Golden Stories Part 24

Bartholomew ran to the switch to examine it. The contact light (green) still burned like a false beacon; and lucky it did, for it showed that the switch had been tampered with and exonerated Bartholomew Mullen completely. The attempt of the strikers to spill the silk in the yards had only made the reputation of a new engineer. Thirty minutes later, the million-dollar train was turned over to the East End to wrestle with, and we breathed, all of us, a good bit easier.

Bartholomew Mullen, now a pa.s.senger runner who ranks with Kennedy and Jack Moore and Foley and George Sinclair himself, got a personal letter from the General Manager complimenting him on his pretty wit; and he was good enough to say nothing whatever about mine.

We registered that night and went to supper together: Foley, Jackson, Bartholomew, and I. Afterward we dropped into the despatcher's office.

Something was coming from McCloud, but the operator to save his life couldn't catch it. I listened a minute; it was Neighbor. Now, Neighbor isn't great on despatching trains. He can make himself understood over the poles, but his sending is like a boy's sawing wood--sort of uneven.

However, though I am not much on running yards, I claim to be able to take the wildest ball that ever was thrown along the wire, and the chair was tendered me at once to catch Neighbor's extraordinary pa.s.ses at the McCloud key. They came something like this:

"To Opr. Tell Ma.s.sacree"--that was the word that stuck them all, and I could perceive that Neighbor was talking emphatically. He had apparently forgotten Bartholomew's last name, and was trying to connect with the one he had "disremembered" the night before. "Tell Ma.s.sacree," repeated Neighbor, "that he is al-l-l right. Tell hi-m I give him double mileage for to-day all the way through. And to-morrow he gets the 109 to keep.--NEIGHB-B-OR."

I

THE BULLDOG BREED

A Story of the Russo-j.a.panese War

By AMBROSE PRATT

"WHAT do you make of her, Maclean?" asked Captain Brandon anxiously.

First mate Hugh Maclean did not reply at once. Embracing a stanchion of the S.S. _Saigon's_ bridge in order to steady himself against the vessel's pitching, he was peering with strained eyes through the captain's binoculars at two small brown needle-points, set very close together, that stabbed the northeastern horizon.

At length, however, he lowered the gla.s.s, and resumed the perpendicular.

"You were right, sir," he declared. "She has altered her course, and our paths now converge."

"Which proves that she is one of those d----d Russian volunteer pirates."

"Or else a j.a.panese cruiser, sir."

"Nonsense! The j.a.p cruisers have only one mast."

"So they have, sir. I was forgetting that."

"What to do!" growled the captain, and he fell to frowning and cracking his long fingers--his habit when perplexed. He was a short, thick-set man, with a round, red face, keen blue eyes, and strong, square jaws: a typical specimen of the old-time British sailor. Hugh Maclean, on the other hand, was a lean and lank Australian, of evident Scottish ancestry. His long, aquiline nose and high cheek-bones were tightly covered with a parchment-like skin, bronzed almost to the hue of leather. He wore a close-cropped, pointed beard, and the deep-set gray eyes that looked out from under the peak of his seaman's cap twinkled with good health and humor.

"We might alter our course, too, sir," he suggested.

"Ay!" snapped the other, "and get pushed for our pains on to the Teraghlind Reef. We are skirting those rocks more closely than I like already."

"You know best, sir, of course. But I meant that we might slip back toward Manila, and try the other channel after we have given that fellow the go-by."

"What!" snorted the captain, his blue eyes flashing fire, "run from the Russian! I'll be ---- first. We haven't a st.i.tch of contraband aboard,"

he added more calmly a moment later. "He daren't do more than stop and search us."

But Maclean shook his head. "One of them took and sunk the _Acandaga_ last month, sir, and she carried no contraband either."

"Russia will have to foot the bill for that."

"May be, sir. But Captain Tollis--as fine a chap as ever breathed, sir--has lost his ship, and the Lord knows if he'll ever get another."

"Are you trying to frighten me, Maclean?" asked Captain Brandon, stormily.

The mate shrugged his shoulders. "No, sir; but I am interested in this venture, and if the _Saigon_ gets back all right to Liverpool I'm due to splice Mr. Keppel's niece, and the old gentleman, as you know, has promised me a ship."

"And hasn't it entered your thick skull that to return as you suggest would cost fifty pounds' worth of coal? How do you suppose old Kep would like that?"

"Better burn a few tons of coal than risk losing the _Saigon_, sir, and mark time till G.o.d knows when in a Russian prison."

Captain Brandon shut his mouth with a snap, and muttered something about Scottish caution that was distinctly uncomplimentary to the Caledonian race. Then, to signify the end of the argument, he strode to the ladder, and prepared to descend. Maclean, however, was of an equally stubborn character. "About the course, sir?" he demanded, touching his cap with ironical deference.

"Carry on!" snarled the captain, and he forthwith disappeared.

Two hours afterward Hugh Maclean knocked at the door of the captain's cabin, and was hoa.r.s.ely bidden enter. Captain Brandon was seated before a bottle of whisky, which was scarce half full.

"Have a nip?" he hospitably inquired.

Maclean nodded, and half filled a gla.s.s.

"Thank you, sir. Queer thing's happened," he observed, as he wiped his lips. "The Russian----"

"I know," interrupted the captain. "I've been watching her through the port. She's the _Saigon's_ twin-sister ship, that was the _Saragossa_ which old Kep sold to Baron Dabchowski six months ago. Much good it would have done us to run. She has the heels of us. Old Kep had just put new triple-expansion engines into her before she changed hands. But they've killed the look of her, converting her into a cruiser. She's nothing but a floating sc.r.a.p-heap now."

"But she has six guns," observed Maclean. "Don't you think you'd better come up, sir? She is almost near enough to signal."

"Well, well," said the captain, and putting away the whisky bottle, he led the way to the bridge.

Some half-dozen miles away, steaming at an angle to meet the _Saigon_ at a destined point, there plowed through the sea a large iron steamer of about three thousand tons' burden. She exactly resembled the _Saigon_ in all main points of build, and except for the fact that two guns were mounted fore and aft on her main deck above the line of steel bulwarks, and that her masts were fitted with small fighting tops, she might very well have pa.s.sed for an ordinary merchantman.

For twenty minutes or thereabouts the two officers watched her in silence, taking turn about with the binoculars; then, quite suddenly, the vessel, now less than two miles distant, luffed and fell slightly away from her course.

"She is going to speak," said Captain Brandon, who held the gla.s.ses.

"Look out!"

Maclean smiled at the caution; but next instant a bright flash quivered from the other vessel's side, and involuntarily he ducked his head, for something flew dipping and shrieking over the _Saigon_. In the following second there was heard the clap of the distant cannon and the splash of a sh.e.l.l striking the sea close at hand. Invisible hands unfolded and shook out three b.a.l.l.s of bunting at the truck of the war-ship's signal boom. They fluttered for awhile, and then spread out to the breeze. The arms of Russia surmounted two lines of symbolic letters.

"Quartermaster!" shouted Captain Brandon.

"Ay, ay, sir!" rang out a sailor's voice, and the _Saigon's_ number raced a Union Jack to the mast-head.

"Well, Mac?" cried the captain, with his hand on the engine-room signal-bell.

Maclean looked up from the book. "His Imperial Majesty of Russia, by the commander of the converted cruiser _Nevski_, orders us to stop."

Captain Brandon pressed the lever, and before ten might be counted the shuddering of the _Saigon's_ screw had ceased.