Part 7 (2/2)

”How much would you expect?” the captain was asking,--a most unsealike captain, in Daughtry's opinion; rather, a spick-and-span, brisk little business-man or floor-walker just out of a bandbox.

”He shall not share,” spoke up another of the four, huge, raw-boned, middle-aged, whom Daughtry identified by his ham-like hands as the California wheat-farmer described by the departed steward.

”Plenty for all,” the Ancient Mariner startled Daughtry by cackling shrilly. ”Oodles and oodles of it, my gentlemen, in cask and chest, in cask and chest, a fathom under the sand.”

”Share--_what_, sir?” Daughtry queried, though well he knew, the other steward having cursed to him the day he sailed from San Francisco on a blind lay instead of straight wages. ”Not that it matters, sir,” he hastened to add. ”I spent a whalin' voyage once, three years of it, an'

paid off with a dollar. Wages for mine, an' sixty gold a month, seein'

there's only four of you.”

”And a mate,” the captain added.

”And a mate,” Daughtry repeated. ”Very good, sir. An' no share.”

”But yourself?” spoke up the fourth man, a huge-bulking, colossal-bodied, greasy-seeming grossness of flesh--the Armenian Jew and San Francisco p.a.w.nbroker the previous steward had warned Daughtry about. ”Have you papers--letters of recommendation, the doc.u.ments you receive when you are paid off before the s.h.i.+pping commissioners?”

”I might ask, sir,” Dag Daughtry brazened it, ”for your own papers. This ain't no regular cargo-carrier or pa.s.senger-carrier, no more than you gentlemen are a regular company of s.h.i.+p-owners, with regular offices, doin' business in a regular way. How do I know if you own the s.h.i.+p even, or that the charter ain't busted long ago, or that you're being libelled ash.o.r.e right now, or that you won't dump me on any old beach anywheres without a soo-markee of what's comin' to me? Howsoever”--he antic.i.p.ated by a bluff of his own the show of wrath from the Jew that he knew would be wind and bluff--”howsoever, here's my papers . . . ”

With a swift dip of his hand into his inside coat-pocket he scattered out in a wealth of profusion on the cabin table all the papers, sealed and stamped, that he had collected in forty-five years of voyaging, the latest date of which was five years back.

”I don't ask your papers,” he went on. ”What I ask is, cash payment in full the first of each month, sixty dollars a month gold--”

”Oodles and oodles of it, gold and gold and better than gold, in cask and chest, in cask and chest, a fathom under the sand,” the Ancient Mariner a.s.sured him in beneficent cackles. ”Kings, princ.i.p.alities and powers!--all of us, the least of us. And plenty more, my gentlemen, plenty more. The lat.i.tude and longitude are mine, and the bearings from the oak ribs on the shoal to Lion's Head, and the cross-bearings from the points unnamable, I only know. I only still live of all that brave, mad, scallywag s.h.i.+p's company . . . ”

”Will you sign the articles to that?” the Jew demanded, cutting in on the ancient's maunderings.

”What port do you wind up the cruise in?” Daughtry asked.

”San Francisco.”

”I'll sign the articles that I'm to sign off in San Francisco then.”

The Jew, the captain, and the farmer nodded.

”But there's several other things to be agreed upon,” Daughtry continued.

”In the first place, I want my six quarts a day. I'm used to it, and I'm too old a stager to change my habits.”

”Of spirits, I suppose?” the Jew asked sarcastically.

”No; of beer, good English beer. It must be understood beforehand, no matter what long stretches we may be at sea, that a sufficient supply is taken along.”

”Anything else?” the captain queried.

”Yes, sir,” Daughtry answered. ”I got a dog that must come along.”

”Anything else?--a wife or family maybe?” the farmer asked.

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