by Howard Fast
And because his attitude went far beyond the sailor’s assurance, the man returned with his captain. But the captain was impatient, harassed, and worried about another visit from the port inspector, whom he would have to pay half of what he got from each of the extra passengers he overburdened his hold with. He was already far above his quota, the captain, and he desired to be off. Even money had come to be unattractive in the madness that was growing upon the waterfront.
“Well?” he demanded of John Preswick, making out his features in the long, faint light of a lantern hung upon the rail.
“You sail to-night—for Chagres?”
“Yes! Oh, it is you, Mr. Preswick. I didn’t catch your name at first. Yes, in an hour. I thought it was that damned inspector!”
“I should like passage.”
“Sorry,” the captain replied hurriedly, shaking his head. “We’re full up and foundering. I couldn’t accommodate another for love of heaven or hell. Look along the deck there!”
John Preswick looked and shrugged his shoulders. Men were rolling in blankets and settling themselves in snug positions against the rails. Or else they sat with their knees drawn up, hands about them. He could count more than a dozen men under the forward boom. “But I should like a cabin,” he decided. “I really couldn’t be persuaded to spend my trip on deck.”
“Six in a cabin already,” the captain laughed shortly. “I am sorry, but I can’t help you. The Albatross sails day after tomorrow.”
“The Albatross is a scow, and I can’t wait. What do you take for cabin passage?”
“Eighty dollars.”
“Thievery!”
“As you look at it. I am full at that price. Find a man on the waterfront who’ll better it.”
With a slight smile John Preswick took a wallet from his pocket and counted out five hundred dollars. “I’ll have the cabin,” he said softly. “As for the others—”
The captain hesitated, looked at the money, and then nodded. “They’ll sleep on deck. Of course, they’ll kick up a rumpus, but—” He glanced again at the money. “Come with me.”
They kicked up a rumpus, but that was only to be expected; at last John Preswick found himself sole occupant of a small, hot, untidy cabin, a bunk to one side of it, a lamp hanging in the center, and a square table beneath the lamp. As his eyes traveled over it, he shook his head, thinking to himself that the year before, the same passage might have been had for forty dollars. When the situation required it, John Preswick never hesitated to spend, but even then the spending was not without a pang. More than anything else, money represented substance to him; he was not niggardly, but he treasured the one thing he valued. And, coming to the bottom of the matter, the one thing he set any store at all by was money. That was how, in his twenty-nine years, he had managed to amass out of an inn without patronage almost six thousand dollars. Now, upon his person, he had more than forty thousand dollars. That, he had, and a bag with a suit of clothes and a shirt—and a dream of a place where, so the rumor ran, gold might be had for the taking.
And John Preswick could no more have resisted that call of California than water the pull of the moon.
So he was off—in a five-hundred-dollar cabin that measured six feet by eight. Before he crawled into his narrow bunk that night, he took out a small revolver he had purchased—one of the first revolvers—and he twirled the chambers, saw that the caps were set, and laid it by his side. Then, unemotionally, he closed his eyes and slept.
4
WHEN he had arrived at Chagres, he found passage in a canoe almost immediately, although he made no further lavish display of his money. It was a long, crowded canoe, more than twenty feet from stern to high prow, propelled at a deathly slow pace by six naked Indians who swung themselves on slim poles, moving so unhurriedly as to make the entire action illusory. They would lift their poles, dip, find the mud bottom, and swish through the water; and for hour upon hour the thing would be repeated, taking them in all about ten miles a day. Beside the six Indians, there were twelve other white men crowded together upon the narrow seats. With John Preswick, the number was brought to thirteen. But that was alleviated the first night out, one of the men being bitten on the wrist by a snake as he lay, and dying shortly afterwards. All in all, that was considered hopeful, for thirteen had been a source of worry.
In ways, the other men resembled John Preswick. Eight of them were Yankees; two were Mexican; one was French; one was British. The Englishman, it was, who had died the first night out.
