Cross Courses

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Title:     Cross Courses
Author: James B. Connolly [More Titles by Connolly]

Hearing the boys in the office talking of a lecture at the Sailor's Haven a few nights ago was what set me thinking to-day. It was on superstition, and the speaker digressed to expend ten minutes, as he put it, on sailors. A most superstitious lot, sailors.

He had a lot of fun with the sailors, and a crowd of old seafaring men sat there and let him, until a boss stevedore from our wharf who'd been one time mate of a coaster, with the preliminary contribution that this was sure the wisest party he'd listened to in all o' seven years, rose to inquire of the gentleman how long he'd been to sea.

Well, he had been to sea quite a little. Twice to Europe and return, once to Panama and return, once to Jamaica in the West Indies and----

"--return?" finishes our stevedore. "Sure you returned each time? 'N' in what sortivver craft'd you sail to them places--and return--in?"

"Why, steamers," answers the lecturer.

"Passinjer?"

"Passenger? Certainly."

"Excuse me!" says our stevedore. "I oughter known better. O' course, you know all about sailors," and sits down.

The lecturer was all right. He was doing the best he knew, with the finest and fattest of words he could pick out, to make things clearer to his audience; and his audience, appreciating that, let him run on, until he said that there was not one mysterious thing which had ever happened that could fail to be proved very ordinary by mathematical, or historical, or logical, or physical, or some other "cal" deduction; which bounced our watch-dog out of his seat again.

"How d'you 'count," he growls, "for th' Orion 'n' Sirius?"

Well-l, he could not account for it, for the simple and overwhelmingly conclusive reason that, previous to that very moment, he had never heard of the ships named.

"Then s'pose you hear 'f 'em now," says our stevedore, and starts in and delivers the lecturer a lecture on the Orion and Sirius, and it wound up the show; for when the lecturer started to butt in, all the old barnacles, who before this had been clinging warily to the edge of their seats, now rose up and rallied around our stevedore to finish his story, which he did; and the old fellows, on leaving the hall, said that the credit of the proceeds for the Sailor's Haven fund, for that night, anyway, ought to go as much to their old college chum from the coal wharf as to any imported lecturer with his deckload of lantern slides.

But our stevedore didn't tell all there was of the Orion and the Sirius. The lecturer went home thinking he had been told all about it, but he hadn't. Here it is as it was.

I

In the fleet of big coal schooners, which at this time were running from the middle Atlantic ports to Boston, the twin five-masters, the Orion and the Sirius, were notable.

They were twins in everything: built from the one set of moulds in the one yard at the one time, launched together, rigged together, sailed on their maiden trips together, and were brought home with their first cargoes of coal together by two masters who were almost as twinlike to look at as their vessels.

It was the history of these two big schooners, that they seemed always to be wanting to get together. Their crews used to say of them that if left anchored at all near each other in the stream, they would start right away to swing toward each other. Even if it was slack water they would. Yes, sir.

I can't speak from personal knowledge of that tide-swinging trick, but I do know that I saw them a few hours after they had twice smashed into each other--once under sail off the Capes and once in tow up Boston Harbor; and it was not to be doubted that in both cases they had more than drifted into each other. And of their near-collisions! A day's loaf along the water-front would yield gossip of a dozen or more.

Now, these next few lines are from out of the sailors' book of gossip of mysterious happenings at sea; and it is true that the more sailorly the gossip, the more likely will it be to try to account for unusual accidents at sea in a natural way; and the most usual reason given is inefficiency--lack of seamanship. As to that, it is true that lack of seamanship or of sea instinct has accounted for many calamities at sea, and the same lack would probably account for many another not so set down on the public tablets; but lack of seamanship won't account for all the queer happenings at sea. Every now and then comes a ship which no earthly power seems able to keep up with. From out of our superior shore knowledge we may deduce that the builder or designer was in fault, that there must have been an asymmetry in her hull, or that her rigging lacked balance, such defects tending to render her uncontrollable under certain conditions. Maybe; but there she is, as she is, with the malign fates seeming to be working double tides to get her.

"Hoodoo ships," sailors term such, and "Hoo-doos, both of 'em," the crews of the collier fleet early labelled the Orion and the Sirius. Yes, sir. And some day the pair of them were going up--or down--in a whirl of glory. If only they would smash only each other, and not go to putting poor innocent outsiders out of commission when they did go!--that was all they'd ask of them.

The master of the Orion was Oliver Sickles; of the Sirius, Norman Sickles; and they were from the same little hamlet in that Cape Shore region whence come so many capable sailormen. Each was named for his father, and their fathers were brothers who hated each other and brought up their children to hate each other.

It was curious to see them--two master mariners commanding sister ships for the same owners--passing each other on the wharf, brushing elbows in the office, putting to sea time and time together, sailing, again and again, side by side for days together, and yet never seeming to see each other. Indifference was the word; but if by any chance a third person referred to one in the presence of the other in anything like complimentary terms, that third person was soon let to know that he wasn't making any hit with whichever Captain Sickles it was who had to listen. If it was Norman of the Sirius, he would shift his feet and start to stare intently at the ceiling or the sky; if it was Oliver of the Orion, with a snarl of disgust he would get up and walk off.

I had heard a lot of the Sickles cousins, but had never had more than a hailing acquaintance with either of them, until this early fall when my firm chartered, among others, the Orion and the Sirius, and sent me down to Newport News to see that they lost no time in loading and getting out. It was the time of a threatened coal famine in New England, with coal freights up to two dollars a ton, and my firm chartering everything they could get hold of to take the coal from the railroads at Newport News and rush it east.

In our two new schooner captains, Norman and Oliver Sickles, I found, when I came to have dealings with them, a pair who knew their business. Implacable toward each other they surely were, but so long as their feelings weren't delaying their sailing days, that was their own business. Tall, broad, powerful chaps they both were, twenty-eight or thirty years of age to look at, slow in thought, heavy in action, but competent sailormen always. I had no need to know their records, nor to talk with them too many hours, to find that out. Not much about a schooner, be she two or five master, nor much about the North Atlantic coast, that they didn't know.

I had been three months in Newport News, Christmas was at hand, and the railroad people were telling me that they would have no more coal for my firm until after New Year's. There were twenty thousand tons not yet gone; but if my four four-master schooners could sail next morning, and the five-masters, Orion and Sirius, get away the morning after, that twenty thousand tons would be cleaned up.

I hunted up the Captain Sickles of the Sirius and put the question to him: "Captain Norman, if I can get you loaded and cleared by the morning after to-morrow, what's the chance of your making Boston by Christmas?" And he answered, after some thought: "It's a westerly wind with a medium glass to-day. It ought to hang on westerly and dry for another four or five days. Clear me by the morning after to-morrow, and I'll lay the Sirius to anchor in Boston Harbor Christmas Eve, or"--he was a man of serious ways, and spoke most seriously now---"or I'll give you a good reason why."

I hunted up Captain Oliver Sickles of the Orion, and I found him having a drink in the bar of the Tidewater Café. He looked as if he'd welcome a quarrel, but that was nothing strange in him. I put the same question to him that I had put to his cousin, and the answer came in almost the same words as to the medium glass and the westerly wind, but at that point he looked sharply at me.

"And when does the Sirius sail?" he asked.

"The morning after to-morrow."

"And"--suspiciously--"who first that morning, the Sirius or me?"

"I don't know. You'll be loaded and cleared together--it's for yourselves to say who sails first."

"And what did he say?"

Captain Oliver had a hectoring way about him which used to make me promise myself that some day, after he'd done hauling coal for my outfit, I'd tell him what I thought of him. "What did who say?" I asked him now.

"Warn't you talkin' to my cousin awhile ago about the same thing?"

"I was, though I don't remember telling you about it."

"H-m," he sneered, "I thought so. Y' always go to him first."

"Yes, I do!" I snapped at him. "And why? Because he knows his mind. And he's a man to give an answer without using up an afternoon talking about it. He said he'd have the Sirius to anchor in Boston Harbor by Christmas Eve or give me a good reason why."

"He did, did he? Then set this down in your log"--with the end of a prodigiously thick forefinger he was tapping the bar as he said it:--"The Orion will be laying to anchor in Boston Harbor by Christmas Eve or there'll be a damn good reason why."

Right here I should say that there was more than a rivalry of craftsmanship between the Sickles cousins. Once, thinking it was the Sirius, Norman Sickles's sweetheart, a very pretty and a very good girl, had gone aboard the Orion as it lay in Boston Harbor. Oliver at once locked her in the cabin, put to sea, and carried her to Philadelphia, where, urged by her mother, and to save her good name as she thought, she married Oliver. But that her heart was still with Norman was current gossip in the fleet.

Because he had lately heard that I had been free-spoken in my comment on that exploit was why Captain Oliver now--his forefinger tapping the bar and he eying me from under his hat-brim--added to his "good reason" the word that, no matter what my firm or any other firm thought of this or that, which warn't none o' their business anyway, he wanted 'em all to understand that he was as capable of getting a quick passage out of a vessel as any Norman Sickles that ever walked; which gave me a fine chance to say: "Well, the place to prove that is at sea, and not in a barroom ashore."

Not very delicate--no; but it sent him almost on the run down aboard his vessel, to clear his decks for loading, which was mostly what I was after.

And I let it leak out--the answer of the two cousins about being in Boston before Christmas. A little rivalry of that kind doesn't do any harm; and I wanted to walk into the office on Christmas Eve and say, "The last of that Newport News coal is lying out there in the stream waiting to dock," and then go home, even as many of the crews would want to go home, with an easy conscience for a Christmas holiday.

II

People in my line used to say that I was pretty young for my job, and some of them to warn me about allowing the underlings to get familiar with me. Well, perhaps I was too young for my job, or for any other job of any account; but as to the other charge I never noticed anybody getting over-familiar with me. Friendly, yes; but even the head of the firm himself couldn't get over-familiar unless I let him.

