The Grain Ship Part 9

At Boston, he shipped before the mast as able seaman in a big deep-water ship. He was not an able seaman, nor did he become one on this voyage; it required several; but each one marked a steady advance in muscular strength, mental activity, and bank account; and, at the end of the fifth, he signed as boatswain--an able man who knew his work.

He was strong, broad-shouldered, and active; the slightly vacant look in his face that had come from his boyhood incapacity had changed to a frank stare that demanded consideration and respect. He seldom asked a question twice now--once was usually enough. He had a fist that could smash the panels of a door, a voice that he could not modulate to conversational tones--so used was he to sending it against the wind. He did not use tobacco, nor did he drink, for these things cost money, and he was thinking of Minnie, most precious of all things in the world.

At the end of each voyage he visited home, deposited the money he had brought, and waited in the street just long enough for a sight of Minnie, sweet and matronly, and for a sight of the minister, who was holding on to life with a remarkable tenacity. Then he would work his way to Boston, and sign again.

Soon he became a second mate, but never a first, nor a captain. His limitations in arithmetic prevented him from mastering navigation, a necessary acquirement in a first mate or a skipper, and he remained in the position he had reached, close to the sailors, but not of them; sharing their hardships and hard work--for with every reefing or furling match a second mate must go aloft with the men--standing watch with them, washing down decks with them, getting drenched to the skin as often as they, and differing from them only in increase of pay, cabin food, and a dryer bed to sleep in.

But the dryer bed preserved him from the rheumatism and pulmonary troubles that kill all sailors who do not drown, the better food preserved his now iron physique, and the increased pay went into the bank at home.

And so it continued until he was forty years old, when he went home to find Minnie a widow with a grown-up son--a fat, weak-chinned, pale-faced parody on manhood, who never had done a day's work in his life--a "mamma's boy," who was destined for the ministry.

The dark, seamy-faced man of storm and strength, of stress and strain, asked her again to be his wife. He asked her as he would have asked a sailor to sign articles; and the frightened little woman accepted in about the same spirit that would have influenced the sailor; but she made one condition--that he would educate her son for the ministry.

He agreed. Her husband had left her almost nothing, while Quinbey had about ten thousand dollars in the bank. From this he drew the expense of a four years' course at Andover; and, taking the youth to this famous theological college, arranged for his stay there in such a manner as would insure his completing the course--that is, he paid to the president for everything in advance, including, beside tuition and board, a moderate amount of spending money, and traveling expense home and back in vacation.

Then, with Sammy Simpson off his mind for four years at least, Quinbey returned, and married the woman he loved, feeling that he had now earned happiness and the right to remain on land--and smoke.

But he was not born for happiness, and did not recognize it when it came to him. He opened up his house on the hill, fired up the base-burner, and the two sat around it for a month trying to a.s.similate each other; but they could not. He knew nothing of women; she nothing of such men as him. He never smiled; and, when he joked, the joke was lost in the rumble and grumble of his voice. He caressed her with the gentleness of a grizzly fondling the hunter, and was nonplussed and set back when she cried out in pain.

Afraid of him at first, she soon realized that he knew no better, and responded with the weapons of woman. The man, inured to cold and pain and fatigue, yet was sensitive as a child when it came to his feelings.

When she learned this, she kept his nerves quivering with quiet smiles, soft and sarcastic little speeches, and deadening silences, the meaning of which did not strike him at the time because of his transparent frankness and honesty.

He became afraid of her; and she, following up her advantage, wheedled him out of money for clothes, which, though he could not see the need of them, he cheerfully gave her. He loved her devotedly; and, though he never smiled, yet he never frowned, nor spoke a harsh word to her.

But she thought him harsh, and, justified by the thought, continued the marital loot until she grew brave enough to demand a gold watch for Sammy's birthday.

This was not in his program, and he told her so. Then followed a lecture on the duties and shortcomings of fathers, which lasted an hour, and left him shaking like a sick man, sprawled out in the big chair by the fire, and smoking like a high-pressure tug. But she had brought him around, and he had arisen to go out to the town's one jeweler, when she lost all she had won.

