The Tale of Timber Town

“Now, I never saw those when I was coming in,” said he. “Where did you get them islands from, Summerhayes? Are they occulting, real, or apparent? Changing your landmarks, like this, is deceiving.”

The Pilot, forgetting the technicalities of his profession, looked at the phenomenon which puzzled the skipper, and said, as gruffly as a bear, “That’s no islands: it’s but a bit of a mirage. Sometimes there’s only one island, sometimes three, sometimes more – it’s accordin’ to circumstances. But what’s this craft coming down the bay? Barque or ship, Sartoris? – I’ve forgot me glass.”

Both men stood on the seaward edge of the island, and looked long and hard at the approaching vessel.

“Barque,” said Sartoris, whose eyes were keener than the older man’s.

“There’s no barque due at this port for a month,” said the Pilot. “The consignees keep me posted up, for to encourage a sharp lookout. The Ida Bell should arrive from London towards the middle of next month, but she is a ship. This must be a stranger, putting in for water or stores; or maybe she’s short-handed.”

For a long time they watched the big craft, sailing before the breeze.

“Sartoris, she’s clewing up her courses and pulling down her head-sails.”

“Isn’t she a trifle far out, Pilot?”

“It’s good holding-ground out there – stiff clay that would hold anything. What did I tell you? – there you are – coming-to. She’s got starn-board. There goes the anchor!”

The skipper had hitherto displayed but little interest in the strange vessel, but now he was shouting and gesticulating, as a flag was run up to her fore-truck.

“Look at that, Summerhayes!” he exclaimed. “If you ain’t blind, tell me what that flag is. Sure as I’m a master without a ship, it’s the currantine flag.”

“So it is, so it is. That means the Health Officer, Sartoris.” And the gruff old Pilot hastened down to the dingey.

As the two seamen put off from the island, the skipper, who was in the stern of the little boat, could see Summerhayes’s crew standing about on the slip of the pilot-shed; and by the time the dingey had reached the shore, the Pilot’s big whale-boat lay by the landing-stage.

“Where’s the doctor?” roared Summerhayes. “Is he goin’ to make us hunt for him when he’s required for the first time this six weeks?”

“All right, all right,” called a clear voice from inside the great shed. “I’m ready before you are this time, Pilot.”

“An’ well you are,” growled the gruff old barnacle. “That furrin’-lookin’ barque outside has hoisted the yellow flag. Get aboard, lads, get aboard.”

“Your men discovered the fact half an hour ago, by the aid of your telescope.” The doctor came slowly down the slip, carrying a leather hand-bag.

“If you’ve any mercy,” said the Pilot, “you’ll spare ’em the use o’ that. Men die fast enough without physic.”

“Next time you get the sciatica, Summerhayes, I’ll give you a double dose.”

“An’ charge me a double fee. I know you. Shove her off, Johnson.”

The grim old Pilot stood with the steering-oar in his hand; the skipper and the doctor sitting on either hand of him, and the crew pulling as only a trained crew can.

“Steady, men,” said the Pilot: “it’s only half tide, and there’s plenty of water coming in at the entrance. Keep your wind for that, Hendricson.”

With one hand he unbuttoned the flap of his capacious trouser-pocket, and took out a small bunch of keys, which he handed to Sartoris.

“Examine the locker,” he said. “It’s the middle-sized key.” The captain, in a moment, had opened the padlock which fastened the locker under the Pilot’s seat.

“Is there half-a-dozen of beer – quarts?” asked Summerhayes.

“There is,” replied Sartoris.

“Two bottles of rum?”

“Yes.”

“Glasses?”

“Four.”

“An’ a corkscrew?”

“It’s here.”

“Then we’ve just what the doctor ordered: not this doctor – make no mistake o’ that. An’ them sons o’ sea cooks, forrard there, haven’t yet found a duplicate key to my locker. Wonderful! wonderful!”

The crew grinned, and put their backs into every stroke, for they knew “the old man” meant that they shouldn’t go dry.

“I’m the Pilot o’ this here port, eh?”

“Most certainly,” said the doctor.

“An’ Harbour Master, in a manner o’ speaking?”

“That’s so.”

“And captain o’ this here boat?”

They were hugging the shore of the island, where the strength of the incoming tide began to be felt in the narrow tortuous channel. The bluff old Pilot put the steering-oar to port, and brought his boat round to starboard, in order to keep her out of the strongest part of the current.

“Now, lads, shake her up!” he shouted.

The men strained every nerve, and the boat was forced slowly against the tide. With another sudden movement of the steering-oar Summerhayes brought the boat into an eddy under the island, and she shot forward.

