MEN, WOMEN, AND BOATS

By Stephen Crane

Edited With an Introduction by Vincent Starrett

NOTE

A Number of the tales and sketches here brought together appear now forthe first time between covers; others for the first time between coversin this country. All have been gathered from out-of-print volumes andold magazine files. 

"The Open Boat, " one of Stephen Crane's finest stories, is used with thecourteous permission of Doubleday, Page & Co. , holders of the copyright. Its companion masterpiece, "The Blue Hotel, " because of copyrightcomplications, has had to be omitted, greatly to the regret of theeditor. 

After the death of Stephen Crane, a haphazard and undiscriminatinggathering of his earlier tales and sketches appeared in London under themisleading title, "Last Words. " From this volume, now rarely met with, anumber of characteristic minor works have been selected, and these willbe new to Crane's American admirers; as follows: "The ReluctantVoyagers, " "The End of the Battle, " "The Upturned Face, " "An Episode ofWar, " "A Desertion, " "Four Men in a Cave, " "The Mesmeric Mountain, ""London Impressions, " "The Snake. "

Three of our present collection, printed by arrangement, appeared in theLondon (1898) edition of "The Open Boat and Other Stories, " published byWilliam Heinemann, but did not occur in the American volume of thattitle. They are "An Experiment in Misery, " "The Duel that was notFought, " and "The Pace of Youth. "

For the rest, "A Dark Brown Dog, " "A Tent in Agony, " and "The ScotchExpress, " are here printed for the first time in a book. 

For the general title of the present collection, the editor alone isresponsible. 

V. S. 

MEN, WOMEN AND BOATS

CONTENTS

STEPHEN CRANE: _An Estimate_

THE OPEN BOAT

THE RELUCTANT VOYAGERS

THE END OF THE BATTLE

THE UPTURNED FACE

AN EPISODE OF WAR

AN EXPERIMENT IN MISERY

THE DUEL THAT WAS NOT FOUGHT

A DESERTION

THE DARK-BROWN DOG

THE PACE OF YOUTH

SULLIVAN COUNTY SKETCHES

 A TENT IN AGONY

 FOUR MEN IN A CAVE

 THE MESMERIC MOUNTAIN

THE SNAKE

LONDON IMPRESSIONS

THE SCOTCH EXPRESS

STEPHEN CRANE: _AN ESTIMATE_

It hardly profits us to conjecture what Stephen Crane might have writtenabout the World War had he lived. Certainly, he would have been in it, in one capacity or another. No man had a greater talent for war andpersonal adventure, nor a finer art in describing it. Few writers ofrecent times could so well describe the poetry of motion as manifestedin the surge and flow of battle, or so well depict the isolated deed ofheroism in its stark simplicity and terror. 

To such an undertaking as Henri Barbusse's "Under Fire, " that powerful, brutal book, Crane would have brought an analytical genius almostclairvoyant. He possessed an uncanny vision; a descriptive abilityphotographic in its clarity and its care for minutiae--yetunphotographic in that the big central thing often is omitted, to befelt rather than seen in the occult suggestion of detail. Crane wouldhave seen and depicted the grisly horror of it all, as did Barbusse, butalso he would have seen the glory and the ecstasy and the wonder of it, and over that his poetry would have been spread. 

While Stephen Crane was an excellent psychologist, he was also a truepoet. Frequently his prose was finer poetry than his deliberate essaysin poesy. His most famous book, "The Red Badge of Courage, " isessentially a psychological study, a delicate clinical dissection of thesoul of a recruit, but it is also a _tour de force_ of theimagination. When he wrote the book he had never seen a battle: he hadto place himself in the situation of another. Years later, when he cameout of the Greco-Turkish _fracas_, he remarked to a friend: "'TheRed Badge' is all right. "

Written by a youth who had scarcely passed his majority, this book hasbeen compared with Tolstoy's "Sebastopol" and Zola's "La Débâcle, " andwith some of the short stories of Ambrose Bierce. The comparison withBierce's work is legitimate; with the other books, I think, less so. Tolstoy and Zola see none of the traditional beauty of battle; theyapply themselves to a devoted--almost obscene--study of corpses andcarnage generally; and they lack the American's instinct for the rowdycommonplace, the natural, the irreverent, which so materially aids hisrealism. In "The Red Badge of Courage" invariably the tone is kept downwhere one expects a height: the most heroic deeds are accomplished withstudied awkwardness. 

Crane was an obscure free-lance when he wrote this book. The effort, hesays, somewhere, "was born of pain--despair, almost. " It was a betterpiece of work, however, for that very reason, as Crane knew. It is farfrom flawless. It has been remarked that it bristles with as manygrammatical errors as with bayonets; but it is a big canvas, and I amcertain that many of Crane's deviations from the rules of politerhetoric were deliberate experiments, looking to effect--effect which, frequently, he gained. 

Stephen Crane "arrived" with this book. There are, of course, many whonever have heard of him, to this day, but there was a time when he wasvery much talked of. That was in the middle nineties, followingpublication of "The Red Badge of Courage, " although even before that hehad occasioned a brief flurry with his weird collection of poems called"The Black Riders and Other Lines. " He was highly praised, and highlyabused and laughed at; but he seemed to be "made. " We have largelyforgotten since. It is a way we have. 

Personally, I prefer his short stories to his novels and his poems;those, for instance, contained in "The Open Boat, " in "Wounds in theRain, " and in "The Monster. " The title-story in that first collection isperhaps his finest piece of work. Yet what is it? A truthful record ofan adventure of his own in the filibustering days that preceded our warwith Spain; the faithful narrative of the voyage of an open boat, mannedby a handful of shipwrecked men. But Captain Bligh's account of_his_ small boat journey, after he had been sent adrift by themutineers of the _Bounty_, seems tame in comparison, although ofthe two the English sailor's voyage was the more perilous. 

In "The Open Boat" Crane again gains his effects by keeping down thetone where another writer might have attempted "fine writing" and havebeen lost. In it perhaps is most strikingly evident the poetic cadencesof his prose: its rhythmic, monotonous flow is the flow of the graywater that laps at the sides of the boat, that rises and recedes incruel waves, "like little pointed rocks. " It is a desolate picture, andthe tale is one of our greatest short stories. In the other tales thatgo to make up the volume are wild, exotic glimpses of Latin-America. Idoubt whether the color and spirit of that region have been betterrendered than in Stephen Crane's curious, distorted, staccato sentences. 

"War Stories" is the laconic sub-title of "Wounds in the Rain. " It wasnot war on a grand scale that Crane saw in the Spanish-Americancomplication, in which he participated as a war correspondent; no suchwar as the recent horror. But the occasions for personal heroism were nofewer than always, and the opportunities for the exercise of such powersof trained and appreciative understanding and sympathy as Cranepossessed, were abundant. For the most part, these tales are episodic, reports of isolated instances--the profanely humorous experiences ofcorrespondents, the magnificent courage of signalmen under fire, theforgotten adventure of a converted yacht--but all are instinct with thered fever of war, and are backgrounded with the choking smoke of battle. Never again did Crane attempt the large canvas of "The Red Badge ofCourage. " Before he had seen war, he imagined its immensity and paintedit with the fury and fidelity of a Verestchagin; when he was itsfamiliar, he singled out its minor, crimson passages for briefer but noless careful delineation. 

In this book, again, his sense of the poetry of motion is vividlyevident. We see men going into action, wave on wave, or in scatteringcharges; we hear the clink of their accoutrements and their breathwhistling through their teeth. They are not men going into action atall, but men going about their business, which at the moment happens tobe the capture of a trench. They are neither heroes nor cowards. Theirfaces reflect no particular emotion save, perhaps, a desire to getsomewhere. They are a line of men running for a train, or following afire engine, or charging a trench. It is a relentless picture, everchanging, ever the same. But it contains poetry, too, in rich, memorablepassages. 

In "The Monster and Other Stories, " there is a tale called "The BlueHotel". A Swede, its central figure, toward the end manages to gethimself murdered. Crane's description of it is just as casual as that. The story fills a dozen pages of the book; but the social injustice ofthe whole world is hinted in that space; the upside-downness ofcreation, right prostrate, wrong triumphant, --a mad, crazy world. Theincident of the murdered Swede is just part of the backwash of it all, but it is an illuminating fragment. The Swede was slain, not by thegambler whose knife pierced his thick hide: he was the victim of acondition for which he was no more to blame than the man who stabbedhim. Stephen Crane thus speaks through the lips of one of thecharacters:--

 "We are all in it! This poor gambler isn't even a noun. He is a kind of an adverb. Every sin is the result of a collaboration. We, five of us, have collaborated in the murder of this Swede. Usually there are from a dozen to forty women really involved in every murder, but in this case it seems to be only five men--you, I, Johnnie, Old Scully, and that fool of an unfortunate gambler came merely as a culmination, the apex of a human movement, and gets all the punishment. "

And then this typical and arresting piece of irony:--

 "The corpse of the Swede, alone in the saloon, had its eyes fixed upon a dreadful legend that dwelt atop of the cash-machine: 'This registers the amount of your purchase. '"

In "The Monster, " the ignorance, prejudice and cruelty of an entirecommunity are sharply focussed. The realism is painful; one blushes formankind. But while this story really belongs in the volume called"Whilomville Stories, " it is properly left out of that series. TheWhilomville stories are pure comedy, and "The Monster" is a hideoustragedy. 

Whilomville is any obscure little village one may happen to think of. Towrite of it with such sympathy and understanding, Crane must have donesome remarkable listening in Boyville. The truth is, of course, he was aboy himself--"a wonderful boy, " somebody called him--and was possessedof the boy mind. These tales are chiefly funny because they are so true--boy stories written for adults; a child, I suppose, would find themdull. In none of his tales is his curious understanding of human moodsand emotions better shown. 

A stupid critic once pointed out that Crane, in his search for strikingeffects, had been led into "frequent neglect of the time-hallowed rightsof certain words, " and that in his pursuit of color he "fallsoccasionally into almost ludicrous mishap. " The smug pedantry of thequoted lines is sufficient answer to the charges, but in support ofthese assertions the critic quoted certain passages and phrases. Heobjected to cheeks "scarred" by tears, to "dauntless" statues, and to"terror-stricken" wagons. The very touches of poetic impressionism thatlargely make for Crane's greatness, are cited to prove him an ignoramus. There is the finest of poetic imagery in the suggestions subtly conveyedby Crane's tricky adjectives, the use of which was as deliberate withhim as his choice of a subject. But Crane was an imagist before ourmodern imagists were known. 

This unconventional use of adjectives is marked in the Whilomvilletales. In one of them Crane refers to the "solemn odor of burningturnips. " It is the most nearly perfect characterization of burningturnips conceivable: can anyone improve upon that "solemn odor"?

Stephen Crane's first venture was "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. " Itwas, I believe, the first hint of naturalism in American letters. It wasnot a best-seller; it offers no solution of life; it is an episodic bitof slum fiction, ending with the tragic finality of a Greek drama. Itis a skeleton of a novel rather than a novel, but it is a powerfuloutline, written about a life Crane had learned to know as a newspaperreporter in New York. It is a singularly fine piece of analysis, or abit of extraordinarily faithful reporting, as one may prefer; but not afew French and Russian writers have failed to accomplish in two volumeswhat Crane achieved in two hundred pages. In the same category is"George's Mother, " a triumph of inconsequential detail piling up with acumulative effect quite overwhelming. 

Crane published two volumes of poetry--"The Black Riders" and "War isKind. " Their appearance in print was jeeringly hailed; yet Crane wasonly pioneering in the free verse that is today, if not definitelyaccepted, at least more than tolerated. I like the following love poemas well as any rhymed and conventionally metrical ballad that I know:--

 "Should the wide world roll away, Leaving black terror, Limitless night, Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand Would be to me essential, If thou and thy white arms were there And the fall to doom a long way. "

"If war be kind, " wrote a clever reviewer, when the second volumeappeared, "then Crane's verse may be poetry, Beardsley's black and whitecreations may be art, and this may be called a book";--a smart summingup that is cherished by cataloguers to this day, in describing thevolume for collectors. Beardsley needs no defenders, and it is fairlycertain that the clever reviewer had not read the book, for certainlyCrane had no illusions about the kindness of war. The title-poem of thevolume is an amazingly beautiful satire which answers all criticism. 

 "Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky And the affrighted steed ran on alone, Do not weep. War is kind. 

 "Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment, Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above them, Great is the battle-god, and his kingdom-- A field where a thousand corpses lie. 

 * * * * *

 "Mother whose heart hung humble as a button On the bright splendid shroud of your son, Do not weep. War is kind. "

Poor Stephen Crane! Like most geniuses, he had his weaknesses and hisfailings; like many, if not most, geniuses, he was ill. He died oftuberculosis, tragically young. But what a comrade he must have been, with his extraordinary vision, his keen, sardonic comment, hisfearlessness and his failings!

Just a glimpse of Crane's last days is afforded by a letter written fromEngland by Robert Barr, his friend--Robert Barr, who collaborated withCrane in "The 0' Ruddy, " a rollicking tale of old Ireland, or, rather, who completed it at Crane's death, to satisfy his friend's earnestrequest. The letter is dated from Hillhead, Woldingham, Surrey, June 8, 1900, and runs as follows:--

 "My Dear ----

 "I was delighted to hear from you, and was much interested to see the article on Stephen Crane you sent me. It seems to me the harsh judgment of an unappreciative, commonplace person on a man of genius. Stephen had many qualities which lent themselves to misapprehension, but at the core he was the finest of men, generous to a fault, with something of the old-time recklessness which used to gather in the ancient literary taverns of London. I always fancied that Edgar Allan Poe revisited the earth as Stephen Crane, trying again, succeeding again, failing again, and dying ten years sooner than he did on the other occasion of his stay on earth. 

 "When your letter came I had just returned from Dover, where I stayed four days to see Crane off for the Black Forest. There was a thin thread of hope that he might recover, but to me he looked like a man already dead. When he spoke, or, rather, whispered, there was all the accustomed humor in his sayings. I said to him that I would go over to the Schwarzwald in a few weeks, when he was getting better, and that we would take some convalescent rambles together. As his wife was listening he said faintly: 'I'll look forward to that, ' but he smiled at me, and winked slowly, as much as to say: 'You damned humbug, you know I'll take no more rambles in this world. ' Then, as if the train of thought suggested what was looked on before as the crisis of his illness, he murmured: 'Robert, when you come to the hedge--that we must all go over-- it isn't bad. You feel sleepy--and--you don't care. Just a little dreamy curiosity--which world you're really in--that's all. '

 "To-morrow, Saturday, the 9th, I go again to Dover to meet his body. He will rest for a little while in England, a country that was always good to him, then to America, and his journey will be ended. 

 "I've got the unfinished manuscript of his last novel here beside me, a rollicking Irish tale, different from anything he ever wrote before. Stephen thought I was the only person who could finish it, and he was too ill for me to refuse. I don't know what to do about the matter, for I never could work up another man's ideas. Even your vivid imagination could hardly conjecture anything more ghastly than the dying man, lying by an open window overlooking the English channel, relating in a sepulchral whisper the comic situations of his humorous hero so that I might take up the thread of his story. 

 "From the window beside which I write this I can see down in the valley Ravensbrook House, where Crane used to live and where Harold Frederic, he and I spent many a merry night together. When the Romans occupied Britain, some of their legions, parched with thirst, were wandering about these dry hills with the chance of finding water or perishing. They watched the ravens, and so came to the stream which rises under my place and flows past Stephen's former home; hence the name, Ravensbrook. 

 "It seems a strange coincidence that the greatest modern writer on war should set himself down where the greatest ancient warrior, Caesar, probably stopped to quench his thirst. 

 "Stephen died at three in the morning, the same sinister hour which carried away our friend Frederic nineteen months before. At midnight, in Crane's fourteenth-century house in Sussex, we two tried to lure back the ghost of Frederic into that house of ghosts, and to our company, thinking that if reappearing were ever possible so strenuous a man as Harold would somehow shoulder his way past the guards, but he made no sign. I wonder if the less insistent Stephen will suggest some ingenious method by which the two can pass the barrier. I can imagine Harold cursing on the other side, and welcoming the more subtle assistance of his finely fibred friend. 

 "I feel like the last of the Three Musketeers, the other two gone down in their duel with Death. I am wondering if, within the next two years, I also shall get the challenge. If so, I shall go to the competing ground the more cheerfully that two such good fellows await the outcome on the other side. 

 "Ever your friend, "ROBERT BARR. "

The last of the Three Musketeers is gone, now, although he outlived hisfriends by some years. Robert Barr died in 1912. Perhaps they are stilldebating a joint return. 

There could be, perhaps, no better close for a paper on Stephen Cranethan the subjoined paragraph from a letter written by him to a Rochestereditor:--

 "The one thing that deeply pleases me is the fact that men of sense invariably believe me to be sincere. I know that my work does not amount to a string of dried beans--I always calmly admit it--but I also know that I do the best that is in me without regard to praise or blame. When I was the mark for every humorist in the country, I went ahead; and now when I am the mark for only fifty per cent of the humorists of the country, I go ahead; for I understand that a man is born into the world with his own pair of eyes, and he is not at all responsible for his vision--he is merely responsible for his quality of personal honesty. To keep close to this personal honesty is my supreme ambition. "

VINCENT STARRETT. 

THE OPEN BOAT

A Tale intended to be after the fact. Being the experience of four menfrom the sunk steamer "Commodore"

I

None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, andwere fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were ofthe hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, andall of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed andwidened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged withwaves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks. Many a man ought tohave a bath-tub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea. Thesewaves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and eachfroth-top was a problem in small-boat navigation. 

The cook squatted in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the sixinches of gunwale which separated him from the ocean. His sleeves wererolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vestdangled as he bent to bail out the boat. Often he said: "Gawd! That wasa narrow clip. " As he remarked it he invariably gazed eastward over thebroken sea. 

The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimesraised himself suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over thestern. It was a thin little oar and it seemed often ready to snap. 

The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves andwondered why he was there. 

The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in thatprofound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least, to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a vesselis rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he commanded for a day or adecade, and this captain had on him the stern impression of a scene inthe greys of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a stump of a top-mastwith a white ball on it that slashed to and fro at the waves, went lowand lower, and down. Thereafter there was something strange in hisvoice. Although steady, it was, deep with mourning, and of a qualitybeyond oration or tears. 

"Keep 'er a little more south, Billie, " said he. 

"'A little more south, ' sir, " said the oiler in the stern. 

A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho, and bythe same token, a broncho is not much smaller. The craft pranced andreared, and plunged like an animal. As each wave came, and she rose forit, she seemed like a horse making at a fence outrageously high. Themanner of her scramble over these walls of water is a mystic thing, and, moreover, at the top of them were ordinarily these problems in whitewater, the foam racing down from the summit of each wave, requiring anew leap, and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully bumping acrest, she would slide, and race, and splash down a long incline, andarrive bobbing and nodding in front of the next menace. 

A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that aftersuccessfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is anotherbehind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to dosomething effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dingeyone can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of wavesthat is not probable to the average experience which is never at sea ina dingey. As each slatey wall of water approached, it shut all else fromthe view of the men in the boat, and it was not difficult to imaginethat this particular wave was the final outburst of the ocean, the lasteffort of the grim water. There was a terrible grace in the move of thewaves, and they came in silence, save for the snarling of the crests. 

In the wan light, the faces of the men must have been grey. Their eyesmust have glinted in strange ways as they gazed steadily astern. Viewedfrom a balcony, the whole thing would doubtless have been weirdlypicturesque. But the men in the boat had no time to see it, and if theyhad had leisure there were other things to occupy their minds. The sunswung steadily up the sky, and they knew it was broad day because thecolor of the sea changed from slate to emerald-green, streaked withamber lights, and the foam was like tumbling snow. The process of thebreaking day was unknown to them. They were aware only of this effectupon the color of the waves that rolled toward them. 

In disjointed sentences the cook and the correspondent argued as to thedifference between a life-saving station and a house of refuge. The cookhad said: "There's a house of refuge just north of the Mosquito InletLight, and as soon as they see us, they'll come off in their boat andpick us up. "

"As soon as who see us?" said the correspondent. 

"The crew, " said the cook. 

"Houses of refuge don't have crews, " said the correspondent. "As Iunderstand them, they are only places where clothes and grub are storedfor the benefit of shipwrecked people. They don't carry crews. "

"Oh, yes, they do, " said the cook. 

"No, they don't, " said the correspondent. 

"Well, we're not there yet, anyhow, " said the oiler, in the stern. 

"Well, " said the cook, "perhaps it's not a house of refuge that I'mthinking of as being near Mosquito Inlet Light. Perhaps it's a life-saving station. "

"We're not there yet, " said the oiler, in the stern. 

II

As the boat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through thehair of the hatless men, and as the craft plopped her stern down againthe spray splashed past them. The crest of each of these waves was ahill, from the top of which the men surveyed, for a moment, a broadtumultuous expanse, shining and wind-riven. It was probably splendid. Itwas probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with lights ofemerald and white and amber. 

"Bully good thing it's an on-shore wind, " said the cook; "If not, wherewould we be? Wouldn't have a show. "

"That's right, " said the correspondent. 

The busy oiler nodded his assent. 

Then the captain, in the bow, chuckled in a way that expressed humor, contempt, tragedy, all in one. "Do you think We've got much of a shownow, boys?" said he. 

Whereupon the three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming andhawing. To express any particular optimism at this time they felt to bechildish and stupid, but they all doubtless possessed this sense of thesituation in their mind. A young man thinks doggedly at such times. Onthe other hand, the ethics of their condition was decidedly against anyopen suggestion of hopelessness. So they were silent. 

"Oh, well, " said the captain, soothing his children, "We'll get ashoreall right. "

But there was that in his tone which made them think, so the oilerquoth: "Yes! If this wind holds!"

The cook was bailing: "Yes! If we don't catch hell in the surf. "

Canton flannel gulls flew near and far. Sometimes they sat down on thesea, near patches of brown seaweed that rolled on the waves with amovement like carpets on a line in a gale. The birds sat comfortably ingroups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of thesea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens athousand miles inland. Often they came very close and stared at the menwith black bead-like eyes. At these times they were uncanny and sinisterin their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at them, telling them to be gone. One came, and evidently decided to alight onthe top of the captain's head. The bird flew parallel to the boat anddid not circle, but made short sidelong jumps in the air in chicken-fashion. His black eyes were wistfully fixed upon the captain's head. "Ugly brute, " said the oiler to the bird. "You look as if you were madewith a jack-knife. " The cook and the correspondent swore darkly at thecreature. The captain naturally wished to knock it away with the end ofthe heavy painter; but he did not dare do it, because anythingresembling an emphatic gesture would have capsized this freighted boat, and so with his open hand, the captain gently and carefully waved thegull away. After it had been discouraged from the pursuit the captainbreathed easier on account of his hair, and others breathed easierbecause the bird struck their minds at this time as being somehowgrewsome and ominous. 

In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed And also theyrowed. 

They sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then theoiler took both oars; then the correspondent took both oars; then theoiler; then the correspondent. They rowed and they rowed. The veryticklish part of the business was when the time came for the recliningone in the stern to take his turn at the oars. By the very last star oftruth, it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to changeseats in the dingey. First the man in the stern slid his hand along thethwart and moved with care, as if he were of Sèvres. Then the man in therowing seat slid his hand along the other thwart. It was all done withmost extraordinary care. As the two sidled past each other, the wholeparty kept watchful eyes on the coming wave, and the captain cried:"Look out now! Steady there!"

The brown mats of seaweed that appeared from time to time were likeislands, bits of earth. They were traveling, apparently, neither one waynor the other. They were, to all intents, stationary. They informed themen in the boat that it was making progress slowly toward the land. 

The captain, rearing cautiously in the bow, after the dingey soared on agreat swell, said that he had seen the light-house at Mosquito Inlet. Presently the cook remarked that he had seen it. The correspondent wasat the oars then, and for some reason he too wished to look at thelighthouse, but his back was toward the far shore and the waves wereimportant, and for some time he could not seize an opportunity to turnhis head. But at last there came a wave more gentle than the others, andwhen at the crest of it he swiftly scoured the western horizon. 

"See it?" said the captain. 

"No, " said the correspondent slowly, "I didn't see anything. "

"Look again, " said the captain. He pointed. "It's exactly in thatdirection. "

At the top of another wave, the correspondent did as he was bid, andthis time his eyes chanced on a small still thing on the edge of theswaying horizon. It was precisely like the point of a pin. It took ananxious eye to find a light house so tiny. 

"Think we'll make it, captain?"

"If this wind holds and the boat don't swamp, we can't do much else, "said the captain. 

The little boat, lifted by each towering sea, and splashed viciously bythe crests, made progress that in the absence of seaweed was notapparent to those in her. She seemed just a wee thing wallowing, miraculously top-up, at the mercy of five oceans. Occasionally, a greatspread of water, like white flames, swarmed into her. 

"Bail her, cook, " said the captain serenely. 

"All right, captain, " said the cheerful cook. 

III

It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that washere established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No onementioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him. They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and theywere friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may becommon. The hurt captain, lying against the water-jar in the bow, spokealways in a low voice and calmly, but he could never command a moreready and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the dingey. Itwas more than a mere recognition of what was best for the common safety. There was surely in it a quality that was personal and heartfelt. Andafter this devotion to the commander of the boat there was thiscomradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who had been taught tobe cynical of men, knew even at the time was the best experience of hislife. But no one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. 

"I wish we had a sail, " remarked the captain. "We might try my overcoaton the end of an oar and give you two boys a chance to rest. " So thecook and the correspondent held the mast and spread wide the overcoat. The oiler steered, and the little boat made good way with her new rig. Sometimes the oiler had to scull sharply to keep a sea from breakinginto the boat, but otherwise sailing was a success. 

Meanwhile the lighthouse had been growing slowly larger. It had nowalmost assumed color, and appeared like a little grey shadow on the sky. The man at the oars could not be prevented from turning his head ratheroften to try for a glimpse of this little grey shadow. 

At last, from the top of each wave the men in the tossing boat could seeland. Even as the lighthouse was an upright shadow on the sky, this landseemed but a long black shadow on the sea. It certainly was thinner thanpaper. "We must be about opposite New Smyrna, " said the cook, who hadcoasted this shore often in schooners. "Captain, by the way, I believethey abandoned that life-saving station there about a year ago. "

"Did they?" said the captain. 

The wind slowly died away. The cook and the correspondent were not nowobliged to slave in order to hold high the oar. But the waves continuedtheir old impetuous swooping at the dingey, and the little craft, nolonger under way, struggled woundily over them. The oiler or thecorrespondent took the oars again. 

Shipwrecks are _à propos_ of nothing. If men could only train forthem and have them occur when the men had reached pink condition, therewould be less drowning at sea. Of the four in the dingey none had sleptany time worth mentioning for two days and two nights previous toembarking in the dingey, and in the excitement of clambering about thedeck of a foundering ship they had also forgotten to eat heartily. 

For these reasons, and for others, neither the oiler nor thecorrespondent was fond of rowing at this time. The correspondentwondered ingenuously how in the name of all that was sane could there bepeople who thought it amusing to row a boat. It was not an amusement; itwas a diabolical punishment, and even a genius of mental aberrationscould never conclude that it was anything but a horror to the musclesand a crime against the back. He mentioned to the boat in general howthe amusement of rowing struck him, and the weary-faced oiler smiled infull sympathy. Previously to the foundering, by the way, the oiler hadworked double-watch in the engine-room of the ship. 

"Take her easy, now, boys, " said the captain. "Don't spend yourselves. If we have to run a surf you'll need all your strength, because we'llsure have to swim for it. Take your time. "

Slowly the land arose from the sea. From a black line it became a lineof black and a line of white, trees and sand. Finally, the captain saidthat he could make out a house on the shore. "That's the house ofrefuge, sure, " said the cook. "They'll see us before long, and come outafter us. "

The distant lighthouse reared high. "The keeper ought to be able to makeus out now, if he's looking through a glass, " said the captain. "He'llnotify the life-saving people. "

"None of those other boats could have got ashore to give word of thewreck, " said the oiler, in a low voice. "Else the lifeboat would be outhunting us. "

Slowly and beautifully the land loomed out of the sea. The wind cameagain. It had veered from the north-east to the south-east. Finally, anew sound struck the ears of the men in the boat. It was the low thunderof the surf on the shore. "We'll never be able to make the lighthousenow, " said the captain. "Swing her head a little more north, Billie, "said he. 

"'A little more north, ' sir, " said the oiler. 

Whereupon the little boat turned her nose once more down the wind, andall but the oarsman watched the shore grow. Under the influence of thisexpansion doubt and direful apprehension was leaving the minds of themen. The management of the boat was still most absorbing, but it couldnot prevent a quiet cheerfulness. In an hour, perhaps, they would beashore. 

Their backbones had become thoroughly used to balancing in the boat, andthey now rode this wild colt of a dingey like circus men. Thecorrespondent thought that he had been drenched to the skin, buthappening to feel in the top pocket of his coat, he found therein eightcigars. Four of them were soaked with sea-water; four were perfectlyscathless. After a search, somebody produced three dry matches, andthereupon the four waifs rode impudently in their little boat, and withan assurance of an impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at thebig cigars and judged well and ill of all men. Everybody took a drink ofwater. 

IV

"Cook, " remarked the captain, "there don't seem to be any signs of lifeabout your house of refuge. "

"No, " replied the cook. "Funny they don't see us!"

A broad stretch of lowly coast lay before the eyes of the men. It was ofdunes topped with dark vegetation. The roar of the surf was plain, andsometimes they could see the white lip of a wave as it spun up thebeach. A tiny house was blocked out black upon the sky. Southward, theslim lighthouse lifted its little grey length. 

Tide, wind, and waves were swinging the dingey northward. "Funny theydon't see us, " said the men. 

The surf's roar was here dulled, but its tone was, nevertheless, thunderous and mighty. As the boat swam over the great rollers, the mensat listening to this roar. "We'll swamp sure, " said everybody. 

It is fair to say here that there was not a life-saving station withintwenty miles in either direction, but the men did not know this fact, and in consequence they made dark and opprobrious remarks concerning theeyesight of the nation's life-savers. Four scowling men sat in thedingey and surpassed records in the invention of epithets. 

"Funny they don't see us. "

The lightheartedness of a former time had completely faded. To theirsharpened minds it was easy to conjure pictures of all kinds ofincompetency and blindness and, indeed, cowardice. There was the shoreof the populous land, and it was bitter and bitter to them that from itcame no sign. 

"Well, " said the captain, ultimately, "I suppose we'll have to make atry for ourselves. If we stay out here too long, we'll none of us havestrength left to swim after the boat swamps. "

And so the oiler, who was at the oars, turned the boat straight for theshore. There was a sudden tightening of muscle. There was some thinking. 

