Captain Doane worked hard, pursuing the sun in its daily course through the sky, by the equation of time correcting its aberrations1 due to the earth’s swinging around the great circle of its orbit, and charting Sumner lines innumerable, working assumed latitudes2 for position until his head grew dizzy.
Simon Nishikanta sneered4 openly at what he considered the captain’s inefficient5 navigation, and continued to paint water-colours when he was serene6, and to shoot at whales, sea-birds, and all things hurtable when he was downhearted and sea-sore with disappointment at not sighting the Lion’s Head peak of the Ancient Mariner7’s treasure island.
“I’ll show I ain’t a pincher,” Nishikanta announced one day, after having broiled8 at the mast-head for five hours of sea-searching. “Captain Doane, how much could we have bought extra chronometers9 for in San Francisco—good second-hand11 ones, I mean?”
“Say a hundred dollars,” the captain answered.
“Very well. And this ain’t a piker’s proposition. The cost of such a chronometer10 would have been divided between the three of us. I stand for its total cost. You just tell the sailors that I, Simon Nishikanta, will pay one hundred dollars gold money for the first one that sights land on Mr. Greenleaf’s latitude3 and longitude12.”
But the sailors who swarmed13 the mast-heads were doomed14 to disappointment, in that for only two days did they have opportunity to stare the ocean surface for the reward. Nor was this due entirely15 to Dag Daughtry, despite the fact that his own intention and act would have been sufficient to spoil their chance for longer staring.
Down in the lazarette, under the main-cabin floor, it chanced that he took toll16 of the cases of beer which had been shipped for his especial benefit. He counted the cases, doubted the verdict of his senses, lighted more matches, counted again, then vainly searched the entire lazarette in the hope of finding more cases of beer stored elsewhere.
He sat down under the trap door of the main-cabin floor and thought for a solid hour. It was the Jew again, he concluded—the Jew who had been willing to equip the Mary Turner with two chronometers, but not with three; the Jew who had ratified17 the agreement of a sufficient supply to permit Daughtry his daily six quarts. Once again the steward18 counted the cases to make sure. There were three. And since each case contained two dozen quarts, and since his whack19 each day was half a dozen quarts, it was patent that, the supply that stared him in the face would last him only twelve days. And twelve days were none too long to sail from this unidentifiable naked sea-stretch to the nearest possible port where beer could be purchased.
The steward, once his mind was made up, wasted no time. The clock marked a quarter before twelve when he climbed up out of the lazarette, replaced the trapdoor, and hurried to set the table. He served the company through the noon meal, although it was all he could do to refrain from capsizing the big tureen of split-pea soup over the head of Simon Nishikanta. What did effectually withstrain him was the knowledge of the act which in the lazarette he had already determined20 to perform that afternoon down in the main hold where the water-casks were stored.
At three o’clock, while the Ancient Mariner supposedly drowned in his room, and while Captain Doane, Grimshaw, and half the watch on deck clustered at the mast-heads to try to raise the Lion’s Head from out the sapphire21 sea, Dag Daughtry dropped down the ladder of the open hatchway into the main hold. Here, in long tiers, with alleyways between, the water-casks were chocked safely on their sides.
From inside his shirt the steward drew a brace22, and to it fitted a half-inch bit from his hip-pocket. On his knees, he bored through the head of the first cask until the water rushed out upon the deck and flowed down into the bilge. He worked quickly, boring cask after cask down the alleyway that led to deeper twilight23. When he had reached the end of the first row of casks he paused a moment to listen to the gurglings of the many half-inch streams running to waste. His quick ears caught a similar gurgling from the right in the direction of the next alleyway. Listening closely, he could have sworn he heard the sounds of a bit biting into hard wood.
A minute later, his own brace and bit carefully secreted24, his hand was descending25 on the shoulder of a man he could not recognize in the gloom, but who, on his knees and wheezing26, was steadily27 boring into the head of a cask. The culprit made no effort to escape, and when Daughtry struck a match he gazed down into the upturned face of the Ancient Mariner.