“Very well,” he said; “it’s acknowledged that I’m all that – Pilot, Harbour Master, and skipper o’ this boat. Then let me tell you that I’m ship’s doctor as well, and in that capacity, since we’re outside and there’s easy going now under sail, I prescribe a good stiff glass all round, as a preventive against plague, Yellow Jack, small-pox, or whatever disease it is they’ve got on yonder barque.”

Sartoris uncorked a bottle, and handed a glass to the doctor.

“And a very good prescription, too,” said the tall, thin medico, who had a colourless complexion and eyes that glittered like black beads; “but where’s the water?”

“Who drinks on my boat,” growled the Pilot, “drinks his liquor neat. I drown no man and no rum with water. If a man must needs spoil his liquor, let him bring his own water: there’s none in my locker.”

The doctor took the old seaman’s medicine, but not without a wry face; Sartoris followed suit, and then the Pilot. The boat was now under sail, and the crew laid in their oars and “spliced the main brace.”

“That’s the only medicine we favour in this boat or in this service,” said the Pilot, as he returned the key of the locker to his pocket, “an’ we’ve never yet found it to fail. Before encount’ring plague, or after encount’ring dirty weather, a glass all round: at other times the locker is kept securely fastened, and I keep the key.” Saying which, he buttoned the flap of his pocket, and fixed his eyes on the strange barque, to which they were now drawing near.

It could be seen that she was a long time “out”; her sails, not yet all furled, were old and weather-worn; her sides badly needed paint; and as she rose and fell with the swell, she showed barnacles and “grass” below the water-line. At her mizzen-peak flew the American ensign, and at the fore-truck the ominous quarantine flag.

As the boat passed under the stern, the name of the vessel could be seen – “Fred P. Lincoln, New York” – and a sickly brown man looked over the side. Soon he was joined by more men, brown and yellow, who jabbered like monkeys, but did nothing.

“Seems they’ve got a menag’ry aboard,” commented Sartoris.

Presently a white face appeared at the side.

“Where’s the captain?” asked the Health Officer.

“With the mate, who’s dying.”

“Then who are you?”

“Cap’n’s servant.”

“But where’s the other mate?”

“He died a week ago.”

“What’s wrong on board?”

“Don’t know, sir. Ten men are dead, and three are sick.”

“Where are you from?”

“Canton.”

“Canton? Have you got plague aboard?”

“Not bubonic. The men go off quiet and gradual, after being sick a long time. I guess you’d better come aboard, and see for yourself.”

The ladder was put over the side, and soon the doctor had clambered on board.

The men in the boat sat quiet and full of contemplation.

“This is a good time for a smoke,” said the Pilot, filling his pipe and passing his tobacco tin forrard. “And I think, Sartoris, all hands ’d be none the worse for another dose o’ my medicine.” Again his capacious hand went into his more capacious pocket, and the key of the locker was handed to Sartoris.

“Some foolish people are teetotal,” continued Summerhayes, “and would make a man believe as how every blessed drop o’ grog he drinks shortens his life by a day or a week, as the case may be. But give me a glass o’ liquor an’ rob me of a month, rather than the plagues o’ China strike me dead to-morrer. Some folks have no more sense than barn-door fowls.”

A yellow man, more loquacious than his fellows, had attracted the attention of Sartoris.

“Heh! John. What’s the name of your skipper?”

The Chinaman’s reply was unintelligible. “I can make nothing of him,” said Sartoris. But, just at that moment, the man who had described himself as the captain’s servant reappeared at the side of the ship.

“My man,” said Summerhayes, “who’s your captain?”

“Cap’n Starbruck.”

“Starbruck!” exclaimed Sartoris. “I know him.” In a moment he was half-way up the ladder.

“Hi! Sartoris,” roared the Pilot. “If you go aboard that vessel, you’ll stay there till she’s got a clean bill o’ health.”

“I’m going to help my old shipmate,” answered Sartoris from the top of the ladder. “Turn and turn about, I says. He stood by me in the West Indies, when I had Yellow Jack; and I stand by him now.” As he spoke his foot was on the main-rail. He jumped into the waist of the quarantined barque, and was lost to sight.

“Whew!” said the Pilot to the vessel’s side. “Here’s a man just saved from shipwreck, and he must plunge into a fever-den in order to be happy. I wash my hands of such foolishness. Let ’im go, let ’im go.”

The thin, neat doctor appeared, standing on the main-rail. He handed his bag to one of the boat’s crew, and slowly descended the ladder.

“An’ what have you done with Sartoris?” asked the Pilot.

