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
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