“My word!” the steward muttered his amazement28 softly. “What in hell are you running water out for?”
He could feel the old man’s form trembling with violent nervousness, and his own heart smote29 him for gentleness.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “Don’t mind me. How many have you bored?”
“All in this tier,” came the whispered answer. “You will not inform on me to the . . . the others?”
“Inform?” Daughtry laughed softly. “I don’t mind telling you that we’re playing the same game, though I don’t know why you should play it. I’ve just finished boring all of the starboard row. Now I tell you, sir, you skin out right now, quietly, while the goin’ is good. Everybody’s aloft, and you won’t be noticed. I’ll go ahead and finish this job . . . all but enough water to last us say a dozen days.”
“I should like to talk with you . . . to explain matters,” the Ancient Mariner whispered.
“Sure, sir, an’ I don’t mind sayin’, sir, that I’m just plain mad curious to hear. I’ll join you down in the cabin, say in ten minutes, and we can have a real gam. But anyway, whatever your game is, I’m with you. Because it happens to be my game to get quick into port, and because, sir, I have a great liking30 and respect for you. Now shoot along. I’ll be with you inside ten minutes.”
“I like you, steward, very much,” the old man quavered.
“And I like you, sir—and a damn sight more than them money-sharks aft. But we’ll just postpone31 this. You beat it out of here, while I finish scuppering the rest of the water.”
A quarter of an hour later, with the three money-sharks still at the mast-heads, Charles Stough Greenleaf was seated in the cabin and sipping32 a highball, and Dag Daughtry was standing33 across the table from him, drinking directly from a quart bottle of beer.
“Maybe you haven’t guessed it,” the Ancient Mariner said; “but this is my fourth voyage after this treasure.”
“You mean . . . ?” Daughtry asked.
“Just that. There isn’t any treasure. There never was one—any more than the Lion’s Head, the longboat, or the bearings unnamable.”’
Daughtry rumpled34 his grizzled thatch35 of hair in his perplexity, as he admitted:
“Well, you got me, sir. You sure got me to believin’ in that treasure.”
“And I acknowledge, steward, that I am pleased to hear it. It shows that I have not lost my cunning when I can deceive a man like you. It is easy to deceive men whose souls know only money. But you are different. You don’t live and breathe for money. I’ve watched you with your dog. I’ve watched you with your nigger boy. I’ve watched you with your beer. And just because your heart isn’t set on a great buried treasure of gold, you are harder to deceive. Those whose hearts are set, are most astonishingly easy to fool. They are of cheap kidney. Offer them a proposition of one hundred dollars for one, and they are like hungry pike snapping at the bait. Offer a thousand dollars for one, or ten thousand for one, and they become sheer lunatic. I am an old man, a very old man. I like to live until I die—I mean, to live decently, comfortably, respectably.”
“And you like the voyages long? I begin to see, sir. Just as they’re getting near to where the treasure ain’t, a little accident like the loss of their water-supply sends them into port and out again to start hunting all over.”
The Ancient Mariner nodded, and his sun-washed eyes twinkled.
“There was the Emma Louisa. I kept her on the long voyage over eighteen months with water accidents and similar accidents. And, besides, they kept me in one of the best hotels in New Orleans for over four months before the voyage began, and advanced to me handsomely, yes, bravely, handsomely.”
“But tell me more, sir; I am most interested,” Dag Daughtry concluded his simple matter of the beer. “It’s a good game. I might learn it for my old age, though I give you my word, sir, I won’t butt36 in on your game. I wouldn’t tackle it until you are gone, sir, good game that it is.”
“First of all, you must pick out men with money—with plenty of money, so that any loss will not hurt them. Also, they are easier to interest—”
“Because they are more hoggish,” the steward interrupted. “The more money they’ve got the more they want.”
“Precisely,” the Ancient Mariner continued. “And, at least, they are repaid. Such sea-voyages are excellent for their health. After all, I do them neither hurt nor harm, but only good, and add to their health.”
