Michael, Brother of Jerry

“I say, Noah,” he called. “Some flood, eh? Located Ararat yet?”

“Catch any fish?” bawled another youngster down over the rail.

“Gracious! Look at the beer! Good English beer! Put me down for a case!”

Never was a more popular wrecked crew more merrily rescued at sea. The young blades would have it that none other than old Noah himself had come on board with the remnants of the Lost Tribes, and to elderly female passengers spun hair-raising accounts of the sinking of an entire tropic island by volcanic and earthquake action.

“I’m a steward,” Dag Daughtry told the Mariposa’s captain, “and I’ll be glad and grateful to berth along with your stewards in the glory-hole. Big John there’s a sailorman, an’ the fo’c’s’le ’ll do him. The Chink is a ship’s cook, and the nigger belongs to me. But Mr. Greenleaf, sir, is a gentleman, and the best of cabin fare and staterooms’ll be none too good for him, sir.”

And when the news went around that these were part of the survivors of the three-masted schooner, Mary Turner, smashed into kindling wood and sunk by a whale, the elderly females no more believed than had they the yarn of the sunken island.

“Captain Hayward,” one of them demanded of the steamer’s skipper, “could a whale sink the Mariposa?”

“She has never been so sunk,” was his reply.

“I knew it!” she declared emphatically. “It’s not the way of ships to go around being sunk by whales, is it, captain?”

“No, madam, I assure you it is not,” was his response. “Nevertheless, all the five men insist upon it.”

“Sailors are notorious for their unveracity, are they not?” the lady voiced her flat conclusion in the form of a tentative query.

“Worst liars I ever saw, madam. Do you know, after forty years at sea, I couldn’t believe myself under oath.”

* * * * *

Nine days later the Mariposa threaded the Golden Gate and docked at San Francisco. Humorous half-columns in the local papers, written in the customary silly way by unlicked cub reporters just out of grammar school, tickled the fancy of San Francisco for a fleeting moment in that the steamship Mariposa had rescued some sea-waifs possessed of a cock-and-bull story that not even the reporters believed. Thus, silly reportorial unveracity usually proves extraordinary truth a liar. It is the way of cub reporters, city newspapers, and flat-floor populations which get their thrills from moving pictures and for which the real world and all its spaciousness does not exist.

“Sunk by a whale!” demanded the average flat-floor person. “Nonsense, that’s all. Just plain rotten nonsense. Now, in the ‘Adventures of Eleanor,’ which is some film, believe me, I’ll tell you what I saw happen.. ”

So Daughtry and his crew went ashore into ’Frisco Town uheralded and unsung, the second following morning’s lucubrations of the sea reporters being varied disportations upon the attack on an Italian crab fisherman by an enormous jellyfish. Big John promptly sank out of sight in a sailors’ boarding-house, and, within the week, joined the Sailors’ Union and shipped on a steam schooner to load redwood ties at Bandon, Oregon. Ah Moy got no farther ashore than the detention sheds of the Federal Immigration Board, whence he was deported to China on the next Pacific Mail steamer. The Mary Turner’s cat was adopted by the sailors’ forecastle of the Mariposa, and on the Mariposa sailed away on the back trip to Tahiti. Scraps was taken ashore by a quartermaster and left in the bosom of his family.

And ashore went Dag Daughtry, with his small savings, to rent two cheap rooms for himself and his remaining responsibilities, namely, Charles Stough Greenleaf, Kwaque, Michael, and, not least, Cocky. But not for long did he permit the Ancient Mariner to live with him.

“It’s not playing the game, sir,” he told him. “What we need is capital. We’ve got to interest capital, and you’ve got to do the interesting. Now this very day you’ve got to buy a couple of suit-cases, hire a taxicab, go sailing up to the front door of the Bronx Hotel like good pay and be damned. She’s a real stylish hotel, but reasonable if you want to make it so. A little room, an inside room, European plan, of course, and then you can economise by eatin’ out.”

“But, steward, I have no money,” the Ancient Mariner protested.

“That’s all right, sir; I’ll back you for all I can.”

“But, my dear man, you know I’m an old impostor. I can’t stick you up like the others. You.. why.. why, you’re a friend, don’t you see?”