"If we don't all get ashore--" said the captain. "If we don't all getashore, I suppose you fellows know where to send news of my finish?"

They then briefly exchanged some addresses and admonitions. As for thereflections of the men, there was a great deal of rage in them. Perchance they might be formulated thus: "If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned, why, in thename of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thusfar and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have mynose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? Itis preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better thanthis, she should be deprived of the management of men's fortunes. She isan old hen who knows not her intention. If she has decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning and save me all this trouble? Thewhole affair is absurd.... But no, she cannot mean to drown me. She darenot drown me. She cannot drown me. Not after all this work. " Afterwardthe man might have had an impulse to shake his fist at the clouds: "Justyou drown me, now, and then hear what I call you!"

The billows that came at this time were more formidable. They seemedalways just about to break and roll over the little boat in a turmoil offoam. There was a preparatory and long growl in the speech of them. Nomind unused to the sea would have concluded that the dingey could ascendthese sheer heights in time. The shore was still afar. The oiler was awily surfman. "Boys, " he said swiftly, "she won't live three minutesmore, and we're too far out to swim. Shall I take her to sea again, captain?"

"Yes! Go ahead!" said the captain. 

This oiler, by a series of quick miracles, and fast and steadyoarsmanship, turned the boat in the middle of the surf and took hersafely to sea again. 

There was a considerable silence as the boat bumped over the furrowedsea to deeper water. Then somebody in gloom spoke. "Well, anyhow, theymust have seen us from the shore by now. "

The gulls went in slanting flight up the wind toward the grey desolateeast. A squall, marked by dingy clouds, and clouds brick-red, like smokefrom a burning building, appeared from the south-east. 

"What do you think of those life-saving people? Ain't they peaches?'

"Funny they haven't seen us. "

"Maybe they think we're out here for sport! Maybe they think we'refishin'. Maybe they think we're damned fools. "

It was a long afternoon. A changed tide tried to force them southward, but the wind and wave said northward. Far ahead, where coast-line, sea, and sky formed their mighty angle, there were little dots which seemedto indicate a city on the shore. 

"St. Augustine?"

The captain shook his head. "Too near Mosquito Inlet. "

And the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed. Then the oilerrowed. It was a weary business. The human back can become the seat ofmore aches and pains than are registered in books for the compositeanatomy of a regiment. It is a limited area, but it can become thetheatre of innumerable muscular conflicts, tangles, wrenches, knots, andother comforts. 

"Did you ever like to row, Billie?" asked the correspondent. 

"No, " said the oiler. "Hang it!"

When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of theboat, he suffered a bodily depression that caused him to be careless ofeverything save an obligation to wiggle one finger. There was cold sea-water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His head, pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave crest, and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board and drenchedhim once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It is almost certainthat if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably out uponthe ocean as if he felt sure that it was a great soft mattress. 

"Look! There's a man on the shore!"

"Where?"

"There! See 'im? See 'im?"

"Yes, sure! He's walking along. "

"Now he's stopped. Look! He's facing us!"

"He's waving at us!"

"So he is! By thunder!"

"Ah, now we're all right! Now we're all right! There'll be a boat outhere for us in half-an-hour. "

"He's going on. He's running. He's going up to that house there. "

The remote beach seemed lower than the sea, and it required a searchingglance to discern the little black figure. The captain saw a floatingstick and they rowed to it. A bath-towel was by some weird chance in theboat, and, tying this on the stick, the captain waved it. The oarsmandid not dare turn his head, so he was obliged to ask questions. 

"What's he doing now?"

"He's standing still again. He's looking, I think.... There he goesagain. Toward the house.... Now he's stopped again. "

"Is he waving at us?"

"No, not now! he was, though. "

"Look! There comes another man!"

"He's running. "

"Look at him go, would you. "

"Why, he's on a bicycle. Now he's met the other man. They're both wavingat us. Look!"

"There comes something up the beach. "

"What the devil is that thing?"

"Why it looks like a boat. "

"Why, certainly it's a boat. "

"No, it's on wheels. "

"Yes, so it is. Well, that must be the life-boat. They drag them alongshore on a wagon. "

"That's the life-boat, sure. "

"No, by ----, it's--it's an omnibus. "

"I tell you it's a life-boat. "

"It is not! It's an omnibus. I can see it plain. See? One of these bighotel omnibuses. "

"By thunder, you're right. It's an omnibus, sure as fate. What do yousuppose they are doing with an omnibus? Maybe they are going aroundcollecting the life-crew, hey?"

"That's it, likely. Look! There's a fellow waving a little black flag. He's standing on the steps of the omnibus. There come those other twofellows. Now they're all talking together. Look at the fellow with theflag. Maybe he ain't waving it. "

"That ain't a flag, is it? That's his coat. Why, certainly, that's hiscoat. "

"So it is. It's his coat. He's taken it off and is waving it around hishead. But would you look at him swing it. "

"Oh, say, there isn't any life-saving station there. That's just awinter resort hotel omnibus that has brought over some of the boardersto see us drown. "

"What's that idiot with the coat mean? What's he signaling, anyhow?"

"It looks as if he were trying to tell us to go north. There must be alife-saving station up there. "

"No! He thinks we're fishing. Just giving us a merry hand. See? Ah, there, Willie!"

"Well, I wish I could make something out of those signals. What do yousuppose he means?"

"He don't mean anything. He's just playing. "

"Well, if he'd just signal us to try the surf again, or to go to sea andwait, or go north, or go south, or go to hell--there would be somereason in it. But look at him. He just stands there and keeps his coatrevolving like a wheel. The ass!"

"There come more people. "

"Now there's quite a mob. Look! Isn't that a boat?"

"Where? Oh, I see where you mean. No, that's no boat. "

"That fellow is still waving his coat. "

"He must think we like to see him do that. Why don't he quit it? Itdon't mean anything. "

"I don't know. I think he is trying to make us go north. It must be thatthere's a life-saving station there somewhere. "

"Say, he ain't tired yet. Look at 'im wave. "

"Wonder how long he can keep that up. He's been revolving his coat eversince he caught sight of us. He's an idiot. Why aren't they getting mento bring a boat out? A fishing boat--one of those big yawls--could comeout here all right. Why don't he do something?"

"Oh, it's all right, now. "

"They'll have a boat out here for us in less than no time, now thatthey've seen us. "

A faint yellow tone came into the sky over the low land. The shadows onthe sea slowly deepened. The wind bore coldness with it, and the menbegan to shiver. 

"Holy smoke!" said one, allowing his voice to express his impious mood, "if we keep on monkeying out here! If we've got to flounder out here allnight!"

"Oh, we'll never have to stay here all night! Don't you worry. They'veseen us now, and it won't be long before they'll come chasing out afterus. "

The shore grew dusky. The man waving a coat blended gradually into thisgloom, and it swallowed in the same manner the omnibus and the group ofpeople. The spray, when it dashed uproariously over the side, made thevoyagers shrink and swear like men who were being branded. 

"I'd like to catch the chump who waved the coat. I feel like soaking himone, just for luck. "

"Why? What did he do?"

"Oh, nothing, but then he seemed so damned cheerful. "

In the meantime the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed, andthen the oiler rowed. Grey-faced and bowed forward, they mechanically, turn by turn, plied the leaden oars. The form of the lighthouse hadvanished from the southern horizon, but finally a pale star appeared, just lifting from the sea. The streaked saffron in the west passedbefore the all-merging darkness, and the sea to the east was black. Theland had vanished, and was expressed only by the low and drear thunderof the surf. 

"If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am goingto be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was Ibrought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about tonibble the sacred cheese of life?"

The patient captain, drooped over the water-jar, was sometimes obligedto speak to the oarsman. 

"Keep her head up! Keep her head up!"

"'Keep her head up, ' sir. " The voices were weary and low. 

This was surely a quiet evening. All save the oarsman lay heavily andlistlessly in the boat's bottom. As for him, his eyes were just capableof noting the tall black waves that swept forward in a most sinistersilence, save for an occasional subdued growl of a crest. 

The cook's head was on a thwart, and he looked without interest at thewater under his nose. He was deep in other scenes. Finally he spoke. "Billie, " he murmured, dreamfully, "what kind of pie do you like best?"

V

"Pie, " said the oiler and the correspondent, agitatedly. "Don't talkabout those things, blast you!"

"Well, " said the cook, "I was just thinking about ham sandwiches, and--"

A night on the sea in an open boat is a long night. As darkness settledfinally, the shine of the light, lifting from the sea in the south, changed to full gold. On the northern horizon a new light appeared, asmall bluish gleam on the edge of the waters. These two lights were thefurniture of the world. Otherwise there was nothing but waves. 

Two men huddled in the stern, and distances were so magnificent in thedingey that the rower was enabled to keep his feet partly warmed bythrusting them under his companions. Their legs indeed extended farunder the rowing-seat until they touched the feet of the captainforward. Sometimes, despite the efforts of the tired oarsman, a wavecame piling into the boat, an icy wave of the night, and the chillingwater soaked them anew. They would twist their bodies for a moment andgroan, and sleep the dead sleep once more, while the water in the boatgurgled about them as the craft rocked. 

The plan of the oiler and the correspondent was for one to row until helost the ability, and then arouse the other from his sea-water couch inthe bottom of the boat. 

The oiler plied the oars until his head drooped forward, and theoverpowering sleep blinded him. And he rowed yet afterward. Then hetouched a man in the bottom of the boat, and called his name. "Will youspell me for a little while?" he said, meekly. 

"Sure, Billie, " said the correspondent, awakening and dragging himselfto a sitting position. They exchanged places carefully, and the oiler, cuddling down in the sea-water at the cook's side, seemed to go to sleepinstantly. 

The particular violence of the sea had ceased. The waves came withoutsnarling. The obligation of the man at the oars was to keep the boatheaded so that the tilt of the rollers would not capsize her, and topreserve her from filling when the crests rushed past. The black waveswere silent and hard to be seen in the darkness. Often one was almostupon the boat before the oarsman was aware. 

In a low voice the correspondent addressed the captain. He was not surethat the captain was awake, although this iron man seemed to be alwaysawake. "Captain, shall I keep her making for that light north, sir?"

The same steady voice answered him. "Yes. Keep it about two points offthe port bow. "

The cook had tied a life-belt around himself in order to get even thewarmth which this clumsy cork contrivance could donate, and he seemedalmost stove-like when a rower, whose teeth invariably chattered wildlyas soon as he ceased his labor, dropped down to sleep. 

The correspondent, as he rowed, looked down at the two men sleepingunder-foot. The cook's arm was around the oiler's shoulders, and, withtheir fragmentary clothing and haggard faces, they were the babes of thesea, a grotesque rendering of the old babes in the wood. 

Later he must have grown stupid at his work, for suddenly there was agrowling of water, and a crest came with a roar and a swash into theboat, and it was a wonder that it did not set the cook afloat in hislife-belt. The cook continued to sleep, but the oiler sat up, blinkinghis eyes and shaking with the new cold. 

"Oh, I'm awful sorry, Billie, " said the correspondent contritely. 

"That's all right, old boy, " said the oiler, and lay down again and wasasleep. 

Presently it seemed that even the captain dozed, and the correspondentthought that he was the one man afloat on all the oceans. The wind had avoice as it came over the waves, and it was sadder than the end. 

There was a long, loud swishing astern of the boat, and a gleaming trailof phosphorescence, like blue flame, was furrowed on the black waters. It might have been made by a monstrous knife. 

Then there came a stillness, while the correspondent breathed with theopen mouth and looked at the sea. 

Suddenly there was another swish and another long flash of bluish light, and this time it was alongside the boat, and might almost have beenreached with an oar. The correspondent saw an enormous fin speed like ashadow through the water, hurling the crystalline spray and leaving thelong glowing trail. 

The correspondent looked over his shoulder at the captain. His face washidden, and he seemed to be asleep. He looked at the babes of the sea. They certainly were asleep. So, being bereft of sympathy, he leaned alittle way to one side and swore softly into the sea. 

But the thing did not then leave the vicinity of the boat. Ahead orastern, on one side or the other, at intervals long or short, fled thelong sparkling streak, and there was to be heard the whirroo of the darkfin. The speed and power of the thing was greatly to be admired. It cutthe water like a gigantic and keen projectile. 

The presence of this biding thing did not affect the man with the samehorror that it would if he had been a picnicker. He simply looked at thesea dully and swore in an undertone. 

Nevertheless, it is true that he did not wish to be alone. He wished oneof his companions to awaken by chance and keep him company with it. Butthe captain hung motionless over the water-jar, and the oiler and thecook in the bottom of the boat were plunged in slumber. 

VI

"If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am goingto be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?"

During this dismal night, it may be remarked that a man would concludethat it was really the intention of the seven mad gods to drown him, despite the abominable injustice of it. For it was certainly anabominable injustice to drown a man who had worked so hard, so hard. Theman felt it would be a crime most unnatural. Other people had drowned atsea since galleys swarmed with painted sails, but still--

When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeplythe fact that there are no brick and no temples. Any visible expressionof nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers. 

Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, thedesire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to oneknee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but I love myself. "

A high cold star on a winter's night is the word he feels that she saysto him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation. 

The men in the dingey had not discussed these matters, but each had, nodoubt, reflected upon them in silence and according to his mind. Therewas seldom any expression upon their faces save the general one ofcomplete weariness. Speech was devoted to the business of the boat. 

To chime the notes of his emotion, a verse mysteriously entered thecorrespondent's head. He had even forgotten that he had forgotten thisverse, but it suddenly was in his mind. 

 "A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, There was a lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears; But a comrade stood beside him, and he took that comrade's hand, And he said: 'I shall never see my own, my native land. '"

In his childhood, the correspondent had been made acquainted with thefact that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, but he had neverregarded the fact as important. Myriads of his school-fellows hadinformed him of the soldier's plight, but the dinning had naturallyended by making him perfectly indifferent. He had never considered ithis affair that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, nor had itappeared to him as a matter for sorrow. It was less to him than thebreaking of a pencil's point. 

Now, however, it quaintly came to him as a human, living thing. It wasno longer merely a picture of a few throes in the breast of a poet, meanwhile drinking tea and warming his feet at the grate; it was anactuality--stern, mournful, and fine. 

The correspondent plainly saw the soldier. He lay on the sand with hisfeet out straight and still. While his pale left hand was upon his chestin an attempt to thwart the going of his life, the blood came betweenhis fingers. In the far Algerian distance, a city of low square formswas set against a sky that was faint with the last sunset hues. Thecorrespondent, plying the oars and dreaming of the slow and slowermovements of the lips of the soldier, was moved by a profound andperfectly impersonal comprehension. He was sorry for the soldier of theLegion who lay dying in Algiers. 

The thing which had followed the boat and waited, had evidently grownbored at the delay. There was no longer to be heard the slash of thecut-water, and there was no longer the flame of the long trail. Thelight in the north still glimmered, but it was apparently no nearer tothe boat. Sometimes the boom of the surf rang in the correspondent'sears, and he turned the craft seaward then and rowed harder. Southward, some one had evidently built a watch-fire on the beach. It was too lowand too far to be seen, but it made a shimmering, roseate reflectionupon the bluff back of it, and this could be discerned from the boat. The wind came stronger, and sometimes a wave suddenly raged out like amountain-cat, and there was to be seen the sheen and sparkle of a brokencrest. 

The captain, in the bow, moved on his water-jar and sat erect. "Prettylong night, " he observed to the correspondent. He looked at the shore. "Those life-saving people take their time. "

"Did you see that shark playing around?"

"Yes, I saw him. He was a big fellow, all right. "

"Wish I had known you were awake. "

Later the correspondent spoke into the bottom of the boat. 

"Billie!" There was a slow and gradual disentanglement. "Billie, willyou spell me?"

"Sure, " said the oiler. 

As soon as the correspondent touched the cold comfortable sea-water inthe bottom of the boat, and had huddled close to the cook's life-belt hewas deep in sleep, despite the fact that his teeth played all thepopular airs. This sleep was so good to him that it was but a momentbefore he heard a voice call his name in a tone that demonstrated thelast stages of exhaustion. "Will you spell me?"

"Sure, Billie. "

The light in the north had mysteriously vanished, but the correspondenttook his course from the wide-awake captain. 

Later in the night they took the boat farther out to sea, and thecaptain directed the cook to take one oar at the stern and keep the boatfacing the seas. He was to call out if he should hear the thunder of thesurf. This plan enabled the oiler and the correspondent to get respitetogether. "We'll give those boys a chance to get into shape again, " saidthe captain. They curled down and, after a few preliminary chatteringsand trembles, slept once more the dead sleep. Neither knew they hadbequeathed to the cook the company of another shark, or perhaps the sameshark. 

As the boat caroused on the waves, spray occasionally bumped over theside and gave them a fresh soaking, but this had no power to break theirrepose. The ominous slash of the wind and the water affected them as itwould have affected mummies. 

"Boys, " said the cook, with the notes of every reluctance in his voice, "she's drifted in pretty close. I guess one of you had better take herto sea again. " The correspondent, aroused, heard the crash of thetoppled crests. 

As he was rowing, the captain gave him some whisky-and-water, and thissteadied the chills out of him. "If I ever get ashore and anybody showsme even a photograph of an oar--"

At last there was a short conversation. 

"Billie.... Billie, will you spell me?"

"Sure, " said the oiler. 

VII

When the correspondent again opened his eyes, the sea and the sky wereeach of the grey hue of the dawning. Later, carmine and gold was paintedupon the waters. The morning appeared finally, in its splendor, with asky of pure blue, and the sunlight flamed on the tips of the waves. 

On the distant dunes were set many little black cottages, and a tallwhite windmill reared above them. No man, nor dog, nor bicycle appearedon the beach. The cottages might have formed a deserted village. 

The voyagers scanned the shore. A conference was held in the boat. "Well, " said the captain, "if no help is coming we might better try arun through the surf right away. If we stay out here much longer we willbe too weak to do anything for ourselves at all. " The others silentlyacquiesced in this reasoning. The boat was headed for the beach. Thecorrespondent wondered if none ever ascended the tall wind-tower, and ifthen they never looked seaward. This tower was a giant, standing withits back to the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to thecorrespondent, the serenity of nature amid the struggles of theindividual--nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She didnot seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent. It is, perhaps, plausiblethat a man in this situation, impressed with the unconcern of theuniverse, should see the innumerable flaws of his life, and have themtaste wickedly in his mind and wish for another chance. A distinctionbetween right and wrong seems absurdly clear to him, then, in this newignorance of the grave-edge, and he understands that if he were givenanother opportunity he would mend his conduct and his words, and bebetter and brighter during an introduction or at a tea. 

"Now, boys, " said the captain, "she is going to swamp, sure. All we cando is to work her in as far as possible, and then when she swamps, pileout and scramble for the beach. Keep cool now, and don't jump until sheswamps sure. "

The oiler took the oars. Over his shoulders he scanned the surf. "Captain, " he said, "I think I'd better bring her about, and keep herhead-on to the seas and back her in. "

"All right, Billie, " said the captain. "Back her in. " The oiler swungthe boat then and, seated in the stern, the cook and the correspondentwere obliged to look over their shoulders to contemplate the lonely andindifferent shore. 

The monstrous in-shore rollers heaved the boat high until the men wereagain enabled to see the white sheets of water scudding up the slantedbeach. "We won't get in very close, " said the captain. Each time a mancould wrest his attention from the rollers, he turned his glance towardthe shore, and in the expression of the eyes during this contemplationthere was a singular quality. The correspondent, observing the others, knew that they were not afraid, but the full meaning of their glanceswas shrouded. 

As for himself, he was too tired to grapple fundamentally with the fact. He tried to coerce his mind into thinking of it, but the mind wasdominated at this time by the muscles, and the muscles said they did notcare. It merely occurred to him that if he should drown it would be ashame. 

There were no hurried words, no pallor, no plain agitation. The mensimply looked at the shore. "Now, remember to get well clear of the boatwhen you jump, " said the captain. 

Seaward the crest of a roller suddenly fell with a thunderous crash, andthe long white comber came roaring down upon the boat. 

"Steady now, " said the captain. The men were silent. They turned theireyes from the shore to the comber and waited. The boat slid up theincline, leaped at the furious top, bounced over it, and swung down thelong back of the wave. Some water had been shipped and the cook bailedit out. 

But the next crest crashed also. The tumbling, boiling flood of whitewater caught the boat and whirled it almost perpendicular. Water swarmedin from all sides. The correspondent had his hands on the gunwale atthis time, and when the water entered at that place he swiftly withdrewhis fingers, as if he objected to wetting them. 

The little boat, drunken with this weight of water, reeled and snuggleddeeper into the sea. 

"Bail her out, cook! Bail her out, " said the captain. 

"All right, captain, " said the cook. 

"Now, boys, the next one will do for us, sure, " said the oiler. "Mind tojump clear of the boat. "

The third wave moved forward, huge, furious, implacable. It fairlyswallowed the dingey, and almost simultaneously the men tumbled into thesea. A piece of lifebelt had lain in the bottom of the boat, and as thecorrespondent went overboard he held this to his chest with his lefthand. 

The January water was icy, and he reflected immediately that it wascolder than he had expected to find it on the coast of Florida. Thisappeared to his dazed mind as a fact important enough to be noted at thetime. The coldness of the water was sad; it was tragic. This fact wassomehow so mixed and confused with his opinion of his own situation thatit seemed almost a proper reason for tears. The water was cold. 

When he came to the surface he was conscious of little but the noisywater. Afterward he saw his companions in the sea. The oiler was aheadin the race. He was swimming strongly and rapidly. Off to thecorrespondent's left, the cook's great white and corked back bulged outof the water, and in the rear the captain was hanging with his one goodhand to the keel of the overturned dingey. 

There is a certain immovable quality to a shore, and the correspondentwondered at it amid the confusion of the sea. 

It seemed also very attractive, but the correspondent knew that it was along journey, and he paddled leisurely. The piece of life-preserver layunder him, and sometimes he whirled down the incline of a wave as if hewere on a handsled. 

But finally he arrived at a place in the sea where travel was besetwith difficulty. He did not pause swimming to inquire what manner ofcurrent had caught him, but there his progress ceased. The shore was setbefore him like a bit of scenery on a stage, and he looked at it andunderstood with his eyes each detail of it. 

As the cook passed, much farther to the left, the captain was calling tohim, "Turn over on your back, cook! Turn over on your back and use theoar. "

"All right, sir. " The cook turned on his back, and, paddling with anoar, went ahead as if he were a canoe. 

Presently the boat also passed to the left of the correspondent with thecaptain clinging with one hand to the keel. He would have appeared likea man raising himself to look over a board fence, if it were not for theextraordinary gymnastics of the boat. The correspondent marvelled thatthe captain could still hold to it. 

They passed on, nearer to shore--the oiler, the cook, the captain--andfollowing them went the water-jar, bouncing gaily over the seas. 

The correspondent remained in the grip of this strange new enemy--acurrent. The shore, with its white slope of sand and its green bluff, topped with little silent cottages, was spread like a picture beforehim. It was very near to him then, but he was impressed as one who in agallery looks at a scene from Brittany or Holland. 

He thought: "I am going to drown? Can it be possible Can it be possible?Can it be possible?" Perhaps an individual must consider his own deathto be the final phenomenon of nature. 

But later a wave perhaps whirled him out of this small, deadly current, for he found suddenly that he could again make progress toward theshore. Later still, he was aware that the captain, clinging with onehand to the keel of the dingey, had his face turned away from the shoreand toward him, and was calling his name. "Come to the boat! Come to theboat!"

In his struggle to reach the captain and the boat, he reflected thatwhen one gets properly wearied, drowning must really be a comfortablearrangement, a cessation of hostilities accompanied by a large degree ofrelief, and he was glad of it, for the main thing in his mind for somemonths had been horror of the temporary agony. He did not wish to behurt. 

Presently he saw a man running along the shore. He was undressing withmost remarkable speed. Coat, trousers, shirt, everything flew magicallyoff him. 

"Come to the boat, " called the captain. 

"All right, captain. " As the correspondent paddled, he saw the captainlet himself down to bottom and leave the boat. Then the correspondentperformed his one little marvel of the voyage. A large wave caught himand flung him with ease and supreme speed completely over the boat andfar beyond it. It struck him even then as an event in gymnastics, and atrue miracle of the sea. An over-turned boat in the surf is not aplaything to a swimming man. 

The correspondent arrived in water that reached only to his waist, buthis condition did not enable him to stand for more than a moment. Eachwave knocked him into a heap, and the under-tow pulled at him. 

Then he saw the man who had been running and undressing, and undressingand running, come bounding into the water. He dragged ashore the cook, and then waded towards the captain, but the captain waved him away, andsent him to the correspondent. He was naked, naked as a tree in winter, but a halo was about his head, and he shone like a saint. He gave astrong pull, and a long drag, and a bully heave at the correspondent'shand. The correspondent, schooled in the minor formulae, said: "Thanks, old man. " But suddenly the man cried: "What's that?" He pointed a swiftfinger. The correspondent said: "Go. "

In the shallows, face downward, lay the oiler. His forehead touched sandthat was periodically, between each wave, clear of the sea. 

The correspondent did not know all that transpired afterward. When heachieved safe ground he fell, striking the sand with each particularpart of his body. It was as if he had dropped from a roof, but the thudwas grateful to him. 

It seems that instantly the beach was populated with men with blankets, clothes, and flasks, and women with coffeepots and all the remediessacred to their minds. The welcome of the land to the men from the seawas warm and generous, but a still and dripping shape was carried slowlyup the beach, and the land's welcome for it could only be the differentand sinister hospitality of the grave. 

When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the wind brought the sound of the great sea's voice to the men onshore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters. 

THE RELUCTANT VOYAGERS

CHAPTER I

Two men sat by the sea waves. 

"Well, I know I'm not handsome, " said one gloomily. He was poking holesin the sand with a discontented cane. 

The companion was watching the waves play. He seemed overcome withperspiring discomfort as a man who is resolved to set another man right. 

Suddenly his mouth turned into a straight line. 

"To be sure you are not, " he cried vehemently. 

"You look like thunder. I do not desire to be unpleasant, but I mustassure you that your freckled skin continually reminds spectators ofwhite wall paper with gilt roses on it. The top of your head looks likea little wooden plate. And your figure--heavens!"

For a time they were silent. They stared at the waves that purred neartheir feet like sleepy sea-kittens. 

Finally the first man spoke. 

"Well, " said he, defiantly, "what of it?"

"What of it?" exploded the other. "Why, it means that you'd look likeblazes in a bathing-suit. "

They were again silent. The freckled man seemed ashamed. His tallcompanion glowered at the scenery. 

"I am decided, " said the freckled man suddenly. He got boldly up from thesand and strode away. The tall man followed, walking sarcastically andglaring down at the round, resolute figure before him. 

A bath-clerk was looking at the world with superior eyes through a holein a board. To him the freckled man made application, waving his handsover his person in illustration of a snug fit. The bath-clerk thoughtprofoundly. Eventually, he handed out a blue bundle with an air ofhaving phenomenally solved the freckled man's dimensions. 

The latter resumed his resolute stride. 

"See here, " said the tall man, following him, "I bet you've got aregular toga, you know. That fellow couldn't tell--"

"Yes, he could, " interrupted the freckled man, "I saw correctmathematics in his eyes. "

"Well, supposin' he has missed your size. Supposin'--"

"Tom, " again interrupted the other, "produce your proud clothes andwe'll go in. "

The tall man swore bitterly. He went to one of a row of little woodenboxes and shut himself in it. His companion repaired to a similar box. 

At first he felt like an opulent monk in a too-small cell, and he turnedround two or three times to see if he could. He arrived finally into hisbathing-dress. Immediately he dropped gasping upon a three-corneredbench. The suit fell in folds about his reclining form. There wassilence, save for the caressing calls of the waves without. 

Then he heard two shoes drop on the floor in one of the little coops. Hebegan to clamor at the boards like a penitent at an unforgiving door. 

"Tom, " called he, "Tom--"

A voice of wrath, muffled by cloth, came through the walls. "You go t'blazes!"

The freckled man began to groan, taking the occupants of the entire rowof coops into his confidence. 

"Stop your noise, " angrily cried the tall man from his hidden den. "Yourented the bathing-suit, didn't you? Then--"

"It ain't a bathing-suit, " shouted the freckled man at the boards. "It'san auditorium, a ballroom, or something. It isn't a bathing-suit. "

The tall man came out of his box. His suit looked like blue skin. Hewalked with grandeur down the alley between the rows of coops. Stoppingin front of his friend's door, he rapped on it with passionate knuckles. 

"Come out of there, y' ol' fool, " said he, in an enraged whisper. "It'sonly your accursed vanity. Wear it anyhow. What difference does it make?I never saw such a vain ol' idiot!"

As he was storming the door opened, and his friend confronted him. Thetall man's legs gave way, and he fell against the opposite door. 

The freckled man regarded him sternly. 

"You're an ass, " he said. 

His back curved in scorn. He walked majestically down the alley. Therewas pride in the way his chubby feet patted the boards. The tall manfollowed, weakly, his eyes riveted upon the figure ahead. 

As a disguise the freckled man had adopted the stomach of importance. Hemoved with an air of some sort of procession, across a board walk, downsome steps, and out upon the sand. 

There was a pug dog and three old women on a bench, a man and a maidwith a book and a parasol, a seagull drifting high in the wind, and adistant, tremendous meeting of sea and sky. Down on the wet sand stood agirl being wooed by the breakers. 

The freckled man moved with stately tread along the beach. The tall man, numb with amazement, came in the rear. They neared the girl. 

Suddenly the tall man was seized with convulsions. He laughed, and thegirl turned her head. 

She perceived the freckled man in the bathing-suit. An expression ofwonderment overspread her charming face. It changed in a moment to apearly smile. 

This smile seemed to smite the freckled man. He obviously tried to swelland fit his suit. Then he turned a shrivelling glance upon hiscompanion, and fled up the beach. The tall man ran after him, pursuingwith mocking cries that tingled his flesh like stings of insects. Heseemed to be trying to lead the way out of the world. But at last hestopped and faced about. 

"Tom Sharp, " said he, between his clenched teeth, "you are anunutterable wretch! I could grind your bones under my heel. "

The tall man was in a trance, with glazed eyes fixed on the bathing-dress. He seemed to be murmuring: "Oh, good Lord! Oh, good Lord! I neversaw such a suit!"

The freckled man made the gesture of an assassin. 

"Tom Sharp, you--"

The other was still murmuring: "Oh, good Lord! I never saw such a suit!I never--"

The freckled man ran down into the sea. 

CHAPTER II

The cool, swirling waters took his temper from him, and it became athing that is lost in the ocean. The tall man floundered in, and the twoforgot and rollicked in the waves. 

