The Seekers

by F. M. Parker

  Levi grew restless and walked forward to the railing to watch ahead. He could hear the bow of the boat slicing the water and the splash of the two huge rotating paddle wheels. The wind created by the movement of the boat smelled of wetness and mud. It was pleasantly cool as it fanned his face.

  * * *

  The riverboat Whipple, its paddle wheels spinning and smokestacks pumping smoke, passed Point San Pablo and entered the salt water of San Francisco Bay. To Levi, from his position on the upper deck of the riverboat, the full sweep of the bay came into his view. The water of the harbor had a silver sheen from the glancing rays of the sun that had fallen halfway down from the top of the sky. He counted forty-six ships, both sail and steam, at anchor and motionless on the silver water.

  The captain sounded a blast on the steam whistle to announce his imminent arrival at the docks of the city. The spin of the paddle wheels slowed.

  “Damn the captain,” said the man standing by the rail of the boat near Levi. “He blows that whistle every time he comes into the docks. Bursts my ears when he does that. Plumb unnecessary for everybody can see the boat is coming.”

  “A loud whistle all right,” Levi agreed. The man was old with a seamed face and a black hat set upon his white head. “You live here in San Francisco?”

  “Yes. For more than fifteen years. Even before the gold rush days of ‘49.”

  “What’s the city like?”

  “Frisco is what the harbor and the gold from the mountains have made it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A wicked city, and a rich city, and will probably always be so. It has one of the best natural harbors in the world. Ships sail from here to every major seaport in all the faraway continents. The last census counted 150,000 people. Twenty- five thousand of that number are Chinamen. Of course, many other nationalities have come here. The town’s growing rapidly. There’s plenty of lumber for building material, brought down by ship from the forests on the north California and the Oregon coast.”

  “A man should be able to find work here,” Levi said.

  “All except Chinamen and the free blacks. Both groups have a hard road to go to find someone to hire them. The white men don’t like them competing for their jobs. They hate the Chinamen worst of all. They’ll work for a dime when the white man wants a dollar. The blacks are almost as cheap. The Chinamen sometimes get beat up awfully bad. The law officers don’t do much about that. They’re all white men.”

  The old man pointed ahead where the current swirled around a multitude of canting masts and spars sticking up above the water of the bay. “There’s hundreds of dead ships on the bottom. In ‘49, ‘50 and even ‘51 the crews of many ships went gold crazy and abandoned their vessels. Seven hundred in ‘50 alone, they rotted and sank right at their anchorages. Now they’ve been forgotten, and the men too. The port officials have made passageways through the wrecks by dragging some aside.”

  The man fell silent watching ahead as the captain slowed the riverboat and steered a course through the forest of masts projecting from the water.

  Levi could make out long, rickety-looking, wooden piers jutting out from the waterfront quay of the city. Ships were tied up to every foot of dock space. A host of men and vehicles were scurrying about moving a huge tonnage of cargo to and from the ships. Beyond the piers the waterfront was crowded with warehouses and factories. The hills rising up from the bay were covered with buildings of every description. He had reached famous San Francisco.

  The riverboat slowed as two tugboats steamed out from the docks. The captain waved at them as they chugged past toward the wheat barge he towed. The tugs secured themselves to the barge, one on each side. One of the riverboat crewmen, at a signal from his captain, cut the barge free.

  The riverboat continued slowing as it drew near its berth. The rotation of the paddle wheels reversed, the water boiled and the boat gently bumped the wooden piling of the pier. Lines were tossed from the vessel to men on the pier and they were made fast to cleats on the dock.

  “All passengers disembark,” called the deck steward. He moved to help two deck hands swinging out the top deck gangway and lower it to rest one end on the pier. A strong ramp was run out from the lower deck to accommodate the several dozen wagons and buggies and saddle horses that had been transported.

  “Good luck to you in San Francisco, young fellow,” said the old man.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The old man walked toward the gangway. Levi went down to the lower deck and stood beside his black horse and watched the other passengers. He patiently waited, enjoying his arrival at his final destination.

