The Young Vigilantes: A Story of California Life in the Fifties

"That is Mr. Bright, madam," one of the clerks hastened to say.

"What can I do for you, madam?" the merchant asked.

The woman fixed two keen gray eyes upon the speaker's face, as she spoke up, quite unabashed by the quiet dignity of the merchant's manner of speaking.

"Well," she began breathlessly, "I'm real glad to see you if you have kept me waiting. Here I've sot, an' sot, a good half-hour. 'Pears to me you Boston folks don't get up none too airly fer yer he'lth. I was down here before your shop was open this mornin'. Better late than never, though."

The merchant bent his head politely. His visitor caught her breath and went on:

"I'm Miss Marthy Seabury. What's all this coil about my nevvy? He's wrote me that he was goin' away. Where's he gone? What's he done? That's what I'd like to know, right up an' down." She paused for a reply, never taking her eyes off the merchant's troubled face for an instant.

"My good woman," Mr. Bright began in a mollifying tone, when she broke in upon him abruptly:

"No palaverin', mister. No beatin' the bush, if ye please. Come to the p'int. I left my dirty dishes in the sink to home, an' must go back in the afternoon keers."

"Then don't let me detain you," resumed Mr. Bright gravely. "There has been a defalcation. I'm sorry to say your nephew is suspected of knowing more than he was willing to tell about it. So we had to let him go. Where he is now, is more than I can say."

"What's a defalcation?"

"A betrayal of trust, madam."

"Do you mean my boy took anything that didn't belong to him?"

"Not quite that. No, indeed. At least, I hope not. But, you see, Walter is badly mixed up with the precious rascal who did."

"Well, you'd better not. I'd like to see the man who'd say my boy was a thief, that's all. Why, I'd trust him long before the President of the United States!" The woman actually glared at every one in the office, as if in search of some one willing to take up her challenge.

"If you'll try to listen calmly, madam," interposed the merchant, "I'll try to tell you what we know." He then went on to relate the circumstances already known to us.

Aunt Martha gave an indignant sniff when the merchant had finished. "You call yourself smart, eh? Why, an old woman sees through it with one eye. Walter was just humbugged. So was you, warn't ye? An' goin' on right under your own nose ever so long, an' ye none the wiser for't. Well, I declare to goodness, if I was you I sh'ld feel real downright small potatoes!"

"I think, madam, perhaps we had better bring this interview to a close. It is a very painful subject, I do assure you."

"Very well, sir. I sh'ld think you'd want to. But mark my words. You'll be sorry for this some day, as I am now that Walter ever laid eyes on you or – your darter." With this parting shot she bounced out of the office, shutting the door with a vicious bang behind her.

But Mr. Bright's worries that day were not to be so easily set at rest. Upon reaching his home for a late dinner, looking pale and careworn, it was Dora who met him in the hallway, who put her arms round her father's neck, and who kissed him lovingly on both cheeks.

"Dear papa, I know all," she said with a little sob.

"Ah!" he ejaculated. "Then you have heard – "

"Yes, papa; our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Pryor, has told me all about it. Hateful old thing!"

The merchant made a gesture of resignation.

"She said you would have to discharge most of your clerks."

Mr. Bright made a gesture of assent.

"Then I want to do something. I can give music lessons. I'll work my fingers off to help. I know I shall be a perfect treasure. But why did you send Mr. Seabury away, papa?"

"Because he was unfaithful."

"I don't believe a word of it."

"Appearances are strongly against him."

"I don't care. I say it's a wicked shame. Why, what has he done?"

"What has he done? Why, he knew Ramon gambled, and wouldn't tell. He knew Ramon had gone, and never lisped a syllable."

"Yes, but that's what he didn't do."

"He was caught hanging around our house the night that Ramon ran away. There, child, don't bother me with any more questions. Guilty or not, both have gone beyond reach."

Dora came near letting slip a little cry of surprise. She knew that she was blushing furiously, but fortunately the hall was dark. A new light had flashed upon her. And she thought she could guess why Walter had been lurking round their house on that, to him, most eventful night. Although she had never exchanged a dozen words with him, he had won her gratitude and admiration fairly, and now she began to feel great pity and sorrow for the friendless clerk.

Hearing Dora crying softly, her father put his arm around her waist and said soothingly: "There, child, don't cry; we must try to bear up under misfortune. But 'tis a thousand pities – "

"Well," anxiously.

"Well, if I had known all that in season, the worst might have been prevented."

"And now?"

"And now, child, your father is a ruined man." So saying, the merchant hung up his hat and walked gloomily away.

Dora ran upstairs to her own room and locked herself in, leaving the despondent merchant to eat his dinner solitary and alone.

VIII

OUTWARD BOUND

"Beats Boston, don't it?" said Bill to Walter, as the Susan J. was slowly working her way up the East River past the miles of wharves and warehouses with which the shores are lined.

"Maybe it's bigger, but I don't believe it's any better," was Walter's guarded reply.

As soon as the anchor was down, the two friends hailed a passing boatman, who quickly put them on shore at the Battery, whence they lost no time in making their way to the steamship company's office – Bill to see if he could get a chance to ship for the run to the Isthmus, Walter to get a berth in the steerage just as soon as Bill's case should be decided. So eager were they to have the matter settled that they would not stop even to look at the wonders of the town.

While waiting their turn among the crowd in the office, Bill's roving eye happened to fall on a big, square-shouldered, thick-set man who sat comfortably warming his hands over a coal fire in the fireplace, which he wholly monopolized, apparently absorbed in his own thoughts. It was now the month of December, and the air was chilly. Bill hailed him without ceremony. "Mawnin', mister. Fire feels kind o' good this cold mawnin', don't it?"

The person thus addressed did not even turn his head.

Unabashed by this cool reception, Bill added in a lower tone, "Lookin' out for a chance to ship, heh, matey?"

At this question, so squarely put, a suppressed titter ran round the room. The silent man gave Bill a sidelong look, shrugged his shoulders, and absently asked, "What makes you think so?"

"D'ye think I don't know a sailorman when I see one? Mighty stuck up, some folks is. Better get that Ingy-ink out o' yer hands ef yer 'shamed on it."

The silent man rose up, buttoned his shaggy buffalo-skin coat up to his chin, pulled his fur cap down over his bushy eyebrows, and strode out of the office without looking either to the right or the left.

"I say, you!" a clerk called out to Bill. "Do you know who you were talking to? That's the old man."

"I don't keer ef it's the old boy. Ef that chap ha'n't hauled on a tarred rope afore now, I'm a nigger; that's all."

"That was Commodore Vanderbilt, the owner of this line," the clerk retorted very pompously, quite as if he expected Bill to drop.

The general laugh now went against Bill. "Whew! was it, though? Then I s'pose my cake's all dough," he grumbled to himself, but was greatly relieved when the shipping clerk, after a few questions, told him to sign the articles. Walter was duly engaged, in his turn, as a cabin waiter. This being settled, the two friends sallied forth in high spirits to report on board the Prometheus, bound for San Juan del Norte.

Nowhere, probably, since the days of Noah was there ever seen such utter and seemingly helpless confusion as on one of those great floating arks engaged in the California trade by way of the Isthmus, in the early fifties, just before sailing. Bullocks were dismally lowing, sheep plaintively bleating, hogs squealing. Men were wildly running to and fro, shouting, pushing, and elbowing each other about, as if they had only a few minutes longer to live and must therefore make the most of their time. Women were quietly crying, or laughing hysterically, by turns, as the fit happened to take them. Of human beings, upwards of a thousand were thus occupied on board the Prometheus; while on the already crowded slip the shouting of belated hack drivers, who stormed and swore, the loud cries of peddlers and newsboys, who darted hither and thither among the surging throng, served to keep up an indescribable uproar. Add to this, that the sky was dark and lowering, the black river swimming with floating ice, crushing and grinding against the slip, as it moved out to sea with the ebb; and possibly some idea may be formed of what was taking place on that bleak December afternoon.

But all things must come to an end. All this confusion was hushed when the word was passed to cast off, the paddle wheels began slowly to turn, and the big ship, careening heavily to port under its human freight, who swarmed like bees upon her decks, forged slowly out into the stream, carrying with her, if the truth must be told, many a sorry and homesick one already.