Part of my job, as I figured it, was to know freights and ships and the masters of ships; and where it hurt the firm's interests if I knew the crews as well, I couldn't see. Some would tell me that the further away I kept from them the more highly they would respect me, and the more highly they respected me the more they would do for me, which would have listened well if their vessels were getting in and out of loading ports any faster than mine did; but nobody noticed that they were.

And beyond that: I could never see where a little friendliness to anybody did any harm. I may have been too young for my job, but I wasn't too young to know that the world is alive with unassuming little fellows who are full to the hatches with knowledge of one kind or another that they will cheerfully unload to anybody who has time for them. Not that I want anybody to think I am so long-headed or forehanded a chap as to spend time only with people who could tell me things! I didn't do any thinking about it one way or the other. Any man that had time for me, I had time for him.

I had time for Drislane. He was one of the crew of the Sirius, and I had been seeing quite a little of him while I was in Newport News this fall on the coal. The Sirius would load, sail, and return; load, sail, and return; and between trips Drislane and I would have sessions.

I'd seen something of Drislane before this in Boston. His mail used to come addressed to our Boston office, where everybody knew that twice a year, toward the end of June and just before Christmas, a check would come to him from his home in the West. When he came up from the vessel after a trip and found that home envelope awaiting him, he would step around to his room, clean up, and in his shore-going suit of clothes come back, have us cash his check, and then, according to our office force, it was--Good night! for two weeks.

The check, always the same--for twelve hundred dollars--would have given him a good two weeks' whirl in highly-rated, expensive places, if he cared for splurge, but I guess he never was influenced much by regulation ratings. Any place he liked the looks of would do for him--and some perhaps that he didn't like the looks of.

It was no use to try to tell the office force that Drislane hadn't a weak joint somewhere. Man, they knew! and holding no berths for the purely spiritual, with but one suspicious and unexplained action to work from, would build you up a character of any depth of depravity you were pleased to have. Three guesses, no more, was all they needed for Drislane's case. It was rum, or women, or rum and women. If neither, then there was no hope for him at all--he was insane.

And certainly his judgment in women was something fierce. I'm setting down now the diction, as well as the judgment, of the office force; this last judgment being based on the evidence of the two illuminated occasions when he had come in to cash his check, and each time brought with him a young woman. Naturally, on his departure, the lads in the office had a word to say. The only way they could account for his selections--well, they couldn't account for them. It must be a genius he had--something was born with him--to pick the homely ones.

There wasn't the least evidence to show that there was anything wrong in these companionships of his. My notion of it was--he would never speak of it--that he picked up any kind of people in any kind of place, and made them as happy as he could while his money lasted. He certainly never went off for any two weeks' jamboree. Whatever his experiences were, they seemed to leave him in good shape physically, anyway. At least the marks of too many lonesome hours seemed to be ironed out of his face when he came back.

The man was so everlastingly unconscious that he was different from anybody else that it was refreshing. But there was more than that--to me, at least. I always looked on him as a touchstone, one of those men by whom you may gauge other men. Drislane was sensitized to crooks. He had only to stand in the same room with them to get their moral pictures. If I heard of Drislane distrusting a man or of a man disliking Drislane, I would at once set that man down, knowing nothing of the man, as having a rotten spot in him somewhere.

That was the Drislane who met me this night before the Sirius and the Orion were to sail for their last coal trip of the year, and asked me to have supper with him. And he took me to that same place where I'd had the words with Captain Oliver Sickles the day before--that is, the Tidewater Café--where was a drinking bar in front and a restaurant in back, a common enough sort of place, where women of the street could--and did--bring drunken sailors, and they served you pie with a knife.

I speak of that item of serving pie with a knife, not by way of poking fun at anybody; but here was a man five years away from his inland hills, for a whole year owner of an eating-place in a good-sized seaport city, and had not yet noticed that some people ate pie without a knife. By it I fancied I could gauge the man's social inheritance. And there were other customs of the place in keeping with the pie and knife. I used to speculate on what primitive sort of an upbringing he had that he was so slow to adopt the most ordinary civilized customs.

Drislane seemed to be at home in the place. So was I for that matter; by which I mean I felt safe enough. Several times before this, in my inquisitive ramblings about the port, I had looked in there. So far as that goes, there are not many places where they bother a man who doesn't bother them, always excepting, of course, that he doesn't get drunk and disorderly, and isn't naturally foolish.

While I was studying the place and the people, Drislane ordered supper. I paid no attention to him until he joggled my elbow. "What do you think of her?" he asked.

"Which one?" I asked, and looked about me afresh to note what worshipful creature it was I had missed.

"You didn't notice," he said, plainly put out with me, "the girl who is waiting on us?"

I had noticed her; but when she reappeared with the first part of our order, I noticed anew. A tall, full-bosomed girl she was, and as she walked across the floor toward us, a load of table things in each hand, she swayed from her hips like a young tree in the wind.

The physical force and poise of the girl was the notable thing about her. She carried her armfuls of dishes and food as if they were handfuls of marshmallows. She must have spent years working like a man in the fields to have developed such physical power. As to her face--it was innocent as a child's.

He introduced me when she had set down her dishes. "Miss Rose"---- I didn't get her surname, and it doesn't matter. "Rose's uncle owns this place," he added.

"Poor girl!" I thought.

She met his enchanted gaze with a slow, red-lipped smile. To me she gave an embarrassed, half-sidewise glance. Strange men as yet were evidently disturbing items in her life.

He watched her when she left us, until she had passed through the kitchen-door and beyond sight. "I'm going to marry and settle down," he said.

"This young lady?"

"If she'll have me. I haven't asked her yet." He was fiddling with his bread and butter. Suddenly he burst out with: "If you knew how lonesome I used to get, and the things I was tempted to do to forget it!"

"A man doesn't need, son, to be entirely exiled from his family to believe that; but when you're married will you go to sea just the same?" I asked.

He did not answer.

I felt sorry for him. She looked to be a good girl, but I foresaw her troubles in a place like this while he would be away to sea. It would be a constant fight. She was possibly nineteen; she didn't look like a girl who had been tempered by temptation's long siege, and Lord knows what resisting power she would develop when so tempted.

From the fragments Drislane fed me with while she was coming and going, I learned that both her parents were dead, that she had been in the city only three months, that her uncle didn't seem to see anything strange in her employment in his place, and that Drislane was the first man who had shown an honest interest in her. "I take her to the theatre regularly," said Drislane. "I would to-night, only I want to sit in somewhere and have a long talk with her. You'd be surprised the things she doesn't know about the world."

"I wonder," I thought to myself, "if you realize the things you don't know about the world," and began to wish then for his own sake that he'd hurry up and take to looking at life through the same glasses other people used.

She was living in sordid quarters in a section where a woman was any man's who could get her, and on any terms he could get her; and she was of the type and at the age which has always been held most desirable by the primitive male; and it was to be doubted if she had had the religious or home training needful to an emotional nature. In a good home, in a community where a woman was respected because she was a woman, all would have been fine; but here--they married, and he most of the time at sea--I felt sorry for her as well as for him.

"Take her out of here when you marry," I said to him before parting.

He shook his head. "No, I had a scrap with my people leaving home. They're all right at home--the best--but they want me to get down on my knees to them."

"Better be on your knees of your own will to your own people than against your will to an enemy," I said, but it had no meaning to him; and I left him to his Rose, almost wishing that something would happen to him soon to shake him up, even if, shaking him up, it shook off a few of the purple blossoms that he thought so necessary to the tree of life. Thinking of him I almost talk like him in his absent-minded moments.

III

I left Drislane to go to the theatre with Captain Norman Sickles. The theatre over, he went with me to my hotel to get a few ship's papers I had for him. After that we sat in for a smoke and a chat.

Not that there was much chatting on Captain Norman's part. He never did have much to say of himself, nor too much of anybody else, though he could praise a man if he liked him. It was the first time I had ever spent more than an hour together with him except on pure business, and I was curious to know just what he thought of a lot of things; among others, of his cousin. I gave him two or three openings, but he didn't rush in. What he did have to say of him he said at one gulp. It was: "Where I was raised 'twas common talk that after you'd been getting naught but fair winds for a long course, it was then a good time to keep a watch out. The headwinds have to come some time, and the longer they be in coming the longer they'll stay with you when they does come. Oliver Sickles's been runnin' with a free sheet so long that I calc'late he's forgot there's such a thing as headwinds this side the Western ocean."

Even as Drislane, so did Captain Norman look like a terribly lonesome man at times. He probably was not yet over losing that girl who had been tricked into marrying his cousin. His cousin seemed to have got over it. There was gossip enough between Boston and Norfolk to hang more than a suspicion of that on--for that and the belief that not so much in marrying her as in getting the girl away from his cousin was where Captain Oliver had most likely achieved his main desire.

We talked until Captain Norman thought it was time for him to be getting back aboard his vessel and turning in. As he stood up to go, he said: "'Tis said you like a little sea trip now and again? Why don't you go home with me in the Sirius?"

I was pleased at that--he was known to be not over-free with his invitations--and I thanked him, but on my not saying yes or no at once he looked chagrined; seeing which, I explained that early that fall his cousin had invited me, if ever I cared to return to Boston by water, to take passage with him on the Orion.

He tried to smile. He was a whale of a man, bashful in his ways. He smiled like an overgrown boy who had done something there was no harm in but of which he was ashamed. "He always appears to be gettin' in ahead o' me, don't he?" he said, wistfully-like, after a moment, which hurried me into saying: "But I never said I'd go with him, captain, and he probably thinks he knows me too well to ask me now. I want to go with you, captain, and"--I made up my mind then and there--"I will--and proud to have you ask me."

"Good!" 'Twas a real smile now. "And if the Orion hauls out with us you may see a wet passage, and maybe a bit of excitement of one kind or another before we make Boston Light."

We shook hands on the hope of a fast run to Boston, and then, drawing from my suit-case a package of receipts, coal memoranda, and so on, I held them up. "For the Orion, captain. Where do you suppose I'll find your cousin this time of night to give them to him?"

