The Strength of the Strong Contents: The Strength of the StrongSouth of the SlotThe Unparalleled InvasionThe Enemy of All the WorldThe Dream of DebsThe Sea-FarmerSamuel THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG "Parables don't lie, but liars will parable. "--Lip-King. Old Long-Beard paused in his narrative, licked his greasy fingers, and wiped them on his naked sides where his one piece of raggedbearskin failed to cover him. Crouched around him, on their hams, were three young men, his grandsons, Deer-Runner, Yellow-Head, andAfraid-of-the-Dark. In appearance they were much the same. Skinsof wild animals partly covered them. They were lean and meagre ofbuild, narrow-hipped and crooked-legged, and at the same time deep-chested, with heavy arms and enormous hands. There was much hairon their chests and shoulders, and on the outsides of their armsand legs. Their heads were matted with uncut hair, long locks ofwhich often strayed before their eyes, beady and black andglittering like the eyes of birds. They were narrow between theeyes and broad between the cheeks, while their lower jaws wereprojecting and massive. It was a night of clear starlight, and below them, stretching awayremotely, lay range on range of forest-covered hills. In thedistance the heavens were red from the glow of a volcano. At theirbacks yawned the black mouth of a cave, out of which, from time totime, blew draughty gusts of wind. Immediately in front of themblazed a fire. At one side, partly devoured, lay the carcass of abear, with about it, at a respectable distance, several large dogs, shaggy and wolf-like. Beside each man lay his bow and arrows and ahuge club. In the cave-mouth a number of rude spears leanedagainst the rock. "So that was how we moved from the cave to the tree, " old Long-Beard spoke up. They laughed boisterously, like big children, at recollection of aprevious story his words called up. Long-Beard laughed, too, thefive-inch bodkin of bone, thrust midway through the cartilage ofhis nose, leaping and dancing and adding to his ferociousappearance. He did not exactly say the words recorded, but he madeanimal-like sounds with his mouth that meant the same thing. "And that is the first I remember of the Sea Valley, " Long-Beardwent on. "We were a very foolish crowd. We did not know thesecret of strength. For, behold, each family lived by itself, andtook care of itself. There were thirty families, but we got nostrength from one another. We were in fear of each other all thetime. No one ever paid visits. In the top of our tree we built agrass house, and on the platform outside was a pile of rocks, whichwere for the heads of any that might chance to try to visit us. Also, we had our spears and arrows. We never walked under thetrees of the other families, either. My brother did, once, underold Boo-oogh's tree, and he got his head broken and that was theend of him. "Old Boo-oogh was very strong. It was said he could pull a grownman's head right off. I never heard of him doing it, because noman would give him a chance. Father wouldn't. One day, whenfather was down on the beach, Boo-oogh took after mother. Shecouldn't run fast, for the day before she had got her leg clawed bya bear when she was up on the mountain gathering berries. So Boo-oogh caught her and carried her up into his tree. Father never gother back. He was afraid. Old Boo-oogh made faces at him. "But father did not mind. Strong-Arm was another strong man. Hewas one of the best fishermen. But one day, climbing after sea-gull eggs, he had a fall from the cliff. He was never strong afterthat. He coughed a great deal, and his shoulders drew near to eachother. So father took Strong-Arm's wife. When he came around andcoughed under our tree, father laughed at him and threw rocks athim. It was our way in those days. We did not know how to addstrength together and become strong. " "Would a brother take a brother's wife?" Deer-Runner demanded. "Yes, if he had gone to live in another tree by himself. " "But we do not do such things now, " Afraid-of-the-Dark objected. "It is because I have taught your fathers better. " Long-Beardthrust his hairy paw into the bear meat and drew out a handful ofsuet, which he sucked with a meditative air. Again he wiped hishands on his naked sides and went on. "What I am telling youhappened in the long ago, before we knew any better. " "You must have been fools not to know better, " was Deer-Runner'scomment, Yellow-Head grunting approval. "So we were, but we became bigger fools, as you shall see. Still, we did learn better, and this was the way of it. We Fish-Eatershad not learned to add our strength until our strength was thestrength of all of us. But the Meat-Eaters, who lived across thedivide in the Big Valley, stood together, hunted together, fishedtogether, and fought together. One day they came into our valley. Each family of us got into its own cave and tree. There were onlyten Meat-Eaters, but they fought together, and we fought, eachfamily by itself. " Long-Beard counted long and perplexedly on his fingers. "There were sixty men of us, " was what he managed to say withfingers and lips combined. "And we were very strong, only we didnot know it. So we watched the ten men attack Boo-oogh's tree. Hemade a good fight, but he had no chance. We looked on. When someof the Meat-Eaters tried to climb the tree, Boo-oogh had to showhimself in order to drop stones on their heads, whereupon the otherMeat-Eaters, who were waiting for that very thing, shot him full ofarrows. And that was the end of Boo-oogh. "Next, the Meat-Eaters got One-Eye and his family in his cave. They built a fire in the mouth and smoked him out, like we smokedout the bear there to-day. Then they went after Six-Fingers, uphis tree, and, while they were killing him and his grown son, therest of us ran away. They caught some of our women, and killed twoold men who could not run fast and several children. The womenthey carried away with them to the Big Valley. "After that the rest of us crept back, and, somehow, perhapsbecause we were in fear and felt the need for one another, wetalked the thing over. It was our first council--our first realcouncil. And in that council we formed our first tribe. For wehad learned the lesson. Of the ten Meat-Eaters, each man had hadthe strength of ten, for the ten had fought as one man. They hadadded their strength together. But of the thirty families and thesixty men of us, we had had the strength of but one man, for eachhad fought alone. "It was a great talk we had, and it was hard talk, for we did nothave the words then as now with which to talk. The Bug made someof the words long afterward, and so did others of us make wordsfrom time to time. But in the end we agreed to add our strengthtogether and to be as one man when the Meat-Eaters came over thedivide to steal our women. And that was the tribe. "We set two men on the divide, one for the day and one for thenight, to watch if the Meat-Eaters came. These were the eyes ofthe tribe. Then, also, day and night, there were to be ten menawake with their clubs and spears and arrows in their hands, readyto fight. Before, when a man went after fish, or clams, or gull-eggs, he carried his weapons with him, and half the time he wasgetting food and half the time watching for fear some other manwould get him. Now that was all changed. The men went out withouttheir weapons and spent all their time getting food. Likewise, when the women went into the mountains after roots and berries, five of the ten men went with them to guard them. While all thetime, day and night, the eyes of the tribe watched from the top ofthe divide. "But troubles came. As usual, it was about the women. Men withoutwives wanted other men's wives, and there was much fighting betweenmen, and now and again one got his head smashed or a spear throughhis body. While one of the watchers was on top of the divide, another man stole his wife, and he came down to fight. Then theother watcher was in fear that some one would take his wife, and hecame down likewise. Also, there was trouble among the ten men whocarried always their weapons, and they fought five against five, till some ran away down the coast and the others ran after them. "So it was that the tribe was left without eyes or guards. We hadnot the strength of sixty. We had no strength at all. So we helda council and made our first laws. I was but a cub at the time, but I remember. We said that, in order to be strong, we must notfight one another, and we made a law that when a man killed anotherhim would the tribe kill. We made another law that whoso stoleanother man's wife him would the tribe kill. We said that whateverman had too great strength, and by that strength hurt his brothersin the tribe, him would we kill that his strength might hurt nomore. For, if we let his strength hurt, the brothers would becomeafraid and the tribe would fall apart, and we would be as weak aswhen the Meat-Eaters first came upon us and killed Boo-oogh. "Knuckle-Bone was a strong man, a very strong man, and he knew notlaw. He knew only his own strength, and in the fullness thereof hewent forth and took the wife of Three-Clams. Three-Clams tried tofight, but Knuckle-Bone clubbed out his brains. Yet had Knuckle-Bone forgotten that all the men of us had added our strength tokeep the law among us, and him we killed, at the foot of his tree, and hung his body on a branch as a warning that the law wasstronger than any man. For we were the law, all of us, and no manwas greater than the law. "Then there were other troubles, for know, O Deer-Runner, andYellow-Head, and Afraid-of-the-Dark, that it is not easy to make atribe. There were many things, little things, that it was a greattrouble to call all the men together to have a council about. Wewere having councils morning, noon, and night, and in the middle ofthe night. We could find little time to go out and get food, because of the councils, for there was always some little thing tobe settled, such as naming two new watchers to take the place ofthe old ones on the hill, or naming how much food should fall tothe share of the men who kept their weapons always in their handsand got no food for themselves. "We stood in need of a chief man to do these things, who would bethe voice of the council, and who would account to the council forthe things he did. So we named Fith-Fith the chief man. He was astrong man, too, and very cunning, and when he was angry he madenoises just like that, fith-fith, like a wild-cat. "The ten men who guarded the tribe were set to work making a wallof stones across the narrow part of the valley. The women andlarge children helped, as did other men, until the wall was strong. After that, all the families came down out of their caves and treesand built grass houses behind the shelter of the wall. Thesehouses were large and much better than the caves and trees, andeverybody had a better time of it because the men had added theirstrength together and become a tribe. Because of the wall and theguards and the watchers, there was more time to hunt and fish andpick roots and berries; there was more food, and better food, andno one went hungry. And Three-Legs, so named because his legs hadbeen smashed when a boy and who walked with a stick--Three-Legs gotthe seed of the wild corn and planted it in the ground in thevalley near his house. Also, he tried planting fat roots and otherthings he found in the mountain valleys. "Because of the safety in the Sea Valley, which was because of thewall and the watchers and the guards, and because there was food inplenty for all without having to fight for it, many families camein from the coast valleys on both sides and from the high backmountains where they had lived more like wild animals than men. And it was not long before the Sea Valley filled up, and in it werecountless families. But, before this happened, the land, which hadbeen free to all and belonged to all, was divided up. Three-Legsbegan it when he planted corn. But most of us did not care aboutthe land. We thought the marking of the boundaries with fences ofstone was a foolishness. We had plenty to eat, and what more didwe want? I remember that my father and I built stone fences forThree-Legs and were given corn in return. "So only a few got all the land, and Three-Legs got most of it. Also, others that had taken land gave it to the few that held on, being paid in return with corn and fat roots, and bear-skins, andfishes which the farmers got from the fishermen in exchange forcorn. And, the first thing we knew, all the land was gone. "It was about this time that Fith-Fith died and Dog-Tooth, his son, was made chief. He demanded to be made chief anyway, because hisfather had been chief before him. Also, he looked upon himself asa greater chief than his father. He was a good chief at first, andworked hard, so that the council had less and less to do. Thenarose a new voice in the Sea Valley. It was Twisted-Lip. We hadnever thought much of him, until he began to talk with the spiritsof the dead. Later we called him Big-Fat, because he ate over-much, and did no work, and grew round and large. One day Big-Fattold us that the secrets of the dead were his, and that he was thevoice of God. He became great friends with Dog-Tooth, whocommanded that we should build Big-Fat a grass house. And Big-Fatput taboos all around this house and kept God inside. "More and more Dog-Tooth became greater than the council, and whenthe council grumbled and said it would name a new chief, Big-Fatspoke with the voice of God and said no. Also, Three-Legs and theothers who held the land stood behind Dog-Tooth. Moreover, thestrongest man in the council was Sea-Lion, and him the land-ownersgave land to secretly, along with many bearskins and baskets ofcorn. So Sea-Lion said that Big-Fat's voice was truly the voice ofGod and must be obeyed. And soon afterward Sea-Lion was named thevoice of Dog-Tooth and did most of his talking for him. "Then there was Little-Belly, a little man, so thin in the middlethat he looked as if he had never had enough to eat. Inside themouth of the river, after the sand-bar had combed the strength ofthe breakers, he built a big fish-trap. No man had ever seen ordreamed a fish-trap before. He worked weeks on it, with his sonand his wife, while the rest of us laughed at their labours. But, when it was done, the first day he caught more fish in it thancould the whole tribe in a week, whereat there was great rejoicing. There was only one other place in the river for a fish-trap, but, when my father and I and a dozen other men started to make a verylarge trap, the guards came from the big grass-house we had builtfor Dog-Tooth. And the guards poked us with their spears and toldus begone, because Little-Belly was going to build a trap therehimself on the word of Sea-Lion, who was the voice of Dog-Tooth. "There was much grumbling, and my father called a council. But, when he rose to speak, him the Sea-Lion thrust through the throatwith a spear and he died. And Dog-Tooth and Little-Belly, andThree-Legs and all that held land said it was good. And Big-Fatsaid it was the will of God. And after that all men were afraid tostand up in the council, and there was no more council. "Another man, Pig-Jaw, began to keep goats. He had heard about itas among the Meat-Eaters, and it was not long before he had manyflocks. Other men, who had no land and no fish-traps, and who elsewould have gone hungry, were glad to work for Pig-Jaw, caring forhis goats, guarding them from wild dogs and tigers, and drivingthem to the feeding pastures in the mountains. In return, Pig-Jawgave them goat-meat to eat and goat-skins to wear, and sometimesthey traded the goat-meat for fish and corn and fat roots. "It was this time that money came to be. Sea-Lion was the man whofirst thought of it, and he talked it over with Dog-Tooth and Big-Fat. You see, these three were the ones that got a share ofeverything in the Sea Valley. One basket out of every three ofcorn was theirs, one fish out of every three, one goat out of everythree. In return, they fed the guards and the watchers, and keptthe rest for themselves. Sometimes, when a big haul of fish wasmade they did not know what to do with all their share. So Sea-Lion set the women to making money out of shell--little roundpieces, with a hole in each one, and all made smooth and fine. These were strung on strings, and the strings were called money. "Each string was of the value of thirty fish, or forty fish, butthe women, who made a string a day, were given two fish each. Thefish came out of the shares of Dog-Tooth, Big-Fat, and Sea-Lion, which they three did not eat. So all the money belonged to them. Then they told Three-Legs and the other land-owners that they wouldtake their share of corn and roots in money, Little-Belly that theywould take their share of fish in money, Pig-Jaw that they wouldtake their share of goats and cheese in money. Thus, a man who hadnothing, worked for one who had, and was paid in money. With thismoney he bought corn, and fish, and meat, and cheese. And Three-Legs and all owners of things paid Dog-Tooth and Sea-Lion and Big-Fat their share in money. And they paid the guards and watchers inmoney, and the guards and watchers bought their food with themoney. And, because money was cheap, Dog-Tooth made many more meninto guards. And, because money was cheap to make, a number of menbegan to make money out of shell themselves. But the guards stuckspears in them and shot them full of arrows, because they weretrying to break up the tribe. It was bad to break up the tribe, for then the Meat-Eaters would come over the divide and kill themall. "Big-Fat was the voice of God, but he took Broken-Rib and made himinto a priest, so that he became the voice of Big-Fat and did mostof his talking for him. And both had other men to be servants tothem. So, also, did Little-Belly and Three-Legs and Pig-Jaw haveother men to lie in the sun about their grass houses and carrymessages for them and give commands. And more and more were mentaken away from work, so that those that were left worked harderthan ever before. It seemed that men desired to do no work andstrove to seek out other ways whereby men should work for them. Crooked-Eyes found such a way. He made the first fire-brew out ofcorn. And thereafter he worked no more, for he talked secretlywith Dog-Tooth and Big-Fat and the other masters, and it was agreedthat he should be the only one to make fire-brew. But Crooked-Eyesdid no work himself. Men made the brew for him, and he paid themin money. Then he sold the fire-brew for money, and all menbought. And many strings of money did he give Dog-Tooth and Sea-Lion and all of them. "Big-Fat and Broken-Rib stood by Dog-Tooth when he took his secondwife, and his third wife. They said Dog-Tooth was different fromother men and second only to God that Big-Fat kept in his taboohouse, and Dog-Tooth said so, too, and wanted to know who were theyto grumble about how many wives he took. Dog-Tooth had a big canoemade, and, many more men he took from work, who did nothing and layin the sun, save only when Dog-Tooth went in the canoe, when theypaddled for him. And he made Tiger-Face head man over all theguards, so that Tiger-Face became his right arm, and when he didnot like a man Tiger-Face killed that man for him. And Tiger-Face, also, made another man to be his right arm, and to give commands, and to kill for him. "But this was the strange thing: as the days went by we who wereleft worked harder and harder, and yet did we get less and less toeat. " "But what of the goats and the corn and the fat roots and the fish-trap?" spoke up Afraid-of-the-Dark, "what of all this? Was therenot more food to be gained by man's work?" "It is so, " Long-Beard agreed. "Three men on the fish-trap gotmore fish than the whole tribe before there was a fish-trap. Buthave I not said we were fools? The more food we were able to get, the less food did we have to eat. " "But was it not plain that the many men who did not work ate it allup?" Yellow-Head demanded. Long-Beard nodded his head sadly. "Dog-Tooth's dogs were stuffed with meat, and the men who lay inthe sun and did no work were rolling in fat, and, at the same time, there were little children crying themselves to sleep with hungerbiting them with every wail. " Deer-Runner was spurred by the recital of famine to tear out achunk of bear-meat and broil it on a stick over the coals. This hedevoured with smacking lips, while Long-Beard went on: "When we grumbled Big-Fat arose, and with the voice of God saidthat God had chosen the wise men to own the land and the goats andthe fish-trap, and the fire-brew, and that without these wise menwe would all be animals, as in the days when we lived in trees. "And there arose one who became a singer of songs for the king. Him they called the Bug, because he was small and ungainly of faceand limb and excelled not in work or deed. He loved the fattestmarrow bones, the choicest fish, the milk warm from the goats, thefirst corn that was ripe, and the snug place by the fire. Andthus, becoming singer of songs to the king, he found a way to donothing and be fat. And when the people grumbled more and more, and some threw stones at the king's grass house, the Bug sang asong of how good it was to be a Fish-Eater. In his song he toldthat the Fish-Eaters were the chosen of God and the finest men Godhad made. He sang of the Meat-Eaters as pigs and crows, and sanghow fine and good it was for the Fish-Eaters to fight and die doingGod's work, which was the killing of Meat-Eaters. The words of hissong were like fire in us, and we clamoured to be led against theMeat-Eaters. And we forgot that we were hungry, and why we hadgrumbled, and were glad to be led by Tiger-Face over the divide, where we killed many Meat-Eaters and were content. "But things were no better in the Sea Valley. The only way to getfood was to work for Three-Legs or Little-Belly or Pig-Jaw; forthere was no land that a man might plant with corn for himself. And often there were more men than Three-Legs and the others hadwork for. So these men went hungry, and so did their wives andchildren and their old mothers. Tiger-Face said they could becomeguards if they wanted to, and many of them did, and thereafter theydid no work except to poke spears in the men who did work and whogrumbled at feeding so many idlers. "And when we grumbled, ever the Bug sang new songs. He said thatThree-Legs and Pig-Jaw and the rest were strong men, and that thatwas why they had so much. He said that we should be glad to havestrong men with us, else would we perish of our own worthlessnessand the Meat-Eaters. Therefore, we should be glad to let suchstrong men have all they could lay hands on. And Big-Fat and Pig-Jaw and Tiger-Face and all the rest said it was true. "'All right, ' said Long-Fang, 'then will I, too, be a strong man. 'And he got himself corn, and began to make fire-brew and sell itfor strings of money. And, when Crooked-Eyes complained, Long-Fangsaid that he was himself a strong man, and that if Crooked-Eyesmade any more noise he would bash his brains out for him. WhereatCrooked-Eyes was afraid and went and talked with Three-Legs andPig-Jaw. And all three went and talked to Dog-Tooth. And Dog-Tooth spoke to Sea-Lion, and Sea-Lion sent a runner with a messageto Tiger-Face. And Tiger-Face sent his guards, who burned Long-Fang's house along with the fire-brew he had made. Also, theykilled him and all his family. And Big-Fat said it was good, andthe Bug sang another song about how good it was to observe the law, and what a fine land the Sea Valley was, and how every man wholoved the Sea Valley should go forth and kill the bad Meat-Eaters. And again his song was as fire to us, and we forgot to grumble. "It was very strange. When Little-Belly caught too many fish, sothat it took a great many to sell for a little money, he threw manyof the fish back into the sea, so that more money would be paid forwhat was left. And Three-Legs often let many large fields lie idleso as to get more money for his corn. And the women, making somuch money out of shell that much money was needed to buy with, Dog-Tooth stopped the making of money. And the women had no work, so they took the places of the men. I worked on the fish-trap, getting a string of money every five days. But my sister now didmy work, getting a string of money for every ten days. The womenworked cheaper, and there was less food, and Tiger-Face said weshould become guards. Only I could not become a guard because Iwas lame of one leg and Tiger-Face would not have me. And therewere many like me. We were broken men and only fit to beg for workor to take care of the babies while the women worked. " Yellow-Head, too, was made hungry by the recital and broiled apiece of bear-meat on the coals. "But why didn't you rise up, all of you, and kill Three-Legs andPig-Jaw and Big-Fat and the rest and get enough to eat?" Afraid-in-the-Dark demanded. "Because we could not understand, " Long-Beard answered. "There wastoo much to think about, and, also, there were the guards stickingspears into us, and Big-Fat talking about God, and the Bug singingnew songs. And when any man did think right, and said so, Tiger-Face and the guards got him, and he was tied out to the rocks atlow tide so that the rising waters drowned him. "It was a strange thing--the money. It was like the Bug's songs. It seemed all right, but it wasn't, and we were slow to understand. Dog-Tooth began to gather the money in. He put it in a big pile, in a grass house, with guards to watch it day and night. And themore money he piled in the house the dearer money became, so that aman worked a longer time for a string of money than before. Then, too, there was always talk of war with the Meat-Eaters, and Dog-Tooth and Tiger-Face filled many houses with corn, and dried fish, and smoked goat-meat, and cheese. And with the food, piled therein mountains the people had not enough to eat. But what did itmatter? Whenever the people grumbled too loudly the Bug sang a newsong, and Big-Fat said it was God's word that we should kill Meat-Eaters, and Tiger-Face led us over the divide to kill and bekilled. I was not good enough to be a guard and lie fat in thesun, but, when we made war, Tiger-Face was glad to take me along. And when we had eaten, all the food stored in the houses we stoppedfighting and went back to work to pile up more food. " "Then were you all crazy, " commented Deer-Runner. "Then were we indeed all crazy, " Long-Beard agreed. "It wasstrange, all of it. There was Split-Nose. He said everything waswrong. He said it was true that we grew strong by adding ourstrength together. And he said that, when we first formed thetribe, it was right that the men whose strength hurt the tribeshould be shorn of their strength--men who bashed their brothers'heads and stole their brothers' wives. And now, he said, the tribewas not getting stronger, but was getting weaker, because therewere men with another kind of strength that were hurting the tribe--men who had the strength of the land, like Three-Legs; who had thestrength of the fish-trap, like Little-Belly; who had the strengthof all the goat-meat, like Pig-Jaw. The thing to do, Split-Nosesaid, was to shear these men of their evil strength; to make themgo to work, all of them, and to let no man eat who did not work. "And the Bug sang another song about men like Split-Nose, whowanted to go back, and live in trees. "Yet Split-Nose said no; that he did not want to go back, butahead; that they grew strong only as they added their strengthtogether; and that, if the Fish-Eaters would add their strength tothe Meat-Eaters, there would be no more fighting and no morewatchers and no more guards, and that, with all men working, therewould be so much food that each man would have to work not morethan two hours a day. "Then the Bug sang again, and he sang that Split-Nose was lazy, andhe sang also the 'Song of the Bees. ' It was a strange song, andthose who listened were made mad, as from the drinking of strongfire-brew. The song was of a swarm of bees, and of a robber waspwho had come in to live with the bees and who was stealing alltheir honey. The wasp was lazy and told them there was no need towork; also, he told them to make friends with the bears, who werenot honey-stealers but only very good friends. And the Bug sang incrooked words, so that those who listened knew that the swarm wasthe Sea Valley tribe, that the bears were the Meat-Eaters, and thatthe lazy wasp was Split-Nose. And when the Bug sang that the beeslistened to the wasp till the swarm was near to perishing, thepeople growled and snarled, and when the Bug sang that at last thegood bees arose and stung the wasp to death, the people picked upstones from the ground and stoned Split-Nose to death till therewas naught to be seen of him but the heap of stones they had flungon top of him. And there were many poor people who worked long andhard and had not enough to eat that helped throw the stones onSplit-Nose. "And, after the death of Split-Nose, there was but one other manthat dared rise up and speak his mind, and that man was Hair-Face. 'Where is the strength of the strong?' he asked. 