Walter, however, drew a long breath of relief as the ship moved away from the shores. It was the first moment in which he had been able to shake off the fear of being followed. He therefore went about his duties cheerfully, if not very skillfully.

Oh, the unspeakable misery of that first night at sea! A stiff southeaster was blowing when the steamer thrust her black nose outside of Sandy Hook. And as the hours wore on, and the gale rose higher and higher, with every lurch the straining ship would moan and tremble like a human being in distress. Now and then a big sea would strike the ship fairly, sending crockery and glassware flying about the cabin with a crash, then as she settled down into the trough, for one breathless moment it would seem as if she would never come up again. Twenty times that night the affrighted passengers gave themselves up for lost. Most of them lay in their berths prostrated by fear or seasickness. A few even put on life preservers. Perhaps a score or more, too much terrified even to seek their berths, crouched with pallid faces on the cabin stairs, foolishly imagining that if the ship did go down they would thus have the better chance of saving themselves. Some half-crazed women had even put on their bonnets, in order, as they sobbed out, to die decently.

It was hardly light, if a blurred gray streak in the east could be called light, when Walter crept up the slippery companionway. His head felt like a balloon, his eyes like two lumps of lead, his legs like mismatched legs. The ship was working her engines just enough to keep her head to the sea. The deck was all awash, and littered with the rubbish of a row of temporary, or "standee," bunks abandoned by their occupants, and broken up by the force of the gale. The paddle-boxes were stove, and tons of water were pouring in upon the decks with every revolution of the wheels. By watching his chance, when the ship steadied herself for another plunge, Walter managed to work his way out to the forepart of the vessel. Here he found Bill, with half a dozen more, all wringing-wet, hastily swallowing, between lurches of the ship, a cupful of hot coffee, which the cook was passing out to them from the galley. If ever men looked completely worn out, then those men did.

Bill no sooner caught sight of Walter, than he offered him his dipper. Walter put it away from him with a grimace of disgust.

"Dirty night," said Bill, cooling his coffee between swallows; "blowed fresh; nary watch below sence we left the dock; no life in her; steered like a wild bull broke loose in Broadway. She's some easier now. Better have some [again holding out his cup]; 't will do you good. No? Well, here goes," tilting his head back and draining the cup to the last drop.

Just then the first officer came bustling along in oilskins and sou'wester. "Here, you!" he called out, "lay for'ard there, and get the jib on her; come, bear a hand!" Walter went forward with the men. Hoisting the sail was no easy matter, with the ship plunging bows under every minute, but no sooner did the gale fill It fairly, than away it went with a report like a cannon, blown clean out of the bolt-rope, as if it had been a boy's kite held by a string. While the men were watching it disappear in the mist, crash came a ton or more of salt water pouring over the bow, throwing them violently against the deck-house. Shaking himself like a spaniel, the mate darted off to give the steersman a dressing-down for letting the ship "broach to."

Two sailors had been lost overboard during the night. On a hint dropped by Bill, Walter was taken from the cabin, where there was little to do, and put to work with the carpenter's gang, repairing damages. The change being much to his liking, Walter applied himself to his new duties with a zeal that soon won for him the good will of his mates. And when it came to doing a job on the rigging, though out of practice, Walter was always the one called upon to do it. The captain, a quiet, gentlemanly man, who looked more like a schoolmaster than a shipmaster, told the purser to put Walter in the ship's books.

Thoroughly tired out with his day's work, Walter was going below when the mate called out to him: "I say, youngster, you're not going down into that dog-hole again. There's a spare bunk in my stateroom. Get your traps and sail in. You can h'ist in as much sleep as you've storage room for."

By noon of the second day out, the Prometheus had run into the Gulf Stream. The gale had sensibly abated, though it still blew hard. When the captain came on deck, after taking a long look at the clouds, he said to the mate, "Mr. Gray, I think you may give her the jib and mainsail, to steady her a bit."

At break of day on the morning of the fourth day out, as Walter was leaning over the weather rail, his eye caught sight of a dark spot rising out of the water nearly abeam. The mate was taking a long look at it through his glass. In reply to Walter's inquiring look, the mate told him it was a low-lying reef called Mariguana, one of the easternmost of the Bahamas. It was not long before most of the passengers were crowding up to get sight of that little speck of dry land, the first they had laid eyes on since the voyage began. "Now, my lad, you can judge something of how Columbus felt when he made his first landfall hereabouts so long ago!" exclaimed the mate. "Good for sore eyes, ain't it? We never try to pass it except in the daytime," he added; "if we did, ten to one we'd fetch up all standing."

