Wide Courses Part 30

"Cogan saw the Panamanian army at dress parade one day--after the Revolution that was. About two hundred darkies, mostly boys of thirteen or fourteen, barefooted with high-water pants on. Cogan's notion of it was that a dozen good huskies with baseball bats could've landed on their peninsula any fine, sunny afternoon and in ten minutes rushed the whole Panamanian army into the Pacific Ocean--that is, if our warships would let them. If we'd only let the Colombians alone they'd soon've wound up the Revolution--so Cogan thought, and told Martin so. 'But I s'pose they've had hundreds of revolutions in South America?' he says to Martin.

"'Hundreds,' says Martin, and blows more smoke toward the sky. Out in front of the saloon they were sitting, both of 'em balancing between the sidewalk and the wall on the hind legs of their chairs.

"'Anybody ever killed?'

"'Oh, not more than maybe a few hundred to a time--sometimes a few thousand--'

"'Hundreds? Thousands?' says Cogan. 'We hadn't any more than three hundred killed--that is, killed fighting--in the whole Santiago campaign.' Cogan had been there.

"'And you have written a library of books about it,' says Martin. 'But of course when a few hundred are killed down this way--'tis a great joke. And those little black and tan lads of thirteen or fourteen having to go off shouldering a rifle and kill or get killed--they're jokes, too. But if a grown man up in your country does it--the band plays when he goes and comes, and he makes speeches about it at banquets--and sometimes he will draw a pension for the next sixty years after it--'

says Martin and said it in his easy way, as if he didn't care much about it one way or the other; and maybe he didn't.

"Cogan didn't find much doing on the streets of Colon after the Revolution was over, so he got in the way of dropping into a place just around the corner from Martin's, a joint where they sold you drinks to tables in the front room and ran faro layouts in two rooms in back--one for whites and one for blacks.

"Cogan drifted in there with a man who looked like the pictures of grand dukes he'd seen--tall, fine broad shoulders, and dressed in white ducks, and wore a long, well-trimmed dark beard, and swung a gold-headed cane, and had a big ring on one finger. Cogan heard him on the wharf that day--he talked pretty good English--helping out a Chinese merchant who was kicking about the freight charges on some cases he wanted to ship across the peninsula. The American gang running the railroad down there used to charge what they pleased in those days, and Cogan had a sympathy for anybody that bucked them--he'd had to pay eight dollars gold for a run to Panama and back himself--and he and the grand duke got chummy and looked the town over together; but not much to look at, and this evening they drifted into this place--the Russian taking a high-ball and Cogan another ginger ale--to have an excuse to hang around and see what was doing.

"There wasn't much doing. Half a dozen discouraged looking girls were sitting to tables in the place. From California, Mexico, Jamaica they were, and had come on just as soon as they could when they heard about the Revolution, thinking that with the crowd of Americans who were sure to rush down to the peninsula, there ought to be a living for a few clever ladies like themselves. But up to this time the rush hadn't got beyond war correspondents and navy people, and now the poor things were sitting to tables and looking as if they wished somebody would loosen up and buy a drink--even if it was no more than a gla.s.s of moxie.

"Cogan's grand duke turned out to be a Peruvian, a dealer in Panama hats from Lima, and he told Cogan a lot about Panama hats, which weren't Panama hats at all, and other interesting things--South America politics and bull fighting especially. He had a brother Juan, who was a famous mounted capeador, he said--that's the man who sits with a red cloak on a horse in the first part of the bull fight and Cogan could see that he was very proud of him.

"Cogan and his Peruvian friend were getting on fine, when a tremendous old Indian woman filled up the doorway, and said something in Spanish to the Peruvian, and he got up, explaining to Cogan that his daughter Valera, who had come with him on this trip to see the strange peoples, had sent to say that he must not forget his good-night before she fell asleep. 'She never allows me to forget that,' said the Peruvian. 'Also possibly she knows,' he smiled, 'that if I am at home I shall not be in mis-cheef,' and he said he hoped they'd meet again next day and bowed himself out.

"Cogan went off later to his hotel. That's the same hotel which had been the George Washington Hotel, later the Cleveland House, and at this time was the Hotel McKinley, but with an intention soon to call it the Roosevelt House. If it's there now, it must be the Hotel Taft.

"Cogan had the end room of the lower floor of the hotel wing which ran down toward the beach. The ocean rolled almost up to the window of his room. It was a calm night with no sea on, and lying there, listening, Cogan could just catch the low swish of the surf.

[Ill.u.s.tration: He said he hoped they'd meet again next day and bowed himself out]

"It was a hot, close night, and Cogan's bed no cooler for being wrapped four times around with mosquito netting, so after he had tossed around an hour or two, he guessed he might as well get up and have a swim. He had only to step through a window, take a hop, step, and jump, and he would be at the edge of the surf; but as he opened up his shutters softly, so as not to disturb anybody else in that wing of the house, he saw that it was already near dawn, and then wh-s-s-t, quick as that, the top edge of the sun popped up.

