The Girl (Wilson)
WE had met on the little launch that runs across the channel from San Pedro to East San Pedro and we were glad to see each other, for it was cold and lonely and neither of us knew anybody in the port.
"I'm just in from Shanghai," Murray told me. "I brought the schooner Seahome over."
"Good voyage?" I asked, glancing at his freshly shaven, brown face.
"Fair," he returned. "She's a good old packet. I hoped to meet the girl again. But she's gone."
"The girl?" I demanded. "What girl?"
"The girl that was in love with Tantor Martin," he replied. "She was so good and kind and beautiful I really hoped to see her again."
"I never heard of her," I returned. "I believe I did get a hint that that pirate was in love with some woman or other—after hating all women—but I didn't hear enough to startle me."
Captain Murray looked at me gravely. "It was really an affair," he remarked, getting to his feet as the launch swung up to the float. "Funny you never heard of it. Come on over to the Hanalei, and I'll tell you about it. I did hope to see her."
Presently we were in his little stateroom on the steamer, and Murray lit his pipe. He bore an expression of sadness that touched me, I, who had known him for many years as a carefree sailor. I saw that he was deeply moved.
"Yes, Tantor Martin forgot all his hatred of women because of this girl," he said simply. "I wish she had loved me. And yet I don't regret the affair. It was quite beautiful."
"I shouldn't expect that brute to have been concerned in anything that one might describe as beautiful," I commented. "He was born to be a pirate. The man was a savage."
"And the fine part of it all is that he was a pirate in a good cause and made others of us pirates," Murray said quietly. "Listen."
You remember that Tantor got into trouble with the owners of the Tam O'Shanter for holding up poor Captain Dare, of the Mildmay, for five thousand dollars when the Mildmay was off the rocks up at Cape Blanco. It was plain brutality, for Dare was incompetent and his ship was a sure loss unless Martin gave him a hawser and towed him out. Tantor despised Dare, and as it was the Mildmay was in the breakers when Tantor finally put a line aboard and hauled him out to sea. Dare signed for five thousand. Plain piracy on Tantor's part. His owners wouldn't stand for it.
They gave the Tam O'Shanter to Richardson. Martin shook his fist in the boss' face and swore he had made five thousand for him, only to be cheated of his share. You know he was a rough customer, Tantor. You remember the time he was mate of The Gleaner and nearly got ten years at hard labor for beating the captain? Well, he told his owners that he would make them sorry.
"Some day I'll take my five thousand back," he said. "I made it fair and square, and you accept it, and then discharge me because Dare makes a fuss. He was going to lose his hundred thousand dollar ship. I save it for the poor wretch. And you listen to the papers and let me go."
As a matter of fact, I met Tantor an hour later and gave him a job—mate of the Witch of Endor, when I was skipper of her and we were in the coastwise trade to Puget Sound. Good mate, Tantor. I got to appreciate him. And when he'd been with me six months this girl wanders down to the wharf while we're lying here in San Pedro, and Tantor sees her and the affair begins.
She was a lovely creature. Name of Laws—Gertrude Laws. From up the country, she was. She'd been to school and had come down to Los Angeles to study to be a teacher. One afternoon she thought she'd like to see a ship, and took the trolley down here. The Witch of Endor's masts are sticking up into the blue sky and she traipses down to see her. Tantor was sitting on the wheel box telling me that ships and women were the two evils in life.
"I'll never speak to a woman again," he growls.
"Please, may I come and see your ship?" says a voice from the wharf.
I looked over and there stands a big, handsome kid of a girl, with her hair blowing about her face, and one brown hand holding on her cap.
I don't know just what made me do it, but I jumped up and told her to come aboard.
"Keep 'em off the ship," says Tantor, not lifting his eyes. "Twenty years ago a woman turned me down and I never"
The girl tripped up the plank and stopped to stare up at the yards. I saw that she was about eighteen years old and innocent as a baby.
"Please," says she, as frank as the wind, "I've never seen a ship. Where are the sails? All the pictures of ships have sails!"
"Madam," says Tantor, in his ugliest voice, "you mean that the ships you see in pictures have sails."
