by Frank Norris
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At about half-past eight Friday evening the rockets began to roar again from the direction of the lagoon. The evening fete was commencing.
On one side of the river were the Tribunes, two wings of them stretching out, half-moon fashion, from either side of the Governor’s pavilion, banked high with row upon row of watching faces. Directly opposite was the Queen’s pavilion, an immense canopylike structure, flimsy enough, but brave and gay with tinsel and paint and bunting. Between the two pavilions was the waterway where the boats maneuvered. The “Bucentaur,” the Queen’s barge, came up the river slowly, gleaming with lanterns, a multitude of floats and barges and gondolas following. It drew up to the pavilion — the Queen’s pavilion — and Josephine disembarked.
It was quite dark by now, and you began to feel the charm of the whole affair. Little by little the numbers of boats increased. Hundreds and hundreds of swinging lanterns wove a slow moving maze of trailing sparks and reflected themselves in the black water in long stillettoes with wavering golden blades; the rockets and roman candles hissed and roared without intermission; the enormous shafts of the searchlights, like sticks of gigantic fans, moved here and there, describing cartwheels of white light; the orchestra was playing again, not too loud. And then at last here under the night the carnival was in its proper element. The incongruities, the little, cheap makeshifts, so bare and bald in an afternoon’s sun, disappeared, or took on a new significance; the tinsel was not tinsel any longer; the cambric and paper and paint grew rich and real; the Queen’s canopy, the necklaces of electric bulbs, the thousands of heaving lights, the slow-moving “Bucentaur” all seemed part of a beautiful, illusive picture, impossible, fanciful, very charming, like a painting of Watteau, the Embarquement Pour Cythére, seen by night. More lights and lanterns came crowding in, a wheel of red fireworks covered the surface of the water with a myriad of red, writhing snakes. The illusion became perfect, the sense of reality, of solidity, dwindled. The black water, the black land, and the black sky merged into one vast, intangible shadow, hollow, infinitely deep. There was no longer the water there, nor the banks beyond, nor even the reach of sky, but you looked out into an infinite, empty space, sown with thousands of trembling lights, across which moved dim, beautiful shapes, shallops and curved prows and gondolas, and in the midst of which floated a fairy palace, glittering, fragile, airy, a thing of crystal and of gold, created miraculously, like the passing whim of some compelling genie.
While the impression lasted it was not to be resisted; it was charming, seductive — but it did not last. At one o’clock the fete was over, the last rocket fired, the last colored light burnt out in a puff of pungent smoke, the last reveler gone. From the hill above the lagoon on your way home you turned and looked back and down. It was very late. The streets were deserted, the city was asleep. There was nothing left but the immensity of the night, and the low, red moon canted over like a sinking galleon. The shams, the paper lanterns, and the winking tinsel were all gone, and you remembered the stars again.
And then, in that immense silence, when all the shrill, staccato, trivial noises of the day were dumb, you heard again the prolonged low hum that rose from the city, even in its sleep, the voice of something individual, living a huge, strange life apart, raising a virile diapason of protest against shams and tinsels and things transient in that other strange carnival, that revel of masks and painted faces, the huge grim joke that runs its fourscore years and ten. But that was not all.
There was another voice, that of the sea; mysterious, insistent, and there through the night, under the low, red moon, the two voices of the sea and of the city talked to each other in that unknown language of their own; and the two voices mingling together filled all the night with an immense and prolonged wave of sound, the bourdon of an unseen organ — the vast and minor note of Life.
A CALIFORNIA JUBILEE
AN ARTICLE REPRINTED FROM THE WAVE OF JULY 11, 1896.
Tuesday was the bright particular day of the Monterey celebration; the ceremonies appropriate to the occasion were performed under a cloudless sky and in the midst of enormous crowds. It would have been impossible to have recognized the old town of Monterey during the days of the celebration. Its sidewalks were jammed with a slow moving throng, its houses were festooned, its streets garlanded. At every turning and in every direction the eye was almost dazzled by the stretch of blinding tricolor that wound spirally around everything that could be called a pole. The main street of the town suggested the Midway Plaisance; every shop seemed a bazaar, while on either edge of the sidewalk sprang up a magic mushroom growth of booths and tents; peanut men, popcorn men, tamale and fruit men, chanted a minor chorus without a moment’s interruption. There were public phonographs, merry-go-rounds, tintype photographers, nickel-in-the-slot machines by the scores. Even the calling-card writer with his famous bird of paradise drawn in lovely curves and sweeps was on hand and found occasion to turn the nimble penny. All sorts and conditions of men paraded the streets, Mexican war veterans, Grand Army men, militia, marines cowboys, men in flannels and ducks from Del Monte, Mexicans and Spaniards in sugar-loaved sombreros, and touring Englishmen in tweeds and pith-helmets, very puzzled to know what was going forward.
On Tuesday morning occurred the laying of the foundation stone of the Sloat monument. It was deadly hot. Up the hill from all sides, across the potato and cabbage patches, over the slippery dry and yellow grass trudged and scrambled the assembling crowd. Many of them had come in dusty, rattling buggies from the surrounding country. The old rattletraps stood about by the dozen, the aged horse, unhaltered, tossing at his nose-bag, the lunch under the back seat covered with a plaid shawl or a red tablecloth, the old setter-dog asleep in the shadow of the lowered top.