"Cogan looking out saw a young girl of maybe fourteen years with long black hair hanging loose behind her. It was a smooth, silver-like sea, with hardly surf enough to raise a white edge on the beach, and the girl, ankle deep in the water, was kicking her feet ahead of her, making a great splashing as she marched along. Her legs below her knees were bare, and she was gurgling with joy. By the time she was abreast of Cogan's window, it was full dawn.

"Suddenly she turned, ran in waist deep, and plunged seaward. Cogan, seeing her over her head and alone, began to worry; but he might have saved himself the worry--she came tumbling back like a young dolphin, found her feet on the beach, and flew to where was a cloak and a pair of Chinese slippers piled on the sand. The long rays of the just rising sun were now flashing level atop of the sea, and the sea-water clinging to her in a million twinkling drops as she ran. Cogan remembered a marble nymph he had once seen under a fountain in a square on a sunny morning in Rome, only the figure in Rome was a couple of hundred, or perhaps a couple of thousand, years old and needed washing, and being marble the water didn't cling so lingeringly.

"Her bare young legs, as they twinkled on the beach, were like a pair of moving poems to Cogan, and then the long cloak enveloped her. An instant later the little feet slipped out from beneath the cloak and into the sandals, and then a big woman came running down the beach. Cogan recognized her--the same big Indian who had come after his Peruvian friend the night before. He decided she must be a descendant of the old Incas that Pizarro conquered, and of course that didn't make it any less interesting. She began to scold the girl, peering distressfully around while she was talking as if to see if any early hotel riser had seen them. But the girl only made a face up at her, and that gave Cogan his first sight of her teeth. He thought her the most delightful looking creature he had ever seen. They disappeared between a row of trees further up the beach--a row of palms which guarded a line of cottages from the wash of the surf.

"'That,' said Cogan to himself, when his eyes couldn't make out the fluttering of her cloak any more--'that must be Valera.' And he sat down to the hotel breakfast with a great appet.i.te, thinking happily that by and by he would see her father again.

"But Cogan, who was off a cruiser in Colon harbor, had to be back aboard for quarters that morning; and after quarters it was up the coast to Chiriqui Lagoon to coal ship, and it was three days more before he was back in Colon. His Peruvian friend he could not find, but he looked up the Chinese trader that he'd first seen him with and who had a shop on the corner between Martin Jackson's and the faro joint.

"The Chinaman could tell him. Senor Roca had taken the choo-choo back to Callao--si, si--Oh, yes, for Lima.

"Cogan asked for the name and address and got it. 'Senor Luis Roca,' he repeated. 'I'll remember that--and the street and number. And some day I'll take a run down to Peru--to Lima.'

"'Si, si--fine cit-ee. And bull fight--granda, senor,' said the Chinaman, who, like Martin Jackson, had also a Spanish accent."

The pump-man had come to a full stop. The third officer was standing near. A regurgitating and ruminating little animal was the third officer, who always after a meal came up on deck to lean over the after-rail, and spend a few enjoyable minutes in picking his teeth, and rechewing the lumps of food as they welled regularly into his throat; but otherwise a polite little man, plainly waiting for a chance to say a word to Kieran, but too well-bred to break in on any intimate conversation. However, Kieran remained silent so very long that the third officer turned and ventured: "'Adn't you better go below and have your bit o' dinner afore it's gone, mate?" And Kieran came out of his dream and said perhaps he'd better and stood up to go below; but on the top step of the ladder he paused and over his shoulder threw back to the pa.s.senger: "It was a long time, though, before Cogan saw Peru."

II

When Kieran came on deck again the third officer had gone forward, but the pa.s.senger was still on one of the towing bitts and still smoking.

Kieran, strolling to the taffrail, resumed his study of the tossing ship's wake and the cavorting barge in tow. When he seemed to have settled the matter to his satisfaction, he seated himself on the other towing bitt.

"You can get an idea into your head and sometimes it'll swing you around like that barge on the end of that hawser, won't it? Or perhaps your mind don't run that way?"

"I don't see," retorted the pa.s.senger, "that that barge has to stick there forever. What's to prevent her from making a leap and fetching up suddenly, and if she did she'd part that hawser like a piece of twine."

"Yes, but she won't make the leap--not till something outside of herself drives her to it. If a sea should rise, or a gale of wind, she might.

But it would take something like that. In the meantime she points this way and that, slewing now to this side--see--and now to the other--but never getting away from this ship which has her in tow. Our course must be her course."

"Yes, I suppose that is so."

