text:
Plundered Cargo/Chapter 3

HE four individuals whose fortunes thus brought them to a bleak house in the cabbage fields would have to be considerably less than human if what occurred there did not leave them with their reasoning faculties decidedly scrambled. The four found themselves bound with ropes, dumped in a pitch dark and unfurnished chamber within the house, dumped unceremoniously like so many potato sacks. They heard a door close and the sound of a key in the lock. Then absolute silence. For a long minute each prisoner was busy with his own menial machinery, adjusting himself to the results of overwhelming surprise.

“Well,” in a growl from Spike Horn, “I'll say this takes the cake!”

“A much more serious matter than a cake appears to be involved here, my young friend,” spoke the measured thought of the doctor. “I for one feel that I have a rising somewhere on my head, though I can't get my hands up to feel it. People do not produce risings on other people's heads with blows of some blunt instrument without reason. Now if we only knew the reason”

“Aw, you make me tired, whoever you are,” came brusque interruption of a soft tenor voice somewhere near. “Don't you know a hold-up when you see it—or feel it? Cripes, I guess my arm's broke from the way it feels!”

A chuckle from the irrepressible Spike. “The Iron Man! Walla-Walla, who lets you hit him in the pants with a ball bat, gets a wallop out of bounds an' yells about it! Oh, Mama!”

“You crazy drunk!” the disembodied tenor retorted. “Wait'll I get my hands untied and we'll see who's an Iron Man! 'F I hadn't met up with you and fallen for your dizzy talk I'd be settin' in a peaceful game of pinochle in the back room of Barney Moore's right now, 'stead of”

A footfall sounded outside the door of their prison chamber. A thin ray of light shone under the bottom of the door. The key grated in the lock. Back swung the door and a man entered the room. He carried a ship's lantern: a squat, black affair with light streaming through a corded round of glass Jens. By a curious trick the spray of light revealed no more than the boot toes of him who carried it; not even the hand holding the bale of the lantern was visible. The light danced. like some illuminated feather duster over the figures of the four propped against the wall: the flute player, Spike Horn, the Iron Man and finally in a far corner, Old Doctor Chitterly.

“Well, well!” It was again that soft voice the prisoners had heard at the conclusion of the brief battle outside the house.

“Well, well, gentlemen, here we are! I've been expecting this visit and so was ready to receive you.”

“You received us all right,” was the doughty Spike's rejoinder given with light truculence. “My watch is in my right vest pocket an' you'll find a handful of gold down my pants pocket, you cheap lead pipe artist!”

A quiet laugh sounded behind the lantern. “Pretty bluff! The people who hire you, young man, know very well I'm not in the footpad business.”

Once more the whiskbroom of light slowly brushed the faces of the four prisoners, ranged backs against the wall. It crossed the patriarchal beard of the doctor and then returned to linger upon his features.

“Aren't you rather an elderly man to be mixed up in this sort of game?” asked the voice.

“Not too old to thrash you thoroughly if you'll give me the use of my hands,” the valiant Chitterly replied. “I don't know what business you have in mind. I don't know who you are nor what may be your wretched reason for assault upon my person, I am a physician and known from Vancouver to Ensenada as Old”

“An' I playa da flute—me,” came the hurried interjection from an unlighted space along the wall. Instantly the round eye of light bored the features of the unfortunate musician: the tight curled, high-glossed mustache, the staring eyes in olive slits.

“A-ha! A physician and a flute player, eh? I see that the Lonney Lee won't lack for talent. Now gentlemen—your pardon!”

The invisible speaker knelt before the doctor and, keeping the lantern light dazzlingly on his face, searched his pockets with careful thoroughness. What he found therein—a memorandum book, an old-fashioned wallet of vast proportions, some printed dodgers extolling the merits of Squaw Root Tonic—he carefully perused under the lantern ray, then returned everything intact. The others, watching these proceedings intently, could see the play of heavy hands wherein strength was proclaimed by the stubbed fingers and breadth of back; but of the rest of their inquisitor not a vestige showed.

Each of the other three was subjected to this search, The man behind the lantern chuckled when the Iron Man's intimate possessions showed several pawn tickets and a Chinese lottery chance stamped in red and black lozenges like our present day crossword puzzle. He bunched the pledges and the lottery ticket significantly.

“Cause and effect,” he laughed.

Spike kept up a running fire of provocatory comment when the big hands were pawing over his treasures—a gold and purple garter, a cigarette picture of Jimmy Britt, pugilist. The hands opened the pages of a new bank book which showed a deposit of $100,000 dated but two days back.

“Ah, yes!” came the satisfied exclamation, “But a hundred thousand! They were not at all stingy in providing funds, now were they?”

“Why, you big Swede, my interest was worth twice that,” was Spike's bullying rejoinder. He had the feel of unseen eyes boring him.

“Your interest, eh? So you're the mysterious third party in this business? Well, let me tell you, young fellow, now that you're where you are and I'm where I am, your interest isn't worth a plugged Mexican peso. I had thought a minute ago maybe I'd made a mistake—thought perhaps you four men blundered onto us here by mistake. But this little item of a hundred thousand, and what you say about 'your interest'—well, I don't need to know more.”

“My dear sir!” Doctor Chitterly's agitated voice came booming from the dark flank. “We came here just to find a telephone. Our car—our pleasure car suffered an accident. This young man, Mr. Horn, whom I scarcely know, told me he'd sold”

“Aw, shut up, Doc!” Spike muttered. “More you talk to this gazabo the nuttier he gets.”

The voice behind the lantern purled on as if no interruption had come: “Of course, you know, gentlemen, I could do away with you. But I only consider murder when there's no other course. Out-of-hand murder never pays. Luckily for you, it will serve my purpose just as well to take you along with me on the Lonney Lee; we're short handed anyway. I think we'll get along very well together provided you discover at the start I am master,”

The light lifted from the floor and began to back toward the door.

“And I would advise you, gentlemen, to make that discovery as to who's master without any prompting from me. I can be a hard man, and lay to that!”

“Meester!” came the despairing wail from the musician; “Meester, I swear I on'y playa da flute—me!”

“So much the better,” purled the voice, and the door shut behind it.

Before the prisoners had a chance to collect their wits men came in to lift them, bound as they still were, and carry them like so much cordwood to be loaded into a farm wagon outside the house. On their backs on the hard wagon bed, with the fog pressing down on their faces, they were jolted and tortured by the ruts of a country road for three endless hours. Where the fringe of truck gardens tributary to the city markets ceased wilderness commenced—a wilderness of crags overhanging the sea, of bald mountains and marshes where inlets of salt water backed into the land.

It must have been at Abalone Cove just north of the broad swing of Halfmoon Bay that the wagon stopped. Those on the floor saw the driver above them light a lantern and, standing on the seat, wave it up and down in slow arcs. The sound of the sea on a beach was very nigh.

After what seemed an interminable time, Chinamen appeared at the wagon tail and cut the ropes which bound the prisoners' feet. They were dragged out to the ground and, each with a guard, were bidden to hoof it. A short cut through furze, the feel of yielding sand, and at the end of a brief journey unceremonious booting over the gunnel of a yawl pulled half way out of the reach of waves. The boat was shoved off.

Before many minutes the loom of a hull suddenly cut out of the thinning fog. A rancid smell of fish oil and opium—typical Chinatown smell—stung their nostrils. The yawl drew alongside, and bare yellow arms stretched down to receive the prisoners, half lifted over-side by the rowers. A Chinaman directed they stand over against a mast.

Sound of a second boat approaching. The shanghaied ones saw a heavy shouldered man in blue sea-jacket and vizored cap come over-side. Instantly he turned to a group of slattern, yellow men showing in the light of a lantern fixed to the mainmast and called with a voice of authority: “Hoist those boats aboard! Be spry about it!”

There was a creaking of fall-blocks.

The nian in the sea-jacket called back into the darkness of the after-deck: “Turn over your engine, Mr. Hansen.” Then once more to the Chinamen: “Man the windlass! On the jump!”

From the darkness forward came the mutter of anchor chain crawling through the hawse-holes. Aft a gasoline engine was put-putting fretfully.

“Quarter speed ahead, Mr. Hansen. For'ard there, heave in!”

All this with not so much as a look from the skipper toward the group of bound wretches under the mainmast lantern. But for their arms triced at their backs, the luckless four might have been willing passengers for all they seemed to count.

They heard the anchor come dripping up to the cathead. They felt the throb of the gasoline kicker under the stern. With creak of tackle and swish of canvas the sails were set. The schooner slowly began to nose her way seaward where a streaky dawn had commenced to show behind floating rags of fog.

Suddenly, bound as he was, Spike Horn made a dash for the side. He had mounted the gunnel of the yawl lately dropped in its chocks there and was poised for a desperate leap overboard when the skipper intervened. A cat-like bound brought him below Spike's vantage. One hand caught the tail of his jacket and jerked him backward. Even as he toppled a stinging blow from the skipper's right smashed under his ear. Spike spun around in midair and fell on his face along the deck.

His miserable companions saw the fingers of the boy's bound hands twitch convulsively as if in a signal.

title: Plundered Cargo/Chapter 3


text:
Plundered Cargo/Chapter 4

 BLEARY sun with shreds of cold scud driven across its face by a boisterous north wind. Great gray seas tipped with spindrift heaving and tumbling in a pantomime of resistless force. Landward and miles off a succession of bleak mountains marching in line like elephants, whose feet came straight down to kick a froth of surf at the ocean's edge. Alone in the water waste the hundred and twenty ton schooner Lonney Lee, trim of line and rig, was running close- hauled to the wind with mainsail, foresail and both jibs rock-hard under the thrust of the breeze. Her forefoot turned up a wound of white water which sang along her counter and went streaming out in a troubled trail behind.

On the quarterdeck, where a stolid Chinaman grasped the wheel spokes, an interesting tableau was presented to the sun's misty eye. The big skipper stood a little aft of the binnacle, hands in pockets of his blue sea-jacket, a smile of mild cynicism parting the sparse graying beard which ringed mouth and chin like a rusty fetter. Before him, standing unsteadily and suffering pangs of seasickness, were the sorry remnants of Spike Horn's beach party. They had been routed from behind water butts and dark holes of the fo'c's'le where in abject misery they had crawled when first their bonds were cut on leaving Abalone Cove. At the skipper's direction they had been stripped of their shore togs, with the exception of the Iron Man, the sickest of the lot, and arrayed in nondescripts from the Lonney Lee's none-too-complete slop chest—in reality pegs in the paint closet whereon a previous crew had left their cast-offs.