The crowd was densely packed around the crane that held the corner stone. It was of country folk for the most part, to whom that day was a veritable event, something to be taken very seriously and to be talked about for the next five days. There, under the broiling sun, they stood, wedged-in, perspiring, very grave. A cordon of the Masons of the town made room about the unfinished monument. They wore white cotton gloves that showed the wrist below the cuff, red, fat and beaded with perspiration. In their left hands they carried long wands with all the gravity of lictors, while about their stomachs were absurdly tied their Masonic aprons like flabby mail pouches, lamentably incongruous with their frock coats and carefully polished silk hats. The orations began. There were references to “Old Glory,”
“gratitude of the American people,”
“fitting tributes.” The crowd listened with attention, carefully applauded the most distant allusion to freedom. Then, at last, with a great rattle of chains and a groaning of strained timbers, the huge stone was lowered into place. The crowd broke up, the women gathering up the hot and fretting bundles of infancy, the men tramping back to the buggies stolidly, thrusting out their chins in approbation. They had the air of men who have accomplished a duty, and they put on their coats again complacently.
That afternoon the Flag was raised. You had an undoubted thrill at the precise moment of the raising when the vast flag grew into the air like the slow flight of some immense, beautiful bird, and the salutes began to speak from the Philadelphia and Monadnock. It was fine and exhilarating, and worth while, and it made one forget for a moment some few of the drawbacks of the business — such, for instance, as the splendid new coat of whitewash that in honor of the occasion had been applied to the old Custom House.
Towards2 o’clock the cortege arrived in front of this ancient building, preceded by a train of artillery and escorted by the Philadelphia marines. The main features of the procession were the two floats, one carrying the big blonde girl who represented the Goddess of Liberty, and the other the allegorical group of California made up of three very pretty girls in smart white frocks. Following these were the 200 Mexican War veterans, very old fellows, walking uncertainly, dazed for the most part, looking bewilderedly about them with
wide eyes, and, after these, the little red-white-and-blue girls who sat in the grand stand in appropriate rows and made the “Living Flag.” They were excited and chattering, and suggested a troupe of little trained animals on exhibition. Then after the members of the procession had been disposed about the grand stand, more speeches were delivered, by the Mayor of Monterey, by Congressman McLachlan, the President of the day; then came a prayer by a naval chaplain, a reading of Sloat’s proclamation by his grandson, a “vocal selection” and a chorus by the little red-white-and-blue girls and finally the reading of an address by E. A. Sherman, the Commander of the day.
Ah, that Commander of the day, what a figure he was with his bristling gray beard, his huge campaign hat and his fearful array of medals. Never was there a man so weighted down with the responsibility of his position. He directed, he organized, he presided, he exhorted and commanded, he shouted and roared like an unleashed lion, the fate of nations rested upon his shoulders, the destinies of a whole race trembled upon the utterance of his tongue. From dawn to dewy eve Mister Sherman played a part, a heroic, gold-laced part, and he played it well. He was a procession, a whole brigade, all in himself; he assumed commanding attitudes — Grant reviewing his army, Washington delivering his inaugural address, Wellington at Waterloo. He posed for the gallery. He was a series of living pictures all the more delightful because he succeeded in deceiving even himself.
Then at last out of all this fanfaronade, with the suddenness and unexpectedness of a rising rocket came the great flag, raised there by the same hands that raised it on that same staff, over that same old building so many years ago. There was a great cheer, genuine, true, with the right ring in it. And you were not ashamed to cheer yourself, and as the marines and officers saluted and as the great guns aboard the two war ships crashed and shouted, you felt a touch of the real thing itself, a touch of that fine enthusiasm which Sloat and his men must have felt when that flag strained at its halyards there on that desolate shore a whole half-century ago, when, for once at least, an English scheme of land-grabbing was balked and a strip of country far larger than the whole kingdom of Great Britain added to the Union.
It was fine and strong. Why not be glad in the great barred banner — patriotism was, after all, something better than rhetoric and firecrackers. You felt glad that you were there, that, for all its failings, the ceremony of the Flag Raising stood for something that was good. It was worth while after all.
HUNTING HUMAN GAME
AN ARTICLE FROM The Wave of January 23, 1897.
On the 21st of November in the year 1896 there appeared in one of the newspapers of Sydney, Australia, an advertisement to the effect that one Frank Butler — mining prospector, was in search of a partner with whom to engage in a certain mining venture. It was stipulated that applicants should possess at least ten pounds and come well recommended.
Captain Lee Weller answered the advertisement and accompanied Butler to the Blue Mountains mining region, in what is known as the Glenbrook district. There Butler shot him in the back of the head and buried the body in such a way that a stream of trickling water would help in its decomposition. But Captain Weller had friends; he was missed; a search was made and it was not long before the detectives discovered the grave and identified the remains.