'We are thestrong, all of us, and we are stronger than Dog-Tooth and Tiger-Face and Three-Legs and Pig-Jaw and all the rest who do nothing andeat much and weaken us by the hurt of their strength which is badstrength. Men who are slaves are not strong. If the man who firstfound the virtue and use of fire had used his strength we wouldhave been his slaves, as we are the slaves to-day of Little-Belly, who found the virtue and use of the fish-trap; and of the men whofound the virtue and use of the land, and the goats, and the fire-brew. Before, we lived in trees, my brothers, and no man was safe. But we fight no more with one another. We have added our strengthtogether. Then let us fight no more with the Meat-Eaters. Let usadd our strength and their strength together. Then will we beindeed strong. And then we will go out together, the Fish-Eatersand the Meat-Eaters, and we will kill the tigers and the lions andthe wolves and the wild dogs, and we will pasture our goats on allthe hill-sides and plant our corn and fat roots in all the highmountain valleys. In that day we will be so strong that all thewild animals will flee before us and perish. And nothing willwithstand us, for the strength of each man will be the strength ofall men in the world. ' "So said Hair-Face, and they killed him, because, they said, he wasa wild man and wanted to go back and live in a tree. It was verystrange. Whenever a man arose and wanted to go forward all thosethat stood still said he went backward and should be killed. Andthe poor people helped stone him, and were fools. We were allfools, except those who were fat and did no work. The fools werecalled wise, and the wise were stoned. Men who worked did not getenough to eat, and the men who did not work ate too much. "And the tribe went on losing strength. The children were weak andsickly. And, because we ate not enough, strange sicknesses cameamong us and we died like flies. And then the Meat-Eaters cameupon us. We had followed Tiger-Face too often over the divide andkilled them. And now they came to repay in blood. We were tooweak and sick to man the big wall. And they killed us, all of us, except some of the women, which they took away with them. The Bugand I escaped, and I hid in the wildest places, and became a hunterof meat and went hungry no more. I stole a wife from the Meat-Eaters, and went to live in the caves of the high mountains wherethey could not find me. And we had three sons, and each son stolea wife from the Meat-Eaters. And the rest you know, for are younot the sons of my sons?" "But the Bug?" queried Deer-Runner. "What became of him?" "He went to live with the Meat-Eaters and to be a singer of songsto the king. He is an old man now, but he sings the same oldsongs; and, when a man rises up to go forward, he sings that thatman is walking backward to live in a tree. " Long-Beard dipped into the bear-carcass and sucked with toothlessgums at a fist of suet. "Some day, " he said, wiping his hands on his sides, "all the foolswill be dead and then all live men will go forward. The strengthof the strong will be theirs, and they will add their strengthtogether, so that, of all the men in the world, not one will fightwith another. There will be no guards nor watchers on the walls. And all the hunting animals will be killed, and, as Hair-Face said, all the hill-sides will be pastured with goats and all the highmountain valleys will be planted with corn and fat roots. And allmen will be brothers, and no man will lie idle in the sun and befed by his fellows. And all that will come to pass in the timewhen the fools are dead, and when there will be no more singers tostand still and sing the 'Song of the Bees. ' Bees are not men. " SOUTH OF THE SLOT Old San Francisco, which is the San Francisco of only the otherday, the day before the Earthquake, was divided midway by the Slot. The Slot was an iron crack that ran along the centre of MarketStreet, and from the Slot arose the burr of the ceaseless, endlesscable that was hitched at will to the cars it dragged up and down. In truth, there were two slots, but in the quick grammar of theWest time was saved by calling them, and much more that they stoodfor, "The Slot. " North of the Slot were the theatres, hotels, andshopping district, the banks and the staid, respectable businesshouses. South of the Slot were the factories, slums, laundries, machine-shops, boiler works, and the abodes of the working class. The Slot was the metaphor that expressed the class cleavage ofSociety, and no man crossed this metaphor, back and forth, moresuccessfully than Freddie Drummond. He made a practice of livingin both worlds, and in both worlds he lived signally well. FreddieDrummond was a professor in the Sociology Department of theUniversity of California, and it was as a professor of sociologythat he first crossed over the Slot, lived for six mouths in thegreat labour-ghetto, and wrote The Unskilled Labourer--a book thatwas hailed everywhere as an able contribution to the literature ofprogress, and as a splendid reply to the literature of discontent. Politically and economically it was nothing if not orthodox. Presidents of great railway systems bought whole editions of it togive to their employees. The Manufacturers' Association alonedistributed fifty thousand copies of it. In a way, it was almostas immoral as the far-famed and notorious Message to Garcia, whilein its pernicious preachment of thrift and content it ran Mr. Wiggsof the Cabbage Patch a close second. At first, Freddie Drummond found it monstrously difficult to getalong among the working people. He was not used to their ways, andthey certainly were not used to his. They were suspicious. He hadno antecedents. He could talk of no previous jobs. His hands weresoft. His extraordinary politeness was ominous. His first idea ofthe role he would play was that of a free and independent Americanwho chose to work with his hands and no explanations given. But itwouldn't do, as he quickly discovered. At the beginning theyaccepted him, very provisionally, as a freak. A little later, ashe began to know his way about better, he insensibly drifted intothe role that would work--namely, he was a man who had seen betterdays, very much better days, but who was down on his luck, though, to be sure, only temporarily. He learned many things, and generalized much and often erroneously, all of which can be found in the pages of The Unskilled Labourer. He saved himself, however, after the sane and conservative mannerof his kind, by labelling his generalizations as "tentative. " Oneof his first experiences was in the great Wilmax Cannery, where hewas put on piece-work making small packing cases. A box factorysupplied the parts, and all Freddie Drummond had to do was to fitthe parts into a form and drive in the wire nails with a lighthammer. It was not skilled labour, but it was piece-work. The ordinarylabourers in the cannery got a dollar and a half per day. FreddieDrummond found the other men on the same job with him jogging alongand earning a dollar and seventy-five cents a day. By the thirdday he was able to earn the same. But he was ambitious. He didnot care to jog along and, being unusually able and fit, on thefourth day earned two dollars. The next day, having keyed himself up to an exhausting high-tension, he earned two dollars and a half. His fellow workersfavoured him with scowls and black looks, and made remarks, slangily witty and which he did not understand, about sucking up tothe boss and pace-making and holding her down, when the rains setin. He was astonished at their malingering on piece-work, generalized about the inherent laziness of the unskilled labourer, and proceeded next day to hammer out three dollars' worth of boxes. And that night, coming out of the cannery, he was interviewed byhis fellow workmen, who were very angry and incoherently slangy. He failed to comprehend the motive behind their action. The actionitself was strenuous. When he refused to ease down his pace andbleated about freedom of contract, independent Americanism, and thedignity of toil, they proceeded to spoil his pace-making ability. It was a fierce battle, for Drummond was a large man and anathlete, but the crowd finally jumped on his ribs, walked on hisface, and stamped on his fingers, so that it was only after lyingin bed for a week that he was able to get up and look for anotherjob. All of which is duly narrated in that first book of his, inthe chapter entitled "The Tyranny of Labour. " A little later, in another department of the Wilmax Cannery, lumping as a fruit-distributor among the women, he essayed to carrytwo boxes of fruit at a time, and was promptly reproached by theother fruit-lumpers. It was palpable malingering; but he wasthere, he decided, not to change conditions, but to observe. So helumped one box thereafter, and so well did he study the art ofshirking that he wrote a special chapter on it, with the lastseveral paragraphs devoted to tentative generalizations. In those six months he worked at many jobs and developed into avery good imitation of a genuine worker. He was a naturallinguist, and he kept notebooks, making a scientific study of theworkers' slang or argot, until he could talk quite intelligibly. This language also enabled him more intimately to follow theirmental processes, and thereby to gather much data for a projectedchapter in some future book which he planned to entitle Synthesisof Working-Class Psychology. Before he arose to the surface from that first plunge into theunderworld he discovered that he was a good actor and demonstratedthe plasticity of his nature. He was himself astonished at his ownfluidity. Once having mastered the language and conquered numerousfastidious qualms, he found that he could flow into any nook ofworking-class life and fit it so snugly as to feel comfortably athome. As he said, in the preface to his second book, The Toiler, he endeavoured really to know the working people, and the onlypossible way to achieve this was to work beside them, eat theirfood, sleep in their beds, be amused with their amusements, thinktheir thoughts, and feel their feeling. He was not a deep thinker. He had no faith in new theories. Allhis norms and criteria were conventional. His Thesis on the FrenchRevolution was noteworthy in college annals, not merely for itspainstaking and voluminous accuracy, but for the fact that it wasthe dryest, deadest, most formal, and most orthodox screed everwritten on the subject. He was a very reserved man, and hisnatural inhibition was large in quantity and steel-like in quality. He had but few friends. He was too undemonstrative, too frigid. He had no vices, nor had any one ever discovered any temptations. Tobacco he detested, beer he abhorred, and he was never known todrink anything stronger than an occasional light wine at dinner. When a freshman he had been baptized "Ice-Box" by his warmer-blooded fellows. As a member of the faculty he was known as "Cold-Storage. " He had but one grief, and that was "Freddie. " He hadearned it when he played full-back in the 'Varsity eleven, and hisformal soul had never succeeded in living it down. "Freddie" hewould ever be, except officially, and through nightmare vistas helooked into a future when his world would speak of him as "OldFreddie. " For he was very young to be a doctor of sociology, only twenty-seven, and he looked younger. In appearance and atmosphere he wasa strapping big college man, smooth-faced and easy-mannered, cleanand simple and wholesome, with a known record of being a splendidathlete and an implied vast possession of cold culture of theinhibited sort. He never talked shop out of class and committeerooms, except later on, when his books showered him withdistasteful public notice and he yielded to the extent of readingoccasional papers before certain literary and economic societies. He did everything right--too right; and in dress and comportmentwas inevitably correct. Not that he was a dandy. Far from it. Hewas a college man, in dress and carriage as like as a pea to thetype that of late years is being so generously turned out of ourinstitutions of higher learning. His handshake was satisfyinglystrong and stiff. His blue eyes were coldly blue and convincinglysincere. His voice, firm and masculine, clean and crisp ofenunciation, was pleasant to the ear. The one drawback to FreddieDrummond was his inhibition. He never unbent. In his footballdays, the higher the tension of the game, the cooler he grew. Hewas noted as a boxer, but he was regarded as an automaton, with theinhuman precision of a machine judging distance and timing blows, guarding, blocking, and stalling. He was rarely punished himself, while he rarely punished an opponent. He was too clever and toocontrolled to permit himself to put a pound more weight into apunch than he intended. With him it was a matter of exercise. Itkept him fit. As time went by, Freddie Drummond found himself more frequentlycrossing the Slot and losing himself in South of Market. Hissummer and winter holidays were spent there, and, whether it was aweek or a week-end, he found the time spent there to be valuableand enjoyable. And there was so much material to be gathered. Histhird book, Mass and Master, became a text-book in the Americanuniversities; and almost before he knew it, he was at work on afourth one, The Fallacy of the Inefficient. Somewhere in his make-up there was a strange twist or quirk. Perhaps it was a recoil from his environment and training, or fromthe tempered seed of his ancestors, who had been book-mengeneration preceding generation; but at any rate, he foundenjoyment in being down in the working-class world. In his ownworld he was "Cold-Storage, " but down below he was "Big" BillTotts, who could drink and smoke, and slang and fight, and be anall-round favourite. Everybody liked Bill, and more than oneworking girl made love to him. At first he had been merely a goodactor, but as time went on, simulation became second nature. He nolonger played a part, and he loved sausages, sausages and bacon, than which, in his own proper sphere, there was nothing moreloathsome in the way of food. From doing the thing for the need's sake, he came to doing thething for the thing's sake. He found himself regretting as thetime drew near for him to go back to his lecture-room and hisinhibition. And he often found himself waiting with anticipationfor the dreamy time to pass when he could cross the Slot and cutloose and play the devil. He was not wicked, but as "Big" BillTotts he did a myriad things that Freddie Drummond would never havebeen permitted to do. Moreover, Freddie Drummond never would havewanted to do them. That was the strangest part of his discovery. Freddie Drummond and Bill Totts were two totally differentcreatures. The desires and tastes and impulses of each ran counterto the other's. Bill Totts could shirk at a job with clearconscience, while Freddie Drummond condemned shirking as vicious, criminal, and un-American, and devoted whole chapters tocondemnation of the vice. Freddie Drummond did not care fordancing, but Bill Totts never missed the nights at the variousdancing clubs, such as The Magnolia, The Western Star, and TheElite; while he won a massive silver cup, standing thirty incheshigh, for being the best-sustained character at the Butchers andMeat Workers' annual grand masked ball. And Bill Totts liked thegirls and the girls liked him, while Freddie Drummond enjoyedplaying the ascetic in this particular, was open in his oppositionto equal suffrage, and cynically bitter in his secret condemnationof coeducation. Freddie Drummond changed his manners with his dress, and withouteffort. When he entered the obscure little room used for histransformation scenes, he carried himself just a bit too stiffly. He was too erect, his shoulders were an inch too far back, whilehis face was grave, almost harsh, and practically expressionless. But when he emerged in Bill Totts' clothes he was another creature. Bill Totts did not slouch, but somehow his whole form limbered upand became graceful. The very sound of the voice was changed, andthe laugh was loud and hearty, while loose speech and an occasionaloath were as a matter of course on his lips. Also, Bill Totts wasa trifle inclined to late hours, and at times, in saloons, to begood-naturedly bellicose with other workmen. Then, too, at Sundaypicnics or when coming home from the show, either arm betrayed apractised familiarity in stealing around girls' waists, while hedisplayed a wit keen and delightful in the flirtatious badinagethat was expected of a good fellow in his class. So thoroughly was Bill Totts himself, so thoroughly a workman, agenuine denizen of South of the Slot, that he was as class-conscious as the average of his kind, and his hatred for a scabeven exceeded that of the average loyal union man. During theWater Front Strike, Freddie Drummond was somehow able to standapart from the unique combination, and, coldly critical, watch BillTotts hilariously slug scab longshoremen. For Bill Totts was adues-paying member of the Longshoremen Union and had a right to beindignant with the usurpers of his job. "Big" Bill Totts was sovery big, and so very able, that it was "Big" Bill to the frontwhen trouble was brewing. From acting outraged feelings, FreddieDrummond, in the role of his other self, came to experience genuineoutrage, and it was only when he returned to the classic atmosphereof the university that he was able, sanely and conservatively, togeneralize upon his underworld experiences and put them down onpaper as a trained sociologist should. That Bill Totts lacked theperspective to raise him above class-consciousness Freddie Drummondclearly saw. But Bill Totts could not see it. When he saw a scabtaking his job away, he saw red at the same time, and little elsedid he see. It was Freddie Drummond, irreproachably clothed andcomported, seated at his study desk or facing his class inSociology 17, who saw Bill Totts, and all around Bill Totts, andall around the whole scab and union-labour problem and its relationto the economic welfare of the United States in the struggle forthe world market. Bill Totts really wasn't able to see beyond thenext meal and the prize-fight the following night at the GaietyAthletic Club. It was while gathering material for Women and Work that Freddiereceived his first warning of the danger he was in. He was toosuccessful at living in both worlds. This strange dualism he haddeveloped was after all very unstable, and, as he sat in his studyand meditated, he saw that it could not endure. It was really atransition stage, and if he persisted he saw that he wouldinevitably have to drop one world or the other. He could notcontinue in both. And as he looked at the row of volumes thatgraced the upper shelf of his revolving book-case, his volumes, beginning with his Thesis and ending with Women and Work, hedecided that that was the world he would hold to and stick by. Bill Totts had served his purpose, but he had become a toodangerous accomplice. Bill Totts would have to cease. Freddie Drummond's fright was due to Mary Condon, President of theInternational Glove Workers' Union No. 974. He had seen her, first, from the spectators' gallery, at the annual convention ofthe Northwest Federation of Labour, and he had seen her throughBill Totts' eyes, and that individual had been most favourablyimpressed by her. She was not Freddie Drummond's sort at all. What if she were a royal-bodied woman, graceful and sinewy as apanther, with amazing black eyes that could fill with fire orlaughter-love, as the mood might dictate? He detested women with atoo exuberant vitality and a lack of . . . Well, of inhibition. Freddie Drummond accepted the doctrine of evolution because it wasquite universally accepted by college men, and he flatly believedthat man had climbed up the ladder of life out of the welteringmuck and mess of lower and monstrous organic things. But he was atrifle ashamed of this genealogy, and preferred not to think of it. Wherefore, probably, he practised his iron inhibition and preachedit to others, and preferred women of his own type, who could shakefree of this bestial and regrettable ancestral line and bydiscipline and control emphasize the wideness of the gulf thatseparated them from what their dim forbears had been. Bill Totts had none of these considerations. He had liked MaryCondon from the moment his eyes first rested on her in theconvention hall, and he had made it a point, then and there, tofind out who she was. The next time he met her, and quite byaccident, was when he was driving an express waggon for PatMorrissey. It was in a lodging-house in Mission Street, where hehad been called to take a trunk into storage. The landlady'sdaughter had called him and led him to the little bedroom, theoccupant of which, a glove-maker, had just been removed tohospital. But Bill did not know this. He stooped, up-ended thetrunk, which was a large one, got it on his shoulder, and struggledto his feet with his back toward the open door. At that moment heheard a woman's voice. "Belong to the union?" was the question asked. "Aw, what's it to you?" he retorted. "Run along now, an' git outamy way. I wanta turn round. " The next he know, big as he was, he was whirled half around andsent reeling backward, the trunk overbalancing him, till he fetchedup with a crash against the wall. He started to swear, but at thesame instant found himself looking into Mary Condon's flashing, angry eyes. "Of course I b'long to the union, " he said. "I was only kiddin'you. " "Where's your card?" she demanded in businesslike tones. "In my pocket. But I can't git it out now. This trunk's too damnheavy. Come on down to the waggon an' I'll show it to you. " "Put that trunk down, " was the command. "What for? I got a card, I'm tellin' you. " "Put it down, that's all. No scab's going to handle that trunk. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you big coward, scabbing onhonest men. Why don't you join the union and be a man?" Mary Condon's colour had left her face, and it was apparent thatshe was in a rage. "To think of a big man like you turning traitor to his class. Isuppose you're aching to join the militia for a chance to shootdown union drivers the next strike. You may belong to the militiaalready, for that matter. You're the sort--" "Hold on, now, that's too much!" Bill dropped the trunk to thefloor with a bang, straightened up, and thrust his hand into hisinside coat pocket. "I told you I was only kiddin'. There, lookat that. " It was a union card properly enough. "All right, take it along, " Mary Condon said. "And the next timedon't kid. " Her face relaxed as she noticed the ease with which he got the bigtrunk to his shoulder, and her eyes glowed as they glanced over thegraceful massiveness of the man. But Bill did not see that. Hewas too busy with the trunk. The next time he saw Mary Condon was during the Laundry Strike. The Laundry Workers, but recently organized, were green at thebusiness, and had petitioned Mary Condon to engineer the strike. Freddie Drummond had had an inkling of what was coming, and hadsent Bill Totts to join the union and investigate. Bill's job wasin the wash-room, and the men had been called out first, thatmorning, in order to stiffen the courage of the girls; and Billchanced to be near the door to the mangle-room when Mary Condonstarted to enter. The superintendent, who was both large andstout, barred her way. He wasn't going to have his girls calledout, and he'd teach her a lesson to mind her own business. And asMary tried to squeeze past him he thrust her back with a fat handon her shoulder. She glanced around and saw Bill. "Here you, Mr. Totts, " she called. "Lend a hand. I want to getin. " Bill experienced a startle of warm surprise. She had rememberedhis name from his union card. The next moment the superintendenthad been plucked from the doorway raving about rights under thelaw, and the girls were deserting their machines. During the restof that short and successful strike, Bill constituted himself MaryCondon's henchman and messenger, and when it was over returned tothe University to be Freddie Drummond and to wonder what Bill Tottscould see in such a woman. Freddie Drummond was entirely safe, but Bill had fallen in love. There was no getting away from the fact of it, and it was this factthat had given Freddie Drummond his warning. Well, he had done hiswork, and his adventures could cease. There was no need for him tocross the Slot again. All but the last three chapters of hislatest, Labour Tactics and Strategy, was finished, and he hadsufficient material on hand adequately to supply those chapters. Another conclusion he arrived at, was that in order to sheet-anchorhimself as Freddie Drummond, closer ties and relations in his ownsocial nook were necessary. It was time that he was married, anyway, and he was fully aware that if Freddie Drummond didn't getmarried, Bill Totts assuredly would, and the complications were tooawful to contemplate. And so, enters Catherine Van Vorst. She wasa college woman herself, and her father, the one wealthy member ofthe faculty, was the head of the Philosophy Department as well. Itwould be a wise marriage from every standpoint, Freddie Drummondconcluded when the engagement was consummated and announced. Inappearance cold and reserved, aristocratic and wholesomelyconservative, Catherine Van Vorst, though warm in her way, possessed an inhibition equal to Drummond's. All seemed well with him, but Freddie Drummond could not quiteshake off the call of the underworld, the lure of the free andopen, of the unhampered, irresponsible life South of the Slot. Asthe time of his marriage approached, he felt that he had indeedsowed wild oats, and he felt, moreover, what a good thing it wouldbe if he could have but one wild fling more, play the good fellowand the wastrel one last time, ere he settled down to grey lecture-rooms and sober matrimony. And, further to tempt him, the verylast chapter of Labour Tactics and Strategy remained unwritten forlack of a trifle more of essential data which he had neglected togather. So Freddie Drummond went down for the last time as Bill Totts, gothis data, and, unfortunately, encountered Mary Condon. Once moreinstalled in his study, it was not a pleasant thing to look backupon. It made his warning doubly imperative. Bill Totts hadbehaved abominably. Not only had he met Mary Condon at the CentralLabour Council, but he had stopped at a chop-house with her, on theway home, and treated her to oysters. And before they parted ather door, his arms had been about her, and he had kissed her on thelips and kissed her repeatedly. And her last words in his ear, words uttered softly with a catchy sob in the throat that wasnothing more nor less than a love cry, were "Bill . . . Dear, dearBill. " Freddie Drummond shuddered at the recollection. He saw the pityawning for him. He was not by nature a polygamist, and he wasappalled at the possibilities of the situation. It would have tobe put an end to, and it would end in one only of two ways: eitherhe must become wholly Bill Totts and be married to Mary Condon, orhe must remain wholly Freddie Drummond and be married to CatherineVan Vorst. Otherwise, his conduct would be beneath contempt andhorrible. In the several months that followed, San Francisco was torn withlabour strife. The unions and the employers' associations hadlocked horns with a determination that looked as if they intendedto settle the matter, one way or the other, for all time. ButFreddie Drummond corrected proofs, lectured classes, and did notbudge. He devoted himself to Catherine Van Vorst, and day by dayfound more to respect and admire in her--nay, even to love in her. The Street Car Strike tempted him, but not so severely as he wouldhave expected; and the great Meat Strike came on and left him cold. The ghost of Bill Totts had been successfully laid, and FreddieDrummond with rejuvenescent zeal tackled a brochure, long-planned, on the topic of "diminishing returns. " The wedding was two weeks off, when, one afternoon, in SanFrancisco, Catherine Van Vorst picked him up and whisked him awayto see a Boys' Club, recently instituted by the settlement workersin whom she was interested. It was her brother's machine, but theywere alone with the exception of the chauffeur. At the junctionwith Kearny Street, Market and Geary Streets intersect like thesides of a sharp-angled letter "V. " They, in the auto, were comingdown Market with the intention of negotiating the sharp apex andgoing up Geary. But they did not know what was coming down Geary, timed by fate to meet them at the apex. While aware from thepapers that the Meat Strike was on and that it was an exceedinglybitter one, all thought of it at that moment was farthest fromFreddie Drummond's mind. Was he not seated beside Catherine? Andbesides, he was carefully expositing to her his views on settlementwork--views that Bill Totts' adventures had played a part informulating. Coming down Geary Street were six meat waggons. Beside each scabdriver sat a policeman. Front and rear, and along each side ofthis procession, marched a protecting escort of one hundred police. Behind the police rearguard, at a respectful distance, was anorderly but vociferous mob, several blocks in length, thatcongested the street from sidewalk to sidewalk. The Beef Trust wasmaking an effort to supply the hotels, and, incidentally, to beginthe breaking of the strike. The St. Francis had already beensupplied, at a cost of many broken windows and broken heads, andthe expedition was marching to the relief of the Palace Hotel. All unwitting, Drummond sat beside Catherine, talking settlementwork, as the auto, honking methodically and dodging traffic, swungin a wide curve to get around the apex. A big coal waggon, loadedwith lump coal and drawn by four huge horses, just debouching fromKearny Street as though to turn down Market, blocked their way. The driver of the waggon seemed undecided, and the chauffeur, running slow but disregarding some shouted warning from thecrossing policemen, swerved the auto to the left, violating thetraffic rules, in order to pass in front of the waggon. At that moment Freddie Drummond discontinued his conversation. Nordid he resume it again, for the situation was developing with therapidity of a transformation scene. He heard the roar of the mobat the rear, and caught a glimpse of the helmeted police and thelurching meat waggons. At the same moment, laying on his whip, andstanding up to his task, the coal driver rushed horses and waggonsquarely in front of the advancing procession, pulled the horses upsharply, and put on the big brake. Then he made his lines fast tothe brake-handle and sat down with the air of one who had stoppedto stay. The auto had been brought to a stop, too, by his bigpanting leaders which had jammed against it. Before the chauffeur could back clear, an old Irishman, driving arickety express waggon and lashing his one horse to a gallop, hadlocked wheels with the auto. Drummond recognized both horse andwaggon, for he had driven them often himself. The Irishman was PatMorrissey. On the other side a brewery waggon was locking with thecoal waggon, and an east-bound Kearny Street car, wildly clangingits gong, the motorman shouting defiance at the crossing policeman, was dashing forward to complete the blockade. And waggon afterwaggon was locking and blocking and adding to the confusion. Themeat waggons halted. The police were trapped. The roar at therear increased as the mob came on to the attack, while the vanguardof the police charged the obstructing waggons. "We're in for it, " Drummond remarked coolly to Catherine. "Yes, " she nodded, with equal coolness. "What savages they are. " His admiration for her doubled on itself. She was indeed his sort. He would have been satisfied with her even if she had screamed, andclung to him, but this--this was magnificent. She sat in thatstorm centre as calmly as if it had been no more than a block ofcarriages at the opera. The police were struggling to clear a passage. The driver of thecoal waggon, a big man in shirt sleeves, lighted a pipe and satsmoking. He glanced down complacently at a captain of police whowas raving and cursing at him, and his only acknowledgment was ashrug of the shoulders. From the rear arose the rat-rat-tat ofclubs on heads and a pandemonium of cursing, yelling, and shouting. A violent accession of noise proclaimed that the mob had brokenthrough and was dragging a scab from a waggon. The police captainreinforced from his vanguard, and the mob at the rear was repelled. Meanwhile, window after window in the high office building on theright had been opened, and the class-conscious clerks were raininga shower of office furniture down on the heads of police and scabs. Waste-baskets, ink-bottles, paper-weights, type-writers--anythingand everything that came to hand was filling the air. A policeman, under orders from his captain, clambered to the loftyseat of the coal waggon to arrest the driver. And the driver, rising leisurely and peacefully to meet him, suddenly crumpled himin his arms and threw him down on top of the captain. The driverwas a young giant, and when he climbed on his load and poised alump of coal in both hands, a policeman, who was just scaling thewaggon from the side, let go and dropped back to earth. Thecaptain ordered half-a-dozen of his men to take the waggon. Theteamster, scrambling over the load from side to side, beat themdown with huge lumps of coal. The crowd on the sidewalks and the teamsters on the locked waggonsroared encouragement and their own delight. The motorman, smashinghelmets with his controller bar, was beaten into insensibility anddragged from his platform. The captain of police, beside himselfat the repulse of his men, led the next assault on the coal waggon. A score of police were swarming up the tall-sided fortress. Butthe teamster multiplied himself. At times there were six or eightpolicemen rolling on the pavement and under the waggon. Engaged inrepulsing an attack on the rear end of his fortress, the teamsterturned about to see the captain just in the act of stepping on tothe seat from the front end. He was still in the air and in mostunstable equilibrium, when the teamster hurled a thirty-pound lumpof coal. It caught the captain fairly on the chest, and he wentover backward, striking on a wheeler's back, tumbling on to theground, and jamming against the rear wheel of the auto. Catherine thought he was dead, but he picked himself up and chargedback. She reached out her gloved hand and patted the flank of thesnorting, quivering horse. But Drummond did not notice the action. He had eyes for nothing save the battle of the coal waggon, whilesomewhere in his complicated psychology, one Bill Totts was heavingand straining in an effort to come to life. Drummond believed inlaw and order and the maintenance of the established, but thisriotous savage within him would have none of it. Then, if ever, did Freddie Drummond call upon his iron inhibition to save him. But it is written that the house divided against itself must fall. And Freddie Drummond found that he had divided all the will andforce of him with Bill Totts, and between them the entity thatconstituted the pair of them was being wrenched in twain. Freddie Drummond sat in the auto, quite composed, alongsideCatherine Van Vorst; but looking out of Freddie Drummond's eyes wasBill Totts, and somewhere behind those eyes, battling for thecontrol of their mutual body, were Freddie Drummond the sane andconservative sociologist, and Bill Totts, the class-conscious andbellicose union working man. It was Bill Totts, looking out ofthose eyes, who saw the inevitable end of the battle on the coalwaggon. He saw a policeman gain the top of the load, a second, anda third. They lurched clumsily on the loose footing, but theirlong riot-clubs were out and swinging. One blow caught theteamster on the head. A second he dodged, receiving it on theshoulder. For him the game was plainly up. He dashed in suddenly, clutched two policemen in his arms, and hurled himself a prisonerto the pavement, his hold never relaxing on his two captors. Catherine Van Vorst was sick and faint at sight of the blood andbrutal fighting. But her qualms were vanquished by the sensationaland most unexpected happening that followed. The man beside heremitted an unearthly and uncultured yell and rose to his feet. Shesaw him spring over the front seat, leap to the broad rump of thewheeler, and from there gain the waggon. His onslaught was like awhirlwind. Before the bewildered officer on the load could guessthe errand of this conventionally clad but excited-seeminggentleman, he was the recipient of a punch that arched him backthrough the air to the pavement. A kick in the face led anascending policeman to follow his example. A rush of three moregained the top and locked with Bill Totts in a gigantic clinch, during which his scalp was opened up by a club, and coat, vest, andhalf his starched shirt were torn from him. But the threepolicemen were flung far and wide, and Bill Totts, raining downlumps of coal, held the fort. The captain led gallantly to the attack, but was bowled over by achunk of coal that burst on his head in black baptism. The need ofthe police was to break the blockade in front before the mob couldbreak in at the rear, and Bill Totts' need was to hold the waggontill the mob did break through. So the battle of the coal went on. The crowd had recognized its champion. "Big" Bill, as usual, hadcome to the front, and Catherine Van Vorst was bewildered by thecries of "Bill! O you Bill!" that arose on every hand. PatMorrissey, on his waggon seat, was jumping and screaming in anecstasy, "Eat 'em, Bill! Eat 'em! Eat 'em alive!" From thesidewalk she heard a woman's voice cry out, "Look out, Bill--frontend!" Bill took the warning and with well-directed coal clearedthe front end of the waggon of assailants. Catherine Van Vorstturned her head and saw on the curb of the sidewalk a woman withvivid colouring and flashing black eyes who was staring with allher soul at the man who had been Freddie Drummond a few minutesbefore. The windows of the office building became vociferous with applause. A fresh shower of office chairs and filing cabinets descended. Themob had broken through on one side the line of waggons, and wasadvancing, each segregated policeman the centre of a fightinggroup. The scabs were torn from their seats, the traces of thehorses cut, and the frightened animals put in flight. Manypolicemen crawled under the coal waggon for safety, while the loosehorses, with here and there a policeman on their backs orstruggling at their heads to hold them, surged across the sidewalkopposite the jam and broke into Market Street. Catherine Van Vorst heard the woman's voice calling in warning. She was back on the curb again, and crying out-- "Beat it, Bill! Now's your time! Beat it!" The police for the moment had been swept away. Bill Totts leapedto the pavement and made his way to the woman on the sidewalk. Catherine Van Vorst saw her throw her arms around him and kiss himon the lips; and Catherine Van Vorst watched him curiously as hewent on down the sidewalk, one arm around the woman, both talkingand laughing, and he with a volubility and abandon she could neverhave dreamed possible. The police were back again and clearing the jam while waiting forreinforcements and new drivers and horses. The mob had done itswork and was scattering, and Catherine Van Vorst, still watching, could see the man she had known as Freddie Drummond. He towered ahead above the crowd. His arm was still about the woman. And shein the motor-car, watching, saw the pair cross Market Street, crossthe Slot, and disappear down Third Street into the labour ghetto. In the years that followed no more lectures were given in theUniversity of California by one Freddie Drummond, and no more bookson economics and the labour question appeared over the name ofFrederick A. Drummond. On the other hand there arose a new labourleader, William Totts by name. He it was who married Mary Condon, President of the International Glove Workers' Union No. 974; and heit was who called the notorious Cooks and Waiters' Strike, which, before its successful termination, brought out with it scores ofother unions, among which, of the more remotely allied, were theChicken Pickers and the Undertakers. THE UNPARALLELED INVASION It was in the year 1976 that the trouble between the world andChina reached its culmination. It was because of this that thecelebration of the Second Centennial of American Liberty wasdeferred. Many other plans of the nations of the earth weretwisted and tangled and postponed for the same reason. The worldawoke rather abruptly to its danger; but for over seventy years, unperceived, affairs had been shaping toward this very end. The year 1904 logically marks the beginning of the developmentthat, seventy years later, was to bring consternation to the wholeworld. The Japanese-Russian War took place in 1904, and thehistorians of the time gravely noted it down that that event markedthe entrance of Japan into the comity of nations. What it reallydid mark was the awakening of China. This awakening, longexpected, had finally been given up. The Western nations had triedto arouse China, and they had failed. Out of their native optimismand race-egotism they had therefore concluded that the task wasimpossible, that China would never awaken. What they had failed to take into account was this: that betweenthem and China was no common psychological speech. Their thought-processes were radically dissimilar. There was no intimatevocabulary. The Western mind penetrated the Chinese mind but ashort distance when it found itself in a fathomless maze. TheChinese mind penetrated the Western mind an equally short distancewhen it fetched up against a blank, incomprehensible wall. It wasall a matter of language. There was no way to communicate Westernideas to the Chinese mind. China remained asleep. The materialachievement and progress of the West was a closed book to her; norcould the West open the book. Back and deep down on the tie-ribsof consciousness, in the mind, say, of the English-speaking race, was a capacity to thrill to short, Saxon words; back and deep downon the tie-ribs of consciousness of the Chinese mind was a capacityto thrill to its own hieroglyphics; but the Chinese mind could notthrill to short, Saxon words; nor could the English-speaking mindthrill to hieroglyphics. The fabrics of their minds were wovenfrom totally different stuffs. They were mental aliens. And so itwas that Western material achievement and progress made no dent onthe rounded sleep of China. Came Japan and her victory over Russia in 1904. Now the Japaneserace was the freak and paradox among Eastern peoples. In somestrange way Japan was receptive to all the West had to offer. Japan swiftly assimilated the Western ideas, and digested them, andso capably applied them that she suddenly burst forth, full-panoplied, a world-power. There is no explaining this peculiaropenness of Japan to the alien culture of the West. As well mightbe explained any biological sport in the animal kingdom. Having decisively thrashed the great Russian Empire, Japan promptlyset about dreaming a colossal dream of empire for herself. Koreashe had made into a granary and a colony; treaty privileges andvulpine diplomacy gave her the monopoly of Manchuria. But Japanwas not satisfied. She turned her eyes upon China. There lay avast territory, and in that territory were the hugest deposits inthe world of iron and coal--the backbone of industrialcivilization. Given natural resources, the other great factor inindustry is labour. In that territory was a population of400, 000, 000 souls--one quarter of the then total population of theearth. Furthermore, the Chinese were excellent workers, whiletheir fatalistic philosophy (or religion) and their stolid nervousorganization constituted them splendid soldiers--if they wereproperly managed. Needless to say, Japan was prepared to furnishthat management. But best of all, from the standpoint of Japan, the Chinese was akindred race. The baffling enigma of the Chinese character to theWest was no baffling enigma to the Japanese. The Japaneseunderstood as we could never school ourselves or hope tounderstand. Their mental processes were the same. The Japanesethought with the same thought-symbols as did the Chinese, and theythought in the same peculiar grooves. Into the Chinese mind theJapanese went on where we were balked by the obstacle ofincomprehension. They took the turning which we could notperceive, twisted around the obstacle, and were out of sight in theramifications of the Chinese mind where we could not follow. Theywere brothers. Long ago one had borrowed the other's writtenlanguage, and, untold generations before that, they had divergedfrom the common Mongol stock. There had been changes, differentiations brought about by diverse conditions and infusionsof other blood; but down at the bottom of their beings, twistedinto the fibres of them, was a heritage in common, a sameness inkind that time had not obliterated. And so Japan took upon herself the management of China. In theyears immediately following the war with Russia, her agents swarmedover the Chinese Empire. A thousand miles beyond the last missionstation toiled her engineers and spies, clad as coolies, under theguise of itinerant merchants or proselytizing Buddhist priests, noting down the horse-power of every waterfall, the likely sitesfor factories, the heights of mountains and passes, the strategicadvantages and weaknesses, the wealth of the farming valleys, thenumber of bullocks in a district or the number of labourers thatcould be collected by forced levies. Never was there such acensus, and it could have been taken by no other people than thedogged, patient, patriotic Japanese. But in a short time secrecy was thrown to the winds. Japan'sofficers reorganized the Chinese army; her drill sergeants made themediaeval warriors over into twentieth century soldiers, accustomedto all the modern machinery of war and with a higher average ofmarksmanship than the soldiers of any Western nation. Theengineers of Japan deepened and widened the intricate system ofcanals, built factories and foundries, netted the empire withtelegraphs and telephones, and inaugurated the era of railroad-building. It was these same protagonists of machine-civilizationthat discovered the great oil deposits of Chunsan, the ironmountains of Whang-Sing, the copper ranges of Chinchi, and theysank the gas wells of Wow-Wee, that most marvellous reservoir ofnatural gas in all the world. In China's councils of empire were the Japanese emissaries. In theears of the statesmen whispered the Japanese statesmen. Thepolitical reconstruction of the Empire was due to them. Theyevicted the scholar class, which was violently reactionary, and putinto office progressive officials. And in every town and city ofthe Empire newspapers were started. Of course, Japanese editorsran the policy of these papers, which policy they got direct fromTokio. It was these papers that educated and made progressive thegreat mass of the population. China was at last awake. Where the West had failed, Japansucceeded. She had transmuted Western culture and achievement intoterms that were intelligible to the Chinese understanding. Japanherself, when she so suddenly awakened, had astounded the world. But at the time she was only forty millions strong. China'sawakening, with her four hundred millions and the scientificadvance of the world, was frightfully astounding. She was thecolossus of the nations, and swiftly her voice was heard in nouncertain tones in the affairs and councils of the nations. Japanegged her on, and the proud Western peoples listened withrespectful ears. China's swift and remarkable rise was due, perhaps more than toanything else, to the superlative quality of her labour. TheChinese was the perfect type of industry. He had always been that. For sheer ability to work no worker in the world could compare withhim. Work was the breath of his nostrils. It was to him whatwandering and fighting in far lands and spiritual adventure hadbeen to other peoples. Liberty, to him, epitomized itself inaccess to the means of toil. To till the soil and labourinterminably was all he asked of life and the powers that be. Andthe awakening of China had given its vast population not merelyfree and unlimited access to the means of toil, but access to thehighest and most scientific machine-means of toil. China rejuvenescent! It was but a step to China rampant. Shediscovered a new pride in herself and a will of her own. She beganto chafe under the guidance of Japan, but she did not chafe long. On Japan's advice, in the beginning, she had expelled from theEmpire all Western missionaries, engineers, drill sergeants, merchants, and teachers. She now began to expel the similarrepresentatives of Japan. The latter's advisory statesmen wereshowered with honours and decorations, and sent home. The West hadawakened Japan, and, as Japan had then requited the West, Japan wasnot requited by China. Japan was thanked for her kindly aid andflung out bag and baggage by her gigantic protege. The Westernnations chuckled. Japan's rainbow dream had gone glimmering. Shegrew angry. China laughed at her. The blood and the swords of theSamurai would out, and Japan rashly went to war. This occurred in1922, and in seven bloody months Manchuria, Korea, and Formosa weretaken away from her and she was hurled back, bankrupt, to stifle inher tiny, crowded islands. Exit Japan from the world drama. Thereafter she devoted herself to art, and her task became toplease the world greatly with her creations of wonder and beauty. Contrary to expectation, China did not prove warlike. She had noNapoleonic dream, and was content to devote herself to the arts ofpeace. After a time of disquiet, the idea was accepted that Chinawas to be feared, not in war, but in commerce. It will be seenthat the real danger was not apprehended. China went onconsummating her machine-civilization. Instead of a large standingarmy, she developed an immensely larger and splendidly efficientmilitia. Her navy was so small that it was the laughing stock ofthe world; nor did she attempt to strengthen her navy. The treatyports of the world were never entered by her visiting battleships. The real danger lay in the fecundity of her loins, and it was in1970 that the first cry of alarm was raised. For some time allterritories adjacent to China had been grumbling at Chineseimmigration; but now it suddenly came home to the world thatChina's population was 500, 000, 000. She had increased by a hundredmillions since her awakening. Burchaldter called attention to thefact that there were more Chinese in existence than white-skinnedpeople. He performed a simple sum in arithmetic. He addedtogether the populations of the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, European Russia, and all Scandinavia. The result was 495, 000, 000. And the population of China overtopped this tremendous total by5, 000, 000. Burchaldter's figures went round the world, and theworld shivered. For many centuries China's population had been constant. Herterritory had been saturated with population; that is to say, herterritory, with the primitive method of production, had supportedthe maximum limit of population. But when she awoke andinaugurated the machine-civilization, her productive power had beenenormously increased. Thus, on the same territory, she was able tosupport a far larger population. At once the birth rate began torise and the death rate to fall. Before, when population pressedagainst the means of subsistence, the excess population had beenswept away by famine. But now, thanks to the machine-civilization, China's means of subsistence had been enormously extended, andthere were no famines; her population followed on the heels of theincrease in the means of subsistence. During this time of transition and development of power, China hadentertained no dreams of conquest. The Chinese was not an imperialrace. It was industrious, thrifty, and peace-loving. War waslooked upon as an unpleasant but necessary task that at times mustbe performed. And so, while the Western races had squabbled andfought, and world-adventured against one another, China had calmlygone on working at her machines and growing. Now she was spillingover the boundaries of her Empire--that was all, just spilling overinto the adjacent territories with all the certainty and terrifyingslow momentum of a glacier. Following upon the alarm raised by Burchaldter's figures, in 1970France made a long-threatened stand. French Indo-China had beenoverrun, filled up, by Chinese immigrants. France called a halt. The Chinese wave flowed on. France assembled a force of a hundredthousand on the boundary between her unfortunate colony and China, and China sent down an army of militia-soldiers a million strong. Behind came the wives and sons and daughters and relatives, withtheir personal household luggage, in a second army. The Frenchforce was brushed aside like a fly. The Chinese militia-soldiers, along with their families, over five millions all told, coolly tookpossession of French Indo-China and settled down to stay for a fewthousand years. Outraged France was in arms. She hurled fleet after fleet againstthe coast of China, and nearly bankrupted herself by the effort. China had no navy. She withdrew like a turtle into her shell. Fora year the French fleets blockaded the coast and bombarded exposedtowns and villages. China did not mind. She did not depend uponthe rest of the world for anything. She calmly kept out of rangeof the French guns and went on working. France wept and wailed, wrung her impotent hands and appealed to the dumfounded nations. Then she landed a punitive expedition to march to Peking. It wastwo hundred and fifty thousand strong, and it was the flower ofFrance. It landed without opposition and marched into theinterior. And that was the last ever seen of it. The line ofcommunication was snapped on the second day. Not a survivor cameback to tell what had happened. It had been swallowed up inChina's cavernous maw, that was all. In the five years that followed, China's expansion, in all landdirections, went on apace. Siam was made part of the Empire, and, in spite of all that England could do, Burma and the MalayPeninsula were overrun; while all along the long south boundary ofSiberia, Russia was pressed severely by China's advancing hordes. The process was simple. First came the Chinese immigration (or, rather, it was already there, having come there slowly andinsidiously during the previous years). Next came the clash ofarms and the brushing away of all opposition by a monster army ofmilitia-soldiers, followed by their families and household baggage. And finally came their settling down as colonists in the conqueredterritory. Never was there so strange and effective a method ofworld conquest. Napal and Bhutan were overrun, and the whole northern boundary ofIndia pressed against by this fearful tide of life. To the west, Bokhara, and, even to the south and west, Afghanistan, wereswallowed up. Persia, Turkestan, and all Central Asia felt thepressure of the flood. It was at this time that Burchaldterrevised his figures. He had been mistaken. China's populationmust be seven hundred millions, eight hundred millions, nobody knewhow many millions, but at any rate it would soon be a billion. There were two Chinese for every white-skinned human in the world, Burchaldter announced, and the world trembled. China's increasemust have begun immediately, in 1904. It was remembered that sincethat date there had not been a single famine. At 5, 000, 000 a yearincrease, her total increase in the intervening seventy years mustbe 350, 000, 000. But who was to know? It might be more. Who wasto know anything of this strange new menace of the twentiethcentury--China, old China, rejuvenescent, fruitful, and militant! The Convention of 1975 was called at Philadelphia. All the Westernnations, and some few of the Eastern, were represented. Nothingwas accomplished. There was talk of all countries putting bountieson children to increase the birth rate, but it was laughed to scornby the arithmeticians, who pointed out that China was too far inthe lead in that direction. No feasible way of coping with Chinawas suggested. China was appealed to and threatened by the UnitedPowers, and that was all the Convention of Philadelphia came to;and the Convention and the Powers were laughed at by China. LiTang Fwung, the power behind the Dragon Throne, deigned to reply. "What does China care for the comity of nations?" said Li TangFwung. "We are the most ancient, honourable, and royal of races. We have our own destiny to accomplish. It is unpleasant that ourdestiny does not tally with the destiny of the rest of the world, but what would you? You have talked windily about the royal racesand the heritage of the earth, and we can only reply that thatremains to be seen. You cannot invade us. Never mind about yournavies. Don't shout. We know our navy is small. You see we useit for police purposes. We do not care for the sea. Our strengthis in our population, which will soon be a billion. Thanks to you, we are equipped with all modern war-machinery. Send your navies. We will not notice them. Send your punitive expeditions, but firstremember France. To land half a million soldiers on our shoreswould strain the resources of any of you. And our thousandmillions would swallow them down in a mouthful. Send a million;send five millions, and we will swallow them down just as readily. Pouf! A mere nothing, a meagre morsel. Destroy, as you havethreatened, you United States, the ten million coolies we haveforced upon your shores--why, the amount scarcely equals half ofour excess birth rate for a year. " So spoke Li Tang Fwung. The world was nonplussed, helpless, terrified. Truly had he spoken. There was no combating China'samazing birth rate. If her population was a billion, and wasincreasing twenty millions a year, in twenty-five years it would bea billion and a half--equal to the total population of the world in1904. And nothing could be done. There was no way to dam up theover-spilling monstrous flood of life. War was futile. Chinalaughed at a blockade of her coasts. She welcomed invasion. Inher capacious maw was room for all the hosts of earth that could behurled at her. And in the meantime her flood of yellow life pouredout and on over Asia. China laughed and read in their magazinesthe learned lucubrations of the distracted Western scholars. But there was one scholar China failed to reckon on--JacobusLaningdale. Not that he was a scholar, except in the widest sense. Primarily, Jacobus Laningdale was a scientist, and, up to thattime, a very obscure scientist, a professor employed in thelaboratories of the Health Office of New York City. JacobusLaningdale's head was very like any other head, but in that headwas evolved an idea. Also, in that head was the wisdom to keepthat idea secret. He did not write an article for the magazines. Instead, he asked for a vacation. On September 19, 1975, hearrived in Washington. It was evening, but he proceeded straightto the White House, for he had already arranged an audience withthe President. He was closeted with President Moyer for threehours. What passed between them was not learned by the rest of theworld until long after; in fact, at that time the world was notinterested in Jacobus Laningdale. Next day the President called inhis Cabinet. Jacobus Laningdale was present. The proceedings werekept secret. But that very afternoon Rufus Cowdery, Secretary ofState, left Washington, and early the following morning sailed forEngland. The secret that he carried began to spread, but it spreadonly among the heads of Governments. Possibly half-a-dozen men ina nation were entrusted with the idea that had formed in JacobusLaningdale's head. Following the spread of the secret, sprang upgreat activity in all the dockyards, arsenals, and navy-yards. Thepeople of France and Austria became suspicious, but so sincere weretheir Governments' calls for confidence that they acquiesced in theunknown project that was afoot. This was the time of the Great Truce. All countries pledgedthemselves solemnly not to go to war with any other country. Thefirst definite action was the gradual mobilization of the armies ofRussia, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Then beganthe eastward movement. All railroads into Asia were glutted withtroop trains. China was the objective, that was all that wasknown. A little later began the great sea movement. Expeditionsof warships were launched from all countries. Fleet followedfleet, and all proceeded to the coast of China. The nationscleaned out their navy-yards. They sent their revenue cutters anddispatch boots and lighthouse tenders, and they sent their lastantiquated cruisers and battleships. Not content with this, theyimpressed the merchant marine. The statistics show that 58, 640merchant steamers, equipped with searchlights and rapid-fire guns, were despatched by the various nations to China. And China smiled and waited. On her land side, along herboundaries, were millions of the warriors of Europe. She mobilizedfive times as many millions of her militia and awaited theinvasion. On her sea coasts she did the same. But China waspuzzled. After all this enormous preparation, there was noinvasion. She could not understand. Along the great Siberianfrontier all was quiet. Along her coasts the towns and villageswere not even shelled. Never, in the history of the world, hadthere been so mighty a gathering of war fleets. The fleets of allthe world were there, and day and night millions of tons ofbattleships ploughed the brine of her coasts, and nothing happened. Nothing was attempted. Did they think to make her emerge from hershell? China smiled. Did they think to tire her out, or starveher out? China smiled again. But on May 1, 1976, had the reader been in the imperial city ofPeking, with its then population of eleven millions, he would havewitnessed a curious sight. He would have seen the streets filledwith the chattering yellow populace, every queued head tilted back, every slant eye turned skyward. And high up in the blue he wouldhave beheld a tiny dot of black, which, because of its orderlyevolutions, he would have identified as an airship. From thisairship, as it curved its flight back and forth over the city, fellmissiles--strange, harmless missiles, tubes of fragile glass thatshattered into thousands of fragments on the streets and house-tops. But there was nothing deadly about these tubes of glass. Nothing happened. There were no explosions. It is true, threeChinese were killed by the tubes dropping on their heads from soenormous a height; but what were three Chinese against an excessbirth rate of twenty millions? One tube struck perpendicularly ina fish-pond in a garden and was not broken. It was dragged ashoreby the master of the house. He did not dare to open it, but, accompanied by his friends, and surrounded by an ever-increasingcrowd, he carried the mysterious tube to the magistrate of thedistrict. The latter was a brave man. With all eyes upon him, heshattered the tube with a blow from his brass-bowled pipe. Nothinghappened. Of those who were very near, one or two thought they sawsome mosquitoes fly out. That was all. The crowd set up a greatlaugh and dispersed. As Peking was bombarded by glass tubes, so was all China. The tinyairships, dispatched from the warships, contained but two men each, and over all cities, towns, and villages they wheeled and curved, one man directing the ship, the other man throwing over the glasstubes. Had the reader again been in Peking, six weeks later, he would havelooked in vain for the eleven million inhabitants. Some few ofthem he would have found, a few hundred thousand, perhaps, theircarcasses festering in the houses and in the deserted streets, andpiled high on the abandoned death-waggons. But for the rest hewould have had to seek along the highways and byways of the Empire. And not all would he have found fleeing from plague-strickenPeking, for behind them, by hundreds of thousands of unburiedcorpses by the wayside, he could have marked their flight. And asit was with Peking, so it was with all the cities, towns, andvillages of the Empire. The plague smote them all. Nor was it oneplague, nor two plagues; it was a score of plagues. Every virulentform of infectious death stalked through the land. Too late theChinese government apprehended the meaning of the colossalpreparations, the marshalling of the world-hosts, the flights ofthe tin airships, and the rain of the tubes of glass. Theproclamations of the government were vain. They could not stop theeleven million plague-stricken wretches, fleeing from the one cityof Peking to spread disease through all the land. The physiciansand health officers died at their posts; and death, the all-conqueror, rode over the decrees of the Emperor and Li Tang Fwung. It rode over them as well, for Li Tang Fwung died in the secondweek, and the Emperor, hidden away in the Summer Palace, died inthe fourth week. Had there been one plague, China might have coped with it. Butfrom a score of plagues no creature was immune. The man whoescaped smallpox went down before scarlet fever. The man who wasimmune to yellow fever was carried away by cholera; and if he wereimmune to that, too, the Black Death, which was the bubonic plague, swept him away. For it was these bacteria, and germs, andmicrobes, and bacilli, cultured in the laboratories of the West, that had come down upon China in the rain of glass. All organization vanished. The government crumbled away. Decreesand proclamations were useless when the men who made them andsigned them one moment were dead the next. Nor could the maddenedmillions, spurred on to flight by death, pause to heed anything. They fled from the cities to infect the country, and wherever theyfled they carried the plagues with them. The hot summer was on--Jacobus Laningdale had selected the time shrewdly--and the plaguefestered everywhere. Much is conjectured of what occurred, andmuch has been learned from the stories of the few survivors. Thewretched creatures stormed across the Empire in many-millionedflight. The vast armies China had collected on her frontiersmelted away. The farms were ravaged for food, and no more cropswere planted, while the crops already in were left unattended andnever came to harvest. The most remarkable thing, perhaps, was theflights. Many millions engaged in them, charging to the bounds ofthe Empire to be met and turned back by the gigantic armies of theWest. The slaughter of the mad hosts on the boundaries wasstupendous. Time and again the guarding line was drawn back twentyor thirty miles to escape the contagion of the multitudinous dead. Once the plague broke through and seized upon the German andAustrian soldiers who were