Old Doctor Chitterly wore a pair of Chinaman's cotton trousers, had Cantonese rattan shoe-packs on his feet, and his hard glazed shirt, from which his diamond stud blazed defiantly, was covered by a sleazy jacket inches short, from the arms of which his wrists and big hands protruded like cypress stubs.

Spike Horn carried a challenging grin over the collar of a patched slicker, although his face was putty. His loud checked trousers peeped under the hem of the oilskin and his patent leather “toothpick” shoes had been replaced by brogans which might be rated worse than second-hand. The unfortunate flute player, whose name might well be Angelo, had compromised with his changed status by shedding his jacket in favor of a Chinaman's denim smock, very greasy and smelling to the wide heavens.

I said the skippers smile was one of mild cynicism. There was more cynicism behind that in his demeanor as he let his eye rove over the tatterdemalion crew who had assembled at his summons three hours after the anchor was catheaded, The easy assumption of mastery was in his mien; he was master of the schooner Lonney Lee, and was the law between sea and sky so long as salt water ran under the schooner's foot. Whatever other advantage he fancied to be his, this prerogative went with his master's certificate, and of course he was sensible of the fact.

“Men,” he began in that baffling voice of mildness the four had marked in the room of the house of the cabbage fields when a speaking light was their only introduction, “men, we're going to make a voyage together and it might as well be understood here and now that Cap'n Judah Storrs is master of this schooner, the Lonney Lee. It happened to suit my convenience to press you in to fill a short crew. You understand you're to take orders from me and from my mate, Mr. Hansen.” Captain Storrs jerked a thumb to indicate where a slouching man of Scandinavian stamp leaned against the rail, a dull humor in his eyes.

“Ye-ah, an' we'll get you for this first chance comes up!” Spike growled his defiance with his never failing grin. Captain Storrs acknowledged the threat with a broadening smile.

“Mr. Man, a little piece of advice to you—and I see already you are going to be the hardest to persuade with advice only. While you're aboard this schooner and under command of Cap'n Judah Storrs it'll be best for you to 'vast any notion of 'getting' your skipper. Men have tried that before and found themselves tidily stowed away in a shark's belly. A corpus delicti is mighty hard to discover in a shark's belly, and any sea lawyer'll tell you that.”

The doughty Spike was on the point of compounding a breach of sea discipline by further speech when Doctor Chitterly's uplifted hand stayed him. By a mighty effort the doctor rallied his shreds of dignity, although his stomach was giving him a great deal of trouble, and he spoke in his best medicine wagon manner.

“Captain Judah Storrs, sir,” he said, “we have a just grievance against you. Or perhaps our present situation is due—ah—to an unfortunate misunderstanding. You may see for yourself we are not sailors. I, for example, am the discoverer of Squaw Root Tonic, an unparelleled [sic] elixir, the secret of which was imparted to me by the widow of a Medoc chief. This man here—” he pointed to the miserable Walla-Walla—makes his living I am told by letting people strike him in the most resistant part of his body with a baseball bat; not an elevating profession, I admit, nor one necessarily qualifying him to be a sailor.

“Captain Judah Storrs, sir, I give you my solemn word of honor as a medical man that before last night I never so much as set my eyes on any of these men; that I have no part in any—um—conspiracy such as you intimated when we were made your prisoners last night. This—um—kidnapping—not to put too fine a point to the word—works a decided inconvenience upon me personally, and I demand to be put ashore.”

“Demand, eh?” The gray fetter of whisker about Captain Judah's lips suddenly became elastic.

“Well—um—request,” the good doctor amended lamely.

“Neatly spoken, Doctor!” the skipper applauded. “I think, since you know nothing about sailoring, I'll make you my second mate and let you divide watches with Mr. Hansen. No second mate knows anything about navigation anyway, so you'll fill the bill. You'll move your things—” he paused to iron out a grin with the back of a hand—“you'll move your shore coat and shoes aft and mess with me.”

Some instinct of sea craft prompted Doctor Chitterly to quit his position among the vagabonds and step across an invisible line of authority to stand beside the skipper. He tried to put a look of severity into his eyes as he gazed across a gulf of four feet at his erstwhile companions.

“Any of you three swabs know how to cook?” Captain Judah plumped the question suddenly. Angelo the flute player smote himself on the chest resoundingly.

“Cook? Tha's me! One time secon' cook by Fior d'Italia rest'ra', San Francis'. Ravioli, vermicelli, all da pasta: that's me, Angelo!”

“In the galley for you and out goes Hop Wo, the worst cook that ever burned a slum. You—” Captain Judah's finger speared at the Iron Man—“are you the man that takes a ball bat before breakfast?”

The moon face of the Iron Man, green as Roquefort, turned sickly toward his interrogator.

“Well, Bat, you look strong. The galley for you—potwrastler for little Angelo here. Now, you three, get for'ard.”

Walla-Walla and Angelo moved uncertainly to the short flight dropping from the quarter-deck. Spike Horn remained, slouching in his scarecrow rig, his eyes challenging the skipper's.

“You heard me! Get for'ard!” The skipper made two swift strides. His right hand flashed out from a pocket of his sea-jacket. Brass knuckles gleamed dully across the back of his fist. Spike set himself and launched a wide swing at the whiskered chin. By a lightning side-step the skipper dodged and sent in a short hook to Spike's point.

Down he crashed, rolled over once and lay face upward, arms spread-eagled. The captain of the Lonney Lee stepped to the side of the prone figure and stamped once with his boot heel upon the upturned features.

A wave of nausea rippled upward from Doctor Chitterly's solar plexus. He covered his eyes. “Dear God!” he moaned.

As if it was a matter of the day's work, one of the Chinese rats from up for'ard came padding bare-footed with a bucket and line. He dropped the bucket overboard and sluiced the unconscious man twice, thrice.

Spike sat up; studied the hand that came bloodied from his face; clapped exploring fingers to his mouth. He tossed two teeth overboard, then grinned wryly at the back of Skipper Judah by the wheel.

Spike went for'ard with the Chinamen.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Plundered Cargo/Chapter 4


text: Page:Poems Osgood.djvu/239

title: Page:Poems Osgood.djvu/239


text:
Plundered Cargo/Chapter 5

 WEEK out from the questionable port of Abalone Cove.

The stiff north winds which had carried the Lonney Lee down the coast suddenly died with the passing of San Clemente Island, and the schooner made bare steering way, jibs and tops'ls limp as bed sheets between vagrant puffs of zephyrs.

An African heat dropped upon the ocean; a shriveling furnace breath straight off the deserts behind San Diego where September marks the climax of summer's torridity. The sky was a thin. plate of superheated brass riveted upon the horizon. The sea appeared molten tallow, viscid, filmed over by grease globules wherever a capful of wind dropped. Only twice in twenty-four hours did sea and sky return to familiar aspect and then in an exaggerated degree. At dawn and sunset, especially at the latter hour, the ether was a crystal sphere deep as the universe itself, through which played unimaginable colors. Then the sea became a mirror to distort and blend violets and golds and ruby reds into a breath-taking pattern.

Land still showed off the port bow—it never had been out of sight. But it was an unreal land. Tenuous blue mountains, which at dawn showed bare and ragged and by sunset became black iron palings, fenced the eastern horizon. Distance half veiled a stark brutality, a portent of slow death awaiting any luckless one who might be cast upon this inhospitable coast.

All of this was background for the bit of yeasty life being played on the Lonney Lee. Between bowsprit and taffrail ran cross-currents of passion which the heat and hours of mid-day breathlessness served only to aggravate. Under the surface of affairs psychic forces were constantly coursing: blood lust, mounting promptings of savagery—even, in time, the popping of bubbles in the brain pan of the least stable intelligence aboard this floating half-portion of life.

Not a man on the Lonney Lee, except perhaps the dull Mr. Hansen who lacked the imagination of a cockroach, who did not feel the prickle of portents.

Spike Horn, seven days after he had started out to build a fire of easy money under gay San Francisco, was at war with the whole immediate world except Doctor Chitterly; and him he held only in disdainful tolerance. It was Spike Horn against every other damned man on the ship, yellow, white or olive tinted. The major force of his antagonism was directed, of course, against Captain Judah Storrs.

He only bided an opportunity to kill the skipper. No middle ground for the rage that boiled like hot pitch through his veins; it was kill Captain Judah or be killed by him. No man, in Spike's very direct code of personal ethics, could put the mark of his boot heel on Spike Horn's face and get away with it. He'd stand being knocked down in a fair fight, Spike would; he'd take his medicine if anybody could give him a licking straight and above the belt. But to be brass-knuckled and then stamped on when he was out, that was a killing matter.

Captain Judah sensed the temper that was in him and was vigilantly on his guard. He never approached the man he'd marked but that one hand stayed in his pocket; and it took no sharp eye to see the bulge a revolver butt made in the cloth. He took care, the skipper did, that wherever he went on his schooner, day of night, the deckhouse, a mast or a rail should be close at his back. Yet the odd humor of the man twisted these precautions into a sort of game, as a tiger tamer might conceal his whip upon entering his cage of beasts. He developed the trick of standing a little away from where his enemy was at work upon some wretched task and letting his cold blue eyes follow every swing of an arm, each bending of the back. This sometimes for an hour on end, with not a word spoken by either.

And Captain Judah exercised sweet ingenuity in the appointment of these tasks. During the first days of the voyage there was brass to be polished and the windlass to be scraped and repainted. He saved the most heart-racking job for the hot weather he knew would befall. That was the chipping of rust from the anchor chain.

The skipper had the fathoms of heavy links stretched on the fo'c's'le deck in massy parallels of sullen steel, then set Spike to work with a shortened cold chisel and a maul scaling the rust off link by link. A paint job would follow the chipping.

Without cover from the grilling sun, the youth who had one hundred thousand dollars written on his bankbook's credit side started his slave work. He had cajoled a coolie's wicker hat from a Chinese fo'c's'le' mate; this sat on his head like a mammoth toadstool. Shreds of a silk shirt and his loud checked trousers, now grimed and grease stained, completed his rigging. Whenever Captain Judah mounted his tantalizing vigil by the windlass Spike put on his dogged grin which could not be drowned by sweat.

Doctor Chitterly ventured to expostulate with the skipper the second day of this torture. Not at all sure of his own somewhat honorary position as second mate, nevertheless the worthy discoverer of Squaw Root Tonic risked his peacock feather.

