” said Billy.

“You blessed children,” said the man. “I wonder if you know how dear you
look sitting there.”

That was all. The wagon had passed by, rustling down the road, which was
carpeted with fallen leaves of maple, oak, and alder. Then they came to
the meeting of the two creeks.

“Oh, what a place for a home,” Saxon cried, pointing across Wild Water.
“See, Billy, on that bench there above the meadow.”

“It's a rich bottom, Saxon; and so is the bench rich. Look at the big
trees on it. An' they's sure to be springs.”

“Drive over,” she said.

Forsaking the main road, they crossed Wild Water on a narrow bridge
and continued along an ancient, rutted road that ran beside an equally
ancient worm-fence of split redwood rails. They came to a gate, open and
off its hinges, through which the road led out on the bench.

“This is it--I know it,” Saxon said with conviction. “Drive in, Billy.”

A small, whitewashed farmhouse with broken windows showed through the
trees.

“Talk about your madronos--”

Billy pointed to the father of all madronos, six feet in diameter at its
base, sturdy and sound, which stood before the house.

They spoke in low tones as they passed around the house under great
oak trees and came to a stop before a small barn. They did not wait to
unharness. Tying the horses, they started to explore. The pitch from
the bench to the meadow was steep yet thickly wooded with oaks and
manzanita. As they crashed through the underbrush they startled a score
of quail into flight.

“How about game?” Saxon queried.

Billy grinned, and fell to examining a spring which bubbled a clear
stream into the meadow. Here the ground was sunbaked and wide open in a
multitude of cracks.

Disappointment leaped into Saxon's face, but Billy, crumbling a clod
between his fingers, had not made up his mind.

“It's rich,” he pronounced; “--the cream of the soil that's been washin'
down from the hills for ten thousan' years. But--”

He broke off, stared all about, studying the configuration of the
meadow, crossed it to the redwood trees beyond, then came back.

“It's no good as it is,” he said. “But it's the best ever if it's
handled right. All it needs is a little common sense an' a lot of
drainage. This meadow's a natural basin not yet filled level. They's a
sharp slope through the redwoods to the creek. Come on, I'll show you.”

They went through the redwoods and came out on Sonoma Creek. At this
spot was no singing. The stream poured into a quiet pool. The willows on
their side brushed the water. The opposite side was a steep bank. Billy
measured the height of the bank with his eye, the depth of the water
with a driftwood pole.

“Fifteen feet,” he announced. “That allows all kinds of high-divin' from
the bank. An' it's a hundred yards of a swim up an' down.”

They followed down the pool. It emptied in a riffle, across exposed
bedrock, into another pool. As they looked, a trout flashed into the air
and back, leaving a widening ripple on the quiet surface.

“I guess we won't winter in Carmel,” Billy said. “This place was
specially manufactured for us. In the morning I'll find out who owns
it.”

Half an hour later, feeding the horses, he called Saxon's attention to a
locomotive whistle.

“You've got your railroad,” he said. “That's a train pulling into Glen
Ellen, an' it's only a mile from here.”

Saxon was dozing off to sleep under the blankets when Billy aroused her.

“Suppose the guy that owns it won't sell?”

“There isn't the slightest doubt,” Saxon answered with unruffled
certainty. “This is our place. I know it.”



CHAPTER XVIII

They were awakened by Possum, who was indignantly reproaching a tree
squirrel for not coming down to be killed. The squirrel chattered
garrulous remarks that drove Possum into a mad attempt to climb the
tree. Billy and Saxon giggled and hugged each other at the terrier's
frenzy.

“If this is goin' to be our place, they'll be no shootin' of tree
squirrels,” Billy said.

Saxon pressed his hand and sat up. From beneath the bench came the cry
of a meadow lark.

“There isn't anything left to be desired,” she sighed happily.

“Except the deed,” Billy corrected.

After a hasty breakfast, they started to explore, running the irregular
boundaries of the place and repeatedly crossing it from rail fence to
creek and back again. Seven springs they found along the foot of the
bench on the edge of the meadow.

“There's your water supply,” Billy said. “Drain the meadow, work the
soil up, and with fertilizer and all that water you can grow crops the
year round. There must be five acres of it, an' I wouldn't trade it for
Mrs. Mortimer's.”

They were standing in the old orchard, on the bench where they had
counted twenty-seven trees, neglected but of generous girth.

“And on top the bench, back of the house, we can grow berries.” Saxon
paused, considering a new thought. “If only Mrs. Mortimer would come up
and advise us!--Do you think she would, Billy?”

“Sure she would. It ain't more 'n four hours' run from San Jose. But
first we'll get our hooks into the place. Then you can write to her.”

Sonoma Creek gave the long boundary to the little farm, two sides were
worm fenced, and the fourth side was Wild Water.

“Why, we'll have that beautiful man and woman for neighbors,” Saxon
recollected. “Wild Water will be the dividing line between their place
and ours.”

“It ain't ours yet,” Billy commented. “Let's go and call on 'em. They'll
be able to tell us all about it.”

“It's just as good as,” she replied. “The big thing has been the
finding. And whoever owns it doesn't care much for it. It hasn't been
lived in for a long time. And--Oh, Billy--are you satisfied!”

“With every bit of it,” he answered frankly, “as far as it goes. But the
trouble is, it don't go far enough.”

The disappointment in her face spurred him to renunciation of his
particular dream.

“We'll buy it--that's settled,” he said. “But outside the meadow, they's
so much woods that they's little pasture--not more 'n enough for a
couple of horses an' a cow. But I don't care. We can't have everything,
an' what they is is almighty good.”

“Let us call it a starter,” she consoled. “Later on we can add to
it--maybe the land alongside that runs up the Wild Water to the three
knolls we saw yesterday.”

“Where I seen my horses pasturin',” he remembered, with a flash of eye.
“Why not? So much has come true since we hit the road, maybe that'll
come true, too.

“We'll work for it, Billy.”

“We'll work like hell for it,” he said grimly.


They passed through the rustic gate and along a path that wound through
wild woods. There was no sign of the house until they came abruptly
upon it, bowered among the trees. It was eight-sided, and so justly
proportioned that its two stories made no show of height. The house
belonged there. It might have sprung from the soil just as the trees
had. There were no formal grounds. The wild grew to the doors. The
low porch of the main entrance was raised only a step from the ground.
“Trillium Covert,” they read, in quaint carved letters under the eave of
the porch.

“Come right upstairs, you dears,” a voice called from above, in response
to Saxon's knock.

Stepping back and looking up, she beheld the little lady smiling down
from a sleeping-porch. Clad in a rosy-tissued and flowing house gown,
she again reminded Saxon of a flower.

“Just push the front door open and find your way,” was the direction.

Saxon led, with Billy at her heels. They came into a room bright with
windows, where a big log smoldered in a rough-stone fireplace. On the
stone slab above stood a huge Mexican jar, filled with autumn branches
and trailing fluffy smoke-vine. The walls were finished in warm natural
woods, stained but without polish. The air was aromatic with clean
wood odors. A walnut organ loomed in a shallow corner of the room. All
corners were shallow in this octagonal dwelling. In another corner were
many rows of books. Through the windows, across a low couch indubitably
made for use, could be seen a restful picture of autumn trees and yellow
grasses, threaded by wellworn paths that ran here and there over the
tiny estate. A delightful little stairway wound past more windows to the
upper story. Here the little lady greeted them and led them into what
Saxon knew at once was her room. The two octagonal sides of the house
which showed in this wide room were given wholly to windows. Under
the long sill, to the floor, were shelves of books. Books lay here and
there, in the disorder of use, on work table, couch and desk. On a sill
by an open window, a jar of autumn leaves breathed the charm of the
sweet brown wife, who seated herself in a tiny rattan chair, enameled a
cheery red, such as children delight to rock in.

“A queer house,” Mrs. Hale laughed girlishly and contentedly. “But we
love it. Edmund made it with his own hands even to the plumbing, though
he did have a terrible time with that before he succeeded.”

“How about that hardwood floor downstairs?--an' the fireplace?” Billy
inquired.

“All, all,” she replied proudly. “And half the furniture. That cedar
desk there, the table--with his own hands.”

“They are such gentle hands,” Saxon was moved to say.

Mrs. Hale looked at her quickly, her vivid face alive with a grateful
light.

“They are gentle, the gentlest hands I have ever known,” she said
softly. “And you are a dear to have noticed it, for you only saw them
yesterday in passing.”

“I couldn't help it,” Saxon said simply.

Her gaze slipped past Mrs. Hale, attracted by the wall beyond, which
was done in a bewitching honeycomb pattern dotted with golden bees. The
walls were hung with a few, a very few, framed pictures.

“They are all of people,” Saxon said, remembering the beautiful
paintings in Mark Hall's bungalow.

“My windows frame my landscape paintings,” Mrs. Hale answered, pointing
out of doors. “Inside I want only the faces of my dear ones whom I
cannot have with me always. Some of them are dreadful rovers.”

“Oh!” Saxon was on her feet and looking at a photograph. “You know Clara
Hastings!”

“I ought to. I did everything but nurse her at my breast. She came to
me when she was a little baby. Her mother was my sister. Do you know
how greatly you resemble her? I remarked it to Edmund yesterday. He had
already seen it. It wasn't a bit strange that his heart leaped out to
you two as you came drilling down behind those beautiful horses.”

So Mrs. Hale was Clara's aunt--old stock that had crossed the Plains.
Saxon knew now why she had reminded her so strongly of her own mother.

The talk whipped quite away from Billy, who could only admire the
detailed work of the cedar desk while he listened. Saxon told of meeting
Clara and Jack Hastings on their yacht and on their driving trip in
Oregon. They were off again, Mrs. Hale said, having shipped their horses
home from Vancouver and taken the Canadian Pacific on their way to
England. Mrs. Hale knew Saxon's mother or, rather, her poems; and
produced, not only “The Story of the Files,” but a ponderous scrapbook
which contained many of her mother's poems which Saxon had never seen.
A sweet singer, Mrs. Hale said; but so many had sung in the days of gold
and been forgotten. There had been no army of magazines then, and the
poems had perished in local newspapers.

Jack Hastings had fallen in love with Clara, the talk ran on; then,
visiting at Trillium Covert, he had fallen in love with Sonoma Valley
and bought a magnificent home ranch, though little enough he saw of it,
being away over the world so much of the time. Mrs. Hale talked of her
own Journey across the Plains, a little girl, in the late Fifties, and,
like Mrs. Mortimer, knew all about the fight at Little Meadow, and the
tale of the massacre of the emigrant train of which Billy's father had
been the sole survivor.

“And so,” Saxon concluded, an hour later, “we've been three years
searching for our valley of the moon, and now we've found it.”

“Valley of the Moon?” Mrs. Hale queried. “Then you knew about it all the
time. What kept you so long?”

“No; we didn't know. We just started on a blind search for it. Mark Hall
called it a pilgrimage, and was always teasing us to carry long staffs.
He said when we found the spot we'd know, because then the staffs would
burst into blossom. He laughed at all the good things we wanted in our
valley, and one night he took me out and showed me the moon through
a telescope. He said that was the only place we could find such a
wonderful valley. He meant it was moonshine, but we adopted the name and
went on looking for it.”

“What a coincidence!” Mrs. Hale exclaimed. “For this is the Valley of
the Moon.”

“I know it,” Saxon said with quiet confidence. “It has everything we
wanted.”

“But you don't understand, my dear. This is the Valley of the Moon. This
is Sonoma Valley. Sonoma is an Indian word, and means the Valley of the
Moon. That was what the Indians called it for untold ages before the
first white men came. We, who love it, still so call it.”

And then Saxon recalled the mysterious references Jack Hastings and
his wife had made to it, and the talk tripped along until Billy grew
restless. He cleared his throat significantly and interrupted.

“We want to find out about that ranch acrost the creek--who owns it, if
they'll sell, where we'll find 'em, an' such things.”

Mrs. Hale stood up.

“We'll go and see Edmund,” she said, catching Saxon by the hand and
leading the way.

“My!” Billy ejaculated, towering above her. “I used to think Saxon was
small. But she'd make two of you.”

“And you're pretty big,” the little woman smiled; “but Edmund is taller
than you, and broader-shouldered.”

They crossed a bright hall, and found the big beautiful husband lying
back reading in a huge Mission rocker. Beside it was another tiny
child's chair of red-enameled rattan. Along the length of his thigh, the
head on his knee and directed toward a smoldering log in a fireplace,
clung an incredibly large striped cat. Like its master, it turned its
head to greet the newcomers. Again Saxon felt the loving benediction
that abided in his face, his eyes, his hands--toward which she
involuntarily dropped her eyes. Again she was impressed by the
gentleness of them. They were hands of love. They were the hands of a
type of man she had never dreamed existed. No one in that merry crowd of
Carmel had prefigured him. They were artists. This was the scholar,
the philosopher. In place of the passion of youth and all youth's mad
revolt, was the benignance of wisdom. Those gentle hands had passed all
the bitter by and plucked only the sweet of life. Dearly as she loved
them, she shuddered to think what some of those Carmelites would be like
when they were as old as he--especially the dramatic critic and the Iron
Man.

“Here are the dear children, Edmund,” Mrs. Hale said. “What do you
think! They want to buy the Madrono Ranch. They've been three years
searching for it--I forgot to tell them we had searched ten years for
Trillium Covert. Tell them all about it. Surely Mr. Naismith is still of
a mind to sell!”

They seated themselves in simple massive chairs, and Mrs. Hale took the
tiny rattan beside the big Mission rocker, her slender hand curled like
a tendril in Edmund's. And while Saxon listened to the talk, her eyes
took in the grave rooms lined with books. She began to realize how
a mere structure of wood and stone may express the spirit of him who
conceives and makes it. Those gentle hands had made all this--the very
furniture, she guessed as her eyes roved from desk to chair, from work
table to reading stand beside the bed in the other room, where stood a
green-shaded lamp and orderly piles of magazines and books.

As for the matter of Madrono Ranch, it was easy enough he was saying.
Naismith would sell. Had desired to sell for the past five years, ever
since he had engaged in the enterprise of bottling mineral water at the
springs lower down the valley. It was fortunate that he was the
owner, for about all the rest of the surrounding land was owned by a
Frenchman--an early settler. He would not part with a foot of it. He was
a peasant, with all the peasant's love of the soil, which, in him, had
become an obsession, a disease. He was a land-miser. With no business
capacity, old and opinionated, he was land poor, and it was an open
question which would arrive first, his death or bankruptcy.

As for Madrono Ranch, Naismith owned it and had set the price at fifty
dollars an acre. That would be one thousand dollars, for there were
twenty acres. As a farming investment, using old-fashioned methods, it
was not worth it. As a business investment, yes; for the virtues of the
valley were on the eve of being discovered by the outside world, and
no better location for a summer home could be found. As a happiness
investment in joy of beauty and climate, it was worth a thousand times
the price asked. And he knew Naismith would allow time on most of the
amount. Edmund's suggestion was that they take a two years' lease, with
option to buy, the rent to apply to the purchase if they took it up.
Naismith had done that once with a Swiss, who had paid a monthly rental
of ten dollars. But the man's wife had died, and he had gone away.

Edmund soon divined Billy's renunciation, though not the nature of it;
and several questions brought it forth--the old pioneer dream of land
spaciousness; of cattle on a hundred hills; one hundred and sixty acres
of land the smallest thinkable division.

“But you don't need all that land, dear lad,” Edmund said softly. “I
see you understand intensive farming. Have you thought about intensive
horse-raising?”

Billy's jaw dropped at the smashing newness of the idea. He considered
it, but could see no similarity in the two processes. Unbelief leaped
into his eyes.

“You gotta show me!” he cried.

The elder man smiled gently.

“Let us see. In the first place, you don't need those twenty acres
except for beauty. There are five acres in the meadow. You don't need
more than two of them to make your living at selling vegetables. In
fact, you and your wife, working from daylight to dark, cannot properly
farm those two acres. Remains three acres. You have plenty of water for
it from the springs. Don't be satisfied with one crop a year, like the
rest of the old-fashioned farmers in this valley. Farm it like
your vegetable plot, intensively, all the year, in crops that make
horse-feed, irrigating, fertilizing, rotating your crops. Those three
acres will feed as many horses as heaven knows how huge an area of
unseeded, uncared for, wasted pasture would feed. Think it over. I'll
lend you books on the subject. I don't know how large your crops will
be, nor do I know how much a horse eats; that's your business. But I am
certain, with a hired man to take your place helping your wife on her
two acres of vegetables, that by the time you own the horses your three
acres will feed, you will have all you can attend to. Then it will be
time to get more land, for more horses, for more riches, if that way
happiness lie.”

Billy understood. In his enthusiasm he dashed out:

“You're some farmer.”

Edmund smiled and glanced toward his wife.

“Give him your opinion of that, Annette.”

Her blue eyes twinkled as she complied.

“Why, the dear, he never farms. He has never farmed. But he knows.” She
waved her hand about the booklined walls. “He is a student of good. He
studies all good things done by good men under the sun. His pleasure is
in books and wood-working.”

“Don't forget Dulcie,” Edmund gently protested.

“Yes, and Dulcie.” Annette laughed. “Dulcie is our cow. It is a great
question with Jack Hastings whether Edmund dotes more on Dulcie, or
Dulcie dotes more on Edmund. When he goes to San Francisco Dulcie is
miserable. So is Edmund, until he hastens back. Oh, Dulcie has given me
no few jealous pangs. But I have to confess he understands her as no one
else does.”

“That is the one practical subject I know by experience,” Edmund
confirmed. “I am an authority on Jersey cows. Call upon me any time for
counsel.”

He stood up and went toward his book-shelves; and they saw how
magnificently large a man he was. He paused a book in his hand, to
answer a question from Saxon. No; there were no mosquitoes, although,
one summer when the south wind blew for ten days--an unprecedented
thing--a few mosquitoes had been carried up from San Pablo Bay. As for
fog, it was the making of the valley. And where they were situated,
sheltered behind Sonoma Mountain, the fogs were almost invariably high
fogs. Sweeping in from the ocean forty miles away, they were deflected
by Sonoma Mountain and shunted high into the air. Another thing,
Trillium Covert and Madrono Ranch were happily situated in a narrow
thermal belt, so that in the frosty mornings of winter the temperature
was always several degrees higher than in the rest of the valley. In
fact, frost was very rare in the thermal belt, as was proved by the
successful cultivation of certain orange and lemon trees.

Edmund continued reading titles and selecting books until he had drawn
out quite a number. He opened the top one, Bolton Hall's “Three Acres
and Liberty,” and read to them of a man who walked six hundred and fifty
miles a year in cultivating, by old-fashioned methods, twenty acres,
from which he harvested three thousand bushels of poor potatoes; and of
another man, a “new” farmer, who cultivated only five acres, walked two
hundred miles, and produced three thousand bushels of potatoes, early
and choice, which he sold at many times the price received by the first
man.

Saxon received the books from Edmund, and, as she heaped them in Billy's
arms, read the titles. They were: Wickson's “California Fruits,”
 Wickson's “California Vegetables,” Brooks' “Fertilizers,” Watson's
“Farm Poultry,” King's “Irrigation and Drainage,” Kropotkin's “Fields,
Factories and Workshops,” and Farmer's Bulletin No. 22 on “The Feeding
of Farm Animals.”

“Come for more any time you want them,” Edmund invited. “I have hundreds
of volumes on farming, and all the Agricultural Bulletins... . And you
must come and get acquainted with Dulcie your first spare time,” he
called after them out the door.



CHAPTER XIX

Mrs. Mortimer arrived with seed catalogs and farm books, to find Saxon
immersed in the farm books borrowed from Edmund. Saxon showed her
around, and she was delighted with everything, including the terms of
the lease and its option to buy.

“And now,” she said. “What is to be done? Sit down, both of you. This is
a council of war, and I am the one person in the world to tell you what
to do. I ought to be. Anybody who has reorganized and recatalogued a
great city library should be able to start you young people on in short
order. Now, where shall we begin?”

She paused for breath of consideration.

“First, Madrono Ranch is a bargain. I know soil, I know beauty, I
know climate. Madrono Ranch is a gold mine. There is a fortune in that
meadow. Tilth--I'll tell you about that later. First, here's the
land. Second, what are you going to do with it? Make a living? Yes.
Vegetables? Of course. What are you going to do with them after you have
grown them? Sell. Where?--Now listen. You must do as I did. Cut out the
middle man. Sell directly to the consumer. Drum up your own market.
Do you know what I saw from the car windows coming up the valley,
only several miles from here? Hotels, springs, summer resorts, winter
resorts--population, mouths, market. How is that market supplied? I
looked in vain for truck gardens.--Billy, harness up your horses and
be ready directly after dinner to take Saxon and me driving. Never mind
everything else. Let things stand. What's the use of starting for a
place of which you haven't the address. We'll look for the address
this afternoon. Then we'll know where we are--at.”--The last syllable a
smiling concession to Billy.

But Saxon did not accompany them. There was too much to be done in
cleaning the long-abandoned house and in preparing an arrangement for
Mrs. Mortimer to sleep. And it was long after supper time when Mrs.
Mortimer and Billy returned.

“You lucky, lucky children,” she began immediately. “This valley is just
waking up. Here's your market. There isn't a competitor in the valley.
I thought those resorts looked new--Caliente, Boyes Hot Springs, El
Verano, and all along the line. Then there are three little hotels in
Glen Ellen, right next door. Oh, I've talked with all the owners and
managers.”

“She's a wooz,” Billy admired. “She'd brace up to God on a business
proposition. You oughta seen her.”

Mrs. Mortimer acknowledged the compliment and dashed on.

“And where do all the vegetables come from? Wagons drive down twelve to
fifteen miles from Santa Rosa, and up from Sonoma. Those are the nearest
truck farms, and when they fail, as they often do, I am told, to supply
the increasing needs, the managers have to express vegetables all
the way from San Francisco. I've introduced Billy. They've agreed to
patronize home industry. Besides, it is better for them. You'll deliver
just as good vegetables just as cheap; you will make it a point to
deliver better, fresher vegetables; and don't forget that delivery for
you will be cheaper by virtue of the shorter haul.

“No day-old egg stunt here. No jams nor jellies. But you've got lots of
space up on the bench here on which you can't grow vegetables. To-morrow
morning I'll help you lay out the chicken runs and houses. Besides,
there is the matter of capons for the San Francisco market. You'll start
small. It will be a side line at first. I'll tell you all about that,
too, and send you the literature. You must use your head. Let others
do the work. You must understand that thoroughly. The wages of
superintendence are always larger than the wages of the laborers. You
must keep books. You must know where you stand. You must know what pays
and what doesn't and what pays best. Your books will tell that. I'll
show you all in good time.”

“An' think of it--all that on two acres!” Billy murmured.

Mrs. Mortimer looked at him sharply.

“Two acres your granny,” she said with asperity. “Five acres. And then
you won't be able to supply your market. And you, my boy, as soon as
the first rains come will have your hands full and your horses weary
draining that meadow. We'll work those plans out to-morrow Also, there
is the matter of berries on the bench here--and trellised table
grapes, the choicest. They bring the fancy prices. There will be
blackberries--Burbank's, he lives at Santa Rosa--Loganberries, Mammoth
berries. But don't fool with strawberries. That's a whole occupation in
itself. They're not vines, you know. I've examined the orchard. It's a
good foundation. We'll settle the pruning and grafts later.”

“But Billy wanted three acres of the meadow,” Saxon explained at the
first chance.

“What for?”

“To grow hay and other kinds of food for the horses he's going to
raise.”

“Buy it out of a portion of the profits from those three acres,” Mrs.
Mortimer decided on the instant.

Billy swallowed, and again achieved renunciation.

“All right,” he said, with a brave show of cheerfulness. “Let her go. Us
for the greens.”

During the several days of Mrs. Mortimer's visit, Billy let the two
women settle things for themselves. Oakland had entered upon a boom, and
from the West Oakland stables had come an urgent letter for more horses.
So Billy was out, early and late, scouring the surrounding country for
young work animals. In this way, at the start, he learned his valley
thoroughly. There was also a clearing out at the West Oakland stables of
mares whose feet had been knocked out on the hard city pavements, and
he was offered first choice at bargain prices. They were good animals.
He knew what they were because he knew them of old time. The soft earth
of the country, with a preliminary rest in pasture with their shoes
pulled off, would put them in shape. They would never do again on
hard-paved streets, but there were years of farm work in them. And
then there was the breeding. But he could not undertake to buy them. He
fought out the battle in secret and said nothing to Saxon.

At night, he would sit in the kitchen and smoke, listening to all that
the two women had done and planned in the day. The right kind of horses
was hard to buy, and, as he put it, it was like pulling a tooth to get a
farmer to part with one, despite the fact that he had been authorized to
increase the buying sum by as much as fifty dollars. Despite the coming
of the automobile, the price of heavy draught animals continued to rise.
From as early as Billy could remember, the price of the big work horses
had increased steadily. After the great earthquake, the price had
jumped; yet it had never gone back.

“Billy, you make more money as a horse-buyer than a common laborer,
don't you?” Mrs. Mortimer asked. “Very well, then. You won't have to
drain the meadow, or plow it, or anything. You keep right on buying
horses. Work with your head. But out of what you make you will please
pay the wages of one laborer for Saxon's vegetables. It will be a good
investment, with quick returns.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “That's all anybody hires any body for--to make money
outa 'm. But how Saxon an' one man are goin' to work them five acres,
when Mr. Hale says two of us couldn't do what's needed on two acres, is
beyond me.”

“Saxon isn't going to work,” Mrs. Mortimer retorted.

“Did you see me working at San Jose? Saxon is going to use her head.
It's about time you woke up to that. A dollar and a half a day is what
is earned by persons who don't use their heads. And she isn't going to
be satisfied with a dollar and a half a day. Now listen. I had a long
talk with Mr. Hale this afternoon. He says there are practically no
efficient laborers to be hired in the valley.”

“I know that,” Billy interjected. “All the good men go to the cities.
It's only the leavin's that's left. The good ones that stay behind ain't
workin' for wages.”

“Which is perfectly true, every word. Now listen, children. I knew about
it, and I spoke to Mr. Hale. He is prepared to make the arrangements for
you. He knows all about it himself, and is in touch with the Warden. In
short, you will parole two good-conduct prisoners from San Quentin; and
they will be gardeners. There are plenty of Chinese and Italians there,
and they are the best truck-farmers. You kill two birds with one stone.
You serve the poor convicts, and you serve yourselves.”

Saxon hesitated, shocked; while Billy gravely considered the question.

“You know John,” Mrs. Mortimer went on, “Mr. Hale's man about the place?
How do you like him?”

“Oh, I was wishing only to-day that we could find somebody like him,”
 Saxon said eagerly. “He's such a dear, faithful soul. Mrs. Hale told me
a lot of fine things about him.”

“There's one thing she didn't tell you,” smiled Mrs. Mortimer. “John is
a paroled convict. Twenty-eight years ago, in hot blood, he killed a
man in a quarrel over sixty-five cents. He's been out of prison with
the Hales three years now. You remember Louis, the old Frenchman, on my
place? He's another. So that's settled. When your two come--of course
you will pay them fair wages--and we'll make sure they're the same
nationality, either Chinese or Italians--well, when they come, John,
with their help, and under Mr. Hale's guidance, will knock together a
small cabin for them to live in. We'll select the spot. Even so, when
your farm is in full swing you'll have to have more outside help. So
keep your eyes open, Billy, while you're gallivanting over the valley.”

The next night Billy failed to return, and at nine o'clock a Glen Ellen
boy on horseback delivered a telegram. Billy had sent it from Lake
County. He was after horses for Oakland.

Not until the third night did he arrive home, tired to exhaustion, but
with an ill concealed air of pride.

“Now what have you been doing these three days?” Mrs. Mortimer demanded.

“Usin' my head,” he boasted quietly. “Killin' two birds with one stone;
an', take it from me, I killed a whole flock. Huh! I got word of it at
Lawndale, an' I wanta tell you Hazel an' Hattie was some tired when I
stabled 'm at Calistoga an' pulled out on the stage over St. Helena.
I was Johnny-on-the-spot, an' I nailed 'm--eight whoppers--the whole
outfit of a mountain teamster. Young animals, sound as a dollar, and
the lightest of 'em over fifteen hundred. I shipped 'm last night from
Calistoga. An', well, that ain't all.

“Before that, first day, at Lawndale, I seen the fellow with the teamin'
contract for the pavin'-stone quarry. Sell horses! He wanted to buy 'em.
He wanted to buy 'em bad. He'd even rent 'em, he said.”

“And you sent him the eight you bought!” Saxon broke in.

“Guess again. I bought them eight with Oakland money, an' they was
shipped to Oakland. But I got the Lawndale contractor on long distance,
and he agreed to pay me half a dollar a day rent for every work horse up
to half a dozen. Then I telegraphed the Boss, tellin' him to ship me six
sore-footed mares, Bud Strothers to make the choice, an' to charge to my
commission. Bud knows what I 'm after. Soon as they come, off go their
shoes. Two weeks in pasture, an' then they go to Lawndale. They can do
the work. It's a down-hill haul to the railroad on a dirt road. Half a
dollar rent each--that's three dollars a day they'll bring me six days a
week. I don't feed 'em, shoe 'm, or nothin', an' I keep an eye on 'm to
see they're treated right. Three bucks a day, eh! Well, I guess that'll
keep a couple of dollar-an '-a-half men goin' for Saxon, unless she
works 'em Sundays. Huh! The Valley of the Moon! Why, we'll be wearin'
diamonds before long. Gosh! A fellow could live in the city a thousan'
years an' not get such chances. It beats China lottery.”

He stood up.

“I 'm goin' out to water Hazel an' Hattie, feed 'm, an' bed 'm down.
I'll eat soon as I come back.”

The two women were regarding each other with shining eyes, each on the
verge of speech when Billy returned to the door and stuck his head in.

“They's one thing maybe you ain't got,” he said. “I pull down them three
dollars every day; but the six mares is mine, too. I own 'm. They're
mine. Are you on?”



CHAPTER XX

“I'm not done with you children,” had been Mrs. Mortimer's parting
words; and several times that winter she ran up to advise, and to teach
Saxon how to calculate her crops for the small immediate market, for the
increasing spring market, and for the height of summer, at which time
she would be able to sell all she could possibly grow and then not
supply the demand. In the meantime, Hazel and Hattie were used every
odd moment in hauling manure from Glen Ellen, whose barnyards had never
known such a thorough cleaning. Also there were loads of commercial
fertilizer from the railroad station, bought under Mrs. Mortimer's
instructions.

The convicts paroled were Chinese. Both had served long in prison, and
were old men; but the day's work they were habitually capable of won
Mrs. Mortimer's approval. Gow Yum, twenty years before, had had charge
of the vegetable garden of one of the great Menlo Park estates. His
disaster had come in the form of a fight over a game of fan tan in the
Chinese quarter at Redwood City. His companion, Chan Chi, had been
a hatchet-man of note, in the old fighting days of the San Francisco
tongs. But a quarter of century of discipline in the prison vegetable
gardens had cooled his blood and turned his hand from hatchet to hoe.
These two assistants had arrived in Glen Ellen like precious goods
in bond and been receipted for by the local deputy sheriff, who, in
addition, reported on them to the prison authorities each month. Saxon,
too, made out a monthly report and sent it in.

As for the danger of their cutting her throat, she quickly got over the
idea of it. The mailed hand of the State hovered over them. The taking
of a single drink of liquor would provoke that hand to close down and
jerk them back to prison-cells. Nor had they freedom of movement. When
old Gow Yum needed to go to San Francisco to sign certain papers
before the Chinese Consul, permission had first to be obtained from
San Quentin. Then, too, neither man was nasty tempered. Saxon had been
apprehensive of the task of bossing two desperate convicts; but when
they came she found it a pleasure to work with them. She could tell them
what to do, but it was they who knew how to do. From them she learned all
the ten thousand tricks and quirks of artful gardening, and she was not
long in realizing how helpless she would have been had she depended on
local labor.

Still further, she had no fear, because she was not alone. She had
been using her head. It was quickly apparent to her that she could not
adequately oversee the outside work and at the same time do the house
work. She wrote to Ukiah to the energetic widow who had lived in the
adjoining house and taken in washing. She had promptly closed with
Saxon's offer. Mrs. Paul was forty, short in stature, and weighed two
hundred pounds, but never wearied on her feet. Also she was devoid of
fear, and, according to Billy, could settle the hash of both Chinese
with one of her mighty arms. Mrs. Paul arrived with her son, a country
lad of sixteen who knew horses and could milk Hilda, the pretty Jersey
which had successfully passed Edmund's expert eye. Though Mrs. Paul ably
handled the house, there was one thing Saxon insisted on doing--namely,
washing her own pretty flimsies.

“When I 'm no longer able to do that,” she told Billy, “you can take
a spade to that clump of redwoods beside Wild Water and dig a hole. It
will be time to bury me.”

It was early in the days of Madrono Ranch, at the time of Mrs.
Mortimer's second visit, that Billy drove in with a load of pipe; and
house, chicken yards, and barn were piped from the second-hand tank he
installed below the house-spring.

“Huh! I guess I can use my head,” he said. “I watched a woman over on
the other side of the valley, packin' water two hundred feet from the
spring to the house; an' I did some figurin'. I put it at three trips a
day and on wash days a whole lot more; an' you can't guess what I made
out she traveled a year packin' water. One hundred an' twenty-two miles.
D'ye get that? One hundred and twenty-two miles! I asked her how long
she'd been there. Thirty-one years. Multiply it for yourself. Three
thousan', seven hundred an' eighty-two miles--all for the sake of two
hundred feet of pipe. Wouldn't that jar you?”

“Oh, I ain't done yet. They's a bath-tub an' stationary tubs a-comin'
soon as I can see my way. An', say, Saxon, you know that little clear
flat just where Wild Water runs into Sonoma. They's all of an acre of
it. An' it's mine! Got that? An' no walkin' on the grass for you. It'll
be my grass. I 'm goin' up stream a ways an' put in a ram. I got a big
second-hand one staked out that I can get for ten dollars, an' it'll
pump more water'n I need. An' you'll see alfalfa growin' that'll make
your mouth water. I gotta have another horse to travel around on. You're
usin' Hazel an' Hattie too much to give me a chance; an' I'll never see
'm as soon as you start deliverin' vegetables. I guess that alfalfa'll
help some to keep another horse goin'.”

But Billy was destined for a time to forget his alfalfa in the
excitement of bigger ventures. First, came trouble. The several
hundred dollars he had arrived with in Sonoma Valley, and all his own
commissions since earned, had gone into improvements and living. The
eighteen dollars a week rental for his six horses at Lawndale went to
pay wages. And he was unable to buy the needed saddle-horse for his
horse-buying expeditions. This, however, he had got around by again
using his head and killing two birds with one stone. He began breaking
colts to drive, and in the driving drove them wherever he sought horses.

So far all was well. But a new administration in San Francisco, pledged
to economy, had stopped all street work. This meant the shutting down of
the Lawndale quarry, which was one of the sources of supply for paving
blocks. The six horses would not only be back on his hands, but he would
have to feed them. How Mrs. Paul, Gow Yum, and Chan Chi were to be paid
was beyond him.

“I guess we've bit off more'n we could chew,” he admitted to Saxon.

That night he was late in coming home, but brought with him a radiant
face. Saxon was no less radiant.

“It's all right,” she greeted him, coming out to the barn where he was
unhitching a tired but fractious colt. “I've talked with all three. They
see the situation, and are perfectly willing to let their wages stand a
while. By another week I start Hazel and Hattie delivering vegetables.
Then the money will pour in from the hotels and my books won't look
so lopsided. And--oh, Billy--you'd never guess. Old Gow Yum has a bank
account. He came to me afterward--I guess he was thinking it over--and
offered to lend me four hundred dollars. What do you think of that?”

“That I ain't goin' to be too proud to borrow it off 'm, if he IS a
Chink. He's a white one, an' maybe I'll need it. Because, you see--well,
you can't guess what I've been up to since I seen you this mornin'. I've
been so busy I ain't had a bite to eat.”

“Using your head?” She laughed.

“You can call it that,” he joined in her laughter. “I've been spendin'
money like water.”

“But you haven't got any to spend,” she objected.

“I've got credit in this valley, I'll let you know,” he replied. “An' I
sure strained it some this afternoon. Now guess.”

“A saddle-horse?”

He roared with laughter, startling the colt, which tried to bolt and
lifted him half off the ground by his grip on its frightened nose and
neck.

“Oh, I mean real guessin',” he urged, when the animal had dropped back
to earth and stood regarding him with trembling suspicion.

“Two saddle-horses?”

“Aw, you ain't got imagination. I'll tell you. You know Thiercroft. I
bought his big wagon from 'm for sixty dollars. I bought a wagon from
the Kenwood blacksmith--so-so, but it'll do--for forty-five dollars. An'
I bought Ping's wagon--a peach--for sixty-five dollars. I could a-got it
for fifty if he hadn't seen I wanted it bad.”

“But the money?” Saxon questioned faintly. “You hadn't a hundred dollars
left.”

“Didn't I tell you I had credit? Well, I have. I stood 'm off for them
wagons. I ain't spent a cent of cash money to-day except for a
couple of long-distance switches. Then I bought three sets of
work-harness--they're chain harness an' second-hand--for twenty dollars
a set. I bought 'm from the fellow that's doin' the haulin' for the
quarry. He don't need 'm any more. An' I rented four wagons from 'm,
an' four span of horses, too, at half a dollar a day for each horse,
an' half a dollar a day for each wagon--that's six dollars a day rent
I gotta pay 'm. The three sets of spare harness is for my six horses.
Then... lemme see... yep, I rented two barns in Glen Ellen, an' I
ordered fifty tons of hay an' a carload of bran an' barley from the
store in Glenwood--you see, I gotta feed all them fourteen horses, an'
shoe 'm, an' everything.

“Oh, sure Pete, I've went some. I hired seven men to go drivin' for me
at two dollars a day, an'--ouch! Jehosaphat! What you doin'!”

“No,” Saxon said gravely, having pinched him, “you're not dreaming.”
 She felt his pulse and forehead. “Not a sign of fever.” She sniffed
his breath. “And you've not been drinking. Go on, tell me the rest of
this... whatever it is.”

“Ain't you satisfied?”

“No. I want more. I want all.”

“All right. But I just want you to know, first, that the boss I used to
work for in Oakland ain't got nothin' on me. I 'm some man of affairs,
if anybody should ride up on a vegetable wagon an' ask you. Now, I 'm
goin' to tell you, though I can't see why the Glen Ellen folks didn't
beat me to it. I guess they was asleep. Nobody'd a-overlooked a thing
like it in the city. You see, it was like this: you know that fancy
brickyard they're gettin' ready to start for makin' extra special fire
brick for inside walls? Well, here was I worryin' about the six horses
comin' back on my hands, earnin' me nothin' an' eatin' me into the
poorhouse. I had to get 'm work somehow, an' I remembered the brickyard.
I drove the colt down an' talked with that Jap chemist who's been doin'
the experimentin'. Gee! They was foremen lookin' over the ground an'
everything gettin' ready to hum. I looked over the lay an' studied it.
Then I drove up to where they're openin' the clay pit--you know, that
fine, white chalky stuff we saw 'em borin' out just outside the hundred
an' forty acres with the three knolls. It's a down-hill haul, a mile,
an' two horses can do it easy. In fact, their hardest job'll be haulin'
the empty wagons up to the pit. Then I tied the colt an' went to
figurin'.

“The Jap professor'd told me the manager an' the other big guns of the
company was comin' up on the mornin' train. I wasn't shoutin' things
out to anybody, but I just made myself into a committee of welcome; an',
when the train pulled in, there I was, extendin' the glad hand of the
burg--likewise the glad hand of a guy you used to know in Oakland once,
a third-rate dub prizefighter by the name of--lemme see--yep, I got
it right--Big Bill Roberts was the name he used to sport, but now he's
known as William Roberts, E. S. Q.

“Well, as I was sayin', I gave 'm the glad hand, an' trailed along with
'em to the brickyard, an' from the talk I could see things was doin'.
Then I watched my chance an' sprung my proposition. I was scared stiff
all the time for maybe the teamin' was already arranged. But I knew it
wasn't when they asked for my figures. I had 'm by heart, an' I rattled
'm off, and the top-guy took 'm down in his note-book.

“'We're goin' into this big, an' at once,' he says, lookin' at me sharp.
'What kind of an outfit you got, Mr. Roberts?'”

“Me!--with only Hazel an' Hattie, an' them too small for heavy teamin'.

“'I can slap fourteen horses an' seven wagons onto the job at the jump,'
says I. 'An' if you want more, I'll get 'm, that's all.'

“'Give us fifteen minutes to consider, Mr. Roberts,' he says.

“'Sure,' says I, important as all hell--ahem--me!--'but a couple of
other things first. I want a two year contract, an' them figures all
depends on one thing. Otherwise they don't go.'

“'What's that,' he says.

“'The dump,' says I. 'Here we are on the ground, an' I might as well
show you.'

“An' I did. I showed 'm where I'd lose out if they stuck to their plan,
on account of the dip down an' pull up to the dump. 'All you gotta do,'
I says, 'is to build the bunkers fifty feet over, throw the road around
the rim of the hill, an' make about seventy or eighty feet of elevated
bridge.'

“Say, Saxon, that kind of talk got 'em. It was straight. Only they'd
been thinkin' about bricks, while I was only thinkin' of teamin'.

“I guess they was all of half an hour considerin', an' I was almost as
miserable waitin' as when I waited for you to say yes after I asked you.
I went over the figures, calculatin' what I could throw off if I had
to. You see, I'd given it to 'em stiff--regular city prices; an' I was
prepared to trim down. Then they come back.

“'Prices oughta be lower in the country,' says the top-guy.

“'Nope,' I says. 'This is a wine-grape valley. It don't raise enough
hay an' feed for its own animals. It has to be shipped in from the San
Joaquin Valley. Why, I can buy hay an' feed cheaper in San Francisco,
laid down, than I can here an' haul it myself.'

“An' that struck 'm hard. It was true, an' they knew it. But--say! If
they'd asked about wages for drivers, an' about horse-shoein' prices,
I'd a-had to come down; because, you see, they ain't no teamsters' union
in the country, an' no horseshoers' union, an' rent is low, an' them two
items come a whole lot cheaper. Huh! This afternoon I got a word bargain
with the blacksmith across from the post office; an' he takes my whole
bunch an' throws off twenty-five cents on each shoein', though it's on
the Q. T. But they didn't think to ask, bein' too full of bricks.”

Billy felt in his breast pocket, drew out a legal-looking document, and
handed it to Saxon.

“There it is,” he said, “the contract, full of all the agreements,
prices, an' penalties. I saw Mr. Hale down town an' showed it to 'm.
He says it's O.K. An' say, then I lit out. All over town, Kenwood,
Lawndale, everywhere, everybody, everything. The quarry teamin' finishes
Friday of this week. An' I take the whole outfit an' start Wednesday of
next week haulin' lumber for the buildin's, an' bricks for the kilns,
an' all the rest. An' when they're ready for the clay I 'm the boy
that'll give it to them.

“But I ain't told you the best yet. I couldn't get the switch right
away from Kenwood to Lawndale, and while I waited I went over my figures
again. You couldn't guess it in a million years. I'd made a mistake in
addition somewhere, an' soaked 'm ten per cent. more'n I'd expected.
Talk about findin' money! Any time you want them couple of extra men to
help out with the vegetables, say the word. Though we're goin' to have
to pinch the next couple of months. An' go ahead an' borrow that four
hundred from Gow Yum. An' tell him you'll pay eight per cent. interest,
an' that we won't want it more 'n three or four months.”

When Billy got away from Saxon's arms, he started leading the colt up
and down to cool it off. He stopped so abruptly that his back collided
with the colt's nose, and there was a lively minute of rearing and
plunging. Saxon waited, for she knew a fresh idea had struck Billy.

“Say,” he said, “do you know anything about bank accounts and drawin'
checks?”



CHAPTER XXI

It was on a bright June morning that Billy told Saxon to put on her
riding clothes to try out a saddle-horse.

“Not until after ten o'clock,” she said. “By that time I'll have the
wagon off on a second trip.”

Despite the extent of the business she had developed, her executive
ability and system gave her much spare time. She could call on the
Hales, which was ever a delight, especially now that the Hastings
were back and that Clara was often at her aunt's. In this congenial
atmosphere Saxon burgeoned. She had begun to read--to read with
understanding; and she had time for her books, for work on her pretties,
and for Billy, whom she accompanied on many expeditions.

Billy was even busier than she, his work being more scattered and
diverse. And, as well, he kept his eye on the home barn and horses
which Saxon used. In truth he had become a man of affairs, though Mrs.
Mortimer had gone over his accounts, with an eagle eye on the expense
column, discovering several minor leaks, and finally, aided by Saxon,
bullied him into keeping books. Each night, after supper, he and Saxon
posted their books. Afterward, in the big morris chair he had insisted
on buying early in the days of his brickyard contract, Saxon would creep
into his arms and strum on the ukulele; or they would talk long about
what they were doing and planning to do. Now it would be:

“I'm mixin' up in politics, Saxon. It pays. You bet it pays. If by next
spring I ain't got a half a dozen teams workin' on the roads an' pullin'
down the county money, it's me back to Oakland an' askin' the Boss for a
job.”

Or, Saxon: “They're really starting that new hotel between Caliente and
Eldridge. And there's some talk of a big sanitarium back in the hills.”

Or, it would be: “Billy, now that you've piped that acre, you've just
got to let me have it for my vegetables. I'll rent it from you. I'll
take your own estimate for all the alfalfa you can raise on it, and pay
you full market price less the cost of growing it.”

“It's all right, take it.” Billy suppressed a sigh. “Besides, I 'm too
busy to fool with it now.”

Which prevarication was bare-faced, by virtue of his having just
installed the ram and piped the land.

“It will be the wisest, Billy,” she soothed, for she knew his dream of
land-spaciousness was stronger than ever. “You don't want to fool with
an acre. There's that hundred and forty. We'll buy it yet if old Chavon
ever dies. Besides, it really belongs to Madrono Ranch. The two together
were the original quarter section.”

“I don't wish no man's death,” Billy grumbled. “But he ain't gettin'
no good out of it, over-pasturin' it with a lot of scrub animals. I've
sized it up every inch of it. They's at least forty acres in the three
cleared fields, with water in the hills behind to beat the band. The
horse feed I could raise on it'd take your breath away. Then they's at
least fifty acres I could run my brood mares on, pasture mixed up with
trees and steep places and such. The other fifty's just thick woods, an'
pretty places, an' wild game. An' that old adobe barn's all right. With
a new roof it'd shelter any amount of animals in bad weather. Look at me
now, rentin' that measly pasture back of Ping's just to run my restin'
animals. They could run in the hundred an' forty if I only had it. I
wonder if Chavon would lease it.”

Or, less ambitious, Billy would say: “I gotta skin over to Petaluma
to-morrow, Saxon. They's an auction on the Atkinson Ranch an' maybe I
can pick up some bargains.”

“More horses!”

“Ain't I got two teams haulin' lumber for the new winery? An' Barney's
got a bad shoulder-sprain. He'll have to lay off a long time if he's to
get it in shape. An' Bridget ain't ever goin' to do a tap of work again.
I can see that stickin' out. I've doctored her an' doctored her. She's
fooled the vet, too. An' some of the other horses has gotta take a rest.
That span of grays is showin' the hard work. An' the big roan's goin'
loco. Everybody thought it was his teeth, but it ain't. It's straight
loco. It's money in pocket to take care of your animals, an' horses is
the delicatest things on four legs. Some time, if I can ever see my way
to it, I 'm goin' to ship a carload of mules from Colusa County--big,
heavy ones, you know. They'd sell like hot cakes in the valley
here--them I didn't want for myself.”

Or, in lighter vein, Billy: “By the way, Saxon, talkin' of accounts,
what d'you think Hazel an' Hattie is worth?--fair market price?”

“Why?”

“I 'm askin' you.”

“Well, say, what you paid for them--three hundred dollars.”

“Hum.” Billy considered deeply. “They're worth a whole lot more, but let
it go at that. An' now, gettin' back to accounts, suppose you write me a
check for three hundred dollars.”

“Oh! Robber!”

“You can't show me. Why, Saxon, when I let you have grain an' hay from
my carloads, don't you give me a check for it? An' you know how you're
stuck on keepin' your accounts down to the penny,” he teased. “If you're
any kind of a business woman you just gotta charge your business with
them two horses. I ain't had the use of 'em since I don't know when.”

“But the colts will be yours,” she argued. “Besides, I can't afford
brood mares in my business. In almost no time, now, Hazel and Hattie
will have to be taken off from the wagon--they're too good for it
anyway. And you keep your eyes open for a pair to take their place. I'll
give you a check for THAT pair, but no commission.”

“All right,” Billy conceded. “Hazel an' Hattie come back to me; but you
can pay me rent for the time you did use 'em.”

“If you make me, I'll charge you board,” she threatened.

“An' if you charge me board, I'll charge you interest for the money I've
stuck into this shebang.”

“You can't,” Saxon laughed. “It's community property.”

He grunted spasmodically, as if the breath had been knocked out of him.

“Straight on the solar plexus,” he said, “an' me down for the count. But
say, them's sweet words, ain't they--community property.” He rolled them
over and off his tongue with keen relish. “An' when we got married
the top of our ambition was a steady job an' some rags an' sticks
of furniture all paid up an' half-worn out. We wouldn't have had any
community property only for you.”

“What nonsense! What could I have done by myself? You know very well
that you earned all the money that started us here. You paid the wages
of Gow Yum and Chan Chi, and old Hughie, and Mrs. Paul, and--why, you've
done it all.”

She drew her two hands caressingly across his shoulders and down along
his great biceps muscles.

“That's what did it, Billy.”

“Aw hell! It's your head that done it. What was my muscles good for with
no head to run 'em,--sluggin' scabs, beatin' up lodgers, an' crookin'
the elbow over a bar. The only sensible thing my head ever done was when
it run me into you. Honest to God, Saxon, you've been the makin' of me.”

“Aw hell, Billy,” she mimicked in the way that delighted him, “where
would I have been if you hadn't taken me out of the laundry? I couldn't
take myself out. I was just a helpless girl. I'd have been there yet if
it hadn't been for you. Mrs. Mortimer had five thousand dollars; but I
had you.”

“A woman ain't got the chance to help herself that a man has,” he
generalized. “I'll tell you what: It took the two of us. It's been
team-work. We've run in span. If we'd a-run single, you might still be
in the laundry; an', if I was lucky, I'd be still drivin' team by the
day an' sportin' around to cheap dances.”