The freckled man, in endeavoring to escape from mankind, had left allsave a solitary fisherman under a large hat, and three boys in bathing-dress, laughing and splashing upon a raft made of old spars. 

The two men swam softly over the ground swells. 

The three boys dived from their raft, and turned their jolly facesshorewards. It twisted slowly around and around, and began to moveseaward on some unknown voyage. The freckled man laid his face to thewater and swam toward the raft with a practised stroke. The tall manfollowed, his bended arm appearing and disappearing with the precisionof machinery. 

The craft crept away, slowly and wearily, as if luring. The littlewooden plate on the freckled man's head looked at the shore like around, brown eye, but his gaze was fixed on the raft that slyly appearedto be waiting. The tall man used the little wooden plate as a beacon. 

At length the freckled man reached the raft and climbed aboard. He laydown on his back and puffed. His bathing-dress spread about him like adead balloon. The tall man came, snorted, shook his tangled locks andlay down by the side of his companion. 

They were overcome with a delicious drowsiness. The planks of the raftseemed to fit their tired limbs. They gazed dreamily up into the vastsky of summer. 

"This is great, " said the tall man. His companion grunted blissfully. 

Gentle hands from the sea rocked their craft and lulled them to peace. Lapping waves sang little rippling sea-songs about them. The two menissued contented groans. 

"Tom, " said the freckled man. 

"What?" said the other. 

"This is great. "

They lay and thought. 

A fish-hawk, soaring, suddenly, turned and darted at the waves. The tallman indolently twisted his head and watched the bird plunge its clawsinto the water. It heavily arose with a silver gleaming fish. 

"That bird has got his feet wet again. It's a shame, " murmured the tallman sleepily. "He must suffer from an endless cold in the head. Heshould wear rubber boots. They'd look great, too. If I was him, I'd--Great Scott!"

He had partly arisen, and was looking at the shore. 

He began to scream. "Ted! Ted! Ted! Look!"

"What's matter?" dreamily spoke the freckled man. "You remind me of whenI put the bird-shot in your leg. " He giggled softly. 

The agitated tall man made a gesture of supreme eloquence. His companionup-reared and turned a startled gaze shoreward. 

"Lord!" he roared, as if stabbed. 

The land was a long, brown streak with a rim of green, in which sparkledthe tin roofs of huge hotels. The hands from the sea had pushed themaway. The two men sprang erect, and did a little dance of perturbation. 

"What shall we do? What shall we do?" moaned the freckled man, wrigglingfantastically in his dead balloon. 

The changing shore seemed to fascinate the tall man, and for a time hedid not speak. 

Suddenly he concluded his minuet of horror. He wheeled about and facedthe freckled man. He elaborately folded his arms. 

"So, " he said, in slow, formidable tones. "So! This all comes from youraccursed vanity, your bathing-suit, your idiocy; you have murdered yourbest friend. "

He turned away. His companion reeled as if stricken by an unexpectedarm. 

He stretched out his hands. "Tom, Tom, " wailed he, beseechingly, "don'tbe such a fool. "

The broad back of his friend was occupied by a contemptuous sneer. 

Three ships fell off the horizon. Landward, the hues were blending. Thewhistle of a locomotive sounded from an infinite distance as if tootingin heaven. 

"Tom! Tom! My dear boy, " quavered the freckled man, "don't speak thatway to me. "

"Oh, no, of course not, " said the other, still facing away and throwingthe words over his shoulder. "You suppose I am going to accept all thiscalmly, don't you? Not make the slightest objection? Make no protest atall, hey?"

"Well, I--I----" began the freckled man. 

The tall man's wrath suddenly exploded. "You've abducted me! That's thewhole amount of it! You've abducted me!"

"I ain't, " protested the freckled man. "You must think I'm a fool. "

The tall man swore, and sitting down, dangled his legs angrily in thewater. Natural law compelled his companion to occupy the other end ofthe raft. 

Over the waters little shoals of fish spluttered, raising tiny tempests. Languid jelly-fish floated near, tremulously waving a thousand legs. Arow of porpoises trundled along like a procession of cog-wheels. The skybecame greyed save where over the land sunset colors were assembling. 

The two voyagers, back to back and at either end of the raft, quarrelledat length. 

"What did you want to follow me for?" demanded the freckled man in avoice of indignation. 

"If your figure hadn't been so like a bottle, we wouldn't be here, "replied the tall man. 

CHAPTER III

The fires in the west blazed away, and solemnity spread over the sea. Electric lights began to blink like eyes. Night menaced the voyagerswith a dangerous darkness, and fear came to bind their souls together. They huddled fraternally in the middle of the raft. 

"I feel like a molecule, " said the freckled man in subdued tones. 

"I'd give two dollars for a cigar, " muttered the tall man. 

A V-shaped flock of ducks flew towards Barnegat, between the voyagersand a remnant of yellow sky. Shadows and winds came from the vanishedeastern horizon. 

"I think I hear voices, " said the freckled man. 

"That Dollie Ramsdell was an awfully nice girl, " said the tall man. 

When the coldness of the sea night came to them, the freckled man foundhe could by a peculiar movement of his legs and arms encase himself inhis bathing-dress. The tall man was compelled to whistle and shiver. Asnight settled finally over the sea, red and green lights began to dotthe blackness. There were mysterious shadows between the waves. 

"I see things comin', " murmured the freckled man. 

"I wish I hadn't ordered that new dress-suit for the hop to-morrownight, " said the tall man reflectively. 

The sea became uneasy and heaved painfully, like a lost bosom, whenlittle forgotten heart-bells try to chime with a pure sound. Thevoyagers cringed at magnified foam on distant wave crests. A moon cameand looked at them. 

"Somebody's here, " whispered the freckled man. 

"I wish I had an almanac, " remarked the tall man, regarding the moon. 

Presently they fell to staring at the red and green lights that twinkledabout them. 

"Providence will not leave us, " asserted the freckled man. 

"Oh, we'll be picked up shortly. I owe money, " said the tall man. 

He began to thrum on an imaginary banjo. 

"I have heard, " said he, suddenly, "that captains with healthy shipsbeneath their feet will never turn back after having once started on avoyage. In that case we will be rescued by some ship bound for thegolden seas of the south. Then, you'll be up to some of your confoundeddevilment and we'll get put off. They'll maroon us! That's what they'lldo! They'll maroon us! On an island with palm trees and sun-kissedmaidens and all that. Sun-kissed maidens, eh? Great! They'd--"

He suddenly ceased and turned to stone. At a distance a great, green eyewas contemplating the sea wanderers. 

They stood up and did another dance. As they watched the eye grewlarger. 

Directly the form of a phantom-like ship came into view. About thegreat, green eye there bobbed small yellow dots. The wanderers couldhear a far-away creaking of unseen tackle and flapping of shadowy sails. There came the melody of the waters as the ship's prow thrust its way. 

The tall man delivered an oration. 

"Ha!" he exclaimed, "here come our rescuers. The brave fellows! How Ilong to take the manly captain by the hand! You will soon see a whiteboat with a star on its bow drop from the side of yon ship. Kind sailorsin blue and white will help us into the boat and conduct our wastedframes to the quarter-deck, where the handsome, bearded captain, withgold bands all around, will welcome us. Then in the hard-oak cabin, while the wine gurgles and the Havanas glow, we'll tell our tale ofperil and privation. "

The ship came on like a black hurrying animal with froth-filled maw. Thetwo wanderers stood up and clasped hands. Then they howled out a wildduet that rang over the wastes of sea. 

The cries seemed to strike the ship. 

Men with boots on yelled and ran about the deck. They picked up heavyarticles and threw them down. They yelled more. After hideous creakingsand flappings, the vessel stood still. 

In the meantime the wanderers had been chanting their song for help. Outin the blackness they beckoned to the ship and coaxed. 

A voice came to them. 

"Hello, " it said. 

They puffed out their cheeks and began to shout. "Hello! Hello! Hello!"

"Wot do yeh want?" said the voice. 

The two wanderers gazed at each other, and sat suddenly down on theraft. Some pall came sweeping over the sky and quenched their stars. 

But almost the tall man got up and brawled miscellaneous information. Hestamped his foot, and frowning into the night, swore threateningly. 

The vessel seemed fearful of these moaning voices that called from ahidden cavern of the water. And now one voice was filled with a menace. A number of men with enormous limbs that threw vast shadows over the seaas the lanterns flickered, held a debate and made gestures. 

Off in the darkness, the tall man began to clamor like a mob. Thefreckled man sat in astounded silence, with his legs weak. 

After a time one of the men of enormous limbs seized a rope that wastugging at the stem and drew a small boat from the shadows. Three giantsclambered in and rowed cautiously toward the raft. Silver water flashedin the gloom as the oars dipped. 

About fifty feet from the raft the boat stopped. "Who er you?" asked avoice. 

The tall man braced himself and explained. He drew vivid pictures, histwirling fingers illustrating like live brushes. 

"Oh, " said the three giants. 

The voyagers deserted the raft. They looked back, feeling in theirhearts a mite of tenderness for the wet planks. Later, they wriggled upthe side of the vessel and climbed over the railing. 

On deck they met a man. 

He held a lantern to their faces. "Got any chewin' tewbacca?" heinquired. 

"No, " said the tall man, "we ain't. "

The man had a bronze face and solitary whiskers. Peculiar lines abouthis mouth were shaped into an eternal smile of derision. His feet werebare, and clung handily to crevices. 

Fearful trousers were supported by a piece of suspender that went up thewrong side of his chest and came down the right side of his back, dividing him into triangles. 

"Ezekiel P. Sanford, capt'in, schooner 'Mary Jones, ' of N'yack, N. Y. , genelmen, " he said. 

"Ah!" said the tall man, "delighted, I'm sure. "

There were a few moments of silence. The giants were hovering in thegloom and staring. 

Suddenly astonishment exploded the captain. 

"Wot th' devil----" he shouted. "Wot th' devil yeh got on?"

"Bathing-suits, " said the tall man. 

CHAPTER IV

The schooner went on. The two voyagers sat down and watched. After atime they began to shiver. The soft blackness of the summer night passedaway, and grey mists writhed over the sea. Soon lights of early dawnwent changing across the sky, and the twin beacons on the highlands grewdim and sparkling faintly, as if a monster were dying. The dawnpenetrated the marrow of the two men in bathing-dress. 

The captain used to pause opposite them, hitch one hand in hissuspender, and laugh. 

"Well, I be dog-hanged, " he frequently said. 

The tall man grew furious. He snarled in a mad undertone to hiscompanion. "This rescue ain't right. If I had known--"

He suddenly paused, transfixed by the captain's suspender. "It's goin'to break, " cried he, in an ecstatic whisper. His eyes grew large withexcitement as he watched the captain laugh. "It'll break in a minute, sure. "

But the commander of the schooner recovered, and invited them to drinkand eat. They followed him along the deck, and fell down a square blackhole into the cabin. 

It was a little den, with walls of a vanished whiteness. A lamp shed anorange light. In a sort of recess two little beds were hiding. A woodentable, immovable, as if the craft had been builded around it, sat in themiddle of the floor. Overhead the square hole was studded with a dozenstars. A foot-worn ladder led to the heavens. 

The captain produced ponderous crackers and some cold broiled ham. Thenhe vanished in the firmament like a fantastic comet. 

The freckled man sat quite contentedly like a stout squaw in a blanket. The tall man walked about the cabin and sniffed. He was angered at thecrudeness of the rescue, and his shrinking clothes made him feel toolarge. He contemplated his unhappy state. 

Suddenly, he broke out. "I won't stand this, I tell you! Heavens andearth, look at the--say, what in the blazes did you want to get me inthis thing for, anyhow? You're a fine old duffer, you are! Look at thatham!"

The freckled man grunted. He seemed somewhat blissful. He was seatedupon a bench, comfortably enwrapped in his bathing-dress. 

The tall man stormed about the cabin. 

"This is an outrage! I'll see the captain! I'll tell him what I thinkof--"

He was interrupted by a pair of legs that appeared among the stars. Thecaptain came down the ladder. He brought a coffee pot from the sky. 

The tall man bristled forward. He was going to denounce everything. 

The captain was intent upon the coffee pot, balancing it carefully, andleaving his unguided feet to find the steps of the ladder. 

But the wrath of the tall man faded. He twirled his fingers inexcitement, and renewed his ecstatic whisperings to the freckled man. 

"It's going to break! Look, quick, look! It'll break in a minute!"

He was transfixed with interest, forgetting his wrongs in staring at theperilous passage. 

But the captain arrived on the floor with triumphant suspenders. 

"Well, " said he, "after yeh have eat, maybe ye'd like t'sleep some! Ifso, yeh can sleep on them beds. "

The tall man made no reply, save in a strained undertone. "It'll breakin about a minute! Look, Ted, look quick!"

The freckled man glanced in a little bed on which were heaped boots andoilskins. He made a courteous gesture. 

"My dear sir, we could not think of depriving you of your beds. No, indeed. Just a couple of blankets if you have them, and we'll sleep verycomfortable on these benches. "

The captain protested, politely twisting his back and bobbing his head. The suspenders tugged and creaked. The tall man partially suppressed acry, and took a step forward. 

The freckled man was sleepily insistent, and shortly the captain gaveover his deprecatory contortions. He fetched a pink quilt with yellowdots on it to the freckled man, and a black one with red roses on it tothe tall man. 

Again he vanished in the firmament. The tall man gazed until the lastremnant of trousers disappeared from the sky. Then he wrapped himself upin his quilt and lay down. The freckled man was puffing contentedly, swathed like an infant. The yellow polka-dots rose and fell on the vastpink of his chest. 

The wanderers slept. In the quiet could be heard the groanings oftimbers as the sea seemed to crunch them together. The lapping of wateralong the vessel's side sounded like gaspings. A hundred spirits of thewind had got their wings entangled in the rigging, and, in soft voices, were pleading to be loosened. 

The freckled man was awakened by a foreign noise. He opened his eyes andsaw his companion standing by his couch. 

His comrade's face was wan with suffering. His eyes glowed in thedarkness. He raised his arms, spreading them out like a clergyman at agrave. He groaned deep in his chest. 

"Good Lord!" yelled the freckled man, starting up. "Tom, Tom, what's th'matter?"

The tall man spoke in a fearful voice. "To New York, " he said, "to NewYork in our bathing-suits. "

The freckled man sank back. The shadows of the cabin threw mysteriesabout the figure of the tall man, arrayed like some ancient and potentastrologer in the black quilt with the red roses on it. 

CHAPTER V

Directly the tall man went and lay down and began to groan. 

The freckled man felt the miseries of the world upon him. He grew angryat the tall man awakening him. They quarrelled. 

"Well, " said the tall man, finally, "we're in a fix. "

"I know that, " said the other, sharply. 

They regarded the ceiling in silence. 

"What in the thunder are we going to do?" demanded the tall man, after atime. His companion was still silent. "Say, " repeated he, angrily, "whatin the thunder are we going to do?"

"I'm sure I don't know, " said the freckled man in a dismal voice. 

"Well, think of something, " roared the other. "Think of something, youold fool. You don't want to make any more idiots of yourself, do you?"

"I ain't made an idiot of myself. "

"Well, think. Know anybody in the city?"

"I know a fellow up in Harlem, " said the freckled man. 

"You know a fellow up in Harlem, " howled the tall man. "Up in Harlem!How the dickens are we to--say, you're crazy!"

"We can take a cab, " cried the other, waxing indignant. 

The tall man grew suddenly calm. "Do you know any one else?" he asked, measuredly. 

"I know another fellow somewhere on Park Place. "

"Somewhere on Park Place, " repeated the tall man in an unnatural manner. "Somewhere on Park Place. " With an air of sublime resignation he turnedhis face to the wall. 

The freckled man sat erect and frowned in the direction of hiscompanion. "Well, now, I suppose you are going to sulk. You make me ill!It's the best we can do, ain't it? Hire a cab and go look that fellow upon Park--What's that? You can't afford it? What nonsense! You aregetting--Oh! Well, maybe we can beg some clothes of the captain. Eh?Did I see 'im? Certainly, I saw 'im. Yes, it is improbable that a manwho wears trousers like that can have clothes to lend. No, I won't wearoilskins and a sou'-wester. To Athens? Of course not! I don't know whereit is. Do you? I thought not. With all your grumbling about otherpeople, you never know anything important yourself. What? Broadway? I'llbe hanged first. We can get off at Harlem, man alive. There are no cabsin Harlem. I don't think we can bribe a sailor to take us ashore andbring a cab to the dock, for the very simple reason that we have nothingto bribe him with. What? No, of course not. See here, Tom Sharp, don'tyou swear at me like that. I won't have it. What's that? I ain't, either. I ain't. What? I am not. It's no such thing. I ain't. I've gotmore than you have, anyway. Well, you ain't doing anything so verybrilliant yourself--just lying there and cussin'. " At length the tallman feigned prodigiously to snore. The freckled man thought with suchvigor that he fell asleep. 

After a time he dreamed that he was in a forest where bass drums grew ontrees. There came a strong wind that banged the fruit about like emptypods. A frightful din was in his ears. 

He awoke to find the captain of the schooner standing over him. 

"We're at New York now, " said the captain, raising his voice above thethumping and banging that was being done on deck, "an' I s'pose youfellers wanta go ashore. " He chuckled in an exasperating manner. "Jes'sing out when yeh wanta go, " he added, leering at the freckled man. 

The tall man awoke, came over and grasped the captain by the throat. 

"If you laugh again I'll kill you, " he said. 

The captain gurgled and waved his legs and arms. 

"In the first place, " the tall man continued, "you rescued us in adeucedly shabby manner. It makes me ill to think of it. I've a mind tomop you 'round just for that. In the second place, your vessel is boundfor Athens, N. Y. , and there's no sense in it. Now, will you or will younot turn this ship about and take us back where our clothes are, or toPhiladelphia, where we belong?"

He furiously shook the captain. Then he eased his grip and awaited areply. 

"I can't, " yelled the captain, "I can't. This vessel don't belong to me. I've got to--"

"Well, then, " interrupted the tall man, "can you lend us some clothes?"

"Hain't got none, " replied the captain, promptly. His face was red, andhis eyes were glaring. 

"Well, then, " said the tall man, "can you lend us some money?"

"Hain't got none, " replied the captain, promptly. Something overcame himand he laughed. 

"Thunderation, " roared the tall man. He seized the captain, who began tohave wriggling contortions. The tall man kneaded him as if he werebiscuits. "You infernal scoundrel, " he bellowed, "this whole affair issome wretched plot, and you are in it. I am about to kill you. "

The solitary whisker of the captain did acrobatic feats like a strangedemon upon his chin. His eyes stood perilously from his head. Thesuspender wheezed and tugged like the tackle of a sail. 

Suddenly the tall man released his hold. Great expectancy sat upon hisfeatures. "It's going to break!" he cried, rubbing his hands. 

But the captain howled and vanished in the sky. 

The freckled man then came forward. He appeared filled with sarcasm. 

"So!" said he. "So, you've settled the matter. The captain is the onlyman in the world who can help us, and I daresay he'll do anything he cannow. "

"That's all right, " said the tall man. "If you don't like the way I runthings you shouldn't have come on this trip at all. "

They had another quarrel. 

At the end of it they went on deck. The captain stood at the sternaddressing the bow with opprobrious language. When he perceived thevoyagers he began to fling his fists about in the air. 

"I'm goin' to put yeh off!" he yelled. The wanderers stared at eachother. 

"Hum, " said the tall man. 

The freckled man looked at his companion. "He's going to put us off, yousee, " he said, complacently. 

The tall man began to walk about and move his shoulders. "I'd like tosee you do it, " he said, defiantly. 

The captain tugged at a rope. A boat came at his bidding. 

"I'd like to see you do it, " the tall man repeated, continually. Animperturbable man in rubber boots climbed down in the boat and seizedthe oars. The captain motioned downward. His whisker had a triumphantappearance. 

The two wanderers looked at the boat. "I guess we'll have to get in, "murmured the freckled man. 

The tall man was standing like a granite column. "I won't, " said he. "Iwon't! I don't care what you do, but I won't!"

"Well, but--" expostulated the other. They held a furious debate. 

In the meantime the captain was darting about making sinister gestures, but the back of the tall man held him at bay. The crew, much depleted bythe departure of the imperturbable man into the boat, looked on from thebow. 

"You're a fool, " the freckled man concluded his argument. 

"So?" inquired the tall man, highly exasperated. 

"So! Well, if you think you're so bright, we'll go in the boat, and thenyou'll see. "

He climbed down into the craft and seated himself in an ominous mannerat the stern. 

"You'll see, " he said to his companion, as the latter floundered heavilydown. "You'll see!"

The man in rubber boots calmly rowed the boat toward the shore. As theywent, the captain leaned over the railing and laughed. The freckled manwas seated very victoriously. 

"Well, wasn't this the right thing after all?" he inquired in a pleasantvoice. The tall man made no reply. 

CHAPTER VI

As they neared the dock something seemed suddenly to occur to thefreckled man. 

"Great heavens!" he murmured. He stared at the approaching shore. 

"My, what a plight, Tommy!" he quavered. 

"Do you think so?" spoke up the tall man. "Why, I really thought youliked it. " He laughed in a hard voice. "Lord, what a figure you'll cut. "

This laugh jarred the freckled man's soul. He became mad. 

"Thunderation, turn the boat around!" he roared. "Turn 'er round, quick!Man alive, we can't--turn 'er round, d'ye hear!"

The tall man in the stern gazed at his companion with glowing eyes. 

"Certainly not, " he said. "We're going on. You insisted Upon it. " Hebegan to prod his companion with words. 

The freckled man stood up and waved his arms. 

"Sit down, " said the tall man. "You'll tip the boat over. "

The other man began to shout. 

"Sit down!" said the tall man again. 

Words bubbled from the freckled man's mouth. There was a little torrentof sentences that almost choked him. And he protested passionately withhis hands. 

But the boat went on to the shadow of the docks. The tall man was intentupon balancing it as it rocked dangerously during his comrade's oration. 

"Sit down, " he continually repeated. 

"I won't, " raged the freckled man. "I won't do anything. " The boatwobbled with these words. 

"Say, " he continued, addressing the oarsman, "just turn this boat round, will you? Where in the thunder are you taking us to, anyhow?"

The oarsman looked at the sky and thought. Finally he spoke. "I'm doin'what the cap'n sed. "

"Well, what in th' blazes do I care what the cap'n sed?" demanded thefreckled man. He took a violent step. "You just turn this round or--"

The small craft reeled. Over one side water came flashing in. Thefreckled man cried out in fear, and gave a jump to the other side. Thetall man roared orders, and the oarsman made efforts. The boat acted fora moment like an animal on a slackened wire. Then it upset. 

"Sit down!" said the tall man, in a final roar as he was plunged intothe water. The oarsman dropped his oars to grapple with the gunwale. Hewent down saying unknown words. The freckled man's explanation orapology was strangled by the water. 

Two or three tugs let off whistles of astonishment, and continued ontheir paths. A man dozing on a dock aroused and began to caper. 

The passengers on a ferry-boat all ran to the near railing. A miraculousperson in a small boat was bobbing on the waves near the piers. Hesculled hastily toward the scene. It was a swirl of waters in the midstof which the dark bottom of the boat appeared, whale-like. 

Two heads suddenly came up. 

"839, " said the freckled man, chokingly. "That's it! 839!"

"What is?" said the tall man. 

"That's the number of that feller on Park Place. I just remembered. "

"You're the bloomingest--" the tall man said. 

"It wasn't my fault, " interrupted his companion. "If you hadn't--" Hetried to gesticulate, but one hand held to the keel of the boat, and theother was supporting the form of the oarsman. The latter had fought abattle with his immense rubber boots and had been conquered. 

The rescuer in the other small boat came fiercely. As his craft glidedup, he reached out and grasped the tall man by the collar and draggedhim into the boat, interrupting what was, under the circumstances, avery brilliant flow of rhetoric directed at the freckled man. Theoarsman of the wrecked craft was taken tenderly over the gunwale andlaid in the bottom of the boat. Puffing and blowing, the freckled manclimbed in. 

"You'll upset this one before we can get ashore, " the other voyagerremarked. 

As they turned toward the land they saw that the nearest dock was linedwith people. The freckled man gave a little moan. 

But the staring eyes of the crowd were fixed on the limp form of the manin rubber boots. A hundred hands reached down to help lift the body up. On the dock some men grabbed it and began to beat it and roll it. Apoliceman tossed the spectators about. Each individual in the heavingcrowd sought to fasten his eyes on the blue-tinted face of the man inthe rubber boots. They surged to and fro, while the policeman beat themindiscriminately. 

The wanderers came modestly up the dock and gazed shrinkingly at thethrong. They stood for a moment, holding their breath to see the firstfinger of amazement levelled at them. 

But the crowd bended and surged in absorbing anxiety to view the man inrubber boots, whose face fascinated them. The sea-wanderers were asthough they were not there. 

They stood without the jam and whispered hurriedly. 

"839, " said the freckled man. 

"All right, " said the tall man. 

Under the pommeling hands the oarsman showed signs of life. The voyagerswatched him make a protesting kick at the leg of the crowd, the whileuttering angry groans. 

"He's better, " said the tall man, softly; "let's make off. "

Together they stole noiselessly up the dock. Directly in front of itthey found a row of six cabs. 

The drivers on top were filled with a mighty curiosity. They had drivenhurriedly from the adjacent ferry-house when they had seen the firstrunning sign of an accident. They were straining on their toes andgazing at the tossing backs of the men in the crowd. 

The wanderers made a little detour, and then went rapidly towards a cab. They stopped in front of it and looked up. 

"Driver, " called the tall man, softly. 

The man was intent. 

"Driver, " breathed the freckled man. They stood for a moment and gazedimploringly. 

The cabman suddenly moved his feet. "By Jimmy, I bet he's a gonner, " hesaid, in an ecstacy, and he again relapsed into a statue. 

The freckled man groaned and wrung his hands. The tall man climbed intothe cab. 

"Come in here, " he said to his companion. The freckled man climbed in, and the tall man reached over and pulled the door shut. Then he put hishead out the window. 

"Driver, " he roared, sternly, "839 Park Place--and quick. "

The driver looked down and met the eye of the tall man. "Eh?--Oh--839?Park Place? Yessir. " He reluctantly gave his horse a clump on the back. As the conveyance rattled off the wanderers huddled back among thedingy cushions and heaved great breaths of relief. 

"Well, it's all over, " said the freckled man, finally. "We're about outof it. And quicker than I expected. Much quicker. It looked to mesometimes that we were doomed. I am thankful to find it not so. I amrejoiced. And I hope and trust that you--well, I don't wish to--perhapsit is not the proper time to--that is, I don't wish to intrude a moralat an inopportune moment, but, my dear, dear fellow, I think the time isripe to point out to you that your obstinacy, your selfishness, yourvillainous temper, and your various other faults can make it just asunpleasant for your ownself, my dear boy, as they frequently do forother people. You can see what you brought us to, and I most sincerelyhope, my dear, dear fellow, that I shall soon see those signs in youwhich shall lead me to believe that you have become a wiser man. "

THE END OF THE BATTLE

A sergeant, a corporal, and fourteen men of the Twelfth Regiment of theLine had been sent out to occupy a house on the main highway. They wouldbe at least a half of a mile in advance of any other picket of their ownpeople. Sergeant Morton was deeply angry at being sent on this duty. Hesaid that he was over-worked. There were at least two sergeants, heclaimed furiously, whose turn it should have been to go on this arduousmission. He was treated unfairly; he was abused by his superiors; whydid any damned fool ever join the army? As for him he would get out ofit as soon as possible; he was sick of it; the life of a dog. All thishe said to the corporal, who listened attentively, giving grunts ofrespectful assent. On the way to this post two privates took occasion todrop to the rear and pilfer in the orchard of a deserted plantation. When the sergeant discovered this absence, he grew black with a ragewhich was an accumulation of all his irritations. "Run, you!" he howled. "Bring them here! I'll show them--" A private ran swiftly to the rear. The remainder of the squad began to shout nervously at the twodelinquents, whose figures they could see in the deep shade of theorchard, hurriedly picking fruit from the ground and cramming it withintheir shirts, next to their skins. The beseeching cries of theircomrades stirred the criminals more than did the barking of thesergeant. They ran to rejoin the squad, while holding their loadedbosoms and with their mouths open with aggrieved explanations. 

Jones faced the sergeant with a horrible cancer marked in bumps on hisleft side. The disease of Patterson showed quite around the front of hiswaist in many protuberances. "A nice pair!" said the sergeant, withsudden frigidity. "You're the kind of soldiers a man wants to choose fora dangerous outpost duty, ain't you?"

The two privates stood at attention, still looking much aggrieved. "Weonly--" began Jones huskily. 

"Oh, you 'only!'" cried the sergeant. "Yes, you 'only. ' I know all aboutthat. But if you think you are going to trifle with me--"

A moment later the squad moved on towards its station. Behind thesergeant's back Jones and Patterson were slyly passing apples and pearsto their friends while the sergeant expounded eloquently to thecorporal. "You see what kind of men are in the army now. Why, when Ijoined the regiment it was a very different thing, I can tell you. Thena sergeant had some authority, and if a man disobeyed orders, he had avery small chance of escaping something extremely serious. But now! GoodGod! If I report these men, the captain will look over a lot of beastlyorderly sheets and say--'Haw, eh, well, Sergeant Morton, these men seemto have very good records; very good records, indeed. I can't be toohard on them; no, not too hard. '" Continued the sergeant: "I tell you, Flagler, the army is no place for a decent man. "

Flagler, the corporal, answered with a sincerity of appreciation whichwith him had become a science. "I think you are right, sergeant, " heanswered. 

Behind them the privates mumbled discreetly. "Damn this sergeant ofours. He thinks we are made of wood. I don't see any reason for all thisstrictness when we are on active service. It isn't like being at home inbarracks! There is no great harm in a couple of men dropping out to raidan orchard of the enemy when all the world knows that we haven't had adecent meal in twenty days. "

The reddened face of Sergeant Morton suddenly showed to the rear. "Alittle more marching and less talking, " he said. 

When he came to the house he had been ordered to occupy the sergeantsniffed with disdain. "These people must have lived like cattle, " hesaid angrily. To be sure, the place was not alluring. The ground floorhad been used for the housing of cattle, and it was dark and terrible. Aflight of steps led to the lofty first floor, which was denuded butrespectable. The sergeant's visage lightened when he saw the strongwalls of stone and cement. "Unless they turn guns on us, they will neverget us out of here, " he said cheerfully to the squad. The men, anxiousto keep him in an amiable mood, all hurriedly grinned and seemed veryappreciative and pleased. "I'll make this into a fortress, " heannounced. He sent Jones and Patterson, the two orchard thieves, out onsentry-duty. He worked the others, then, until he could think of no morethings to tell them to do. Afterwards he went forth, with a major-general's serious scowl, and examined the ground in front of hisposition. In returning he came upon a sentry, Jones, munching an apple. He sternly commanded him to throw it away. 

