The Crusade of the Excelsior

by Harte, Bret

  "Help!" cried the young man, springing after him, "It is madness. He will kill himself!"

  The water was shallow, they were both wading, they both reached the boat at the same time; but the Captain had scrambled into the stern-sheets, and cast loose the painter, as Hurlstone once more threw his arms about him.

  "Hear me, Captain. I'll go with you. Listen! I know the way through the fog. You understand: I'll pilot you!" He was desperate, but no longer from despair of himself, but of another; he was reckless, but only to save a madman from the fate that but a moment before he had chosen for himself.

  Captain Bunker seemed to soften. "Get in for'ard," he said, in a lower voice. Hurlstone released his grasp, but still clinging to the boat, which had now drifted into deeper water, made his way to the bow. He was climbing over the thwarts when a horrified cry from the fisherman ashore and a jarring laugh in his ear caused him to look up. But not in time to save himself! The treacherous maniac had suddenly launched a blow from an oar at the unsuspecting man as he was rising to his knees. It missed his head, but fell upon his arm and shoulder, precipitating him violently into the sea.

  Stunned by the shock, he sank at first like lead to the bottom. When he rose again, with his returning consciousness, he could see that Captain Bunker had already hoisted sail, and, with the assistance of his oars, was rapidly increasing his distance from the shore. With his returning desperation he turned to strike out after him, but groaned as his one arm sank powerless to his side. A few strokes showed him the madness of the attempt; a few more convinced him that he himself could barely return to the shore. A sudden torpor had taken possession of him—he was sinking!

  With this thought, a struggle for life began; and this man who had just now sought death so eagerly—with no feeling of inconsistency, with no physical fear of dissolution, with only a vague, blind, dogged determination to live for some unknown purpose—a determination as vague and dogged as his former ideas of self-destruction—summoned all his energies to reach the shore. He struck out wildly, desperately; once or twice he thought he felt his feet touch the bottom, only to find himself powerlessly dragged back towards the sea. With a final superhuman effort he gained at last a foothold on the muddy strand, and, half scrambling, half crawling, sank exhaustedly beside the fisherman's net. But the fisherman was gone! He attempted again to rise to his feet, but a strange dizziness attacked him. The darkening landscape, with its contracting wall of fog; the gloomy flat; the still, pale sea, as yet unruffled by the faint land breeze that was slowly wafting the escaping boat into the shadowy offing—all swam round him! Through the roaring in his ears he thought he heard drumbeats, and the fanfare of a trumpet, and voices. The next moment he had lost all consciousness.

  When he came to, he was lying in the guard-room of the Presidio. Among the group of people who surrounded him he recognized the gaunt features of the Commander, the sympathetic eyes of Father Esteban, and the fisherman who had disappeared. When he rose on his elbow, and attempted to lift himself feebly, the fisherman, with a cry of gratitude, threw himself on his knees, and kissed his helpless hand.

  "He lives, he lives! your Excellencies! Saints be praised, he lives! The hero—the brave Americano—the noble caballero who delivered me from the madman."

  "Who are you? and whence come you?" demanded the Commander of Hurlstone, with grave austerity.

  Hurlstone hesitated; the priest leaned forward with a half anxious, half warning gesture. There was a sudden rustle in the passage; the crowd gave way as Miss Keene, followed by Mrs. Markham, entered. The young girl's eyes caught those of the prostrate man. With an impulsive cry she ran towards him.

  "Mr. Hurlstone!"

  "Hurlstone," echoed the group, pressing nearer the astonished man.

  The Comandante lifted his hand gravely with a gesture of silence, and then slowly removed his plumed hat. Every head was instantly uncovered.

  "Long live our brave and noble ally, Don Diego! Long live the beautiful Dona Leonor!"

  A faint shade of sadness passed over the priest's face. He glanced from Hurlstone to Miss Keene.

  "Then you have consented?" he whispered.

  Hurlstone cast a rapid glance at Eleanor Keene.

  "I consent!"

  PART II. FREED.

  CHAPTER I.

  THE MOURNERS AT SAN FRANCISCO.

