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The Underdog

F >> F. Hopkinson Smith >> The Underdog




Then the first officer walked down the deck to where I stood, followed
by a huddle of seamen who began unrolling a rope ladder.

"You're right," I heard an officer answer a passenger. "It's no fit
weather to take a pilot. Captain wouldn't have stopped for any other
boat but No. 11. But those fellows out there don't know what
weather is."

The bit of driftwood now developed into a yawl. The yellow dot broadened
and lengthened to the semblance of a man standing erect and unbuttoning
his oil-skins as he looked straight at the steamer rolling port-holes
under, the rope ladder flopping against her side. Then came a quick
twist of the oars, a sudden lull as the yawl shot within a boat's length
of the rope ladder, and with the spring of a cat the man in oil-skins
landed with both feet on its lower rung, and the next instant he was
over the steamer's rail and on her deck beside me.

I thought I knew that spring, even before I saw his face or got hold of
his hand.

It was Captain Bob.

As I look at him now, sitting in my office-chair, the smoke of the cigar
curling about his bronzed, weather-tanned face, my eye taking in his
slim waist, slender thighs, and long, sinewy arms and hands that have
served him so well all his life, I can hardly believe that twenty years
have passed over his head since we worked together on Shark Ledge. But
for the marks chalked on his temples by the Old Man with the Hour-glass
and the few tally-scores of hard work crossing the corners of his mouth
and eyes, he has the same external appearance as in the old days. Even
these indexes of advancing years are lost when he throws his head up and
laughs one of his spontaneous, ringing laughs that fills my office full
of sunshine, illumining it for hours after he has gone.

"This pilotin' 's pretty rough sometimes," Captain Bob continued between
the puffs of smoke, "but it ain't nothin' to the old days. When I look
back on it all, seems to me as if we was out o' our heads most o' the
time. I didn't know it then, but 'twas true all the same. Think now o'
layin' the Screamer broadside on that stone pile at Shark Ledge,
unloadin' them stone with nothin' but a couple o' spar buoys to keep 'er
off. Wonder I didn't leave 'er bones there. Would if I hadn't knowed
every stick o' timber in 'er and jest what she could stagger under."

"But she was a good sea-boat," I interpolated. "The Screamer was always
the pride of the work."

"None better. You'd a-thought so if you'd been with us that night off
Hatteras; we layin' to, hatches battened down. I never see it blow wuss.
It came out o' the nor'west 'bout dark, and 'fore mornin' I tell ye it
was a-humpin' things. We started with a pretty decent set o' sails, new
eyelets rove in and new clew lines, but, Lord love ye, we hadn't taken
old Hatteras into consideration. Bill Nevins, my engineer, and a
landsman who was to work the h'istin' engine, looked kind 'er peaked
when what was left of the jib come rattlin' down on his fo'c's'le hatch,
but I says to him, 'the Screamer's all right, Billy, so she don't strike
nothin' and so long's we can keep the water out 'er. Can't sink 'er any
more'n an empty five-gallon ker'sene can with the cork in. We'll lay
'round here till mornin' and then set a signal. Something'll come along
pretty soon.' Sure 'nough, 'long come a coaler bound for Charleston.
She see us a-wallowin' in the trough and our mast thrashin' for all it
was worth.

"'What d'ye want?' the skipper says, when he got within hail.

"'Some sail-needles and a ball o' twine,' I hollered back; 'we got
everything else.' You should just a-heard him cuss--" and one of Captain
Bob's laughs rang through the room. "Them's two things I'd
forgot--didn't think o' them in fact till the mainsheet give 'way.

"Well, he chucked 'em aboard with another cuss. I hadn't no money to pay
no salvage. All we wanted was them needles and a little elbow-grease and
gumption. So we started in, and 'fore night, she still a-thrashin', I'd
fixed up the sails, patched the eyelets with a pair o' boot-legs, and
was off again."

"What were you doing off Hatteras, Captain Bob?" I asked. I was leading
him on, professing ignorance of minor details, so that I could again
enjoy the delight of hearing him tell it.

"Oh, that was another one o' them crazy jobs I used to take when I
didn't know no better. Why, I guess you remember 'bout that wreckin' job
off Hamilton, Bermuda?"

He was settled in his chair now, his legs crossed, his head down between
his shoulders.