The men spread their blankets on the floors of the bare rooms, andputting their packs under their heads and lighting their pipes, theylived an easy peace. Bees hummed in the garden, and a scent of flowerscame through the open window. A great fan-shaped bit of sunshine smotethe face of one man, and he indolently cursed as he moved his primitivebed to a shadier place. 

Another private explained to a comrade: "This is all nonsense anyhow. Nosense in occupying this post. They--"

"But, of course, " said the corporal, "when she told me herself that shecared more for me than she did for him, I wasn't going to stand any ofhis talk--" The corporal's listener was so sleepy that he could onlygrunt his sympathy. 

There was a sudden little spatter of shooting. A cry from Jones rangout. With no intermediate scrambling, the sergeant leaped straight tohis feet. "Now, " he cried, "let us see what you are made of! If, " headded bitterly, "you are made of anything!"

A man yelled: "Good God, can't you see you're all tangled up in mycartridge belt?"

Another man yelled: "Keep off my legs! Can't you walk on the floor?"

To the windows there was a blind rush of slumberous men, who brushedhair from their eyes even as they made ready their rifles. Jones andPatterson came stumbling up the steps, crying dreadful information. Already the enemy's bullets were spitting and singing over the house. 

The sergeant suddenly was stiff and cold with a sense of the importanceof the thing. "Wait until you see one, " he drawled loudly and calmly, "then shoot. "

For some moments the enemy's bullets swung swifter than lightning overthe house without anybody being able to discover a target. In thisinterval a man was shot in the throat. He gurgled, and then lay down onthe floor. The blood slowly waved down the brown skin of his neck whilehe looked meekly at his comrades. 

There was a howl. "There they are! There they come!" The riflescrackled. A light smoke drifted idly through the rooms. There was astrong odor as if from burnt paper and the powder of firecrackers. Themen were silent. Through the windows and about the house the bullets ofan entirely invisible enemy moaned, hummed, spat, burst, and sang. 

The men began to curse. "Why can't we see them?" they muttered throughtheir teeth. The sergeant was still frigid. He answered soothingly as ifhe were directly reprehensible for this behavior of the enemy. "Wait amoment. You will soon be able to see them. There! Give it to them!" Alittle skirt of black figures had appeared in a field. It was reallylike shooting at an upright needle from the full length of a ballroom. But the men's spirits improved as soon as the enemy--this mysteriousenemy--became a tangible thing, and far off. They had believed the foeto be shooting at them from the adjacent garden. 

"Now, " said the sergeant ambitiously, "we can beat them off easily ifyou men are good enough. "

A man called out in a tone of quick, great interest. "See that fellow onhorseback, Bill? Isn't he on horseback? I thought he was on horseback. "

There was a fusilade against another side of the house. The sergeantdashed into the room which commanded the situation. He found a deadsoldier on the floor. He rushed out howling: "When was Knowles killed?When was Knowles killed? When was Knowles killed? Damn it, when wasKnowles killed?" It was absolutely essential to find out the exactmoment this man died. A blackened private turned upon his sergeant anddemanded: "How in hell do I know?" Sergeant Morton had a sense of angerso brief that in the next second he cried: "Patterson!" He had evenforgotten his vital interest in the time of Knowles' death. 

"Yes?" said Patterson, his face set with some deep-rooted quality ofdetermination. Still, he was a mere farm boy. 

"Go in to Knowles' window and shoot at those people, " said the sergeanthoarsely. Afterwards he coughed. Some of the fumes of the fight had madeway to his lungs. 

Patterson looked at the door into this other room. He looked at it as ifhe suspected it was to be his death-chamber. Then he entered and stoodacross the body of Knowles and fired vigorously into a group of plumtrees. 

"They can't take this house, " declared the sergeant in a contemptuousand argumentative tone. He was apparently replying to somebody. The manwho had been shot in the throat looked up at him. Eight men were firingfrom the windows. The sergeant detected in a corner three wounded mentalking together feebly. "Don't you think there is anything to do?" hebawled. "Go and get Knowles' cartridges and give them to somebody whocan use them! Take Simpson's too. " The man who had been shot in thethroat looked at him. Of the three wounded men who had been talking, onesaid: "My leg is all doubled up under me, sergeant. " He spokeapologetically. 

Meantime the sergeant was re-loading his rifle. His foot slipped in theblood of the man who had been shot in the throat, and the military bootmade a greasy red streak on the floor. 

"Why, we can hold this place!" shouted the sergeant jubilantly. "Whosays we can't?"

Corporal Flagler suddenly spun away from his window and fell in a heap. 

"Sergeant, " murmured a man as he dropped to a seat on the floor out ofdanger, "I can't stand this. I swear I can't. I think we should runaway. "

Morton, with the kindly eyes of a good shepherd, looked at the man. "Youare afraid, Johnston, you are afraid, " he said softly. The man struggledto his feet, cast upon the sergeant a gaze full of admiration, reproach, and despair, and returned to his post. A moment later he pitchedforward, and thereafter his body hung out of the window, his armsstraight and the fists clenched. Incidentally this corpse was piercedafterwards by chance three times by bullets of the enemy. 

The sergeant laid his rifle against the stonework of the window-frameand shot with care until his magazine was empty. Behind him a man, simply grazed on the elbow, was wildly sobbing like a girl. "Damn it, shut up!" said Morton, without turning his head. Before him was a vistaof a garden, fields, clumps of trees, woods, populated at the time withlittle fleeting figures. 

He grew furious. "Why didn't he send me orders?" he cried aloud. Theemphasis on the word "he" was impressive. A mile back on the road agalloper of the Hussars lay dead beside his dead horse. 

The man who had been grazed on the elbow still set up his bleat. Morton's fury veered to this soldier. "Can't you shut up? Can't you shutup? Can't you shut up? Fight! That's the thing to do. Fight!"

A bullet struck Morton, and he fell upon the man who had been shot inthe throat. There was a sickening moment. Then the sergeant rolled offto a position upon the bloody floor. He turned himself with a lasteffort until he could look at the wounded who were able to look at him. 

"Kim up, the Kickers, " he said thickly. His arms weakened and he droppedon his face. 

After an interval a young subaltern of the enemy's infantry, followed byhis eager men, burst into this reeking interior. But just over thethreshold he halted before the scene of blood and death. He turned witha shrug to his sergeant. "God, I should have estimated them at least onehundred strong. "

UPTURNED FACE

"What will we do now?" said the adjutant, troubled and excited. 

"Bury him, " said Timothy Lean. 

The two officers looked down close to their toes where lay the body oftheir comrade. The face was chalk-blue; gleaming eyes stared at the sky. Over the two upright figures was a windy sound of bullets, and on thetop of the hill Lean's prostrate company of Spitzbergen infantry wasfiring measured volleys. 

"Don't you think it would be better--" began the adjutant. "We mightleave him until tomorrow. "

"No, " said Lean. "I can't hold that post an hour longer. I've got tofall back, and we've got to bury old Bill. "

"Of course, " said the adjutant, at once. "Your men got intrenchingtools?"

Lean shouted back to his little line, and two men came slowly, one witha pick, one with a shovel. They started in the direction of the Rostinasharp-shooters. Bullets cracked near their ears. "Dig here, " said Leangruffly. The men, thus caused to lower their glances to the turf, becamehurried and frightened merely because they could not look to see whencethe bullets came. The dull beat of the pick striking the earth soundedamid the swift snap of close bullets. Presently the other private beganto shovel. 

"I suppose, " said the adjutant, slowly, "we'd better search his clothesfor--things. "

Lean nodded. Together in curious abstraction they looked at the body. Then Lean stirred his shoulders suddenly, arousing himself. 

"Yes, " he said, "we'd better see what he's got. " He dropped to hisknees, and his hands approached the body of the dead officer. But hishands wavered over the buttons of the tunic. The first button was brick-red with drying blood, and he did not seem to dare touch it. 

"Go on, " said the adjutant, hoarsely. 

Lean stretched his wooden hand, and his fingers fumbled the blood-stained buttons. At last he rose with ghastly face. He had gathered awatch, a whistle, a pipe, a tobacco pouch, a handkerchief, a little caseof cards and papers. He looked at the adjutant. There was a silence. Theadjutant was feeling that he had been a coward to make Lean do all thegrisly business. 

"Well, " said Lean, "that's all, I think. You have his sword andrevolver?"

"Yes, " said the adjutant, his face working, and then he burst out in asudden strange fury at the two privates. "Why don't you hurry up withthat grave? What are you doing, anyhow? Hurry, do you hear? I never sawsuch stupid--"

Even as he cried out in his passion the two men were laboring for theirlives. Ever overhead the bullets were spitting. 

The grave was finished, It was not a masterpiece--a poor little shallowthing. Lean and the adjutant again looked at each other in a curioussilent communication. 

Suddenly the adjutant croaked out a weird laugh. It was a terriblelaugh, which had its origin in that part of the mind which is firstmoved by the singing of the nerves. "Well, " he said, humorously to Lean, "I suppose we had best tumble him in. "

"Yes, " said Lean. The two privates stood waiting, bent over theirimplements. "I suppose, " said Lean, "it would be better if we laid himin ourselves. "

"Yes, " said the adjutant. Then apparently remembering that he had madeLean search the body, he stooped with great fortitude and took hold ofthe dead officer's clothing. Lean joined him. Both were particular thattheir fingers should not feel the corpse. They tugged away; the corpselifted, heaved, toppled, flopped into the grave, and the two officers, straightening, looked again at each other--they were always looking ateach other. They sighed with relief. 

The adjutant said, "I suppose we should--we should say something. Do youknow the service, Tim?"

"They don't read the service until the grave is filled in, " said Lean, pressing his lips to an academic expression. 

"Don't they?" said the adjutant, shocked that he had made the mistake. 

"Oh, well, " he cried, suddenly, "let us--let us say something--while hecan hear us. "

"All right, " said Lean. "Do you know the service?"

"I can't remember a line of it, " said the adjutant. 

Lean was extremely dubious. "I can repeat two lines, but--"

"Well, do it, " said the adjutant. "Go as far as you can. That's betterthan nothing. And the beasts have got our range exactly. "

Lean looked at his two men. "Attention, " he barked. The privates came toattention with a click, looking much aggrieved. The adjutant lowered hishelmet to his knee. Lean, bareheaded, he stood over the grave. TheRostina sharpshooters fired briskly. 

"Oh, Father, our friend has sunk in the deep waters of death, but hisspirit has leaped toward Thee as the bubble arises from the lips of thedrowning. Perceive, we beseech, O Father, the little flying bubble, and--". 

Lean, although husky and ashamed, had suffered no hesitation up to thispoint, but he stopped with a hopeless feeling and looked at the corpse. 

The adjutant moved uneasily. "And from Thy superb heights--" he began, and then he too came to an end. 

"And from Thy superb heights, " said Lean. 

The adjutant suddenly remembered a phrase in the back part of theSpitzbergen burial service, and he exploited it with the triumphantmanner of a man who has recalled everything, and can go on. 

"Oh, God, have mercy--"

"Oh, God, have mercy--" said Lean. 

"Mercy, " repeated the adjutant, in quick failure. 

"Mercy, " said Lean. And then he was moved by some violence of feeling, for he turned suddenly upon his two men and tigerishly said, "Throw thedirt in. "

The fire of the Rostina sharpshooters was accurate and continuous. 

 * * * * *

One of the aggrieved privates came forward with his shovel. He liftedhis first shovel-load of earth, and for a moment of inexplicablehesitation it was held poised above this corpse, which from its chalk-blue face looked keenly out from the grave. Then the soldier emptied hisshovel on--on the feet. 

Timothy Lean felt as if tons had been swiftly lifted from off hisforehead. He had felt that perhaps the private might empty the shovelon--on the face. It had been emptied on the feet. There was a greatpoint gained there--ha, ha!--the first shovelful had been emptied onthe feet. How satisfactory!

The adjutant began to babble. "Well, of course--a man we've messed withall these years--impossible--you can't, you know, leave your intimatefriends rotting on the field. Go on, for God's sake, and shovel, you!"

The man with the shovel suddenly ducked, grabbed his left arm with hisright hand, and looked at his officer for orders. Lean picked the shovelfrom the ground. "Go to the rear, " he said to the wounded man. He alsoaddressed the other private. "You get under cover, too; I'll finish thisbusiness. "

The wounded man scrambled hard still for the top of the ridge withoutdevoting any glances to the direction whence the bullets came, and theother man followed at an equal pace; but he was different, in that helooked back anxiously three times. 

This is merely the way--often--of the hit and unhit. 

Timothy Lean filled the shovel, hesitated, and then in a movement whichwas like a gesture of abhorrence he flung the dirt into the grave, andas it landed it made a sound--plop! Lean suddenly stopped and mopped hisbrow--a tired laborer. 

"Perhaps we have been wrong, " said the adjutant. His glance waveredstupidly. "It might have been better if we hadn't buried him just atthis time. Of course, if we advance to-morrow the body would havebeen--"

"Damn you, " said Lean, "shut your mouth!" He was not the senior officer. 

He again filled the shovel and flung the earth. Always the earth madethat sound--plop! For a space Lean worked frantically, like a mandigging himself out of danger. 

Soon there was nothing to be seen but the chalk-blue face. Lean filledthe shovel. "Good God, " he cried to the adjutant. "Why didn't you turnhim somehow when you put him in? This--" Then Lean began to stutter. 

The adjutant understood. He was pale to the lips. "Go on, man, " hecried, beseechingly, almost in a shout. Lean swung back the shovel. Itwent forward in a pendulum curve. When the earth landed it made a sound--plop!

AN EPISODE OF WAR

The lieutenant's rubber blanket lay on the ground, and upon it he hadpoured the company's supply of coffee. Corporals and otherrepresentatives of the grimy and hot-throated men who lined thebreastwork had come for each squad's portion. 

The lieutenant was frowning and serious at this task of division. Hislips pursed as he drew with his sword various crevices in the heap untilbrown squares of coffee, astoundingly equal in size, appeared on theblanket. He was on the verge of a great triumph in mathematics, and thecorporals were thronging forward, each to reap a little square, whensuddenly the lieutenant cried out and looked quickly at a man near himas if he suspected it was a case of personal assault. The others criedout also when they saw blood upon the lieutenant's sleeve. 

He had winced like a man stung, swayed dangerously, and thenstraightened. The sound of his hoarse breathing was plainly audible. Helooked sadly, mystically, over the breastwork at the green face of awood, where now were many little puffs of white smoke. During thismoment the men about him gazed statue-like and silent, astonished andawed by this catastrophe which happened when catastrophes were notexpected--when they had leisure to observe it. 

As the lieutenant stared at the wood, they too swung their heads, sothat for another instant all hands, still silent, contemplated thedistant forest as if their minds were fixed upon the mystery of abullet's journey. 

The officer had, of course, been compelled to take his sword into hisleft hand. He did not hold it by the hilt. He gripped it at the middleof the blade, awkwardly. Turning his eyes from the hostile wood, helooked at the sword as he held it there, and seemed puzzled as to whatto do with it, where to put it. In short, this weapon had of a suddenbecome a strange thing to him. He looked at it in a kind ofstupefaction, as if he had been endowed with a trident, a sceptre, or aspade. 

Finally he tried to sheath it. To sheath a sword held by the left hand, at the middle of the blade, in a scabbard hung at the left hip, is afeat worthy of a sawdust ring. This wounded officer engaged in adesperate struggle with the sword and the wobbling scabbard, and duringthe time of it he breathed like a wrestler. 

But at this instant the men, the spectators, awoke from their stone-likeposes and crowded forward sympathetically. The orderly-sergeant took thesword and tenderly placed it in the scabbard. At the time, he leanednervously backward, and did not allow even his finger to brush the bodyof the lieutenant. A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it. Well men shy from this new and terrible majesty. It is as if the woundedman's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of allexistence--the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine, snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing; and the power of it shedsradiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understandsometimes that they are little. His comrades look at him with large eyesthoughtfully. Moreover, they fear vaguely that the weight of a fingerupon him might send him headlong, precipitate the tragedy, hurl him atonce into the dim, grey unknown. And so the orderly-sergeant, whilesheathing the sword, leaned nervously backward. 

There were others who proffered assistance. One timidly presented hisshoulder and asked the lieutenant if he cared to lean upon it, but thelatter waved him away mournfully. He wore the look of one who knows heis the victim of a terrible disease and understands his helplessness. Heagain stared over the breastwork at the forest, and then turning wentslowly rearward. He held his right wrist tenderly in his left hand as ifthe wounded arm was made of very brittle glass. 

And the men in silence stared at the wood, then at the departinglieutenant--then at the wood, then at the lieutenant. 

As the wounded officer passed from the line of battle, he was enabled tosee many things which as a participant in the fight were unknown to him. He saw a general on a black horse gazing over the lines of blue infantryat the green woods which veiled his problems. An aide gallopedfuriously, dragged his horse suddenly to a halt, saluted, and presenteda paper. It was, for a wonder, precisely like an historical painting. 

To the rear of the general and his staff a group, composed of a bugler, two or three orderlies, and the bearer of the corps standard, all uponmaniacal horses, were working like slaves to hold their ground, preserve, their respectful interval, while the shells boomed in the airabout them, and caused their chargers to make furious quivering leaps. 

A battery, a tumultuous and shining mass, was swirling toward the right. The wild thud of hoofs, the cries of the riders shouting blame andpraise, menace and encouragement, and, last the roar of the wheels, theslant of the glistening guns, brought the lieutenant to an intent pause. The battery swept in curves that stirred the heart; it made halts asdramatic as the crash of a wave on the rocks, and when it fled onward, this aggregation of wheels, levers, motors, had a beautiful unity, as ifit were a missile. The sound of it was a war-chorus that reached intothe depths of man's emotion. 

The lieutenant, still holding his arm as if it were of glass, stoodwatching this battery until all detail of it was lost, save the figuresof the riders, which rose and fell and waved lashes over the black mass. 

Later, he turned his eyes toward the battle where the shooting sometimescrackled like bush-fires, sometimes sputtered with exasperatingirregularity, and sometimes reverberated like the thunder. He saw thesmoke rolling upward and saw crowds of men who ran and cheered, or stoodand blazed away at the inscrutable distance. 

He came upon some stragglers, and they told him how to find the fieldhospital. They described its exact location. In fact, these men, nolonger having part in the battle, knew more of it than others. They toldthe performance of every corps, every division, the opinion of everygeneral. The lieutenant, carrying his wounded arm rearward, looked uponthem with wonder. 

At the roadside a brigade was making coffee and buzzing with talk like agirls' boarding-school. Several officers came out to him and inquiredconcerning things of which he knew nothing. One, seeing his arm, beganto scold. "Why, man, that's no way to do. You want to fix that thing. "He appropriated the lieutenant and the lieutenant's wound. He cut thesleeve and laid bare the arm, every nerve of which softly flutteredunder his touch. He bound his handkerchief over the wound, scolding awayin the meantime. His tone allowed one to think that he was in the habitof being wounded every day. The lieutenant hung his head, feeling, inthis presence, that he did not know how to be correctly wounded. 

The low white tents of the hospital were grouped around an old school-house. There was here a singular commotion. In the foreground twoambulances interlocked wheels in the deep mud. The drivers were tossingthe blame of it back and forth, gesticulating and berating, while fromthe ambulances, both crammed with wounded, there came an occasionalgroan. An interminable crowd of bandaged men were coming and going. Great numbers sat under the trees nursing heads or arms or legs. Therewas a dispute of some kind raging on the steps of the school-house. Sitting with his back against a tree a man with a face as grey as a newarmy blanket was serenely smoking a corn-cob pipe. The lieutenant wishedto rush forward and inform him that he was dying. 

A busy surgeon was passing near the lieutenant. "Good-morning, " he said, with a friendly smile. Then he caught sight of the lieutenant's arm andhis face at once changed. "Well, let's have a look at it. " He seemedpossessed suddenly of a great contempt for the lieutenant. This woundevidently placed the latter on a very low social plane. The doctor criedout impatiently, "What mutton-head had tied it up that way anyhow?" Thelieutenant answered, "Oh, a man. "

When the wound was disclosed the doctor fingered it disdainfully. "Humph, " he said. "You come along with me and I'll 'tend to you. " Hisvoice contained the same scorn as if he were saying, "You will have togo to jail. "

The lieutenant had been very meek, but now his face flushed, and helooked into the doctor's eyes. "I guess I won't have it amputated, " hesaid. 

"Nonsense, man! Nonsense! Nonsense!" cried the doctor. "Come along, now. I won't amputate it. Come along. Don't be a baby. "

"Let go of me, " said the lieutenant, holding back wrathfully, his glancefixed upon the door of the old school-house, as sinister to him as theportals of death. 

And this is the story of how the lieutenant lost his arm. When hereached home, his sisters, his mother, his wife sobbed for a long timeat the sight of the flat sleeve. "Oh, well, " he said, standingshamefaced amid these tears, "I don't suppose it matters so much as allthat. "

AN EXPERIMENT IN MISERY

It was late at night, and a fine rain was swirling softly down, causingthe pavements to glisten with hue of steel and blue and yellow in therays of the innumerable lights. A youth was trudging slowly, withoutenthusiasm, with his hands buried deep in his trousers' pockets, towardthe downtown places where beds can be hired for coppers. He was clothedin an aged and tattered suit, and his derby was a marvel of dust-coveredcrown and torn rim. He was going forth to eat as the wanderer may eat, and sleep as the homeless sleep. By the time he had reached City HallPark he was so completely plastered with yells of "bum" and "hobo, " andwith various unholy epithets that small boys had applied to him atintervals, that he was in a state of the most profound dejection. Thesifting rain saturated the old velvet collar of his overcoat, and as thewet cloth pressed against his neck, he felt that there no longer couldbe pleasure in life. He looked about him searching for an outcast ofhighest degree that they too might share miseries, but the lights threwa quivering glare over rows and circles of deserted benches thatglistened damply, showing patches of wet sod behind them. It seemed thattheir usual freights had fled on this night to better things. There wereonly squads of well-dressed Brooklyn people who swarmed towards thebridge. 

The young man loitered about for a time and then went shuffling off downPark Row. In the sudden descent in style of the dress of the crowd hefelt relief, and as if he were at last in his own country. He began tosee tatters that matched his tatters. In Chatham Square there wereaimless men strewn in front of saloons and lodging-houses, standingsadly, patiently, reminding one vaguely of the attitudes of chickens ina storm. He aligned himself with these men, and turned slowly to occupyhimself with the flowing life of the great street. 

Through the mists of the cold and storming night, the cable cars went insilent procession, great affairs shining with red and brass, moving withformidable power, calm and irresistible, dangerful and gloomy, breakingsilence only by the loud fierce cry of the gong. Two rivers of peopleswarmed along the sidewalks, spattered with black mud, which made eachshoe leave a scarlike impression. Overhead elevated trains with a shrillgrinding of the wheels stopped at the station, which upon its leglikepillars seemed to resemble some monstrous kind of crab squatting overthe street. The quick fat puffings of the engines could be heard. Downan alley there were somber curtains of purple and black, on which streetlamps dully glittered like embroidered flowers. 

A saloon stood with a voracious air on a corner. A sign leaning againstthe front of the door-post announced "Free hot soup to-night!" The swingdoors, snapping to and fro like ravenous lips, made gratified smacks asthe saloon gorged itself with plump men, eating with astounding andendless appetite, smiling in some indescribable manner as the men camefrom all directions like sacrifices to a heathenish superstition. 

Caught by the delectable sign the young man allowed himself to beswallowed. A bartender placed a schooner of dark and portentous beer onthe bar. Its monumental form upreared until the froth a-top was abovethe crown of the young man's brown derby. 

"Soup over there, gents, " said the bartender affably. A little yellowman in rags and the youth grasped their schooners and went with speedtoward a lunch counter, where a man with oily but imposing whiskersladled genially from a kettle until he had furnished his two mendicantswith a soup that was steaming hot, and in which there were littlefloating suggestions of chicken. The young man, sipping his broth, feltthe cordiality expressed by the warmth of the mixture, and he beamed atthe man with oily but imposing whiskers, who was presiding like a priestbehind an altar. "Have some more, gents?" he inquired of the two sorryfigures before him. The little yellow man accepted with a swift gesture, but the youth shook his head and went out, following a man whosewondrous seediness promised that he would have a knowledge of cheaplodging-houses. 

On the sidewalk he accosted the seedy man. "Say, do you know a cheapplace to sleep?"

The other hesitated for a time, gazing sideways. Finally he nodded inthe direction of the street, "I sleep up there, " he said, "when I've gotthe price. "

"How much?"

"Ten cents. " The young man shook his head dolefully. "That's too rich for me. "

At that moment there approached the two a reeling man in strangegarments. His head was a fuddle of bushy hair and whiskers, from whichhis eyes peered with a guilty slant. In a close scrutiny it was possibleto distinguish the cruel lines of a mouth which looked as if its lipshad just closed with satisfaction over some tender and piteous morsel. He appeared like an assassin steeped in crimes performed awkwardly. 

But at this time his voice was tuned to the coaxing key of anaffectionate puppy. He looked at the men with wheedling eyes, and beganto sing a little melody for charity. 

"Say, gents, can't yeh give a poor feller a couple of cents t' git abed? I got five, and I gits anudder two I gits me a bed. Now, on th'square, gents, can't yeh jest gimme two cents t' git a bed? Now, yehknow how a respecter'ble gentlem'n feels when he's down on his luck, an'I--"

The seedy man, staring with imperturbable countenance at a train whichclattered overhead, interrupted in an expressionless voice--"Ah, go t'h----!"

But the youth spoke to the prayerful assassin in tones of astonishmentand inquiry. "Say, you must be crazy! Why don't yeh strike somebody thatlooks as if they had money?"

The assassin, tottering about on his uncertain legs, and at intervalsbrushing imaginary obstacles from before his nose, entered into a longexplanation of the psychology of the situation. It was so profound thatit was unintelligible. 

When he had exhausted the subject, the young man said to him:

"Let's see th' five cents. "

The assassin wore an expression of drunken woe at this sentence, filledwith suspicion of him. With a deeply pained air he began to fumble inhis clothing, his red hands trembling. Presently he announced in a voiceof bitter grief, as if he had been betrayed--"There's on'y four. "

"Four, " said the young man thoughtfully. "Well, look here, I'm astranger here, an' if ye'll steer me to your cheap joint I'll find theother three. "

The assassin's countenance became instantly radiant with joy. Hiswhiskers quivered with the wealth of his alleged emotions. He seized theyoung man's hand in a transport of delight and friendliness. 

"B' Gawd, " he cried, "if ye'll do that, b' Gawd, I'd say yeh was adamned good fellow, I would, an' I'd remember yeh all m' life, I would, b' Gawd, an' if I ever got a chance I'd return the compliment"--he spokewith drunken dignity--"b' Gawd, I'd treat yeh white, I would, an' I'dallus remember yeh. "

The young man drew back, looking at the assassin coldly. "Oh, that's allright, " he said. "You show me th' joint--that's all you've got t' do. "

The assassin, gesticulating gratitude, led the young man along a darkstreet. Finally he stopped before a little dusty door. He raised hishand impressively. "Look-a-here, " he said, and there was a thrill ofdeep and ancient wisdom upon his face, "I've brought yeh here, an'that's my part, ain't it? If th' place don't suit yeh, yeh needn't gitmad at me, need yeh? There won't be no bad feelin', will there?"

"No, " said the young man. 

The assassin waved his arm tragically, and led the march up the steepstairway. On the way the young man furnished the assassin with threepennies. At the top a man with benevolent spectacles looked at themthrough a hole in a board. He collected their money, wrote some names ona register, and speedily was leading the two men along a gloom-shroudedcorridor. 

Shortly after the beginning of this journey the young man felt his liverturn white, for from the dark and secret places of the building theresuddenly came to his nostrils strange and unspeakable odors, thatassailed him like malignant diseases with wings. They seemed to be fromhuman bodies closely packed in dens; the exhalations from a hundredpairs of reeking lips; the fumes from a thousand bygone debauches; theexpression of a thousand present miseries. 

A man, naked save for a little snuff-colored undershirt, was paradingsleepily along the corridor. He rubbed his eyes, and, giving vent to aprodigious yawn, demanded to be told the time. 

"Half-past one. "

The man yawned again. He opened a door, and for a moment his form wasoutlined against a black, opaque interior. To this door came the threemen, and as it was again opened the unholy odors rushed out like fiends, so that the young man was obliged to struggle as against an overpoweringwind. 

It was some time before the youth's eyes were good in the intense gloomwithin, but the man with benevolent spectacles led him skilfully, pausing but a moment to deposit the limp assassin upon a cot. He tookthe youth to a cot that lay tranquilly by the window, and showing him atall locker for clothes that stood near the head with the ominous air ofa tombstone, left him. 

The youth sat on his cot and peered about him. There was a gas-jet in adistant part of the room, that burned a small flickering orange-huedflame. It caused vast masses of tumbled shadows in all parts of theplace, save where, immediately about it, there was a little grey haze. As the young man's eyes became used to the darkness, he could see uponthe cots that thickly littered the floor the forms of men sprawled out, lying in deathlike silence, or heaving and snoring with tremendouseffort, like stabbed fish. 

The youth locked his derby and his shoes in the mummy case near him, andthen lay down with an old and familiar coat around his shoulders. Ablanket he handed gingerly, drawing it over part of the coat. The cotwas covered with leather, and as cold as melting snow. The youth wasobliged to shiver for some time on this affair, which was like a slab. Presently, however, his chill gave him peace, and during this period ofleisure from it he turned his head to stare at his friend the assassin, whom he could dimly discern where he lay sprawled on a cot in theabandon of a man filled with drink. He was snoring with incrediblevigor. His wet hair and beard dimly glistened, and his inflamed noseshone with subdued lustre like a red light in a fog. 

Within reach of the youth's hand was one who lay with yellow breast andshoulders bare to the cold drafts. One arm hung over the side of thecot, and the fingers lay full length upon the wet cement floor of theroom. Beneath the inky brows could be seen the eyes of the man exposedby the partly opened lids. To the youth it seemed that he and thiscorpse-like being were exchanging a prolonged stare, and that the otherthreatened with his eyes. He drew back, watching his neighbor from theshadows of his blanket edge. The man did not move once through thenight, but lay in this stillness as of death like a body stretched outexpectant of the surgeon's knife. 

And all through the room could be seen the tawny hues of naked flesh, limbs thrust into the darkness, projecting beyond the cots; uprearedknees, arms hanging long and thin over the cot edges. For the most partthey were statuesque, carven, dead. With the curious lockers standingall about like tombstones, there was a strange effect of a graveyardwhere bodies were merely flung. 

