Ralph Delahaye Paine

“ He dutifully bore a tray to the captain’s room, but Miss Hollister had no appetite, and he betook himself to the bridge, where Nora Forbes was standing beside the captain.
“Set the supper on the chart-locker in the wheel-house, George,” said O’Shea. “The young lady will not be wanting to go into her room and miss any of the show.”
In her twenty years Nora Forbes had never lived as intensely as now. The blood of an adventurous ancestry was in her veins. She was thrilled, but not afraid. More than she was aware, the dominating personality of Captain O’Shea was influencing and attracting her. ”

“ They were absorbed in the picture of the bright, hot sand, the dazzling wall of surf, with the gulls dipping and screaming overhead, and the tossing figure of the black swimmer. Jiminez vanished in the outer line of breakers, bobbed into view for an instant, and was whirled over and over. The undertow caught him and pulled him down, but he fought clear and came to the surface, now beaten seaward, now gaining a yard or so.
From the tug it looked as though he were being battered about like a piece of drifting wreckage, but the sea could not drown him. ”

“ As if Jack Gorham had read what was in the skipper’s mind, he crawled across the sloping deck and shouted something in the ear of Jiminez. The negro nodded and waved an arm in the direction of the beach. The soldier was urging and explaining, the other eagerly assenting. Gorham shouted to the bridge:
“This fine big nigger of mine will carry a rope ashore. He can swim like a duck, and there’s nobody aboard with half his strength.”
“Aye, aye, Jack!” exclaimed O’Shea. “I will give him a heaving-line, and when he hits the beach he can haul a light hawser ashore and make it fast.” ”

“ O’Shea managed to walk to a corner of the temple and slumped down upon a marble bench where the Painted Joss cast its deepest shadow. His strength had ebbed again. Listlessly, almost inattentive, he heard the assault upon the doors renewed and the splintering of plank. When the Chinese mob came tumbling in he could try to shoot straight and hit a few of them, and then they would close in on him. It was the end of the game.
A few minutes and the servitors of Chung came jostling and shouting through the anteroom. Then they halted abruptly. Their noise was hushed. ”

“ It satisfied the engineer’s curiosity. He had no great amount of imagination, and although he was ready to share his last dollar with the helpless Maguire, he felt no further call to pursue the mystery of his wrongs.
Captain O’Shea was very differently affected. He had not forsaken the quest of adventure. His soul was not content with cabbages and cows. The world beyond the horizon was always calling in his ears. As children are fond of fairy-stories, so his fancy was lured by the bizarre, the unexpected, the unknown. Your true adventurer is, after all, only a boy who has never grown up. ”

“ The solution of the mystery of King Osmond I impressed him as neither grotesque nor curiously mediæval. In all London the King of Trinadaro could not have found two men of readier mind to fall in with his project and pretensions. To play at being a king on a desert island, to have the means to make it all come true—why, thought Johnny Kent, and he knew O’Shea must instantly agree with him, any man worth his salt would jump at the chance. ”

“ The Fearless maintained an even gait until the coast was no more than five miles distant. Then she drifted idly while Captain O’Shea swept the horizon with his night-glasses. His eyes and ears were acutely alert, but there was neither sight nor sound of Spanish blockading craft cruising to intercept him. Astern were piled six large flat-bottomed surf-boats, in nests, as fishermen’s dories are carried. These were now launched and towed, ready to be ranged alongside and filled with cargo.
The forty Cubans conversed in hushed tones. Every man had knapsack, blanket-roll, canteen, and loaded rifle. ”

“ Captain O’Shea looked on with an air of fatherly interest. After all, this happy family of his had made a prosperous voyage of it. Dreams of rehabilitation cheered these broken wanderers. They would go home. No more for them the misery, the heartache, the humiliation of the tropical tramp. Their riches might slip through their fingers, but they would make the most of golden opportunity. Like poor McDougal, they had thrown all regrets away.
“’Tis share and share alike,” said O’Shea, “but there is a red-headed sailor-man at anchor on a farm in Maine and I think he has a wife somewheres. ”

“ Captain Michael O’Shea and Johnny Kent sat by a window of the Jolly Mermaid tavern at Blackwall on the Thames below London. These two leisurely drank mugs of bitter-beer and gazed with professional interest at the crowded shipping of that great seaport thoroughfare which sailor-folk call London River.
The Jolly Mermaid was one of a jostling row of ancient buildings with bow-windows and balconies painted in bright hues which overhung the tide at Blackwall, to remind one of the maritime London of towering frigates and high-pooped galleons and stout seamen of Devon. ”

“ Men must sleep, and when the Fearless had left the coast twenty miles behind her Captain O’Shea set the regular watches and curled up on the wheel-house transom for a nap before daylight. Johnny Kent, after a sorrowful survey of his engines and boilers, crawled into his bunk and presently his snores rose and fell with the cadenced beat of the steam-pump that fought to keep the water from rising in the leaky hold. The sea was smooth, the clouds no longer obscured the stars, and the weary crew was suffered to rest before clearing away the wreckage and patching the broken upper works. ”

“ The commotion was so startling that O’Shea bounded down from the bridge and was confronted by a smooth-shaven, slender, elderly man who flourished a false mustache and imperial in his fist as he indignantly cried:
“I say, this is all wrong as sure as my name is Thompson. I never bargained with Mr. George Huntley to be kidnapped and taken to sea. I don’t want to go, I tell you. These people tell me that this steamer is bound to some island or other thousands of miles from here. I stand on my rights as an Englishman. I demand that I be taken back to London at once.” ”

“ The Cubans cheered and let fly a scattering, futile rifle fire, but the crew of the Fearless, convinced that they must fight for their skins, crouched behind the heavy bulwarks and handled their Mausers with methodical earnestness. The Spanish officers and seamen took to cover. They were not used to being shot at, and this filibustering tug was behaving like a full-fledged pirate. The commander of the gun-boat made up his mind to dodge collision and sink the Fearless with his guns before she should flee beyond range outside the bay. ”

“ It was after midnight, and the Alsatian was in mid-ocean, when a few of the first-cabin passengers heard what sounded to their drowsy ears like several pistol shots. There are many noises aboard a steamship that are unfamiliar to the landsman. Excepting Captain O’Shea and Johnny Kent, such of the passengers as had been awakened paid so little heed to the sounds that they soon went to sleep again. ”

“ He raised his arm in an eloquent gesture. “You will be aboard soon, and ye will be among hundreds of people that belong to your own world. And ye will sit at dinner with them in the grand saloon, and they will talk to you about the things you have known and lived with all your life. And ye will find out that you belong with them.
“As the days go by, Nora Forbes, you will wonder more and more if this voyage of ours ever really happened. ’Twill be like a dream of romance and adventure, and moonshine, that could not have been at all.” ”

“ O’Shea laughed to think what a stupid, blundering fool he had been to recruit an armed expedition and come clattering into this corner of China with so much fuss and noise.
If a man wanted to find the Painted Joss, all he had to do was listen to the friendly, familiar voices that whispered in his ears. O’Shea could hear them now. He accepted them as a matter of course. His eyes were very bright as he pulled on his shoes and fumbled for the revolver in its holster under the pillow. ”

“ And the sailor’s face, no longer bold and reckless, held a certain quality of gentleness, one might almost call it sweetness.
“Oh, confound it!” cried Van Steen. “You put me in the wrong, as usual. And I’m damned if I can feel square in trying to quit you and leaving you to take your medicine. I am one of the crowd, don’t you see, and proud of it. They are a bully sort.”
“I have never been crowded into such a tight corner,” said O’Shea with a smile, “but ’tis the way of life that when a man is young and strong, and used to long chances, he thinks he will not be tripped. ”