The Mexicans said aves for his soul, while the Yankees played cards, while the Indians slept. John Preswick sat at the edge of the fire and stared at the still, uncovered form, raising his eyes now and then to observe the others of the party. Some fate had thrown him with them, but except to show them common courtesy, he did not speak to them. He was not a quick man to make friendships unless he would be “benefited by them in a material manner. And these men he did not consider as prospective benefits.
He wondered to himself whether, a month back, alive with the heat for gold and life, the Englishman on the other side of the blaze had ever thought of this—had ever anticipated that anything but fortune awaited him. John Preswick wondered where he himself would be in a month; unconsciously his hand crept to the revolver in his belt. The fire flamed up.
A crowd of insects buzzed, danced and spun about the fire, hurling themselves desperately and conscientiously into the blaze, nor being a warning to those other suicides who came after. There were so many insects! All of himself except his face he had covered, and yet they stung him until his lean, bone-stretched countenance was puffed to a dismal chubbiness.
The night wore through; he neither slept nor rested; and in the morning he found it in him to envy the corpse that lay so still and peacefully, unmindful of the insects that fed upon it. For breakfast, he ate some dried fruits and drank of the flat river-water. Then they were off, the canoe sliding upon the interminable poles, the Indians calling out a soft chant as they moved. Peculiarly unattractive were these Indians, naked, with great bulging paunches, with skinny legs and bloated cheeks, with little dark eyes and stringy hair. And on either side of the Chagres, a flat, winding river, were piled walls of such tangled and impenetrable jungle as he had never known existed. The jungle was laced and intertwisted with vines and creepers, like a wild, haphazard woof. And there was the rain, the eternal, dripping rain, that was like no rain the north had seen, and the fever that came on them during the voyage. Before the mountains were gained, two more died. But his weathered leanness wore through, and though he was swollen from mosquito bites, and sick from the water, and loose of bowel, he was well when they reached the great lakes and able to take up passage after that to the coast. The two died while crossing the lakes, and over the mountains the remaining ten separated. With two of the Americans, John Preswick managed to obtain a mule, and the three of them kept together to Panama.
That was the last John Preswick saw of them, for while they were able to find passage upon a small, single-masted scow—which he later heard went down in a storm just outside the harbor of San José—he was laid to bed with malaria.
But Panama was a city overrun with humanity, swarming with the increasing stream that poured down out of the hills, throbbing with life it had never before known. It was not a place where one could be decently sick.
For an entire day he attempted to obtain lodgings, not daring to make any display of his wealth, but even the new mushroom hotels were bursting with life. So sick that he hardly knew where or why he was going, he stumbled onto a certain Michael Brian, who took him to his room, gave him his own bed, and nursed him as he would a brother. For many days Michael Brian tended him, and there grew up between the two men a friendship that was to last for thirty years. For Michael Brian was to be the only man—perhaps the only thing—that John Preswick could love.
He was hardly more than five feet, Michael Brian, bald and with merry blue eyes, and possessing a preposterous store of stren
gth in his wiry form. He was a strange little man, of strange thoughts and strange ideals, with the brow of a dreamer and a narrow, jutting chin. Where he had come from, John Preswick never learnt, but it seemed that no part of the world but had seen his feet and heard his careful stream of curses. And, as he often stated, and truthfully, he was an honorable man, although his honor was often wont to take weird forms. But John Preswick loved him—for full thirty years; and, in his way, he loved John Preswick.
When John Preswick came from the fever and found himself in a tiny room, walls filthy and water-stained, he looked about and discovered a gargoyle seated beside his bed. “Who are you,” John Preswick asked weakly, “and where am I?”
“I,” said the imp, “am Michael O’Flareghty Brian, and for many days now I have been tending you as your mother might have, were she of my disposition. You are in a hole of hell called Panama, and worse I could not be wishing you.”
“Yes. I remember. But why—?”