Yet occasionally could be seen limbs wildly tossing in fantasticnightmare gestures, accompanied by guttural cries, grunts, oaths. Andthere was one fellow off in a gloomy corner, who in his dreams wasoppressed by some frightful calamity, for of a sudden he began to utterlong wails that went almost like yells from a hound, echoing wailfullyand weird through this chill place of tombstones where men lay like thedead. 

The sound in its high piercing beginnings, that dwindled to finalmelancholy moans, expressed a red and grim tragedy of the unfathomablepossibilities of the man's dreams. But to the youth these were notmerely the shrieks of a vision-pierced man: they were an utterance ofthe meaning of the room and its occupants. It was to him the protest ofthe wretch who feels the touch of the imperturbable granite wheels, andwho then cries with an impersonal eloquence, with a strength not fromhim, giving voice to the wail of a whole section, a class, a people. This, weaving into the young man's brain, and mingling with his views ofthe vast and sombre shadows that, like mighty black fingers, curledaround the naked bodies, made the young man so that he did not sleep, but lay carving the biographies for these men from his meagreexperience. At times the fellow in the corner howled in a writhing agonyof his imaginations. 

Finally a long lance-point of grey light shot through the dusty panes ofthe window. Without, the young man could see roofs drearily white in thedawning. The point of light yellowed and grew brighter, until the goldenrays of the morning sun came in bravely and strong. They touched withradiant color the form of a small fat man, who snored in stutteringfashion. His round and shiny bald head glowed suddenly with the valor ofa decoration. He sat up, blinked at the sun, swore fretfully, and pulledhis blanket over the ornamental splendors of his head. 

The youth contentedly watched this rout of the shadows before the brightspears of the sun, and presently he slumbered. When he awoke he heardthe voice of the assassin raised in valiant curses. Putting up his head, he perceived his comrade seated on the side of the cot engaged inscratching his neck with long finger-nails that rasped like files. 

"Hully Jee, dis is a new breed. They've got can-openers on their feet. "He continued in a violent tirade. 

The young man hastily unlocked his closet and took out his shoes andhat. As he sat on the side of the cot lacing his shoes, he glanced aboutand saw that daylight had made the room comparatively commonplace anduninteresting. The men, whose faces seemed stolid, serene or absent, were engaged in dressing, while a great crackle of banteringconversation arose. 

A few were parading in unconcerned nakedness. Here and there were men ofbrawn, whose skins shone clear and ruddy. They took splendid poses, standing massively like chiefs. When they had dressed in their ungainlygarments there was an extraordinary change. They then showed bumps anddeficiencies of all kinds. 

There were others who exhibited many deformities. Shoulders wereslanting, humped, pulled this way and pulled that way. And notable amongthese latter men was the little fat man who had refused to allow hishead to be glorified. His pudgy form, builded like a pear, bustled toand fro, while he swore in fishwife fashion. It appeared that somearticle of his apparel had vanished. 

The young man attired speedily, and went to his friend the assassin. Atfirst the latter looked dazed at the sight of the youth. This faceseemed to be appealing to him through the cloud wastes of his memory. Hescratched his neck and reflected. At last he grinned, a broad smilegradually spreading until his countenance was a round illumination. "Hello, Willie, " he cried cheerily. 

"Hello, " said the young man. "Are yeh ready t' fly?"

"Sure. " The assassin tied his shoe carefully with some twine and cameambling. 

When he reached the street the young man experienced no sudden relieffrom unholy atmospheres. He had forgotten all about them, and had beenbreathing naturally, and with no sensation of discomfort or distress. 

He was thinking of these things as he walked along the street, when hewas suddenly startled by feeling the assassin's hand, trembling withexcitement, clutching his arm, and when the assassin spoke, his voicewent into quavers from a supreme agitation. 

"I'll be hully, bloomin' blowed if there wasn't a feller with anightshirt on up there in that joint. "

The youth was bewildered for a moment, but presently he turned to smileindulgently at the assassin's humor. 

"Oh, you're a d--d liar, " he merely said. 

Whereupon the assassin began to gesture extravagantly, and take oath bystrange gods. He frantically placed himself at the mercy of remarkablefates if his tale were not true. 

"Yes, he did! I cross m' heart thousan' times!" he protested, and at themoment his eyes were large with amazement, his mouth wrinkled inunnatural glee. 

"Yessir! A nightshirt! A hully white nightshirt!"

"You lie!"

"No, sir! I hope ter die b'fore I kin git anudder ball if there wasn't ajay wid a hully, bloomin' white nightshirt!"

His face was filled with the infinite wonder of it. "A hully whitenightshirt, " he continually repeated. 

The young man saw the dark entrance to a basement restaurant. There wasa sign which read "No mystery about our hash"! and there were other age-stained and world-battered legends which told him that the place waswithin his means. He stopped before it and spoke to the assassin. "Iguess I'll git somethin' t' eat. "

At this the assassin, for some reason, appeared to be quite embarrassed. He gazed at the seductive front of the eating place for a moment. Thenhe started slowly up the street. "Well, good-bye, Willie, " he saidbravely. 

For an instant the youth studied the departing figure. Then he calledout, "Hol' on a minnet. " As they came together he spoke in a certainfierce way, as if he feared that the other would think him to becharitable. "Look-a-here, if yeh wanta git some breakfas' I'll lend yehthree cents t' do it with. But say, look-a-here, you've gota git out an'hustle. I ain't goin' t' support yeh, or I'll go broke b'fore night. Iain't no millionaire. "

"I take me oath, Willie, " said the assassin earnestly, "th' on'y thing Ireally needs is a ball. Me t'roat feels like a fryin'-pan. But as Ican't get a ball, why, th' next bes' thing is breakfast, an' if yeh dothat for me, b'Gawd, I say yeh was th' whitest lad I ever see. "

They spent a few moments in dexterous exchanges of phrases, in whichthey each protested that the other was, as the assassin had originallysaid, "a respecter'ble gentlem'n. " And they concluded with mutualassurances that they were the souls of intelligence and virtue. Thenthey went into the restaurant. 

There was a long counter, dimly lighted from hidden sources. Two orthree men in soiled white aprons rushed here and there. 

The youth bought a bowl of coffee for two cents and a roll for one cent. The assassin purchased the same. The bowls were webbed with brown seams, and the tin spoons wore an air of having emerged from the first pyramid. Upon them were black mosslike encrustations of age, and they were bentand scarred from the attacks of long-forgotten teeth. But over theirrepast the wanderers waxed warm and mellow. The assassin grew affable asthe hot mixture went soothingly down his parched throat, and the youngman felt courage flow in his veins. 

Memories began to throng in on the assassin, and he brought forth longtales, intricate, incoherent, delivered with a chattering swiftness asfrom an old woman. "--great job out'n Orange. Boss keep yeh hustlin'though all time. I was there three days, and then I went an' ask 'im t'lend me a dollar. 'G-g-go ter the devil, ' he ses, an' I lose me job. "

"South no good. Damn niggers work for twenty-five an' thirty cents aday. Run white man out. Good grub, though. Easy livin'. "

"Yas; useter work little in Toledo, raftin' logs. Make two or threedollars er day in the spring. Lived high. Cold as ice, though, in thewinter. "

"I was raised in northern N'York. O-a-ah, yeh jest oughto live there. Nobeer ner whisky, though, way off in the woods. But all th' good hot grubyeh can eat. B'Gawd, I hung around there long as I could till th' ol'man fired me. 'Git t' hell outa here, yeh wuthless skunk, git t' hellouta here, an' go die, ' he ses. 'You're a hell of a father, ' I ses, 'youare, ' an' I quit 'im. "

As they were passing from the dim eating place, they encountered an oldman who was trying to steal forth with a tiny package of food, but atall man with an indomitable moustache stood dragon fashion, barring theway of escape. They heard the old man raise a plaintive protest. "Ah, you always want to know what I take out, and you never see that Iusually bring a package in here from my place of business. "

As the wanderers trudged slowly along Park Row, the assassin began toexpand and grow blithe. "B'Gawd, we've been livin' like kings, " he said, smacking appreciative lips. 

"Look out, or we'll have t' pay fer it t'night, " said the youth withgloomy warning. 

But the assassin refused to turn his gaze toward the future. He wentwith a limping step, into which he injected a suggestion of lamblikegambols. His mouth was wreathed in a red grin. 

In the City Hall Park the two wanderers sat down in the little circle ofbenches sanctified by traditions of their class. They huddled in theirold garments, slumbrously conscious of the march of the hours which forthem had no meaning. 

The people of the street hurrying hither and thither made a blend ofblack figures changing yet frieze-like. They walked in their goodclothes as upon important missions, giving no gaze to the two wanderersseated upon the benches. They expressed to the young man his infinitedistance from all that he valued. Social position, comfort, thepleasures of living, were unconquerable kingdoms. He felt a sudden awe. 

And in the background a multitude of buildings, of pitiless hues andsternly high, were to him emblematic of a nation forcing its regal headinto the clouds, throwing no downward glances; in the sublimity of itsaspirations ignoring the wretches who may flounder at its feet. The roarof the city in his ear was to him the confusion of strange tongues, babbling heedlessly; it was the clink of coin, the voice if the city'shopes which were to him no hopes. 

He confessed himself an outcast, and his eyes from under the lowered rimof his hat began to glance guiltily, wearing the criminal expressionthat comes with certain convictions. 

THE DUEL THAT WAS NOT FOUGHT

Patsy Tulligan was not as wise as seven owls, but his courage couldthrow a shadow as long as the steeple of a cathedral. There were men onCherry Street who had whipped him five times, but they all knew thatPatsy would be as ready for the sixth time as if nothing had happened. 

Once he and two friends had been away up on Eighth Avenue, far out oftheir country, and upon their return journey that evening they stoppedfrequently in saloons until they were as independent of theirsurroundings as eagles, and cared much less about thirty days onBlackwell's. 

On Lower Sixth Avenue they paused in a saloon where there was a gooddeal of lamp-glare and polished wood to be seen from the outside, andwithin, the mellow light shone on much furbished brass and more polishedwood. It was a better saloon than they were in the habit of seeing, butthey did not mind it. They sat down at one of the little tables thatwere in a row parallel to the bar and ordered beer. They blinkedstolidly at the decorations, the bartender, and the other customers. When anything transpired they discussed it with dazzling frankness, andwhat they said of it was as free as air to the other people in theplace. 

At midnight there were few people in the saloon. Patsy and his friendsstill sat drinking. Two well-dressed men were at another table, smokingcigars slowly and swinging back in their chairs. They occupiedthemselves with themselves in the usual manner, never betraying by awink of an eyelid that they knew that other folk existed. At anothertable directly behind Patsy and his companions was a slim little Cuban, with miraculously small feet and hands, and with a youthful touch ofdown upon his lip. As he lifted his cigarette from time to time hislittle finger was bended in dainty fashion, and there was a green flashwhen a huge emerald ring caught the light. The bartender came often withhis little brass tray. Occasionally Patsy and his two friendsquarrelled. 

Once this little Cuban happened to make some slight noise and Patsyturned his head to observe him. Then Patsy made a careless and ratherloud comment to his two friends. He used a word which is no more thanpassing the time of day down in Cherry Street, but to the Cuban it was adagger-point. There was a harsh scraping sound as a chair was pushedswiftly back. 

The little Cuban was upon his feet. His eyes were shining with a ragethat flashed there like sparks as he glared at Patsy. His olive face hadturned a shade of grey from his anger. Withal his chest was thrust outin portentous dignity, and his hand, still grasping his wine-glass, wascool and steady, the little finger still bended, the great emeraldgleaming upon it. The others, motionless, stared at him. 

"Sir, " he began ceremoniously. He spoke gravely and in a slow way, histone coming in a marvel of self-possessed cadences from between thoselips which quivered with wrath. "You have insult me. You are a dog, ahound, a cur. I spit upon you. I must have some of your blood. "

Patsy looked at him over his shoulder. 

"What's th' matter wi' che?" he demanded. He did not quite understandthe words of this little man who glared at him steadily, but he knewthat it was something about fighting. He snarled with the readiness ofhis class and heaved his shoulders contemptuously. "Ah, what's eatin'yeh? Take a walk! You hain't got nothin' t' do with me, have yeh? Well, den, go sit on yerself. "

And his companions leaned back valorously in their chairs, andscrutinized this slim young fellow who was addressing Patsy. 

"What's de little Dago chewin' about?"

"He wants t' scrap!"

"What!"

The Cuban listened with apparent composure. It was only when theylaughed that his body cringed as if he was receiving lashes. Presentlyhe put down his glass and walked over to their table. He proceededalways with the most impressive deliberation. 

"Sir, " he began again. "You have insult me. I must have s-s-satisfac-shone. I must have your body upon the point of my sword. In my countryyou would already be dead. I must have s-s-satisfac-shone. "

Patsy had looked at the Cuban with a trifle of bewilderment. But at lasthis face began to grow dark with belligerency, his mouth curved in thatwide sneer with which he would confront an angel of darkness. He arosesuddenly in his seat and came towards the little Cuban. He was going tobe impressive too. 

"Say, young feller, if yeh go shootin' off yer face at me, I'll wipe d'joint wid yeh. What'cher gaffin' about, hey? Are yeh givin' me er jolly?Say, if yeh pick me up fer a cinch, I'll fool yeh. Dat's what! Don'ttake me fer no dead easy mug. " And as he glowered at the little Cuban, he ended his oration with one eloquent word, "Nit!"

The bartender nervously polished his bar with a towel, and kept his eyesfastened upon the men. Occasionally he became transfixed with interest, leaning forward with one hand upon the edge of the bar and the otherholding the towel grabbed in a lump, as if he had been turned intobronze when in the very act of polishing. 

The Cuban did not move when Patsy came toward him and delivered hisoration. At its conclusion he turned his livid face toward where, abovehim, Patsy was swaggering and heaving his shoulders in a consummatedisplay of bravery and readiness. The Cuban, in his clear, tense tones, spoke one word. It was the bitter insult. It seemed fairly to spin fromhis lips and crackle in the air like breaking glass. 

Every man save the little Cuban made an electric movement. Patsy roareda black oath and thrust himself forward until he towered almost directlyabove the other man. His fists were doubled into knots of bone and hardflesh. The Cuban had raised a steady finger. 

"If you touch me wis your hand, I will keel you. "

The two well-dressed men had come swiftly, uttering protesting cries. They suddenly intervened in this second of time in which Patsy hadsprung forward and the Cuban had uttered his threat. The four men werenow a tossing, arguing; violent group, one well-dressed man lecturingthe Cuban, and the other holding off Patsy, who was now wild with rage, loudly repeating the Cuban's threat, and maneuvering and struggling toget at him for revenge's sake. 

The bartender, feverishly scouring away with his towel, and at timespacing to and fro with nervous and excited tread, shouted out--

"Say, for heaven's sake, don't fight in here. If yeh wanta fight, go outin the street and fight all yeh please. But don't fight in here. "

Patsy knew one only thing, and this he kept repeating:

"Well, he wants t' scrap! I didn't begin dis! He wants t' scrap. "

The well-dressed man confronting him continually replied--

"Oh, well, now, look here, he's only a lad. He don't know what he'sdoing. He's crazy mad. You wouldn't slug a kid like that. "

Patsy and his aroused companions, who cursed and growled, werepersistent with their argument. "Well, he wants t' scrap!" The wholeaffair was as plain as daylight when one saw this great fact. Theinterference and intolerable discussion brought the three of themforward, battleful and fierce. 

"What's eatin' you, anyhow?" they demanded. "Dis ain't your business, isit? What business you got shootin' off your face?"

The other peacemaker was trying to restrain the little Cuban, who hadgrown shrill and violent. 

"If he touch me wis his hand I will keel him. We must fight likegentlemen or else I keel him when he touch me wis his hand. "

The man who was fending off Patsy comprehended these sentences that werescreamed behind his back, and he explained to Patsy. 

"But he wants to fight you with swords. With swords, you know. "

The Cuban, dodging around the peacemakers, yelled in Patsy's face--

"Ah, if I could get you before me wis my sword! Ah! Ah! A-a-ah!" Patsymade a furious blow with a swift fist, but the peacemakers buckedagainst his body suddenly like football players. 

Patsy was greatly puzzled. He continued doggedly to try to get nearenough to the Cuban to punch him. To these attempts the Cuban repliedsavagely--

"If you touch me wis your hand, I will cut your heart in two piece. "

At last Patsy said--"Well, if he's so dead stuck on fightin' wid swords, I'll fight 'im. Soitenly! I'll fight 'im. " All this palaver hadevidently tired him, and he now puffed out his lips with the air of aman who is willing to submit to any conditions if he can only bring onthe row soon enough. He swaggered, "I'll fight 'im wid swords. Let 'imbring on his swords, an' I'll fight 'im 'til he's ready t' quit. "

The two well-dressed men grinned. "Why, look here, " they said to Patsy, "he'd punch you full of holes. Why he's a fencer. You can't fight himwith swords. He'd kill you in 'bout a minute. "

"Well, I'll giv' 'im a go at it, anyhow, " said Patsy, stouthearted andresolute. "I'll giv' 'im a go at it, anyhow, an' I'll stay wid 'im aslong as I kin. "

As for the Cuban, his lithe body was quivering in an ecstasy of themuscles. His face radiant with a savage joy, he fastened his glance uponPatsy, his eyes gleaming with a gloating, murderous light. A mostunspeakable, animal-like rage was in his expression. 

"Ah! ah! He will fight me! Ah!" He bended unconsciously in the postureof a fencer. He had all the quick, springy movements of a skilfulswordsman. "Ah, the b-r-r-rute! The b-r-r-rute! I will stick him like apig!"

The two peacemakers, still grinning broadly, were having a great timewith Patsy. 

"Why, you infernal idiot, this man would slice you all up. You betterjump off the bridge if you want to commit suicide. You wouldn't stand aghost of a chance to live ten seconds. "

Patsy was as unshaken as granite. "Well, if he wants t' fight widswords, he'll get it. I'll giv' 'im a go at it, anyhow. "

One man said--"Well, have you got a sword? Do you know what a sword is?Have you got a sword?"

"No, I ain't got none, " said Patsy honestly, "but I kin git one. " Thenhe added valiantly--"An' quick, too. "

The two men laughed. "Why, can't you understand it would be sure deathto fight a sword duel with this fellow?"

"Dat's all right! See? I know me own business. If he wants t' fight oneof dees d--n duels, I'm in it, understan'"

"Have you ever fought one, you fool?"

"No, I ain't. But I will fight one, dough! I ain't no muff. If he wantst' fight a duel, by Gawd, I'm wid 'im! D'yeh understan' dat!" Patsycocked his hat and swaggered. He was getting very serious. 

The little Cuban burst out--"Ah, come on, sirs: come on! We can takecab. Ah, you big cow, I will stick you, I will stick you. Ah, you willlook very beautiful, very beautiful. Ah, come on, sirs. We will stop athotel--my hotel. I there have weapons. "

"Yeh will, will yeh? Yeh bloomin' little black Dago!" cried Patsy inhoarse and maddened reply to the personal part of the Cuban's speech. Hestepped forward. "Git yer d--n swords, " he commanded. "Git yer swords. Git 'em quick! I'll fight wi' che! I'll fight wid anyt'ing, too! See?I'll fight yeh wid a knife an' fork if yeh say so! I'll fight yerstandin' up er sittin' down!" Patsy delivered this intense oration withsweeping, intensely emphatic gestures, his hands stretched outeloquently, his jaw thrust forward, his eyes glaring. 

"Ah!" cried the little Cuban joyously. "Ah, you are in very prettytemper. Ah, how I will cut your heart in two piece, my dear, d-e-a-rfriend. " His eyes, too, shone like carbuncles, with a swift, changingglitter, always fastened upon Patsy's face. 

The two peacemakers were perspiring and in despair. One of them blurtedout--

"Well, I'll be blamed if this ain't the most ridiculous thing I eversaw. "

The other said--"For ten dollars I'd be tempted to let these twoinfernal blockheads have their duel. "

Patsy was strutting to and fro, and conferring grandly with his friends. 

"He took me for a muff. He t'ought he was goin' t' bluff me out, talkin''bout swords. He'll get fooled. " He addressed the Cuban--"You're a finelittle dirty picter of a scrapper, ain't che? I'll chew yez up, dat'swhat I will!"

There began then some rapid action. The patience of well-dressed men isnot an eternal thing. It began to look as if it would at last be a fightwith six corners to it. The faces of the men were shining red withanger. They jostled each other defiantly, and almost every one blazedout at three or four of the others. The bartender had given upprotesting. He swore for a time and banged his glasses. Then he jumpedthe bar and ran out of the saloon, cursing sullenly. 

When he came back with a policeman, Patsy and the Cuban were preparingto depart together. Patsy was delivering his last oration--

"I'll fight yer wid swords! Sure I will! Come ahead, Dago! I'll fightyeh anywheres wid anyt'ing! We'll have a large, juicy scrap, an' don'tyeh forgit dat! I'm right wid yez. I ain't no muff! I scrap with a manjest as soon as he ses scrap, an' if yeh wanta scrap, I'm yer kitten. Understan' dat?"

The policeman said sharply--"Come, now; what's all this?" He had adistinctly business air. 

The little Cuban stepped forward calmly. "It is none of your business. "

The policeman flushed to his ears. "What?"

One well-dressed man touched the other on the sleeve. "Here's the timeto skip, " he whispered. They halted a block away from the saloon andwatched the policeman pull the Cuban through the door. There was aminute of scuffle on the sidewalk, and into this deserted street atmidnight fifty people appeared at once as if from the sky to watch it. 

At last the three Cherry Hill men came from the saloon, and swaggeredwith all their old valor toward the peacemakers. 

"Ah, " said Patsy to them, "he was so hot talkin' about this duelbusiness, but I would a-given 'im a great scrap, an' don't yeh forgitit. "

For Patsy was not as wise as seven owls, but his courage could throw ashadow as long as the steeple of a cathedral. 

A DESERTION

The yellow gaslight that came with an effect of difficulty through thedust-stained windows on either side of the door gave strange hues to thefaces and forms of the three women who stood gabbling in the hallway ofthe tenement. They made rapid gestures, and in the background theirenormous shadows mingled in terrific conflict. 

"Aye, she ain't so good as he thinks she is, I'll bet. He can watch over'er an' take care of 'er all he pleases, but when she wants t' fool 'im, she'll fool 'im. An' how does he know she ain't foolin' im' now?"

"Oh, he thinks he's keepin' 'er from goin' t' th' bad, he does. Oh, yes. He ses she's too purty t' let run round alone. Too purty! Huh! MySadie--"

"Well, he keeps a clost watch on 'er, you bet. On'y las' week, she metmy boy Tim on th' stairs, an' Tim hadn't said two words to 'er b'foreth' ol' man begin to holler. 'Dorter, dorter, come here, come here!'"

At this moment a young girl entered from the street, and it was evidentfrom the injured expression suddenly assumed by the three gossipers thatshe had been the object of their discussion. She passed them with aslight nod, and they swung about into a row to stare after her. 

On her way up the long flights the girl unfastened her veil. One couldthen clearly see the beauty of her eyes, but there was in them a certainfurtiveness that came near to marring the effects. It was a peculiarfixture of gaze, brought from the street, as of one who there saw asuccession of passing dangers with menaces aligned at every corner. 

On the top floor, she pushed open a door and then paused on thethreshold, confronting an interior that appeared black and flat like acurtain. Perhaps some girlish idea of hobgoblins assailed her then, forshe called in a little breathless voice, "Daddie!"

There was no reply. The fire in the cooking-stove in the room crackledat spasmodic intervals. One lid was misplaced, and the girl could nowsee that this fact created a little flushed crescent upon the ceiling. Also, a series of tiny windows in the stove caused patches of red uponthe floor. Otherwise, the room was heavily draped with shadows. 

The girl called again, "Daddie!"

Yet there was no reply. 

"Oh, Daddie!"

Presently she laughed as one familiar with the humors of an old man. "Oh, I guess yer cussin' mad about yer supper, Dad, " she said, and shealmost entered the room, but suddenly faltered, overcome by a feminineinstinct to fly from this black interior, peopled with imagined dangers. 

Again she called, "Daddie!" Her voice had an accent of appeal. It was asif she knew she was foolish but yet felt obliged to insist upon beingreassured. "Oh, Daddie!"

Of a sudden a cry of relief, a feminine announcement that the starsstill hung, burst from her. For, according to some mystic process, thesmoldering coals of the fire went aflame with sudden, fierce brilliance, splashing parts of the walls, the floor, the crude furniture, with a hueof blood-red. And in the light of this dramatic outburst of light, thegirl saw her father seated at a table with his back turned toward her. 

She entered the room, then, with an aggrieved air, her logic evidentlyconcluding that somebody was to blame for her nervous fright. "Oh, yeron'y sulkin' 'bout yer supper. I thought mebbe ye'd gone somewheres. "

Her father made no reply. She went over to a shelf in the corner, and, taking a little lamp, she lit it and put it where it would give herlight as she took off her hat and jacket in front of the tiny mirror. Presently she began to bustle among the cooking utensils that werecrowded into the sink, and as she worked she rattled talk at her father, apparently disdaining his mood. 

"I'd 'a' come home earlier t'night, Dad, on'y that fly foreman, he kep'me in th' shop 'til half-past six. What a fool! He came t' me, yeh know, an' he ses, 'Nell, I wanta give yeh some brotherly advice. ' Oh, I knowhim an' his brotherly advice. 'I wanta give yeh some brotherly advice. Yer too purty, Nell, ' he ses, 't' be workin' in this shop an' paradin'through the streets alone, without somebody t' give yeh good brotherlyadvice, an' I wanta warn yeh, Nell. I'm a bad man, but I ain't as bad assome, an' I wanta warn yeh. ' 'Oh, g'long 'bout yer business, ' I ses. Iknow 'im. He's like all of 'em, on'y he's a little slyer. I know 'im. 'You g'long 'bout yer business, ' I ses. Well, he ses after a while thathe guessed some evenin' he'd come up an' see me. 'Oh, yeh will, ' I ses, 'yeh will? Well, you jest let my ol' man ketch yeh comin' foolin' 'roundour place. Yeh'll wish yeh went t' some other girl t' give brotherlyadvice. ' 'What th' 'ell do I care fer yer father?' he ses. 'What's he t'me?' 'If he throws yeh downstairs, yeh'll care for 'im, ' I ses. 'Well, 'he ses, 'I'll come when 'e ain't in, b' Gawd, I'll come when 'e ain'tin. ' 'Oh, he's allus in when it means takin' care 'o me, ' I ses. 'Don'tyeh fergit it, either. When it comes t' takin' care o' his dorter, he'sright on deck every single possible time. '"

After a time, she turned and addressed cheery words to the old man. "Hurry up th' fire, Daddie! We'll have supper pretty soon. "

But still her father was silent, and his form in its sullen posture wasmotionless. 

At this, the girl seemed to see the need of the inauguration of afeminine war against a man out of temper. She approached him breathingsoft, coaxing syllables. 

"Daddie! Oh, Daddie! O--o--oh, Daddie!"

It was apparent from a subtle quality of valor in her tones that thismanner of onslaught upon his moods had usually been successful, but to-night it had no quick effect. The words, coming from her lips, were likethe refrain of an old ballad, but the man remained stolid. 

"Daddie! My Daddie! Oh, Daddie, are yeh mad at me, really--truly mad atme!"

She touched him lightly upon the arm. Should he have turned then hewould have seen the fresh, laughing face, with dew-sparkling eyes, closeto his own. 

"Oh, Daddie! My Daddie! Pretty Daddie!"

She stole her arm about his neck, and then slowly bended her face towardhis. It was the action of a queen who knows that she reignsnotwithstanding irritations, trials, tempests. 

But suddenly, from this position, she leaped backward with the madenergy of a frightened colt. Her face was in this instant turned to agrey, featureless thing of horror. A yell, wild and hoarse as a brute-cry, burst from her. "Daddie!" She flung herself to a place near thedoor, where she remained, crouching, her eyes staring at the motionlessfigure, spattered by the quivering flashes from the fire. Her armsextended, and her frantic fingers at once besought and repelled. Therewas in them an expression of eagerness to caress and an expression ofthe most intense loathing. And the girl's hair that had been a splendor, was in these moments changed to a disordered mass that hung and swayedin witchlike fashion. 

Again, a terrible cry burst from her. It was more than the shriek ofagony--it was directed, personal, addressed to him in the chair, thefirst word of a tragic conversation with the dead. 

It seemed that when she had put her arm about its neck, she had jostledthe corpse in such a way that now she and it were face to face. Theattitude expressed an intention of arising from the table. The eyes, fixed upon hers, were filled with an unspeakable hatred. 

 * * * * *

The cries of the girl aroused thunders in the tenement. There was a loudslamming of doors, and presently there was a roar of feet upon theboards of the stairway. Voices rang out sharply. 

"What is it?"

"What's th' matter?"

"He's killin' her!"

"Slug 'im with anythin' yeh kin lay hold of, Jack!"

But over all this came the shrill, shrewish tones of a woman. "Ah, th'damned ol' fool, he's drivin' 'er inteh th' street--that's what he'sdoin'. He's drivin' 'er inteh th' street. "

A DARK-BROWN DOG

A child was standing on a street-corner. He leaned with one shoulderagainst a high board fence and swayed the other to and fro, the whilekicking carelessly at the gravel. 

Sunshine beat upon the cobbles, and a lazy summer wind raised yellowdust which trailed in clouds down the avenue. Clattering trucks movedwith indistinctness through it. The child stood dreamily gazing. 

After a time, a little dark-brown dog came trotting with an intent airdown the sidewalk. A short rope was dragging from his neck. Occasionallyhe trod upon the end of it and stumbled. 

He stopped opposite the child, and the two regarded each other. The doghesitated for a moment, but presently he made some little advances withhis tail. The child put out his hand and called him. In an apologeticmanner the dog came close, and the two had an interchange of friendlypattings and waggles. The dog became more enthusiastic with each momentof the interview, until with his gleeful caperings he threatened tooverturn the child. Whereupon the child lifted his hand and struck thedog a blow upon the head. 

This thing seemed to overpower and astonish the little dark-brown dog, and wounded him to the heart. He sank down in despair at the child'sfeet. When the blow was repeated, together with an admonition inchildish sentences, he turned over upon his back, and held his paws in apeculiar manner. At the same time with his ears and his eyes he offereda small prayer to the child. 

He looked so comical on his back, and holding his paws peculiarly, thatthe child was greatly amused and gave him little taps repeatedly, tokeep him so. But the little dark-brown dog took this chastisement in themost serious way and no doubt considered that he had committed somegrave crime, for he wriggled contritely and showed his repentance inevery way that was in his power. He pleaded with the child andpetitioned him, and offered more prayers. 

