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Roy Glashan's Library
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"YOU are quite wrong, my dear fellow," said Don Pablo. "It isn't only a case of trade, and jealousy at British prosperity; we have a much heavier count against you than that. You won't keep your fingers out of our politics. All our South and Central American revolutions are schemed out in your blessed England—most of them are financed in London—and yet you pestilential meddling islanders wonder why we hate you. You don't care a bit what you do, as long as there's a chance of making money out of it. And then you're so indecently reckless. 1 knew a man once, the master of a little tramp steamer, who successfully tackled a Central American revolution absolutely single-handed. He went into the business at five minutes' notice, without even knowing the language of the country; and he disorganised the movements of the two immense political parties to such an extent, that a third party sprang up and swept the board whilst the others were gasping with astonishment."
"A clever man," said I. "An Englishman, you say?"
"Yes, an Englishman. And he wasn't clever either. He was just woodenly reckless and plucky."
"Some soldier of fortune, I suppose? Some broke army man—"
"He was nothing of the kind. We could have stood it better if he had been anybody respectable. He was a little dried-up man of forty, with a red head and a red peaked beard. He was master of a small, old, ramshackle steamer; and he had come into our port with a cargo of hides, I think it was, or anyway, something equally impolite; and he was too insignificant for anyone to take any notice of. His name was Kettle, but of course the tale wouldn't interest you, because—
"Wait a bit; I rather think that you're talking of a man I know. Captain Owen Kettle, was it; and did you ever catch him making poetry?"
"That's the man; poetry or war, he delighted in them both; and his verses were absolutely the most drivelling I ever had thrown at me. But how came you," Don Pablo asked suspiciously, "to know the blackguard?"
I laughed. "We foregathered in quite another corner of the seas, and he tried to shoot me. What we disagreed about was neither poetry nor politics; but I'll tell you about that afterwards. How did you get mixed up with him?"
"Well, you see," said Don Pablo drily, "it was my own native Republic that he saw fit to meddle with. I was not in residence at the time that Kettle made his coup; to be accurate, they'd forced me into exile; but various reasons made me take a great interest in the matter, and I had all the scenes painted to me by one person and another with much vividness."
He broke off and smiled reminiscently, watching the fireflies shedding their crumbs of light as they danced in and out of the long aisle of the piazza. I got up and opened a new tin of cigarettes, and placed them on the arm of his long chair. He helped himself meditatively. I didn't disturb him, and he lay there quietly with his tobacco for forty minutes. Then he looked dreamily out into the warm Southern darkness, and spoke:
"I shouldn't like Captain Kettle harmed," he said tentatively.
"I'd sooner wreck myself than injure him intentionally."
"Well, then, if I tell you about him, all you've got to do is just to forget a few geographical names, and some dates, and then no trouble will be made. I'm saying this because I know you'll repeat the story. It's too good to keep in."
Don Pablo broke off, and laughed to himself softly. "Do you know, the beggar actually did with his own single pair of hands what a whole Congressist army had been trying to do for six continuous months? He captured the President! Yes, sir, seized the man in the middle of all his troops, ran him off to sea, and held him there a prisoner till, as I say, the revolution was settled in a way which no one expected.
"Now I don't want to give you the idea that from start to finish the whole thing was a merely commercial speculation on Kettle's part. Money had a good deal to do with it, that goes without saying, but it was the sheer insolence of the idea which gave him his first appetite for it. He had come in from the North, and a guard-ship met him outside and told him that it was dangerous to go into the harbour, because there was fighting going on every day, and shots were crossing the quays and the water in every direction.
"Kettle said that was no concern of his; he was consigned to that port, and he was going in; and if anybody knocked bits off his steamboat his consul would make them pay for it. The boarding officer from the guard-ship shrugged his shoulders, thought him a fool, and got back into his boat; and Kettle rang on his engines to "Full Ahead." Nothing happened. The crew didn't see the force of being peppered, and refused to lift a hand. They were in a state of passive mutiny."
"That was no new experience for Red Kettle," said I.
