The Ship of Shadows. H. Bedford-Jones
stared at him with an insistent gaze, wondering more than a little at the man. Venable drank, and a little color crept up into his cheeks of bleached iron. To the seaman, this anomaly of a man was beyond comprehension—a man anything but weak, indeed, of stronger fiber than most, yet now utterly abandoned to degradation. And a man, besides, of education and godliness! To the wondering Garrity it was a thing for pity and kindness. He had seen no lack of drug-users in his time, but seldom a man who had come so low from a place so high.
“Why did you ask me that?” demanded Venable suddenly. “Do you want to get divorced and married over again?”
“Not me!” said Garrity with a chuckle. “I’ll never marry again, Parson; far’s a wife’s concerned, I’m tied to Mary for life. That was the first, ye mind. The Russian lass—well, that was fifteen year ago and more—nothin’ more than a weddin’ to that, Parson. Still, she was a girl o’ fine spirit, unusual fine. I’ve often wondered what became of her.”
“She was a revolutionist?”
“Heaven knows—I don’t!” Garrity produced an evil black pipe and lighted it. “Not even her name! Well, Parson, let’s go see a picture-show!”
“What—this time of day?”
“Why not? I want to make the most o’ my opportunities. A week from now I’ll be watchin’ gauges and cursin’ firemen, poor devils! Will ye go out? We’ll get a bite o’ lunch and maybe meet one or two pals, spend the afternoon in a show—”
VENABLE’S will-power was practically nil, and he cared little what he did. The two men sallied forth together in the bright morning sunshine, an odd pair. Despite his condition and his ill-fitting black clothes, there clung to Venable some pathetic remnants of dignity, some vestige of untrodden years. He bulked high about Garrity, a gaunt scarecrow of a man, hell alight in his eyes, his face and mien derelict; and yet something held him apart from the street panhandlers. He would lose the barrier with time, but it was not yet lost.
They found a continuous movie-palace which was opening for the day, and bought seats. For two hours they sat, to emerge again into the blinding light of noon. Venable had with him his box of precious powders; but Garrity, out of whom the drink had died, was glum until they had entered a restaurant and secured something to eat. Venable again became conscious that he was living on the other man’s money, but to his ventured protest Garrity returned scorn.
“Nonsense! It’s glad I am of your company, Parson; and what’s mine is my friends’ while I have it. Would ye not accept a bit of hospitality in the spirit it’s given?”
Venable assented. He was beginning to go to pieces physically and mentally, although he did not realize it. He was moving in a haze of events, scarce conscious what was passing around him. After the noon meal there were a few drinks, and quite a number of men who drank amazing quantities of raw liquor and who talked loudly about things that had to do with the sea.
Quite vaguely, Venable gathered that his friend Garrity was being commiserated for being tied to the John Ferguson, which appeared to be the name of Garrity’s steamer. It seemed that the Ferguson was chartered to Japanese, who were sending general merchandise to Dairen and Tientsin by her. At the latter port she was to take over certain Japanese officers, and Garrity firmly announced his intention of leaving her on the spot if this were done.
“Thank the good Lord,” quoth he, “they’ll not be able to do me out o’ me wages, either! ’Twas at Tientsin I signed on, and it’s there I’ll end, most like!”
There was talk of ports from Africa to Falmouth, and it was not the sort of talk that Eric Venable had been used to hearing from traveled people. It went deeper, this talk; it reached into the hard ground-pan of life—tales of meat and drink, of women and men, of gross things and great things. Through all of it ran a strong and rank individualism—the deeds of such an one, the way a man had done such a thing, the impressions of the first person alone. It was primitive stuff. Venable did not understand it altogether, but he drank it in avidly none the less. It took him back to his younger days, when among the woodsmen he had gained the iron physique which still marked him out among men.
Afterward, Garrity dragged him forth to view San Francisco. They tramped Market Street, viewed the Fairmont and Palace hotels from the outside, and finally took a car out to Golden Gate Park. There they spent hours, ranging from the band concert to the animals, and toward the heel of the afternoon started for home again, worn out.
AS they neared the park gates they passed a jam of automobiles, held up by a car with a stalled engine. A woman in one of the automobiles caught sight of the two men as they went past, and she leaned forward, staring at them. Her face, although muffled in rich furs, showed itself as a strong, womanly face, starred by sea-gray eyes and slightly marked by a faint red weal across the left cheek.
Garrity sensed the stare, turned and saw the woman. He saw that she was devouring the figure of Venable with her gaze; so fiercely eager were her eyes that he knew his companion had been recognized.
“There’s a woman back there looking as if she knew ye,” he said to Venable, a moment later. “Want to stop? In an auto, she is.”
Venable shivered a trifle, then quickened his pace.
“No,” he answered. “Of course not! What did she look like?”
Garrity described her with some accuracy, but the image conveyed little to Venable’s mind. He had entirely forgotten the strange woman who had called upon him the day before he left home. His disclaimer drew a puzzled frown from Garrity.
On their way downtown the engineer was silent, occasionally giving Venable odd sidelong glances of which the latter was unconscious. Indeed, he hardly spoke until they were downtown, when he proffered a request.
“Will ye have a drink, and then step around to the shippin’ office with me? There’s a bit o’ paper there I’d like to have ye sign, if ye don’t mind. After that, supper! We’ll meet a couple o’ the boys to-night, I expect. To-morry’s Friday, and me last day, bad luck to it! Praise be, we’d not be leavin’ until after the midnight, which will take off the curse.”
Venable assented. Garrity took him to Pisco John’s, and they had not one drink but three of subtle Peruvian punch; after that, Venable’s recollections were very hazy. He went to a dingy little office with his companion, sat through a lot of talk, listened to some droned reading, and shakily affixed his signature to a paper.
He did remember meeting a queer man that night, a hulking fellow named Stormalong, or at least with that title—a black-browed giant who hailed Garrity as an old comrade. And there lingered in his brain something he heard Garrity telling this Stormalong:
“Mind ye, now, I don’t want to be seein’ him for a week out at least, maybe more! But I’ll want ye to handle him gentle. Mind that! If ye have no bowels o’ mercy, then by heaven I’ll make the old ship a livin’ hell for ye, man! I mean what I’m sayin’, Stormalong.”
The hulking giant gave Garrity a merry grin, and nodded as he lifted his glass.
“To the Parson’s health!” he cried. “Drink deep!”
Venable did not understand at all.
3. At Sea
CHAPTER III
At Sea
VENABLE awoke to a racking headache, a violent nausea and a nerve-shattering need of morphia. His box of white powders was gone. This discovery startled him into immediate wakefulness.
He found his surroundings woefully strange. He was in a bunk that heaved oddly; everything around him