Michael Brian turned, opened a chest, and produced a money belt, which he threw upon the bed. “That is why. I am neither a fool nor a Christian, but there is your money. There is forty thousand, two hundred and twenty dollars. Three times I have counted it.”
Fumbling for it, John Preswick opened it and spilt forth the notes upon his bed. To the last dollar, it was all there. When he had finished counting it, he turned an amazed face to Michael Brian. He said: “I don’t understand. You might have had it all. Any one would.”
“Any one but Michael Brian,” the little man snapped; “but when you have known me longer, you will find that I am an honest man, and that if there is a thing I detest, it is a thief. Your money is there. No, don’t offer me any; I could have it all. I am a bit deeper than that, my friend. Forty thousand dollars is a great deal of money. Perhaps you can use me. Perhaps I can use you.”
“How do you mean?” John Preswick inquired, staring into those bristling blue eyes.
“Where are you bound for—when you are again on your feet?”
“The gold fields.”
“With forty thousand dollars?”
“And why not?”
“Because you are a fool,” Michael Brian stated decisively. “They will strip you as you have never been stripped before. In the east you were a canny man; there you will be a child. I know. And gold. Gold comes. Gold goes.”
“They will not strip me,” said John Preswick, a slow smile spreading over his thin face.
Then they were alike, though one was small, and round, and bald, and the other was lean, and long, and more hollow of face than ever. They were very much alike, a fact which Michael Brian recognized as he began to speak:
“Gold is not wealth. It comes, and it goes. And those who scrabble in the muck for it are fools. They make seven, or eight, or twenty dollars a day; but what is that? They drink it away—or it slips into the hands of harlots. They gamble it away, or some one beats in their heads and filches it from them. They suffer, and strain, and work like devils—for some one else. In the end they have nothing. Do I not know? Have I never been to gold fields? Am I one of these green louts?” Pausing, he glanced over to John Preswick, who was holding in his hands the pile of money he had gathered together. He went on:
“My friend, here we will take an oath, the two of us, to avoid two things: drink and women; and then, my friend, I shall make your fortune, and you shall make mine—”
5
LATE that night, two guttering candles between them, they were still talking, John Preswick’s dried face lit by a glow that seemed reflected from the moonish, shiny countenance of Michael Brian. He lay in his bed; the other crouched close to him; and between them the words rolled on in an endless stream that builded itself into pictures which whirled about the thoughts of John Preswick. But John Preswick was no dreamer, the money between his fingers.
Upon the coverlet of the bed, with a stubby, creased finger, Michael Brian was tracing a map; and as he traced, he spoke: “It is all because I have been here before, years ago, when there was no gold to rattle men’s brains. Now I will show you.”
The finger moved—slid over and across.
“This is Darien, and here is the Gatun, and back here, further yet, is Chagres, the river Chagres snaking out. Only the mountains are between, but notice how the Gatun cuts in, and how many trickles of water there are. But that is all a dream, though some day it will all be fact, and men will sail their ships from one ocean to another, and the hell of the Horn will be forgotten. It will be through the Gatun; then, perhaps, to Chagres, or, it may be, to Limon Bay. But that is all a dream; this is fact. Here, where my finger rests, is this mad Panama City; now come north through the gulf. We are at Point Mala, and this spot is Naos Island. Cut in again to the coast, and you are at Point Batelo, and then Venando, which is indeed a hovel and a hole of hell if ever there was one, but where Indians are to be had, and where there is anchorage. From there—follow me, my friend—it is but fourteen miles to the Bay of Chorrera, to the mouth of the Rio Caimito. It is at this point, where the river flows into the ocean, that our little ship went down. The hull is broken. That will take time and effort to fix, but that is a detail, should we only find the ship. It is of two masts, rigged like a schooner, fore and aft, and of some ninety tons; small, but easy for half a dozen men to handle, and like a witch upon the rudder. It is six years, but a ship in the water is like meat well jerked. I do not doubt for a moment that I can find it. And when we have it—my God, man, do you realize that these fools will pay from five hundred to a thousand dollars for the privilege of lying like cattle upon the deck, or being stuffed into the hold! This will be only the beginning. If we cannot buy ships at San Francisco, we will build them. Listen, the day of the east is on the wane; the day of the west has not yet begun. Some time, mark my word, they will cut into the Darien, and where we have to drag ourselves through rotten jungle, men will sail calmly upon ships—ships driven by steam. Those are the two things we must think of, Panama and steam. In the east they are building their pretty clipper ships until the sea stinks of them; but the clipper ship has seen its day; the clipper ship is no more than a lovely and archaic toy. But get a seaman or shipper to admit that! It is this new propeller screw which has destroyed the clipper. The future will be erected upon steam. Perhaps you and I shall have something to say in that, eh, my friend?”