"You see, after I quit work on the 'ledge,' I was put to 't for a job,
and there come along a feller by the name of Lamson--the agent of an
insurance company, who wanted me to go to Bermuda and git up some
forty-two pieces o' white I-talian marble that had been wrecked three
years before off the harbor of Hamilton. They ran from three to
twenty-one tons each, he said. So off I started with the Screamer. He
didn't say, though, that the wreck lay on a coral reef eight miles from
land, or I'd stayed to home in New Bedford.

"When I got to where the wreck lay you couldn't see a thing 'bove water.
So I got into an old divin' dress we had aboard--one we used on the
Ledge--oiled up the pump and went down to look her over, and by Jimmy
Criminy, not a scrap o' that wreck was left 'cept the rusty iron work
and that part o' the bottom plankin' of the vessel that lay under the
stones! Everything else was eaten up with the worms! Funniest-lookin'
place you ever see. The water was just as clear as air, and I could see
every one o' them stone plain as daylight--looked like so many big lumps
o' white sugar scattered 'round--and they _were_ big! One of 'em weighed
twenty-one tons, and none on 'em weighed less'n five. Of course I knew
how big they were 'fore I started, and I'd fitted up the Screamer
special to h'ist 'em, but I didn't know I'd have to handle 'em twice;
once from where they laid on that coral reef in twenty-eight feet o'
water and then unload 'em on the Navy Yard dock, above Hamilton, and
then pick 'em up agin, load 'em 'board the Screamer, and unload 'em
once more 'board a Boston brig they'd sent down for 'em--one o' them
high-waisted things 'bout sixteen feet from the water-line to the rail.
That was the wust part of it."

Captain Bob stopped, felt in his pocket for a match, found it empty,
rose from his chair, picked one from a match-safe on my desk, lighted
his cigar, and resumed his seat again. I have found it wisest to let him
have his own way in times like these. If I interrupt the flow of his
talk it may stop for the day, and I lose the best part of the enjoyment
of having him with me.

"Pretty decent chaps, them Englishmen"--puff-puff--the volume of smoke
was all right once more. "One Monday morning I ran out of the Navy Yard
dock within sight of the wreck. I had been layin' up over Sunday to get
out of the way of a norther, when I luffed a little too soon, and bang
went my bowsprit and scraped off about three feet of red paint from the
end of the dock. One of the watchmen was on the string-piece, and saw
the whole thing. 'Come ashore,' he says, 'and go and see the Admiral;
you can't scrape no paint off this dock with _my_ permission.'

"Well, I waited four hours for his nibs. When he come to his office
quarters he was 'bout up to my arms, red as a can-buoy, and white hair
stickin' up straight as a shoe-brush on his head. He looked cross enough
to bite a tenpenny nail in two.

"'Ran into the dock, did ye--ran into Her Majesty's dock, and ye had
room enough to turn a fleet in! Do you think we paint these docks for
the fun of havin' you lubbers scrape it off? You'll pay for paintin' it
over, sir--that's what you'll do, or I'll libel your boat, and send a
file of marines down and tie her up,' and away he went up the dock to
his office again.

"'Gosh!' I said to myself. 'Guess I'm in a fix,' The boys stood around
and heard every word, and I tell ye it warn't no joke. As to money,
there warn't a ten-dollar bill in the crew. I'd spent every cent I could
rake and scrape to fit the Screamer out, and the boys were workin' on
shares, and nobody was to get any money until the last stone--that big
twenty-one-ton feller--was 'board the brig. Then I could go to the
agents in Hamilton and draw two-thirds of my contract. That
twenty-one-ton chunk, I forgot to tell ye, I had picked up the day
before, and it was then aboard the Screamer, and we was on our way down
to Hamilton, where the brig lay, when her nose scraped off the
Admiral's paint.

"It did look kind o' nasty for us, and no mistake. One day more, and
we'd 'a' been through and had our money.

"'Go up and see him,' said the watchman. 'He gits cool sometimes as
sudden as he gits hot.' So Bill Nevins, my engineer, who was workin' the
h'ister, and I went up. The old feller was sittin' on the piazza in a
big rattan chair.