At last the child grew weary of this amusement and turned toward home. The dog was praying at the time. He lay on his back and turned his eyesupon the retreating form. 

Presently he struggled to his feet and started after the child. Thelatter wandered in a perfunctory way toward his home, stopping at timesto investigate various matters. During one of these pauses he discoveredthe little dark-brown dog who was following him with the air of afootpad. 

The child beat his pursuer with a small stick he had found. The dog laydown and prayed until the child had finished, and resumed his journey. Then he scrambled erect and took up the pursuit again. 

On the way to his home the child turned many times and beat the dog, proclaiming with childish gestures that he held him in contempt as anunimportant dog, with no value save for a moment. For being this qualityof animal the dog apologized and eloquently expressed regret, but hecontinued stealthily to follow the child. His manner grew so very guiltythat he slunk like an assassin. 

When the child reached his doorstep, the dog was industriously ambling afew yards in the rear. He became so agitated with shame when he againconfronted the child that he forgot the dragging rope. He tripped uponit and fell forward. 

The child sat down on the step and the two had another interview. Duringit the dog greatly exerted himself to please the child. He performed afew gambols with such abandon that the child suddenly saw him to be avaluable thing. He made a swift, avaricious charge and seized the rope. 

He dragged his captive into a hall and up many long stairways in a darktenement. The dog made willing efforts, but he could not hobble veryskilfully up the stairs because he was very small and soft, and at lastthe pace of the engrossed child grew so energetic that the dog becamepanic-stricken. In his mind he was being dragged toward a grim unknown. His eyes grew wild with the terror of it. He began to wiggle his headfrantically and to brace his legs. 

The child redoubled his exertions. They had a battle on the stairs. Thechild was victorious because he was completely absorbed in his purpose, and because the dog was very small. He dragged his acquirement to thedoor of his home, and finally with triumph across the threshold. 

No one was in. The child sat down on the floor and made overtures to thedog. These the dog instantly accepted. He beamed with affection upon hisnew friend. In a short time they were firm and abiding comrades. 

When the child's family appeared, they made a great row. The dog wasexamined and commented upon and called names. Scorn was leveled at himfrom all eyes, so that he became much embarrassed and drooped like ascorched plant. But the child went sturdily to the center of the floor, and, at the top of his voice, championed the dog. It happened that hewas roaring protestations, with his arms clasped about the dog's neck, when the father of the family came in from work. 

The parent demanded to know what the blazes they were making the kidhowl for. It was explained in many words that the infernal kid wanted tointroduce a disreputable dog into the family. 

A family council was held. On this depended the dog's fate, but he in noway heeded, being busily engaged in chewing the end of the child'sdress. 

The affair was quickly ended. The father of the family, it appears, wasin a particularly savage temper that evening, and when he perceived thatit would amaze and anger everybody if such a dog were allowed to remain, he decided that it should be so. The child, crying softly, took hisfriend off to a retired part of the room to hobnob with him, while thefather quelled a fierce rebellion of his wife. So it came to pass thatthe dog was a member of the household. 

He and the child were associated together at all times save when thechild slept. The child became a guardian and a friend. If the large folkkicked the dog and threw things at him, the child made loud and violentobjections. Once when the child had run, protesting loudly, with tearsraining down his face and his arms outstretched, to protect his friend, he had been struck in the head with a very large saucepan from the handof his father, enraged at some seeming lack of courtesy in the dog. Everafter, the family were careful how they threw things at the dog. Moreover, the latter grew very skilful in avoiding missiles and feet. Ina small room containing a stove, a table, a bureau and some chairs, hewould display strategic ability of a high order, dodging, feinting andscuttling about among the furniture. He could force three or four peoplearmed with brooms, sticks and handfuls of coal, to use all theiringenuity to get in a blow. And even when they did, it was seldom thatthey could do him a serious injury or leave any imprint. 

But when the child was present these scenes did not occur. It came to berecognized that if the dog was molested, the child would burst intosobs, and as the child, when started, was very riotous and practicallyunquenchable, the dog had therein a safeguard. 

However, the child could not always be near. At night, when he wasasleep, his dark-brown friend would raise from some black corner a wild, wailful cry, a song of infinite loneliness and despair, that would goshuddering and sobbing among the buildings of the block and cause peopleto swear. At these times the singer would often be chased all over thekitchen and hit with a great variety of articles. 

Sometimes, too, the child himself used to beat the dog, although it isnot known that he ever had what truly could be called a just cause. Thedog always accepted these thrashings with an air of admitted guilt. Hewas too much of a dog to try to look to be a martyr or to plot revenge. He received the blows with deep humility, and furthermore he forgave hisfriend the moment the child had finished, and was ready to caress thechild's hand with his little red tongue. 

When misfortune came upon the child, and his troubles overwhelmed him, he would often crawl under the table and lay his small distressed headon the dog's back. The dog was ever sympathetic. It is not to besupposed that at such times he took occasion to refer to the unjustbeatings his friend, when provoked, had administered to him. 

He did not achieve any notable degree of intimacy with the other membersof the family. He had no confidence in them, and the fear that he wouldexpress at their casual approach often exasperated them exceedingly. They used to gain a certain satisfaction in underfeeding him, butfinally his friend the child grew to watch the matter with some care, and when he forgot it, the dog was often successful in secret forhimself. 

So the dog prospered. He developed a large bark, which came wondrouslyfrom such a small rug of a dog. He ceased to howl persistently at night. Sometimes, indeed, in his sleep, he would utter little yells, as frompain, but that occurred, no doubt, when in his dreams he encounteredhuge flaming dogs who threatened him direfully. 

His devotion to the child grew until it was a sublime thing. He waggedat his approach; he sank down in despair at his departure. He coulddetect the sound of the child's step among all the noises of theneighborhood. It was like a calling voice to him. 

The scene of their companionship was a kingdom governed by this terriblepotentate, the child; but neither criticism nor rebellion ever lived foran instant in the heart of the one subject. Down in the mystic, hiddenfields of his little dog-soul bloomed flowers of love and fidelity andperfect faith. 

The child was in the habit of going on many expeditions to observestrange things in the vicinity. On these occasions his friend usuallyjogged aimfully along behind. Perhaps, though, he went ahead. Thisnecessitated his turning around every quarter-minute to make sure thechild was coming. He was filled with a large idea of the importance ofthese journeys. He would carry himself with such an air! He was proud tobe the retainer of so great a monarch. 

One day, however, the father of the family got quite exceptionallydrunk. He came home and held carnival with the cooking utensils, thefurniture and his wife. He was in the midst of this recreation when thechild, followed by the dark-brown dog, entered the room. They werereturning from their voyages. 

The child's practised eye instantly noted his father's state. He divedunder the table, where experience had taught him was a rather safeplace. The dog, lacking skill in such matters, was, of course, unawareof the true condition of affairs. He looked with interested eyes at hisfriend's sudden dive. He interpreted it to mean: Joyous gambol. Hestarted to patter across the floor to join him. He was the picture of alittle dark-brown dog en route to a friend. 

The head of the family saw him at this moment. He gave a huge howl ofjoy, and knocked the dog down with a heavy coffee-pot. The dog, yellingin supreme astonishment and fear, writhed to his feet and ran for cover. The man kicked out with a ponderous foot. It caused the dog to swerve asif caught in a tide. A second blow of the coffee-pot laid him upon thefloor. 

Here the child, uttering loud cries, came valiantly forth like a knight. The father of the family paid no attention to these calls of the child, but advanced with glee upon the dog. Upon being knocked down twice inswift succession, the latter apparently gave up all hope of escape. Herolled over on his back and held his paws in a peculiar manner. At thesame time with his eyes and his ears he offered up a small prayer. 

But the father was in a mood for having fun, and it occurred to him thatit would be a fine thing to throw the dog out of the window. So hereached down and, grabbing the animal by a leg, lifted him, squirming, up. He swung him two or three times hilariously about his head, and thenflung him with great accuracy through the window. 

The soaring dog created a surprise in the block. A woman watering plantsin an opposite window gave an involuntary shout and dropped a flower-pot. A man in another window leaned perilously out to watch the flightof the dog. A woman who had been hanging out clothes in a yard began tocaper wildly. Her mouth was filled with clothes-pins, but her arms gavevent to a sort of exclamation. In appearance she was like a gaggedprisoner. Children ran whooping. 

The dark-brown body crashed in a heap on the roof of a shed five storiesbelow. From thence it rolled to the pavement of an alleyway. 

The child in the room far above burst into a long, dirge-like cry, andtoddled hastily out of the room. It took him a long time to reach thealley, because his size compelled him to go downstairs backward, onestep at a time, and holding with both hands to the step above. 

When they came for him later, they found him seated by the body of hisdark-brown friend. 

THE PACE OF YOUTH

I

Stimson stood in a corner and glowered. He was a fierce man and hadindomitable whiskers, albeit he was very small. 

"That young tarrier, " he whispered to himself. "He wants to quit makin'eyes at Lizzie. This is too much of a good thing. First thing you know, he'll get fired. "

His brow creased in a frown, he strode over to the huge open doors andlooked at a sign. "Stimson's Mammoth Merry-Go-Round, " it read, and theglory of it was great. Stimson stood and contemplated the sign. It wasan enormous affair; the letters were as large as men. The glow of it, the grandeur of it was very apparent to Stimson. At the end of hiscontemplation, he shook his head thoughtfully, determinedly. "No, no, "he muttered. "This is too much of a good thing. First thing you know, he'll get fired. "

A soft booming sound of surf, mingled with the cries of bathers, camefrom the beach. There was a vista of sand and sky and sea that drew to amystic point far away in the northward. In the mighty angle, a girl in ared dress was crawling slowly like some kind of a spider on the fabricof nature. A few flags hung lazily above where the bathhouses weremarshalled in compact squares. Upon the edge of the sea stood a shipwith its shadowy sails painted dimly upon the sky, and high overhead inthe still, sun-shot air a great hawk swung and drifted slowly. 

Within the Merry-Go-Round there was a whirling circle of ornamentallions, giraffes, camels, ponies, goats, glittering with varnish andmetal that caught swift reflections from windows high above them. Withstiff wooden legs, they swept on in a never-ending race, while a greatorchestrion clamored in wild speed. The summer sunlight sprinkled itsgold upon the garnet canopies carried by the tireless racers and uponall the devices of decoration that made Stimson's machine magnificentand famous. A host of laughing children bestrode the animals, bendingforward like charging cavalrymen, and shaking reins and whooping inglee. At intervals they leaned out perilously to clutch at iron ringsthat were tendered to them by a long wooden arm. At the intense momentbefore the swift grab for the rings one could see their little nervousbodies quiver with eagerness; the laughter rang shrill and excited. Downin the long rows of benches, crowds of people sat watching the game, while occasionally a father might arise and go near to shoutencouragement, cautionary commands, or applause at his flying offspring. Frequently mothers called out: "Be careful, Georgie!" The orchestrionbellowed and thundered on its platform, filling the ears with its longmonotonous song. Over in a corner, a man in a white apron and behind acounter roared above the tumult: "Popcorn! Popcorn!"

A young man stood upon a small, raised platform, erected in a manner ofa pulpit, and just without the line of the circling figures. It was hisduty to manipulate the wooden arm and affix the rings. When all weregone into the hands of the triumphant children, he held forth a basket, into which they returned all save the coveted brass one, which meantanother ride free and made the holder very illustrious. The young manstood all day upon his narrow platform, affixing rings or holding forththe basket. He was a sort of general squire in these lists of childhood. He was very busy. 

And yet Stimson, the astute, had noticed that the young man frequentlyfound time to twist about on his platform and smile at a girl who shylysold tickets behind a silvered netting. This, indeed, was the greatreason of Stimson's glowering. The young man upon the raised platformhad no manner of license to smile at the girl behind the silverednetting. It was a most gigantic insolence. Stimson was amazed at it. "ByJiminy, " he said to himself again, "that fellow is smiling at mydaughter. " Even in this tone of great wrath it could be discerned thatStimson was filled with wonder that any youth should dare smile at thedaughter in the presence of the august father. 

Often the dark-eyed girl peered between the shining wires, and, uponbeing detected by the young man, she usually turned her head quickly toprove to him that she was not interested. At other times, however, hereyes seemed filled with a tender fear lest he should fall from thatexceedingly dangerous platform. As for the young man, it was plain thatthese glances filled him with valor, and he stood carelessly upon hisperch, as if he deemed it of no consequence that he might fall from it. In all the complexities of his daily life and duties he foundopportunity to gaze ardently at the vision behind the netting. 

This silent courtship was conducted over the heads of the crowd whothronged about the bright machine. The swift eloquent glances of theyoung man went noiselessly and unseen with their message. There hadfinally become established between the two in this manner a subtleunderstanding and companionship. They communicated accurately all thatthey felt. The boy told his love, his reverence, his hope in the changesof the future. The girl told him that she loved him, and she did notlove him, that she did not know if she loved him. Sometimes a littlesign, saying "cashier" in gold letters, and hanging upon the silverednetting, got directly in range and interfered with the tender message. 

The love affair had not continued without anger, unhappiness, despair. The girl had once smiled brightly upon a youth who came to buy sometickets for his little sister, and the young man upon the platform, observing this smile, had been filled with gloomy rage. He stood like adark statue of vengeance upon his pedestal and thrust out the basket tothe children with a gesture that was full of scorn for their hollowhappiness, for their insecure and temporary joy. For five hours he didnot once look at the girl when she was looking at him. He was going tocrush her with his indifference; he was going to demonstrate that he hadnever been serious. However, when he narrowly observed her in secret hediscovered that she seemed more blythe than was usual with her. When hefound that his apparent indifference had not crushed her he sufferedgreatly. She did not love him, he concluded. If she had loved him shewould have been crushed. For two days he lived a miserable existenceupon his high perch. He consoled himself by thinking of how unhappy hewas, and by swift, furtive glances at the loved face. At any rate he wasin her presence, and he could get a good view from his perch when therewas no interference by the little sign: "Cashier. "

But suddenly, swiftly, these clouds vanished, and under the imperialblue sky of the restored confidence they dwelt in peace, a peace thatwas satisfaction, a peace that, like a babe, put its trust in thetreachery of the future. This confidence endured until the next day, when she, for an unknown cause, suddenly refused to look at him. Mechanically he continued his task, his brain dazed, a tortured victimof doubt, fear, suspicion. With his eyes he supplicated her to telegraphan explanation. She replied with a stony glance that froze his blood. There was a great difference in their respective reasons for becomingangry. His were always foolish, but apparent, plain as the moon. Herswere subtle, feminine, as incomprehensible as the stars, as mysteriousas the shadows at night. 

They fell and soared and soared and fell in this manner until they knewthat to live without each other would be a wandering in deserts. Theyhad grown so intent upon the uncertainties, the variations, theguessings of their affair that the world had become but a hugeimmaterial background. In time of peace their smiles were soft andprayerful, caresses confided to the air. In time of war, their youthfulhearts, capable of profound agony, were wrung by the intricate emotionsof doubt. They were the victims of the dread angel of affectionatespeculation that forces the brain endlessly on roads that lead nowhere. 

At night, the problem of whether she loved him confronted the young manlike a spectre, looming as high as a hill and telling him not to deludehimself. Upon the following day, this battle of the night displayeditself in the renewed fervor of his glances and in their increasednumber. Whenever he thought he could detect that she too was suffering, he felt a thrill of joy. 

But there came a time when the young man looked back upon thesecontortions with contempt. He believed then that he had imagined hispain. This came about when the redoubtable Stimson marched forward toparticipate. 

"This has got to stop, " Stimson had said to himself, as he stood andwatched them. They had grown careless of the light world that clatteredabout them; they were become so engrossed in their personal drama thatthe language of their eyes was almost as obvious as gestures. AndStimson, through his keenness, his wonderful, infallible penetration, suddenly came into possession of these obvious facts. "Well, of all thenerves, " he said, regarding with a new interest the young man upon theperch. 

He was a resolute man. He never hesitated to grapple with a crisis. Hedecided to overturn everything at once, for, although small, he was veryfierce and impetuous. He resolved to crush this dreaming. 

He strode over to the silvered netting. "Say, you want to quit youreverlasting grinning at that idiot, " he said, grimly. 

The girl cast down her eyes and made a little heap of quarters into astack. She was unable to withstand the terrible scrutiny of her smalland fierce father. 

Stimson turned from his daughter and went to a spot beneath theplatform. He fixed his eyes upon the young man and said--

"I've been speakin' to Lizzie. You better attend strictly to your ownbusiness or there'll be a new man here next week. " It was as if he hadblazed away with a shotgun. The young man reeled upon his perch. At lasthe in a measure regained his composure and managed to stammer: "A--allright, sir. " He knew that denials would be futile with the terribleStimson. He agitatedly began to rattle the rings in the basket, andpretend that he was obliged to count them or inspect them in some way. He, too, was unable to face the great Stimson. 

For a moment, Stimson stood in fine satisfaction and gloated over theeffect of his threat. 

"I've fixed them, " he said complacently, and went out to smoke a cigarand revel in himself. Through his mind went the proud reflection thatpeople who came in contact with his granite will usually ended in quickand abject submission. 

II

One evening, a week after Stimson had indulged in the proud reflectionthat people who came in contact with his granite will usually ended inquick and abject submission, a young feminine friend of the girl behindthe silvered netting came to her there and asked her to walk on thebeach after "Stimson's Mammoth Merry-Go-Round" was closed for the night. The girl assented with a nod. 

The young man upon the perch holding the rings saw this nod and judgedits meaning. Into his mind came an idea of defeating the watchfulness ofthe redoubtable Stimson. When the Merry-Go-Round was closed and the twogirls started for the beach, he wandered off aimlessly in anotherdirection, but he kept them in view, and as soon as he was assured thathe had escaped the vigilance of Stimson, he followed them. 

The electric lights on the beach made a broad band of tremoring light, extending parallel to the sea, and upon the wide walk there slowlyparaded a great crowd, intermingling, intertwining, sometimes colliding. In the darkness stretched the vast purple expanse of the ocean, and thedeep indigo sky above was peopled with yellow stars. Occasionally outupon the water a whirling mass of froth suddenly flashed into view, likea great ghostly robe appearing, and then vanished, leaving the sea inits darkness, whence came those bass tones of the water's unknownemotion. A wind, cool, reminiscent of the wave wastes, made the womenhold their wraps about their throats, and caused the men to grip therims of their straw hats. It carried the noise of the band in thepavilion in gusts. Sometimes people unable to hear the music glanced upat the pavilion and were reassured upon beholding the distant leaderstill gesticulating and bobbing, and the other members of the band withtheir lips glued to their instruments. High in the sky soared anunassuming moon, faintly silver. 

For a time the young man was afraid to approach the two girls; hefollowed them at a distance and called himself a coward. At last, however, he saw them stop on the outer edge of the crowd and standsilently listening to the voices of the sea. When he came to where theystood, he was trembling in his agitation. They had not seen him. 

"Lizzie, " he began. "I----"

The girl wheeled instantly and put her hand to her throat. 

"Oh, Frank, how you frightened me, " she said--inevitably. 

"Well, you know, I--I----" he stuttered. 

But the other girl was one of those beings who are born to attend attragedies. She had for love a reverence, an admiration that was greaterthe more that she contemplated the fact that she knew nothing of it. This couple, with their emotions, awed her and made her humbly wish thatshe might be destined to be of some service to them. She was veryhomely. 

When the young man faltered before them, she, in her sympathy, actuallyover-estimated the crisis, and felt that he might fall dying at theirfeet. Shyly, but with courage, she marched to the rescue. 

"Won't you come and walk on the beach with us?" she said. 

The young man gave her a glance of deep gratitude which was not withoutthe patronage which a man in his condition naturally feels for one whopities it. The three walked on. 

Finally, the being who was born to attend at this tragedy said that shewished to sit down and gaze at the sea, alone. 

They politely urged her to walk on with them, but she was obstinate. Shewished to gaze at the sea, alone. The young man swore to himself that hewould be her friend until he died. 

And so the two young lovers went on without her. They turned once tolook at her. 

"Jennie's awful nice, " said the girl. 

"You bet she is, " replied the young man, ardently. 

They were silent for a little time. 

At last the girl said--

"You were angry at me yesterday. "

"No, I wasn't. "

"Yes, you were, too. You wouldn't look at me once all day. "

"No, I wasn't angry. I was only putting on. "

Though she had, of course, known it, this confession seemed to make hervery indignant. She flashed a resentful glance at him. 

"Oh, you were, indeed?" she said with a great air. 

For a few minutes she was so haughty with him that he loved her tomadness. And directly this poem, which stuck at his lips, came forthlamely in fragments. 

When they walked back toward the other girl and saw the patience of herattitude, their hearts swelled in a patronizing and secondary tendernessfor her. 

They were very happy. If they had been miserable they would have chargedthis fairy scene of the night with a criminal heartlessness; but as theywere joyous, they vaguely wondered how the purple sea, the yellow stars, the changing crowds under the electric lights could be so phlegmatic andstolid. 

They walked home by the lakeside way, and out upon the water those gaypaper lanterns, flashing, fleeting, and careering, sang to them, sang achorus of red and violet, and green and gold; a song of mystic bands ofthe future. 

One day, when business paused during a dull sultry afternoon, Stimsonwent up town. Upon his return, he found that the popcorn man, from hisstand over in a corner, was keeping an eye upon the cashier's cage, andthat nobody at all was attending to the wooden arm and the iron rings. He strode forward like a sergeant of grenadiers. 

"Where in thunder is Lizzie?" he demanded, a cloud of rage in his eyes. 

The popcorn man, although associated long with Stimson, had never gotover being dazed. 

"They've--they've--gone round to th'--th'--house, " he said withdifficulty, as if he had just been stunned. 

"Whose house?" snapped Stimson. 

"Your--your house, I s'pose, " said the popcorn man. 

Stimson marched round to his home. Kingly denunciations surged, alreadyformulated, to the tip of his tongue, and he bided the moment when hisanger could fall upon the heads of that pair of children. He found hiswife convulsive and in tears. 

"Where's Lizzie?"

And then she burst forth--"Oh--John--John--they've run away, I know theyhave. They drove by here not three minutes ago. They must have done iton purpose to bid me good-bye, for Lizzie waved her hand sadlike; andthen, before I could get out to ask where they were going or what, Frankwhipped up the horse. "

Stimson gave vent to a dreadful roar. 

"Get my revolver--get a hack--get my revolver, do you hear--what thedevil--" His voice became incoherent. 

He had always ordered his wife about as if she were a battalion ofinfantry, and despite her misery, the training of years forced her tospring mechanically to obey; but suddenly she turned to him with ashrill appeal. 

"Oh, John--not--the--revolver. "

"Confound it, let go of me!" he roared again, and shook her from him. 

He ran hatless upon the street. There were a multitude of hacks at thesummer resort, but it was ages to him before he could find one. Then hecharged it like a bull. 

"Uptown!" he yelled, as he tumbled into the rear seat. 

The hackman thought of severed arteries. His galloping horse distanced alarge number of citizens who had been running to find what caused suchcontortions by the little hatless man. 

It chanced as the bouncing hack went along near the lake, Stimson gazedacross the calm grey expanse and recognized a color in a bonnet and apose of a head. A buggy was traveling along a highway that led toSorington. Stimson bellowed--"There--there--there they are--in thatbuggy. "

The hackman became inspired with the full knowledge of the situation. Hestruck a delirious blow with the whip. His mouth expanded in a grin ofexcitement and joy. It came to pass that this old vehicle, with itsdrowsy horse and its dusty-eyed and tranquil driver, seemed suddenly toawaken, to become animated and fleet. The horse ceased to ruminate onhis state, his air of reflection vanished. He became intent upon hisaged legs and spread them in quaint and ridiculous devices for speed. The driver, his eyes shining, sat critically in his seat. He watchedeach motion of this rattling machine down before him. He resembled anengineer. He used the whip with judgment and deliberation as theengineer would have used coal or oil. The horse clacked swiftly upon themacadam, the wheels hummed, the body of the vehicle wheezed and groaned. 

Stimson, in the rear seat, was erect in that impassive attitude thatcomes sometimes to the furious man when he is obliged to leave thebattle to others. Frequently, however, the tempest in his breast came tohis face and he howled--

"Go it--go it--you're gaining; pound 'im! Thump the life out of 'im; hit'im hard, you fool!" His hand grasped the rod that supported thecarriage top, and it was clenched so that the nails were faintly blue. 

Ahead, that other carriage had been flying with speed, as fromrealization of the menace in the rear. It bowled away rapidly, drawn bythe eager spirit of a young and modern horse. Stimson could see thebuggy-top bobbing, bobbing. That little pane, like an eye, was aderision to him. Once he leaned forward and bawled angry sentences. Hebegan to feel impotent; his whole expedition was a tottering of an oldman upon a trail of birds. A sense of age made him choke again withwrath. That other vehicle, that was youth, with youth's pace; it wasswift-flying with the hope of dreams. He began to comprehend those twochildren ahead of him, and he knew a sudden and strange awe, because heunderstood the power of their young blood, the power to fly stronglyinto the future and feel and hope again, even at that time when hisbones must be laid in the earth. The dust rose easily from the hot roadand stifled the nostrils of Stimson. 

The highway vanished far away in a point with a suggestion ofintolerable length. The other vehicle was becoming so small that Stimsoncould no longer see the derisive eye. 

At last the hackman drew rein to his horse and turned to look atStimson. 

"No use, I guess, " he said. 

Stimson made a gesture of acquiescence, rage, despair. As the hackmanturned his dripping horse about, Stimson sank back with the astonishmentand grief of a man who has been defied by the universe. He had been in agreat perspiration, and now his bald head felt cool and uncomfortable. He put up his hand with a sudden recollection that he had forgotten hishat. 

At last he made a gesture. It meant that at any rate he was notresponsible. 

A TENT IN AGONY

A SULLIVAN COUNTY TALE

Four men once came to a wet place in the roadless forest to fish. Theypitched their tent fair upon the brow of a pine-clothed ridge of rivenrocks whence a bowlder could be made to crash through the brush andwhirl past the trees to the lake below. On fragrant hemlock boughs theyslept the sleep of unsuccessful fishermen, for upon the lake alternatelythe sun made them lazy and the rain made them wet. Finally they ate thelast bit of bacon and smoked and burned the last fearful and wonderfulhoecake. 

Immediately a little man volunteered to stay and hold the camp while theremaining three should go the Sullivan county miles to a farmhouse forsupplies. They gazed at him dismally. "There's only one of you--thedevil make a twin, " they said in parting malediction, and disappeareddown the hill in the known direction of a distant cabin. When it camenight and the hemlocks began to sob they had not returned. The littleman sat close to his companion, the campfire, and encouraged it withlogs. He puffed fiercely at a heavy built brier, and regarded a thousandshadows which were about to assault him. Suddenly he heard the approachof the unknown, crackling the twigs and rustling the dead leaves. Thelittle man arose slowly to his feet, his clothes refused to fit hisback, his pipe dropped from his mouth, his knees smote each other. "Hah!" he bellowed hoarsely in menace. A growl replied and a bear pacedinto the light of the fire. The little man supported himself upon asapling and regarded his visitor. 

The bear was evidently a veteran and a fighter, for the black of hiscoat had become tawny with age. There was confidence in his gait andarrogance in his small, twinkling eye. He rolled back his lips anddisclosed his white teeth. The fire magnified the red of his mouth. Thelittle man had never before confronted the terrible and he could notwrest it from his breast. "Hah!" he roared. The bear interpreted this asthe challenge of a gladiator. He approached warily. As he came near, theboots of fear were suddenly upon the little man's feet. He cried out andthen darted around the campfire. "Ho!" said the bear to himself, "thisthing won't fight--it runs. Well, suppose I catch it. " So upon hisfeatures there fixed the animal look of going--somewhere. He startedintensely around the campfire. The little man shrieked and ranfuriously. Twice around they went. 

The hand of heaven sometimes falls heavily upon the righteous. The beargained. 

In desperation the little man flew into the tent. The bear stopped andsniffed at the entrance. He scented the scent of many men. Finally heventured in. 

The little man crouched in a distant corner. The bear advanced, creeping, his blood burning, his hair erect, his jowls dripping. Thelittle man yelled and rustled clumsily under the flap at the end of thetent. The bear snarled awfully and made a jump and a grab at hisdisappearing game. The little man, now without the tent, felt atremendous paw grab his coat tails. He squirmed and wriggled out of hiscoat like a schoolboy in the hands of an avenger. The bear bowledtriumphantly and jerked the coat into the tent and took two bites, apunch and a hug before he, discovered his man was not in it. Then hegrew not very angry, for a bear on a spree is not a black-haired pirate. He is merely a hoodlum. He lay down on his back, took the coat on hisfour paws and began to play uproariously with it. The most appalling, blood-curdling whoops and yells came to where the little man was cryingin a treetop and froze his blood. He moaned a little speech meant for aprayer and clung convulsively to the bending branches. He gazed withtearful wistfulness at where his comrade, the campfire, was giving dyingflickers and crackles. Finally, there was a roar from the tent whicheclipsed all roars; a snarl which it seemed would shake the stolidsilence of the mountain and cause it to shrug its granite shoulders. Thelittle man quaked and shrivelled to a grip and a pair of eyes. In theglow of the embers he saw the white tent quiver and fall with a crash. The bear's merry play had disturbed the center pole and brought a chaosof canvas upon his head. 

Now the little man became the witness of a mighty scene. The tent beganto flounder. It took flopping strides in the direction of the lake. Marvellous sounds came from within--rips and tears, and great groans andpants. The little man went into giggling hysterics. 

The entangled monster failed to extricate himself before he had wallopedthe tent frenziedly to the edge of the mountain. So it came to pass thatthree men, clambering up the hill with bundles and baskets, saw theirtent approaching. It seemed to them like a white-robed phantom pursuedby hornets. Its moans riffled the hemlock twigs. 

The three men dropped their bundles and scurried to one side, their eyesgleaming with fear. The canvas avalanche swept past them. They leaned, faint and dumb, against trees and listened, their blood stagnant. Belowthem it struck the base of a great pine tree, where it writhed andstruggled. The three watched its convolutions a moment and then startedterrifically for the top of the hill. As they disappeared, the bear cutloose with a mighty effort. He cast one dishevelled and agonized look atthe white thing, and then started wildly for the inner recesses of theforest. 

The three fear-stricken individuals ran to the rebuilt fire. The littleman reposed by it calmly smoking. They sprang at him and overwhelmed himwith interrogations. He contemplated darkness and took a long, pompouspuff. "There's only one of me--and the devil made a twin, " he said. 

FOUR MEN IN A CAVE

LIKEWISE FOUR QUEENS, AND A SULLIVAN COUNTY HERMIT

The moon rested for a moment on the top of a tall pine on a hill. 

