James B. Connolly

“ And for every child a woman bears mark her up a decade of years in human wisdom. And twice a decade in hardening resolution. It had already become marble in me—my resolution to save from the talons of this hawk this brother of my Ned's—a twenty-five-year-old man of war according to stupid bureau files, but in reality a little child playing in the garden of life with never a thought of any bird of prey hovering in the air above him. ”

“ Just to look at the young blue seas was life, and the soft salt air was a cure for whatever blue feeling a man might have had hooked into himself ashore.
A great morning. We passed two big salt fishermen bound in. From the Western Banks they were, or from Flemish Cap, half across the ocean, maybe; and the brown rocks of Cape Ann must have looked to them like mother's johnny-cake on the kitchen table that sunny morning. Swinging by like a pair of twins they went, flying both topsails the pair of them, but neither of them much more than flushing their scuppers to the fine fresh breeze. ”

“ Carlin left Trench and walked around deck, in and out among the sleeping forms. Here was one in a hammock, here one on a cot, but mostly they slept on the bare deck in their blankets. Every odd corner and open space held them. They were tucked in against hatchways, under turrets, inboard of boats, outboard of boats, next the smoke-pipes, in the lee of gypsies, of winches, cook's galley. Everyhow and everywhere they slept—on their backs, their stomachs, on their sides, curled up and stretched out. Some whistled, some groaned, some snored, but mostly they slept like babes. ”

“ With Bill and Steve in the cabin slept Oliver and the skipper. Most sword-fishermen carry an auxiliary engine to hustle after the fish in calm summer weather. The rest of us bunked in the forec's'le. She was a little creature, the Henriette, and it was pretty close sleeping for'ard on a hot night. To abate the heat nights, we rigged up a wind-sail which came down the air-port forward of the foremast; which was all right till the vessel tacked. When she did, her jumbo-boom would sweep across the deck and swipe our wind-sail over the rail. ”

“ By and by we were rolling low enough for a buoy keg to go floating off our house and overboard astern. A fine half-barrel of a buoy keg it was—black and white painted, smooth and tight as a drum; a beauty of a buoy which by and by, at the end of a fifty-fathom warp, ought by rights to be towing after a fat swordfish; and so the skipper said. But now she was dancing atop of the swirling seas astern, and the skipper, looking astern after it and then at us, also said: "To hell with it now! Buy a new one out your share—and next time some o' you'll learn to lash 'em, maybe!" ”

“ Well, Big Bill's all right; but he's alive to-day because a better man—the same being John—shoved him into a dory when he might have gone himself instead. And Big Bill thinks of John only as an irresponsible young fellow who liked to play jokes with blueberry dumplings.
The best men don't always come back from sea. Four good men stayed aboard the Henriette, and two of them—the skipper and John—were certainly quicker and braver than any of the others of us. ”

“ I said when the lemonades had come. "There she was, sort of standing on one foot like she wanted to talk to somebody, and I know that somebody wasn't me, when 'Marguerite!' a voice called—like that—and whing! she was gone, with sighs soft as the bubbles in the wake of a torpedo to mark her going."
"Marguerite?" says the young fellow, coming wonderfully back to life. "What did she look like?"
"Queen o' the Movies—nothing less for looks, but with a touch o' home and mother and little babies clinging to her neck."
"That's Marguerite! Why didn't you call me?" he says. ”

“ A man should always have a good word—even if he don't more than half believe it himself—for the craft he's going to sea in. At the same time I was thinking that I was having an eye to a new, able fresh-halibuter—a big ninety-ton vessel—across the slip.
I like the big fellows to go to sea in. I said so to John.
"A big, able brute—yes, boy. But that big brute—Lard Gard, she'd look sweet, wouldn't she, chasin' swordfish in the shoal water south o' Georges. She's a good little boat, the Henriette—and a pretty name," said John. ”

“ It was still dark night, but ahead of the ship a cluster of pale yellow lights could be seen.
"Veracruz?" asked Carlin.
"Veracruz, yes—the port ahead. And how was she when you saw her last?"
"A lonesome woman—more lonesome and weary than a good woman should be at her age. Her eyes are still violet and her cheeks like ivory, but the color doesn't come and go in them now."
"I had to leave home to learn," said Killorin, "that the bright color coming and going like a flood means the blood running high in the heart. Men should have a care for such. ”

“ And so "Sh-h, Nan!" I warned.
"I won't sh-h, Nettie Trench. It's so and you know it. I hate superior people, Nettie. Father always did, too. And you know how he liked Larry. Dear papa! One night, Nettie—I was never so surprised—mamma all at once began to cry—imagine mamma crying! She was crying for papa, who had to die, she said, before she could appreciate the gentleness and warm heart that was in him. And papa always said that no kind of people go further to the bad than those who really think they're better than others. ”