She paused and looked at him. I could see her eyes light up with a little twinkling gleam, like the firelight on your wife's eyes. "I never can get my grammar and my curiosity to fit in together," she said. "Isn't that terrible for a girl that's going to be a school-teacher?"
Tantor turned those hard, grim eyes of his on her and got up. I could see that he was suddenly changed. I don't know just how you'd explain it, but there was something about the way he looked at her that told me she'd altered his point of view. He went down on the main deck with her and showed her all about the Witch. I could hear 'em talking, and now and then there'd float up to the quarter-deck, where I was sitting, that little, tinkling, pretty laugh of hers.
Thinks I, Tantor never behaved that way before. And when they came back to the quarter-deck, and I saw him smile in answer to her smile I felt that something had happened.
It wasn't a week before Tantor Martin came to me, and said he was going to marry Gertrude Laws.
"You!" I roared at him. "That girl's as clean and dainty as a morning-glory, and you're nothing but a hard-fisted, mean-tempered, bad-livered sailor." Honest, it got me for the moment. I'd seen quite a bit of the girl, and I—I liked her. She was as fresh and wholesome as a breeze across an orchard, and she was beautiful, too, with that strange loveliness that changes and has little shadows of sadness about it, and little lights of passion and all very girlish and natural and innocent.
"Yes," says he, "I'm going to marry her. I'll try and get another ship. Or live ashore. But I think I can get a ship."
"Well," I returned, "if she agrees and her people agree, I s'pose nobody else has any say."
"Her people?" he says quietly. "She hasn't any—only an aunt. She's all alone in this world, and you and I know it's no place for a lone girl."
"When are you going to be married?" I asked.
"I haven't asked her yet," he told me slowly. "I just wanted you to understand. I'll ask her to-night."
You know perfectly well that Tantor Martin wasn't a man to laugh at. He was mortally in earnest, and I kept my mouth shut.
"She's going to the show with me to-night," he went on. "And I'll bring her down here for supper. She thinks there ought to be some third person when we eat together, so I told her you were skipper of the ship and you'd eat with us."
"Thanks," says I, actually forgetting to call him down.
"And if anybody thinks he can make any remarks about her," he goes on, "I'll show him something."
"The only remark I have to make is that you have enough nerve to stock a battleship," I returned. "Tell the cook to give us a good spread."
"Nothing to drink, you know," he continued. "She don't like it."
"Sure," I told him.
"And no rough language about."
"You're still mate of this packet and that's up to you," I remarked.
And that evening just about sunset she came down with Tantor striding alongside of her. It was a pretty sight: big, coarse Tantor with a new look on his face, and the girl laughing up at him, and glancing at the shipping and the sky and the crisp water with bright eyes.
We had a supper fit for a king. Old cookee certainly outdid himself and waited on us with such officiousness that Gertrude simply had to shake hands with him over the dessert. The cook nearly died of pleasure.
When it was full dark I took Tantor and Gertrude up on the quarter-deck, and he showed her all the harbor lights while I smoked my pipe. Then I told 'em to enjoy themselves on deck—it was a fine night and went over to visit Captain Nelson on the Beaver.
Nelson and I had a yarn, and then I wandered back to the Witch of Endor. I could see the watchman's lantern burning under the break of the fo'c's'le head and the glimmer of the lamp in the cook's room amidships. I stopped under the bulwarks a moment to look at the stars and wonder why a sailor's life is so lonely. I heard voices. It was the girl and Tantor, above me on the quarter-deck.
"I want to teach school!" she was saying in her fresh, girlish voice.
"And you've got to marry me," says he, quite gently for him.
"But," she protested, "I don't want to get married!"
"Yes, you do," Martin puts in. "And I'll tell you why: because I love you and I can't bear to see you alone in the world, and I'm strong enough to look after you."
Well, I stepped away for a while, and when I came back Tantor was just coming ashore with the girl on his arm. He was happy. And she was happy, too. They merely called good night to me, and hurried off to catch the trolley.
We had to lie in San Pedro for a long time that trip, waiting for a cargo for Seattle, and all that time Tantor worked and acted like a man who'd thought himself in torment and suddenly found that he was in heaven. Gertrude used to come down to the ship every afternoon, and they'd sit on a stringer and talk. I knew that trouble was coming, but what business was it of mine?
