A STRANDED SHIP

Waipawa Mail, Volume VII, Issue 713, 5 December 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

A STRANDED SHIP

A STORY OF SEA AND SHORE. By L. ©LA.RKE DAVIS. PART H. BY THE SWEAT OF HIS BROW. The beautiful night, closing down on the golden City by the Sea, hid under its shadows a thousand wrongs and crimes ; but as the sultry day faded, and the lamps were lighted, other wrongs and crimes grew fairer and bolder, and the gamesters hung out their gaudy lures to entrap the devotees of Chance. One San Francisco gaming-house differed in no essential particular from a hundred others of the same class which night and day kept open doors for their votaries during the summer of 1855. The same rough sort of men were to be found in them all ; the same gaudy iflwmiture and hangings, the same low-voiced croupiers or dealers, the same soft-footed servants, were characteristic of each.

In one, the night was far spent, the raw, chilly morning beginning to dawn, and the players dropping off one by one from around the green tables. The croupiers yawned wearily, tired of raking into their strong boxes treasures which they were only paid to gather, and which they could not share. The long, high-ceiled room shone gaudily in the gas glare, reflecting back from its mirrored walls the gorgeous hangings and crimson - coloured furniture. A gilded against the wall sparkled with its store of beautiful glass, through which glared redly the fiery liquors, placed there by the wily spider of this parlour with a cunning forethought to steal away the brains of the unwary flies whom he had entrapped. Play went on at a single table, about which the men were mostly miners, who had come down from the mountains with their large or small stores of gold, the result of weeks or months of such labour and exposure as few men long endure and survive, only to lay it all down on the green cloth before the quiet-voiced croupier, never to see it again. Rough-voiced, rude-mannered, hard-listed fellows mostly, who staked and lost and bore their failure or success with oath or laughter equally unpleasant to hear. One by one as the day came on the players went away up into the mountain gullies again, only to dig and sweat and find gold, to bring back, alter more weeks or months, to this room to lose. But one man there did not stir, though the sunlight of the morning had already fallen on and made beautiful the Golden Gate, its ships and 2 litis and piers. Seated at the table, a few men still standing about, he sat w atching the game with feverish anxiety, being (lushed or depressed beyond all others as he lost or won ; he differed from the rest not >nly in his nervous, feverish impatience, jut in that there was about him an air of gentler breeding than they had known, a gentleman at odds with luck, fast parting vith that something which raised him tbove his coarse associates ; so much of his ace as could be seen—for his hat was Irawn low over his forehead and his hand vandered about his mouth and chin in alnost perpetual unrest—was pale and thin, lis hands white and attenuated, his eyes unken and fierce, as if from an inward bver. He had evidently suffered great tidily or mental distress, and had scarcely Scovered from its effects. Later, he was 3ft quite alone at the green table with the roupier, the drowsy servants hanging bout silent and sole spectators of the game.

The croupier raked in the result of the irevious play, and, looking out into the unshine, asked, “ Do you play again ?” The man’s voice was thin and weak as he nswered, “Yes, I play my last dollar on he red.”

The rod spun quickly round, resting on he black.

“ You have lost,” said the other, coolly, aking in the pile of coin. “Were you ight in saying you had staked your last

“ Yes, the last of a good many hundreds hat have gone down into this hell since esterday.” The croupier tossed back to him a halfandful of coin. “ Take that ; it will pay our w ay to the diggings ; and if you don’t ke. this hell, keep out of it. You came re of your own choice, you miserable Then the man held the money in his hand, •resolute for a moment whether to keep it i lling it back into the croupier’s face. The banker smiled. “ Keep it, my mn,” he said; “you’ll need it soon.”

'here was more pity than insolence in his Dne now, which made it all the more olFen ive to the ruined gamester.

He put the money into his pocket and rept away into the chill, moist air of the lorning ; a gentleman very much at odds dth fortune, and slipping fast down the

“ He’s been sick, that man has,” said a leepy servant. “ And not long out of gaol,” added anther.

The keeper of the place that the man had ust left was no better or no worse than his ellows. They were all willing enough to -ive back to the men that they plundered i small percentage of their losings to enable them to reach the mines, knowing by long experience that they would find their way back to the green tables again with replenished stores. When the man reached the street, his first thought was to find a hotel ; but he carefully avoided the best houses, and walked on until he found an obsrure tavern in an obscure street, and there he entered. The clerk, a low, narrow-browed ruffian, eyed him closely as he advanced slowly to the desk and stated his object. “You have made a mistake; this is a hotel, not a graveyard,” the fellow said insolently, smiling at some loungers in the room.

“I have made no mistake, and I don’t mean to die yet awhile ; if I should, I have sufficient money to pay my funeral expenses.” He threw some coin on the desk. “Take what you want out of that for a day’s accommodation ; give me a decent room and breakfast.” “ I don’t want your money now. A good many people come in who have none, and I thought you looked like one of that sort, ” said the clerk, abating nothing in the insolence of his manner. “Sign the register, will you ?” “ What is it you ask?” taid the man, perfectly understanding the request, but pretending he did not, trying to gain time. “ I ask you to register your name.” “My name?” “ Yes, your name—or another man’s ; it don’t matter to us, only we require people who come here to write the names by which they wish to be known on our register.” The man drew his hand slowly across his nervous mouth, looked at the clerk for a moment with an ugly glitter in his eyes ; then he took up the pen, and in a miserably cramped hand wrote his name, Abel Duwlethe. The clerk turned the book about, and read it. “ 1 think,” he said, “your people ui*de a-mistake in your christening;. ”

“ How ? I don’t understand.” “ They called you for the wrong brother. It should have been Gain —the other one.” Loud, coarse laughter greeted this sally of the clerk’s ; but Abel Dunlethe only scowled upon the ruffians in the room, and went out to find his breakfast elsewhere. Still choosing the obscure streets, he went on until he came to a decent, cleanlylooking tavern on Suter-street, where he entered and received civil treatment. He breakfasted, and afterwards slept until noon. He went out then, and occupied the remainder of the day in buying an outfit for the mines. In the morning he started, making the journey by steamer to Sacramento, thence for days together across the dead level of the plains, among the great oaks for awhile, and then over a dreary desert of sand, or through a tangled wilderness of bushes to the Mokelumne River, on the southern hills of w’hich the miners worked like ants, digging and washing the yellow sands. He arrived at nightfall, as they began to light their fires and prepare for supper. He passed among them closely scrutinised, hoping with a curious longing for fellowship, that some would ask him to share the evening meal with them ; . but he went on past their quarters and cabins, uninvited to pitch his tent near or enter theirs. When he reached the outer edge of the rancho, he pitched his tent, and built his fire unassisted or unvisited by any one. Later in the night, he sat at his door watching the hills grow denser with each expiring flame, his own thoughts growing blacker as the bitterness of his situation gathered about him. Some men neai him were seated on stones, at their fire playing cards. He wanted some one to say a single friendly word to him before he went in for the night. He hesitated for a moment, then went over to them. The men looked up at him as he stood among them. “ These seats are all reserved, mate ; no room here,” said the biggest ruffian of the lot, shuttling the cards. The rest laughed, and went on with the game. He weht back to his tent. . When he had made all fast for the night, he sat on his tent floor silent for a long time. “It was a mistake,” he said presently, getting up ; “I should have been called Cain, for it seems as if I carried his mark in my face. I haven’t had a friendly word to-day.” Nor had he. He had come among a rough desperate crew, mostly vagabonds and adventurers from the States, noisy and fioricsome, but, for all that, with a good deal of human feeling for the unfortunates of their class who fell exhausted by the way. But thev did not like this man’s appearance ; it might have been that the air of the gentleman was too strong upon him to suit their tastes, or it might have been that, w hen they looked into his face, they indeed saw there the mark of Cain. Dunlethe resolved that first night never to try again to get a friendly word from any man. In the morning he located his claim, and with increastng strength went to work with pick-axe and spade and sieve. But he was not a strong man yet ; illness had pulled him down, and he was unused to such exertion, so that, the given quantity of labour being small, the result was not great. The rough fellows, who had avoided him at first, seeing how poorly he began to look and how unsuccessful his awkward efforts were, came about him now to proffer assistance or advice ; but he was morose or aiietit with them all, as they had been with him. Then he fell sick, and «ie men, seeing his pick and shovel lying idle in the pit, went over to his tent, but he was soured and bitter, and he turned them savagely away. After a time, when ho was better, and the miners noticing that he still kept himself aloof from them, refusing to join in their games at cards, or storytelling, or drinking-bouts, they left him quite alone, and went no more to his tent or diggings. lie believed for awhile that he was glad of their neglect, and stoutly maintained his resolve ; but the time soon came when he grew intolerably lonely and miserable ; his money, too, was given out, and he found no nuggets, and but little dust to replace it. Other men, he thought, had friends or companions in the gullies of these black hills, and he had none ; other men got letters from home, but none ever came to him ; occasionally, though, he borrowed a newspaper from the States, and then he read eagerly every line of it, down to the last advertisement; it made him feel less lonely, somehow. Returning one night from his claim, he came upon a man reading a paper to a group of miners seated around the hre, and, going in among them, lie found the reader had finished. Then he heard some one ask,