“Captain Storrs, sir,” he suggested, “I do not know exactly what may be a schooner's equipment; but if there might be such a thing aboard as—um—a sea umbrella which could be raised over that poor young man's head”

“Mr. Chitterly,” spoke the skipper's suave voice, “I regret to say that the Lonney Lee left her sea umbrella at home.” And that was that.

A word as to Spike's status in the fo'c's'le, which the Iron Man, Angelo the flute player and impressed cook and he himself shared with six scurvy offscourings from Canton. That fo'c's'le was a ten-by-twelve corner of Bedlam.

The Iron Man cordially hated Horn as the cause of the misfortune which had been visited upon him. Had not this loud-mouth plucked him from the dramatic stage where he had earned an honest living by being smitten with ball bats and billiard cues and singing “Asleep In the Deep” between spoonfuls of beer? 'What chance of getting back to the artistic life? And what about five bucks a day with cakes?

Angelo's Latin temperament was quick to sense the roused tiger in Spike who bore the fresh scar of degradation on his face. He looked upon Spike as some sort of a mad dog and, being a timorous soul, he greatly feared lest he fall foul of so dangerous a character. A man afraid is a dangerous man. Angelo slept at night in the bunk above Spike's with a long bladed knife from the galley handy under his blankets.

The blunter sensibilities of the Iron Man and Angelo did not find bunking with Chinamen the abomination it was in Spike Horn's eyes. Reared in the mines where the most despised member of society is the humble Chink, Spike felt his soul smirched by being herded in a dark cubby reeking with the burnt-peanut smell of opium. ”

But there was more to it than squeamishness. Spike had been shanghaied aboard with a pocket bursting with gold pieces. When on that night of their kidnapping he had undertaken a partial change of wardrobe a pitch of the schooner had floored him and before several of the Chinese, tell-tale gold had spurted from his pocket. An avid light jumped to slant eyes when the white man scrambled to recover his money. The secret was out. A dangerous secret in those surroundings.

Once the cause of that bulge over his thigh was revealed, there was no dodging the ever present threat of robbery. Spike knew coolies of this type would kill for the sake of gold if a reasonable chance offered—a chance and a fair possibility of not being caught at murder. A silent knife-thrust in the dark; a body carried up four steps to the deck; a splash

He seized the initiative himself by stealing a sheath knife from the belt of one of the sleeping Chinamen—a sort of bos'n-boss of the crew; this on the second night out. Thereafter he carried that knife by day inside his shirt and at nights he cat-winked—deep sleep would not come however great his exhaustion—with the haft clutched close to him. His gold he distributed between three trousers pockets and the inside of each sock. Walking on double-eagles raised blisters on his soles.

To complete the bizarre picture of life aboard the Lonney Lee there was the matter of Angelo and his flute.

When that musician started to walk with Spike Horn and his two companions to find a telephone at the time of the palace trolley car's wreck, canny caution had dictated he take his instrument with him. The thing unjointed into three segments and was carried in a flat case capable of being slipped in an inside coat pocket. During the surprise at the house of the cabbage fields and the subsequent rough handling this precious instrument remained snugly stowed. The third night of the voyage, when he and his pot-walloper had things all tidied up in the galley, Angelo screwed his flute together. Seated on a box with his back against the foremast, Angelo forgot his troubles in music.

Captain Judah was one who did not favor flute piping overmuch. The second night of Angelo's solo work the skipper sent Doctor Chitterly for'ard to bid him cease.

“Why not I playa da flute—me, Angelo? Good musich!” Angelo protested.

“Because, my good man, the captain says you shall not,” Doctor Chitterly answered with what he meant to be a note of fatherly austerity.

“Capitan, he can go t' hell—heem!” Angelo pursed his lips anew to finish the rippling arpeggio of a Spanish bolero.

Captain Judah was on him before six notes were vented. Without a word he snatched the instrument from the Italian's lips and tossed it overboard. Like a flash Angelo leaped to his feet, his hand searching his waist-band for the knife he carried against attack by the wild man Horn. The skipper deliberately turned his back and walked away. He knew the man was a coward.

But that incident was the beginning cause for what the other white men aboard came to believe was Angelo's madness. Angelo spoke word to nobody, not even to the Iron Man, his helper. Glumly he went through his tasks in the galley. Everybody who encountered him, whether yellow man or white, got a baleful look from his black eyes, wherein much of the white showed. And at spare moments during the day, under a lantern at night, Angelo busied himself with a section of bamboo broom handle. He was filing and haggling vents in the stone-like fibre. He cut and fitted a wooden stopple to close one hollow end. He was making himself another flute.

Captain Judah locked up a can of ant poison which stood on a galley shelf.

“Ant poison,” he remarked to Doctor Chitterly, “is all right in its place; but it wouldn't go so well in coffee.”

Doctor Chitterly's position as second mate was, as I have said, more or less an honorary one. Though he went through the pretense of standing the first watch, with Captain Judah always within call if not actually on deck during that term of hours, his real status aboard the Lonney Lee was that of entertainer and companion for the skipper. Perhaps you have seen that Captain Judah was not of the ordinary type of coasting master, The man possessed a well ordered and acquisitive mind; he was far more widely read than the doctor; he took a secret pride in his ability to dissect character.

Perhaps this latter characteristic was what prompted his instant selection of the doctor for a cabin berth upon the coming aboard of the shanghaied four. Certainly he found amusement in the gentle old fraud's pompous mannerisms and pretended erudition. After the third night out they played dominoes together each evening on the cleared table of the cabin. On these formal occasions Doctor Chitterly donned his Prince Albert coat.

The worthy Chitterly, being secretly very much afraid of Captain Judah and fearful lest some sudden whim should send him to the fo'c's'le, ventured no reference to the manner of his and his companions' coming aboard. However great his curiosity as to what lay behind that incident, as to where the Lonney Lee might be bound and what awaited at the end of the voyage, his judgment tied his tongue. One night, which was the second of the calm, Captain Judah broke the silence of the game by plumping an interesting observation.

“Mr. Chitterly, I believe I shanghaied you by mistake.”

“Captain Storrs, sir, I offer a hearty second to that statement,” was the doctor's gusty answer.

“Tm rather pleased that I did, after all.” The skipper bent his blue eyes upon his second mate in a baffling half-smile.

“Meaning no offense, sir, I cannot share that sentiment,” Doctor Chitterly declared. “My previous ventures at sea have all proved—um—unfortunate; and I have no reason to believe this experience will break the rule. Moreover my duty on shore—the thousands of ailing folk who crave the healing touch of Squaw Root Tonic”

“Rot!” snapped Captain Judah. “If things break right on this voyage, I can put you in a position where you'll never have to cure another stomach ache. That is if you have the gumption to know which side your bread's buttered on.”

“You mean”

“Thousands! Thousands in your pocket, Mr. Chitterly, if you stick by me.”

The doctor turned in his swivel seat so that he might slip his hand beneath the second button of his Prince Albert—his Henry Clay gesture. “A-hum, Captain Storrs, my integrity in a worthy cause—in a worthy cause mind you, sir, has never been open to question. Once when I was suspected of assassinating, or attempting to assassinate the President of Panama”

The skipper cut him short with an impatient shake of the head. “You wouldn't hesitate to shoot a man if he stood between yourself and a fortune?”

Doctor Chitterly combed his beard in acute embarrassment. He wanted to temper his answer to trim with the necessities of the moment; yet somewhere under his diamond stud lurked a conscience.

“Wouldn't that depend, Captain Storrs, sir, upon how the right of the thing lay—his right and mine?”

Captain Judah shrugged. He stirred the mess of dominoes on the red cloth. “Draw,” he commanded and at random picked out five.

“You can lay to this much, Mr. Chitterly,” he mused in afterthought as he put the five counters before him up on edge. “If I made a mistake in shanghaing you I didn't go far wrong with that young wolf pup for'ard, that Horn fellow. He represents the people who're going to race down here to double-cross me. It's my guess Horn's the first man that you—or perhaps I—will have to drill with a lead slug.”

title: Plundered Cargo/Chapter 5


text:
Plundered Cargo/Chapter 6

NCONSIDERED trifles often have a trick of suddenly developing into circumstances of extraordinary importance. In the tiny world of the Lonney Lee so trivial an event as the theft of three cigars jarred all the bolts of security and put Captain Judah's supremacy to the test. Events befell in this way.

Among the many sterling vices the redoubtable Spike Horn owned to was a love for tobacco. He had learned to chew at ten, was whipped by his school principal for smoking a pipe at twelve and from that year on he leaned heavily upon the prop of the leaf.

When he was shanghaied aboard the Lonney Lee four cigars, or the remnants of four, remained in the pockets of his waistcoat to arouse memories of his gaudy party ashore. These perfectos had been sadly used in the fight before the house of the cabbage fields and the subsequent ride on the floor of the farm wagon down to Abalone Cove. One only was intact enough to smoke; the other three were mashed and frayed beyond any attempts at salvage.

Spike smoked the serviceable cigar the first night out, rashly and with a spendthrift carelessness. If he thought of replacements at all it was to assure himself he had money enough to buy more cigars. Next day he approached the wooden Mr. Hansen with a request to be shown the cigar stock. The first mate gave him a dead fish's stare.

“This is a schooner, not the Palace Hotel,” he grunted. “Ve don't sell seegars.”

The Iron Man had half a sack of flake tobacco and cigarette papers in his trousers pocket. He grudgingly gave Spike a few of the manila leaves from his little book. For four days the man from the mines eked out the shreds and crumbs of the ruined cigars in his waistcoat pocket by rolling them into cigarettes. Then even the lint from the bottoms of the pockets, turned inside out, was consumed. Spike Horn was tobaccoless.

This lack came when Captain Judah had set him at the anchor chain. The cruel job was doubly aggravated by the skipper's practice of mounting guard over him with a cigar in his teeth. The toiling Spike, on his hunkers by the line of chain, never looked up at his tormentor; but an occasional sly puff of wind would carry to his nostrils the delectable odor of Havana. More than once as his right arm rose and fell to the swinging of the maul the miserable Spike reckoned the possibility of a swift upward fling of that heavy instrument straight at the skipper's midriff—a dropped cigar—a few satisfying drags upon it, come hell or high water.

Here was he, Spike, sitting on gold and with gold raising welts on both feet; yet would he have had his right hand lopped off rather than ask Captain Judah to sell him some cigars.

