So much the better, then, I continued ; and went on to
point out that our separation need not be for long j that,
in the way affairs were going, he might join me in two
years with a fortune, small, indeed, for the States, but
in France almost conspicuous ; that we might unite our
resources, and have one house in Paris for the winter
and a second near Fontainebleau for summer, where we
could be as happy as the day was long, and bring up
little Pinkertons as practical, artistic workmen, far from
the money-hunger of the West. "Let me go then," 1
concluded; "not as a deserter, but as the vanguard, to
lead the march of the Pinkerton men."

So I argued and pleaded, not without emotion; my
friend sitting opposite, resting his chin upon his hand
and (but for that single interjection) silent. "I have
been looking for this, Loudon," said he, when I had
done. " It does pain me, and that's the fact Fm so
miserably selfish. And I believe it's a death blow to the
picnics; for it's idle to deny that you were the heart and
soul of them with your wand and your gallant bearing,
and wit and humour and chivalry, and throwing that



IRONS IN THE FIEE. 155

kind of society atmosphere about the thing. But for
all that, you're right, and you ought to go. You may
count on forty dollars a weekj and if Depew City one
of nature's centres for this State pan out the least as
I expect, it may be double. But it's forty dollars any-
way ; and to think that two years ago you were almost
reduced to beggary!"

" I was reduced to it," said L

" Well, the brutes gave you nothing, and I'm glad of
it now!" cried Jim. "It's the triumphant return I
glory in! Think of the master, and that cold-blooded
Myner too ! Yes, just let the Depew City boom get on
its legs, and you shall go ; and two years later, day for
day, I'll shake hands with you in Paris, with Mamie on
my arm, God bless her ! "

We talked in this vein far into the night. I was
myself so exultant in my new-found liberty, and Pinker-
ton so proud of my triumph, so happy in my happiness,
in so warm a glow about the gallant little woman of his
choice, and the very room so filled with castles in the
air and cottages at Fontainebleau, that it was little
wonder if sleep fled our eyelids, and three had followed
two upon the office clock before Pinkerton unfolded the
mechanism of his patent sofa.



156 THE WRECKER.



CHAPTER

PACES ON THE CITY FBONT.

It is very much the custom to view life as if it were
exactly ruled in two, like sleep and waking ; the prov-
inces of play and business standing separate. The busi-
ness side of my career in San Francisco has been now
disposed of; I approach the chapter of diversion; and
it will be found they had about an equal share in build-
ing up the story of the Wrecker a gentleman whose
appearance may be presently expected.

With all my occupations, some six afternoons and
two or three odd evenings remained at my disposal
every week: a circumstance the more agreeable as I
was a stranger in a city singularly picturesque. From
what I had once called myself, The Amateur Parisian,
I grew (or declined) into a waterside prowler, a lin-
gerer on wharves, a frequenter of shy neighbourhoods,
a scraper of acquaintance with eccentric characters. I
visited Chinese and Mexican gambling-hells, German
secret societies, sailors' boarding-houses, and u dives "
of every complexion of the disreputable and dangerous.
I have seen greasy Mexican hands pinned to the table
with a knife for cheating, seamen (when blood-money
ran high) knocked down upon the public street and
carried insensible on board short-handed ships, shots



FACES ON THE CITY FRONT. 157

exchanged and the smoke (and the company) dispersing
from the doors of the saloon. I have heard cold-minded
Polacks debate upon the readiest method of burning
San Francisco to the ground, hot-headed working men
and women bawl and swear in the tribune at the Sand-
lot, and Kearney himself open his subscription for a
gallows, name the manufacturers who were to grace it
with their dangling bodies, and read aloud to the de-
lighted multitude a telegram of adhesion from a member
of the State legislature : all which preparations of prol-
etarian war were (in a moment) breathed upon and
abolished by the mere name and fame of Mr. Coleman.
That lion of the Vigilantes had but to rouse himself and
shake his ears, and the whole brawling mob was silenced.
I could not but reflect what a strange manner of man
this was, to be living unremarked there as a private
merchant, and to be so feared by a whole city ; and if
I was disappointed, in my character of looker-on, to
have the matter end ingloriously without the firing of
a shot or the hanging of a single millionnaire, philosophy
tried to tell me that this sight was truly the more pic-
turesque. In a thousand towns and different epochs I
might have had occasion to behold the cowardice and
carnage of street fighting; where else, but only there
and then, could I have enjoyed a view of Coleman (the
intermittent despot) walking meditatively up hill in a
quiet part of town, with a very rolling gait, and slapping
gently his great thigh ?



