The Sailor

"How long have you been afloat?" She handed him a second tankard of mild.

"Near six year."

"Six years. Gracious goodness! And you didn't like it?"

"No."

For some reason, the look in his eyes caused her to shiver a little.

"Why did you stick it, then?"

"Dunno."

A pause followed. Then he lifted his tankard again, said, "'Ere's lookin', lady," and drank it right off.

"Well, you are a rum one, you are, and no mistake," murmured Miss Burton, not to the Sailor, but to the beer engine at her side.

II

After the young man from the sea had drunk his second tankard of mild, he sat on the high stool silent and embarrassed. He was hoping that the gorgeous creature opposite would continue the conversation, but he didn't seem to know how to encourage her. However, as soon as a powerful feminine intelligence had told her the state of the case, she said abruptly, "Well, and what are you going to do for a living now you've retired from the sea?"

He gave his head a wistful shake.

The gesture, rather pathetic in its hopelessness, touched Miss Burton.

"Well, you can't live on air, you know."

"No, lady."

"Well, what are you going to do?"

Another shake of the head was the only answer, but as he met her sympathetic eyes, an inspiration came to him.

"Lady," he said humbly, "you don't happen to know of a shack?"

"Know of a what!" The touch of acerbity froze him at once. "Shack!" Coming to his assistance, "What on earth's that?"

"Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man." The phrase was Klondyke's, and it came to him quite oddly at that moment in all its native purity. His mentor had a private collection of such phrases which he used to roll out for his own amusement when he went ashore. This was one. Henry Harper could see him now, pointing to a dingy card in a dingy window in a dingy street, in some miserable seaboard suburb, and he could hear him saying, "There you are, Sailor, lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man."

Miss Burton pondered. And then the slow smile came again.

"Well, if you really want lodgings clean and decent for a single man I suppose I must try and help you," she said graciously. "But I'm afraid I shan't be much use. They are not quite in my line."

"No, lady."

"Still, Fore Street is full of them. That's the second turn to the left and then the first on the right, and then the first on the right again."

"Yes, lady."

"You might try No. 5 – or No. 7 – or No. 9 – but Fore Street's full of them."

Miss Burton was really trying to be helpful, and the young seaman was very grateful to her, but Klondyke would have known at once that "she was talking out of the back of her neck."

Armed with this valuable information, the young man got off his high stool at last, raised his fur cap once more, with a little of the unconscious grace of its original owner, said, "So long, lady," collected his bundle and went out by the side door. And in the meantime, the bar-lady, who had marked every detail of his going, hardly knew whether to laugh or to shed tears. This was the queerest being she had ever seen in her life.

The Sailor managed to find Fore Street after taking several wrong turnings and asking his way three times. And then his difficulties really began.

Fore Street was very narrow, very long, very gloomy, very dirty. In each of these qualities it seemed well able to compare with any street he had seen in Frisco, in Sydney, in Liverpool, or even in Port Said. But it didn't discourage him. After all he had never been used to anything else.

The first house in Fore Street had a grimy card in a grimier window, exactly in the manner to rejoice the heart of Klondyke. Sailor, who had forgotten almost every syllable of "book-learning" he ever possessed – and at no time had he been the possessor of many – leaped at once to the conclusion that the legend on the card was, "Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man." Unfortunately it was, "Dressmaking done here."

A very modest knock was answered by a large female of truculent aspect, to whom he took off his cap, while she stood looking at him with surprise, wonder and inveterate distrust of mankind in general and of him in particular spreading over her like a pall.

"Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man!"

The door of No. 1, Fore Street, was slammed violently in the face of the applicant.

The Sailor nearly shed tears. He was absurdly sensitive in dealing with the other sex and prone to be affected by its hazards and vicissitudes. However, Auntie of the long ago surged into his mind, and the recollection seemed to soften the rebuff. All, even of that sex, were not bar-ladies, sympathetic, smiling, and magnificent. Therefore he took courage to knock at the door of the next house which also had a card in the window. But, unfortunately, that again was not to proclaim lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man, but merely, "A horse and cart for hire."