"Where are you going?" she asked sharply, as he put on his hat.

"Going out, Minnie," he said, in his jokeless voice, "to get some catnip for you."

He meant it good-humoredly; but it was taken otherwise. The jeweler had no gold watches; but, after a two hours' search, he dug up a wholesaler's catalogue, and, with this in his pocket, Quinbey returned to have Minnie select a watch from it; but she, her trunks, and her belongings were gone, while a note on the table apprised him that she would live with no man who called her a cat.

Troubled in mind, he followed her to the home of her parents, but he was not admitted--nor given a chance to show her the catalogue.

He slept on the problem, and in the morning resolved that a little absence would be good for her; so, as the season had opened, he packed his bag and went out on a fishing trip with friends of his, expecting to be back in a month. It was eight years later when he returned.

His adventures during those eight years can only be summarized. The fishing schooner was cut down by a big ship out of Halifax bound around the Horn; and Quinbey alone of her crew succeeded in springing to her martingale-stay as the smaller craft went under. No one else was saved, though the ship hove to and put out boats to search. Then the ship went on, and, as she met no inbound craft, Quinbey was forced to go with her.

But she did not round Cape Horn. A strong current threw her onto the Patagonian coast near Cape Virgins in a dead calm, and a sudden gale of wind and heavy sea ground her to pieces.

Only John Quinbey was a swimmer of sufficient strength to reach the beach, and here he lay, half dead, for a day, when he arose and struck inland, knowing that Punta Arenas was about a hundred and fifty miles along the coast of the Magellan Strait, and hoping to reach it.

He did not at once. The giant savages of this region caught him and made him one of them, preventing his escape. He was accustomed to hardship, and lived their life, tormented only by the thought that the money at home was deposited in his name, and that he had made no provision whereby the foolish little wife could draw from the bank.

But he still hoped to escape; and, as the tribe drifted inland, he was allowed more liberty. He never abused it, waiting for a final dash, always returning from a jaunt in reasonable time, and earning the confidence of his captors.

When over seven years had pa.s.sed, he found, in the foothills of the Latorre Mountains, a large, heavy lump of dark metal, which he sc.r.a.ped with his knife and recognized as gold. It was fully the size of a draw bucket, but of what value he could not determine, except that it represented a fortune.

Strong man though he was, he could not carry it a hundred yards without resting, yet he carried it, not back to the tribe, but in a southwesterly direction, toward Punta Arenas. When forced to return, he hid it, taking careful bearings, and rejoined his masters. He waited a few days before the next trip, then moved it a few miles farther on.

In this way, exciting no suspicion, he shifted his find, step by step, until he had it on a well-defined trail that could lead nowhere but to the lonely port he was making for. Then, after a few days' rest, he packed a bundle of dried meat, took with him a native-made rope by which to drag the heavy nugget, and left the camp in the dark of night.

He reached his treasure by daylight, and started along the trail. He was not pursued, and ten days later, half starved, half mad, his shoulders bleeding from the chafe of the rope, and every bone in his body aching with the pain of fatigue, he dragged his burden onto a rickety wharf at Punta Arenas where an eastbound steamer was coaling.

Her captain was an honest man. He took Quinbey on board, took him to Boston, and helped him turn the nugget into cash--fifty thousand dollars. Then Quinbey went home.

II

Quinbey had been right about the money in the bank. It was a tidy sum to retain on deposit, and the bank officials had heartlessly refused to pay any of it out to Mrs. Quinbey. She did not attempt to draw until her sulks left her, which occurred after the jeweler, intent upon the sale of a watch, had called upon her, and when the villagers had informed her that Quinbey had gone fishing. Then, disappointed, and somewhat worried over the future, she returned to the house on the hill, and, as it was still cold, lit up the big base-burner from the scanty stock of coal.

As the weeks grew into months and the fishing schooner did not return, she did not, like the rest of the villagers, give her husband up as lost--rather, she believed him alive, hoped for his return, and revised her opinion of him.

