The Belted Seas Part 11

He paused and blew smoke. Maya Dala and Irish were gone. I asked, "Are you learning Burmese off Maya Dala?" and he nodded.

"Now," I says, "what I don't see is this temple business. Where was the profit? Don't temples belong to the priests?"

"Seems not always," he says. "They're a kind of monks, anyway. It's where old Lo Tsin Shan was original to begin with and mysterious afterward. Suppose a Siamese prince brings a pound of gold leaf to gild things with, and some Ceylon pilgrims leave a few dozen little bronze images with a ruby in each eye. They've 'acquired merit,' so they say.

It goes to their credit on some celestial record. Their next existence will be the better to that extent anyway, now. Suppose the temple's gilded all over, and lumber rooms packed to the roof with bronze images already. Do they care what becomes of these things? Don't seem to. Why should they? They're credited on one ledger. You credit the same to the business on another. Economic, ain't it? That was the old man's perception, to begin with. But afterwards,--maybe his joss house got to be a hobby with him. Oh, I don't know! Nor I don't care. Fu Shan says it's good property. What he says is generally so. Profits! I don't care about profits. What good would they do me? I'm going to run that temple if it ain't too monotonous."

That was the limit of Sadler's knowledge of this thing. Maya Dala remembered the Shway Dagohn, but as to the other paG.o.das and monasteries,--there were many--he didn't know--he thought they belonged to the monks, or to the caretakers, or to no one at all, or maybe the government. What became of the offerings? He thought they were kept in the paG.o.das. Sometimes they were sold? It might be so. He thought it made no difference, for it was taught in the monastery schools, that the "Giver acquires merit only by his action and the spirit of his giving, wherefore are the merits of the poor and rich equal." Why should they care what became of their gifts? From Maya Dala's talk one seemed to catch a glimpse of the idea, which occurred to old Lo Tsin Shan, that fishy Oriental, one day forty years before, and sent him up the river to interview King Tharawady on his gold-lacquer and mosaic throne. Yet he had let the profits lie there, if there were any, maybe thinking all along of the handsome tomb he was putting up for himself, when his time came. You couldn't guess all his Mongolian thoughts, nor those of his son, Fu Shan, of whom Sadler asked medicine for a dyspeptic soul. Fu Shan said, "Go lun joss house by Langoon." Sadler didn't seem to care about the business part of it either, though it looked interesting. He only wanted the medicine.

Days and nights we talked it over, and got no further than that, and drew nearer the East. The East is a muddy sea with no bottom, and it swallows a man like a fog bank swallows a ship.

Sadler made some verses that he called his "Prayer;"--"Sadler's prayer,"

and he told me them one wet day, when a half gale was blowing, and he sat smoking with his feet hitched over the rail. He appeared to be trying to get a bead on infinity across the point of his shoe. It ran this way, beginning, "Lord G.o.d that o'erulest":

"Lord G.o.d that o'er-rulest The waters, and coolest The face of the foolish With the touch of thy death, I, Sadler, a Yankee, Lean, leathery, lanky, Red-livered and cranky, And weary of breath,

"That hain't no theology But a sort of doxology, Here's my apology, Maker of me, Here where I'm sittin', Smooth as a kitten, Smokin' and spittin'

Into the sea.

"The storm winds come sweepin', Come widowed and weepin', Come rippin' and reapin', The wheat of the loam, And some says, it's sport, boys, It's timbrels and hautboys, And some is the sort, boys, That's sorry he come.

"Lord G.o.d of the motions Of lumberin' oceans, There's some of your notions Is handsome and free, But what in the brewin'

And sizzlin,' and stewin'

Did you think you was doin'

The time you done me?

"Evil and good Did ye squirt in my blood?

I stand where I stood When my runnin' began; And the start and the goal Were the same in my soul, And the d.a.m.nable whole Was ent.i.tled a man.

"Lord G.o.d that o'er-gazest The waste and wet places, The faint foolish faces Turned upward to Thee, Though Thy sight goeth far O'er our rabble and war Yet remember we are The drift of Thy sea."

Sadler left the _Good Sister_ at Singapore, and disappeared.

He dropped out of sight. Afterward his name went from the letter heads of "Sadler and Shan." They read, "Shan Brothers, Saleratus, Cal. Fu Shan--Lum Shan."