158 THE WRECKER.

Minora canamus. This historic figure stalks silently
through a corner of the San Francisco of my memory :
the rest is bric-a-brac, the reminiscences of a vagrant
sketcher. My delight was much in slums. Little Italy
was a haunt of mine ; there I would look in at the win-
dows of small eating-shops, transported bodily from
Genoa or Naples, with their macaroni, and chianti
flasks and portraits of Garibaldi, and coloured political
caricatures ; or (entering in) hold high debate with some
ear-ringed fisher of the bay as to the designs of " Mr.
Owstria " and " Mr. Eooshia." I was often to be ob-
served (had there been any to observe me) in that dis-
peopled, hill-side solitude of Little Mexico, with its crazy
wooden houses, endless crazy wooden stairs, and perilous
mountain goat-paths in the sand. Chinatown by a thou-
sand eccentricities drew and held me; I could never
have enough of its ambiguous, interracial atmosphere,
as of a vitalised museum; never wonder enough at its
outlandish, necromantic-looking vegetables set forth to
sell in commonplace American shop-windows, its temple
doors open and the scent of the joss-stick streaming
forth on the American air, its kites of Oriental fashion
hanging fouled in Western telegraph-wires, its flights of
paper prayers which the trade-wind hunts and dissipates
along Western gutters. I was a frequent wanderer on
North Beach, gazing at the straits, and the huge Cape-
Horners creeping out to sea, and imminent Tamalpais.
Thence, on my homeward way, I might visit that strange



FACES ON THE CITY FRONT. 159

and filthy shed, earth-paved and walled with the cages
of wild animals and birds, where at a ramshackle
counter, amid the yells of monkeys, and a poignant
atmosphere of menagerie, forty-rod whiskey was admin-
istered by a proprietor as dirty as his beasts. Nor did
I even neglect Nob Hill, which is itself a kind of slum,
being the habitat of the mere millionnaire. There they
dwell upon the hill-top, high raised above man's clamour,
and the trade-wind blows between their palaces about
deserted streets.

But San Francisco is not herself only. She is not
only the most interesting city in the Union, and the
hugest smelting-pot of races and the precious metals.
She keeps, besides, the doors of the Pacific, and is the
port of entry to another world and an earlier epoch in
man's history. Nowhere else shall you observe (in the
ancient phrase) so many tall ships as here convene from
round the Horn, from China, from Sydney, and the
Indies ; but scarce remarked amid that crowd of deep-
sea giants, another class of craft, the Island schooner,
circulates : low in the water, with lofty spars and dainty
lines, rigged and fashioned like a yacht, manned with
brown-skinned, soft-spoken, sweet-eyed native sailors,
and equipped with their great double-ender boats that
tell a tale of boisterous sea-beaches. These steal out
and in again, unnoted by the world or even the news-
paper press, save for the line in the clearing column,
" Schooner So-and-so for Yap and South Sea Islands "



160 THE WKECKEB.

steal out with nondescript cargoes of tinned salmon, gin,
bolts of gaudy cotton stuff, women's hats, and Waterbury
watches, to return, after a year, piled as high as to the
eaves of the house with copra, or wallowing deep with
the shells of the tortoise or the pearl oyster. To me, in
my character of the Amateur Parisian, this island traffic,
and even the island world, were beyond the bounds of
curiosity, and how much more of knowledge. I stood
there on the extreme shore of the West and of to-day.
Seventeen hundred years ago, and seven thousand miles
to the east, a legionary stood, perhaps, upon the wall of
Antoninus, and looked northward toward the mountaina
of the Picts. For all the interval of time and space, I,
when I looked from the cliff-house on the broad Pacific,
was that man's heir and analogue : each of us standing
on the verge of the Roman Empire (or, as we now call
it, Western civilization), each of us gazing onward into
zones unromanised. But I was dull. I looked rather
backward, keeping a kind eye on Paris ; and it required
a series of converging incidents to change my attitude
of nonchalance for one of interest, and even longing,
which I little dreamed that I should live to gratify.