  The telegraph operator at the Golden Gate of San Francisco had long since given up hope of the Excelsior. During the months of September and October, 1854, stimulated by the promised reward, and often by the actual presence of her owners, he had shown zeal and hope in his scrutiny of the incoming ships. The gaunt arms of the semaphore at Fort Point, turned against the sunset sky, had regularly recorded the smallest vessel of the white-winged fleet which sought the portal of the bay during that eventful year of immigration; but the Excelsior was not amongst them. At the close of the year 1854 she was a tradition; by the end of January, 1855, she was forgotten. Had she been engulfed in her own element she could not have been more completely swallowed up than in the changes of that shore she never reached. Whatever interest or hope was still kept alive in solitary breasts the world never knew. By the significant irony of Fate, even the old-time semaphore that should have signaled her was abandoned and forgotten.

  The mention of her name—albeit in a quiet, unconcerned voice—in the dress-circle of a San Francisco theatre, during the performance of a popular female star, was therefore so peculiar that it could only have come from the lips of some one personally interested in the lost vessel. Yet the speaker was a youngish, feminine-looking man of about thirty, notable for his beardlessness, in the crowded circle of bearded and moustachioed Californians, and had been one of the most absorbed of the enthusiastic audience. A weak smile of vacillating satisfaction and uneasiness played on his face during the plaudits of his fellow-admirers, as if he were alternately gratified and annoyed. It might have passed for a discriminating and truthful criticism of the performance, which was a classical burlesque, wherein the star displayed an unconventional frankness of shapely limbs and unrestrained gestures and glances; but he applauded the more dubious parts equally with the audience. He was evidently familiar with the performance, for a look of eager expectation greeted most of the "business." Either he had not come for the entire evening, or he did not wish to appear as if he had, as he sat on one of the back benches near the passage, and frequently changed his place. He was well, even foppishly, dressed for the period, and appeared to be familiarly known to the loungers in the passage as a man of some social popularity.

  He had just been recognized by a man of apparently equal importance and distinction, who had quietly and unconsciously taken a seat by his side, and the recognition appeared equally unexpected and awkward. The new-comer was the older and more decorous-looking, with an added formality of manner and self-assertion that did not, however, conceal a certain habitual shrewdness of eye and lip. He wore a full beard, but the absence of a moustache left the upper half of his handsome and rather satirical mouth uncovered. His dress was less pronounced than his companion's, but of a type of older and more established gentility.

  "I was a little late coming from the office to-night," said the younger man, with an embarrassed laugh, "and I thought I'd drop in here on my way home. Pretty rough outside, ain't it?"

  "Yes, it's raining and blowing; so I thought I wouldn't go up to the plaza for a cab, but wait here for the first one that dropped a fare at the door, and take it on to the hotel."

  "Hold on, and I'll go with you," said the young man carelessly. "I say, Brimmer," he added, after a pause, with a sudden assumption of larger gayety, "there's nothing mean about Belle Montgomery, eh? She's a whole team and the little dog under the wagon, ain't she? Deuced pretty woman!—no make-up there, eh?"

  "She certainly is a fine woman," said Brimmer gravely, borrowing his companion's lorgnette. "By the way, Markham, do you usually keep an opera-glass in your office in case of an emergency like this?"

  "I reckon
it was forgotten in my overcoat pocket," said Markham, with an embarrassed smile.

  "Left over from the last time," said Brimmer, rising from his seat. "Well, I'm going now—I suppose I'll have to try the plaza."

  "Hold on a moment. She's coming on now—there she is!" He stopped, his anxious eyes fixed upon the stage. Brimmer turned at the same moment in no less interested absorption. A quick hush ran through the theatre; the men bent eagerly forward as the Queen of Olympus swept down to the footlights, and, with a ravishing smile, seemed to envelop the whole theatre in a gracious caress.

  "You know, 'pon my word, Brimmer, she's a very superior woman," gasped Markham excitedly, when the goddess had temporarily withdrawn. "These fellows here," he said, indicating the audience contemptuously, "don't know her,—think she's all that sort of thing, you know,—and come here just to LOOK at her. But she's very accomplished—in fact, a kind of literary woman. Writes devilish good poetry—only took up the stage on account of domestic trouble: drunken husband that beat her—regular affecting story, you know. These sap-headed fools don't, of course, know THAT. No, sir; she's a remarkable woman! I say, Brimmer, look here! I"—he hesitated, and then went on more boldly, as if he had formed a sudden resolution. "What have you got to do to-night?"