He was a singular man was Sadler. He held the opinion that this life was an idea that occurred to somebody, who was tired of it and would like to get it off his mind. I took him for one that had got too much conscience, or too much restlessness, one of the two, and between them they gave him dyspepsia of the soul. Sometimes that dyspepsia took him bad, and when he had one of those spells he'd light out into poetry scandalous. Some folks are built that way, some not. J. R. Craney, for instance, he was a romantic man, and gifted according to his own line, and had airy notions ahead of him that he pretty near caught up to; but as to metres, he couldn't tell metres from cord-wood. Yet the first time I saw him again, after leaving him at Corazon, he heaved some at me, but he didn't know it was poetry. It was some years later. I sailed the _Good Sister_ quite a time, and did pretty well by her.

CHAPTER IX.

KING JULIUS.

It was back in San Francisco and several years after, and I was master of the _Good Sister_ still, but not feeling agreeable at the time, because Fu Shan and the agent at 'Frisco kept me sitting around collecting barnacles. They didn't seem to know what they wanted me to do with her. I guess the business of Sadler and Shan didn't prosper well for a while after Sadler left, on account of sportive Caucasians.

I was leaning over the rail one day, looking across the wharf, and I saw J. R. Craney come strolling down with one hand in his pocket and the other pulling a chin beard. He hadn't changed so much, except that he looked older and had a chin beard and wore a long black coat and plush vest. He looked at the _Good Sister_, and he looked at me, and neither of us said anything for a long time, and his business eye was absent-minded and calm, and the blind one pale and dead-looking. Then I says:

"Why don't you get a gla.s.s eye, Craney?" and he says, "I wished you'd call me J. R. Phipp. What you doing with that there ship?" which was a promising rhyme, but he didn't know he'd done it. I judged his family name had been collecting barnacles, till it wasn't worth cleaning maybe, or maybe he was a fugitive or exile from Corazon, or maybe he'd speculated in matrimony, and was fleeing from hot water, or maybe kettles, or maybe he'd a.s.sa.s.sinated his great aunt's second cousin's husband, which was no business of mine, any of it.

"Look here," I says, not feeling agreeable. "Here's my programme. You go up to 22 Market Street, and ask the agent. Then he'll say he don't know.

Then you'll tell him he's a three-cornered idiot, because you'll admire the truth, and come back and we'll have a drink."

"All right," he says, absent-minded and calm, and went off up Market Street. By-and-by the agent came down with Craney floating behind.

"This is Mr. J. R. Phipp," says the agent, "who has chartered the _Good Sister_. Get her ready. Mr. Phipp will superintend cargo himself and sail with you."

That was the way it happened. Craney spent days going round the stores in the city and buying everything that took his eyes. He bought house-furnishings and pictures, toys, horns, drums, cases of tobacco and spirits, gla.s.s ornaments and plaster statues, crockery and cutlery, guns, clothes, neckties, and silk handkerchiefs, and cheap jewelry. He'd go in and ask for a drygoods box. Then he'd potter around the shop till the box was full. He'd buy out a show case of goods, and maybe he'd buy the show case. He bought barrels full of old magazines and books on theology and law, and a cord or two of ten-cent novels, and some poetry that was handy, and three encyclopaedias, and two or three kinds of dogs, and a basket phaeton with green wheels, and a printing press, and a stereopticon. The agent says to me:

"He has a scheme for trading in the South Pacific. He's a lunatic, and he's paid for six months. Send me news when you get a chance, and come back by Honolulu for directions. He's a lunatic," he says, "and you'd better lose him somewhere and get a commission on the time saved."

Then he hurried off the way you'd think he was a man with energy, instead of one that would sit still and let the weeds grow in his hair.

But Craney went on buying chandeliers and chess-boards and clocks and women's things, such as dresses and ostrich-feathers hats, and baby carriages, and parasols, and an allotment of a.s.sorted dinner-bells, and one side of a drug store. I don't know all there was in his cases, only I judged there wasn't any monotony. I says:

"Maybe now you might be done."

He came aboard and looked thoughtful. Then he felt in his pocket and pulled out a bunch of knitting needles, and looked thoughtful.

"Well," he says. "I rather wanted to look up some front porches, ready made, with door-knockers, but I didn't get to it. It's just as well."

We dropped out of the Gate with the tide on a Sat.u.r.day night, and stood away to the southwest.

Craney was always a talkative man, liking to open out his point of view.

At first I thought he'd gone lunatic of late, and then again when he showed me his point of view, I found he hadn't changed so much, as got more so.

Many nights we sat on deck in the moonlight and with a light breeze pushing in the sails, for the weather in the main was steady, and he'd smoke a fat cigar, and look at the little shining clouds. He'd talk and speculate, sometimes shrewd, and then again it was like a matter of adding a shipload of pirates to the signs of the zodiac, and getting the New Jerusalem for a result. By-and-by, I felt that way myself, as if, supposing you kept on sailing long enough, you might run down an island full of mixed myths and happy angels. Sure he was romantic.

"I'm a romantic man, Tommy," he says. "That's my secret. Yes, sir, Romance, that's me! That's the centre of my circ.u.mference, that's the gravity of my orbit, that's the number of my combination. Visions, ideals! I'm a man to get up and look for the beyond. I want to expand! I want to permeate! I want the beyond! Here I am, fifty years old. I gets up and looks out on to the world. I says: 'J. R., this won't do. Is it for nothing that you're a man of romance? Is it for nothing that you long to permeate, to expand? The soul of man' I says, 'is airy; it's full of draughts. Your soul, J. R., flaps like a tent,' I says, 'in the breezes of dawn. The world is round. Time is fleeting. Is man an ox? No.

Is he a patent inkstand? No. Was he created to occupy a house and fit his head to a hat? No. Then why delay? Why smother your longings?' I says; 'J. R., this won't do. This ain't your destiny. Rise! Be winged!

Chase the ideal! Get on the vastness! Seek and find!' But what? I says, 'Fame, fortune, a vocation that's worthy of you.' Where? I says, 'In the beyond.' Then I took a map, Tommy, and looked over the world; I examined the globe; I took stock of the earth, and compared lands, seas, climates. The likeliest-looking place appeared to be the South Pacific Ocean. Why? It appeared to be, in general, beyond. It was the biggest thing on the map. It was tropical. Palm-trees, spicy odours, corals, pearls. 'All right,' I says: 'J. R., it wouldn't take much to be a millionaire in those unpolluted regions. You'd be a potentate. You'd wear picturesque clothes, and lie on poppies and lotuses. You'd be a Solomon to those guileless nations. You'd instruct their ignorance and preserve their morals. You'd lead their armies to victory on account of your natural gifts. You'd have your birthdays celebrated with torch-light processions. You'd be a luxurious patriot.' Now that's a pleasant way of looking at it. But it seemed to me the likeliest thing was to go out as a trader. Now as to trading. Sitting on a stool and figuring discounts is business, and trading cheese-cloth for parrots is business too. A horse is an animal, and so's a potato-bug. But I take it where society is loose and business isn't a system, there's always chance for a man with natural gifts. But you're going to ask me: What for is all this mixture I've got aboard? If some of it's tradable, you'd say, there must be a deal of it isn't. And I ask you back, Tommy: Take it in general, haven't I got a mixture that represents civilisation?

Did you ever see a ship that had more commodious, miscellaneous, and sufficient civilisation in her than this? I'm taking out civilisation.

Maybe I'm calculating on a boom. Now, the secret of a boom is to spread out as far as you can reach, and then flap. That's business. When you've got people's attention, you can settle down and make your bargains. Mind you," says Craney, turning on me an eye that was cold and calm--"mind you, I don't say that's what I'm going to do, nor I don't say what I'm calculating to trade for. Maybe I have an idea, and maybe I haven't."

I says, "Course you have."

"You think so?" he says. "It's no more than reasonable. But look at all this now"--with one thumb in the armhole of his vest and waving his cigar with the other hand toward the moon and sea--"look at this here hemisphere. It's big and still. The kinks and creases of me are smoothing out. I'm expanding, permeating. I look out. I see those there shining waves. I says to myself, 'J. R., as a romantic man, you may be said to be getting there.'"

He used to read some in the daytime, but mostly he'd smoke and meditate and pull his chin beard, sitting on deck in a red plush-covered easy-chair, with his feet on the rail. One time he had a volume of poetry in his hand, turning over the leaves.

"Some of it appears to be sawed down smooth one side," he says, "and left ragged on the other, and some of it's ragged both sides."

Then he read a bit of it aloud, but it didn't go right, for sometimes he'd trot, as you might say, when he ought to have galloped, and sometimes he'd gallop when he ought to have trotted, and sometimes he'd come along at a mixed gait. As a rule, he b.u.mped.

He was no hand at poetry. Nor was he romantic to look at, but thin, and sinewy, and one-eyed, and some dried up, clean shaven except for a wisp of greyish whisker on his chin, and always neatly dressed now. When he'd laugh to himself, the wrinkles would spread around his eyes, one blind, and the other calm and calculating, and absent-minded. He'd sit with his cigar tilted up in one corner of his mouth, and his hat tilted forward, and whittle sticks. He'd talk with anybody, but mostly with me and Kamelillo, whom he appeared to be asking for information. Kamelillo knew island dialects about the same as he did English, but wasn't much for conversation. Craney came one day with a bundle of charts, and he collected me and Kamelillo in a corner and spread his charts on the deck. They were old charts.

"Now," he says, "here is the lines of trade."

He had the regular routes all marked on his charts.