The first of these incidents brought me in acquaintance
with a certain San Francisco character, who had some-
thing of a name beyond the limits of the city, and was
known to many lovers of good English. I had discov-
ered a new slum, a place of precarious, sandy cliffs, deep,
sandy cuttings, solitary, ancient houses, and the butt-



FACES ON THE CITY FRONT. 161

/

ends of streets. It was already environed. The ranks
of the street-lamps threaded it unbroken. The city,
upon all sides of it, was tightly packed, and growled
with traffic. To-day, I do not doubt the very landmarks
are all swept away ; but it offered then, within narrow
limits, a delightful peace, and (in the morning, when I
chiefly went there) a seclusion almost rural. On a steep
sand-hill, in this neighbourhood, toppled, on the most
insecure foundation, a certain row of houses, each with
a bit of garden, and all (I have to presume) inhabited.
Thither I used to mount by a crumbling footpath, and
in front of the last of the houses, would sit down to
sketch. The very first day I saw I was observed,
out of the grouiid-floor window, by a youngish, good-
looking fellow, prematurely bald, and with an expression
both lively and engaging. The second, as we were still
the only figures in the landscape, it was no more than
natural that we should nod. The third, he came fairly
out from his entrenchments, praised my sketch, and with
the impromptu cordiality of artists carried me into his
apartment; where I sat presently in the midst of a
museum of strange objects, paddles and battle-clubs
and baskets, rough-hewn stone images, ornaments of
threaded shell, cocoanut bowls, snowy cocoanut plumes
evidences and examples of another earth, another cli-
mate, another race, and another (if a ruder) culture.
Kor did these objects lack a fitting commentary in the
conversation of my new acquaintance. Doubtless you



162 THE WRECKER.

have read his book. You know already how he tramped
and starved, and had so fine a profit of living, in his
days among the islands ; and, meeting him, as I did, one
artist with another, after months of offices and picnics,
you can imagine with what charm he would speak, and
with what pleasure I would hear. It was in such talks,
which we were both eager to repeat, that I first heard the
names first fell under the spell of the islands ; and
it was from one of the first of them that I returned (a
happy man) with Omoo under one arm, and my friend's
own adventures under the other.

The second incident was more dramatic, and had,
besides, a bearing on my future. I was standing, one
day, near a boat-landing under Telegraph Hill. A large
barque, perhaps of eighteen hundred tons, was coming
more than usually close about the point to reach her
moorings; and I was observing her with languid inat-
tention, when I observed two men to stride across the
bulwarks, drop into a shore boat, and, violently dispos-
sessing the boatman of his oars, pull toward the landing
where I stood. In a surprisingly short time they came
bearing up the steps; and I could see that both were
too well dressed to be foremast hands the first even
with research, and both, and specially the first, appeared
under the empire of some strong emotion.

" Nearest police office ! " cried the leader.

" This way," said I, immediately falling in with their
precipitate pace. "What's wrong? What ship is that ?"

" That's the Gleaner," he replied. " I am chief officer,



FACES ON THE CITY FRONT. 163

this gentleman's third ; and we've to get iu our deposi-
tions before the crew. You see they might corral us
with the captain; and that's no kind of berth for me.
I've sailed with some hard cases in my time, and seen
pins flying like sand on a squally day but never a
match to our old man. It never let up from the Hook
to the Farallones ; and the last man was dropped not
sixteen hours ago. Packet rats our men were, and as
tough a crowd as ever sand-bagged a man's head in ; but
they looked sick enough when the captain started in
with his fancy shooting."

"0, he's done up," observed the other. "He won't
go to sea no more."

"You make me tired," retorted his superior. "If he
gets ashore in one piece and isn't lynched in the next
ten minutes, he'll do yet. The owners have a longer
memory than the public; they'll stand by him; they
don't find as smart a captain every day in the year."

" 0, he's a son of a gun of a fine captain, there ain't
no doubt of that," concurred the other, heartily. " Why,
I don't suppose there's been no wages paid aboard that
Gleaner for three trips."

" No wages ? " I exclaimed, for I was still a novice in
maritime affairs.

" Not to sailor-men before the mast," agreed the mate.
" Men cleared out ; wasn't the soft job they maybe took
it for. She isn' the first ship that never paid wages."