There was no other way to relieve the tobacco hunger. What the Chinaman smoked looked and smelt like camel's hair; even a whiff of it in the stuffy fo'c's'le was enough to send Spike gasping to the deck. The Iron Man's sack was nearly empty, and he nursed what was left with flat refusal of a division. Angelo and Doctor Chitterly didn't smoke. Spike approached Mr. Hansen a second time with a goldpiece balanced on the tip of his forefinger. The mate, true to his Scandinavian stubbornness, would not consider selling any of his black plugs. In desperation Spike offered him all of ten dollars for one, only to get a curt; “Na!”

Three smokeless days, then the evil genius who had shunted the Goldfield miner from a Ferris wheel to a fo'c's'le baited still another trap for his feet.

Spike was at the early morning task of sluicing down and swabbing the decks; a job which he shared with three Chinamen. The hose had been stowed, and Spike was on the quarterdeck alone, working the slop down the planks with a squeegee. He saw the skipper's sea-jacket lying on the deck-house grating, evidently thrown there and forgotten the night before. The tips of three cigars peeped from the breast pocket. Those three brown tips could not have been more tempting had a diamond been set in each.

Spike cast an over-shoulder glance at the Chinaman at the wheel. The slant eyes were roving off to leeward. Spike maneuvred the overturned yawl, which was lashed to the house, between the helmsman and himself, made a quick pass at the coat pocket and then again bent to his work.

It was a dreary day of dripping heat made a little more tolerable by avid anticipation. At night with the skipper below over his game of dominoes with Doctor Chitterly, Spike slipped up to the bow of the schooner. Perched on a pile of anchor chain, he screened the flame of a match and lighted one of the stolen cigars. No boy with a pilfered watermelon could have found the delight in a first mouthful that was Spike's at the initial deep draught of fragrance. It searched his toes, that full-lunged inhalation.

As puff followed puff the chains of his slavery aboard the Lonney Lee slipped from him. The mystery of whither bound the craft might be and for what purpose, even his bitter blood feud with the skipper, these distractions were dimmed in the lulling narcotic of the smoke. Nor did the smoker hear a quiet footfall behind him when Captain Judah, following his nose along the trail of three stolen cigars, paused by the windlass for a final sniff of confirmation. The saturnine master of the Lonney Lee tiptoed back to the main deck without revealing his presence.

The morning following, Angelo received a surprise visit in the galley. Seizing a moment when the Iron Man, Angelo's scullion, was clearing away the breakfast dishes in the cabin, Captain Judah stepped over the galley sill. He held an unlighted cigar between his fingers.

“Listen to me,” he commanded. Angelo turned a sullen face up from his bread board. “You've got two coffee pots here.” The captain jerked a thumb to indicate where a reserve boiler hung on a peg over the sink. He pointed to the pot and then to the cigar. “When you cook your noon grub I want you to make two pots of coffee: one for the crew and the cabin mess and one for Horn for'ard. Put this cigar in Horn's pot when you boil his coffee; understand? Boil the cigar with his coffee.”

The startling whites of the flute player's eyes showed even wider. He looked from the cigar to the coffee pot.

“And leave the cigar in that pot when you've finished boiling,” added Judah. “I want Horn's coffee boiled with a cigar in it until further orders. And when that cigar wears out you come to me for another. And, mark you, Cookey; you pour Horn's coffee yourself. Don't let that swab, the Iron Man, handle the coffee and don't let him see you doctor Horn's pot. Understand these orders, now?”

Angelo nodded and turned back to his dough.

The weather suddenly became capricious enough to divert the skipper's mind from contemplation of the punishment he had ordered for the theft of his cigars. Before dawn the breathless sea began to be stirred by puffy winds from the sou'west. The sun had not been up two hours before it was more than evident that the past days of calm were broken. The winds came squally and in brief spells of violence. The sea assumed a dour, leaden hue, with whitecaps here and there giving portent of a troubled water waste. Captain Judah's glass registered a sudden drop.

The skipper cast an appraising glance at the shore line not fifteen miles off and gave orders to his helmsman to bear up a couple of points, which brought the Lonney Lee's bow almost into the teeth of the wind. He commanded the fore and main tops'ls taken in, greatly as he would have preferred to take the full advantage of the wind after the days of drifting. The schooner cut like a knife through the waves.

At eight bells the skipper and Doctor Chitterly sat down to their noon meal; Mr. Hansen remained on deck in charge of the changed watch. The Iron Man in his dirty apron set the beef stew and tomato slum before them and poured out the coffee.

The wraith of a smile stretched Captain Judah's ring of whisker as he ladled himself a generous portion of stew. He beamed at the doctor with a travesty of good humor which had marked all his assumption of fellowship with the physician; a sort of condescending patronage.

“Mr. Chitterly, perhaps you can tell me the effect upon the human system of nicotine taken in considerable quantities directly into the stomach.”

The doctor pawed his beard while he did some rapid stalling.

“Well, Captain Storrs, sir, the juice of the tobacco leaf is a powerful alkali, while nicotine—um—is an alkaloid. Now the difference between an alkali and”

Doctor Chitterly paused, mouth ajar and eyes fixed upon the face of the skipper. It was set in lines of mixed surprise and horror. His hand plumped a coffee cup into its saucer; the surface of the liquid within had been dropped from the brim by a generous draught.

“That unholy swine of a flute player!” Captain Judah staggered to his feet, red napkin significantly clapped to his lips, and made for the companionway.

Just that instant the Lonney Lee heeled suddenly to port—over—over until all the dishes on the table went sliding and crashing to the floor and the swinging lamp spilled oil from banging against the cabin roof.

Trampling on the deck above—confused cries

Doctor Chitterly scrambled madly to the deck, convinced that the schooner was sinking. What he saw was fully as exciting as a shipwreck.

First, the deck aslant at an angle steep as a church roof where a terrific squall had laid her down; the sky had shut down like a black pot. Next, a knot of men struggling hand to hand, waist deep in water by the lee rail; yellow men and white; yellow arms and white arms flailing savagely against the background of a wall of green-gray water rising almost perpendicularly above the rail.

Doctor Chitterly cast a swift glance back to the wheel—that much of a sailor ten days at sea had made him. He saw no man there—the wheel was wabbling sickly. He made the precipitous climb thither by scrambling over the canted deckhouse. Once his hands were on the spokes, he pushed with all his might against the unseen force of storm strength forcing the Lonney Lee under. Spoke by spoke the wheel came over while every muscle in the doctor's broad back and arms cracked under strain. Little by little the Lonney Lee's head came up out of the sea trough, where another boarding wave assuredly would have capsized her, and came around into the wind. The mains'l and single jib slatted furiously, then caught the lessening wind of the squall. The schooner was saved.

Old Doctor Chitterly felt tremendous exaltation. For once in his life he had done a job with no fake in it.

To get the whole picture of how the flute player's coffee affected the fortunes of the Lonney Lee we must go back to a moment when, with the skipper below at his dinner, Mr. Hansen had placed the afternoon watch with the sounding of eight bells, the watch of Spike Horn and three of the six Chinks. He took the wheel himself. A black cloud which he had been watching smear the western horizon suddenly broke away from its moorings where sky joined water and came ballooning over the heavens like a runaway blimp.

“All hands!” he shouted and he pointed to the fores'l halyards. The wind whipped his “Take in sail!” out of his mouth.

Spike Horn had been dallying by the galley door, lingering over his second cup of coffee—good coffee which Angelo himself had given him with a sly smile. That was the first smile Spike had seen on the flute player's face since the night Captain Judah pitched his instrument overboard. Just as he hastily passed the empty cup to Angelo, at the mate's hail, a chorus of shrieks sounded from up for'ard where three coolies had been squatting by the hatch over their cups of coffee and tub of stew.

One writhed on the deck holding his hands over his mid-region. One was being very honestly ill. All screamed falsetto imprecations.

Spike joined the three of his watch in taking in the fores'l. They had it half clewed down—a clumsy task in the rising gale—when the three Chinks whose screams had come at the same time as Mr. Hansen's summons came padding wild-eyed down the deck. They jabbered excitedly at their fellows and pointed to the opened half-door of the galley.

The vicious squall and mutiny struck the schooner at the same instant.

With reports like the barking of seventy-fives the jib carried away and the unfurled section of the fores'l bellowsed and split. The ship heeled over and took solid water over the rail.

“Cookee put-um one piecee poison by coffee,” the yellow man next to Spike at the fores'l boom bawled as he quit work and joined his fellows in a rush on the galley. Knives glittered in the fists of two of the attackers; windlass staves came out of their rack to arm the rest.

Mr. Hansen at the wheel permitted himself to slip into a Scandinavian panic, all the more complete because rare, and to quit his post with the wheel hastily and insecurely lashed. He charged bellowing down on the knot of coolies vainly trying to storm over the galley's half-door.

Spike leaped into the mêlée bare handed. No loyalty to Captain Judah or his schooner prompted him. Hardly the sense of race loyalty—defending a white man in the galley against yellow men storming his stronghold. Just the lure of a fight called him; primitive instinct to do battle.

The struggle at the galley door was necessarily brief. Angelo met the charging Chinamen with a pailful of scalding water. Even as he leaned over the half-door to get full swing with his pail a knife slit one arm from wrist to elbow. He spit like a cat, whirled and seized a meat cleaver from its rack over the chopping block.

Before he could wield it the heeling of the schooner sent the whole milling crew—Hansen, Spike and six Chinamen—sliding down into the waist-deep wash of a boarding wave. This was the scene Doctor Chitterly burst out upon. A clout on the head knocked out the mate—he would have drowned had not Spike with a mighty effort hooked one limp arm through the lanyards of the mainmast shrouds—and Spike was left to face alone six scalded Chinks gone wild.

There Captain Judah found him when he erupted on deck under the magic compulsion of a boiled cigar. His schooner wrecked, his crew in mutiny and this wolf pup Horn fighting for him, fighting like a fiend from the pit—that's the way the picture looked to Captain Judah.

One eye swiftly roved to catch the giant figure of Doctor Chitterly, now at the wheel. The skipper drew his revolver, clubbed it and slid hell-bent into the ruction. That finished it. The Celestials would not stand up against authority. They quit cold.

“Get for'ard, you swine, and hoist the stays! Horn, give Mr. Chitterly a hand at the wheel—steady as she goes.”

In ten minutes the last of the squall had blown. itself out, and the Lonney Lee under double reefed mains'l and with the single stays'l to steady her was running before a lively breeze mounting almost to a gale. Tattered canvas was stowed under gaskets. The vessel was shipshape.