Here the blow, again from the quarter which knows how to deal them, was equally decisive. A creature, blowsy and unkempt, told him, after a single glance at his fur cap and his bundle and his deep-sea-going gear, "that if he didn't take hisself off and look sharp about it she'd set the pleece on him."

At this second rebuff the Sailor stood at the edge of the curb for some little time, trying to pluck up spirit to grapple with the problem of the next card-bearing domicile, which happened to be the third house in the street. He felt he had begun to lose his bearings a bit. It had come upon him all at once with great force that he was a stranger in a strange land whose language he didn't know.

He had just made up his mind to tackle the next card in the window, let the consequences be what they might, when he felt his sleeve plucked by a small urchin of nine with a preternaturally sharp and racial countenance.

This promising product of the world's greatest race, one Moses Gerothwohl by name, had had an eye fixed on the fur cap ever since he had heard its owner ask at the first house in the street for lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man. This was undoubtedly one of those foreign sailors, perhaps a Rooshian – a Rooshian was the very highest flight of which the imagination of Moses Gerothwohl was at present capable – who, even if they were apt to get drunk on queer fluids and sometimes went a bit free with their knives, were yet very good-natured, and as a rule were pretty well off for money.

"Did yer sye, mate, yer wanted a shakedown?" said Moses Gerothwohl, plucking at the sleeve of the Sailor.

The Sailor looked down at the urchin and nodded.

"Come with me, then," said Moses, stoutly. "And I'll take yer to my grandma's."

He led the Sailor through a perfect maze of by-streets, and through a nest of foul courts and alleys, until at last he came to the house of his grandmother, to whom he presented the foreign seaman.

She was not very prepossessing to look at, nor was her abode enticing, but she had a small room to offer which, if not over clean and decidedly airless, contained a bed of which he could have the sole use for the reasonable sum of sixpence a night.

The young man accepted the terms at once and laid his bundle on the bed. But the old woman did not accept him with equal alacrity. There was a little formality to be gone through before the transaction could be looked upon as "firm." It was usual for the sixpence to be paid in advance.

Grandma was one-fifth tact, three-fifths determination, one-fifth truculence, and the whole of her was will power of a very concentrated kind. She was as tough as wire, and in the course of several tense and vital minutes, during which her wolf's eyes never left Henry Harper's face, that fact came home to him.

It took nearly five minutes for the Sailor to realize that Grandma was waiting for something, but as soon as he did, the way in which he bowed to fate impressed her right down to the depths of her soul. He took an immense handful of silver out of his pocket, the hoarded savings of six years of bitter toil, chose one modest English "tanner" after a search among many values and nationalities, and handed it over with a polite smile.

The old woman was a very hard nut of the true waterside variety, but the sight of such affluence was almost too much for her. Money was her ruling passion. She went downstairs breathing hard, and with a deep conviction that Rothschild himself was in occupation of her first floor front.

In the meantime, the Sailor had seated himself on the bed at the side of his bundle, and had started to think things out a bit. This was a long and tough job. Hours passed. The small, stuffy, evil-smelling bedroom grew as black as pitch; a heavy October darkness had descended upon the strange land of Wapping, but the Sailor was still thinking very hard; also he was wondering what he should do next.

He hadn't a friend on the wide earth. There was nothing to which he could turn his hand. He could neither read nor write. And in his heart he had a subtle fear of these queer longshore people, although he had sense enough to know that it was a Sailor's duty to trample that feeling under foot. One who six long years had sailed before the mast aboard the Margaret Carey had nothing to fear in human shape.

As Henry Harper sat on that patched counterpane in the growing October darkness, unloosing that strange and terrible thing, the mind of man, he was not merely lonely, he was afraid. Afraid of what? He didn't know. But as the darkness grew there came an uncanny feeling under his jersey. It seemed to stick him in the pit of the stomach like the icy blade of a knife. He had tasted fear in many forms, but this kind of stealing coldness was something new and something different.