"He was quite ready for the emergency," Don Pablo retorted. "His crew hated him so much that he'd had three outbreaks with them already since they'd signed on, and in consequence he'd acquired the habit of carrying loaded weapons ready to hand in his jacket pockets. He'd not even a brace of truculent mates to help him; they were disaffected like the rest; and it was himself against every soul on board.
"Any ordinary human being would have subsided before the force of such a combination. Kettle didn't. He faced it with a scorching tongue and his pistols, and he got his own way. He cowed the men on deck, and then sat himself on the coaming of the engine-room skylight, and potted at his engineers.
He cowed the men on deck.
They threw up their hands after three shots, and gave her the steam, and the little old tramp was brought into harbour through a brisk cross-fire from the revolutionists, and moored in very quick time. There were a good many narrow escapes, but no man on board of her was hurt. The members of her crew were not, however, properly thankful for their sound skins, but they were thoroughly anxious to murder Captain Owen Kettle.
"Well, our little devil of a skipper sticks a fresh cigar into his mouth, puts on clean white clothes, and goes ashore to see his consignee. The consignee," said Don Pablo, thoughtfully, "was not a man who showed up much in politics. He announced openly that he took no side with either party. But he knew which bit of his bread was buttered, and when he saw his way to a sound speculation, he didn't stop much to think, because it happened to be outside his usual groove. I guess he was just a man of business, of the thoroughly go-a-head type. He offered Kettle a return cargo. 'The freights are good,' said he, 'but it's dangerous stuff to get on board.'
"'I'd load up with Old Nick's gridirons,' said Kettle, 'if you put 'em down on the wharf beside my derricks, and offered me a paying freight. I'm not sweet on clearing from here in ballast What's your cargo?'
"'It's comparatively small in bulk,' said the merchant, 'but it isn't stuff you can haul through the streets on a dray.'
"Captain Kettle sat down upon a corner of the table and helped himself to a cigar. 'Something to be smuggled, you mean?' said he. 'Well, that bounces up the freight at once. Is there any chance of the forts having a pot at us if we go out?'
"'Every chance if they knew what you've got on board. So I suppose,' said the merchant (who knew his man), 'that frightens you off the bargain?'
"'If I chose to go out,' said Kettle, 'not all the forts in your blessed republic should stop my trying. It's my crew I was thinking of. The beasts are fit to eat me already; they'll try and do it if they hear of this new game; and if I've to fight the lot of them, I've got to be paid for it. So now name your figure.'
"'Wait a bit. You've got to hear more about the business first, and at the same time I've to be very careful what I say.'
"'Oh, don't mind me.'
"'Well, you said just now you'd take Old Nick's batterie de cuisine.... You see it isn't that.... It's a man we want you to get on board.'
"'To kidnap? Well, offer me a big enough price, and point out your man.'
"The merchant considered a minute. Then he said, in a low voice: 'There's two thousand pounds if you get him clear of the harbour, and a hundred for every day we ask you to keep him at sea. But it's a risky job, and although the money's sure enough, maybe you'd be frightened when you knew '
"'Yes,' said Kettle, 'I'm the right sort of man to be frightened, aren't I? We'll call that a bargain, Señor. I'd carry off Old Nick himself out of his kitchen on those terms. But I'd like to see them down on a slip of paper with your name written to them over a charter party stamp.'
"But to that the merchant would not consent, and it was agreed that he was to send an agent on board the Parakeet with the hard cash in his pocket ready to deliver; and after that detail had been comfortably settled, the merchant leant forward, and in a whisper disclosed the name of the victim. It was no less a person than the President of the Republic!
"Kettle, brazen little ruffian though he was, was plainly staggered by the name; but the merchant knew his man. 'Ah,' he said, 'but, of course, the job's too big for you.'
"'I haven't said so,' replied Kettle. 'I must have ballast, coal, and the money put on board my steamboat; and when it's there I'll ship your President.'
"'Yes, but how do I know that you will do that?'
"'I'm telling you now. You must take my word for it, my son, or do the other thing. This is a matter to be arranged by word of mouth. You yourself objected to a written agreement and a charter party stamp. Only thing is, I'm going to have a man with that money on board before I move. Otherwise you might forget to pay me, and I'd be left. You can't realise on a Central American President outside his own bit of land. He isn't like Australian mutton, that will fetch its threepence a pound 'most everywhere.'