Captain Judah beckoned Spike aft. Still bloodied from the fight and the old glint of defiance in his eyes, Horn stood before him.

“Horn,” began the skipper's mild voice, “any idea what started that ruckus with the Chinks?”

“Yes.” Spike steadfastly refused to append the “sir” of sea usage. “One of 'em said that crazy Dago cook put poison in the coffee.”

“Ah! Did you taste the coffee served at noon mess?”

“Yes,”

“Taste all right to you, Horn?”

“Sure; two cups worth of right.”

Captain Judah's eyes half closed as he put two and two together and came to the sum of a flute player's iniquity. He smiled at the battle stained youth before him.

“Do you smoke cigars, Horn?” he purred.

“When I cam get 'em.”

“Horn, I think yeu saved Mr. Hansen's life. Not worth much, but of course valuable to him. And you did a great deal to save my ship. Will you accept a box of my cigars and forget bygones?”

“No,” said Spike.

title: Plundered Cargo/Chapter 6


text:
Munsey's Magazine/Volume 94/Issue 1/Annie Maude from London Town

T was three o'clock on an early autumn morning when Joseph Crawley reluctantly rose from his bed to set off with his market cart for Covent Garden. The cart had been packed overnight, but it was twelve miles to London, and Joe had to light the fire, prepare his breakfast, harness old Betsy, and pick a bouquet for Annie Maude, before he could set out.

He had never forgotten to bring Annie Maude her posy every morning since the day, three months ago, when she had first bought from him for her barrow; and Joe was not going to disappoint her now, even if he had to pay for it with indigestion. He hurried into the garden, his cheek full of bread and bacon, thinking of Annie Maude's unvarying look and words when he presented her with the posy, and the same little speech.

"An' I ain't forgot you, neither, miss, if you'll accept a posy from our garden at 'ome."

Annie Maude's eyebrows, which were extremely thick and dark, went up every morning in the same coy surprise, and her hand went out with a hesitating pleasure, as she said:

"Well, now, Mr. Crawley, ain't yer good to me?"

Joe had had three months in which to fire off his salutation; but instead of finding it monotonous, it would have been almost a painful shock to him if Annie Maude had varied her remark.

The first roosters had begun to answer one another in tones that seemed audacious to such a gray and unawakened world, when Joe stood among the rows of cabbage, heavily beaded with dew, and reached across them to a dahlia hedge beyond. Red dahlias, petunias, a branch or two of his mother's hoarded fuchsias, a sprig of heliotrope, a bit of mint—because he had no other sweet smelling plant to make the bouquet fragrant—a few geranium blossoms, a close-cropped lingering head of hollyhock, and then the posy was bound up and stowed safely in the cart.

By the time he reached Covent Garden a resolve had begun to crystallize in Joe. Annie Maude should have her bouquet when she came, and then he would have something else to say!

From his position underneath the big clock in the market he watched for the best part of an hour the corner of Tavistock Street, around which she used to come, pushing the barrow before her. So many girls wore black sailor hats and had red cheeks and—

There she was at last!

Joe Crawley was extremely busy, bargaining with a man whom he supplied with cabbages, when Annie Maude came up to him.

"The usual pears and apples, I suppose, miss?" were his first words.

After that no further speech occurred to him. She watched him counting out her supply of apples, and then she said:

"Seems like a dream, Mr. Crawley, to say that all them apples comes off the trees in your own garding!"

He looked up quickly. Her thoughts seemed almost born of his own.

"Seems like a dream to me, I tell you," he answered, "when I comes up to Covent Garden."

"And—and do you pick 'em off the trees," she pursued, "or do they just fall down theirselves? Declare I never thought of it, but what makes apples, Mr. Crawley? What do they come from, eh?"

Joe Crawley looked at the pile of apples that he was making on her barrow.

"You don't know what an apple's like," he told her, half shyly, "till you taste it off the tree."

"Dessay," said Annie Maude.

"Annie Maude," said Joe, calling her by her name for the first time, "would you come down to the country and pick 'em off the trees yourself?"

He looked up at her. Annie Maude seemed shy and silent for the first time since he had known her.

"You could fill your apron with what falls down from the trees," he went on.

"My!" she said, with her eyes round.

"Yes," he repeated, almost stubbornly. "If some one don't pick 'em up as fast as the wind shakes 'em down, the slugs 'll have them apples, Annie Maude."

There was a pause. Joe did not know how to go on. Suddenly he remembered the posy.

"Nearly forgot your posy from the garden at 'ome," he exclaimed, presenting it.

He watched her black brows go up and her hand creep out. He fancied that she had never looked so much pleased with the bouquet before.

"Well, now, Mr. Crawley, ain't yer good to me?" she exclaimed. "There's dahlies and geranies, an' a sprig o' mint, an' what's this?"

"Heliotrope they calls it," he replied. A new idea had taken his brain by storm. "Wouldn't you like to see 'em all a growin' and a blowin'—so they calls it—in the country, Annie Maude?"

"Country!" replied Annie Maude. "Never been down there, Mr. Crawley. Seems funny, but I ain't."

"What? Never been down to the country?" he cried. "Why, then, you don't know what life is! There's birds and flowers, Annie Maude. You could pick flowers same as those yourself. You could wander in the garden at night, if you fancied, with the wind just movin' of the trees, an' the stars lookin' out through the leaves, an' the flowers all smellin' around you in the dark."

"Wouldn't I like to come?" she said. "Not 'arf!"

"They'd all be rare and pleased to see you at my place," said Joe. "Just say you'll come, and we'll fix it, Annie Maude."

"Well—" she began, and so they fixed it.

met at Paddington at ten o'clock the next Sunday morning. Annie Maude was wearing the velvet jacket, the huge earrings, the purple skirt and feathered hat of the London coster girl upon high days and holidays.

"What yer think o' this?" she asked him, smoothing the new velvet jacket with one hand. "I want to be a credit to you as your friend from London, Joe. Thought yer people 'd like to see a bit o' style. Don't see much style down there, do they—country folks?"

"N-not much," he answered loyally.

"Simple folks," she continued cheerfully, "ain't they, takin' 'em for all in all? Don't go with the times. Don't know what's what. Well"—she drew a breath and winked a friendly eye at Joe—"they'll see a bit of all right when they sets eyes on me!"

At Slowburn old Mr. Crawley met them with the market cart. Delighted with her welcome, Annie Maude's high spirits increased with every fresh turn of the road that brought new beauties of the country to her view. Her tongue went as fast as the wheels of old Betsy's cart.

When they arrived at Joe's home, she leaped from the cart till her earrings jangled again.

"Mean to say you lives 'ere?" she said. "Go on—you're teasin'! Why, our house ain't 'alf the size!"

"Come in," said Joe.

He led her through the hall and pushed open the door of the sitting room. The table was laid elegantly for six people, and decorated with flowers. On one side of the fireplace sat a stately old lady in a black silk dress with a gold chain round her neck. Opposite her was a young lady, like Joe to look at, with her hair arranged in modern fashion, and wearing a dress distinguished by the very latest sleeves.

"Here, mother, is my young lady friend from London, Miss Annie Maude Wheeler," said Joe, presenting her. "My mother, and my sister, Lucy, Annie Maude, and I'm sure I hope you'll all be friends."

Mrs. Crawley rose, Miss Lucy Crawley rose, too, after a prolonged stare of complete amazement at the velvet jacket, the feathered hat, and the purple skirt of Joe's young lady friend.

Joe's sister had a low, refined voice, like the ladies whom one passed in Regent Street, thought Annie Maude. Her manner was self-possessed and quiet, her hands were white. As she moved to the fireplace to take the joint from the oven, it seemed a marvel to Annie Maude, from London, that such a cultivated lady should know how to set a leg of mutton on a dish.

In the meantime Mrs. Crawley, putting a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on her nose, looked the girl all over and asked her in her kind and quiet voice if the journey had not tired her.

It was as much as Annie Maude could do to answer. Her flow of wit and conversation had dried up in her; she felt as if she dared not speak in her own voice, and was constrained in all the gestures that were natural to her. What would be expected of her when she sat down to a table decked with plate and flowers? Could this be the country—the proper country? Were these the simple country people whose eyes she was prepared to open with a bit of London style? She wanted to throw open the velvet jacket, but felt uncertain as to how Miss Lucy might receive this expression of the sense of stifling that she felt.

"Now, mother," Joe said, as they sat down to dinner, and another of Joe's sisters, more genteel than the first, had come tip on the scene, "you look right well after Miss Wheeler, and Annie Maude, you mind you make yourself at 'ome."

"At home, with those sleeves rubbing against my velvet jacket!" said Annie Maude to herself. "Not me! He oughter told me. Joe oughter prepared me for a set o' nobs like these!"

In turn they all addressed polite remarks to her.

"I expect you'll find this place very quiet after the noise of the streets," said Mrs. Crawley.

"I don't think!" Annie Maude got out in a choked voice.

"Which do you prefer as a place of residence, Miss Wheeler—the country or the town?" inquired Joe's eldest sister.

"Town for me," replied Annie Maude, almost in a low growl, because of the gathering lump in her throat.

"Have you any sympathy with this suffragette movement that is going on?" inquired the youngest sister.

"When I hears o' their chuckin' brickbats," replied Annie Maude, with hoarse seriousness, clutching the hem of the tablecloth, which rested on her lap.

The meal seemed of a solemnity and awfulness which she had never known; and when she heard old Mr. Crawley declare that she should not leave them till the last train at night, her vague despair gathered itself to an ominous head.

With relief that amounted to an inward pæan of thanksgiving she received the suggestion that while the women washed up the dinner things, she might like to see the garden where the apples grew upon the trees.

"Father takes a nap after dinner on Sunday," Mrs. Crawley explained, "and there's a few jobs for our Joe to do about the place. He got up so early this morning to meet his young lady friend"—she smiled at Annie Maude with a suggestive kindliness—"that he's had to put 'em off till now. You'll be all right for half an hour or so among the flowers and apples, won't you?"

Out in the garden Annie Maude seemed scarcely to take notice of the glowing dahlias "all a growin' and a blowin'," as Joe said. She wandered to the far end of the garden, where, they told her, she would find the apple trees.

"He oughter told me!" she said to herself. "He oughter told me!"

of an hour later, when Joe came from the yard in the workaday clothes to which he had changed to save his Sunday suit, he looked around the kitchen for Annie Maude from London.