guarding the borders of Turkestan. Preparations had been made for such a happening, and though sixtythousand soldiers of Europe were carried off, the internationalcorps of physicians isolated the contagion and dammed it back. Itwas during this struggle that it was suggested that a new plague-germ had originated, that in some way or other a sort ofhybridization between plague-germs had taken place, producing a newand frightfully virulent germ. First suspected by Vomberg, whobecame infected with it and died, it was later isolated and studiedby Stevens, Hazenfelt, Norman, and Landers. Such was the unparalleled invasion of China. For that billion ofpeople there was no hope. Pent in their vast and festeringcharnel-house, all organization and cohesion lost, they could donaught but die. They could not escape. As they were flung backfrom their land frontiers, so were they flung back from the sea. Seventy-five thousand vessels patrolled the coasts. By day theirsmoking funnels dimmed the sea-rim, and by night their flashingsearchlights ploughed the dark and harrowed it for the tiniestescaping junk. The attempts of the immense fleets of junks werepitiful. Not one ever got by the guarding sea-hounds. Modern war-machinery held back the disorganized mass of China, while theplagues did the work. But old War was made a thing of laughter. Naught remained to himbut patrol duty. China had laughed at war, and war she wasgetting, but it was ultra-modern war, twentieth century war, thewar of the scientist and the laboratory, the war of JacobusLaningdale. Hundred-ton guns were toys compared with the micro-organic projectiles hurled from the laboratories, the messengers ofdeath, the destroying angels that stalked through the empire of abillion souls. During all the summer and fall of 1976 China was an inferno. Therewas no eluding the microscopic projectiles that sought out theremotest hiding-places. The hundreds of millions of dead remainedunburied and the germs multiplied themselves, and, toward the last, millions died daily of starvation. Besides, starvation weakenedthe victims and destroyed their natural defences against theplagues. Cannibalism, murder, and madness reigned. And soperished China. Not until the following February, in the coldest weather, were thefirst expeditions made. These expeditions were small, composed ofscientists and bodies of troops; but they entered China from everyside. In spite of the most elaborate precautions againstinfection, numbers of soldiers and a few of the physicians werestricken. But the exploration went bravely on. They found Chinadevastated, a howling wilderness through which wandered bands ofwild dogs and desperate bandits who had survived. All survivorswere put to death wherever found. And then began the great task, the sanitation of China. Five years and hundreds of millions oftreasure were consumed, and then the world moved in--not in zones, as was the idea of Baron Albrecht, but heterogeneously, accordingto the democratic American programme. It was a vast and happyintermingling of nationalities that settled down in China in 1982and the years that followed--a tremendous and successful experimentin cross-fertilization. We know to-day the splendid mechanical, intellectual, and art output that followed. It was in 1987, the Great Truce having been dissolved, that theancient quarrel between France and Germany over Alsace-Lorrainerecrudesced. The war-cloud grew dark and threatening in April, andon April 17 the Convention of Copenhagen was called. Therepresentatives of the nations of the world, being present, allnations solemnly pledged themselves never to use against oneanother the laboratory methods of warfare they had employed in theinvasion of China. --Excerpt from Walt Mervin's "Certain Essays in History. " THE ENEMY OF ALL THE WORLD It was Silas Bannerman who finally ran down that scientific wizardand arch-enemy of mankind, Emil Gluck. Gluck's confession, beforehe went to the electric chair, threw much light upon the series ofmysterious events, many apparently unrelated, that so perturbed theworld between the years 1933 and 1941. It was not until thatremarkable document was made public that the world dreamed of therebeing any connection between the assassination of the King andQueen of Portugal and the murders of the New York City policeofficers. While the deeds of Emil Gluck were all that wasabominable, we cannot but feel, to a certain extent, pity for theunfortunate, malformed, and maltreated genius. This side of hisstory has never been told before, and from his confession and fromthe great mass of evidence and the documents and records of thetime we are able to construct a fairly accurate portrait of him, and to discern the factors and pressures that moulded him into thehuman monster he became and that drove him onward and downwardalong the fearful path he trod. Emil Gluck was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1895. His father, Josephus Gluck, was a special policeman and night watchman, who, inthe year 1900, died suddenly of pneumonia. The mother, a pretty, fragile creature, who, before her marriage, had been a milliner, grieved herself to death over the loss of her husband. Thissensitiveness of the mother was the heritage that in the boy becamemorbid and horrible. In 1901, the boy, Emil, then six years of age, went to live withhis aunt, Mrs. Ann Bartell. She was his mother's sister, but inher breast was no kindly feeling for the sensitive, shrinking boy. Ann Bartell was a vain, shallow, and heartless woman. Also, shewas cursed with poverty and burdened with a husband who was a lazy, erratic ne'er-do-well. Young Emil Gluck was not wanted, and AnnBartell could be trusted to impress this fact sufficiently uponhim. As an illustration of the treatment he received in thatearly, formative period, the following instance is given. When he had been living in the Bartell home a little more than ayear, he broke his leg. He sustained the injury through playing onthe forbidden roof--as all boys have done and will continue to doto the end of time. The leg was broken in two places between theknee and thigh. Emil, helped by his frightened playmates, managedto drag himself to the front sidewalk, where he fainted. Thechildren of the neighbourhood were afraid of the hard-featuredshrew who presided over the Bartell house; but, summoning theirresolution, they rang the bell and told Ann Bartell of theaccident. She did not even look at the little lad who lay strickenon the sidewalk, but slammed the door and went back to her wash-tub. The time passed. A drizzle came on, and Emil Gluck, out ofhis faint, lay sobbing in the rain. The leg should have been setimmediately. As it was, the inflammation rose rapidly and made anasty case of it. At the end of two hours, the indignant women ofthe neighbourhood protested to Ann Bartell. This time she came outand looked at the lad. Also she kicked him in the side as he layhelpless at her feet, and she hysterically disowned him. He wasnot her child, she said, and recommended that the ambulance becalled to take him to the city receiving hospital. Then she wentback into the house. It was a woman, Elizabeth Shepstone, who came along, learned thesituation, and had the boy placed on a shutter. It was she whocalled the doctor, and who, brushing aside Ann Bartell, had the boycarried into the house. When the doctor arrived, Ann Bartellpromptly warned him that she would not pay him for his services. For two months the little Emil lay in bed, the first month on hisback without once being turned over; and he lay neglected andalone, save for the occasional visits of the unremunerated andover-worked physician. He had no toys, nothing with which tobeguile the long and tedious hours. No kind word was spoken tohim, no soothing hand laid upon his brow, no single touch or act ofloving tenderness--naught but the reproaches and harshness of AnnBartell, and the continually reiterated information that he was notwanted. And it can well be understood, in such environment, howthere was generated in the lonely, neglected boy much of thebitterness and hostility for his kind that later was to expressitself in deeds so frightful as to terrify the world. It would seem strange that, from the hands of Ann Bartell, EmilGluck should have received a college education; but the explanationis simple. Her ne'er-do-well husband, deserting her, made a strikein the Nevada goldfields, and returned to her a many-timesmillionaire. Ann Bartell hated the boy, and immediately she senthim to the Farristown Academy, a hundred miles away. Shy andsensitive, a lonely and misunderstood little soul, he was morelonely than ever at Farristown. He never came home, at vacation, and holidays, as the other boys did. Instead, he wandered aboutthe deserted buildings and grounds, befriended and misunderstood bythe servants and gardeners, reading much, it is remembered, spending his days in the fields or before the fire-place with hisnose poked always in the pages of some book. It was at this timethat he over-used his eyes and was compelled to take up the wearingof glasses, which same were so prominent in the photographs of himpublished in the newspapers in 1941. He was a remarkable student. Application such as his would havetaken him far; but he did not need application. A glance at a textmeant mastery for him. The result was that he did an immenseamount of collateral reading and acquired more in half a year thandid the average student in half-a-dozen years. In 1909, barelyfourteen years of age, he was ready--"more than ready" theheadmaster of the academy said--to enter Yale or Harvard. Hisjuvenility prevented him from entering those universities, and so, in 1909, we find him a freshman at historic Bowdoin College. In1913 he graduated with highest honours, and immediately afterwardfollowed Professor Bradlough to Berkeley, California. The onefriend that Emil Gluck discovered in all his life was ProfessorBradlough. The latter's weak lungs had led him to exchange Mainefor California, the removal being facilitated by the offer of aprofessorship in the State University. Throughout the year 1914, Emil Gluck resided in Berkeley and took special scientific courses. Toward the end of that year two deaths changed his prospects andhis relations with life. The death of Professor Bradlough tookfrom him the one friend he was ever to know, and the death of AnnBartell left him penniless. Hating the unfortunate lad to thelast, she cut him off with one hundred dollars. The following year, at twenty years of age, Emil Gluck was enrolledas an instructor of chemistry in the University of California. Here the years passed quietly; he faithfully performed the drudgerythat brought him his salary, and, a student always, he took half-a-dozen degrees. He was, among other things, a Doctor of Sociology, of Philosophy, and of Science, though he was known to the world, inlater days, only as Professor Gluck. He was twenty-seven years old when he first sprang into prominencein the newspapers through the publication of his book, Sex andProgress. The book remains to-day a milestone in the history andphilosophy of marriage. It is a heavy tome of over seven hundredpages, painfully careful and accurate, and startlingly original. It was a book for scientists, and not one calculated to make astir. But Gluck, in the last chapter, using barely three lines forit, mentioned the hypothetical desirability of trial marriages. Atonce the newspapers seized these three lines, "played them upyellow, " as the slang was in those days, and set the whole worldlaughing at Emil Gluck, the bespectacled young professor of twenty-seven. Photographers snapped him, he was besieged by reporters, women's clubs throughout the land passed resolutions condemning himand his immoral theories; and on the floor of the CaliforniaAssembly, while discussing the state appropriation to theUniversity, a motion demanding the expulsion of Gluck was madeunder threat of withholding the appropriation--of course, none ofhis persecutors had read the book; the twisted newspaper version ofonly three lines of it was enough for them. Here began EmilGluck's hatred for newspaper men. By them his serious andintrinsically valuable work of six years had been made a laughing-stock and a notoriety. To his dying day, and to their everlastingregret, he never forgave them. It was the newspapers that were responsible for the next disasterthat befell him. For the five years following the publication ofhis book he had remained silent, and silence for a lonely man isnot good. One can conjecture sympathetically the awful solitude ofEmil Gluck in that populous University; for he was without friendsand without sympathy. His only recourse was books, and he went onreading and studying enormously. But in 1927 he accepted aninvitation to appear before the Human Interest Society ofEmeryville. He did not trust himself to speak, and as we write wehave before us a copy of his learned paper. It is sober, scholarly, and scientific, and, it must also be added, conservative. But in one place he dealt with, and I quote hiswords, "the industrial and social revolution that is taking placein society. " A reporter present seized upon the word "revolution, "divorced it from the text, and wrote a garbled account that madeEmil Gluck appear an anarchist. At once, "Professor Gluck, anarchist, " flamed over the wires and was appropriately "featured"in all the newspapers in the land. He had attempted to reply to the previous newspaper attack, but nowhe remained silent. Bitterness had already corroded his soul. TheUniversity faculty appealed to him to defend himself, but hesullenly declined, even refusing to enter in defence a copy of hispaper to save himself from expulsion. He refused to resign, andwas discharged from the University faculty. It must be added thatpolitical pressure had been put upon the University Regents and thePresident. Persecuted, maligned, and misunderstood, the forlorn and lonely manmade no attempt at retaliation. All his life he had been sinnedagainst, and all his life he had sinned against no one. But hiscup of bitterness was not yet full to overflowing. Having lost hisposition, and being without any income, he had to find work. Hisfirst place was at the Union Iron Works, in San Francisco, where heproved a most able draughtsman. It was here that he obtained hisfirsthand knowledge of battleships and their construction. But thereporters discovered him and featured him in his new vocation. Heimmediately resigned and found another place; but after thereporters had driven him away from half-a-dozen positions, hesteeled himself to brazen out the newspaper persecution. Thisoccurred when he started his electroplating establishment--inOakland, on Telegraph Avenue. It was a small shop, employing threemen and two boys. Gluck himself worked long hours. Night afternight, as Policeman Carew testified on the stand, he did not leavethe shop till one and two in the morning. It was during thisperiod that he perfected the improved ignition device for gas-engines, the royalties from which ultimately made him wealthy. He started his electroplating establishment early in the spring of1928, and it was in the same year that he formed the disastrouslove attachment for Irene Tackley. Now it is not to be imaginedthat an extraordinary creature such as Emil Gluck could be anyother than an extraordinary lover. In addition to his genius, hisloneliness, and his morbidness, it must be taken into considerationthat he knew nothing about women. Whatever tides of desire floodedhis being, he was unschooled in the conventional expression ofthem; while his excessive timidity was bound to make his love-making unusual. Irene Tackley was a rather pretty young woman, butshallow and light-headed. At the time she worked in a small candystore across the street from Gluck's shop. He used to come in anddrink ice-cream sodas and lemon-squashes, and stare at her. Itseems the girl did not care for him, and merely played with him. He was "queer, " she said; and at another time she called him acrank when describing how he sat at the counter and peered at herthrough his spectacles, blushing and stammering when she tooknotice of him, and often leaving the shop in precipitate confusion. Gluck made her the most amazing presents--a silver tea-service, adiamond ring, a set of furs, opera-glasses, a ponderous History ofthe World in many volumes, and a motor-cycle all silver-plated inhis own shop. Enters now the girl's lover, putting his foot down, showing great anger, compelling her to return Gluck's strangeassortment of presents. This man, William Sherbourne, was a grossand stolid creature, a heavy-jawed man of the working class who hadbecome a successful building-contractor in a small way. Gluck didnot understand. He tried to get an explanation, attempting tospeak with the girl when she went home from work in the evening. She complained to Sherbourne, and one night he gave Gluck abeating. It was a very severe beating, for it is on the records ofthe Red Cross Emergency Hospital that Gluck was treated there thatnight and was unable to leave the hospital for a week. Still Gluck did not understand. He continued to seek anexplanation from the girl. In fear of Sherbourne, he applied tothe Chief of Police for permission to carry a revolver, whichpermission was refused, the newspapers as usual playing it upsensationally. Then came the murder of Irene Tackley, six daysbefore her contemplated marriage with Sherbourne. It was on aSaturday night. She had worked late in the candy store, departingafter eleven o'clock with her week's wages in her purse. She rodeon a San Pablo Avenue surface car to Thirty-fourth Street, whereshe alighted and started to walk the three blocks to her home. That was the last seen of her alive. Next morning she was found, strangled, in a vacant lot. Emil Gluck was immediately arrested. Nothing that he could docould save him. He was convicted, not merely on circumstantialevidence, but on evidence "cooked up" by the Oakland police. Thereis no discussion but that a large portion of the evidence wasmanufactured. The testimony of Captain Shehan was the sheerestperjury, it being proved long afterward that on the night inquestion he had not only not been in the vicinity of the murder, but that he had been out of the city in a resort on the San LeandroRoad. The unfortunate Gluck received life imprisonment in SanQuentin, while the newspapers and the public held that it was amiscarriage of justice--that the death penalty should have beenvisited upon him. Gluck entered San Quentin prison on April 17, 1929. He was thenthirty-four years of age. And for three years and a half, much ofthe time in solitary confinement, he was left to meditate upon theinjustice of man. It was during that period that his bitternesscorroded home and he became a hater of all his kind. Three otherthings he did during the same period: he wrote his famoustreatise, Human Morals, his remarkable brochure, The Criminal Sane, and he worked out his awful and monstrous scheme of revenge. Itwas an episode that had occurred in his electroplatingestablishment that suggested to him his unique weapon of revenge. As stated in his confession, he worked every detail outtheoretically during his imprisonment, and was able, on hisrelease, immediately to embark on his career of vengeance. His release was sensational. Also it was miserably and criminallydelayed by the soulless legal red tape then in vogue. On the nightof February 1, 1932, Tim Haswell, a hold-up man, was shot during anattempted robbery by a citizen of Piedmont Heights. Tim Haswelllingered three days, during which time he not only confessed to themurder of Irene Tackley, but furnished conclusive proofs of thesame. Bert Danniker, a convict dying of consumption in FolsomPrison, was implicated as accessory, and his confession followed. It is inconceivable to us of to-day--the bungling, dilatoryprocesses of justice a generation ago. Emil Gluck was proved inFebruary to be an innocent man, yet he was not released until thefollowing October. For eight months, a greatly wronged man, he wascompelled to undergo his unmerited punishment. This was notconducive to sweetness and light, and we can well imagine how heate his soul with bitterness during those dreary eight months. He came back to the world in the fall of 1932, as usual a "feature"topic in all the newspapers. The papers, instead of expressingheartfelt regret, continued their old sensational persecution. Onepaper did more--the San Francisco Intelligencer. John Hartwell, its editor, elaborated an ingenious theory that got around theconfessions of the two criminals and went to show that Gluck wasresponsible, after all, for the murder of Irene Tackley. Hartwelldied. And Sherbourne died too, while Policeman Phillipps was shotin the leg and discharged from the Oakland police force. The murder of Hartwell was long a mystery. He was alone in hiseditorial office at the time. The reports of the revolver wereheard by the office boy, who rushed in to find Hartwell expiring inhis chair. What puzzled the police was the fact, not merely thathe had been shot with his own revolver, but that the revolver hadbeen exploded in the drawer of his desk. The bullets had tornthrough the front of the drawer and entered his body. The policescouted the theory of suicide, murder was dismissed as absurd, andthe blame was thrown upon the Eureka Smokeless Cartridge Company. Spontaneous explosion was the police explanation, and the chemistsof the cartridge company were well bullied at the inquest. Butwhat the police did not know was that across the street, in theMercer Building, Room 633, rented by Emil Gluck, had been occupiedby Emil Gluck at the very moment Hartwell's revolver somysteriously exploded. At the time, no connection was made between Hartwell's death andthe death of William Sherbourne. Sherbourne had continued to livein the home he had built for Irene Tackley, and one morning inJanuary, 1933, he was found dead. Suicide was the verdict of thecoroner's inquest, for he had been shot by his own revolver. Thecurious thing that happened that night was the shooting ofPoliceman Phillipps on the sidewalk in front of Sherbourne's house. The policeman crawled to a police telephone on the corner and rangup for an ambulance. He claimed that some one had shot him frombehind in the leg. The leg in question was so badly shattered bythree '38 calibre bullets that amputation was necessary. But whenthe police discovered that the damage had been done by his ownrevolver, a great laugh went up, and he was charged with havingbeen drunk. In spite of his denial of having touched a drop, andof his persistent assertion that the revolver had been in his hippocket and that he had not laid a finger to it, he was dischargedfrom the force. Emil Gluck's confession, six years later, clearedthe unfortunate policeman of disgrace, and he is alive to-day andin good health, the recipient of a handsome pension from the city. Emil Gluck, having disposed of his immediate enemies, now sought awider field, though his enmity for newspaper men and for the policeremained always active. The royalties on his ignition device forgasolene-engines had mounted up while he lay in prison, and year byyear the earning power of his invention increased. He wasindependent, able to travel wherever he willed over the earth andto glut his monstrous appetite for revenge. He had become amonomaniac and an anarchist--not a philosophic anarchist, merely, but a violent anarchist. Perhaps the word is misused, and he isbetter described as a nihilist, or an annihilist. It is known thathe affiliated with none of the groups of terrorists. He operatedwholly alone, but he created a thousandfold more terror andachieved a thousandfold more destruction than all the terroristgroups added together. He signalized his departure from California by blowing up FortMason. In his confession he spoke of it as a little experiment--hewas merely trying his hand. For eight years he wandered over theearth, a mysterious terror, destroying property to the tune ofhundreds of millions of dollars, and destroying countless lives. One good result of his awful deeds was the destruction he wroughtamong the terrorists themselves. Every time he did anything theterrorists in the vicinity were gathered in by the police dragnet, and many of them were executed. Seventeen were executed at Romealone, following the assassination of the Italian King. Perhaps the most world-amazing achievement of his was theassassination of the King and Queen of Portugal. It was theirwedding day. All possible precautions had been taken against theterrorists, and the way from the cathedral, through Lisbon'sstreets, was double-banked with troops, while a squad of twohundred mounted troopers surrounded the carriage. Suddenly theamazing thing happened. The automatic rifles of the troopers beganto go off, as well as the rifles, in the immediate vicinity, of thedouble-banked infantry. In the excitement the muzzles of theexploding rifles were turned in all directions. The slaughter wasterrible--horses, troops, spectators, and the King and Queen, wereriddled with bullets. To complicate the affair, in different partsof the crowd behind the foot-soldiers, two terrorists had bombsexplode on their persons. These bombs they had intended to throwif they got the opportunity. But who was to know this? Thefrightful havoc wrought by the bursting bombs but added to theconfusion; it was considered part of the general attack. One puzzling thing that could not be explained away was the conductof the troopers with their exploding rifles. It seemed impossiblethat they should be in the plot, yet there were the hundreds theirflying bullets had slain, including the King and Queen. On theother hand, more baffling than ever was the fact that seventy percent. Of the troopers themselves had been killed or wounded. Someexplained this on the ground that the loyal foot-soldiers, witnessing the attack on the royal carriage, had opened fire on thetraitors. Yet not one bit of evidence to verify this could bedrawn from the survivors, though many were put to the torture. They contended stubbornly that they had not discharged their riflesat all, but that their rifles had discharged themselves. They werelaughed at by the chemists, who held that, while it was just barelyprobable that a single cartridge, charged with the new smokelesspowder, might spontaneously explode, it was beyond all probabilityand possibility for all the cartridges in a given area, so charged, spontaneously to explode. And so, in the end, no explanation ofthe amazing occurrence was reached. The general opinion of therest of the world was that the whole affair was a blind panic ofthe feverish Latins, precipitated, it was true, by the bursting oftwo terrorist bombs; and in this connection was recalled thelaughable encounter of long years before between the Russian fleetand the English fishing boats. And Emil Gluck chuckled and went his way. He knew. But how wasthe world to know? He had stumbled upon the secret in his oldelectroplating shop on Telegraph Avenue in the city of Oakland. Ithappened, at that time, that a wireless telegraph station wasestablished by the Thurston Power Company close to his shop. In ashort time his electroplating vat was put out of order. The vat-wiring had many bad joints, and, on investigation, Gluck discoveredminute welds at the joints in the wiring. These, by lowering theresistance, had caused an excessive current to pass through thesolution, "boiling" it and spoiling the work. But what had causedthe welds? was the question in Gluck's mind. His reasoning wassimple. Before the establishment of the wireless station, the vathad worked well. Not until after the establishment of the wirelessstation had the vat been ruined. Therefore the wireless stationhad been the cause. But how? He quickly answered the question. If an electric discharge was capable of operating a coherer acrossthree thousand miles of ocean, then, certainly, the electricdischarges from the wireless station four hundred feet away couldproduce coherer effects on the bad joints in the vat-wiring. Gluck thought no more about it at the time. He merely re-wired hisvat and went on electroplating. But afterwards, in prison, heremembered the incident, and like a flash there came into his mindthe full significance of it. He saw in it the silent, secretweapon with which to revenge himself on the world. His greatdiscovery, which died with him, was control over the direction andscope of the electric discharge. At the time, this was theunsolved problem of wireless telegraphy--as it still is to-day--butEmil Gluck, in his prison cell, mastered it. And, when he wasreleased, he applied it. It was fairly simple, given the directingpower that was his, to introduce a spark into the powder-magazinesof a fort, a battleship, or a revolver. And not alone could hethus explode powder at a distance, but he could igniteconflagrations. The great Boston fire was started by him--quite byaccident, however, as he stated in his confession, adding that itwas a pleasing accident and that he had never had any reason toregret it. It was Emil Gluck that caused the terrible German-American War, with the loss of 800, 000 lives and the consumption of almostincalculable treasure. It will be remembered that in 1939, becauseof the Pickard incident, strained relations existed between the twocountries. Germany, though aggrieved, was not anxious for war, and, as a peace token, sent the Crown Prince and seven battleshipson a friendly visit to the United States. On the night of February15, the seven warships lay at anchor in the Hudson opposite NewYork City. And on that night Emil Gluck, alone, with all hisapparatus on board, was out in a launch. This launch, it wasafterwards proved, was bought by him from the Ross Turner Company, while much of the apparatus he used that night had been purchasedfrom the Columbia Electric Works. But this was not known at thetime. All that was known was that the seven battleships blew up, one after another, at regular four-minute intervals. Ninety percent. Of the crews and officers, along with the Crown Prince, perished. Many years before, the American battleship Maine hadbeen blown up in the harbour of Havana, and war with Spain hadimmediately followed--though there has always existed a reasonabledoubt as to whether the explosion was due to conspiracy oraccident. But accident could not explain the blowing up of theseven battleships on the Hudson at four-minute intervals. Germanybelieved that it had been done by a submarine, and immediatelydeclared war. It was six months after Gluck's confession that shereturned the Philippines and Hawaii to the United States. In the meanwhile Emil Gluck, the malevolent wizard and arch-hater, travelled his whirlwind path of destruction. He left no traces. Scientifically thorough, he always cleaned up after himself. Hismethod was to rent a room or a house, and secretly to install hisapparatus--which apparatus, by the way, he so perfected andsimplified that it occupied little space. After he hadaccomplished his purpose he carefully removed the apparatus. Hebade fair to live out a long life of horrible crime. The epidemic of shooting of New York City policemen was aremarkable affair. It became one of the horror mysteries of thetime. In two short weeks over a hundred policemen were shot in thelegs by their own revolvers. Inspector Jones did not solve themystery, but it was his idea that finally outwitted Gluck. On hisrecommendation the policemen ceased carrying revolvers, and no moreaccidental shootings occurred. It was in the early spring of 1940 that Gluck destroyed the MareIsland navy-yard. From a room in Vallejo he sent his electricdischarges across the Vallejo Straits to Mare Island. He firstplayed his flashes on the battleship Maryland. She lay at the dockof one of the mine-magazines. On her forward deck, on a hugetemporary platform of timbers, were disposed over a hundred mines. These mines were for the defence of the Golden Gate. Any one ofthese mines was capable of destroying a dozen