O'Shea

“ 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. ”

“ As the blood-quickening boom reverberated through the village, the natives came out from their huts and gathered around the House of the Old Men, where, with bound hands and feet, Sera, the White Man’s wife, sat, with her back to one of the centre-posts. And opposite her, sitting like a native on a mat of kapau, was the burly figure of O’Shea, with the demon of disappointed passion eating away his reason, and a mist of blood swimming before his eyes. ”

“ O’Shea was dancing with excitement as he turned again to stare at the cloudless sun and smiling sea. Johnny Kent thought to humor him and amiably murmured:
“She always comes up in the mornin’ regular as a clock, Cap’n Mike, and I guess she always will. Ain’t she on time, or what’s the matter with her?”
“The sun is where it belongs,” cried O’Shea, “but this ship is not. Her course has been shifted during the night. Man, we are not on the great circle course to New York at all. The steamer has gone mad. We are running due south to fetch to the west’ard of the Azores.” ”

“ O’Shea had to make his choice. He could abandon his ship and flee with his crew and passengers to the beach and the jungle, or he could turn and try to smash his way out to sea. The thought of deserting the Fearless was so intolerable that he made his decision without hesitating. Summoning the mate and Johnny Kent, he spoke hurriedly.
“’Tis bottled up we are. Look yonder and ye can see for yourself. Call the men aboard and cut the boats adrift. Give it to her, Johnny, and hold on tight. There may be the divil and all of a bump.” ”

“ There are strange doings aboard this fine, elegant steamer,” sharply returned O’Shea. “’Tis too big for me. We will roll into our bunks till morning. I will lose me sleep for no man.”
When Johnny Kent awoke blinking and yawning, Captain O’Shea was standing in front of the open port through which the morning wind gushed cool and sweet. The sun had lifted above the horizon and the sea was bathed in rosy radiance. The aspect of the sunrise seemed to fascinate Captain O’Shea, but his emotion was rather amazement than admiration. ”

“ Whimsical amusement lighted O' Shea's bold, smooth-shaven features as he replied:
"I am not a man to seek a humdrum life, afloat or ashore, you impatient old pirate! There was a lot of fuss kicked up at home about that last voyage of ours, as ye well know. And there was a strong chance that we would be laid by the heels in one of Uncle Sam's jails for breaking the laws between nations. We are better off where we are."
"Governments are touchy, but it's dog-goned foolishness to hold it against us," grumbled Johnny Kent. ”

“ In all London the King of Trinadaro could not have found two men of readier mind to fall in with his project and his pretensions than these. 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 would instantly agree with him, every living man with the spirit of youth in him would jump at the chance. ”

“ His Excellency Hao Su Ting no longer resembled a round-faced Buddha seated in reposeful meditation upon a throne of teak-wood. The words came from him in a torrential flow, and the harsh, sing-song intonations were terribly in earnest. It was a harangue that warned, expostulated, lamented with all the fervor of an issue that concerned life and death. It startled O’Shea to behold a man of his unemotional race, and one so hedged about with the dignity of rank, in this stormy tide of feeling. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ O’Shea was permitted to enter them and explore to his heart’s content. They were nothing more than village shrines, however, in which the perfunctory rites were held and offerings made—such places as might have been seen in a thousand Chinese towns. Nor did the village itself, excepting for an air of general decay, differ from the hamlets of a dozen provinces.
“I have a harrowing suspicion that Charley Tong Sin made a monkey of me,” ruefully sighed O’Shea, “or maybe I have been all wrong from the start. The Chinese proposition has too many twists in it for a white man to fathom.” ”

“ We have a ship-shape little settlement, if I do say it meself.”
“An exploring expedition? I shall be delighted,” cried she, unconsciously glancing at the tent which hid the chaperon and also Gerald Van Steen.
They strolled a little way without speaking. O’Shea halted to gaze at the wreck of the Fearless. With quick sympathy, the girl understood and made no comment. He turned away with a sorrowful smile and broke the silence.
“’Tis strange how close a man’s ship is to his heart. I wish I did not have to see her.”
“There will be other ships for a man like you, Captain O’Shea,” said Nora. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such a one as he had power to sway the wills of others to his desires, to create and direct great enterprises and send his influence afar, but never for good. If he ordered murder done in distant places his secret edicts would be obeyed, nor would his agent dare to thwart him. If there was such an organization as O’Shea had assumed, then he had stood face to face with the dominant personality, the compelling force from which radiated infernal activities. ”