"Now then, mother!" he called to the old lady. "Where've you put her?"

"She's in the garden, Joe."

"She ain't," he answered. "I've just been there."

"Not there?" said Mrs. Crawley. "Why, that's queer!"

The young man's whole face changed.

"Not been sayin' anything to her, 'ave you?" he asked.

"Sayin', lad?" his mother answered. "Why, what should I say, d'you think? You've not been 'avin a difference, dear?"

"Me—difference—with Annie Maude?" he said quickly. "What makes you think—"

"Nothing, lad—nothing," she replied "but a mother sees, and she didn't seem happy in her mind, to my thinking. A little look, and a word or two—it's quite enough."

"That's enough, mother," he said. Joe clapped on his hat at the words. "Wherever she is, I'll find her."

Joe set off down the station road. He felt sure that something had been done, or said, or looked, to Annie Maude, and she had set off home.

Two miles of the road had gone, and still he had not found her. She must have run, he said to himself, to have got so far already. He stepped out quickly, using his eyes and ears on all sides. Then he became aware of a movement in the hedge to the right of him as he swung downhill, and he turned and cried out:

"Annie Maude!"

She was hanging over a gate, the arms of the velvet jacket resting on the topmost bar, and she was sobbing bitterly, with the feathered hat all on one side.

"You—you—you've got to let me go along back home! It ain't no use your stoppin' me," she sobbed. "You—you never told me that they'd be like that!"

"What 'd they do to you?" he cried. "Like what, like what, Annie Maude?"

"You was humbuggin' me," she cried passionately, "when you said they was countrified! I ain't got sleeves like that, nor fine pocket han'kerchers. It ain't no use—I'll never be like them!"

"Why, Annie Maude," he said, "d'you think I want yer changed? Do you think I want yer anything but what yer are?"

With a sudden movement she tore off the feathered hat and cast it over the gate into the field beyond.

"There yer go," she cried, "'ole bird o' paradise!"

Without a word he climbed over the gate and fetched it back to her.

"There, put it on," he said. "You'll 'urt me if you 'urt that 'at."

"I'm goin' back 'ome," she declared. "That's what I'm goin' to do."

"That's right—you're goin' 'ome," he agreed, "and there'll be no more posies from Joe Crawley!"

Her tears began to fall again.

"Ain't yer said enough," she sobbed, "without sayin' that?"

"No, I ain't said enough," he answered. "What I want to say is this—I want yer to go back 'ome an' pick 'em every morning for yourself!"


text: Talk:Munsey's Magazine/Volume 94/Issue 1/Annie Maude from London Town


text: The Commonweal/Volume 1/Number 3/Vive la Commune!


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Munsey's Magazine/Volume 94/Issue 4/The Triumph of Thomasine

HOMASINE O'CONNOR had been pretty badly disappointed in love, so she ran away from home and went to London, with a very slender balance in the Post Office Savings Bank and an unquenchable resolve to make her own living and be independent of all men forever.

It was a pity that no one reminded her, before she started, that she was that unfortunate anomaly of modern growth, a clever young woman who had not been specifically trained. She could sing a little, play a little, dance a little, and typewrite a bit. She had possibilities in her; but she lacked concentration, she had not found herself, and she had never quite made up her mind to do one thing particularly well.

By the end of her first fortnight in London her unlimited self-confidence, which was Thomasine's best asset, had procured her a post as typewriter in a West End solicitor's office at twelve shillings a week. She had asserted her speed to be a hundred words a minute, imagining, in a burst of hopefulness, that it could not possibly be less, although, as a matter of fact, she had never taken the trouble to find out exactly what it was.

It was unfortunate that the very day—a week after her engagement—when she had put it to her employer that, since she seemed to give him every satisfaction, an increase of salary would be only reasonable, he should take it into his head to time her speed, and find that it scarcely came to thirty words a minute. An extremely unpleasant little interview ensued. He told her that she had got her situation under false pretenses. Thomasine replied that he could not expect to hire proficiency at a starvation wage; and at the end of the fortnight she was once again upon the market.

Her next engagement was a companionship to a "young lady." She was required to accompany the young lady on expeditions to museums and picture galleries, to "know her London well," and to discourse with historical and geographical intelligence on everything they saw.

She embarked on her new duties with enormous cheerfulness and courage. Her unlimited self-confidence inspired the family with trust; but on the first day of her engagement, Thomasine and the young lady were missing at lunch time. They reappeared in time for tea, the charge a little sulky and aggrieved, the companion undaunted. In the evening, when it was put to Thomasine to explain why a lady "knowing her London" inside and out should get into the Bakerloo Tube for Belgrave Square, and ride triumphantly to Waterloo, a little altercation followed; and Thomasine remarked with spirit that, since she did not seem able to hit off their requirements, they had better part.

The result of giving Thomasine "another chance" was a little scene at the British Museum, in which she was overheard by a member of the family descanting, in answer to a question from the young lady, on the Elgin Marbles.

"These," said the companion, a little fluttered at the suddenness of the demand, "were executed by the unaided hand of Mr. Elgin, a person of impatient disposition, who undertook things which he seldom finished, and who was a famous statesman in the reign of—well, roughly speaking, William and Mary."

Thomasine was once again upon the market; but, strange to say, her boundless self-confidence had remained unshaken by her vicissitudes. This time she sought the counsel of a tried and trusty friend.

"Why not start writing?" Mrs. Montague said. "Your letters are graphic and original. Some famous man—I can't remember who—said that this was the first test of a capacity for authorship. You're clever, Thomasine, you're self-confident and amusing—why not make a start? There's no harm in trying, anyway. You never know what you can do till you've tried. At least you've had some experience of life."

"Life!" exclaimed Thomasine, thinking of the faithless lover. "I should like to meet any one of my age who's had more experience of life!"

She agreed that she was amusing, that—yes, she supposed she had a certain reputation for letter writing—in short, that she would try her hand.

"Fortunes are made in stories for the magazines," added the confidential friend. "In a day's work, Thomasine, you could make twice or three times the money you could ever make as typewriter to a tiresome man, or companion to a fussy woman. Make a start, keep your eyes open, don't be afraid to launch out boldly, and let me see what you can do. You can rely on me, dear, to tell you exactly what I think."

Thomasine was quite excited. Before nightfall she had drawn a pound out of the savings bank, hired a cranky typewriter, and bought a goodly stock of paper, notebooks, envelopes, and pens.

That night she sat up until twelve o'clock, for she felt that it would be wrong to stem the tide of inspiration which flowed in such abundance from her pen. Besides, said Thomasine to herself, to burn midnight kerosene is to be a "true devotee at the shrine of art," as she had seen it put somewhere.

At twelve o'clock she had finished her first tale, and was trembling from the evaporation of emotion. How long it was she did not know, but it seemed to Thomasine to contain many, many thousands of precious words. AH the miseries and mournfulness which life could yield and Thomasine could remember she had amassed and poured out in a flood of lurid depressingness. She completely put aside her own humor and audacity, her confident and cheerful way of looking at things, and dwelt upon the agonies, tears, and tortures of mankind.

"It must be great and human," she murmured to herself, finding her own eyes wet. Delicious agony to bring tears of happy parentage into one's own eyes!

At this delirious point, Thomasine's landlady, who had been seething upon her lodger's mat in uncontrollable annoyance at the expenditure of gas, looked in, perceived the mass of scattered paper, and asked if she was addressing envelopes.

"Oh, no!" said Thomasine with staggering dignity. "It's not addressing envelopes, Mrs. Poynter; it's—it's authorship!"

By noon of the following day the cranky typewriter had ground out a decent copy of "The Tragedy of Theresa." By four o'clock the manuscript was in the hands of the confidential friend. She sent her "candid verdict" by return of post. How Thomasine blessed that trusty woman!

"It is great and human," wrote the trusty friend. "How you think of it, I can't imagine!"

"Great and human!" ejaculated the new author. "My own words! How strange!"

"I am sure," the letter continued, "any magazine would jump at it. You have got it in you, Thomasine. You will get there, if you keep pegging away!"

"You are a truly great critic," Thomasine wrote back, also by return, her very soul overflowing with an almost hysterical gratitude. "I agree with every word you say. Why don't you go on the papers as a critic? You would make a fortune. Don't be afraid," she ended, "about my not pegging away. I have got it in me, I believe. All that is now needed is a fierce endurance, and time, that softener of all ills."

editor sat at his desk in the office of Nature's Mirror. It was his day for reading manuscripts, and he was surrounded by a sea of bulky envelopes. He was extremely young, very bright, a curious mixture of ideals and practicability, and full of an inspiring zeal. It was a stroke of uncommonly good luck to find himself, at twenty-four, editor of a popular magazine; but Carrington Cleveson, the proprietor of Nature's Mirror, had a peculiar knack of getting hold of enthusiastic young fellows with something in them, and of getting that something out of them as fast as possible.

"I know It's a good berth, sir," he said to Cleveson. "I mean to stick to it and make a name for myself!"

"Stick to us," said Cleveson, "and we'll stick to you, my boy!"

Nature's Mirror had prospered under young Marcus Monkman, and it reflected something of his beaming enthusiasm back into the world's face. He knew the readers of the magazine just as a doctor knows, from a patient's pulse, every heartbeat of the man. He must have known them by instinct, somehow, for nobody had taught him the symptoms of the public taste. He had a peculiar delight in crushing out contributors who either could not or would not gauge the wants of Nature's Mirror, and a peculiar knack of luring the best "stuff" out of Cleveson's favorite authors. He was proud of his post, proud of Cleveson's approbation, and not a little proud of his own cleverness.

This morning he had been sorting out certain stories for reconsideration, a few as definitely suitable, and others as clearly out of the question. After about half an hour of this work he opened a small but bulky envelope. It was far smaller than the usual size for folding manuscripts, and the editor did not know what to make of it when he took out a typescript folded several times into a thick square, and glanced at it.

The story was typed in a very amateurish way, and the paper was pierced with a large hole at the right-hand corner, and tied up with ribbon. Young Monkman had sisters, and he recognized that it was washing ribbon, of the kind that petticoats and things are threaded with. He read the letter inclosed, which ran thus:

There was no stamped and addressed envelope inclosed, the length of the story submitted was not mentioned, the author confidently expected a decision by return of post, and she signed herself "Iona" with the calm assurance of an established Ouida!

"Unfortunate woman!" the editor exclaimed in genuine horror. "Is it possible that such things are still done?"

