by Frank Norris
“When Ally Bazan calls it a draw, they gits up and wobbles toward each other an’ shakes hands, and Hardenberg he says:
“‘Stroke, I thanks you a whole lot for as neat a go as ever I mixed in.’
“An’ Strokher answers up:
“‘Hardie, I loves you better’n ever. You’se the first man I’ve met up with which I couldn’t do for — an’ I’ve met up with some scraggy propositions in my time, too.’
“Well, they two is a sorry-lookin’ pair o’ birds by the time we runs into San Diego harbour next night. They was fine lookin’ objects for fair, all bruises and bumps. You remember now we was to take on a party at San Diego who was to show t’other half o’ Esperanza’s card, an’ thereafterward to boss the job.
“Well, we waits till nightfall an’ then slides in an’ lays to off a certain pile o’ stone, an’ shows two green lights and one white every three and a half minutes for half a hour — this being a signal.
“They is a moon, an’ we kin see pretty well. After we’d signaled about a hour, mebbee, we gits the answer — a one-minute green flare, and thereafterward we makes out a rowboat putting out and comin’ towards us. They is two people in the boat. One is the gesabe at the oars an’ the other a party sitting in the hinder end.
“Ally Bazan an’ me, an’ Strokher an’ Hardenberg, we’s all leanin’ over the fence a-watchin’; when all to once I ups an’ groans some sad. The party in the hinder end o’ the boat bein’ feemale.
“‘Ain’t we never goin’ to git shut of ‘em?’ says I; but the words ain’t no more’n off my teeth when Strokher pipes up:
“‘It’s she,’ says he, gaspin’ as though shot hard.
“‘Wot!’ cries Hardenberg, sort of mystified, ‘Oh, I’m sure a-dreamin’! he says, just that silly-like.
“‘An’ the mugs we’ve got!’ says Strokher.
“An’ they both sets to swearin’ and cussin’ to beat all I ever heard.
“‘I can’t let her see me so bunged up,’ says Hardenberg, doleful-like,
‘Oh, whatever is to be done?’
“‘An’ I look like a real genuine blown-in-the-bottle pug,’ whimpers Strokher. ‘Never mind,’ says he, ‘we must face the music. We’ll tell her these are sure honourable scars, got because we fit for her.’
“Well, the boat comes up an’ the feemale party jumps out and comes up the let-down stairway, onto the deck. Without sayin’ a word she hands Hardenberg the half o’ the card and he fishes out his half an’ matches the two by the light o’ a lantern.
“By this time the rowboat has gone a little ways off, an’ then at last
Hardenberg says:
“‘Welkum aboard, Sigñorita.’
“And Strokher cuts in with ——
“‘We thought it was to be a man that ‘ud join us here to take command, but you,’ he says — an’ oh, butter wouldn’t a-melted in his mouth— ‘But you he says, ‘is always our mistress.
“‘Very right, bueno. Me good fellows,’ says the Sigñorita, ‘but don’t you be afraid that they’s no man is at the head o’ this business.’ An’ with that the party chucks off hat an’ skirts, and I’ll be Mexican if it wa’n’t a man after all!
“‘I’m the Sigñor Barreto Palachi, gentlemen,’ says he. ‘The gringo police who wanted for to arrest me made the disguise necessary. Gentlemen, I regret to have been obliged to deceive such gallant compadres; but war knows no law.’
“Hardenberg and Strokher gives one look at the Sigñor and another at their own spiled faces, then:
“‘Come back here with the boat!’ roars Hardenberg over the side, and with that — (upon me word you’d a-thought they two both were moved with the same spring) — over they goes into the water and strikes out hands over hands for the boat as hard as ever they kin lay to it. The boat meets ’em — Lord knows what the party at the oars thought — they climbs in an’ the last I sees of ’em they was puttin’ for shore — each havin’ taken a oar from the boatman, an’ they sure was makin’ that boat hum.
“Well, we sails away eventually without ‘em; an’ a year or more afterward I crosses their trail again in Cy Ryder’s office in ‘Frisco.”
“Did you ask them about it all?” said I.
“Mister Man,” observed Bunt. “I’m several kinds of a fool; I know it. But sometimes I’m wise. I wishes for to live as long as I can, an’ die when I can’t help it. I does not, neither there, nor thereafterward, ever make no joke, nor yet no alloosion about, or concerning the Sigñorita Esperanza Palachi in the hearin’ o’ Hardenberg an’ Strokher. I’ve seen — (ye remember) — both those boys use their fists — an’ likewise Hardenberg, as he says hisself, shoots with both hands.”
THE DUAL PERSONALITY OF SLICK DICK NICKERSON
I.
On a certain morning in the spring of the year, the three men who were known as the Three Black Crows called at the office of “The President of the Pacific and Oriental Flotation Company,” situated in an obscure street near San Francisco’s water-front. They were Strokher, the tall, blond, solemn, silent Englishman; Hardenberg, the American, dry of humour, shrewd, resourceful, who bargained like a Vermonter and sailed a schooner like a Gloucester cod-fisher; and in their company, as ever inseparable from the other two, came the little colonial, nicknamed, for occult reasons, “Ally Bazan,” a small, wiry man, excitable, vociferous, who was without fear, without guile and without money.
When Hardenberg, who was always spokesman for the Three Crows, had sent in their names, they were admitted at once to the inner office of the “President.” The President was an old man, bearded like a prophet, with a watery blue eye and a forehead wrinkled like an orang’s. He spoke to the Three Crows in the manner of one speaking to friends he has not seen in some time.
“Well, Mr. Ryder,” began Hardenberg. “We called around to see if you had anything fer us this morning. I don’t mind telling you that we’re at liberty jus’ now. Anything doing?”
Ryder fingered his beard distressfully. “Very little, Joe; very little.”
“Got any wrecks?”
“Not a wreck.”
Hardenberg turned to a great map that hung on the wall by Ryder’s desk. It was marked in places by red crosses, against which were written certain numbers and letters. Hardenberg put his finger on a small island south of the Marquesas group and demanded: “What might be H. 33, Mr. President?”
“Pearl Island,” answered the President. “Davidson is on that job.”
“Or H. 125?” Hardenberg indicated a point in the Gilbert group.
“Guano deposits. That’s promised.”
“Hallo! You’re up in the Aleutians. I make out. 20 A. — what’s that?”
“Old government telegraph wire — line abandoned — finest drawn-copper wire. I’ve had three boys at that for months.”
“What’s 301? This here, off the Mexican coast?”
The President, unable to remember, turned to his one clerk: “Hyers, what’s 301? Isn’t that Peterson?”
The clerk ran his finger down a column: “No, sir; 301 is the Whisky
Ship.”
“Ah! So it is. I remember. You remember, too, Joe. Little schooner, the Tropic Bird — sixty days out from Callao — five hundred cases of whisky aboard — sunk in squall. It was thirty years ago. Think of five hundred cases of thirty-year-old whisky! There’s money in that if I can lay my hands on the schooner. Suppose you try that, you boys — on a twenty per cent. basis. Come now, what do you say?”
“Not for five per cent.,” declared Hardenberg. “How’d we raise her? How’d we know how deep she lies? Not for Joe. What’s the matter with landing arms down here in Central America for Bocas and his gang?”
“I’m out o’ that, Joe. Too much competition.”
“What’s doing here in Tahiti — No. 88? It ain’t lettered.”
Once more the President consulted his books.
“Ah! — 88. Here we are. Cache o’ illicit pearls. I had it looked up.
“Say, Cap’n!” — Hardenberg’s eye had traveled to the upper edge of the map— “whatever did you strike up here in Alaska? At Point Barrow, s’elp me Bob! It’s 48 B.”
The President stirred uneasily in his place. “Well, I ain’t quite worked that scheme out, Joe. But I smell the deal. There’s a Russian post along there some’eres. Where they catch sea-otters. And the skins o’ sea-otters are selling this very day for seventy dollars at any port in China.”
“I s’y,” piped up Ally Bazan, “I knows a bit about that gyme. They’s a bally kind o’ Lum-tums among them Chinese as sports those syme skins on their bally clothes — as a mark o’ rank, d’ye see.”
“Have you figured at all on the proposition, Cap’n?” inquired
Hardenberg.
“There’s risk in it, Joe; big risk,” declared the President nervously.
“But I’d only ask fifteen per cent.”
“You have worked out the scheme, then.”