battleships, andthere were over a hundred mines. The destruction was terrific, butit was only Gluck's overture. He played his flashes down the MareIsland shore, blowing up five torpedo boats, the torpedo station, and the great magazine at the eastern end of the island. Returningwestward again, and scooping in occasional isolated magazines onthe high ground back from the shore, he blew up three cruisers andthe battleships Oregon, Delaware, New Hampshire, and Florida--thelatter had just gone into dry-dock, and the magnificent dry-dockwas destroyed along with her. It was a frightful catastrophe, and a shiver of horror passedthrough the land. But it was nothing to what was to follow. Inthe late fall of that year Emil Gluck made a clean sweep of theAtlantic seaboard from Maine to Florida. Nothing escaped. Forts, mines, coast defences of all sorts, torpedo stations, magazines--everything went up. Three months afterward, in midwinter, he smotethe north shore of the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Greece inthe same stupefying manner. A wail went up from the nations. Itwas clear that human agency was behind all this destruction, and itwas equally clear, through Emil Gluck's impartiality, that thedestruction was not the work of any particular nation. One thingwas patent, namely, that whoever was the human behind it all, thathuman was a menace to the world. No nation was safe. There was nodefence against this unknown and all-powerful foe. Warfare wasfutile--nay, not merely futile but itself the very essence of theperil. For a twelve-month the manufacture of powder ceased, andall soldiers and sailors were withdrawn from all fortifications andwar vessels. And even a world-disarmament was seriously consideredat the Convention of the Powers, held at The Hague at that time. And then Silas Bannerman, a secret service agent of the UnitedStates, leaped into world-fame by arresting Emil Gluck. At firstBannerman was laughed at, but he had prepared his case well, and ina few weeks the most sceptical were convinced of Emil Gluck'sguilt. The one thing, however, that Silas Bannerman neversucceeded in explaining, even to his own satisfaction, was howfirst he came to connect Gluck with the atrocious crimes. It istrue, Bannerman was in Vallejo, on secret government business, atthe time of the destruction of Mare Island; and it is true that onthe streets of Vallejo Emil Gluck was pointed out to him as a queercrank; but no impression was made at the time. It was not untilafterward, when on a vacation in the Rocky Mountains and whenreading the first published reports of the destruction along theAtlantic Coast, that suddenly Bannerman thought of Emil Gluck. Andon the instant there flashed into his mind the connection betweenGluck and the destruction. It was only an hypothesis, but it wassufficient. The great thing was the conception of the hypothesis, in itself an act of unconscious cerebration--a thing asunaccountable as the flashing, for instance, into Newton's mind ofthe principle of gravitation. The rest was easy. Where was Gluck at the time of the destructionalong the Atlantic sea-board? was the question that formed inBannerman's mind. By his own request he was put upon the case. Inno time he ascertained that Gluck had himself been up and down theAtlantic Coast in the late fall of 1940. Also he ascertained thatGluck had been in New York City during the epidemic of the shootingof police officers. Where was Gluck now? was Bannerman's nextquery. And, as if in answer, came the wholesale destruction alongthe Mediterranean. Gluck had sailed for Europe a month before--Bannerman knew that. It was not necessary for Bannerman to go toEurope. By means of cable messages and the co-operation of theEuropean secret services, he traced Gluck's course along theMediterranean and found that in every instance it coincided withthe blowing up of coast defences and ships. Also, he learned thatGluck had just sailed on the Green Star liner Plutonic for theUnited States. The case was complete in Bannerman's mind, though in the intervalof waiting he worked up the details. In this he was ably assistedby George Brown, an operator employed by the Wood's System ofWireless Telegraphy. When the Plutonic arrived off Sandy Hook shewas boarded by Bannerman from a Government tug, and Emil Gluck wasmade a prisoner. The trial and the confession followed. In theconfession Gluck professed regret only for one thing, namely, thathe had taken his time. As he said, had he dreamed that he was everto be discovered he would have worked more rapidly and accomplisheda thousand times the destruction he did. His secret died with him, though it is now known that the French Government managed to getaccess to him and offered him a billion francs for his inventionwherewith he was able to direct and closely to confine electricdischarges. "What!" was Gluck's reply--"to sell to you that whichwould enable you to enslave and maltreat suffering Humanity?" Andthough the war departments of the nations have continued toexperiment in their secret laboratories, they have so far failed tolight upon the slightest trace of the secret. Emil Gluck wasexecuted on December 4, 1941, and so died, at the age of forty-six, one of the world's most unfortunate geniuses, a man of tremendousintellect, but whose mighty powers, instead of making toward good, were so twisted and warped that he became the most amazing ofcriminals. --Culled from Mr. A. G. Burnside's "Eccentricitics of Crime, " bykind permission of the publishers, Messrs. Holiday and Whitsund. THE DREAM OF DEBS I awoke fully an hour before my customary time. This in itself wasremarkable, and I lay very wide awake, pondering over it. Something was the matter, something was wrong--I knew not what. Iwas oppressed by a premonition of something terrible that hadhappened or was about to happen. But what was it? I strove toorient myself. I remembered that at the time of the GreatEarthquake of 1906 many claimed they awakened some moments beforethe first shock and that during these moments they experiencedstrange feelings of dread. Was San Francisco again to be visitedby earthquake? I lay for a full minute, numbly expectant, but there occurred noreeling of walls nor shock and grind of falling masonry. All wasquiet. That was it! The silence! No wonder I had been perturbed. The hum of the great live city was strangely absent. The surfacecars passed along my street, at that time of day, on an average ofone every three minutes; but in the ten succeeding minutes not acar passed. Perhaps it was a street-railway strike, was mythought; or perhaps there had been an accident and the power wasshut off. But no, the silence was too profound. I heard no jarand rattle of waggon wheels, nor stamp of iron-shod hoofs strainingup the steep cobble-stones. Pressing the push-button beside my bed, I strove to hear the soundof the bell, though I well knew it was impossible for the sound torise three stories to me even if the bell did ring. It rang allright, for a few minutes later Brown entered with the tray andmorning paper. Though his features were impassive as ever, I noteda startled, apprehensive light in his eyes. I noted, also, thatthere was no cream on the tray. "The Creamery did not deliver this morning, " he explained; "nor didthe bakery. " I glanced again at the tray. There were no fresh French rolls--only slices of stale graham bread from yesterday, the mostdetestable of bread so far as I was concerned. "Nothing was delivered this morning, sir, " Brown started to explainapologetically; but I interrupted him. "The paper?" "Yes, sir, it was delivered, but it was the only thing, and it isthe last time, too. There won't be any paper to-morrow. The papersays so. Can I send out and get you some condensed milk?" I shook my head, accepted the coffee black, and spread open thepaper. The headlines explained everything--explained too much, infact, for the lengths of pessimism to which the journal went wereridiculous. A general strike, it said, had been called all overthe United States; and most foreboding anxieties were expressedconcerning the provisioning of the great cities. I read on hastily, skimming much and remembering much of labourtroubles in the past. For a generation the general strike had beenthe dream of organized labour, which dream had arisen originally inthe mind of Debs, one of the great labour leaders of thirty yearsbefore. I recollected that in my young college-settlement days Ihad even written an article on the subject for one of the magazinesand that I had entitled it "The Dream of Debs. " And I must confessthat I had treated the idea very cavalierly and academically as adream and nothing more. Time and the world had rolled on, Gomperswas gone, the American Federation of Labour was gone, and gone wasDebs with all his wild revolutionary ideas; but the dream hadpersisted, and here it was at last realized in fact. But Ilaughed, as I read, at the journal's gloomy outlook. I knewbetter. I had seen organized labour worsted in too many conflicts. It would be a matter only of days when the thing would be settled. This was a national strike, and it wouldn't take the Governmentlong to break it. I threw the paper down and proceeded to dress. It would certainlybe interesting to be out in the streets of San Francisco when not awheel was turning and the whole city was taking an enforcedvacation. "I beg your pardon, sir, " Brown said, as he handed me my cigar-case, "but Mr. Harmmed has asked to see you before you go out. " "Send him in right away, " I answered. Harmmed was the butler. When he entered I could see he waslabouring under controlled excitement. He came at once to thepoint. "What shall I do, sir? There will be needed provisions, and thedelivery drivers are on strike. And the electricity is shut off--Iguess they're on strike, too. " "Are the shops open?" I asked. "Only the small ones, sir. The retail clerks are out, and the bigones can't open; but the owners and their families are running thelittle ones themselves. " "Then take the machine, " I said, "and go the rounds and make yourpurchases. Buy plenty of everything you need or may need. Get abox of candles--no, get half-a-dozen boxes. And, when you're done, tell Harrison to bring the machine around to the club for me--notlater than eleven. " Harmmed shook his head gravely. "Mr. Harrison has struck alongwith the Chauffeurs' Union, and I don't know how to run the machinemyself. " "Oh, ho, he has, has he?" said. "Well, when next Mister Harrisonhappens around you tell him that he can look elsewhere for aposition. " "Yes, sir. " "You don't happen to belong to a Butlers' Union, do you, Harmmed?" "No, sir, " was the answer. "And even if I did I'd not desert myemployer in a crisis like this. No, sir, I would--" "All right, thank you, " I said. "Now you get ready to accompanyme. I'll run the machine myself, and we'll lay in a stock ofprovisions to stand a siege. " It was a beautiful first of May, even as May days go. The sky wascloudless, there was no wind, and the air was warm--almost balmy. Many autos were out, but the owners were driving them themselves. The streets were crowded but quiet. The working class, dressed inits Sunday best, was out taking the air and observing the effectsof the strike. It was all so unusual, and withal so peaceful, thatI found myself enjoying it. My nerves were tingling with mildexcitement. It was a sort of placid adventure. I passed MissChickering. She was at the helm of her little runabout. She swungaround and came after me, catching me at the corner. "Oh, Mr. Corf!"' she hailed. "Do you know where I can buy candles?I've been to a dozen shops, and they're all sold out. It'sdreadfully awful, isn't it?" But her sparkling eyes gave the lie to her words. Like the rest ofus, she was enjoying it hugely. Quite an adventure it was, gettingthose candles. It was not until we went across the city and downinto the working-class quarter south of Market Street that we foundsmall corner groceries that had not yet sold out. Miss Chickeringthought one box was sufficient, but I persuaded her into takingfour. My car was large, and I laid in a dozen boxes. There was notelling what delays might arise in the settlement of the strike. Also, I filled the car with sacks of flour, baking-powder, tinnedgoods, and all the ordinary necessaries of life suggested byHarmmed, who fussed around and clucked over the purchases like ananxious old hen. The remarkable thing, that first day of the strike, was that no onereally apprehended anything serious. The announcement of organizedlabour in the morning papers that it was prepared to stay out amonth or three months was laughed at. And yet that very first daywe might have guessed as much from the fact that the working classtook practically no part in the great rush to buy provisions. Ofcourse not. For weeks and months, craftily and secretly, the wholeworking class had been laying in private stocks of provisions. That was why we were permitted to go down and buy out the littlegroceries in the working-class neighbourhoods. It was not until I arrived at the club that afternoon that I beganto feel the first alarm. Everything was in confusion. There wereno olives for the cocktails, and the service was by hitches andjerks. Most of the men were angry, and all were worried. A babelof voices greeted me as I entered. General Folsom, nursing hiscapacious paunch in a window-seat in the smoking-room was defendinghimself against half-a-dozen excited gentlemen who were demandingthat he should do something. "What can I do more than I have done?" he was saying. "There areno orders from Washington. If you gentlemen will get a wirethrough I'll do anything I am commanded to do. But I don't seewhat can be done. The first thing I did this morning, as soon as Ilearned of the strike, was to order in the troops from thePresidio--three thousand of them. They're guarding the banks, theMint, the post office, and all the public buildings. There is nodisorder whatever. The strikers are keeping the peace perfectly. You can't expect me to shoot them down as they walk along thestreets with wives and children all in their best bib and tucker. " "I'd like to know what's happening on Wall Street, " I heard JimmyWombold say as I passed along. I could imagine his anxiety, for Iknew that he was deep in the big Consolidated-Western deal. "Say, Corf, " Atkinson bustled up to me, "is your machine running?" "Yes, " I answered, "but what's the matter with your own?" "Broken down, and the garages are all closed. And my wife'ssomewhere around Truckee, I think, stalled on the overland. Can'tget a wire to her for love or money. She should have arrived thisevening. She may be starving. Lend me your machine. " "Can't get it across the bay, " Halstead spoke up. "The ferriesaren't running. But I tell you what you can do. There'sRollinson--oh, Rollinson, come here a moment. Atkinson wants toget a machine across the bay. His wife is stuck on the overland atTruckee. Can't you bring the Lurlette across from Tiburon andcarry the machine over for him?" The Lurlette was a two-hundred-ton, ocean-going schooner-yacht. Rollinson shook his head. "You couldn't get a longshoreman to landthe machine on board, even if I could get the Lurlette over, whichI can't, for the crew are members of the Coast Seamen's Union, andthey're on strike along with the rest. " "But my wife may be starving, " I could hear Atkinson wailing as Imoved on. At the other end of the smoking-room I ran into a group of menbunched excitedly and angrily around Bertie Messener. And Bertiewas stirring them up and prodding them in his cool, cynical way. Bertie didn't care about the strike. He didn't care much aboutanything. He was blase--at least in all the clean things of life;the nasty things had no attraction for him. He was worth twentymillions, all of it in safe investments, and he had never done atap of productive work in his life--inherited it all from hisfather and two uncles. He had been everywhere, seen everything, and done everything but get married, and this last in the face ofthe grim and determined attack of a few hundred ambitious mammas. For years he had been the greatest catch, and as yet he had avoidedbeing caught. He was disgracefully eligible. On top of his wealthhe was young, handsome, and, as I said before, clean. He was agreat athlete, a young blond god that did everything perfectly andadmirably with the solitary exception of matrimony. And he didn'tcare about anything, had no ambitions, no passions, no desire to dothe very things he did so much better than other men. "This is sedition!" one man in the group was crying. Anothercalled it revolt and revolution, and another called it anarchy. "I can't see it, " Bertie said. "I have been out in the streets allmorning. Perfect order reigns. I never saw a more law-abidingpopulace. There's no use calling it names. It's not any of thosethings. It's just what it claims to be, a general strike, and it'syour turn to play, gentlemen. " "And we'll play all right!" cried Garfield, one of the tractionmillionaires. "We'll show this dirt where its place is--thebeasts! Wait till the Government takes a hand. " "But where is the Government?" Bertie interposed. "It might aswell be at the bottom of the sea so far as you're concerned. Youdon't know what's happening at Washington. You don't know whetheryou've got a Government or not. " "Don't you worry about that, " Garfield blurted out. "I assure you I'm not worrying, " Bertie smiled languidly. "But itseems to me it's what you fellows are doing. Look in the glass, Garfield. " Garfield did not look, but had he looked he would have seen a veryexcited gentleman with rumpled, iron-grey hair, a flushed face, mouth sullen and vindictive, and eyes wildly gleaming. "It's not right, I tell you, " little Hanover said; and from histone I was sure that he had already said it a number of times. "Now that's going too far, Hanover, " Bertie replied. "You fellowsmake me tired. You're all open-shop men. You've eroded myeardrums with your endless gabble for the open shop and the rightof a man to work. You've harangued along those lines for years. Labour is doing nothing wrong in going out on this general strike. It is violating no law of God nor man. Don't you talk, Hanover. You've been ringing the changes too long on the God-given right towork . . . Or not to work; you can't escape the corollary. It's adirty little sordid scrap, that's all the whole thing is. You'vegot labour down and gouged it, and now labour's got you down and isgouging you, that's all, and you're squealing. " Every man in the group broke out in indignant denials that labourhad ever been gouged. "No, sir!" Garfield was shouting. "We've done the best for labour. Instead of gouging it, we've given it a chance to live. We've madework for it. Where would labour be if it hadn't been for us?" "A whole lot better off, " Bertie sneered. "You've got labour downand gouged it every time you got a chance, and you went out of yourway to make chances. " "No! No!" were the cries. "There was the teamsters' strike, right here in San Francisco, "Bertie went on imperturbably. "The Employers' Associationprecipitated that strike. You know that. And you know I know it, too, for I've sat in these very rooms and heard the inside talk andnews of the fight. First you precipitated the strike, then youbought the Mayor and the Chief of Police and broke the strike. Apretty spectacle, you philanthropists getting the teamsters downand gouging them. "Hold on, I'm not through with you. It's only last year that thelabour ticket of Colorado elected a governor. He was never seated. You know why. You know how your brother philanthropists andcapitalists of Colorado worked it. It was a case of getting labourdown and gouging it. You kept the president of the South-westernAmalgamated Association of Miners in jail for three years ontrumped-up murder charges, and with him out of the way you broke upthe association. That was gouging labour, you'll admit. The thirdtime the graduated income tax was declared unconstitutional was agouge. So was the eight-hour Bill you killed in the last Congress. "And of all unmitigated immoral gouges, your destruction of theclosed-shop principle was the limit. You know how it was done. Youbought out Farburg, the last president of the old AmericanFederation of Labour. He was your creature--or the creature of allthe trusts and employers' associations, which is the same thing. You precipitated the big closed-shop strike. Farburg betrayed thatstrike. You won, and the old American Federation of Labourcrumbled to pieces. You follows destroyed it, and by so doingundid yourselves; for right on top of it began the organization ofthe I. L. W. --the biggest and solidest organization of labour theUnited States has ever seen, and you are responsible for itsexistence and for the present general strike. You smashed all theold federations and drove labour into the I. L. W. , and the I. L. W. Called the general strike--still fighting for the closed shop. Andthen you have the effrontery to stand here face to face and tell methat you never got labour down and gouged it. Bah!" This time there were no denials. Garfield broke out in self-defence-- "We've done nothing we were not compelled to do, if we were towin. " "I'm not saying anything about that, " Bertie answered. "What I amcomplaining about is your squealing now that you're getting a tasteof your own medicine. How many strikes have you won by starvinglabour into submission? Well, labour's worked out a scheme wherebyto starve you into submission. It wants the closed shop, and, ifit can get it by starving you, why, starve you shall. " "I notice that you have profited in the past by those very labourgouges you mention, " insinuated Brentwood, one of the wiliest andmost astute of our corporation lawyers. "The receiver is as bad asthe thief, " he sneered. "You had no hand in the gouging, but youtook your whack out of the gouge. " "That is quite beside the question, Brentwood, " Bertie drawled. "You're as bad as Hanover, intruding the moral element. I haven'tsaid that anything is right or wrong. It's all a rotten game, Iknow; and my sole kick is that you fellows are squealing now thatyou're down and labour's taking a gouge out of you. Of course I'vetaken the profits from the gouging and, thanks to you, gentlemen, without having personally to do the dirty work. You did that forme--oh, believe me, not because I am more virtuous than you, butbecause my good father and his various brothers left me a lot ofmoney with which to pay for the dirty work. " "If you mean to insinuate--" Brentwood began hotly. "Hold on, don't get all-ruffled up, " Bertie interposed insolently. "There's no use in playing hypocrites in this thieves' den. Thehigh and lofty is all right for the newspapers, boys' clubs, andSunday schools--that's part of the game; but for heaven's sakedon't let's play it on one another. You know, and you know that Iknow just what jobbery was done in the building trades' strike lastfall, who put up the money, who did the work, and who profited byit. " (Brentwood flushed darkly. ) "But we are all tarred with thesame brush, and the best thing for us to do is to leave moralityout of it. Again I repeat, play the game, play it to the lastfinish, but for goodness' sake don't squeal when you get hurt. " When I left the group Bertie was off on a new tack tormenting themwith the more serious aspects of the situation, pointing out theshortage of supplies that was already making itself felt, andasking them what they were going to do about it. A little later Imet him in the cloak-room, leaving, and gave him a lift home in mymachine. "It's a great stroke, this general strike, " he said, as we bowledalong through the crowded but orderly streets. "It's a smashingbody-blow. Labour caught us napping and struck at our weakestplace, the stomach. I'm going to get out of San Francisco, Corf. Take my advice and get out, too. Head for the country, anywhere. You'll have more chance. Buy up a stock of supplies and get into atent or a cabin somewhere. Soon there'll be nothing but starvationin this city for such as we. " How correct Bertie Messener was I never dreamed. I decided that hewas an alarmist. As for myself, I was content to remain and watchthe fun. After I dropped him, instead of going directly home, Iwent on in a hunt for more food. To my surprise, I learned thatthe small groceries where I had bought in the morning were soldout. I extended my search to the Potrero, and by good luck managedto pick up another box of candles, two sacks of wheat flour, tenpounds of graham flour (which would do for the servants), a case oftinned corn, and two cases of tinned tomatoes. It did look asthough there was going to be at least a temporary food shortage, and I hugged myself over the goodly stock of provisions I had laidin. The next morning I had my coffee in bed as usual, and, more thanthe cream, I missed the daily paper. It was this absence ofknowledge of what was going on in the world that I found the chiefhardship. Down at the club there was little news. Rider hadcrossed from Oakland in his launch, and Halstead had been down toSan Jose and back in his machine. They reported the sameconditions in those places as in San Francisco. Everything wastied up by the strike. All grocery stocks had been bought out bythe upper classes. And perfect order reigned. But what washappening over the rest of the country--in Chicago? New York?Washington? Most probably the same things that were happening withus, we concluded; but the fact that we did not know with absolutesurety was irritating. General Folsom had a bit of news. An attempt had been made toplace army telegraphers in the telegraph offices, but the wires hadbeen cut in every direction. This was, so far, the one unlawfulact committed by labour, and that it was a concerted act he wasfully convinced. He had communicated by wireless with the armypost at Benicia, the telegraph lines were even then being patrolledby soldiers all the way to Sacramento. Once, for one shortinstant, they had got the Sacramento call, then the wires, somewhere, were cut again. General Folsom reasoned that similarattempts to open communication were being made by the authoritiesall the way across the continent, but he was non-committal as towhether or not he thought the attempt would succeed. What worriedhim was the wire-cutting; he could not but believe that it was animportant part of the deep-laid labour conspiracy. Also, heregretted that the Government had not long since established itsprojected chain of wireless stations. The days came and went, and for a while it was a humdrum time. Nothing happened. The edge of excitement had become blunted. Thestreets were not so crowded. The working class did not come uptownany more to see how we were taking the strike. And there were notso many automobiles running around. The repair-shops and garageswere closed, and whenever a machine broke down it went out ofcommission. The clutch on mine broke, and neither love nor moneycould get it repaired. Like the rest, I was now walking. SanFrancisco lay dead, and we did not know what was happening over therest of the country. But from the very fact that we did not knowwe could conclude only that the rest of the country lay as dead asSan Francisco. From time to time the city was placarded with theproclamations of organized labour--these had been printed monthsbefore, and evidenced how thoroughly the I. L. W. Had prepared forthe strike. Every detail had been worked out long in advance. Noviolence had occurred as yet, with the exception of the shooting ofa few wire-cutters by the soldiers, but the people of the slumswere starving and growing ominously restless. The business men, the millionaires, and the professional class heldmeetings and passed resolutions, but there was no way of making theproclamations public. They could not even get them printed. Oneresult of these meetings, however, was that General Folsom waspersuaded into taking military possession of the wholesale housesand of all the flour, grain, and food warehouses. It was hightime, for suffering was becoming acute in the homes of the rich, and bread-lines were necessary. I knew that my servants werebeginning to draw long faces, and it was amazing--the hole theymade in my stock of provisions. In fact, as I afterward surmised, each servant was stealing from me and secreting a private stock ofprovisions for himself. But with the formation of the bread-lines came new troubles. Therewas only so much of a food reserve in San Francisco, and at thebest it could not last long. Organized labour, we knew, had itsprivate supplies; nevertheless, the whole working class joined thebread-lines. As a result, the provisions General Folsom had takenpossession of diminished with perilous rapidity. How were thesoldiers to distinguish between a shabby middle-class man, a memberof the I. L. W. , or a slum dweller? The first and the last had to befed, but the soldiers did not know all the I. L. W. Men in the city, much less the wives and sons and daughters of the I. L. W. Men. Theemployers helping, a few of the known union men were flung out ofthe bread-lines; but that amounted to nothing. To make mattersworse, the Government tugs that had been hauling food from the armydepots on Mare Island to Angel Island found no more food to haul. The soldiers now received their rations from the confiscatedprovisions, and they received them first. The beginning of the end was in sight. Violence was beginning toshow its face. Law and order were passing away, and passing away, I must confess, among the slum people and the upper classes. Organized labour still maintained perfect order. It could wellafford to--it had plenty to eat. I remember the afternoon at theclub when I caught Halstead and Brentwood whispering in a corner. They took me in on the venture. Brentwood's machine was still inrunning order, and they were going out cow-stealing. Halstead hada long butcher knife and a cleaver. We went out to the outskirtsof the city. Here and there were cows grazing, but always theywere guarded by their owners. We pursued our quest, followingalong the fringe of the city to the east, and on the hills nearHunter's Point we came upon a cow guarded by a little girl. Therewas also a young calf with the cow. We wasted no time onpreliminaries. The little girl ran away screaming, while weslaughtered the cow. I omit the details, for they are not nice--wewere unaccustomed to such work, and we bungled it. But in the midst of it, working with the haste of fear, we heardcries, and we saw a number of men running toward us. We abandonedthe spoils and took to our heels. To our surprise we were notpursued. Looking back, we saw the men hurriedly cutting up thecow. They had been on the same lay as ourselves. We argued thatthere was plenty for all, and ran back. The scene that followedbeggars description. We fought and squabbled over the divisionlike savages. Brentwood, I remember, was a perfect brute, snarlingand snapping and threatening that murder would be done if we didnot get our proper share. And we were getting our share when there occurred a new irruptionon the scene. This time it was the dreaded peace officers of theI. L. W. The little girl had brought them. They were armed withwhips and clubs, and there were a score of them. The little girldanced up and down in anger, the tears streaming down her cheeks, crying: "Give it to 'em! Give it to 'em! That guy with thespecs--he did it! Mash his face for him! Mash his face!" Thatguy with the specs was I, and I got my face mashed, too, though Ihad the presence of mind to take off my glasses at the first. My!but we did receive a trouncing as we scattered in all directions. Brentwood, Halstead, and I fled away for the machine. Brentwood'snose was bleeding, while Halstead's cheek was cut across with thescarlet slash of a black-snake whip. And, lo, when the pursuit ceased and we had gained the machine, there, hiding behind it, was the frightened calf. Brentwood warnedus to be cautious, and crept up on it like a wolf or tiger. Knifeand cleaver