The men opened out for him, and stopped their singing. But the steward began to shout, at the top of his voice:— “It’s her! It’s her! I knew I’d find her!”
Cargunka pulled off his felt hat, and looked at the woman. He saw a pretty, piquant face, with clear, bright blue eyes, and a face extraordinarily sun-browned.
He held out his hand to her.
“The Almighty sure does wonderful things, Miss,” he said, simply. “But I guess He never done a wonderfuller than this.”
The girl was shaking and almost crying with excitement and joy. “Oh, yes, yes…” she began, and forthwith began to cry outright, with sheer happiness and shock.
The one-time bartender held out a big hand to Cargunka, and the little man gripped it so hard that the big man winced.
“I thank God I met you, Sir,” said the big man.
“My Oath!” said the little man, confusedly. “Same here.”
Chapter VII
The remainder of this tale is soon told. The girl had been found in a small cave at the far end of the island (which is about seven and a half miles long). She had lived there in hiding all the three years, so as to keep out of the way of big old Captain Barstow, who had gone very definitely mad when he saw the vessel, carrying all of his long-hoarded money, go down.
Once, when she had ventured down to the vicinity of the wreck, he had chased her for a couple of miles, screaming out mad oaths, and threats of what he would do, if ever he caught her there again. For the poor fellow, in his madness, could think of nothing but his gold, and suspected that she intended to rob him.
Often, she had watched him, from a distance, diving, diving, all day long. Indeed, she described him as seeming almost to live on the submerged craft; but whether he had ever succeeded in salving any of his gold she could not say.
In all the time on the island, there had not called another vessel; and she had begun to feel that she might end her life there. She had grown to keep so much to her own little valley at the other end of the island, that she had actually known nothing of the arrival of the Happy Return, until the steward found her that morning out fishing from the rocks; and she admitted that it was possible there might have been another vessel to the island, without her knowing; but she thought it very unlikely, as she had not grown careless in watching until the latter months of her stay.
As regards the curious striking of the bell, and the attack on the bo’sun and Cargunka, these were obviously nothing more than the tricks of an obsessed mind, conceived and carried out with the characteristic cunning and remorselessness of the true monomaniac. It was plain that the last thing the madman had desired was visitors to the island. Possibly there had been some other ship called in, and he may have adopted similar means to frighten them away.
As regards the money, a large part of this, amounting to over three thousand pounds, was found in the cave which the old Captain had inhabited. A careful search of the wreck led them to a second “find,” under the cemented-down iron ballast, of which the barque carried a little for stiffening. It had been this, doubtless, that had kept the Captain diving hopelessly all those years; for it was possible to trace where he had made crazy, ineffectual efforts to shift the great, shaped masses of iron, under which, at some earlier period, he had obviously placed a portion of his wealth for safety.
An examination of the fo’cas’le head, and the deck house aft, showed how the Captain had managed to breathe, whilst apparently remaining under water; for the stairs that led down out of the poop-deck house (or chart-house) led down into the steward’s pantry; and as the top of the house was always above water, the Captain had been able to obtain fresh air for as long as he liked, by simply rising to the surface of the water inside the deserted and closed-up deck house.
In somewhat the same way, he had probably dived into the fo’cas’le, when he played the hanky-panky with the bell, hitting it probably with a piece of wood; for there was a quantity of imprisoned air (renewed each ebb) just under the perfectly air-tight deck of the fo’cas’le head.
Chapter VIII
Five days later, the Happy Return continued her voyage to ’Frisco, and Cargunka returned happily to his daily pleasures in the galley. This apparently puzzled the girl, Agnes Jensag, who knew him to be the “Owner”; but when she poked her head inside the galley doorway to ask whether she could not be of some use, Cargunka shook his head, and offered her a seat on the locker. He was peeling potatoes, and his pocket volume of Byron’s Poems was propped up on the dresser before him.
“Wonderful man, Miss,” said Cargunka, pointing at the book with his knife. He wiped his hand on his apron, and handed the book across to her, opened at the frontispiece, which was an engraving of Byron himself.
