Why, dye know, when Im playin an hes singin, its a regular duet of what the sky-pilots d call religion an knowin God. Sure, when we sing together Im absorbin religion an gettin pretty close up to God. An its big, I tell you. Big as the earth an ocean an sky an all the stars. I just seem to get hold of a sense that were all the same stuff after all you, me, Killeny Boy, mountains, sand, salt water, worms, mosquitoes, suns, an shootin stars an blazin comets..
Day Daughtry left his flight as beyond his own grasp of speech, and concluded, his half embarrassment masked by braggadocio over Michael:
Oh, believe me, they dont make dogs like him every day in the week. Sure, I stole m. He looked good to me. An if I had it over, knowin as I do known m now, Id steal m again if I lost a leg doin it. Thats the kind of a dog he is.
CHAPTER IX
The morning the Makambo entered Sydney harbour, Captain Duncan had another try for Michael. The port doctors launch was coming alongside, when he nodded up to Daughtry, who was passing along the deck:
Steward, Ill give you twenty pounds.
No, sir, thank you, sir, was Dag Daughtrys answer. I couldnt bear to part with him.
Twenty-five pounds, then. I cant go beyond that. Besides, there are plenty more Irish terriers in the world.
Thats what Im thinkin, sir. An Ill get one for you. Right here in Sydney. An it wont cost you a penny, sir.
But I want Killeny Boy, the captain persisted.
An so do I, which is the worst of it, sir. Besides, I got him first.
Twenty-five sovereigns is a lot of money.. for a dog, Captain Duncan said.
An Killeny Boys a lot of dog.. for the money, the steward retorted. Why, sir, cuttin out all sentiment, his tricks is worth more n that. Him not recognizing me when I dont want m to is worth fifty pounds of itself. An theres his countin an his singin, an all the rest of his tricks. Now, no matter how I got him, he didnt have them tricks. Them tricks are mine. I taught him them. He aint the dog he was when he come on board. Hes a whole lot of me now, an sellin him would be like sellin a piece of myself.
Thirty pounds, said the captain with finality.
No, sir, thankin you just the same, sir, was Daughtrys refusal.
And Captain Duncan was forced to turn away in order to greet the port doctor coming over the side.
Scarcely had the Makambo passed quarantine, and while on her way up harbour to dock, when a trim man-of-war launch darted in to her side and a trim lieutenant mounted the Makambos boarding-ladder. His mission was quickly explained. The Albatross, British cruiser of the second class, of which he was fourth lieutenant, had called in at Tulagi with dispatches from the High Commissioner of the English South Seas. A scant twelve hours having intervened between her arrival and the Makambos departure, the Commissioner of the Solomons and Captain Kellar had been of the opinion that the missing dog had been carried away on the steamer. Knowing that the Albatross would beat her to Sydney, the captain of the Albatross had undertaken to look up the dog. Was the dog, an Irish terrier answering to the name of Michael, on board?
Captain Duncan truthfully admitted that it was, though he most unveraciously shielded Dag Daughtry by repeating his yarn of the dog coming on board of itself. How to return the dog to Captain Kellar? was the next question; for the Albatross was bound on to New Zealand. Captain Duncan settled the matter.
The Makambo will be back in Tulagi in eight weeks, he told the lieutenant, and Ill undertake personally to deliver the dog to its owner. In the meantime well take good care of it. Our steward has sort of adopted it, so it will be in good hands.
* * * * *Seems we dont either of us get the dog, Daughtry commented resignedly, when Captain Duncan had explained the situation.
But when Daughtry turned his back and started off along the deck, his constitutional obstinacy tightened his brows so that the Shortlands planter, observing it, wondered what the captain had been rowing him about.
* * * * *Despite his six quarts a day and all his easy-goingness of disposition, Dag Daughtry possessed certain integrities. Though he could steal a dog, or a cat, without a twinge of conscience, he could not but be faithful to his salt, being so made. He could not draw wages for being a ship steward without faithfully performing the functions of ship steward. Though his mind was firmly made up, during the several days of the Makambo in Sydney, lying alongside the Burns Philp Dock, he saw to every detail of the cleaning up after the last crowd of outgoing passengers, and to every detail of preparation for the next crowd of incoming passengers who had tickets bought for the passage far away to the coral seas and the cannibal isles.
In the midst of this devotion to his duty, he took a night off and part of two afternoons. The night off was devoted to the public-houses which sailors frequent, and where can be learned the latest gossip and news of ships and of men who sail upon the sea. Such information did he gather, over many bottles of beer, that the next afternoon, hiring a small launch at a cost of ten shillings, he journeyed up the harbour to Jackson Bay, where lay the lofty-poled, sweet-lined, three-topmast American schooner, the Mary Turner.