"Well, then, Cogan that I've been telling you about was nearly always in tow of a force that seemed to be outside of himself. A storm, a high sea, or a gale of wind in his case would be an upheaval of his soul like. But in those days he hadn't come to that. Maybe he was still only half awake. Martin Jackson, sitting out on the sidewalk of his Fourth of July saloon, came nearer to making him think than all of the school teachers he'd ever seen. Maybe, too, life was too smooth in those days.

However, he was always in tow of some fancy or other. And one day, being free of the navy, he went to Peru."

'"Twas love at first sight then with that young Peruvian girl on the beach?"

"No, I don't think so--not quite that. Even at that age Cogan could not fall in love with curves and color alone. At any rate, he put out to sea; and the beauty of the little Peruvian girl was with him in many a night-watch. Under the stars he could shut his eyes and see her--the flashing teeth as she grimaced up at the horrified nurse, and the eyes still rioting after the curved lips were closed. And yet it was not her beauty. A hundred rosy-marbled nymphs could have paraded the beach in a thousand silvery dawns and, once out of sight, his heart never quicken whatever it was--the innocence, the breathing innocence of her, it may have been that. And yet there was something more. There must have been.

He gave it up, but he knew that if he had been born a girl he, too, would want to paddle in the sea at dawn."

"A sort of poet?" suggested the pa.s.senger.

Kieran shot a side glance at the pa.s.senger. "H-m-m--a good thing he didn't know it if he was. He was irresponsible enough without having that excuse. If he thought then that it was poetry in him which kept him hopping about the world, he'd have been no good at all. He did enough dreaming as it was. It was probably only the discipline of a warship, of having to do a daily stint, that kept him from loafing all his time away, for, as maybe I've said, a power used to take hold of him at times and swing him. An idea would come to him and he'd follow it like a guide to heaven.

"He wondered what had become of her, and one day, being now free of the navy, he took a bald-headed schooner out of Portland, Oregon, with a load of lumber for Callao. Between watches he studied a Spanish-Without-A-Master for one dollar. The lumber schooner never reached Callao, but she did make one of those volcanic islands to the south side of the harbor--piled up there and began to fill, which forced the crew to leave in a hurry and row into Callao harbor in their quarter-boat. From Callao the crew took a trolley to Lima to see the American consul. In Lima they became scattered, and Cogan and an old fellow named Tommie Jones found themselves together. Cogan had met Tommie in a restaurant in Portland at about the time Tommie was taking notice of a tall, well-nourished, red-headed la.s.s waiting on table there. Tommie was a hearty lad of fifty-four or so, and Cogan had helped the little romance along, and because of his interest in the case was how Cogan and Tommie came to ship together. Well, here was Tommie adrift in Lima after five weeks to sea, and in all that time he hadn't had a drink, and he wanted one now. He had no money, but Cogan had a half-dollar, and American silver is good money in Peru; so Cogan bought Tommie three drinks of some kind of Spanish wine and himself one lemonade for the half-dollar.

"It couldn't have been the wine--he hadn't had enough of that. Maybe it was the reaction from the excitement of the wreck that made Tommie sleepy. He wanted to turn in, and it being now night-time they went into a park where a fine band was playing. It was a beautiful night, with a moon; and under the moon, while the music rolled out, dark-eyed senoritas with their mothers strolled up and down, and the young fellows hung around and got in a word when they could. On the edges the police kept an eye on the loafers.

"The night breeze which made the trees almost talk, the water of the fountain arching under the colored lights, the scent of the flowering bushes--Tommie and Cogan after their five weeks at sea just sat there till long after the music had stopped and everybody gone home. Then Tommie fell asleep, full length under a tree. Cogan tried to stand watch but he was tired, too, and after a while, with his back against the same tree, and the water-play of the fountain still tinkling in his ears, he fell asleep alongside Tommie.

"Cogan had a dream of somebody trying to pull his leg off and it woke him. He looked down and saw that the lace of one of his shoes was untied. He retied it and looked at his chum. He was still asleep, snoring, but there was something missing. In half a minute, his brain clearing, he saw that Tommie's shoes were gone, and also his hat, and his pockets turned inside out. Cogan then noticed that his own trousers pockets were turned inside out. He stood up and caught sight of two fellows just dropping over the tall iron fence surrounding the park. The gates of the park were closed, and locked, too, or so Cogan guessed, and wasted no time in trying them. The fence was pretty high and had iron spikes on top, and he felt somewhat stiff in his joints, but a hot temper is good as a bath and a rub-down any time--Cogan vaulted the fence, and the two natives just then turned and saw him. He was coming on pretty fast and they threw up their hands, dropped the shoes and hat, and went tearing away. Cogan had only to stoop down and pick up the stuff, but it wasn't property he was after. To steal the shoes off of a shipwrecked sailor! Even if they weren't told he was shipwrecked, they ought to have guessed, or so he thought, and he held on after them, and Cogan could run pretty well in those days. But so could one of those fellows. Cogan could soon have caught the slow one, but he kept always after the fast fellow and was feeling sure of his man when he took to turning corners. They had come to a part of the city where the streets were narrow and the blocks short. It seemed to Cogan there was a corner every twenty feet, and it was up hill. His man turned one corner and four seconds later Cogan turned it, and, his man not being in sight, Cogan kept on and turned the next corner. Another twenty yards and he ran up against a high wall. 'Wow,' says Cogan, but with a running high jump, he got his fingers on top of the wall and hauled himself up. There was n.o.body in sight on the other side. 'Trimmed!' says Cogan, and, sitting on the wall, began to fan himself.

