Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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MR. MCTODD took a piece of wet cotton waste from his pocket and held it over the charcoal brazero to dry. "Fancy meeting you again," he repeated.
"You've said that twenty times already," said Captain Kettle ungraciously. "Try and think of something new."
"I will, man, I will. Don't hustle me. I'm in a very nervous and exhausted state, and need nutriment. Pass the jimmy john. This sour blue wine's poor tipple for a throat of my strength; but it's better than Atlantic seawater, anyway. And the aguardiente is done. You don't think your credit is good enough to get us another bottle of aguardiente, Skipper? Come now, one bottle among nine of us?"
"You'll have no more, Mac, and I'm telling you that for the tenth time at least. I asked you to think of something new?"
"Weel, man," said the engineer, "I'll give ye an observation. Here's me, come new out of the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, with a boatload of the things they call sailors and firemen in England; and here's you, in a little, single cylinder, low pressure, small tonnage Spanish seaport town. We come together by an accident we'd call a lie if we heard it sung about in a music-hall, and I must say I'm not pleased to see you. I'm no' a man o' what ye might call much commercial aptitude mysel'; but when I've been in your company, and that's more times now than one or two, there's always been bad luck and tight belts to follow. There's humour in the situation if ye look at it rightly."
"Don't associate yourself with me, if you please, Mr. McTodd. I've handled you before, you dissolute mechanic, and we know who's the better man; but, by James, if you've forgotten, just mention it again, and I'll teach you afresh. Otherwise, please remember I'm going to have the respect that's due to me."
"Well," said McTodd briskly, "that's an invitation ye don't catch me saying 'no' to. But, man, of the 'all-in' variety, ye're a bonny fighter, and I'd like to do justice to ye. To-night I'm suffering from the effects of exposure and privation, and the poor blue ink in this jimmyjohn does me very little material good. I'm cold, too, and starved. I wish they'd a stove or a fire in this public, or a nice hot steam-pipe to dry one's clothes on. A bit charcoal dish like that on the floor is sheer ridiculousness for a man of my measurements."
"I've done my best for you."
"Man, I'm no' grumbling at that part of your hospitality. When I take myself off to bed presently—and the jimmyjohn's nearly done—the blankets will dry my clothes fine, and by morning, after a bite of breakfast, and a wee dram just to ward off the malaria, I'll be ready for the scrap, either here among the furniture, or outside in the street, just as you please."
With an effort, Kettle bit down his temper. "The sea's spit you out, Mr. McTodd, and I'm not surprised at it. Even the Atlantic Ocean is too nice in its tastes to swallow all that's offered to it. I'll leave you over till to-morrow morning, and if you're not civil then, I'll break you up in a style that will astonish you." He turned and faced the rest of the men with a glow of anger. "And if the rest of you swine who sit sniggering there care to chip in, I'll break you up, too, without extra charge. Just remember this, you scum: There's not a man living I allow to laugh at me, and whether I happen to be at sea, or ashore at a fonda in Spain, that makes no difference. So take that in your ugly mouths and chew on it."
The little sailor waited for retorts, but got none. There was something in that lean, savage face of his which forbade liberties. But he did not stay longer in the room. After this reasonable wait, to prove that he was not afraid of the lot of them together, he pushed open the door against the wind, went out into the cobbled street, and shut the door behind him.
The night overhead was bright with wind-blown stars, and through the narrow streets a fine patter of sand blew from the dunes beyond the harbor. The gale had scared away the garlic smell, and had left in its place a taint of salt and seaweed, just then most savoury to Kettle's nostrils. His last disastrous months had been spent up-country in Spain, in the vain attempt to extort employment either from the Government agents or from the Carlists. In his final desperate, financial straits the sea, in some mysterious way, had dragged him back to herself, and in his then mood the atmosphere of even this small coast village came to him as a pleasant tonic.
He walked down on to the beach, and stood under the lee of a green-painted fishing felucca. He lifted up his face to the dying gale, and sniffed it appreciatively. "Same old smell," he commented. "Well, I've tasted you many a time, but you're good to get back to. After these beastly Dagos, anything is better." He turned and shook a savage fist at the vague outline of the hills behind the village, beyond which lay the rest of Spain. "By James, if only I saw a chance of getting another job at sea!"