“ I can’t seem to beat it into your head that I’ve turned respectable. The wilder the job, the better you like it.”
“I have taken quite a fancy to this one,” and O’Shea’s eyes were dancing. “It has been haunting me, in a way, ever since I caught sight of the310 cruel brand and listened to the yarn of those Chinese gentlemen. As one seafarin’ man to another, I will do what I can to square the account of Bill Maguire.”
“It’s the first time I ever laid down on you,” sighed Johnny Kent.
“I do not hold it against ye,” warmly returned Captain O’Shea. “And maybe you ought to stand watch over Bill. ”

“ Now by daylight he moved on tiptoe to the mattress and twitched the blanket aside. O’Shea had lived among hard men and fought his way through battering circumstances in which physical brutality still survived to uphold the rude old traditions of the sea. ”

“ Before seeking the royal audience next morning they went to Leadenhall Street to see George Huntley. The ship-broker greeted them indignantly.
“You would try to hoodwink me, would you?” exclaimed he. “I have found out who your mysterious king is. I received a letter from him last night, asking information about the price of the Tyneshire Glen. I had no idea it was this crazy Colonel Sydenham-Leach that calls himself ruler of Trinadaro.”
“Own up like a man, George,” shouted O’Shea. “Ye would like nothing better than to be this kind of a king yourself.” ”

“ As it opened, the quick ear of Captain O'Shea heard the mysterious personage saying to the brisk young man:
"A steamer of the tonnage of this Tyneshire Glen is what I wish. If your investigation has satisfied you that she is thoroughly seaworthy, and in good repair, and Captain Handy also recommends her——"
The door closed behind Captain Handy; and O'Shea, glancing in that direction, smiled cynically, and observed to Johnny Kent:
"Did you size him up? You know the kind. Every big port has them—broken shipmasters, disrated mates, beach combers that aren't fit to take a scow to sea." ”

“ O’Shea let his glance rove in swift, appraising scrutiny and smiled to himself as he recognized one familiar type after another. He had recruited such men as these for unostentatious ventures in the waters of the Spanish Main. Here was the red-faced, burly shipmaster ready with a glib speech and fluent curses to explain how he happened to be without his papers; the shambling ne’er-do-well with the slack mouth and the weak chin who had fled from a scrape at home to lose himself in foreign ports; the tanned adventurer, brave and resourceful, who was fit for nothing else than the life of a rover ”

“ O'Shea is an Irishman, and their ways bear the same relation to general good breeding that rope-dancing does to waltzing.”
“I 'll take good care not to ask you for any description of myself,” said he, laughingly.
“You are very wrong then, for you should have heard something excessively flattering,” was her reply. “Shall I tell you who your new protector is to be?” cried she, after a moment's pause; “I have just guessed it: the O'Shea himself!”
“O'Shea! impossible; how could you imagine such a thing?” ”

“ 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 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." ”

“ When O’Shea awoke the dawn was bright and a fresh breeze whipped across an empty sea. George, the cook, greeted him with melancholy demeanor.
“You-all suttinly did play th’ mischief with mah galley when you kerbumped that gun-boat, cap’n. Every las’ dish is busted.” ”

“ O’Shea leaped to the bridge and the girl followed, her heart throbbing with a sudden, sickening fear.43 Twilight was shutting down. The first star gleamed in the pale sky, but a curious after-glow lingered to flood the sea with tremulous illumination. The cruiser showed like a gray shadow, a vague blur, from which shot a second flash of red. Again the boom of her gun was heard on the Fearless, and this time the steel shell kicked up a water-spout far off to starboard.
“Johnny Kent has lost distance in the last half hour,” muttered the skipper. “His men can’t stand the pace.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Captain O'Shea, at his ease in any company or circumstances, and particularly now when he held the whip hand, asked at once:
"Are we to have the pleasure of paying our respects to his majesty?"
"You Americans are so jolly informal," smiled the minister of finance. ”

“ And O’Shea had come to coax him away from this enchanted place. He would hear what the blarneying rascal had to say263 and convince him of his folly. The shipmaster liked not the stolid silence of his companion. He knew it of old for a stubbornness that nothing could budge. However, he went on with the argument:
“I need an engineer, Johnny. And will ye not take one more fling with me? You are an old rover, and this messing about a farm will not content you for long. ’Tis no place for a bold man that knows his trade. ”

“ They can’t bother the king until he is actually on board and the ship is cleared, so the barrister lad tells George.”
“Then they’ll be watchin’ the Tarlington like terriers at a rat-hole,” exclaimed the engineer.
“No, they won’t,” cried O’Shea with tremendous earnestness. “Do ye mind how we slipped out of Charleston Harbor in the Hercules steamer, bound on the filibusterin’ expedition to Honduras? ’Twas a successful stratagem, and it could be done in London River.”
“Sure it could,” and Johnny Kent chuckled joyously. “And the king needn’t know anything about it.” ”