James B. Connolly

“ Then two arms scooped down and swept her over the rail of the lovely big American schooner. A strong arm and a voice. "Oh, Bessie! Bessie! and the big, warm, foolish heart of you!" said the voice, and the arms carried her below and wrapped her in blankets and poured hot coffee, mugs of it, down her throat, and laid her in a bunk, while he sat on the locker and looked—just looked at her.
"Ah-h, Sammie!" murmured Bess blissfully. "An' now you'll bring me home, Sammie?"
"Ay, home, Bess."
"Ah-h! An' my mother'll no ha' to cry for me, arter all. ”

“ Cadogan, having found his coat, laid it on a bitt near by while he should launch his little raft. He balanced it on the rail, inserted a hook under one of his lashings at each end, folded his blankets on top, and, a boat-falls in each hand, paid out carefully, slowly. He could not have lowered a human body more tenderly. Easily, gently, he felt it settle on the bosom of the sea. He took a turn of his falls around the bitt, and, always with one eye peeping sidewise into the shadows, reached for his coat. In the pocket of that coat was the photograph of his beloved. ”

“ And the last passenger on this ship should be such as he, a strong man with the innocence of the child." He turned from the older to the younger man. "You are creative in thought, powerful, direct, tireless in action, Mr. Cadogan. Every new experience still comes to you with the dew of the morning on it. You should die hard, with your eyes open to the last. ”

“ We had picked up all of the Orion's crew from the water and were now hurrying to get to the two men on the Orion, which was fast settling, when a red-haired girl came running from the cabin companionway. Almost as if she had been waiting in ambush, she rushed over to the fallen spar, untangled the halyards from the legs of one of the furthest men, and after an effort lifted the end of the spar so that he could scramble free. She needed to be strong to do that; but she was strong. If she had held the spar up only an instant longer, the other man might have wiggled free too. ”

“ And yet why were all the rich ladies being sent away and the gates to the upper decks closed, so that the poor people in the steerage could not get out? Was it really true there was no danger? Surely those officers would not deceive poor, friendless people! And yet here the oily men, the greasy ones who worked deep down in the ship, rushing every moment from below! And saying nothing but low-spoken words to each other, and into their rooms and out again in no time, but with more and heavier clothes upon them! Did men dress more warmly to work where the engines and hot fires were? ”

“ Four days only have I known you, but a man may build his life anew in four days, and this last adventure of mine has been such as in my visionary boyhood days I used to mark out for myself in rosy dreams.
I have the little snapshot you gave me yesterday. I will have it with me to the end, and your face in it will be the last thing I kiss this side of eternity. And so good-by, dear heart, and don't worry for me. Who lives by the sword, et cetera. It had to come to some such ending, I suppose, though rather a joke, isn't it, to be lost on an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic in these days? ”

“ Yes, there was the vessel, and it was Tim Lacy calling. She was coming into the wind. Her jibs were down by the run. Ay, and there was the rattling of her chain-anchor.
"Skipper, oh, skipper," came the hail again, and he heard the hoisting of a dory. To one hand was the mob which meant his destruction; to the other hand by the open water to the vessel if he could make it. He had farther to go than they, but they were mostly in oilskins, and he was a rarely active man. That he knew. Away he went over the little bowlders.
Diagonally he had to go. A straight parallel to the beach it was for them. ”

“ I always looked on him as a touchstone, one of those men by whom you may gauge other men. Drislane was sensitized to crooks. He had only to stand in the same room with them to get their moral pictures. If I heard of Drislane distrusting a man or of a man disliking Drislane, I would at once set that man down, knowing nothing of the man, as having a rotten spot in him somewhere.
That was the Drislane who met me this night before the Sirius and the Orion were to sail for their last coal trip of the year, and asked me to have supper with him. ”

“ He was gazing reflectively through the weather air-port as he spoke.
"Cadogan"—Meade was speaking—"give us some more of your adventures."
Cadogan drew out his watch, also of gun-metal. "And I've carried that a good many years, too." He spoke as if to himself. He looked at the face. "No, it's too late, Mr. Meade. It's too late to begin now."
"It's never too late. Just think, in your short life you have lived more volumes than I have written. You know more, ten times more, about real life than I do, and I'm sixty. ”