“ Didn’t you say that you knew the murdered man, Joe ?” “ No, I didn’t know the man, but I knew the boy, George Lawrence ; 1 lost sight of him when lie was a man, for I left home young, you see.” The speaker looked up into lumkothe’s face, which was shaded with his hand, as if to shut off the glare of the flames. “We were talking, mate,” he said, “of a man as was murdered in the States —a gentleman I once knew’. Sit down and I'll tell you about it.”

Dunlethe sat down among them, still shadiiu his face from the fire, keeping his hand between the narrator and himself. The miner went on, keenly relishing his story, and glad to have another listener, to

“ I knew that boy, George Lawrence ; I worked for his father. He was English from Surrey, and I think George was English too, but he must have come over when young. He was a baddish sort of boy, was George. But no matter about that now; he’s dead.”

“ Murdered, I think you said ?” Dunlethe asked.

“ Yes, lie was murdered, at night, in Boston—flung into the river off old Dunlethe’s wharf. Hello ! there, mate, aren’t that w hat you’re called—Dunlethe ?” “ That is my name, but I do not know the wharf, nor the ow ner. lam from the West—Ohio.” The men turned lazily to look at him as he spoke, but the next moment their eyes ■were bent on the fire. “ Well, stranger !” he asked, “ was the murderer discovered ?” “ Yes, he was ; he was found and tried for George Lawrence’s murder, and though he said he did it, they let him go. ‘Not guilty,’ was the verdict.” “ What was that man’s name ?” “ The murderer’s do you mean ?” “Y es the man who killed George Lawrence.” “ Well, Mr Dunlethe, his name was Luke Connor,” the miner said, turning full upon him, as being the one auditor most interested in his story.

“You did not know this man Connor, then, did you?” asked Dunlethe. “I’m not so sure of that, mate; there was some Connors in that town where I came from ; maybe I did know him, for he was a friend of the man lie killed. If he was one of them ('minors I knew ; though 1 might forget his first name, l would know his face if I ever saw it again. I never forget faces."’ The face lie looked at now’ was shaded from him and from the fire by a hand that was visibly trembling. Dunlethe got up. “The man was acquitted, you said !” “Yes ‘not guilty,’ was the verdict. You’re not going, eh ? Well, then, goodnight, mate,” said the miner; “sorry to lose so good a listener.

“ Good night, friends all.” He had been gone but a few minutes, when he returned, and asked permission to take the paper to his tent.

Dunlethe sat up half the night reading it, and as often as he concluded the account of the murder and the trial, w*ent back to it again. \\ hen he started out to the pit in the morning, he carried the paper to the owner. He w r as glad the miner had gone to his work before he got there ; he flung the paper into his tent, and went on, thinking a good deal, by the way, of the man who knew the Connors, and never forgot faces.

During the next few days he kept himself very close to his ’work and quarters, but the solitude oppressed him beyond endurance, and he tried to make friends with some of the better sort, but the effort was futile ; he met with no response, and was made to understand that he was disliked, and that, even by the hardened wretches of the mines, he was regarded with suspicion. He worked on then alone for several w 7 eeks, digging and washing, but scarcely getting out sufficient gold to support existence from day to day ; and then the rainy season set in, which was unfortunately at a time when he was certain he had reached a lode filled with gold. For several days before he had been encouraged to more vigorous exertions, to go deeper, both by the indications and the increased results and within a few hours he had found a number of rich nuggets, scales, and dust in abundance, and felt that his labours were about to be rewarded.