It grew darker and darker in the room. The sense of loneliness was upon him now like a living presence. There was not a soul in the world to whom he could turn, to whom he might speak, unless it was the old woman downstairs. Yet lonely and rather terrified as he was, his odd intuition told him it would be better to converse with no one than to converse with her.

At last, shivering and supperless, although his pockets were heavy with silver untold, he made up his mind to turn in. It was a counsel of desperation. He was sick to nausea with the business of thinking about nothing, a process which began in nothing and ended in nothing; and at last with a groan of misery, he pulled off his boots and leggings, but without removing his clothes stretched himself on the bed.

If he could have had his wish he would have gone to sleep, never to awake again. But he could only lie shivering in the darkness without any hope of rest. Presently a clock struck two. And then he thought he heard a creak on the stairs and shortly afterwards a stealthy footfall outside his door.

He had never been anything but broad awake. But these creeping noises of the night seemed to string up every sense he had to a point that was uncanny. He held his breath in order to listen – to listen like a frightened animal in a primeval forest that has begun to sense the approach of a secret and deadly foe.

The door of the room came very softly open. It was at the side of the bed, and he could not see it; but he felt an almost imperceptible vibration in the airless stuffiness in which he lay. Moreover, a breathing, catlike thing had entered the room; a thing he could neither hear nor see. It was a presence of which he was made aware by the incandescent forces of a living imagination.

It was too dark to see, there was not a sound to hear, but he knew there was a breathing shape within reach of his left hand.

Suddenly his hand shot out and closed upon it.

He caught something electric, quivering, alive. But whatever it was, a deadly silence contained it. There was not a sound, except a gasp, as of one who has made a sudden plunge into icy water. The Sailor lay inert, but now that live thing was in his hand he was not afraid.

He expected a knife. Realizing that he must defend his face or his ribs or whatever part might be open to attack, he knew he must be ready for the blow.

But a queer thing happened. The attack was not made by a knife. It was made by a human will. As he lay grappling in the darkness with his visitor, slowly but surely he felt himself enfolded by an unknown power. Such a force was beyond his experience. His own will was in a vice; there was a deadly struggle, yet neither moved. Not a sound was uttered, but in the end the Sailor nearly screamed with the overmastering tension which seemed to be pressing out his life. And then he realized that his hand was no longer holding the thing upon which it had closed.

The room was empty again. The darkness was too great for his eyes to tell him, but every sense he had, and at this moment he had more than five, seemed to say that whatever his peril, it had now passed.

He sat up and listened tensely through the still open door. He thought he could hear the creak of a foot on the stairs. Then he began to search his pockets for a box of matches, and suddenly remembered that he hadn't one. But the sense of physical danger had given him a new power over his mind. He was now terribly alert.

His instinct was to get out of that house at once. But a very little reflection showed that such a course was not necessary. It was only an old woman after all.

III

Reinforced with the idea that an old woman with wolf's eyes should have no terrors for a sailor, Henry Harper decided to stay where he was, until daylight at least. In the absence of matches and local knowledge it would not be easy to find a way out of the house in the middle of the night. Moreover if he drew the chest of drawers from under the skylight, which was too thickly plastered with generations of grime to dispense light from the sky or anywhere else, and barricaded the door, he could not be taken by surprise and need have fear of none.

He decided to do this. With arms as tough as steel, he lifted up the chest of drawers bodily and dumped it with a crash against the door. Let Grandma get through that if she could. If she did, God help her.

Yes, God help her. The Sailor suddenly took from his pocket a large, bone-hafted clasp knife. There came the friendly click of the opening blade, he felt the well ground edge lightly with the ball of his thumb. He would lie quietly for Grandma in comfort and in simple faith.

What a fool to let her go! … the trusty friend in his hand was speaking to him… Had you forgotten me? I'd have done Grandma's business in a brace of shakes, you know.

The Sailor, aware of that, felt rather sorry.

But in a little while there was another voice in the room. In climbing back on the bed, one hand touched the fur cap which lay at the foot of it. Instantly, a second voice spoke through the darkness.

