Harvey J. O'Higgins

“ The captain replied, coaxingly, "Well, what 'd you do, Sam?"
"'Mates,' I says, 'I'm a married man. I got a wife, mates,' I says, 'an' a little one. Is it fair,' I says, 'that I go, that's got them dependin' to me, an' Tom here's got no one? Is it right?' I says. An' they didn't say a word. We was all played out. I could scarce speak, my mouth was so. 'Is it right?' I says. 'No! If any one goes, it ought to be Tom,' I says. 'He's got no one. He's near dead now. What good is he? He can't help none. 'Tain't right! I'm a strong man. I got a woman to keep. ”

“ Captain Jim gave him clothes and bedding, sent cooked food to his shack while he was away from it, "stood" him drinks in the bar, lent him a boat in which to go fishing for mud-cats up the creek, and paid him, as well, for his work on the boat-building or in the garden. In return for it all he did not get more gratitude than could be expressed in a grunt.
"He's got somethin' on his mind, that's all," Captain Jim decided. "It's got him a bit touched. Knowed 'n old sailor up to Duluth like that—on'y his was religion. He'll come through. ”

“ Feeble nothin'! He works 's good 's the best o' them—where he knows how."
"He won't chop the wood," she said. The whole village had discovered his aversion to the use of an ax.
"No," he reflected. "He's a bit queer about that. He ain't strong in his top story. But he's harmless, girl. An' we've treated him like a dog—leavin' him live in that swamp—"
"He wouldn't let you do anything else."
"That's so. That's right. Well, I'll make him come if I have to move the shack to do it."
The captain's house was a relic of the ante-railroad, days of Port Derby's prosperity. ”

“ It was a peculiarity of the beach that there was one spot where the wood came ashore in abundance—great trees that had been uprooted by the rains and carried out into the lake, ships' timbers, the loosened planks of derelicts, and all the wreckage of storms and freshets. ”

“ Seven of us. An' our tongues swollen so we couldn't shut our jaws. An' the mate says: 'Boys, it's time to draw lots. There's too many of us. Take yer choice. We'll all die together if we don't,' he says. 'All of us!' An' my mouth so dry I couldn't eat the biscuit no more than it was sand."
The captain waited, listening, with his head on one side, watching him. The moonlight had grown strong enough to make a faint shadow on the beach. When Sam continued silent he said: "Well, in a case like that there, I s'pose there's nothin' else to do. I remember once—"
Sam licked his lips. ”

“ The captain caught him by the shoulder. "Sit down," he said. "You're dog-tired. There. That's all right. Now."
The old man sat down weakly on a log and took his head in his hands. He shook as if he had a chill. When the tremor had passed Captain Jim said: "Better, eh? Well. When you feel like work come over an' help us on the steam-box. Know how to warp boards, eh? ... Come away, boys. Don't bother him. He's a bit touched." ”

“ The captain struck a match and sat—to relight his pipe—on the other end of the log. "Well," he said, "I come down to see if there was much wood here fer the whiter. Pick up more logs here in a day than you could cut down in a week. Cold weather's comin', Sam. You'll freeze stiff in that shack. I was tellin' my girl to get a room ready fer you—over the kitchen, where it 'll be warm. You can do her chores fer yer board if you want to."
Sam stopped puffing at his pipe, but he did not turn around.
"We're gettin' old," the captain went on. "Got to have a warm bed when you're old. ”

“ But what we do know is his remarkable story, and it surely entitles him to a place in these portrait-studies, for it seems to me quite the most distinguished true story that I have run across; and if "W. T." is not himself immortally famous, it is only because he has not met a Eugene Sue to do him as another "Wandering Jew," or a second Coleridge to make another "Ancient Mariner" of him.
Moreover, Captain Johnson has begged me: "Put somethin' about him in the papers, an' if any one comes across 'm, tell 'em to write Cap'n Jim Johnson, Port Derby, eh? ”

“ But he refused to wield an ax as he had refused the adz; he continued dumb; and when the afternoon was done he took his supper on the hotel veranda at the captain's expense, accepted a corn-cob pipe and a plug of tobacco, and wandered away up the beach in the fading light.
He did not reappear until the morning. Subsequently it was found that he had taken possession of a deserted shack in a hollow behind the captain's farm, where a bend in the shore-line met the trickle of a swamp.
"I seen a man had hands like that afore," Captain Jim said. "He done it handlin' grain-bags. Yeh. ”

“ Wonder what he's doin' away up here, anyway."
4 Port Derby is hundreds of miles from the ocean and ten miles from a railroad, even. The mail arrived on a buckboard once a day. The fish were taken to a shipping port, on the tug, once a week. Between fishing and farming the little community supported itself in a contented isolation, and if old "Sam" had wished to escape the world he could not have chosen a better hermitage. ”

“ The captain, having stood a moment gazing after him, turned and went home to his bed.
7 In the morning, after a scene of anger with his daughter, he posted down to the boat and found that Sam had not appeared for work. He waited an hour, and then hurried off to the shack. The door was open. The place was in disorder—the lantern thrown upon the floor, the bedding dragged aside, the bench overturned under the table—and Sam had gone. ”

“ His voice fell away into silence irresolutely.
"If they'd ketched me?" the captain asked. He was at the end of his story of the bounty-jumping. "Well, I s'pose I'd been rushed to the front on the first train. But they didn't ketch me." He chuckled. "Not them." ”

“ An' nobody said a word, except one o' the men sort o' laughed."
He turned suddenly. "What would you 'a' done?" he cried. "With the wife home—an' the baby—waitin' fer you? An' young Tom with nobody dependin' to him." ”