"'Come aboard,' he hollered, soon's he see Bill and me a-standin' in
the garden-path with our hats off, lookin' like two jailbirds about to
be sentenced. Well, we got up on the porch, and he looked us all
over, and said:

"'Have you got that money with you?' 'No,' I said, 'I haven't,' and I
ups and tells him just how we was fixed, and how we had worked, and how
short we was of grub and clothes and money, and then I said, 'an' now I
come to tell ye that I hit the dock fair and square, and it was all my
fault, and that I'll pay whatever you say is right when I put this stone
'board and get my pay.'

"He looked me all over--I tell you I was pretty ragged; nothin' but a
shirt and pants on, and they was almighty tore up, especially where most
everybody wants to be covered--and Bill was no better. We'd 'bout used
up our clo'es so that sail-needles nor nothin' else wouldn't a-done us
no good, and we had no time nor no spare cash to go ashore and
get others.

"While I was a-talkin', the old feller's eyes was a-borin' into
mine--then he roared out, 'No, sir; you won't!--you won't pay one d--d
shillin', sir. You'll go back to your work, and if there's anything you
want in the way of grub or supplies send here for it and you shall have
it. Good-day.' I tell ye he was a rum one."

"Was that the last time you saw him?" I asked.

"Not much. When we got 'longside the brig the next day, her Cap'n see
that twenty-one-ton stone settin' up on the deck of the Screamer,
lookin' like a big white church, and he got so scared he went ashore and
started a yarn that we couldn't lift that stone sixteen feet in the air,
and over her rail and down into the hold, and that we'd smash his brig,
and it got to the Admiral's ears, and down come two English engineers,
in cork helmets and white jackets and gold buttons, spic' an' span as if
they'd stepped out of the chart-room of a yacht. One was a colonel and
the other was a major. They were both just back from India, and
natty-lookin' chaps as you ever saw. And clear stuff all the way
through--you could tell that before they opened their mouths.

"I was on the deck of the Screamer, overhaulin' the fall, surrounded by
most of the crew, gettin' ready to h'ist the stone, when I first saw
'em. They and the Cap'n were away up above me, leanin' over the rail,
lookin' at the stone church that some o' the boys was puttin' the chains
'round. Bill Nevins was down in the fo'c's'le, firin' up, with the
safety-valve set at 125 pounds. He had half a keg o' rosin and a can o'
kerosene to help out with in case we wanted a few pounds extry in the
middle of the tea-party. Pretty soon I heard one of 'em holler:

"'Ahoy! Is the Captain aboard?'

"'He is,' I said, steppin' out. 'Who wants him?'

"'Colonel Throckmorton,' he says, 'and Major Severn.'

"'Come aboard, gentlemen,' I says.

"So down they come, the Colonel first, one foot at a time touchin' the
ladder, the Major following. When he reached the deck and wheeled around
to look at me you just ought to have seen his face.

"'Are you the Captain?' he says, and he looked me over 'bout as the
admiral had done.

"'I be,' I said, 'Captain Robert Brandt, of Pigeon Cove, Cape Ann,
master and owner of the sloop Screamer, at your service'--I kep' front
side to him. 'What can I do for you?'

"'Well, Captain,' he began, 'perhaps it is none of our business, but the
Captain of the brig here,' and he pointed up above him, 'has asked us to
look over your tackle and see whether it is safe enough to lift this
stone. He's afraid you'll drop it and smash his deck in. Since I've seen
it, and what you propose to lift it with, I've told him there's no
danger, for you'll never get it off the deck. We are both officers of
the Engineering Corps, and it is our business to know about
such things.'

"'What makes you think the Screamer won't lift it?' I asked.

"'Well,' says the Colonel, looking aloft, 'her boom ain't big enough,
and that Manila rope is too light. I should think it wasn't over three
and three-quarter-inch rope. We all know fifteen tons is enough weight
for that size rope, even with a fourfold purchase, and we understand
you say this stone weighs twenty-one.'

"'I'm sorry, gentlemen,' I said, 'and if you are worried about it you'd
better go 'board the brig, for I'm about ready to pick the stone up and
land her.'

"Well, the Major said he guessed he would, if I was determined to pull
the mast out of my sloop, but the Colonel said he'd stay by and see
it out.

"Just then Bill Nevins stuck his head out of the fo'c's'le. He was
blacker than I was; all smeared with grease and stripped to his waist.
It was hot enough anywhere, but it was sizzlin' down where he was.

"'All ready, Cap'n,' he says. 'She's got every pound she can carry.'