He faced the wind again, and watched on the water the dim green lights going north, and the dim red lights working south, each with a bright white light carried unwinkingly above it. The beach there lay alongside the steam lane between Ushant and the Straits, and the revolving light on the headland beyond was one of the many marks which vessels bound for the Mediterranean or the Canal pick up on their way from Ushant or the Bay ports. Each pair of lights represented a steamer, and each steamer (as poor Kettle woefully calculated) carried a master earning decent pay and occupying a respectable position. As to qualifications, he was as competent as any of them, and yet he stood on that strip of wind-swept sand out of employ, and without the least hope or prospect that any one would again hire him. He was a man utterly without interest. Indeed, in many quarters he had but to mention his name, and people were only too anxious to pass on the fact that he had been irrevocably blacklisted. By reason of very pressing domestic calls, too, he was a man just then who most strongly needed money.
For an hour he stood in the lee of that green-painted boat, cursing fate; and then a different mood came over him. He remembered that at home he was the leader, yes, and the founder of a sect. In a lonely pulpit in a Yorkshire valley he had preached resignation to the Divine will and a full belief in the tenets of the Wharfedale Particular Methodists. Among these last was the axiom that everything comes to those who pray, if only the prayer be sent upward with sufficient vigour.
There and then he lifted up a hand, and with tight-shut eyes faced the dark and windy skies.
The supplication was earnest, and it was long. Then, again the little sailor opened his eyes and faced the laborious sea. But this time it was with a robust faith.
He saw something out of the common, certainly, but it did not at first seem to promise either extravagant fortune, or even modest employ.
A steamer was heading in for the land, spitting an occasional flame, and glowing with rosy smoke. Every minute a rocket spouted from her, climbed up into the sky, and cracked into stars. All the time her siren boomed out in a husky baritone.
"Badly on fire," commented Kettle, "and can't get it under. They've made fast the whistle-string to the bridge-rail, and the captain's wondering whether He will have to leave Her. I wonder where I come in?"
The steamer drew nearer, and more near, and so far no one on the beach or in the little town seemed to have sighted her. Captain Kettle watched her with an eye of personal interest. "Seems to be on fire aft, and by the queer way she's steaming I should say she'd caught in the bunkers as well. What in thunder are they squalling for? They don't exactly think this village has a steam fire-float, I suppose, which will go out and swamp the blaze for them. Or is it that there's no one in charge? Is her captain ill or dead, and does she want another? Is that what she has been sent here for?" He reverently touched his cap—"I must go off and see."
At a run he set out back for the village, and presently was beating against the door of the fonda from which he had recently emerged. An indignant landlord presently opened to him—a man who only wished he could screw up courage just then for impudence.
Him Kettle pushed aside, and with a vigorous shoe applied himself to waking Mr. McTodd from his beauty sleep on the floor.
The engineer was not the safest person in the world to tackle just then. Wake he certainly did, and that with promptness, but the only thing which had arrived to his somewhat bemused brain was the fact that some one was attacking him; and so without rising from the floor he seized a chair by the leg, and used it with considerable vigour as a flail.
The ensuing crash and row aroused the rest of the men, and they, after the manner of their profession, were doing their best to take sides in the argument. But Kettle's tongue by this time had brought Mr. McTodd to his senses, and he thereupon sat up, and threw the balance of his chair in among his friends, with instructions to keep the peace.
"I'm no' just ready for yon scrap, Skipper, if that's what ye've come for. But if you call me a dissolute mechanic again, I'll get up before we're any older, and take my feet to you."
"I want you to rouse and come out, if you're not too drunk."
"Drunk! Me drunk! Man, must I keep on referring to your inhospitality? Sour blue ink such as they give here has no power to make a man with my coefficient of absorption even wutty. Moreover, we'd only a jimmyjohn of it, and if all hands didn't share equally, at least they can say they had as much as I thought was good for them. Ye'll ken, Skipper, with this poor blue ink."
"Rouse, you swine, and pick the sleep out of your ears. Can't you hear that whistle? There's a steamboat inshore, blowing for all she's worth, and shooting rockets. She's on fire, and well lit, and she wants help badly, and no one else seems inclined to give it."
The engineer jumped sharply to his feet. "There's our boat and us. Of course, the blessed Dagos in the village are all shamming sleep, in case they should be called upon to help. Come along, Skipper. Why couldn't you have said at once what was wanted, instead of starting off on the preach and wasting time?"
A gesticulating landlord, shrieking for the payment of his bill, was swept away from the door, and ten men (of seven different nationalities) scrambled into the night. They ran out through the narrow streets on to the beach. Kettle leading, McTodd stumbling along in the rear, and throwing stones at the innkeeper when he came within range.
The lifeboat in which Mr. McTodd and his companions had made their arrival from the vague Atlantic twelve hours before, lay there hauled up, and the thrifty Spaniards had looted her of all movable stores. But the returning crew were not particular or over-nice. They visited the fishing feluccas within reach, and gleaned all the oars and thole pins they wanted. Then they ran the boat down into the surf, and half of them waded to their necks to get her out.
Before them, lit by the light of her own burning, the steamer shouldered over the Atlantic rollers. But the roar of her siren was growing more faint, and McTodd, who was tugging at the stroke oar, with his head over his shoulder, soon diagnosed her case.
"They've been driven from the engine-room, and steam's run down, and she's out of command. She's on fire in the bunkers. Lift your nose, Captain, and smell that roasting coal. My whiskers, but she stinks just like a gas-house."
"They've let one boat catch," said Kettle, "and she's flaming away there in the davits. They've tried lowering the other, and she's gone down one end first, and swamped alongside. Rotten tackle, I guess, never renewed since she went to sea. Same old usual. By James! look at them dancing about there like a lot of monkeys on a hot stove lid. What sort of a putty man's skipper there? Does he pride himself on keeping no discipline?"
The boat, rowed strongly against wind and sea, closed at last with the burning steamer, and Kettle rounded her up against the quarter. A rope was thrown, and the bowman caught it, and took a turn, and she hung there in comparatively smooth water, as the steamer had fallen off into the trough, and made a lee. The frightened men above were all for jumping down to her at once, but Kettle, with the tiller out and over his shoulder, threatened to brain the first that came over the side, and the sight of the savage little face under the fire glare held them back. Then, tucking the tiller inside his coat, he caught another rope, jumped over, clapped his feet against the plating, and ran nimbly up to the rail, and stepped over on deck.
McTodd followed him, and the pair of them went coolly round and made inspection for themselves. Officers and crew of the burning steamer pressed round them, clamouring wildly; but after one had received McTodd's grimy, heavy, sledge-hammer fist in the jaw, without further explanation, there was no more hustling. As for Kettle, his savage face and the heavy tiller in his hand scared them all away from him with full completeness.
The pair of them made their leisurely inspection to the accompaniment of hissing water, booming wind, the roar of flame and the chatter of southern tongues, and then said McTodd: "Not much trouble dousing this small splutter, anyway, Skipper."
"You shut your blighted head," came the surprising retort. "Every living soul has got to leave this old packet within the next three minutes."
"But, man, do ye no' think of the salvage? As a spectacle, I'll admit she makes a surprising fine bonfire, though I'm ower sober to appreciate it. But if she's put out, it'll mean a fine large sum to us. Man, Kettle, if you're thinking these Dagos will pay for ferriage ashore, you're wrong. They'll no' fork out saxpence. And if you're thinking there's more easy time to be had ashore, you're wrong again there. I'm thinking our credit is exhausted at the pub, and I have it in mind that I broke the landlord's head with the last stone I fired at the beggar."
Kettle lifted the tiller and rushed. "By James, don't you try to keep me here haggling for your dirty saxpences! Into the boat with you, Mr. McTodd, and do your duty. By James, if you're asking me for a broken skull, you shall have one while you wait. Into the boat with you, and send down the rest of the scum first."
"Whiskers take the saxpences," said the engineer unpleasantly. "Don't you keep on flinging that in my face just because I'm Scottish. If you want to do the job for nothing, I'm the man to help you-" with which he drove the steamer's crew before him, and then down into the dancing lifeboat.
In the meanwhile Kettle, during the moment's respite, ran forward; and from the bows came the splash of an anchor, and the heavy roar of a cable rasping through a hawse-pipe. Then, with a jar it stopped, and the other noises drowned all comment.