had been left behind, but Brentwood still had hishands, and over and over on the ground he rolled with the poorlittle calf as he throttled it. We threw the carcass into themachine, covered it over with a robe, and started for home. Butour misfortunes had only begun. We blew out a tyre. There was noway of fixing it, and twilight was coming on. We abandoned themachine, Brentwood pulling and staggering along in advance, thecalf, covered by the robe, slung across his shoulders. We tookturn about carrying that calf, and it nearly killed us. Also, welost our way. And then, after hours of wandering and toil, weencountered a gang of hoodlums. They were not I. L. W. Men, and Iguess they were as hungry as we. At any rate, they got the calfand we got the thrashing. Brentwood raged like a madman the restof the way home, and he looked like one, with his torn clothes, swollen nose, and blackened eyes. There wasn't any more cow-stealing after that. General Folsom senthis troopers out and confiscated all the cows, and his troopers, aided by the militia, ate most of the meat. General Folsom was notto be blamed; it was his duty to maintain law and order, and hemaintained it by means of the soldiers, wherefore he was compelledto feed them first of all. It was about this time that the great panic occurred. The wealthyclasses precipitated the flight, and then the slum people caughtthe contagion and stampeded wildly out of the city. General Folsomwas pleased. It was estimated that at least 200, 000 had desertedSan Francisco, and by that much was his food problem solved. Welldo I remember that day. In the morning I had eaten a crust ofbread. Half of the afternoon I had stood in the bread-line; andafter dark I returned home, tired and miserable, carrying a quartof rice and a slice of bacon. Brown met me at the door. His facewas worn and terrified. All the servants had fled, he informed me. He alone remained. I was touched by his faithfulness and, when Ilearned that he had eaten nothing all day, I divided my food withhim. We cooked half the rice and half the bacon, sharing itequally and reserving the other half for morning. I went to bedwith my hunger, and tossed restlessly all night. In the morning Ifound Brown had deserted me, and, greater misfortune still, he hadstolen what remained of the rice and bacon. It was a gloomy handful of men that came together at the club thatmorning. There was no service at all. The last servant was gone. I noticed, too, that the silver was gone, and I learned where ithad gone. The servants had not taken it, for the reason, Ipresume, that the club members got to it first. Their method ofdisposing of it was simple. Down south of Market Street, in thedwellings of the I. L. W. , the housewives had given square meals inexchange for it. I went back to my house. Yes, my silver wasgone--all but a massive pitcher. This I wrapped up and carrieddown south of Market Street. I felt better after the meal, and returned to the club to learn ifthere was anything new in the situation. Hanover, Collins, andDakon were just leaving. There was no one inside, they told me, and they invited me to come along with them. They were leaving thecity, they said, on Dakon's horses, and there was a spare one forme. Dakon had four magnificent carriage horses that he wanted tosave, and General Folsom had given him the tip that next morningall the horses that remained in the city were to be confiscated forfood. There were not many horses left, for tens of thousands ofthem had been turned loose into the country when the hay and graingave out during the first days. Birdall, I remember, who had greatdraying interests, had turned loose three hundred dray horses. Atan average value of five hundred dollars, this had amounted to$150, 000. He had hoped, at first, to recover most of the horsesafter the strike was over, but in the end he never recovered one ofthem. They were all eaten by the people that fled from SanFrancisco. For that matter, the killing of the army mules andhorses for food had already begun. Fortunately for Dakon, he had had a plentiful supply of hay andgrain stored in his stable. We managed to raise four saddles, andwe found the animals in good condition and spirited, withal unusedto being ridden. I remembered the San Francisco of the greatearthquake as we rode through the streets, but this San Franciscowas vastly more pitiable. No cataclysm of nature had caused this, but, rather, the tyranny of the labour unions. We rode down pastUnion Square and through the theatre, hotel, and shoppingdistricts. The streets were deserted. Here and there stoodautomobiles, abandoned where they had broken down or when thegasolene had given out. There was no sign of life, save for theoccasional policemen and the soldiers guarding the banks and publicbuildings. Once we came upon an I. L. W. Man pasting up the latestproclamation. We stopped to read. "We have maintained an orderlystrike, " it ran; "and we shall maintain order to the end. The endwill come when our demands are satisfied, and our demands will besatisfied when we have starved our employers into submission, as weourselves in the past have often been starved into submission. " "Messener's very words, " Collins said. "And I, for one, am readyto submit, only they won't give me a chance to submit. I haven'thad a full meal in an age. I wonder what horse-meat tastes like?" We stopped to read another proclamation: "When we think ouremployers are ready to submit we shall open up the telegraphs andplace the employers' associations of the United States incommunication. But only messages relating to peace terms shall bepermitted over the wires. " We rode on, crossed Market Street, and a little later were passingthrough the working-class district. Here the streets were notdeserted. Leaning over the gates or standing in groups were theI. L. W. Men. Happy, well-fed children were playing games, and stouthousewives sat on the front steps gossiping. One and all castamused glances at us. Little children ran after us, crying: "Hey, mister, ain't you hungry?" And one woman, nursing a child at herbreast, called to Dakon: "Say, Fatty, I'll give you a meal foryour skate--ham and potatoes, currant jelly, white bread, cannedbutter, and two cups of coffee. " "Have you noticed, the last few days, " Hanover remarked to me, "that there's not been a stray dog in the streets?" I had noticed, but I had not thought about it before. It was hightime to leave the unfortunate city. We at last managed to connectwith the San Bruno Road, along which we headed south. I had acountry place near Menlo, and it was our objective. But soon webegan to discover that the country was worse off and far moredangerous than the city. There the soldiers and the I. L. W. Keptorder; but the country had been turned over to anarchy. Twohundred thousand people had fled from San Francisco, and we hadcountless evidences that their flight had been like that of an armyof locusts. They had swept everything clean. There had been robbery andfighting. Here and there we passed bodies by the roadside and sawthe blackened ruins of farm-houses. The fences were down, and thecrops had been trampled by the feet of a multitude. All thevegetable patches had been rooted up by the famished hordes. Allthe chickens and farm animals had been slaughtered. This was trueof all the main roads that led out of San Francisco. Here andthere, away from the roads, farmers had held their own withshotguns and revolvers, and were still holding their own. Theywarned us away and refused to parley with us. And all thedestruction and violence had been done by the slum-dwellers and theupper classes. The I. L. W. Men, with plentiful food supplies, remained quietly in their homes in the cities. Early in the ride we received concrete proof of how desperate wasthe situation. To the right of us we heard cries and rifle-shots. Bullets whistled dangerously near. There was a crashing in theunderbrush; then a magnificent black truck-horse broke across theroad in front of us and was gone. We had barely time to noticethat he was bleeding and lame. He was followed by three soldiers. The chase went on among the trees on the left. We could hear thesoldiers calling to one another. A fourth soldier limped out uponthe road from the right, sat down on a boulder, and mopped thesweat from his face. "Militia, " Dakon whispered. "Deserters. " The man grinned up at us and asked for a match. In reply toDakon's "What's the word?" he informed us that the militiamen weredeserting. "No grub, " he explained. "They're feedin' it all tothe regulars. " We also learned from him that the militaryprisoners had been released from Alcatraz Island because they couldno longer be fed. I shall never forget the next sight we encountered. We came uponit abruptly around a turn of the road. Overhead arched the trees. The sunshine was filtering down through the branches. Butterflieswere fluttering by, and from the fields came the song of larks. And there it stood, a powerful touring car. About it and in it laya number of corpses. It told its own tale. Its occupants, fleeingfrom the city, had been attacked and dragged down by a gang of slumdwellers--hoodlums. The thing had occurred within twenty-fourhours. Freshly opened meat and fruit tins explained the reason forthe attack. Dakon examined the bodies. "I thought so, " he reported. "I've ridden in that car. It wasPerriton--the whole family. We've got to watch out for ourselvesfrom now on. " "But we have no food with which to invite attack, " I objected. Dakon pointed to the horse I rode, and I understood. Early in the day Dakon's horse had cast a shoe. The delicate hoofhad split, and by noon the animal was limping. Dakon refused toride it farther, and refused to desert it. So, on hissolicitation, we went on. He would lead the horse and join us atmy place. That was the last we saw of him; nor did we ever learnhis end. By one o'clock we arrived at the town of Menlo, or, rather, at thesite of Menlo, for it was in ruins. Corpses lay everywhere. Thebusiness part of the town, as well as part of the residences, hadbeen gutted by fire. Here and there a residence still held out;but there was no getting near them. When we approached too closelywe were fired upon. We met a woman who was poking about in thesmoking ruins of her cottage. The first attack, she told us hadbeen on the stores, and as she talked we could picture that raging, roaring, hungry mob flinging itself on the handful of townspeople. Millionaires and paupers had fought side by side for the food, andthen fought with one another after they got it. The town of PaloAlto and Stanford University had been sacked in similar fashion, welearned. Ahead of us lay a desolate, wasted land; and we thoughtwe were wise in turning off to my place. It lay three miles to thewest, snuggling among the first rolling swells of the foothills. But as we rode along we saw that the devastation was not confinedto the main roads. The van of the flight had kept to the roads, sacking the small towns as it went; while those that followed hadscattered out and swept the whole countryside like a great broom. My place was built of concrete, masonry, and tiles, and so hadescaped being burned, but it was gutted clean. We found thegardener's body in the windmill, littered around with empty shot-gun shells. He had put up a good fight. But no trace could wefind of the two Italian labourers, nor of the house-keeper and herhusband. Not a live thing remained. The calves, the colts, allthe fancy poultry and thoroughbred stock, everything, was gone. The kitchen and the fireplaces, where the mob had cooked, were amess, while many camp-fires outside bore witness to the largenumber that had fed and spent the night. What they had not eatenthey had carried away. There was not a bite for us. We spent the rest of the night vainly waiting for Dakon, and in themorning, with our revolvers, fought off half-a-dozen marauders. Then we killed one of Dakon's horses, hiding for the future whatmeat we did not immediately eat. In the afternoon Collins went outfor a walk, but failed to return. This was the last straw toHanover. He was for flight there and then, and I had greatdifficulty in persuading him to wait for daylight. As for myself, I was convinced that the end of the general strike was near, and Iwas resolved to return to San Francisco. So, in the morning, weparted company, Hanover heading south, fifty pounds of horse-meatstrapped to his saddle, while I, similarly loaded, headed north. Little Hanover pulled through all right, and to the end of his lifehe will persist, I know, in boring everybody with the narrative ofhis subsequent adventures. I got as far as Belmont, on the main road back, when I was robbedof my horse-meat by three militiamen. There was no change in thesituation, they said, except that it was going from bad to worse. The I. L. W. Had plenty of provisions hidden away and could last outfor months. I managed to get as far as Baden, when my horse wastaken away from me by a dozen men. Two of them were San Franciscopolicemen, and the remainder were regular soldiers. This wasominous. The situation was certainly extreme when the regularswere beginning to desert. When I continued my way on foot, theyalready had the fire started, and the last of Dakon's horses layslaughtered on the ground. As luck would have it, I sprained my ankle, and succeeded ingetting no farther than South San Francisco. I lay there thatnight in an out-house, shivering with the cold and at the same timeburning with fever. Two days I lay there, too sick to move, and onthe third, reeling and giddy, supporting myself on an extemporizedcrutch, I tottered on toward San Francisco. I was weak as well, for it was the third day since food had passed my lips. It was aday of nightmare and torment. As in a dream I passed hundreds ofregular soldiers drifting along in the opposite direction, and manypolicemen, with their families, organized in large groups formutual protection. As I entered the city I remembered the workman's house at which Ihad traded the silver pitcher, and in that direction my hungerdrove me. Twilight was falling when I came to the place. I passedaround by the alleyway and crawled up the black steps, on which Icollapsed. I managed to reach out with the crutch and knock on thedoor. Then I must have fainted, for I came to in the kitchen, myface wet with water, and whisky being poured down my throat. Ichoked and spluttered and tried to talk. I began saying somethingabout not having any more silver pitchers, but that I would make itup to them afterward if they would only give me something to eat. But the housewife interrupted me. "Why, you poor man, " she said, "haven't you heard? The strike wascalled off this afternoon. Of course we'll give you something toeat. " She bustled around, opening a tin of breakfast bacon and preparingto fry it. "Let me have some now, please, " I begged; and I ate the raw baconon a slice of bread, while her husband explained that the demandsof the I. L. W. Had been granted. The wires had been opened up inthe early afternoon, and everywhere the employers' associations hadgiven in. There hadn't been any employers left in San Francisco, but General Folsom had spoken for them. The trains and steamerswould start running in the morning, and so would everything elsejust as soon as system could be established. And that was the end of the general strike. I never want to seeanother one. It was worse than a war. A general strike is a crueland immoral thing, and the brain of man should be capable ofrunning industry in a more rational way. Harrison is still mychauffeur. It was part of the conditions of the I. L. W. That all ofits members should be reinstated in their old positions. Brownnever came back, but the rest of the servants are with me. Ihadn't the heart to discharge them--poor creatures, they werepretty hard-pressed when they deserted with the food and silver. And now I can't discharge them. They have all been unionized bythe I. L. W. The tyranny of organized labour is getting beyond humanendurance. Something must be done. THE SEA-FARMER "That wull be the doctor's launch, " said Captain MacElrath. The pilot grunted, while the skipper swept on with his glass fromthe launch to the strip of beach and to Kingston beyond, and thenslowly across the entrance to Howth Head on the northern side. "The tide's right, and we'll have you docked in two hours, " thepilot vouchsafed, with an effort at cheeriness. "Ring's End Basin, is it?" This time the skipper grunted. "A dirty Dublin day. " Again the skipper grunted. He was weary with the night of wind inthe Irish Channel behind him, the unbroken hours of which he hadspent on the bridge. And he was weary with all the voyage behindhim--two years and four months between home port and home port, eight hundred and fifty days by his log. "Proper wunter weather, " he answered, after a silence. "The townis undistinct. Ut wull be rainun' guid an' hearty for the day. " Captain MacElrath was a small man, just comfortably able to peepover the canvas dodger of the bridge. The pilot and third officerloomed above him, as did the man at the wheel, a bulky German, deserted from a warship, whom he had signed on in Rangoon. But hislack of inches made Captain MacElrath a no less able man. At leastso the Company reckoned, and so would he have reckoned could hehave had access to the carefully and minutely compiled record ofhim filed away in the office archives. But the Company had nevergiven him a hint of its faith in him. It was not the way of theCompany, for the Company went on the principle of never allowing anemployee to think himself indispensable or even exceedingly useful;wherefore, while quick to censure, it never praised. What wasCaptain MacElrath, anyway, save a skipper, one skipper of theeighty-odd skippers that commanded the Company's eighty-oddfreighters on all the highways and byways of the sea? Beneath them, on the main deck, two Chinese stokers were carryingbreakfast for'ard across the rusty iron plates that told their owngrim story of weight and wash of sea. A sailor was taking down thelife-line that stretched from the forecastle, past the hatches andcargo-winches, to the bridge-deck ladder. "A rough voyage, " suggested the pilot. "Aye, she was fair smokin' ot times, but not thot I minded thot somuch as the lossin' of time. I hate like onythun' tull loss time. " So saying, Captain MacElrath turned and glanced aft, aloft andalow, and the pilot, following his gaze, saw the mute butconvincing explanation of that loss of time. The smoke-stack, buff-coloured underneath, was white with salt, while the whistle-pipe glittered crystalline in the random sunlight that broke forthe instant through a cloud-rift. The port lifeboat was missing, its iron davits, twisted and wrenched, testifying to the mightinessof the blow that had been struck the old Tryapsic. The starboarddavits were also empty. The shattered wreck of the lifeboat theyhad held lay on the fiddley beside the smashed engine-roomskylight, which was covered by a tarpaulin. Below, to star-board, on the bridge deck, the pilot saw the crushed mess-room door, roughly bulkheaded against the pounding seas. Abreast of it, onthe smokestack guys, and being taken down by the bos'n and asailor, hung the huge square of rope netting which had failed tobreak those seas of their force. "Twice afore I mentioned thot door tull the owners, " said CaptainMacElrath. "But they said ut would do. There was bug seas thottime. They was uncreditable bug. And thot buggest one dud thedomage. Ut fair carried away the door an' laid ut flat on the messtable an' smashed out the chief's room. He was a but sore aboutut. " "It must 'a' been a big un, " the pilot remarked sympathetically. "Aye, ut was thot. Thungs was lively for a but. Ut finished themate. He was on the brudge wuth me, an' I told hum tull take alook tull the wedges o' number one hatch. She was takin' watterfreely an' I was no sure o' number one. I dudna like the look o'ut, an' I was fuggerin' maybe tull heave to tull the marn, when shetook ut over abaft the brudge. My word, she was a bug one. We gota but of ut ourselves on the brudge. I dudna miss the mate ot thefirst, what o' routin' out Chips an' bulkheadun' thot door an'stretchun' the tarpaulin over the sky-light. Then he was nowhereto be found. The men ot the wheel said as he seen hum goin' downthe lodder just afore she hut us. We looked for'ard, we lookedtull hus room, aye looked tull the engine-room, an' we looked alongaft on the lower deck, and there he was, on both sides the cover tothe steam-pipe runnun' tull the after-wunches. " The pilot ejaculated an oath of amazement and horror. "Aye, " the skipper went on wearily, "an' on both sides the steam-pipe uz well. I tell ye he was in two pieces, splut clean uz aherrin'. The sea must a-caught hum on the upper brudge deck, carried hum clean across the fiddley, an' banged hum head-on tullthe pipe cover. It sheered through hum like so much butter, downatween the eyes, an' along the middle of hum, so that one leg an'arm was fast tull the one piece of hum, an' one leg an' arm fasttull the other piece of hum. I tull ye ut was fair grewsome. Weputt hum together an' rolled hum in canvas uz we pulled hum out. " The pilot swore again. "Oh, ut wasna onythun' tull greet about, " Captain MacElrath assuredhim. "'Twas a guid ruddance. He was no a sailor, thot mate-fellow. He was only fut for a pugsty, an' a dom puir apology forthot same. " It is said that there are three kinds of Irish--Catholic, Protestant, and North-of-Ireland--and that the North-of-IrelandIrishman is a transplanted Scotchman. Captain MacElrath was aNorth-of-Ireland man, and, talking for much of the world like aScotchman, nothing aroused his ire quicker than being mistaken fora Scotchman. Irish he stoutly was, and Irish he stoutly abided, though it was with a faint lip-lift of scorn that he mentioned mereSouth-of-Ireland men, or even Orange-men. Himself he wasPresbyterian, while in his own community five men were all thatever mustered at a meeting in the Orange Men's Hall. His communitywas the Island McGill, where seven thousand of his kind lived insuch amity and sobriety that in the whole island there was but onepoliceman and never a public-house at all. Captain MacElrath did not like the sea, and had never liked it. Hewrung his livelihood from it, and that was all the sea was, theplace where he worked, as the mill, the shop, and the counting-house were the places where other men worked. Romance never sangto him her siren song, and Adventure had never shouted in hissluggish blood. He lacked imagination. The wonders of the deepwere without significance to him. Tornadoes, hurricanes, waterspouts, and tidal waves were so many obstacles to the way of aship on the sea and of a master on the bridge--they were that tohim, and nothing more. He had seen, and yet not seen, the manymarvels and wonders of far lands. Under his eyelids burned thebrazen glories of the tropic seas, or ached the bitter gales of theNorth Atlantic or far South Pacific; but his memory of them was ofmess-room doors stove in, of decks awash and hatches threatened, ofundue coal consumption, of long passages, and of fresh paint-workspoiled by unexpected squalls of rain. "I know my buzz'ness, " was the way he often put it, and beyond hisbusiness was all that he did not know, all that he had seen withthe mortal eyes of him and yet that he never dreamed existed. Thathe knew his business his owners were convinced, or at forty hewould not have held command of the Tryapsic, three thousand tonsnet register, with a cargo capacity of nine thousand tons andvalued at fifty-thousand pounds. He had taken up seafaring through no love of it, but because it hadbeen his destiny, because he had been the second son of his fatherinstead of the first. Island McGill was only so large, and theland could support but a certain definite proportion of those thatdwelt upon it. The balance, and a large balance it was, was drivento the sea to seek its bread. It had been so for generations. Theeldest sons took the farms from their fathers; to the other sonsremained the sea and its salt-ploughing. So it was that DonaldMacElrath, farmer's son and farm-boy himself, had shifted from thesoil he loved to the sea he hated and which it was his destiny tofarm. And farmed it he had, for twenty years, shrewd, cool-headed, sober, industrious, and thrifty, rising from ship's boy andforecastle hand to mate and master of sailing-ships and thence intosteam, second officer, first, and master, from small command tolarger, and at last to the bridge of the old Tryapsic--old, to besure, but worth her fifty thousand pounds and still able to bear upin all seas, and weather her nine thousand tons of freight. From the bridge of the Tryapsic, the high place he had gained inthe competition of men, he stared at Dublin harbour opening out, atthe town obscured by the dark sky of the dreary wind-driven day, and at the tangled tracery of spars and rigging of the harbourshipping. Back from twice around the world he was, and frominterminable junketings up and down on far stretches, home-comingto the wife he had not seen in eight-and-twenty months, and to thechild he had never seen and that was already walking and talking. He saw the watch below of stokers and trimmers bobbing out of theforecastle doors like rabbits from a warren and making their wayaft over the rusty deck to the mustering of the port doctor. Theywere Chinese, with expressionless, Sphinx-like faces, and theywalked in peculiar shambling fashion, dragging their feet as if theclumsy brogans were too heavy for their lean shanks. He saw them and he did not see them, as he passed his hand beneathhis visored cap and scratched reflectively his mop of sandy hair. For the scene before him was but the background in his brain forthe vision of peace that was his--a vision that was his oftenduring long nights on the bridge when the old Tryapsic wallowed onthe vexed ocean floor, her decks awash, her rigging thrumming inthe gale gusts or snow squalls or driving tropic rain. And thevision he saw was of farm and farm-house and straw-thatchedoutbuildings, of children playing in the sun, and the good wife atthe door, of lowing kine, and clucking fowls, and the stamp ofhorses in the stable, of his father's farm next to him, with, beyond, the woodless, rolling land and the hedged fields, neat andorderly, extending to the crest of the smooth, soft hills. It washis vision and his dream, his Romance and Adventure, the goal ofall his effort, the high reward for the salt-ploughing and thelong, long furrows he ran up and down the whole world around in hisfarming of the sea. In simple taste and homely inclination this much-travelled map wasmore simple and homely than the veriest yokel. Seventy-one yearshis father was, and had never slept a night out of his own bed inhis own house on Island McGill. That was the life ideal, soCaptain MacElrath considered, and he was prone to marvel that anyman, not under compulsion, should leave a farm to go to sea. Tothis much-travelled man the whole world was as familiar as thevillage to the cobbler sitting in his shop. To Captain MacElraththe world was a village. In his mind's eye he saw its streets athousand leagues long, aye, and longer; turnings that doubledearth's stormiest headlands or were the way to quiet inland ponds;cross-roads, taken one way, that led to flower-lands and summerseas, and that led the other way to bitter, ceaseless gales and theperilous bergs of the great west wind drift. And the cities, bright with lights, were as shops on these long streets--shopswhere business was transacted, where bunkers were replenished, cargoes taken or shifted, and orders received from the owners inLondon town to go elsewhere and beyond, ever along the long sea-lanes, seeking new cargoes here, carrying new cargoes there, running freights wherever shillings and pence beckoned andunderwriters did not forbid. But it was all a weariness tocontemplate, and, save that he wrung from it his bread, it waswithout profit under the sun. The last good-bye to the wife had been at Cardiff, twenty-eightmonths before, when he sailed for Valparaiso with coals--ninethousand tons and down to his marks. From Valparaiso he had goneto Australia, light, a matter of six thousand miles on end with astormy passage and running short of bunker coal. Coals again toOregon, seven thousand miles, and nigh as many more with generalcargo for Japan and China. Thence to Java, loading sugar forMarseilles, and back along the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, andon to Baltimore, down to her marks with crome ore, buffeted byhurricanes, short again of bunker coal and calling at Bermuda toreplenish. Then a time charter, Norfolk, Virginia, loadingmysterious contraband coal and sailing for South Africa underorders of the mysterious German supercargo put on board by thecharterers. On to Madagascar, steaming four knots by thesupercargo's orders, and the suspicion forming that the Russianfleet might want the coal. Confusion and delays, long waits atsea, international complications, the whole world excited over theold Tryapsic and her cargo of contraband, and then on to Japan andthe naval port of Sassebo. Back to Australia, another time charterand general merchandise picked up at Sydney, Melbourne, andAdelaide, and carried on to Mauritius, Lourenco Marques, Durban, Algoa Bay, and Cape Town. To Ceylon for orders, and from Ceylon toRangoon to load rice for Rio Janeiro. Thence to Buenos Aires andloading maize for the United Kingdom or the Continent, stopping atSt. Vincent, to receive orders to proceed to Dublin. Two years andfour months, eight hundred and fifty days by the log, steaming upand down the thousand-league-long sea-lanes and back again toDublin town. And he was well aweary. A little tug had laid hold of the Tryapsic, and with clang andclatter and shouted command, with engines half-ahead, slow-speed, or half-astern, the battered old sea-tramp was nudged and nosed andshouldered through the dock-gates into Ring's End Basin. Lineswere flung ashore, fore and aft, and a 'midship spring got out. Already a small group of the happy shore-staying folk had clusteredon the dock. "Ring off, " Captain MacElrath commanded in his slow thick voice;and the third officer worked the lever of the engine-roomtelegraph. "Gangway out!" called the second officer; and when this wasaccomplished, "That will do. " It was the last task of all, gangway out. "That will do" was thedismissal. The voyage was ended, and the crew shambled eagerlyforward across the rusty decks to where their sea-bags were packedand ready for the shore. The taste of the land was strong in themen's mouths, and strong it was in the skipper's mouth as hemuttered a gruff good day to the departing pilot, and himself wentdown to his cabin. Up the gangway were trooping the customsofficers, the surveyor, the agent's clerk, and the stevedores. Quick work disposed of these and cleared his cabin, the agentwaiting to take him to the office. "Dud ye send word tull the wife?" had been his greeting to theclerk. "Yes, a telegram, as soon as you were reported. " "She'll likely be comin' down on the marnin' train, " the skipperhad soliloquized, and gone inside to change his clothes and wash. He took a last glance about the room and at two photographs on thewall, one of the wife the other of an infant--the child he hadnever seen. He stepped out into the cabin, with its panelled wallsof cedar and maple, and with its long table that seated ten, and atwhich he had eaten by himself through all the weary time. Nolaughter and clatter and wordy argument of the mess-room had beenhis. He had eaten silently, almost morosely, his silence emulatedby the noiseless Asiatic who had served him. It came to himsuddenly, the overwhelming realization of the loneliness of thosetwo years and more. All his vexations and anxieties had been hisown. He had shared them with no one. His two young officers weretoo young and flighty, the mate too stupid. There was noconsulting with them. One tenant had shared the cabin with him, that tenant his responsibility. They had dined and suppedtogether, walked the bridge together, and together they had bedded. "Och!" he muttered to that grim companion, "I'm quit of you, an'wull quit . . . For a wee. " Ashore he passed the last of the seamen with their bags, and, atthe agent's, with the usual delays, put through his ship business. When asked out by them to drink he took milk and soda. "I am no teetotaler, " he explained; "but for the life o' me I cannabide beer or whusky. " In the early afternoon, when he finished paying off his crew, hehurried to the private office where he had been told his wife waswaiting. His eyes were for her first, though the temptation was great tohave more than a hurried glimpse of the child in the chair besideher. He held her off from him after the long embrace, and lookedinto her face long and steadily, drinking in every feature of itand wondering that he could mark no changes of time. A warm man, his wife thought him, though had the opinion of his officers beenasked it would have been: a harsh man and a bitter one. "Wull, Annie, how is ut wi' ye?" he queried, and drew her to himagain. And again he held her away from him, this wife of ten years and ofwhom he knew so little. She was almost a stranger--more a strangerthan his Chinese steward, and certainly far more a stranger thanhis own officers whom he had seen every day, day and day, for eighthundred and fifty days. Married ten years, and in that time he hadbeen with her nine weeks--scarcely a honeymoon. Each time home hadbeen a getting acquainted again with her. It was the fate of themen who went out to the salt-ploughing. Little they knew of theirwives and less of their children. There was his chief engineer--old, near-sighted MacPherson--who told the story of returning hometo be locked out of his house by his four-year kiddie that neverhad laid eyes on him before. "An' thus 'ull be the loddie, " the skipper said, reaching out ahesitant hand to the child's cheek. But the boy drew away from him, sheltering against the mother'sside. "Och!" she cried, "and he doesna know his own father. " "Nor I hum. Heaven knows I could no a-picked hum out of a crowd, though he'll be havin' your nose I'm thunkun'. " "An' your own eyes, Donald. Look ut them. He's your own father, laddie. Kiss hum like the little mon ye are. " But the child drew closer to her, his expression of fear anddistrust growing stronger, and when the father attempted to takehim in his arms he threatened to cry. The skipper straightened up, and to conceal the pang at his hearthe drew out his watch and looked at it. "Ut's time to go, Annie, " he said. "Thot train 'ull be startun'. " He was silent on the train at first, divided between watching thewife with the child going to sleep in her arms and looking out ofthe window at the tilled fields and green unforested hills vagueand indistinct in the driving drizzle that had set in. They hadthe compartment to themselves. When the boy slept she laid him outon the seat and wrapped him warmly. And when the health ofrelatives and friends had been inquired after, and the gossip ofIsland McGill narrated, along with the weather and the price ofland and crops, there was little left to talk about savethemselves, and Captain MacElrath took up the tale brought home forthe good wife from all his world's-end wandering. But it was not atale of marvels he told, nor of beautiful flower-lands normysterious Eastern cities. "What like is Java?" she asked once. "Full o' fever. Half the crew down wuth ut an' luttle work. Utwas quinine an' quinine the whole blessed time. Each marnun' 'twasquinine an' gin for all hands on an empty stomach. An' they whowas no sick made ut out to be hovun' ut bad uz the rest. " Another time she asked about Newcastle. "Coals an' coal-dust--thot's all. No a nice sutty. I lost twoChinks there, stokers the both of them. An' the owners paid a finetull the Government of a hundred pounds each for them. 