BECHE-DE-MER By LEO CRANE (Copyrighted 1S11 by Harper & Bros.) ' OME of us live in cities, and some of us S go down to the sea in snips. Ut these last I had been Johannesen. But when I first I mpt him bia cailincr Hqvg uAri nvpr a n H he kept a shipchandler's shop a gloomy, much-cluttered place smelling of rust and oil down on the water-front. At twi light one could see him stumping oustide, his wooden leg solidly prodding the cob blestone pavement, putting up his shutters. The water-front is a lonely place fet night, and Johannesen kept his shop like a fort; it has been a warehouse since Beche-de- Mer came . . . but I will give you Johan nesen's story first. Then he would light his two ship's lamps, the globes of them greasily yellowed and with a crony or two and a glass of grog in his room back of the shop, would pass the time amid yarns and tobacco smoke, I met with Johannesen in this way : MacDougal wrote Shipping for the "Press." He could get a cap tain's story when others failed, and the men of the sea knew him and welcomed him every one with that heartiness born of loneliness and fog. Therefore, on many a night, Mac stumbled down their ladders and into his dingy, with too much of his welcome inside him; and on such a one I located him at Johannesen's. "A frien' o' mine," mumbled Mac, seeing that he was discovered and the obligation of introducing me. He apologized for my condition "Don' min' what 'e does, Joo hansome ; 'e's a' right, an' . . . an' I'm lorry for 'im. ..." Thus recommended, I made a friendship with the old man. He had been apprentice, and mate, and master at last; he had sailed the seven seas and loved them all; in his talk was mention of a thousand ports, the friends he knew no more. Once he grew reminiscent to a degree that was unusual, and concluded by saying : "Aye! that was the trip 'fore I was married, too which helps me remember it so clear." Now I had listened to him on many nights, but the things he had told were rough romance, concerning gales and fogs and the wrecks of ships and men ; whereas 1 suspected a bit of sentiment in this. ''There's the yarn for me." I suggested. He turned with a sad smile, a wistful expression for such a man. "Aye, lad ! that is a story, . . . but one I never tell." By prodding the memory of some woman dead I had earned the snub, and so, rebuked, I left him. Ferhaps a month passed without my seeing more of Johannesen; and then one night it. came on wet and wintery, with a driving rain beating around the old warehouses, and the wind sweeping in from the river, and the towboats moaning as they felt their ways through the mists. A tramp with ore had reported in at "the Hollow," the captain thereof an old friend of Mac's, and they both Scotch; when he had not re appeared at ten o'clock a short cut took me to Shake speare Street, from the foot of which, where the ferries come in, I hoped to chance on a small boat. Shake speare Street is one of those lanes "where sailormen abide," and Fultah Fisher's boarding-house is many limes repeated, and its tragedy, too, perhaps, were the truth but known. The street was as dark as a ship's hold, and when crossing it I was hustled by a man who came swiftly out of the dark. He mumbled an apology with an oath in the same breath, and as he tried to recover himself I heard a wooden tap on the pavement ; lo ! it was Johannesen. "Hello!" I said. "What's the rush?" He gave me a frightened stare and stammered some thing thickly. "What is it?" I asked. "Have you seen a ghost?" "God, lad !" he said, breathlessly, "God ! . . ." and these were the only words he seemed capable of utter ing at once. I caught his arm and demanded to know what had happened. (j "Let me go !" he protested, glancing behind him, "let me go and when you're down street, cast an eye about; if yeh see anything strange-like, let me know soon." With that he broke away and stumped off hurriedly. I was carrying a heavy stick my custom in such quarters, where one may meet a policeman, and then one may not ; I shifted it to a balance nicely, and with a whistle for courage went on. At the next corner J came suddenly upon a fellow who lounged against a lamp-post, as if content despite the vile weather. Water gleamed from his oil-skins he might have been over board recently, so wet he was. As I passed the yellow light fell on his face, and I started, involuntarily, as if I had touched something clammy and had got a chill. His skin was of a bluish-white color, this pallor even to the lips and his eyes had a vacant stare, which was