"Where but the Tidewater where that girl is?"

I stopped to put one thing to another. "And he is after that red-haired Rose, too?"

"What else?"

"But doesn't she know, or doesn't her uncle know, that he's a wife in Boston?"

"Her uncle!" he snorted. "He's no more wit than my ship's cat."

"But Drislane knows--won't he tell her?"

"He don't seem to. A proud one, Drislane. Six months he's been with me now in the Sirius, and if she isn't sure she wants him above anybody else on this earth, then she needn't have him, that's all; or leastwise, that's how I sense him. He wouldn't take no odds of the devil, that lad."

I could believe that; and it set me to thinking.

"Maybe you're thinkin' now," he went on, "that she should be able to see for herself what my cousin is? But what training has she had to judge o' men? What other kind does she see aught of in her uncle's place? Indeed, with her bringing up and what brains the poor girl has, she's done very well, I'm thinkin', to ha' kept off the rocks as long as she has. A hundred to one you'll find my fine cousin at the Tidewater to-night. But I must be going. Good night to you."

* * * * *

Only the bartender was in the front room of the Tidewater, and he was so busy peeking through a slide in the wall, the same through which he passed the drink orders from the restaurant, that he did not hear me come in. The door to the inner room was closed, but the low-powered roars of people trying hard not to be noisy were oozing through.

"What's doing?" I called to the bartender. I had to call it twice to make him turn around.

"It's the big captain of the Orion and that little deck-hand Drislane."

Anybody taking Drislane for a joke always did get my goat. "He's not a deck-hand!" I bit out, "he's a seaman, and a good one. But what about him and Captain Sickles?"

"It's about him an' the boss's Rose. The captain begins to abuse Drislane somethin' fierce, an' he comes back at him. Then the captain brings her into it. 'What would a girl be wantin' with a little runt like you?' he says; and after that, 'I dunno but I'll take her to Boston with me this trip,' and said it like he meant it. An' the little Drislane he jumps into him two-handed, an' they're hard at it now."

I squeezed inside the door of the inner room. "Man-to-man fashion!" I could hear, in the powerful voice of Captain Oliver, while I was crowding through the ring of people to the open space in the middle of the floor. "That's it--man fashion wi' the naked fists!" some scattering voices echoed.

Man-to-man fashion! As if man could invent an unfairer scheme to settle private quarrels! Give a man heavy muscles and huge knuckles, tough hide and thick skull, add half the courage of a yellow dog, and how can he lose at that game? The old-time duellists with their swords were a hundred times fairer. A long sword to his wrist and the smallest man had a chance; which is as it should be, or else we might as well pick some seven-foot, solid-skulled savage from out of the jungle and set him up for king.

Man to man! Drislane was five foot six and weighed, possibly, a hundred and thirty-five pounds, and was no boxer. Sickles was six foot three and weighed two-fifty. He had enormous muscles and knuckles of brass. His hide was thick and hard as double-ought canvas. Drislane could have stood off and pounded on his ribs for a week and hardly black-and-blued them. He could have swung on him for a month and not knocked him over.

It was the old-fashioned style of stand-up fighting. No regular rounds with a rest between. The men rushed and slugged and clinched and tugged, and when they fell, got up and went at it again. Always, when they went to the floor, Sickles let his two hundred and fifty pounds drop limp and heavy on Drislane. Drislane would almost flatten out under it. Standing up, when Sickles's fist landed on him he would wince all over. He felt pain like a girl.

It was slaughter. Blood, blood, blood; and the blood all on one side. For perhaps twenty times Drislane was knocked flat. If Sickles had only the explosive spark to go with those tremendous blows he wouldn't have had to hit Drislane more than once. But he could only continue to knock the little man flat; and knocking him flat often enough, the pounding finally told.

The time came when Drislane could not rise to his feet. He worked himself up to one knee, with the big man waiting for him to look up so he might deliver the blow more sweetly. Drislane, knowing to the full what was coming, looked up and took all there was of it.

This time he lay flat and quiet. The triumphant Sickles bent over him. "Y'are satisfied, are yuh?"

Sickles wasn't going to stop with beating him up. Drislane must proclaim his conqueror's victory and his own defeat. Possibly he wanted the girl Rose to hear it. She had been standing back on a box in the kitchen doorway and must have seen most of the fight. I was wondering how far the joy of battle would mount in her primitive nature; but when I looked up to note that, and how she took Drislane's beating, she had gone.

"Are yuh? Speak up!--are yuh?" bellowed Sickles.

Drislane by now could open his eyes. He looked up at his conqueror but would not say the word. Sickles dug the toe of his shoe into his side.

I had been waiting, half sick to my stomach, for a good excuse to butt in. I had marked, when I first came in, a piano-stool setting upside down atop of the piano to one side of the room. In these possibly rough-house wind-ups it never does any harm to note where a few little articles of warfare may be picked up in a hurry. This piano-stool had a two-inch oak seat.