Saxon stood under the father of all madronos, watching Hazel and Hattie
go out the gate, the full vegetable wagon behind them, when she saw
Billy ride in, leading a sorrel mare from whose silken coat the sun
flashed golden lights.

“Four-year-old, high-life, a handful, but no vicious tricks,” Billy
chanted, as he stopped beside Saxon. “Skin like tissue paper, mouth like
silk, but kill the toughest broncho ever foaled--look at them lungs an'
nostrils. They call her Ramona--some Spanish name: sired by Morellita
outa genuine Morgan stock.”

“And they will sell her?” Saxon gasped, standing with hands clasped in
inarticulate delight.

“That's what I brought her to show you for.”

“But how much must they want for her?” was Saxon's next question, so
impossible did it seem that such an amazement of horse-flesh could ever
be hers.

“That ain't your business,” Billy answered brusquely. “The brickyard's
payin' for her, not the vegetable ranch. She's yourn at the word. What
d'ye say?”


“I'll tell you in a minute.”

Saxon was trying to mount, but the animal danced nervously away.

“Hold on till I tie,” Billy said. “She ain't skirt-broke, that's the
trouble.”

Saxon tightly gripped reins and mane, stepped with spurred foot on
Billy's hand, and was lifted lightly into the saddle.

“She's used to spurs,” Billy called after. “Spanish broke, so don't
check her quick. Come in gentle. An' talk to her. She's high-life, you
know.”

Saxon nodded, dashed out the gate and down the road, waved a hand to
Clara Hastings as she passed the gate of Trillium Covert, and continued
up Wild Water canyon.

When she came back, Ramona in a pleasant lather, Saxon rode to the rear
of the house, past the chicken houses and the flourishing berry-rows,
to join Billy on the rim of the bench, where he sat on his horse in the
shade, smoking a cigarette. Together they looked down through an
opening among the trees to the meadow which was a meadow no longer. With
mathematical accuracy it was divided into squares, oblongs, and narrow
strips, which displayed sharply the thousand hues of green of a truck
garden. Gow Yum and Chan Chi, under enormous Chinese grass hats, were
planting green onions. Old Hughie, hoe in hand, plodded along the main
artery of running water, opening certain laterals, closing others. From
the work-shed beyond the barn the strokes of a hammer told Saxon that
Carlsen was wire-binding vegetable boxes. Mrs. Paul's cheery soprano,
lifted in a hymn, floated through the trees, accompanied by the whirr of
an egg-beater. A sharp barking told where Possum still waged hysterical
and baffled war on the Douglass squirrels. Billy took a long draw from
his cigarette, exhaled the smoke, and continued to look down at the
meadow. Saxon divined trouble in his manner. His rein-hand was on the
pommel, and her free hand went out and softly rested on his. Billy
turned his slow gaze upon her mare's lather, seeming not to note it, and
continued on to Saxon's face.

“Huh!” he equivocated, as if waking up. “Them San Leandro Porchugeeze
ain't got nothin' on us when it comes to intensive farmin'. Look at that
water runnin'. You know, it seems so good to me that sometimes I just
wanta get down on hands an' knees an' lap it all up myself.”

“Oh, to have all the water you want in a climate like this!” Saxon
exclaimed.

“An' don't be scared of it ever goin' back on you. If the rains fooled
you, there's Sonoma Creek alongside. All we gotta do is install a
gasolene pump.”

“But we'll never have to, Billy. I was talking with 'Redwood' Thompson.
He's lived in the valley since Fifty-three, and he says there's never
been a failure of crops on account of drought. We always get our rain.”

“Come on, let's go for a ride,” he said abruptly. “You've got the time.”

“All right, if you'll tell me what's bothering you.”

He looked at her quickly.

“Nothin',” he grunted. “Yes, there is, too. What's the difference? You'd
know it sooner or later. You ought to see old Chavon. His face is that
long he can't walk without bumpin' his knee on his chin. His gold-mine's
peterin' out.”

“Gold mine!”

“His clay pit. It's the same thing. He's gettin' twenty cents a yard for
it from the brickyard.”

“And that means the end of your teaming contract.” Saxon saw the
disaster in all its hugeness. “What about the brickyard people?”

“Worried to death, though they've kept secret about it. They've had men
out punchin' holes all over the hills for a week, an' that Jap chemist
settin' up nights analyzin' the rubbish they've brought in. It's
peculiar stuff, that clay, for what they want it for, an' you don't find
it everywhere. Them experts that reported on Chavon's pit made one
hell of a mistake. Maybe they was lazy with their borin's. Anyway,
they slipped up on the amount of clay they was in it. Now don't get to
botherin'. It'd come out somehow. You can't do nothin'.”

“But I can,” Saxon insisted. “We won't buy Ramona.”

“You ain't got a thing to do with that,” he answered. “I 'm buyin' her,
an' her price don't cut any figure alongside the big game I 'm playin'.
Of course, I can always sell my horses. But that puts a stop to their
makin' money, an' that brickyard contract was fat.”

“But if you get some of them in on the road work for the county?” she
suggested.

“Oh, I got that in mind. An' I 'm keepin' my eyes open. They's a chance
the quarry will start again, an' the fellow that did that teamin' has
gone to Puget Sound. An' what if I have to sell out most of the horses?
Here's you and the vegetable business. That's solid. We just don't go
ahead so fast for a time, that's all. I ain't scared of the country any
more. I sized things up as we went along. They ain't a jerk burg we hit
all the time on the road that I couldn't jump into an' make a go. An'
now where d'you want to ride?”



CHAPTER XXII

They cantered out the gate, thundered across the bridge, and passed
Trillium Covert before they pulled in on the grade of Wild Water Canyon.
Saxon had chosen her field on the big spur of Sonoma Mountains as the
objective of their ride.

“Say, I bumped into something big this mornin' when I was goin' to fetch
Ramona,” Billy said, the clay pit trouble banished for the time. “You
know the hundred an' forty. I passed young Chavon along the road, an'--I
don't know why--just for ducks, I guess--I up an' asked 'm if he thought
the old man would lease the hundred an' forty to me. An' what d 'you
think! He said the old man didn't own it. Was just leasin' it himself.
That's how we was always seein' his cattle on it. It's a gouge into his
land, for he owns everything on three sides of it.

“Next I met Ping. He said Hilyard owned it an' was willin' to sell, only
Chavon didn't have the price. Then, comin' back, I looked in on Payne.
He's quit blacksmithin'--his back's hurtin' 'm from a kick--an' just
startin' in for real estate. Sure, he said, Hilyard would sell, an' had
already listed the land with 'm. Chavon's over-pastured it, an' Hilyard
won't give 'm another lease.”

When they had climbed out of Wild Water Canyon they turned their horses
about and halted on the rim where they could look across at the three
densely wooded knolls in the midst of the desired hundred and forty.

“We'll get it yet,” Saxon said.

“Sure we will,” Billy agreed with careless certitude. “I've ben lookin'
over the big adobe barn again. Just the thing for a raft of horses, an'
a new roof'll be cheaper 'n I thought. Though neither Chavon or me'll be
in the market to buy it right away, with the clay pinchin' out.”


When they reached Saxon's field, which they had learned was the property
of Redwood Thompson, they tied the horses and entered it on foot. The
hay, just cut, was being raked by Thompson, who hallo'd a greeting to
them. It was a cloudless, windless day, and they sought refuge from the
sun in the woods beyond. They encountered a dim trail.

“It's a cow trail,” Billy declared. “I bet they's a teeny pasture tucked
away somewhere in them trees. Let's follow it.”

A quarter of an hour later, several hundred feet up the side of the
spur, they emerged on an open, grassy space of bare hillside. Most of
the hundred and forty, two miles away, lay beneath them, while they were
level with the tops of the three knolls. Billy paused to gaze upon the
much-desired land, and Saxon joined him.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing toward the knolls. “Up the little
canyon, to the left of it, there on the farthest knoll, right under that
spruce that's leaning over.”

What Billy saw was a white scar on the canyon wall.

“It's one on me,” he said, studying the scar. “I thought I knew every
inch of that land, but I never seen that before. Why, I was right in
there at the head of the canyon the first part of the winter. It's awful
wild. Walls of the canyon like the sides of a steeple an' covered with
thick woods.”

“What is it?” she asked. “A slide?”

“Must be--brought down by the heavy rains. If I don't miss my guess--”
 Billy broke off, forgetting in the intensity with which he continued to
look.

“Hilyard'll sell for thirty an acre,” he began again, disconnectedly.
“Good land, bad land, an' all, just as it runs, thirty an acre. That's
forty-two hundred. Payne's new at real estate, an' I'll make 'm split
his commission an' get the easiest terms ever. We can re-borrow that
four hundred from Gow Yum, an' I can borrow money on my horses an'
wagons--”

“Are you going to buy it to-day?” Saxon teased.

She scarcely touched the edge of his thought. He looked at her, as if he
had heard, then forgot her the next moment.

“Head work,” he mumbled. “Head work. If I don't put over a hot one--”

He started back down the cow trail, recollected Saxon, and called over
his shoulder:

“Come on. Let's hustle. I wanta ride over an' look at that.”

So rapidly did he go down the trail and across the field, that Saxon had
no time for questions. She was almost breathless from her effort to keep
up with him.

“What is it?” she begged, as he lifted her to the saddle.

“Maybe it's all a joke--I'll tell you about it afterward,” he put her
off.

They galloped on the levels, trotted down the gentler slopes of road,
and not until on the steep descent of Wild Water canyon did they rein
to a walk. Billy's preoccupation was gone, and Saxon took advantage to
broach a subject which had been on her mind for some time.

“Clara Hastings told me the other day that they're going to have a
house party. The Hazards are to be there, and the Halls, and Roy
Blanchard....”

She looked at Billy anxiously. At the mention of Blanchard his head had
tossed up as to a bugle call. Slowly a whimsical twinkle began to glint
up through the cloudy blue of his eyes.

“It's a long time since you told any man he was standing on his foot,”
 she ventured slyly.

Billy began to grin sheepishly.

“Aw, that's all right,” he said in mock-lordly fashion. “Roy Blanchard
can come. I'll let 'm. All that was a long time ago. Besides, I 'm too
busy to fool with such things.”

He urged his horse on at a faster walk, and as soon as the slope
lessened broke into a trot. At Trillium Covert they were galloping.

“You'll have to stop for dinner first,” Saxon said, as they neared the
gate of Madrono Ranch.

“You stop,” he answered. “I don't want no dinner.”

“But I want to go with you,” she pleaded. “What is it?”

“I don't dast tell you. You go on in an' get your dinner.”

“Not after that,” she said. “Nothing can keep me from coming along now.”

Half a mile farther on, they left the highway, passed through a patent
gate which Billy had installed, and crossed the fields on a road
which was coated thick with chalky dust. This was the road that led to
Chavon's clay pit. The hundred and forty lay to the west. Two wagons, in
a cloud of dust, came into sight.

“Your teams, Billy,” cried Saxon. “Think of it! Just by the use of the
head, earning your money while you're riding around with me.”

“Makes me ashamed to think how much cash money each one of them teams is
bringin' me in every day,” he acknowledged.

They were turning off from the road toward the bars which gave entrance
to the one hundred and forty, when the driver of the foremost wagon
hallo'd and waved his hand. They drew in their horses and waited.

“The big roan's broke loose,” the driver said, as he stopped beside them.
“Clean crazy loco--bitin', squealin', strikin', kickin'. Kicked clean
out of the harness like it was paper. Bit a chunk out of Baldy the
size of a saucer, an' wound up by breakin' his own hind leg. Liveliest
fifteen minutes I ever seen.”

“Sure it's broke?” Billy demanded sharply.

“Sure thing.”

“Well, after you unload, drive around by the other barn and get Ben.
He's in the corral. Tell Matthews to be easy with 'm. An' get a gun.
Sammy's got one. You'll have to see to the big roan. I ain't got time
now.--Why couldn't Matthews a-come along with you for Ben? You'd save
time.”

“Oh, he's just stickin' around waitin',” the driver answered. “He
reckoned I could get Ben.”

“An' lose time, eh? Well, get a move on.”

“That's the way of it,” Billy growled to Saxon as they rode on. “No
savve. No head. One man settin' down an' holdin his hands while another
team drives outa its way doin what he oughta done. That's the trouble
with two-dollar-a-day men.”

“With two-dollar-a-day heads,” Saxon said quickly. “What kind of heads
do you expect for two dollars?”

“That's right, too,” Billy acknowledged the hit. “If they had better
heads they'd be in the cities like all the rest of the better men.
An' the better men are a lot of dummies, too. They don't know the big
chances in the country, or you couldn't hold 'm from it.”

Billy dismounted, took the three bars down, led his horse through, then
put up the bars.

“When I get this place, there'll be a gate here,” he announced. “Pay
for itself in no time. It's the thousan' an' one little things like this
that count up big when you put 'm together.” He sighed contentedly. “I
never used to think about such things, but when we shook Oakland I began
to wise up. It was them San Leandro Porchugeeze that gave me my first
eye-opener. I'd been asleep, before that.”

They skirted the lower of the three fields where the ripe hay stood
uncut. Billy pointed with eloquent disgust to a break in the fence,
slovenly repaired, and on to the standing grain much-trampled by cattle.

“Them's the things,” he criticized. “Old style. An' look how thin
that crop is, an' the shallow plowin'. Scrub cattle, scrub seed, scrub
farmin'. Chavon's worked it for eight years now, an' never rested it
once, never put anything in for what he took out, except the cattle into
the stubble the minute the hay was on.”

In a pasture glade, farther on, they came upon a bunch of cattle.

“Look at that bull, Saxon. Scrub's no name for it. They oughta be a
state law against lettin' such animals exist. No wonder Chavon's that
land poor he's had to sink all his clay-pit earnin's into taxes an'
interest. He can't make his land pay. Take this hundred an forty.
Anybody with the savve can just rake silver dollars offen it. I'll show
'm.”

They passed the big adobe barn in the distance.

“A few dollars at the right time would a-saved hundreds on that roof,”
 Billy commented. “Well, anyway, I won't be payin' for any improvements
when I buy. An I'll tell you another thing. This ranch is full of water,
and if Glen Ellen ever grows they'll have to come to see me for their
water supply.”

Billy knew the ranch thoroughly, and took short-cuts through the woods
by way of cattle paths. Once, he reined in abruptly, and both stopped.
Confronting them, a dozen paces away, was a half-grown red fox. For half
a minute, with beady eyes, the wild thing studied them, with twitching
sensitive nose reading the messages of the air. Then, velvet-footed, it
leapt aside and was gone among the trees.

“The son-of-a-gun!” Billy ejaculated.

As they approached Wild Water; they rode out into a long narrow meadow.
In the middle was a pond.

“Natural reservoir, when Glen Ellen begins to buy water,” Billy said.
“See, down at the lower end there?--wouldn't cost anything hardly
to throw a dam across. An' I can pipe in all kinds of hill-drip. An'
water's goin' to be money in this valley not a thousan' years from
now.--An' all the ginks, an' boobs, an' dubs, an' gazabos poundin' their
ear deado an' not seein' it comin.--An' surveyors workin' up the valley
for an electric road from Sausalito with a branch up Napa Valley.”

They came to the rim of Wild Water canyon. Leaning far back in their
saddles, they slid the horses down a steep declivity, through big spruce
woods, to an ancient and all but obliterated trail.

“They cut this trail 'way back in the Fifties,” Billy explained. “I only
found it by accident. Then I asked Poppe yesterday. He was born in the
valley. He said it was a fake minin' rush across from Petaluma. The
gamblers got it up, an' they must a-drawn a thousan' suckers. You see
that flat there, an' the old stumps. That's where the camp was. They
set the tables up under the trees. The flat used to be bigger, but the
creek's eaten into it. Poppe said they was a couple of killin's an' one
lynchin'.”

Lying low against their horses' necks, they scrambled up a steep cattle
trail out of the canyon, and began to work across rough country toward
the knolls.

“Say, Saxon, you're always lookin' for something pretty. I'll show
you what'll make your hair stand up... soon as we get through this
manzanita.”

Never, in all their travels, had Saxon seen so lovely a vista as the one
that greeted them when they emerged. The dim trail lay like a rambling
red shadow cast on the soft forest floor by the great redwoods and
over-arching oaks. It seemed as if all local varieties of trees and
vines had conspired to weave the leafy roof--maples, big madronos and
laurels, and lofty tan-bark oaks, scaled and wrapped and interwound with
wild grape and flaming poison oak. Saxon drew Billy's eyes to a mossy
bank of five-finger ferns. All slopes seemed to meet to form this basin
and colossal forest bower. Underfoot the floor was spongy with water. An
invisible streamlet whispered under broad-fronded brakes. On every hand
opened tiny vistas of enchantment, where young redwoods grouped
still and stately about fallen giants, shoulder-high to the horses,
moss-covered and dissolving into mold.

At last, after another quarter of an hour, they tied their horses on the
rim of the narrow canyon that penetrated the wilderness of the knolls.
Through a rift in the trees Billy pointed to the top of the leaning
spruce.

“It's right under that,” he said. “We'll have to follow up the bed of
the creek. They ain't no trail, though you'll see plenty of deer paths
crossin' the creek. You'll get your feet wet.”

Saxon laughed her joy and held on close to his heels, splashing through
pools, crawling hand and foot up the slippery faces of water-worn rocks,
and worming under trunks of old fallen trees.

“They ain't no real bed-rock in the whole mountain,” Billy elucidated,
“so the stream cuts deeper'n deeper, an' that keeps the sides cavin' in.
They're as steep as they can be without fallin' down. A little farther
up, the canyon ain't much more'n a crack in the ground--but a mighty
deep one if anybody should ask you. You can spit across it an' break
your neck in it.”

The climbing grew more difficult, and they were finally halted, in a
narrow cleft, by a drift-jam.

“You wait here,” Billy directed, and, lying flat, squirmed on through
crashing brush.

Saxon waited till all sound had died away. She waited ten minutes
longer, then followed by the way Billy had broken. Where the bed of the
canyon became impossible, she came upon what she was sure was a deer
path that skirted the steep side and was a tunnel through the close
greenery. She caught a glimpse of the overhanging spruce, almost above
her head on the opposite side, and emerged on a pool of clear water in a
clay-like basin. This basin was of recent origin, having been formed by
a slide of earth and trees. Across the pool arose an almost sheer wall
of white. She recognized it for what it was, and looked about for Billy.
She heard him whistle, and looked up. Two hundred feet above, at the
perilous top of the white wall, he was holding on to a tree trunk. The
overhanging spruce was nearby.

“I can see the little pasture back of your field,” he called down. “No
wonder nobody ever piped this off. The only place they could see it from
is that speck of pasture. An' you saw it first. Wait till I come down
and tell you all about it. I didn't dast before.”

It required no shrewdness to guess the truth. Saxon knew this was the
precious clay required by the brickyard. Billy circled wide of the
slide and came down the canyon-wall, from tree to tree, as descending a
ladder.

“Ain't it a peach?” he exulted, as he dropped beside her. “Just look at
it--hidden away under four feet of soil where nobody could see it, an'
just waitin' for us to hit the Valley of the Moon. Then it up an' slides
a piece of the skin off so as we can see it.”

“Is it the real clay?” Saxon asked anxiously.

“You bet your sweet life. I've handled too much of it not to know it
in the dark. Just rub a piece between your fingers.--Like that. Why,
I could tell by the taste of it. I've eaten enough of the dust of the
teams. Here's where our fun begins. Why, you know we've been workin' our
heads off since we hit this valley. Now we're on Easy street.”

“But you don't own it,” Saxon objected.

“Well, you won't be a hundred years old before I do. Straight from here
I hike to Payne an' bind the bargain--an option, you know, while title's
searchin' an' I 'm raisin' money. We'll borrow that four hundred back
again from Gow Yum, an' I'll borrow all I can get on my horses an'
wagons, an' Hazel and Hattie, an' everything that's worth a cent. An'
then I get the deed with a mortgage on it to Hilyard for the balance.
An' then--it's takin' candy from a baby--I'll contract with the
brickyard for twenty cents a yard--maybe more. They'll be crazy with joy
when they see it. Don't need any borin's. They's nearly two hundred feet
of it exposed up an' down. The whole knoll's clay, with a skin of soil
over it.”

“But you'll spoil all the beautiful canyon hauling out the clay,” Saxon
cried with alarm.

“Nope; only the knoll. The road'll come in from the other side. It'll be
only half a mile to Chavon's pit. I'll build the road an' charge steeper
teamin', or the brickyard can build it an' I'll team for the same rate
as before. An' twenty cents a yard pourin' in, all profit, from the
jump. I'll sure have to buy more horses to do the work.”

They sat hand in hand beside the pool and talked over the details.

“Say, Saxon,” Billy said, after a pause had fallen, “sing 'Harvest
Days,' won't you?”

And, when she had complied: “The first time you sung that song for me
was comin' home from the picnic on the train--”

“The very first day we met each other,” she broke in. “What did you
think about me that day?”

“Why, what I've thought ever since--that you was made for me.--I thought
that right at the jump, in the first waltz. An' what'd you think of me?

“Oh, I wondered, and before the first waltz, too, when we were
introduced and shook hands--I wondered if you were the man. Those were
the very words that flashed into my mind.--IS HE THE MAN?”

“An' I kinda looked a little some good to you?” he queried. “_I_ thought
so, and my eyesight has always been good.”

“Say!” Billy went off at a tangent. “By next winter, with everything
hummin' an' shipshape, what's the matter with us makin' a visit to
Carmel? It'll be slack time for you with the vegetables, an' I'll be
able to afford a foreman.”

Saxon's lack of enthusiasm surprised him.

“What's wrong?” he demanded quickly.

With downcast demurest eyes and hesitating speech, Saxon said:

“I did something yesterday without asking your advice, Billy.”

He waited.

“I wrote to Tom,” she added, with an air of timid confession.

Still he waited--for he knew not what.

“I asked him to ship up the old chest of drawers--my mother's, you
remember--that we stored with him.”

“Huh! I don't see anything outa the way about that,” Billy said with
relief. “We need the chest, don't we? An' we can afford to pay the
freight on it, can't we?”

“You are a dear stupid man, that's what you are. Don't you know what is
in the chest?”

He shook his head, and what she added was so soft that it was almost a
whisper:

“The baby clothes.”

“No!” he exclaimed.

“True.”

“Sure?”

She nodded her head, her cheeks flooding with quick color.

“It's what I wanted, Saxon, more'n anything else in the world. I've been
thinkin' a whole lot about it lately, ever since we hit the valley,” he
went on, brokenly, and for the first time she saw tears unmistakable
in his eyes. “But after all I'd done, an' the hell I'd raised, an'
everything, I... I never urged you, or said a word about it. But I
wanted it... oh, I wanted it like ... like I want you now.”

His open arms received her, and the pool in the heart of the canyon knew
a tender silence.

Saxon felt Billy's finger laid warningly on her lips. Guided by his
hand, she turned her head back, and together they gazed far up the side
of the knoll where a doe and a spotted fawn looked down upon them from a
tiny open space between the trees.


9xxxxxxxxx

WHITE FANG


PART I


CHAPTER I--THE TRAIL OF THE MEAT


Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway.  The trees
had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and
they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading
light.  A vast silence reigned over the land.  The land itself was a
desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit
of it was not even that of sadness.  There was a hint in it of laughter,
but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness--a laughter that was
mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and
partaking of the grimness of infallibility.  It was the masterful and
incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and
the effort of life.  It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted
Northland Wild.

But there _was_ life, abroad in the land and defiant.  Down the frozen
waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs.  Their bristly fur was rimed
with frost.  Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths,
spouting forth in spumes of vapour that settled upon the hair of their
bodies and formed into crystals of frost.  Leather harness was on the
dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged along
behind.  The sled was without runners.  It was made of stout birch-bark,
and its full surface rested on the snow.  The front end of the sled was
turned up, like a scroll, in order to force down and under the bore of
soft snow that surged like a wave before it.  On the sled, securely
lashed, was a long and narrow oblong box.  There were other things on the
sled--blankets, an axe, and a coffee-pot and frying-pan; but prominent,
occupying most of the space, was the long and narrow oblong box.

In advance of the dogs, on wide snowshoes, toiled a man.  At the rear of
the sled toiled a second man.  On the sled, in the box, lay a third man
whose toil was over,--a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down
until he would never move nor struggle again.  It is not the way of the
Wild to like movement.  Life is an offence to it, for life is movement;
and the Wild aims always to destroy movement.  It freezes the water to
prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till
they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly
of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man--man who is the
most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all
movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.

But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable, toiled the two men who
were not yet dead.  Their bodies were covered with fur and soft-tanned
leather.  Eyelashes and cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals
from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible.  This
gave them the seeming of ghostly masques, undertakers in a spectral world
at the funeral of some ghost.  But under it all they were men,
penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny
adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the
might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of
space.

They travelled on without speech, saving their breath for the work of
their bodies.  On every side was the silence, pressing upon them with a
tangible presence.  It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of
deep water affect the body of the diver.  It crushed them with the weight
of unending vastness and unalterable decree.  It crushed them into the
remotest recesses of their own minds, pressing out of them, like juices
from the grape, all the false ardours and exaltations and undue
self-values of the human soul, until they perceived themselves finite and
small, specks and motes, moving with weak cunning and little wisdom
amidst the play and inter-play of the great blind elements and forces.

An hour went by, and a second hour.  The pale light of the short sunless
day was beginning to fade, when a faint far cry arose on the still air.
It soared upward with a swift rush, till it reached its topmost note,
where it persisted, palpitant and tense, and then slowly died away.  It
might have been a lost soul wailing, had it not been invested with a
certain sad fierceness and hungry eagerness.  The front man turned his
head until his eyes met the eyes of the man behind.  And then, across the
narrow oblong box, each nodded to the other.

A second cry arose, piercing the silence with needle-like shrillness.
Both men located the sound.  It was to the rear, somewhere in the snow
expanse they had just traversed.  A third and answering cry arose, also
to the rear and to the left of the second cry.

"They're after us, Bill," said the man at the front.

His voice sounded hoarse and unreal, and he had spoken with apparent
effort.

"Meat is scarce," answered his comrade.  "I ain't seen a rabbit sign for
days."

Thereafter they spoke no more, though their ears were keen for the
hunting-cries that continued to rise behind them.

At the fall of darkness they swung the dogs into a cluster of spruce
trees on the edge of the waterway and made a camp.  The coffin, at the
side of the fire, served for seat and table.  The wolf-dogs, clustered on
the far side of the fire, snarled and bickered among themselves, but
evinced no inclination to stray off into the darkness.

"Seems to me, Henry, they're stayin' remarkable close to camp," Bill
commented.

Henry, squatting over the fire and settling the pot of coffee with a
piece of ice, nodded.  Nor did he speak till he had taken his seat on the
coffin and begun to eat.

"They know where their hides is safe," he said.  "They'd sooner eat grub
than be grub.  They're pretty wise, them dogs."

Bill shook his head.  "Oh, I don't know."

His comrade looked at him curiously.  "First time I ever heard you say
anything about their not bein' wise."

"Henry," said the other, munching with deliberation the beans he was
eating, "did you happen to notice the way them dogs kicked up when I was
a-feedin' 'em?"

"They did cut up more'n usual," Henry acknowledged.

"How many dogs 've we got, Henry?"

"Six."

"Well, Henry . . . " Bill stopped for a moment, in order that his words
might gain greater significance.  "As I was sayin', Henry, we've got six
dogs.  I took six fish out of the bag.  I gave one fish to each dog, an',
Henry, I was one fish short."

"You counted wrong."

"We've got six dogs," the other reiterated dispassionately.  "I took out
six fish.  One Ear didn't get no fish.  I came back to the bag afterward
an' got 'm his fish."

"We've only got six dogs," Henry said.

"Henry," Bill went on.  "I won't say they was all dogs, but there was
seven of 'm that got fish."

Henry stopped eating to glance across the fire and count the dogs.

"There's only six now," he said.

"I saw the other one run off across the snow," Bill announced with cool
positiveness.  "I saw seven."

Henry looked at him commiseratingly, and said, "I'll be almighty glad
when this trip's over."

"What d'ye mean by that?" Bill demanded.

"I mean that this load of ourn is gettin' on your nerves, an' that you're
beginnin' to see things."

"I thought of that," Bill answered gravely.  "An' so, when I saw it run
off across the snow, I looked in the snow an' saw its tracks.  Then I
counted the dogs an' there was still six of 'em.  The tracks is there in
the snow now.  D'ye want to look at 'em?  I'll show 'em to you."

Henry did not reply, but munched on in silence, until, the meal finished,
he topped it with a final cup of coffee.  He wiped his mouth with the
back of his hand and said:

"Then you're thinkin' as it was--"

A long wailing cry, fiercely sad, from somewhere in the darkness, had
interrupted him.  He stopped to listen to it, then he finished his
sentence with a wave of his hand toward the sound of the cry, "--one of
them?"

Bill nodded.  "I'd a blame sight sooner think that than anything else.
You noticed yourself the row the dogs made."

Cry after cry, and answering cries, were turning the silence into a
bedlam.  From every side the cries arose, and the dogs betrayed their
fear by huddling together and so close to the fire that their hair was
scorched by the heat.  Bill threw on more wood, before lighting his pipe.

"I'm thinking you're down in the mouth some," Henry said.

"Henry . . . "  He sucked meditatively at his pipe for some time before
he went on.  "Henry, I was a-thinkin' what a blame sight luckier he is
than you an' me'll ever be."

He indicated the third person by a downward thrust of the thumb to the
box on which they sat.

"You an' me, Henry, when we die, we'll be lucky if we get enough stones
over our carcases to keep the dogs off of us."

"But we ain't got people an' money an' all the rest, like him," Henry
rejoined.  "Long-distance funerals is somethin' you an' me can't exactly
afford."

"What gets me, Henry, is what a chap like this, that's a lord or
something in his own country, and that's never had to bother about grub
nor blankets; why he comes a-buttin' round the Godforsaken ends of the
earth--that's what I can't exactly see."

"He might have lived to a ripe old age if he'd stayed at home," Henry
agreed.

Bill opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind.  Instead, he
pointed towards the wall of darkness that pressed about them from every
side.  There was no suggestion of form in the utter blackness; only could
be seen a pair of eyes gleaming like live coals.  Henry indicated with
his head a second pair, and a third.  A circle of the gleaming eyes had
drawn about their camp.  Now and again a pair of eyes moved, or
disappeared to appear again a moment later.

The unrest of the dogs had been increasing, and they stampeded, in a
surge of sudden fear, to the near side of the fire, cringing and crawling
about the legs of the men.  In the scramble one of the dogs had been
overturned on the edge of the fire, and it had yelped with pain and
fright as the smell of its singed coat possessed the air.  The commotion
caused the circle of eyes to shift restlessly for a moment and even to
withdraw a bit, but it settled down again as the dogs became quiet.

"Henry, it's a blame misfortune to be out of ammunition."

Bill had finished his pipe and was helping his companion to spread the
bed of fur and blanket upon the spruce boughs which he had laid over the
snow before supper.  Henry grunted, and began unlacing his moccasins.

"How many cartridges did you say you had left?" he asked.

"Three," came the answer.  "An' I wisht 'twas three hundred.  Then I'd
show 'em what for, damn 'em!"

He shook his fist angrily at the gleaming eyes, and began securely to
prop his moccasins before the fire.

"An' I wisht this cold snap'd break," he went on.  "It's ben fifty below
for two weeks now.  An' I wisht I'd never started on this trip, Henry.  I
don't like the looks of it.  I don't feel right, somehow.  An' while I'm
wishin', I wisht the trip was over an' done with, an' you an' me
a-sittin' by the fire in Fort McGurry just about now an' playing
cribbage--that's what I wisht."

Henry grunted and crawled into bed.  As he dozed off he was aroused by
his comrade's voice.

"Say, Henry, that other one that come in an' got a fish--why didn't the
dogs pitch into it?  That's what's botherin' me."

"You're botherin' too much, Bill," came the sleepy response.  "You was
never like this before.  You jes' shut up now, an' go to sleep, an'
you'll be all hunkydory in the mornin'.  Your stomach's sour, that's
what's botherin' you."

The men slept, breathing heavily, side by side, under the one covering.
The fire died down, and the gleaming eyes drew closer the circle they had
flung about the camp.  The dogs clustered together in fear, now and again
snarling menacingly as a pair of eyes drew close.  Once their uproar
became so loud that Bill woke up.  He got out of bed carefully, so as not
to disturb the sleep of his comrade, and threw more wood on the fire.  As
it began to flame up, the circle of eyes drew farther back.  He glanced
casually at the huddling dogs.  He rubbed his eyes and looked at them
more sharply.  Then he crawled back into the blankets.

"Henry," he said.  "Oh, Henry."

Henry groaned as he passed from sleep to waking, and demanded, "What's
wrong now?"

"Nothin'," came the answer; "only there's seven of 'em again.  I just
counted."

Henry acknowledged receipt of the information with a grunt that slid into
a snore as he drifted back into sleep.

In the morning it was Henry who awoke first and routed his companion out
of bed.  Daylight was yet three hours away, though it was already six
o'clock; and in the darkness Henry went about preparing breakfast, while
Bill rolled the blankets and made the sled ready for lashing.

"Say, Henry," he asked suddenly, "how many dogs did you say we had?"

"Six."

"Wrong," Bill proclaimed triumphantly.

"Seven again?" Henry queried.

"No, five; one's gone."

"The hell!"  Henry cried in wrath, leaving the cooking to come and count
the dogs.

"You're right, Bill," he concluded.  "Fatty's gone."

"An' he went like greased lightnin' once he got started.  Couldn't 've
seen 'm for smoke."

"No chance at all," Henry concluded.  "They jes' swallowed 'm alive.  I
bet he was yelpin' as he went down their throats, damn 'em!"

"He always was a fool dog," said Bill.

"But no fool dog ought to be fool enough to go off an' commit suicide
that way."  He looked over the remainder of the team with a speculative
eye that summed up instantly the salient traits of each animal.  "I bet
none of the others would do it."

"Couldn't drive 'em away from the fire with a club," Bill agreed.  "I
always did think there was somethin' wrong with Fatty anyway."

And this was the epitaph of a dead dog on the Northland trail--less scant
than the epitaph of many another dog, of many a man.



CHAPTER II--THE SHE-WOLF


Breakfast eaten and the slim camp-outfit lashed to the sled, the men
turned their backs on the cheery fire and launched out into the darkness.
At once began to rise the cries that were fiercely sad--cries that called
through the darkness and cold to one another and answered back.
Conversation ceased.  Daylight came at nine o'clock.  At midday the sky
to the south warmed to rose-colour, and marked where the bulge of the
earth intervened between the meridian sun and the northern world.  But
the rose-colour swiftly faded.  The grey light of day that remained
lasted until three o'clock, when it, too, faded, and the pall of the
Arctic night descended upon the lone and silent land.

As darkness came on, the hunting-cries to right and left and rear drew
closer--so close that more than once they sent surges of fear through the
toiling dogs, throwing them into short-lived panics.

At the conclusion of one such panic, when he and Henry had got the dogs
back in the traces, Bill said:

"I wisht they'd strike game somewheres, an' go away an' leave us alone."

"They do get on the nerves horrible,"  Henry sympathised.

They spoke no more until camp was made.

Henry was bending over and adding ice to the babbling pot of beans when
he was startled by the sound of a blow, an exclamation from Bill, and a
sharp snarling cry of pain from among the dogs.  He straightened up in
time to see a dim form disappearing across the snow into the shelter of
the dark.  Then he saw Bill, standing amid the dogs, half triumphant,
half crestfallen, in one hand a stout club, in the other the tail and
part of the body of a sun-cured salmon.

"It got half of it," he announced; "but I got a whack at it jes' the
same.  D'ye hear it squeal?"

"What'd it look like?" Henry asked.

"Couldn't see.  But it had four legs an' a mouth an' hair an' looked like
any dog."

"Must be a tame wolf, I reckon."

"It's damned tame, whatever it is, comin' in here at feedin' time an'
gettin' its whack of fish."

That night, when supper was finished and they sat on the oblong box and
pulled at their pipes, the circle of gleaming eyes drew in even closer
than before.

"I wisht they'd spring up a bunch of moose or something, an' go away an'
leave us alone," Bill said.

Henry grunted with an intonation that was not all sympathy, and for a
quarter of an hour they sat on in silence, Henry staring at the fire, and
Bill at the circle of eyes that burned in the darkness just beyond the
firelight.

"I wisht we was pullin' into McGurry right now," he began again.

"Shut up your wishin' and your croakin'," Henry burst out angrily.  "Your
stomach's sour.  That's what's ailin' you.  Swallow a spoonful of sody,
an' you'll sweeten up wonderful an' be more pleasant company."

In the morning Henry was aroused by fervid blasphemy that proceeded from
the mouth of Bill.  Henry propped himself up on an elbow and looked to
see his comrade standing among the dogs beside the replenished fire, his
arms raised in objurgation, his face distorted with passion.

"Hello!" Henry called.  "What's up now?"

"Frog's gone," came the answer.

"No."

"I tell you yes."

Henry leaped out of the blankets and to the dogs.  He counted them with
care, and then joined his partner in cursing the power of the Wild that
had robbed them of another dog.

"Frog was the strongest dog of the bunch," Bill pronounced finally.

"An' he was no fool dog neither," Henry added.

And so was recorded the second epitaph in two days.

A gloomy breakfast was eaten, and the four remaining dogs were harnessed
to the sled.  The day was a repetition of the days that had gone before.
The men toiled without speech across the face of the frozen world.  The
silence was unbroken save by the cries of their pursuers, that, unseen,
hung upon their rear.  With the coming of night in the mid-afternoon, the
cries sounded closer as the pursuers drew in according to their custom;
and the dogs grew excited and frightened, and were guilty of panics that
tangled the traces and further depressed the two men.

"There, that'll fix you fool critters," Bill said with satisfaction that
night, standing erect at completion of his task.

Henry left the cooking to come and see.  Not only had his partner tied
the dogs up, but he had tied them, after the Indian fashion, with sticks.
About the neck of each dog he had fastened a leather thong.  To this, and
so close to the neck that the dog could not get his teeth to it, he had
tied a stout stick four or five feet in length.  The other end of the
stick, in turn, was made fast to a stake in the ground by means of a
leather thong.  The dog was unable to gnaw through the leather at his own
end of the stick.  The stick prevented him from getting at the leather
that fastened the other end.

Henry nodded his head approvingly.

"It's the only contraption that'll ever hold One Ear," he said.  "He can
gnaw through leather as clean as a knife an' jes' about half as quick.
They all'll be here in the mornin' hunkydory."

"You jes' bet they will," Bill affirmed.  "If one of em' turns up
missin', I'll go without my coffee."

"They jes' know we ain't loaded to kill," Henry remarked at bed-time,
indicating the gleaming circle that hemmed them in.  "If we could put a
couple of shots into 'em, they'd be more respectful.  They come closer
every night.  Get the firelight out of your eyes an' look hard--there!
Did you see that one?"

For some time the two men amused themselves with watching the movement of
vague forms on the edge of the firelight.  By looking closely and
steadily at where a pair of eyes burned in the darkness, the form of the
animal would slowly take shape.  They could even see these forms move at
times.

A sound among the dogs attracted the men's attention.  One Ear was
uttering quick, eager whines, lunging at the length of his stick toward
the darkness, and desisting now and again in order to make frantic
attacks on the stick with his teeth.

"Look at that, Bill," Henry whispered.

Full into the firelight, with a stealthy, sidelong movement, glided a
doglike animal.  It moved with commingled mistrust and daring, cautiously
observing the men, its attention fixed on the dogs.  One Ear strained the
full length of the stick toward the intruder and whined with eagerness.

"That fool One Ear don't seem scairt much," Bill said in a low tone.

"It's a she-wolf," Henry whispered back, "an' that accounts for Fatty an'
Frog.  She's the decoy for the pack.  She draws out the dog an' then all
the rest pitches in an' eats 'm up."

The fire crackled.  A log fell apart with a loud spluttering noise.  At
the sound of it the strange animal leaped back into the darkness.

"Henry, I'm a-thinkin'," Bill announced.

"Thinkin' what?"

"I'm a-thinkin' that was the one I lambasted with the club."

"Ain't the slightest doubt in the world," was Henry's response.

"An' right here I want to remark," Bill went on, "that that animal's
familyarity with campfires is suspicious an' immoral."

"It knows for certain more'n a self-respectin' wolf ought to know," Henry
agreed.  "A wolf that knows enough to come in with the dogs at feedin'
time has had experiences."

"Ol' Villan had a dog once that run away with the wolves," Bill cogitates
aloud.  "I ought to know.  I shot it out of the pack in a moose pasture
over 'on Little Stick.  An' Ol' Villan cried like a baby.  Hadn't seen it
for three years, he said.  Ben with the wolves all that time."

"I reckon you've called the turn, Bill.  That wolf's a dog, an' it's
eaten fish many's the time from the hand of man."

"An if I get a chance at it, that wolf that's a dog'll be jes' meat,"
Bill declared.  "We can't afford to lose no more animals."

"But you've only got three cartridges," Henry objected.

"I'll wait for a dead sure shot," was the reply.

In the morning Henry renewed the fire and cooked breakfast to the
accompaniment of his partner's snoring.

"You was sleepin' jes' too comfortable for anything," Henry told him, as
he routed him out for breakfast.  "I hadn't the heart to rouse you."

Bill began to eat sleepily.  He noticed that his cup was empty and
started to reach for the pot.  But the pot was beyond arm's length and
beside Henry.

"Say, Henry," he chided gently, "ain't you forgot somethin'?"

Henry looked about with great carefulness and shook his head.  Bill held
up the empty cup.

"You don't get no coffee," Henry announced.

"Ain't run out?" Bill asked anxiously.

"Nope."

"Ain't thinkin' it'll hurt my digestion?"

"Nope."

A flush of angry blood pervaded Bill's face.

"Then it's jes' warm an' anxious I am to be hearin' you explain
yourself," he said.

"Spanker's gone," Henry answered.

Without haste, with the air of one resigned to misfortune Bill turned his
head, and from where he sat counted the dogs.

"How'd it happen?" he asked apathetically.

Henry shrugged his shoulders.  "Don't know.  Unless One Ear gnawed 'm
loose.  He couldn't a-done it himself, that's sure."

"The darned cuss."  Bill spoke gravely and slowly, with no hint of the
anger that was raging within.  "Jes' because he couldn't chew himself
loose, he chews Spanker loose."

"Well, Spanker's troubles is over anyway; I guess he's digested by this
time an' cavortin' over the landscape in the bellies of twenty different
wolves," was Henry's epitaph on this, the latest lost dog.  "Have some
coffee, Bill."

But Bill shook his head.

"Go on," Henry pleaded, elevating the pot.

Bill shoved his cup aside.  "I'll be ding-dong-danged if I do.  I said I
wouldn't if ary dog turned up missin', an' I won't."

"It's darn good coffee," Henry said enticingly.

But Bill was stubborn, and he ate a dry breakfast washed down with
mumbled curses at One Ear for the trick he had played.

"I'll tie 'em up out of reach of each other to-night," Bill said, as they
took the trail.

They had travelled little more than a hundred yards, when Henry, who was
in front, bent down and picked up something with which his snowshoe had
collided.  It was dark, and he could not see it, but he recognised it by
the touch.  He flung it back, so that it struck the sled and bounced
along until it fetched up on Bill's snowshoes.

"Mebbe you'll need that in your business," Henry said.

Bill uttered an exclamation.  It was all that was left of Spanker--the
stick with which he had been tied.

"They ate 'm hide an' all," Bill announced.  "The stick's as clean as a
whistle.  They've ate the leather offen both ends.  They're damn hungry,
Henry, an' they'll have you an' me guessin' before this trip's over."

Henry laughed defiantly.  "I ain't been trailed this way by wolves
before, but I've gone through a whole lot worse an' kept my health.  Takes
more'n a handful of them pesky critters to do for yours truly, Bill, my
son."

"I don't know, I don't know," Bill muttered ominously.

"Well, you'll know all right when we pull into McGurry."

"I ain't feelin' special enthusiastic," Bill persisted.

"You're off colour, that's what's the matter with you," Henry dogmatised.
"What you need is quinine, an' I'm goin' to dose you up stiff as soon as
we make McGurry."

Bill grunted his disagreement with the diagnosis, and lapsed into
silence.  The day was like all the days.  Light came at nine o'clock.  At
twelve o'clock the southern horizon was warmed by the unseen sun; and
then began the cold grey of afternoon that would merge, three hours
later, into night.

It was just after the sun's futile effort to appear, that Bill slipped
the rifle from under the sled-lashings and said:

"You keep right on, Henry, I'm goin' to see what I can see."

"You'd better stick by the sled," his partner protested.  "You've only
got three cartridges, an' there's no tellin' what might happen."

"Who's croaking now?" Bill demanded triumphantly.

Henry made no reply, and plodded on alone, though often he cast anxious
glances back into the grey solitude where his partner had disappeared.  An
hour later, taking advantage of the cut-offs around which the sled had to
go, Bill arrived.

"They're scattered an' rangin' along wide," he said: "keeping up with us
an' lookin' for game at the same time.  You see, they're sure of us, only
they know they've got to wait to get us.  In the meantime they're willin'
to pick up anything eatable that comes handy."

"You mean they _think_ they're sure of us," Henry objected pointedly.

But Bill ignored him.  "I seen some of them.  They're pretty thin.  They
ain't had a bite in weeks I reckon, outside of Fatty an' Frog an'
Spanker; an' there's so many of 'em that that didn't go far.  They're
remarkable thin.  Their ribs is like wash-boards, an' their stomachs is
right up against their backbones.  They're pretty desperate, I can tell
you.  They'll be goin' mad, yet, an' then watch out."

A few minutes later, Henry, who was now travelling behind the sled,
emitted a low, warning whistle.  Bill turned and looked, then quietly
stopped the dogs.  To the rear, from around the last bend and plainly
into view, on the very trail they had just covered, trotted a furry,
slinking form.  Its nose was to the trail, and it trotted with a
peculiar, sliding, effortless gait.  When they halted, it halted,
throwing up its head and regarding them steadily with nostrils that
twitched as it caught and studied the scent of them.

"It's the she-wolf," Bill answered.

The dogs had lain down in the snow, and he walked past them to join his
partner in the sled.  Together they watched the strange animal that had
pursued them for days and that had already accomplished the destruction
of half their dog-team.

After a searching scrutiny, the animal trotted forward a few steps.  This
it repeated several times, till it was a short hundred yards away.  It
paused, head up, close by a clump of spruce trees, and with sight and
scent studied the outfit of the watching men.  It looked at them in a
strangely wistful way, after the manner of a dog; but in its wistfulness
there was none of the dog affection.  It was a wistfulness bred of
hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, as merciless as the frost itself.

It was large for a wolf, its gaunt frame advertising the lines of an
animal that was among the largest of its kind.

"Stands pretty close to two feet an' a half at the shoulders," Henry
commented.  "An' I'll bet it ain't far from five feet long."

"Kind of strange colour for a wolf," was Bill's criticism.  "I never seen
a red wolf before.  Looks almost cinnamon to me."

The animal was certainly not cinnamon-coloured.  Its coat was the true
wolf-coat.  The dominant colour was grey, and yet there was to it a faint
reddish hue--a hue that was baffling, that appeared and disappeared, that
was more like an illusion of the vision, now grey, distinctly grey, and
again giving hints and glints of a vague redness of colour not
classifiable in terms of ordinary experience.

"Looks for all the world like a big husky sled-dog," Bill said.  "I
wouldn't be s'prised to see it wag its tail."

"Hello, you husky!" he called.  "Come here, you whatever-your-name-is."

"Ain't a bit scairt of you," Henry laughed.

Bill waved his hand at it threateningly and shouted loudly; but the
animal betrayed no fear.  The only change in it that they could notice
was an accession of alertness.  It still regarded them with the merciless
wistfulness of hunger.  They were meat, and it was hungry; and it would
like to go in and eat them if it dared.

"Look here, Henry," Bill said, unconsciously lowering his voice to a
whisper because of what he imitated.  "We've got three cartridges.  But
it's a dead shot.  Couldn't miss it.  It's got away with three of our
dogs, an' we oughter put a stop to it.  What d'ye say?"

Henry nodded his consent.  Bill cautiously slipped the gun from under the
sled-lashing.  The gun was on the way to his shoulder, but it never got
there.  For in that instant the she-wolf leaped sidewise from the trail
into the clump of spruce trees and disappeared.

The two men looked at each other.  Henry whistled long and
comprehendingly.

"I might have knowed it," Bill chided himself aloud as he replaced the
gun.  "Of course a wolf that knows enough to come in with the dogs at
feedin' time, 'd know all about shooting-irons.  I tell you right now,
Henry, that critter's the cause of all our trouble.  We'd have six dogs
at the present time, 'stead of three, if it wasn't for her.  An' I tell
you right now, Henry, I'm goin' to get her.  She's too smart to be shot
in the open.  But I'm goin' to lay for her.  I'll bushwhack her as sure
as my name is Bill."

"You needn't stray off too far in doin' it," his partner admonished.  "If
that pack ever starts to jump you, them three cartridges'd be wuth no
more'n three whoops in hell.  Them animals is damn hungry, an' once they
start in, they'll sure get you, Bill."

They camped early that night.  Three dogs could not drag the sled so fast
nor for so long hours as could six, and they were showing unmistakable
signs of playing out.  And the men went early to bed, Bill first seeing
to it that the dogs were tied out of gnawing-reach of one another.

But the wolves were growing bolder, and the men were aroused more than
once from their sleep.  So near did the wolves approach, that the dogs
became frantic with terror, and it was necessary to replenish the fire
from time to time in order to keep the adventurous marauders at safer
distance.

"I've hearn sailors talk of sharks followin' a ship," Bill remarked, as
he crawled back into the blankets after one such replenishing of the
fire.  "Well, them wolves is land sharks.  They know their business
better'n we do, an' they ain't a-holdin' our trail this way for their
health.  They're goin' to get us.  They're sure goin' to get us, Henry."

"They've half got you a'ready, a-talkin' like that," Henry retorted
sharply.  "A man's half licked when he says he is.  An' you're half eaten
from the way you're goin' on about it."

"They've got away with better men than you an' me," Bill answered.

"Oh, shet up your croakin'.  You make me all-fired tired."

Henry rolled over angrily on his side, but was surprised that Bill made
no similar display of temper.  This was not Bill's way, for he was easily
angered by sharp words.  Henry thought long over it before he went to
sleep, and as his eyelids fluttered down and he dozed off, the thought in
his mind was: "There's no mistakin' it, Bill's almighty blue.  I'll have
to cheer him up to-morrow."



CHAPTER III--THE HUNGER CRY


The day began auspiciously.  They had lost no dogs during the night, and
they swung out upon the trail and into the silence, the darkness, and the
cold with spirits that were fairly light.  Bill seemed to have forgotten
his forebodings of the previous night, and even waxed facetious with the
dogs when, at midday, they overturned the sled on a bad piece of trail.

It was an awkward mix-up.  The sled was upside down and jammed between a
tree-trunk and a huge rock, and they were forced to unharness the dogs in
order to straighten out the tangle.  The two men were bent over the sled
and trying to right it, when Henry observed One Ear sidling away.

"Here, you, One Ear!" he cried, straightening up and turning around on
the dog.

But One Ear broke into a run across the snow, his traces trailing behind
him.  And there, out in the snow of their back track, was the she-wolf
waiting for him.  As he neared her, he became suddenly cautious.  He
slowed down to an alert and mincing walk and then stopped.  He regarded
her carefully and dubiously, yet desirefully.  She seemed to smile at
him, showing her teeth in an ingratiating rather than a menacing way.  She
moved toward him a few steps, playfully, and then halted.  One Ear drew
near to her, still alert and cautious, his tail and ears in the air, his
head held high.

He tried to sniff noses with her, but she retreated playfully and coyly.
Every advance on his part was accompanied by a corresponding retreat on
her part.  Step by step she was luring him away from the security of his
human companionship.  Once, as though a warning had in vague ways flitted
through his intelligence, he turned his head and looked back at the
overturned sled, at his team-mates, and at the two men who were calling
to him.

But whatever idea was forming in his mind, was dissipated by the
she-wolf, who advanced upon him, sniffed noses with him for a fleeting
instant, and then resumed her coy retreat before his renewed advances.

In the meantime, Bill had bethought himself of the rifle.  But it was
jammed beneath the overturned sled, and by the time Henry had helped him
to right the load, One Ear and the she-wolf were too close together and
the distance too great to risk a shot.

Too late One Ear learned his mistake.  Before they saw the cause, the two
men saw him turn and start to run back toward them.  Then, approaching at
right angles to the trail and cutting off his retreat they saw a dozen
wolves, lean and grey, bounding across the snow.  On the instant, the she-
wolf's coyness and playfulness disappeared.  With a snarl she sprang upon
One Ear.  He thrust her off with his shoulder, and, his retreat cut off
and still intent on regaining the sled, he altered his course in an
attempt to circle around to it.  More wolves were appearing every moment
and joining in the chase.  The she-wolf was one leap behind One Ear and
holding her own.

"Where are you goin'?" Henry suddenly demanded, laying his hand on his
partner's arm.

Bill shook it off.  "I won't stand it," he said.  "They ain't a-goin' to
get any more of our dogs if I can help it."

Gun in hand, he plunged into the underbrush that lined the side of the
trail.  His intention was apparent enough.  Taking the sled as the centre
of the circle that One Ear was making, Bill planned to tap that circle at
a point in advance of the pursuit.  With his rifle, in the broad
daylight, it might be possible for him to awe the wolves and save the
dog.

"Say, Bill!" Henry called after him.  "Be careful!  Don't take no
chances!"

Henry sat down on the sled and watched.  There was nothing else for him
to do.  Bill had already gone from sight; but now and again, appearing
and disappearing amongst the underbrush and the scattered clumps of
spruce, could be seen One Ear.  Henry judged his case to be hopeless.  The
dog was thoroughly alive to its danger, but it was running on the outer
circle while the wolf-pack was running on the inner and shorter circle.
It was vain to think of One Ear so outdistancing his pursuers as to be
able to cut across their circle in advance of them and to regain the
sled.

The different lines were rapidly approaching a point.  Somewhere out
there in the snow, screened from his sight by trees and thickets, Henry
knew that the wolf-pack, One Ear, and Bill were coming together.  All too
quickly, far more quickly than he had expected, it happened.  He heard a
shot, then two shots, in rapid succession, and he knew that Bill's
ammunition was gone.  Then he heard a great outcry of snarls and yelps.
He recognised One Ear's yell of pain and terror, and he heard a wolf-cry
that bespoke a stricken animal.  And that was all.  The snarls ceased.
The yelping died away.  Silence settled down again over the lonely land.

He sat for a long while upon the sled.  There was no need for him to go
and see what had happened.  He knew it as though it had taken place
before his eyes.  Once, he roused with a start and hastily got the axe
out from underneath the lashings.  But for some time longer he sat and
brooded, the two remaining dogs crouching and trembling at his feet.

At last he arose in a weary manner, as though all the resilience had gone
out of his body, and proceeded to fasten the dogs to the sled.  He passed
a rope over his shoulder, a man-trace, and pulled with the dogs.  He did
not go far.  At the first hint of darkness he hastened to make a camp,
and he saw to it that he had a generous supply of firewood.  He fed the
dogs, cooked and ate his supper, and made his bed close to the fire.

But he was not destined to enjoy that bed.  Before his eyes closed the
wolves had drawn too near for safety.  It no longer required an effort of
the vision to see them.  They were all about him and the fire, in a
narrow circle, and he could see them plainly in the firelight lying down,
sitting up, crawling forward on their bellies, or slinking back and
forth.  They even slept.  Here and there he could see one curled up in
the snow like a dog, taking the sleep that was now denied himself.

He kept the fire brightly blazing, for he knew that it alone intervened
between the flesh of his body and their hungry fangs.  His two dogs
stayed close by him, one on either side, leaning against him for
protection, crying and whimpering, and at times snarling desperately when
a wolf approached a little closer than usual.  At such moments, when his
dogs snarled, the whole circle would be agitated, the wolves coming to
their feet and pressing tentatively forward, a chorus of snarls and eager
yelps rising about him.  Then the circle would lie down again, and here
and there a wolf would resume its broken nap.

But this circle had a continuous tendency to draw in upon him.  Bit by
bit, an inch at a time, with here a wolf bellying forward, and there a
wolf bellying forward, the circle would narrow until the brutes were
almost within springing distance.  Then he would seize brands from the
fire and hurl them into the pack.  A hasty drawing back always resulted,
accompanied by angry yelps and frightened snarls when a well-aimed brand
struck and scorched a too daring animal.

Morning found the man haggard and worn, wide-eyed from want of sleep.  He
cooked breakfast in the darkness, and at nine o'clock, when, with the
coming of daylight, the wolf-pack drew back, he set about the task he had
planned through the long hours of the night.  Chopping down young
saplings, he made them cross-bars of a scaffold by lashing them high up
to the trunks of standing trees.  Using the sled-lashing for a heaving
rope, and with the aid of the dogs, he hoisted the coffin to the top of
the scaffold.

"They got Bill, an' they may get me, but they'll sure never get you,
young man," he said, addressing the dead body in its tree-sepulchre.

Then he took the trail, the lightened sled bounding along behind the
willing dogs; for they, too, knew that safety lay open in the gaining of
Fort McGurry.  The wolves were now more open in their pursuit, trotting
sedately behind and ranging along on either side, their red tongues
lolling out, their lean sides showing the undulating ribs with every
movement.  They were very lean, mere skin-bags stretched over bony
frames, with strings for muscles--so lean that Henry found it in his mind
to marvel that they still kept their feet and did not collapse forthright
in the snow.

He did not dare travel until dark.  At midday, not only did the sun warm
the southern horizon, but it even thrust its upper rim, pale and golden,
above the sky-line.  He received it as a sign.  The days were growing
longer.  The sun was returning.  But scarcely had the cheer of its light
departed, than he went into camp.  There were still several hours of grey
daylight and sombre twilight, and he utilised them in chopping an
enormous supply of fire-wood.

With night came horror.  Not only were the starving wolves growing
bolder, but lack of sleep was telling upon Henry.  He dozed despite
himself, crouching by the fire, the blankets about his shoulders, the axe
between his knees, and on either side a dog pressing close against him.
He awoke once and saw in front of him, not a dozen feet away, a big grey
wolf, one of the largest of the pack.  And even as he looked, the brute
deliberately stretched himself after the manner of a lazy dog, yawning
full in his face and looking upon him with a possessive eye, as if, in
truth, he were merely a delayed meal that was soon to be eaten.

This certitude was shown by the whole pack.  Fully a score he could
count, staring hungrily at him or calmly sleeping in the snow.  They
reminded him of children gathered about a spread table and awaiting
permission to begin to eat.  And he was the food they were to eat!  He
wondered how and when the meal would begin.

As he piled wood on the fire he discovered an appreciation of his own
body which he had never felt before.  He watched his moving muscles and
was interested in the cunning mechanism of his fingers.  By the light of
the fire he crooked his fingers slowly and repeatedly now one at a time,
now all together, spreading them wide or making quick gripping movements.
He studied the nail-formation, and prodded the finger-tips, now sharply,
and again softly, gauging the while the nerve-sensations produced.  It
fascinated him, and he grew suddenly fond of this subtle flesh of his
that worked so beautifully and smoothly and delicately.  Then he would
cast a glance of fear at the wolf-circle drawn expectantly about him, and
like a blow the realisation would strike him that this wonderful body of
his, this living flesh, was no more than so much meat, a quest of
ravenous animals, to be torn and slashed by their hungry fangs, to be
sustenance to them as the moose and the rabbit had often been sustenance
to him.

He came out of a doze that was half nightmare, to see the red-hued she-
wolf before him.  She was not more than half a dozen feet away sitting in
the snow and wistfully regarding him.  The two dogs were whimpering and
snarling at his feet, but she took no notice of them.  She was looking at
the man, and for some time he returned her look.  There was nothing
threatening about her.  She looked at him merely with a great
wistfulness, but he knew it to be the wistfulness of an equally great
hunger.  He was the food, and the sight of him excited in her the
gustatory sensations.  Her mouth opened, the saliva drooled forth, and
she licked her chops with the pleasure of anticipation.

A spasm of fear went through him.  He reached hastily for a brand to
throw at her.  But even as he reached, and before his fingers had closed
on the missile, she sprang back into safety; and he knew that she was
used to having things thrown at her.  She had snarled as she sprang away,
baring her white fangs to their roots, all her wistfulness vanishing,
being replaced by a carnivorous malignity that made him shudder.  He
glanced at the hand that held the brand, noticing the cunning delicacy of
the fingers that gripped it, how they adjusted themselves to all the
inequalities of the surface, curling over and under and about the rough
wood, and one little finger, too close to the burning portion of the
brand, sensitively and automatically writhing back from the hurtful heat
to a cooler gripping-place; and in the same instant he seemed to see a
vision of those same sensitive and delicate fingers being crushed and
torn by the white teeth of the she-wolf.  Never had he been so fond of
this body of his as now when his tenure of it was so precarious.

All night, with burning brands, he fought off the hungry pack.  When he
dozed despite himself, the whimpering and snarling of the dogs aroused
him.  Morning came, but for the first time the light of day failed to
scatter the wolves.  The man waited in vain for them to go.  They
remained in a circle about him and his fire, displaying an arrogance of
possession that shook his courage born of the morning light.

He made one desperate attempt to pull out on the trail.  But the moment
he left the protection of the fire, the boldest wolf leaped for him, but
leaped short.  He saved himself by springing back, the jaws snapping
together a scant six inches from his thigh.  The rest of the pack was now
up and surging upon him, and a throwing of firebrands right and left was
necessary to drive them back to a respectful distance.

Even in the daylight he did not dare leave the fire to chop fresh wood.
Twenty feet away towered a huge dead spruce.  He spent half the day
extending his campfire to the tree, at any moment a half dozen burning
faggots ready at hand to fling at his enemies.  Once at the tree, he
studied the surrounding forest in order to fell the tree in the direction
of the most firewood.

The night was a repetition of the night before, save that the need for
sleep was becoming overpowering.  The snarling of his dogs was losing its
efficacy.  Besides, they were snarling all the time, and his benumbed and
drowsy senses no longer took note of changing pitch and intensity.  He
awoke with a start.  The she-wolf was less than a yard from him.
Mechanically, at short range, without letting go of it, he thrust a brand
full into her open and snarling mouth.  She sprang away, yelling with
pain, and while he took delight in the smell of burning flesh and hair,
he watched her shaking her head and growling wrathfully a score of feet
away.

But this time, before he dozed again, he tied a burning pine-knot to his
right hand.  His eyes were closed but few minutes when the burn of the
flame on his flesh awakened him.  For several hours he adhered to this
programme.  Every time he was thus awakened he drove back the wolves with
flying brands, replenished the fire, and rearranged the pine-knot on his
hand.  All worked well, but there came a time when he fastened the pine-
knot insecurely.  As his eyes closed it fell away from his hand.

He dreamed.  It seemed to him that he was in Fort McGurry.  It was warm
and comfortable, and he was playing cribbage with the Factor.  Also, it
seemed to him that the fort was besieged by wolves.  They were howling at
the very gates, and sometimes he and the Factor paused from the game to
listen and laugh at the futile efforts of the wolves to get in.  And
then, so strange was the dream, there was a crash.  The door was burst
open.  He could see the wolves flooding into the big living-room of the
fort.  They were leaping straight for him and the Factor.  With the
bursting open of the door, the noise of their howling had increased
tremendously.  This howling now bothered him.  His dream was merging into
something else--he knew not what; but through it all, following him,
persisted the howling.

And then he awoke to find the howling real.  There was a great snarling
and yelping.  The wolves were rushing him.  They were all about him and
upon him.  The teeth of one had closed upon his arm.  Instinctively he
leaped into the fire, and as he leaped, he felt the sharp slash of teeth
that tore through the flesh of his leg.  Then began a fire fight.  His
stout mittens temporarily protected his hands, and he scooped live coals
into the air in all directions, until the campfire took on the semblance
of a volcano.

But it could not last long.  His face was blistering in the heat, his
eyebrows and lashes were singed off, and the heat was becoming unbearable
to his feet.  With a flaming brand in each hand, he sprang to the edge of
the fire.  The wolves had been driven back.  On every side, wherever the
live coals had fallen, the snow was sizzling, and every little while a
retiring wolf, with wild leap and snort and snarl, announced that one
such live coal had been stepped upon.

Flinging his brands at the nearest of his enemies, the man thrust his
smouldering mittens into the snow and stamped about to cool his feet.  His
two dogs were missing, and he well knew that they had served as a course
in the protracted meal which had begun days before with Fatty, the last
course of which would likely be himself in the days to follow.

"You ain't got me yet!" he cried, savagely shaking his fist at the hungry
beasts; and at the sound of his voice the whole circle was agitated,
there was a general snarl, and the she-wolf slid up close to him across
the snow and watched him with hungry wistfulness.

He set to work to carry out a new idea that had come to him.  He extended
the fire into a large circle.  Inside this circle he crouched, his
sleeping outfit under him as a protection against the melting snow.  When
he had thus disappeared within his shelter of flame, the whole pack came
curiously to the rim of the fire to see what had become of him.  Hitherto
they had been denied access to the fire, and they now settled down in a
close-drawn circle, like so many dogs, blinking and yawning and
stretching their lean bodies in the unaccustomed warmth.  Then the she-
wolf sat down, pointed her nose at a star, and began to howl.  One by one
the wolves joined her, till the whole pack, on haunches, with noses
pointed skyward, was howling its hunger cry.

Dawn came, and daylight.  The fire was burning low.  The fuel had run
out, and there was need to get more.  The man attempted to step out of
his circle of flame, but the wolves surged to meet him.  Burning brands
made them spring aside, but they no longer sprang back.  In vain he
strove to drive them back.  As he gave up and stumbled inside his circle,
a wolf leaped for him, missed, and landed with all four feet in the
coals.  It cried out with terror, at the same time snarling, and
scrambled back to cool its paws in the snow.

The man sat down on his blankets in a crouching position.  His body
leaned forward from the hips.  His shoulders, relaxed and drooping, and
his head on his knees advertised that he had given up the struggle.  Now
and again he raised his head to note the dying down of the fire.  The
circle of flame and coals was breaking into segments with openings in
between.  These openings grew in size, the segments diminished.

"I guess you can come an' get me any time," he mumbled.  "Anyway, I'm
goin' to sleep."

Once he awakened, and in an opening in the circle, directly in front of
him, he saw the she-wolf gazing at him.

Again he awakened, a little later, though it seemed hours to him.  A
mysterious change had taken place--so mysterious a change that he was
shocked wider awake.  Something had happened.  He could not understand at
first.  Then he discovered it.  The wolves were gone.  Remained only the
trampled snow to show how closely they had pressed him.  Sleep was
welling up and gripping him again, his head was sinking down upon his
knees, when he roused with a sudden start.

There were cries of men, and churn of sleds, the creaking of harnesses,
and the eager whimpering of straining dogs.  Four sleds pulled in from
the river bed to the camp among the trees.  Half a dozen men were about
the man who crouched in the centre of the dying fire.  They were shaking
and prodding him into consciousness.  He looked at them like a drunken
man and maundered in strange, sleepy speech.

"Red she-wolf. . . . Come in with the dogs at feedin' time. . . . First
she ate the dog-food. . . . Then she ate the dogs. . . . An' after that
she ate Bill. . . . "

"Where's Lord Alfred?" one of the men bellowed in his ear, shaking him
roughly.

He shook his head slowly.  "No, she didn't eat him. . . . He's roostin'
in a tree at the last camp."

"Dead?" the man shouted.

"An' in a box," Henry answered.  He jerked his shoulder petulantly away
from the grip of his questioner.  "Say, you lemme alone. . . . I'm jes'
plump tuckered out. . . . Goo' night, everybody."

His eyes fluttered and went shut.  His chin fell forward on his chest.
And even as they eased him down upon the blankets his snores were rising
on the frosty air.

But there was another sound.  Far and faint it was, in the remote
distance, the cry of the hungry wolf-pack as it took the trail of other
meat than the man it had just missed.




PART II


CHAPTER I--THE BATTLE OF THE FANGS


It was the she-wolf who had first caught the sound of men's voices and
the whining of the sled-dogs; and it was the she-wolf who was first to
spring away from the cornered man in his circle of dying flame.  The pack
had been loath to forego the kill it had hunted down, and it lingered for
several minutes, making sure of the sounds, and then it, too, sprang away
on the trail made by the she-wolf.

Running at the forefront of the pack was a large grey wolf--one of its
several leaders.  It was he who directed the pack's course on the heels
of the she-wolf.  It was he who snarled warningly at the younger members
of the pack or slashed at them with his fangs when they ambitiously tried
to pass him.  And it was he who increased the pace when he sighted the
she-wolf, now trotting slowly across the snow.

She dropped in alongside by him, as though it were her appointed
position, and took the pace of the pack.  He did not snarl at her, nor
show his teeth, when any leap of hers chanced to put her in advance of
him.  On the contrary, he seemed kindly disposed toward her--too kindly
to suit her, for he was prone to run near to her, and when he ran too
near it was she who snarled and showed her teeth.  Nor was she above
slashing his shoulder sharply on occasion.  At such times he betrayed no
anger.  He merely sprang to the side and ran stiffly ahead for several
awkward leaps, in carriage and conduct resembling an abashed country
swain.

This was his one trouble in the running of the pack; but she had other
troubles.  On her other side ran a gaunt old wolf, grizzled and marked
with the scars of many battles.  He ran always on her right side.  The
fact that he had but one eye, and that the left eye, might account for
this.  He, also, was addicted to crowding her, to veering toward her till
his scarred muzzle touched her body, or shoulder, or neck.  As with the
running mate on the left, she repelled these attentions with her teeth;
but when both bestowed their attentions at the same time she was roughly
jostled, being compelled, with quick snaps to either side, to drive both
lovers away and at the same time to maintain her forward leap with the
pack and see the way of her feet before her.  At such times her running
mates flashed their teeth and growled threateningly across at each other.
They might have fought, but even wooing and its rivalry waited upon the
more pressing hunger-need of the pack.

After each repulse, when the old wolf sheered abruptly away from the
sharp-toothed object of his desire, he shouldered against a young three-
year-old that ran on his blind right side.  This young wolf had attained
his full size; and, considering the weak and famished condition of the
pack, he possessed more than the average vigour and spirit.  Nevertheless,
he ran with his head even with the shoulder of his one-eyed elder.  When
he ventured to run abreast of the older wolf (which was seldom), a snarl
and a snap sent him back even with the shoulder again.  Sometimes,
however, he dropped cautiously and slowly behind and edged in between the
old leader and the she-wolf.  This was doubly resented, even triply
resented.  When she snarled her displeasure, the old leader would whirl
on the three-year-old.  Sometimes she whirled with him.  And sometimes
the young leader on the left whirled, too.

At such times, confronted by three sets of savage teeth, the young wolf
stopped precipitately, throwing himself back on his haunches, with fore-
legs stiff, mouth menacing, and mane bristling.  This confusion in the
front of the moving pack always caused confusion in the rear.  The wolves
behind collided with the young wolf and expressed their displeasure by
administering sharp nips on his hind-legs and flanks.  He was laying up
trouble for himself, for lack of food and short tempers went together;
but with the boundless faith of youth he persisted in repeating the
manoeuvre every little while, though it never succeeded in gaining
anything for him but discomfiture.

Had there been food, love-making and fighting would have gone on apace,
and the pack-formation would have been broken up.  But the situation of
the pack was desperate.  It was lean with long-standing hunger.  It ran
below its ordinary speed.  At the rear limped the weak members, the very
young and the very old.  At the front were the strongest.  Yet all were
more like skeletons than full-bodied wolves.  Nevertheless, with the
exception of the ones that limped, the movements of the animals were
effortless and tireless.  Their stringy muscles seemed founts of
inexhaustible energy.  Behind every steel-like contraction of a muscle,
lay another steel-like contraction, and another, and another, apparently
without end.

They ran many miles that day.  They ran through the night.  And the next
day found them still running.  They were running over the surface of a
world frozen and dead.  No life stirred.  They alone moved through the
vast inertness.  They alone were alive, and they sought for other things
that were alive in order that they might devour them and continue to
live.

They crossed low divides and ranged a dozen small streams in a
lower-lying country before their quest was rewarded.  Then they came upon
moose.  It was a big bull they first found.  Here was meat and life, and
it was guarded by no mysterious fires nor flying missiles of flame.  Splay
hoofs and palmated antlers they knew, and they flung their customary
patience and caution to the wind.  It was a brief fight and fierce.  The
big bull was beset on every side.  He ripped them open or split their
skulls with shrewdly driven blows of his great hoofs.  He crushed them
and broke them on his large horns.  He stamped them into the snow under
him in the wallowing struggle.  But he was foredoomed, and he went down
with the she-wolf tearing savagely at his throat, and with other teeth
fixed everywhere upon him, devouring him alive, before ever his last
struggles ceased or his last damage had been wrought.

There was food in plenty.  The bull weighed over eight hundred
pounds--fully twenty pounds of meat per mouth for the forty-odd wolves of
the pack.  But if they could fast prodigiously, they could feed
prodigiously, and soon a few scattered bones were all that remained of
the splendid live brute that had faced the pack a few hours before.

There was now much resting and sleeping.  With full stomachs, bickering
and quarrelling began among the younger males, and this continued through
the few days that followed before the breaking-up of the pack.  The
famine was over.  The wolves were now in the country of game, and though
they still hunted in pack, they hunted more cautiously, cutting out heavy
cows or crippled old bulls from the small moose-herds they ran across.

There came a day, in this land of plenty, when the wolf-pack split in
half and went in different directions.  The she-wolf, the young leader on
her left, and the one-eyed elder on her right, led their half of the pack
down to the Mackenzie River and across into the lake country to the east.
Each day this remnant of the pack dwindled.  Two by two, male and female,
the wolves were deserting.  Occasionally a solitary male was driven out
by the sharp teeth of his rivals.  In the end there remained only four:
the she-wolf, the young leader, the one-eyed one, and the ambitious three-
year-old.

The she-wolf had by now developed a ferocious temper.  Her three suitors
all bore the marks of her teeth.  Yet they never replied in kind, never
defended themselves against her.  They turned their shoulders to her most
savage slashes, and with wagging tails and mincing steps strove to
placate her wrath.  But if they were all mildness toward her, they were
all fierceness toward one another.  The three-year-old grew too ambitious
in his fierceness.  He caught the one-eyed elder on his blind side and
ripped his ear into ribbons.  Though the grizzled old fellow could see
only on one side, against the youth and vigour of the other he brought
into play the wisdom of long years of experience.  His lost eye and his
scarred muzzle bore evidence to the nature of his experience.  He had
survived too many battles to be in doubt for a moment about what to do.

The battle began fairly, but it did not end fairly.  There was no telling
what the outcome would have been, for the third wolf joined the elder,
and together, old leader and young leader, they attacked the ambitious
three-year-old and proceeded to destroy him.  He was beset on either side
by the merciless fangs of his erstwhile comrades.  Forgotten were the
days they had hunted together, the game they had pulled down, the famine
they had suffered.  That business was a thing of the past.  The business
of love was at hand--ever a sterner and crueller business than that of
food-getting.

And in the meanwhile, the she-wolf, the cause of it all, sat down
contentedly on her haunches and watched.  She was even pleased.  This was
her day--and it came not often--when manes bristled, and fang smote fang
or ripped and tore the yielding flesh, all for the possession of her.

And in the business of love the three-year-old, who had made this his
first adventure upon it, yielded up his life.  On either side of his body
stood his two rivals.  They were gazing at the she-wolf, who sat smiling
in the snow.  But the elder leader was wise, very wise, in love even as
in battle.  The younger leader turned his head to lick a wound on his
shoulder.  The curve of his neck was turned toward his rival.  With his
one eye the elder saw the opportunity.  He darted in low and closed with
his fangs.  It was a long, ripping slash, and deep as well.  His teeth,
in passing, burst the wall of the great vein of the throat.  Then he
leaped clear.

The young leader snarled terribly, but his snarl broke midmost into a
tickling cough.  Bleeding and coughing, already stricken, he sprang at
the elder and fought while life faded from him, his legs going weak
beneath him, the light of day dulling on his eyes, his blows and springs
falling shorter and shorter.

And all the while the she-wolf sat on her haunches and smiled.  She was
made glad in vague ways by the battle, for this was the love-making of
the Wild, the sex-tragedy of the natural world that was tragedy only to
those that died.  To those that survived it was not tragedy, but
realisation and achievement.

When the young leader lay in the snow and moved no more, One Eye stalked
over to the she-wolf.  His carriage was one of mingled triumph and
caution.  He was plainly expectant of a rebuff, and he was just as
plainly surprised when her teeth did not flash out at him in anger.  For
the first time she met him with a kindly manner.  She sniffed noses with
him, and even condescended to leap about and frisk and play with him in
quite puppyish fashion.  And he, for all his grey years and sage
experience, behaved quite as puppyishly and even a little more foolishly.

Forgotten already were the vanquished rivals and the love-tale
red-written on the snow.  Forgotten, save once, when old One Eye stopped
for a moment to lick his stiffening wounds.  Then it was that his lips
half writhed into a snarl, and the hair of his neck and shoulders
involuntarily bristled, while he half crouched for a spring, his claws
spasmodically clutching into the snow-surface for firmer footing.  But it
was all forgotten the next moment, as he sprang after the she-wolf, who
was coyly leading him a chase through the woods.

After that they ran side by side, like good friends who have come to an
understanding.  The days passed by, and they kept together, hunting their
meat and killing and eating it in common.  After a time the she-wolf
began to grow restless.  She seemed to be searching for something that
she could not find.  The hollows under fallen trees seemed to attract
her, and she spent much time nosing about among the larger snow-piled
crevices in the rocks and in the caves of overhanging banks.  Old One Eye
was not interested at all, but he followed her good-naturedly in her
quest, and when her investigations in particular places were unusually
protracted, he would lie down and wait until she was ready to go on.

They did not remain in one place, but travelled across country until they
regained the Mackenzie River, down which they slowly went, leaving it
often to hunt game along the small streams that entered it, but always
returning to it again.  Sometimes they chanced upon other wolves, usually
in pairs; but there was no friendliness of intercourse displayed on
either side, no gladness at meeting, no desire to return to the
pack-formation.  Several times they encountered solitary wolves.  These
were always males, and they were pressingly insistent on joining with One
Eye and his mate.  This he resented, and when she stood shoulder to
shoulder with him, bristling and showing her teeth, the aspiring solitary
ones would back off, turn-tail, and continue on their lonely way.

One moonlight night, running through the quiet forest, One Eye suddenly
halted.  His muzzle went up, his tail stiffened, and his nostrils dilated
as he scented the air.  One foot also he held up, after the manner of a
dog.  He was not satisfied, and he continued to smell the air, striving
to understand the message borne upon it to him.  One careless sniff had
satisfied his mate, and she trotted on to reassure him.  Though he
followed her, he was still dubious, and he could not forbear an
occasional halt in order more carefully to study the warning.

She crept out cautiously on the edge of a large open space in the midst
of the trees.  For some time she stood alone.  Then One Eye, creeping and
crawling, every sense on the alert, every hair radiating infinite
suspicion, joined her.  They stood side by side, watching and listening
and smelling.

To their ears came the sounds of dogs wrangling and scuffling, the
guttural cries of men, the sharper voices of scolding women, and once the
shrill and plaintive cry of a child.  With the exception of the huge
bulks of the skin-lodges, little could be seen save the flames of the
fire, broken by the movements of intervening bodies, and the smoke rising
slowly on the quiet air.  But to their nostrils came the myriad smells of
an Indian camp, carrying a story that was largely incomprehensible to One
Eye, but every detail of which the she-wolf knew.

She was strangely stirred, and sniffed and sniffed with an increasing
delight.  But old One Eye was doubtful.  He betrayed his apprehension,
and started tentatively to go.  She turned and touched his neck with her
muzzle in a reassuring way, then regarded the camp again.  A new
wistfulness was in her face, but it was not the wistfulness of hunger.
She was thrilling to a desire that urged her to go forward, to be in
closer to that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding
and dodging the stumbling feet of men.

One Eye moved impatiently beside her; her unrest came back upon her, and
she knew again her pressing need to find the thing for which she
searched.  She turned and trotted back into the forest, to the great
relief of One Eye, who trotted a little to the fore until they were well
within the shelter of the trees.

As they slid along, noiseless as shadows, in the moonlight, they came
upon a run-way.  Both noses went down to the footprints in the snow.
These footprints were very fresh.  One Eye ran ahead cautiously, his mate
at his heels.  The broad pads of their feet were spread wide and in
contact with the snow were like velvet.  One Eye caught sight of a dim
movement of white in the midst of the white.  His sliding gait had been
deceptively swift, but it was as nothing to the speed at which he now
ran.  Before him was bounding the faint patch of white he had discovered.

They were running along a narrow alley flanked on either side by a growth
of young spruce.  Through the trees the mouth of the alley could be seen,
opening out on a moonlit glade.  Old One Eye was rapidly overhauling the
fleeing shape of white.  Bound by bound he gained.  Now he was upon it.
One leap more and his teeth would be sinking into it.  But that leap was
never made.  High in the air, and straight up, soared the shape of white,
now a struggling snowshoe rabbit that leaped and bounded, executing a
fantastic dance there above him in the air and never once returning to
earth.

One Eye sprang back with a snort of sudden fright, then shrank down to
the snow and crouched, snarling threats at this thing of fear he did not
understand.  But the she-wolf coolly thrust past him.  She poised for a
moment, then sprang for the dancing rabbit.  She, too, soared high, but
not so high as the quarry, and her teeth clipped emptily together with a
metallic snap.  She made another leap, and another.

Her mate had slowly relaxed from his crouch and was watching her.  He now
evinced displeasure at her repeated failures, and himself made a mighty
spring upward.  His teeth closed upon the rabbit, and he bore it back to
earth with him.  But at the same time there was a suspicious crackling
movement beside him, and his astonished eye saw a young spruce sapling
bending down above him to strike him.  His jaws let go their grip, and he
leaped backward to escape this strange danger, his lips drawn back from
his fangs, his throat snarling, every hair bristling with rage and
fright.  And in that moment the sapling reared its slender length upright
and the rabbit soared dancing in the air again.

The she-wolf was angry.  She sank her fangs into her mate's shoulder in
reproof; and he, frightened, unaware of what constituted this new
onslaught, struck back ferociously and in still greater fright, ripping
down the side of the she-wolf's muzzle.  For him to resent such reproof
was equally unexpected to her, and she sprang upon him in snarling
indignation.  Then he discovered his mistake and tried to placate her.
But she proceeded to punish him roundly, until he gave over all attempts
at placation, and whirled in a circle, his head away from her, his
shoulders receiving the punishment of her teeth.

In the meantime the rabbit danced above them in the air.  The she-wolf
sat down in the snow, and old One Eye, now more in fear of his mate than
of the mysterious sapling, again sprang for the rabbit.  As he sank back
with it between his teeth, he kept his eye on the sapling.  As before, it
followed him back to earth.  He crouched down under the impending blow,
his hair bristling, but his teeth still keeping tight hold of the rabbit.
But the blow did not fall.  The sapling remained bent above him.  When he
moved it moved, and he growled at it through his clenched jaws; when he
remained still, it remained still, and he concluded it was safer to
continue remaining still.  Yet the warm blood of the rabbit tasted good
in his mouth.

It was his mate who relieved him from the quandary in which he found
himself.  She took the rabbit from him, and while the sapling swayed and
teetered threateningly above her she calmly gnawed off the rabbit's head.
At once the sapling shot up, and after that gave no more trouble,
remaining in the decorous and perpendicular position in which nature had
intended it to grow.  Then, between them, the she-wolf and One Eye
devoured the game which the mysterious sapling had caught for them.

There were other run-ways and alleys where rabbits were hanging in the
air, and the wolf-pair prospected them all, the she-wolf leading the way,
old One Eye following and observant, learning the method of robbing
snares--a knowledge destined to stand him in good stead in the days to
come.



CHAPTER II--THE LAIR


For two days the she-wolf and One Eye hung about the Indian camp.  He was
worried and apprehensive, yet the camp lured his mate and she was loath
to depart.  But when, one morning, the air was rent with the report of a
rifle close at hand, and a bullet smashed against a tree trunk several
inches from One Eye's head, they hesitated no more, but went off on a
long, swinging lope that put quick miles between them and the danger.

They did not go far--a couple of days' journey.  The she-wolf's need to
find the thing for which she searched had now become imperative.  She was
getting very heavy, and could run but slowly.  Once, in the pursuit of a
rabbit, which she ordinarily would have caught with ease, she gave over
and lay down and rested.  One Eye came to her; but when he touched her
neck gently with his muzzle she snapped at him with such quick fierceness
that he tumbled over backward and cut a ridiculous figure in his effort
to escape her teeth.  Her temper was now shorter than ever; but he had
become more patient than ever and more solicitous.

And then she found the thing for which she sought.  It was a few miles up
a small stream that in the summer time flowed into the Mackenzie, but
that then was frozen over and frozen down to its rocky bottom--a dead
stream of solid white from source to mouth.  The she-wolf was trotting
wearily along, her mate well in advance, when she came upon the
overhanging, high clay-bank.  She turned aside and trotted over to it.
The wear and tear of spring storms and melting snows had underwashed the
bank and in one place had made a small cave out of a narrow fissure.

She paused at the mouth of the cave and looked the wall over carefully.
Then, on one side and the other, she ran along the base of the wall to
where its abrupt bulk merged from the softer-lined landscape.  Returning
to the cave, she entered its narrow mouth.  For a short three feet she
was compelled to crouch, then the walls widened and rose higher in a
little round chamber nearly six feet in diameter.  The roof barely
cleared her head.  It was dry and cosey.  She inspected it with
painstaking care, while One Eye, who had returned, stood in the entrance
and patiently watched her.  She dropped her head, with her nose to the
ground and directed toward a point near to her closely bunched feet, and
around this point she circled several times; then, with a tired sigh that
was almost a grunt, she curled her body in, relaxed her legs, and dropped
down, her head toward the entrance.  One Eye, with pointed, interested
ears, laughed at her, and beyond, outlined against the white light, she
could see the brush of his tail waving good-naturedly.  Her own ears,
with a snuggling movement, laid their sharp points backward and down
against the head for a moment, while her mouth opened and her tongue
lolled peaceably out, and in this way she expressed that she was pleased
and satisfied.

One Eye was hungry.  Though he lay down in the entrance and slept, his
sleep was fitful.  He kept awaking and cocking his ears at the bright
world without, where the April sun was blazing across the snow.  When he
dozed, upon his ears would steal the faint whispers of hidden trickles of
running water, and he would rouse and listen intently.  The sun had come
back, and all the awakening Northland world was calling to him.  Life was
stirring.  The feel of spring was in the air, the feel of growing life
under the snow, of sap ascending in the trees, of buds bursting the
shackles of the frost.

He cast anxious glances at his mate, but she showed no desire to get up.
He looked outside, and half a dozen snow-birds fluttered across his field
of vision.  He started to get up, then looked back to his mate again, and
settled down and dozed.  A shrill and minute singing stole upon his
hearing.  Once, and twice, he sleepily brushed his nose with his paw.
Then he woke up.  There, buzzing in the air at the tip of his nose, was a
lone mosquito.  It was a full-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen in
a dry log all winter and that had now been thawed out by the sun.  He
could resist the call of the world no longer.  Besides, he was hungry.

He crawled over to his mate and tried to persuade her to get up.  But she
only snarled at him, and he walked out alone into the bright sunshine to
find the snow-surface soft under foot and the travelling difficult.  He
went up the frozen bed of the stream, where the snow, shaded by the
trees, was yet hard and crystalline.  He was gone eight hours, and he
came back through the darkness hungrier than when he had started.  He had
found game, but he had not caught it.  He had broken through the melting
snow crust, and wallowed, while the snowshoe rabbits had skimmed along on
top lightly as ever.

He paused at the mouth of the cave with a sudden shock of suspicion.
Faint, strange sounds came from within.  They were sounds not made by his
mate, and yet they were remotely familiar.  He bellied cautiously inside
and was met by a warning snarl from the she-wolf.  This he received
without perturbation, though he obeyed it by keeping his distance; but he
remained interested in the other sounds--faint, muffled sobbings and
slubberings.

His mate warned him irritably away, and he curled up and slept in the
entrance.  When morning came and a dim light pervaded the lair, he again
sought after the source of the remotely familiar sounds.  There was a new
note in his mate's warning snarl.  It was a jealous note, and he was very
careful in keeping a respectful distance.  Nevertheless, he made out,
sheltering between her legs against the length of her body, five strange
little bundles of life, very feeble, very helpless, making tiny
whimpering noises, with eyes that did not open to the light.  He was
surprised.  It was not the first time in his long and successful life
that this thing had happened.  It had happened many times, yet each time
it was as fresh a surprise as ever to him.

His mate looked at him anxiously.  Every little while she emitted a low
growl, and at times, when it seemed to her he approached too near, the
growl shot up in her throat to a sharp snarl.  Of her own experience she
had no memory of the thing happening; but in her instinct, which was the
experience of all the mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers
that had eaten their new-born and helpless progeny.  It manifested itself
as a fear strong within her, that made her prevent One Eye from more
closely inspecting the cubs he had fathered.

But there was no danger.  Old One Eye was feeling the urge of an impulse,
that was, in turn, an instinct that had come down to him from all the
fathers of wolves.  He did not question it, nor puzzle over it.  It was
there, in the fibre of his being; and it was the most natural thing in
the world that he should obey it by turning his back on his new-born
family and by trotting out and away on the meat-trail whereby he lived.

Five or six miles from the lair, the stream divided, its forks going off
among the mountains at a right angle.  Here, leading up the left fork, he
came upon a fresh track.  He smelled it and found it so recent that he
crouched swiftly, and looked in the direction in which it disappeared.
Then he turned deliberately and took the right fork.  The footprint was
much larger than the one his own feet made, and he knew that in the wake
of such a trail there was little meat for him.

Half a mile up the right fork, his quick ears caught the sound of gnawing
teeth.  He stalked the quarry and found it to be a porcupine, standing
upright against a tree and trying his teeth on the bark.  One Eye
approached carefully but hopelessly.  He knew the breed, though he had
never met it so far north before; and never in his long life had
porcupine served him for a meal.  But he had long since learned that
there was such a thing as Chance, or Opportunity, and he continued to
draw near.  There was never any telling what might happen, for with live
things events were somehow always happening differently.

The porcupine rolled itself into a ball, radiating long, sharp needles in
all directions that defied attack.  In his youth One Eye had once sniffed
too near a similar, apparently inert ball of quills, and had the tail
flick out suddenly in his face.  One quill he had carried away in his
muzzle, where it had remained for weeks, a rankling flame, until it
finally worked out.  So he lay down, in a comfortable crouching position,
his nose fully a foot away, and out of the line of the tail.  Thus he
waited, keeping perfectly quiet.  There was no telling.  Something might
happen.  The porcupine might unroll.  There might be opportunity for a
deft and ripping thrust of paw into the tender, unguarded belly.

But at the end of half an hour he arose, growled wrathfully at the
motionless ball, and trotted on.  He had waited too often and futilely in
the past for porcupines to unroll, to waste any more time.  He continued
up the right fork.  The day wore along, and nothing rewarded his hunt.

The urge of his awakened instinct of fatherhood was strong upon him.  He
must find meat.  In the afternoon he blundered upon a ptarmigan.  He came
out of a thicket and found himself face to face with the slow-witted
bird.  It was sitting on a log, not a foot beyond the end of his nose.
Each saw the other.  The bird made a startled rise, but he struck it with
his paw, and smashed it down to earth, then pounced upon it, and caught
it in his teeth as it scuttled across the snow trying to rise in the air
again.  As his teeth crunched through the tender flesh and fragile bones,
he began naturally to eat.  Then he remembered, and, turning on the back-
track, started for home, carrying the ptarmigan in his mouth.

A mile above the forks, running velvet-footed as was his custom, a
gliding shadow that cautiously prospected each new vista of the trail, he
came upon later imprints of the large tracks he had discovered in the
early morning.  As the track led his way, he followed, prepared to meet
the maker of it at every turn of the stream.

He slid his head around a corner of rock, where began an unusually large
bend in the stream, and his quick eyes made out something that sent him
crouching swiftly down.  It was the maker of the track, a large female
lynx.  She was crouching as he had crouched once that day, in front of
her the tight-rolled ball of quills.  If he had been a gliding shadow
before, he now became the ghost of such a shadow, as he crept and circled
around, and came up well to leeward of the silent, motionless pair.

He lay down in the snow, depositing the ptarmigan beside him, and with
eyes peering through the needles of a low-growing spruce he watched the
play of life before him--the waiting lynx and the waiting porcupine, each
intent on life; and, such was the curiousness of the game, the way of
life for one lay in the eating of the other, and the way of life for the
other lay in being not eaten.  While old One Eye, the wolf crouching in
the covert, played his part, too, in the game, waiting for some strange
freak of Chance, that might help him on the meat-trail which was his way
of life.

Half an hour passed, an hour; and nothing happened.  The ball of quills
might have been a stone for all it moved; the lynx might have been frozen
to marble; and old One Eye might have been dead.  Yet all three animals
were keyed to a tenseness of living that was almost painful, and scarcely
ever would it come to them to be more alive than they were then in their
seeming petrifaction.

One Eye moved slightly and peered forth with increased eagerness.
Something was happening.  The porcupine had at last decided that its
enemy had gone away.  Slowly, cautiously, it was unrolling its ball of
impregnable armour.  It was agitated by no tremor of anticipation.
Slowly, slowly, the bristling ball straightened out and lengthened.  One
Eye watching, felt a sudden moistness in his mouth and a drooling of
saliva, involuntary, excited by the living meat that was spreading itself
like a repast before him.

Not quite entirely had the porcupine unrolled when it discovered its
enemy.  In that instant the lynx struck.  The blow was like a flash of
light.  The paw, with rigid claws curving like talons, shot under the
tender belly and came back with a swift ripping movement.  Had the
porcupine been entirely unrolled, or had it not discovered its enemy a
fraction of a second before the blow was struck, the paw would have
escaped unscathed; but a side-flick of the tail sank sharp quills into it
as it was withdrawn.

Everything had happened at once--the blow, the counter-blow, the squeal
of agony from the porcupine, the big cat's squall of sudden hurt and
astonishment.  One Eye half arose in his excitement, his ears up, his
tail straight out and quivering behind him.  The lynx's bad temper got
the best of her.  She sprang savagely at the thing that had hurt her.  But
the porcupine, squealing and grunting, with disrupted anatomy trying
feebly to roll up into its ball-protection, flicked out its tail again,
and again the big cat squalled with hurt and astonishment.  Then she fell
to backing away and sneezing, her nose bristling with quills like a
monstrous pin-cushion.  She brushed her nose with her paws, trying to
dislodge the fiery darts, thrust it into the snow, and rubbed it against
twigs and branches, and all the time leaping about, ahead, sidewise, up
and down, in a frenzy of pain and fright.

She sneezed continually, and her stub of a tail was doing its best toward
lashing about by giving quick, violent jerks.  She quit her antics, and
quieted down for a long minute.  One Eye watched.  And even he could not
repress a start and an involuntary bristling of hair along his back when
she suddenly leaped, without warning, straight up in the air, at the same
time emitting a long and most terrible squall.  Then she sprang away, up
the trail, squalling with every leap she made.

It was not until her racket had faded away in the distance and died out
that One Eye ventured forth.  He walked as delicately as though all the
snow were carpeted with porcupine quills, erect and ready to pierce the
soft pads of his feet.  The porcupine met his approach with a furious
squealing and a clashing of its long teeth.  It had managed to roll up in
a ball again, but it was not quite the old compact ball; its muscles were
too much torn for that.  It had been ripped almost in half, and was still
bleeding profusely.

One Eye scooped out mouthfuls of the blood-soaked snow, and chewed and
tasted and swallowed.  This served as a relish, and his hunger increased
mightily; but he was too old in the world to forget his caution.  He
waited.  He lay down and waited, while the porcupine grated its teeth and
uttered grunts and sobs and occasional sharp little squeals.  In a little
while, One Eye noticed that the quills were drooping and that a great
quivering had set up.  The quivering came to an end suddenly.  There was
a final defiant clash of the long teeth.  Then all the quills drooped
quite down, and the body relaxed and moved no more.

With a nervous, shrinking paw, One Eye stretched out the porcupine to its
full length and turned it over on its back.  Nothing had happened.  It
was surely dead.  He studied it intently for a moment, then took a
careful grip with his teeth and started off down the stream, partly
carrying, partly dragging the porcupine, with head turned to the side so
as to avoid stepping on the prickly mass.  He recollected something,
dropped the burden, and trotted back to where he had left the ptarmigan.
He did not hesitate a moment.  He knew clearly what was to be done, and
this he did by promptly eating the ptarmigan.  Then he returned and took
up his burden.

When he dragged the result of his day's hunt into the cave, the she-wolf
inspected it, turned her muzzle to him, and lightly licked him on the
neck.  But the next instant she was warning him away from the cubs with a
snarl that was less harsh than usual and that was more apologetic than
menacing.  Her instinctive fear of the father of her progeny was toning
down.  He was behaving as a wolf-father should, and manifesting no unholy
desire to devour the young lives she had brought into the world.



CHAPTER III--THE GREY CUB


He was different from his brothers and sisters.  Their hair already
betrayed the reddish hue inherited from their mother, the she-wolf; while
he alone, in this particular, took after his father.  He was the one
little grey cub of the litter.  He had bred true to the straight wolf-
stock--in fact, he had bred true to old One Eye himself, physically, with
but a single exception, and that was he had two eyes to his father's one.

The grey cub's eyes had not been open long, yet already he could see with
steady clearness.  And while his eyes were still closed, he had felt,
tasted, and smelled.  He knew his two brothers and his two sisters very
well.  He had begun to romp with them in a feeble, awkward way, and even
to squabble, his little throat vibrating with a queer rasping noise (the
forerunner of the growl), as he worked himself into a passion.  And long
before his eyes had opened he had learned by touch, taste, and smell to
know his mother--a fount of warmth and liquid food and tenderness.  She
possessed a gentle, caressing tongue that soothed him when it passed over
his soft little body, and that impelled him to snuggle close against her
and to doze off to sleep.

Most of the first month of his life had been passed thus in sleeping; but
now he could see quite well, and he stayed awake for longer periods of
time, and he was coming to learn his world quite well.  His world was
gloomy; but he did not know that, for he knew no other world.  It was dim-
lighted; but his eyes had never had to adjust themselves to any other
light.  His world was very small.  Its limits were the walls of the lair;
but as he had no knowledge of the wide world outside, he was never
oppressed by the narrow confines of his existence.

But he had early discovered that one wall of his world was different from
the rest.  This was the mouth of the cave and the source of light.  He
had discovered that it was different from the other walls long before he
had any thoughts of his own, any conscious volitions.  It had been an
irresistible attraction before ever his eyes opened and looked upon it.
The light from it had beat upon his sealed lids, and the eyes and the
optic nerves had pulsated to little, sparklike flashes, warm-coloured and
strangely pleasing.  The life of his body, and of every fibre of his
body, the life that was the very substance of his body and that was apart
from his own personal life, had yearned toward this light and urged his
body toward it in the same way that the cunning chemistry of a plant
urges it toward the sun.

Always, in the beginning, before his conscious life dawned, he had
crawled toward the mouth of the cave.  And in this his brothers and
sisters were one with him.  Never, in that period, did any of them crawl
toward the dark corners of the back-wall.  The light drew them as if they
were plants; the chemistry of the life that composed them demanded the
light as a necessity of being; and their little puppet-bodies crawled
blindly and chemically, like the tendrils of a vine.  Later on, when each
developed individuality and became personally conscious of impulsions and
desires, the attraction of the light increased.  They were always
crawling and sprawling toward it, and being driven back from it by their
mother.

It was in this way that the grey cub learned other attributes of his
mother than the soft, soothing tongue.  In his insistent crawling toward
the light, he discovered in her a nose that with a sharp nudge
administered rebuke, and later, a paw, that crushed him down and rolled
him over and over with swift, calculating stroke.  Thus he learned hurt;
and on top of it he learned to avoid hurt, first, by not incurring the
risk of it; and second, when he had incurred the risk, by dodging and by
retreating.  These were conscious actions, and were the results of his
first generalisations upon the world.  Before that he had recoiled
automatically from hurt, as he had crawled automatically toward the
light.  After that he recoiled from hurt because he _knew_ that it was
hurt.

He was a fierce little cub.  So were his brothers and sisters.  It was to
be expected.  He was a carnivorous animal.  He came of a breed of meat-
killers and meat-eaters.  His father and mother lived wholly upon meat.
The milk he had sucked with his first flickering life, was milk
transformed directly from meat, and now, at a month old, when his eyes
had been open for but a week, he was beginning himself to eat meat--meat
half-digested by the she-wolf and disgorged for the five growing cubs
that already made too great demand upon her breast.

But he was, further, the fiercest of the litter.  He could make a louder
rasping growl than any of them.  His tiny rages were much more terrible
than theirs.  It was he that first learned the trick of rolling a fellow-
cub over with a cunning paw-stroke.  And it was he that first gripped
another cub by the ear and pulled and tugged and growled through jaws
tight-clenched.  And certainly it was he that caused the mother the most
trouble in keeping her litter from the mouth of the cave.

The fascination of the light for the grey cub increased from day to day.
He was perpetually departing on yard-long adventures toward the cave's
entrance, and as perpetually being driven back.  Only he did not know it
for an entrance.  He did not know anything about entrances--passages
whereby one goes from one place to another place.  He did not know any
other place, much less of a way to get there.  So to him the entrance of
the cave was a wall--a wall of light.  As the sun was to the outside
dweller, this wall was to him the sun of his world.  It attracted him as
a candle attracts a moth.  He was always striving to attain it.  The life
that was so swiftly expanding within him, urged him continually toward
the wall of light.  The life that was within him knew that it was the one
way out, the way he was predestined to tread.  But he himself did not
know anything about it.  He did not know there was any outside at all.

There was one strange thing about this wall of light.  His father (he had
already come to recognise his father as the one other dweller in the
world, a creature like his mother, who slept near the light and was a
bringer of meat)--his father had a way of walking right into the white
far wall and disappearing.  The grey cub could not understand this.
Though never permitted by his mother to approach that wall, he had
approached the other walls, and encountered hard obstruction on the end
of his tender nose.  This hurt.  And after several such adventures, he
left the walls alone.  Without thinking about it, he accepted this
disappearing into the wall as a peculiarity of his father, as milk and
half-digested meat were peculiarities of his mother.

In fact, the grey cub was not given to thinking--at least, to the kind of
thinking customary of men.  His brain worked in dim ways.  Yet his
conclusions were as sharp and distinct as those achieved by men.  He had
a method of accepting things, without questioning the why and wherefore.
In reality, this was the act of classification.  He was never disturbed
over why a thing happened.  How it happened was sufficient for him.  Thus,
when he had bumped his nose on the back-wall a few times, he accepted
that he would not disappear into walls.  In the same way he accepted that
his father could disappear into walls.  But he was not in the least
disturbed by desire to find out the reason for the difference between his
father and himself.  Logic and physics were no part of his mental make-
up.

Like most creatures of the Wild, he early experienced famine.  There came
a time when not only did the meat-supply cease, but the milk no longer
came from his mother's breast.  At first, the cubs whimpered and cried,
but for the most part they slept.  It was not long before they were
reduced to a coma of hunger.  There were no more spats and squabbles, no
more tiny rages nor attempts at growling; while the adventures toward the
far white wall ceased altogether.  The cubs slept, while the life that
was in them flickered and died down.

One Eye was desperate.  He ranged far and wide, and slept but little in
the lair that had now become cheerless and miserable.  The she-wolf, too,
left her litter and went out in search of meat.  In the first days after
the birth of the cubs, One Eye had journeyed several times back to the
Indian camp and robbed the rabbit snares; but, with the melting of the
snow and the opening of the streams, the Indian camp had moved away, and
that source of supply was closed to him.

When the grey cub came back to life and again took interest in the far
white wall, he found that the population of his world had been reduced.
Only one sister remained to him.  The rest were gone.  As he grew
stronger, he found himself compelled to play alone, for the sister no
longer lifted her head nor moved about.  His little body rounded out with
the meat he now ate; but the food had come too late for her.  She slept
continuously, a tiny skeleton flung round with skin in which the flame
flickered lower and lower and at last went out.

Then there came a time when the grey cub no longer saw his father
appearing and disappearing in the wall nor lying down asleep in the
entrance.  This had happened at the end of a second and less severe
famine.  The she-wolf knew why One Eye never came back, but there was no
way by which she could tell what she had seen to the grey cub.  Hunting
herself for meat, up the left fork of the stream where lived the lynx,
she had followed a day-old trail of One Eye.  And she had found him, or
what remained of him, at the end of the trail.  There were many signs of
the battle that had been fought, and of the lynx's withdrawal to her lair
after having won the victory.  Before she went away, the she-wolf had
found this lair, but the signs told her that the lynx was inside, and she
had not dared to venture in.

After that, the she-wolf in her hunting avoided the left fork.  For she
knew that in the lynx's lair was a litter of kittens, and she knew the
lynx for a fierce, bad-tempered creature and a terrible fighter.  It was
all very well for half a dozen wolves to drive a lynx, spitting and
bristling, up a tree; but it was quite a different matter for a lone wolf
to encounter a lynx--especially when the lynx was known to have a litter
of hungry kittens at her back.

But the Wild is the Wild, and motherhood is motherhood, at all times
fiercely protective whether in the Wild or out of it; and the time was to
come when the she-wolf, for her grey cub's sake, would venture the left
fork, and the lair in the rocks, and the lynx's wrath.



CHAPTER IV--THE WALL OF THE WORLD


By the time his mother began leaving the cave on hunting expeditions, the
cub had learned well the law that forbade his approaching the entrance.
Not only had this law been forcibly and many times impressed on him by
his mother's nose and paw, but in him the instinct of fear was
developing.  Never, in his brief cave-life, had he encountered anything
of which to be afraid.  Yet fear was in him.  It had come down to him
from a remote ancestry through a thousand thousand lives.  It was a
heritage he had received directly from One Eye and the she-wolf; but to
them, in turn, it had been passed down through all the generations of
wolves that had gone before.  Fear!--that legacy of the Wild which no
animal may escape nor exchange for pottage.

So the grey cub knew fear, though he knew not the stuff of which fear was
made.  Possibly he accepted it as one of the restrictions of life.  For
he had already learned that there were such restrictions.  Hunger he had
known; and when he could not appease his hunger he had felt restriction.
The hard obstruction of the cave-wall, the sharp nudge of his mother's
nose, the smashing stroke of her paw, the hunger unappeased of several
famines, had borne in upon him that all was not freedom in the world,
that to life there were limitations and restraints.  These limitations and
restraints were laws.  To be obedient to them was to escape hurt and make
for happiness.

He did not reason the question out in this man fashion.  He merely
classified the things that hurt and the things that did not hurt.  And
after such classification he avoided the things that hurt, the
restrictions and restraints, in order to enjoy the satisfactions and the
remunerations of life.

Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother, and in
obedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear, he kept
away from the mouth of the cave.  It remained to him a white wall of
light.  When his mother was absent, he slept most of the time, while
during the intervals that he was awake he kept very quiet, suppressing
the whimpering cries that tickled in his throat and strove for noise.

Once, lying awake, he heard a strange sound in the white wall.  He did
not know that it was a wolverine, standing outside, all a-trembling with
its own daring, and cautiously scenting out the contents of the cave.  The
cub knew only that the sniff was strange, a something unclassified,
therefore unknown and terrible--for the unknown was one of the chief
elements that went into the making of fear.

The hair bristled upon the grey cub's back, but it bristled silently.  How
was he to know that this thing that sniffed was a thing at which to
bristle?  It was not born of any knowledge of his, yet it was the visible
expression of the fear that was in him, and for which, in his own life,
there was no accounting.  But fear was accompanied by another
instinct--that of concealment.  The cub was in a frenzy of terror, yet he
lay without movement or sound, frozen, petrified into immobility, to all
appearances dead.  His mother, coming home, growled as she smelt the
wolverine's track, and bounded into the cave and licked and nozzled him
with undue vehemence of affection.  And the cub felt that somehow he had
escaped a great hurt.

But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which was
growth.  Instinct and law demanded of him obedience.  But growth demanded
disobedience.  His mother and fear impelled him to keep away from the
white wall.  Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for
light.  So there was no damming up the tide of life that was rising
within him--rising with every mouthful of meat he swallowed, with every
breath he drew.  In the end, one day, fear and obedience were swept away
by the rush of life, and the cub straddled and sprawled toward the
entrance.

Unlike any other wall with which he had had experience, this wall seemed
to recede from him as he approached.  No hard surface collided with the
tender little nose he thrust out tentatively before him.  The substance
of the wall seemed as permeable and yielding as light.  And as condition,
in his eyes, had the seeming of form, so he entered into what had been
wall to him and bathed in the substance that composed it.

It was bewildering.  He was sprawling through solidity.  And ever the
light grew brighter.  Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on.
Suddenly he found himself at the mouth of the cave.  The wall, inside
which he had thought himself, as suddenly leaped back before him to an
immeasurable distance.  The light had become painfully bright.  He was
dazzled by it.  Likewise he was made dizzy by this abrupt and tremendous
extension of space.  Automatically, his eyes were adjusting themselves to
the brightness, focusing themselves to meet the increased distance of
objects.  At first, the wall had leaped beyond his vision.  He now saw it
again; but it had taken upon itself a remarkable remoteness.  Also, its
appearance had changed.  It was now a variegated wall, composed of the
trees that fringed the stream, the opposing mountain that towered above
the trees, and the sky that out-towered the mountain.

A great fear came upon him.  This was more of the terrible unknown.  He
crouched down on the lip of the cave and gazed out on the world.  He was
very much afraid.  Because it was unknown, it was hostile to him.
Therefore the hair stood up on end along his back and his lips wrinkled
weakly in an attempt at a ferocious and intimidating snarl.  Out of his
puniness and fright he challenged and menaced the whole wide world.

Nothing happened.  He continued to gaze, and in his interest he forgot to
snarl.  Also, he forgot to be afraid.  For the time, fear had been routed
by growth, while growth had assumed the guise of curiosity.  He began to
notice near objects--an open portion of the stream that flashed in the
sun, the blasted pine-tree that stood at the base of the slope, and the
slope itself, that ran right up to him and ceased two feet beneath the
lip of the cave on which he crouched.

Now the grey cub had lived all his days on a level floor.  He had never
experienced the hurt of a fall.  He did not know what a fall was.  So he
stepped boldly out upon the air.  His hind-legs still rested on the cave-
lip, so he fell forward head downward.  The earth struck him a harsh blow
on the nose that made him yelp.  Then he began rolling down the slope,
over and over.  He was in a panic of terror.  The unknown had caught him
at last.  It had gripped savagely hold of him and was about to wreak upon
him some terrific hurt.  Growth was now routed by fear, and he ki-yi'd
like any frightened puppy.

The unknown bore him on he knew not to what frightful hurt, and he yelped
and ki-yi'd unceasingly.  This was a different proposition from crouching
in frozen fear while the unknown lurked just alongside.  Now the unknown
had caught tight hold of him.  Silence would do no good.  Besides, it was
not fear, but terror, that convulsed him.

But the slope grew more gradual, and its base was grass-covered.  Here
the cub lost momentum.  When at last he came to a stop, he gave one last
agonised yell and then a long, whimpering wail.  Also, and quite as a
matter of course, as though in his life he had already made a thousand
toilets, he proceeded to lick away the dry clay that soiled him.

After that he sat up and gazed about him, as might the first man of the
earth who landed upon Mars.  The cub had broken through the wall of the
world, the unknown had let go its hold of him, and here he was without
hurt.  But the first man on Mars would have experienced less
unfamiliarity than did he.  Without any antecedent knowledge, without any
warning whatever that such existed, he found himself an explorer in a
totally new world.

Now that the terrible unknown had let go of him, he forgot that the
unknown had any terrors.  He was aware only of curiosity in all the
things about him.  He inspected the grass beneath him, the moss-berry
plant just beyond, and the dead trunk of the blasted pine that stood on
the edge of an open space among the trees.  A squirrel, running around
the base of the trunk, came full upon him, and gave him a great fright.
He cowered down and snarled.  But the squirrel was as badly scared.  It
ran up the tree, and from a point of safety chattered back savagely.

This helped the cub's courage, and though the woodpecker he next
encountered gave him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way.  Such
was his confidence, that when a moose-bird impudently hopped up to him,
he reached out at it with a playful paw.  The result was a sharp peck on
the end of his nose that made him cower down and ki-yi.  The noise he
made was too much for the moose-bird, who sought safety in flight.

But the cub was learning.  His misty little mind had already made an
unconscious classification.  There were live things and things not alive.
Also, he must watch out for the live things.  The things not alive
remained always in one place, but the live things moved about, and there
was no telling what they might do.  The thing to expect of them was the
unexpected, and for this he must be prepared.

He travelled very clumsily.  He ran into sticks and things.  A twig that
he thought a long way off, would the next instant hit him on the nose or
rake along his ribs.  There were inequalities of surface.  Sometimes he
overstepped and stubbed his nose.  Quite as often he understepped and
stubbed his feet.  Then there were the pebbles and stones that turned
under him when he trod upon them; and from them he came to know that the
things not alive were not all in the same state of stable equilibrium as
was his cave--also, that small things not alive were more liable than
large things to fall down or turn over.  But with every mishap he was
learning.  The longer he walked, the better he walked.  He was adjusting
himself.  He was learning to calculate his own muscular movements, to
know his physical limitations, to measure distances between objects, and
between objects and himself.

His was the luck of the beginner.  Born to be a hunter of meat (though he
did not know it), he blundered upon meat just outside his own cave-door
on his first foray into the world.  It was by sheer blundering that he
chanced upon the shrewdly hidden ptarmigan nest.  He fell into it.  He
had essayed to walk along the trunk of a fallen pine.  The rotten bark
gave way under his feet, and with a despairing yelp he pitched down the
rounded crescent, smashed through the leafage and stalks of a small bush,
and in the heart of the bush, on the ground, fetched up in the midst of
seven ptarmigan chicks.

They made noises, and at first he was frightened at them.  Then he
perceived that they were very little, and he became bolder.  They moved.
He placed his paw on one, and its movements were accelerated.  This was a
source of enjoyment to him.  He smelled it.  He picked it up in his
mouth.  It struggled and tickled his tongue.  At the same time he was
made aware of a sensation of hunger.  His jaws closed together.  There
was a crunching of fragile bones, and warm blood ran in his mouth.  The
taste of it was good.  This was meat, the same as his mother gave him,
only it was alive between his teeth and therefore better.  So he ate the
ptarmigan.  Nor did he stop till he had devoured the whole brood.  Then
he licked his chops in quite the same way his mother did, and began to
crawl out of the bush.

He encountered a feathered whirlwind.  He was confused and blinded by the
rush of it and the beat of angry wings.  He hid his head between his paws
and yelped.  The blows increased.  The mother ptarmigan was in a fury.
Then he became angry.  He rose up, snarling, striking out with his paws.
He sank his tiny teeth into one of the wings and pulled and tugged
sturdily.  The ptarmigan struggled against him, showering blows upon him
with her free wing.  It was his first battle.  He was elated.  He forgot
all about the unknown.  He no longer was afraid of anything.  He was
fighting, tearing at a live thing that was striking at him.  Also, this
live thing was meat.  The lust to kill was on him.  He had just destroyed
little live things.  He would now destroy a big live thing.  He was too
busy and happy to know that he was happy.  He was thrilling and exulting
in ways new to him and greater to him than any he had known before.

He held on to the wing and growled between his tight-clenched teeth.  The
ptarmigan dragged him out of the bush.  When she turned and tried to drag
him back into the bush's shelter, he pulled her away from it and on into
the open.  And all the time she was making outcry and striking with her
free wing, while feathers were flying like a snow-fall.  The pitch to
which he was aroused was tremendous.  All the fighting blood of his breed
was up in him and surging through him.  This was living, though he did
not know it.  He was realising his own meaning in the world; he was doing
that for which he was made--killing meat and battling to kill it.  He was
justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life
achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was
equipped to do.

After a time, the ptarmigan ceased her struggling.  He still held her by
the wing, and they lay on the ground and looked at each other.  He tried
to growl threateningly, ferociously.  She pecked on his nose, which by
now, what of previous adventures was sore.  He winced but held on.  She
pecked him again and again.  From wincing he went to whimpering.  He
tried to back away from her, oblivious to the fact that by his hold on
her he dragged her after him.  A rain of pecks fell on his ill-used nose.
The flood of fight ebbed down in him, and, releasing his prey, he turned
tail and scampered on across the open in inglorious retreat.

He lay down to rest on the other side of the open, near the edge of the
bushes, his tongue lolling out, his chest heaving and panting, his nose
still hurting him and causing him to continue his whimper.  But as he lay
there, suddenly there came to him a feeling as of something terrible
impending.  The unknown with all its terrors rushed upon him, and he
shrank back instinctively into the shelter of the bush.  As he did so, a
draught of air fanned him, and a large, winged body swept ominously and
silently past.  A hawk, driving down out of the blue, had barely missed
him.

While he lay in the bush, recovering from his fright and peering
fearfully out, the mother-ptarmigan on the other side of the open space
fluttered out of the ravaged nest.  It was because of her loss that she
paid no attention to the winged bolt of the sky.  But the cub saw, and it
was a warning and a lesson to him--the swift downward swoop of the hawk,
the short skim of its body just above the ground, the strike of its
talons in the body of the ptarmigan, the ptarmigan's squawk of agony and
fright, and the hawk's rush upward into the blue, carrying the ptarmigan
away with it

It was a long time before the cub left its shelter.  He had learned much.
Live things were meat.  They were good to eat.  Also, live things when
they were large enough, could give hurt.  It was better to eat small live
things like ptarmigan chicks, and to let alone large live things like
ptarmigan hens.  Nevertheless he felt a little prick of ambition, a
sneaking desire to have another battle with that ptarmigan hen--only the
hawk had carried her away.  Maybe there were other ptarmigan hens.  He
would go and see.

He came down a shelving bank to the stream.  He had never seen water
before.  The footing looked good.  There were no inequalities of surface.
He stepped boldly out on it; and went down, crying with fear, into the
embrace of the unknown.  It was cold, and he gasped, breathing quickly.
The water rushed into his lungs instead of the air that had always
accompanied his act of breathing.  The suffocation he experienced was
like the pang of death.  To him it signified death.  He had no conscious
knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the
instinct of death.  To him it stood as the greatest of hurts.  It was the
very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the
unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could
happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared
everything.

He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open mouth.  He
did not go down again.  Quite as though it had been a long-established
custom of his he struck out with all his legs and began to swim.  The
near bank was a yard away; but he had come up with his back to it, and
the first thing his eyes rested upon was the opposite bank, toward which
he immediately began to swim.  The stream was a small one, but in the
pool it widened out to a score of feet.

Midway in the passage, the current picked up the cub and swept him
downstream.  He was caught in the miniature rapid at the bottom of the
pool.  Here was little chance for swimming.  The quiet water had become
suddenly angry.  Sometimes he was under, sometimes on top.  At all times
he was in violent motion, now being turned over or around, and again,
being smashed against a rock.  And with every rock he struck, he yelped.
His progress was a series of yelps, from which might have been adduced
the number of rocks he encountered.

Below the rapid was a second pool, and here, captured by the eddy, he was
gently borne to the bank, and as gently deposited on a bed of gravel.  He
crawled frantically clear of the water and lay down.  He had learned some
more about the world.  Water was not alive.  Yet it moved.  Also, it
looked as solid as the earth, but was without any solidity at all.  His
conclusion was that things were not always what they appeared to be.  The
cub's fear of the unknown was an inherited distrust, and it had now been
strengthened by experience.  Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he
would possess an abiding distrust of appearances.  He would have to learn
the reality of a thing before he could put his faith into it.

One other adventure was destined for him that day.  He had recollected
that there was such a thing in the world as his mother.  And then there
came to him a feeling that he wanted her more than all the rest of the
things in the world.  Not only was his body tired with the adventures it
had undergone, but his little brain was equally tired.  In all the days
he had lived it had not worked so hard as on this one day.  Furthermore,
he was sleepy.  So he started out to look for the cave and his mother,
feeling at the same time an overwhelming rush of loneliness and
helplessness.

He was sprawling along between some bushes, when he heard a sharp
intimidating cry.  There was a flash of yellow before his eyes.  He saw a
weasel leaping swiftly away from him.  It was a small live thing, and he
had no fear.  Then, before him, at his feet, he saw an extremely small
live thing, only several inches long, a young weasel, that, like himself,
had disobediently gone out adventuring.  It tried to retreat before him.
He turned it over with his paw.  It made a queer, grating noise.  The
next moment the flash of yellow reappeared before his eyes.  He heard
again the intimidating cry, and at the same instant received a sharp blow
on the side of the neck and felt the sharp teeth of the mother-weasel cut
into his flesh.

While he yelped and ki-yi'd and scrambled backward, he saw the mother-
weasel leap upon her young one and disappear with it into the
neighbouring thicket.  The cut of her teeth in his neck still hurt, but
his feelings were hurt more grievously, and he sat down and weakly
whimpered.  This mother-weasel was so small and so savage.  He was yet to
learn that for size and weight the weasel was the most ferocious,
vindictive, and terrible of all the killers of the Wild.  But a portion
of this knowledge was quickly to be his.

He was still whimpering when the mother-weasel reappeared.  She did not
rush him, now that her young one was safe.  She approached more
cautiously, and the cub had full opportunity to observe her lean,
snakelike body, and her head, erect, eager, and snake-like itself.  Her
sharp, menacing cry sent the hair bristling along his back, and he
snarled warningly at her.  She came closer and closer.  There was a leap,
swifter than his unpractised sight, and the lean, yellow body disappeared
for a moment out of the field of his vision.  The next moment she was at
his throat, her teeth buried in his hair and flesh.

At first he snarled and tried to fight; but he was very young, and this
was only his first day in the world, and his snarl became a whimper, his
fight a struggle to escape.  The weasel never relaxed her hold.  She hung
on, striving to press down with her teeth to the great vein where his
life-blood bubbled.  The weasel was a drinker of blood, and it was ever
her preference to drink from the throat of life itself.

The grey cub would have died, and there would have been no story to write
about him, had not the she-wolf come bounding through the bushes.  The
weasel let go the cub and flashed at the she-wolf's throat, missing, but
getting a hold on the jaw instead.  The she-wolf flirted her head like
the snap of a whip, breaking the weasel's hold and flinging it high in
the air.  And, still in the air, the she-wolf's jaws closed on the lean,
yellow body, and the weasel knew death between the crunching teeth.

The cub experienced another access of affection on the part of his
mother.  Her joy at finding him seemed even greater than his joy at being
found.  She nozzled him and caressed him and licked the cuts made in him
by the weasel's teeth.  Then, between them, mother and cub, they ate the
blood-drinker, and after that went back to the cave and slept.



CHAPTER V--THE LAW OF MEAT


The cub's development was rapid.  He rested for two days, and then
ventured forth from the cave again.  It was on this adventure that he
found the young weasel whose mother he had helped eat, and he saw to it
that the young weasel went the way of its mother.  But on this trip he
did not get lost.  When he grew tired, he found his way back to the cave
and slept.  And every day thereafter found him out and ranging a wider
area.

He began to get accurate measurement of his strength and his weakness,
and to know when to be bold and when to be cautious.  He found it
expedient to be cautious all the time, except for the rare moments, when,
assured of his own intrepidity, he abandoned himself to petty rages and
lusts.

He was always a little demon of fury when he chanced upon a stray
ptarmigan.  Never did he fail to respond savagely to the chatter of the
squirrel he had first met on the blasted pine.  While the sight of a
moose-bird almost invariably put him into the wildest of rages; for he
never forgot the peck on the nose he had received from the first of that
ilk he encountered.

But there were times when even a moose-bird failed to affect him, and
those were times when he felt himself to be in danger from some other
prowling meat hunter.  He never forgot the hawk, and its moving shadow
always sent him crouching into the nearest thicket.  He no longer
sprawled and straddled, and already he was developing the gait of his
mother, slinking and furtive, apparently without exertion, yet sliding
along with a swiftness that was as deceptive as it was imperceptible.

In the matter of meat, his luck had been all in the beginning.  The seven
ptarmigan chicks and the baby weasel represented the sum of his killings.
His desire to kill strengthened with the days, and he cherished hungry
ambitions for the squirrel that chattered so volubly and always informed
all wild creatures that the wolf-cub was approaching.  But as birds flew
in the air, squirrels could climb trees, and the cub could only try to
crawl unobserved upon the squirrel when it was on the ground.

The cub entertained a great respect for his mother.  She could get meat,
and she never failed to bring him his share.  Further, she was unafraid
of things.  It did not occur to him that this fearlessness was founded
upon experience and knowledge.  Its effect on him was that of an
impression of power.  His mother represented power; and as he grew older
he felt this power in the sharper admonishment of her paw; while the
reproving nudge of her nose gave place to the slash of her fangs.  For
this, likewise, he respected his mother.  She compelled obedience from
him, and the older he grew the shorter grew her temper.

Famine came again, and the cub with clearer consciousness knew once more
the bite of hunger.  The she-wolf ran herself thin in the quest for meat.
She rarely slept any more in the cave, spending most of her time on the
meat-trail, and spending it vainly.  This famine was not a long one, but
it was severe while it lasted.  The cub found no more milk in his
mother's breast, nor did he get one mouthful of meat for himself.

Before, he had hunted in play, for the sheer joyousness of it; now he
hunted in deadly earnestness, and found nothing.  Yet the failure of it
accelerated his development.  He studied the habits of the squirrel with
greater carefulness, and strove with greater craft to steal upon it and
surprise it.  He studied the wood-mice and tried to dig them out of their
burrows; and he learned much about the ways of moose-birds and
woodpeckers.  And there came a day when the hawk's shadow did not drive
him crouching into the bushes.  He had grown stronger and wiser, and more
confident.  Also, he was desperate.  So he sat on his haunches,
conspicuously in an open space, and challenged the hawk down out of the
sky.  For he knew that there, floating in the blue above him, was meat,
the meat his stomach yearned after so insistently.  But the hawk refused
to come down and give battle, and the cub crawled away into a thicket and
whimpered his disappointment and hunger.

The famine broke.  The she-wolf brought home meat.  It was strange meat,
different from any she had ever brought before.  It was a lynx kitten,
partly grown, like the cub, but not so large.  And it was all for him.
His mother had satisfied her hunger elsewhere; though he did not know
that it was the rest of the lynx litter that had gone to satisfy her.  Nor
did he know the desperateness of her deed.  He knew only that the velvet-
furred kitten was meat, and he ate and waxed happier with every mouthful.

A full stomach conduces to inaction, and the cub lay in the cave,
sleeping against his mother's side.  He was aroused by her snarling.
Never had he heard her snarl so terribly.  Possibly in her whole life it
was the most terrible snarl she ever gave.  There was reason for it, and
none knew it better than she.  A lynx's lair is not despoiled with
impunity.  In the full glare of the afternoon light, crouching in the
entrance of the cave, the cub saw the lynx-mother.  The hair rippled up
along his back at the sight.  Here was fear, and it did not require his
instinct to tell him of it.  And if sight alone were not sufficient, the
cry of rage the intruder gave, beginning with a snarl and rushing
abruptly upward into a hoarse screech, was convincing enough in itself.

The cub felt the prod of the life that was in him, and stood up and
snarled valiantly by his mother's side.  But she thrust him ignominiously
away and behind her.  Because of the low-roofed entrance the lynx could
not leap in, and when she made a crawling rush of it the she-wolf sprang
upon her and pinned her down.  The cub saw little of the battle.  There
was a tremendous snarling and spitting and screeching.  The two animals
threshed about, the lynx ripping and tearing with her claws and using her
teeth as well, while the she-wolf used her teeth alone.

Once, the cub sprang in and sank his teeth into the hind leg of the lynx.
He clung on, growling savagely.  Though he did not know it, by the weight
of his body he clogged the action of the leg and thereby saved his mother
much damage.  A change in the battle crushed him under both their bodies
and wrenched loose his hold.  The next moment the two mothers separated,
and, before they rushed together again, the lynx lashed out at the cub
with a huge fore-paw that ripped his shoulder open to the bone and sent
him hurtling sidewise against the wall.  Then was added to the uproar the
cub's shrill yelp of pain and fright.  But the fight lasted so long that
he had time to cry himself out and to experience a second burst of
courage; and the end of the battle found him again clinging to a hind-leg
and furiously growling between his teeth.

The lynx was dead.  But the she-wolf was very weak and sick.  At first
she caressed the cub and licked his wounded shoulder; but the blood she
had lost had taken with it her strength, and for all of a day and a night
she lay by her dead foe's side, without movement, scarcely breathing.  For
a week she never left the cave, except for water, and then her movements
were slow and painful.  At the end of that time the lynx was devoured,
while the she-wolf's wounds had healed sufficiently to permit her to take
the meat-trail again.

The cub's shoulder was stiff and sore, and for some time he limped from
the terrible slash he had received.  But the world now seemed changed.  He
went about in it with greater confidence, with a feeling of prowess that
had not been his in the days before the battle with the lynx.  He had
looked upon life in a more ferocious aspect; he had fought; he had buried
his teeth in the flesh of a foe; and he had survived.  And because of all
this, he carried himself more boldly, with a touch of defiance that was
new in him.  He was no longer afraid of minor things, and much of his
timidity had vanished, though the unknown never ceased to press upon him
with its mysteries and terrors, intangible and ever-menacing.

He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw much of
the killing of meat and began to play his part in it.  And in his own dim
way he learned the law of meat.  There were two kinds of life--his own
kind and the other kind.  His own kind included his mother and himself.
The other kind included all live things that moved.  But the other kind
was divided.  One portion was what his own kind killed and ate.  This
portion was composed of the non-killers and the small killers.  The other
portion killed and ate his own kind, or was killed and eaten by his own
kind.  And out of this classification arose the law.  The aim of life was
meat.  Life itself was meat.  Life lived on life.  There were the eaters
and the eaten.  The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN.  He did not formulate the
law in clear, set terms and moralise about it.  He did not even think the
law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.

He saw the law operating around him on every side.  He had eaten the
ptarmigan chicks.  The hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother.  The hawk
would also have eaten him.  Later, when he had grown more formidable, he
wanted to eat the hawk.  He had eaten the lynx kitten.  The lynx-mother
would have eaten him had she not herself been killed and eaten.  And so
it went.  The law was being lived about him by all live things, and he
himself was part and parcel of the law.  He was a killer.  His only food
was meat, live meat, that ran away swiftly before him, or flew into the
air, or climbed trees, or hid in the ground, or faced him and fought with
him, or turned the tables and ran after him.

Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life as a
voracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude of
appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating
and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and
disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance,
merciless, planless, endless.

But the cub did not think in man-fashion.  He did not look at things with
wide vision.  He was single-purposed, and entertained but one thought or
desire at a time.  Besides the law of meat, there were a myriad other and
lesser laws for him to learn and obey.  The world was filled with
surprise.  The stir of the life that was in him, the play of his muscles,
was an unending happiness.  To run down meat was to experience thrills
and elations.  His rages and battles were pleasures.  Terror itself, and
the mystery of the unknown, led to his living.

And there were easements and satisfactions.  To have a full stomach, to
doze lazily in the sunshine--such things were remuneration in full for
his ardours and toils, while his ardours and tolls were in themselves
self-remunerative.  They were expressions of life, and life is always
happy when it is expressing itself.  So the cub had no quarrel with his
hostile environment.  He was very much alive, very happy, and very proud
of himself.




PART III


CHAPTER I--THE MAKERS OF FIRE


The cub came upon it suddenly.  It was his own fault.  He had been
careless.  He had left the cave and run down to the stream to drink.  It
might have been that he took no notice because he was heavy with sleep.
(He had been out all night on the meat-trail, and had but just then
awakened.)  And his carelessness might have been due to the familiarity
of the trail to the pool.  He had travelled it often, and nothing had
ever happened on it.

He went down past the blasted pine, crossed the open space, and trotted
in amongst the trees.  Then, at the same instant, he saw and smelt.
Before him, sitting silently on their haunches, were five live things,
the like of which he had never seen before.  It was his first glimpse of
mankind.  But at the sight of him the five men did not spring to their
feet, nor show their teeth, nor snarl.  They did not move, but sat there,
silent and ominous.

Nor did the cub move.  Every instinct of his nature would have impelled
him to dash wildly away, had there not suddenly and for the first time
arisen in him another and counter instinct.  A great awe descended upon
him.  He was beaten down to movelessness by an overwhelming sense of his
own weakness and littleness.  Here was mastery and power, something far
and away beyond him.

The cub had never seen man, yet the instinct concerning man was his.  In
dim ways he recognised in man the animal that had fought itself to
primacy over the other animals of the Wild.  Not alone out of his own
eyes, but out of the eyes of all his ancestors was the cub now looking
upon man--out of eyes that had circled in the darkness around countless
winter camp-fires, that had peered from safe distances and from the
hearts of thickets at the strange, two-legged animal that was lord over
living things.  The spell of the cub's heritage was upon him, the fear
and the respect born of the centuries of struggle and the accumulated
experience of the generations.  The heritage was too compelling for a
wolf that was only a cub.  Had he been full-grown, he would have run
away.  As it was, he cowered down in a paralysis of fear, already half
proffering the submission that his kind had proffered from the first time
a wolf came in to sit by man's fire and be made warm.

One of the Indians arose and walked over to him and stooped above him.
The cub cowered closer to the ground.  It was the unknown, objectified at
last, in concrete flesh and blood, bending over him and reaching down to
seize hold of him.  His hair bristled involuntarily; his lips writhed
back and his little fangs were bared.  The hand, poised like doom above
him, hesitated, and the man spoke laughing, "_Wabam wabisca ip pit tah_."
("Look!  The white fangs!")

The other Indians laughed loudly, and urged the man on to pick up the
cub.  As the hand descended closer and closer, there raged within the cub
a battle of the instincts.  He experienced two great impulsions--to yield
and to fight.  The resulting action was a compromise.  He did both.  He
yielded till the hand almost touched him.  Then he fought, his teeth
flashing in a snap that sank them into the hand.  The next moment he
received a clout alongside the head that knocked him over on his side.
Then all fight fled out of him.  His puppyhood and the instinct of
submission took charge of him.  He sat up on his haunches and ki-yi'd.
But the man whose hand he had bitten was angry.  The cub received a clout
on the other side of his head.  Whereupon he sat up and ki-yi'd louder
than ever.

The four Indians laughed more loudly, while even the man who had been
bitten began to laugh.  They surrounded the cub and laughed at him, while
he wailed out his terror and his hurt.  In the midst of it, he heard
something.  The Indians heard it too.  But the cub knew what it was, and
with a last, long wail that had in it more of triumph than grief, he
ceased his noise and waited for the coming of his mother, of his
ferocious and indomitable mother who fought and killed all things and was
never afraid.  She was snarling as she ran.  She had heard the cry of her
cub and was dashing to save him.

She bounded in amongst them, her anxious and militant motherhood making
her anything but a pretty sight.  But to the cub the spectacle of her
protective rage was pleasing.  He uttered a glad little cry and bounded
to meet her, while the man-animals went back hastily several steps.  The
she-wolf stood over against her cub, facing the men, with bristling hair,
a snarl rumbling deep in her throat.  Her face was distorted and
malignant with menace, even the bridge of the nose wrinkling from tip to
eyes so prodigious was her snarl.

Then it was that a cry went up from one of the men.  "Kiche!" was what he
uttered.  It was an exclamation of surprise.  The cub felt his mother
wilting at the sound.

"Kiche!" the man cried again, this time with sharpness and authority.

And then the cub saw his mother, the she-wolf, the fearless one,
crouching down till her belly touched the ground, whimpering, wagging her
tail, making peace signs.  The cub could not understand.  He was
appalled.  The awe of man rushed over him again.  His instinct had been
true.  His mother verified it.  She, too, rendered submission to the man-
animals.

The man who had spoken came over to her.  He put his hand upon her head,
and she only crouched closer.  She did not snap, nor threaten to snap.
The other men came up, and surrounded her, and felt her, and pawed her,
which actions she made no attempt to resent.  They were greatly excited,
and made many noises with their mouths.  These noises were not indication
of danger, the cub decided, as he crouched near his mother still
bristling from time to time but doing his best to submit.

"It is not strange," an Indian was saying.  "Her father was a wolf.  It
is true, her mother was a dog; but did not my brother tie her out in the
woods all of three nights in the mating season?  Therefore was the father
of Kiche a wolf."

"It is a year, Grey Beaver, since she ran away," spoke a second Indian.

"It is not strange, Salmon Tongue," Grey Beaver answered.  "It was the
time of the famine, and there was no meat for the dogs."

"She has lived with the wolves," said a third Indian.

"So it would seem, Three Eagles," Grey Beaver answered, laying his hand
on the cub; "and this be the sign of it."

The cub snarled a little at the touch of the hand, and the hand flew back
to administer a clout.  Whereupon the cub covered its fangs, and sank
down submissively, while the hand, returning, rubbed behind his ears, and
up and down his back.

"This be the sign of it," Grey Beaver went on.  "It is plain that his
mother is Kiche.  But his father was a wolf.  Wherefore is there in him
little dog and much wolf.  His fangs be white, and White Fang shall be
his name.  I have spoken.  He is my dog.  For was not Kiche my brother's
dog?  And is not my brother dead?"

The cub, who had thus received a name in the world, lay and watched.  For
a time the man-animals continued to make their mouth-noises.  Then Grey
Beaver took a knife from a sheath that hung around his neck, and went
into the thicket and cut a stick.  White Fang watched him.  He notched
the stick at each end and in the notches fastened strings of raw-hide.
One string he tied around the throat of Kiche.  Then he led her to a
small pine, around which he tied the other string.

White Fang followed and lay down beside her.  Salmon Tongue's hand
reached out to him and rolled him over on his back.  Kiche looked on
anxiously.  White Fang felt fear mounting in him again.  He could not
quite suppress a snarl, but he made no offer to snap.  The hand, with
fingers crooked and spread apart, rubbed his stomach in a playful way and
rolled him from side to side.  It was ridiculous and ungainly, lying
there on his back with legs sprawling in the air.  Besides, it was a
position of such utter helplessness that White Fang's whole nature
revolted against it.  He could do nothing to defend himself.  If this man-
animal intended harm, White Fang knew that he could not escape it.  How
could he spring away with his four legs in the air above him?  Yet
submission made him master his fear, and he only growled softly.  This
growl he could not suppress; nor did the man-animal resent it by giving
him a blow on the head.  And furthermore, such was the strangeness of it,
White Fang experienced an unaccountable sensation of pleasure as the hand
rubbed back and forth.  When he was rolled on his side he ceased to
growl, when the fingers pressed and prodded at the base of his ears the
pleasurable sensation increased; and when, with a final rub and scratch,
the man left him alone and went away, all fear had died out of White
Fang.  He was to know fear many times in his dealing with man; yet it was
a token of the fearless companionship with man that was ultimately to be
his.

After a time, White Fang heard strange noises approaching.  He was quick
in his classification, for he knew them at once for man-animal noises.  A
few minutes later the remainder of the tribe, strung out as it was on the
march, trailed in.  There were more men and many women and children,
forty souls of them, and all heavily burdened with camp equipage and
outfit.  Also there were many dogs; and these, with the exception of the
part-grown puppies, were likewise burdened with camp outfit.  On their
backs, in bags that fastened tightly around underneath, the dogs carried
from twenty to thirty pounds of weight.

White Fang had never seen dogs before, but at sight of them he felt that
they were his own kind, only somehow different.  But they displayed
little difference from the wolf when they discovered the cub and his
mother.  There was a rush.  White Fang bristled and snarled and snapped
in the face of the open-mouthed oncoming wave of dogs, and went down and
under them, feeling the sharp slash of teeth in his body, himself biting
and tearing at the legs and bellies above him.  There was a great uproar.
He could hear the snarl of Kiche as she fought for him; and he could hear
the cries of the man-animals, the sound of clubs striking upon bodies,
and the yelps of pain from the dogs so struck.

Only a few seconds elapsed before he was on his feet again.  He could now
see the man-animals driving back the dogs with clubs and stones,
defending him, saving him from the savage teeth of his kind that somehow
was not his kind.  And though there was no reason in his brain for a
clear conception of so abstract a thing as justice, nevertheless, in his
own way, he felt the justice of the man-animals, and he knew them for
what they were--makers of law and executors of law.  Also, he appreciated
the power with which they administered the law.  Unlike any animals he
had ever encountered, they did not bite nor claw.  They enforced their
live strength with the power of dead things.  Dead things did their
bidding.  Thus, sticks and stones, directed by these strange creatures,
leaped through the air like living things, inflicting grievous hurts upon
the dogs.

To his mind this was power unusual, power inconceivable and beyond the
natural, power that was godlike.  White Fang, in the very nature of him,
could never know anything about gods; at the best he could know only
things that were beyond knowing--but the wonder and awe that he had of
these man-animals in ways resembled what would be the wonder and awe of
man at sight of some celestial creature, on a mountain top, hurling
thunderbolts from either hand at an astonished world.

The last dog had been driven back.  The hubbub died down.  And White Fang
licked his hurts and meditated upon this, his first taste of pack-cruelty
and his introduction to the pack.  He had never dreamed that his own kind
consisted of more than One Eye, his mother, and himself.  They had
constituted a kind apart, and here, abruptly, he had discovered many more
creatures apparently of his own kind.  And there was a subconscious
resentment that these, his kind, at first sight had pitched upon him and
tried to destroy him.  In the same way he resented his mother being tied
with a stick, even though it was done by the superior man-animals.  It
savoured of the trap, of bondage.  Yet of the trap and of bondage he knew
nothing.  Freedom to roam and run and lie down at will, had been his
heritage; and here it was being infringed upon.  His mother's movements
were restricted to the length of a stick, and by the length of that same
stick was he restricted, for he had not yet got beyond the need of his
mother's side.

He did not like it.  Nor did he like it when the man-animals arose and
went on with their march; for a tiny man-animal took the other end of the
stick and led Kiche captive behind him, and behind Kiche followed White
Fang, greatly perturbed and worried by this new adventure he had entered
upon.

They went down the valley of the stream, far beyond White Fang's widest
ranging, until they came to the end of the valley, where the stream ran
into the Mackenzie River.  Here, where canoes were cached on poles high
in the air and where stood fish-racks for the drying of fish, camp was
made; and White Fang looked on with wondering eyes.  The superiority of
these man-animals increased with every moment.  There was their mastery
over all these sharp-fanged dogs.  It breathed of power.  But greater
than that, to the wolf-cub, was their mastery over things not alive;
their capacity to communicate motion to unmoving things; their capacity
to change the very face of the world.

It was this last that especially affected him.  The elevation of frames
of poles caught his eye; yet this in itself was not so remarkable, being
done by the same creatures that flung sticks and stones to great
distances.  But when the frames of poles were made into tepees by being
covered with cloth and skins, White Fang was astounded.  It was the
colossal bulk of them that impressed him.  They arose around him, on
every side, like some monstrous quick-growing form of life.  They
occupied nearly the whole circumference of his field of vision.  He was
afraid of them.  They loomed ominously above him; and when the breeze
stirred them into huge movements, he cowered down in fear, keeping his
eyes warily upon them, and prepared to spring away if they attempted to
precipitate themselves upon him.

But in a short while his fear of the tepees passed away.  He saw the
women and children passing in and out of them without harm, and he saw
the dogs trying often to get into them, and being driven away with sharp
words and flying stones.  After a time, he left Kiche's side and crawled
cautiously toward the wall of the nearest tepee.  It was the curiosity of
growth that urged him on--the necessity of learning and living and doing
that brings experience.  The last few inches to the wall of the tepee
were crawled with painful slowness and precaution.  The day's events had
prepared him for the unknown to manifest itself in most stupendous and
unthinkable ways.  At last his nose touched the canvas.  He waited.
Nothing happened.  Then he smelled the strange fabric, saturated with the
man-smell.  He closed on the canvas with his teeth and gave a gentle tug.
Nothing happened, though the adjacent portions of the tepee moved.  He
tugged harder.  There was a greater movement.  It was delightful.  He
tugged still harder, and repeatedly, until the whole tepee was in motion.
Then the sharp cry of a squaw inside sent him scampering back to Kiche.
But after that he was afraid no more of the looming bulks of the tepees.

A moment later he was straying away again from his mother.  Her stick was
tied to a peg in the ground and she could not follow him.  A part-grown
puppy, somewhat larger and older than he, came toward him slowly, with
ostentatious and belligerent importance.  The puppy's name, as White Fang
was afterward to hear him called, was Lip-lip.  He had had experience in
puppy fights and was already something of a bully.

Lip-lip was White Fang's own kind, and, being only a puppy, did not seem
dangerous; so White Fang prepared to meet him in a friendly spirit.  But
when the stranger's walk became stiff-legged and his lips lifted clear of
his teeth, White Fang stiffened too, and answered with lifted lips.  They
half circled about each other, tentatively, snarling and bristling.  This
lasted several minutes, and White Fang was beginning to enjoy it, as a
sort of game.  But suddenly, with remarkable swiftness, Lip-lip leaped
in, delivering a slashing snap, and leaped away again.  The snap had
taken effect on the shoulder that had been hurt by the lynx and that was
still sore deep down near the bone.  The surprise and hurt of it brought
a yelp out of White Fang; but the next moment, in a rush of anger, he was
upon Lip-lip and snapping viciously.

But Lip-lip had lived his life in camp and had fought many puppy fights.
Three times, four times, and half a dozen times, his sharp little teeth
scored on the newcomer, until White Fang, yelping shamelessly, fled to
the protection of his mother.  It was the first of the many fights he was
to have with Lip-lip, for they were enemies from the start, born so, with
natures destined perpetually to clash.

Kiche licked White Fang soothingly with her tongue, and tried to prevail
upon him to remain with her.  But his curiosity was rampant, and several
minutes later he was venturing forth on a new quest.  He came upon one of
the man-animals, Grey Beaver, who was squatting on his hams and doing
something with sticks and dry moss spread before him on the ground.  White
Fang came near to him and watched.  Grey Beaver made mouth-noises which
White Fang interpreted as not hostile, so he came still nearer.

Women and children were carrying more sticks and branches to Grey Beaver.
It was evidently an affair of moment.  White Fang came in until he
touched Grey Beaver's knee, so curious was he, and already forgetful that
this was a terrible man-animal.  Suddenly he saw a strange thing like
mist beginning to arise from the sticks and moss beneath Grey Beaver's
hands.  Then, amongst the sticks themselves, appeared a live thing,
twisting and turning, of a colour like the colour of the sun in the sky.
White Fang knew nothing about fire.  It drew him as the light, in the
mouth of the cave had drawn him in his early puppyhood.  He crawled the
several steps toward the flame.  He heard Grey Beaver chuckle above him,
and he knew the sound was not hostile.  Then his nose touched the flame,
and at the same instant his little tongue went out to it.

For a moment he was paralysed.  The unknown, lurking in the midst of the
sticks and moss, was savagely clutching him by the nose.  He scrambled
backward, bursting out in an astonished explosion of ki-yi's.  At the
sound, Kiche leaped snarling to the end of her stick, and there raged
terribly because she could not come to his aid.  But Grey Beaver laughed
loudly, and slapped his thighs, and told the happening to all the rest of
the camp, till everybody was laughing uproariously.  But White Fang sat
on his haunches and ki-yi'd and ki-yi'd, a forlorn and pitiable little
figure in the midst of the man-animals.

It was the worst hurt he had ever known.  Both nose and tongue had been
scorched by the live thing, sun-coloured, that had grown up under Grey
Beaver's hands.  He cried and cried interminably, and every fresh wail
was greeted by bursts of laughter on the part of the man-animals.  He
tried to soothe his nose with his tongue, but the tongue was burnt too,
and the two hurts coming together produced greater hurt; whereupon he
cried more hopelessly and helplessly than ever.

And then shame came to him.  He knew laughter and the meaning of it.  It
is not given us to know how some animals know laughter, and know when
they are being laughed at; but it was this same way that White Fang knew
it.  And he felt shame that the man-animals should be laughing at him.  He
turned and fled away, not from the hurt of the fire, but from the
laughter that sank even deeper, and hurt in the spirit of him.  And he
fled to Kiche, raging at the end of her stick like an animal gone mad--to
Kiche, the one creature in the world who was not laughing at him.

Twilight drew down and night came on, and White Fang lay by his mother's
side.  His nose and tongue still hurt, but he was perplexed by a greater
trouble.  He was homesick.  He felt a vacancy in him, a need for the hush
and quietude of the stream and the cave in the cliff.  Life had become
too populous.  There were so many of the man-animals, men, women, and
children, all making noises and irritations.  And there were the dogs,
ever squabbling and bickering, bursting into uproars and creating
confusions.  The restful loneliness of the only life he had known was
gone.  Here the very air was palpitant with life.  It hummed and buzzed
unceasingly.  Continually changing its intensity and abruptly variant in
pitch, it impinged on his nerves and senses, made him nervous and
restless and worried him with a perpetual imminence of happening.

He watched the man-animals coming and going and moving about the camp.  In
fashion distantly resembling the way men look upon the gods they create,
so looked White Fang upon the man-animals before him.  They were superior
creatures, of a verity, gods.  To his dim comprehension they were as much
wonder-workers as gods are to men.  They were creatures of mastery,
possessing all manner of unknown and impossible potencies, overlords of
the alive and the not alive--making obey that which moved, imparting
movement to that which did not move, and making life, sun-coloured and
biting life, to grow out of dead moss and wood.  They were fire-makers!
They were gods.



CHAPTER II--THE BONDAGE


The days were thronged with experience for White Fang.  During the time
that Kiche was tied by the stick, he ran about over all the camp,
inquiring, investigating, learning.  He quickly came to know much of the
ways of the man-animals, but familiarity did not breed contempt.  The
more he came to know them, the more they vindicated their superiority,
the more they displayed their mysterious powers, the greater loomed their
god-likeness.

To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and
his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in
to crouch at man's feet, this grief has never come.  Unlike man, whose
gods are of the unseen and the overguessed, vapours and mists of fancy
eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness
and power, intangible out-croppings of self into the realm of
spirit--unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to the
fire find their gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying
earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and
their existence.  No effort of faith is necessary to believe in such a
god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god.  There
is no getting away from it.  There it stands, on its two hind-legs, club
in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and
mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds when it
is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh.

And so it was with White Fang.  The man-animals were gods unmistakable
and unescapable.  As his mother, Kiche, had rendered her allegiance to
them at the first cry of her name, so he was beginning to render his
allegiance.  He gave them the trail as a privilege indubitably theirs.
When they walked, he got out of their way.  When they called, he came.
When they threatened, he cowered down.  When they commanded him to go, he
went away hurriedly.  For behind any wish of theirs was power to enforce
that wish, power that hurt, power that expressed itself in clouts and
clubs, in flying stones and stinging lashes of whips.

He belonged to them as all dogs belonged to them.  His actions were
theirs to command.  His body was theirs to maul, to stamp upon, to
tolerate.  Such was the lesson that was quickly borne in upon him.  It
came hard, going as it did, counter to much that was strong and dominant
in his own nature; and, while he disliked it in the learning of it,
unknown to himself he was learning to like it.  It was a placing of his
destiny in another's hands, a shifting of the responsibilities of
existence.  This in itself was compensation, for it is always easier to
lean upon another than to stand alone.

But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and
soul, to the man-animals.  He could not immediately forego his wild
heritage and his memories of the Wild.  There were days when he crept to
the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him
far and away.  And always he returned, restless and uncomfortable, to
whimper softly and wistfully at Kiche's side and to lick her face with
eager, questioning tongue.

White Fang learned rapidly the ways of the camp.  He knew the injustice
and greediness of the older dogs when meat or fish was thrown out to be
eaten.  He came to know that men were more just, children more cruel, and
women more kindly and more likely to toss him a bit of meat or bone.  And
after two or three painful adventures with the mothers of part-grown
puppies, he came into the knowledge that it was always good policy to let
such mothers alone, to keep away from them as far as possible, and to
avoid them when he saw them coming.

But the bane of his life was Lip-lip.  Larger, older, and stronger, Lip-
lip had selected White Fang for his special object of persecution.  While
Fang fought willingly enough, but he was outclassed.  His enemy was too
big.  Lip-lip became a nightmare to him.  Whenever he ventured away from
his mother, the bully was sure to appear, trailing at his heels, snarling
at him, picking upon him, and watchful of an opportunity, when no man-
animal was near, to spring upon him and force a fight.  As Lip-lip
invariably won, he enjoyed it hugely.  It became his chief delight in
life, as it became White Fang's chief torment.

But the effect upon White Fang was not to cow him.  Though he suffered
most of the damage and was always defeated, his spirit remained
unsubdued.  Yet a bad effect was produced.  He became malignant and
morose.  His temper had been savage by birth, but it became more savage
under this unending persecution.  The genial, playful, puppyish side of
him found little expression.  He never played and gambolled about with
the other puppies of the camp.  Lip-lip would not permit it.  The moment
White Fang appeared near them, Lip-lip was upon him, bullying and
hectoring him, or fighting with him until he had driven him away.

The effect of all this was to rob White Fang of much of his puppyhood and
to make him in his comportment older than his age.  Denied the outlet,
through play, of his energies, he recoiled upon himself and developed his
mental processes.  He became cunning; he had idle time in which to devote
himself to thoughts of trickery.  Prevented from obtaining his share of
meat and fish when a general feed was given to the camp-dogs, he became a
clever thief.  He had to forage for himself, and he foraged well, though
he was oft-times a plague to the squaws in consequence.  He learned to
sneak about camp, to be crafty, to know what was going on everywhere, to
see and to hear everything and to reason accordingly, and successfully to
devise ways and means of avoiding his implacable persecutor.

It was early in the days of his persecution that he played his first
really big crafty game and got therefrom his first taste of revenge.  As
Kiche, when with the wolves, had lured out to destruction dogs from the
camps of men, so White Fang, in manner somewhat similar, lured Lip-lip
into Kiche's avenging jaws.  Retreating before Lip-lip, White Fang made
an indirect flight that led in and out and around the various tepees of
the camp.  He was a good runner, swifter than any puppy of his size, and
swifter than Lip-lip.  But he did not run his best in this chase.  He
barely held his own, one leap ahead of his pursuer.

Lip-lip, excited by the chase and by the persistent nearness of his
victim, forgot caution and locality.  When he remembered locality, it was
too late.  Dashing at top speed around a tepee, he ran full tilt into
Kiche lying at the end of her stick.  He gave one yelp of consternation,
and then her punishing jaws closed upon him.  She was tied, but he could
not get away from her easily.  She rolled him off his legs so that he
could not run, while she repeatedly ripped and slashed him with her
fangs.

When at last he succeeded in rolling clear of her, he crawled to his
feet, badly dishevelled, hurt both in body and in spirit.  His hair was
standing out all over him in tufts where her teeth had mauled.  He stood
where he had arisen, opened his mouth, and broke out the long,
heart-broken puppy wail.  But even this he was not allowed to complete.
In the middle of it, White Fang, rushing in, sank his teeth into
Lip-lip's hind leg.  There was no fight left in Lip-lip, and he ran away
shamelessly, his victim hot on his heels and worrying him all the way
back to his own tepee.  Here the squaws came to his aid, and White Fang,
transformed into a raging demon, was finally driven off only by a
fusillade of stones.

Came the day when Grey Beaver, deciding that the liability of her running
away was past, released Kiche.  White Fang was delighted with his
mother's freedom.  He accompanied her joyfully about the camp; and, so
long as he remained close by her side, Lip-lip kept a respectful
distance.  White Fang even bristled up to him and walked stiff-legged,
but Lip-lip ignored the challenge.  He was no fool himself, and whatever
vengeance he desired to wreak, he could wait until he caught White Fang
alone.

Later on that day, Kiche and White Fang strayed into the edge of the
woods next to the camp.  He had led his mother there, step by step, and
now when she stopped, he tried to inveigle her farther.  The stream, the
lair, and the quiet woods were calling to him, and he wanted her to come.
He ran on a few steps, stopped, and looked back.  She had not moved.  He
whined pleadingly, and scurried playfully in and out of the underbrush.
He ran back to her, licked her face, and ran on again.  And still she did
not move.  He stopped and regarded her, all of an intentness and
eagerness, physically expressed, that slowly faded out of him as she
turned her head and gazed back at the camp.

There was something calling to him out there in the open.  His mother
heard it too.  But she heard also that other and louder call, the call of
the fire and of man--the call which has been given alone of all animals
to the wolf to answer, to the wolf and the wild-dog, who are brothers.

Kiche turned and slowly trotted back toward camp.  Stronger than the
physical restraint of the stick was the clutch of the camp upon her.
Unseen and occultly, the gods still gripped with their power and would
not let her go.  White Fang sat down in the shadow of a birch and
whimpered softly.  There was a strong smell of pine, and subtle wood
fragrances filled the air, reminding him of his old life of freedom
before the days of his bondage.  But he was still only a part-grown
puppy, and stronger than the call either of man or of the Wild was the
call of his mother.  All the hours of his short life he had depended upon
her.  The time was yet to come for independence.  So he arose and trotted
forlornly back to camp, pausing once, and twice, to sit down and whimper
and to listen to the call that still sounded in the depths of the forest.

In the Wild the time of a mother with her young is short; but under the
dominion of man it is sometimes even shorter.  Thus it was with White
Fang.  Grey Beaver was in the debt of Three Eagles.  Three Eagles was
going away on a trip up the Mackenzie to the Great Slave Lake.  A strip
of scarlet cloth, a bearskin, twenty cartridges, and Kiche, went to pay
the debt.  White Fang saw his mother taken aboard Three Eagles' canoe,
and tried to follow her.  A blow from Three Eagles knocked him backward
to the land.  The canoe shoved off.  He sprang into the water and swam
after it, deaf to the sharp cries of Grey Beaver to return.  Even a man-
animal, a god, White Fang ignored, such was the terror he was in of
losing his mother.

But gods are accustomed to being obeyed, and Grey Beaver wrathfully
launched a canoe in pursuit.  When he overtook White Fang, he reached
down and by the nape of the neck lifted him clear of the water.  He did
not deposit him at once in the bottom of the canoe.  Holding him
suspended with one hand, with the other hand he proceeded to give him a
beating.  And it _was_ a beating.  His hand was heavy.  Every blow was
shrewd to hurt; and he delivered a multitude of blows.

Impelled by the blows that rained upon him, now from this side, now from
that, White Fang swung back and forth like an erratic and jerky pendulum.
Varying were the emotions that surged through him.  At first, he had
known surprise.  Then came a momentary fear, when he yelped several times
to the impact of the hand.  But this was quickly followed by anger.  His
free nature asserted itself, and he showed his teeth and snarled
fearlessly in the face of the wrathful god.  This but served to make the
god more wrathful.  The blows came faster, heavier, more shrewd to hurt.

Grey Beaver continued to beat, White Fang continued to snarl.  But this
could not last for ever.  One or the other must give over, and that one
was White Fang.  Fear surged through him again.  For the first time he
was being really man-handled.  The occasional blows of sticks and stones
he had previously experienced were as caresses compared with this.  He
broke down and began to cry and yelp.  For a time each blow brought a
yelp from him; but fear passed into terror, until finally his yelps were
voiced in unbroken succession, unconnected with the rhythm of the
punishment.

At last Grey Beaver withheld his hand.  White Fang, hanging limply,
continued to cry.  This seemed to satisfy his master, who flung him down
roughly in the bottom of the canoe.  In the meantime the canoe had
drifted down the stream.  Grey Beaver picked up the paddle.  White Fang
was in his way.  He spurned him savagely with his foot.  In that moment
White Fang's free nature flashed forth again, and he sank his teeth into
the moccasined foot.

The beating that had gone before was as nothing compared with the beating
he now received.  Grey Beaver's wrath was terrible; likewise was White
Fang's fright.  Not only the hand, but the hard wooden paddle was used
upon him; and he was bruised and sore in all his small body when he was
again flung down in the canoe.  Again, and this time with purpose, did
Grey Beaver kick him.  White Fang did not repeat his attack on the foot.
He had learned another lesson of his bondage.  Never, no matter what the
circumstance, must he dare to bite the god who was lord and master over
him; the body of the lord and master was sacred, not to be defiled by the
teeth of such as he.  That was evidently the crime of crimes, the one
offence there was no condoning nor overlooking.

When the canoe touched the shore, White Fang lay whimpering and
motionless, waiting the will of Grey Beaver.  It was Grey Beaver's will
that he should go ashore, for ashore he was flung, striking heavily on
his side and hurting his bruises afresh.  He crawled tremblingly to his
feet and stood whimpering.  Lip-lip, who had watched the whole proceeding
from the bank, now rushed upon him, knocking him over and sinking his
teeth into him.  White Fang was too helpless to defend himself, and it
would have gone hard with him had not Grey Beaver's foot shot out,
lifting Lip-lip into the air with its violence so that he smashed down to
earth a dozen feet away.  This was the man-animal's justice; and even
then, in his own pitiable plight, White Fang experienced a little
grateful thrill.  At Grey Beaver's heels he limped obediently through the
village to the tepee.  And so it came that White Fang learned that the
right to punish was something the gods reserved for themselves and denied
to the lesser creatures under them.

That night, when all was still, White Fang remembered his mother and
sorrowed for her.  He sorrowed too loudly and woke up Grey Beaver, who
beat him.  After that he mourned gently when the gods were around.  But
sometimes, straying off to the edge of the woods by himself, he gave vent
to his grief, and cried it out with loud whimperings and wailings.

It was during this period that he might have harkened to the memories of
the lair and the stream and run back to the Wild.  But the memory of his
mother held him.  As the hunting man-animals went out and came back, so
she would come back to the village some time.  So he remained in his
bondage waiting for her.

But it was not altogether an unhappy bondage.  There was much to interest
him.  Something was always happening.  There was no end to the strange
things these gods did, and he was always curious to see.  Besides, he was
learning how to get along with Grey Beaver.  Obedience, rigid,
undeviating obedience, was what was exacted of him; and in return he
escaped beatings and his existence was tolerated.

Nay, Grey Beaver himself sometimes tossed him a piece of meat, and
defended him against the other dogs in the eating of it.  And such a
piece of meat was of value.  It was worth more, in some strange way, then
a dozen pieces of meat from the hand of a squaw.  Grey Beaver never
petted nor caressed.  Perhaps it was the weight of his hand, perhaps his
justice, perhaps the sheer power of him, and perhaps it was all these
things that influenced White Fang; for a certain tie of attachment was
forming between him and his surly lord.

Insidiously, and by remote ways, as well as by the power of stick and
stone and clout of hand, were the shackles of White Fang's bondage being
riveted upon him.  The qualities in his kind that in the beginning made
it possible for them to come in to the fires of men, were qualities
capable of development.  They were developing in him, and the camp-life,
replete with misery as it was, was secretly endearing itself to him all
the time.  But White Fang was unaware of it.  He knew only grief for the
loss of Kiche, hope for her return, and a hungry yearning for the free
life that had been his.



CHAPTER III--THE OUTCAST


Lip-lip continued so to darken his days that White Fang became wickeder
and more ferocious than it was his natural right to be.  Savageness was a
part of his make-up, but the savageness thus developed exceeded his make-
up.  He acquired a reputation for wickedness amongst the man-animals
themselves.  Wherever there was trouble and uproar in camp, fighting and
squabbling or the outcry of a squaw over a bit of stolen meat, they were
sure to find White Fang mixed up in it and usually at the bottom of it.
They did not bother to look after the causes of his conduct.  They saw
only the effects, and the effects were bad.  He was a sneak and a thief,
a mischief-maker, a fomenter of trouble; and irate squaws told him to his
face, the while he eyed them alert and ready to dodge any quick-flung
missile, that he was a wolf and worthless and bound to come to an evil
end.

He found himself an outcast in the midst of the populous camp.  All the
young dogs followed Lip-lip's lead.  There was a difference between White
Fang and them.  Perhaps they sensed his wild-wood breed, and
instinctively felt for him the enmity that the domestic dog feels for the
wolf.  But be that as it may, they joined with Lip-lip in the
persecution.  And, once declared against him, they found good reason to
continue declared against him.  One and all, from time to time, they felt
his teeth; and to his credit, he gave more than he received.  Many of
them he could whip in single fight; but single fight was denied him.  The
beginning of such a fight was a signal for all the young dogs in camp to
come running and pitch upon him.

Out of this pack-persecution he learned two important things: how to take
care of himself in a mass-fight against him--and how, on a single dog, to
inflict the greatest amount of damage in the briefest space of time.  To
keep one's feet in the midst of the hostile mass meant life, and this he
learnt well.  He became cat-like in his ability to stay on his feet.  Even
grown dogs might hurtle him backward or sideways with the impact of their
heavy bodies; and backward or sideways he would go, in the air or sliding
on the ground, but always with his legs under him and his feet downward
to the mother earth.

When dogs fight, there are usually preliminaries to the actual
combat--snarlings and bristlings and stiff-legged struttings.  But White
Fang learned to omit these preliminaries.  Delay meant the coming against
him of all the young dogs.  He must do his work quickly and get away.  So
he learnt to give no warning of his intention.  He rushed in and snapped
and slashed on the instant, without notice, before his foe could prepare
to meet him.  Thus he learned how to inflict quick and severe damage.
Also he learned the value of surprise.  A dog, taken off its guard, its
shoulder slashed open or its ear ripped in ribbons before it knew what
was happening, was a dog half whipped.

Furthermore, it was remarkably easy to overthrow a dog taken by surprise;
while a dog, thus overthrown, invariably exposed for a moment the soft
underside of its neck--the vulnerable point at which to strike for its
life.  White Fang knew this point.  It was a knowledge bequeathed to him
directly from the hunting generation of wolves.  So it was that White
Fang's method when he took the offensive, was: first to find a young dog
alone; second, to surprise it and knock it off its feet; and third, to
drive in with his teeth at the soft throat.

Being but partly grown his jaws had not yet become large enough nor
strong enough to make his throat-attack deadly; but many a young dog went
around camp with a lacerated throat in token of White Fang's intention.
And one day, catching one of his enemies alone on the edge of the woods,
he managed, by repeatedly overthrowing him and attacking the throat, to
cut the great vein and let out the life.  There was a great row that
night.  He had been observed, the news had been carried to the dead dog's
master, the squaws remembered all the instances of stolen meat, and Grey
Beaver was beset by many angry voices.  But he resolutely held the door
of his tepee, inside which he had placed the culprit, and refused to
permit the vengeance for which his tribespeople clamoured.

White Fang became hated by man and dog.  During this period of his
development he never knew a moment's security.  The tooth of every dog
was against him, the hand of every man.  He was greeted with snarls by
his kind, with curses and stones by his gods.  He lived tensely.  He was
always keyed up, alert for attack, wary of being attacked, with an eye
for sudden and unexpected missiles, prepared to act precipitately and
coolly, to leap in with a flash of teeth, or to leap away with a menacing
snarl.

As for snarling he could snarl more terribly than any dog, young or old,
in camp.  The intent of the snarl is to warn or frighten, and judgment is
required to know when it should be used.  White Fang knew how to make it
and when to make it.  Into his snarl he incorporated all that was
vicious, malignant, and horrible.  With nose serrulated by continuous
spasms, hair bristling in recurrent waves, tongue whipping out like a red
snake and whipping back again, ears flattened down, eyes gleaming hatred,
lips wrinkled back, and fangs exposed and dripping, he could compel a
pause on the part of almost any assailant.  A temporary pause, when taken
off his guard, gave him the vital moment in which to think and determine
his action.  But often a pause so gained lengthened out until it evolved
into a complete cessation from the attack.  And before more than one of
the grown dogs White Fang's snarl enabled him to beat an honourable
retreat.

An outcast himself from the pack of the part-grown dogs, his sanguinary
methods and remarkable efficiency made the pack pay for its persecution
of him.  Not permitted himself to run with the pack, the curious state of
affairs obtained that no member of the pack could run outside the pack.
White Fang would not permit it.  What of his bushwhacking and waylaying
tactics, the young dogs were afraid to run by themselves.  With the
exception of Lip-lip, they were compelled to hunch together for mutual
protection against the terrible enemy they had made.  A puppy alone by
the river bank meant a puppy dead or a puppy that aroused the camp with
its shrill pain and terror as it fled back from the wolf-cub that had
waylaid it.

But White Fang's reprisals did not cease, even when the young dogs had
learned thoroughly that they must stay together.  He attacked them when
he caught them alone, and they attacked him when they were bunched.  The
sight of him was sufficient to start them rushing after him, at which
times his swiftness usually carried him into safety.  But woe the dog
that outran his fellows in such pursuit!  White Fang had learned to turn
suddenly upon the pursuer that was ahead of the pack and thoroughly to
rip him up before the pack could arrive.  This occurred with great
frequency, for, once in full cry, the dogs were prone to forget
themselves in the excitement of the chase, while White Fang never forgot
himself.  Stealing backward glances as he ran, he was always ready to
whirl around and down the overzealous pursuer that outran his fellows.

Young dogs are bound to play, and out of the exigencies of the situation
they realised their play in this mimic warfare.  Thus it was that the
hunt of White Fang became their chief game--a deadly game, withal, and at
all times a serious game.  He, on the other hand, being the
fastest-footed, was unafraid to venture anywhere.  During the period that
he waited vainly for his mother to come back, he led the pack many a wild
chase through the adjacent woods.  But the pack invariably lost him.  Its
noise and outcry warned him of its presence, while he ran alone, velvet-
footed, silently, a moving shadow among the trees after the manner of his
father and mother before him.  Further he was more directly connected
with the Wild than they; and he knew more of its secrets and stratagems.
A favourite trick of his was to lose his trail in running water and then
lie quietly in a near-by thicket while their baffled cries arose around
him.

Hated by his kind and by mankind, indomitable, perpetually warred upon
and himself waging perpetual war, his development was rapid and
one-sided.  This was no soil for kindliness and affection to blossom in.
Of such things he had not the faintest glimmering.  The code he learned
was to obey the strong and to oppress the weak.  Grey Beaver was a god,
and strong.  Therefore White Fang obeyed him.  But the dog younger or
smaller than himself was weak, a thing to be destroyed.  His development
was in the direction of power.  In order to face the constant danger of
hurt and even of destruction, his predatory and protective faculties were
unduly developed.  He became quicker of movement than the other dogs,
swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with ironlike
muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel, more ferocious, and more
intelligent.  He had to become all these things, else he would not have
held his own nor survive the hostile environment in which he found
himself.



CHAPTER IV--THE TRAIL OF THE GODS


In the fall of the year, when the days were shortening and the bite of
the frost was coming into the air, White Fang got his chance for liberty.
For several days there had been a great hubbub in the village.  The
summer camp was being dismantled, and the tribe, bag and baggage, was
preparing to go off to the fall hunting.  White Fang watched it all with
eager eyes, and when the tepees began to come down and the canoes were
loading at the bank, he understood.  Already the canoes were departing,
and some had disappeared down the river.

Quite deliberately he determined to stay behind.  He waited his
opportunity to slink out of camp to the woods.  Here, in the running
stream where ice was beginning to form, he hid his trail.  Then he
crawled into the heart of a dense thicket and waited.  The time passed
by, and he slept intermittently for hours.  Then he was aroused by Grey
Beaver's voice calling him by name.  There were other voices.  White Fang
could hear Grey Beaver's squaw taking part in the search, and Mit-sah,
who was Grey Beaver's son.

White Fang trembled with fear, and though the impulse came to crawl out
of his hiding-place, he resisted it.  After a time the voices died away,
and some time after that he crept out to enjoy the success of his
undertaking.  Darkness was coming on, and for a while he played about
among the trees, pleasuring in his freedom.  Then, and quite suddenly, he
became aware of loneliness.  He sat down to consider, listening to the
silence of the forest and perturbed by it.  That nothing moved nor
sounded, seemed ominous.  He felt the lurking of danger, unseen and
unguessed.  He was suspicious of the looming bulks of the trees and of
the dark shadows that might conceal all manner of perilous things.

Then it was cold.  Here was no warm side of a tepee against which to
snuggle.  The frost was in his feet, and he kept lifting first one fore-
foot and then the other.  He curved his bushy tail around to cover them,
and at the same time he saw a vision.  There was nothing strange about
it.  Upon his inward sight was impressed a succession of memory-pictures.
He saw the camp again, the tepees, and the blaze of the fires.  He heard
the shrill voices of the women, the gruff basses of the men, and the
snarling of the dogs.  He was hungry, and he remembered pieces of meat
and fish that had been thrown him.  Here was no meat, nothing but a
threatening and inedible silence.

His bondage had softened him.  Irresponsibility had weakened him.  He had
forgotten how to shift for himself.  The night yawned about him.  His
senses, accustomed to the hum and bustle of the camp, used to the
continuous impact of sights and sounds, were now left idle.  There was
nothing to do, nothing to see nor hear.  They strained to catch some
interruption of the silence and immobility of nature.  They were appalled
by inaction and by the feel of something terrible impending.

He gave a great start of fright.  A colossal and formless something was
rushing across the field of his vision.  It was a tree-shadow flung by
the moon, from whose face the clouds had been brushed away.  Reassured,
he whimpered softly; then he suppressed the whimper for fear that it
might attract the attention of the lurking dangers.

A tree, contracting in the cool of the night, made a loud noise.  It was
directly above him.  He yelped in his fright.  A panic seized him, and he
ran madly toward the village.  He knew an overpowering desire for the
protection and companionship of man.  In his nostrils was the smell of
the camp-smoke.  In his ears the camp-sounds and cries were ringing loud.
He passed out of the forest and into the moonlit open where were no
shadows nor darknesses.  But no village greeted his eyes.  He had
forgotten.  The village had gone away.

His wild flight ceased abruptly.  There was no place to which to flee.  He
slunk forlornly through the deserted camp, smelling the rubbish-heaps and
the discarded rags and tags of the gods.  He would have been glad for the
rattle of stones about him, flung by an angry squaw, glad for the hand of
Grey Beaver descending upon him in wrath; while he would have welcomed
with delight Lip-lip and the whole snarling, cowardly pack.

He came to where Grey Beaver's tepee had stood.  In the centre of the
space it had occupied, he sat down.  He pointed his nose at the moon.  His
throat was afflicted by rigid spasms, his mouth opened, and in a heart-
broken cry bubbled up his loneliness and fear, his grief for Kiche, all
his past sorrows and miseries as well as his apprehension of sufferings
and dangers to come.  It was the long wolf-howl, full-throated and
mournful, the first howl he had ever uttered.

The coming of daylight dispelled his fears but increased his loneliness.
The naked earth, which so shortly before had been so populous, thrust his
loneliness more forcibly upon him.  It did not take him long to make up
his mind.  He plunged into the forest and followed the river bank down
the stream.  All day he ran.  He did not rest.  He seemed made to run on
forever.  His iron-like body ignored fatigue.  And even after fatigue
came, his heritage of endurance braced him to endless endeavour and
enabled him to drive his complaining body onward.

Where the river swung in against precipitous bluffs, he climbed the high
mountains behind.  Rivers and streams that entered the main river he
forded or swam.  Often he took to the rim-ice that was beginning to form,
and more than once he crashed through and struggled for life in the icy
current.  Always he was on the lookout for the trail of the gods where it
might leave the river and proceed inland.

White Fang was intelligent beyond the average of his kind; yet his mental
vision was not wide enough to embrace the other bank of the Mackenzie.
What if the trail of the gods led out on that side?  It never entered his
head.  Later on, when he had travelled more and grown older and wiser and
come to know more of trails and rivers, it might be that he could grasp
and apprehend such a possibility.  But that mental power was yet in the
future.  Just now he ran blindly, his own bank of the Mackenzie alone
entering into his calculations.

All night he ran, blundering in the darkness into mishaps and obstacles
that delayed but did not daunt.  By the middle of the second day he had
been running continuously for thirty hours, and the iron of his flesh was
giving out.  It was the endurance of his mind that kept him going.  He
had not eaten in forty hours, and he was weak with hunger.  The repeated
drenchings in the icy water had likewise had their effect on him.  His
handsome coat was draggled.  The broad pads of his feet were bruised and
bleeding.  He had begun to limp, and this limp increased with the hours.
To make it worse, the light of the sky was obscured and snow began to
fall--a raw, moist, melting, clinging snow, slippery under foot, that hid
from him the landscape he traversed, and that covered over the
inequalities of the ground so that the way of his feet was more difficult
and painful.

Grey Beaver had intended camping that night on the far bank of the
Mackenzie, for it was in that direction that the hunting lay.  But on the
near bank, shortly before dark, a moose coming down to drink, had been
espied by Kloo-kooch, who was Grey Beaver's squaw.  Now, had not the
moose come down to drink, had not Mit-sah been steering out of the course
because of the snow, had not Kloo-kooch sighted the moose, and had not
Grey Beaver killed it with a lucky shot from his rifle, all subsequent
things would have happened differently.  Grey Beaver would not have
camped on the near side of the Mackenzie, and White Fang would have
passed by and gone on, either to die or to find his way to his wild
brothers and become one of them--a wolf to the end of his days.

Night had fallen.  The snow was flying more thickly, and White Fang,
whimpering softly to himself as he stumbled and limped along, came upon a
fresh trail in the snow.  So fresh was it that he knew it immediately for
what it was.  Whining with eagerness, he followed back from the river
bank and in among the trees.  The camp-sounds came to his ears.  He saw
the blaze of the fire, Kloo-kooch cooking, and Grey Beaver squatting on
his hams and mumbling a chunk of raw tallow.  There was fresh meat in
camp!

White Fang expected a beating.  He crouched and bristled a little at the
thought of it.  Then he went forward again.  He feared and disliked the
beating he knew to be waiting for him.  But he knew, further, that the
comfort of the fire would be his, the protection of the gods, the
companionship of the dogs--the last, a companionship of enmity, but none
the less a companionship and satisfying to his gregarious needs.

He came cringing and crawling into the firelight.  Grey Beaver saw him,
and stopped munching the tallow.  White Fang crawled slowly, cringing and
grovelling in the abjectness of his abasement and submission.  He crawled
straight toward Grey Beaver, every inch of his progress becoming slower
and more painful.  At last he lay at the master's feet, into whose
possession he now surrendered himself, voluntarily, body and soul.  Of
his own choice, he came in to sit by man's fire and to be ruled by him.
White Fang trembled, waiting for the punishment to fall upon him.  There
was a movement of the hand above him.  He cringed involuntarily under the
expected blow.  It did not fall.  He stole a glance upward.  Grey Beaver
was breaking the lump of tallow in half!  Grey Beaver was offering him
one piece of the tallow!  Very gently and somewhat suspiciously, he first
smelled the tallow and then proceeded to eat it.  Grey Beaver ordered
meat to be brought to him, and guarded him from the other dogs while he
ate.  After that, grateful and content, White Fang lay at Grey Beaver's
feet, gazing at the fire that warmed him, blinking and dozing, secure in
the knowledge that the morrow would find him, not wandering forlorn
through bleak forest-stretches, but in the camp of the man-animals, with
the gods to whom he had given himself and upon whom he was now dependent.



CHAPTER V--THE COVENANT


When December was well along, Grey Beaver went on a journey up the
Mackenzie.  Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch went with him.  One sled he drove
himself, drawn by dogs he had traded for or borrowed.  A second and
smaller sled was driven by Mit-sah, and to this was harnessed a team of
puppies.  It was more of a toy affair than anything else, yet it was the
delight of Mit-sah, who felt that he was beginning to do a man's work in
the world.  Also, he was learning to drive dogs and to train dogs; while
the puppies themselves were being broken in to the harness.  Furthermore,
the sled was of some service, for it carried nearly two hundred pounds of
outfit and food.

White Fang had seen the camp-dogs toiling in the harness, so that he did
not resent overmuch the first placing of the harness upon himself.  About
his neck was put a moss-stuffed collar, which was connected by two
pulling-traces to a strap that passed around his chest and over his back.
It was to this that was fastened the long rope by which he pulled at the
sled.

There were seven puppies in the team.  The others had been born earlier
in the year and were nine and ten months old, while White Fang was only
eight months old.  Each dog was fastened to the sled by a single rope.  No
two ropes were of the same length, while the difference in length between
any two ropes was at least that of a dog's body.  Every rope was brought
to a ring at the front end of the sled.  The sled itself was without
runners, being a birch-bark toboggan, with upturned forward end to keep
it from ploughing under the snow.  This construction enabled the weight
of the sled and load to be distributed over the largest snow-surface; for
the snow was crystal-powder and very soft.  Observing the same principle
of widest distribution of weight, the dogs at the ends of their ropes
radiated fan-fashion from the nose of the sled, so that no dog trod in
another's footsteps.

There was, furthermore, another virtue in the fan-formation.  The ropes
of varying length prevented the dogs attacking from the rear those that
ran in front of them.  For a dog to attack another, it would have to turn
upon one at a shorter rope.  In which case it would find itself face to
face with the dog attacked, and also it would find itself facing the whip
of the driver.  But the most peculiar virtue of all lay in the fact that
the dog that strove to attack one in front of him must pull the sled
faster, and that the faster the sled travelled, the faster could the dog
attacked run away.  Thus, the dog behind could never catch up with the
one in front.  The faster he ran, the faster ran the one he was after,
and the faster ran all the dogs.  Incidentally, the sled went faster, and
thus, by cunning indirection, did man increase his mastery over the
beasts.

Mit-sah resembled his father, much of whose grey wisdom he possessed.  In
the past he had observed Lip-lip's persecution of White Fang; but at that
time Lip-lip was another man's dog, and Mit-sah had never dared more than
to shy an occasional stone at him.  But now Lip-lip was his dog, and he
proceeded to wreak his vengeance on him by putting him at the end of the
longest rope.  This made Lip-lip the leader, and was apparently an
honour! but in reality it took away from him all honour, and instead of
being bully and master of the pack, he now found himself hated and
persecuted by the pack.

Because he ran at the end of the longest rope, the dogs had always the
view of him running away before them.  All that they saw of him was his
bushy tail and fleeing hind legs--a view far less ferocious and
intimidating than his bristling mane and gleaming fangs.  Also, dogs
being so constituted in their mental ways, the sight of him running away
gave desire to run after him and a feeling that he ran away from them.

The moment the sled started, the team took after Lip-lip in a chase that
extended throughout the day.  At first he had been prone to turn upon his
pursuers, jealous of his dignity and wrathful; but at such times Mit-sah
would throw the stinging lash of the thirty-foot cariboo-gut whip into
his face and compel him to turn tail and run on.  Lip-lip might face the
pack, but he could not face that whip, and all that was left him to do
was to keep his long rope taut and his flanks ahead of the teeth of his
mates.

But a still greater cunning lurked in the recesses of the Indian mind.  To
give point to unending pursuit of the leader, Mit-sah favoured him over
the other dogs.  These favours aroused in them jealousy and hatred.  In
their presence Mit-sah would give him meat and would give it to him only.
This was maddening to them.  They would rage around just outside the
throwing-distance of the whip, while Lip-lip devoured the meat and Mit-
sah protected him.  And when there was no meat to give, Mit-sah would
keep the team at a distance and make believe to give meat to Lip-lip.

White Fang took kindly to the work.  He had travelled a greater distance
than the other dogs in the yielding of himself to the rule of the gods,
and he had learned more thoroughly the futility of opposing their will.
In addition, the persecution he had suffered from the pack had made the
pack less to him in the scheme of things, and man more.  He had not
learned to be dependent on his kind for companionship.  Besides, Kiche
was well-nigh forgotten; and the chief outlet of expression that remained
to him was in the allegiance he tendered the gods he had accepted as
masters.  So he worked hard, learned discipline, and was obedient.
Faithfulness and willingness characterised his toil.  These are essential
traits of the wolf and the wild-dog when they have become domesticated,
and these traits White Fang possessed in unusual measure.

A companionship did exist between White Fang and the other dogs, but it
was one of warfare and enmity.  He had never learned to play with them.
He knew only how to fight, and fight with them he did, returning to them
a hundred-fold the snaps and slashes they had given him in the days when
Lip-lip was leader of the pack.  But Lip-lip was no longer leader--except
when he fled away before his mates at the end of his rope, the sled
bounding along behind.  In camp he kept close to Mit-sah or Grey Beaver
or Kloo-kooch.  He did not dare venture away from the gods, for now the
fangs of all dogs were against him, and he tasted to the dregs the
persecution that had been White Fang's.

With the overthrow of Lip-lip, White Fang could have become leader of the
pack.  But he was too morose and solitary for that.  He merely thrashed
his team-mates.  Otherwise he ignored them.  They got out of his way when
he came along; nor did the boldest of them ever dare to rob him of his
meat.  On the contrary, they devoured their own meat hurriedly, for fear
that he would take it away from them.  White Fang knew the law well: _to
oppress the weak and obey the strong_.  He ate his share of meat as
rapidly as he could.  And then woe the dog that had not yet finished!  A
snarl and a flash of fangs, and that dog would wail his indignation to
the uncomforting stars while White Fang finished his portion for him.

Every little while, however, one dog or another would flame up in revolt
and be promptly subdued.  Thus White Fang was kept in training.  He was
jealous of the isolation in which he kept himself in the midst of the
pack, and he fought often to maintain it.  But such fights were of brief
duration.  He was too quick for the others.  They were slashed open and
bleeding before they knew what had happened, were whipped almost before
they had begun to fight.

As rigid as the sled-discipline of the gods, was the discipline
maintained by White Fang amongst his fellows.  He never allowed them any
latitude.  He compelled them to an unremitting respect for him.  They
might do as they pleased amongst themselves.  That was no concern of his.
But it _was_ his concern that they leave him alone in his isolation, get
out of his way when he elected to walk among them, and at all times
acknowledge his mastery over them.  A hint of stiff-leggedness on their
part, a lifted lip or a bristle of hair, and he would be upon them,
merciless and cruel, swiftly convincing them of the error of their way.

He was a monstrous tyrant.  His mastery was rigid as steel.  He oppressed
the weak with a vengeance.  Not for nothing had he been exposed to the
pitiless struggles for life in the day of his cubhood, when his mother
and he, alone and unaided, held their own and survived in the ferocious
environment of the Wild.  And not for nothing had he learned to walk
softly when superior strength went by.  He oppressed the weak, but he
respected the strong.  And in the course of the long journey with Grey
Beaver he walked softly indeed amongst the full-grown dogs in the camps
of the strange man-animals they encountered.

The months passed by.  Still continued the journey of Grey Beaver.  White
Fang's strength was developed by the long hours on trail and the steady
toil at the sled; and it would have seemed that his mental development
was well-nigh complete.  He had come to know quite thoroughly the world
in which he lived.  His outlook was bleak and materialistic.  The world
as he saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, a
world in which caresses and affection and the bright sweetnesses of the
spirit did not exist.

He had no affection for Grey Beaver.  True, he was a god, but a most
savage god.  White Fang was glad to acknowledge his lordship, but it was
a lordship based upon superior intelligence and brute strength.  There
was something in the fibre of White Fang's being that made his lordship a
thing to be desired, else he would not have come back from the Wild when
he did to tender his allegiance.  There were deeps in his nature which
had never been sounded.  A kind word, a caressing touch of the hand, on
the part of Grey Beaver, might have sounded these deeps; but Grey Beaver
did not caress, nor speak kind words.  It was not his way.  His primacy
was savage, and savagely he ruled, administering justice with a club,
punishing transgression with the pain of a blow, and rewarding merit, not
by kindness, but by withholding a blow.

So White Fang knew nothing of the heaven a man's hand might contain for
him.  Besides, he did not like the hands of the man-animals.  He was
suspicious of them.  It was true that they sometimes gave meat, but more
often they gave hurt.  Hands were things to keep away from.  They hurled
stones, wielded sticks and clubs and whips, administered slaps and
clouts, and, when they touched him, were cunning to hurt with pinch and
twist and wrench.  In strange villages he had encountered the hands of
the children and learned that they were cruel to hurt.  Also, he had once
nearly had an eye poked out by a toddling papoose.  From these
experiences he became suspicious of all children.  He could not tolerate
them.  When they came near with their ominous hands, he got up.

It was in a village at the Great Slave Lake, that, in the course of
resenting the evil of the hands of the man-animals, he came to modify the
law that he had learned from Grey Beaver: namely, that the unpardonable
crime was to bite one of the gods.  In this village, after the custom of
all dogs in all villages, White Fang went foraging, for food.  A boy was
chopping frozen moose-meat with an axe, and the chips were flying in the
snow.  White Fang, sliding by in quest of meat, stopped and began to eat
the chips.  He observed the boy lay down the axe and take up a stout
club.  White Fang sprang clear, just in time to escape the descending
blow.  The boy pursued him, and he, a stranger in the village, fled
between two tepees to find himself cornered against a high earth bank.

There was no escape for White Fang.  The only way out was between the two
tepees, and this the boy guarded.  Holding his club prepared to strike,
he drew in on his cornered quarry.  White Fang was furious.  He faced the
boy, bristling and snarling, his sense of justice outraged.  He knew the
law of forage.  All the wastage of meat, such as the frozen chips,
belonged to the dog that found it.  He had done no wrong, broken no law,
yet here was this boy preparing to give him a beating.  White Fang
scarcely knew what happened.  He did it in a surge of rage.  And he did
it so quickly that the boy did not know either.  All the boy knew was
that he had in some unaccountable way been overturned into the snow, and
that his club-hand had been ripped wide open by White Fang's teeth.

But White Fang knew that he had broken the law of the gods.  He had
driven his teeth into the sacred flesh of one of them, and could expect
nothing but a most terrible punishment.  He fled away to Grey Beaver,
behind whose protecting legs he crouched when the bitten boy and the
boy's family came, demanding vengeance.  But they went away with
vengeance unsatisfied.  Grey Beaver defended White Fang.  So did Mit-sah
and Kloo-kooch.  White Fang, listening to the wordy war and watching the
angry gestures, knew that his act was justified.  And so it came that he
learned there were gods and gods.  There were his gods, and there were
other gods, and between them there was a difference.  Justice or
injustice, it was all the same, he must take all things from the hands of
his own gods.  But he was not compelled to take injustice from the other
gods.  It was his privilege to resent it with his teeth.  And this also
was a law of the gods.

Before the day was out, White Fang was to learn more about this law.  Mit-
sah, alone, gathering firewood in the forest, encountered the boy that
had been bitten.  With him were other boys.  Hot words passed.  Then all
the boys attacked Mit-sah.  It was going hard with him.  Blows were
raining upon him from all sides.  White Fang looked on at first.  This
was an affair of the gods, and no concern of his.  Then he realised that
this was Mit-sah, one of his own particular gods, who was being
maltreated.  It was no reasoned impulse that made White Fang do what he
then did.  A mad rush of anger sent him leaping in amongst the
combatants.  Five minutes later the landscape was covered with fleeing
boys, many of whom dripped blood upon the snow in token that White Fang's
teeth had not been idle.  When Mit-sah told the story in camp, Grey
Beaver ordered meat to be given to White Fang.  He ordered much meat to
be given, and White Fang, gorged and sleepy by the fire, knew that the
law had received its verification.

It was in line with these experiences that White Fang came to learn the
law of property and the duty of the defence of property.  From the
protection of his god's body to the protection of his god's possessions
was a step, and this step he made.  What was his god's was to be defended
against all the world--even to the extent of biting other gods.  Not only
was such an act sacrilegious in its nature, but it was fraught with
peril.  The gods were all-powerful, and a dog was no match against them;
yet White Fang learned to face them, fiercely belligerent and unafraid.
Duty rose above fear, and thieving gods learned to leave Grey Beaver's
property alone.

One thing, in this connection, White Fang quickly learnt, and that was
that a thieving god was usually a cowardly god and prone to run away at
the sounding of the alarm.  Also, he learned that but brief time elapsed
between his sounding of the alarm and Grey Beaver coming to his aid.  He
came to know that it was not fear of him that drove the thief away, but
fear of Grey Beaver.  White Fang did not give the alarm by barking.  He
never barked.  His method was to drive straight at the intruder, and to
sink his teeth in if he could.  Because he was morose and solitary,
having nothing to do with the other dogs, he was unusually fitted to
guard his master's property; and in this he was encouraged and trained by
Grey Beaver.  One result of this was to make White Fang more ferocious
and indomitable, and more solitary.

The months went by, binding stronger and stronger the covenant between
dog and man.  This was the ancient covenant that the first wolf that came
in from the Wild entered into with man.  And, like all succeeding wolves
and wild dogs that had done likewise, White Fang worked the covenant out
for himself.  The terms were simple.  For the possession of a flesh-and-
blood god, he exchanged his own liberty.  Food and fire, protection and
companionship, were some of the things he received from the god.  In
return, he guarded the god's property, defended his body, worked for him,
and obeyed him.

The possession of a god implies service.  White Fang's was a service of
duty and awe, but not of love.  He did not know what love was.  He had no
experience of love.  Kiche was a remote memory.  Besides, not only had he
abandoned the Wild and his kind when he gave himself up to man, but the
terms of the covenant were such that if ever he met Kiche again he would
not desert his god to go with her.  His allegiance to man seemed somehow
a law of his being greater than the love of liberty, of kind and kin.



CHAPTER VI--THE FAMINE


The spring of the year was at hand when Grey Beaver finished his long
journey.  It was April, and White Fang was a year old when he pulled into
the home villages and was loosed from the harness by Mit-sah.  Though a
long way from his full growth, White Fang, next to Lip-lip, was the
largest yearling in the village.  Both from his father, the wolf, and
from Kiche, he had inherited stature and strength, and already he was
measuring up alongside the full-grown dogs.  But he had not yet grown
compact.  His body was slender and rangy, and his strength more stringy
than massive. His coat was the true wolf-grey, and to all appearances he
was true wolf himself.  The quarter-strain of dog he had inherited from
Kiche had left no mark on him physically, though it had played its part
in his mental make-up.

He wandered through the village, recognising with staid satisfaction the
various gods he had known before the long journey.  Then there were the
dogs, puppies growing up like himself, and grown dogs that did not look
so large and formidable as the memory pictures he retained of them.  Also,
he stood less in fear of them than formerly, stalking among them with a
certain careless ease that was as new to him as it was enjoyable.

There was Baseek, a grizzled old fellow that in his younger days had but
to uncover his fangs to send White Fang cringing and crouching to the
right about.  From him White Fang had learned much of his own
insignificance; and from him he was now to learn much of the change and
development that had taken place in himself.  While Baseek had been
growing weaker with age, White Fang had been growing stronger with youth.

It was at the cutting-up of a moose, fresh-killed, that White Fang
learned of the changed relations in which he stood to the dog-world.  He
had got for himself a hoof and part of the shin-bone, to which quite a
bit of meat was attached.  Withdrawn from the immediate scramble of the
other dogs--in fact out of sight behind a thicket--he was devouring his
prize, when Baseek rushed in upon him.  Before he knew what he was doing,
he had slashed the intruder twice and sprung clear.  Baseek was surprised
by the other's temerity and swiftness of attack.  He stood, gazing
stupidly across at White Fang, the raw, red shin-bone between them.

Baseek was old, and already he had come to know the increasing valour of
the dogs it had been his wont to bully.  Bitter experiences these, which,
perforce, he swallowed, calling upon all his wisdom to cope with them.  In
the old days he would have sprung upon White Fang in a fury of righteous
wrath.  But now his waning powers would not permit such a course.  He
bristled fiercely and looked ominously across the shin-bone at White
Fang.  And White Fang, resurrecting quite a deal of the old awe, seemed
to wilt and to shrink in upon himself and grow small, as he cast about in
his mind for a way to beat a retreat not too inglorious.

And right here Baseek erred.  Had he contented himself with looking
fierce and ominous, all would have been well.  White Fang, on the verge
of retreat, would have retreated, leaving the meat to him.  But Baseek
did not wait.  He considered the victory already his and stepped forward
to the meat.  As he bent his head carelessly to smell it, White Fang
bristled slightly.  Even then it was not too late for Baseek to retrieve
the situation.  Had he merely stood over the meat, head up and glowering,
White Fang would ultimately have slunk away.  But the fresh meat was
strong in Baseek's nostrils, and greed urged him to take a bite of it.

This was too much for White Fang.  Fresh upon his months of mastery over
his own team-mates, it was beyond his self-control to stand idly by while
another devoured the meat that belonged to him.  He struck, after his
custom, without warning.  With the first slash, Baseek's right ear was
ripped into ribbons.  He was astounded at the suddenness of it.  But more
things, and most grievous ones, were happening with equal suddenness.  He
was knocked off his feet.  His throat was bitten.  While he was
struggling to his feet the young dog sank teeth twice into his shoulder.
The swiftness of it was bewildering.  He made a futile rush at White
Fang, clipping the empty air with an outraged snap.  The next moment his
nose was laid open, and he was staggering backward away from the meat.

The situation was now reversed.  White Fang stood over the shin-bone,
bristling and menacing, while Baseek stood a little way off, preparing to
retreat.  He dared not risk a fight with this young lightning-flash, and
again he knew, and more bitterly, the enfeeblement of oncoming age.  His
attempt to maintain his dignity was heroic.  Calmly turning his back upon
young dog and shin-bone, as though both were beneath his notice and
unworthy of his consideration, he stalked grandly away.  Nor, until well
out of sight, did he stop to lick his bleeding wounds.

The effect on White Fang was to give him a greater faith in himself, and
a greater pride.  He walked less softly among the grown dogs; his
attitude toward them was less compromising.  Not that he went out of his
way looking for trouble.  Far from it.  But upon his way he demanded
consideration.  He stood upon his right to go his way unmolested and to
give trail to no dog.  He had to be taken into account, that was all.  He
was no longer to be disregarded and ignored, as was the lot of puppies,
and as continued to be the lot of the puppies that were his team-mates.
They got out of the way, gave trail to the grown dogs, and gave up meat
to them under compulsion.  But White Fang, uncompanionable, solitary,
morose, scarcely looking to right or left, redoubtable, forbidding of
aspect, remote and alien, was accepted as an equal by his puzzled elders.
They quickly learned to leave him alone, neither venturing hostile acts
nor making overtures of friendliness.  If they left him alone, he left
them alone--a state of affairs that they found, after a few encounters,
to be pre-eminently desirable.

In midsummer White Fang had an experience.  Trotting along in his silent
way to investigate a new tepee which had been erected on the edge of the
village while he was away with the hunters after moose, he came full upon
Kiche.  He paused and looked at her.  He remembered her vaguely, but he
_remembered_ her, and that was more than could be said for her.  She
lifted her lip at him in the old snarl of menace, and his memory became
clear.  His forgotten cubhood, all that was associated with that familiar
snarl, rushed back to him.  Before he had known the gods, she had been to
him the centre-pin of the universe.  The old familiar feelings of that
time came back upon him, surged up within him.  He bounded towards her
joyously, and she met him with shrewd fangs that laid his cheek open to
the bone.  He did not understand.  He backed away, bewildered and
puzzled.

But it was not Kiche's fault.  A wolf-mother was not made to remember her
cubs of a year or so before.  So she did not remember White Fang.  He was
a strange animal, an intruder; and her present litter of puppies gave her
the right to resent such intrusion.

One of the puppies sprawled up to White Fang.  They were half-brothers,
only they did not know it.  White Fang sniffed the puppy curiously,
whereupon Kiche rushed upon him, gashing his face a second time.  He
backed farther away.  All the old memories and associations died down
again and passed into the grave from which they had been resurrected.  He
looked at Kiche licking her puppy and stopping now and then to snarl at
him.  She was without value to him.  He had learned to get along without
her.  Her meaning was forgotten.  There was no place for her in his
scheme of things, as there was no place for him in hers.

He was still standing, stupid and bewildered, the memories forgotten,
wondering what it was all about, when Kiche attacked him a third time,
intent on driving him away altogether from the vicinity.  And White Fang
allowed himself to be driven away.  This was a female of his kind, and it
was a law of his kind that the males must not fight the females.  He did
not know anything about this law, for it was no generalisation of the
mind, not a something acquired by experience of the world.  He knew it as
a secret prompting, as an urge of instinct--of the same instinct that
made him howl at the moon and stars of nights, and that made him fear
death and the unknown.

The months went by.  White Fang grew stronger, heavier, and more compact,
while his character was developing along the lines laid down by his
heredity and his environment.  His heredity was a life-stuff that may be
likened to clay.  It possessed many possibilities, was capable of being
moulded into many different forms.  Environment served to model the clay,
to give it a particular form.  Thus, had White Fang never come in to the
fires of man, the Wild would have moulded him into a true wolf.  But the
gods had given him a different environment, and he was moulded into a dog
that was rather wolfish, but that was a dog and not a wolf.

And so, according to the clay of his nature and the pressure of his
surroundings, his character was being moulded into a certain particular
shape.  There was no escaping it.  He was becoming more morose, more
uncompanionable, more solitary, more ferocious; while the dogs were
learning more and more that it was better to be at peace with him than at
war, and Grey Beaver was coming to prize him more greatly with the
passage of each day.