only seeming, for the cold penetrating gaze from those filmy eyes was deadly. I hurried on, half shiver ing. Not finding Mac, eventually I returned to Johan nesen's. He was a long time answering my knock, and first surveyed me from a hole in a shutter panel. When he did open the door I noticed a nasty-looking blue steel gun in his hand, and I did not relish going ahead through the dark of the old shop. How did I know but that he had been a buccaneer? "Come on back," he invited, leading the way and putting his weapon on the table. He looked at me narrowly, as if he debated the wisdom of yielding a confidence, and then asked: "Down there did yeh see anything?" "On Shakespeare Street? Why, yes; a fellow who looked as if some one had pitched him overboard, and he had the queerest fishy eyes." Johannesen sighed in a troubled way. "I know . . ." shaking his head, "I thought I had sighted him that's him. . . ." He tapped me with one finger impressively. "That's Beche-dc-Mer." Then he commanded me as if on his own deck, mas ter again, and a hundred leagues out. "There's paper an a pen. I had got it out for my self, but I cramp at writin'. Yeh asked me once about themy courtin and that voyage. Well write down, write down there's a lot in it concernin' this Bech-de-Mer." And follows Johannesen's story: "You have not been in the Pacific, or yeh would un derstand beche-dc-mer. That's where I got to know them an' . . . an' him. I was mate then, the bark Auckland, and the captain's daughter along. ' I had be- ' gun to see what a fine bit of a girl she was long before we picked up the distress signal. Now that came about this way we had a spell o' good weather, when sudden the glass begins to fall. We had time to prepare for it, an' we made the craft as tight as a drum. One gale is like another, anyway, unless you're caught nap ping, an' we weren't, so we rode through safe enough. Anxious times, though an' we in waters so chocked with the backbones of reefs that a man with a sweet-' heart aboard couldn't rest easy. But we clawed through nil right, a day an' a night, of it, and when- the dawn comes, a yellow grinnin' dawn, we saw that- the worst was over. We made some guesses as to where we had rrnved at, an' the captain said he thanked God for !ercnt daylight, for away off to starboard was a thin r-tf. low an' wicked, a fang of coral, lookin' like the I rnil of jnmethin' that had died and bleached out. An' I 3! mr.t where we sighted the signal. jrmr poor 1.1 in. worse c'n t hr.ve the light an' a decent sea.' 'it ;. rtimmii? hiuh yet, hut we stood br an' 'r f, prd a 1 oat The captain calls for men to man it I. nas r.o pieman! job. an' we had no time to waste, poor devils, Mr. johannesen,' avs the can n' than ourselves, he says, 'all 'cause they for 'tis a fancy of those gales to whip back-track on yeh. "'I take it, Mr. Johannesen,' says the captain, "that reef is one o' the Twins.' And he showed me a nasty place he had marked on the chart. Likely it was one of 'the Twins,' 1 thought, and mean enough for any thing. ' "Well, a combet swept our boat across a spur of the reef, spite of an the men could do. an' we dropped a second one to save what we could from the first. Crushed like an eggshell was that first boat, and two men gone, which event started our trouble. "I went off with the second boat, an' we made a landing. There was one lone man to meet us, the strangest-lookin' figure he was I can't describe what a creep that fellow gave me he was 'most naked, looked like a bunch of mouldy seaweed that had dried, an' the starved bones of him, an' the stare in his eyes. "We had lost two men for him, an' without more ado we pulled back to the ship. Making sail, we cleared for the open, an' as the captain had said, to the nor'-nor'east we picked up the second reef, as wicked lookin' as the first, but with more bone above the water line. "Now about that man we had picked up even after we had togged him out he was a creepy object. Weak ! he was weak as ... as beche-de-mer. Tre pang they're called in the places where folks eat 'em God! I couldn't eat any. An' that fellow couldn't speak a word I guess he was dazed, mebbe, anyway ... he had lost his tongue. After he'd been fed a bit, he brightened up some, an' one of the men, old Fritz, tackled him in German. He caught a little of that, an' we took it that he was German. But he looked no nationality at all, an' the men were leery of him. He kept that queer glazed look in his eyes, too, which no amount of comfort seemed to disturb, an' so none of them