"You wunt, heh?" Sickles lifted his foot.

"No, he won't!" I butted in, and as he straightened up to see who it was, I went on: "And don't think I'll be foolish enough to go staving in my good knuckles on you. See this little wherewithal I'm holding, and not too loosely, by the wind'ard leg? You've a fine thick skull, but this is thicker. One cute little wallop o' this amidships of your ears, and it's little you'll care whether you take the Orion out on the first or the last of the flood-tide to-morrow. Let him be!"

Now, don't let anybody think I was making a play for any Carnegie medal thereby. I knew Oliver Sickles, and even better did I know his kind, who only go to battle when certain victory lies before them. The only chance I was taking was with my firm's interests. It might be that he'd have such a grouch against me that he'd carry no more coal for my firm than he could help in future.

He let him be. He put on his collar and coat, and received as his due the applause of that crawling breed which are never by any chance seen shaking hands with anybody but a winner. While he was still at the hand-shaking I threw him his ship's papers.

I had the bartender order a carriage, and while waiting I tried to cheer up Drislane. I told him that he must not think of going to sea next day, that I would see Captain Norman Sickles and get him off, and later go with him to Boston by rail.

He shook his head. He could hardly part his swollen lips to talk; and then could only half whisper. "I'll sail to-morrow on the Sirius," he said; and rolled his head over to see what Sickles was doing.

Sickles was just then stepping through that kitchen doorway where but two minutes earlier Rose had been standing. Drislane closed his eyes; and then, as if he thought he had to show me he wasn't beaten, he opened them and smiled. After I'd fully taken in that smile, I wished he had cried.

The bartender called through the slide that the carriage was waiting. I carried out Drislane, drove him to my hotel, and called in a doctor. Between us we gave him a hot bath, salved and plastered him, and put him to bed.

I turned in on a cot which I had had brought in. Hours after I heard him groan. I switched on the light and went to him. He was lying on his side with his head on one arm. His hands were clinched.

After a moment he said: "She is in trouble somewhere." That was another one of the things he believed in--telepathy.

He may or may not have had it right; but it certainly wasn't going to do him any good to let him lie there and be torturing himself. "Sh-h--go to sleep, son. Don't imagine things. You'll find everything will be all right to-morrow," I said.

"No," he said, "everything will never be all right while he's alive and I'm alive."

That didn't sound good to me, so I sat down by the bed and began to talk to him. We talked, I doing the most of it, until past daylight. We talked of her. "She's all right," he said at last, "I tell you she is. Even if she didn't like me and did him, it would be only natural. But she likes me--the best of her likes me better than him, and when she gets to know him all of her will like me. You'll see."

There were people who used to say Drislane was so innocent as to be a joke; but after that talk into that wintry dawn I had to salute him. He had just a little something on all of us who were so much more worldly-wise. It surely was a great gift he had--to see in every woman only the shining soul.

IV

No man could say where the word came from, no man could say that he had seen her himself; but the word was out that Oliver Sickles had boarded his vessel in the early morning with the red-haired girl of the Tidewater Café in tow.

Nobody on the Sirius ever intended to pass the word to Drislane, but no crew of a vessel can be whispering for hours without the one man they don't discuss the mysterious matter with wanting to guess what it is they are trying to keep from him. Drislane guessed.

I had brought him to the Sirius in a carriage just before she sailed. Captain Norman had told him to keep to his bunk until the Sirius tied up to the dock in Boston if he wished, but Drislane did not wish. He came on deck, still bandaged and battered, on the first morning out, to stand his watch. A word blown across the deck, when he was thought to be still in his bunk below, halted him in his walk aft. He turned and stared at the man who was speaking, whereupon followed such a sudden and foolish twist to the conversation that he might just as well have been told.

Throughout his trick at the wheel Drislane said nothing, but every moment the compass could spare his eyes saw them roaming across to where the Orion, like ourselves, was plugging through the short green seas for home. When his watch was done he borrowed my glasses, climbed by painful relays to the masthead and trained them on the Orion. After he came down and had gone below, I went aloft and spent the rest of the morning trying to see what it was that Drislane may have seen on the deck of Oliver Sickles's vessel.

Was it a woman's head showing above the cabin companionway? or was it a man passenger Oliver Sickles had taken aboard at the last minute? If a man, he surely was no seagoer; for in the two hours that I watched he never once stepped out on deck. He leaned dejectedly, or it might be patiently, but, either way, motionless as a stanchion against the companion casing, his soft flapping hat and the shoulders of a loose coat showing just above the woodwork. Man or woman, the face was pointed steadily toward the Sirius.

Our captain said it was a passenger of some kind. It had to be, he said, because during the morning he had kept an eye on the Orion's deck and accounted for every man of her crew, which numbered exactly the same as his own; even for the cook, who had shown himself on deck to heave a bucket of galley refuse over the rail. It could not be an extra hand shipped for the trip, because no hand would be allowed to stand on the cabin stairs.