"San Domingo to-morrow!" cried the mate, rubbing his hands as he came out of the chart room on the fifth day. As the word passed through the ship it produced a magical effect among the passengers, whose chief desire was once more to set foot on dry land, and next to see it.

Sure enough, when the sun rose out of the ocean next morning there was the lovely tropic island looming up, darkly blue, before them. There, too, were the hazy mountain peaks of Cuba rising in the west. All day long the ship was sailing between these islands, on a sea as smooth as a millpond. Every day she was getting in better trim, and going faster; and the spirits of all on board rose accordingly at the prospect of an early ending of the voyage.

"This beats all!" was Walter's delighted comment to Bill, who was swabbing down the decks in his bare feet.

"'Tis kind o' pooty," Bill assented, wiping his sweaty face with his bare arm. "That un," nodding toward Cuba, "Uncle Sam ought to hev, by good rights; but this 'ere," turning on San Domingo a look of contempt, "'z nothin' but niggers, airthquakes, an' harricanes. Let 'em keep it, says Bill;" then continuing, after a short pause, "Porter Prince is up in the bight of yon deep bay. I seen the old king-pin himself onct. Coal-tar ain't a patchin' to him; no, nor Day & Martin nuther. Hot? If you was ashore there, you'd think it was hot. Why, they cook eggs without fire right out in the sun."

A two-days' run across the Caribbean Sea brought the Prometheus on soundings, and a few hours more to her destined port. Every one was now making hurried preparations to leave the ship, bag and baggage; every eye beamed with delight at the prospect of escaping from the confinement of what had seemed more like a prison than anything else. While the Prometheus was heading toward her anchorage there was time allowed for a brief survey of the town and harbor of San Juan del Norte, or, as it was then commonly called, Greytown.

These were really nothing more than an open roadstead, bounded by a low, curving, and sandy shore, along which half a hundred poor cabins lay half hid among tall cocoanut palms. From the one two-story building in sight the British flag was flying. The harbor, however, presented a very animated and warlike appearance, in consequence of the warm dispute then in progress between England and the United States as to who should control the transit from ocean to ocean. Two American and two British warships lay within easy gunshot of each other, flying the flags of their respective nations, and no sooner were the colors of the starry banner caught sight of than a tremendous cheer burst from the thousand throats on board the Prometheus. Her anchor had hardly touched bottom when a boat from the Saranac came alongside, the officer in charge eagerly hailing the deck for the latest news from the States. As for the jackies, to judge from their looks they seemed literally spoiling for a fight.

Walter had no very clear idea upon the subject of this international dispute, still less of the importance it might assume in the future, but the evident anxiety shown on the faces around him led him to suppose that the matter was serious. He stood holding onto the lee rigging, watching the American tars in the boat alongside, and thinking what fine, manly fellows they looked, when two passengers near him began an animated discussion which set him to thinking.

"Sare," said one, with a strong French accent, "it was, ma foi, I shall recollect —ah oui– it was my countryman, one Samuel Champlain, who first gave ze idea of cutting – what you call him? – one sheep canal across ze Eesmus. I shall not be wrong to-day."

"Excuse me, monsieur," the other returned, "I think Cortez did that very thing long before him."

"Nevair mind, mon ami. I gage you 'ave ze histoire correct. Eet only prove zat great minds 'ave always sometime ze same ideas. Mais, your Oncle Sam, wiz hees sillee Monroe Doctreen, he eez like ze dog wiz his paw on ze bone: he not eat himself; he not let any oder dog: he just growl, growl, growl."

"But, monsieur, wouldn't Uncle Sam, as you call him, be a big fool to let any foreign nation get control of his road to California?"

The Frenchman only replied by a shrug.

Even before the Prometheus dropped anchor she was surrounded by a swarm of native boatmen, of all shades of color from sour cream to jet-black, some holding up bunches of bananas, some screaming out praises of their boats to such as were disposed to go ashore, others begging the passengers to throw a dime into the water, for which they instantly plunged, head first, regardless of the sharks which could be seen lazily swimming about the harbor, attracted by the offal thrown over from the ships.

"I don't know how 'tis," said Bill in Walter's ear, "but them sharks'll never tech a nigger. But come, time to wake up! Anchor's down. All's snug aboard. Now keep your weather eye peeled for a long pull across the Isthmus."

"Good luck to ye," said the jolly mate, shaking Walter heartily by the hand as he was about leaving the ship. "I'm right glad to see you've been trying to improve your mind a bit, instead of moonin' about like a catfish in a mudhole, as most of 'em do on board here. Use your eyes. Keep your ears open and don't be afraid to ask questions. That's the way to travel, my hearty!" And with a parting wave of the hand he strode forward.

IX

ACROSS NICARAGUA

In the course of an hour or so three light-draught stern-wheel steamboats ("wheelbarrows," Bill derisively called them) came puffing up alongside. Into them the passengers were now unceremoniously bundled, like so many sheep, and in such numbers as hardly to allow room to move about, yet all in high glee at escaping from the confinement of the ship, at which many angrily shook their fists as the fasts were cast off. In another quarter of an hour the boats were steaming slowly up the San Juan River, thus commencing the second stage of the long journey.

For the first hour or two the travelers were fully occupied in looking about them with charmed eyes, as with mile after mile, and turn after turn, the wonders of a tropical forest, all hung about with rare and beautiful flowers, and all as still as death, passed before them. But Bill, to whom the sight was not new or strange, declared that for his part he would rather have a sniff of good old Boston's east wind than all the cloying perfumes of that wilderness of woods and blossoms. It was not long, however, before attention was drawn to the living inhabitants of this fairyland.

First a strange object, something between a huge lizard and a bloated bullfrog, was spied clinging to a bush on the bank. No sooner seen than crack! crack! went a dozen pistol shots, and down dropped the dirty green-and-yellow creature with a loud splash into the river.

"There's a tidbit gone," observed Bill, in Walter's ear.

"What! eat that thing?" demanded Walter with a disgusted look.

"Sartin. They eat um; eat anything. And what you can't eat, 'll eat you. If you don't b'leeve it, look at that 'ar reptyle on the bank yonder," said Bill, pointing out the object in question with the stem of his pipe.

Walter followed the direction of Bill's pipe.

Looking quite as much like a stranded log as anything else, a full-grown alligator lay stretched out along the muddy margin of the river at the water's edge. No sooner was he seen, than the ungainly monster became the target for a perfect storm of bullets, all of which glanced as harmlessly off his scaly back as hailstones from a slate roof. Disturbed by the noise and the shouts, the hideous animal slid slowly into the water and disappeared from sight, churning up the muddy bottom as he went.

Bill put on a quizzical look as he asked Walter if he knew why some barbarians worshiped the alligator. Walter was obliged to admit that he did not. "'Cause the alligator can swaller the man, but the man can't swaller the alligator," chuckled Bill.

Now and then a native bongo would be overhauled, bound for San Carlos, Grenada, or Leon, with a cargo of European goods. They were uncouth-looking boats, rigged with mast and sail, and sometimes thirty to forty feet long. Many a hearty laugh greeted the grotesque motions of the jet-black rowers, who half rose from their seats every time they dipped their oars, and then sank back with a grunt to give their strokes more power. The patrón, or master, prefaced all his orders with a persuasive "Now, gentlemen, a little faster, if you please!"

"And so that's the way, is it, that all inland transportation has been carried on here for so many hundred years?" thought Walter. "Well, I never!"

Incidents such as these served, now and then, to cause a ripple of excitement, or until even alligators became quite too numerous to waste powder upon. As darkness was coming on fast, there being no twilight to speak of in this part of the world, a ship's yawl was seen tied up under the bank for the night. Its occupants were nowhere in sight, but the dim light of a fire among the bushes showed that they were not far off. "Runaway sailors," Bill explained; "stole the boat, an' 'fraid to show themselves. Poor devils! they've a long pull afore 'em ef they get away, an' a rope's-end behind 'em if they're caught."

"Why, how far is it across?"

"It's more'n a hundred miles to the lake, and another hundred or so beyond."