"I looked everything over--saw the butt of the boom was playin' free in
the wooden socket, chucked in a lot of tallow so it could move easy,
give an extra twist to the end of the guy, and hollered to Bill to go
ahead. She went chuckety-chuck, chuckety-chuck for half a dozen turns;
then she slowed down soon as she struck the full weight, and began to
pant like an old horse climbin' a hill. All this time the Colonel was
callin' out from where he stood near the tiller: 'She'll never lift it,
Captain--she'll never lift it.'

"Next come a scrapin' 'long the deck, and the big stone swung clear with
a foot o' daylight 'tween it and the deck. Then up she went, crawlin'
slowly inch by inch, till she reached the height of the brig's rail.

"Now come the wust part. I knew that when I gave orders to slack away
the guy-rope so as to swing the stone aboard the brig, the Screamer
would list over and dip her rail in the water. So I made a jump for the
rope ladder and shinned up the brig's side so as to take a hand in
landin' the stone properly on the brig's deck so as to save her beams
and break the jar when I lowered the stone down. I had one eye now on
the stone and the other on the water, which was curling over the
Screamer's rail and makin' for the fo'c's'le hatch. Should the water
pour down this hatch, out would go my fires and maybe up would come
her b'iler.

"'Ease away on that guy and lower away easy,' I hollered to Bill. The
stone dropped to within two feet of the brig's deck and swung back and
for'ards. Then I heard Bill yell. I was expectin' it.

"'Water's comin' in!'

"I leaned over the brig's rail and could see the slop of the sea combin'
over the Screamer's fo'c's'le hatch. Bill's fires _would_ be out the
next minute. There was just two feet now 'tween the stone and the deck
where I stood--too much to drop; but there was nothing else to do, and
I hollered:

"'All gone.'

"Down she come with a run, struck the big timbers on the deck, and by
Jiminy! ye could a-heard that old brig groan from stem to stern.

"I jumped on top of the stone and threw off the shackles, and the
Screamer came up on an even keel as easy as a duck ridin' the water.

"You just oughter seen the Colonel when the old boat righted herself,
and he had climbed up and stood 'longside the Major a-talkin' it over.

"Pretty soon he came up to where I was a-gettin' the tackle ready to
lower the stone in the hold, and he says:

"'Well, you made your word good, Cap'n, but I want to tell you that
nobody but an American could a-done it. It would cost me my commission
if I should try to do what you have done.'

"'Well, gentlemen,' I says, 'what was wrong about it? What's the matter
with the Screamer's rig?'

"'Well, the size of the rope for one thing,' says the Colonel, 'and the
boom.'

"'Well, p'haps you ain't looked it over,' I says, and I began
unravelling an end that stuck out near the shackle. 'If you'll look
close here'--and I held the end of the rope up--'you'll see that every
stran' of that rope is made of the best Manila yarn, and laid as smooth
as silk. I stood over that rope myself when it was put together. Old Sam
Hanson of New Bedford laid up that rope, and there ain't no better
nowhere. I knew what it had to do, and I warn't goin' to take no chances
of its not doin' it right. As to that boom, I want to tell ye that I
picked that boom out o' about two hundred sticks in Tom Carlin's
shipyard, in Stonington, and had it scraped and ironed just to please
me. There ain't a rotten knot in it from butt to finish, and mighty few
of any other kind. That stick's _growed right_--that's what's the matter
with it; and it bellies out in the middle, just where it ought to be
thickest.'

"Well, they didn't say nothin' for a while, 'cept to walk round the
stone once or twice and slap it with their hands, as if they wanted to
make sure it was all there. My men were all over it now, and we was
gettin' things in shape to finish up. I tell ye the boys were mighty
glad, and so was I. It had been a long pull of six months' work, and we
were out of most everything, and as soon as the big stone was down in
the brig's hold, and warped back and stowed with the others--and that
wouldn't take but a day or two more--we would clean up, get our money,
and light out for home.

"All this time the Colonel and the Major were buzzin' each other off by
the other rail. Pretty soon they both come over to where I stood, and
the Colonel reached out his hand.

"'Cap'n Brandt,' he says--and he had a look in his face as if he meant
it--and he did, every word of it--'it would give Major Severn and myself
great pleasure if you would dine with us to-night at the Canteen. The
Admiral is coming, and some brother officers who would be pleased to
know you.'