You see Burton of the Hazel saw all this and he fell in love with the girl, too. You knew him—a smooth, quiet, dangerous fellow. He was awfully nice to Gertrude, and she, being that kind of girl that likes everybody and knows no evil, took him for what he professed to be. And she made Tantor Martin smile at him. Tantor even forget his old grudge against Burton, though he remembered that Burton had been no friend of his during the time they were thrashing out the little matter of the Tam O'Shanter and Captain Dare.
Then Burton began openly to make love to the girl. She suddenly found out what he was doing, and I've never seen such a pitiful sight.
"Oh, you're in love with me!" she cried out one evening when Tantor and I were busy in the cabin over some papers, and she was enjoying the air on the wharf.
At the sound of the words, Martin leaped up.
"Keep still!" I warned him. We both listened.
"It is so lovely to be in love and so terrible to be in love wrong," she went on. I could fairly see the tears in her lovely eyes. "And you're in love with me, and I can't help you at all. I'm so sorry!"
"Sit still!" I told Tantor. "Remember that every man's love is his own affair. Leave it to her."
So we sat there—forgetting the papers—and listened. I suppose Burton's black heart really beat for her, she was so pure and kind and gentle. At any rate, he was in earnest and went away at last in silence.
"Now," said I, "go and don't let her understand that you overheard. She is sorry for him."
Martin left, and I heard her run to him and ask him to take her back to Los Angeles. A moment later they were gone.
All the next day Tantor brooded over the thing. He went about his work much like he had done in the old days—with curses on his lips and ugly looks for those who crossed him. That night he told me she wouldn't come down that evening.
"Natural," I said. "My heavens, do you expect the girl to be here every night? I don't notice you calling where she lives."
"It wouldn't do," he told me. "She's living at some woman's hotel where men can't call without getting the matron down on them. She doesn't know it, but I do, and I wouldn't have anything happen to make her even think of the wrong things that so many people think." He looked at me with those grim eyes of his and added: "So long as I live she'll never even have to listen to suggestions of what life can be made when one is wicked."
He was right and I said nothing. He was protecting the purity of her love for him, the gentle and pure affection that was like an altar candle in her heart. Tantor Martin was decent. He wasn't even urging her to marry him quickly because he was afraid. The girl—the woman one loves—is sacred—even when one marries her—I understood Tantor.
But Burton's love for her had turned to something infernal. It showed that Martin was right in hating him. He went to the girl and told her—stories. He invited her on board the Hazel and she went, like a friendly child. There he said more, the things that burned and scorched the girl. She said nothing but went to her boarding place in Los Angeles and confided in the matron. Some good women unlock the doors of hell without knowing it. She dragged the whole story of Gertrude's engagement to Tantor out and said the single thing: "You have compromised yourself. No good girl would go down to a ship and meet a sailor without being a bad woman. Pack your things."
It was a cruel thing to say under any circumstances. But women don't understand other women, I guess. That excellent matron did not know that Gertrude wouldn't, couldn't go to Tantor. She had put the stain on their pure and lovely relations. The girl was sickened at the thought that she was unworthy of Tantor—that she had soiled the pure character she must have to be his wife. She thought—it's the way women think—that what that matron had said was true: she was not fit to be the wife of a good man.
She went to Burton.
Was it because she knew him to be a beast and a scoundrel? Was it because she thought that she was sinful and no other course was open except to go to people stained like herself? Or was it because she wished to forever shut herself out of the heaven she had forfeited? You and I can't tell. But she went down to Burton and told him what the matron had said, and he smiled and then frowned and told her that though every one else turned her down, he loved her and she could come to him and be protected.
He sailed that night for Honolulu.
It was four o'clock in the morning when Martin kicked my door in and told me. He had been up to the boarding place and the matron had informed him of what she had said and done. Tantor listened and cursed the woman. Then he came back to San Pedro and found Burton had sailed and that the girl was on board.
"I'm going for her," he told me.
"How?" I demanded.'
"This packet won't do. The Hazel can steam twelve, and Burton's making time offshore, I know. The only packet in port that can catch him is the Tam O'Shanter. Come with me. We'll take her."