“Well — ah — y’see, there’s the risk, and — ah—” Suddenly Ryder leaned forward, his watery blue eyes glinting: “Boys, it’s a jewel. It’s just your kind. I’d a-sent for you, to try on this very scheme, if you hadn’t shown up. You kin have the Bertha Millner — I’ve a year’s charter o’ her from Wilbur — and I’ll only ask you fifteen per cent. of the net profits — net, mind you.”
“I ain’t buyin’ no dead horse, Cap’n,” returned Hardenberg, “but I’ll say this: we pay no fifteen per cent.”
“Banks and the Ruggles were daft to try it and give me twenty-five.”
“An’ where would Banks land the scheme? I know him. You put him on that German cipher-code job down Honolulu way, an’ it cost you about a thousand before you could pull out. We’ll give you seven an’ a half.”
“Ten,” declared Ryder, “ten, Joe, at the very least. Why, how much do you suppose just the stores would cost me? And Point Barrow — why, Joe, that’s right up in the Arctic. I got to run the risk o’ you getting the Bertha smashed in the ice.”
“What do we risk?” retorted Hardenberg; and it was the monosyllabic
Strokher who gave the answer:
“Chokee, by Jove!”
“Ten is fair. It’s ten or nothing,” answered Hardenberg.
“Gross, then, Joe. Ten on the gross — or I give the job to the Ruggles and Banks.”
“Who’s your bloomin’ agent?” put in Ally Bazan.
“Nickerson. I sent him with Peterson on that Mary Archer wreck scheme. An’ you know what Peterson says of him — didn’t give him no trouble at all. One o’ my best men, boys.”
“There have been,” observed Strokher stolidly, “certain stories told about Nickerson. Not that I wish to seem suspicious, but I put it to you as man to man.”
“Ay,” exclaimed Ally Bazan. “He was fair nutty once, they tell me. Threw some kind o’ bally fit an’ come aout all skew-jee’d in his mind. Forgot his nyme an’ all. I s’y, how abaout him, anyw’y?”
“Boys,” said Ryder, “I’ll tell you. Nickerson — yes, I know the yarns about him. It was this way — y’see, I ain’t keeping anything from you, boys. Two years ago he was a Methody preacher in Santa Clara. Well, he was what they call a revivalist, and he was holding forth one blazin’ hot day out in the sun when all to once he goes down, flat, an’ don’t come round for the better part o’ two days. When he wakes up he’s another person; he’d forgot his name, forgot his job, forgot the whole blamed shooting-match. And he ain’t never remembered them since. The doctors have names for that kind o’ thing. It seems it does happen now and again. Well, he turned to an’ began sailoring first off — soon as the hospitals and medicos were done with him — an’ him not having any friends as you might say, he was let go his own gait. He got to be third mate of some kind o’ dough-dish down Mexico way; and then I got hold o’ him an’ took him into the Comp’ny. He’s been with me ever since. He ain’t got the faintest kind o’ recollection o’ his Methody days, an’ believes he’s always been a sailorman. Well, that’s his business, ain’t it? If he takes my orders an’ walks chalk, what do I care about his Methody game? There, boys, is the origin, history and development of Slick Dick Nickerson. If you take up this sea-otter deal and go to Point Barrow, naturally Nick has got to go as owner’s agent and representative of the Comp’ny. But I couldn’t send a easier fellow to get along with. Honest, now, I couldn’t. Boys, you think over the proposition between now and tomorrow an’ then come around and let me know.”
And the upshot of the whole matter was that one month later the Bertha Millner, with Nickerson, Hardenberg, Strokher and Ally Bazan on board, cleared from San Francisco, bound — the papers were beautifully precise — for Seattle and Tacoma with a cargo of general merchandise.
As a matter of fact, the bulk of her cargo consisted of some odd hundreds of very fine lumps of rock — which as ballast is cheap by the ton — and some odd dozen cases of conspicuously labeled champagne.
The Pacific and Oriental Flotation Company made this champagne out of Rhine wine, effervescent salts, raisins, rock candy and alcohol. It was from the same stock of wine of which Ryder had sold some thousand cases to the Coreans the year before.
II
“Not that I care a curse,” said Strokher, the Englishman. “But I put it to you squarely that this voyage lacks that certain indescribable charm.”