Captain Kettle came flying down the rope, the last man into the boat, and the bow fast to which she rode was cast off. The next sea spurned her away, and once more her oars straddled out, and before the wind she swept away quickly for the beach.
She was heavy with men, and in the landing through the surf, partly swamped. But those from the steamer were quickly hustled out with small concern about their convenience, and the boat was hauled higher up on the beach.
"Now, then," Kettle shouted through the gale, "rock out the water."
"Water be beggared!" retorted McTodd. "Let her rot."
"She may rot as she chooses, once she's carried us back to that steamboat."
"What's that, man?"
"A deserted ship, Mr. McTodd, is worth to the salvors just eight times what a ship with men on her is worth. Now I should say that steamboat footed up to all of £50,000 when she left port, and if her cargo was valuable she might very well have touched £100,000. Did you think I was a fool?"
Mr. McTodd rubbed his scrubby beard, and then (as the idea came to him) burst into a cackle of laughter. "Oh, humorous, very humorous. Skipper, you're a great man. I take back what I said about being Scotch. Ye're as bad as a Dundee man at heart, and nearly as bad as an Aberdonian, and I love you for it. When it comes to that scrap of ours I'll deal lightly with you. Here, you coal heavers, get the water kicked out of that boat quick, or you'll have me to converse with next. That's our steamer over there, and we don't want her more badly burned than necessary."
The crew, who were not all of them English speakers, did not at first understand this new change of front, but neither Captain Owen Kettle nor Mr. Neil Angus McTodd was accustomed to waste breath in lengthy explanations to their underlings. The art of "driving" was one in which they both excelled, and presently the lifeboat lurched and reared again out through the surf, and was rowed out over the ugly seas to the steamer.
This time the matter of boarding was more difficult. The vessel had swung to her anchor, and lay pitching violently head-on to the seas. But Kettle drove the boat remorselessly alongside, and she was made fast, though at every heave the steamer threatened to come down bodily on the top of her. However, the men jumped as she rose, and once they were over the rail, the lifeboat was passed astern at the end of a long painter to plunge as violently as she chose.
Truth to tell, with the exception of Kettle and McTodd, they were all pleased enough to have the boat within reach. The steamer was a sufficiently terrifying spectacle; she roared with flame and vomited sickening smoke; she buckled and shimmered with heat; it seemed as though she might drop in pieces and founder any second. She had scared off her Spanish crew already, and the rank and file of the newcomers openly sympathized with them. There were only two English speakers among these. One expressed his dislike for a something "tea-party on the top of a very red blast furnace," and his exact words were pungent. The other said he didn't care where he went to when he died now, as the hot place couldn't be worse than this. From the rest came similar sentiments in different tongues. But for awhile they were allowed leisure to exchange these comments, and translate them for mutual benefit as well as they were able.
Kettle and McTodd were gasping and choking on the top platform of the engine-room. The technical man explained things.
"Steam's down, you see, Skipper, and so we can't have the pumps. You can hear by the slop and by the way she rolls she's half full of water already. The clumsy fools have let it get into the stokehold, and likely enough it's over the fire-bars this minute, and it's that that's chilled the boilers."
"P-f-f-f! No man could live down in that stokehold now in this heat."
"It's a matter of opeenion, and perhaps for demonstration. A fireman, and the engineer that drives him, is no' a man; he's a machine, or it should be his pride to make himself such, and rise superior to the effects of temperature. It's that, Skipper, that makes some of the profession suffer from a distressing thirst."
"We'll drop politics of that description, if you please, Mac. This steamboat has been sent directly for our benefit; we've got her all to ourselves; and it's our job to make her useful. At present she's neither more nor less than a bally frying-pan, with-out immediate commercial value, and very uncomfortable to live upon. Now, I'd an idea when we boarded her first that we could open a seacock and let her partly fill, and get rid of the fire that way. The blaze seemed to me low down. But that's out of the question. The seacocks will be down below there, and there's no getting at them through that heat and reek. There are no pumps on deck, of course. I see nothing for it but buckets."
"Weel, man, if that's as far as your intellect takes you, get your buckets rigged. But we've a saying in Ballindrochater, which is where I came from—my father was meenister there; I don't know whether I ever told you—we'd a saying that at a pinch a highly trained man was worth ten amateurs, and that's where I come in. They've a donkey boiler here at the far side of the fiddley, which a man can fire without being melted, and there'll be a pump attached to that which I think I can rig. So once you've got your bucket chain in action, get your hoses passed, and stand by for further results."