  The passengers hastened down the gangway, but Levi hung back until he was the last to leave the riverboat. Leading his horse, he walked leisurely along the dock that was jammed with heavily laden drays, wagons, and carts. Stevedores carried huge loads up and down the gangways of the ships. Seamen, ship officers, craftsmen, and travelers bustled about speaking a Babble tongue of languages. A thumping, steam-driven pile driver was hammering long timbers into the bottom of the bay to lengthen the pier. A huffing steam paddy added its hiss and clank as it scooped sand from along the pier to deepen the water so the larger ships could come close in to land. He stopped for a minute to watch a steam-powered winch hoisting a cargo of freight from the hold of a ship and swinging it onto the dock. Most of the workers on the dock were burly white men. However at one vessel a line of small brown Chinamen, carrying loads on their backs larger than they were, labored up and down the gangway.

  Levi approached a man bossing a group of workers. “What’s the shortest route to the Pacific Ocean?” Levi asked.

  A surprised expression passed over the man’s face. “Just straight west through town and up and over Mount Sutro. The ocean’s not more than four miles away. Why do you ask?”

  Levi grinned sheepishly and replied, “I promised myself that the very first thing I’d do when I reached San Francisco was to go for a swim in the ocean.”

  “You’ll find it damn cold,” the man said with a chuckle.

  “Then I’ll know when I’m in it.”

  “That you will.”

  Levi mounted and rode from the busy docks and through the blocks of large warehouses.

  He turned up Market Street and soon passed the Harpenning Block and the four-story Grand Hotel with its four hundred rooms. A tiny steam locomotive pulling a loaded passenger coach rattled by down the center of the street.

  All the thoroughfares he passed were lined with big buildings and the sidewalks crowded with people and the street with horse drawn wagons, surreys and buggies. There was a constant rumble of noise all around him from the iron-rimmed wheels of the conveyances and shod hooves of the horses passing on the wooden planking that surfaced the street.

  He wondered about the great quantity of lumber needed to cover the numerous streets until he recalled the old man telling him of the huge forests on the coasts of northern California and Oregon. With water transportation, timbers could be brought cheaply to San Francisco.

  Levi stopped at a restaurant and had a beef sandwich, a wedge of cheese and a slice of cake packed for a lunch. Now he was prepared to spend the night on the ocean shore. He spoke to the black and it went at a gallop up the sloping street between the rows of buildings.

  Three miles later, he reined the horse to a halt amid the brush and oak trees on the top of Mount Sutro. Before him, a mile distant, spread the mighty rolling waters of the Pacific. He breathed deeply. Even from a mile away the west breeze brought the smell of the ocean salt water to him.

  He sat in his saddle for a time and looked at the ocean, watching the waves roll in, never ending. The sun, hanging low over the water, was a crimson ball. A tall-masted schooner with brilliant white sails was pinned against the darkening water. The ship, racing swiftly on the wind, was heading directly for the land. North of him and closer, a steamship came out between the headlands of the Golden Gate and drove away into the sea.

  T
he horse caught its wind and began to nibble at the wild grass. Levi pulled its head up.

  “None of that now,” he told the horse. He touched its flanks with his heels and began the descent to the ocean shore.

  Reaching the beach, Levi removed the saddle from the black and slapped the animal away to graze. He spread his blankets on a patch of beach grass between two boulders above high tide. He pulled off his clothing while all the time watching the waves sweep in to stroke the narrow beach. With a rushing charge, he rushed barefoot and naked across the beach and plunged into the breakers.

  The cold water enclosed him and instantly robbed him of all warmth. Still he swam onward beneath the surface, exulting in the coldness. Finally he surfaced, spraying salt water from his mouth and flinging his head to throw the long wet hair from his face. He swam back to shallow water. Shivering, he hastily finished bathing and walked back to his bedroll. He dried on a corner of a blanket and slid into his clothing.