Meanwhile, news had been brought to the Australian police that another man named Preston had gone into the mountains and never returned. Next the body of this Preston was discovered. Then it was found that another man had disappeared under the same circumstances as those surrounding the vanishing of Weller. Then another and another, and still another. The news of these disappearances ran from end to end of Australia, and the whole police system of the country was brought to bear upon the case. Finally it was found that a man named Lee Weller had applied to the Sailor’s Home at Newcastle for a berth on a ship. Seven days later this Lee Weller shipped out of Newcastle before the mast on the British tramp ship Swanhilda, bound for San Francisco in coal. This was all the detectives wanted to know. The man calling himself Weller was Butler beyond any doubt, suddenly grown suspicious and resolved upon a bolt. Butler’s photograph was identified at once by the Superintendent of the Sailor’s Home as the supposed Lee Weller. It was out of the question to overhaul Butler now, but two Australian detectives, McHattie and Conroy, took passage on a steamer for San Francisco, where they arrived some three weeks ago. They outstripped Butler and are now waiting for him to catch up with them. That is the story in brief of this extraordinary criminal who, Mr. McHattie says, has killed — no, assassinated is the word — fourteen men.
I saw the “death watch” the other day — the watch for the tramp collier ship Swanhilda — that is being maintained at Meiggs’ wharf by seven men, whose business it is to hunt criminals down. There is but little of that secrecy and dark mystery about this famous “death watch” that sensational story-writers would have you believe. The detectives live upstairs in a little two-story house at the end of Meiggs’ wharf, close to the customs offices. I had imagined that I would be met at the door with all sorts of difficulties, that permits and passes would be demanded and explanations and the like; that the detectives would be austere and distant and preoccupied, preoccupied as men are who are watching for a sign or listening for a signal. Nothing of the sort. I tramped in at the open door and up the stairs to the room and sat me down on Mr. McHattie’s bed — it’s a lounge, but it does for a bed — as unchallenged as if the place had been my own; nor was I armed with so much as a letter of introduction. I was not even asked to show a business card.
The room is a little room, whose front windows give out upon the bay and the Golden Gate. Not a rowboat could pass the Gate without being noted from this vantage point. There were four beds made up on the floor of the room, and Conroy was dozing in one, pretending to read “Phra the Phoenician,” the whiles. The other detectives sat about a gas stove, smoking. They were for the most part big, burly men, with red faces, very jovial and not at all like the sleuths you expected to see. They are, however, heavily muscled fellows, with the exception of Conroy, who singularly enough is slighter than any of them, though a trained athlete. I remember that the room was warm. That there were pictures of barks and brigs about the walls, that a pair of handcuff’s were in a glass dish on the top of a dresser, and that, lying in a cubby hole of a desk, was Detective Egan’s revolver in a very worn case. The detectives impressed one as positively jolly. They told me many funny yarns about the crowd of visitors on the wharf, of the “Branch office of the Chronicle,” a room ten feet square, just back of the Customs building, and once when “The Examiner” reporter cried out that a girl was waving a handkerchief from a window on the hill back of the wharf, they made a rush for the rear window of the room, crowding about it like so many boys.
And at that very moment somewhere out there beyond the Farallones a certain great four-masted ship, 58 days out of Newcastle, was rolling and lifting on the swell of the Pacific, drawing nearer to these men with every puff of the snoring trades. Some time within the next few days the signal from the Merchants’ Exchange will be rung in that room, there on Meiggs’ wharf the signal which some of these men have come around half of the world to hear. It will be rung on the telephone bell, and it may come at each instant — it may be ringing now as I write these lines, or now as you read them. It may come in the morning, or while the “watch” is at supper, or in the very dead of night, or the early dawn. May I be there to hear it and to see as well. The scene cannot be otherwise than dramatic — melodramatic even. I want to hear that exclamation “Here she is” that some one is bound to utter. I want to see Egan reach for the revolver in the worn leather case, and Conroy take the handcuffs from the glass dish. I want to see the sudden rousing of these seven men, these same men who waved their hands to the girl in the window, and I want to hear the clatter of those seven pairs of boots going down the stair and out upon the wharf. I fancy there will not be much talking.
THE BOMBARDMENT
AN AR
TICLE REPRINTED FROM THE WAVE OF APRIL 3, 1897.
I arrived in Crete the day after the bombardment. Many things had happened, but everything was then over. I cursed the quarantine officers who had delayed the steamer, and set about collecting local color, for there was plenty of that left around — thank Heaven!
I salted down all my information and filled a small note book with the data. I made a bluff at a few sketches and betook myself home. I was no reporter, so it didn’t much matter. I was only indulging in a little three months’ fling at the Orient, and I wasn’t much disappointed at not catching snap shots of the excitement.
I wrote it all up on the way across the Atlantic, and had it in shape by the time I reached New York — about three thousand words that everybody said was “good stuff.” It seemed to me that it was “timely,” too, and I sent it off with postage enclosed to Harper’s Monthly. It came back, of course — they always do — and I had made a try at the Century and several of the half-tone monthlies, but it was always marked “down.” I had some good letters introducing me to the editors, and I got personal replies, but by the time I reached San Francisco I gave the thing up and put it away.