White Fang, seeming to sum up strength in all his qualities, nevertheless
suffered from one besetting weakness.  He could not stand being laughed
at.  The laughter of men was a hateful thing.  They might laugh among
themselves about anything they pleased except himself, and he did not
mind.  But the moment laughter was turned upon him he would fly into a
most terrible rage.  Grave, dignified, sombre, a laugh made him frantic
to ridiculousness.  It so outraged him and upset him that for hours he
would behave like a demon.  And woe to the dog that at such times ran
foul of him.  He knew the law too well to take it out of Grey Beaver;
behind Grey Beaver were a club and godhead.  But behind the dogs there
was nothing but space, and into this space they flew when White Fang came
on the scene, made mad by laughter.

In the third year of his life there came a great famine to the Mackenzie
Indians.  In the summer the fish failed.  In the winter the cariboo
forsook their accustomed track.  Moose were scarce, the rabbits almost
disappeared, hunting and preying animals perished.  Denied their usual
food-supply, weakened by hunger, they fell upon and devoured one another.
Only the strong survived.  White Fang's gods were always hunting animals.
The old and the weak of them died of hunger.  There was wailing in the
village, where the women and children went without in order that what
little they had might go into the bellies of the lean and hollow-eyed
hunters who trod the forest in the vain pursuit of meat.

To such extremity were the gods driven that they ate the soft-tanned
leather of their mocassins and mittens, while the dogs ate the harnesses
off their backs and the very whip-lashes.  Also, the dogs ate one
another, and also the gods ate the dogs.  The weakest and the more
worthless were eaten first.  The dogs that still lived, looked on and
understood.  A few of the boldest and wisest forsook the fires of the
gods, which had now become a shambles, and fled into the forest, where,
in the end, they starved to death or were eaten by wolves.

In this time of misery, White Fang, too, stole away into the woods.  He
was better fitted for the life than the other dogs, for he had the
training of his cubhood to guide him.  Especially adept did he become in
stalking small living things.  He would lie concealed for hours,
following every movement of a cautious tree-squirrel, waiting, with a
patience as huge as the hunger he suffered from, until the squirrel
ventured out upon the ground.  Even then, White Fang was not premature.
He waited until he was sure of striking before the squirrel could gain a
tree-refuge.  Then, and not until then, would he flash from his hiding-
place, a grey projectile, incredibly swift, never failing its mark--the
fleeing squirrel that fled not fast enough.

Successful as he was with squirrels, there was one difficulty that
prevented him from living and growing fat on them.  There were not enough
squirrels.  So he was driven to hunt still smaller things.  So acute did
his hunger become at times that he was not above rooting out wood-mice
from their burrows in the ground.  Nor did he scorn to do battle with a
weasel as hungry as himself and many times more ferocious.

In the worst pinches of the famine he stole back to the fires of the
gods.  But he did not go into the fires.  He lurked in the forest,
avoiding discovery and robbing the snares at the rare intervals when game
was caught.  He even robbed Grey Beaver's snare of a rabbit at a time
when Grey Beaver staggered and tottered through the forest, sitting down
often to rest, what of weakness and of shortness of breath.

One day White Fang encountered a young wolf, gaunt and scrawny, loose-
jointed with famine.  Had he not been hungry himself, White Fang might
have gone with him and eventually found his way into the pack amongst his
wild brethren.  As it was, he ran the young wolf down and killed and ate
him.

Fortune seemed to favour him.  Always, when hardest pressed for food, he
found something to kill.  Again, when he was weak, it was his luck that
none of the larger preying animals chanced upon him.  Thus, he was strong
from the two days' eating a lynx had afforded him when the hungry wolf-
pack ran full tilt upon him.  It was a long, cruel chase, but he was
better nourished than they, and in the end outran them.  And not only did
he outrun them, but, circling widely back on his track, he gathered in
one of his exhausted pursuers.

After that he left that part of the country and journeyed over to the
valley wherein he had been born.  Here, in the old lair, he encountered
Kiche.  Up to her old tricks, she, too, had fled the inhospitable fires
of the gods and gone back to her old refuge to give birth to her young.
Of this litter but one remained alive when White Fang came upon the
scene, and this one was not destined to live long.  Young life had little
chance in such a famine.

Kiche's greeting of her grown son was anything but affectionate.  But
White Fang did not mind.  He had outgrown his mother.  So he turned tail
philosophically and trotted on up the stream.  At the forks he took the
turning to the left, where he found the lair of the lynx with whom his
mother and he had fought long before.  Here, in the abandoned lair, he
settled down and rested for a day.

During the early summer, in the last days of the famine, he met Lip-lip,
who had likewise taken to the woods, where he had eked out a miserable
existence.

White Fang came upon him unexpectedly.  Trotting in opposite directions
along the base of a high bluff, they rounded a corner of rock and found
themselves face to face.  They paused with instant alarm, and looked at
each other suspiciously.

White Fang was in splendid condition.  His hunting had been good, and for
a week he had eaten his fill.  He was even gorged from his latest kill.
But in the moment he looked at Lip-lip his hair rose on end all along his
back.  It was an involuntary bristling on his part, the physical state
that in the past had always accompanied the mental state produced in him
by Lip-lip's bullying and persecution.  As in the past he had bristled
and snarled at sight of Lip-lip, so now, and automatically, he bristled
and snarled.  He did not waste any time.  The thing was done thoroughly
and with despatch.  Lip-lip essayed to back away, but White Fang struck
him hard, shoulder to shoulder.  Lip-lip was overthrown and rolled upon
his back.  White Fang's teeth drove into the scrawny throat.  There was a
death-struggle, during which White Fang walked around, stiff-legged and
observant.  Then he resumed his course and trotted on along the base of
the bluff.

One day, not long after, he came to the edge of the forest, where a
narrow stretch of open land sloped down to the Mackenzie.  He had been
over this ground before, when it was bare, but now a village occupied it.
Still hidden amongst the trees, he paused to study the situation.  Sights
and sounds and scents were familiar to him.  It was the old village
changed to a new place.  But sights and sounds and smells were different
from those he had last had when he fled away from it.  There was no
whimpering nor wailing.  Contented sounds saluted his ear, and when he
heard the angry voice of a woman he knew it to be the anger that proceeds
from a full stomach.  And there was a smell in the air of fish.  There
was food.  The famine was gone.  He came out boldly from the forest and
trotted into camp straight to Grey Beaver's tepee.  Grey Beaver was not
there; but Kloo-kooch welcomed him with glad cries and the whole of a
fresh-caught fish, and he lay down to wait Grey Beaver's coming.




PART IV


CHAPTER I--THE ENEMY OF HIS KIND


Had there been in White Fang's nature any possibility, no matter how
remote, of his ever coming to fraternise with his kind, such possibility
was irretrievably destroyed when he was made leader of the sled-team.  For
now the dogs hated him--hated him for the extra meat bestowed upon him by
Mit-sah; hated him for all the real and fancied favours he received;
hated him for that he fled always at the head of the team, his waving
brush of a tail and his perpetually retreating hind-quarters for ever
maddening their eyes.

And White Fang just as bitterly hated them back.  Being sled-leader was
anything but gratifying to him.  To be compelled to run away before the
yelling pack, every dog of which, for three years, he had thrashed and
mastered, was almost more than he could endure.  But endure it he must,
or perish, and the life that was in him had no desire to perish out.  The
moment Mit-sah gave his order for the start, that moment the whole team,
with eager, savage cries, sprang forward at White Fang.

There was no defence for him.  If he turned upon them, Mit-sah would
throw the stinging lash of the whip into his face.  Only remained to him
to run away.  He could not encounter that howling horde with his tail and
hind-quarters.  These were scarcely fit weapons with which to meet the
many merciless fangs.  So run away he did, violating his own nature and
pride with every leap he made, and leaping all day long.

One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that
nature recoil upon itself.  Such a recoil is like that of a hair, made to
grow out from the body, turning unnaturally upon the direction of its
growth and growing into the body--a rankling, festering thing of hurt.
And so with White Fang.  Every urge of his being impelled him to spring
upon the pack that cried at his heels, but it was the will of the gods
that this should not be; and behind the will, to enforce it, was the whip
of cariboo-gut with its biting thirty-foot lash.  So White Fang could
only eat his heart in bitterness and develop a hatred and malice
commensurate with the ferocity and indomitability of his nature.

If ever a creature was the enemy of its kind, White Fang was that
creature.  He asked no quarter, gave none.  He was continually marred and
scarred by the teeth of the pack, and as continually he left his own
marks upon the pack.  Unlike most leaders, who, when camp was made and
the dogs were unhitched, huddled near to the gods for protection, White
Fang disdained such protection.  He walked boldly about the camp,
inflicting punishment in the night for what he had suffered in the day.
In the time before he was made leader of the team, the pack had learned
to get out of his way.  But now it was different.  Excited by the day-
long pursuit of him, swayed subconsciously by the insistent iteration on
their brains of the sight of him fleeing away, mastered by the feeling of
mastery enjoyed all day, the dogs could not bring themselves to give way
to him.  When he appeared amongst them, there was always a squabble.  His
progress was marked by snarl and snap and growl.  The very atmosphere he
breathed was surcharged with hatred and malice, and this but served to
increase the hatred and malice within him.

When Mit-sah cried out his command for the team to stop, White Fang
obeyed.  At first this caused trouble for the other dogs.  All of them
would spring upon the hated leader only to find the tables turned.  Behind
him would be Mit-sah, the great whip singing in his hand.  So the dogs
came to understand that when the team stopped by order, White Fang was to
be let alone.  But when White Fang stopped without orders, then it was
allowed them to spring upon him and destroy him if they could.  After
several experiences, White Fang never stopped without orders.  He learned
quickly.  It was in the nature of things, that he must learn quickly if
he were to survive the unusually severe conditions under which life was
vouchsafed him.

But the dogs could never learn the lesson to leave him alone in camp.
Each day, pursuing him and crying defiance at him, the lesson of the
previous night was erased, and that night would have to be learned over
again, to be as immediately forgotten.  Besides, there was a greater
consistence in their dislike of him.  They sensed between themselves and
him a difference of kind--cause sufficient in itself for hostility.  Like
him, they were domesticated wolves.  But they had been domesticated for
generations.  Much of the Wild had been lost, so that to them the Wild
was the unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing and ever warring.  But
to him, in appearance and action and impulse, still clung the Wild.  He
symbolised it, was its personification: so that when they showed their
teeth to him they were defending themselves against the powers of
destruction that lurked in the shadows of the forest and in the dark
beyond the camp-fire.

But there was one lesson the dogs did learn, and that was to keep
together.  White Fang was too terrible for any of them to face single-
handed.  They met him with the mass-formation, otherwise he would have
killed them, one by one, in a night.  As it was, he never had a chance to
kill them.  He might roll a dog off its feet, but the pack would be upon
him before he could follow up and deliver the deadly throat-stroke.  At
the first hint of conflict, the whole team drew together and faced him.
The dogs had quarrels among themselves, but these were forgotten when
trouble was brewing with White Fang.

On the other hand, try as they would, they could not kill White Fang.  He
was too quick for them, too formidable, too wise.  He avoided tight
places and always backed out of it when they bade fair to surround him.
While, as for getting him off his feet, there was no dog among them
capable of doing the trick.  His feet clung to the earth with the same
tenacity that he clung to life.  For that matter, life and footing were
synonymous in this unending warfare with the pack, and none knew it
better than White Fang.

So he became the enemy of his kind, domesticated wolves that they were,
softened by the fires of man, weakened in the sheltering shadow of man's
strength.  White Fang was bitter and implacable.  The clay of him was so
moulded.  He declared a vendetta against all dogs.  And so terribly did
he live this vendetta that Grey Beaver, fierce savage himself, could not
but marvel at White Fang's ferocity.  Never, he swore, had there been the
like of this animal; and the Indians in strange villages swore likewise
when they considered the tale of his killings amongst their dogs.

When White Fang was nearly five years old, Grey Beaver took him on
another great journey, and long remembered was the havoc he worked
amongst the dogs of the many villages along the Mackenzie, across the
Rockies, and down the Porcupine to the Yukon.  He revelled in the
vengeance he wreaked upon his kind.  They were ordinary, unsuspecting
dogs.  They were not prepared for his swiftness and directness, for his
attack without warning.  They did not know him for what he was, a
lightning-flash of slaughter.  They bristled up to him, stiff-legged and
challenging, while he, wasting no time on elaborate preliminaries,
snapping into action like a steel spring, was at their throats and
destroying them before they knew what was happening and while they were
yet in the throes of surprise.

He became an adept at fighting.  He economised.  He never wasted his
strength, never tussled.  He was in too quickly for that, and, if he
missed, was out again too quickly.  The dislike of the wolf for close
quarters was his to an unusual degree.  He could not endure a prolonged
contact with another body.  It smacked of danger.  It made him frantic.
He must be away, free, on his own legs, touching no living thing.  It was
the Wild still clinging to him, asserting itself through him.  This
feeling had been accentuated by the Ishmaelite life he had led from his
puppyhood.  Danger lurked in contacts.  It was the trap, ever the trap,
the fear of it lurking deep in the life of him, woven into the fibre of
him.

In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered had no chance against
him.  He eluded their fangs.  He got them, or got away, himself untouched
in either event.  In the natural course of things there were exceptions
to this.  There were times when several dogs, pitching on to him,
punished him before he could get away; and there were times when a single
dog scored deeply on him.  But these were accidents.  In the main, so
efficient a fighter had he become, he went his way unscathed.

Another advantage he possessed was that of correctly judging time and
distance.  Not that he did this consciously, however.  He did not
calculate such things.  It was all automatic.  His eyes saw correctly,
and the nerves carried the vision correctly to his brain.  The parts of
him were better adjusted than those of the average dog.  They worked
together more smoothly and steadily.  His was a better, far better,
nervous, mental, and muscular co-ordination.  When his eyes conveyed to
his brain the moving image of an action, his brain without conscious
effort, knew the space that limited that action and the time required for
its completion.  Thus, he could avoid the leap of another dog, or the
drive of its fangs, and at the same moment could seize the infinitesimal
fraction of time in which to deliver his own attack.  Body and brain, his
was a more perfected mechanism.  Not that he was to be praised for it.
Nature had been more generous to him than to the average animal, that was
all.

It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon.  Grey Beaver
had crossed the great watershed between Mackenzie and the Yukon in the
late winter, and spent the spring in hunting among the western outlying
spurs of the Rockies.  Then, after the break-up of the ice on the
Porcupine, he had built a canoe and paddled down that stream to where it
effected its junction with the Yukon just under the Arctic circle.  Here
stood the old Hudson's Bay Company fort; and here were many Indians, much
food, and unprecedented excitement.  It was the summer of 1898, and
thousands of gold-hunters were going up the Yukon to Dawson and the
Klondike.  Still hundreds of miles from their goal, nevertheless many of
them had been on the way for a year, and the least any of them had
travelled to get that far was five thousand miles, while some had come
from the other side of the world.

Here Grey Beaver stopped.  A whisper of the gold-rush had reached his
ears, and he had come with several bales of furs, and another of gut-sewn
mittens and moccasins.  He would not have ventured so long a trip had he
not expected generous profits.  But what he had expected was nothing to
what he realised.  His wildest dreams had not exceeded a hundred per
cent. profit; he made a thousand per cent.  And like a true Indian, he
settled down to trade carefully and slowly, even if it took all summer
and the rest of the winter to dispose of his goods.

It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men.  As
compared with the Indians he had known, they were to him another race of
beings, a race of superior gods.  They impressed him as possessing
superior power, and it is on power that godhead rests.  White Fang did
not reason it out, did not in his mind make the sharp generalisation that
the white gods were more powerful.  It was a feeling, nothing more, and
yet none the less potent.  As, in his puppyhood, the looming bulks of the
tepees, man-reared, had affected him as manifestations of power, so was
he affected now by the houses and the huge fort all of massive logs.  Here
was power.  Those white gods were strong.  They possessed greater mastery
over matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among which was
Grey Beaver.  And yet Grey Beaver was as a child-god among these white-
skinned ones.

To be sure, White Fang only felt these things.  He was not conscious of
them.  Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking, that animals
act; and every act White Fang now performed was based upon the feeling
that the white men were the superior gods.  In the first place he was
very suspicious of them.  There was no telling what unknown terrors were
theirs, what unknown hurts they could administer.  He was curious to
observe them, fearful of being noticed by them.  For the first few hours
he was content with slinking around and watching them from a safe
distance.  Then he saw that no harm befell the dogs that were near to
them, and he came in closer.

In turn he was an object of great curiosity to them.  His wolfish
appearance caught their eyes at once, and they pointed him out to one
another.  This act of pointing put White Fang on his guard, and when they
tried to approach him he showed his teeth and backed away.  Not one
succeeded in laying a hand on him, and it was well that they did not.

White Fang soon learned that very few of these gods--not more than a
dozen--lived at this place.  Every two or three days a steamer (another
and colossal manifestation of power) came into the bank and stopped for
several hours.  The white men came from off these steamers and went away
on them again.  There seemed untold numbers of these white men.  In the
first day or so, he saw more of them than he had seen Indians in all his
life; and as the days went by they continued to come up the river, stop,
and then go on up the river out of sight.

But if the white gods were all-powerful, their dogs did not amount to
much.  This White Fang quickly discovered by mixing with those that came
ashore with their masters.  They were irregular shapes and sizes.  Some
were short-legged--too short; others were long-legged--too long.  They
had hair instead of fur, and a few had very little hair at that.  And
none of them knew how to fight.

As an enemy of his kind, it was in White Fang's province to fight with
them.  This he did, and he quickly achieved for them a mighty contempt.
They were soft and helpless, made much noise, and floundered around
clumsily trying to accomplish by main strength what he accomplished by
dexterity and cunning.  They rushed bellowing at him.  He sprang to the
side.  They did not know what had become of him; and in that moment he
struck them on the shoulder, rolling them off their feet and delivering
his stroke at the throat.

Sometimes this stroke was successful, and a stricken dog rolled in the
dirt, to be pounced upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian dogs
that waited.  White Fang was wise.  He had long since learned that the
gods were made angry when their dogs were killed.  The white men were no
exception to this.  So he was content, when he had overthrown and slashed
wide the throat of one of their dogs, to drop back and let the pack go in
and do the cruel finishing work.  It was then that the white men rushed
in, visiting their wrath heavily on the pack, while White Fang went free.
He would stand off at a little distance and look on, while stones, clubs,
axes, and all sorts of weapons fell upon his fellows.  White Fang was
very wise.

But his fellows grew wise in their own way; and in this White Fang grew
wise with them.  They learned that it was when a steamer first tied to
the bank that they had their fun.  After the first two or three strange
dogs had been downed and destroyed, the white men hustled their own
animals back on board and wreaked savage vengeance on the offenders.  One
white man, having seen his dog, a setter, torn to pieces before his eyes,
drew a revolver.  He fired rapidly, six times, and six of the pack lay
dead or dying--another manifestation of power that sank deep into White
Fang's consciousness.

White Fang enjoyed it all.  He did not love his kind, and he was shrewd
enough to escape hurt himself.  At first, the killing of the white men's
dogs had been a diversion.  After a time it became his occupation.  There
was no work for him to do.  Grey Beaver was busy trading and getting
wealthy.  So White Fang hung around the landing with the disreputable
gang of Indian dogs, waiting for steamers.  With the arrival of a steamer
the fun began.  After a few minutes, by the time the white men had got
over their surprise, the gang scattered.  The fun was over until the next
steamer should arrive.

But it can scarcely be said that White Fang was a member of the gang.  He
did not mingle with it, but remained aloof, always himself, and was even
feared by it.  It is true, he worked with it.  He picked the quarrel with
the strange dog while the gang waited.  And when he had overthrown the
strange dog the gang went in to finish it.  But it is equally true that
he then withdrew, leaving the gang to receive the punishment of the
outraged gods.

It did not require much exertion to pick these quarrels.  All he had to
do, when the strange dogs came ashore, was to show himself.  When they
saw him they rushed for him.  It was their instinct.  He was the Wild--the
unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing, the thing that prowled in the
darkness around the fires of the primeval world when they, cowering close
to the fires, were reshaping their instincts, learning to fear the Wild
out of which they had come, and which they had deserted and betrayed.
Generation by generation, down all the generations, had this fear of the
Wild been stamped into their natures.  For centuries the Wild had stood
for terror and destruction.  And during all this time free licence had
been theirs, from their masters, to kill the things of the Wild.  In
doing this they had protected both themselves and the gods whose
companionship they shared.

And so, fresh from the soft southern world, these dogs, trotting down the
gang-plank and out upon the Yukon shore had but to see White Fang to
experience the irresistible impulse to rush upon him and destroy him.
They might be town-reared dogs, but the instinctive fear of the Wild was
theirs just the same.  Not alone with their own eyes did they see the
wolfish creature in the clear light of day, standing before them.  They
saw him with the eyes of their ancestors, and by their inherited memory
they knew White Fang for the wolf, and they remembered the ancient feud.

All of which served to make White Fang's days enjoyable.  If the sight of
him drove these strange dogs upon him, so much the better for him, so
much the worse for them.  They looked upon him as legitimate prey, and as
legitimate prey he looked upon them.

Not for nothing had he first seen the light of day in a lonely lair and
fought his first fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and the lynx.  And
not for nothing had his puppyhood been made bitter by the persecution of
Lip-lip and the whole puppy pack.  It might have been otherwise, and he
would then have been otherwise.  Had Lip-lip not existed, he would have
passed his puppyhood with the other puppies and grown up more doglike and
with more liking for dogs.  Had Grey Beaver possessed the plummet of
affection and love, he might have sounded the deeps of White Fang's
nature and brought up to the surface all manner of kindly qualities.  But
these things had not been so.  The clay of White Fang had been moulded
until he became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious,
the enemy of all his kind.



CHAPTER II--THE MAD GOD


A small number of white men lived in Fort Yukon.  These men had been long
in the country.  They called themselves Sour-doughs, and took great pride
in so classifying themselves.  For other men, new in the land, they felt
nothing but disdain.  The men who came ashore from the steamers were
newcomers.  They were known as _chechaquos_, and they always wilted at
the application of the name.  They made their bread with baking-powder.
This was the invidious distinction between them and the Sour-doughs, who,
forsooth, made their bread from sour-dough because they had no baking-
powder.

All of which is neither here nor there.  The men in the fort disdained
the newcomers and enjoyed seeing them come to grief.  Especially did they
enjoy the havoc worked amongst the newcomers' dogs by White Fang and his
disreputable gang.  When a steamer arrived, the men of the fort made it a
point always to come down to the bank and see the fun.  They looked
forward to it with as much anticipation as did the Indian dogs, while
they were not slow to appreciate the savage and crafty part played by
White Fang.

But there was one man amongst them who particularly enjoyed the sport.  He
would come running at the first sound of a steamboat's whistle; and when
the last fight was over and White Fang and the pack had scattered, he
would return slowly to the fort, his face heavy with regret.  Sometimes,
when a soft southland dog went down, shrieking its death-cry under the
fangs of the pack, this man would be unable to contain himself, and would
leap into the air and cry out with delight.  And always he had a sharp
and covetous eye for White Fang.

This man was called "Beauty" by the other men of the fort.  No one knew
his first name, and in general he was known in the country as Beauty
Smith.  But he was anything save a beauty.  To antithesis was due his
naming.  He was pre-eminently unbeautiful.  Nature had been niggardly
with him.  He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame
was deposited an even more strikingly meagre head.  Its apex might be
likened to a point.  In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been named
Beauty by his fellows, he had been called "Pinhead."

Backward, from the apex, his head slanted down to his neck and forward it
slanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably wide forehead.
Beginning here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature had spread his
features with a lavish hand.  His eyes were large, and between them was
the distance of two eyes.  His face, in relation to the rest of him, was
prodigious.  In order to discover the necessary area, Nature had given
him an enormous prognathous jaw.  It was wide and heavy, and protruded
outward and down until it seemed to rest on his chest.  Possibly this
appearance was due to the weariness of the slender neck, unable properly
to support so great a burden.

This jaw gave the impression of ferocious determination.  But something
lacked.  Perhaps it was from excess.  Perhaps the jaw was too large.  At
any rate, it was a lie.  Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the
weakest of weak-kneed and snivelling cowards.  To complete his
description, his teeth were large and yellow, while the two eye-teeth,
larger than their fellows, showed under his lean lips like fangs.  His
eyes were yellow and muddy, as though Nature had run short on pigments
and squeezed together the dregs of all her tubes.  It was the same with
his hair, sparse and irregular of growth, muddy-yellow and dirty-yellow,
rising on his head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected tufts and
bunches, in appearance like clumped and wind-blown grain.

In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it lay
elsewhere.  He was not responsible.  The clay of him had been so moulded
in the making.  He did the cooking for the other men in the fort, the
dish-washing and the drudgery.  They did not despise him.  Rather did
they tolerate him in a broad human way, as one tolerates any creature
evilly treated in the making.  Also, they feared him.  His cowardly rages
made them dread a shot in the back or poison in their coffee.  But
somebody had to do the cooking, and whatever else his shortcomings,
Beauty Smith could cook.

This was the man that looked at White Fang, delighted in his ferocious
prowess, and desired to possess him.  He made overtures to White Fang
from the first.  White Fang began by ignoring him.  Later on, when the
overtures became more insistent, White Fang bristled and bared his teeth
and backed away.  He did not like the man.  The feel of him was bad.  He
sensed the evil in him, and feared the extended hand and the attempts at
soft-spoken speech.  Because of all this, he hated the man.

With the simpler creatures, good and bad are things simply understood.
The good stands for all things that bring easement and satisfaction and
surcease from pain.  Therefore, the good is liked.  The bad stands for
all things that are fraught with discomfort, menace, and hurt, and is
hated accordingly.  White Fang's feel of Beauty Smith was bad.  From the
man's distorted body and twisted mind, in occult ways, like mists rising
from malarial marshes, came emanations of the unhealth within.  Not by
reasoning, not by the five senses alone, but by other and remoter and
uncharted senses, came the feeling to White Fang that the man was ominous
with evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, and therefore a thing bad, and
wisely to be hated.

White Fang was in Grey Beaver's camp when Beauty Smith first visited it.
At the faint sound of his distant feet, before he came in sight, White
Fang knew who was coming and began to bristle.  He had been lying down in
an abandon of comfort, but he arose quickly, and, as the man arrived,
slid away in true wolf-fashion to the edge of the camp.  He did not know
what they said, but he could see the man and Grey Beaver talking
together.  Once, the man pointed at him, and White Fang snarled back as
though the hand were just descending upon him instead of being, as it
was, fifty feet away.  The man laughed at this; and White Fang slunk away
to the sheltering woods, his head turned to observe as he glided softly
over the ground.

Grey Beaver refused to sell the dog.  He had grown rich with his trading
and stood in need of nothing.  Besides, White Fang was a valuable animal,
the strongest sled-dog he had ever owned, and the best leader.
Furthermore, there was no dog like him on the Mackenzie nor the Yukon.  He
could fight.  He killed other dogs as easily as men killed mosquitoes.
(Beauty Smith's eyes lighted up at this, and he licked his thin lips with
an eager tongue).  No, White Fang was not for sale at any price.

But Beauty Smith knew the ways of Indians.  He visited Grey Beaver's camp
often, and hidden under his coat was always a black bottle or so.  One of
the potencies of whisky is the breeding of thirst.  Grey Beaver got the
thirst.  His fevered membranes and burnt stomach began to clamour for
more and more of the scorching fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry by
the unwonted stimulant, permitted him to go any length to obtain it.  The
money he had received for his furs and mittens and moccasins began to go.
It went faster and faster, and the shorter his money-sack grew, the
shorter grew his temper.

In the end his money and goods and temper were all gone.  Nothing
remained to him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that
grew more prodigious with every sober breath he drew.  Then it was that
Beauty Smith had talk with him again about the sale of White Fang; but
this time the price offered was in bottles, not dollars, and Grey
Beaver's ears were more eager to hear.

"You ketch um dog you take um all right," was his last word.

The bottles were delivered, but after two days.  "You ketch um dog," were
Beauty Smith's words to Grey Beaver.

White Fang slunk into camp one evening and dropped down with a sigh of
content.  The dreaded white god was not there.  For days his
manifestations of desire to lay hands on him had been growing more
insistent, and during that time White Fang had been compelled to avoid
the camp.  He did not know what evil was threatened by those insistent
hands.  He knew only that they did threaten evil of some sort, and that
it was best for him to keep out of their reach.

But scarcely had he lain down when Grey Beaver staggered over to him and
tied a leather thong around his neck.  He sat down beside White Fang,
holding the end of the thong in his hand.  In the other hand he held a
bottle, which, from time to time, was inverted above his head to the
accompaniment of gurgling noises.

An hour of this passed, when the vibrations of feet in contact with the
ground foreran the one who approached.  White Fang heard it first, and he
was bristling with recognition while Grey Beaver still nodded stupidly.
White Fang tried to draw the thong softly out of his master's hand; but
the relaxed fingers closed tightly and Grey Beaver roused himself.

Beauty Smith strode into camp and stood over White Fang.  He snarled
softly up at the thing of fear, watching keenly the deportment of the
hands.  One hand extended outward and began to descend upon his head.  His
soft snarl grew tense and harsh.  The hand continued slowly to descend,
while he crouched beneath it, eyeing it malignantly, his snarl growing
shorter and shorter as, with quickening breath, it approached its
culmination.  Suddenly he snapped, striking with his fangs like a snake.
The hand was jerked back, and the teeth came together emptily with a
sharp click.  Beauty Smith was frightened and angry.  Grey Beaver clouted
White Fang alongside the head, so that he cowered down close to the earth
in respectful obedience.

White Fang's suspicious eyes followed every movement.  He saw Beauty
Smith go away and return with a stout club.  Then the end of the thong
was given over to him by Grey Beaver.  Beauty Smith started to walk away.
The thong grew taut.  White Fang resisted it.  Grey Beaver clouted him
right and left to make him get up and follow.  He obeyed, but with a
rush, hurling himself upon the stranger who was dragging him away.  Beauty
Smith did not jump away.  He had been waiting for this.  He swung the
club smartly, stopping the rush midway and smashing White Fang down upon
the ground.  Grey Beaver laughed and nodded approval.  Beauty Smith
tightened the thong again, and White Fang crawled limply and dizzily to
his feet.

He did not rush a second time.  One smash from the club was sufficient to
convince him that the white god knew how to handle it, and he was too
wise to fight the inevitable.  So he followed morosely at Beauty Smith's
heels, his tail between his legs, yet snarling softly under his breath.
But Beauty Smith kept a wary eye on him, and the club was held always
ready to strike.

At the fort Beauty Smith left him securely tied and went in to bed.  White
Fang waited an hour.  Then he applied his teeth to the thong, and in the
space of ten seconds was free.  He had wasted no time with his teeth.
There had been no useless gnawing.  The thong was cut across, diagonally,
almost as clean as though done by a knife.  White Fang looked up at the
fort, at the same time bristling and growling.  Then he turned and
trotted back to Grey Beaver's camp.  He owed no allegiance to this
strange and terrible god.  He had given himself to Grey Beaver, and to
Grey Beaver he considered he still belonged.

But what had occurred before was repeated--with a difference.  Grey
Beaver again made him fast with a thong, and in the morning turned him
over to Beauty Smith.  And here was where the difference came in.  Beauty
Smith gave him a beating.  Tied securely, White Fang could only rage
futilely and endure the punishment.  Club and whip were both used upon
him, and he experienced the worst beating he had ever received in his
life.  Even the big beating given him in his puppyhood by Grey Beaver was
mild compared with this.

Beauty Smith enjoyed the task.  He delighted in it.  He gloated over his
victim, and his eyes flamed dully, as he swung the whip or club and
listened to White Fang's cries of pain and to his helpless bellows and
snarls.  For Beauty Smith was cruel in the way that cowards are cruel.
Cringing and snivelling himself before the blows or angry speech of a
man, he revenged himself, in turn, upon creatures weaker than he.  All
life likes power, and Beauty Smith was no exception.  Denied the
expression of power amongst his own kind, he fell back upon the lesser
creatures and there vindicated the life that was in him.  But Beauty
Smith had not created himself, and no blame was to be attached to him.  He
had come into the world with a twisted body and a brute intelligence.
This had constituted the clay of him, and it had not been kindly moulded
by the world.

White Fang knew why he was being beaten.  When Grey Beaver tied the thong
around his neck, and passed the end of the thong into Beauty Smith's
keeping, White Fang knew that it was his god's will for him to go with
Beauty Smith.  And when Beauty Smith left him tied outside the fort, he
knew that it was Beauty Smith's will that he should remain there.
Therefore, he had disobeyed the will of both the gods, and earned the
consequent punishment.  He had seen dogs change owners in the past, and
he had seen the runaways beaten as he was being beaten.  He was wise, and
yet in the nature of him there were forces greater than wisdom.  One of
these was fidelity.  He did not love Grey Beaver, yet, even in the face
of his will and his anger, he was faithful to him.  He could not help it.
This faithfulness was a quality of the clay that composed him.  It was
the quality that was peculiarly the possession of his kind; the quality
that set apart his species from all other species; the quality that has
enabled the wolf and the wild dog to come in from the open and be the
companions of man.

After the beating, White Fang was dragged back to the fort.  But this
time Beauty Smith left him tied with a stick.  One does not give up a god
easily, and so with White Fang.  Grey Beaver was his own particular god,
and, in spite of Grey Beaver's will, White Fang still clung to him and
would not give him up.  Grey Beaver had betrayed and forsaken him, but
that had no effect upon him.  Not for nothing had he surrendered himself
body and soul to Grey Beaver.  There had been no reservation on White
Fang's part, and the bond was not to be broken easily.

So, in the night, when the men in the fort were asleep, White Fang
applied his teeth to the stick that held him.  The wood was seasoned and
dry, and it was tied so closely to his neck that he could scarcely get
his teeth to it.  It was only by the severest muscular exertion and neck-
arching that he succeeded in getting the wood between his teeth, and
barely between his teeth at that; and it was only by the exercise of an
immense patience, extending through many hours, that he succeeded in
gnawing through the stick.  This was something that dogs were not
supposed to do.  It was unprecedented.  But White Fang did it, trotting
away from the fort in the early morning, with the end of the stick
hanging to his neck.

He was wise.  But had he been merely wise he would not have gone back to
Grey Beaver who had already twice betrayed him.  But there was his
faithfulness, and he went back to be betrayed yet a third time.  Again he
yielded to the tying of a thong around his neck by Grey Beaver, and again
Beauty Smith came to claim him.  And this time he was beaten even more
severely than before.

Grey Beaver looked on stolidly while the white man wielded the whip.  He
gave no protection.  It was no longer his dog.  When the beating was over
White Fang was sick.  A soft southland dog would have died under it, but
not he.  His school of life had been sterner, and he was himself of
sterner stuff.  He had too great vitality.  His clutch on life was too
strong.  But he was very sick.  At first he was unable to drag himself
along, and Beauty Smith had to wait half-an-hour for him.  And then,
blind and reeling, he followed at Beauty Smith's heels back to the fort.

But now he was tied with a chain that defied his teeth, and he strove in
vain, by lunging, to draw the staple from the timber into which it was
driven.  After a few days, sober and bankrupt, Grey Beaver departed up
the Porcupine on his long journey to the Mackenzie.  White Fang remained
on the Yukon, the property of a man more than half mad and all brute.  But
what is a dog to know in its consciousness of madness?  To White Fang,
Beauty Smith was a veritable, if terrible, god.  He was a mad god at
best, but White Fang knew nothing of madness; he knew only that he must
submit to the will of this new master, obey his every whim and fancy.



CHAPTER III--THE REIGN OF HATE


Under the tutelage of the mad god, White Fang became a fiend.  He was
kept chained in a pen at the rear of the fort, and here Beauty Smith
teased and irritated and drove him wild with petty torments.  The man
early discovered White Fang's susceptibility to laughter, and made it a
point after painfully tricking him, to laugh at him.  This laughter was
uproarious and scornful, and at the same time the god pointed his finger
derisively at White Fang.  At such times reason fled from White Fang, and
in his transports of rage he was even more mad than Beauty Smith.

Formerly, White Fang had been merely the enemy of his kind, withal a
ferocious enemy.  He now became the enemy of all things, and more
ferocious than ever.  To such an extent was he tormented, that he hated
blindly and without the faintest spark of reason.  He hated the chain
that bound him, the men who peered in at him through the slats of the
pen, the dogs that accompanied the men and that snarled malignantly at
him in his helplessness.  He hated the very wood of the pen that confined
him.  And, first, last, and most of all, he hated Beauty Smith.

But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that he did to White Fang.  One day
a number of men gathered about the pen.  Beauty Smith entered, club in
hand, and took the chain off from White Fang's neck.  When his master had
gone out, White Fang turned loose and tore around the pen, trying to get
at the men outside.  He was magnificently terrible.  Fully five feet in
length, and standing two and one-half feet at the shoulder, he far
outweighed a wolf of corresponding size.  From his mother he had
inherited the heavier proportions of the dog, so that he weighed, without
any fat and without an ounce of superfluous flesh, over ninety pounds.  It
was all muscle, bone, and sinew-fighting flesh in the finest condition.

The door of the pen was being opened again.  White Fang paused.  Something
unusual was happening.  He waited.  The door was opened wider.  Then a
huge dog was thrust inside, and the door was slammed shut behind him.
White Fang had never seen such a dog (it was a mastiff); but the size and
fierce aspect of the intruder did not deter him.  Here was some thing,
not wood nor iron, upon which to wreak his hate.  He leaped in with a
flash of fangs that ripped down the side of the mastiff's neck.  The
mastiff shook his head, growled hoarsely, and plunged at White Fang.  But
White Fang was here, there, and everywhere, always evading and eluding,
and always leaping in and slashing with his fangs and leaping out again
in time to escape punishment.

The men outside shouted and applauded, while Beauty Smith, in an ecstasy
of delight, gloated over the ripping and mangling performed by White
Fang.  There was no hope for the mastiff from the first.  He was too
ponderous and slow.  In the end, while Beauty Smith beat White Fang back
with a club, the mastiff was dragged out by its owner.  Then there was a
payment of bets, and money clinked in Beauty Smith's hand.

White Fang came to look forward eagerly to the gathering of the men
around his pen.  It meant a fight; and this was the only way that was now
vouchsafed him of expressing the life that was in him.  Tormented,
incited to hate, he was kept a prisoner so that there was no way of
satisfying that hate except at the times his master saw fit to put
another dog against him.  Beauty Smith had estimated his powers well, for
he was invariably the victor.  One day, three dogs were turned in upon
him in succession.  Another day a full-grown wolf, fresh-caught from the
Wild, was shoved in through the door of the pen.  And on still another
day two dogs were set against him at the same time.  This was his
severest fight, and though in the end he killed them both he was himself
half killed in doing it.

In the fall of the year, when the first snows were falling and mush-ice
was running in the river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself and White
Fang on a steamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson.  White Fang had now
achieved a reputation in the land.  As "the Fighting Wolf" he was known
far and wide, and the cage in which he was kept on the steam-boat's deck
was usually surrounded by curious men.  He raged and snarled at them, or
lay quietly and studied them with cold hatred.  Why should he not hate
them?  He never asked himself the question.  He knew only hate and lost
himself in the passion of it.  Life had become a hell to him.  He had not
been made for the close confinement wild beasts endure at the hands of
men.  And yet it was in precisely this way that he was treated.  Men
stared at him, poked sticks between the bars to make him snarl, and then
laughed at him.

They were his environment, these men, and they were moulding the clay of
him into a more ferocious thing than had been intended by Nature.
Nevertheless, Nature had given him plasticity.  Where many another animal
would have died or had its spirit broken, he adjusted himself and lived,
and at no expense of the spirit.  Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend and
tormentor, was capable of breaking White Fang's spirit, but as yet there
were no signs of his succeeding.

If Beauty Smith had in him a devil, White Fang had another; and the two
of them raged against each other unceasingly.  In the days before, White
Fang had had the wisdom to cower down and submit to a man with a club in
his hand; but this wisdom now left him.  The mere sight of Beauty Smith
was sufficient to send him into transports of fury.  And when they came
to close quarters, and he had been beaten back by the club, he went on
growling and snarling, and showing his fangs.  The last growl could never
be extracted from him.  No matter how terribly he was beaten, he had
always another growl; and when Beauty Smith gave up and withdrew, the
defiant growl followed after him, or White Fang sprang at the bars of the
cage bellowing his hatred.

When the steamboat arrived at Dawson, White Fang went ashore.  But he
still lived a public life, in a cage, surrounded by curious men.  He was
exhibited as "the Fighting Wolf," and men paid fifty cents in gold dust
to see him.  He was given no rest.  Did he lie down to sleep, he was
stirred up by a sharp stick--so that the audience might get its money's
worth.  In order to make the exhibition interesting, he was kept in a
rage most of the time.  But worse than all this, was the atmosphere in
which he lived.  He was regarded as the most fearful of wild beasts, and
this was borne in to him through the bars of the cage.  Every word, every
cautious action, on the part of the men, impressed upon him his own
terrible ferocity.  It was so much added fuel to the flame of his
fierceness.  There could be but one result, and that was that his
ferocity fed upon itself and increased.  It was another instance of the
plasticity of his clay, of his capacity for being moulded by the pressure
of environment.

In addition to being exhibited he was a professional fighting animal.  At
irregular intervals, whenever a fight could be arranged, he was taken out
of his cage and led off into the woods a few miles from town.  Usually
this occurred at night, so as to avoid interference from the mounted
police of the Territory.  After a few hours of waiting, when daylight had
come, the audience and the dog with which he was to fight arrived.  In
this manner it came about that he fought all sizes and breeds of dogs.  It
was a savage land, the men were savage, and the fights were usually to
the death.

Since White Fang continued to fight, it is obvious that it was the other
dogs that died.  He never knew defeat.  His early training, when he
fought with Lip-lip and the whole puppy-pack, stood him in good stead.
There was the tenacity with which he clung to the earth.  No dog could
make him lose his footing.  This was the favourite trick of the wolf
breeds--to rush in upon him, either directly or with an unexpected
swerve, in the hope of striking his shoulder and overthrowing him.
Mackenzie hounds, Eskimo and Labrador dogs, huskies and Malemutes--all
tried it on him, and all failed.  He was never known to lose his footing.
Men told this to one another, and looked each time to see it happen; but
White Fang always disappointed them.

Then there was his lightning quickness.  It gave him a tremendous
advantage over his antagonists.  No matter what their fighting
experience, they had never encountered a dog that moved so swiftly as he.
Also to be reckoned with, was the immediateness of his attack.  The
average dog was accustomed to the preliminaries of snarling and bristling
and growling, and the average dog was knocked off his feet and finished
before he had begun to fight or recovered from his surprise.  So often
did this happen, that it became the custom to hold White Fang until the
other dog went through its preliminaries, was good and ready, and even
made the first attack.

But greatest of all the advantages in White Fang's favour, was his
experience.  He knew more about fighting than did any of the dogs that
faced him.  He had fought more fights, knew how to meet more tricks and
methods, and had more tricks himself, while his own method was scarcely
to be improved upon.

As the time went by, he had fewer and fewer fights.  Men despaired of
matching him with an equal, and Beauty Smith was compelled to pit wolves
against him.  These were trapped by the Indians for the purpose, and a
fight between White Fang and a wolf was always sure to draw a crowd.
Once, a full-grown female lynx was secured, and this time White Fang
fought for his life.  Her quickness matched his; her ferocity equalled
his; while he fought with his fangs alone, and she fought with her sharp-
clawed feet as well.

But after the lynx, all fighting ceased for White Fang.  There were no
more animals with which to fight--at least, there was none considered
worthy of fighting with him.  So he remained on exhibition until spring,
when one Tim Keenan, a faro-dealer, arrived in the land.  With him came
the first bull-dog that had ever entered the Klondike.  That this dog and
White Fang should come together was inevitable, and for a week the
anticipated fight was the mainspring of conversation in certain quarters
of the town.



CHAPTER IV--THE CLINGING DEATH


Beauty Smith slipped the chain from his neck and stepped back.

For once White Fang did not make an immediate attack.  He stood still,
ears pricked forward, alert and curious, surveying the strange animal
that faced him.  He had never seen such a dog before.  Tim Keenan shoved
the bull-dog forward with a muttered "Go to it."  The animal waddled
toward the centre of the circle, short and squat and ungainly.  He came
to a stop and blinked across at White Fang.

There were cries from the crowd of, "Go to him, Cherokee!  Sick 'm,
Cherokee!  Eat 'm up!"

But Cherokee did not seem anxious to fight.  He turned his head and
blinked at the men who shouted, at the same time wagging his stump of a
tail good-naturedly.  He was not afraid, but merely lazy.  Besides, it
did not seem to him that it was intended he should fight with the dog he
saw before him.  He was not used to fighting with that kind of dog, and
he was waiting for them to bring on the real dog.

Tim Keenan stepped in and bent over Cherokee, fondling him on both sides
of the shoulders with hands that rubbed against the grain of the hair and
that made slight, pushing-forward movements.  These were so many
suggestions.  Also, their effect was irritating, for Cherokee began to
growl, very softly, deep down in his throat.  There was a correspondence
in rhythm between the growls and the movements of the man's hands.  The
growl rose in the throat with the culmination of each forward-pushing
movement, and ebbed down to start up afresh with the beginning of the
next movement.  The end of each movement was the accent of the rhythm,
the movement ending abruptly and the growling rising with a jerk.

This was not without its effect on White Fang.  The hair began to rise on
his neck and across the shoulders.  Tim Keenan gave a final shove forward
and stepped back again.  As the impetus that carried Cherokee forward
died down, he continued to go forward of his own volition, in a swift,
bow-legged run.  Then White Fang struck.  A cry of startled admiration
went up.  He had covered the distance and gone in more like a cat than a
dog; and with the same cat-like swiftness he had slashed with his fangs
and leaped clear.

The bull-dog was bleeding back of one ear from a rip in his thick neck.
He gave no sign, did not even snarl, but turned and followed after White
Fang.  The display on both sides, the quickness of the one and the
steadiness of the other, had excited the partisan spirit of the crowd,
and the men were making new bets and increasing original bets.  Again,
and yet again, White Fang sprang in, slashed, and got away untouched, and
still his strange foe followed after him, without too great haste, not
slowly, but deliberately and determinedly, in a businesslike sort of way.
There was purpose in his method--something for him to do that he was
intent upon doing and from which nothing could distract him.

His whole demeanour, every action, was stamped with this purpose.  It
puzzled White Fang.  Never had he seen such a dog.  It had no hair
protection.  It was soft, and bled easily.  There was no thick mat of fur
to baffle White Fang's teeth as they were often baffled by dogs of his
own breed.  Each time that his teeth struck they sank easily into the
yielding flesh, while the animal did not seem able to defend itself.
Another disconcerting thing was that it made no outcry, such as he had
been accustomed to with the other dogs he had fought.  Beyond a growl or
a grunt, the dog took its punishment silently.  And never did it flag in
its pursuit of him.

Not that Cherokee was slow.  He could turn and whirl swiftly enough, but
White Fang was never there.  Cherokee was puzzled, too.  He had never
fought before with a dog with which he could not close.  The desire to
close had always been mutual.  But here was a dog that kept at a
distance, dancing and dodging here and there and all about.  And when it
did get its teeth into him, it did not hold on but let go instantly and
darted away again.

But White Fang could not get at the soft underside of the throat.  The
bull-dog stood too short, while its massive jaws were an added
protection.  White Fang darted in and out unscathed, while Cherokee's
wounds increased.  Both sides of his neck and head were ripped and
slashed.  He bled freely, but showed no signs of being disconcerted.  He
continued his plodding pursuit, though once, for the moment baffled, he
came to a full stop and blinked at the men who looked on, at the same
time wagging his stump of a tail as an expression of his willingness to
fight.

In that moment White Fang was in upon him and out, in passing ripping his
trimmed remnant of an ear.  With a slight manifestation of anger,
Cherokee took up the pursuit again, running on the inside of the circle
White Fang was making, and striving to fasten his deadly grip on White
Fang's throat.  The bull-dog missed by a hair's-breadth, and cries of
praise went up as White Fang doubled suddenly out of danger in the
opposite direction.

The time went by.  White Fang still danced on, dodging and doubling,
leaping in and out, and ever inflicting damage.  And still the bull-dog,
with grim certitude, toiled after him.  Sooner or later he would
accomplish his purpose, get the grip that would win the battle.  In the
meantime, he accepted all the punishment the other could deal him.  His
tufts of ears had become tassels, his neck and shoulders were slashed in
a score of places, and his very lips were cut and bleeding--all from
these lightning snaps that were beyond his foreseeing and guarding.

Time and again White Fang had attempted to knock Cherokee off his feet;
but the difference in their height was too great.  Cherokee was too
squat, too close to the ground.  White Fang tried the trick once too
often.  The chance came in one of his quick doublings and
counter-circlings.  He caught Cherokee with head turned away as he
whirled more slowly.  His shoulder was exposed.  White Fang drove in upon
it: but his own shoulder was high above, while he struck with such force
that his momentum carried him on across over the other's body.  For the
first time in his fighting history, men saw White Fang lose his footing.
His body turned a half-somersault in the air, and he would have landed on
his back had he not twisted, catlike, still in the air, in the effort to
bring his feet to the earth.  As it was, he struck heavily on his side.
The next instant he was on his feet, but in that instant Cherokee's teeth
closed on his throat.

It was not a good grip, being too low down toward the chest; but Cherokee
held on.  White Fang sprang to his feet and tore wildly around, trying to
shake off the bull-dog's body.  It made him frantic, this clinging,
dragging weight.  It bound his movements, restricted his freedom.  It was
like the trap, and all his instinct resented it and revolted against it.
It was a mad revolt.  For several minutes he was to all intents insane.
The basic life that was in him took charge of him.  The will to exist of
his body surged over him.  He was dominated by this mere flesh-love of
life.  All intelligence was gone.  It was as though he had no brain.  His
reason was unseated by the blind yearning of the flesh to exist and move,
at all hazards to move, to continue to move, for movement was the
expression of its existence.

Round and round he went, whirling and turning and reversing, trying to
shake off the fifty-pound weight that dragged at his throat.  The bull-
dog did little but keep his grip.  Sometimes, and rarely, he managed to
get his feet to the earth and for a moment to brace himself against White
Fang.  But the next moment his footing would be lost and he would be
dragging around in the whirl of one of White Fang's mad gyrations.
Cherokee identified himself with his instinct.  He knew that he was doing
the right thing by holding on, and there came to him certain blissful
thrills of satisfaction.  At such moments he even closed his eyes and
allowed his body to be hurled hither and thither, willy-nilly, careless
of any hurt that might thereby come to it.  That did not count.  The grip
was the thing, and the grip he kept.