Soon--yet long before the grocer, the butcher, and the coal man had refused further credit--she realized that she loved the crude man she had known but a month, but who had loved her for twenty years; and, with tears streaming down her face, she prayed for his safety and return with more fervency than for the beloved son at Andover. This person wrote filial letters home, a.s.suring her of protection and support when he returned; but they brought her small comfort, for the time was at hand when she must pay cash or go without the necessities of life.

Then Sammy came home on his first vacation, and, learning of the money in the bank, used his prestige and address to such advantage that he persuaded the local authorities to declare Quinbey legally dead--an easy matter on that coast of many wrecks.

Righteously indignant at the selfishness of the bank officials, he induced his mother to withdraw the money--shrunk to eight thousand dollars--from the bank, and allow him to take it to Boston, where, in a larger and safer bank, it would draw interest, and on which she could write checks in payment of her bills.

She consented, and Sammy departed with the money. But at Boston, before reaching the bank, he traversed the highways and the byways of the big city, imbibed certain and sundry liquids known to him only by name, loved his fellow men, and met fellow men of like state of mind, who, seeing a stranger, took him in.

He was stripped to empty pockets, spent a night in a cell, and only by the help of another clergyman was he shipped back to Andover with a letter to the president.

From here he wrote to his mother a garbled account of his adventures; and, as the president of the college mercifully forbore writing her the truth, the poor woman merely wept a little, prayed a little, and took up her burden.

Her parents were old and indigent, unable to more than house her for a few days at a time. As minister's wife, she had made no friends that would help her now in a way befitting her position. As for herself, with only a village education, she could not even teach, even though able to found a school.

But every mother and daughter, sister and grand-ma'am in the village was willing to give her work by the day for the mere pleasure of gloating; and at this work she went bravely.

The sneers and insults she received soon limited her journeyings from home, and she finally became the village wash-woman. The kitchen of the house was turned into a laundry, and the big base-burner allowed to grow cold; for she could not afford two fires.

In her laundry she worked, and in wintertime slept, and only on Sat.u.r.days was she seen on the street, when, with deepening lines in her face and a growing gray tinge to her hair, she struggled back and forth with her basket of clothes. But she earned her living, and looked forward hopefully to the return of her husband and a.s.suredly to the return of her son, who would care for her.

Sammy only came home on the first vacation; the next three he spent at the homes of cla.s.smates. But at last the four years' course was ended, and, with nowhere else to go, he appeared, an ordained minister of the Gospel, but unattached.

The Reverend Samuel Simpson, as we must know him now, was twenty-four years old, as pale as ever, fatter than ever, with a chin that, because of the fat, seemed to recede still farther into his neck. His mother rejoiced over him, was proud of him, and believed that her troubles were now ended.

The villagers welcomed him, and the gray old pastor of the church once presided over by his father invited him to preach. He did so, delivering his one sermon; but the delivery and the sermon were not of a character that would inspire the congregation to empty the pulpit for him, so the young preacher went home to wait, as Quinbey had waited, for that pulpit to become vacant by death.

But he deplored the coldness of the house, and ordered coal on credit for the base-burner; also he deplored the hard labor of his mother, a.s.sured her that the necessity for it would soon end, but did nothing himself toward this end; for, in truth, there was nothing he could do but preach; and the gray old pastor seemed as tenacious of life as his own father had been.

The mother was content, however, except for the always present, but lessening, hope that her husband would return, and happy in the company of her educated and accomplished son. And so, as bravely as ever, she carried her burden through the streets, not only on Sat.u.r.days now, but on Wednesdays, because, with another mouth to feed, she must of needs wash more clothes.

And so the time went on, the Reverend Samuel Simpson growing seedier of raiment and fatter of body, enduring patiently the sneers and sarcasms of the indignant men of the village, while the mother's face grew thinner, her body weaker, and her once blond hair so gray that she looked ten years beyond her age. Then, four years after the son's return, the breaking point came. With the front of her garments dripping wet, she stood erect from her tub, looked at him where he sat near the kitchen fire--the base-burner had long been cold--and said:

"Sammy, you must go to work. I can do no more. It is killing me."

"But what can I do, mother dear?" he answered kindly.