was anxious to make friends. I didn't blame the men he felt cold to the touch, clammy. . . .Ugh ! mebbe you've touched a lisii. ..." Johannesen loaded his pipe. He said he was shaky and wanted something to bite on. "With sunlight an' fair weather it would have been different: but we did get the lash end of that gale. Close-reefed we tried to run before it, until the fore mast went over, an' the old bark got crazy. Matt Lar zen was at the wheel for a long trick, an' he swore she was bewitched, 'cause she wouldn't answer half the time, an' Matt had known her for years. Well, spite of all we could do, she went the way of many a good ship, did the Auckland; the wrath o' the sea was up, au' she wrecked but where, do yeh s'pose? On the rack of coral bones off where we'd got that man the day before. An' when she struck, the way she went to pieces was strange to see like a boat determined to commit suicide. "I knew then how much the captain's girl meant to me. She was a plucky one, lad I went overboard with her that night, clingin' to a piece of raft we had lashed, with my one arm caught round her and the other twisted in the rope. It near pulled both off me, but I held to it, an' when her white face would come close up, wet and miserable-lookin', I forgot everything else and damned the South Seas with all the spleen there was in me. An' by God! we went through it, we two, though the arms I had were bloody, an' when we'd got to the reef, her eyes closed an' her teeth biting into her lip, I thought she was dead an' somehow, since we had stood on the deck together, waitin' for the last of it, we separated from the rest, I knew though never a word did we speak, only she had gripped me by the arm, tight, an' when we were lifted away from the deck she called out, so I knew that the others were forgot, an' that she wanted me." Johannesen smoked hard for a minute, and I lost his face in the drift of it; but there was a husky note in his voice and he kept on smoking. "Morning found us huddled together, ten of us be side the captain, like a bunch of drenched sheep. But she smiled when the sun came out, an' that put life back into me, lad. There was something to live for, and to fight for, so I went to work knowin' the world would have nothing worth goin' back to if she wasn't along. Women are the only rainbows we ever find, I guess. "Work! There was the wreck, a tidy distance out, an fast going to pieces, so we had to sit by idle and watch it breaking up. Some things of use came ashore, an' by sheer rusii we got them. Water wc baled out of the reef's hollows, an' after the bark was gone we counted a three days' supply of food or say five of starvin' rations. When that was exhausted we had nothin'. "Then we sought advice from the . . . from Bcche-de-Mer. Oh yes! he saved himself while most of us had cuts and bruises to show for our swim, an' we were a worn-out lot, he hadn't seemed to mind the experience a whit. He wasn't changed, nor won cast the same forlorn object he had been. For all we knew, he could have been a squid, that picked the reef to sun on. But he could give, advice. He had lived on litis reef, months, perhaps, an' we found him with nothing. So we wanted to know Imu he had lived! "Old Fritz tried to make him understand, and finally lie managed it. Mebbe his dullness was put on, an' mebbe not; a fish has got no great store of brains, an' lie was as much that as man can be without having scales. During all this time no one had even a sympa thy for him. He was the sort yeh wanted to let alone. We didn't have to shun him, for he kept apart. The reef was of considerable extent and, he held to his place on the far side of it, where he would sit in the sun for hours without stirring, gazing out, silent . . . enough to give yeh the creeps to look at him. 'But he had lived. And to live was the question before us. We must learn from him the process of existin' on practically nothing at all. When he finally came to understand the question, he went off an' in a short time he comes back with the things we afterward named him for beche-de-mer. "Yeh know what beche-de-mer is? Trepang is the common name sea-slugs why, you've heard of 'em, sold in Manila and Eastern ports. I've seen the stuff when dried, lookin' like charred sausages, an' crackly. There is a trade in , them ; they are gutted with a knife, boiled by the fishers, an' dried for sale. The Chinese like 'em, an' the black sort, 'chao sah oo,' they call 'em, fetch as much as five hundred dollars a ton. But since the wreck, the Chinks