White Fang ceased only when he had tired himself out.  He could do
nothing, and he could not understand.  Never, in all his fighting, had
this thing happened.  The dogs he had fought with did not fight that way.
With them it was snap and slash and get away, snap and slash and get
away.  He lay partly on his side, panting for breath.  Cherokee still
holding his grip, urged against him, trying to get him over entirely on
his side.  White Fang resisted, and he could feel the jaws shifting their
grip, slightly relaxing and coming together again in a chewing movement.
Each shift brought the grip closer to his throat.  The bull-dog's method
was to hold what he had, and when opportunity favoured to work in for
more.  Opportunity favoured when White Fang remained quiet.  When White
Fang struggled, Cherokee was content merely to hold on.

The bulging back of Cherokee's neck was the only portion of his body that
White Fang's teeth could reach.  He got hold toward the base where the
neck comes out from the shoulders; but he did not know the chewing method
of fighting, nor were his jaws adapted to it.  He spasmodically ripped
and tore with his fangs for a space.  Then a change in their position
diverted him.  The bull-dog had managed to roll him over on his back, and
still hanging on to his throat, was on top of him.  Like a cat, White
Fang bowed his hind-quarters in, and, with the feet digging into his
enemy's abdomen above him, he began to claw with long tearing-strokes.
Cherokee might well have been disembowelled had he not quickly pivoted on
his grip and got his body off of White Fang's and at right angles to it.

There was no escaping that grip.  It was like Fate itself, and as
inexorable.  Slowly it shifted up along the jugular.  All that saved
White Fang from death was the loose skin of his neck and the thick fur
that covered it.  This served to form a large roll in Cherokee's mouth,
the fur of which well-nigh defied his teeth.  But bit by bit, whenever
the chance offered, he was getting more of the loose skin and fur in his
mouth.  The result was that he was slowly throttling White Fang.  The
latter's breath was drawn with greater and greater difficulty as the
moments went by.

It began to look as though the battle were over.  The backers of Cherokee
waxed jubilant and offered ridiculous odds.  White Fang's backers were
correspondingly depressed, and refused bets of ten to one and twenty to
one, though one man was rash enough to close a wager of fifty to one.
This man was Beauty Smith.  He took a step into the ring and pointed his
finger at White Fang.  Then he began to laugh derisively and scornfully.
This produced the desired effect.  White Fang went wild with rage.  He
called up his reserves of strength, and gained his feet.  As he struggled
around the ring, the fifty pounds of his foe ever dragging on his throat,
his anger passed on into panic.  The basic life of him dominated him
again, and his intelligence fled before the will of his flesh to live.
Round and round and back again, stumbling and falling and rising, even
uprearing at times on his hind-legs and lifting his foe clear of the
earth, he struggled vainly to shake off the clinging death.

At last he fell, toppling backward, exhausted; and the bull-dog promptly
shifted his grip, getting in closer, mangling more and more of the fur-
folded flesh, throttling White Fang more severely than ever.  Shouts of
applause went up for the victor, and there were many cries of "Cherokee!"
"Cherokee!"  To this Cherokee responded by vigorous wagging of the stump
of his tail.  But the clamour of approval did not distract him.  There
was no sympathetic relation between his tail and his massive jaws.  The
one might wag, but the others held their terrible grip on White Fang's
throat.

It was at this time that a diversion came to the spectators.  There was a
jingle of bells.  Dog-mushers' cries were heard.  Everybody, save Beauty
Smith, looked apprehensively, the fear of the police strong upon them.
But they saw, up the trail, and not down, two men running with sled and
dogs.  They were evidently coming down the creek from some prospecting
trip.  At sight of the crowd they stopped their dogs and came over and
joined it, curious to see the cause of the excitement.  The dog-musher
wore a moustache, but the other, a taller and younger man, was smooth-
shaven, his skin rosy from the pounding of his blood and the running in
the frosty air.

White Fang had practically ceased struggling.  Now and again he resisted
spasmodically and to no purpose.  He could get little air, and that
little grew less and less under the merciless grip that ever tightened.
In spite of his armour of fur, the great vein of his throat would have
long since been torn open, had not the first grip of the bull-dog been so
low down as to be practically on the chest.  It had taken Cherokee a long
time to shift that grip upward, and this had also tended further to clog
his jaws with fur and skin-fold.

In the meantime, the abysmal brute in Beauty Smith had been rising into
his brain and mastering the small bit of sanity that he possessed at
best.  When he saw White Fang's eyes beginning to glaze, he knew beyond
doubt that the fight was lost.  Then he broke loose.  He sprang upon
White Fang and began savagely to kick him.  There were hisses from the
crowd and cries of protest, but that was all.  While this went on, and
Beauty Smith continued to kick White Fang, there was a commotion in the
crowd.  The tall young newcomer was forcing his way through, shouldering
men right and left without ceremony or gentleness.  When he broke through
into the ring, Beauty Smith was just in the act of delivering another
kick.  All his weight was on one foot, and he was in a state of unstable
equilibrium.  At that moment the newcomer's fist landed a smashing blow
full in his face.  Beauty Smith's remaining leg left the ground, and his
whole body seemed to lift into the air as he turned over backward and
struck the snow.  The newcomer turned upon the crowd.

"You cowards!" he cried.  "You beasts!"

He was in a rage himself--a sane rage.  His grey eyes seemed metallic and
steel-like as they flashed upon the crowd.  Beauty Smith regained his
feet and came toward him, sniffling and cowardly.  The new-comer did not
understand.  He did not know how abject a coward the other was, and
thought he was coming back intent on fighting.  So, with a "You beast!"
he smashed Beauty Smith over backward with a second blow in the face.
Beauty Smith decided that the snow was the safest place for him, and lay
where he had fallen, making no effort to get up.

"Come on, Matt, lend a hand," the newcomer called the dog-musher, who had
followed him into the ring.

Both men bent over the dogs.  Matt took hold of White Fang, ready to pull
when Cherokee's jaws should be loosened.  This the younger man
endeavoured to accomplish by clutching the bulldog's jaws in his hands
and trying to spread them.  It was a vain undertaking.  As he pulled and
tugged and wrenched, he kept exclaiming with every expulsion of breath,
"Beasts!"

The crowd began to grow unruly, and some of the men were protesting
against the spoiling of the sport; but they were silenced when the
newcomer lifted his head from his work for a moment and glared at them.

"You damn beasts!" he finally exploded, and went back to his task.

"It's no use, Mr. Scott, you can't break 'm apart that way," Matt said at
last.

The pair paused and surveyed the locked dogs.

"Ain't bleedin' much," Matt announced.  "Ain't got all the way in yet."

"But he's liable to any moment," Scott answered.  "There, did you see
that!  He shifted his grip in a bit."

The younger man's excitement and apprehension for White Fang was growing.
He struck Cherokee about the head savagely again and again.  But that did
not loosen the jaws.  Cherokee wagged the stump of his tail in
advertisement that he understood the meaning of the blows, but that he
knew he was himself in the right and only doing his duty by keeping his
grip.

"Won't some of you help?" Scott cried desperately at the crowd.

But no help was offered.  Instead, the crowd began sarcastically to cheer
him on and showered him with facetious advice.

"You'll have to get a pry," Matt counselled.

The other reached into the holster at his hip, drew his revolver, and
tried to thrust its muzzle between the bull-dog's jaws.  He shoved, and
shoved hard, till the grating of the steel against the locked teeth could
be distinctly heard.  Both men were on their knees, bending over the
dogs.  Tim Keenan strode into the ring.  He paused beside Scott and
touched him on the shoulder, saying ominously:

"Don't break them teeth, stranger."

"Then I'll break his neck," Scott retorted, continuing his shoving and
wedging with the revolver muzzle.

"I said don't break them teeth," the faro-dealer repeated more ominously
than before.

But if it was a bluff he intended, it did not work.  Scott never desisted
from his efforts, though he looked up coolly and asked:

"Your dog?"

The faro-dealer grunted.

"Then get in here and break this grip."

"Well, stranger," the other drawled irritatingly, "I don't mind telling
you that's something I ain't worked out for myself.  I don't know how to
turn the trick."

"Then get out of the way," was the reply, "and don't bother me.  I'm
busy."

Tim Keenan continued standing over him, but Scott took no further notice
of his presence.  He had managed to get the muzzle in between the jaws on
one side, and was trying to get it out between the jaws on the other
side.  This accomplished, he pried gently and carefully, loosening the
jaws a bit at a time, while Matt, a bit at a time, extricated White
Fang's mangled neck.

"Stand by to receive your dog," was Scott's peremptory order to
Cherokee's owner.

The faro-dealer stooped down obediently and got a firm hold on Cherokee.

"Now!" Scott warned, giving the final pry.

The dogs were drawn apart, the bull-dog struggling vigorously.

"Take him away," Scott commanded, and Tim Keenan dragged Cherokee back
into the crowd.

White Fang made several ineffectual efforts to get up.  Once he gained
his feet, but his legs were too weak to sustain him, and he slowly wilted
and sank back into the snow.  His eyes were half closed, and the surface
of them was glassy.  His jaws were apart, and through them the tongue
protruded, draggled and limp.  To all appearances he looked like a dog
that had been strangled to death.  Matt examined him.

"Just about all in," he announced; "but he's breathin' all right."

Beauty Smith had regained his feet and come over to look at White Fang.

"Matt, how much is a good sled-dog worth?" Scott asked.

The dog-musher, still on his knees and stooped over White Fang,
calculated for a moment.

"Three hundred dollars," he answered.

"And how much for one that's all chewed up like this one?" Scott asked,
nudging White Fang with his foot.

"Half of that," was the dog-musher's judgment.  Scott turned upon Beauty
Smith.

"Did you hear, Mr. Beast?  I'm going to take your dog from you, and I'm
going to give you a hundred and fifty for him."

He opened his pocket-book and counted out the bills.

Beauty Smith put his hands behind his back, refusing to touch the
proffered money.

"I ain't a-sellin'," he said.

"Oh, yes you are," the other assured him.  "Because I'm buying.  Here's
your money.  The dog's mine."

Beauty Smith, his hands still behind him, began to back away.

Scott sprang toward him, drawing his fist back to strike.  Beauty Smith
cowered down in anticipation of the blow.

"I've got my rights," he whimpered.

"You've forfeited your rights to own that dog," was the rejoinder.  "Are
you going to take the money? or do I have to hit you again?"

"All right," Beauty Smith spoke up with the alacrity of fear.  "But I
take the money under protest," he added.  "The dog's a mint.  I ain't a-
goin' to be robbed.  A man's got his rights."

"Correct," Scott answered, passing the money over to him.  "A man's got
his rights.  But you're not a man.  You're a beast."

"Wait till I get back to Dawson," Beauty Smith threatened.  "I'll have
the law on you."

"If you open your mouth when you get back to Dawson, I'll have you run
out of town.  Understand?"

Beauty Smith replied with a grunt.

"Understand?" the other thundered with abrupt fierceness.

"Yes," Beauty Smith grunted, shrinking away.

"Yes what?"

"Yes, sir," Beauty Smith snarled.

"Look out!  He'll bite!" some one shouted, and a guffaw of laughter went
up.

Scott turned his back on him, and returned to help the dog-musher, who
was working over White Fang.

Some of the men were already departing; others stood in groups, looking
on and talking.  Tim Keenan joined one of the groups.

"Who's that mug?" he asked.

"Weedon Scott," some one answered.

"And who in hell is Weedon Scott?" the faro-dealer demanded.

"Oh, one of them crackerjack minin' experts.  He's in with all the big
bugs.  If you want to keep out of trouble, you'll steer clear of him,
that's my talk.  He's all hunky with the officials.  The Gold
Commissioner's a special pal of his."

"I thought he must be somebody," was the faro-dealer's comment.  "That's
why I kept my hands offen him at the start."



CHAPTER V--THE INDOMITABLE


"It's hopeless," Weedon Scott confessed.

He sat on the step of his cabin and stared at the dog-musher, who
responded with a shrug that was equally hopeless.

Together they looked at White Fang at the end of his stretched chain,
bristling, snarling, ferocious, straining to get at the sled-dogs.  Having
received sundry lessons from Matt, said lessons being imparted by means
of a club, the sled-dogs had learned to leave White Fang alone; and even
then they were lying down at a distance, apparently oblivious of his
existence.

"It's a wolf and there's no taming it," Weedon Scott announced.

"Oh, I don't know about that," Matt objected.  "Might be a lot of dog in
'm, for all you can tell.  But there's one thing I know sure, an' that
there's no gettin' away from."

The dog-musher paused and nodded his head confidentially at Moosehide
Mountain.

"Well, don't be a miser with what you know," Scott said sharply, after
waiting a suitable length of time.  "Spit it out.  What is it?"

The dog-musher indicated White Fang with a backward thrust of his thumb.

"Wolf or dog, it's all the same--he's ben tamed 'ready."

"No!"

"I tell you yes, an' broke to harness.  Look close there.  D'ye see them
marks across the chest?"

"You're right, Matt.  He was a sled-dog before Beauty Smith got hold of
him."

"And there's not much reason against his bein' a sled-dog again."

"What d'ye think?" Scott queried eagerly.  Then the hope died down as he
added, shaking his head, "We've had him two weeks now, and if anything
he's wilder than ever at the present moment."

"Give 'm a chance," Matt counselled.  "Turn 'm loose for a spell."

The other looked at him incredulously.

"Yes," Matt went on, "I know you've tried to, but you didn't take a
club."

"You try it then."

The dog-musher secured a club and went over to the chained animal.  White
Fang watched the club after the manner of a caged lion watching the whip
of its trainer.

"See 'm keep his eye on that club," Matt said.  "That's a good sign.  He's
no fool.  Don't dast tackle me so long as I got that club handy.  He's
not clean crazy, sure."

As the man's hand approached his neck, White Fang bristled and snarled
and crouched down.  But while he eyed the approaching hand, he at the
same time contrived to keep track of the club in the other hand,
suspended threateningly above him.  Matt unsnapped the chain from the
collar and stepped back.

White Fang could scarcely realise that he was free.  Many months had gone
by since he passed into the possession of Beauty Smith, and in all that
period he had never known a moment of freedom except at the times he had
been loosed to fight with other dogs.  Immediately after such fights he
had always been imprisoned again.

He did not know what to make of it.  Perhaps some new devilry of the gods
was about to be perpetrated on him.  He walked slowly and cautiously,
prepared to be assailed at any moment.  He did not know what to do, it
was all so unprecedented.  He took the precaution to sheer off from the
two watching gods, and walked carefully to the corner of the cabin.
Nothing happened.  He was plainly perplexed, and he came back again,
pausing a dozen feet away and regarding the two men intently.

"Won't he run away?" his new owner asked.

Matt shrugged his shoulders.  "Got to take a gamble.  Only way to find
out is to find out."

"Poor devil," Scott murmured pityingly.  "What he needs is some show of
human kindness," he added, turning and going into the cabin.

He came out with a piece of meat, which he tossed to White Fang.  He
sprang away from it, and from a distance studied it suspiciously.

"Hi-yu, Major!" Matt shouted warningly, but too late.

Major had made a spring for the meat.  At the instant his jaws closed on
it, White Fang struck him.  He was overthrown.  Matt rushed in, but
quicker than he was White Fang.  Major staggered to his feet, but the
blood spouting from his throat reddened the snow in a widening path.

"It's too bad, but it served him right," Scott said hastily.

But Matt's foot had already started on its way to kick White Fang.  There
was a leap, a flash of teeth, a sharp exclamation.  White Fang, snarling
fiercely, scrambled backward for several yards, while Matt stooped and
investigated his leg.

"He got me all right," he announced, pointing to the torn trousers and
undercloths, and the growing stain of red.

"I told you it was hopeless, Matt," Scott said in a discouraged voice.
"I've thought about it off and on, while not wanting to think of it.  But
we've come to it now.  It's the only thing to do."

As he talked, with reluctant movements he drew his revolver, threw open
the cylinder, and assured himself of its contents.

"Look here, Mr. Scott," Matt objected; "that dog's ben through hell.  You
can't expect 'm to come out a white an' shinin' angel.  Give 'm time."

"Look at Major," the other rejoined.

The dog-musher surveyed the stricken dog.  He had sunk down on the snow
in the circle of his blood and was plainly in the last gasp.

"Served 'm right.  You said so yourself, Mr. Scott.  He tried to take
White Fang's meat, an' he's dead-O.  That was to be expected.  I wouldn't
give two whoops in hell for a dog that wouldn't fight for his own meat."

"But look at yourself, Matt.  It's all right about the dogs, but we must
draw the line somewhere."

"Served me right," Matt argued stubbornly.  "What'd I want to kick 'm
for?  You said yourself that he'd done right.  Then I had no right to
kick 'm."

"It would be a mercy to kill him," Scott insisted.  "He's untamable."

"Now look here, Mr. Scott, give the poor devil a fightin' chance.  He
ain't had no chance yet.  He's just come through hell, an' this is the
first time he's ben loose.  Give 'm a fair chance, an' if he don't
deliver the goods, I'll kill 'm myself.  There!"

"God knows I don't want to kill him or have him killed," Scott answered,
putting away the revolver.  "We'll let him run loose and see what
kindness can do for him.  And here's a try at it."

He walked over to White Fang and began talking to him gently and
soothingly.

"Better have a club handy," Matt warned.

Scott shook his head and went on trying to win White Fang's confidence.

White Fang was suspicious.  Something was impending.  He had killed this
god's dog, bitten his companion god, and what else was to be expected
than some terrible punishment?  But in the face of it he was indomitable.
He bristled and showed his teeth, his eyes vigilant, his whole body wary
and prepared for anything.  The god had no club, so he suffered him to
approach quite near.  The god's hand had come out and was descending upon
his head.  White Fang shrank together and grew tense as he crouched under
it.  Here was danger, some treachery or something.  He knew the hands of
the gods, their proved mastery, their cunning to hurt.  Besides, there
was his old antipathy to being touched.  He snarled more menacingly,
crouched still lower, and still the hand descended.  He did not want to
bite the hand, and he endured the peril of it until his instinct surged
up in him, mastering him with its insatiable yearning for life.

Weedon Scott had believed that he was quick enough to avoid any snap or
slash.  But he had yet to learn the remarkable quickness of White Fang,
who struck with the certainty and swiftness of a coiled snake.

Scott cried out sharply with surprise, catching his torn hand and holding
it tightly in his other hand.  Matt uttered a great oath and sprang to
his side.  White Fang crouched down, and backed away, bristling, showing
his fangs, his eyes malignant with menace.  Now he could expect a beating
as fearful as any he had received from Beauty Smith.

"Here!  What are you doing?" Scott cried suddenly.

Matt had dashed into the cabin and come out with a rifle.

"Nothin'," he said slowly, with a careless calmness that was assumed,
"only goin' to keep that promise I made.  I reckon it's up to me to kill
'm as I said I'd do."

"No you don't!"

"Yes I do.  Watch me."

As Matt had pleaded for White Fang when he had been bitten, it was now
Weedon Scott's turn to plead.

"You said to give him a chance.  Well, give it to him.  We've only just
started, and we can't quit at the beginning.  It served me right, this
time.  And--look at him!"

White Fang, near the corner of the cabin and forty feet away, was
snarling with blood-curdling viciousness, not at Scott, but at the dog-
musher.

"Well, I'll be everlastingly gosh-swoggled!" was the dog-musher's
expression of astonishment.

"Look at the intelligence of him," Scott went on hastily.  "He knows the
meaning of firearms as well as you do.  He's got intelligence and we've
got to give that intelligence a chance.  Put up the gun."

"All right, I'm willin'," Matt agreed, leaning the rifle against the
woodpile.

"But will you look at that!" he exclaimed the next moment.

White Fang had quieted down and ceased snarling.  "This is worth
investigatin'.  Watch."

Matt, reached for the rifle, and at the same moment White Fang snarled.
He stepped away from the rifle, and White Fang's lifted lips descended,
covering his teeth.

"Now, just for fun."

Matt took the rifle and began slowly to raise it to his shoulder.  White
Fang's snarling began with the movement, and increased as the movement
approached its culmination.  But the moment before the rifle came to a
level on him, he leaped sidewise behind the corner of the cabin.  Matt
stood staring along the sights at the empty space of snow which had been
occupied by White Fang.

The dog-musher put the rifle down solemnly, then turned and looked at his
employer.

"I agree with you, Mr. Scott.  That dog's too intelligent to kill."



CHAPTER VI--THE LOVE-MASTER


As White Fang watched Weedon Scott approach, he bristled and snarled to
advertise that he would not submit to punishment.  Twenty-four hours had
passed since he had slashed open the hand that was now bandaged and held
up by a sling to keep the blood out of it.  In the past White Fang had
experienced delayed punishments, and he apprehended that such a one was
about to befall him.  How could it be otherwise?  He had committed what
was to him sacrilege, sunk his fangs into the holy flesh of a god, and of
a white-skinned superior god at that.  In the nature of things, and of
intercourse with gods, something terrible awaited him.

The god sat down several feet away.  White Fang could see nothing
dangerous in that.  When the gods administered punishment they stood on
their legs.  Besides, this god had no club, no whip, no firearm.  And
furthermore, he himself was free.  No chain nor stick bound him.  He
could escape into safety while the god was scrambling to his feet.  In
the meantime he would wait and see.

The god remained quiet, made no movement; and White Fang's snarl slowly
dwindled to a growl that ebbed down in his throat and ceased.  Then the
god spoke, and at the first sound of his voice, the hair rose on White
Fang's neck and the growl rushed up in his throat.  But the god made no
hostile movement, and went on calmly talking.  For a time White Fang
growled in unison with him, a correspondence of rhythm being established
between growl and voice.  But the god talked on interminably.  He talked
to White Fang as White Fang had never been talked to before.  He talked
softly and soothingly, with a gentleness that somehow, somewhere, touched
White Fang.  In spite of himself and all the pricking warnings of his
instinct, White Fang began to have confidence in this god.  He had a
feeling of security that was belied by all his experience with men.

After a long time, the god got up and went into the cabin.  White Fang
scanned him apprehensively when he came out.  He had neither whip nor
club nor weapon.  Nor was his uninjured hand behind his back hiding
something.  He sat down as before, in the same spot, several feet away.
He held out a small piece of meat.  White Fang pricked his ears and
investigated it suspiciously, managing to look at the same time both at
the meat and the god, alert for any overt act, his body tense and ready
to spring away at the first sign of hostility.

Still the punishment delayed.  The god merely held near to his nose a
piece of meat.  And about the meat there seemed nothing wrong.  Still
White Fang suspected; and though the meat was proffered to him with short
inviting thrusts of the hand, he refused to touch it.  The gods were all-
wise, and there was no telling what masterful treachery lurked behind
that apparently harmless piece of meat.  In past experience, especially
in dealing with squaws, meat and punishment had often been disastrously
related.

In the end, the god tossed the meat on the snow at White Fang's feet.  He
smelled the meat carefully; but he did not look at it.  While he smelled
it he kept his eyes on the god.  Nothing happened.  He took the meat into
his mouth and swallowed it.  Still nothing happened.  The god was
actually offering him another piece of meat.  Again he refused to take it
from the hand, and again it was tossed to him.  This was repeated a
number of times.  But there came a time when the god refused to toss it.
He kept it in his hand and steadfastly proffered it.

The meat was good meat, and White Fang was hungry.  Bit by bit,
infinitely cautious, he approached the hand.  At last the time came that
he decided to eat the meat from the hand.  He never took his eyes from
the god, thrusting his head forward with ears flattened back and hair
involuntarily rising and cresting on his neck.  Also a low growl rumbled
in his throat as warning that he was not to be trifled with.  He ate the
meat, and nothing happened.  Piece by piece, he ate all the meat, and
nothing happened.  Still the punishment delayed.

He licked his chops and waited.  The god went on talking.  In his voice
was kindness--something of which White Fang had no experience whatever.
And within him it aroused feelings which he had likewise never
experienced before.  He was aware of a certain strange satisfaction, as
though some need were being gratified, as though some void in his being
were being filled.  Then again came the prod of his instinct and the
warning of past experience.  The gods were ever crafty, and they had
unguessed ways of attaining their ends.

Ah, he had thought so!  There it came now, the god's hand, cunning to
hurt, thrusting out at him, descending upon his head.  But the god went
on talking.  His voice was soft and soothing.  In spite of the menacing
hand, the voice inspired confidence.  And in spite of the assuring voice,
the hand inspired distrust.  White Fang was torn by conflicting feelings,
impulses.  It seemed he would fly to pieces, so terrible was the control
he was exerting, holding together by an unwonted indecision the counter-
forces that struggled within him for mastery.

He compromised.  He snarled and bristled and flattened his ears.  But he
neither snapped nor sprang away.  The hand descended.  Nearer and nearer
it came.  It touched the ends of his upstanding hair.  He shrank down
under it.  It followed down after him, pressing more closely against him.
Shrinking, almost shivering, he still managed to hold himself together.
It was a torment, this hand that touched him and violated his instinct.
He could not forget in a day all the evil that had been wrought him at
the hands of men.  But it was the will of the god, and he strove to
submit.

The hand lifted and descended again in a patting, caressing movement.
This continued, but every time the hand lifted, the hair lifted under it.
And every time the hand descended, the ears flattened down and a
cavernous growl surged in his throat.  White Fang growled and growled
with insistent warning.  By this means he announced that he was prepared
to retaliate for any hurt he might receive.  There was no telling when
the god's ulterior motive might be disclosed.  At any moment that soft,
confidence-inspiring voice might break forth in a roar of wrath, that
gentle and caressing hand transform itself into a vice-like grip to hold
him helpless and administer punishment.

But the god talked on softly, and ever the hand rose and fell with non-
hostile pats.  White Fang experienced dual feelings.  It was distasteful
to his instinct.  It restrained him, opposed the will of him toward
personal liberty.  And yet it was not physically painful.  On the
contrary, it was even pleasant, in a physical way.  The patting movement
slowly and carefully changed to a rubbing of the ears about their bases,
and the physical pleasure even increased a little.  Yet he continued to
fear, and he stood on guard, expectant of unguessed evil, alternately
suffering and enjoying as one feeling or the other came uppermost and
swayed him.

"Well, I'll be gosh-swoggled!"

So spoke Matt, coming out of the cabin, his sleeves rolled up, a pan of
dirty dish-water in his hands, arrested in the act of emptying the pan by
the sight of Weedon Scott patting White Fang.

At the instant his voice broke the silence, White Fang leaped back,
snarling savagely at him.

Matt regarded his employer with grieved disapproval.

"If you don't mind my expressin' my feelin's, Mr. Scott, I'll make free
to say you're seventeen kinds of a damn fool an' all of 'em different,
an' then some."

Weedon Scott smiled with a superior air, gained his feet, and walked over
to White Fang.  He talked soothingly to him, but not for long, then
slowly put out his hand, rested it on White Fang's head, and resumed the
interrupted patting.  White Fang endured it, keeping his eyes fixed
suspiciously, not upon the man that patted him, but upon the man that
stood in the doorway.

"You may be a number one, tip-top minin' expert, all right all right,"
the dog-musher delivered himself oracularly, "but you missed the chance
of your life when you was a boy an' didn't run off an' join a circus."

White Fang snarled at the sound of his voice, but this time did not leap
away from under the hand that was caressing his head and the back of his
neck with long, soothing strokes.

It was the beginning of the end for White Fang--the ending of the old
life and the reign of hate.  A new and incomprehensibly fairer life was
dawning.  It required much thinking and endless patience on the part of
Weedon Scott to accomplish this.  And on the part of White Fang it
required nothing less than a revolution.  He had to ignore the urges and
promptings of instinct and reason, defy experience, give the lie to life
itself.

Life, as he had known it, not only had had no place in it for much that
he now did; but all the currents had gone counter to those to which he
now abandoned himself.  In short, when all things were considered, he had
to achieve an orientation far vaster than the one he had achieved at the
time he came voluntarily in from the Wild and accepted Grey Beaver as his
lord.  At that time he was a mere puppy, soft from the making, without
form, ready for the thumb of circumstance to begin its work upon him.  But
now it was different.  The thumb of circumstance had done its work only
too well.  By it he had been formed and hardened into the Fighting Wolf,
fierce and implacable, unloving and unlovable.  To accomplish the change
was like a reflux of being, and this when the plasticity of youth was no
longer his; when the fibre of him had become tough and knotty; when the
warp and the woof of him had made of him an adamantine texture, harsh and
unyielding; when the face of his spirit had become iron and all his
instincts and axioms had crystallised into set rules, cautions, dislikes,
and desires.

Yet again, in this new orientation, it was the thumb of circumstance that
pressed and prodded him, softening that which had become hard and
remoulding it into fairer form.  Weedon Scott was in truth this thumb.  He
had gone to the roots of White Fang's nature, and with kindness touched
to life potencies that had languished and well-nigh perished.  One such
potency was _love_.  It took the place of _like_, which latter had been
the highest feeling that thrilled him in his intercourse with the gods.

But this love did not come in a day.  It began with _like_ and out of it
slowly developed.  White Fang did not run away, though he was allowed to
remain loose, because he liked this new god.  This was certainly better
than the life he had lived in the cage of Beauty Smith, and it was
necessary that he should have some god.  The lordship of man was a need
of his nature.  The seal of his dependence on man had been set upon him
in that early day when he turned his back on the Wild and crawled to Grey
Beaver's feet to receive the expected beating.  This seal had been
stamped upon him again, and ineradicably, on his second return from the
Wild, when the long famine was over and there was fish once more in the
village of Grey Beaver.

And so, because he needed a god and because he preferred Weedon Scott to
Beauty Smith, White Fang remained.  In acknowledgment of fealty, he
proceeded to take upon himself the guardianship of his master's property.
He prowled about the cabin while the sled-dogs slept, and the first night-
visitor to the cabin fought him off with a club until Weedon Scott came
to the rescue.  But White Fang soon learned to differentiate between
thieves and honest men, to appraise the true value of step and carriage.
The man who travelled, loud-stepping, the direct line to the cabin door,
he let alone--though he watched him vigilantly until the door opened and
he received the endorsement of the master.  But the man who went softly,
by circuitous ways, peering with caution, seeking after secrecy--that was
the man who received no suspension of judgment from White Fang, and who
went away abruptly, hurriedly, and without dignity.

Weedon Scott had set himself the task of redeeming White Fang--or rather,
of redeeming mankind from the wrong it had done White Fang.  It was a
matter of principle and conscience.  He felt that the ill done White Fang
was a debt incurred by man and that it must be paid.  So he went out of
his way to be especially kind to the Fighting Wolf.  Each day he made it
a point to caress and pet White Fang, and to do it at length.

At first suspicious and hostile, White Fang grew to like this petting.
But there was one thing that he never outgrew--his growling.  Growl he
would, from the moment the petting began till it ended.  But it was a
growl with a new note in it.  A stranger could not hear this note, and to
such a stranger the growling of White Fang was an exhibition of
primordial savagery, nerve-racking and blood-curdling.  But White Fang's
throat had become harsh-fibred from the making of ferocious sounds
through the many years since his first little rasp of anger in the lair
of his cubhood, and he could not soften the sounds of that throat now to
express the gentleness he felt.  Nevertheless, Weedon Scott's ear and
sympathy were fine enough to catch the new note all but drowned in the
fierceness--the note that was the faintest hint of a croon of content and
that none but he could hear.

As the days went by, the evolution of _like_ into _love_ was accelerated.
White Fang himself began to grow aware of it, though in his consciousness
he knew not what love was.  It manifested itself to him as a void in his
being--a hungry, aching, yearning void that clamoured to be filled.  It
was a pain and an unrest; and it received easement only by the touch of
the new god's presence.  At such times love was joy to him, a wild, keen-
thrilling satisfaction.  But when away from his god, the pain and the
unrest returned; the void in him sprang up and pressed against him with
its emptiness, and the hunger gnawed and gnawed unceasingly.

White Fang was in the process of finding himself.  In spite of the
maturity of his years and of the savage rigidity of the mould that had
formed him, his nature was undergoing an expansion.  There was a
burgeoning within him of strange feelings and unwonted impulses.  His old
code of conduct was changing.  In the past he had liked comfort and
surcease from pain, disliked discomfort and pain, and he had adjusted his
actions accordingly.  But now it was different.  Because of this new
feeling within him, he ofttimes elected discomfort and pain for the sake
of his god.  Thus, in the early morning, instead of roaming and foraging,
or lying in a sheltered nook, he would wait for hours on the cheerless
cabin-stoop for a sight of the god's face.  At night, when the god
returned home, White Fang would leave the warm sleeping-place he had
burrowed in the snow in order to receive the friendly snap of fingers and
the word of greeting.  Meat, even meat itself, he would forego to be with
his god, to receive a caress from him or to accompany him down into the
town.

_Like_ had been replaced by _love_.  And love was the plummet dropped
down into the deeps of him where like had never gone.  And responsive out
of his deeps had come the new thing--love.  That which was given unto him
did he return.  This was a god indeed, a love-god, a warm and radiant
god, in whose light White Fang's nature expanded as a flower expands
under the sun.

But White Fang was not demonstrative.  He was too old, too firmly
moulded, to become adept at expressing himself in new ways.  He was too
self-possessed, too strongly poised in his own isolation.  Too long had
he cultivated reticence, aloofness, and moroseness.  He had never barked
in his life, and he could not now learn to bark a welcome when his god
approached.  He was never in the way, never extravagant nor foolish in
the expression of his love.  He never ran to meet his god.  He waited at
a distance; but he always waited, was always there.  His love partook of
the nature of worship, dumb, inarticulate, a silent adoration.  Only by
the steady regard of his eyes did he express his love, and by the
unceasing following with his eyes of his god's every movement.  Also, at
times, when his god looked at him and spoke to him, he betrayed an
awkward self-consciousness, caused by the struggle of his love to express
itself and his physical inability to express it.

He learned to adjust himself in many ways to his new mode of life.  It
was borne in upon him that he must let his master's dogs alone.  Yet his
dominant nature asserted itself, and he had first to thrash them into an
acknowledgment of his superiority and leadership.  This accomplished, he
had little trouble with them.  They gave trail to him when he came and
went or walked among them, and when he asserted his will they obeyed.

In the same way, he came to tolerate Matt--as a possession of his master.
His master rarely fed him.  Matt did that, it was his business; yet White
Fang divined that it was his master's food he ate and that it was his
master who thus fed him vicariously.  Matt it was who tried to put him
into the harness and make him haul sled with the other dogs.  But Matt
failed.  It was not until Weedon Scott put the harness on White Fang and
worked him, that he understood.  He took it as his master's will that
Matt should drive him and work him just as he drove and worked his
master's other dogs.

Different from the Mackenzie toboggans were the Klondike sleds with
runners under them.  And different was the method of driving the dogs.
There was no fan-formation of the team.  The dogs worked in single file,
one behind another, hauling on double traces.  And here, in the Klondike,
the leader was indeed the leader.  The wisest as well as strongest dog
was the leader, and the team obeyed him and feared him.  That White Fang
should quickly gain this post was inevitable.  He could not be satisfied
with less, as Matt learned after much inconvenience and trouble.  White
Fang picked out the post for himself, and Matt backed his judgment with
strong language after the experiment had been tried.  But, though he
worked in the sled in the day, White Fang did not forego the guarding of
his master's property in the night.  Thus he was on duty all the time,
ever vigilant and faithful, the most valuable of all the dogs.

"Makin' free to spit out what's in me," Matt said one day, "I beg to
state that you was a wise guy all right when you paid the price you did
for that dog.  You clean swindled Beauty Smith on top of pushin' his face
in with your fist."

A recrudescence of anger glinted in Weedon Scott's grey eyes, and he
muttered savagely, "The beast!"

In the late spring a great trouble came to White Fang.  Without warning,
the love-master disappeared.  There had been warning, but White Fang was
unversed in such things and did not understand the packing of a grip.  He
remembered afterwards that his packing had preceded the master's
disappearance; but at the time he suspected nothing.  That night he
waited for the master to return.  At midnight the chill wind that blew
drove him to shelter at the rear of the cabin.  There he drowsed, only
half asleep, his ears keyed for the first sound of the familiar step.
But, at two in the morning, his anxiety drove him out to the cold front
stoop, where he crouched, and waited.

But no master came.  In the morning the door opened and Matt stepped
outside.  White Fang gazed at him wistfully.  There was no common speech
by which he might learn what he wanted to know.  The days came and went,
but never the master.  White Fang, who had never known sickness in his
life, became sick.  He became very sick, so sick that Matt was finally
compelled to bring him inside the cabin.  Also, in writing to his
employer, Matt devoted a postscript to White Fang.

Weedon Scott reading the letter down in Circle City, came upon the
following:

"That dam wolf won't work.  Won't eat.  Aint got no spunk left.  All the
dogs is licking him.  Wants to know what has become of you, and I don't
know how to tell him.  Mebbe he is going to die."

It was as Matt had said.  White Fang had ceased eating, lost heart, and
allowed every dog of the team to thrash him.  In the cabin he lay on the
floor near the stove, without interest in food, in Matt, nor in life.
Matt might talk gently to him or swear at him, it was all the same; he
never did more than turn his dull eyes upon the man, then drop his head
back to its customary position on his fore-paws.

And then, one night, Matt, reading to himself with moving lips and
mumbled sounds, was startled by a low whine from White Fang.  He had got
upon his feet, his ears cocked towards the door, and he was listening
intently.  A moment later, Matt heard a footstep.  The door opened, and
Weedon Scott stepped in.  The two men shook hands.  Then Scott looked
around the room.

"Where's the wolf?" he asked.

Then he discovered him, standing where he had been lying, near to the
stove.  He had not rushed forward after the manner of other dogs.  He
stood, watching and waiting.

"Holy smoke!" Matt exclaimed.  "Look at 'm wag his tail!"

Weedon Scott strode half across the room toward him, at the same time
calling him.  White Fang came to him, not with a great bound, yet
quickly.  He was awakened from self-consciousness, but as he drew near,
his eyes took on a strange expression.  Something, an incommunicable
vastness of feeling, rose up into his eyes as a light and shone forth.

"He never looked at me that way all the time you was gone!" Matt
commented.

Weedon Scott did not hear.  He was squatting down on his heels, face to
face with White Fang and petting him--rubbing at the roots of the ears,
making long caressing strokes down the neck to the shoulders, tapping the
spine gently with the balls of his fingers.  And White Fang was growling
responsively, the crooning note of the growl more pronounced than ever.

But that was not all.  What of his joy, the great love in him, ever
surging and struggling to express itself, succeeded in finding a new
mode of expression.  He suddenly thrust his head forward and nudged his
way in between the master's arm and body.  And here, confined, hidden
from view all except his ears, no longer growling, he continued to nudge
and snuggle.

The two men looked at each other.  Scott's eyes were shining.

"Gosh!" said Matt in an awe-stricken voice.

A moment later, when he had recovered himself, he said, "I always
insisted that wolf was a dog.  Look at 'm!"

With the return of the love-master, White Fang's recovery was rapid.  Two
nights and a day he spent in the cabin.  Then he sallied forth.  The sled-
dogs had forgotten his prowess.  They remembered only the latest, which
was his weakness and sickness.  At the sight of him as he came out of the
cabin, they sprang upon him.

"Talk about your rough-houses," Matt murmured gleefully, standing in the
doorway and looking on.

"Give 'm hell, you wolf!  Give 'm hell!--an' then some!"

White Fang did not need the encouragement.  The return of the love-master
was enough.  Life was flowing through him again, splendid and
indomitable.  He fought from sheer joy, finding in it an expression of
much that he felt and that otherwise was without speech.  There could be
but one ending.  The team dispersed in ignominious defeat, and it was not
until after dark that the dogs came sneaking back, one by one, by
meekness and humility signifying their fealty to White Fang.

Having learned to snuggle, White Fang was guilty of it often.  It was the
final word.  He could not go beyond it.  The one thing of which he had
always been particularly jealous was his head.  He had always disliked to
have it touched.  It was the Wild in him, the fear of hurt and of the
trap, that had given rise to the panicky impulses to avoid contacts.  It
was the mandate of his instinct that that head must be free.  And now,
with the love-master, his snuggling was the deliberate act of putting
himself into a position of hopeless helplessness.  It was an expression
of perfect confidence, of absolute self-surrender, as though he said: "I
put myself into thy hands.  Work thou thy will with me."

One night, not long after the return, Scott and Matt sat at a game of
cribbage preliminary to going to bed.  "Fifteen-two, fifteen-four an' a
pair makes six," Matt was pegging up, when there was an outcry and sound
of snarling without.  They looked at each other as they started to rise
to their feet.

"The wolf's nailed somebody," Matt said.

A wild scream of fear and anguish hastened them.

"Bring a light!" Scott shouted, as he sprang outside.

Matt followed with the lamp, and by its light they saw a man lying on his
back in the snow.  His arms were folded, one above the other, across his
face and throat.  Thus he was trying to shield himself from White Fang's
teeth.  And there was need for it.  White Fang was in a rage, wickedly
making his attack on the most vulnerable spot.  From shoulder to wrist of
the crossed arms, the coat-sleeve, blue flannel shirt and undershirt were
ripped in rags, while the arms themselves were terribly slashed and
streaming blood.

All this the two men saw in the first instant.  The next instant Weedon
Scott had White Fang by the throat and was dragging him clear.  White
Fang struggled and snarled, but made no attempt to bite, while he quickly
quieted down at a sharp word from the master.

Matt helped the man to his feet.  As he arose he lowered his crossed
arms, exposing the bestial face of Beauty Smith.  The dog-musher let go
of him precipitately, with action similar to that of a man who has picked
up live fire.  Beauty Smith blinked in the lamplight and looked about
him.  He caught sight of White Fang and terror rushed into his face.

At the same moment Matt noticed two objects lying in the snow.  He held
the lamp close to them, indicating them with his toe for his employer's
benefit--a steel dog-chain and a stout club.

Weedon Scott saw and nodded.  Not a word was spoken.  The dog-musher laid
his hand on Beauty Smith's shoulder and faced him to the right about.  No
word needed to be spoken.  Beauty Smith started.

In the meantime the love-master was patting White Fang and talking to
him.

"Tried to steal you, eh?  And you wouldn't have it!  Well, well, he made
a mistake, didn't he?"

"Must 'a' thought he had hold of seventeen devils," the dog-musher
sniggered.

White Fang, still wrought up and bristling, growled and growled, the hair
slowly lying down, the crooning note remote and dim, but growing in his
throat.




PART V


CHAPTER I--THE LONG TRAIL


It was in the air.  White Fang sensed the coming calamity, even before
there was tangible evidence of it.  In vague ways it was borne in upon
him that a change was impending.  He knew not how nor why, yet he got his
feel of the oncoming event from the gods themselves.  In ways subtler
than they knew, they betrayed their intentions to the wolf-dog that
haunted the cabin-stoop, and that, though he never came inside the cabin,
knew what went on inside their brains.

"Listen to that, will you!" the dog-musher exclaimed at supper one night.

Weedon Scott listened.  Through the door came a low, anxious whine, like
a sobbing under the breath that had just grown audible.  Then came the
long sniff, as White Fang reassured himself that his god was still inside
and had not yet taken himself off in mysterious and solitary flight.

"I do believe that wolf's on to you," the dog-musher said.

Weedon Scott looked across at his companion with eyes that almost
pleaded, though this was given the lie by his words.

"What the devil can I do with a wolf in California?" he demanded.

"That's what I say," Matt answered.  "What the devil can you do with a
wolf in California?"

But this did not satisfy Weedon Scott.  The other seemed to be judging
him in a non-committal sort of way.

"White man's dogs would have no show against him," Scott went on.  "He'd
kill them on sight.  If he didn't bankrupt me with damage suits, the
authorities would take him away from me and electrocute him."

"He's a downright murderer, I know," was the dog-musher's comment.

Weedon Scott looked at him suspiciously.

"It would never do," he said decisively.

"It would never do!" Matt concurred.  "Why you'd have to hire a man
'specially to take care of 'm."

The other's suspicion was allayed.  He nodded cheerfully.  In the silence
that followed, the low, half-sobbing whine was heard at the door and then
the long, questing sniff.

"There's no denyin' he thinks a hell of a lot of you," Matt said.

The other glared at him in sudden wrath.  "Damn it all, man!  I know my
own mind and what's best!"

"I'm agreein' with you, only . . . "

"Only what?" Scott snapped out.

"Only . . . " the dog-musher began softly, then changed his mind and
betrayed a rising anger of his own.  "Well, you needn't get so all-fired
het up about it.  Judgin' by your actions one'd think you didn't know
your own mind."

Weedon Scott debated with himself for a while, and then said more gently:
"You are right, Matt.  I don't know my own mind, and that's what's the
trouble."

"Why, it would be rank ridiculousness for me to take that dog along," he
broke out after another pause.

"I'm agreein' with you," was Matt's answer, and again his employer was
not quite satisfied with him.

"But how in the name of the great Sardanapolis he knows you're goin' is
what gets me," the dog-musher continued innocently.

"It's beyond me, Matt," Scott answered, with a mournful shake of the
head.

Then came the day when, through the open cabin door, White Fang saw the
fatal grip on the floor and the love-master packing things into it.  Also,
there were comings and goings, and the erstwhile placid atmosphere of the
cabin was vexed with strange perturbations and unrest.  Here was
indubitable evidence.  White Fang had already scented it.  He now
reasoned it.  His god was preparing for another flight.  And since he had
not taken him with him before, so, now, he could look to be left behind.

That night he lifted the long wolf-howl.  As he had howled, in his puppy
days, when he fled back from the Wild to the village to find it vanished
and naught but a rubbish-heap to mark the site of Grey Beaver's tepee, so
now he pointed his muzzle to the cold stars and told to them his woe.

Inside the cabin the two men had just gone to bed.

"He's gone off his food again," Matt remarked from his bunk.

There was a grunt from Weedon Scott's bunk, and a stir of blankets.

"From the way he cut up the other time you went away, I wouldn't wonder
this time but what he died."

The blankets in the other bunk stirred irritably.

"Oh, shut up!" Scott cried out through the darkness.  "You nag worse than
a woman."

"I'm agreein' with you," the dog-musher answered, and Weedon Scott was
not quite sure whether or not the other had snickered.

The next day White Fang's anxiety and restlessness were even more
pronounced.  He dogged his master's heels whenever he left the cabin, and
haunted the front stoop when he remained inside.  Through the open door
he could catch glimpses of the luggage on the floor.  The grip had been
joined by two large canvas bags and a box.  Matt was rolling the master's
blankets and fur robe inside a small tarpaulin.  White Fang whined as he
watched the operation.

Later on two Indians arrived.  He watched them closely as they shouldered
the luggage and were led off down the hill by Matt, who carried the
bedding and the grip.  But White Fang did not follow them.  The master
was still in the cabin.  After a time, Matt returned.  The master came to
the door and called White Fang inside.

"You poor devil," he said gently, rubbing White Fang's ears and tapping
his spine.  "I'm hitting the long trail, old man, where you cannot
follow.  Now give me a growl--the last, good, good-bye growl."

But White Fang refused to growl.  Instead, and after a wistful, searching
look, he snuggled in, burrowing his head out of sight between the
master's arm and body.

"There she blows!" Matt cried.  From the Yukon arose the hoarse bellowing
of a river steamboat.  "You've got to cut it short.  Be sure and lock the
front door.  I'll go out the back.  Get a move on!"

The two doors slammed at the same moment, and Weedon Scott waited for
Matt to come around to the front.  From inside the door came a low
whining and sobbing.  Then there were long, deep-drawn sniffs.

"You must take good care of him, Matt," Scott said, as they started down
the hill.  "Write and let me know how he gets along."

"Sure," the dog-musher answered.  "But listen to that, will you!"

Both men stopped.  White Fang was howling as dogs howl when their masters
lie dead.  He was voicing an utter woe, his cry bursting upward in great
heart-breaking rushes, dying down into quavering misery, and bursting
upward again with a rush upon rush of grief.

The _Aurora_ was the first steamboat of the year for the Outside, and her
decks were jammed with prosperous adventurers and broken gold seekers,
all equally as mad to get to the Outside as they had been originally to
get to the Inside.  Near the gang-plank, Scott was shaking hands with
Matt, who was preparing to go ashore.  But Matt's hand went limp in the
other's grasp as his gaze shot past and remained fixed on something
behind him.  Scott turned to see.  Sitting on the deck several feet away
and watching wistfully was White Fang.

The dog-musher swore softly, in awe-stricken accents.  Scott could only
look in wonder.

"Did you lock the front door?" Matt demanded.  The other nodded, and
asked, "How about the back?"

"You just bet I did," was the fervent reply.

White Fang flattened his ears ingratiatingly, but remained where he was,
making no attempt to approach.

"I'll have to take 'm ashore with me."

Matt made a couple of steps toward White Fang, but the latter slid away
from him.  The dog-musher made a rush of it, and White Fang dodged
between the legs of a group of men.  Ducking, turning, doubling, he slid
about the deck, eluding the other's efforts to capture him.

But when the love-master spoke, White Fang came to him with prompt
obedience.

"Won't come to the hand that's fed 'm all these months," the dog-musher
muttered resentfully.  "And you--you ain't never fed 'm after them first
days of gettin' acquainted.  I'm blamed if I can see how he works it out
that you're the boss."

Scott, who had been patting White Fang, suddenly bent closer and pointed
out fresh-made cuts on his muzzle, and a gash between the eyes.

Matt bent over and passed his hand along White Fang's belly.

"We plumb forgot the window.  He's all cut an' gouged underneath.  Must
'a' butted clean through it, b'gosh!"

But Weedon Scott was not listening.  He was thinking rapidly.  The
_Aurora's_ whistle hooted a final announcement of departure.  Men were
scurrying down the gang-plank to the shore.  Matt loosened the bandana
from his own neck and started to put it around White Fang's.  Scott
grasped the dog-musher's hand.

"Good-bye, Matt, old man.  About the wolf--you needn't write.  You see,
I've . . . !"

"What!" the dog-musher exploded.  "You don't mean to say . . .?"

"The very thing I mean.  Here's your bandana.  I'll write to you about
him."

Matt paused halfway down the gang-plank.

"He'll never stand the climate!" he shouted back.  "Unless you clip 'm in
warm weather!"

The gang-plank was hauled in, and the _Aurora_ swung out from the bank.
Weedon Scott waved a last good-bye.  Then he turned and bent over White
Fang, standing by his side.

"Now growl, damn you, growl," he said, as he patted the responsive head
and rubbed the flattening ears.



CHAPTER II--THE SOUTHLAND


White Fang landed from the steamer in San Francisco.  He was appalled.
Deep in him, below any reasoning process or act of consciousness, he had
associated power with godhead.  And never had the white men seemed such
marvellous gods as now, when he trod the slimy pavement of San Francisco.
The log cabins he had known were replaced by towering buildings.  The
streets were crowded with perils--waggons, carts, automobiles; great,
straining horses pulling huge trucks; and monstrous cable and electric
cars hooting and clanging through the midst, screeching their insistent
menace after the manner of the lynxes he had known in the northern woods.