“He’s aboard,” replied the doctor, “and there he stops. That’s all I can say.”

“And what’s the sickness?”

“Ten men are dead, five more are down – two women, Chinese, and three men. I should call it fever, a kind of barbiers or beri-beri. But in the meanwhile, I’ll take another drop of your excellent liquor.”

The doctor drank the Pilot’s medicine in complete silence.

“Let go that rope!” roared Summerhayes. “Shove her off. Up with your sail.” The trim boat shot towards the sunny port of Timber Town, and Sartoris was left aboard the fever-ship.

CHAPTER IX

What Looked Like Courting

On the terrace of the Pilot’s house was a garden-seat, on which sat Rose Summerhayes and Scarlett.

Rose was looking at her dainty shoe, the point of which protruded from beneath her skirt; while Scarlett’s eyes were fixed on the magnificent panorama of mountains which stretched north and south as far as he could see.

Behind the grass-covered foot-hills, at whose base crouched the little town, there stood bolder and more rugged heights. In rear of these rose the twin forest-clad tops of an enormous mountain mass, on either side of which stretched pinnacled ranges covered with primeval “bush.”

Scarlett was counting hill and mountain summits. His enumeration had reached twenty distinct heights, when, losing count, he turned to his companion.

“It’s a lovely picture to have in front of your door,” he said, “a picture that never tires the eye.”

A break in the centre of the foot-hills suddenly attracted his attention. It was the gorge through which a rippling, sparkling river escaped from the mountain rampart and flowed through the town to the tidal waters of the harbour.

“That valley will take us into the heart of the hills,” he said. “We start to-morrow morning, soon after dawn – Moonlight and I. Do you know him?”

The girl looked up from her shoe, and smiled. “I can’t cultivate the acquaintance of every digger in the town,” she replied.

“Don’t speak disparagingly of diggers. I become one to-morrow.”

“Then, mind you bring me a big nugget when you come back,” said the girl.

“That’s asking me to command good luck. Give me that, and you shall have the nugget.”

“Does luck go by a girl’s favour? If it did, you would be sure to have it.”

“I never had it on the voyage out, did I?”

“Perhaps you never had the other either.”

“That’s true – I left England through lack of it.”

“I shouldn’t have guessed that. Perhaps you’ll gain it in this country.”

Scarlett looked at her, but her eyes were again fixed on the point of her shoe.

“Well, Rosebud – flirting as usual?” Captain Summerhayes, clad in blue serge, with his peaked cap on the back of his head, came labouring up the path, and sat heavily on the garden-seat. “I never see such a gal – always with the boys when she ought to be cooking the dinner.”

“Father!” exclaimed Rose, flushing red, though she well knew the form that the Pilot’s chaff usually took. “How can you tell such fibs? You forget that Mr. Scarlett is not one of the old cronies who understand your fun.”

“There, there, my gal.” The Pilot laid his great brown hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Don’t be ruffled. Let an old sailor have his joke: it won’t hurt, God bless us; it won’t hurt more’n the buzzing of a blue-bottle fly. But you’re that prim and proper, that staid and straight-laced, you make me tease you, just to rouse you up. Oh! them calm ones, Mr. Scarlett, beware of ’em. It takes a lot to goad ’em to it, but once their hair’s on end, it’s time a sailor went to sea, and a landsman took to the bush. It’s simply terrible. Them mild ’uns, Mr. Scarlett, beware of ’em.”

“Father, do stop!” cried Rose, slapping the Pilot’s broad back with her soft, white hand.

“All right,” said her father, shrinking from her in mock dread; “stop that hammerin’.”

“Tell us about the fever-ship, and what they’re doing with Sartoris,” said Scarlett.

“Lor’, she’s knocked the breath out of a man’s body. I’m just in dread o’ me life. Sit t’other end o’ the seat, gal; and do you, Mr. Scarlett, sit in between us, and keep the peace. It’s fearful, this livin’ alone with a dar’ter that thumps me.” The old fellow chuckled internally, and threatened to explode with suppressed merriment. “Some day I shall die o’ laffing,” he said, as he pulled himself together. “But you was asking about Sartoris.” He had now got himself well in hand. “Sartoris is like a pet monkey in a cage, along o’ Chinamen, Malays, Seedee boys, and all them sort of animals. Laff? You should ha’ seen me standing up in the boat, hollerin’ at Sartoris, and laffin’ so as I couldn’t hardly keep me feet. ‘Sartoris,’ I says, ‘when do the animals feed?’ An’ he looks over the rail, just like a stuffed owl in a glass case, and says nothing. I took a bottle from the boat’s locker, and held it up. ‘What wouldn’t you give for a drop o’ that!’ I shouts. But he shook his fist, and said something disrespectful about port wine; but I was that roused up with the humour o’ the thing, I laffed so as I had to set down. A prisoner for full four weeks, or durin’ the pleasure o’ the Health Officer, that’s Sartoris. Lord! what a trap to be caught in.”

