Читать книгу Hidden Country - Henry Oyen - Страница 5

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George Chanler’s offer of a position as literary secretary of his Arctic expedition came to me one fine May morning when I was sitting at my desk, glooming from an eighteenth-story height down upon the East River, and dreading to begin the day’s work.

I had sat so for many mornings past. I was not happy; I was a failure. I was thirty years old, had a college education; my health was splendid and I was intelligent and ambitious. And I was precariously occupying a position as country correspondent in Hurst’s Mail Order Emporium, salary $25 a week, with every reason to believe that I had achieved the limits of such success as my capabilities entitled me to.

“You ain’t got no punch, Mr. Pitt; that’s the matter vit’ you,” was my employer’s verdict. “You’re a fine feller, but—oof! How you haf got into the rut!”

I had. I was in so deeply that I had lost confidence and was losing hope. That was why I, Gardner Pitt, bookman by instinct and office-cog by vocation, was ripe for Chanler’s sensational offer.

My friendship with Chanler, which had been a close one at school where I had done half his work for him, had of a necessity languished during the last few years. There is not much room for friendship between a poorly paid office man and an idle young millionaire. Yet it was apparent that George had not forgotten, for now he turned to me when he wanted some one to accompany him and write the history of his Arctic achievements.

His offer came in the form of a long telegram from Seattle where he was outfitting his new yacht, Wanderer. Being what he was George gave me absolutely no useful information concerning the nature of his expedition. In what most concerned me, however, his message was sufficient: a light task, a Summer vacation, and at generous terms.

I looked out of the window at the wearying roofs of the city, and the yellow paper crumpled in my fingers as I clenched my fist. There was none of the adventurer in me. I was not in the optimistic frame of mind necessary to an explorer. But Chanler’s offer was, at least, a chance to escape from New York. I bade Mr. Hurst good-by, and went out and sent a wire of acceptance.

Eight days later, shortly before noon, I stood on the curb outside the station in Seattle bargaining with a cabman to drive me to the dock where I had been directed to find a launch from the Wanderer awaiting me that morning. The particular cabman that I happened to hit upon was an honest man. He cheerfully admitted that he did not know the exact location of the dock mentioned in my directions, but he assured me that he knew in a general way in which section of the water-front it must be.

“And when we get down there I’ll step in and ask at Billy Taylor’s,” he said, as if that settled the matter. “Billy’ll know; he knows everything that’s going along the water-front.”

Billy Taylor’s proved to be a tiny waterfront saloon which my man entered with an alacrity that testified to a desire for something more than information concerning my dock. I waited in patience for many minutes with no sign of his return. I waited many more minutes in impatience with a like result.

In my broken-spirited condition I was not fit or inclined to reprimand a drinking cabman, but neither was I minded to sit idle while my man filled himself up. I stepped out of the cab and thrust open the swinging doors of the saloon.

I did not enter. My cabman was in the act of coming out, standing with one hand absently thrust out toward the doors, his attention arrested and held by something that was taking place in a small room at the rear of the saloon. The door of this room was half open. I saw a small, wiry man in seaman’s clothes leaning over a round table, shaking his fist at a large man with light cropped hair who sat opposite him. A bottle of beer, knocked over, was gurgling out its contents on the floor. The large man was sitting up very stiff and straight, but smiling easily at the other’s fury.

“No, you don’t, Foxy; no you don’t! You can’t come any of your ‘Captain’ business on me, you Laughing Devil,” screamed the little man. “Ah, ha! That stung, eh? Didn’t think I knew what the Aleuts called you, eh, Foxy? ‘Laughing Devil.’ An’ you talk like a captain to me, and ask me to go North with you! Here: what became of Slade and Harris, that let you into partnership with ’em after you’d lost your sealer in Omkutsk Strait? And what became of the gold strike they’d made? Eh? And you talk to me about a rich gold find you’ve got, and want me to help you take a rich sucker up North——”

“Still,” said the big man suddenly. “Still, Madigan.”

He had been smiling up till then, his huge, red face lighted up like a wrinkled red sun, but suddenly the light seemed to go out. The fat of his face seemed to become like cast bronze, with two pin-points of fire gleaming, balefully from under down-drawn lids. Several heavy lines which had been hidden in genial wrinkles now were apparent, and, though only the flat profile was visible to me, I saw, or rather I felt, that the man’s face for the while was terrible.

To my amazement the infuriated sea-man’s abuse ceased as abruptly as if the power of speech had been taken from him. He remained in his threatening attitude, leaning across the table, his clenched fist thrust forward, his mouth open; but his eyes were held by the crop-haired man’s and not a sound came from his lips.

“Down, Madigan,” continued the big man. “It is my wish that you sit down.”