"No, Sailor, my boy." What a voice it was! "It ain't quite white. Put your knife in your pocket, old friend. And if Grandma calls again and you feel you must set your mark on her, what's wrong with your ten commandments, anyway?"

The tones of Klondyke filled the darkness with their music.

Sailor obeyed instinctively, in the way he had always done. He put the knife back in his pocket with a gentle sigh.

The dirty dawn of a wet October day stole on the young man's eyes as he was attempting a doze on the patched counterpane with his sea-going gear around him. The arrival of an honest Wednesday morning, chill and dismal as it was, dispelled with a magic that seemed ironical any lingering trace he might have of his night fear of Grandma. Was he not a sailor who six long years had sailed the seas? Had he not seen, done and suffered things which held him forever from any human thrall?

But Henry Harper knew better than to ask Grandma what she had got for breakfast.

He chose instead to sling his hook. Gathering his truck back into its bundle, and cramming the magic cap over his eyes, he pulled the chest of drawers away from the bedroom door. Then as soon as there was light enough to see the way he crept down the creaking stairs, unlocked, unbolted and unchained the door below, and slipped out into Wednesday morning.

Wednesday morning received him with a chill spatter of rain. He stood a minute on the cobbles of the squalid yard in front of Grandma's abode – wondering where he was, what he should do, which turn he should take. As a fact, there was only one turn he could take, and that lay straight ahead across the yard, through a short arched passageway leading to a maze of courts and alleys which led heaven knew where.

He proceeded to find out. Bundle under arm, fur cap over eyes, a roll in his gait, the Sailor emerged at last upon a main street, at present only half awake. But it contained a thing of vast importance: a policeman.

The Law in its majesty looked at the Sailor. The Sailor in his simplicity looked at the majesty of the Law. There was a time, six long, long years ago, when he would not have ventured such a liberty with the most august of human institutions. But he was through that phase of his career. By comparison with all the stripes that had since been laid upon him even the police were gentle and humane.

There was not a soul in sight except this solemn London bobby, who stood four square in the Sailor's path.

"Mornin', mister." The Sailor lifted his cap, partly from a sense of fraternity, partly from a proud feeling of being no longer afraid to do so.

The bobby surveyed the strange nondescript that had been washed up by the tide of Wapping. He looked gravely at the bundle and at the fur cap, and then decided in quite an impersonal way not to return their owner's salutation.

The Sailor was not hurt by the aloofness of the Law. He had not expected anything else. After all, the police were the police. He knew that a gulf of several hemispheres was fixed between a real three-stripe rozzer of the Metropolitan Force and a thing it had pleased fate to call by the name of Henry Harper.

"A wrong un, I expect," was the reflection of Constable H23, who always expected a wrong un at that hour of the morning. Upon the spur of this thought, the bobby suddenly turned on his heel, and saw the wrong un, bundle, fur cap and all, crossing the road like an early morning fox at the lure of a favorite hencoop. Moreover, he was crossing it for the reason that he was frantically hungry.

Across the road, at a junction it formed with three others as mean and dismal as itself, was a sight supremely blessed in the eyes of the Sailor. It was nothing less than a coffee stall in the panoply of matutinal splendor. Steaming fluids, with flames glowing under them, flanked one half of its counter; rock cakes, ham sandwiches, beef sandwiches, rolls and butter, and pork pies, splendidly honest and genuine pork pies, flanked the other half of it.

The proprietor of the stall, an optimist in white apron and shirt sleeves, being unmistakably of the male sex had no terrors for the Sailor. Besides, he was flushed with the knowledge that he had just said good morning to the police.

"Cup o' coffee, mister, and one o' them."

Nothing less than a pork pie could meet the need of the Sailor. Moreover, he dived in his pocket, took the first coin that came, which happened to be half a crown, and laid it with true Klondyke magnificence on the counter.

The proprietor of the stall, who added a power of clear thinking to his many qualities, appeared to see in the action as well as in the coin itself, a declaration of financial status on the part of the young seaman in the remarkable gear. Also this view was shared by the only one of his early morning customers who happened to be at the stall: to wit, an almost aggressively capable looking and slightly bow-legged young man with flaming red hair and ears set at right angles to his head, who was devouring a pork pie with quiet ferocity.