I sat up and argued with him. I told him plainly that he hadn't money enough nor had I to charter that steamer for a wild-goose chase.
"And she belongs to the men who kicked you out," I added.
He glowered on me. "Will you come with me to save the girl? I hear her crying out there."
He waved his great hand toward the Pacific, and it seemed as if I did actually hear a woman sobbing.
I tried to do something with him, but he was mad. The end of it was I dressed and we went down the water front to the Tam O'Shanter, which was lying with steam up, ready to sail in the morning.
Luckily the captain was ashore, else we would have had more trouble. As it was, Tantor raged aboard, got the engineer into a blue funk, and himself cast off the lines while the mate and deck hands—who knew him of old—feebly protested.
It was as plain a case of piracy as ever you saw. We simply seized that ship and went to sea in a dark mist that filled the channel with murky shadows that made the course to Dead Man's Island a mystery. Tantor was at the wheel. We barely missed the government dredge and tailed on the bar—we were beyond the islands an hour after sunrise.
It was noon when the crew of the Tam O'Shanter wakened to the fact that they were in charge of a skipper who had no business on their ship and that they were bound for Honolulu instead of Puget Sound. The mate and the chief engineer put their heads together and tried to reason with Tantor. I am ashamed to say that I backed him up—there was no more trouble. The Tam O'Shanter made a good fifteen knots an hour with double watches in the fireroom. Martin kept the wheel.
Late that night we saw the stern light of the Hazel, a mere flicker of flame on the horizon.
"I knew I'd catch him," Tantor said hoarsely. "I used to make this old packet log sixteen knots. When I dragged old Dare out of the breakers off Blanco I had fifty pounds more than allowed in the boilers. And I knew what course that Burton would take. Keep the wheel while I see about a boat."
"What do you intend to do?" I demanded. "Burton won't stop for you. You're absolutely crazy. All you can do is follow him."
"Is that so?" retorted Martin. "Watch me. I leave you in charge of this packet. I have work to do, and I'm going to do it."
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, we crept up on that little light that marked where the girl was crying. At four in the morning it was less than a mile ahead. Tantor had been raging up and down the decks, using his fists and his tongue to such effect that the mate of the Tam O'Shanter had taken to his room and refused to come out.
It was a raw, dark, misty morning, such as one gets off the lower coast of California once in a while. The sea was running along in great, smooth rollers that seemed to stream in endless array out of the blackness and hasten toward the invisible shore. The Tam O'Shanter was shaking to the tremendous thrust of her engines.
"In half an hour we'll be up to them," I told Tantor.
"I'll take the bridge then," he said. "Understand, obey my orders to the word. When I'm done, you take charge."
We surged along, and I caught once in a while the glint of the white water under the counter of the Hazel. At other moments I would catch the shadow of fresh smoke against the lowering sky. By her masthead light and the lights along her starboard side, I could see that she was heading up, evidently trying to make us buck the light sea that was running.
"In fifteen minutes I'll show you something," said Tantor, thrusting his head in at the wheelhouse window.
For the first time I studied the man's face. You've seen him. He's a pirate. as you say. I fancy Columbus looked as he did when his crew mutinied. Captain Columbus was a pirate. They don't say it in the schoolbooks. but a man who'd seize a whole hemisphere must have been some person. And Tantor Martin was seizing a whole world just then. I stuck to the wheel.
"Keep to starboard of him," he told me grimly.
I did.
I think that Burton realized at the last that Tantor was after him. I suppose he was afraid, anyway, and when he had first seen our lights he had put on more steam. But now the Hazel simply leaped through the long, purple swells. I could see the glimmer of the water breaking over her bows. And down below in the bowels of the Tam O'Shanter the firemen wielded shovels and slice bars so vigorously that I could hear the clang of them in the wheel-house.
It was nip and tuck for the next hour. Then the Hazel began to slow down and we forged up. I steered in toward her. Tantor banged the weather window open and said: "Keep away to starboard."
"But you want to get alongside!" I protested.
"You do what I tell you," he said, glaring at me. I did. We kept to the nor'ard.
It was in the gray of the dawn that we passed the Hazel. It was clear as water that Burton thought he had been wrong and that we weren't after him. He slacked down his engines, and, as the sun rose, we were a mile ahead of him. I could hear Tantor raging back and forth on the bridge overhead. Then the trap hatch opened, and he called down: "Starboard your helm!"