'We regrettull note, ' they wrut me--I got the letter tull Oregon--'We regrettull note the loss o' two Chinese members o' yer crew ot Newcastle, an' we recommend greater carefulness un the future. ' Greatercarefulness! And I could no a-been more careful. The Chinks hodforty-five pounds each comun' tull them in wages, an' I was no a-thunkun' they 'ud run. "But thot's their way--'we regret tull note, ' 'we beg tull advise, ''we recommend, ' 'we canna understand'--an' the like o' thot. Domned cargo tank! An' they would thunk I could drive her like aLucania, an' wi'out burnun' coals. There was thot propeller. Iwas after them a guid while for ut. The old one was iron, thuck onthe edges, an' we couldna make our speed. An' the new one wasbronze--nine hundred pounds ut cost, an' then wantun' their returnsout o' ut, an' me wuth a bod passage an' lossin' time every day. 'We regret tull note your long passage from Voloparaiso tull Sydneywuth an average daily run o' only one hundred an' suxty-seven. Wehod expected better results wuth the new propeller. You should a-made an average daily run o' two hundred and suxteen. ' "An' me on a wunter passage, blowin' a luvin' gale half the time, wuth hurricane force in atweenwhiles, an' hove to sux days, wuthengines stopped an' bunker coal runnun' short, an' me wuth a matethot stupid he could no pass a shup's light ot night wi'out callun'me tull the brudge. I wrut an' told 'em so. An' then: 'Ournautical adviser suggests you kept too far south, ' an' 'We arelookun' for better results from thot propeller. ' Nauticaladviser!--shore pilot! Ut was the regular latitude for a wunterpassage from Voloparaiso tull Sydney. "An' when I come un tull Auckland short o' coal, after lettun' herdruft sux days wuth the fires out tull save the coal, an' wuth onlytwenty tons in my bunkers, I was thunkun' o' the lossin' o' timean' the expense, an' tull save the owners I took her un an' outwi'out pilotage. Pilotage was no compulsory. An' un Yokohama, whoshould I meet but Captun Robinson o' the Dyapsic. We got a-talkun'about ports an' places down Australia-way, an' first thing he says:'Speakun' o' Auckland--of course, Captun, you was never unAuckland?' 'Yus, ' I says, 'I was un there very recent. ' 'Oh, ho, 'he says, very angry-like, 'so you was the smart Aleck thot fetchedme thot letter from the owners: "We note item of fufteen poundsfor pilotage ot Auckland. A shup o' ours was un tull Aucklandrecently an' uncurred no such charge. We beg tull advise you thotwe conseeder thus pilotage an onnecessary expense which should nobe uncurred un the future. '" "But dud they say a word tull me for the fufteen pounds I savedtull them? No a word. They send a letter tull Captun Robinson forno savun' them the fufteen pounds, an' tull me: 'We note item oftwo guineas doctor's fee at Auckland for crew. Please explain thusonusual expunditure. ' Ut was two o' the Chinks. I was thunkun'they hod beri-beri, an' thot was the why o' sendun' for the doctor. I buried the two of them ot sea not a week after. But ut was:'Please explain thus onusual expunditure, ' an' tull CaptunRobinson, 'We beg tull advise you thot we conseeder thus pilotagean onnecessary expense. ' "Dudna I cable them from Newcastle, tellun' them the old tank wasthot foul she needed dry-dock? Seven months out o' drydock, an'the West Coast the quickest place for foulun' un the world. Butfreights was up, an' they hod a charter o' coals for Portland. TheArrata, one o' the Woor Line, left port the same day uz us, boundfor Portland, an' the old Tryapsic makun' sux knots, seven ot thebest. An' ut was ot Comox, takun' un bunker coal, I got the letterfrom the owners. The boss humself hod signed ut, an' ot the bottomhe wrut un hus own bond: 'The Arrata beat you by four an' a halfdays. Am dusappointed. ' Dusappointed! When I had cabled themfrom Newcastle. When she drydocked ot Portland, there was whuskerson her a foot long, barnacles the size o' me fust, oysters likeyoung sauce plates. Ut took them two days afterward tull clean thedock o' shells an' muck. "An' there was the motter o' them fire-bars ot Newcastle. The firmashore made them heavier than the engineer's speecifications, an'then forgot tull charge for the dufference. Ot the last moment, wuth me ashore gettun' me clearance, they come wuth the bill:'Tull error on fire-bars, sux pounds. ' They'd been tull the shupan' MacPherson hod O. K. 'd ut. I said ut was strange an' would nopay. 'Then you are dootun' the chief engineer, ' says they. 'I'mno dootun', ' says I, 'but I canna see my way tull sign. Come wuthme tull the shup. The launch wull cost ye naught an' ut 'ull brungye back. An' we wull see what MacPherson says. ' "But they would no come. Ot Portland I got the bill un a letter. I took no notice. Ot Hong-Kong I got a letter from the owners. The bill hod been sent tull them. I wrut them from Javaexplainun'. At Marseilles the owners wrut me: 'Tull extra work unengine-room, sux pounds. The engineer has O. K. 'd ut, an' you haveno O. K. 'd ut. Are you dootun' the engineer's honesty?' I wrut an'told them I was no dootun' his honesty; thot the bill was for extraweight o' fire-bars; an' thot ut was O. K. Dud they pay ut? Theyno dud. They must unvestigate. An' some clerk un the office tooksick, an' the bill was lost. An' there was more letters. I gotletters from the owners an' the firm--'Tull error on fire-bars, suxpounds'--ot Baltimore, ot Delagoa Bay, ot Moji, ot Rangoon, ot Rio, an' ot Montevuddio. Ut uz no settled yut. I tell ye, Annie, theowners are hard tull please. " He communed with himself for a moment, and then mutteredindignantly: "Tull error on fire-bars, sux pounds. " "Hov ye heard of Jamie?" his wife asked in the pause. Captain MacElrath shook his head. "He was washed off the poop wuth three seamen. " "Whereabouts?" "Off the Horn. 'Twas on the Thornsby. " "They would be runnun' homeward bound?" "Aye, " she nodded. "We only got the word three days gone. Hiswife is greetin' like tull die. " "A good lod, Jamie, " he commented, "but a stiff one ot carryun' on. I mind me when we was mates together un the Abion. An' so Jamie'sgone. " Again a pause fell, to be broken by the wife. "An' ye will no a-heard o' the Bankshire? MacDougall lost her inMagellan Straits. 'Twas only yesterday ut was in the paper. " "A cruel place, them Magellan Straits, " he said. "Dudna thotdomned mate-fellow nigh putt me ashore twice on the one passagethrough? He was a eediot, a lunatuc. I wouldna have hum on thebrudge a munut. Comun' tull Narrow Reach, thuck weather, wuth snowsqualls, me un the chart-room, dudna I guv hum the changed course?'South-east-by-east, ' I told hum. 'South-east-by-east, sir, ' sayshe. Fufteen munuts after I comes on tull the brudge. 'Funny, 'says thot mate-fellow, 'I'm no rememberun' ony islands un the moutho' Narrow Reach. I took one look ot the islands an' yells, 'Puttyour wheel hard a-starboard, ' tull the mon ot the wheel. An' yeshould a-seen the old Tryapsic turnun' the sharpest circle she everturned. I waited for the snow tull clear, an' there was NarrowReach, nice uz ye please, tull the east'ard an' the islands un themouth o' False Bay tull the south'ard. 'What course was yesteerun'?' I says tull the mon ot the wheel. 'South-by-east, sir, 'says he. I looked tull the mate-fellow. What could I say? I wasthot wroth I could a-kult hum. Four points dufference. Fivemunuts more an' the old Tryapsic would a-been funushed. "An' was ut no the same when we cleared the Straits tull theeast'ard? Four hours would a-seen us guid an' clear. I was fortyhours then on the brudge. I guv the mate his course, an' thebearun' o' the Askthar Light astern. 'Don't let her bear more tullthe north'ard than west-by-north, ' I said tull hum, 'an' ye wull beall right. ' An' I went below an' turned un. But I couldna sleepfor worryun'. After forty hours on the brudge, what was four hoursmore? I thought. An' for them four hours wull ye be lettun' themate loss her on ye? 'No, ' I says to myself. An' wuth thot I gotup, hod a wash an' a cup o' coffee, an' went tull the brudge. Itook one look ot the bearun' o' Askthar Light. 'Twas nor'west-by-west, and the old Tryapsic down on the shoals. He was a eediot, thot mate-fellow. Ye could look overside an' see the duscolorationof the watter. 'Twas a close call for the old Tryapsic I'm tellun'ye. Twice un thirty hours he'd a-hod her ashore uf ut hod no beenfor me. " Captain MacElrath fell to gazing at the sleeping child with mildwonder in his small blue eyes, and his wife sought to divert himfrom his woes. "Ye remember Jummy MacCaul?" she asked. "Ye went tull school wuthhus two boys. Old Jummy MacCaul thot hoz the farm beyond DoctorHaythorn's place. " "Oh, aye, an' what o' hum? Uz he dead?" "No, but he was after askun' your father, when he sailed last timefor Voloparaiso, uf ye'd been there afore. An' when your fathersays no, then Jummy says, 'An' how wull he be knowun a' tull findhus way?' An' with thot your father says: 'Verry sumple ut uz, Jummy. Supposun' you was goin' tull the mainland tull a mon wholuved un Belfast. Belfast uz a bug sutty, Jummy, an' how would yebe findun' your way?' 'By way o' me tongue, ' says Jummy; 'I'd beaskun' the folk I met. ' 'I told ye ut was sumple, ' says yourfather. 'Ut's the very same way my Donald finds the road tullVoloparaiso. He asks every shup he meets upon the sea tull ot lasthe meets wuth a shup thot's been tull Voloparaiso, an' the captuno' thot shup tells hum the way. ' An' Jummy scratches hus head an'says he understands an' thot ut's a very sumple motter after all. " The skipper chuckled at the joke, and his tired blue eyes weremerry for the moment. "He was a thun chap, thot mate-fellow, oz thun oz you an' me putttogether, " he remarked after a time, a slight twinkle in his eye ofappreciation of the bull. But the twinkle quickly disappeared andthe blue eyes took on a bleak and wintry look. "What dud he do otVoloparaiso but land sux hundred fathom o' chain cable an' takenever a receipt from the lighter-mon. I was gettun' my clearanceot the time. When we got tull sea, I found he hod no receipt forthe cable. "'An' ye no took a receipt for ut?' says I. "'No, ' says he. 'Wasna ut goin' direct tull the agents?' "'How long ha' ye been goin' tull sea, ' says I, 'not tull beknowin' the mate's duty uz tull deluver no cargo wuthout receiptfor same? An' on the West Coast ot thot. What's tull stop thelighter-mon from stealun' a few lengths o' ut?' "An' ut come out uz I said. Sux hundred hundred went over theside, but four hundred an' ninety-five was all the agents received. The lighter-mon swore ut was all he received from the mate--fourhundred an' ninety-five fathom. I got a letter from the owners otPortland. They no blamed the mate for ut, but me, an' me ashore otthe time on shup's buzz'ness. I could no be in the two places otthe one time. An' the letters from the owners an' the agents uzstill comun' tull me. "Thot mate-fellow was no a proper sailor, an' no a mon tull workfor owners. Dudna he want tull break me wuth the Board of Tradefor bein' below my marks? He said as much tull the bos'n. An' hetold me tull my face homeward bound thot I'd been half an inchunder my marks. 'Twas at Portland, loadun' cargo un fresh watteran' goin' tull Comox tull load bunker coal un salt watter. I tellye, Annie, ut takes close fuggerin', an' I WAS half an inch underthe load-line when the bunker coal was un. But I'm no tellun' anyother body but you. An' thot mate-fellow untendun' tull report metull the Board o' Trade, only for thot he saw fut tull be sliced untwo pieces on the steam-pipe cover. "He was a fool. After loadun' ot Portland I hod tull take on suxtytons o' coal tull last me tull Comox. The charges for lighterun'was heavy, an' no room ot the coal dock. A French barque was lyin'alongside the dock an' I spoke tull the captun, askun' hum what hewould charge when work for the day was done, tull haul clear for acouple o' hours an' let me un. 'Twenty dollars, ' said he. Ut wassavun' money on lighters tull the owner, an' I gave ut tull hum. An' thot night, after dark, I hauled un an' took on the coal. ThenI started tull go out un the stream an' drop anchor--under me ownsteam, of course. "We hod tull go out stern first, an' somethun' went wrong wuth thereversun' gear. Old MacPherson said he could work ut by hond, butvery slow ot thot. An' I said 'All right. ' We started. The pilotwas on board. The tide was ebbun' stuffly, an' right abreast an' abut below was a shup lyin' wuth a lighter on each side. I saw theshup's ridun' lights, but never a light on the lighters. Ut wasclose quarters to shuft a bug vessel onder steam, wuth MacPhersonworkun' the reversun' gear by hond. We hod to come close down uponthe shup afore I could go ahead an' clear o' the shups on the dock-ends. An' we struck the lighter stern-on, just uz I rung tullMacPherson half ahead. "'What was thot?' says the pilot, when we struck the lighter. "'I dunna know, ' says I, 'an' I'm wonderun'. ' "The pilot was no keen, ye see, tull hus job. I went on tull aguid place an' dropped anchor, an' ut would all a-been well but forthot domned eediot mate. "'We smashed thot lighter, ' says he, comun' up the lodder tull thebrudge--an' the pilot stondun' there wuth his ears cocked tullhear. "'What lighter?' says I. "'Thot lighter alongside the shup, ' says the mate. "'I dudna see no lighter, ' says I, and wuth thot I steps on hus futguid an' hard. "After the pilot was gone I says tull the mate: 'Uf you dunna knowonythun', old mon, for Heaven's sake keep your mouth shut. ' "'But ye dud smash thot lighter, dudn't ye?' says he. "'Uf we dud, ' says I, 'ut's no your buzz'ness tull be tellun' thepilot--though, mind ye, I'm no admuttun' there was ony lighter. ' "An' next marnun', just uz I'm after dressun', the steward says, 'Amon tull see ye, sir. ' 'Fetch hum un, ' says I. An' un he come. 'Sut down, ' says I. An' he sot down. "He was the owner of the lighter, an' when he hod told hus story, Isays, 'I dudna see ony lighter. ' "'What, mon?' says he. 'No see a two-hundred-ton lighter, bug oz ahouse, alongside thot shup?' "'I was goin' by the shup's lights, ' says I, 'an' I dudna touch theshup, thot I know. ' "'But ye dud touch the lighter, ' says he. 'Ye smashed her. There's a thousand dollars' domage done, an' I'll see ye pay forut. ' 'Look here, muster, ' says I, 'when I'm shuftun' a shup ot night Ifollow the law, an' the law dustunctly says I must regulate meactions by the lights o' the shuppun'. Your lighter never hod noridun' light, nor dud I look for ony lighter wuthout lights tullshow ut. ' "'The mate says--' he beguns. "'Domn the mate, ' says I. 'Dud your lighter hov a ridun' light?' "'No, ut dud not, ' says he, 'but ut was a clear night wuth the moona-showun'. ' "'Ye seem tull know your buzz'ness, ' says I. 'But let me tell yethot I know my buzz'ness uz well, an' thot I'm no a-lookun' forlighters wuthout lights. Uf ye thunk ye hov a case, go ahead. Thesteward will show ye out. Guid day. ' "An' thot was the end o' ut. But ut wull show ye what a puirfellow thot mate was. I call ut a blessun' for all masters thot hewas sliced un two on thot steam-pipe cover. He had a pull un theoffice an' thot was the why he was kept on. " "The Wekley farm wull soon be for sale, so the agents be tellun'me, " his wife remarked, slyly watching what effect her announcementwould have upon him. His eyes flashed eagerly on the instant, and he straightened up asmight a man about to engage in some agreeable task. It was thefarm of his vision, adjoining his father's, and her own peoplefarmed not a mile away. "We wull be buyun' ut, " he said, "though we wull be no tellun' asoul of ut ontul ut's bought an' the money paid down. I've savun'consuderable these days, though pickun's uz no what they used tobe, an' we hov a tidy nest-egg laid by. I wull see the father an'hove the money ready tull hus hond, so uf I'm ot sea he can buywhenever the land offers. " He rubbed the frosted moisture from the inside of the window andpeered out at the pouring rain, through which he could discernnothing. "When I was a young men I used tull be afeard thot the owners wouldguv me the sack. Stull afeard I am of the sack. But once thotfarm is mine I wull no be afeard ony longer. Ut's a puir job thussea-farmun'. Me managin' un all seas an' weather an' perils o' thedeep a shup worth fufty thousand pounds, wuth cargoes ot timesworth fufty thousand more--a hundred thousand pounds, half amillion dollars uz the Yankees say, an' me wuth all theresponsubility gettun' a screw o' twenty pounds a month. What monashore, managin' a buz'ness worth a hundred thousand pounds wull begettun' uz small a screw uz twenty pounds? An' wuth such mastersuz a captun serves--the owners, the underwriters, an' the Board o'Trade, all pullun' an wantun' dufferent thungs--the owners wantun'quick passages an' domn the rusk, the underwriters wantun' safepassages an' domn the delay, an' the Board o' Trade wantun'cautious passages an' caution always meanun' delay. Threedufferent masters, an' all three able an' wullun' to break ye uf yedon't serve their dufferent wushes. " He felt the train slackening speed, and peered again through themisty window. He stood up, buttoned his overcoat, turned up thecollar, and awkwardly gathered the child, still asleep, in hisarms. "I wull see the father, " he said, "an' hov the money ready tull hushond so uf I'm ot sea when the land offers he wull no muss thechance tull buy. An' then the owners can guv me the sack uz soonuz they like. Ut will be all night un, an' I wull be wuth you, Annie, an' the sea can go tull hell. " Happiness was in both their faces at the prospect, and for a momentboth saw the same vision of peace. Annie leaned toward him, and asthe train stopped they kissed each other across the sleeping child. SAMUEL Margaret Henan would have been a striking figure under anycircumstances, but never more so than when I first chanced uponher, a sack of grain of fully a hundredweight on her shoulder, asshe walked with sure though tottering stride from the cart-tail tothe stable, pausing for an instant to gather strength at the footof the steep steps that led to the grain-bin. There were four ofthese steps, and she went up them, a step at a time, slowly, unwaveringly, and with so dogged certitude that it never entered mymind that her strength could fail her and let that hundred-weightsack fall from the lean and withered frame that wellnigh doubledunder it. For she was patently an old woman, and it was her agethat made me linger by the cart and watch. Six times she went between the cart and the stable, each time witha full sack on her back, and beyond passing the time of day with meshe took no notice of my presence. Then, the cart empty, shefumbled for matches and lighted a short clay pipe, pressing downthe burning surface of the tobacco with a calloused and apparentlynerveless thumb. The hands were noteworthy. They were large-knuckled, sinewy and malformed by labour, rimed with callouses, thenails blunt and broken, and with here and there cuts and bruises, healed and healing, such as are common to the hands of hard-workingmen. On the back were huge, upstanding veins, eloquent of age andtoil. Looking at them, it was hard to believe that they were thehands of the woman who had once been the belle of Island McGill. This last, of course, I learned later. At the time I knew neitherher history nor her identity. She wore heavy man's brogans. Her legs were stockingless, and Ihad noticed when she walked that her bare feet were thrust into thecrinkly, iron-like shoes that sloshed about her lean ankles atevery step. Her figure, shapeless and waistless, was garbed in arough man's shirt and in a ragged flannel petticoat that had oncebeen red. But it was her face, wrinkled, withered and weather-beaten, surrounded by an aureole of unkempt and straggling wisps ofgreyish hair, that caught and held me. Neither drifted hair norserried wrinkles could hide the splendid dome of a forehead, highand broad without verging in the slightest on the abnormal. The sunken cheeks and pinched nose told little of the quality ofthe life that flickered behind those clear blue eyes of hers. Despite the minutiae of wrinkle-work that somehow failed to weazenthem, her eyes were clear as a girl's--clear, out-looking, and far-seeing, and with an open and unblinking steadfastness of gaze thatwas disconcerting. The remarkable thing was the distance betweenthem. It is a lucky man or woman who has the width of an eyebetween, but with Margaret Henan the width between her eyes wasfully that of an eye and a half. Yet so symmetrically moulded washer face that this remarkable feature produced no uncanny effect, and, for that matter, would have escaped the casual observer'snotice. The mouth, shapeless and toothless, with down-turnedcorners and lips dry and parchment-like, nevertheless lacked themuscular slackness so usual with age. The lips might have beenthose of a mummy, save for that impression of rigid firmness theygave. Not that they were atrophied. On the contrary, they seemedtense and set with a muscular and spiritual determination. There, and in the eyes, was the secret of the certitude with which shecarried the heavy sacks up the steep steps, with never a false stepor overbalance, and emptied them in the grain-bin. "You are an old woman to be working like this, " I ventured. She looked at me with that strange, unblinking gaze, and shethought and spoke with the slow deliberateness that characterizedeverything about her, as if well aware of an eternity that was hersand in which there was no need for haste. Again I was impressed bythe enormous certitude of her. In this eternity that seemed soindubitably hers, there was time and to spare for safe-footing andstable equilibrium--for certitude, in short. No more in herspiritual life than in carrying the hundredweights of grain wasthere a possibility of a misstep or an overbalancing. The feelingproduced in me was uncanny. Here was a human soul that, save forthe most glimmering of contacts, was beyond the humanness of me. And the more I learned of Margaret Henan in the weeks that followedthe more mysteriously remote she became. She was as alien as afar-journeyer from some other star, and no hint could she nor allthe countryside give me of what forms of living, what heats offeeling, or rules of philosophic contemplation actuated her in allthat she had been and was. "I wull be suvunty-two come Guid Friday a fortnight, " she said inreply to my question. "But you are an old woman to be doing this man's work, and a strongman's work at that, " I insisted. Again she seemed to immerse herself in that atmosphere ofcontemplative eternity, and so strangely did it affect me that Ishould not have been surprised to have awaked a century or so laterand found her just beginning to enunciate her reply-- "The work hoz tull be done, an' I am beholden tull no one. " "But have you no children, no family, relations?" "Oh, aye, a-plenty o' them, but they no see fut tull be helpun'me. " She drew out her pipe for a moment, then added, with a nod of herhead toward the house, "I luv' wuth meself. " I glanced at the house, straw-thatched and commodious, at the largestable, and at the large array of fields I knew must belong withthe place. "It is a big bit of land for you to farm by yourself. " "Oh, aye, a bug but, suvunty acres. Ut kept me old mon buzzy, along wuth a son an' a hired mon, tull say naught o' extra honds unthe harvest an' a maid-servant un the house. " She clambered into the cart, gathered the reins in her hands, andquizzed me with her keen, shrewd eyes. "Belike ye hail from over the watter--Ameruky, I'm meanun'?" "Yes, I'm a Yankee, " I answered. "Ye wull no be findun' mony Island McGill folk stoppun' unAmeruky?" "No; I don't remember ever meeting one, in the States. " She nodded her head. "They are home-luvun' bodies, though I wull no be sayin' they areno fair-travelled. Yet they come home ot the last, them oz are nolost ot sea or kult by fevers an' such-like un foreign parts. " "Then your sons will have gone to sea and come home again?" Iqueried. "Oh, aye, all savun' Samuel oz was drownded. " At the mention of Samuel I could have sworn to a strange light inher eyes, and it seemed to me, as by some telepathic flash, that Idivined in her a tremendous wistfulness, an immense yearning. Itseemed to me that here was the key to her inscrutableness, the cluethat if followed properly would make all her strangeness plain. Itcame to me that here was a contact and that for the moment I wasglimpsing into the soul of her. The question was tickling on mytongue, but she forestalled me. She tchk'd to the horse, and with a "Guid day tull you, sir, " droveoff. A simple, homely people are the folk of Island McGill, and I doubtif a more sober, thrifty, and industrious folk is to be found inall the world. Meeting them abroad--and to meet them abroad onemust meet them on the sea, for a hybrid sea-faring and farmer breedare they--one would never take them to be Irish. Irish they claimto be, speaking of the North of Ireland with pride and sneering attheir Scottish brothers; yet Scotch they undoubtedly are, transplanted Scotch of long ago, it is true, but none the lessScotch, with a thousand traits, to say nothing of their tricks ofspeech and woolly utterance, which nothing less than their Scotchclannishness could have preserved to this late day. A narrow loch, scarcely half a mile wide, separates Island McGillfrom the mainland of Ireland; and, once across this loch, one findshimself in an entirely different country. The Scotch impression isstrong, and the people, to commence with, are Presbyterians. Whenit is considered that there is no public-house in all the islandand that seven thousand souls dwell therein, some idea may begained of the temperateness of the community. Wedded to old ways, public opinion and the ministers are powerful influences, whilefathers and mothers are revered and obeyed as in few other placesin this modern world. Courting lasts never later than ten atnight, and no girl walks out with her young man without herparents' knowledge and consent. The young men go down to the sea and sow their wild oats in thewicked ports, returning periodically, between voyages, to live theold intensive morality, to court till ten o'clock, to sit under theminister each Sunday, and to listen at home to the same sternprecepts that the elders preached to them from the time they wereladdies. Much they learned of women in the ends of the earth, these seafaring sons, yet a canny wisdom was theirs and they neverbrought wives home with them. The one solitary exception to thishad been the schoolmaster, who had been guilty of bringing a wifefrom half a mile the other side of the loch. For this he had neverbeen forgiven, and he rested under a cloud for the remainder of hisdays. At his death the wife went back across the loch to her ownpeople, and the blot on the escutcheon of Island McGill was erased. In the end the sailor-men married girls of their own homeland andsettled down to become exemplars of all the virtues for which theisland was noted. Island McGill was without a history. She boasted none of theevents that go to make history. There had never been any wearingof the green, any Fenian conspiracies, any land disturbances. There had been but one eviction, and that purely technical--a testcase, and on advice of the tenant's lawyer. So Island McGill waswithout annals. History had passed her by. She paid her taxes, acknowledged her crowned rulers, and left the world alone; all sheasked in return was that the world should leave her alone. Theworld was composed of two parts--Island McGill and the rest of it. And whatever was not Island McGill was outlandish and barbarian;and well she knew, for did not her seafaring sons bring home reportof that world and its ungodly ways? It was from the skipper of a Glasgow tramp, as passenger fromColombo to Rangoon, that I had first learned of the existence ofIsland McGill; and it was from him that I had carried the letterthat gave me entrance to the house of Mrs. Ross, widow of a mastermariner, with a daughter living with her and with two sons, mastermariners themselves and out upon the sea. Mrs. Ross did not takein boarders, and it was Captain Ross's letter alone that hadenabled me to get from her bed and board. In the evening, after myencounter with Margaret Henan, I questioned Mrs. Ross, and I knewon the instant that I had in truth stumbled upon mystery. Like all Island McGill folk, as I was soon to discover, Mrs. Rosswas at first averse to discussing Margaret Henan at all. Yet itwas from her I learned that evening that Margaret Henan had oncebeen one of the island belles. Herself the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, she had married Thomas Henan, equally well-to-do. Beyond the usual housewife's tasks she had never been accustomed towork. Unlike many of the island women, she had never lent a handin the fields. "But what of her children?" I asked. "Two o' the sons, Jamie an' Timothy uz married an' be goun' tullsea. Thot bug house close tull the post office uz Jamie's. Thedaughters thot ha' no married be luvun' wuth them as dud marry. An' the rest be dead. " "The Samuels, " Clara interpolated, with what I suspected was agiggle. She was Mrs. Ross's daughter, a strapping young woman with handsomefeatures and remarkably handsome black eyes. "'Tuz naught to be smuckerun' ot, " her mother reproved her. "The Samuels?" I intervened. "I don't understand. " "Her four sons thot died. " "And were they all named Samuel?" "Aye. " "Strange, " I commented in the lagging silence. "Very strange, " Mrs. Ross affirmed, proceeding stolidly with theknitting of the woollen singlet on her knees--one of the countlessunder-garments that she interminably knitted for her skipper sons. "And it was only the Samuels that died?" I queried, in furtherattempt. "The others luved, " was the answer. "A fine fomuly--no finer onthe island. No better lods ever sailed out of Island McGill. Themunuster held them up oz models tull pottern after. Nor was ever awhusper breathed again' the girls. " "But why is she left alone now in her old age?" I persisted. "Whydon't her own flesh and blood look after her? Why does she livealone? Don't they ever go to see her or care for her?" "Never a one un twenty years an' more now. She fetched ut on tullherself. She drove them from the house just oz she drove old TomHenan, thot was her husband, tull hus death. " "Drink?" I ventured. Mrs. Ross shook her head scornfully, as if drink was a weaknessbeneath the weakest of Island McGill. A long pause followed, during which Mrs. Ross knitted stolidly on, only nodding permission when Clara's young man, mate on one of theShire Line sailing ships, came to walk out with her. I studied thehalf-dozen ostrich eggs, hanging in the corner against the walllike a cluster of some monstrous fruit. On each shell were paintedprecipitous and impossible seas through which full-rigged shipsfoamed with a lack of perspective only equalled by their sharptechnical perfection. On the mantelpiece stood two large pearlshells, obviously a pair, intricately carved by the patient handsof New Caledonian convicts. In the centre of the mantel was astuffed bird-of-paradise, while about the room were scatteredgorgeous shells from the southern seas, delicate sprays of coralsprouting from barnacled pi-pi shells and cased in glass, assegaisfrom South Africa, stone axes from New Guinea, huge Alaskantobacco-pouches beaded with heraldic totem designs, a boomerangfrom Australia, divers ships in glass bottles, a cannibal kai-kaibowl from the Marquesas, and fragile cabinets from China and theIndies and inlaid with mother-of-pearl and precious woods. I gazed at this varied trove brought home by sailor sons, andpondered the mystery of Margaret Henan, who had driven her husbandto his death and been forsaken by all her kin. It was not thedrink. Then what was it?