The night that followed was rough and stormy, beyond all nights he had ever seen. The rain fell in unbroken torrents, swelling the mountain streams, which rushed impetuously down the canons, sweeping before them whatever encumbered their way. In the morning, while the rain still fell, he ventured out, going down to see how, in the general rack and ruin his lode had fared. When he arrived at the place where he thought that it ought to be, he could discover not a trace of its whereabouts. The gully in which it was located was tilled up with mud and stones and trees ; he looked down upon a miserable, hopeless wreck, never to be worked nor made profitable again ; even his tools were gone—nothing left of all yesterday’s hope and promise of success. His long months, labour and exposure had gone for nothing, and he must begin all anew. Buried in the corner of his tent were some nuggets, scales, and dust, which he dug up and sewed into his tattered clothing. He sat by his fire all day, while the rain pelted down upon his tent roof, counting over his losses, living over again the betteryears he had known, between which and to-day a dead face came and went for ever. —a dead face which came and looked in at his tent-door by day and by night, in fou or pleasant weather—always there. Then he grew sick of the place, of his hard luck, and of the men who avoided him ; afraid, too, of the man who knew the Connors and never forgot a face. The next day the rain had ceased falling and the sun shone. Then, not knowing but that the storm would come again to-morrow, he shouldered his traps, started out to find a new location one not likely to be buried|in the next tempestuous night. He went farther away into the newer fields and the profounder loneliness of the mountains, to locate his claim and dig and wash, and wash and dig. He found the place he sought after several days’ toilsome tramp, pitched his tent, and began prospecting ; finally locating a claim a short distance from the mountain road. Half a mile off was the nearest cabin, where provisions, liquors, and implements were sold. There he went and bought flour, bacon, and coffee, stored them away,and then went to his work, a little more ragged and dirty, a little more desperate, a little further off from the God he once knew than he had ever been. He was not lonely here, as he had been before ; there were no other men abcut him to be roughly rude to him, or happy, or to get letters from home, or to have friendships and loves. Here he Mas sufficient unto himself, alone, but not lonely. Then he dug on and on, day after day throwing out the washed|sands which left no gold liehind, digging deeper through sand and clay and rock in vain. Disappointment and defeat made him mad. He valued gold for its own sake as little as any man ; but to get it meant success, or, as he grew to call it, luck. In the place of human love and fellowship, which should have been in Dunlethe’s heart, there suddenly was engendered in it, by defeat, a single feeling—an awful hunger and thirst to find gold. That one passion filled his life up, took all his thought, and occupied his sleep. Having found it, he might have flung it away again, or recklessly tossed it openhanded to the first beggar that passed that way’; but lie was mad to find it, for that would be luck, and luck meant to this poor wretch that his God had not deserted him, that he was not altogether forgotten and cast out.

Then day by day and month after month be digged deeper into the pit he had sunk, but the indications grew no more promising, the luck his very soul grew hungry for did not come to him, and the few ounces of gold that he had before gathered were going fast. Desperate at last under continued failure, he swore a savage oath that if he should be unlucky for only another day, he would dig no more. The day came, and the man, as if regretful of his oath and repenting it, dug with the persistence and energy of one who delved for life, or to save his soul alive. It wore on slowly and surely to its close, leaving him digging there, every muscle strained to its utmost tension, great beads of sweat standing on his face and hands, rolling down his limbs, sapping his strength ; but that was all of his reward. The dying, day gave him no signs of the golden luck he toiled for—it w r as almost gone now, and as Dunlethe paused in his work, leaning on his shovel, w’atching the sun sinking behind the line of melancholy cedars skirting the horizon, he heard the music of a loud, jubilant song, echoing along the hills, and turning around he saw some men approaching, a rough and careless crew of Frenchmen.

They come nearer and stood upon the brink of the pit he had made. One touched his cap gaily, and asked, “ What luck, Monsieur?”

Abel Dunlethe clambered up from the depths of the hole.