can have 'em all; I know that I've had my fill of beche-de-mer, whether eighteen inches long and black, or man-big, like the one we tried to save for civilization. "Well, lad. that was what he ate; he had lived on 'em raw the sort of food to make a man dull and chilly. So many times had he been in the sea after them, his hands looked bloodless an' fin-like; and so he was fishy-eyed, vacant, without a human emotion, I an' no use for a tongue or words. That was what we thought, anyway. An I s'pose if he hadn't been some what bloodless to begin with, he couldn't have lasted there alone, as we found it, 'cause it was a hellish place. Day an' night the sea hissed in, churning over an' tearing at the coral, as if it was greedy to make way with it, an' the sun broiled down on the .white crumbly back of the reef, and the dark made bones of it again. Fine weather, an' yeh could see the other Twin for company, just another lleachin' skeleton then the blue-gray sea clear off to the skyline, with never a sail, an' the white-topped waves always lick in' in enough to drive a real man daft, lad I "So we lived on beche-de-mer for some time I don't know how long. He'd get than in the reef-end shallows at low tide, an' sometimes he'd dive into deep water for the bigger ones. There was black ones, an' red sort too, soft pasty things, and some that are called 'the prickly fish,' green color. Now we had a bucket from the wreck, a copper-bottomed tin thing, an' we would boil beche-de-mer in it. We didn't ask ques tions 'bout the green ones, an' then, sudden we were all sick, dog-sickV every man of us, and Larzen died that night. Yes, Larzen died from what? Why, it must have come from the green beehe-de-mer ; but the ; men began to whisper, saying that he died from 'the Bechc-de-Mer,' meanin' Aim. ' "We were now ten people on the reef-rnot countin' him, yeh know. There was the captain an' Mary; Wirt, the second mate; old Fritz, Steenerson, Dodd, McCauley, Freebus, Martin, an' myself. You can guess what a scare Larzen s going off gave us all; an' while the men couldn't say, they believed he had something to do with it. Old Fritz came to me with the tale ; he wanted to know if we weren't takin' big chances. "'Better stand a Watch at nights, sir,' he said.' 'Ever notice how Jae looks at us, sir? He's got the evil eye!' "I had paid little attention to the castaway, but I found that he did take a stealthy sort of interest in our affairs, though all the time he kept off to himself. When the captain heard of the men's ideas, he only laughed, for he feared nothing. He said the fellow was a poor creature, unfortunate like ourselves, an' that loneliness had made him queer; and he added to me, speaking grim, 'we're all like to resemble him, Mr. Johannesen, unless some ship is sighted!' "But you can imagine what I felt when Mary came to me with the same such idea. too. Women, lad, feel these things keener than do we rough men. She said this fellow was like our shadow, that she had got cornered, and he was edging away, an inch at a time, when old Frit lost patience and grabbed for him. That settled the question. He turned guilty for with a leap an' a dodge he got clear away, and legged it. Fritz and Dodd were for going after him, so mad were they, but the captain ordered them to stop. "'We can get him when we want,' he says; which was right enough, there being no place for him to run to ; 'and besides, he's scared,' says the captain. 'Mebbe he'll drown himself an' save us some trouble.' "From this I could see that the old man realized cur true situation. He had always been determined when-wrought up, an' he proved not to have lost any . of his character. He sets the case before us. " 'This man seems to be dangerous,' he says. "We've lost one member of this crew, and . . .' "'Also them lost when we sent the boats after him, : captain, an' in the wreck afterward.' He's to blame for the whole parcel of luck we're in,' interrupted old Fritz. 