--some shocking cruelty? some amazinginfidelity? or some fearful, old-world peasant-crime? I broached my theories, but to all Mrs. Ross shook her head. "Ut was no thot, " she said. "Margaret was a guid wife an' a guidmother, an' I doubt she would harm a fly. She brought up herfomuly God-fearin' an' decent-minded. Her trouble was thot shetook lunatic--turned eediot. " Mrs. Ross tapped significantly on her forehead to indicate a stateof addlement. "But I talked with her this afternoon, " I objected, "and I foundher a sensible woman--remarkably bright for one of her years. " "Aye, an' I'm grantun' all thot you say, " she went on calmly. "ButI am no referrun' tull thot. I am referrun' tull her wucked-headedan' vucious stubbornness. No more stubborn woman ever luv'd thanMargaret Henan. Ut was all on account o' Samuel, which was thename o' her youngest an' they do say her favourut brother--hum ozdied by hus own hond all through the munuster's mustake un noregisterun' the new church ot Dublin. Ut was a lesson thot thename was musfortunate, but she would no take ut, an' there was talkwhen she called her first child Samuel--hum thot died o' the croup. An' wuth thot what does she do but call the next one Samuel, an'hum only three when he fell un tull the tub o' hot watter an' wasplain cooked tull death. Ut all come, I tell you, o' her wucked-headed an' foolush stubbornness. For a Samuel she must hov; an' utwas the death of the four of her sons. After the first, dudna herown mother go down un the dirt tull her feet, a-beggun' an'pleadun' wuth her no tull name her next one Samuel? But she was notull be turned from her purpose. Margaret Henan was always set onher ways, an' never more so thon on thot name Samuel. "She was fair lunatuc on Samuel. Dudna her neighbours' an' allkuth an' kun savun' them thot luv'd un the house wuth her, get upan' walk out ot the christenun' of the second--hum thot was cooked?Thot they dud, an' ot the very moment the munuster asked what wouldthe bairn's name be. 'Samuel, ' says she; an' wuth thot they got upan' walked out an' left the house. An' ot the door dudna her AuntFannie, her mother's suster, turn an' say loud for all tull hear:'What for wull she be wantun' tull murder the wee thing?' Themunuster heard fine, an' dudna like ut, but, oz he told my Larryafterward, what could he do? Ut was the woman's wush, an' therewas no law again' a mother callun' her child accordun' tull herwush. "An' then was there no the third Samuel? An' when he was lost otsea off the Cape, dudna she break all laws o' nature tull hov afourth? She was forty-seven, I'm tellun' ye, an' she hod a childot forty-seven. Thunk on ut! Ot forty-seven! Ut was fairscand'lous. " From Clara, next morning, I got the tale of Margaret Henan'sfavourite brother; and from here and there, in the week thatfollowed, I pieced together the tragedy of Margaret Henan. SamuelDundee had been the youngest of Margaret's four brothers, and, asClara told me, she had well-nigh worshipped him. He was going tosea at the time, skipper of one of the sailing ships of the BankLine, when he married Agnes Hewitt. She was described as a slenderwisp of a girl, delicately featured and with a nervous organizationof the supersensitive order. Theirs had been the first marriage inthe "new" church, and after a two-weeks' honeymoon Samuel hadkissed his bride good-bye and sailed in command of the Loughbank, abig four-masted barque. And it was because of the "new" church that the minister's blunderoccurred. Nor was it the blunder of the minister alone, as one ofthe elders later explained; for it was equally the blunder of thewhole Presbytery of Coughleen, which included fifteen churches onIsland McGill and the mainland. The old church, beyond repair, hadbeen torn down and the new one built on the original foundation. Looking upon the foundation-stones as similar to a ship's keel, itnever entered the minister's nor the Presbytery's head that the newchurch was legally any other than the old church. "An' three couples was married the first week un the new church, "Clara said. "First of all, Samuel Dundee an' Agnes Hewitt; thenext day Albert Mahan an' Minnie Duncan; an' by the week-end EddieTroy and Flo Mackintosh--all sailor-men, an' un sux weeks' time thelast of them back tull their ships an' awa', an' no one o' themdreamin' of the wuckedness they'd been ot. " The Imp of the Perverse must have chuckled at the situation. Allthings favoured. The marriages had taken place in the first weekof May, and it was not till three months later that the minister, as required by law, made his quarterly report to the civilauthorities in Dublin. Promptly came back the announcement thathis church had no legal existence, not being registered accordingto the law's demands. This was overcome by prompt registration;but the marriages were not to be so easily remedied. The threesailor husbands were away, and their wives, in short, were nottheir wives. "But the munuster was no for alarmin' the bodies, " said Clara. "Hekept hus council an' bided hus time, waitun' for the lods tull beback from sea. Oz luck would have ut, he was away across theisland tull a christenun' when Albert Mahan arrives homeonexpected, hus shup just docked ot Dublin. Ut's nine o'clock otnight when the munuster, un hus sluppers an' dressun'-gown, getsthe news. Up he jumps an' calls for horse an' saddle, an' awa' hegoes like the wund for Albert Mahan's. Albert uz just goun' tullbed an' hoz one shoe off when the munuster arrives. "'Come wuth me, the pair o' ye, ' says he, breathless-like. 'Whatfor, an' me dead weary an' goun' tull bed?' says Albert. 'Yull belawful married, ' says the munuster. Albert looks black an' says, 'Now, munuster, ye wull be jokun', ' but tull humself, oz I've heardhum tell mony a time, he uz wonderun' thot the munuster should a-took tull whusky ot hus time o' life. "'We be no married?' says Minnie. He shook his head. 'An' I om noMussus Mahan?' 'No, ' says he, 'ye are no Mussus Mahan. Ye areplain Muss Duncan. ' 'But ye married 'us yoursel', ' says she. 'Idud an' I dudna, ' says he. An' wuth thot he tells them the wholeupshot, an' Albert puts on hus shoe, an' they go wuth the munusteran' are married proper an' lawful, an' oz Albert Mahan saysafterward mony's the time, ''Tus no every mon thot hoz two weddun'nights on Island McGill. '" Six months later Eddie Troy came home and was promptly remarried. But Samuel Dundee was away on a three-years' voyage and his shipfell overdue. Further to complicate the situation, a baby boy, past two years old, was waiting for him in the arms of his wife. The months passed, and the wife grew thin with worrying. "Ut's nomeself I'm thunkun' on, " she is reported to have said many times, "but ut's the puir fatherless bairn. Uf aught happened tull Samuelwhere wull the bairn stond?" Lloyd's posted the Loughbank as missing, and the owners ceased themonthly remittance of Samuel's half-pay to his wife. It was thequestion of the child's legitimacy that preyed on her mind, and, when all hope of Samuel's return was abandoned, she drowned herselfand the child in the loch. And here enters the greater tragedy. The Loughbank was not lost. By a series of sea disasters anddelays too interminable to relate, she had made one of those long, unsighted passages such as occur once or twice in half a century. How the Imp must have held both his sides! Back from the sea cameSamuel, and when they broke the news to him something else brokesomewhere in his heart or head. Next morning they found him wherehe had tried to kill himself across the grave of his wife andchild. Never in the history of Island McGill was there so fearfula death-bed. He spat in the minister's face and reviled him, anddied blaspheming so terribly that those that tended on him did sowith averted gaze and trembling hands. And, in the face of all this, Margaret Henan named her first childSamuel. How account for the woman's stubbornness? Or was it a morbidobsession that demanded a child of hers should be named Samuel?Her third child was a girl, named after herself, and the fourth wasa boy again. Despite the strokes of fate that had already berefther, and despite the loss of friends and relatives, she persistedin her resolve to name the child after her brother. She wasshunned at church by those who had grown up with her. Her mother, after a final appeal, left her house with the warning that if thechild were so named she would never speak to her again. And thoughthe old lady lived thirty-odd years longer she kept her word. Theminister agreed to christen the child any name but Samuel, andevery other minister on Island McGill refused to christen it by thename she had chosen. There was talk on the part of Margaret Henanof going to law at the time, but in the end she carried the childto Belfast and there had it christened Samuel. And then nothing happened. The whole island was confuted. The boygrew and prospered. The schoolmaster never ceased averring that itwas the brightest lad he had ever seen. Samuel had a splendidconstitution, a tremendous grip on life. To everybody's amazementhe escaped the usual run of childish afflictions. Measles, whooping-cough and mumps knew him not. He was armour-clad againstgerms, immune to all disease. Headaches and earaches were thingsunknown. "Never so much oz a boil or a pumple, " as one of the oldbodies told me, ever marred his healthy skin. He broke schoolrecords in scholarship and athletics, and whipped every boy of hissize or years on Island McGill. It was a triumph for Margaret Henan. This paragon was hers, and itbore the cherished name. With the one exception of her mother, friends and relatives drifted back and acknowledged that they hadbeen mistaken; though there were old crones who still abided bytheir opinion and who shook their heads ominously over their cupsof tea. The boy was too wonderful to last. There was no escapingthe curse of the name his mother had wickedly laid upon him. Theyoung generation joined Margaret Henan in laughing at them, but theold crones continued to shake their heads. Other children followed. Margaret Henan's fifth was a boy, whomshe called Jamie, and in rapid succession followed three girls, Alice, Sara, and Nora, the boy Timothy, and two more girls, Florence and Katie. Katie was the last and eleventh, and MargaretHenan, at thirty-five, ceased from her exertions. She had donewell by Island McGill and the Queen. Nine healthy children werehers. All prospered. It seemed her ill-luck had shot its boltwith the deaths of her first two. Nine lived, and one of them wasnamed Samuel. Jamie elected to follow the sea, though it was not so much a matterof election as compulsion, for the eldest sons on Island McGillremained on the land, while all other sons went to the salt-ploughing. Timothy followed Jamie, and by the time the latter hadgot his first command, a steamer in the Bay trade out of Cardiff, Timothy was mate of a big sailing ship. Samuel, however, did nottake kindly to the soil. The farmer's life had no attraction forhim. His brothers went to sea, not out of desire, but because itwas the only way for them to gain their bread; and he, who had noneed to go, envied them when, returned from far voyages, they satby the kitchen fire, and told their bold tales of the wonderlandsbeyond the sea-rim. Samuel became a teacher, much to his father's disgust, and eventook extra certificates, going to Belfast for his examinations. When the old master retired, Samuel took over his school. Secretly, however, he studied navigation, and it was Margaret'sdelight when he sat by the kitchen fire, and, despite theirmaster's tickets, tangled up his brothers in the theoretics oftheir profession. Tom Henan alone was outraged when Samuel, schoolteacher, gentleman, and heir to the Henan farm, shipped to seabefore the mast. Margaret had an abiding faith in her son's star, and whatever he did she was sure was for the best. Like everythingelse connected with his glorious personality, there had never beenknown so swift a rise as in the case of Samuel. Barely with twoyears' sea experience before the mast, he was taken from theforecastle and made a provisional second mate. This occurred in afever port on the West Coast, and the committee of skippers thatexamined him agreed that he knew more of the science of navigationthan they had remembered or forgotten. Two years later he sailedfrom Liverpool, mate of the Starry Grace, with both master's andextra-master's tickets in his possession. And then it happened--the thing the old crones had been shaking their heads over foryears. It was told me by Gavin McNab, bos'n of the Starry Grace at thetime, himself an Island McGill man. "Wull do I remember ut, " he said. "We was runnin' our Eastun'down, an' makun' heavy weather of ut. Oz fine a sailor-mon oz everwalked was Samuel Henan. I remember the look of hum wull thot lastmarnun', a-watch-un' them bug seas curlun' up astern, an' a-watchun' the old girl an' seeun' how she took them--the skupperdown below an' drunkun' for days. Ut was ot seven thot Henanbrought her up on tull the wund, not darun' tull run longer on thotfearful sea. Ot eight, after havun' breakfast, he turns un, an' ahalf hour after up comes the skupper, bleary-eyed an' shaky an'holdun' on tull the companion. Ut was fair smokun', I om tellun'ye, an' there he stood, blunkun' an' noddun' an' talkun' tullhumsel'. 'Keep off, ' says he ot last tull the mon ot the wheel. 'My God!' says the second mate, standun' beside hum. The skuppernever looks tull hum ot all, but keeps on mutterun" an' jabberun'tull humsel'. All of a suddent-like he straightens up an' throwshus head back, an' says: 'Put your wheel over, me mon--now domnye! Are ye deef thot ye'll no be hearun' me?' "Ut was a drunken mon's luck, for the Starry Grace wore off aforethot God-Almighty gale wuthout shuppun' a bucket o' watter, thesecond mate shoutun' orders an' the crew jumpun' like mod. An'wuth thot the skupper nods contented-like tull humself an' goesbelow after more whusky. Ut was plain murder o' the lives o' allof us, for ut was no the time for the buggest shup afloat tull berunnun'. Run? Never hov I seen the like! Ut was beyond allthunkun', an' me goun' tull sea, boy an' men, for forty year. Itell you ut was fair awesome. "The face o' the second mate was white oz death, an' he stood utalone for half an hour, when ut was too much for hum an' he wentbelow an' called Samuel an' the third. Aye, a fine sailor-mon thotSamuel, but ut was too much for hum. He looked an' studied, andlooked an' studied, but he could no see hus way. He durst na heavetull. She would ha' been sweeput o' all honds an' stucks an'everythung afore she could a-fetched up. There was naught tull dobut keep on runnun'. An' uf ut worsened we were lost ony way, forsoon or late that overtakun' sea was sure tull sweep us clear overpoop an' all. "Dud I say ut was a God-Almighty gale? Ut was worse nor thot. Thedevil himself must ha' hod a hond un the brewun' o' ut, ut was thotfearsome. I ha' looked on some sights, but I om no carun' tulllook on the like o' thot again. No mon dared tull be un hus bunk. No, nor no mon on the decks. All honds of us stood on top thehouse an' held on an' watched. The three mates was on the poop, with two men ot the wheel, an' the only mon below was thot whusky-blighted captain snorun' drunk. "An' then I see ut comun', a mile away, risun' above all the waveslike an island un the sea--the buggest wave ever I looked upon. The three mates stood tulgether an' watched ut comun', a-prayun'like we thot she would no break un passun' us. But ut was no tullbe. Ot the last, when she rose up like a mountain, curlun' abovethe stern an' blottun' out the sky, the mates scattered, the secondan' third runnun' for the mizzen-shrouds an' climbun' up, but thefirst runnun' tull the wheel tull lend a hond. He was a brave men, thot Samuel Henan. He run straight un tull the face o' thot fathero' all waves, no thunkun' on humself but thunkun' only o' the shup. The two men was lashed tull the wheel, but he would be ready tullhond un the case they was kult. An' then she took ut. We on thehouse could no see the poop for the thousand tons o' watter thothod hut ut. Thot wave cleaned them out, took everythung along wuthut--the two mates, climbun' up the mizzen-ruggun', Samuel Henanrunnun' tull the wheel, the two men ot the wheel, aye, an' thewheel utself. We never saw aught o' them, for she broached tullwhat o' the wheel goun', an' two men o' us was drownded off thehouse, no tull mention the carpenter thot we pucked up ot the breako' the poop wuth every bone o' hus body broke tull he was like somuch jelly. " And here enters the marvel of it, the miraculous wonder of thatwoman's heroic spirit. Margaret Henan was forty-seven when thenews came home of the loss of Samuel; and it was not long afterthat the unbelievable rumour went around Island McGill. I sayunbelievable. Island McGill would not believe. Doctor Hall pooh-pooh'd it. Everybody laughed at it as a good joke. They tracedback the gossip to Sara Dack, servant to the Henans', and who alonelived with Margaret and her husband. But Sara Dack persisted inher assertion and was called a low-mouthed liar. One or two daredquestion Tom Henan himself, but beyond black looks and curses fortheir presumption they elicited nothing from him. The rumour died down, and the island fell to discussing in all itsramifications the loss of the Grenoble in the China seas, with allher officers and half her crew born and married on Island McGill. But the rumour would not stay down. Sara Dack was louder in herassertions, the looks Tom Henan cast about him were blacker thanever, and Dr. Hall, after a visit to the Henan house, no longerpooh-pooh'd. Then Island McGill sat up, and there was a tremendouswagging of tongues. It was unnatural and ungodly. The like hadnever been heard. And when, as time passed, the truth of SaraDack's utterances was manifest, the island folk decided, like thebos'n of the Starry Grace, that only the devil could have had ahand in so untoward a happening. And the infatuated woman, so SaraDack reported, insisted that it would be a boy. "Eleven bairns ha'I borne, " she said; "sux o' them lossies an' five o' them loddies. An' sunce there be balance un all thungs, so wull there be balancewuth me. Sux o' one an' half a dozen o' the other--there uz thebalance, an' oz sure oz the sun rises un the marnun', thot surewull ut be a boy. " And boy it was, and a prodigy. Dr. Hall raved about itsunblemished perfection and massive strength, and wrote a brochureon it for the Dublin Medical Society as the most interesting caseof the sort in his long career. When Sara Dack gave the babe'sunbelievable weight, Island McGill refused to believe and onceagain called her liar. But when Doctor Hall attested that he hadhimself weighed it and seen it tip that very notch, Island McGillheld its breath and accepted whatever report Sara Dack made of theinfant's progress or appetite. And once again Margaret Henancarried a babe to Belfast and had it christened Samuel. "Oz good oz gold ut was, " said Sara Dack to me. Sara, at the time I met her, was a buxom, phlegmatic spinster ofsixty, equipped with an experience so tragic and unusual thatthough her tongue ran on for decades its output would still be ofimperishable interest to her cronies. "Oz good oz good, " said Sara Dack. "Ut never fretted. Sut ut downun the sun by the hour an' never a sound ut would make oz long ozut was no hungered! An' thot strong! The grup o' uts honds waslike a mon's. I mind me, when ut was but hours old, ut grupped meso mighty thot I fetched a scream I was thot frightened. Ut wasthe punk o' health. Ut slept an' ate, an' grew. Ut neverbothered. Never a night's sleep ut lost tull no one, nor ever amunut's, an' thot wuth cuttin' uts teeth an' all. An' Margaretwould dandle ut on her knee an' ask was there ever so fine a loddieun the three Kungdoms. "The way ut grew! Ut was un keepun' wuth the way ut ate. Ot ayear ut was the size o' a bairn of two. Ut was slow tull walk an'talk. Exceptun' for gurgly noises un uts throat an' for creepun'on all fours, ut dudna monage much un the walkun' an' talkun' line. But thot was tull be expected from the way ut grew. Ut all wenttull growun' strong an' healthy. An' even old Tom Henan cheered upot the might of ut an' said was there ever the like o' ut un thethree Kungdoms. Ut was Doctor Hall thot first suspicioned, I mindme well, though ut was luttle I dreamt what he was up tull ot thetime. I seehum holdun' thungs' un fronto' luttle Sammy's eyes, an'a-makun' noises, loud an' soft, an' far an' near, un luttle Sammy'sears. An' then I see Doctor Hall go away, wrunklun' hus eyebrowsan' shakun' hus head like the bairn was ailun'. But he was noailun', oz I could swear tull, me a-seeun' hum eat an' grow. ButDoctor Hall no said a word tull Margaret an' I was no for guessun'the why he was sore puzzled. "I mind me when luttle Sammy first spoke. He was two years old an'the size of a child o five, though he could no monage the walkun'yet but went around on all fours, happy an' contented-like an'makun' no trouble oz long oz he was fed promptly, which was onusualoften. I was hangun' the wash on the line ot the time when out hecomes, on all fours, hus bug head waggun' tull an' fro an' blunkun'un the sun. An' then, suddent, he talked. I was thot took a-backI near died o' fright, an' fine I knew ut then, the shakun' o'Doctor Hall's head. Talked? Never a bairn on Island McGill talkedso loud an' tull such purpose. There was no mustakun' ut. I stoodthere all tremblun' an' shakun'. Little Sammy was brayun'. I tellyou, sir, he was brayun' like an ass--just like thot, --loud an'long an' cheerful tull ut seemed hus lungs ud crack. "He was a eediot--a great, awful, monster eediot. Ut was after hetalked thot Doctor Hall told Margaret, but she would no believe. Ut would all come right, she said. Ut was growun' too fast foraught else. Guv ut time, said she, an' we would see. But old TomHenan knew, an' he never held up hus head again. He could no abidethe thung, an' would no brung humsel' tull touch ut, though I om nodenyun' he was fair fascinated by ut. Mony the time, I see humwatchun' of ut around a corner, lookun' ot ut tull hus eyes fairbulged wuth the horror; an' when ut brayed old Tom ud stuck husfungers tull hus ears an' look thot miserable I could a-puttiedhum. "An' bray ut could! Ut was the only thung ut could do besides eatan' grow. Whenever ut was hungry ut brayed, an' there was nostoppun' ut save wuth food. An' always of a marnun', when first utcrawled tull the kutchen-door an' blunked out ot the sun, utbrayed. An' ut was brayun' that brought about uts end. "I mind me well. Ut was three years old an' oz bug oz a led o'ten. Old Tom hed been goun' from bed tull worse, ploughun' up an'down the fields an' talkun' an' mutterun' tull humself. On themarnun' o' the day I mind me, he was suttun' on the bench outsidethe kutchen, a-futtun' the handle tull a puck-axe. Unbeknown, themonster eediot crawled tull the door an' brayed after hus fashionot the sun. I see old Tom start up an' look. An' there was themonster eediot, waggun' uts bug head an' blunkun' an' brayun' likethe great bug ass ut was. Ut was too much for Tom. Somethun' wentwrong wuth hum suddent-like. He jumped tull hus feet an' fetchedthe puck-handle down on the monster eediot's head. An' he hut utagain an' again like ut was a mod dog an' hum afeard o' ut. An' hewent straight tull the stable an' hung humsel' tull a rafter. An'I was no for stoppun' on after such-like, an' I went tull stayalong wuth me suster thot was married tull John Martin an'comfortable-off. " I sat on the bench by the kitchen door and regarded Margaret Henan, while with her callous thumb she pressed down the live fire of herpipe and gazed out across the twilight-sombred fields. It was thevery bench Tom Henan had sat upon that last sanguinary day of life. And Margaret sat in the doorway where the monster, blinking at thesun, had so often wagged its head and brayed. We had been talkingfor an hour, she with that slow certitude of eternity that sobefitted her; and, for the life of me, I could lay no finger on themotives that ran through the tangled warp and woof of her. Was shea martyr to Truth? Did she have it in her to worship at soabstract a shrine? Had she conceived Abstract Truth to be the onehigh goal of human endeavour on that day of long ago when she namedher first-born Samuel? Or was hers the stubborn obstinacy of theox? the fixity of purpose of the balky horse? the stolidity of theself-willed peasant-mind? Was it whim or fancy?--the one streak oflunacy in what was otherwise an eminently rational mind? Or, reverting, was hers the spirit of a Bruno? Was she convinced ofthe intellectual rightness of the stand she had taken? Was hers asteady, enlightened opposition to superstition? or--and a subtlerthought--was she mastered by some vaster, profounder superstition, a fetish-worship of which the Alpha and the Omega was the crypticSAMUEL? "Wull ye be tellun' me, " she said, "thot uf the second Samuel hodbeen named Larry thot he would no hov fell un the hot watter an'drownded? Atween you an' me, sir, an' ye are untellugent-lookun'tull the eye, would the name hov made ut onyways dufferent? Wouldthe washun' no be done thot day uf he hod been Larry or Michael?Would hot watter no be hot, an' would hot watter no burn uf he hodhod ony other name but Samuel?" I acknowledged the justice of her contention, and she went on. "Do a wee but of a name change the plans o' God? Do the world runby hut or muss, an' be God a weak, shully-shallyun' creature thotud alter the fate an' destiny o' thungs because the worm MargaretHenan seen fut tull name her bairn Samuel? There be my son Jamie. He wull no sign a Rooshan-Funn un hus crew because o' believun'thot Rooshan-Funns do be monajun' the wunds an' hov the makun' o'bod weather. Wull you be thunkun' so? Wull you be thunkun' thotGod thot makes the wunds tull blow wull bend Hus head from on hightull lussen tull the word o' a greasy Rooshan-Funn un some dirtyshup's fo'c'sle?" I said no, certainly not; but she was not to be set aside frompressing home the point of her argument. "Then wull you be thunkun' thot God thot directs the stars un theircourses, an' tull whose mighty foot the world uz but a footstool, wull you be thunkun' thot He wull take a spite again' MargaretHenan an' send a bug wave off the Cape tull wash her son un tulleternity, all because she was for namun' hum Samuel?" "But why Samuel?" I asked. "An' thot I dinna know. I wantud ut so. " "But WHY did you want it so?" "An' uz ut me thot would be answerun' a such-like question? Bethere ony mon luvun' or dead thot can answer? Who can tell the WHYo' like? My Jamie was fair daft on buttermilk, he would drunk uttull, oz he said humself, hus back teeth was awash. But my Tumothycould no abide buttermilk. I like tull lussen tull the thundergrowlun' an' roarun', an' rampajun'. My Katie could no abide thenoise of ut, but must scream an' flutter an' go runnun' for themudmost o' a feather-bed. Never yet hov I heard the answer tullthe WHY o' like, God alone hoz thot answer. You an' me be mortalan' we canna know. Enough for us tull know what we like an' whatwe duslike. I LIKE--thot uz the first word an' the last. An'behind thot like no men can go an' find the WHY o' ut. I LIKESamuel, an' I like ut well. Ut uz a sweet name, an' there be arollun' wonder un the sound o' ut thot passes onderstandun'. " The twilight deepened, and in the silence I gazed upon thatsplendid dome of a forehead which time could not mar, at the widthbetween the eyes, and at the eyes themselves--clear, out-looking, and wide-seeing. She rose to her feet with an air of dismissingme, saying-- "Ut wull be a dark walk home, an' there wull be more thon asprunkle o' wet un the sky. " "Have you any regrets, Margaret Henan?" I asked, suddenly andwithout forethought. She studied me a moment. "Aye, thot I no ha' borne another son. " "And you would . . . ?" I faltered. "Aye, thot I would, " she answered. "Ut would ha' been hus name. " I went down the dark road between the hawthorn hedges puzzling overthe why of like, repeating SAMUEL to myself and aloud and listeningto the rolling wonder in its sound that had charmed her soul andled her life in tragic places. SAMUEL! There was a rolling wonderin the sound. Aye, there was!