“Sure I do, and I thank you for sayin’ it, sir. And that’s why I’m with you. And when you’ve nailed another crowd of treasure-hunters and got the ship ready, you’ll just ship me along as steward, with Kwaque, and Killeny Boy, and the rest of our family. You’ve adopted me, now, an’ I’m your grown-up son, an’ you’ve got to listen to me. The Bronx is the hotel for you – fine-soundin’ name, ain’t it? That’s atmosphere. Folk’ll listen half to you an’ more to your hotel. I tell you, you leaning back in a big leather chair talkin’ treasure with a two-bit cigar in your mouth an’ a twenty-cent drink beside you, why that’s like treasure. They just got to believe. An’ if you’ll come along now, sir, we’ll trot out an’ buy them suit-cases.”

Right bravely the Ancient Mariner drove to the Bronx in a taxi, registered his “Charles Stough Greenleaf” in an old-fashioned hand, and took up anew the activities which for years had kept him free of the poor-farm. No less bravely did Dag Daughtry set out to seek work. This was most necessary, because he was a man of expensive luxuries. His family of Kwaque, Michael, and Cocky required food and shelter; more costly than that was maintenance of the Ancient Mariner in the high-class hotel; and, in addition, was his six-quart thirst.

But it was a time of industrial depression. The unemployed problem was bulking bigger than usual to the citizens of San Francisco. And, as regarded steamships and sailing vessels, there were three stewards for every Steward’s position. Nothing steady could Daughtry procure, while his occasional odd jobs did not balance his various running expenses. Even did he do pick-and-shovel work, for the municipality, for three days, when he had to give way, according to the impartial procedure, to another needy one whom three days’ work would keep afloat a little longer.

Daughtry would have put Kwaque to work, except that Kwaque was impossible. The black, who had only seen Sydney from steamers’ decks, had never been in a city in his life. All he knew of the world was steamers, far-outlying south-sea isles, and his own island of King William in Melanesia. So Kwaque remained in the two rooms, cooking and housekeeping for his master and caring for Michael and Cocky. All of which was prison for Michael, who had been used to the run of ships, of coral beaches and plantations.

But in the evenings, sometimes accompanied a few steps in the rear by Kwaque, Michael strolled out with Steward. The multiplicity of man-gods on the teeming sidewalks became a real bore to Michael, so that man-gods, in general, underwent a sharp depreciation. But Steward, the particular god of his fealty and worship, appreciated. Amongst so many gods Michael felt bewildered, while Steward’s Abrahamic bosom became more than ever the one sure haven where harshness and danger never troubled.

“Mind your step,” is the last word and warning of twentieth-century city life. Michael was not slow to learn it, as he conserved his own feet among the countless thousands of leather-shod feet of men, ever hurrying, always unregarding of the existence and right of way of a lowly, four-legged Irish terrier.

The evening outings with Steward invariably led from saloon to saloon, where, at long bars, standing on sawdust floors, or seated at tables, men drank and talked. Much of both did men do, and also did Steward do, ere, his daily six-quart stint accomplished, he turned homeward for bed. Many were the acquaintances he made, and Michael with him. Coasting seamen and bay sailors they mostly were, although there were many ’longshoremen and waterfront workmen among them.

From one of these, a scow-schooner captain who plied up and down the bay and the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, Daughtry had the promise of being engaged as cook and sailor on the schooner Howard. Eighty tons of freight, including deckload, she carried, and in all democracy Captain Jorgensen, the cook, and the two other sailors, loaded and unloaded her at all hours, and sailed her night and day on all times and tides, one man steering while three slept and recuperated. It was time, and double-time, and over-time beyond that, but the feeding was generous and the wages ran from forty-five to sixty dollars a month.

“Sure, you bet,” said Captain Jorgensen. “This cook-feller, Hanson, pretty quick I smash him up an’ fire him, then you can come along.. and the bow-wow, too.” Here he dropped a hearty, wholesome hand of toil down to a caress of Michael’s head. “That’s one fine bow-wow. A bow-wow is good on a scow when all hands sleep alongside the dock or in an anchor watch.”

“Fire Hanson now,” Dag Daughtry urged.

But Captain Jorgensen shook his slow head slowly. “First I smash him up.”

“Then smash him now and fire him,” Daughtry persisted. “There he is right now at the corner of the bar.”

“No. He must give me reason. I got plenty of reason. But I want reason all hands can see. I want him make me smash him, so that all hands say, ‘Hurrah, Captain, you done right.’ Then you get the job, Daughtry.”

Had Captain Jorgensen not been dilatory in his contemplated smashing, and had not Hanson delayed in giving sufficient provocation for a smashing, Michael would have accompanied Steward upon the schooner, Howard, and all Michael’s subsequent experiences would have been totally different from what they were destined to be. But destined they were, by chance and by combinations of chance events over which Michael had no control and of which he had no more awareness than had Steward himself. At that period, the subsequent stage career and nightmare of cruelty for Michael was beyond any wildest forecast or apprehension. And as to forecasting Dag Daughtry’s fate, along with Kwaque, no maddest drug-dream could have approximated it.