"'I could give you a quotation,' said the merchant tentatively, 'for that man at so much a pound, delivered—er—cold, which would astonish you.'
"Kettle threw his cigar violently into the street below. 'Have you?' he cried, 'you'd better take care what you say. Do you take me for a brute who'd cut a man's throat in cold blood? Have you? Do you know I'm an Englishman? You'd better treat me with proper respect.'
"'Then,' said the merchant, a good deal taken aback, 'am I to understand that the bargain's off, and to consider that nothing's been said?'
"'You can consider what you choose,' said Kettle unpleasantly. 'But I can tell you this: if I don't have my chance given me of carrying out my share of it, I'll go to the Yankee consulate and blow the whole yarn. And you bet they'll believe it and make the most of it. The consul will see his way to figuring as the hero of the American papers for the next two weeks, and he'd hatch up trouble with half creation for less than that.'
"The merchant shuddered. 'Well,' he said, 'it appears you intend to see this matter through whether I like it or not. The only thing is, Captain, if you do happen to come to grief, I should take it as a great favour if you'd keep my name out of the business. You see I'm a married man with a family, and it would cause people I care about a good deal of pain if I was taken out into the public streets and shot.'
"'Oh, certainly,' said Captain Kettle, 'I'm always quite ready to oblige. And if you don't mind, I'll just take another of these cigars of yours.'"
DON PABLO broke off and smiled reminiscently, and a servant with noiseless feet came out on to the piazza to take away the coffee cups and liqueur glasses.
"Yes?" I said when we were alone once more with the fireflies and the darkness.
"That little countryman of yours was really a marvellous person. The President was away up country arranging for a battle and a siege during the next week, and so, as nothing could be done, Kettle sat in his chart house and wrote poetry, whilst the peons tipped shingle ballast into the Parakeet's holds. I saw the poetry, and it fairly made me gasp. You know what the man is?"
"I can sincerely say that he is the most thoroughly-paced little ruffian that ever hazed a crew."
Don Pablo nodded.
"He is a man who for years has carried his life in his hand, and has never gone to sleep on board ship without a probability of waking with a cut throat. But you should have seen that poetry! Anyone would have expected it to be full of fights, and gunpowder, and melodrama generally. But not a bit of it. One piece was a serenade to a lady with eyebrows; in another he eulogised the 'glowing scarlet of the grain,' presumably from a railway view of poppies in a corn field; and a third was a hymn as full of religion and doggerel as its writer was crammed with truculence.
"It seems that the man was an ardent chapel-goer when he was at home, and, as he had never been in the country, his one ambition in life was to turn farmer and never look upon the sea again. However, when the time came for action, he was quite ready to put away his drivelling manuscript and get to work, and within twelve hours of the President's return, Kettle had got him on board, and was calmly steaming past the harbour forts out to sea.
"His method succeeded from its sheer impudence. He called at the palace just as the clocks struck midnight, and demanded to see the President. He was asked his business. 'I have got something to show his worship,' said he, and refused to explain further. So he got his audience, and then proceeded to clear everybody else out of the room. 'I must see your worship alone,' said he, and when the President replied in his own tongue, he added, 'and you must speak English; I have no Spanish.'
"The President, who was very tired, naturally wanted to know his errand, but Kettle flatly refused to tell it. 'I shall speak only to your worship alone,' said he; 'and if you insist on a third person being present, you'll miss something that'll change your life. I guess my news will make about the most thrilling communication you ever listened to.'
"For a minute the President hesitated; a good many attempts had been made to assassinate him of late; but then he remembered that Kettle was an alien, and came of a race which is not addicted to that sort of thing; and after that he gave way. He sent his secretaries and aide-de-camp out of the room, and asked Kettle to state his business as briefly as possible.
"'Quite so,' said the little man. 'I don't want to keep your worship here another minute. I'm under contract to take you on my steamboat for a cruise, and as the freight offered is good, I don't want to miss the job. You will kindly keep your arms folded as they are now. It would annoy me very much if I had to shoot you.'