“No luck, Messieurs,” he said; “and be damned to it. I have dug there for many months, and in all kinds of weather. The dry mine of yesterday I have seen today filled with water, and have bailed it out with such poor contrivances as you see here about me. I have begun with the pick at dawn, and have laid the shovel down only at dusk. 1 have washed the accursed sands till my fingers were worn to the bone, and yet I have found nothing. I will dig no more. If you care to try your luck, there is the claim and there are the tools. Take them, Messieurs, you are welcome, and may your luck be better than mine. There are my tent and traps on the hill, yonder, von are welcome to them all. “ A million thanks generous Monsieur,” they said, and the merry fellows, ready for any fortune good as well as bad, jumped down into the pit, went to work, and resumed the measures of theirinterrup+ed o g* He shook the dust of the hole fro n his torn shoes, and with no object, no place nor time in view, started off along the

mountain defile by which the other men had come.

“What luck, Monsieur Dunlethe?” he asked himself savagely, and he answered back to the mocking devil within, “No luck, Monsieur Dunlethe, no luck at play, no luck at work, no luck at anything, no luck for the man on whom the curse has fallen, no luck for the alien adventurer, bearing a dead man’s name.” On he went down the mountain path in the rapidly closing twilight ; down to the valley below, where lights already gleamed from tent and cabin door. He was halfway down when a horse’s feet struck the path beside him. He stepped aside into the bushes to let the horse and rider pass. “ What luck, stranger ?” asked the rider drawing rein. “No luck, stranger, pass on,” the man replied, cursing the other for using that word at that time.

The rider looked down at Abel Dunlethe with an ugly, mocking smile on his face. “ I meant to tell you,” he said, “ you surly devil, of the luck of some friends of yours, back in the hills yonder. They have struck the lode to which you had dug down, and w-ithin an hour have taken out a hundred ounces. You had better return and ask them to give you back your claim, or share it with you.” Dunlethe strode on to where the lights shone in the valley, cursing the good fortune that shunned him and went to other men. The rider shot past, leaving the luckless, surly stranger to himself. He reached the valley at last, and, footsore and weary, entered a tavern, about the door of which a score of miners were seated, all eagerly discussing the ill luck of the man Dunlethe, and making their plans for migrating soon to the new’ and richer diggings which he had found but not enjoyed. He sat alone by the stove, his ragged hat drawn down over his face, damning the men outside who continued to sneer at his folly for giving his claim to others after so many months of labour. In the morning, having paid for his lodging and breakfast, he found that his last grain of gold w r as gone, and remembered bitterly that in half an hour after he had thrown away his lode it had yielded to others a hundred ounces. He went dow n to the river then, and stood watching a gang of labourers digging away a bank for a mill-site. He recollected that he too must work, if he would live ; in a few hours he would be hungry ; about lodgings, that did not matter ; he could creep into any shed and find shelter. He found the foreman of the works after a little search, and asked to be employed. The man, a hearty, frank fellow, looked at him for a moment, and the result of his survey not being satisfactory, said “ No. I have no w r ork here that you could do. You are scarcely strong enough tor this job.”

“ You mistake. I have worked for months in a hole, digging sand and rock. I am a strong man,” replied Dunlethe, his voice quivering a little ; he w’anted the chance to get near to tnis bluff, pleasantfaced gentleman, to make a friend of him, if he could.

The other, remarking his anxiety to get work, said cheerfully, “ Very well, turn in and try your luck with the rest, though you don’t look fit.”

Having arrived late, he was placed on the outer edge of the labourers’ gang, where the earth tossed to him from above could be thrown into the river. The sand was wet and heavy, his shovel large and unwieldy. After an hour his back began to ache as it never did before, and at the end of another hour his hands were gashed and sore ; he could barely stand erect, every muscle seemed strained and ready to crack. Momentarily he looked up, watching the sun lazily crawling to the meridian, think ing that noon would neve* come ; for he meant to knock off then and go away—his pride would not permit him to do it before. Noon came to the poor wretch at last, and found him without strength, with aching back and muscles, his hands dripping blood where the rough-handled shovel,gliding through,had torn and bruised them. " When the dinner-bell rang for the workmen he did not follow them, but hunted up the foreman. When he found him, he said, frankly,

“ You were right this morning, and I was wrong ; the work is too hard for me, Pay me for half a day, and let me go ; my luck

“ I can’t pay you till Saturday night,” the man said. “It is against the rules. Stay here till then, and I v» ill look up some light work for you, maybe.” He was sorry for the poor wretch, who had no tiiends, and who would be hungry and houseless when night came ; he looked around to find some excuse for employing him until pay day. “Go in and get your dinner now,” he said, “and afterwards, go up the hill yonder, and chop away those bushes ; they are in our road there. I w ill pay you the same wages as I pay the others.”