I put the wheel over slowly, and the Tam O'Shanter rolled around till the swells that were running out the northwest were broad on the bow. The Hazel was then on the port beam and coming slowly along. I heard the jangle of the engine-room telegraph. As I steadied her on the new course I saw that we were going to cross the Hazel's bows. Then the telegraph rang again and the throb of the machinery ceased. The Tam O'Shanter rolled slowly in the trough of the sea.
I think that nothing of what was to happen entered my head. I think I still heard vaguely the sobbing of a woman. It seems as if that was the general impression I got while I waited. I think I also heard the tramp of Tantor Martin on the bridge.
The thing that stands out most clearly in my mind is the sudden realization that the Hazel was steaming along within a quarter of a mile and that we were slowly but steadily making toward her, we rolling in the hollow of the sea. It suddenly occurred to me that we were going to cross her bows if the engines started. Tantor was taking chances.
And then came the sharp clang of the telegraph—full speed ahead. The answer came from the chief and I felt the vessel slowly regain her speed. I eased the wheel, wondering whether we should pass astern of the Hazel or range alongside.
You must understand that it was a beautiful morning; the sun had risen and burned up the mist; the swell rolled eastward with a slow and powerful sweep; the sky above us was clear and crystalline. There was not even a circling gull to catch the eye.
I eased the helm a little more. The Hazel was drawing closer and I could see Burton's figure on the bridge. He had his glasses fixed on us. It was perfectly clear that he was puzzled. I saw him turn and consult his mate. Then he leaped to the center of the bridge and pulled the whistle cord. Before the plume of steam had vanished in the pellucid air, I heard the sound of the warning blast.
Instantly I was shaken by the bellow of our own siren. And then I understood. That sound throbbing upward into the beautiful air was the call of a man to his mate. I caught the roar of Tantor's voice, telling me to keep my course. I did.
I can still see the great, blank, black side of the Hazel as she gave us her unprotected flank. I can still see the Tam O'Shanter's powerful bows thrust downward and into her heart. Then came shouts, the ringing of gongs, the slow, steady pulse of the engines beneath my feet. With our stem deep in her vitals, the Hazel slowly died on the sea.
I think that there was little time between the instant of our impact and the wild leap of Tantor Martin to the upper deck of the Hazel. Where he found the girl, I don't know. But he reappeared amidst our gesticulating crowd, and she was in his arms. He regained the bridge, and I heard the harsh clang of the gongs, signaling full speed astern. The Tam O'Shanter slowly backed out, and the other steamer lurched drunkenly as the water poured into her hold.
"You're drowning people!" I bawled up through the trap hatch.
And the only answer I heard was the sobbing of a woman.
So we left the Hazel, sinking into the clear, pure sea, into the dark depths of the Pacific, while her crew fought at the boats and leaped downward like nuts falling from a tree. We left her swiftly, without looking backward. And on the bridge Tantor Martin stood with his grim, cruel eyes fixed on the figure of Captain Burton, who was on the starboard side of the after deck, yelling for the single boat that had got away to come back for him. The girl clung to the railing, blind with tears.
Of course, I got a man at the wheel and watched the whole affair. But I confess that I said nothing. I picked up what men of the Hazel's crew I could, and then I allowed the Tam O'Shanter to speed on her course.
Burton went down with his ship, a yelling maniac, a coward in death as he had been in life. As the Hazel plunged downward at the last, I saw the smoke of five revolver shots. He was firing wildly into the men on a life raft. So he died.
We reached San Pedro, and Tantor Martin got the lines ashore and came down to me, who was again in the wheelhouse.
"I'm responsible," he said to me. "You'd best say that you were kidnaped."
"The girl?" I said.
"The girl? I hope for no other warmth in this world than the warmth of her breath, no other sweetness but that of her lips, no sky but that of her eyes, no shelter but that of her arms."
Queer speech—wasn't it?—from the pirate. He'd killed men and wrecked a ship for the sake of a girl. You know he was a brute. But he took her to himself. They were married the morning we got in.
I wish I could see her again.
She was very lovely and adorable and—
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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