"You will kindly keep your arms folded as they are now."
"The President was no fool. He saw that he had to deal with a man who was quite cool and entirely reckless, and he was soldier enough to know at a glance that Kettle's revolver was not in the grip of amateur fingers. So he said: 'This is very unprecedented, señor,' and set himself on to talk so as to gain time. He was wakeful enough then, poor man.
"But Captain Owen Kettle cut him short with very meagre ceremony. 'I must ask your worship to come with me at once,' said he. 'My engineers have got steam up, and I cannot afford to waste coal. You have a pistol on you.'
"'In my hip pocket.'
"Kettle went round, dived a hand respectfully beneath the frock coat-tail, and removed it. 'Your worship will kindly put on your hat, and take my left arm. I shall have my right hand—and this Smith and Wesson—inside my coat breast, so; and if you make it needful, I'll shoot you stone dead through the cloth. Your worship quite understands?'
"'Your explanation's clear, captain. May I ask what your steamer is?'
"'The Parakeet.'
"'Then you are the gentleman who shot a mutinous quartermaster from the upper bridge a week ago outside this port, and fired on your engineers from the skylight till they let steam into the engines?'
"Kettle nodded. 'But I wasn't trying to hit my chief,' he explained, 'or he wouldn't be alive now. I was only scaring him on to his duty. No, sir; I'm not a man that ever misses a shot when I lift a gun: shoot and write poetry, these are the things I can do: and I'll ask you to come with me right now without any further waiting.'
"'You want me to go out of the palace on your arm, walk unescorted through the streets of this city, and then put off to sea in your steamer? My dear sir, you seem to forget that I am President of this country, and that all my movements are carefully mapped out for me.'
"'Quite so,' said Kettle. 'I'm mapper.'
"'I admit you hold one key to the situation, señor, but perhaps you will suggest how I am to explain to my officers and friends this sudden sweeping change of plan?'
"'No,' said the little man, 'that's a thing I can offer no suggestion on. As a liar, I'm the biggest failure you could find. And, besides, I don't know a word of the language. But your worship is a politician, and so I can leave explanations confidently to you. The only thing is,' he added significantly, 'I should advise square dealing, because if you try to give the show away whilst we're getting back to my steamboat, it's a certain fact that you'll go to your own funeral, whatever happens to me.'
"'And if I go with you submissively to the Parakeet, what afterwards?'
"'Your worship shall be fed like a prince, whilst you're on board of me. You shall have the best of everything, and no stint. You shall have pickles with every meal. And when I'm done with you—if there's been no attempt at interfering with me—I'll set you ashore with a railway fare in your pocket, and not an inch of your skin harmed. But, by James, if you put one of your warships on my track, I'll shoot you like a rat. And that,' he added with a sigh, 'is a thing I've no wish to do. I've took a sort of liking to your worship. And now I must ask you to come without further talk. My steamboat's waiting all ready. I can't afford to have her waste more coal.'
"'Well!' said the President ruefully, 'I see no way of avoiding your invitation. Permit me to take your arm, Captain Kettle. It is a pity you do not understand Spanish. As it is, you will miss one of the prettiest pieces of fiction a man ever composed to deliberately bring about his own ruin.'
"The Parakeet steamed eighty miles out to sea, and there lay-to with banked fires.
"The passenger and Captain Kettle inhabited the chart house, and through the doorways there came at intervals strains of music squeezed forth from an accordion, and accompanied by the human voice. The voice varied; sometimes the President sang, and sometimes Captain Kettle, but it was always Kettle who drew from the accordion its unwilling notes. It turned out that the stolen President was a maker of verse himself, and as he affected a profound admiration for his captor's own poems, that little ruffian's heart warmed towards him.
it was always Kettle who drew from the accordion its unwilling notes.
"'Your worship,' he would say, 'if I'd known you were a man like this, darn me if I'd ever have carried you off.'
"But when the President suggested restitution as the best recompense. Kettle would shake his head. 'No, senor,' he would say; 'a bargain's a bargain. I gave my word to a man ashore, and as long as he keeps his faith with me, your worship's got to stay here.' At which the President would sigh, and ask Kettle to favour him with more melody.