Partially smoothing out the crinkled sheets, he looked at the first page of the story, and ran his fingers through his hair. Then he glanced at the last page, and uttered a low groan.

One afternoon, at the end of a fortnight from the launching of Thomasine's first literary dreadnought, her landlady appeared beaming at her door.

"It's fat, and it's rather like a lawyer's letter," she remarked. "You wouldn't surprise me if it was a legacy."

Thomasine tore open the envelope. Around "The Tragedy of Theresa" was wrapped a printed form, expressing the editor's thanks for the offer of the manuscript and his regret at having to decline it.

With tears in her eyes Thomasine wrote off to the trusty friend. By return, for Mrs. Montague did everything by return, she received the following message:

By this time Thomasine had completed and typewritten another tale, entitled "The Sorrows of Sophia," and the joys of renewed parentage had consoled and fortified her for her disappointment in her first-born. Before nightfall she had fired "The Sorrows of Sophia" like a broadside into Nature's Mirror, with the accompanying note:

So confident, indeed, was Thomasine that she went out forthwith, and on the strength of "The Sorrows of Sophia," she ordered a large packet of visiting cards to be printed bearing one golden word—"Iona." This made her feel that she had taken another step upon the road to greatness.

Three days later "Sophia" came back like a prodigal daughter. Wrapped about her was a letter from the editor to Thomasine:

Thomasine first wept her wrath out in a flood of tears, then poured it in a flood of indignation on the trusty friend.

"Don't mind what the silly old thing says," wrote the consoling Mrs. Montague. "They get such a lot of nonsense shot in at them that they have neither the heart nor the time to read the more serious and artistic contributions. My own impression is that he has never read your story."

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Thomasine, on receiving this letter. "What an intuition that woman has! I might have thought of that. What he says about my work is proof positive that he has never looked at it!"

She cogitated deeply, and a look of adventurous audacity sprang into her eyes.

" that?" said Marcus Monkman a day later, raising a ruffled head from his desk, as an office boy appeared. "Letters?"

He ran through the mail. Midway he paused, stared, and uttered a wild exclamation:

"What, again?" he cried. "Here I have only just recovered from 'The Tragedy of Theresa,' when 'The Sorrows of Sophia' is thrust upon me. I have just cast 'Sophia' into outer darkness when 'The Morbidities of Maria,' very likely, shows its head!"

For it was unmistakably Iona's writing. This time the envelope was larger and thicker, and seemed to contain cardboard. A kind of humorous despair, coupled with a morbid curiosity to see what Iona was capable of perpetrating, came over the editor. He opened the envelope. It contained a photograph of a young girl in a white dress, with "Yours sincerely Iona," scrawled across the chest and arms.

Monkman's cheeks grew crimson.

"Alas, poor Iona!" he exclaimed, poring over the dainty, saucy face, with its lovable lines and irresistibly sweet features. "Alas, my poor little Iona!"

He looked around, to make sure that no one's eyes were on him. Then he put the photograph into his breast pocket and turned to the typescript inclosed. It was "The Sorrows of Sophia" come back to roost. He laid it upon a pile of manuscripts which were to be put into type as soon as possible.

The same evening found Thomasine reading a letter, her whole face tremendous with the incredible ecstasy she felt:

In "The Sorrows of Sophia" allow me to suggest to you that you have found yourself at last. Your touch has gained in firmness, your style is crisp and mellow, your characterization is true to the type that you strive so faithfully to represent. I should be glad to learn what terms you would accept for the story, and should be pleased to consider more stories from your pen.

Yours faithfully..

Some months later a taxicab drove up to the office of Nature's Mirror, and Thomasine, getting out, inquired if she could see Mr. Monkman. She noticed that at mention of the editor's name the attendant grinned with pointedoess.

"Yes, you can see him," the attendant said. "He's there on the doorstep."

The editor was not going in, but out. He was walking slowly, with his head bent. Thomasine hurried after him.

"Are you the editor of Nature's Mirror?" she said.

"I was," he answered.

Thomasine paused. She felt that she was on delicate ground.

"We have had some correspondence," she began. "I wanted to ask you something."

She took out her card case and handed him a card. "Iona!" he exclaimed. "I felt quite sure—"

Thomasine bowed her head.

"I am no other," she answered. "You have published a series of my stories."

"I did," he answered.

She thought she heard him drawing a deep sigh.

"I sent you a signed photograph," she continued, "a few months since, and, in spite of repeated letters asking for its return, I have not been able to get it back from you."

Young Mr. Monkman became extremely red.

"It must have been mislaid," he muttered.

"That was extremely careless!" answered Thomasine, with proper severity.

He admitted that it was.

"It was the only copy that I had," she continued. She paused. "There was one other matter which I should like to have cleared up. Perhaps you can throw some light upon it. Directly after submitting 'The Tragedy of Theresa' to you for consideration, I sent you 'The Sorrows of Sophia.' You returned it with an almost savage criticism upon its utter unsuitability for publication in any form whatsoever. Within two days I sent it back to you. You then wrote, accepting it with apparent avidity, and telling me that in 'Sophia' I had found myself, and that my touch had gained in firmness."

She saw him flush again.

"Strange!" he said. "It must have been that by some oversight Sophia was put back into her envelope, the first time, without being read at all."

"Ah!" she triumphantly replied. "I thought as much! Then there was another thing I wanted your advice upon"—she broke off—"but you're too busy—"

"Iona," he replied, "if I may call you so, I have nothing whatever to do. I had an interview with my chief this morning. He has given me what is vulgarly known as the push."

Thomasine flushed and started. "Accept my sincere regrets," she began. She looked at him and saw that, instead of an extreme depression, a curious kind of chivalrous exhilaration shone from his face. "You were too go-ahead for them?" she ventured.

"Not too go-ahead, perhaps, but too—disinterested," he said. "The cause of my dismissal was the publication of a series of stories from the pen of a contributor in whose personality I had more faith than in her literary ability."

Her eyes grew round with admiration.

"It was noble of you," she said, "to risk your position for the sake of one who was nothing to you, and who probably wrote trash!"

"This morning," continued Monkman, "Cleveson came into my office with a sheaf of correspondence from readers of the Mirror, complaining of the series I have mentioned. He demanded an explanation of my conduct. Until this morning he had not noticed that those stories had been running in the magazine for several weeks. I gave him a truthful explanation—"

"You gave him a truthful explanation, and he gave you the push!" said Thomasine. "It sounds rather like playing consequences," she added a bit ruefully.

Suddenly Marcus Monkman's face broke out into an unaccountable expression of ecstasy.

"He didn't know what he was doing in showing me the door," the young editor said joyously. "I happen to be a man with money behind me, and I am starting in a month or two, an opposition magazine, which will shatter Nature's Mirror into a thousand smithereens!"

Thomasine clapped her hands.

"Bravo, Mr. Editor!" she exclaimed.

"Already I have a list of my contributors mapped out in my head," he said. "A prominent feature of the magazine will be a series of tales in which Iona reveals a hitherto unsuspected vein of humor."

"But do you think Iona has a vein of humor?" Thomasine began.

"Iona has a fund of most audacious humor," he replied enthusiastically. "She has a well of it, from which, with a little judicious assistance from me, I hope to see her draw weekly buckets full of cheeriness and fun!"

A year later Thomasine came into the office of the editor of Cupid's Confessions. The editor looked up from his desk with a smile, and handed his wife a letter.

"Dear Mr. Editor," she read, "please let us have lots more of Iona's funny stories. They buck up all our family for the week."

Thomasine Monkman kissed her husband's head, which was all that she could conveniently embrace.

"You dear, clever old thing! I'm so fearfully glad!" she said.


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 When dressed, she drew up the window curtain; but how different the prospect she beheld from the prospects she had been accustomed to; instead of sublime mountains towering to the clouds, or rich meadows, scattered over with flocks and herds, she now beheld high and dirty walls, which completely enclosed a small spot of ground planted with a few stunted trees. She sighed, and a tear stole from her to think she might never more enjoy the sweets of Nature, or mark

Her melancholy reflections were soon interrupted by the voice of Madame Fleury; she immediately opened the door, and, after the usual salutations of the morning were over, accompanied her to breakfast, which was laid out in the room where they had


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 supped the preceding night, and which, like the chamber of Madeline, looked into what Madame Fleury called the garden.

After breakfast she rose, and told Madeline she must leave her—"I go every morning to church (cried she); while I am absent, you can amuse yourself with reading; you'll find some books in that closet," pointing to one at the end of the room.

Madeline thought it odd her not being asked to accompany her to church; and she was just on the point of requesting permission to do so, when she recollected, that perhaps Madame Fleury might have some places after the service was over to call at, which she did not wish to bring her to; she therefore timely checked herself, and said she would either walk in the garden, or read.

As soon as she was alone, she examined the books, but she found none that pleased her; and even if she had, her mind was too


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 much disturbed to permit her to derive amusement from them; she therefore went into the garden, where, deeply ruminating o'er past events, she heeded not the lapse of time, and was astonished when the maid came out to inform her that her mistress had been returned some time, and dinner waited. Madeline hastily followed her into the house, but on reaching the parlour, she involuntarily started back on perceiving a young man with Madame Fleury.

"Bless my soul (said Madame Fleury, laughing immoderately), bless my soul (cried she, taking the hand of Madeline), you look terrified. Well, you are the first girl I ever saw frightened at the sight of a young man; let me introduce my nephew to you, and you'll find you have no reason to be afraid of him;—Dupont, this is Mademoiselle Jernac," the assumed name Lafroy had chosen for Madeline."


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 Dupont saluted Madeline with much politeness, and expressed his regret at having caused her any disagreeable surprise: she bowed, and endeavoured to recollect herself, in order to avoid the coarse raillery which her confusion excited in Madame Fleury, and permitted him to lead her to the table.

When they were seated at it, Madame Fleury began to sound the praises of her nephew;—"I can assure you, Mademoiselle (cried she) when you know him better, you will like him much; he is a good soul, I cannot help saying so, though to his face: he is secretary to a nobleman of high rank and consequence; and, though from his situation he might be conceited and dissipated, he is neither the one nor the other, nor disdains to come now and then, and take a snug dinner with his old aunt." While she was speaking, Madeline could not help attentively regarding Dupont, whose face appeared familiar to her; but where or when she had seen


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 the person whom he resembled, she could not possibly recollect.