A single glance passed between Ike, who owned the stall, and the most influential of his patrons, who answered to the name of Ginger; a single glance and that was all.

"Nothing smaller, sonny?" said Ike, smiling and pleasant. "Not used to big money at seven g.m. Penny the corfee and two pence the pie. Three d." The proprietor raised three fingers and beamed like a seraph.

Ginger suspended operations on the pork pie to see what Dr. Nansen would do next.

The Sailor, with memories of Grandma still in his mind, put back the half-crown carefully before he brought out anything else. He was not going to give himself away this time. Thus he went warily in search of the smallest coin he could disentangle from the welter of all shapes and sizes, of all values and countries, which had been disposed in every pocket of his person. At last he produced one and laid it on the oilcloth modestly, as though he merely valued it at threepence. But in that part of the world it was valued at half a sovereign.

"Rich aunt," said the proprietor of the stall, with respectful humor.

The young man with the flaming hair turned half about, pork pie in hand, to get a better view of Dr. Nansen. This close observer proceeded to chew steadily without venturing any remark.

There was nothing left for the Sailor but to give away his wealth in handfuls now. He had to keep diving into his secret hoard, which out of deference to the thought of Grandma he was still determined not to disclose in bulk and sum. Now came up a Spanish fourpenny, now a Yankee nickel, now a Frenchman, now a Dutchman, now a Mexican half-dollar, now a noble British quid. For several crowded and glorious minutes, Ike and the most influential of his patrons had the time of their lives.

"Thank you, Count," said the proprietor of the stall urbanely, when at last the owner of the fur cap had managed to discharge his liability in coin current in the realm of Great Britain. Then, in common with the entranced Ginger, he watched the young man recruit exhausted nature.

The Sailor having made short and clean work of his first pie went on to his second, then to his second cup of coffee, then to a rock cake, then to a ham sandwich, then to a third cup of coffee, then to a third pie, when Ike and Ginger, his patron, watched with ever growing respect. And then came the business of finding ninepence, and with it a second solemn procession of Yankees and Dutchmen and Spaniards and Mexicans, which roused the respect of Ginger and Ike to such a pitch that it became almost unbearable.

"See here, Vanderbilt!" said Ike at last, yielding reluctantly the hope that the young plutocrat would ever hit the exact coin that would meet the case. "Dig up that half dollar. Me and Ginger" – a polite grimace at Ginger – "can make up one-and-nine."

Ginger, divided between the reserve of undoubted social position – he was earning good money down at the docks – and an honest desire to make himself agreeable in such romantic circumstances, warily produced a grimy and war-worn sixpence and handed it across the counter, looking Ike straight in the eyes as he did so.

"Any use?" said Ginger, calm, aloof, and casual.

In the meantime the Sailor had begun the search for his half-crown. Ginger and Ike waited hopefully, and in the end they were rewarded. The Sailor found it at last, but not before he had made an end of all secrecy. In sheer desperation he disclosed handfuls of his hoard.

"Thank yer, Count. One-and-nine change," said Ike.

IV

The Sailor, fortified by one of the best breakfasts of his life, politely said "Mornin'" to the proprietor of the coffee stall with a lift of the cap not ungraceful, adding a slightly modified ritual for the benefit of Ginger, and stepped out again into the world.

Ike and Ginger, his patron, turned to watch the Sailor go. Neither spoke, but with eyes that glowed in the gray light of the morning like those of a couple of healthy basilisks, they marked all that the young man did. The Sailor walked into the middle of the road to the point where four arteries of traffic met, and then hesitation overcame him as to what he should do next. For a little while, he stood looking up one street and down another with an expression of bewilderment upon his face.

"So long," said Ginger to Ike.

The proprietor of the stall had now none to share his thoughts. He saw Ginger, assured but wary, saunter up to the Sailor as he stood at gaze; saw him touch the young man on the shoulder as if by chance rather than design; saw him speak words which, bend across the counter as he might, he was too far away to catch.