A snarl came from the small man’s lips. He seemed about to break out again, but suddenly he subsided and sat down. The big man nodded stiffly, as one might at child who has obeyed an unpleasant command, and the smaller man humbly closed the door.

My cabman came hurtling out through the swinging doors, nearly running me down in his hurry.

“Hullo!” he cried. “Did you see that, too? Whee-yew! That was a funny thing. That little fellow’s Tad Madigan, a mate that’s lost his papers, and the toughest man along the water-front; and he—he shut up like a schoolboy, didn’t he?”

Saloon brawls, even when displaying amazing characters, do not interest me.

I reminded him that he had gone in to inquire about the location of my dock.

“Oh, that’s a good joke on me,” he laughed. “Your dock’s right next door here, and you can see the Wanderer from Billy’s back room.”

A few minutes later I was standing in the midst of my baggage on this dock, looking out across the water to where lay anchored the white, clean-lined yacht, Wanderer.

It was a morning in early June, a day alive with bright, warm sun. A slight breeze with a mingling of sea, and pine, and the subtle scents of Spring in it, was coming up the Sound, and beneath its breath the water was rippling into wavelets, each with a touch of sun on its tiny crest.

An outdoor man might have thrilled with the scene, the sun, the fresh Spring-scent and all. But I was fresh from the asphalt and stone walls of New York, and I was broken-spirited, resigned to anything, elated over nothing, that fate might allot me. I merely looked over the water to the Wanderer to see if the promised launch was on its way.

“Sure enough, Mister, there comes a little gas-boat for you now,” exclaimed my cabman, pointing with his whip to a small launch that was coming away from the yacht’s stern. “You’ll be all right; your friends have seen you. Well, good luck to you, friend, and lots of it.”

“Thank you,” I said, “and the same to you.”

But I felt bitterly that there was little hope that his cheery wish would be realized for me.

As the launch drew nearer the dock I saw that a bareheaded and red-haired young man was in charge, and as it came quite near I saw that the young man’s mouth was opening and closing prodigiously, and from snatches of sound that drifted toward me above the noise of the engine, I heard that he was singing joyously at the top of a strained and thoroughly unmusical voice.

He drove the launch straight at the dock in a fashion that seemed to threaten inevitable collision, but at the crucial moment the engine suddenly was reversed, the rudder swung around, and the little craft came sidling alongside against the timber on which I was standing; the young man tossed a rope around a pile, and with a sudden spring he was on the dock beside me.

“You’re Mr. Gardner Pitt, if your baggage is marked right,” he said, though I had not seen the swift glance he had shot at the initials on my bags.

He stood on his tip-toes, blinking in the sun, and filled his lungs with a great draft of air.

“Gee! It’s some morning, ain’t it, Mr. Pitt? A-a-ah-ah!” he continued with ineffable satisfaction. “It certainly is one grand thing to be alive.”

I could not wholly subscribe to his sentiment at that time, but there was such an aura of wholesome good humor about the young man that I warmed toward him at once. He was probably twenty-three years old, short and boyish of build: his face was a mass of freckles; his eyes were very blue and merry; his nose very snubbed, his mouth large. He wore one of the most awful red ties that ever tortured the eyes of humanity, and the crime was aggravated by a pin containing a large yellow stone; but when he grinned it was apparent that he was one of those whom much is to be forgiven.

“I’m Freddy Pierce,” he said. “Wireless operator and odd-job-man on the Wanderer. Say, Mr. Pitt, will you do me a favor?”

He looked at me with an expression of indescribable comicality on his sun-wrinkled face, and, willy-nilly, I found myself smiling.

“Thank you for them kind words,” he laughed before I had opened my mouth. “Knew you’d do it; knew I had you sized up right. Let me roll a pill before we start back? Thanks.”

With amazing swiftness he had produced tobacco and paper, rolled a cigaret, and sent a ring of smoke rolling upward through the clear air.

“Mr. Pitt,” he said suddenly in a new tone, “do you know Captain Brack?”

“No,” I said. “Who is Captain Brack?”

“Captain of the Wanderer,” was the reply.

“I don’t know him.”

He threw away his cigaret and began easing my baggage down into the launch. He was serious for the moment.

“And—and say, Mr. Pitt, do you know a Jane—I mean, a lady named Miss Baldwin?”

I did not.

“Who is Miss Baldwin?”

Pierce suddenly snapped his teeth together, and the look that came upon his freckled countenance puzzled me for days to come.

“God knows—and the boss,” he said enigmatically. “She—she’s——”

He shook his head vigorously, then sprang into the launch. His serious moment had gone.

“Now get in while I’m holding ’er steady, Mr. Pitt. That’s right.” And now, putt-putt said the engine, and bearing its precious freight the launch sped across the blue water to the noble yacht. “Ah, ha! And there’s old ‘Frozen Face,’ the Boss’s valet, waiting to welcome you on board.”