All this was the manifestation of power.  Through it all, behind it all,
was man, governing and controlling, expressing himself, as of old, by his
mastery over matter.  It was colossal, stunning.  White Fang was awed.
Fear sat upon him.  As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his
smallness and puniness on the day he first came in from the Wild to the
village of Grey Beaver, so now, in his full-grown stature and pride of
strength, he was made to feel small and puny.  And there were so many
gods!  He was made dizzy by the swarming of them.  The thunder of the
streets smote upon his ears.  He was bewildered by the tremendous and
endless rush and movement of things.  As never before, he felt his
dependence on the love-master, close at whose heels he followed, no
matter what happened never losing sight of him.

But White Fang was to have no more than a nightmare vision of the city--an
experience that was like a bad dream, unreal and terrible, that haunted
him for long after in his dreams.  He was put into a baggage-car by the
master, chained in a corner in the midst of heaped trunks and valises.
Here a squat and brawny god held sway, with much noise, hurling trunks
and boxes about, dragging them in through the door and tossing them into
the piles, or flinging them out of the door, smashing and crashing, to
other gods who awaited them.

And here, in this inferno of luggage, was White Fang deserted by the
master.  Or at least White Fang thought he was deserted, until he smelled
out the master's canvas clothes-bags alongside of him, and proceeded to
mount guard over them.

"'Bout time you come," growled the god of the car, an hour later, when
Weedon Scott appeared at the door.  "That dog of yourn won't let me lay a
finger on your stuff."

White Fang emerged from the car.  He was astonished.  The nightmare city
was gone.  The car had been to him no more than a room in a house, and
when he had entered it the city had been all around him.  In the interval
the city had disappeared.  The roar of it no longer dinned upon his ears.
Before him was smiling country, streaming with sunshine, lazy with
quietude.  But he had little time to marvel at the transformation.  He
accepted it as he accepted all the unaccountable doings and
manifestations of the gods.  It was their way.

There was a carriage waiting.  A man and a woman approached the master.
The woman's arms went out and clutched the master around the neck--a
hostile act!  The next moment Weedon Scott had torn loose from the
embrace and closed with White Fang, who had become a snarling, raging
demon.

"It's all right, mother," Scott was saying as he kept tight hold of White
Fang and placated him.  "He thought you were going to injure me, and he
wouldn't stand for it.  It's all right.  It's all right.  He'll learn
soon enough."

"And in the meantime I may be permitted to love my son when his dog is
not around," she laughed, though she was pale and weak from the fright.

She looked at White Fang, who snarled and bristled and glared
malevolently.

"He'll have to learn, and he shall, without postponement," Scott said.

He spoke softly to White Fang until he had quieted him, then his voice
became firm.

"Down, sir!  Down with you!"

This had been one of the things taught him by the master, and White Fang
obeyed, though he lay down reluctantly and sullenly.

"Now, mother."

Scott opened his arms to her, but kept his eyes on White Fang.

"Down!" he warned.  "Down!"

White Fang, bristling silently, half-crouching as he rose, sank back and
watched the hostile act repeated.  But no harm came of it, nor of the
embrace from the strange man-god that followed.  Then the clothes-bags
were taken into the carriage, the strange gods and the love-master
followed, and White Fang pursued, now running vigilantly behind, now
bristling up to the running horses and warning them that he was there to
see that no harm befell the god they dragged so swiftly across the earth.

At the end of fifteen minutes, the carriage swung in through a stone
gateway and on between a double row of arched and interlacing walnut
trees.  On either side stretched lawns, their broad sweep broken here and
there by great sturdy-limbed oaks.  In the near distance, in contrast
with the young-green of the tended grass, sunburnt hay-fields showed tan
and gold; while beyond were the tawny hills and upland pastures.  From
the head of the lawn, on the first soft swell from the valley-level,
looked down the deep-porched, many-windowed house.

Little opportunity was given White Fang to see all this.  Hardly had the
carriage entered the grounds, when he was set upon by a sheep-dog, bright-
eyed, sharp-muzzled, righteously indignant and angry.  It was between him
and the master, cutting him off.  White Fang snarled no warning, but his
hair bristled as he made his silent and deadly rush.  This rush was never
completed.  He halted with awkward abruptness, with stiff fore-legs
bracing himself against his momentum, almost sitting down on his
haunches, so desirous was he of avoiding contact with the dog he was in
the act of attacking.  It was a female, and the law of his kind thrust a
barrier between.  For him to attack her would require nothing less than a
violation of his instinct.

But with the sheep-dog it was otherwise.  Being a female, she possessed
no such instinct.  On the other hand, being a sheep-dog, her instinctive
fear of the Wild, and especially of the wolf, was unusually keen.  White
Fang was to her a wolf, the hereditary marauder who had preyed upon her
flocks from the time sheep were first herded and guarded by some dim
ancestor of hers.  And so, as he abandoned his rush at her and braced
himself to avoid the contact, she sprang upon him.  He snarled
involuntarily as he felt her teeth in his shoulder, but beyond this made
no offer to hurt her.  He backed away, stiff-legged with
self-consciousness, and tried to go around her.  He dodged this way and
that, and curved and turned, but to no purpose.  She remained always
between him and the way he wanted to go.

"Here, Collie!" called the strange man in the carriage.

Weedon Scott laughed.

"Never mind, father.  It is good discipline.  White Fang will have to
learn many things, and it's just as well that he begins now.  He'll
adjust himself all right."

The carriage drove on, and still Collie blocked White Fang's way.  He
tried to outrun her by leaving the drive and circling across the lawn but
she ran on the inner and smaller circle, and was always there, facing him
with her two rows of gleaming teeth.  Back he circled, across the drive
to the other lawn, and again she headed him off.

The carriage was bearing the master away.  White Fang caught glimpses of
it disappearing amongst the trees.  The situation was desperate.  He
essayed another circle.  She followed, running swiftly.  And then,
suddenly, he turned upon her.  It was his old fighting trick.  Shoulder
to shoulder, he struck her squarely.  Not only was she overthrown.  So
fast had she been running that she rolled along, now on her back, now on
her side, as she struggled to stop, clawing gravel with her feet and
crying shrilly her hurt pride and indignation.

White Fang did not wait.  The way was clear, and that was all he had
wanted.  She took after him, never ceasing her outcry.  It was the
straightaway now, and when it came to real running, White Fang could
teach her things.  She ran frantically, hysterically, straining to the
utmost, advertising the effort she was making with every leap: and all
the time White Fang slid smoothly away from her silently, without effort,
gliding like a ghost over the ground.

As he rounded the house to the _porte-cochere_, he came upon the
carriage.  It had stopped, and the master was alighting.  At this moment,
still running at top speed, White Fang became suddenly aware of an attack
from the side.  It was a deer-hound rushing upon him.  White Fang tried
to face it.  But he was going too fast, and the hound was too close.  It
struck him on the side; and such was his forward momentum and the
unexpectedness of it, White Fang was hurled to the ground and rolled
clear over.  He came out of the tangle a spectacle of malignancy, ears
flattened back, lips writhing, nose wrinkling, his teeth clipping
together as the fangs barely missed the hound's soft throat.

The master was running up, but was too far away; and it was Collie that
saved the hound's life.  Before White Fang could spring in and deliver
the fatal stroke, and just as he was in the act of springing in, Collie
arrived.  She had been out-manoeuvred and out-run, to say nothing of her
having been unceremoniously tumbled in the gravel, and her arrival was
like that of a tornado--made up of offended dignity, justifiable wrath,
and instinctive hatred for this marauder from the Wild.  She struck White
Fang at right angles in the midst of his spring, and again he was knocked
off his feet and rolled over.

The next moment the master arrived, and with one hand held White Fang,
while the father called off the dogs.

"I say, this is a pretty warm reception for a poor lone wolf from the
Arctic," the master said, while White Fang calmed down under his
caressing hand.  "In all his life he's only been known once to go off his
feet, and here he's been rolled twice in thirty seconds."

The carriage had driven away, and other strange gods had appeared from
out the house.  Some of these stood respectfully at a distance; but two
of them, women, perpetrated the hostile act of clutching the master
around the neck.  White Fang, however, was beginning to tolerate this
act.  No harm seemed to come of it, while the noises the gods made were
certainly not threatening.  These gods also made overtures to White Fang,
but he warned them off with a snarl, and the master did likewise with
word of mouth.  At such times White Fang leaned in close against the
master's legs and received reassuring pats on the head.

The hound, under the command, "Dick!  Lie down, sir!" had gone up the
steps and lain down to one side of the porch, still growling and keeping
a sullen watch on the intruder.  Collie had been taken in charge by one
of the woman-gods, who held arms around her neck and petted and caressed
her; but Collie was very much perplexed and worried, whining and
restless, outraged by the permitted presence of this wolf and confident
that the gods were making a mistake.

All the gods started up the steps to enter the house.  White Fang
followed closely at the master's heels.  Dick, on the porch, growled, and
White Fang, on the steps, bristled and growled back.

"Take Collie inside and leave the two of them to fight it out," suggested
Scott's father.  "After that they'll be friends."

"Then White Fang, to show his friendship, will have to be chief mourner
at the funeral," laughed the master.

The elder Scott looked incredulously, first at White Fang, then at Dick,
and finally at his son.

"You mean . . .?"

Weedon nodded his head.  "I mean just that.  You'd have a dead Dick
inside one minute--two minutes at the farthest."

He turned to White Fang.  "Come on, you wolf.  It's you that'll have to
come inside."

White Fang walked stiff-legged up the steps and across the porch, with
tail rigidly erect, keeping his eyes on Dick to guard against a flank
attack, and at the same time prepared for whatever fierce manifestation
of the unknown that might pounce out upon him from the interior of the
house.  But no thing of fear pounced out, and when he had gained the
inside he scouted carefully around, looking at it and finding it not.
Then he lay down with a contented grunt at the master's feet, observing
all that went on, ever ready to spring to his feet and fight for life
with the terrors he felt must lurk under the trap-roof of the dwelling.



CHAPTER III--THE GOD'S DOMAIN


Not only was White Fang adaptable by nature, but he had travelled much,
and knew the meaning and necessity of adjustment.  Here, in Sierra Vista,
which was the name of Judge Scott's place, White Fang quickly began to
make himself at home.  He had no further serious trouble with the dogs.
They knew more about the ways of the Southland gods than did he, and in
their eyes he had qualified when he accompanied the gods inside the
house.  Wolf that he was, and unprecedented as it was, the gods had
sanctioned his presence, and they, the dogs of the gods, could only
recognise this sanction.

Dick, perforce, had to go through a few stiff formalities at first, after
which he calmly accepted White Fang as an addition to the premises.  Had
Dick had his way, they would have been good friends; but White Fang
was averse to friendship.  All he asked of other dogs was to be let
alone.  His whole life he had kept aloof from his kind, and he still
desired to keep aloof.  Dick's overtures bothered him, so he snarled Dick
away.  In the north he had learned the lesson that he must let the
master's dogs alone, and he did not forget that lesson now.  But he
insisted on his own privacy and self-seclusion, and so thoroughly ignored
Dick that that good-natured creature finally gave him up and scarcely
took as much interest in him as in the hitching-post near the stable.

Not so with Collie.  While she accepted him because it was the mandate of
the gods, that was no reason that she should leave him in peace.  Woven
into her being was the memory of countless crimes he and his had
perpetrated against her ancestry.  Not in a day nor a generation were the
ravaged sheepfolds to be forgotten.  All this was a spur to her, pricking
her to retaliation.  She could not fly in the face of the gods who
permitted him, but that did not prevent her from making life miserable
for him in petty ways.  A feud, ages old, was between them, and she, for
one, would see to it that he was reminded.

So Collie took advantage of her sex to pick upon White Fang and maltreat
him.  His instinct would not permit him to attack her, while her
persistence would not permit him to ignore her.  When she rushed at him
he turned his fur-protected shoulder to her sharp teeth and walked away
stiff-legged and stately.  When she forced him too hard, he was compelled
to go about in a circle, his shoulder presented to her, his head turned
from her, and on his face and in his eyes a patient and bored expression.
Sometimes, however, a nip on his hind-quarters hastened his retreat and
made it anything but stately.  But as a rule he managed to maintain a
dignity that was almost solemnity.  He ignored her existence whenever it
was possible, and made it a point to keep out of her way.  When he saw or
heard her coming, he got up and walked off.

There was much in other matters for White Fang to learn.  Life in the
Northland was simplicity itself when compared with the complicated
affairs of Sierra Vista.  First of all, he had to learn the family of the
master.  In a way he was prepared to do this.  As Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch
had belonged to Grey Beaver, sharing his food, his fire, and his
blankets, so now, at Sierra Vista, belonged to the love-master all the
denizens of the house.

But in this matter there was a difference, and many differences.  Sierra
Vista was a far vaster affair than the tepee of Grey Beaver.  There were
many persons to be considered.  There was Judge Scott, and there was his
wife.  There were the master's two sisters, Beth and Mary.  There was his
wife, Alice, and then there were his children, Weedon and Maud, toddlers
of four and six.  There was no way for anybody to tell him about all
these people, and of blood-ties and relationship he knew nothing whatever
and never would be capable of knowing.  Yet he quickly worked it out that
all of them belonged to the master.  Then, by observation, whenever
opportunity offered, by study of action, speech, and the very intonations
of the voice, he slowly learned the intimacy and the degree of favour
they enjoyed with the master.  And by this ascertained standard, White
Fang treated them accordingly.  What was of value to the master he
valued; what was dear to the master was to be cherished by White Fang and
guarded carefully.

Thus it was with the two children.  All his life he had disliked
children.  He hated and feared their hands.  The lessons were not tender
that he had learned of their tyranny and cruelty in the days of the
Indian villages.  When Weedon and Maud had first approached him, he
growled warningly and looked malignant.  A cuff from the master and a
sharp word had then compelled him to permit their caresses, though he
growled and growled under their tiny hands, and in the growl there was no
crooning note.  Later, he observed that the boy and girl were of great
value in the master's eyes.  Then it was that no cuff nor sharp word was
necessary before they could pat him.

Yet White Fang was never effusively affectionate.  He yielded to the
master's children with an ill but honest grace, and endured their fooling
as one would endure a painful operation.  When he could no longer endure,
he would get up and stalk determinedly away from them.  But after a time,
he grew even to like the children.  Still he was not demonstrative.  He
would not go up to them.  On the other hand, instead of walking away at
sight of them, he waited for them to come to him.  And still later, it
was noticed that a pleased light came into his eyes when he saw them
approaching, and that he looked after them with an appearance of curious
regret when they left him for other amusements.

All this was a matter of development, and took time.  Next in his regard,
after the children, was Judge Scott.  There were two reasons, possibly,
for this.  First, he was evidently a valuable possession of the master's,
and next, he was undemonstrative.  White Fang liked to lie at his feet on
the wide porch when he read the newspaper, from time to time favouring
White Fang with a look or a word--untroublesome tokens that he recognised
White Fang's presence and existence.  But this was only when the master
was not around.  When the master appeared, all other beings ceased to
exist so far as White Fang was concerned.

White Fang allowed all the members of the family to pet him and make much
of him; but he never gave to them what he gave to the master.  No caress
of theirs could put the love-croon into his throat, and, try as they
would, they could never persuade him into snuggling against them.  This
expression of abandon and surrender, of absolute trust, he reserved for
the master alone.  In fact, he never regarded the members of the family
in any other light than possessions of the love-master.

Also White Fang had early come to differentiate between the family and
the servants of the household.  The latter were afraid of him, while he
merely refrained from attacking them.  This because he considered that
they were likewise possessions of the master.  Between White Fang and
them existed a neutrality and no more.  They cooked for the master and
washed the dishes and did other things just as Matt had done up in the
Klondike.  They were, in short, appurtenances of the household.

Outside the household there was even more for White Fang to learn.  The
master's domain was wide and complex, yet it had its metes and bounds.
The land itself ceased at the county road.  Outside was the common domain
of all gods--the roads and streets.  Then inside other fences were the
particular domains of other gods.  A myriad laws governed all these
things and determined conduct; yet he did not know the speech of the
gods, nor was there any way for him to learn save by experience.  He
obeyed his natural impulses until they ran him counter to some law.  When
this had been done a few times, he learned the law and after that
observed it.

But most potent in his education was the cuff of the master's hand, the
censure of the master's voice.  Because of White Fang's very great love,
a cuff from the master hurt him far more than any beating Grey Beaver or
Beauty Smith had ever given him.  They had hurt only the flesh of him;
beneath the flesh the spirit had still raged, splendid and invincible.
But with the master the cuff was always too light to hurt the flesh.  Yet
it went deeper.  It was an expression of the master's disapproval, and
White Fang's spirit wilted under it.

In point of fact, the cuff was rarely administered.  The master's voice
was sufficient.  By it White Fang knew whether he did right or not.  By
it he trimmed his conduct and adjusted his actions.  It was the compass
by which he steered and learned to chart the manners of a new land and
life.

In the Northland, the only domesticated animal was the dog.  All other
animals lived in the Wild, and were, when not too formidable, lawful
spoil for any dog.  All his days White Fang had foraged among the live
things for food.  It did not enter his head that in the Southland it was
otherwise.  But this he was to learn early in his residence in Santa
Clara Valley.  Sauntering around the corner of the house in the early
morning, he came upon a chicken that had escaped from the chicken-yard.
White Fang's natural impulse was to eat it.  A couple of bounds, a flash
of teeth and a frightened squawk, and he had scooped in the adventurous
fowl.  It was farm-bred and fat and tender; and White Fang licked his
chops and decided that such fare was good.

Later in the day, he chanced upon another stray chicken near the stables.
One of the grooms ran to the rescue.  He did not know White Fang's breed,
so for weapon he took a light buggy-whip.  At the first cut of the whip,
White Fang left the chicken for the man.  A club might have stopped White
Fang, but not a whip.  Silently, without flinching, he took a second cut
in his forward rush, and as he leaped for the throat the groom cried out,
"My God!" and staggered backward.  He dropped the whip and shielded his
throat with his arms.  In consequence, his forearm was ripped open to the
bone.

The man was badly frightened.  It was not so much White Fang's ferocity
as it was his silence that unnerved the groom.  Still protecting his
throat and face with his torn and bleeding arm, he tried to retreat to
the barn.  And it would have gone hard with him had not Collie appeared
on the scene.  As she had saved Dick's life, she now saved the groom's.
She rushed upon White Fang in frenzied wrath.  She had been right.  She
had known better than the blundering gods.  All her suspicions were
justified.  Here was the ancient marauder up to his old tricks again.

The groom escaped into the stables, and White Fang backed away before
Collie's wicked teeth, or presented his shoulder to them and circled
round and round.  But Collie did not give over, as was her wont, after a
decent interval of chastisement.  On the contrary, she grew more excited
and angry every moment, until, in the end, White Fang flung dignity to
the winds and frankly fled away from her across the fields.

"He'll learn to leave chickens alone," the master said.  "But I can't
give him the lesson until I catch him in the act."

Two nights later came the act, but on a more generous scale than the
master had anticipated.  White Fang had observed closely the
chicken-yards and the habits of the chickens.  In the night-time, after
they had gone to roost, he climbed to the top of a pile of newly hauled
lumber.  From there he gained the roof of a chicken-house, passed over
the ridgepole and dropped to the ground inside.  A moment later he was
inside the house, and the slaughter began.

In the morning, when the master came out on to the porch, fifty white
Leghorn hens, laid out in a row by the groom, greeted his eyes.  He
whistled to himself, softly, first with surprise, and then, at the end,
with admiration.  His eyes were likewise greeted by White Fang, but about
the latter there were no signs of shame nor guilt.  He carried himself
with pride, as though, forsooth, he had achieved a deed praiseworthy and
meritorious.  There was about him no consciousness of sin.  The master's
lips tightened as he faced the disagreeable task.  Then he talked harshly
to the unwitting culprit, and in his voice there was nothing but godlike
wrath.  Also, he held White Fang's nose down to the slain hens, and at
the same time cuffed him soundly.

White Fang never raided a chicken-roost again.  It was against the law,
and he had learned it.  Then the master took him into the chicken-yards.
White Fang's natural impulse, when he saw the live food fluttering about
him and under his very nose, was to spring upon it.  He obeyed the
impulse, but was checked by the master's voice.  They continued in the
yards for half an hour.  Time and again the impulse surged over White
Fang, and each time, as he yielded to it, he was checked by the master's
voice.  Thus it was he learned the law, and ere he left the domain of the
chickens, he had learned to ignore their existence.

"You can never cure a chicken-killer."  Judge Scott shook his head sadly
at luncheon table, when his son narrated the lesson he had given White
Fang.  "Once they've got the habit and the taste of blood . . ."  Again
he shook his head sadly.

But Weedon Scott did not agree with his father.  "I'll tell you what I'll
do," he challenged finally.  "I'll lock White Fang in with the chickens
all afternoon."

"But think of the chickens," objected the judge.

"And furthermore," the son went on, "for every chicken he kills, I'll pay
you one dollar gold coin of the realm."

"But you should penalise father, too," interpose Beth.

Her sister seconded her, and a chorus of approval arose from around the
table.  Judge Scott nodded his head in agreement.

"All right." Weedon Scott pondered for a moment.  "And if, at the end of
the afternoon White Fang hasn't harmed a chicken, for every ten minutes
of the time he has spent in the yard, you will have to say to him,
gravely and with deliberation, just as if you were sitting on the bench
and solemnly passing judgment, 'White Fang, you are smarter than I
thought.'"

From hidden points of vantage the family watched the performance.  But it
was a fizzle.  Locked in the yard and there deserted by the master, White
Fang lay down and went to sleep.  Once he got up and walked over to the
trough for a drink of water.  The chickens he calmly ignored.  So far as
he was concerned they did not exist.  At four o'clock he executed a
running jump, gained the roof of the chicken-house and leaped to the
ground outside, whence he sauntered gravely to the house.  He had learned
the law.  And on the porch, before the delighted family, Judge Scott,
face to face with White Fang, said slowly and solemnly, sixteen times,
"White Fang, you are smarter than I thought."

But it was the multiplicity of laws that befuddled White Fang and often
brought him into disgrace.  He had to learn that he must not touch the
chickens that belonged to other gods.  Then there were cats, and rabbits,
and turkeys; all these he must let alone.  In fact, when he had but
partly learned the law, his impression was that he must leave all live
things alone.  Out in the back-pasture, a quail could flutter up under
his nose unharmed.  All tense and trembling with eagerness and desire, he
mastered his instinct and stood still.  He was obeying the will of the
gods.

And then, one day, again out in the back-pasture, he saw Dick start a
jackrabbit and run it.  The master himself was looking on and did not
interfere.  Nay, he encouraged White Fang to join in the chase.  And thus
he learned that there was no taboo on jackrabbits.  In the end he worked
out the complete law.  Between him and all domestic animals there must be
no hostilities.  If not amity, at least neutrality must obtain.  But the
other animals--the squirrels, and quail, and cottontails, were creatures
of the Wild who had never yielded allegiance to man.  They were the
lawful prey of any dog.  It was only the tame that the gods protected,
and between the tame deadly strife was not permitted.  The gods held the
power of life and death over their subjects, and the gods were jealous of
their power.

Life was complex in the Santa Clara Valley after the simplicities of the
Northland.  And the chief thing demanded by these intricacies of
civilisation was control, restraint--a poise of self that was as delicate
as the fluttering of gossamer wings and at the same time as rigid as
steel.  Life had a thousand faces, and White Fang found he must meet them
all--thus, when he went to town, in to San Jose, running behind the
carriage or loafing about the streets when the carriage stopped.  Life
flowed past him, deep and wide and varied, continually impinging upon his
senses, demanding of him instant and endless adjustments and
correspondences, and compelling him, almost always, to suppress his
natural impulses.

There were butcher-shops where meat hung within reach.  This meat he must
not touch.  There were cats at the houses the master visited that must be
let alone.  And there were dogs everywhere that snarled at him and that
he must not attack.  And then, on the crowded sidewalks there were
persons innumerable whose attention he attracted.  They would stop and
look at him, point him out to one another, examine him, talk of him, and,
worst of all, pat him.  And these perilous contacts from all these
strange hands he must endure.  Yet this endurance he achieved.
Furthermore, he got over being awkward and self-conscious.  In a lofty
way he received the attentions of the multitudes of strange gods.  With
condescension he accepted their condescension.  On the other hand, there
was something about him that prevented great familiarity.  They patted
him on the head and passed on, contented and pleased with their own
daring.

But it was not all easy for White Fang.  Running behind the carriage in
the outskirts of San Jose, he encountered certain small boys who made a
practice of flinging stones at him.  Yet he knew that it was not
permitted him to pursue and drag them down.  Here he was compelled to
violate his instinct of self-preservation, and violate it he did, for he
was becoming tame and qualifying himself for civilisation.

Nevertheless, White Fang was not quite satisfied with the arrangement.  He
had no abstract ideas about justice and fair play.  But there is a
certain sense of equity that resides in life, and it was this sense in
him that resented the unfairness of his being permitted no defence
against the stone-throwers.  He forgot that in the covenant entered into
between him and the gods they were pledged to care for him and defend
him.  But one day the master sprang from the carriage, whip in hand, and
gave the stone-throwers a thrashing.  After that they threw stones no
more, and White Fang understood and was satisfied.

One other experience of similar nature was his.  On the way to town,
hanging around the saloon at the cross-roads, were three dogs that made a
practice of rushing out upon him when he went by.  Knowing his deadly
method of fighting, the master had never ceased impressing upon White
Fang the law that he must not fight.  As a result, having learned the
lesson well, White Fang was hard put whenever he passed the cross-roads
saloon.  After the first rush, each time, his snarl kept the three dogs
at a distance but they trailed along behind, yelping and bickering and
insulting him.  This endured for some time.  The men at the saloon even
urged the dogs on to attack White Fang.  One day they openly sicked the
dogs on him.  The master stopped the carriage.

"Go to it," he said to White Fang.

But White Fang could not believe.  He looked at the master, and he looked
at the dogs.  Then he looked back eagerly and questioningly at the
master.

The master nodded his head.  "Go to them, old fellow.  Eat them up."

White Fang no longer hesitated.  He turned and leaped silently among his
enemies.  All three faced him.  There was a great snarling and growling,
a clashing of teeth and a flurry of bodies.  The dust of the road arose
in a cloud and screened the battle.  But at the end of several minutes
two dogs were struggling in the dirt and the third was in full flight.  He
leaped a ditch, went through a rail fence, and fled across a field.  White
Fang followed, sliding over the ground in wolf fashion and with wolf
speed, swiftly and without noise, and in the centre of the field he
dragged down and slew the dog.

With this triple killing his main troubles with dogs ceased.  The word
went up and down the valley, and men saw to it that their dogs did not
molest the Fighting Wolf.



CHAPTER IV--THE CALL OF KIND


The months came and went.  There was plenty of food and no work in the
Southland, and White Fang lived fat and prosperous and happy.  Not alone
was he in the geographical Southland, for he was in the Southland of
life.  Human kindness was like a sun shining upon him, and he flourished
like a flower planted in good soil.

And yet he remained somehow different from other dogs.  He knew the law
even better than did the dogs that had known no other life, and he
observed the law more punctiliously; but still there was about him a
suggestion of lurking ferocity, as though the Wild still lingered in him
and the wolf in him merely slept.

He never chummed with other dogs.  Lonely he had lived, so far as his
kind was concerned, and lonely he would continue to live.  In his
puppyhood, under the persecution of Lip-lip and the puppy-pack, and in
his fighting days with Beauty Smith, he had acquired a fixed aversion for
dogs.  The natural course of his life had been diverted, and, recoiling
from his kind, he had clung to the human.

Besides, all Southland dogs looked upon him with suspicion.  He aroused
in them their instinctive fear of the Wild, and they greeted him always
with snarl and growl and belligerent hatred.  He, on the other hand,
learned that it was not necessary to use his teeth upon them.  His naked
fangs and writhing lips were uniformly efficacious, rarely failing to
send a bellowing on-rushing dog back on its haunches.

But there was one trial in White Fang's life--Collie.  She never gave him
a moment's peace.  She was not so amenable to the law as he.  She defied
all efforts of the master to make her become friends with White Fang.
Ever in his ears was sounding her sharp and nervous snarl.  She had never
forgiven him the chicken-killing episode, and persistently held to the
belief that his intentions were bad.  She found him guilty before the
act, and treated him accordingly.  She became a pest to him, like a
policeman following him around the stable and the hounds, and, if he even
so much as glanced curiously at a pigeon or chicken, bursting into an
outcry of indignation and wrath.  His favourite way of ignoring her was
to lie down, with his head on his fore-paws, and pretend sleep.  This
always dumfounded and silenced her.

With the exception of Collie, all things went well with White Fang.  He
had learned control and poise, and he knew the law.  He achieved a
staidness, and calmness, and philosophic tolerance.  He no longer lived
in a hostile environment.  Danger and hurt and death did not lurk
everywhere about him.  In time, the unknown, as a thing of terror and
menace ever impending, faded away.  Life was soft and easy.  It flowed
along smoothly, and neither fear nor foe lurked by the way.

He missed the snow without being aware of it.  "An unduly long summer,"
would have been his thought had he thought about it; as it was, he merely
missed the snow in a vague, subconscious way.  In the same fashion,
especially in the heat of summer when he suffered from the sun, he
experienced faint longings for the Northland.  Their only effect upon
him, however, was to make him uneasy and restless without his knowing
what was the matter.

White Fang had never been very demonstrative.  Beyond his snuggling and
the throwing of a crooning note into his love-growl, he had no way of
expressing his love.  Yet it was given him to discover a third way.  He
had always been susceptible to the laughter of the gods.  Laughter had
affected him with madness, made him frantic with rage.  But he did not
have it in him to be angry with the love-master, and when that god
elected to laugh at him in a good-natured, bantering way, he was
nonplussed.  He could feel the pricking and stinging of the old anger as
it strove to rise up in him, but it strove against love.  He could not be
angry; yet he had to do something.  At first he was dignified, and the
master laughed the harder.  Then he tried to be more dignified, and the
master laughed harder than before.  In the end, the master laughed him
out of his dignity.  His jaws slightly parted, his lips lifted a little,
and a quizzical expression that was more love than humour came into his
eyes.  He had learned to laugh.

Likewise he learned to romp with the master, to be tumbled down and
rolled over, and be the victim of innumerable rough tricks.  In return he
feigned anger, bristling and growling ferociously, and clipping his teeth
together in snaps that had all the seeming of deadly intention.  But he
never forgot himself.  Those snaps were always delivered on the empty
air.  At the end of such a romp, when blow and cuff and snap and snarl
were fast and furious, they would break off suddenly and stand several
feet apart, glaring at each other.  And then, just as suddenly, like the
sun rising on a stormy sea, they would begin to laugh.  This would always
culminate with the master's arms going around White Fang's neck and
shoulders while the latter crooned and growled his love-song.

But nobody else ever romped with White Fang.  He did not permit it.  He
stood on his dignity, and when they attempted it, his warning snarl and
bristling mane were anything but playful.  That he allowed the master
these liberties was no reason that he should be a common dog, loving here
and loving there, everybody's property for a romp and good time.  He
loved with single heart and refused to cheapen himself or his love.

The master went out on horseback a great deal, and to accompany him was
one of White Fang's chief duties in life.  In the Northland he had
evidenced his fealty by toiling in the harness; but there were no sleds
in the Southland, nor did dogs pack burdens on their backs.  So he
rendered fealty in the new way, by running with the master's horse.  The
longest day never played White Fang out.  His was the gait of the wolf,
smooth, tireless and effortless, and at the end of fifty miles he would
come in jauntily ahead of the horse.

It was in connection with the riding, that White Fang achieved one other
mode of expression--remarkable in that he did it but twice in all his
life.  The first time occurred when the master was trying to teach a
spirited thoroughbred the method of opening and closing gates without the
rider's dismounting.  Time and again and many times he ranged the horse
up to the gate in the effort to close it and each time the horse became
frightened and backed and plunged away.  It grew more nervous and excited
every moment.  When it reared, the master put the spurs to it and made it
drop its fore-legs back to earth, whereupon it would begin kicking with
its hind-legs.  White Fang watched the performance with increasing
anxiety until he could contain himself no longer, when he sprang in front
of the horse and barked savagely and warningly.

Though he often tried to bark thereafter, and the master encouraged him,
he succeeded only once, and then it was not in the master's presence.  A
scamper across the pasture, a jackrabbit rising suddenly under the
horse's feet, a violent sheer, a stumble, a fall to earth, and a broken
leg for the master, was the cause of it.  White Fang sprang in a rage at
the throat of the offending horse, but was checked by the master's voice.

"Home!  Go home!" the master commanded when he had ascertained his
injury.

White Fang was disinclined to desert him.  The master thought of writing
a note, but searched his pockets vainly for pencil and paper.  Again he
commanded White Fang to go home.

The latter regarded him wistfully, started away, then returned and whined
softly.  The master talked to him gently but seriously, and he cocked his
ears, and listened with painful intentness.

"That's all right, old fellow, you just run along home," ran the talk.
"Go on home and tell them what's happened to me.  Home with you, you
wolf.  Get along home!"

White Fang knew the meaning of "home," and though he did not understand
the remainder of the master's language, he knew it was his will that he
should go home.  He turned and trotted reluctantly away.  Then he
stopped, undecided, and looked back over his shoulder.

"Go home!" came the sharp command, and this time he obeyed.

The family was on the porch, taking the cool of the afternoon, when White
Fang arrived.  He came in among them, panting, covered with dust.

"Weedon's back," Weedon's mother announced.

The children welcomed White Fang with glad cries and ran to meet him.  He
avoided them and passed down the porch, but they cornered him against a
rocking-chair and the railing.  He growled and tried to push by them.
Their mother looked apprehensively in their direction.

"I confess, he makes me nervous around the children," she said.  "I have
a dread that he will turn upon them unexpectedly some day."

Growling savagely, White Fang sprang out of the corner, overturning the
boy and the girl.  The mother called them to her and comforted them,
telling them not to bother White Fang.

"A wolf is a wolf!" commented Judge Scott.  "There is no trusting one."

"But he is not all wolf," interposed Beth, standing for her brother in
his absence.

"You have only Weedon's opinion for that," rejoined the judge.  "He
merely surmises that there is some strain of dog in White Fang; but as he
will tell you himself, he knows nothing about it.  As for his
appearance--"

He did not finish his sentence.  White Fang stood before him, growling
fiercely.

"Go away!  Lie down, sir!" Judge Scott commanded.

White Fang turned to the love-master's wife.  She screamed with fright as
he seized her dress in his teeth and dragged on it till the frail fabric
tore away.  By this time he had become the centre of interest.

He had ceased from his growling and stood, head up, looking into their
faces.  His throat worked spasmodically, but made no sound, while he
struggled with all his body, convulsed with the effort to rid himself of
the incommunicable something that strained for utterance.

"I hope he is not going mad," said Weedon's mother.  "I told Weedon that
I was afraid the warm climate would not agree with an Arctic animal."

"He's trying to speak, I do believe," Beth announced.

At this moment speech came to White Fang, rushing up in a great burst of
barking.

"Something has happened to Weedon," his wife said decisively.

They were all on their feet now, and White Fang ran down the steps,
looking back for them to follow.  For the second and last time in his
life he had barked and made himself understood.

After this event he found a warmer place in the hearts of the Sierra
Vista people, and even the groom whose arm he had slashed admitted that
he was a wise dog even if he was a wolf.  Judge Scott still held to the
same opinion, and proved it to everybody's dissatisfaction by
measurements and descriptions taken from the encyclopaedia and various
works on natural history.

The days came and went, streaming their unbroken sunshine over the Santa
Clara Valley.  But as they grew shorter and White Fang's second winter in
the Southland came on, he made a strange discovery.  Collie's teeth were
no longer sharp.  There was a playfulness about her nips and a gentleness
that prevented them from really hurting him.  He forgot that she had made
life a burden to him, and when she disported herself around him he
responded solemnly, striving to be playful and becoming no more than
ridiculous.

One day she led him off on a long chase through the back-pasture land
into the woods.  It was the afternoon that the master was to ride, and
White Fang knew it.  The horse stood saddled and waiting at the door.
White Fang hesitated.  But there was that in him deeper than all the law
he had learned, than the customs that had moulded him, than his love for
the master, than the very will to live of himself; and when, in the
moment of his indecision, Collie nipped him and scampered off, he turned
and followed after.  The master rode alone that day; and in the woods,
side by side, White Fang ran with Collie, as his mother, Kiche, and old
One Eye had run long years before in the silent Northland forest.



CHAPTER V--THE SLEEPING WOLF


It was about this time that the newspapers were full of the daring escape
of a convict from San Quentin prison.  He was a ferocious man.  He had
been ill-made in the making.  He had not been born right, and he had not
been helped any by the moulding he had received at the hands of society.
The hands of society are harsh, and this man was a striking sample of its
handiwork.  He was a beast--a human beast, it is true, but nevertheless
so terrible a beast that he can best be characterised as carnivorous.

In San Quentin prison he had proved incorrigible.  Punishment failed to
break his spirit.  He could die dumb-mad and fighting to the last, but he
could not live and be beaten.  The more fiercely he fought, the more
harshly society handled him, and the only effect of harshness was to make
him fiercer.  Strait-jackets, starvation, and beatings and clubbings
were the wrong treatment for Jim Hall; but it was the treatment he
received.  It was the treatment he had received from the time he was a
little pulpy boy in a San Francisco slum--soft clay in the hands of
society and ready to be formed into something.

It was during Jim Hall's third term in prison that he encountered a guard
that was almost as great a beast as he.  The guard treated him unfairly,
lied about him to the warden, lost his credits, persecuted him.  The
difference between them was that the guard carried a bunch of keys and a
revolver.  Jim Hall had only his naked hands and his teeth.  But he
sprang upon the guard one day and used his teeth on the other's throat
just like any jungle animal.

After this, Jim Hall went to live in the incorrigible cell.  He lived
there three years.  The cell was of iron, the floor, the walls, the roof.
He never left this cell.  He never saw the sky nor the sunshine.  Day was
a twilight and night was a black silence.  He was in an iron tomb, buried
alive.  He saw no human face, spoke to no human thing.  When his food was
shoved in to him, he growled like a wild animal.  He hated all things.
For days and nights he bellowed his rage at the universe.  For weeks and
months he never made a sound, in the black silence eating his very soul.
He was a man and a monstrosity, as fearful a thing of fear as ever
gibbered in the visions of a maddened brain.

And then, one night, he escaped.  The warders said it was impossible, but
nevertheless the cell was empty, and half in half out of it lay the body
of a dead guard.  Two other dead guards marked his trail through the
prison to the outer walls, and he had killed with his hands to avoid
noise.

He was armed with the weapons of the slain guards--a live arsenal that
fled through the hills pursued by the organised might of society.  A
heavy price of gold was upon his head.  Avaricious farmers hunted him
with shot-guns.  His blood might pay off a mortgage or send a son to
college.  Public-spirited citizens took down their rifles and went out
after him.  A pack of bloodhounds followed the way of his bleeding feet.
And the sleuth-hounds of the law, the paid fighting animals of society,
with telephone, and telegraph, and special train, clung to his trail
night and day.

Sometimes they came upon him, and men faced him like heroes, or stampeded
through barbed-wire fences to the delight of the commonwealth reading the
account at the breakfast table.  It was after such encounters that the
dead and wounded were carted back to the towns, and their places filled
by men eager for the man-hunt.

And then Jim Hall disappeared.  The bloodhounds vainly quested on the
lost trail.  Inoffensive ranchers in remote valleys were held up by armed
men and compelled to identify themselves.  While the remains of Jim Hall
were discovered on a dozen mountain-sides by greedy claimants for blood-
money.

In the meantime the newspapers were read at Sierra Vista, not so much
with interest as with anxiety.  The women were afraid.  Judge Scott pooh-
poohed and laughed, but not with reason, for it was in his last days on
the bench that Jim Hall had stood before him and received sentence.  And
in open court-room, before all men, Jim Hall had proclaimed that the day
would come when he would wreak vengeance on the Judge that sentenced him.

For once, Jim Hall was right.  He was innocent of the crime for which he
was sentenced.  It was a case, in the parlance of thieves and police, of
"rail-roading."  Jim Hall was being "rail-roaded" to prison for a crime
he had not committed.  Because of the two prior convictions against him,
Judge Scott imposed upon him a sentence of fifty years.

Judge Scott did not know all things, and he did not know that he was
party to a police conspiracy, that the evidence was hatched and perjured,
that Jim Hall was guiltless of the crime charged.  And Jim Hall, on the
other hand, did not know that Judge Scott was merely ignorant.  Jim Hall
believed that the judge knew all about it and was hand in glove with the
police in the perpetration of the monstrous injustice.  So it was, when
the doom of fifty years of living death was uttered by Judge Scott, that
Jim Hall, hating all things in the society that misused him, rose up and
raged in the court-room until dragged down by half a dozen of his blue-
coated enemies.  To him, Judge Scott was the keystone in the arch of
injustice, and upon Judge Scott he emptied the vials of his wrath and
hurled the threats of his revenge yet to come.  Then Jim Hall went to his
living death . . . and escaped.

Of all this White Fang knew nothing.  But between him and Alice, the
master's wife, there existed a secret.  Each night, after Sierra Vista
had gone to bed, she rose and let in White Fang to sleep in the big hall.
Now White Fang was not a house-dog, nor was he permitted to sleep in the
house; so each morning, early, she slipped down and let him out before
the family was awake.

On one such night, while all the house slept, White Fang awoke and lay
very quietly.  And very quietly he smelled the air and read the message
it bore of a strange god's presence.  And to his ears came sounds of the
strange god's movements.  White Fang burst into no furious outcry.  It
was not his way.  The strange god walked softly, but more softly walked
White Fang, for he had no clothes to rub against the flesh of his body.
He followed silently.  In the Wild he had hunted live meat that was
infinitely timid, and he knew the advantage of surprise.

The strange god paused at the foot of the great staircase and listened,
and White Fang was as dead, so without movement was he as he watched and
waited.  Up that staircase the way led to the love-master and to the love-
master's dearest possessions.  White Fang bristled, but waited.  The
strange god's foot lifted.  He was beginning the ascent.

Then it was that White Fang struck.  He gave no warning, with no snarl
anticipated his own action.  Into the air he lifted his body in the
spring that landed him on the strange god's back.  White Fang clung with
his fore-paws to the man's shoulders, at the same time burying his fangs
into the back of the man's neck.  He clung on for a moment, long enough
to drag the god over backward.  Together they crashed to the floor.  White
Fang leaped clear, and, as the man struggled to rise, was in again with
the slashing fangs.

Sierra Vista awoke in alarm.  The noise from downstairs was as that of a
score of battling fiends.  There were revolver shots.  A man's voice
screamed once in horror and anguish.  There was a great snarling and
growling, and over all arose a smashing and crashing of furniture and
glass.

But almost as quickly as it had arisen, the commotion died away.  The
struggle had not lasted more than three minutes.  The frightened
household clustered at the top of the stairway.  From below, as from out
an abyss of blackness, came up a gurgling sound, as of air bubbling
through water.  Sometimes this gurgle became sibilant, almost a whistle.
But this, too, quickly died down and ceased.  Then naught came up out of
the blackness save a heavy panting of some creature struggling sorely for
air.

Weedon Scott pressed a button, and the staircase and downstairs hall were
flooded with light.  Then he and Judge Scott, revolvers in hand,
cautiously descended.  There was no need for this caution.  White Fang
had done his work.  In the midst of the wreckage of overthrown and
smashed furniture, partly on his side, his face hidden by an arm, lay a
man.  Weedon Scott bent over, removed the arm and turned the man's face
upward.  A gaping throat explained the manner of his death.

"Jim Hall," said Judge Scott, and father and son looked significantly at
each other.

Then they turned to White Fang.  He, too, was lying on his side.  His
eyes were closed, but the lids slightly lifted in an effort to look at
them as they bent over him, and the tail was perceptibly agitated in a
vain effort to wag.  Weedon Scott patted him, and his throat rumbled an
acknowledging growl.  But it was a weak growl at best, and it quickly
ceased.  His eyelids drooped and went shut, and his whole body seemed to
relax and flatten out upon the floor.

"He's all in, poor devil," muttered the master.

"We'll see about that," asserted the Judge, as he started for the
telephone.

"Frankly, he has one chance in a thousand," announced the surgeon, after
he had worked an hour and a half on White Fang.

Dawn was breaking through the windows and dimming the electric lights.
With the exception of the children, the whole family was gathered about
the surgeon to hear his verdict.

"One broken hind-leg," he went on.  "Three broken ribs, one at least of
which has pierced the lungs.  He has lost nearly all the blood in his
body.  There is a large likelihood of internal injuries.  He must have
been jumped upon.  To say nothing of three bullet holes clear through
him.  One chance in a thousand is really optimistic.  He hasn't a chance
in ten thousand."

"But he mustn't lose any chance that might be of help to him," Judge
Scott exclaimed.  "Never mind expense.  Put him under the X-ray--anything.
Weedon, telegraph at once to San Francisco for Doctor Nichols.  No
reflection on you, doctor, you understand; but he must have the advantage
of every chance."

The surgeon smiled indulgently.  "Of course I understand.  He deserves
all that can be done for him.  He must be nursed as you would nurse a
human being, a sick child.  And don't forget what I told you about
temperature.  I'll be back at ten o'clock again."

White Fang received the nursing.  Judge Scott's suggestion of a trained
nurse was indignantly clamoured down by the girls, who themselves
undertook the task.  And White Fang won out on the one chance in ten
thousand denied him by the surgeon.

The latter was not to be censured for his misjudgment.  All his life he
had tended and operated on the soft humans of civilisation, who lived
sheltered lives and had descended out of many sheltered generations.
Compared with White Fang, they were frail and flabby, and clutched life
without any strength in their grip.  White Fang had come straight from
the Wild, where the weak perish early and shelter is vouchsafed to none.
In neither his father nor his mother was there any weakness, nor in the
generations before them.  A constitution of iron and the vitality of the
Wild were White Fang's inheritance, and he clung to life, the whole of
him and every part of him, in spirit and in flesh, with the tenacity that
of old belonged to all creatures.

Bound down a prisoner, denied even movement by the plaster casts and
bandages, White Fang lingered out the weeks.  He slept long hours and
dreamed much, and through his mind passed an unending pageant of
Northland visions.  All the ghosts of the past arose and were with him.
Once again he lived in the lair with Kiche, crept trembling to the knees
of Grey Beaver to tender his allegiance, ran for his life before Lip-lip
and all the howling bedlam of the puppy-pack.

He ran again through the silence, hunting his living food through the
months of famine; and again he ran at the head of the team, the gut-whips
of Mit-sah and Grey Beaver snapping behind, their voices crying "Ra!
Raa!" when they came to a narrow passage and the team closed together
like a fan to go through.  He lived again all his days with Beauty Smith
and the fights he had fought.  At such times he whimpered and snarled in
his sleep, and they that looked on said that his dreams were bad.

But there was one particular nightmare from which he suffered--the
clanking, clanging monsters of electric cars that were to him colossal
screaming lynxes.  He would lie in a screen of bushes, watching for a
squirrel to venture far enough out on the ground from its tree-refuge.
Then, when he sprang out upon it, it would transform itself into an
electric car, menacing and terrible, towering over him like a mountain,
screaming and clanging and spitting fire at him.  It was the same when he
challenged the hawk down out of the sky.  Down out of the blue it would
rush, as it dropped upon him changing itself into the ubiquitous electric
car.  Or again, he would be in the pen of Beauty Smith.  Outside the pen,
men would be gathering, and he knew that a fight was on.  He watched the
door for his antagonist to enter.  The door would open, and thrust in
upon him would come the awful electric car.  A thousand times this
occurred, and each time the terror it inspired was as vivid and great as
ever.

Then came the day when the last bandage and the last plaster cast were
taken off.  It was a gala day.  All Sierra Vista was gathered around.  The
master rubbed his ears, and he crooned his love-growl.  The master's wife
called him the "Blessed Wolf," which name was taken up with acclaim and
all the women called him the Blessed Wolf.

He tried to rise to his feet, and after several attempts fell down from
weakness.  He had lain so long that his muscles had lost their cunning,
and all the strength had gone out of them.  He felt a little shame
because of his weakness, as though, forsooth, he were failing the gods in
the service he owed them.  Because of this he made heroic efforts to
arise and at last he stood on his four legs, tottering and swaying back
and forth.

"The Blessed Wolf!" chorused the women.

Judge Scott surveyed them triumphantly.

"Out of your own mouths be it," he said.  "Just as I contended right
along.  No mere dog could have done what he did.  He's a wolf."

"A Blessed Wolf," amended the Judge's wife.

"Yes, Blessed Wolf," agreed the Judge.  "And henceforth that shall be my
name for him."

"He'll have to learn to walk again," said the surgeon; "so he might as
well start in right now.  It won't hurt him.  Take him outside."

And outside he went, like a king, with all Sierra Vista about him and
tending on him.  He was very weak, and when he reached the lawn he lay
down and rested for a while.

Then the procession started on, little spurts of strength coming into
White Fang's muscles as he used them and the blood began to surge through
them.  The stables were reached, and there in the doorway, lay Collie, a
half-dozen pudgy puppies playing about her in the sun.

White Fang looked on with a wondering eye.  Collie snarled warningly at
him, and he was careful to keep his distance.  The master with his toe
helped one sprawling puppy toward him.  He bristled suspiciously, but the
master warned him that all was well.  Collie, clasped in the arms of one
of the women, watched him jealously and with a snarl warned him that all
was not well.

The puppy sprawled in front of him.  He cocked his ears and watched it
curiously.  Then their noses touched, and he felt the warm little tongue
of the puppy on his jowl.  White Fang's tongue went out, he knew not why,
and he licked the puppy's face.

Hand-clapping and pleased cries from the gods greeted the performance.  He
was surprised, and looked at them in a puzzled way.  Then his weakness
asserted itself, and he lay down, his ears cocked, his head on one side,
as he watched the puppy.  The other puppies came sprawling toward him, to
Collie's great disgust; and he gravely permitted them to clamber and
tumble over him.  At first, amid the applause of the gods, he betrayed a
trifle of his old self-consciousness and awkwardness.  This passed away
as the puppies' antics and mauling continued, and he lay with half-shut
patient eyes, drowsing in the sun.