"And so matters went on for a week, and the Parakeet swung gently over the swells, and diffused the scent of paint over the plains of ocean. But at the end of a week, the face of the matter changed. Kettle had his usual morning's interview with the agent, and that worthy asked for a pen and the ink-pot.
"'For what?' asked Kettle suspiciously.
"The agent confessed his inability to make further cash payments, but said airily that his cheque was in every way as good,
"Kettle stood up and stepped to the chart-house door. 'Ah!' he said, 'then I'll be getting under weigh to dump my passenger on dry land again. No payee, no keepee.'
"'But, señor Capitan,' the other retorted, 'you will have my signed promise to pay, and that is as good as gold any day.'
"'I hear you say it,' said Captain Kettle.
"'Señor, have you no gratitude? I have paid you in cash £2700 English already.'
"'Quite right. You handed me over £2000 for doing with one pair of hands a bit of a job which your whole blooming army failed at, and you paid me £100 a day for turning my steamboat into a common hotel. Well, sir, I'm going out of this public-house business right now without further talk, and I tell you I'm sorry I ever started in at it. If I'd known a week ago what I know now, I'd never have meddled at all. There's not a sweeter-natured man in all Central America than this President of yours. It seems I'm the brute that's pulled him off his perch; well, I'm going to put him up there once more; and if you don't hear him crowing again before three more days are over, it won't be my fault.'
"'But, Capitan,' pleaded the agent, 'consider—'
"'I've no more to say to you,' said Captain Kettle, and went out into the bridge deck. He passed word to the Chief Engineer; and the chief did what was needful; and an hour later the Parakeet was standing in again towards the coast.
"Now, Captain Owen Kettle," Don Pablo went on, "though possessed of the best intentions, had yet to learn that, though it may be difficult to upset, it is ten thousand times as hard to put straight again. He had completely disorganised all the political arrangements of a very considerable republic by a stroke of impudent recklessness; but such things do not bear repeating a second time.
"And, besides, whilst he and the Parakeet had been away, history had galloped. When he left shore, the Congressist party were in a tight place: the President's troops had pinned them. But when by this piece of kidnapping he decapitated the winning side, they were too paralysed by the shock to follow up their advantage; and as the Congressists had not the nerve to turn the opportunity to account, a third person stepped in and got the country nicely within his grip before the other contending factions quite knew what had happened.
"The novelty of the new-comer's promises came as a pleasing stimulant to the jaded nerves of the citizens, and as most of them flocked to his standard at once, the rest followed for fear of being got at by a pronunciamento. I guess," said Don Pablo complacently, "it was the most unlooked for and the most satisfactory ending the Republic has ever seen to any of its revolutions. Don't you think yourself it was neat?"
I nodded.
"And what became of Kettle's President?" I asked.
"Oh, he wasn't allowed to land. The State's warship made for the Parakeet directly she appeared off the port, and forbade her entrance. Kettle took the wheel himself, rang on his engines to 'Full ahead,' and tried to ram her; but that time his crew had got such a solid scare rubbed into them that they mutinied in real earnest.
"Kettle used his revolver viciously, and there were casualties; but the crew got their own way at last, and, indeed, the President backed them up. He was quite sensible enough to see that he could do no earthly good by getting ashore then. So the Parakeet was escorted under the guns of the warship five hundred miles from the port; after which they dipped flags, and parted.
"Captain Kettle I have lost sight of since, and am not remarkably anxious to meet again. He is a trifle too uncertain in his manners to be altogether wholesome as an acquaintance. The President I did hear of. He made his way to Paris and set up as a teacher of languages. I believe he is doing rather well at it."
"And who," I asked, "was the man who made use of the psychological moment and grabbed the republic whilst the other two parties were gasping?"
Don Pablo rose to his feet and laughed. "Come inside," he said, "and have a whisky and soda, and he will drink your health."
"What, you?" I said.
"Why not? I was very anxious to taste the sweets of Presidency then. Maybe I have learned wisdom since."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.