Dupont was young, handsome, and rather elegant; yet almost the moment Madeline beheld him, she conceived a prejudice against him;—his gentleness seemed assumed, and there was a fierceness, a boldness in his eyes, which at once alarmed and confused her.

When dinner was over, Madame Fleury proposed cards. Madeline immediately rose, and, declaring she never played, desired leave to retire to her chamber.

"No, (cried Dupont, also rising and taking her hand, whilst he gazed upon her with the most impassioned tenderness), we cannot let you go; we'll give up cards; we'll not think, not act, but as you like."

"I should be sorry, Sir (cried Madeline coldly, and withdrawing her hand), that the inclination of any person was sacrificed to mine; at present I am much better calcu-


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 lated for solitude than society, and must therefore again entreat Madame Fleury's permission to retire to my room."

"Then you will entreat in vain I assure you (cried she); I have no notion of letting you go to mope about by yourself."

"If you thus restrain me, Madam (said Madeline, who every moment grew more anxious to quit Dupont), you will prevent me from having the pleasure of thinking myself at home."

"True (cried Dupont), where there is restraint, there can be no pleasure; permit Mademoiselle Jernac, therefore, Madame (addressing his aunt) to leave us, since she is so cruel as to desire to do so; perhaps our ready compliance with her wishes will at some other time incline her to be more propitious to our's."

"Well, you may go, child (said Madame Fleury); but indeed 'tis only to oblige my nephew that I let you."


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 Dupont led Madeline to the door, where, in spite of all her efforts to prevent him, he imprinted a kiss upon her hand.

Her heart throbbing tumultuously, she hastily ascended the stairs; she saw, or fancied she saw, looks exchanged between the aunt and nephew which terrified her: stories of designing men and deceitful women rushed to her recollection; and she trembled at the idea of her forlorn situation—at the idea of being solely in the power of strangers, without a being near her to protect her, if protection should be necessary. She wished to know whether she was in an inhabited part of the town, which the darkness of the hour she had arrived at Madame Fleury's prevented her ascertaining, that in case there was a necessity for quitting her present residence, she might have a chance of easily procuring another; and accordingly determined to avail herself of the present opportunity, and explore her way, if possible to the front of the house. The gallery in which her cham-


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 ber stood, was terminated by a door, which she softly opened, and discovered a winding passage: without hesitation she entered it, and proceeded till stopped by another door; this she opened with difficulty, for the key was rusty, and for a long time resisted all her efforts to turn it: when at length she had succeeded, she found herself in a chamber as spacious as her own, but stripped of all the furniture except a bare bedstead. She stepped lightly to a window, and to her great mortification, found herself still at the back of the house; she directly turned away, and was hastening from the room, when, carelessly glancing her eye over it, a stain of blood upon the floor filled her with horror, and riveted her to the spot. "Oh! God, (she cried, while her arms dropped nerveless by the side), what dreadful evidence of guilt do I behold!" A heavy hand fell upon her shoulder; she shrieked—and, starting, beheld Madame Fleury—"What, in the name of wonder, brought you hither?" demanded she in rather an angry voice.


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 "I did not conceive there was the least impropriety in examining the apartments," said Madeline.

"Impropriety, why no; but then you might have told me you were curious. Come, let us quit this chamber; I hate it."

"Have you reason to hate it?" asked Madeline, her eyes still fastened upon the blood-stained floor. She felt the hand of Madame Fleury tremble.—"Why to tell you the truth, (said she, going to the bedstead and sitting down), my nephew, Dupont, (speaking in an agitated voice), once met with an ugly accident in it; he fell and hurt himself so much, we thought he never would have recovered; the stains of his blood are still upon the floor; nothing would take them out."

"Blood sinks deep!" said Madeline in a hollow voice, and raising her eyes, she fixed them upon Madame Fleury.

"Pray let us leave this chamber," cried her companion, rising in visible confusion. She seized the arm of Madeline, and drawing


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 her from it, locked the door, and put the key into her pocket. "I came up (said she, as they proceeded to the chamber of Madeline), to ask you whether you would not choose a book, and if I should not send you some coffee."

"No (replied Madeline), neither a book nor coffee; all I desire is to be left without interruption to myself to-night."

"I am afraid you are a fanciful girl," said Madame Fleury.

"Would to Heaven I was only affected by fancies!" exclaimed Madeline with fervour.

"Well, since you wish to be alone, I will leave you (cried Madame Fleury), nor shall you again be interrupted."

"In doubting Madame Fleury (said Madeline, when left to herself), do I not doubt Lafroy, of whose fidelity I have received such proofs, that to harbour a suspicion of him, makes me feel guilty of ingratitude. Oh! surely (she continued, and her mind grew composed by the idea), he never would


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 have confided me to the care of his relation, had he not been convinced she was worthy of the trust; and, in giving way to my present fears, I torment myself without a cause. Every thing may be as Madame Fleury has stated; her nephew may have been hurt in the chamber; and his attentions to me may be dictated by what he imagines politeness. I will then exert myself (she cried); I will combat my fears, nor to the pressure of real evils add those of imaginary ones."

To reason herself out of her fears was not, however, as easy as she imagined; they still clung to her heart, and she wished, fervently wished, that she had never entered the residence of Madame Fleury. She determined the next morning to ask to accompany her to church—"I shall then (said she), know what kind of neighbourhood I am in, and whether there is any convent near the house, to which I could fly in case any thing disagreeable again occurred in it."


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 As soon as it grew dark, the maid brought her a light, which she kept burning all the night. She was scarcely dressed in the morning, when Madame Fleury tapped at the door to inform her breakfast was ready. Madeline immediately opened the door, and attended her to the parlour, where, to her great vexation, she found Dupont.

"So, so (said his aunt, as if a little surprised by seeing him), you are here! what, I suppose you could not rest till you had paid your devoirs to Mademoiselle?"

"I should be sorry (said Madeline, with some degree of haughtiness), to place to my own account a visit which I neither expected nor desired."

"And yet you would be right in doing so," cried Dupont.

Madeline made no reply, but addressed herself on some indifferent subject to Madame Fleury.


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 be got into "worship of a material object." There is no worship in West Africa of a material not so possessed, for material objects are regarded as in themselves so low down in the scale of things that nothing of the human grade would dream of worshipping them. Moreover, apart from these apparitions, I do not think you can accurately use the word Fetish in its restricted sense to include the visions seen by witch-doctors, or incantations made of words possessing power in themselves, and yet these things are part and parcel of Fetish. In fact, not being a comparative ethnologist, but a student of West African religion, I wish to goodness those comparative ethnologists would get another word of their own, instead of using our own old West Coast one.

It is, however, far easier to state what Fetish is not, than to state what it is. Although a Darwinian to the core, I doubt if evolution in a neat and tidy perpendicular line, with Fetish at the bottom and Christianity at the top, represents the true state of things. It seems to me—I have no authority to fortify my position with, so it is only me—that things are otherwise in this matter. That there are lines of development in religious ideas, and that no form of religious idea is a thing restricted to one race, I will grant; but if you will make a scientific use of your imagination, most carefully on the lines laid down for that exercise by Professor Tyndall, I think you would see that the higher form of the Fetish idea is Brahmanism; and that the highest possible form it could attain to is shown by two passages in the works of absolutely white people to have already been reached,—first in that passage from a poem by an author, whose name I have never

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 known, though I have known the lines these five-and-twenty years―

and secondly in this statement by Spinoza—" By the help of God, I mean the fixed and unchangeable order of nature, or chain of natural events, for I have said before and shown elsewhere that the universal laws of nature, according to which all things exist and are determined, are only another name for the eternal decrees of God, which always involves eternal truth and necessity, so that to say everything happens according to natural laws, and to say everything is ordained by the decree and ordinance of God, is to say the same thing. Now, since the power in nature is identical with the power of God, by which alone all things happen and are determined, it follows that whatsoever man as a part of nature provides himself with to aid and preserve his existence, or whatsoever nature affords him without his help, is given him solely by the Divine power acting either through human nature or through external circumstances. So whatever human nature can furnish itself with by its own efforts to preserve its existence may be fitly termed the inward aid of God, whereas whatever else accrues to man's profit from outward causes may be called the external aid of God."

Now both these utterances are magnificent Fetish, and

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 After breakfast, which was rendered extremely disagreeable to Madeline by the looks and attentions of Dupont, Madame Fleury rose, and said it was time to go to church. "I hope, Madam (cried Madeline, also rising), you will permit me to accompany you this morning."

"No, indeed I shall not (exclaimed she); you can be much better employed at home, for my nephew will stay with you."

There was something in those words which shocked Madeline so much, that for a moment she had not the power of utterance.—"I can assure you, Madam, then (said she), that if you do not let me go, I will confine myself to my chamber until your return."

"That is, if my nephew is such a fool as to permit you."

Madeline could no longer restrain herself. "If this is the manner in which you mean to treat me, Madam (she exclaimed), you cannot be surprised if my continuance with you is of short duration. 'Tis not (she con-


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 tinued, with increasing warmth), the mere shelter of a roof that I require—'tis kindness, 'tis protection, 'tis the attentions which sooth the sorrows of the heart, and lighten the pangs of dependence;—except assured of my receiving these, your nephew, Lafroy, I am confident would never have entrusted me to your care; and candidly and explicitly I now tell you, I shall withdraw myself from it, if longer subjected to freedoms I abhor."

Madame Fleury only replied to this speech by a contemptuous smile; then turning on her heel, she darted out of the room, and shut the door after her. Madeline attempted to follow her, but was prevented by Dupont, who, seizing her hand, dragged her back to a seat. She grew terrified, but tried to conceal her terrors. "I insist on your releasing me immediately, Sir," said she.

"I cannot (cried he), I cannot be so much my own enemy."


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 "Though Madame Fleury has forgot what is due to her sex, I hope (resumed Madeline), you will not forget what is due to your's; to insult an unhappy woman, is surely a degradation to the character of a man."

"I do not mean to insult you (replied Dupont); my honourable addresses cannot surely insult you?"

"Your honourable addresses!" repeated Madeline, surveying him with mingled surprise and contempt.

"Yes—I love, I adore you; and now entreat you to accept my hand and heart."

"I shall not say I reject them (replied Madeline), because I do not think you serious in offering them; I cannot believe that any man in his senses can offer himself to a woman he scarcely knows."

"I am serious, by all that is sacred!" cried he with vehemence.

"Then believe me equally serious (said Madeline), when I assure you, that could you with your hand and heart offer me the wealth of the