Once on board, explaining his errand, he was taken below into the main cabin, where he interviewed, and was interviewed by, a quartette of men whom Daughtry qualified to himself as a rum bunch.
It was because he had talked long with the steward who had left the ship, that Dag Daughtry recognized and identified each of the four men. That, surely, was the Ancient Mariner, sitting back and apart with washed eyes of such palest blue that they seemed a faded white. Long thin wisps of silvery, unkempt hair framed his face like an aureole. He was slender to emaciation, cavernously checked, roll after roll of skin, no longer encasing flesh or muscle, hanging grotesquely down his neck and swathing the Adams apple so that only occasionally, with queer swallowing motions, did it peep out of the mummy-wrappings of skin and sink back again from view.
A proper ancient mariner, thought Daughtry. Might be seventy-five, might just as well be a hundred and five, or a hundred and seventy-five.
Beginning at the right temple, a ghastly scar split the cheek-bone, sank into the depths of the hollow cheek, notched across the lower jaw, and plunged to disappearance among the prodigious skin-folds of the neck. The withered lobes of both ears were perforated by tiny gypsy-like circles of gold. On the skeleton fingers of his right hand were no less than five rings not mens rings, nor womens, but foppish rings that would fetch a price, Daughtry adjudged. On the left hand were no rings, for there were no fingers to wear them. Only was there a thumb; and, for that matter, most of the hand was missing as well, as if it had been cut off by the same slicing edge that had cleaved him from temple to jaw and heaven alone knew how far down that skin-draped neck.
The Ancient Mariners washed eyes seemed to bore right through Daughtry (or at least so Daughtry felt), and rendered him so uncomfortable as to make him casually step to the side for the matter of a yard. This was possible, because, a servant seeking a servants billet, he was expected to stand and face the four seated ones as if they were judges on the bench and he the felon in the dock. Nevertheless, the gaze of the ancient one pursued him, until, studying it more closely, he decided that it did not reach to him at all. He got the impression that those washed pale eyes were filmed with dreams, and that the intelligence, the thing, that dwelt within the skull, fluttered and beat against the dream-films and no farther.
The Ancient Mariners washed eyes seemed to bore right through Daughtry (or at least so Daughtry felt), and rendered him so uncomfortable as to make him casually step to the side for the matter of a yard. This was possible, because, a servant seeking a servants billet, he was expected to stand and face the four seated ones as if they were judges on the bench and he the felon in the dock. Nevertheless, the gaze of the ancient one pursued him, until, studying it more closely, he decided that it did not reach to him at all. He got the impression that those washed pale eyes were filmed with dreams, and that the intelligence, the thing, that dwelt within the skull, fluttered and beat against the dream-films and no farther.
How much would you expect? the captain was asking, a most unsealike captain, in Daughtrys opinion; rather, a spick-and-span, brisk little business-man or floor-walker just out of a bandbox.
He shall not share, spoke up another of the four, huge, raw-boned, middle-aged, whom Daughtry identified by his ham-like hands as the California wheat-farmer described by the departed steward.
Plenty for all, the Ancient Mariner startled Daughtry by cackling shrilly. Oodles and oodles of it, my gentlemen, in cask and chest, in cask and chest, a fathom under the sand.
Share what, sir? Daughtry queried, though well he knew, the other steward having cursed to him the day he sailed from San Francisco on a blind lay instead of straight wages. Not that it matters, sir, he hastened to add. I spent a whalin voyage once, three years of it, an paid off with a dollar. Wages for mine, an sixty gold a month, seein theres only four of you.
And a mate, the captain added.
And a mate, Daughtry repeated. Very good, sir. An no share.
But yourself? spoke up the fourth man, a huge-bulking, colossal-bodied, greasy-seeming grossness of flesh the Armenian Jew and San Francisco pawnbroker the previous steward had warned Daughtry about. Have you papers letters of recommendation, the documents you receive when you are paid off before the shipping commissioners?
I might ask, sir, Dag Daughtry brazened it, for your own papers. This aint no regular cargo-carrier or passenger-carrier, no more than you gentlemen are a regular company of ship-owners, with regular offices, doin business in a regular way. How do I know if you own the ship even, or that the charter aint busted long ago, or that youre being libelled ashore right now, or that you wont dump me on any old beach anywheres without a soo-markee of whats comin to me? Howsoever he anticipated by a bluff of his own the show of wrath from the Jew that he knew would be wind and bluff howsoever, heres my papers..
