George Kibbe Turner

“ I looked at him.
“The new speech of the air—all over—universal!” he said, talking English like a pocket dictionary, the way those foreigners do.
And then he introduced me to his girl, a nice, merry-looking kid, but kind of shy. And dresses? You'd be surprised! All this bright, gay-looking batik-dyed stuff they make out around there; and little bangles and green earrings, in gold, and all Eastern stuff like that. She looked like an escaped butterfly. ”

“ And just then the captain came in.
“Who fails?” he asked him.
“The firm—the American company who has bought my sugar.”
And then all at once the voice of Sophie came from in behind the two of them. I hadn't seen her coming in.
“What is it?” she asked in a quick voice, excited the way women always get over any fear about business. “Is it trouble for us? Do we lose—in the selling of our sugar?”
“Not we, dear one,” her father said, smiling an easy, comforting smile. “We are protected by our confirmed letters of credit on a bank—an American bank. ”

“ The talk came in gradually more from the ships and coasts around South America, Spanish and Portuguese, and every now and then an English or American liner. And up to the north, whenever that rotten static under the equator lifted up a bit, you'd hear more and more the old man's commerce of the North Atlantic buzz like very distant bees—the old man's Anglo-Saxons—always honest, always on the job, giving the world a square deal like this one ”

“ It was quite a theory at that.
“They fight now after war,” he was telling me, “a greater fight than they fought then—the great dozen languages you speak of that have lived and become strong enough to call through the sky.”
“And you claim,” I asked him, “that the Anglo-Saxon is winning out?”
“No,” he said, stopping me. “No; the Anglo-Saxon has only, I say, the great chance now, if it will prove worthy, as had the Spanish or the Portuguese or the Dutch long ago and—and lost.” ”

“ Still more so since this new thing—since the captain was dragging him and his bills of lading into New York on time.
“Your captain now,” he told me—“there is an example of the Anglo-Saxon race; so just, so strong, with so much of honor. It is difficult for me to relate my thanks to him since that mistake of my little Sophie; the fear of the nonarrival of my needed papers in New York on time. Since then he works day and night for us. He speeds the ship, and now he shows—yes, demonstrates to me—that without doubt we shall reach New York in ample time.” ”

“ I told him, and then finally he mapped out for me the whole idea as it hit him.
“You have not been before there in our East—in the islands,” he told me, “where the languages still lie as they first grew, and stay yet so many centuries as at their beginning. I, on the other hand,” he went on telling me, “have traveled much here as a merchant—thirty, forty years. I observe myself how the language of men has started at the first, in the islands, in the valleys of the hills; cries of men, like birds; animals calling to their mates, their families, their tribes. ”

“ For that's just what it did.
“With no doubt possible,” he said after me. “A noble man, a fine upstanding Anglo-Saxon,” he said, talking free again. “And I will say to you in confidence that there are others who will see this also—my daughter, for example. Look!” he said. “There they come again together. I prophesy to you we shall hear now soon from that quarter!” he said, and tipped me a long, wise, crafty wink.
I looked at them coming, sorer and sorer every time I noticed them together, and me still the innocent bystander, doing nothing! ”

“ There's always this to be thought of. We've got more than enough time to get this ship into New York. You've just admitted it yourself,” I said, beginning to see red streamers where his face was, now I let myself loose and talked about the thing. “And the mate is an honest man—not a crook. Now I'll tell you something: I'm going to be a prophet,” I said, standing still, but the bright red streamers fluttering more and more. “This ship is going to be in New York on or before the thirtieth of this month—that's settled now already. ”

“ Just listen to what I've stirred up—all the Anglo-Saxons! The air is full of them, American and English both.”
“Like bees,” she said, repeating her father. “Far away!”
“Or hornets, maybe!” I said, feeling pleased with myself, slopping over a little again about the U. S. A.—glad to be getting home. “There's one thing about them,” I told her: “There are crooks among them, I suppose, just like all the other races. Occasionally one or two may be yellow. But when you want them they're mostly there.”
“I'll say so!” said Sophie.
You'd be surprised how fast she picked up American talk. ”

“ I said, “she's nothing but a kid!”
“I fancy them young,” he said. “We all do—if the truth is told. You watch me!” he said, warming up to the idea. “Speaking of barratry and piracy and tampering with the cargo,” he told me, with a big, slow-firing English wink, “how would it be, eh, to pick up on a voyage a nice little Dutch hausfrau that's sole heiress to nobody knows how many miliion guilders?” ”