They separated at this, and went coughing through the smoke toward their various employments. By a happy chance the steamer was comparatively modern, and was, in fact, a typical small cargo tramp. She was steel built throughout—steel decks, steel masts, steel deck-houses. The few scraps of wood in her composition—forward of mid-ships—had charred, caught and flared away before her Spanish crew left her, and when Captain Kettle and his companions took her over, she was a mere box of glowing metal.
The seas outside hissed against her, and from her flanks, every time she rolled them under, arose a vast cloud of spluttering steam. Her decks, which were for the most part free from water, glowed with a dull-red heat, and a passage fore and aft was only obtained by a precarious climb along her bulwark rail.
Buckets, as it turned out, were not procurable, but sailor men have ingenuity, and vessels which would carry water were quickly contrived and found.
The most pressing need for the moment was the preservation of the fore hatch. The bunkers attended to themselves, but the worst of the cargo fire was below this, and if once the hatch covers were burnt off, the air would get in bodily, and the place would become a mere furnace. So Kettle rigged a derrick on to the rail to serve as a bridge across the glowing deck, and set his men to pour water on to this hatch. The ventilators to this hold had been burnt off, and the Spanish crew had made no effort to replace them, and, as a consequence, air got in through the gaps, and kept the blaze merrily alight.
Kettle's most difficult task was to plug these apertures. At first sight it seemed that he had no materials to do it with, and a red-hot deck to work upon; but the resourcefulness of the man was at its best just then. He looked upon this steamer as a special gift to him in answer to that fervid supplication of his on the beach, and he was straining every nerve and every fibre of his brain to prove himself worthy of the boon. Sometimes alone, sometimes with McTodd to help him, he kicked, and tore, and dismantled, till he had gathered enough metal work for the purpose, and then, slung in the bight of a rope above the red-hot deck, he fitted the covers in place, and cut off the fire from the open air. And still the bucket gang kept on baling.
Long ago day had sprung up bright and hot over the sea, and though the wind had dropped, a heavy swell still ran, and burst in a roar of surf on the beach. Crowds of country people stood among the fishing craft there, gaping at the spectacle, but no boat put off, and no signal fluttered an offer of help. The steamer which rolled dimly out there at her anchor in the heart of that cloud of steam and smoke did not attract them in the smallest, and if the English sailors (who had insulted the innkeeper, and still owed him a bill) thought good to occupy themselves with her, well, it was a matter for their own choice. It was one more proof of how mad these English were.
McTodd had a steam-pump running from the donkey boiler by this time, and for most of that day he was pumping the cool Atlantic down into the burning bunkers and forehold. Later on, when the fire eased somewhat, and the steamer was so low in the water that every other sea came bodily on board and she was in imminent danger of swamping, he altered the process, and drew his supplies from the bilge.
Mr. McTodd was made of iron, but the others were softer. The eight firemen and trimmers, who were much worn with their long boat trip even when they came on board, were utterly exhausted by this time, and for the most part slept. But they kept on baling just the same, and if one of them tumbled from his perch, the burn of the hot iron decks soon awakened him.
Indeed, burns were the common portion of all hands, and steam-scalds and the blackings of much' smoke. McTodd, perhaps, was not much changed in outward appearance; he was never, at his best, a smart man. But the spruce Captain Kettle was filled with disgust at his own appearance. He was as black as a chimney sweep, and his clothes were so charred that he was half naked as well. Even the thought that he was earning the wherewithal to provide many baths and much new raiment did not wholly console him. He was a man to whom uncleanliness gave acute physical discomfort.
As for meals, there was a water tank and a barrel of biscuit in the firemen's filthy quarters, aft in the counter, and to the former of these all hands applied with frequency. The biscuit they did not trouble much about just then.
Two long weary days they fought the fire, and got it in check; a third day, and it was plainly diminished; then, because both Kettle and McTodd were utterly exhausted and dropped off to sleep one after the other, efforts were slackened, and the fire gained; but on the fifth day they attacked it again with more savage vigour; and on the sixth day it was practically out.