The little man was standing in front of the campfire making orations tohis companions. 

"We can tell a great tale when we get back to the city if we investigatethis thing, " said he, in conclusion. 

They were won. 

The little man was determined to explore a cave, because its black mouthhad gaped at him. The four men took a lighted pine-knot and clamberedover boulders down a hill. In a thicket on the mountainside lay a littletilted hole. At its side they halted. 

"Well?" said the little man. 

They fought for last place and the little man was overwhelmed. He triedto struggle from under by crying that if the fat, pudgy man came after, he would be corked. But he finally administered a cursing over hisshoulder and crawled into the hole. His companions gingerly followed. 

A passage, the floor of damp clay and pebbles, the walls slimy, green-mossed, and dripping, sloped downward. In the cave atmosphere thetorches became studies in red blaze and black smoke. 

"Ho!" cried the little man, stifled and bedraggled, "let's go back. " Hiscompanions were not brave. They were last. The next one to the littleman pushed him on, so the little man said sulphurous words andcautiously continued his crawl. 

Things that hung seemed to be on the wet, uneven ceiling, ready to dropupon the men's bare necks. Under their hands the clammy floor seemedalive and writhing. When the little man endeavored to stand erect theceiling forced him down. Knobs and points came out and punched him. Hisclothes were wet and mud-covered, and his eyes, nearly blinded by smoke, tried to pierce the darkness always before his torch. 

"Oh, I say, you fellows, let's go back, " cried he. At that moment hecaught the gleam of trembling light in the blurred shadows before him. 

"Ho!" he said, "here's another way out. "

The passage turned abruptly. The little man put one hand around thecorner, but it touched nothing. He investigated and discovered that thelittle corridor took a sudden dip down a hill. At the bottom shone ayellow light. 

The little man wriggled painfully about, and descended feet in advance. The others followed his plan. All picked their way with anxious care. The traitorous rocks rolled from beneath the little man's feet androared thunderously below him, lesser stone loosened by the men abovehim, hit him on the back. He gained seemingly firm foothold, and, turning halfway about, swore redly at his companions for dolts andcareless fools. The pudgy man sat, puffing and perspiring, high in therear of the procession. The fumes and smoke from four pine-knots were inhis blood. Cinders and sparks lay thick in his eyes and hair. The pauseof the little man angered him. 

"Go on, you fool!" he shouted. "Poor, painted man, you are afraid. "

"Ho!" said the little man. "Come down here and go on yourself, imbecile!"

The pudgy man vibrated with passion. He leaned downward. "Idiot--"

He was interrupted by one of his feet which flew out and crashed intothe man in front of and below. It is not well to quarrel upon a slipperyincline, when the unknown is below. The fat man, having lost the supportof one pillar-like foot, lurched forward. His body smote the next man, who hurtled into the next man. Then they all fell upon the cursinglittle man. 

They slid in a body down over the slippery, slimy floor of the passage. The stone avenue must have wibble-wobbled with the rush of this ball oftangled men and strangled cries. The torches went out with the combinedassault upon the little man. The adventurers whirled to the unknown indarkness. The little man felt that he was pitching to death, but even inhis convolutions he bit and scratched at his companions, for he wassatisfied that it was their fault. The swirling mass went some twentyfeet, and lit upon a level, dry place in a strong, yellow light ofcandles. It dissolved and became eyes. 

The four men lay in a heap upon the floor of a grey chamber. A smallfire smoldered in the corner, the smoke disappearing in a crack. Inanother corner was a bed of faded hemlock boughs and two blankets. Cooking utensils and clothes lay about, with boxes and a barrel. 

Of these things the four men took small cognisance. The pudgy man didnot curse the little man, nor did the little man swear, in the abstract. Eight widened eyes were fixed upon the center of the room of rocks. 

A great, gray stone, cut squarely, like an altar, sat in the middle ofthe floor. Over it burned three candles, in swaying tin cups hung fromthe ceiling. Before it, with what seemed to be a small volume clasped inhis yellow fingers, stood a man. He was an infinitely sallow person inthe brown-checked shirt of the ploughs and cows. The rest of his apparelwas boots. A long grey beard dangled from his chin. He fixed glinting, fiery eyes upon the heap of men, and remained motionless. Fascinated, their tongues cleaving, their blood cold, they arose to their feet. Thegleaming glance of the recluse swept slowly over the group until itfound the face of the little man. There it stayed and burned. 

The little man shrivelled and crumpled as the dried leaf under theglass. 

Finally, the recluse slowly, deeply spoke. It was a true voice from acave, cold, solemn, and damp. 

"It's your ante, " he said. 

"What?" said the little man. 

The hermit tilted his beard and laughed a laugh that was either thechatter of a banshee in a storm or the rattle of pebbles in a tin box. His visitors' flesh seemed ready to drop from their bones. 

They huddled together and cast fearful eyes over their shoulders. Theywhispered. 

"A vampire!" said one. 

"A ghoul!" said another. 

"A Druid before the sacrifice, " murmured another. 

"The shade of an Aztec witch doctor, " said the little man. 

As they looked, the inscrutable face underwent a change. It became alivid background for his eyes, which blazed at the little man likeimpassioned carbuncles. His voice arose to a howl of ferocity. "It'syour ante!" With a panther-like motion he drew a long, thin knife andadvanced, stooping. Two cadaverous hounds came from nowhere, and, scowling and growling, made desperate feints at the little man's legs. His quaking companions pushed him forward. 

Tremblingly he put his hand to his pocket. 

"How much?" he said, with a shivering look at the knife that glittered. 

The carbuncles faded. 

"Three dollars, " said the hermit, in sepulchral tones which rang againstthe walls and among the passages, awakening long-dead spirits withvoices. The shaking little man took a roll of bills from a pocket andplaced "three ones" upon the altar-like stone. The recluse looked at thelittle volume with reverence in his eyes. It was a pack of playingcards. 

Under the three swinging candles, upon the altar-like stone, the greybeard and the agonized little man played at poker. The three other mencrouched in a corner, and stared with eyes that gleamed with terror. Before them sat the cadaverous hounds licking their red lips. Thecandles burned low, and began to flicker. The fire in the cornerexpired. 

Finally, the game came to a point where the little man laid down hishand and quavered: "I can't call you this time, sir. I'm dead broke. "

"What?" shrieked the recluse. "Not call me! Villain Dastard! Cur! I havefour queens, miscreant. " His voice grew so mighty that it could not fithis throat. He choked wrestling with his lungs for a moment. Then thepower of his body was concentrated in a word: "Go!"

He pointed a quivering, yellow finger at a wide crack in the rock. Thelittle man threw himself at it with a howl. His erstwhile frozencompanions felt their blood throb again. With great bounds they plungedafter the little man. A minute of scrambling, falling, and pushingbrought them to open air. They climbed the distance to their camp infurious springs. 

The sky in the east was a lurid yellow. In the west the footprints ofdeparting night lay on the pine trees. In front of their replenishedcamp fire sat John Willerkins, the guide. 

"Hello!" he shouted at their approach. "Be you fellers ready to go deerhuntin'?"

Without replying, they stopped and debated among themselves in whispers. 

Finally, the pudgy man came forward. 

"John, " he inquired, "do you know anything peculiar about this cavebelow here?"

"Yes, " said Willerkins at once; "Tom Gardner. "

"What?" said the pudgy man. 

"Tom Gardner. "

"How's that?"

"Well, you see, " said Willerkins slowly, as he took dignified pulls athis pipe, "Tom Gardner was once a fambly man, who lived in these hereparts on a nice leetle farm. He uster go away to the city orften, andone time he got a-gamblin' in one of them there dens. He went ter thedickens right quick then. At last he kum home one time and tol' hisfolks he had up and sold the farm and all he had in the worl'. Hisleetle wife she died then. Tom he went crazy, and soon after--"

The narrative was interrupted by the little man, who became possessed ofdevils. 

"I wouldn't give a cuss if he had left me 'nough money to get home onthe doggoned, grey-haired red pirate, " he shrilled, in a seethingsentence. The pudgy man gazed at the little man calmly and sneeringly. 

"Oh, well, " he said, "we can tell a great tale when we get back to thecity after having investigated this thing. "

"Go to the devil, " replied the little man. 

THE MESMERIC MOUNTAIN

A TALE OF SULLIVAN COUNTY

On the brow of a pine-plumed hillock there sat a little man with hisback against a tree. A venerable pipe hung from his mouth, and smoke-wreaths curled slowly skyward, he was muttering to himself with his eyesfixed on an irregular black opening in the green wall of forest at thefoot of the hill. Two vague wagon ruts led into the shadows. The littleman took his pipe in his hands and addressed the listening pines. 

"I wonder what the devil it leads to, " said he. 

A grey, fat rabbit came lazily from a thicket and sat in the opening. Softly stroking his stomach with his paw, he looked at the little man ina thoughtful manner. The little man threw a stone, and the rabbitblinked and ran through an opening. Green, shadowy portals seemed toclose behind him. 

The little man started. "He's gone down that roadway, " he said, withecstatic mystery to the pines. He sat a long time and contemplated thedoor to the forest. Finally, he arose, and awakening his limbs, startedaway. But he stopped and looked back. 

"I can't imagine what it leads to, " muttered he. He trudged over thebrown mats of pine needles, to where, in a fringe of laurel, a tent waspitched, and merry flames caroused about some logs. A pudgy man wasfuming over a collection of tin dishes. He came forward and waved aplate furiously in the little man's face. 

"I've washed the dishes for three days. What do you think I am--"

He ended a red oration with a roar: "Damned if I do it any more. "

The little man gazed dim-eyed away. "I've been wonderin' what it leadsto. "

"What?"

"That road out yonder. I've been wonderin' what it leads to. Maybe, somediscovery or something, " said the little man. 

The pudgy man laughed. "You're an idiot. It leads to ol' Jim Boyd's overon the Lumberland Pike. "

"Ho!" said the little man, "I don't believe that. "

The pudgy man swore. "Fool, what does it lead to, then?"

"I don't know just what, but I'm sure it leads to something great orsomething. It looks like it. "

While the pudgy man was cursing, two more men came from obscurity withfish dangling from birch twigs. The pudgy man made an obviouslyherculean struggle and a meal was prepared. As he was drinking his cupof coffee, he suddenly spilled it and swore. The little man waswandering off. 

"He's gone to look at that hole, " cried the pudgy man. 

The little man went to the edge of the pine-plumed hillock, and, sittingdown, began to make smoke and regard the door to the forest. There wasstillness for an hour. Compact clouds hung unstirred in the sky. Thepines stood motionless, and pondering. 

Suddenly the little man slapped his knees and bit his tongue. He stoodup and determinedly filled his pipe, rolling his eye over the bowl tothe doorway. Keeping his eyes fixed he slid dangerously to the foot ofthe hillock and walked down the wagon ruts. A moment later he passedfrom the noise of the sunshine to the gloom of the woods. 

The green portals closed, shutting out live things. The little mantrudged on alone. 

Tall tangled grass grew in the roadway, and the trees bended obstructingbranches. The little man followed on over pine-clothed ridges and downthrough water-soaked swales. His shoes were cut by rocks of themountains, and he sank ankle-deep in mud and moss of swamps. A curvejust ahead lured him miles. 

Finally, as he wended the side of a ridge, the road disappeared frombeneath his feet. He battled with hordes of ignorant bushes on his wayto knolls and solitary trees which invited him. Once he came to a tall, bearded pine. He climbed it, and perceived in the distance a peak. Heuttered an ejaculation and fell out. 

He scrambled to his feet, and said: "That's Jones's Mountain, I guess. It's about six miles from our camp as the crow flies. "

He changed his course away from the mountain, and attacked the bushesagain. He climbed over great logs, golden-brown in decay, and wasopposed by thickets of dark-green laurel. A brook slid through the oozeof a swamp, cedars and hemlocks hung their spray to the edges of pools. 

The little man began to stagger in his walk. After a time he stopped andmopped his brow. 

"My legs are about to shrivel up and drop off, " he said.... "Still if Ikeep on in this direction, I am safe to strike the Lumberland Pikebefore sundown. "

He dived at a clump of tag-alders, and emerging, confronted Jones'sMountain. 

The wanderer sat down in a clear space and fixed his eyes on the summit. His mouth opened widely, and his body swayed at times. The little manand the peak stared in silence. 

A lazy lake lay asleep near the foot of the mountain. In its bed ofwater-grass some frogs leered at the sky and crooned. The sun sank inred silence, and the shadows of the pines grew formidable. The expectanthush of evening, as if some thing were going to sing a hymn, fell uponthe peak and the little man. 

A leaping pickerel off on the water created a silver circle that waslost in black shadows. The little man shook himself and started to hisfeet, crying: "For the love of Mike, there's eyes in this mountain! Ifeel 'em! Eyes!"

He fell on his face. 

When he looked again, he immediately sprang erect and ran. 

"It's comin'!"

The mountain was approaching. 

The little man scurried, sobbing through the thick growth. He felt hisbrain turning to water. He vanquished brambles with mighty bounds. 

But after a time he came again to the foot of the mountain. 

"God!" he howled, "it's been follerin' me. " He grovelled. 

Casting his eyes upward made circles swirl in his blood. 

"I'm shackled I guess, " he moaned. As he felt the heel of the mountainabout to crush his head, he sprang again to his feet. He grasped ahandful of small stones and hurled them. 

"Damn you, " he shrieked loudly. The pebbles rang against the face of themountain. 

The little man then made an attack. He climbed with hands and feetwildly. Brambles forced him back and stones slid from beneath his feet. The peak swayed and tottered, and was ever about to smite with a granitearm. The summit was a blaze of red wrath. 

But the little man at last reached the top. Immediately he swaggeredwith valor to the edge of the cliff. His hands were scornfully in hispockets. 

He gazed at the western horizon, edged sharply against a yellow sky. "Ho!" he said. "There's Boyd's house and the Lumberland Pike. "

The mountain under his feet was motionless. 

THE SNAKE

Where the path wended across the ridge, the bushes of huckleberry andsweet fern swarmed at it in two curling waves until it was a merewinding line traced through a tangle. There was no interference byclouds, and as the rays of the sun fell full upon the ridge, they calledinto voice innumerable insects which chanted the heat of the summer dayin steady, throbbing, unending chorus. 

A man and a dog came from the laurel thickets of the valley where thewhite brook brawled with the rocks. They followed the deep line of thepath across the ridges. The dog--a large lemon and white setter--walked, tranquilly meditative, at his master's heels. 

Suddenly from some unknown and yet near place in advance there came adry, shrill whistling rattle that smote motion instantly from the limbsof the man and the dog. Like the fingers of a sudden death, this soundseemed to touch the man at the nape of the neck, at the top of thespine, and change him, as swift as thought, to a statue of listeninghorror, surprise, rage. The dog, too--the same icy hand was laid uponhim, and he stood crouched and quivering, his jaw dropping, the froth ofterror upon his lips, the light of hatred in his eyes. 

Slowly the man moved his hands toward the bushes, but his glance did notturn from the place made sinister by the warning rattle. His fingers, unguided, sought for a stick of weight and strength. Presently theyclosed about one that seemed adequate, and holding this weapon poisedbefore him the man moved slowly forward, glaring. The dog with hisnervous nostrils fairly fluttering moved warily, one foot at a time, after his master. 

But when the man came upon the snake, his body underwent a shock as iffrom a revelation, as if after all he had been ambushed. With a blanchedface, he sprang forward and his breath came in strained gasps, his chestheaving as if he were in the performance of an extraordinary musculartrial. His arm with the stick made a spasmodic, defensive gesture. 

The snake had apparently been crossing the path in some mystic travelwhen to his sense there came the knowledge of the coming of his foes. The dull vibration perhaps informed him, and he flung his body to facethe danger. He had no knowledge of paths; he had no wit to tell him toslink noiselessly into the bushes. He knew that his implacable enemieswere approaching; no doubt they were seeking him, hunting him. And so hecried his cry, an incredibly swift jangle of tiny bells, as burdenedwith pathos as the hammering upon quaint cymbals by the Chinese at war--for, indeed, it was usually his death-music. 

"Beware! Beware! Beware!"

The man and the snake confronted each other. In the man's eyes werehatred and fear. In the snake's eyes were hatred and fear. These enemiesmaneuvered, each preparing to kill. It was to be a battle without mercy. Neither knew of mercy for such a situation. In the man was all the wildstrength of the terror of his ancestors, of his race, of his kind. Adeadly repulsion had been handed from man to man through long dimcenturies. This was another detail of a war that had begun evidentlywhen first there were men and snakes. Individuals who do not participatein this strife incur the investigations of scientists. Once there was aman and a snake who were friends, and at the end, the man lay dead withthe marks of the snake's caress just over his East Indian heart. In theformation of devices, hideous and horrible, Nature reached her supremepoint in the making of the snake, so that priests who really paint hellwell fill it with snakes instead of fire. The curving forms, thesescintillant coloring create at once, upon sight, more relentlessanimosities than do shake barbaric tribes. To be born a snake is to bethrust into a place a-swarm with formidable foes. To gain anappreciation of it, view hell as pictured by priests who are reallyskilful. 

As for this snake in the pathway, there was a double curve some inchesback of its head, which, merely by the potency of its lines, made theman feel with tenfold eloquence the touch of the death-fingers at thenape of his neck. The reptile's head was waving slowly from side to sideand its hot eyes flashed like little murder-lights. Always in the airwas the dry, shrill whistling of the rattles. 

"Beware! Beware! Beware!"

The man made a preliminary feint with his stick. Instantly the snake'sheavy head and neck were bended back on the double curve and instantlythe snake's body shot forward in a low, strait, hard spring. The manjumped with a convulsive chatter and swung his stick. The blind, sweeping blow fell upon the snake's head and hurled him so that steel-colored plates were for a moment uppermost. But he rallied swiftly, agilely, and again the head and neck bended back to the double curve, and the steaming, wide-open mouth made its desperate effort to reach itsenemy. This attack, it could be seen, was despairing, but it wasnevertheless impetuous, gallant, ferocious, of the same quality as thecharge of the lone chief when the walls of white faces close upon him inthe mountains. The stick swung unerringly again, and the snake, mutilated, torn, whirled himself into the last coil. 

And now the man went sheer raving mad from the emotions of hisforefathers and from his own. He came to close quarters. He gripped thestick with his two hands and made it speed like a flail. The snake, tumbling in the anguish of final despair, fought, bit, flung itself uponthis stick which was taking his life. 

At the end, the man clutched his stick and stood watching in silence. The dog came slowly and with infinite caution stretched his noseforward, sniffing. The hair upon his neck and back moved and ruffled asif a sharp wind was blowing, the last muscular quivers of the snake werecausing the rattles to still sound their treble cry, the shrill, ringingwar chant and hymn of the grave of the thing that faces foes at oncecountless, implacable, and superior. 

"Well, Rover, " said the man, turning to the dog with a grin of victory, "we'll carry Mr. Snake home to show the girls. "

His hands still trembled from the strain of the encounter, but he priedwith his stick under the body of the snake and hoisted the limp thingupon it. He resumed his march along the path, and the dog walkedtranquilly meditative, at his master's heels. 

LONDON IMPRESSIONS

CHAPTER I

London at first consisted of a porter with the most charming manners inthe world, and a cabman with a supreme intelligence, both observing myprofound ignorance without contempt or humor of any kind observable intheir manners. It was in a great resounding vault of a place where therewere many people who had come home, and I was displeased because theyknew the detail of the business, whereas I was confronting theinscrutable. This made them appear very stony-hearted to the sufferingsof one of whose existence, to be sure, they were entirely unaware, and Iremember taking great pleasure in disliking them heartily for it. I wasin an agony of mind over my baggage, or my luggage, or my--perhaps it iswell to shy around this terrible international question; but I rememberthat when I was a lad I was told that there was a whole nation that saidluggage instead of baggage, and my boyish mind was filled at the timewith incredulity and scorn. In the present case it was a thing that Iunderstood to involve the most hideous confessions of imbecility on mypart, because I had evidently to go out to some obscure point and espyit and claim it, and take trouble for it; and I would rather have had mypockets filled with bread and cheese, and had no baggage at all. 

Mind you, this was not at all a homage that I was paying to London. Iwas paying homage to a new game. A man properly lazy does not like newexperiences until they become old ones. Moreover, I have been taughtthat a man, any man, who has a thousand times more points of informationon a certain thing than I have will bully me because of it, and pour hisadvantages upon my bowed head until I am drenched with his superiority. It was in my education to concede some license of the kind in this case, but the holy father of a porter and the saintly cabman occupied themiddle distance imperturbably, and did not come down from their hills toclout me with knowledge. From this fact I experienced a criminalelation. I lost view of the idea that if I had been brow-beaten byporters and cabmen from one end of the United States to the other end Ishould warmly like it, because in numbers they are superior to me, andcollectively they can have a great deal of fun out of a matter thatwould merely afford me the glee of the latent butcher. 

This London, composed of a porter and a cabman, stood to me subtly as abenefactor. I had scanned the drama, and found that I did not believethat the mood of the men emanated unduly from the feature that there wasprobably more shillings to the square inch of me than there wereshillings to the square inch of them. Nor yet was it any manner ofpalpable warm-heartedness or other natural virtue. But it was a perfectartificial virtue; it was drill, plain, simple drill. And now was I gladof their drilling, and vividly approved of it, because I saw that it wasgood for me. Whether it was good or bad for the porter and the cabman Icould not know; but that point, mark you, came within the pale of myrespectable rumination. 

I am sure that it would have been more correct for me to have alightedupon St. Paul's and described no emotion until I was overcome by theThames Embankment and the Houses of Parliament. But as a matter of factI did not see them for some days, and at this time they did not concernme at all. I was born in London at a railroad station, and my new visionencompassed a porter and a cabman. They deeply absorbed me in newphenomena, and I did not then care to see the Thames Embankment nor theHouses of Parliament. I considered the porter and the cabman to be moreimportant. 

CHAPTER II

The cab finally rolled out of the gas-lit vault into a vast expanse ofgloom. This changed to the shadowy lines of a street that was like apassage in a monstrous cave. The lamps winking here and there resembledthe little gleams at the caps of the miners. They were not verycompetent illuminations at best, merely being little pale flares of gasthat at their most heroic periods could only display one fact concerningthis tunnel--the fact of general direction. But at any rate I shouldhave liked to have observed the dejection of a search-light if it hadbeen called upon to attempt to bore through this atmosphere. In it eachman sat in his own little cylinder of vision, so to speak. It was not sosmall as a sentry-box nor so large as a circus tent, but the walls wereopaque, and what was passing beyond the dimensions of his cylinder noman knew. 

It was evident that the paving was very greasy, but all the cabs thatpassed through my cylinder were going at a round trot, while the wheels, shod in rubber, whirred merely like bicycles. The hoofs of the animalsthemselves did not make that wild clatter which I knew so well. New Yorkin fact, roars always like ten thousand devils. We have ingenuous andsimple ways of making a din in New York that cause the stranger toconclude that each citizen is obliged by statute to provide himself witha pair of cymbals and a drum. If anything by chance can be turned into anoise it is promptly turned. We are engaged in the development of ahuman creature with very large, sturdy, and doubly, fortified ears. 

It was not too late at night, but this London moved with the decorum andcaution of an undertaker. There was a silence, and yet there was nosilence. There was a low drone, perhaps a humming contributed inevitablyby closely-gathered thousands, and yet on second thoughts it was to mesilence. I had perched my ears for the note of London, the sound madesimply by the existence of five million people in one place. I hadimagined something deep, vastly deep, a bass from a mythical organ, butfound as far as I was concerned, only a silence. 

New York in numbers is a mighty city, and all day and all night it criesits loud, fierce, aspiring cry, a noise of men beating upon barrels, anoise of men beating upon tin, a terrific racket that assails the abjectskies. No one of us seemed to question this row as a certain consequenceof three or four million people living together and scuffling for coin, with more agility, perhaps, but otherwise in the usual way. However, after this easy silence of London, which in numbers is a mightier city, I began to feel that there was a seduction in this idea of necessity. Our noise in New York was not a consequence of our rapidity at all. Itwas a consequence of our bad pavements. 

Any brigade of artillery in Europe that would love to assemble itsbatteries, and then go on a gallop over the land, thundering andthundering, would give up the idea of thunder at once if it could hearTim Mulligan drive a beer wagon along one of the side streets of cobbledNew York. 

CHAPTER III

Finally a great thing came to pass. The cab horse, proceeding at a sharptrot, found himself suddenly at the top of an incline, where through therain the pavement shone like an expanse of ice. It looked to me as ifthere was going to be a tumble. In an accident of such a kind a hansombecomes really a cannon in which a man finds that he has paid shillingsfor the privilege of serving as a projectile. I was making a rapidcalculation of the arc that I would describe in my flight, when thehorse met his crisis with a masterly device that I could not haveimagined. He tranquilly braced his four feet like a bundle of stakes, and then, with a gentle gaiety of demeanor, he slid swiftly andgracefully to the bottom of the hill as if he had been a toboggan. Whenthe incline ended he caught his gait again with great dexterity, andwent pattering off through another tunnel. 

I at once looked upon myself as being singularly blessed by this sight. This horse had evidently originated this system of skating as adiversion, or, more probably, as a precaution against the slipperypavement; and he was, of course the inventor and sole proprietor--twoterms that are not always in conjunction. It surely was not to besupposed that there could be two skaters like him in the world. Hedeserved to be known and publicly praised for this accomplishment. Itwas worthy of many records and exhibitions. But when the cab arrived ata place where some dipping streets met, and the flaming front of amusic-hall temporarily widened my cylinder, behold there were many cabs, and as the moment of necessity came the horses were all skaters. Theywere gliding in all directions. It might have been a rink. A greatomnibus was hailed by a hand under an umbrella on the side walk, and thedignified horses bidden to halt from their trot did not waste time inwild and unseemly spasms. They, too, braced their legs and slid gravelyto the end of their momentum. 

It was not the feat, but it was the word which had at this time thepower to conjure memories of skating parties on moonlit lakes, withlaughter ringing over the ice, and a great red bonfire on the shoreamong the hemlocks. 

CHAPTER IV

A Terrible thing in nature is the fall of a horse in his harness. It isa tragedy. Despite their skill in skating there was that about thepavement on the rainy evening which filled me with expectations ofhorses going headlong. Finally it happened just in front. There was ashout and a tangle in the darkness, and presently a prostrate cab horsecame within my cylinder. The accident having been a complete success andaltogether concluded, a voice from the side walk said, "_Look_ out, now! _Be_ more careful, can't you?"

I remember a constituent of a Congressman at Washington who had tried invain to bore this Congressman with a wild project of some kind. TheCongressman eluded him with skill, and his rage and despair ultimatelyculminated in the supreme grievance that he could not even get nearenough to the Congressman to tell him to go to Hades. 

This cabman should have felt the same desire to strangle this man whospoke from the sidewalk. He was plainly impotent; he was deprived of thepower of looking out. There was nothing now for which to look out. Theman on the sidewalk had dragged a corpse from a pond and said to it, "_Be_ more careful, can't you, or you'll drown?" My cabman pulledup and addressed a few words of reproach to the other. Three or fourfigures loomed into my cylinder, and as they appeared spoke to theauthor or the victim of the calamity in varied terms of displeasure. Each of these reproaches was couched in terms that defined the situationas impending. No blind man could have conceived that the precipitatephrase of the incident was absolutely closed. 

"_Look_ out now, cawn't you?" And there was nothing in his mindwhich approached these sentiments near enough to tell them to go toHades. 

However, it needed only an ear to know presently that these expressionswere formulae. It was merely the obligatory dance which the Indians hadto perform before they went to war. These men had come to help, but as aregular and traditional preliminary they had first to display to thiscabman their idea of his ignominy. 

The different thing in the affair was the silence of the victim. Heretorted never a word. This, too, to me seemed to be an obedience to arecognized form. He was the visible criminal, if there was a criminal, and there was born of it a privilege for them. 

They unfastened the proper straps and hauled back the cab. They fetcheda mat from some obscure place of succor, and pushed it carefully underthe prostrate thing. From this panting, quivering mass they suddenly andemphatically reconstructed a horse. As each man turned to go his way hedelivered some superior caution to the cabman while the latter buckledhis harness. 

CHAPTER V

There was to be noticed in this band of rescuers a young man in eveningclothes and top-hat. Now, in America a young man in evening clothes anda top-hat may be a terrible object. He is not likely to do violence, buthe is likely to do impassivity and indifference to the point where theybecome worse than violence. There are certain of the more idle phases ofcivilization to which America has not yet awakened--and it is a matterof no moment if she remains unaware. This matter of hats is one of them. I recall a legend recited to me by an esteemed friend, ex-Sheriff of TinCan, Nevada. Jim Cortright, one of the best gun-fighters in town, wenton a journey to Chicago, and while there he procured a top-hat. He wasquite sure how Tin Can would accept this innovation, but he relied onthe celerity with which he could get a six-shooter in action. One SundayJim examined his guns with his usual care, placed the top-hat on theback of his head, and sauntered coolly out into the streets of Tin Can. 

Now, while Jim was in Chicago some progressive citizen had decided thatTin Can needed a bowling alley. The carpenters went to work the nextmorning, and an order for the balls and pins was telegraphed to Denver. In three days the whole population was concentrated at the new alleybetting their outfits and their lives. 

It has since been accounted very unfortunate that Jim Cortright had notlearned of bowling alleys at his mother's knee or even later in themines. This portion of his mind was singularly belated. He might havebeen an Apache for all he knew of bowling alleys. 

In his careless stroll through the town, his hands not far from his beltand his eyes going sideways in order to see who would shoot first at thehat, he came upon this long, low shanty where Tin Can was betting itselfhoarse over a game between a team from the ranks of Excelsior HoseCompany No. 1 and a team composed from the _habitues_ of the "RedLight" saloon. 

Jim, in blank ignorance of bowling phenomena, wandered casually througha little door into what must always be termed the wrong end of a bowlingalley. Of course, he saw that the supreme moment had come. They were notonly shooting at the hat and at him, but the low-down cusses were usingthe most extraordinary and hellish ammunition. Still, perfectlyundaunted, however, Jim retorted with his two Colts, and killed three ofthe best bowlers in Tin Can. 

The ex-Sheriff vouched for this story. He himself had gone headlongthrough the door at the firing of the first shot with that simplecourtesy which leads Western men to donate the fighters plenty of room. He said that afterwards the hat was the cause of a number of otherfights, and that finally a delegation of prominent citizens was obligedto wait upon Cortright and ask him if he wouldn't take that thing awaysomewhere and bury it. Jim pointed out to them that it was his hat, andthat he would regard it as a cowardly concession if he submitted totheir dictation in the matter of his headgear. He added that he purposedto continue to wear his top-hat on every occasion when he happened tofeel that the wearing of a top-hat was a joy and a solace to him. 

