Part 8 (1/2)

”Greenough!” he says. ”It's next to where Abe Dalrimple lives? Adrian's the name of his town.”

I says:

”What do you know of it, Craney?”

”I went there with Abe Dalrimple,” he says, ”and left him there planting lobster pots. That wouldn't do for me. None of it in mine. Abe's got no more ambition than to dodge the next kettle Mrs. Dalrimple throws at him, but me, I'm ambitious, I got to spread out. I'm a romantic man, Tommy. That's my secret. That's the key of me. Give me largeness. Give me s.p.a.ce for my talents. What do you want with Greenough? You stay with me and I'll show you who's the natural lord of all lands that's fertile and foolish. Ain't I showed you what I could do in a small way? Why, I only just began. That's nothing, I'm a soarer, Tommy, I've got visions.”

I took a look at his one hard bright eye, and thought him over, and I thought:

”You've got 'em all right, but they're slippery,” and I says:

”Did you hear news of any one in Greenough?”

”Give 'em a name.”

”Happen it might be the name of Pemberton,” I says. ”Madge Pemberton.”

”There was a man in Adrian named Andrew McCulloch,” he says, ”that married a girl named Pemberton from Greenough. Aye, I recollect, Pemberton's was a hotel.”

”Madge Pemberton?”

”It was that name.”

I recollect it was a little cafe in Corazon, where Craney and I sat that evening. It was thick with smoke and crowded with round tables, at which mixed breeds of people, mostly square-shouldered little men, were discussing the time of day and the merits of wine--which hadn't any--in a way of excitement that you'd think they were crying out against oppression. Each table had a tallow candle on it, burning dim in the smoke.

I says, ”Oh!”

Then Craney went on talking, but I don't know what it was about. Then I says, ”It don't suit me in Corazon,” and I got up. I went out in the steep cobbled street that runs down to the sh.o.r.e of Corazon Bay.

I lay all night on the sh.o.r.e and watched 'the waves come up and crumble on the s.h.i.+ngle. I remembered the verse Sadler used to chant to me in the _Hebe Maitland_ days, when I was acting more gay than he thought becoming to the uselessness of me. ”Oh, sailor boy,” he says.

”Oh, sailor, my sailor boy, bonny and blue, You're rompin', you're roamin', The long slantin' sorrows are waiting for you In the gloamin', the gloamin'.”

I remember, when it came morning, on the beach at Corazon, I got up, and I says:

”Clyde's mucky old bags can stay there till I'm ready,” I says. ”What's the use!”

I took a dislike to Clyde's money. I bought a pa.s.sage to San Francisco, and came there in the year '75.

There I put the profits of six years on the West Coast into shares in a s.h.i.+p called the _Anaconda_, and s.h.i.+pped on her myself as second mate.

I found Stevey Todd cooking in a restaurant in San Francisco. He'd gone into gold mines, after getting loose from the _Jane Allen_. He'd left his profits from the Hotel Helen Mar in the gold mines. Every mine he'd invested in got discouraged, so he said, but I judge the truth was more likely Stevey Todd was taken in by mining sharks. He'd made up his mind property wasn't his stronghold and gone back to cooking, and never took any more interest in property after that, nor had any to take interest in. But he told me Sadler was in business and getting rich, and in partners.h.i.+p with a Chinaman, and living in a town called ”Saleratus,”

sixty miles down the coast, which none of these statements seemed likely at the time. Stevey Todd didn't know why the town was named Saleratus.

He thought maybe Sadler had named it, or maybe gone there on account of the name, foreseeing interesting rhymes with ”potatoes” and ”tomatoes.”

But I didn't look Sadler up at that time.

The Captain turned to Uncle Abimelech, and said: