The Spoilers Part 3

"Better hear details, captain, before you make breaks like that.

We helped the lady side-step some sailors last night and we most got left doing it. It was up to her to make a quick get-away, so we helped her aboard."

"A poor story! What was she running away from?" He still addressed the men, ignoring her completely, till, with hoa.r.s.e voice, she broke in:

"You mustn't talk about me that way--I can answer your questions.

It's true--I ran away. I had to. The sailors came after me and fought with these men. I had to get away quickly, and your friends helped me on here from gentlemanly kindness, because they saw me unprotected. They are still protecting me. I can't explain how important it is for me to reach Nome on the first boat, because it isn't my secret. It was important enough to make me leave my uncle at Seattle at an hour's notice when we found there was no one else who could go. That's all I can say. I took my maid with me, but the sailors caught her just as she was following me down the ship's ladder. She had my bag of clothes when they seized her. I cast off the rope and rowed ash.o.r.e as fast as I could, but they lowered another boat and followed me."

The captain eyed her sharply, and his grim lines softened a bit, for she was clean-cut and womanly, and utterly out of place, He took her in, shrewdly, detail by detail, then spoke directly to her:

"My dear young lady--the other ships will get there just as quickly as ours, maybe more quickly. To-morrow we strike the ice- pack and then it is all a matter of luck."

"Yes, but the ship I left won't get there."

At this the commander started, and, darting a great, thick- fingered hand at her, spoke savagely:

"What's that? What ship? Which one did you come from? Answer me."

"The Ohio," she replied, with the effect of a hand-grenade. The master glared at her.

"The Ohio! Good G.o.d! You DARE to stand there and tell me that?" He turned and poured his rage upon the others.

"She says the Ohio, d'ye hear? You've ruined me! I'll put you in irons--all of you. The Ohio!"

"What d'ye mean? What's up?"

"What's up? There's small-pox aboard the Ohio! This girl has broken quarantine. The health inspectors bottled up the boat at six o'clock last night! That's why I pulled out of Unalaska ahead of time, to avoid any possible delay. Now we'll all be held up when we get to Nome. Great Heavens! do you realize what this means--bringing this hussy aboard?"

His eyes burned and his voice shook, while the two partners stared at each other in dismay. Too well they knew the result of a small- pox panic aboard this crowded troop-ship. Not only was every available cabin bulging with pa.s.sengers, but the lower decks were jammed with both humanity and live stock all in the most unsanitary conditions. The craft, built for three hundred pa.s.sengers, was carrying triple her capacity; men and women were stowed away like cattle. Order and a half-tolerable condition were maintained only by the efforts of the pa.s.sengers themselves, who held to the thought that imprisonment and inconvenience would last but a few days longer. They had been aboard three weeks and every heart was aflame with the desire to reach Nome--to reach it ahead of the pressing horde behind.

What would be the temper of this gold-frenzied army if thrown into quarantine within sight of their goal? The impatient hundreds would have to lie packed in their floating prison, submitting to the foul disease. Long they must lie thus, till a month should have pa.s.sed after the disappearance of the last symptom. If the disease recurred sporadically, that might mean endless weeks of maddening idleness. It might even be impossible to impose the necessary restraint; there would be violence, perhaps mutiny.

The fear of the sickness was nothing to Dextry and Glenister, but of their mine they thought with terror. What would happen in their absence, where conditions were as unsettled as in this new land; where t.i.tles were held only by physical possession of the premises? During the long winter of their absence, ice had held their treasure inviolate, but with the warming summer the jewel they had fought for so wearily would lie naked and exposed to the first comer. The Midas lay in the valley of the richest creek, where men had schemed and fought and slain for the right to inches. It was the fruit of cheerless, barren years of toil, and if they could not guard it--they knew the result.

The girl interrupted their distressing reflections.

"Don't blame these men, sir," she begged the captain. "I am the only one at fault. Oh! I HAD to get away. I have papers here that must be delivered quickly." She laid a hand upon her bosom. "They couldn't be trusted to the unsettled mail service. It's almost life and death. And I a.s.sure you there is no need of putting me in quarantine. I haven't the smallpox. I wasn't even exposed to it."

"There's nothing else to do," said Stephens. "I'll isolate you in the deck smoking-cabin. G.o.d knows what these madmen on board will do when they hear about it, though. They're apt to tear you to shreds. They're crazy!"

Glenister had been thinking rapidly.

"If you do that, you'll have mutiny in an hour. This isn't the crowd to stand that sort of thing."

"Bah! Let 'em try it. I'll put 'em down." The officer's square jaws clicked.

"Maybe so; but what then? We reach Nome and the Health Inspector hears of small-pox suspects, then we're all quarantined for thirty days; eight hundred of us. We'll lie at Egg Island all summer while your company pays five thousand a day for this ship. That's not all. The firm is liable in damages for your carelessness in letting disease aboard."

"MY CARELESSNESS!" The old man ground his teeth.