CHAPTER XVII

One night Dag Daughtry sat at a table in the saloon called the Pile-drivers’ Home. He was in a parlous predicament. Harder than ever had it been to secure odd jobs, and he had reached the end of his savings. Earlier in the evening he had had a telephone conference with the Ancient Mariner, who had reported only progress with an exceptionally strong nibble that very day from a retired quack doctor.

“Let me pawn my rings,” the Ancient Mariner had urged, not for the first time, over the telephone.

“No, sir,” had been Daughtry’s reply. “We need them in the business. They’re stock in trade. They’re atmosphere. They’re what you call a figure of speech. I’ll do some thinking to-night an’ see you in the morning, sir. Hold on to them rings an’ don’t be no more than casual in playin’ that doctor. Make ’m come to you. It’s the only way. Now you’re all right, an’ everything’s hunkydory an’ the goose hangs high. Don’t you worry, sir. Dag Daughtry never fell down yet.”

But, as he sat in the Pile-drivers’ Home, it looked as if his fall-down was very near. In his pocket was precisely the room-rent for the following week, the advance payment of which was already three days overdue and clamorously demanded by the hard-faced landlady. In the rooms, with care, was enough food with which to pinch through for another day. The Ancient Mariner’s modest hotel bill had not been paid for two weeks – a prodigious sum under the circumstances, being a first-class hotel; while the Ancient Mariner had no more than a couple of dollars in his pocket with which to make a sound like prosperity in the ears of the retired doctor who wanted to go a-treasuring.

Most catastrophic of all, however, was the fact that Dag Daughtry was three quarts short of his daily allowance and did not dare break into the rent money which was all that stood between him and his family and the street. This was why he sat at the beer table with Captain Jorgensen, who was just returned with a schooner-load of hay from the Petaluma Flats. He had already bought beer twice, and evinced no further show of thirst. Instead, he was yawning from long hours of work and waking and looking at his watch. And Daughtry was three quarts short! Besides, Hanson had not yet been smashed, so that the cook-job on the schooner still lay ahead an unknown distance in the future.

In his desperation, Daughtry hit upon an idea with which to get another schooner of steam beer. He did not like steam beer, but it was cheaper than lager.

“Look here, Captain,” he said. “You don’t know how smart that Killeny Boy is. Why, he can count just like you and me.”

“Hoh!” rumbled Captain Jorgensen. “I seen ’em do it in side shows. It’s all tricks. Dogs an’ horses can’t count.”

“This dog can,” Daughtry continued quietly. “You can’t fool ’m. I bet you, right now, I can order two beers, loud so he can hear and notice, and then whisper to the waiter to bring one, an’, when the one comes, Killeny Boy’ll raise a roar with the waiter.”

“Hoh! Hoh! How much will you bet?”

The steward fingered a dime in his pocket. If Killeny failed him it meant that the rent-money would be broken in upon. But Killeny couldn’t and wouldn’t fail him, he reasoned, as he answered:

“I’ll bet you the price of two beers.”

The waiter was summoned, and, when he had received his secret instructions, Michael was called over from where he lay at Kwaque’s feet in a corner. When Steward placed a chair for him at the table and invited him into it, he began to key up. Steward expected something of him, wanted him to show off. And it was not because of the showing off that he was eager, but because of his love for Steward. Love and service were one in the simple processes of Michael’s mind. Just as he would have leaped into fire for Steward’s sake, so would he now serve Steward in any way Steward desired. That was what love meant to him. It was all love meant to him – service.

“Waiter!” Steward called; and, when the waiter stood close at hand: “Two beers. – Did you get that, Killeny? Two beers.”

Michael squirmed in his chair, placed an impulsive paw on the table, and impulsively flashed out his ribbon of tongue to Steward’s close-bending face.

“He will remember,” Daughtry told the scow-schooner captain.

“Not if we talk,” was the reply. “Now we will fool your bow-wow. I will say that the job is yours when I smash Hanson. And you will say it is for me to smash Hanson now. And I will say Hanson must give me reason first to smash him. And then we will argue like two fools with mouths full of much noise. Are you ready?”

Daughtry nodded, and thereupon ensued a loud-voiced discussion that drew Michael’s earnest attention from one talker to the other.