'Beggin' your pardon, sir, but he has the evil eye, he has. .n' this beche-de-mer ain't the stuff he's lived on all these months, either; it ain't supportin',' "The captain looked as if he had been suddenly struck with a very bad thought. "That may be,' he said, 'and then, again, it may not be so. I've seen circumstantial evidence as bad and bowled over. But this is the point of the matter: He seems to be dangerous. Now who accuses him, an' of what is he charged?' . "The men muttered among themselves. They knew the only thing that could be charged was murder, an' they didn't dare. I was about to make some sort of reply to him, when Mary's voice startles me. " 'I accuse him.' " 'You I And of what? . w . What charge do you prefer?' '"If we ... if we are t live here, we must de pend on each other, and a woman ought to be able to trust every one, I want a night's peace . .. . . and . . . and I have been afraid of him so long. He watches me. . . .' "Suddenly her voice got high and it ended in a quavering shriek, when she begins to sob. I tried to comfort Tier, forgetting the rest of them, and she made a surprise for the old man by putting her head down on my shoulder . . . an' all that. ; . . Well, he asks me quick and sharp - " 'Mr. Johannesen, do you verily belieYe that a man's oath can be respected here, like in a 'Frisco court?' "'Mine can, sir,' I said, somewhat indignant, for I thought he referred to we 'two, an' I didn't relish it. , "'Well,' he went on, as if making a decision, 'you . as if we d been clinging to the last W it was so lonely and dismal enouli gt)i' think twice 'fore deciding to kill 11 If seemed a big faree-for if we acqS'? V, no living in peace, an" we could mi K way, to be safe. Pmusi "Finally the arguments were hni1,.j fnlH th- inn, that tl, . . ""'Shed. rt . . ,,c7 must com " the best of their belief. He said ft, 0 ' -and think it over, an' he concluded hLtV10. a serious business it was. They ,nft reef 's end while the four of us left doi Mer. He hadn't said a word an' h over that waste of water, as he knows how long, before we came T ?ltc' long days, an' that sea coming in' J,l ?" t an the . same drippin over the coral u It was a death watch we kept, an' Z . stenni , and white, and trembly. a Sood hit t- ; " Well ? asked the captain. '"He's got to . . . to go, sir mil .i "The captain turned to Beche-de-Mer "i"ave vou anything to say before .' i ncn, 10 every one s surprise, he his' place, and begins to talk; in f- though he felt for a word now and th 8 4 there astonished,- and I don't believe a rnant ' have said a word or mnj , mJnot had happened. It was just like ye'h h,?""' big eel, an' sudden he spoke to yeh 0ti "I guess you can do what you ' please ;n, says, 'but 1 have something to say TY, in this . . . and you're never goinsr to ' from the reef nobody ever does. When I 19 ! here, we found the bones of three ma-?.? Yes, we! There were six of u"V living on beche-de-mer, just as you have ki that we couldn't last on it . " and no 5l . . . and we just had to live somehow lV drew lots, and the five men left brnn ,C:lnfi micrht last that m At lnnV, .1 ""untiu.. I ...... ' ;1- . illii "ll IIIMIIII M'lll Tn The strangest looking figure he was, most naked, looked like a bunch of mouldy seaweed that had dried. awake nights to see him spying on the camp. , I tried to show, that she was only timid, but she makes answer that one man has died, an' that if we went, one by one, what would become of her. Then she broke down, like women do, an' she puts her arms about me, begging that I mustn't leave her alone "God I when I think of that time an' the suspicions I had, I get the creeps, such creeps as you had to nighf, only a hundred times worse; for think of bein' off on a reef with a man like that, a vacant-eyed bloodless-sort, misfortune followin' in his footsteps . . , think of it! "But the captain would have none of our old-wives tales, an' no reg'lar watch was set. To quiet her nerves, though, old Fritz an' I determined to have a watch, notwithstandin', he takin' the first part o' the night, and I the rest of it. If was not always as easy to keep awake as it is to tell about it the days ex hausted a fellow out of sheer monotony, an' once I came to doze off when I should have been wakeful. : ,'. We"- veh know I"1 feeling of how thing ain't goin just right when yeh suddenly wake up? It was just that way with me. I came to myself with a jump, an I knew that he was around somewhere. Then I see something' making off, stealthy as a shadow, an' it must have been him. What could he have been up to? What, indeed I "The next mornin' I innv. Dodd was cook, an' he complains that he must be going dotty, else why did he think he counted nine beche-de-mer on the night before, when there was fifteen now? So I had surprised the fellow changin' the stock of food, an he had made off without evening up right. What could we expect, but another man to go mebbe two or three if we ate the stuff. This was proof, an' we laid it before the captain. " 'All right, Dodd,' he says, cheerful, 'go ahead and get breakfast.' "'But sir, Dodd argues, horrified, 