The delegation sadly retired, and announced to the town that JimCortright had openly defied them, and had declared his purpose offorcing his top-hat on the pained attention of Tin Can whenever hechose. Jim Cortright's plug hat became a phrase with considerablemeaning to it. 

However, the whole affair ended in a great passionate outburst ofpopular revolution. Spike Foster was a friend of Cortright, and one day, when the latter was indisposed, Spike came to him and borrowed the hat. He had been drinking heavily at the "Red Light, " and was in a supremelyreckless mood. With the terrible gear hanging jauntily over his eye andhis two guns drawn, he walked straight out into the middle of the squarein front of the Palace Hotel, and drew the attention of all Tin Can by ablood-curdling imitation of the yowl of a mountain lion. 

This was when the long suffering populace arose as one man. The top-hathad been flaunted once too often. When Spike Foster's friends came tocarry him away they found nearly a hundred and fifty men shooting busilyat a mark--and the mark was the hat. 

My informant told me that he believed he owed his popularity in Tin Can, and subsequently his election to the distinguished office of Sheriff, tothe active and prominent part he had taken in the proceedings. 

The enmity to the top-hat expressed by the convincing anecdote exists inthe American West at present, I think, in the perfection of itsstrength; but disapproval is not now displayed by volleys from thecitizens, save in the most aggravating cases. It is at present usually amatter of mere jibe and general contempt. The East, however, despite agreat deal of kicking and gouging, is having the top-hat stuffed slowlyand carefully down its throat, and there now exist many young men whoconsider that they could not successfully conduct their lives withoutthis furniture. 

To speak generally, I should say that the headgear then supplies themwith a kind of ferocity of indifference. There is fire, sword, andpestilence in the way they heed only themselves. Philosophy shouldalways know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters down thewalls of cities, and murders the women and children amid flames and thepurloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayoneted through the throat. It is not a children'spastime like mere highway robbery. 

Consequently in America we may be much afraid of these young men. Wedive down alleys so that we may not kowtow. It is a fearsome thing. 

Taught thus a deep fear of the top-hat in its effect upon youth, I wasnot prepared for the move of this particular young man when the cab-horse fell. In fact, I grovelled in my corner that I might not see thecruel stateliness of his passing. But in the meantime he had crossed thestreet, and contributed the strength of his back and some advice, aswell as the formal address, to the cabman on the importance of lookingout immediately. 

I felt that I was making a notable collection. I had a new kind ofporter, a cylinder of vision, horses that could skate, and now I added ayoung man in a top-hat who would tacitly admit that the beings aroundhim were alive. He was not walking a churchyard filled with inferiorheadstones. He was walking the world, where there were people, manypeople. 

But later I took him out of the collection. I thought he had rebelledagainst the manner of a class, but I soon discovered that the top-hatwas not the property of a class. It was the property of rogues, clerks, theatrical agents, damned seducers, poor men, nobles, and others. Infact, it was the universal rigging. It was the only hat; all other formsmight as well be named ham, or chops, or oysters. I retracted myadmiration of the young man because he may have been merely a rogue. 

CHAPTER VI

There was a window whereat an enterprising man by dodging two placardsand a calendar was entitled to view a young woman. She was dejectedlywriting in a large book. She was ultimately induced to open the window atrifle. "What nyme, please?" she said wearily. I was surprised to hearthis language from her. I had expected to be addressed on a submarinetopic. I have seen shell fishes sadly writing in large books at thebottom of a gloomy acquarium who could not ask me what was my "nyme. "

At the end of the hall there was a grim portal marked "lift. " I pressedan electric button and heard an answering tinkle in the heavens. Therewas an upholstered settle near at hand, and I discovered the reason. Adeer-stalking peace drooped upon everything, and in it a man couldinvoke the passing of a lazy pageant of twenty years of his life. Thedignity of a coffin being lowered into a grave surrounded the ultimateappearance of the lift. The expert we in America call the elevator-boystepped from the car, took three paces forward, faced to attention andsaluted. This elevator boy could not have been less than sixty years ofage; a great white beard streamed towards his belt. I saw that the lifthad been longer on its voyage than I had suspected. 

Later in our upward progress a natural event would have been anestablishment of social relations. Two enemies imprisoned togetherduring the still hours of a balloon journey would, I believe, suffer amental amalgamation. The overhang of a common fate, a great principalfact, can make an equality and a truce between any pair. Yet, when Idisembarked, a final survey of the grey beard made me recall that I hadfailed even to ask the boy whether he had not taken probably three tripson this lift. 

My windows overlooked simply a great sea of night, in which wereswimming little gas fishes. 

CHAPTER VII

I have of late been led to reflect wistfully that many of theillustrators are very clever. In an impatience, which was donated by acertain economy of apparel, I went to a window to look upon day-litLondon. There were the 'buses parading the streets with the miens ofelephants There were the police looking precisely as I had been informedby the prints. There were the sandwich-men. There was almost everything. 

But the artists had not told me the sound of London. Now, in New Yorkthe artists are able to portray sound because in New York a dray is nota dray at all; it is a great potent noise hauled by two or more horses. When a magazine containing an illustration of a New York street is sentto me, I always know it beforehand. I can hear it coming through themails. As I have said previously, this which I must call sound of Londonwas to me only a silence. 

Later, in front of the hotel a cabman that I hailed said to me--"Are yougowing far, sir? I've got a byby here, and want to giv'er a bit of ablough. " This impressed me as being probably a quotation from an earlyEgyptian poet, but I learned soon enough that the word "byby" was thename of some kind or condition of horse. The cabman's next remark wasaddressed to a boy who took a perilous dive between the byby's nose anda cab in front. "That's roight. Put your head in there and get itjammed--a whackin good place for it, I should think. " Although the tonewas low and circumspect, I have never heard a better off-handeddeclamation. Every word was cut clear of disreputable alliances with itsneighbors. The whole thing was clean as a row of pewter mugs. Theinfluence of indignation upon the voice caused me to reflect that wemight devise a mechanical means of inflaming some in that constellationof mummers which is the heritage of the Anglo-Saxon race. 

Then I saw the drilling of vehicles by two policemen. There were fourtorrents converging at a point, and when four torrents converge at onepoint engineering experts buy tickets for another place. 

But here, again, it was drill, plain, simple drill. I must not falter insaying that I think the management of the traffic--as the phrase goes--to be distinctly illuminating and wonderful. The police were not ruffledand exasperated. They were as peaceful as two cows in a pasture. 

I can remember once remarking that mankind, with all its boasted modernprogress, had not yet been able to invent a turnstile that will commutein fractions. I have now learned that 756 rights-of-way cannot operatesimultaneously at one point. Right-of-way, like fighting women, requiresspace. Even two rights-of-way can make a scene which is only suited tothe tastes of an ancient public. 

This truth was very evidently recognized. There was only one right-of-way at a time. The police did not look behind them to see if theirorders were to be obeyed; they knew they were to be obeyed. These fourtorrents were drilling like four battalions. The two blue-cloth menmaneuvered them in solemn, abiding peace, the silence of London. 

I thought at first that it was the intellect of the individual, but Ilooked at one constable closely and his face was as afire withintelligence as a flannel pin-cushion. It was not the police, and it wasnot the crowd. It was the police and the crowd. Again, it was drill. 

CHAPTER VIII

I have never been in the habit of reading signs. I don't like to readsigns. I have never met a man that liked to read signs. I once inventeda creature who could play the piano with a hammer, and I mentioned himto a professor in Harvard University whose peculiarity was Sanscrit. Hehad the same interest in my invention that I have in a certain kind ofmustard. And yet this mustard has become a part of me. Or, I have becomea part of this mustard. Further, I know more of an ink, a brand of hams, a kind of cigarette, and a novelist than any man living. I went by trainto see a friend in the country, and after passing through a patentmucilage, some more hams, a South African Investment Company, a Parisianmillinery firm, and a comic journal, I alighted at a new and originalkind of corset. On my return journey the road almost continuously ranthrough soap. 

I have accumulated superior information concerning these things, becauseI am at their mercy. If I want to know where I am I must find thedefinitive sign. This accounts for my glib use of the word mucilage, aswell as the titles of other staples. 

I suppose even the Briton in mixing his life must sometimes consult thelabels on 'buses and streets and stations, even as the chemist consultsthe labels on his bottles and boxes. A brave man would possibly affirmthat this was suggested by the existence of the labels. 

The reason that I did not learn more about hams and mucilage in New Yorkseems to me to be partly due to the fact that the British advertiser isallowed to exercise an unbridled strategy in his attack with his newcorset or whatever upon the defensive public. He knows that thevulnerable point is the informatory sign which the citizen must, ofcourse, use for his guidance, and then, with horse, foot, guns, corsets, hams, mucilage, investment companies, and all, he hurls himself at thepoint. 

Meanwhile I have discovered a way to make the Sanscrit scholar heed mycreature who plays the piano with a hammer. 

THE SCOTCH EXPRESS

The entrance to Euston Station is of itself sufficiently imposing. Itis a high portico of brown stone, old and grim, in form a casualimitation, no doubt, of the front of the temple of Nike Apteros, with arecollection of the Egyptians proclaimed at the flanks. The frieze, where of old would prance an exuberant processional of gods, is, in thiscase, bare of decoration, but upon the epistyle is written in simple, stern letters the word "EUSTON. " The legend reared high by the gloomyPelagic columns stares down a wide avenue, In short, this entrance to arailway station does not in any way resemble the entrance to a railwaystation. It is more the front of some venerable bank. But it has anotherdignity, which is not born of form. To a great degree, it is to theEnglish and to those who are in England the gate to Scotland. 

The little hansoms are continually speeding through the gate, dashingbetween the legs of the solemn temple; the four-wheelers, their topscrowded with luggage, roll in and out constantly, and the footways beatunder the trampling of the people. Of course, there are the suburbs anda hundred towns along the line, and Liverpool, the beginning of animportant sea-path to America, and the great manufacturing cities of theNorth; but if one stands at this gate in August particularly, one mustnote the number of men with gun-cases, the number of women who surelyhave Tam-o'-Shanters and plaids concealed within their luggage, readyfor the moors. There is, during the latter part of that month, awholesale flight from London to Scotland which recalls the July throngsleaving New York for the shore or the mountains. 

The hansoms, after passing through this impressive portal of thestation, bowl smoothly across a courtyard which is in the center of theterminal hotel, an institution dear to most railways in Europe. Thetraveler lands amid a swarm of porters, and then proceeds cheerfully totake the customary trouble for his luggage. America provides acontrivance in a thousand situations where Europe provides a man orperhaps a number of men, and the work of our brass check is here done byporters, directed by the traveler himself. The men lack the memory ofthe check; the check never forgets its identity. Moreover, the Europeanrailways generously furnish the porters at the expense of the traveler. Nevertheless, if these men have not the invincible business precision ofthe check, and if they have to be tipped, it can be asserted for thosewho care that in Europe one-half of the populace waits on the other halfmost diligently and well. 

Against the masonry of a platform, under the vaulted arch of the train-house, lay a long string of coaches. They were painted white on thebulging part, which led halfway down from the top, and the bodies were adeep bottle-green. There was a group of porters placing luggage in thevan, and a great many others were busy with the affairs of passengers, tossing smaller bits of luggage into the racks over the seats, andbustling here and there on short quests. The guard of the train, a tallman who resembled one of the first Napoleon's veterans, was caring forthe distribution of passengers into the various bins. There were nosecond-class compartments; they were all third and first-class. 

The train was at this time engineless, but presently a railway "flier, "painted a glowing vermilion, slid modestly down and took its place atthe head. The guard walked along the platform, and decisively closedeach door. He wore a dark blue uniform thoroughly decorated with silverbraid in the guise of leaves. The way of him gave to this business theimportance of a ceremony. Meanwhile the fireman had climbed down fromthe cab and raised his hand, ready to transfer a signal to the driver, who stood looking at his watch. In the interval there had somethingprogressed in the large signal box that stands guard at Euston. Thishigh house contains many levers, standing in thick, shining ranks. Itperfectly resembles an organ in some great church, if it were not thatthese rows of numbered and indexed handles typify something more acutelyhuman than does a keyboard. It requires four men to play this organ-likething, and the strains never cease. Night and day, day and night, thesefour men are walking to and fro, from this lever to that lever, andunder their hands the great machine raises its endless hymn of a worldat work, the fall and rise of signals and the clicking swing ofswitches. 

And so as the vermilion engine stood waiting and looking from the shadowof the curve-roofed station, a man in the signal house had played thenotes that informed the engine of its freedom. The driver saw the fallof those proper semaphores which gave him liberty to speak to his steelfriend. A certain combination in the economy of the London andNorthwestern Railway, a combination which had spread from the men whosweep out the carriages through innumerable minds to the general managerhimself, had resulted in the law that the vermilion engine, with itslong string of white and bottle-green coaches, was to start forthwithtoward Scotland. 

Presently the fireman, standing with his face toward the rear, let fallhis hand. "All right, " he said. The driver turned a wheel, and as thefireman slipped back, the train moved along the platform at the pace ofa mouse. To those in the tranquil carriages this starting was probablyas easy as the sliding of one's hand over a greased surface, but in theengine there was more to it. The monster roared suddenly and loudly, andsprang forward impetuously. A wrong-headed or maddened draft-horse willplunge in its collar sometimes when going up a hill. But this load ofburdened carriages followed imperturbably at the gait of turtles. Theywere not to be stirred from their way of dignified exit by the impatientengine. The crowd of porters and transient people stood respectful. Theylooked with the indefinite wonder of the railway-station sight-seer uponthe faces at the windows of the passing coaches. This train was off forScotland. It had started from the home of one accent to the home ofanother accent. It was going from manner to manner, from habit to habit, and in the minds of these London spectators there surely floated dimimages of the traditional kilts, the burring speech, the grouse, thecanniness, the oat-meal, all the elements of a romantic Scotland. 

The train swung impressively around the signal-house, and headed up abrick-walled cut. In starting this heavy string of coaches, the enginebreathed explosively. It gasped, and heaved, and bellowed; once, for amoment, the wheels spun on the rails, and a convulsive tremor shook thegreat steel frame. 

The train itself, however, moved through this deep cut in the body ofLondon with coolness and precision, and the employees of the railway, knowing the train's mission, tacitly presented arms at its passing. Tothe travelers in the carriages, the suburbs of London must have been onelong monotony of carefully made walls of stone or brick. But after thehill was climbed, the train fled through pictures of red habitations ofmen on a green earth. 

But the noise in the cab did not greatly change its measure. Even thoughthe speed was now high, the tremendous thumping to be heard in the cabwas as alive with strained effort and as slow in beat as the breathingof a half-drowned man. At the side of the track, for instance, the sounddoubtless would strike the ear in the familiar succession of incrediblyrapid puffs; but in the cab itself, this land-racer breathes very likeits friend, the marine engine. Everybody who has spent time on shipboardhas forever in his head a reminiscence of the steady and methodicalpounding of the engines, and perhaps it is curious that this relativewhich can whirl over the land at such a pace, breathes in the leisurelytones that a man heeds when he lies awake at night in his berth. 

There had been no fog in London, but here on the edge of the city aheavy wind was blowing, and the driver leaned aside and yelled that itwas a very bad day for traveling on an engine. The engine-cabs ofEngland, as of all Europe, are seldom made for the comfort of the men. One finds very often this apparent disregard for the man who does thework--this indifference to the man who occupies a position which for theexercise of temperance, of courage, of honesty, has no equal at thealtitude of prime ministers. The American engineer is the gildedoccupant of a salon in comparison with his brother in Europe. The manwho was guiding this five-hundred-ton bolt, aimed by the officials ofthe railway at Scotland, could not have been as comfortable as a shrillgibbering boatman of the Orient. The narrow and bare bench at his sideof the cab was not directly intended for his use, because it was so lowthat he would be prevented by it from looking out of the ship's port-hole which served him as a window. The fireman, on his side, had otherdifficulties. His legs would have had to straggle over some pipes at theonly spot where there was a prospect, and the builders had alsostrategically placed a large steel bolt. Of course it is plain that thecompanies consistently believe that the men will do their work better ifthey are kept standing. The roof of the cab was not altogether a roof. It was merely a projection of two feet of metal from the bulkhead whichformed the front of the cab. There were practically no sides to it, andthe large cinders from the soft coal whirled around in sheets. From timeto time the driver took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped hisblinking eyes. 

London was now well to the rear. The vermilion engine had been for sometime flying like the wind. This train averages, between London andCarlisle forty-nine and nine-tenth miles an hour. It is a distance of299 miles. There is one stop. It occurs at Crewe, and endures fiveminutes. In consequence, the block signals flashed by seemingly at theend of the moment in which they were sighted. 

There can be no question of the statement that the road-beds of Englishrailways are at present immeasurably superior to the American road-beds. Of course there is a clear reason. It is known to every traveler thatpeoples of the Continent of Europe have no right at all to own railways. Those lines of travel are too childish and trivial for expression. Acorrect fate would deprive the Continent of its railways, and give themto somebody who knew about them. 

The continental idea of a railway is to surround a mass of machinerywith forty rings of ultra-military law, and then they believe they haveone complete. The Americans and the English are the railway peoples. That our road-beds are poorer than the English road-beds is because ofthe fact that we were suddenly obliged to build thousands upon thousandsof miles of railway, and the English were obliged to build slowly tensupon tens of miles. A road-bed from New York to San Francisco, withstations, bridges, and crossings of the kind that the London andNorthwestern owns from London to Glasgow, would cost a sum large enoughto support the German army for a term of years. The whole way isconstructed with the care that inspired the creators of some of our nowobsolete forts along the Atlantic coast. 

An American engineer, with his knowledge of the difficulties he had toencounter--the wide rivers with variable banks, the mountain chains, perhaps the long spaces of absolute desert; in fact, all theperplexities of a vast and somewhat new country--would not dare spend arespectable portion of his allowance on seventy feet of granite wallover a gully, when he knew he could make an embankment with little costby heaving up the dirt and stones from here and there. But the Englishroad is all made in the pattern by which the Romans built theirhighways. After England is dead, savants will find narrow streaks ofmasonry leading from ruin to ruin. Of course this does not always seemconvincingly admirable. It sometimes resembles energy poured into a rat-hole. There is a vale between expediency and the convenience ofposterity, a mid-ground which enables men surely to benefit thehereafter people by valiantly advancing the present; and the point isthat, if some laborers live in unhealthy tenements in Cornwall, one islikely to view with incomplete satisfaction the record of long andpatient labor and thought displayed by an eight-foot drain for anonexistent, impossible rivulet in the North. This sentence does notsound strictly fair, but the meaning one wishes to convey is that if anEnglish company spies in its dream the ghost of an ancient valley thatlater becomes a hill, it would construct for it a magnificent steeltrestle, and consider that a duty had been performed in properaccordance with the company's conscience. But after all is said of it, the accidents and the miles of railway operated in England are not inproportion to the accidents and the miles of railway operated in theUnited States. The reason can be divided into three parts--olderconditions, superior caution, the road-bed. And of these, the greatestis older conditions. 

In this flight toward Scotland one seldom encountered a grade crossing. In nine cases of ten there was either a bridge or a tunnel. Theplatforms of even the remote country stations were all of ponderousmasonry in contrast to our constructions of planking. There was alwaysto be seen, as we thundered toward a station of this kind, a number ofporters in uniform, who requested the retreat of any one who had not thewit to give us plenty of room. And then, as the shrill warning of thewhistle pierced even the uproar that was about us, came the wild joy ofthe rush past a station. It was something in the nature of a triumphalprocession conducted at thrilling speed. Perhaps there was a curve ofinfinite grace, a sudden hollow explosive effect made by the passing ofa signal-box that was close to the track, and then the deadly lunge toshave the edge of a long platform. There were always a number of peoplestanding afar, with their eyes riveted upon this projectile, and to beon the engine was to feel their interest and admiration in the terrorand grandeur of this sweep. A boy allowed to ride with the driver of theband-wagon as a circus parade winds through one of our village streetscould not exceed for egotism the temper of a new man in the cab of atrain like this one. This valkyric journey on the back of the vermilionengine, with the shouting of the wind, the deep, mighty panting of thesteed, the gray blur at the track-side, the flowing quicksilver ribbonof the other rails, the sudden clash as a switch intersects, all the dinand fury of this ride, was of a splendor that caused one to look abroadat the quiet, green landscape and believe that it was of a phlegm quietbeyond patience. It should have been dark, rain-shot, and windy; thundershould have rolled across its sky. 

It seemed, somehow, that if the driver should for a moment take hishands from his engine, it might swerve from the track as a horse fromthe road. Once, indeed, as he stood wiping his fingers on a bit ofwaste, there must have been something ludicrous in the way the solitarypassenger regarded him. Without those finely firm hands on the bridle, the engine might rear and bolt for the pleasant farms lying in thesunshine at either side. 

This driver was worth contemplation. He was simply a quiet, middle-agedman, bearded, and with the little wrinkles of habitual geniality andkindliness spreading from the eyes toward the temple, who stood at hispost always gazing out, through his round window, while, from time totime, his hands went from here to there over his levers. He seldomchanged either attitude or expression. There surely is no engine-driverwho does not feel the beauty of the business, but the emotion lies deep, and mainly inarticulate, as it does in the mind of a man who hasexperienced a good and beautiful wife for many years. This driver's facedisplayed nothing but the cool sanity of a man whose thought was buriedintelligently in his business. If there was any fierce drama in it, there was no sign upon him. He was so lost in dreams of speed andsignals and steam, that one speculated if the wonder of his tempestuouscharge and its career over England touched him, this impassive rider ofa fiery thing. 

It should be a well-known fact that, all over the world, the engine-driver is the finest type of man that is grown. He is the pick of theearth. He is altogether more worthy than the soldier, and better thanthe men who move on the sea in ships. He is not paid too much; nor dohis glories weight his brow; but for outright performance, carried onconstantly, coolly, and without elation, by a temperate, honest, clear-minded man, he is the further point. And so the lone human at hisstation in a cab, guarding money, lives, and the honor of the road, is abeautiful sight. The whole thing is aesthetic. The fireman presents thesame charm, but in a less degree, in that he is bound to appear as anapprentice to the finished manhood of the driver. In his eyes, turnedalways in question and confidence toward his superior, one finds thisquality; but his aspirations are so direct that one sees the same typein evolution. 

There may be a popular idea that the fireman's principal function is tohang his head out of the cab and sight interesting objects in thelandscape. As a matter of fact, he is always at work. The dragon isinsatiate. The fireman is continually swinging open the furnace-door, whereat a red shine flows out upon the floor of the cab, and shovelingin immense mouthfuls of coal to a fire that is almost diabolic in itsmadness. The feeding, feeding, feeding goes on until it appears as if itis the muscles of the fireman's arms that are speeding the long train. An engine running over sixty-five miles an hour, with 500 tons to drag, has an appetite in proportion to this task. 

View of the clear-shining English scenery is often interrupted betweenLondon and Crew by long and short tunnels. The first one wasdisconcerting. Suddenly one knew that the train was shooting toward ablack mouth in the hills. It swiftly yawned wider, and then in a momentthe engine dived into a place inhabitated by every demon of wind andnoise. The speed had not been checked, and the uproar was so great thatin effect one was simply standing at the center of a vast, black-walledsphere. The tubular construction which one's reason proclaimed had nomeaning at all. It was a black sphere, alive with shrieks. But then onthe surface of it there was to be seen a little needle-point of light, and this widened to a detail of unreal landscape. It was the world; thetrain was going to escape from this cauldron, this abyss of howlingdarkness. If a man looks through the brilliant water of a tropical pool, he can sometimes see coloring the marvels at the bottom the blue thatwas on the sky and the green that was on the foliage of this detail. Andthe picture shimmered in the heat-rays of a new and remarkable sun. Itwas when the train bolted out into the open air that one knew that itwas his own earth. 

Once train met train in a tunnel. Upon the painting in the perfectlycircular frame formed by the mouth there appeared a black square withsparks bursting from it. This square expanded until it hid everything, and a moment later came the crash of the passing. It was enough to makea man lose his sense of balance. It was a momentary inferno when thefireman opened the furnace door and was bathed in blood-red light as hefed the fires. 

The effect of a tunnel varied when there was a curve in it. One wasmerely whirling then heels over head, apparently in the dark, echoingbowels of the earth. There was no needle-point of light to which one'seyes clung as to a star. 

From London to Crew, the stern arm of the semaphore never made the trainpause even for an instant. There was always a clear track. It was greatto see, far in the distance, a goods train whooping smokily for thenorth of England on one of the four tracks. The overtaking of such atrain was a thing of magnificent nothing for the long-strided engine, and as the flying express passed its weaker brother, one heard one ortwo feeble and immature puffs from the other engine, saw the firemanwave his hand to his luckier fellow, saw a string of foolish, clankingflat-cars, their freights covered with tarpaulins, and then the trainwas lost to the rear. 

The driver twisted his wheel and worked some levers, and the rhythmicalchunking of the engine gradually ceased. Gliding at a speed that wasstill high, the train curved to the left, and swung down a sharpincline, to move with an imperial dignity through the railway yard atRugby. There was a maze of switches, innumerable engines noisily pushingcars here and there, crowds of workmen who turned to look, a sinuouscurve around the long train-shed, whose high wall resounded with therumble of the passing express; and then, almost immediately, it seemed, came the open country again. Rugby had been a dream which one couldproperly doubt. At last the relaxed engine, with the same majesty ofease, swung into the high-roofed station at Crewe, and stopped on aplatform lined with porters and citizens. There was instant bustle, andin the interest of the moment no one seemed particularly to notice thetired vermilion engine being led away. 

There is a five-minute stop at Crewe. A tandem of engines slip up, andbuckled fast to the train for the journey to Carlisle. In the meantime, all the regulation items of peace and comfort had happened on the trainitself. The dining-car was in the center of the train. It was dividedinto two parts, the one being a dining-room for first-class passengers, and the other a dining-room for the third-class passengers. They wereseparated by the kitchens and the larder. The engine, with all itsrioting and roaring, had dragged to Crewe a car in which numbers ofpassengers were lunching in a tranquility that was almost domestic, onan average menu of a chop and potatoes, a salad, cheese, and a bottle ofbeer. Betimes they watched through the windows the great chimney-markedtowns of northern England. They were waited upon by a young man ofLondon, who was supported by a lad who resembled an American bell-boy. The rather elaborate menu and service of the Pullman dining-car is notknown in England or on the Continent. Warmed roast beef is the exactsymbol of a European dinner, when one is traveling on a railway. 

This express is named, both by the public and the company, the "CorridorTrain, " because a coach with a corridor is an unusual thing in England, and so the title has a distinctive meaning. Of course, in America, wherethere is no car which has not what we call an aisle, it would definenothing. The corridors are all at one side of the car. Doors open thenceto little compartments made to seat four, or perhaps six, persons. Thefirst-class carriages are very comfortable indeed, being heavilyupholstered in dark, hard-wearing stuffs, with a bulging rest for thehead. The third-class accommodations on this train are almost ascomfortable as the first-class, and attract a kind of people that arenot usually seen traveling third-class in Europe. Many people sacrificetheir habit, in the matter of this train, to the fine conditions of thelower fare. 

One of the feats of the train is an electric button in each compartment. Commonly an electric button is placed high on the side of the carriageas an alarm signal, and it is unlawful to push it unless one is inserious need of assistance from the guard. But these bells also rang inthe dining-car, and were supposed to open negotiations for tea orwhatever. A new function has been projected on an ancient custom. Nogenius has yet appeared to separate these two meanings. Each bell ringsan alarm and a bid for tea or whatever. It is perfect in theory thenthat, if one rings for tea, the guard comes to interrupt the murder, andthat if one is being murdered, the attendant appears with tea. At anyrate, the guard was forever being called from his reports and hiscomfortable seat in the forward end of the luggage-van by thrillingalarms. He often prowled the length of the train with hardihood anddetermination, merely to meet a request for a sandwich. 

The train entered Carlisle at the beginning of twilight. This is theborder town, and an engine of the Caledonian Railway, manned by two menof broad speech, came to take the place of the tandem. The engine ofthese men of the North was much smaller than the others, but her cab wasmuch larger, and would be a fair shelter on a stormy night. They hadalso built seats with hooks by which they hang them to the rail, andthus are still enabled to see through the round windows withoutdislocating their necks. All the human parts of the cab were coveredwith oilcloth. The wind that swirled from the dim twilight horizon madethe warm glow from the furnace to be a grateful thing. 

As the train shot out of Carlisle, a glance backward could learn of thefaint, yellow blocks of light from the carriages marked on the dimmedground. The signals were now lamps, and shone palely against the sky. The express was entering night as if night were Scotland. 

There was a long toil to the summit of the hills, and then began thebooming ride down the slope. There were many curves. Sometimes could beseen two or three signal lights at one time, twisting off in some newdirection. Minus the lights and some yards of glistening rails, Scotlandwas only a blend of black and weird shapes. Forests which one couldhardly imagine as weltering in the dewy placidity of evening sank to therear as if the gods had bade them. The dark loom of a house quicklydissolved before the eyes. A station with its lamps became a broadyellow band that, to a deficient sense, was only a few yards in length. Below, in a deep valley, a silver glare on the waters of a river madeequal time with the train. Signals appeared, grew, and vanished. In thewind and the mystery of the night, it was like sailing in an enchantedgloom. The vague profiles of hills ran like snakes across the sombersky. A strange shape boldly and formidably confronted the train, andthen melted to a long dash of track as clean as sword-blades. 

The vicinity of Glasgow is unmistakable. The flames of pauselessindustries are here and there marked on the distance. Vast factoriesstand close to the track, and reaching chimneys emit roseate flames. Atlast one may see upon a wall the strong reflection from furnaces, andagainst it the impish and inky figures of workingmen. A long, prison-like row of tenements, not at all resembling London, but in one wayresembling New York, appeared to the left, and then sank out of sightlike a phantom. 

At last the driver stopped the brave effort of his engine The 400 mileswere come to the edge. The average speed of forty-nine and one-thirdmiles each hour had been made, and it remained only to glide with thehauteur of a great express through the yard and into the station atGlasgow. 

A wide and splendid collection of signal lamps flowed toward the engine. With delicacy and care the train clanked over some switches, passes thesignals, and then there shone a great blaze of arc-lamps, defining thewide sweep of the station roof. Smoothly, proudly, with all that vastdignity which had surrounded its exit from London, the express movedalong its platform. It was the entrance into a gorgeous drawing-room ofa man that was sure of everything. 

The porters and the people crowded forward. In their minds there mayhave floated dim images of the traditional music-halls, the bobbies, the'buses, the 'Arrys and 'Arriets, the swells of London. 

THE END