“ Before we left Hong Kong I found out how Furlong's wireless friend had done for him. With a few drinks in him—me buying the drinks—he gushes some confidential chatter.
Furlong was in the pay of the Russian Government, was what he told the foxy old purser. How else could a man so clever—talking and having so much money to spend as Furlong was spending—how could he have been an enlisted man in any navy? And he showed a cable—being so easy to fix up, I wondered why he hadn't made it a wireless—that no man of Furlong's father's name was living in Chicago. ”

“ But all loyal sons of our school took a ticket for the games. I went to them; and there I saw Mary Riley waving her banner and cheering a gangling-legged young fellow that lived in the same street as myself. No special looks did he have, and no more brains than another, but he was winning a hurdle race and she was cheering him. And there came another, the winner of the high jump, and she cheered him, too.
To see a girl you are night and day thinking of—to see and hear her cheering some one else—! ”

“ A Bale of Blankets
They were holding what was almost a public reception in the ward-room of the Missalanna. The Honorable J. J. Flavin, having appeased his hunger and slaked his thirst, signalled the Filipino mess-boy for a smoke; and having decided as to what was the most expensive cigar on the tray, he took two, and moved on to where, through a shining air-port, a fresh sea-breeze might find its cooling way to his beaded brow, for it was a warm summer's day and at trencher-play the Honorable Flavin had been no laggard. ”

“ While a man would be drawing on a pair of rubber-boots it came—oh, whistling! And four hours of it followed. Wind to blow a man's ears off. And rain! Oh, rain! Not rain in sheets—nothing so soft and easy as that; but rain which came driving in like a billion bullets at once. We could pick out where every one hit us. The wind blew maybe eighty miles an hour for four hours. And then the real thing came. For an hour or so more wind really blew. How many miles? Lord knows. John said a good hundred miles. Bill snorted: "A hunderd? Take on'y what's above a hunderd an' you'd git a gale by itself!" ”

“ I said, "Mary Riley made no mistake—you're a better man than I am." And I left him and ran up the ladder—up to where winds were blowing and seas singing and the stars rolling their eternal circles. All night long I walked the deck.
It did me good—what he had said to me. But a man doesn't change his ways overnight. I stopped maybe to have a backward look more often than I used to, and friendly deck officers maybe didn't have so often to look hard at the liberty lists; but being in the same ship with Meagher did me good. ”

“ Carlin had a look at the owner of the voice. Later he hunted up Trench—Lieutenant Trench—and to him he said: "Glory to the man who can wear his uniform without tempering hot convictions or coining free speech to the bureaucratic mint! But greater glory to the man who can divest high office of its shining robes and see only the man beneath. Who's your big, rangy gunner's mate with the gray-flecked, thick black hair and what the apprentice boys call go-to-hell eyes?"
"That's easy—Killorin." ”

“ By this time Nan and Larry had passed onto the latticed balcony, and Nan's mother to her room; and Ned was hugging Neddo and Anna together.
"Perhaps," I said, "I'm not such a strategist after all!"
"Nettie," said Ned, "cheer up. You have your share of brains. I, your husband, say it. And if your husband admits it, it must be so. But, Nettie dear, don't forget that here with the children is your bidding suit. Lead the play up to the children, Nettie, and they will sure have to hold some cards to set you." ”

“ To-morrow they'll be to sea and on the job, a simple-living, busy crowd—working hard, taking chances, and making no talk about it."
Flavin whoofed a funnel of doubting cigar smoke into the teeth of the air-port breeze. "Taking chances! How? And where?"
"Everywhere. Day and night—battleships, destroyers, in submarines and aeroplanes. Thirty men and officers killed in one turret explosion only last month."
"Taking chances—huh! Foolish chances!"
"Anybody who isn't living to see how long he can live takes a foolish chance once in a while. ”

“ He was a large-boned man, McWarrish, with a voice that left no idle spaces in the air about him, and I am myself no dwarf, nor weak of lung; and singing in and out among the fleet we went, while marine guards looked over top-rails and bluejackets rolled out of their blankets to give us a cheerful word in passing and sailors on anchor watch warned us in a friendly way not to run 'em down and sink 'em—from one battleship after another—when in the silvery night they would loom surprisingly up before McWarrish, who was steering. ”

“ I couldn't hear what his watch-mate said, but from out of the dark all at once I heard Cahalan. Said Cahalan: 'When a man does a good job and gets rated up for it, he's a lucky geezer; when he does a good job and don't get rated up for it, he mayn't be a lucky geezer, but what th' hell, he's done a good job just the same, hasn't he?' So, Carl, what d'y'say?—to Pay Totten, sailing lonesome through the Trades—a poor politician, but a damn good officer! ”