“ There is not a man in the ship that wants to lay eyes on Shanghai ever again. They will be only too glad to quit the country if they have the price in their pockets, and I will give them the price. So ye must not hold to the notion that we are afraid of getting in trouble on your account.”
“I am worth more to you alive than if I am dead,” sullenly muttered Charley Tong Sin. “Is it not so? You think I will be handy as a pilot, as an interpreter? I have been doing a deuce of a lot of thinking. I am no fool, Captain O’Shea. I know pretty well when I am licked. I made a botch of it in Shanghai. ”

“ Once or twice their leader passed hastily between the bridge and the engine-room. The confident, sneering egotism no longer marked the demeanor of the man. Nervously twisting his blond beard, he moved as one without definite purpose. His elaborate enterprise was in a bad way. The war against society had suffered an unexpected reverse.
O’Shea and Johnny Kent watched him gloatingly. The advantage was all theirs. They were waiting for the right moment to strike, and to strike hard. They saw Vonderholtz halt to speak to Miss Jenness, who stood apart and alone. ”

“ God knows what the crack-brained anarchist in command will do with the ship. He has handed out a jolt to capital, all right. Of course, if you two men can concoct any scheme to win, you’re welcome to fill in a blank check for any sum you like and I’ll see that it is cashed the day we land in New York.”
Captain O’Shea clapped a strong hand on the rich man’s bony little shoulder and exclaimed, as though admonishing a foolish child:
“Tut, tut! ’Tis nonsense ye talk. We are all in the same boat, and there are women and children amongst us. ”

“ The forward part of the gun-boat was enveloped in a great sheet of flame. The people of the Fearless were stunned and deafened and the hull rocked violently against the reef. Burning fragments rained everywhere, and fell hissing into the bay. From the place where the gun-boat was rapidly sinking came cries for help.
“She is gone entirely. God help their poor souls,” brokenly murmured Captain O’Shea.
He turned to shout to the mate:
“Pull yourself together and paddle over yonder with the life-raft. Pick up all ye find of the poor men in the water and set them ashore. ”

“ If I am spared for ten or fifteen years longer, I shall have time to set my affairs in order, to make Trinadaro self-sustaining, to win the recognition of foreign governments, to arrange for an administration to succeed my reign.”
“May you live to be a king until you are a hundred!” cried O’Shea. “And a man who is as happy and contented as you are is pretty sure of a ripe old age.” ”

“ Good old Johnny Kent had actually achieved a farm, and here was his commander perched on top of the barn like a weather-cock, and enjoying it, forsooth. His nimble wits had framed the most effective strategy possible. It would be futile to go blundering through the woods on a blind trail. From his elevated station he could see the first spark of fire to glow in any direction. The incendiary would linger to make sure that the fire had fairly caught, and O’Shea hoped to catch him unawares and overpower him. ”

“ He has no interest in you.”
O’Shea was oblivious of the absurd tableau in which he played the leading rôle. The red-haired sailor was still stretched upon the grass, and his brace of stanch friends held him at anchor. He was quieter and the tempest of passion had passed. The Chinese servants who had been roosting on the outlying parts of his frame withdrew from the scene of war and rejoined their comrades. As soon as they were beyond the range of his vision, Maguire subsided and seemed as docile as of yore. ”

“ To send the life-raft in search of succor was a forlorn hope, a desperate expedient, but even this was denied him. The wind was blowing steadily from the southward, day after day, and the raft would drift straight toward the coast of Cuba where no mercy was to be looked for. Because of the destruction of the Spanish gun-boat, these refugees were something else than castaways. They were men without a country, and death awaited them wherever flew the red and yellow flag of Spain.
Captain O’Shea turned from gazing at the distant smoke and awakened Johnny Kent. ”

“ That the people were very poor and very industrious was all that one could say of them. And they were no more to be suspected of plotting deeds of violence than so many rabbits. Doggedly persistent, unwilling to confess himself beaten, O’Shea shifted his quest to the open country for miles outside of Wang-Li-Fu. It was a region of green fields gridironed with ditches and rutted paths, and dotted with toilers in blue cotton blouses and straw hats, who tilled their crops from dawn to dark. ”