“ They may give the world what in the end it must have—one universal law, one universal contract of commerce, enforceable all over; one universal language, also, at the last.”
“How would they do all that?” I asked, watching him, trying to get the idea.
“By this,” he said, pointing to my wireless outfit. “In commerce; through the air.”
And then he got up—I still watching him, wondering what it was all about, and would I talk stuff like that when I got his age—and went out, looking for his girl. “Look,” I said, picking up a hand bag and a little handkerchief I'd had my eye on. ”

“ The language of the air, in the end, when it comes, will not be the language of liars or cheats, of contract breakers, of those that other men do not trust.”
“Why not?”
“Because it will come by commerce,” he told me, “and in commerce men will not buy for the long period of other men, or of nations, who may not be trusted. Why should they? Who can make them?” ”

“ He's king here. All he's got to do is burn a few less tons of coal—slow her up a knot or so an hour, or run her off her course a little row and then and lay it to that poor old excuse of a steering compass, or do a half dozen things I wouldn't know about. And we'd never be there—and somebody in New York would be in a half million dollars for not having to pay the money on that sugar. ”

“ Suppose I tell you flat that I never saw anything much in you but what came with you, and suppose we let it go that way; that we'll have a settlement in dollars and cents, or you and your poor crazy father and your papers never will reach New York on time!”
“Rave on!” I said to myself, letting him go the limit. “Rave on! if we didn't have it on you before, we're getting enough now to hang you, out of your own mouth.”
“Suppose,” he said, staring at me now, getting redder and redder, “that I shut you off now—from this thing—and keep going right on in a new course. ”

“ He'll go pop some day sudden, like those little copper-colored ones do.
“You speak of barratry—of money out of this voyage,” he said, tipping me the slow wise wink again, never able to keep his goings on with women to himself. “There's a pot goes there—with that little sweetness—that will make everything on this craft look like tuppence-ha'penny. So what's wrong with my marrying her and stepping into the old man's shoes, and settling down and raising a nice little family of tea and sugar exporters in Java?” ”

“ We used to hold arguments over it, I standing out for the wireless, naturally, and she for the compass.
“Why, consider! You couldn't operate the ship,” she'd say, “without one compass; but years and years they ran ships without the least wireless.”
“I don't know how,” I said, “judging from this one. They wouldn't know where it was without my wireless compass every night, with that thing they're steering by now,” I said, bringing in that business about the compasses on the ship. ”

“ I will kill him myself—all for a scarf of silk!” she said, talking louder; and her shoulders began to shake—kid's shoulders under the trouble of a woman—and more!
“Steady! Steady there!” I said, putting my hand on her arm, not knowing too well just what to do. “It'll come out all right probably.” And after a minute she got hold of herself.
“I would now ask you one thing,” she said then. “Do you believe truly that we shall be in New York with our papers on time?”
“There's just one man will know that for certain!” I said, watching her, starting to hint.
“The captain?” ”

“ For he could not so press his ship—take the chances of lasting damage to her—if he should lose his hope of then having me, which so drove him day and night.”
“Having you?” I said, thinking murder.
“Of our marriage—if we arrive in New York in time—for so I still promise him.”
“Sophie—Miss Sophie,” I said, getting hoarse, “you don't know what you're doing! You're nothing but a kid!” ”

“ I told him. “There's few places left, I guess, where you wouldn't get it sometime during the day.”
“A great tongue, a great people, dear one,” he said to the girl, getting playful again. “They now inherit the earth. Your mother was of that race. No doubt we shall have to marry you to one of them.” ”

“ I said, jumping and fixing the receiver for her.
And she stared ahead, listening the way a kid does, with a kind of scared, doubtful look on her eyes and her little nose.
“You hear them, dear one?” the old man asked her in his dictionary talk. “Languages with languages. They strive in the air. All the nations in commerce, as I have said to you.” ”

“ I asked him, getting his idea. “They die, we'll say! What kills them?”
“Other languages, traveling, conquering.”
And I asked him how—by war?
Illustration: We Were Clear by the End of Africa Now, Coming Out Into That Open Hole in the Sea Between There and South America, Waddling Home All by Our Lonesome
“No, not by war for many centuries now do the conquering languages come. ”

“ I asked him.
“They will—they always do. That's what they send the duplicates ahead for.”
“So the old man,” I said, “gets out of it; gets all his money at top prices—three or four hundred thousand dollars more than the stuff's worth now.” ”

“ Clear twenty-fifth for Surabaya.'
“Or maybe some English kid would break loose and tell the sunset how fed up he was sitting straddling the equator on some other God-forsaken steamer. And along after midnight the captain would come in with his white ducks and his little dyed English military mustache and a fine healthy grouch, and talk about money and women, the two things he didn't have and couldn't get along without.”
According to him the whole world was shot to pieces. ”