“ No, I will not do that. I will do a man’s work, or I will not take a man’s wages. As to what you owe me. give that to some other poor devil on Saturday night for me. Good bye.” “ Good-bye,” the foreman said. “ I’m sorry I can’t help you.” Then he stood looking after the poor fellow whose luck was against him, until ho was lost in the turn of the road.

The road to Sacramento lay straight before him. another led away to his deserted mine. He took the former, penniless and already hungry, with a hundred miles, over a rough road, to go. He could not go into the tavern with the other labourers for dinner ; he had earned, it but lie had not got his pay. Afterwards he was hungrier, less fastidious about satisfying his hunger. He went on till nightfall, meeting here and there a worn-out straggler like himself ; then he entered a rough roadside tavern. The landlord was leaning on his counter as Dunlethe entered, but he glanced once at the stranger, and left him standing in the middle of the room w ithout further notice.

Dunlethe, quick to see the hostile manner of the man, turned to go out ; but hunger and fatigue held him fast. “ I have no money, and I want supper and lodging I have not eaten anything since morning, and the night will be cold.” “ Stranger,” said the landlord, “a hundred men like you pass this road every day, and each one .stops to tell me what you have told me. If it w r as only one man, I could help him, but I can’t help a hundred.”

“ You are right. I beg your pardon for intruding. Goodnight.” “ Stop, though,” said the landlord, who recollected that he could help one man, and had not done it for a long while. “Stop, you are not fit to go on to-night. You shall be the one man ; you shall have your supper, and if you can sleep on that bench, you are welcome.”

The supper was set before him, and Dunlethe ate ravenously, and then slept until morning on the bench before the fire. Before dawn he was up and gone ; before noon he had accomplished twenty miles, with fifty yet to go, and his long last from the previous night began to tell on him. He stopped again at a tavern. “ Can you give me dinner?” he asked of a woman standing in the doorway. “I have no money.”

“No,” she said. “I can give you nothing. I can’t feed every beggar that comes this road. ”

Then he went on again until sundown, and only ten more miles gained. He could go no farther, he thought,and began to look about among the trees for a place in which to pass the night, when he saw, a short distance ahead, the light of a camp-fire. As he approached the camp, a young girl ran out into the road, closely followed by a savage-looking dog, that darted past her and flew at his throat. The girl caught the dog’s collar, held him back, and called to some one in the tent to help her, for the rough beast w’as more than she could hold. Dunlethe, too, worn and weak to have struggled with the animal, stood passively w’aiting for his spring, when the tent-flaps were thrown back, and a tall, powerfully formed man came out, struck the dog down, apologised to the stranger for the rough reception he had got, and asked him what he could do for him.

“I am tired, sick, and hungry. Can you give me a bit of bread, and a place by your fire ?”

“Certainly, I can do that, and more. Come in and see.” Then, getting ready a comfortable meal, he set it before Dunlethe, and watched him as he devoured it. “ Where did you have your dinner, comrade ?” he asked presently. “ I had no dinner—nor breakfast either. Do I eat too much, that you ask ? My luck is down on me, and I am going to Sacramento to get work.” “ Eat till you are filled, my surly friend, you are welcome.” said the other ; “ but how would you like to go further than Sacramento and fare better ?” “ Where to ?”

“To Australia. I’m going there to try grazing, and shall want a man like you to help me. Will you go ?” “ Yes,” said Dunlethe, “ 1 will go there, —the farther the better. When do you start ?”

“ In the first outward-bound vessel that leaves San Francisco,” his host answered.

Three days later, the grazier, having left his little girl in charge of some friends, stood with Abel Dunlethe on the deck of an Australian trader, setting out to sea. On the sixth day out, the steward went into the grazier’s cabin, and when he came on deck again, he ran to the captain, trembling and white-faced, and told him that he had one passenger less tlian he had shipped, for the grazier w’as lying in his berth, with his eyes wide open, staring blankly up at the ceiling, dead. (To be Continued. )