"Yes; that's what it amounts to. You'll ruin your owners, all right. You'll tie up your ship and lose your job, that's a cinch!"

Captain Stephens wiped the moisture from his brow angrily.

"My carelessness! Curse you--you say it well. Don't you realize that I am criminally liable if I don't take every precaution?" He paused for a moment, considering. "I'll hand her over to the ship's doctor."

"See here, now," Glenister urged. "We'll be in Nome in a week-- before the young lady would have time to show symptoms of the disease, even if she were going to have it--and a thousand to one she hasn't been exposed, and will never show a trace of it. n.o.body knows she's aboard but we three. n.o.body will see her get off.

She'll stay in this cabin, which will be just as effectual as though you isolated her in any other part of the boat. It will avoid a panic--you'll save your ship and your company--no one will be the wiser--then if the girl comes down with small-pox after she gets ash.o.r.e, she can go to the pest-house and not jeopardize the health of all the people aboard this ship. You go up forrad to your bridge, sir, and forget that you stepped in to see old Bill Dextry this morning. Well take care of this matter all right. It means as much to us as it does to you. We've GOT to be on Anvil Creek before the ground thaws or we'll lose the Midas. If you make a fuss, you'll ruin us all."

For some moments they watched him breathlessly as he frowned in indecision, then--

"You'll have to look out for the steward," he said, and the girl sank to a stool while two great tears rolled down her cheeks. The captain's eyes softened and his voice was gentle as he laid his hand on her head.

"Don't feel hurt over what I said, miss. You see, appearances don't tell much, hereabouts--most of the pretty ones are no good.

They've fooled me many a time, and I made a mistake. These men will help you through; I can't. Then when you get to Nome, make your sweetheart marry you the day you land. You are too far north to be alone."

He stepped out into the pa.s.sage and closed the door carefully.

CHAPTER III

IN WHICH GLENISTER ERRS

"Well, bein' as me an' Glenister is gougin' into the bowels of Anvil Creek all last summer, we don't really get the fresh-grub habit fastened on us none. You see, the gamblers down-town cop out the few aigs an' green vegetables that stray off the ships, so they never get out as far as the Creek none; except, maybe, in the shape of anecdotes.

"We don't get intimate with no nutriments except hog-boosum an'

brown beans, of which luxuries we have unstinted measure, an'

bein' as this is our third year in the country we hanker for bony fido grub, somethin' scan'lous. Yes, ma'am--three years without a taste of fresh fruit nor meat nor nuthin'--except pork an' beans.

Why, I've et bacon till my immortal soul has growed a rind.

"When it comes time to close down the claim, the boy is sick with the fever an' the only ship in port is a Point Barrow whaler, bound for Seattle. After I book our pa.s.sage, I find they have nothin' aboard to eat except canned salmon, it bein' the end of a two years' cruise, so when I land in the States after seventeen days of a fish diet, I am what you might call sated with canned grub, and have added salmon to the list of things concernin' which I am goin' to economize.

"Soon's ever I get the boy into a hospital, I gallop up to the best restarawnt in town an' prepare for the huge pot-latch. This here, I determine, is to be a gormandizin' jag which shall live in hist'ry, an' wharof in later years the natives of Puget Sound shall speak with bated breath.

"First, I call for five dollars' worth of pork an' beans an' then a full-grown platter of canned salmon. When the waiter lays 'em out in front of me, I look them vittles coldly in their disgustin'

visages, an' say in sarcastic accents:

"'Set there, d.a.m.n you! an' watch me eat REAL grub,' which I proceed to do, cleanin' the menu from soda to hock. When I have done my worst, I pile bones an' olive seeds an' peelin's all over them articles of nourishment, stick toothpicks into 'em, an'

havin' offered 'em what other indignities occur to me, I leave the place."

Dextry and the girl were leaning over the stern-rail, chatting idly in the darkness. It was the second night out and the ship lay dead in the ice-pack. All about them was a flat, floe-clogged sea, leprous and mottled in the deep twilight that midnight brought in this lat.i.tude. They had threaded into the ice-field as long as the light lasted, following the lanes of blue water till they closed, then drifting idly till others appeared; worming out into leagues of open sea, again creeping into the shifting labyrinth till darkness rendered progress perilous.

Occasionally they had pa.s.sed herds of walrus huddled sociably upon ice-pans, their wet hides glistening in the sunlight. The air had been clear and pleasant, while away on all quarters they had seen the smoke of other ships toiling through the barrier. The spring fleet was knocking at the door of the Golden North.

Chafing at her imprisonment, the girl had asked the old man to take her out on deck under the shelter of darkness; then she had led him to speak of his own past experiences, and of Glenister's; which he had done freely. She was frankly curious about them, and she wondered at their apparent lack of interest in her own ident.i.ty and her secret mission. She even construed their silence as indifference, not realizing that these Northmen were offering her the truest evidence of camaraderie.