I could not but observe that our pace was progres-
sively relaxing ; and indeed I have often wondered since



164 THE WRECKER.

whether the hurry of the start were not intended for
the gallery alone. Certain it is at least, that when we
had reached the police office, and the mates had made
their deposition, and told their horrid tale of five men
murdered, some with savage passion, some with cold
brutality, between Sandy Hook and San Francisco, the
police were despatched in time to be too late. Before we
arrived, the ruffian had slipped out upon the dock, had
mingled with the crowd, and found a refuge in the house
of an acquaintance ; and the ship was only tenanted by
his late victims. Well for him that he had been thus
speedy. For when word began to go abroad among the
shore-side characters, when the last victim was carried
by to the hospital, when those who had escaped (as by
miracle) from that floating shambles, began to circulate
and show their wounds in the crowd, it was strange to
witness the agitation that seized and shook that portion
of the city. Men shed tears in public j bosses of lodg-
ing-houses, long inured to brutality, and above all,
brutality to sailors, shook their fists at heaven : if hands
could have been laid on the captain of the Gleaner, his
shrift would have been short. That night (so gossip
reports) he was headed up in a barrel and smuggled
across the bay : in two ships already he had braved the
penitentiary and the gallows ; and yet, by last accounts,
he now commands another on the Western Ocean.

As I have said, I was never quite certain whether
Mr. Nares (the mate) did not intend that his superior
should escape. It would have been like his preference



FACES ON THE CITY FRONT. 165

of loyalty to law ; it would have been like his prejudice,
which was all in favour of the after-guard. But it must
remain a matter of conjecture only. Well as I came to
know him in the sequel, he was never communicative on
that point, nor indeed on any that concerned the voyage
of the Gleaner. Doubtless he had some reason for his
reticence. Even during our walk to the police office, he
debated several times with Johnson, the third officer,
whether he ought not to give up himself, as well as to
denounce the captain. He had decided in the negative,
arguing that "it would probably come to nothing, and
even if there was a stink, he had plenty good friends
in San Francisco." And to nothing it came ; though it
must have very nearly come to something, for Mr. Nares
disappeared immediately from view and was scarce less
closely hidden than his captain.

Johnson, on the other hand, I often met. I could
never learn this man's country; and though he him-
self claimed to be American, neither his English nor
his education warranted the claim. In all likelihood
he was of Scandinavian birth and blood, long pickled
in th* forecastles of English and American ships. It
is possible that, like so many of his race in similar posi-
tion?, he had already lost his native tongue. In mind,
at least, he was quite denationalised ; thought only in
English to call it so; and though by nature one of
the mildest, kindest, and most feebly playful of man-
f tind, he had been so long accustomed to the cruelty of
ea discipline, that bis stories (told perhaps with a



166 THE WRECKER.

giggle) would sometimes turn me chill. In appearance,
he was tall, light of weight, bold and high-bred of feat-
ure, dusky-haired, and with a face of a clean even brown :
the ornament of outdoor men. Seated in a chair, you
might have passed him off for a baronet or a military
officer ; but let him rise, and it was Fo'c's'le Jack that
came rolling toward you, crab-like ; let him but open his
lips, and it was Fo'c's'le Jack that piped and drawled
his ungrammatical gibberish. He had sailed (among
other places) much among the islands ; and after a Cape
Horn passage with its snow-squalls and its frozen sheets,
he announced his intention of "taking a turn among
them Kanakas." I thought I should have lost him
soon ; but according to the unwritten usage of mariners,
he had first to dissipate his wages. "Guess I'll have
to paint this town red," was his hyperbolical expression ;
for sure no man ever embarked upon a milder course
of dissipation, most of his days being passed in the little
parlour behind Black Tom's public house, with a select
corps of old particular acquaintances, all from the South
Seas, and all patrons of a long yarn, a short pipe, and
glasses round.

Black Tom's, to the front, presented the appearance
of a fourth-rate saloon, devoted to Kanaka seamen, dirt,
negrohead tobacco, bad cigars, worse gin, and guitars
and banjos in a state of decline. The proprietor, a
powerful coloured man, was at once a publican, a ward
politician, leader of some brigade of "lambs " or " smash*