"It was bright light now and the city beginning to come awake. People came out and took down the shutters of shops. Indian women went by with loaded baskets of fruit, and other people drove little burros in carts filled with eggs, chickens, and green stuff; and men and women, with fish to sell in big dishes on their heads, came sliding by, and all yelled loud enough to wake a watch below. Girls with baskets of flowers went by, and one, looking up, spied Cogan and stopped and held her basket up and made a motion for him to buy. He turned his pockets inside out and threw his hands apart. That made her laugh, and she took a flower from the basket, touched her lips to it and threw it up to him.

She was a pretty girl,--all the girls were pretty this morning,--but she was prettiest of all, and the flower was of a big blue kind which Cogan had never seen before. He blew a kiss after her and she went singing on her way. Cogan sang a little himself. He was beginning to feel pretty good.

"Boys came and gazed up at Cogan, and sometimes men, and some of them laughed, but mostly they paid no attention to him. He heard a bell tolling and he saw people below him filing toward a gate. They all carried tin cups. He looked further and saw that it was a monastery they were heading for, and that at the gate of the monastery two monks in brown habits were pa.s.sing out bread and filling the tin cups with coffee. Cogan dropped over the wall, and when he saw that one man had finished with his tin cup he asked him for it. He knew Spanish enough for that. The man smiled and handed it over. Cogan went up to the grating and a monk filled his tin cup with coffee. Another handed him three slices of dark bread. Cogan thanked them, but the monks seemed not to hear. He thanked them again, at which one monk, looking up, set a finger to his lips and motioned him to step aside for the next.

"Cogan finished his breakfast, thanked the native for the loan of the cup, and started to look around. He first tried to find the park where he had left Tommie, but there were so many parks with trees and flowers and fountains in them! He crossed a bridge over a river that must have come tumbling all the way from the top of the Andes, it had such a head of speed on. He patrolled he did not know how many streets, and at last gave up hunting for Tommie, on whose account, anyway, he wasn't worrying, for he knew that Tommie, an experienced old sailor man, had by this time laid his course for the Consul's and been taken care of. He sat on a bench at the curbstone in front of a fruit store to think things over. It was a comfortable seat, except that every time a trolley pa.s.sed he had to lift his feet high so he wouldn't be swept off his perch.

"As he sat there, a group of well-muscled, well-set-up young fellows pa.s.sed him. It was a cool, cheerful morning, and they appeared to be full of play. Everybody did that morning in Lima. Cogan knew these at once for some sort of athletes. They seemed to be well known to the store-keepers and the small boys along the street. Their hair, or what he could see of it, was clipped close. Not handsome men all, but all in high favor. Girls flung back light words at them, or tapped them on the arm in pa.s.sing. Two girls pinned roses on the coats of two of them, who took it all as though they were used to it. 'Big leaguers of some kind,'

thinks Cogan, and asked the fruit-stand keeper who they were, and the fruit-seller said 'Torero.'

"'Torero? Torero?--Ah-h-h'--Cogan recalled his 'Spanish Without A Master'--'Ah-h-h, of course, Toreros--Toreadors'--he remembered the opera 'Carmen'--bull-fighters. Cogan got up and followed them.

"If Cogan had never seen a bull-ring, he would right away have known this in Lima for one. It was a perfect circle, about two hundred feet across, packed with what looked like hard sand and surrounded by a stout stockade, and with seats enough for eight or ten thousand people. The bull-fighters had not minded when he followed them in, and now he took a seat on the empty benches and watched them at practice. They had a bull, a lively one, but a well trained one, too, for when he knocked one of them over he would stand still and not try to trample anybody. He would reach down and prod with his horns, but, as he had a bra.s.s k.n.o.b on each horn, he couldn't hurt them much that way. The fellows with the red capes practised all their tricks, the men with wooden stakes all covered with paper streamers practised theirs, and Cogan's blood was racing in his veins before they were through. These were great athletes--he saw that at once--and with a savage bull with sharp-pointed hoofs and horns in place of that trained manicured one--well, these men would be taking chances which no athlete at home ever had to take, unless they were aerial-bar men in the circus or loop-the-loopers or something like that.