  Brimmer, who had been lost in abstraction, started slightly, and said,—

  "I—oh! I've got an appointment with Keene. You know he's off by the steamer—day after to-morrow?"

  "What! He's not going off on that wild-goose chase, after all? Why, the man's got Excelsior on the brain!" He stopped as he looked at Brimmer's cold face, and suddenly colored. "I mean his plan—his idea's all nonsense—you know that!"

  "I certainly don't agree with him," began Brimmer gravely; "but"—

  "The idea," interrupted Markham, encouraged by Brimmer's beginning, "of his knocking around the Gulf of California, and getting up an expedition to go inland, just because a mail-steamer saw a barque like the Excelsior off Mazatlan last August. As if the Excelsior wouldn't have gone into Mazatlan if it had been her! I tell you what it is, Brimmer: it's mighty rough on you and me, and it ain't the square thing at all—after all we've done, and the money we've spent, and the nights we've sat up over the Excelsior—to have this young fellow Keene always putting up the bluff of his lost sister on us! His lost sister, indeed! as if WE hadn't any feelings."

  The two men looked at each other, and each felt it incumbent to look down and sigh deeply—not hypocritically, but perfunctorily, as over a past grief, although anger had been the dominant expression of the speaker.

  "I was about to remark," said Brimmer practically, "that the insurance on the Excelsior having been paid, her loss is a matter of commercial record; and that, in a business point of view, this plan of Keene's ain't worth looking at. As a private matter of our own feelings—purely domestic—there's no question but that we must sympathize with him, although he refuses to let us join in the expenses."

  "Oh, as to that," said Markham hurriedly, "I told him to draw on me for a thousand dollars last time I saw him. No, sir; it ain't that. What gets me is this darned nagging and simpering around, and opening old sores, and putting on sentimental style, and doing the bereaved business generally. I reckon he'd be even horrified to see you and me here—though it was just a chance with both of us."

  "I think not," said Brimmer dryly. "He knows Miss Montgomery already. They're going by the same steamer."

  Markham looked up quickly.

  "Impossible! She's going by the other line to Panama; that is"—he hesitated—"I heard it from the agent."

  "She's changed her mind, so Keene says," returned Brimmer. "She's going by way of Nicaragua. He stops at San Juan to reconnoitre the coast up to Mazatlan. Good-night. It's no use waiting here for a cab any longer, I'm off."

  "Hold on!" said Markham, struggling out of a sudden uneasy reflection. "I say, Brimmer," he resumed, with an enforced smile, which he tried to make playful, "your engagement with Keene won't keep you long. What do you say to having a little supper with Miss Montgomery, eh?—perfectly proper, you know—at our hotel? Just a few friends, eh?"

  Brimmer's eyes and lips slightly contracted.

  "I believe I am already invited," he said quietly. "Keene asked me. In fact, that's the appointment. Strange he didn't speak of you," he added dryly.

  "I suppose it's some later arrangement," Markham replied, with feigned carelessness. "Do you know her?"

  "Slightly."

  "You didn't say so!"

  "You didn't ask me," said Brimmer. "She came to consult me about South American affairs. It seems that filibuster General Leonidas, alias Perkins, whose little game we stopped by that Peruvian contract, actually landed in Quinquinambo and established a government. It seems she knows him, has a great admiration for him as a Liberator, as she calls him. I think they correspond!"

  "She's a wonderful woman, by jingo, Brimmer! I'd like to hear whom she don't know," said Markham, beaming with a patronizing vanity. "There's you, and there's that filibuster, and old Governor Pico, that she's just snatched bald-headed—I mean, you know, that he recognizes her worth, don't you see? Not like this cattle you see here."

  "Are you coming with me?" said Brimmer, gravely buttoning up his coat, as if encasing himself in a panoply of impervious respectability.

  "I'll join you at the hotel," said Markham hurriedly. "There's a man over there in the parquet that I want to say a word to; don't wait for me."