“I got you,” Captain Jorgensen announced, as he saw the waiter approaching with but a single schooner of beer. “The bow-wow has forgot, if he ever remembered. He thinks you an’ me is fighting. The place in his mind for one beer, and two, is wiped out, like a wave on the beach wipes out the writing in the sand.”

“I guess he ain’t goin’ to forget arithmetic no matter how much noise you shouts,” Daughtry argued aloud against his sinking spirits. “An’ I ain’t goin’ to butt in,” he added hopefully. “You just watch ’m for himself.”

The tall, schooner-glass of beer was placed before the captain, who laid a swift, containing hand around it. And Michael, strung as a taut string, knowing that something was expected of him, on his toes to serve, remembered his ancient lessons on the Makambo, vainly looked into the impassive face of Steward for a sign, then looked about and saw, not two glasses, but one glass. So well had he learned the difference between one and two that it came to him – how the profoundest psychologist can no more state than can he state what thought is in itself – that there was one glass only when two glasses had been commanded. With an abrupt upspring, his throat half harsh with anger, he placed both forepaws on the table and barked at the waiter.

Captain Jorgensen crashed his fist down.

“You win!” he roared. “I pay for the beer! Waiter, bring one more.”

Michael looked to Steward for verification, and Steward’s hand on his head gave adequate reply.

“We try again,” said the captain, very much awake and interested, with the back of his hand wiping the beer-foam from his moustache. “Maybe he knows one an’ two. How about three? And four?”

“Just the same, Skipper. He counts up to five, and knows more than five when it is more than five, though he don’t know the figures by name after five.”

“Oh, Hanson!” Captain Jorgensen bellowed across the bar-room to the cook of the Howard. “Hey, you square-head! Come and have a drink!”

Hanson came over and pulled up a chair.

“I pay for the drinks,” said the captain; “but you order, Daughtry. See, now, Hanson, this is a trick bow-wow. He can count better than you. We are three. Daughtry is ordering three beers. The bow-wow hears three. I hold up two fingers like this to the waiter. He brings two. The bow-wow raises hell with the waiter. You see.”

All of which came to pass, Michael blissfully unappeasable until the order was filled properly.

“He can’t count,” was Hanson’s conclusion. “He sees one man without beer. That’s all. He knows every man should ought to have a glass. That’s why he barks.”

“Better than that,” Daughtry boasted. “There are three of us. We will order four. Then each man will have his glass, but Killeny will talk to the waiter just the same.”

True enough, now thoroughly aware of the game, Michael made outcry to the waiter till the fourth glass was brought. By this time many men were about the table, all wanting to buy beer and test Michael.

“Glory be,” Dag Daughtry solloquized. “A funny world. Thirsty one moment. The next moment they’d fair drown you in beer.”

Several even wanted to buy Michael, offering ridiculous sums like fifteen and twenty dollars.

“I tell you what,” Captain Jorgensen muttered to Daughtry, whom he had drawn away into a corner. “You give me that bow-wow, and I’ll smash Hanson right now, and you got the job right away – come to work in the morning.”

Into another corner the proprietor of the Pile-drivers’ Home drew Daughtry to whisper to him:

“You stick around here every night with that dog of yourn. It makes trade. I’ll give you free beer any time and fifty cents cash money a night.”

It was this proposition that started the big idea in Daughtry’s mind. As he told Michael, back in the room, while Kwaque was unlacing his shoes:

“It’s this way Killeny. If you’re worth fifty cents a night and free beer to that saloon keeper, then you’re worth that to me.. and more, my son, more. ’Cause he’s lookin’ for a profit. That’s why he sells beer instead of buyin’ it. An’, Killeny, you won’t mind workin’ for me, I know. We need the money. There’s Kwaque, an’ Mr. Greenleaf, an’ Cocky, not even mentioning you an’ me, an’ we eat an awful lot. An’ room-rent’s hard to get, an’ jobs is harder. What d’ye say, son, to-morrow night you an’ me hustle around an’ see how much coin we can gather?”

And Michael, seated on Steward’s knees, eyes to eyes and nose to nose, his jowls held in Steward’s hand’s wriggled and squirmed with delight, flipping out his tongue and bobbing his tail in the air. Whatever it was, it was good, for it was Steward who spoke.