“It will cost money,” John Preswick said warily.
“Yes, labor here is more valuable than gold. We shall need carpenters and a sail-maker, and perhaps a sailor or two. But we will average twenty-five thousand dollars a trip.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars a trip!”
The candles were guttering, and John Preswick was weak and tired from his illness and the strain of words. Closing his eyes, he lay back, and he let Michael Brian’s terse sentences roll through his brain. The money was still in his fingers. Very probably, the man was mad, but he was a man to trust. He was the first man John Preswick had ever encountered whom he could trust. Softly he said:
“I owe you my life—and more, Michael Brian.”
“You do,” Michael Brian assented.
“We will work together.”
Michael Brian smiled as he eyed the long, lean figure. With his short, stubby fingers, he pinched out each of the candles.
Then it was night. The little Irishman sat in his chair; John Preswick lay with his length on the bed; they both might have been dreaming in that hot, wet, unhealthful Panama night.
A sick moonlight streamed in through the open window. Outside the air crawled with a night-mist.
6
THEY chose their men, and for five hundred dollars apiece they purchased two long native canoes, and, a week after that night, they set off up the coast. In the Bay of Chorrera, after sounding west and south from the mouth of the river, they found the wreck, wedged deep into the sand, with just the top of the deck-house showing when the tide was at its lowest. Attacking it with picks and shovels and loosening it from the wet muck, t
hey made fast two lines, and with a dozen Indians straining upon each, with others up to their necks in water and clearing away the sand, they drew the hull slowly onto the beach. Almost to its weight in gold was the value of that wreck, for there were thousands of gold-mad men in Panama, and so scarce were ships that many set forth to make the trip of thousands of miles by canoe, and others trusted themselves to craft that would founder upon a lagoon.
Progress was slow. In a day, they had drawn it only a few feet. But they fastened it to trees upon the bank, rigging up pulley attachments; after that, they worked daily, from dawn to sunset, putting temporary tar-cloth patches, and cleaning out the sand and water from the hull. When eight days had passed, it was above the lowest tide water, on its side, green and slippery, the forward part of the hull on the port caved in entirely, but most of the other timbers tight and in good condition. Now they were able to make a water-tight patch, to bail it put, batten it down, and float it in on the tide. Dragging it well up on the beach on rollers, they made a crude cradle from tree trunks, and righted the vessel, so that at last it rested upon its keel. Then the carpenters went to work, and the natives with rough sand and glue scrapers.
By this time John Preswick had back most of his strength, though he was leaner than ever and his skin had taken on a yellow tinge which it was never to lose, making him appear like a person with severe jaundice. With Michael Brian at his side, he drove his men, working against time, against the hot, wet weather, against the inherent laziness of the Indians. The hull was scraped; the broken planks were removed, and new ones were braced in; the old oakum was pried out, and the planks were calked; three coats of paint were put on in quick succession, and masts were raised and rigged; and across the stern, in crude letters, was painted: PRESWICK AND BRIAN—SHIPPING. Then, still in a half-completed state, the little schooner was rolled into the water—exactly twenty-nine days after they had located her in the sand. The makeshift gaff slid up, the crude sails looked for the wind, and they were off for Panama.