  With a slight inclination of the head Mr. Brimmer passed out into the lobby, erect, self-possessed, and impeccable. One or two of his commercial colleagues of maturer age, who were loitering leisurely by the wall, unwilling to compromise themselves by actually sitting down, took heart of grace at this correct apparition. Brimmer nodded to them coolly, as if on 'Change, and made his way out of the theatre. He had scarcely taken a few steps before a furious onset of wind and rain drove him into a doorway for shelter. At the same moment a slouching figure, with a turned-up coat-collar, slipped past him and disappeared in a passage at his right. Partly hidden by his lowered umbrella, Mr. Brimmer himself escaped notice, but he instantly recognized his late companion, Markham. As he resumed his way up the street he glanced into the passage. Halfway down, a light flashed upon the legend "Stage Entrance." Quincy Brimmer, with a faint smile, passed on to his hotel.

  It was striking half-past eleven when Mr. Brimmer again issued from his room in the Oriental and passed down a long corridor. Pausing a moment before a side hall that opened from it, he cast a rapid look up and down the corridor, and then knocked hastily at a door. It was opened sharply by a lady's maid, who fell back respectfully before Mr. Brimmer's all-correct presence.

  Half reclining on a sofa in the parlor of an elaborate suite of apartments was the woman whom Mr. Brimmer had a few hours before beheld on the stage of the theatre. Lifting her eyes languidly from a book that lay ostentatiously on her lap, she beckoned her visitor to approach. She was a woman still young, whose statuesque beauty had but slightly suffered from cosmetics, late hours, and the habitual indulgence of certain hysterical emotions that were not only inconsistent with the classical suggestions of her figure, but had left traces not unlike the grosser excitement of alcoholic stimulation. She looked like a tinted statue whose slight mutations through stress of time and weather had been unwisely repaired by freshness of color.

  "I am such a creature of nerves," she said, raising a superb neck and extending a goddess-like arm, "that I am always perfectly exhausted after the performance. I fly, as you see, to my first love—poetry—as soon as Rosina has changed my dress. It is not generally known—but I don't mind telling YOU—that I often nerve myself for the effort of acting by reading some well-remembered passage from my favorite poets, as I stand by the wings. I quaff, as one might say, a single draught of the Pierian spring before I go on."

  The exact relations between the humorous "walk round," in which Miss Montgomery usually made her first entrance, and the volume of Byron she held in
her hand, did not trouble Mr. Brimmer so much as the beautiful arm with which she emphasized it. Neither did it strike him that the distinguishing indications of a poetic exaltation were at all unlike the effects of a grosser stimulant known as "Champagne cocktail" on the less sensitive organization of her colleagues. Touched by her melancholy but fascinating smile, he said gallantly that he had observed no sign of exhaustion, or want of power in her performance that evening.

  "Then you were there!" she said, fixing her eyes upon him with an expression of mournful gratitude. "You actually left your business and the calls of public duty to see the poor mountebank perform her nightly task."

  "I was there with a friend of yours," answered Brimmer soberly, "who actually asked me to the supper to which Mr. Keene had already invited me, and which YOU had been kind enough to suggest to me a week ago."

  "True, I had forgotten," said Miss Montgomery, with a large goddess-like indifference that was more effective with the man before her than the most elaborate explanation. "You don't mind them—do you?—for we are all friends together. My position, you know," she added sadly, "prevents my always following my own inclinations or preferences. Poor Markham, I fear the world does not do justice to his gentle, impressible nature. I sympathize with him deeply; we have both had our afflictions, we have both—lost. Good heavens!" she exclaimed, with a sudden exaggerated start of horror, "what have I done? Forgive my want of tact, dear friend; I had forgotten, wretched being that I am, that YOU, too"—

  She caught his hand in both hers, and bowed her head over it as if unable to finish her sentence.

  Brimmer, who had been utterly mystified and amazed at this picture of Markham's disconsolate attitude to the world, and particularly to the woman before him, was completely finished by this later tribute to his own affliction. His usually composed features, however, easily took upon themselves a graver cast as he kept, and pressed, the warm hands in his own.