The Bertha Millner was a fortnight out, and the four adventurers — or, rather, the three adventurers and Nickerson — were lame in every joint, red-eyed from lack of sleep, half-starved, wholly wet and unequivocally disgusted. They had had heavy weather from the day they bade farewell to the whistling buoy off San Francisco Bay until the moment when even patient, docile, taciturn Strokher had at last — in his own fashion — rebelled.
“Ain’t I a dam’ fool? Ain’t I a proper lot? Gard strike me if I don’t chuck fer fair after this. Wot’d I come to sea fer — an’ this ‘ere go is the worst I ever knew — a baoat no bigger’n a bally bath-tub, head seas, livin’ gyles the clock ‘round, wet food, wet clothes, wet bunks. Caold till, by cricky! I’ve lost the feel o’ mee feet. An’ wat for? For the bloomin’ good chanst o’ a slug in mee guts. That’s wat for.” At little intervals the little vociferous colonial, Ally Bazan — he was red-haired and speckled — capered with rage, shaking his fists.
But Hardenberg only shifted his cigar to the other corner of his mouth. He knew Ally Bazan, and knew that the little fellow would have jeered at the offer of a first-cabin passage back to San Francisco in the swiftest, surest, steadiest passenger steamer that ever wore paint. So he remarked: “I ain’t ever billed this promenade as a Coney Island picnic, I guess.”
Nickerson — Slick Dick, the supercargo — was all that Hardenberg, who captained the schooner, could expect. He never interfered, never questioned; never protested in the name or interests of the Company when Hardenberg “hung on” in the bleak, bitter squalls till the Bertha was rail under and the sails hard as iron.
If it was true that he had once been a Methody revivalist no one, to quote Alia Bazan, “could a’ smelled it off’n him.” He was a black-bearded, scrawling six-footer, with a voice like a steam siren and a fist like a sledge. He carried two revolvers, spoke of the Russians at Point Barrow as the “Boomskys,” and boasted if it came to that he’d engage to account for two of them, would shove their heads into their boot-legs and give them the running scrag, by God so he would!
Slowly, laboriously, beset in blinding fogs, swept with, icy rains, buffeted and mauled and man-handled by the unending assaults of the sea, the Bertha Millner worked her way northward up that iron coast — till suddenly she entered an elysium.
Overnight she seemed to have run into it: it was a world of green, wooded islands, of smooth channels, of warm and steady winds, of cloudless skies. Coming on deck upon the morning of the Bertha’s first day in this new region, Ally Bazan gazed open-mouthed. Then: “I s’y!” he yelled. “Hey! By crickey! Look!” H
e slapped his thighs. “S’trewth! This is ‘eavenly.”
Strokher was smoking his pipe on the hatch combings. “Rather,” he observed. “An’ I put it to you — we’ve deserved it.”
In the main, however, the northward flitting was uneventful. Every fifth day Nickerson got drunk — on the Company’s Corean champagne. Now that the weather had sweetened, the Three Black Crows had less to do in the way of handling and nursing the schooner. Their plans when the “Boomskys” should be reached were rehearsed over and over again. Then came spells of card and checker playing, story-telling, or hours of silent inertia when, man fashion, they brooded over pipes in a patch of sun, somnolent, the mind empty of all thought.
But at length the air took on a keener tang; there was a bite to the breeze, the sun lost his savour and the light of him lengthened till Hardenberg could read off logarithms at ten in the evening. Great-coats and sweaters were had from the chests, and it was no man’s work to reef when the wind came down from out the north.
Each day now the schooner was drawing nearer the Arctic Circle. At length snow fell, and two days later they saw their first iceberg.
Hardenberg worked out their position on the chart and bore to the eastward till he made out the Alaskan coast — a smudge on the horizon. For another week he kept this in sight, the schooner dodging the bergs that by now drove by in squadrons, and even bumping and butling through drift and slush ice.
Seals were plentiful, and Hardenberg and Strokher promptly revived the quarrel of their respective nations. Once even they slew a mammoth bull walrus — astray from some northern herd — and played poker for the tusks. Then suddenly they pulled themselves sharply together, and, as it were, stood “attention.”
For more than a week the schooner, following the trend of the far-distant coast, had headed eastward, and now at length, looming out of the snow and out of the mist, a somber bulwark, black, vast, ominous, rose the scarps and crags of that which they came so far to see — Point Barrow.