With a swift dip of his hand into his inside coat-pocket he scattered out in a wealth of profusion on the cabin table all the papers, sealed and stamped, that he had collected in forty-five years of voyaging, the latest date of which was five years back.
I dont ask your papers, he went on. What I ask is, cash payment in full the first of each month, sixty dollars a month gold
Oodles and oodles of it, gold and gold and better than gold, in cask and chest, in cask and chest, a fathom under the sand, the Ancient Mariner assured him in beneficent cackles. Kings, principalities and powers! all of us, the least of us. And plenty more, my gentlemen, plenty more. The latitude and longitude are mine, and the bearings from the oak ribs on the shoal to Lions Head, and the cross-bearings from the points unnamable, I only know. I only still live of all that brave, mad, scallywag ships company..
Will you sign the articles to that? the Jew demanded, cutting in on the ancients maunderings.
What port do you wind up the cruise in? Daughtry asked.
San Francisco.
Ill sign the articles that Im to sign off in San Francisco then.
The Jew, the captain, and the farmer nodded.
But theres several other things to be agreed upon, Daughtry continued. In the first place, I want my six quarts a day. Im used to it, and Im too old a stager to change my habits.
Of spirits, I suppose? the Jew asked sarcastically.
No; of beer, good English beer. It must be understood beforehand, no matter what long stretches we may be at sea, that a sufficient supply is taken along.
Anything else? the captain queried.
Yes, sir, Daughtry answered. I got a dog that must come along.
Anything else? a wife or family maybe? the farmer asked.
No wife or family, sir. But I got a nigger, a perfectly good nigger, thats got to come along. He can sign on for ten dollars a month if he works for the ship all his time. But if he works for me all the time, Ill let him sign on for two an a half a month.
Eighteen days in the longboat, the Ancient Mariner shrilled, to Daughtrys startlement. Eighteen days in the longboat, eighteen days of scorching hell.
My word, quoth Daughtry, the old gentlemand give one the jumps. Therell sure have to be plenty of beer.
Sea stewards put on some style, I must say, commented the wheat-farmer, oblivious to the Ancient Mariner, who still declaimed of the heat of the longboat.
Suppose we dont see our way to signing on a steward who travels in such style? the Jew asked, mopping the inside of his collar-band with a coloured silk handkerchief.
Then youll never know what a good steward youve missed, sir, Daughtry responded airily.
I guess theres plenty more stewards on Sydney beach, the captain said briskly. And I guess I havent forgotten old days, when I hired them like so much dirt, yes, by Jinks, so much dirt, there were so many of them.
Thank you, Mr. Steward, for looking us up, the Jew took up the idea with insulting oiliness. We very much regret our inability to meet your wishes in the matter
And I saw it go under the sand, a fathom under the sand, on cross-bearings unnamable, where the mangroves fade away, and the coconuts grow, and the rise of land lifts from the beach to the Lions Head.
Hold your horses, the wheat-farmer said, with a flare of irritation, directed, not at the Ancient Mariner, but at the captain and the Jew. Whos putting up for this expedition? Dont I get no say so? Aint my opinion ever to be asked? I like this steward. Strikes me hes the real goods. I notice hes as polite as all get-out, and I can see he can take an order without arguing. And he aint no fool by a long shot.
Thats the very point, Grimshaw, the Jew answered soothingly. Considering the unusualness of our.. of the expedition, wed be better served by a steward who is more of a fool. Another point, which Id esteem a real favour from you, is not to forget that you havent put a red copper more into this trip than I have
And whered either of you be, if it wasnt for me with my knowledge of the sea? the captain demanded aggrievedly. To say nothing of the mortgage on my house and on the nicest little best paying flat building in San Francisco since the earthquake.
But whos still putting up? all of you, I ask you. The wheat-farmer leaned forward, resting the heels of his hands on his knees so that the fingers hung down his long shins, in Daughtrys appraisal, half-way to his feet. You, Captain Doane, cant raise another penny on your properties. My land still grows the wheat that brings the ready. You, Simon Nishikanta, wont put up another penny yet your loan-shark offices are doing business at the same old stands at God knows what per cent. to drunken sailors. And you hang the expedition up here in this hole-in-the-wall waiting for my agent to cable more wheat-money. Well, I guess well just sign on this steward at sixty a month and all he asks, or Ill just naturally quit you cold on the next fast steamer to San Francisco.