“ I remember seeing the cat climbing up the hammer hoist when it saw what was coming and clawing into its place up top; and how when the Happy went under and the tall hoist careened over toward us, the cat made one flying leap on to the oil-ship's deck. When Scoot heard of that later, he said: "We'll name it Confucius—a wonderful, wise cat." ”

“ I'd been fishing mostly in big vessels before this trip, and for the first time in my life I saw a little boat stand up and take a beating. She was a few tons bigger than the Henriette, but still little enough—the Esther. Little and deep-laden, she lay there and took it.
Little and deep-laden, yes; but, man, a stout one, too. When she was building it was Tom Haile himself who drove every bolt—every trenail—into her. He had seen to it that her timbers were heavy enough for a vessel four times her tonnage. Believe him, a vessel the Esther! A solid block of oak, yes! ”

“ And she said: 'I think, Nan, a little travelling and discipline won't hurt you one bit'; and then Larry went and got his appointment to the marine corps, thinking there might be a war and some fighting for him down in this country."
Now, I always have held that women, even as men of any account, are never so attractive as when they throw aside all affectation and stand forth just as they are—that is, if they're wholesome and good to begin with; and no surer way to hold the right kind of a boy to the line than to let him know that the right girl has never lost faith in him. ”

“ Larry, if he saw us, paid no attention to us; neither did he pay any attention to Carmen Whiffle when she stood at his elbow. "There's no changing nature, Nan," I said—"the male in war time is a warrior first and a lover afterward."
"Would you want him not to be?" said Nan, who had dropped grabbing tables to stand off and admire Larry; and while she was at that, her mother, in a dressing-gown of a chocolate shade, came down the wide stairs.
"Mamma, there's Larry—look!" cried Nan. "And he won't pay the least attention to us!"
"Why should he?" retorted auntie. "He has his work before him. ”

“ I stood there at the end of that row of palmettos, hesitating; and while I hesitated the orchestra struck up, and I saw the lady lead Larry out for a dance.
I did not have to see Carmen Whiffle dance to know that she could dance. If they never learn to do anything else on earth, women of her kind do learn to dance. All women who have men in their minds learn to dance. ”

“ I said—"a word from one of the cooks or maids down-stairs it must have been. They take the air in the patio of an evening when their work is done. Remember, voices carry far in the tropics—especially when it is damp."
"I never knew that, Nettie," said innocent Nan—"that voices carry farther in the tropics. And I'm sure it is clear and lovely out." And she stood up to look through the lattice.
Now, the best defense to an attack, Ned always told me, is another attack; so "But Larry did drink too much that time, Nan," I said.
"Why, Nettie Trench—from you!" ”

“ It was one of those warm days in winter and, of course, the steam was on. Peter was wearing only a sleeveless white jersey above his belt. Peter was wide-shouldered and trim-waisted, with the easy lines of the man who is quick as well as powerful in action.
Flaxley saw Mrs. Pentle in the doorway. Henston was with her and, because Henston was with her, Flaxley stepped quickly over to the door. If Mr. Henston had anything to say about Peter he wanted to be there to hear it.
Mrs. Pentle was watching Peter at work.
"He doesn't look like the same man," said Mrs. Pentle. ”

“ The big fellow dances away and shapes up for Dan again. He reaches for Dan and ketches him fair again on the chest, and back goes Dan and begins to look foolish, and they all laugh and cheer, the women too, and of the women the bar-maid loudest of all. And 'He's Dan Magee o' Skibbaree!' says our old friend the bartender, and you couldn't hear a word then for laughing. And at that Dan springs a yard into the air and lets a roar out of him. 'Yes,' says he, 'I'm Dan Magee o' Skibbaree!' and comes charging across the floor. The big fellow sets himself, and when he gets Dan right he lets go. ”

“ But then they do say the people that does the least work has the most genius, the most imagination; and imagination, they say, is the first qualification of genius, and too much work it kills the imagination. What d'y'think o' that doctrine, skipper?' says Dan. ”

“ When Oliver was not to the wheel, Steve would be there. Steve was a tall fellow. To give an idea of how tall he was, John would run down the deck, leap into the air and give a grab at the sky. "Where me hand touched would maybe reach to his waist," John would say. Steve, when he turned in, had to let his feet hang over his bunkboard and onto the locker; and when he did that John came and sat on them. Steve slept in the cabin under the overhang. Big Bill slept under the overhang, too, in the opposite bunk. ”