  Idly he laid out his supper and ate watching the sailing ship and listening to the break of the sea on the rock and sand of the shore. A flock of shorebirds skimmed in to find their roost in the bushes nearby before the night fell. They landed, uttered little chirping calls to each other, then fell silent.

  Levi watched the ocean drown the sun. As the daylight crept away to the west and dusk fell, the sailing ship dropped its sails and became stationary on the dark swell of the deep. Levi wondered why the ship hadn’t set course for the Golden Gate instead of to an anchorage off the coast.

  With the sun gone, a cold wind began to blow off the water and Levi wrapped one of his blankets around his shoulders. The long journey had been safely completed and he should be pleased, but strangely a gloomy melancholy fell over him as the wet twilight settled on the ocean. He had much to try to forget.

  The stars came out. A yellow half moon rose over Mount Sutro and began to eye the earth. Levi crawled into his bedroll, propped his head on the saddle and watched the stars begin their nightlong whirling turn across the ebony heavens.

  He lay for a long time awake, pondering his future. He heard the tide’s inexorable invasion of the land. Late in the night he slept.

  Chapter 13

  The schooner Huntress ran eastward with her sails full and hard with a stiff wind. She was returning to San Francisco after two years hunting seals in the cold south Pacific and Antarctic Oceans. She had survived the terrifying storms that came directly from the South Pole, and the attempted mutiny to take over the ship, and the murder of the first mate. Still, the voyage had been successful and her hold was full of valuable sealskins.

  Errin Scanlan saw the land of America rise up out of the heaving Pacific waters. From a hazy, gray smudge on the horizon, the coastal mountain range of the continent had grown steadily until now the land stretched north and south as far as he could see. He felt his heart beating happily. A new life without the heavy iron shackles around his ankles and without the cutting lash of the cat-o’-nine-tails upon his back was about to begin for him.

  Errin was on the Huntress by the smallest of chances. He was a convicted highwayman of England who had been transported halfway around the world to serve a life term in the English penal colony of Australia for robbery and for killing two “thief-takers”—bounty hunters. After four years of hard labor and the most cruel and inhuman beatings with the cat-o’-nine-tails, he had escaped with Tim Swallow, another convict, by stealing a small fishing boat in Sydney and sailing out into the winter storms on the Pacific Ocean. Swallow had died of hunger and cold during that terrible ordeal.

  Nearly dead himself, Errin had come upon the Huntress moving under reduced sail. No one responded to his calls for help. He managed to climb aboard on a rope hanging over the side. Captain Griffith lay wrapped in furs on the main deck and, the crew, who had tried to mutiny, he had locked below decks. Errin helped the captain kill four of the mutineers and subdue the remainder. The captain agreed to take Errin with him to the ship’s home port, San Francisco.

  Errin had learned seamanship during the long voyage to Australia on the prison ship. The captain, seeing his skill, and judging him a man to trust, made him first mate replacing the mate who had been killed. Errin moved into the mate’s cabin, and exchanged his convict clothing for the mate’s.

  Errin had been off duty all afternoon and had sat leaning against the crank windlass used to raise the big anchor. He watched ahead. Tad the cabin boy came and talked with him for a time, and then left to go about his duties. When the day grew old and the sun slanted in steeply, Captain Griffith came to the rail of the ship near Errin. He spread his legs to brace against the pitch of the ship and gazed as did Errin toward the land.

  “Scanlan, it might be dangerous for you if we ran straight into San Francisco. Some of the crew might be holding a grudge on you for killing Walloghan, and inform the American officials that you are an escaped English convict. The Americans might ignore that, but then again they could arrest you and notify the English of your capture. The English have a consulate here in San Francisco. I think it best we put you ashore by small boat somewhere away from the city.”

  “I appreciate that,” Errin said. “I’d not like to trade a prison in Australia for one here in America.”

  “All right then. We’ll drift-anchor off the coast tonight. In the morning just before daylight, Karcher will row you ashore.

  San Francisco is a large city and you can easily disappear in it.”

  An hour later the land was hardly two miles distant and fog could be seen forming like smoke in the harbor entrance between the headlands of the Golden Gate. Griffith ordered the sails lowered and halted the voyage of the Huntress.

  A sea anchor, a large funnel-shaped canvas object, nine feet at its greatest diameter, was lowered from the bow of the ship and into the water at the end of two hundred feet of stout cable. The sea anchor would sink into the deep still water and hold the schooner against the push of the wind. The vessel would drift not more than a mile during the night.

  With the anchorage made, Captain Griffith called, “Scanlan, come below with me.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Griffith led the way down the ladder and along the narrow passageway to his cabin. He closed the door and lit the brass gimbaled oil lamp on the table.

  “Sit down,” said the captain.

  Errin seated himself. The captain took the second chair and faced Errin.

  “You’ve become an excellent seaman and have been a lot of help in sailing the ship,” the captain said. “We’ll not talk about your help in the mutiny. You know how I feel about that. You’re developing into a good first mate, though you need more salt water to pass under your keel. Would you like to sail on my next voyage?”

  “No, Captain, I’m a landsman. I’ll take my chances on shore.”

  “I thought that would be your answer. Now I want to pay your wages.” Griffith extracted a leather pouch from a drawer in his navigation table and counted out several gold coins into his hand. “Here’s two hundred dollars. You surely earned all of it.” He handed the coins to Errin.

  “Also Karcher is bringing you up a bundle of sealskins from the hold. You can sell them at the California Fur and Hide Company on Market Street. They’re located three or four blocks up from the waterfront. Can’t miss it. I judge one big bundle of skins should bring you about another two hundred dollars.”

  “Thanks, Captain, for all you’ve done for me.”

  “You’ve done as much or more for me.”

  A knock sounded on the cabin door and Karcher’s voice came from the passageway. “Captain, the skins have been brought up and are stowed near the Jacob’s ladder.”

  “Very well, Karcher. You’re relieved of duty until an hour before daylight in the morning.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” Karcher’s footsteps sounded drawing away.

  “One warning for you,” Griffith said. “San Francisco is a rough city, especially the Barbary Coast—that’s a section of town on Pacific, Kea
rney and Broadway—so keep the Colt pistol. You may have need for it. Watch out for crimps on The Embarcadero. They’ll shanghai you. They’ll bust your head or slip you a Mickey Finn and you’ll wake up out at sea and bound for a three-year voyage to nowhere.”

  “I know about the tricks crimps play. They’re plentiful in London too.” He touched the pistol. He had practiced many hours shooting at targets Tad tossed onto the waves. The skill he had possessed before being arrested had quickly returned.

  * * *

  Scanlan woke to a light rapping on his cabin door. Tad’s muffled voice reached him. “Mr. Scanlan, Mr. Karcher said I should tell you the longboat’s in the water and ready to take you ashore.”

  “Very well, Tad. Tell Karcher I’ll be there shortly.”

  Errin arose from his bunk, lit a candle, and dressed in the dead mate’s clothing. As he packed a supply of powder and shot for his pistol, he wondered if the mate had a wife and children in San Francisco. He left the cabin, went forward along the passageway, and climbed to the main deck.

  A light on-shore wind blew. Overhead, the heavens were full of bright stars. The land lying to the east was invisible in the darkness, but the land of America was there and waiting for him. He was a free man in a great new country. Looking past the main mast, he could make out three men near the starboard quarter of the ship. He walked forward to join the captain, Karcher, and little Tad.

  “The boat’s ready, Mr. Scanlan,” Karcher said.

  Errin spoke to Griffith. “Good-bye, captain.” He held out his hand. “Thanks again for everything.”

  “Good luck to you, Scanlan,” the captain replied. He shook Errin’s hand.

  “Karcher, I’ll hang a lantern in the riggin’ so you can find your way back to the ship.”

  “Thanks, Captain.”

  Tad stepped forward. “Captain, may I go ashore with Mr. Karcher?”

  “Sure, lad. Use a second set of oars and practice your rowing.”