“It’s said by them as knows, to be remarkable like me, Miss,” said Cargunka.
The girl flashed a quick glance at him, and understood.
“Yes,” she said, gravely, “I can quite see what you mean;” which was strictly the truth, and, at the same time, pleased the little man tremendously.
“An’ there’s my legs, Miss, just the same wiv me as it was wiv ’im. An’ the same leg, too,” he told her, earnestly. “An’ he was a fair devil wiv the wimmin, too….”
Cargunka realised that his tongue had run ahead a bit, and he changed the talk, by asking her whether she would mind singing him the ballad of “The Fate of the Laughing Sally.” The girl smiled and did as he wished, singing in a low, sweet contralto, that made the little man lean back in ecstasy, with closed eyes, and set him beating a slow time with the potato knife. She sang right through to the last line:—
“And the bells grow faint and lost.”
And Cargunka opened his eyes and stared silently away through the open door to leeward.
“And the bells of the Laughing Sally ring
And die away forever.”
he quoted, scarcely above his breath. “I reck’n it’s gone eight bells wiv ’er for the last time. Aye!” He nodded vaguely astern. “Like as it’ll be me an’ one of the brigs one of these days. It’s bound to come to all of us…. At sea or in bed; As I have said…. You might put that rhyme down for me, Miss. My ’ands is wet. There’s pencil an’ my poetry-writin’ book back of you on the shelf. I writes ’em down as they comes to me,” he said simply.
The Adventure with the
Claim Jumpers
You don’t come that over me, my lad!” said Cargunka, owner of the “Dot-And-Carry-One” Saloon, on the Water Front, San Francisco. “Eat your whack of the free lunch, and welcome; but if I catches you grub-stakin’ your pockets, you’ll get put out here right smart!”
“I paid for three fifteen-cent drinks, ain’t I?” demanded the man on the other side of the bar, in an aggressive voice.
He had been stuffing himself with cheese, ham, fish-rissoles, backed sausages, salmon cutlets and the like, from the Free Lunch Counter, which method of obtaining a meal was quite in order; but D.C.O. Cargunka had just caught him shoving a great hunk of cheese into his pocket, which action was very much out of order, running contra to the unwritten law of the Free Lunch Counter, which says:— “Eat what you like and as much as you like, provided you keep right on drinking; but what your stomach don’t want, leave right there on the Free Lunch Counter.”
It’s a clear and simple and easily learnt law, this Law of the Free Lunch Counter; and the owners of drinking saloons uphold it grimly, and even lustily, if need be; for if they did not, considerable human derelicts would arrive, each with a sack and ten cents. The ten cents would go into a drink, and the contents of the Free Lunch Counter would go into the sack; and, in brief, that would be the end of the Free Lunch institution, which flourishes mightily in certain places, and most vigorously in little old San Francisco.
“You had three fifteen-cent drinks sure, my lad,” said Cargunka; “but that don’t entitle you to hump the Free Counter away on your back. You lug that cheese hunk out of your pocket, my son, or I’ll come round and do it for you.”
“You’ll do what!” said the man, who was a great, husky, red-faced miner, just in from the North. “Ye—. Sure now will ye say that again, so I kin get yoor meanin’, ye little dot-an’-carry galoot!”
It was quite evident that the man was a stranger to that part of the Water Front, or he might have been more careful in his choice of words.
“You got a good opinion of yourself, my lad, ain’t you?” said D.C.O. Cargunka, his eyes shining a little. “You got a mighty good notion of yourself, ain’t you?”
“I reck’n, ye little fool, I’ll jest box yoor tabs for ye, if ye say another word,” said the big man. “If ye was bigger, I’d shut my fist to ye; but I’m feelin’ good, I am, an’ I might spoil ye worse’n God spoilt ye, ye blame little cripple—”
It was the word “cripple” that did it. D.C.O. Cargunka jumped the bar, without even putting his hands on it, and the blow he hit the big man on the jaw was heard outside in the street.
The big man sat down violently, on the weighing machine, which happened to be directly behind him; but he was on his feet in a moment, and charged the short figure of Dot-and-Carry-One Cargunka, with a tremendous bellow of rage.