And did he think it was a man or a woman? The shoulders in the loose coat looked wide enough to be a man's. And I looked at him and he at me. So was Drislane's Rose big enough for a man, but we said no more of that then--Drislane had just come on deck and was making his way aft. Again he borrowed my glasses, went aloft, and trained them on the Orion. From time to time he looked down to the man at the wheel, as if to hint to him to get a little nearer the Orion, but the man at the wheel had already got a quiet word from the captain. We were to leeward. "Keep off--keep off--off--off--!" Captain Norman was saying in a low voice to the helmsman. "Don't let her get any nearer, leastwise while he's aloft with the glasses."

It looked as if we would have to wait to get to Boston to settle the question. Meantime, if Drislane would only try to forget everything of shore matters, he might be getting great comfort of a run like this. If he were himself, he would by now, being half in the way of a poet and half hoping some day to be an artist, be drawing little water-colors and writing little rhymes of these two big schooners racing home together.

'Twould have been well worth his paint and paper. The Orion and the Sirius were two of the best in their class and more trimly modelled than most. What the Orion looked like we must have looked like, and she was something I used to spend whole watches on deck just looking at. She carried an open rail amidships, and her white-painted stanchions, carved to hour-glass form, with the white-painted flat hand-rail atop, stood clearly, sharply, beautifully out above her black lower sides and the pale-green seas.

Not that either of us had much lower planking to show, for four thousand five hundred tons of coal had brought us pretty well down to our scuppers. Too deep-loaded for our best looks, some would say; but I don't know--with all her jibs and all whole sail to her five lower spars, we must have looked pretty good, the pair of us, plugging along together through the curling rollers. We had set no topsails or staysails, because they would not have stayed on, blowing as it was a good half-gale.

It could have been blowing twice a gale and nothing happened to either of us. Probably no stiffer class of vessels sails the seas than the big coasters of our side of the North Atlantic. Give them plenty of ballast and there is no capsizing them. We surely had plenty of ballast in us now, and took cheerfully all the hard westerly had to give us, and foamed along. Foamed? We wallowed--like a couple of sailing submarines almost. In that wind and sea, with all that loose water sloshing around her deck, there was no careless standing around of course; but with rubber boots to your hips, a good oil-slicker to your back, and yourself lashed to something solid up to wind'ard, it was a great place for a man to let the wind blow away three months of coal-dust from his eyelids; and what the wind couldn't blow away the sea would surely wash out.

That loose water flopping around her deck--that was no harm. "Tarpaulin her hatches, clamp 'em down, and let her roll!"--that had been Captain Norman's word coming out of Hampton Roads. And "Batten her down and let her plug into it!" had come roaring across to us at almost the same moment from the deck of the Orion. And no more than into the open Atlantic than we were plugging into it. The sea came mounting up over our low lee-rails--up, up our swash-swept decks, clear across us sometimes, when for a moment a doubtful helmsman would let her ship an extra cargo. But, again, no harm in that. Let 'em slosh and let 'em roll--we were standing up, the pair of us, like two brick houses. And the rest didn't matter. And so almost forgetting Drislane's trouble in the strain of the race, we batted our way through the winter seas on which the sun was dancing--batted and slatted, plugged and slugged our way beside the Orion for the New England coast.

Two vessels may be built alike and rigged alike, but that doesn't mean they will sail alike. The Orion, in the judgment of seafaring folk, was a shade faster reaching and running than the Sirius. At any rate, the Orion proved to us that she was faster off the wind than we were by rounding Cape Cod before us. To there it had been a good passage. No collier loaded to her scuppers is ever going to break any sailing records, but hard driving had brought the pair of us along at a good clip. So far, fine; but it was to be a beat to windward for the rest of the way. West-north-west is the course from Cape Cod to Boston, and west-north-west was where the wind was coming from when it hit us on the nose as we rounded the Cape.

The Orion might outrun us, the Sirius, but to windward there was no difference except in their masters; and there we had the best of it. Norman Sickles could get more out of a vessel than his cousin when the going was bad. Oliver used to claw around deck like a sore-headed bear, and every now and then go below and have a drink for himself when things weren't breaking right. Norman took things more quietly, and so taking them wasn't too busy to grab every little chance that bobbed up.

The Orion stood off on one tack, we on the other, and by and by we lost her below the horizon; but standing in, after some hours found her again; and finding her, were pleased to see that we had made up something on her. We filled away once more, and by and by stood back to her. We were making distance fast. Had we held on we would have crossed her wake almost under her stern on that tack. On our next tack we would be crossing her bow, and it would then be on past the lightship in the lead, and the race over; for neither of us was going to tack up the channel, deep-loaded, against a tide which would soon be ebbing. Up at the harbor entrance two tugs had already seen that and were racing out to pick us up.

To more quickly get in tow of the tug nearest us, which was coming hooked up for us, our captain put the Sirius about earlier than he had originally intended. As we tacked, so did the Orion. We stood in toward the harbor. The Orion stood in toward the harbor. We were surely going to pass close to each other--very close. Altogether too close.

I didn't like the looks of things. Being a passenger, I had a mind free for other things than navigation. "In case of doubt who gives way--the Orion or the Sirius?" I asked Captain Norman. "Why, she does," he said, surprised. "It has to be her--not us. Both of us close-hauled, but we being starboard tack have the right of way. He'll have to come about and give us the road."

"But suppose, captain, he will not give way?"

"What! not give way! That'd be foolish. He c'n go bulling his way on shore all he pleases, but out here he'll only get what's due him. He'll have to give way."

So Norman Sickles said, but he wasn't the man to lose his vessel or risk men's lives. The Orion was holding on. She was going to force us. When Norman Sickles saw that, he motioned with his arm for the man at our wheel to keep off. But the Sirius wasn't keeping off. Norman Sickles turned and yelled: "Keep her off--off--off, I say!" starting aft, at the same time, to take the wheel himself.

He was too late. They seemed drawn together. We took a shoot. The Orion took a shoot. "Damned if she didn't get away from him!" I remember hearing one of our fellows jerk out, but I remember also I was left wondering whether he meant our vessel or the Orion.

They rushed together and g-g-h-h! Talk of a smash! Forty-five hundred tons of coal, nine-tenths of it below the water-line, and a breeze of wind! Either one would have sunk a battle-ship. It shook the spars out of the Orion. Her after-mast came down, the next one came down, the others were swaying. "The boat--the boat!" her crew yelled, but taking another look up at those wabbling masts, they waited to launch no boat. With few words but much action, they went over her side, one after the other, and began to claw out for the Sirius, on which--she was sinking too--our crew had a big quarter-boat ready to launch.

While the two vessels were still locked in collision I had seen Drislane come running from aft and leap into the Orion. I lost sight of him then, because with our captain I had jumped below into our cabin, he to save his ship's papers and I to save my firm's. We were on deck in time to get into our boat, and help pick up the crew of the Orion in the water.

Looking for Drislane then, I saw him and Captain Oliver Sickles at each other's throats in the stern of the Orion. There wasn't much left of her above water then. And on her deck it was a mess of fallen spars, with her foremast the only stick left, and that--unsupported by backstays and the wind still pressing against the big sail--that was wabbling. Even as we looked it came down--lower and top parts--with a smash which snapped the topmast off and sent it twisting and gyrating to where, after a bound or two, it rolled down and pinned to the deck the two battling men in the stern. With it came a tangled mess of halyards and stays.

We had picked up all of the Orion's crew from the water and were now hurrying to get to the two men on the Orion, which was fast settling, when a red-haired girl came running from the cabin companionway. Almost as if she had been waiting in ambush, she rushed over to the fallen spar, untangled the halyards from the legs of one of the furthest men, and after an effort lifted the end of the spar so that he could scramble free. She needed to be strong to do that; but she was strong. If she had held the spar up only an instant longer, the other man might have wiggled free too. But she let it drop back. The man she had freed she picked up and carried to the quarter-rail, where she waited for us in the boat. He made an effort as if to get back to the man left under the spar, but she would not let him. "Tain't no crime, Honey," I heard her say as we got to them. She went overboard as she said it, and we had to hurry to get her. "I know him a heap better than you-all, Honey--let him rest where he done fall to."

She couldn't swim, but we got them in time. She didn't mind us in the least. "He done tol' me, Honey, you was dyin' abo'd yo' ship 'n' o' coase I goes on down to see. It sure did look like yo' own ship, Honey"--she was saying to him before we had them both fairly in the boat. It was Drislane she had, his head cuddled on her knees till the tug came and got us.

We weren't in time to get to the man she had left behind. The last we saw of him was his head sticking out like a turtle's from under the fallen spar as the Orion went under.

* * * * *

We were all in Boston by Christmas Eve; that is, all of course but Oliver Sickles--and nobody gibed at his memory for that. He had his good reason.

The tug rushed the two crews up the harbor to our dock, where I left them while I went to get carriages and warm clothes and so on. When I came back Drislane and his Rose were gone and no word behind them. But the day after Christmas he came to the office early to get his semiannual check and cash it. I wasn't there, but he left word for me that he and Rose were married, and he was going to take my advice and go home to his people. The office force said that with him was a girl of glorious Titian hair and super-physique, who smiled wonderfully on him.

Captain Norman married the girl he should have married in the first place. And so all the good people came happy out of it; all except our firm. Nine thousand tons at two dollars per ton--there was eighteen thousand dollars' worth of freights that we never collected.

* * * * *

So there's the Orion and Sirius thing, only, in telling it at the Sailor's Haven the other night, our old stevedore didn't say anything of Rose's part in it. He probably didn't see what that had to do with it. However, he said enough to convince the lecturer, who was a pretty fair-minded kind, that perhaps he would have to reconstruct his views about sailors' superstitions.

And perhaps there is something in it; but it's a poor case won't stand hearing both sides of the evidence. "Hoodoo ships!" It's a fascinating phrase, but--Oliver Sickles it was who held the wheel of the Orion, and it was Drislane to the wheel of the Sirius, when they came together.

[The end]
James B. Connolly's short story: Cross Courses

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