'you alu'l thinking of eatin'? "'No,' said the captain, "but I inlend that he shall eat I "Then that fellow Dodd went to work like a man who expects to see some wicked fun. We sent a hail for Beche-de-Mer to come in to breakfast. It wasn't often that he got suen an Invitation, an' he came in i,ow- He said he'd had something to eat, already. " Go ahead, man,' ordered the captain: 'there's a feed. "He didn't show any eagerness to, an' he wanted to take the stuff ofT with him. But the captain wouldn't have that 'Fat it here an' now,' he says. . "f,er ,he must be love of life in even Beche-de-Mer; for be glances all around like a rat that is will defend my court. I appoint ynu counsel for the defence. Mr. Virt, you must be prosecutor. The men will form a jury. We can't give him a full one, but we must do the best we can. Fritz and Dodd, I depu tize you to arrest him.' "I never knew a judge that impressed me half so much as did the captain when they had brought him in. He came, limp-looking, an' it made the cold shivers go over me to hear the captain say : '"You are going to be tried for your life; you can sit down there!' "For a minute the only thing to be heard was that greedy sea hissing over the ledges, and yeh might have thought we were all dead men. "'The rest of you stand forward in a row,' said the captain. 'Hold up your right hands, while I give yeh the oath.' We did it, and we repeated his oath after him, swearin' to be fair and just and to act in all con science, so help us God I I am willing that anybody else act as the judge in this case,' says the captain, finally; but we agreed that it came in his line of duty, and so there the matter rested. - . . . "The captain then asked Bcche-de-Mer whether or not ne was guilty of plotting against our lives might last . that way. At length, there was. wf . . . When you came I didn't care much. 71' weak ; but you came, and . . . and theol u I had to live again. That's all I have to 2 m it. But you can't live on beche-de-mer and you will have to live . , . somehow.' ' r "Meantime, we had shuddered to listen to him was worse than anything we had believed-and. everything we had suspected, he admitted. He b termined to live, even though it meant we must& by one, to save him. .. . "Then the captain called on him to stand no ' all stood up, solemn an' white, while the cantm!, "'You've .had a trial,' he says, 'and yotill fessed. It is the sentence of this court thatm,. die!' , "jwit "He ordered Fritz and Dodd to take the sris away, an' stand guard over him. Then went jS some distance, while the captain paces up an' down the rest of us uttering never a word. It all seemed' ridiculous that yeh wanted to laugh, an' thai, couldn't laugh for bein' so trembly, an' for seem captain's face, which was like death itself. Suddo stopped his walk. , "'Now, there is one thing more to be settled' a tVl rani!n 'or,,! ...'11 A- 1. " 'For what?' asked Wirt, who was shaky. "To see who must act as executioner.' "I wake up nights, sometimes, cold an' shivtrr . ing of that lot-drawing. We could see Dodd andi Fritz and . . . an him, off at the spit end; t slowly we drew the little bits of wood the captainit cut and marked. It seemed to me that I could seem: ing else but that and Mary's white face, staring at ut an' hear nothing but the long solemn wash of that so : hissing and dripping, and . . . . and then I hearia captain's voice, hard over it all, saying: i "'Mr. Tohannesen, you're the only one to cam n the court s sentence 1' j ' "Then Mary gave a cry and fell back; the wit place began to swim befoTe me, and I knew that stc . thing ought to be done before she came round tobm . again' . ; . so I turned and went out toward li i- three figures, away off at the end of the reef i seemed a long way to go' . . ." Johannesen paused, and I thought he might men li: for the end of his story. A man does not care to k everything., .But I could not help springing up, et claiming: l "Then you . . . you did see a ghost down tit on Shakespeare Street?" t He shook his head. .' ' I "Wish I had," he said. "No I sent Dodd and Fritz back to the party. Then we had a few words, ji know. 