“I’ll pull ye out to a man’s size, like a putty figger, ye crippled toad!” he yelled, as he sprang at Cargunka, and made a huge, lunging swing at his head.
Cargunka circled to the side, on his dot-and-carry leg. His movements were astonishingly quick; and the difference in the length of his legs seemed to have no effect of slowing his speed. His foot-work was perfect, almost marvelous; for, without once guarding a blow with his arms, he sidestepped, and slid under, and slipped a dozen or more vicious punches from the big, furious miner. And all the time, as he sidestepped, slipped and evaded the man’s great punches, he was never once driven outside of an imaginary four-yard circle, around which the men in the bar had packed themselves in a breathless, shouting ring of mad excitement.
Suddenly, Cargunka stepped right in close to the big man, and drove in a one—two—three, bat! bat! bat! along the line of the short ribs. The big man let out a gasping yell of pain, as his head came forward. In the same instant, D.C.O. Cargunka loosed his right fist from somewhere about the vicinity of his hip, and the upper-cut he sped home to the point of the big man’s jaw was a truly terribly punch. The man’s chin shot up, and his elbows and knees splayed in an absurd and helpless fashion; and down he came in his tracks with a crash, like the sound of a falling bullock.
As he fell, the double swing-doors of the saloon were thrown open, and a man jumped in through, with a drawn gun in his fist.
“Put that away, my lad, ’fore you get into trouble,” said Cargunka, looking over his shoulder.
“Has big Buck Kessel come in here?” demanded the man, hoarsely. “Quick now; for I’m out for bad trouble! Has big Buck Kessel come in here? They told me, up the Front, as he was boozin’ in here.”
“Put your gun away, my lad,” said D.C.O. Cargunka again, turning towards him. “This is ’Frisco, not Denver City!”
“Stow your dam gab!” snarled the man, looking at him fixedly for the first time…. “Say!” he continued, “ain’t you D.C.O.?”
“That’s me, my lad,” replied Cargunka. “Put the popper away, an’ I’ll hear what’s troublin’ you.”
The man lowered his gun, and began to explain, in an excited voice:—
“Say, D.C.O.,” he said, “I’ve heard of you, up the coast. You’re reckoned to be a guy as is always for a square deal. Well, you hark to me, an’ then I guess if you’re hiding yon brasted Buck Kessel, you’ll hand the white-livered swine out for me to perforate.
“You hark to me, Sir! I just come down from up the coast. I been prospectin’, an’ I hit gold while I was up there. Yes, Sir! You bet I hit it big—big enough to mean no more work for yours truly.
“I pegged out my claim. It was on a bit of a creek, an’ then I thought I’d just put in a bit of time, washing, up an’ down the creek, before I come down here to register, an’ let the news go loose, that’d fill that bit of a creek up with gold-hogs as full as a squaw is of hair-bugs.
“Like the brasted fool I was, I stretched my luck too far. When I got back to my claim, that afternoon, middlin’ late, there was a crowd of hard-cases, maybe a dozen of ’em, down in the creek, up to their knees, washin’ my pay dirt for their bloomin’ lives. Yes, Sir! An’ they’d jumped my claim, an’ they’d staked out the whole of the two sides of the creek, as far up an’ down as made it no use to me. What you got to say to that?”
There was a growl of sympathy from the men in the Dot-And-Carry-One Saloon, and Cargunka nodded.
“Go on, my lad,” he said.
“Well,” continued the man, “I was that mad, I’d have tried to buck Satan if he’d come along, an’ I just lugged out my gun, an’ told them there’d be blue murder if they didn’t vamoose my claim, right then!
“Well, the next thing I knew, someone come up behind me and I got a bash on the head. An’ while I was down an’ out, they took my gun and a hundred and thirty ounces of dust and small nuggets, as I’d collected up an’ down the creek. What you got to say to that?
“I did my damndest. I offered to toss ’em, or fight the biggest one of ’em—Anything for fair play; but they wasn’t that kind. No, Sir! They wasn’t!