CHAPTER XVIII

The grizzled ship’s steward and the rough-coated Irish terrier quickly became conspicuous figures in the night life of the Barbary Coast of San Francisco. Daughtry elaborated on the counting trick by bringing Cocky along. Thus, when a waiter did not fetch the right number of glasses, Michael would remain quite still, until Cocky, at a privy signal from Steward, standing on one leg, with the free claw would clutch Michael’s neck and apparently talk into Michael’s ear. Whereupon Michael would look about the glasses on the table and begin his usual expostulation with the waiter.

But it was when Daughtry and Michael first sang “Roll me Down to Rio” together, that the ten-strike was made. It occurred in a sailors’ dance-hall on Pacific Street, and all dancing stopped while the sailors clamoured for more of the singing dog. Nor did the place lose money, for no one left, and the crowd increased to standing room as Michael went through his repertoire of “God Save the King,” “Sweet Bye and Bye,” “Lead, Kindly Light,” “Home, Sweet Home,” and “Shenandoah.”

It meant more than free beer to Daughtry, for, when he started to leave, the proprietor of the place thrust three silver dollars into his hand and begged him to come around with the dog next night.

“For that?” Daughtry demanded, looking at the money as if it were contemptible.

Hastily the proprietor added two more dollars, and Daughtry promised.

“Just the same, Killeny, my son,” he told Michael as they went to bed, “I think you an’ me are worth more than five dollars a turn. Why, the like of you has never been seen before. A real singing dog that can carry ’most any air with me, and that can carry half a dozen by himself. An’ they say Caruso gets a thousand a night. Well, you ain’t Caruso, but you’re the dog-Caruso of the entire world. Son, I’m goin’ to be your business manager. If we can’t make a twenty-dollar gold-piece a night – say, son, we’re goin’ to move into better quarters. An’ the old gent up at the Hotel de Bronx is goin’ to move into an outside room. An’ Kwaque’s goin’ to get a real outfit of clothes. Killeny, my boy, we’re goin’ to get so rich that if he can’t snare a sucker we’ll put up the cash ourselves ’n’ buy a schooner for ’m, ’n’ send him out a-treasure-huntin’ on his own. We’ll be the suckers, eh, just you an’ me, an’ love to.”

* * * * *

The Barbary Coast of San Francisco, once the old-time sailor-town in the days when San Francisco was reckoned the toughest port of the Seven Seas, had evolved with the city until it depended for at least half of its earnings on the slumming parties that visited it and spent liberally. It was quite the custom, after dinner, for many of the better classes of society, especially when entertaining curious Easterners, to spend an hour or several in motoring from dance-hall to dance-hall and cheap cabaret to cheap cabaret. In short, the “Coast” was as much a sight-seeing place as was Chinatown and the Cliff House.

It was not long before Dag Daughtry was getting his twenty dollars a night for two twenty-minute turns, and was declining more beer than a dozen men with thirsts equal to his could have accommodated. Never had he been so prosperous; nor can it be denied that Michael enjoyed it. Enjoy it he did, but principally for Steward’s sake. He was serving Steward, and so to serve was his highest heart’s desire.

In truth, Michael was the bread-winner for quite a family, each member of which fared well. Kwaque blossomed out resplendent in russet-brown shoes, a derby hat, and a gray suit with trousers immaculately creased. Also, he became a devotee of the moving-picture shows, spending as much as twenty and thirty cents a day and resolutely sitting out every repetition of programme. Little time was required of him in caring for Daughtry, for they had come to eating in restaurants. Not only had the Ancient Mariner moved into a more expensive outside room at the Bronx; but Daughtry insisted on thrusting upon him more spending money, so that, on occasion, he could invite a likely acquaintance to the theatre or a concert and bring him home in a taxi.

“We won’t keep this up for ever, Killeny,” Steward told Michael. “For just as long as it takes the old gent to land another bunch of gold-pouched, retriever-snouted treasure-hunters, and no longer. Then it’s hey for the ocean blue, my son, an’ the roll of a good craft under our feet, an’ smash of wet on the deck, an’ a spout now an’ again of the scuppers.

“We got to go rollin’ down to Rio as well as sing about it to a lot of cheap skates. They can take their rotten cities. The sea’s the life for us – you an’ me, Killeny, son, an’ the old gent an’ Kwaque, an’ Cocky, too. We ain’t made for city ways. It ain’t healthy. Why, son, though you maybe won’t believe it, I’m losin’ my spring. The rubber’s goin’ outa me. I’m kind o’ languid, with all night in an’ nothin’ to do but sit around. It makes me fair sick at the thought of hearin’ the old gent say once again, ‘I think, steward, one of those prime cocktails would be just the thing before dinner.’ We’ll take a little ice-machine along next voyage, an’ give ’m the best.