'You made a fine fight to save me, didn't yet says Beche-de-Mer, and he laughed. Think of I k like that laughing. Such a thin, crawly laugh it i and it 'most unnerved me. And you're killin' me tat of that woman,' he says, and the look in his eyar. poison; 'I'll remember ye,' he says; and thenhesttn out to sea again as if he didn't care. "Sudden I see him pointing one of his long ili' fingers out there . . . and, thinks I, he's gone o8t head, when I heard a hail. And the captain comes nt ning, waving to me.' It was a stay of sentence, yeh for away off on the sea's edge snowed a scrap of a The beads of sweat had come out on Johannew face. All this time he had been striding up and do the room, but now, as if he grew weak and nerftfc he reached for a chair and fairly dropped into it "That saved him . , . 'cause 1 had got my ordr ... . but the sail saved him. We waited, and ".: ed . . . and waited; it gfew bigger and biggf finally, they caught our signal. ! "She was a small vessel, one of the beche-de fleet, I think, an' so he had a right to go aboard H boats took us off. But his stay wasn't for long, is men got wagging their tongues among the ship's W yeh can trust sailors to tell their yarns . . when, strange-like, within the hour, dirty weaw showed, why there was plain mutiny. They we" " tossing him over the side. The captain of the cn: was no determined fellow; he listened to then. he weakened. They put back. They dropped I f load of supplies, and on that reef they marooned He stood out near the spit end and watched us drew away., The men said that was where f longed down with his kind the beche-de-mer, . . Johannesen stopped again, and then fevenshly n up. the story anew. He pointed his finger st me said in a tone of accusation : "Somebody took him off. That's no ghost we but BechedeMer himself. It's the second time sighted him. One night in 'Frisco, when . me still, I saw him but he didn't see me. And i ..II. J ...u... l. i I u... h. hart Silo laiicu tvimi lie liau Biliu, an nun - ,,,, criiucr l i f . "r. i.. 'T7-: . i. U f nnA thpn : Itll 1-IIBlU 11141 IliKIH, 1,, but that was a long time back, an' she's safe "1V' him where there's no call to worry, thank Godl "Johannesen seemed to have grown much olaef wr and hil hand tr.mlil.d rln fin the tun. I ,n . laugh away his fear, and told him that this w anrf as tO what he had to Sav: but he didn't uv anvlhincr. ''Ynit'r clnin' fhi araii if that wnman ic juai hi one oi nis nsny stares, an we couldn t memticr it! rouse mm trom it. Wirt then presented the charges. He put the thing Mary had said in the first rank, and tried to show that when people got in our situation, if one couldn't be trusted he had better be rated as an enemy. Larzen's death and the strange actions of the man about the camp he took up, and then the peculiar influence he had had on the men, some of which was foolish, he admitted, but it affected our state of life and must be considered. "When it rested with me to defeat all this. I knew that I could only help the fellow by ridiculing Wirt's argument, and their evidence, for which I felt no keen effort. Mary's plea was the strongest count, so I left that till the last. I tried to show that most of this stuff was based on sailor's superstitions, an' that no one could prove that Larzen had died from what he had eaten, and that no one could say that this man had changed the stock of food that night But when 1 came to make an argument against what Mary had said, I felt it was no use. And then It was that d -j,-. , a look ugh! He knew that I was makir.' a stiff fipht for him. I felt that anything I might say was wasted on the jury it was presented to, though 1 also believed that none of them felt anxious to kill a man, even sui'i man. , "Mary was white to the lips, and they were all dead serious. It was a gray day, an' the sea rolled in moaning and hungry-like, an' we on the reef felt just nol) less reef, but a great city with a police departmen1' shook his head and would take no comfort. "Wirt died sudden in a bigger city than this---York-killed one night on the docks; old tmi ' throttled in a sailors boarding-house in New U' they said Dodd was drunk when he fell off the Liverpool, but whv should he have marks on nim. . . ." he said in "a dry tone, wetting his lip, was him . . , down on Shakespeare Street , that was Rrche-de-Mer ..." inlinlIa! The last I heard from Johannesen was the ! to"" his door-bar when I departed, and, "You fctep notes safe," he called. . ,. ,i No-that m not the last. 'I learned other th? a different way. He was found dead tw later. There had been a struggle, and a al,or (ri. was beside him. The search took in all the waic M and I recall that one captain said, when the blade was shown to him . i . . "South S de-mer knife"; which tmy lend tome weight W i nesen'i story, Universal Syndicate 3toi Gr Ol Fo gam Cc en T cndi bon (tie fnor klyn flar pee igo tsro, rado fade ipar er i Li-