FACES ON THE CITY FRONT. 167

ers," at the wind of whose clubs the party bosses and
the mayor were supposed to tremble, and (what hurt
nothing) an active and reliable crimp. His front quar-
ters, then, were noisy, disreputable, and not even safe. I
have seen worse frequented saloons where there were
fewer scandals ; for Tom was often drunk himself ; and
there is no doubt the Lambs must have been a useful
body, or the place would have been closed. I remember
one day, not long before an election, seeing a blind man,
very well dressed, led up to the counter and remain a
long while in consultation with the negro. The pair
looked so ill-assorted, and the awe with which the
drinkers fell back and left them in the midst of an im-
promptu privacy was so unusual in such a place, that I
turned to my next neighbour with a question. He told
me the blind man was a distinguished party boss, called
by some the King of San Francisco, but perhaps better
known by his picturesque Chinese nickname of the
Blind White Devil. "The Lambs must be wanted
pretty bad, I guess," my informant added. I have here a
sketch of the Blind White Devil leaning on the counter ;
on the next page, and taken the same hour, a jotting of
Black Tom threatening a whole crowd of customers with
a long Smith and Wesson : to such heights and depths
we rose and fell in the front parts of the saloon.

Meanwhile, away in the back quarters, sat the small
informal South Sea club, talking of another world and



168 THE WBECKEB.

surely of a different century. Old schooner captains they
were, old South Sea traders, cooks, and mates : fine crea-
tures, softened by residence among a softer race: full
men besides, though not by reading, but by strange
experience; and for days together I could hear their
yarns with an unfading pleasure. All had indeed some
touch of the poetic ; for the beach-comber, when not a
mere ruffian, is the poor relation of the artist. Even
though Johnson's inarticulate speech, his "0 yes, ther
ain't no harm in them Kanakas," or, "0 yes, that's
son of a gun of a fine island, mountainious right down ;
I didn't never ought to have left that island," there
pierced a certain gusto of appreciation : and some of the
rest were master-talkers. From their long tales, their
traits of character and unpremeditated landscape, there
began to piece itself together in my head some image
of the islands and the island life: precipitous shores,
spired mountain tops, the deep shade of hanging forests,
the unresting surf upon the reef, and the unending
peace of the lagoon ; sun, moon, and stars of an imperial
brightness; man moving in these scenes scarce fallen,
and woman lovelier than Eve ; the primal curse abro-
gated, the bed made ready for the stranger, life set to
perpetual music, and the guest welcomed, the boat
urged, and the long night beguiled, with poetry and
choral song. A man must have been an unsuccessful
artist ; he must have starved on the streets of Paris ; he
must have been yoked to a commercial force like Pinker-



FACES ON THE CITY FRONT. 169

ton, before he can conceive the longings that at times
assailed me. The draughty, rowdy city of San Francisco,
the bustling office where my friend Jim paced like a
caged lion daily between ten and four, even (at times)
the retrospect of Paris, faded in comparison. Many a
man less tempted would have thrown up all to realise
his visions ; but I was by nature unadventurous and un-
initiative : to divert me from all former paths and send
me cruising through the isles of paradise, some force
external to myself must be exerted; Destiny herself
must -ase the fitting wedge; and little as I deemed it,
that tool was already in her hand of brass.

I sat, one afternoon, in the corner of a great, glassy,
silvered saloon, a free lunch at my one elbow, at the
other a "conscientious nude" from the brush of local
talent ; when, with the tramp of feet and a sudden buzz
of voices, the swing-doors were flung broadly open and
the place carried as by storm. The crowd which thus
entered (mostly seafaring men, and all prodigiously ex-
cited) contained a sort of kernel or general centre of
interest, which the rest merely surrounded and adver-
tised, as children in the Old World surround and escort
the Punch-and-Judy man ; and word went round the bar
like wildfire, that these were Captain Trent and the
survivors of the British brig Flying Scud, picked up by
a British war-ship on Midway Island, arrived that morn-
ing in San Francisco Bay, and now fresh from making
the necessary declarations. Presently I had a good



170 THE WRECKER.

sight of them: four brown, seamanlike fellows, stand,
ing by the counter, glass in hand, the centre of a score
of questioners. One was a Kanaka the cook, I was
informed ; one carried a cage with a canary, which occa
sionally trilled into thin song ; one had his left arm in
a sling and looked gentlemanlike, and somewhat sickly,
as though the injury had been severe and he was scarce
recovered; and the captain himself a red-faced, blue-
eyed, thick-set man of five and forty wore a bandage
on his right hand. The incident struck me; I was
struck particularly to see captain, cook, and foremast
hands walking the street and visiting saloons in com-
pany ; and, as when anything impressed me, I got my
sketch-book out, and began to steal a sketch of the four
castaways. The crowd, sympathising with my design,
made a clear lane across the room; and I was thus