“ A woman with a baby in the shawl had, with a sublime gesture, abandoned her baby to a woman already in the boat, so that it might be saved. Lavis was standing behind her when she did it, and as she lost herself in the crowd, Lavis had looked after her with such an expression of pity that Cadogan's attention was attracted anew to him. ”

“ Is it fair to himself to refuse those great offers and stick down here? And what will it mean to young Greg?'"
Marie Welkie let the ensign drop onto the table. "My very thoughts in words, Andie. And while we're speaking of it, will Greg ever get the recognition due him, Andie?"
"Surely—some day."
"Dear me, that some day! After he is dead, I suppose. You men are the idealists! But being only a woman, Andie Balfe, I don't want to wait that long to see my brother rewarded."
"And being only a man, Marie Welkie, I also want to see my friend rewarded before he's laid away." ”

“ Surely he's quite a man; but the man who bosses men's minds a thousand years after he's dead—he's the real one. And that kind of a man, so far's I know things, Necker, never lived too comfortably on earth. He can't. I tell you, Necker, you can't be born into a fat life without being born into a fat soul, too. ”

“ With his free arm Wickett was carrying the baby, which was murmuring, "Papa, papa, papa!"
Carlin would have known Mrs. Wickett without an introduction or the presence of the boy and the baby. Merely from the way she looked at Wickett he knew that this was the girl who had gone sailing with him in the dawn and become engaged before breakfast.
"It's all right," smiled Wickett, with his cheek against the baby's. "This one can't seem to say anything but papa!"
Carlin nodded, and whispered: "And you couldn't afford it?"
Wickett grinned. "We couldn't; but we did. We always do." ”

“ Nobody on the Sirius ever intended to pass the word to Drislane, but no crew of a vessel can be whispering for hours without the one man they don't discuss the mysterious matter with wanting to guess what it is they are trying to keep from him. Drislane guessed.
I had brought him to the Sirius in a carriage just before she sailed. Captain Norman had told him to keep to his bunk until the Sirius tied up to the dock in Boston if he wished, but Drislane did not wish. He came on deck, still bandaged and battered, on the first morning out, to stand his watch. ”

“ If your man of action hasn't himself thought out what he's doing, that's what he looks like to me—a ditch-digger, or at best a foreman of ditch-diggers. And a ditch-digger, a good ditch-digger, ought to be respected—until he thinks he's the whole works. Those kings of yours may have bossed the world, Necker, but, so long's we're arguing it, who bossed them?"
"You mean that the man who bosses the world for thirty or forty years isn't quite a man?" ”

“ Crupp nodded his thanks, took a cigar, bit off the end, and, without looking away from Cadogan, lit up. Vogel took one, but as if by way of courtesy only, for he indicated no desire to light it. Meade, waving Cadogan away, lit a cigarette of his own rolling. "Shortening my life smoking cigars," he explained.
The door opened. It was Lavis. With a pause and a bow, as if to ask their permission, he took the corner seat on the transom. Cadogan, waiting until he saw Lavis seated, tendered him the cigar-case. Lavis shook his head. ”

“ Tim, go aloft and point the way—and hurry, afore the snow comes."
"Point the way to what, Sammie?"
"For a little white sloop with a girl in it."
"Ho-oh—that's it, is it?"
IV
Bess had curled herself up and was falling asleep; and her last sleep it would have been but for the boom of a small gun and the hail of a familiar voice. She stood up. Again a hail. And through the curtain of white it came almost atop of her, the grandest schooner ever was! The long lines of her seemed familiar. Then a clearer glimpse. Ay, she'd know her anywhere—by the rust on her jumbo she would—the Ligonier. ”

“ If death comes, well and good—it cannot be helped; if not, then a glorious adventure. He meets danger with every faculty keyed up to the highest. Now, if a man would meet his death, as this steamer went down, in the same mood, would he not march into the shadows with a soul ennobled?"
"And then what?" [298]
"Then? If we are heirs in spirit even as in body will God ever allow a great spirit to become extinct?"
Meade abandoned his young-ladies'-teacher supposition. He speared the man with another glance. "Pardon me, you are not a scientist?"
Lavis smiled—for the first time. ”

“ Lavis turned to Cadogan. "Here is the man."
"Who!" Cadogan bounded in his seat; and [300] then, smiling at himself: "That's a good one—I took it seriously."
"Take it seriously, please."
Cadogan instantly sobered. "But I'm not aching to die. And the Lord never intended me for a martyr."
"Are you sure you know what the Lord intended you for? You have done great deeds in one way. You could do great deeds in another way. A great deed is never more than a great thought in action. You need but the great thought to give the great deed birth." ”

“ Thinking of Meade, who was a famous author and journalist, Cadogan said hesitatingly and shyly: "I've often thought I'd like to be a writer." He meant that for Lavis, but it was Meade who took it to himself to ask him why.
"If I were a writer, I'd have hope right now of taking part in one of the greatest adventures that could befall a man."
"Where, Cadogan?"
"Right aboard this ship. How? Here we are tearing through the iceberg country trying to make a record. If ever we piled up head on to one of those icebergs, where would we be?" ”

“ An' it's you, Sammie, they has in mind."
"And the crew to Caplin Cove, an' only me and Tim to stand by the vessel. The vessel and her full hold. But who'll get the word to them? If only there was some one, some one we could trust, Bess!"
"There is one that could do that, too, boy."
"Who? What! Yourself, Bess? Could you make where they are—Caplin Cove—alone, and by night—and tell 'em what's in the wind, so they'll be aboard in time, while I go and hurry after Tim Lacy to the vessel at Half-Tide Harbor? Could a woman like a man well enough to do that?"
"Well, women likes men sometimes, Sammie." ”

“ And now we were truly homeward bound in old Magellan Straits, with the hills back of Punta 'renas in sight from our masthead, when we spied a Norwegian bark with a deckload of lumber ashore on the spit of Pouvenir Bay, which is on the southerly—the Terra del Fuego—shore of the straits. Her ensign was upside down in her rigging, and I headed in to see if we could help her out. I thought it was queer no one showed up aboard her to answer when I hailed, but no matter—I moored my steamer just inside the spit and put off with half a dozen men in a boat and went aboard. ”

“ After the mortal death of a man whose dying was a tremendous experience, there will be born again a great soul. And if the being in whom that soul is enshrined is but true to the best in himself, he will attain to the utterance of a great message, compel the world to listen to his message; and the world, having listened, will be for all time the better."
"I suppose"—Meade was by now not wholly free of self-consciousness—"a man should have had a training as a writer to best fit him for such an experience?" ”

“ Tim, with a warm fire and a hot meal in view, hurried on to the little hotel. Peter Kearney was the landlord, a companionable soul, who did not see the need of a register, and who, after a time, produced a lunch; and who, further, while Tim ate, smoked and gossiped of things a travelling man would naturally be interested in.
"And what kind have you here in New Ireland? Easy to get along with?" asked Tim, after the discovery of the quarries, the settling of the town, and the last explosion had been intelligently discussed. ”

“ I had another good look at the steamer coming up astern, and took my prize crew off Red Dick's whaler and turned her adrift. I hated to. Not alone the prize money, but to see a good ship go to loss any time is bad. I did it in hopes that the cargo steamer coming upon us would stop to get her, and while they were getting her—what with the gale and the dark coming—we would be able to slip away. But they didn't stop. Perhaps the little whaler was too close in to the cliffs for the big steamer to have a chance in the tide that was running. ”

“ And so the poor kid was waiting to see a man with no legs."
Wickett was silent. Carlin asked no more questions. In silence he, too, studied what was left of the night-life of the fleet. Only the white anchor-lights of the motionless battle-ships, the colored side-lights of the chugging steam-launches, were now left.
Carlin pointed out to Wickett a green light coming rapidly in from sea. "Another battle-ship, Wickett?"
Wickett shook his head. "No. I've been watching her. It's the Clermont. She's due. And I'm half afraid to go and board her." ”