During the last two days the late captain of the ship had come off in a fishing boat with various members of his crew, with the idea of again taking over possession, but Kettle would hold no parley with them. By his instructions they were pelted with belaying pins and other movables, and then, when they came within nearer range, some humorist turned the hose on them, which just then was pumping black, reeking water from the bilge.
The Spanish captain, who spoke English, shook a fist at Kettle, and called him a pirate. Kettle wagged a finger at the Spaniard, and spoke of his small attainments as a seaman, and made comments on his probable ancestry, and the defects in his bringing up.
"She was your steamer," said he, "and you found Her too hot for comfort. I didn't ask you to come off and stroll about shore, but once she was derelict I took her over, and put a man's work into her, and now she is salved you can bet your little life I am going to stick on to her till I touch my dividends."
The tired crew, so far as linguistic deficiencies permitted, enjoyed the episode thoroughly, and found it an agreeable interlude. As a finale, Mr. McTodd hit the dispossessed one on the head with an enormous lump of coal, which split like a shell and covered him with dust, and with that the boat rowed back for the beach.
"The dirtiest lampblack I've ever fired with," said McTodd. "You've to be using the coal slice to it every minute if you want to make steam. It's a pity it's all done, but I'm free to own it hurt my professional pride using it."
"What's that?" said Kettle sharply. "No coal?"
"Not enough to make up a packet of tooth powder from. I thought at least there'd be coke in the bunkers when she cooled down, but there's not; there's nothing but clinkers. I'm afraid, Skipper, you'll have to go ashore after all and wire for a tow-boat. It's a pity, after having dodged that innkeeper, to have to go near him again."
"Nothing of the sort. If you can't steam her, I'll sail her. As for the innkeeper, I'd have you know, Mr. McTodd, that I'm not a swindling Scotchman myself. That man shall have his account in full when I touch the salvage."
McTodd winked a grimy eyelid. "I bet that Spanish skipper would think it a very humorous observation if you were to tell him just now that you were not Scotch."
"Eh, what's that?"
"Oh, very humorous," chuckled McTodd, and stepped inside the engine-room again.
The steamer's anchor was lifted by hand, and under two trysails and two staysails she started on her way down alongside the brown hills of the Portuguese coast for Gibraltar. By degrees other sails were brought out, and with palm and needle, awnings and weather cloths were made into still other sails. Some were set on the funnel; others were set with derricks for yards; and each helped to add some fraction of a knot to her pace.
The vessel in her new garb presented a sufficiently fantastic appearance, and other vessels, as they passed, observed her through their glasses, and hoisted sarcastic comments in the commercial code of signals. Time after time Kettle turned these up in the signal-book, and swore as he worked out the meaning. As a result he presently turned the vessel out of the steam lane, and let her wallow along a lonely course of her own.
Another man would have worked her into the Tagus as the most convenient port on the Portuguese coast; and McTodd, who distrusted anything but steam, was all for this. Kettle was a steamer sailor, too, and the slowness of his present means of progression irritated him. But his distrust for the Spaniard and the Portugee outweighed all these considerations. True he would find a British consul ashore in these towns, but even this did not influence; him. He had no ready cash, which was the one necessity—so far as his observation travelled—to win a "Dago" lawsuit. He had got the ship—a boon specially sent to him—and in pure thankfulness he ought to make the best of her. Gibraltar was the nearest British port, and although the Rock scorpions have an unsavoury reputation for fleecing the stranger, to Gibraltar he intended to take his prize for realization.
So the old Frying-pan, as they had begun to name her, waddled down the Spanish and Portuguese coasts, anchoring when the wind headed her, making her twenty-five to thirty knots a day when all was prosperous. She nearly drifted on to the Burlings in a calm, but had no other adventure, and in due time she turned into the Straits. She was taken in charge by the current there, just missed being swept into the Mediterranean, and finally blew leisurely up to an anchorage among the coal hulks.
She lay there, one brilliant mass of fleckless red rust, and a swarm of chattering boats flocked round her. There is no creature in the world more profuse in his offers of help than your Scorpion—if he thinks he will get overpaid for it.
And now Kettle's real worries began. The Frying-pan was without provisions, and he was without money, and he had to raise funds at a ruinous rate of interest He had no reliable assistant; once the strain was off, Mr. McTodd thirsted to be ashore. He had a friend, it appeared, a tavern-keeper over in the Spanish Lines, with whom he had left an unfinished argument; the thing could be settled in a couple of days; and he didn't see why he shouldn't go, especially as Kettle refused to be convivial on board, even though whiskey in Gibraltar paid no duty. The firemen, too, were the usual shiftless lot who could not be trusted an inch.
However, he managed to get a cable off to the steamer's owners, and they with promptness replied that they had handed her over to the insurance company.
He applied next to the insurance company for full salvage, and then came delays. But, finally, their surveyor arrived, and was vastly impressed with the rust and ruin which was frankly displayed all over the boat, and by the next mail came an announcement that the company would hand over the steamer herself to the salvors as full satisfaction of their claims.
Captain Kettle could have danced with rage at his disappointment. It was cash he wanted, and immediate cash at that. He had claims at home. He had pressing claims in Gibraltar, where credit is peculiarly short. And there he was, with that very unsalable thing upon his hands, a gutted steamboat of uncertain ancestry.
But to him in this extremity came a certain Rock Scorpion of his former acquaintance, and made an offer.
There was, to begin with, much beating about the bush, and, finally, the man said: "Well, Capitan, you must not be too particular. You must not aska too many questions."
"I ask no questions at all. I have named a price, and cash is what I want. If Old Nick was setting up a navy, and applied for the ship, and would pay for her, I would sell to him."
The Scorpion was visibly moved. "Who said about a navy? Somebody has splita."
"Rats! Let your hair alone. Don't you try any of your play-acting on me. If you want to buy, say so at once, and bring out your cash. If not, please get a move on you, and go down into your boat. Come, now, Solomon, which is it?"
The Scorpion did not like this brusque treatment, but he recognized that this little man would not stand any further trifling. He brought out a fat pocket-book, and showed a sheaf of limp peseta notes.
"How's thata?"
"Thousands and hundreds, are they? Let's see, the exchange is about 34.15 to the pound sterling. Let's see. H'm. There's about £1,090 in that package."
"Take them, Capitan, take them. I wish to do you a good turn. I am your fellow subject. Take them."
"For my steamer? Not likely, you thief."
"But I give you bills for the rest. Don't you understand that I buy steamer at your own figure?"
"Useful sort of thing a bill backed by you would be to realize on."
"But, Capitan, you do not understand. I am agent. There can be no other backer to the bilk. It is politics."
"Call it highway robbery and you'll be nearer the mark. Think I've been in Gib. all these times without finding out what a Scorpion is yet, Solomon?"
The man wrung his hands.
"But, Capitan, you want to sell steamer?"
"And you want to buy."
"Then let us agree. I do not want to rob you. I am most honest man, and we together are fellow subjects of Britannia. Here, take the eleven hundred and twenty pounds—the exchange is just a little different from what you said—and for the rest you shall not hand over the ship's papers till it is paid. You shall stay on board and take care of her till she is ours."
"Now you're talking. Give me the notes."
"Shall I take them and put them to your credit at our bank? We have a pretty good bank, my brother and I, and allow you liberal interest—say eight per cent. More than you get in England!"
Captain Kettle winked a sharp eye.
"Not one peseta, Solomon. I shall deal out their shares to the rest of the crew, pay a public house bill that is owing, and Mrs. Kettle will have my bit remitted to her by the next mail. Hullo, Mac!"
Mr. McTodd came into the ruined chart-house and leaned up against a rusty wall. "You seem pleased with yourself."
"Sold the old packet to Solomon here. You can go ashore, now, Mr. McTodd, if you choose, with money in your pocket to spend."
"Right! and it's about time I did. But there's that scrap of ours. I'm in rare hard fettle now, and I think I could do justice to you."
"Oh, if you want it," said Kettle pleasantly, "I'll break you up. Come out on deck."
"Send the Scorpion off first—we shall be too busy to watch, and these beggars will steal the keel off the ship if you take your eyes away from them."
So they saw Solomon down into his boat, and hauled up the ladder to discourage callers, and then they faced one another and put up their hands.
The many-nation crew of firemen and trimmers whistled to one another, and climbed on to the top of the deck-house to watch. They were connoisseurs in this sort of thing, and they appreciated to the full every hit and every guard.
It was a gorgeous fight!
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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