“But what’s the disease they’ve on board?” asked Scarlett.

“That’s where it is,” replied the Pilot – “nobody seems to know. The Health Officer he says one thing, and then, first one medical and then another must put his oar in, and say it’s something else – dengey fever, break-bone, spirrilum fever, beri-beri, or anything you like. One doctor says the ship shouldn’t ha’ bin currantined, and another says she should, and so they go on quarrelling like a lot o’ cats in a sack.”

“But there have been deaths on board,” said Rose.

“Deaths, my dear? The first mate’s gone, and more’n half the piebald crew. This morning we buried the Chinese cook. You won’t see Sartoris, not this month or more.”

“Mr. Scarlett is going into the bush, father. He’s not likely to be back till after the ship is out of quarantine.”

“Eh? What? Goin’ bush-whacking? I thought you was town-bred. Well, well, so you’re goin’ to help chop down trees.”

Scarlett smiled. “You’ve heard of this gold that’s been found, Pilot?”

“I see it in the paper.”

“I’m going to try if I can find where it comes from.”

“Lord love ’ee, but you’ve no luck, lad. This gold-finding is just a matter o’ luck, and luck goes by streaks. You’re in a bad streak, just at present; and you won’t never find that gold till you’re out o’ that streak. You can try, but you won’t get it. You see, Sartoris is in the same streak – no sooner does he get wrecked than he is shut up aboard this fever-ship. And s’far as I can see, he’ll get on no better till he’s out o’ his streak too. You be careful how you go about for the next six months or so, for as sure as you’re born, if you put yourself in the way of it, you’ll have some worse misfortune than any you’ve yet met with. Luck’s like the tide – you can do nothing agin it; but when it turns, you’ve got everything in your favour. Wait till the tide of your luck turns, young man, before you attempt anything rash. That’s my advice, and I’ve seen proof of it in every quarter of the globe.”

“Father is full of all sorts of sailor-superstitions. He hates to take a ship out of port on a Friday, and wouldn’t kill an albatross for anything.”

“We caught three on the voyage out,” said Scarlett; “a Wandering Albatross, after sighting the Cape of Good Hope, and two sooty ones near the Campbell Islands. I kept the wing-bones, and would have given you one for a pipe-stem, Captain, if the ship had reached port.”

“But she didn’t, my lad,” growled the Pilot, “and that’s where the point comes in. Why sailors can’t leave them birds alone astonishes me: they don’t hurt nobody, and they don’t molest the ship, but sail along out of pure love o’ company. On the strength o’ that you must kill ’em, just for a few feathers and stems for tobacco-pipes. And you got wrecked. P’r’aps you’ll leave ’em alone next voyage.”

During the last part of the conversation, Rose had risen, and entered the house. She now returned with a small leather case in her hand.

“This, at any rate, will be proof against bad luck,” she said, as she undid the case, and drew out a prismatic compass. She adjusted the eye-piece, in which was a slit and a glass prism and lifted the sight-vane, down the centre of which a horsehair stretched perpendicularly to the card of the compass. Putting the instrument to her eye, Rose took the bearing of one of the twin forest-clad heights, and said, “Eighty degrees East – is that right?”

“You’ve got the magnetic bearing,” said Scarlett, taking the instrument from the girl’s hand. “To find the real bearing, you must allow for the variation between the magnetic and true North.”

“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed; “that’s too dreadfully technical. But take the compass: it should keep you from being lost in the bush, anyway.”

“Thank you,” said Jack. “It will be very useful. It’s a proper mining-compass.”

“I hope its needle will guide you to untold gold, and that the mine you are looking for will act on it like a loadstone.”

“Practical and sentimental – that’s Rosebud,” said the Pilot, from the further end of the seat. “And you’ll always notice, Scarlett, that it’s the practical that comes first with her. Once upon a time she give me a cardigan jacket to wear under my coat. She’d knitted it herself. She said it would keep me warm on frosty nights, and prevent me gettin’ cold and all that; and when I gets into the boat one night, and was feeling for a match, bless you if I didn’t find a piece o’ paper, folded up, in the pocket o’ that there cardigan jacket. I took it out and read it by the lantern. It was from my own dar’ter, jest as if I’d ha’ been her sweetheart, and in it was all manner o’ lovey-dovey things just fit to turn her old dad’s head. Practical first, sentimental afterwards – that’s Rosebud. Very practical over the makin’ of an apple-pie – very sentimental over the eatin’ of it, ain’t you, my gal?”