“But them scars—that gouge37 out of your face—all them fingers missing on your hand? You never got them in the fight in the longboat when the bo’s’n carved you up. Then where in Sam Hill did you get the them? Wait a minute, sir. Let me fill your glass first.” And with a fresh-brimmed glass, Charles Stough Greanleaf narrated38 the history of his scars.
“First, you must know, steward, that I am—well, a gentleman. My name has its place in the pages of the history of the United States, even back before the time when they were the United States. I graduated second in my class in a university that it is not necessary to name. For that matter, the name I am known by is not my name. I carefully compounded it out of names of other families. I have had misfortunes. I trod the quarter-deck when I was a young man, though never the deck of the Wide Awake, which is the ship of my fancy—and of my livelihood39 in these latter days.
“The scars you asked about, and the missing fingers? Thus it chanced. It was the morning, at late getting-up times in a Pullman, when the accident happened. The car being crowded, I had been forced to accept an upper berth40. It was only the other day. A few years ago. I was an old man then. We were coming up from Florida. It was a collision on a high trestle. The train crumpled41 up, and some of the cars fell over sideways and fell off, ninety feet into the bottom of a dry creek42. It was dry, though there was a pool of water just ten feet in diameter and eighteen inches deep. All the rest was dry boulders43, and I bull’s-eyed that pool.
“This is the way it was. I had just got on my shoes and pants and shirt, and had started to get out of the bunk44. There I was, sitting on the edge of the bunk, my legs dangling45 down, when the locomotives came together. The berths46, upper and lower, on the opposite side had already been made up by the porter.
“And there I was, sitting, legs dangling, not knowing where I was, on a trestle or a flat, when the thing happened. I just naturally left that upper berth, soared like a bird across the aisle47, went through the glass of the window on the opposite side clean head-first, turned over and over through the ninety feet of fall more times than I like to remember, and by some sort of miracle was mostly flat-out in the air when I bull’s-eyed that pool of water. It was only eighteen inches deep. But I hit it flat, and I hit it so hard that it must have cushioned me. I was the only survivor48 of my car. It struck forty feet away from me, off to the side. And they took only the dead out of it. When they took me out of the pool I wasn’t dead by any means. And when the surgeons got done with me, there were the fingers gone from my hand, that scar down the side of my face . . . and, though you’d never guess it, I’ve been three ribs49 short of the regular complement50 ever since.
“Oh, I had no complaint coming. Think of the others in that car—all dead. Unfortunately, I was riding on a pass, and so could not sue the railroad company. But here I am, the only man who ever dived ninety feet into eighteen inches of water and lived to tell the tale.—Steward, if you don’t mind replenishing my glass . . . ”
Dag Daughtry complied and in his excitement of interest pulled off the top of another quart of beer for himself.
“Go on, go on, sir,” he murmured huskily, wiping his lips, “and the treasure-hunting graft51. I’m straight dying to hear. Sir, I salute52 you.”
“I may say, steward,” the Ancient Mariner resumed, “that I was born with a silver spoon that melted in my mouth and left me a proper prodigal53 son. Also, that I was born with a backbone54 of pride that would not melt. Not for a paltry55 railroad accident, but for things long before as well as after, my family let me die, and I . . . I let it live. That is the story. I let my family live. Furthermore, it was not my family’s fault. I never whimpered. I never let on. I melted the last of my silver spoon—South Sea cotton, an’ it please you, cacao in Tonga, rubber and mahogany in Yucatan. And do you know, at the end, I slept in Bowery lodging-houses and ate scrapple in East-Side feeding-dens, and, on more than one occasion, stood in the bread-line at midnight and pondered whether or not I should faint before I fed.”
“And you never squealed56 to your family,” Dag Daughtry murmured admiringly in the pause.
The Ancient Mariner straightened up his shoulders, threw his head back, then bowed it and repeated, “No, I never squealed. I went into the poor-house, or the county poor-farm as they call it. I lived sordidly57. I lived like a beast. For six months I lived like a beast, and then I saw my way out. I ............