“They shoved me in the creek, an’ held me down, till I near drowneded; an’ then did gun practice stunts all round me, till I reckoned I’d do well to get away with a whole skin.
“But, one of them, this here Buck Kessel that I’m gunning for, told ’em to tie me up. He said he’d get down here and file their claims. And afterwards they could let me go, and be damned to me or anything I could try to put over on ’em.
“Yes, Sir, they tied my up like a damn shote. An’ that Buck swine let off for the South. But, Lord! they didn’t know me! I rolled over to where there was a bit of rough quartz stickin’ up, and I just frayed out the lashing they’d put on my arms. And then I got the stuff off me legs.
“They was all that busy, washing out my pay-dirt, they never thought to bother about me. And I crept in, up at the back of their tent, and sneaked a brace of guns (this here’s one of ’em!). And then I lit out for where my horse was hobbled, in a little valley, about a half mile away.
“Well, I let out, hell for leather, to see if I couldn’t come up on that Buck Kessel hog, an’ do him in. But he’d got clean away from me. And when I got to the offices, they told me he’d just taken out the papers; and I was too late to do anything, ’cept lodge a complaint—A fat lot of use that, hey! Me on the one side, tellin’ my yarn, an’ a dozen of them on the other, tellin’ theirs! An’ them with the claims and their papers! An’ every hour that passes, they’m liftin’ my dust! Yes, Sir! My dust. Jehu sufferin’ Jehoshaphat! My Dust! Now then, will you turn over that Buck Kessel swine to me, so I can perforate him so his own mother won’t know him? The… the… the…”
“Come here, my lad,” said D.C.O. Cargunka, beckoning to him.
The man came forward, a big. rough, powerful chap he was, with a big honest-looking face.
“Now then, my lad,” said Cargunka, as the man came up alongside of him. “Do you recognise the sleepin’ beauty on the floor there?”
The man Cargunka had knocked out, lay quiet enough to be dead. He had not been visible from the doorway of the saloon, because the weighing machine (that frequent adjunct of the bar) had stood between.
But now, as the newcomer set eyes on the insensible man, he let out a mad oath.
“That’s the—” he yelled, and without more ado he thrust his revolver down at the silent figure, crying out:— “To blazes with ye, ye rotten-hearted thief!”
The Dot-And-Carry-One Saloon boomed and echoed with the explosion of the heavy weapon, and there were shouts of horror and fright from the men in the bar.
But the man on the floor lay unharmed; for at the moment of the shot, Cargunka had struck the gunman’s hand, so that the bullet had buried itself in
the floor to the left of the insensible man. And now Cargunka was in the midst of a violent wrestling match, one abnormally long, enormously muscular arm being wound round the man’s waist; while, with his right hand, he fought to wrench the gun away from the insanely angry prospector.
He succeeded at last in getting the revolver, and pitched it to one side. Then he bent the whole power of his short but amazingly muscular body to the conquering of this murder-mad newcomer.
Abruptly, the man weakened, curiously and unexpectedly; and before Cargunka knew what was happening, he had slid through his arms, into a quiet heap on the floor of the saloon.
“My Oath!” said Cargunka, breathlessly. “My Oath! What’s that mean?”
He stared down suspiciously at the man, wondering vaguely whether it might not be some trick to catch him off his guard. Then, suddenly, he knelt on the floor, beside him, and felt his heart.
“My Oath!” he said, at last. “I b’lieve the poor devil’s done out. He’s starved or something, I’m thinkin’. Pass me over that whisky bottle, Bob” (this to the barman), “and I’ll see what we can do wiv him….
“When did you grub last, my lad?” were the first words Cargunka said, when the man came around.
“Blest if I know,” he answered, getting somewhat giddily to his feet. “I been too busy to shunt grub. I guess I’m needin’ it; but I’m goin’ to fill that hog up first; so you stan’ clear!”
With the word, he stooped suddenly, and twitched a second gun out of the leg of his right boot.
But Cargunka was too quick for him. He nailed his wrist with one quick grip, and tore the gun out of his fist.
Boats of the Glen Carrig and Other Nautical Adventures Page 59