“I don’t know about the sentiment,” said Rose, “but I am sure about the pie. If that were missing at dinner-time I know who would grumble. So I’ll go, and attend to my duties.” She had risen, and was confronting Scarlett. “Good-bye,” she said, “and good fortune.”

Jack took her proffered hand. “Thank you,” he said.

She had walked a few steps towards the house, when she looked over her shoulder. “Don’t forget the nuggets,” she said with a laugh.

“I sha’n’t forget,” he replied. “If I get them, you shall have them. I hope I may get them, for your sake.”

“Now, ain’t that a wee bit mushy, for talk?” said the old Pilot, as his daughter disappeared. “You might give a gal a few pennyweights, or even an ounce, but when you say you hope you may find gold for her sake, ain’t that just a trifle flabby? But don’t think you can deceive my gal with talk such as that. She may be sentimental and stoopid with her old dad, but I never yet see the man she couldn’t run rings round at a bargain. And as for gettin’ soft on a chap, he ain’t come along yet; and when he does, like as not I’ll chuck him over this here bank, and break his impident neck. When my gal Rosebud takes a fancy, that’s another matter. If she should have a leanin’ towards some partic’lar chap, why, then I’d open the door, and lug him in by the collar if he didn’t come natural and responsive. I’ve got my own ideas about a girl marrying – I had my own experience, and I say, give a girl the choice, an’ she’ll make a good wife. That’s my theory. So if my gal is set agin a man, I’m set agin him. If she likes a partic’lar man, I’ll like him too. She won’t cotton to any miserable, fish-backed beach-comber, I can promise you. So mushy, flabby talk don’t count with Rose; you can make your mind clear on that point.”

The young man burst into a laugh.

“Keep her tight, Pilot,” he said, in a voice loud with merriment. “When you know you’ve got a good daughter, stick to her. Chuck every interloper over the bank. I should do so myself. But don’t treat me so when I come with the nuggets.”

“Now, look ’ee here,” said the Pilot, as he rose cumbersomely, and took Scarlett by the arm. “I’ve said you’re in a bad streak o’ luck, and I believe it. But, mark me here: nothing would please me better than for you to return with a hatful of gold. All I say is, if you’re bent on going, be careful; and, being in a bad streak, don’t expect great things.”

“Good-bye,” said Scarlett. “I’m in a bad streak? All right. When I work out of that you’ll be the first man I’ll come to see.”

“An’ no one’ll be gladder to see you.”

Captain Summerhayes took Scarlett’s hand, and shook it warmly. “Good-bye,” he said. “Good luck, and damn the bad streak.”

Jack laughed, and walked down the winding path.

The Pilot stood on the bank, and looked after him.

“Hearten him up: that’s the way,” he said to himself, as he watched the retreating figure; “but, for all that, he’s like a young ‘more-pork’ in the bush, with all his troubles to come.”

CHAPTER X

Hocussed

In a small inner room in The Lucky Digger sat Benjamin Tresco and the Prospector.

The goldsmith was happy. His glass was before him, between his teeth was the stem of his pipe, and in consequence his face beamed with contentment, pleasure, good humour, and indolence.

The digger, on the other hand, looked serious, not to say anxious, and his manner was full of uneasiness. His glass stood untouched, his half-finished pipe had gone out, and he could not sit still, but began to pace backwards and forwards restlessly.

“I’ve put my foot in it,” he said, pulling nervously at his bushy beard. “I’ve quarrelled with the toffs of the town, and the best thing I can do is to make a git. I’ll start for the bush to-morrer.”

“Now you’re talking bunkum,” said Tresco, as the smoke from his pipe wreathed above his head. “I know those men – two bigger rogues never breathed. They simply wanted to fleece you, and instead of that you gave ’em one in the eye. More power to you: it was immense! As for old Mr. Crewe and his crowd, they were on the make too; but they are out of court – there’s no chance of them trying to renew your acquaintance. Now, what you must do is to enjoy yourself quietly, and by-and-by get back to your claim. But, for to-night, we’ll have a good time – a little liquor, a quiet game of cards, a bit of a talk, and perhaps a better understanding.”

“To speak the blanky truth,” said the digger, “you’re the whitest man I’ve met. True, I’ve give myself away a bit, but you’re the only man ain’t tried to do the pump-handle business with me.”