"Well, I was struck all of a heap for a minute, knowing what kind of
clo'es I had to go in, and so I says:

"'Well, gentlemen, that's very nice of you, and I see you mean it, and
if I had anything fittin' to wear there's nothin' I would like better;
but ye see how I'm fixed,' and I lifted my arms so he could see a few
holes that he might a-missed before, and I motioned to some other parts
of my get-up that needed repairs.

"'That don't make no difference, Cap'n, what kind of clo'es you come in.
We dine at eight o'clock.'

"Of course I knew I couldn't go, and I didn't want 'em to think I
intended to go when I didn't, so I says, rather positive-like:

"'Very much obliged, gentlemen, but I guess I'll have to get you to
count me out this time.' I knowed I warn't fittin' to sit at anybody's
table, especially if that old Admiral was comin'.

"The Colonel see I was in earnest, and he stepped up, quick-like, and
laid his hand on my shoulder.

"'Captain Brandt,' he says, 'we ain't worryin' 'bout your clo'es, and
don't you worry. You can come in your shirt, you can come in your socks,
or you can come without one damned rag--only come!'"

The Captain stopped, shook the ashes from his cigar, slowly raised
himself to his feet, and reached for his hat.

"Did you go, Captain?" I asked.

The Captain looked at me for a moment with one of those quizzical
glances which so often light up his face when something amuses him, and
said, as he blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling:

"Well, I didn't forget my manners. When it got dark--dark, mind ye--I
went up and sat on the piazza and had a smoke with 'em--Admiral and all.
But I didn't go to dinner--not in them pants."



A PROCESSION OF UMBRELLAS


I

This all happened on the banks of the Seine, above St. Cloud--above
Suresne, in fact, or rather its bridge--the new one that has pieced out
the old one with the quaint stone arches that we love.

A silver-gray haze, a pure French gray, hung over the river, softening
the sky-line of the near-by hills, and making ghosts of a row of
gendarme poplars guarding the opposite bank.

On my side of the stream wandered a path close to the water's edge--so
close that I could fill my water-cups without leaving my
sketching-stool. Over this path, striped with shadows, big trees
towered, their gnarled branches interlaced above my head. On my right,
rising out of a green sward cleared of all underbrush, towered other
trees, their black trunks sharp-cut against the haze. In the distance,
side by side with the path, wound the river, still asleep, save where it
flashed into waves of silver laughter at the touch of some frolicsome
puff of wind. Elsewhere, although the sun was now hours high, it dozed
away, nestling under the overhanging branches making their morning
toilet in its depths. But for these long, straight flashes of silver
light glinting between the tree-trunks, one could not tell where the
haze ended and the river began.

As I worked on, my white umbrella tilted at the exact angle so that my
palette, hand, and canvas would be hidden from the inquisitive sun, a
group of figures emerged from a clump of low trees, and made their way
across the green sward--the man in an ivory-black coat, evidently a
priest, even at that distance; the woman in a burnt-umber dress with a
dot of Chinese white for a head--probably a cap; and the third, a girl
of six or eight in a brown madder dress and yellow-ochre hat.

An out-door painter, while at work, tumbles everything that crosses his
path or comes within range of his vision into the crucible of his
palette. The most majestic of mountains and the softest of summer clouds
are to him but flat washes of cobalt, and the loveliest of dimples on
the fairest of cheeks but a shadow-tone, and a high light made real by
pats of indigo and vermilion.

So in the three figures went among my trees, the priest in the
background against a mass of yellow light--black against yellow is
always a safe contrast; the burnt-umber woman breaking the straight line
of a trunk, and the child--red on green--intensifying a slash of zinober
that illumined my own grassy sward.

Then my interest in the group ceased. The priest, no doubt, was taking
his sister, or his aunt, or his mother, with their own or somebody
else's little girl, out for an airing, and they had come at the precise
moment when I had begun to long for just such a collection of people;
and now they could take themselves off and out of my perspective,
particularly the reddish-brown girl who kept on dancing in the sunniest
places, running ahead of the priest and the woman, lighting up and
accentuating half a dozen other corners of the wood interior before me
in as many minutes, and making me regret before the paint was half dry
on her own little figure that I had not waited for a better composition.

Then she caught sight of my umbrella.

She came straight toward me with that slowing of pace as she approached
the nearer, her curiosity getting the better of her timidity--quite as a
fawn or a little calf would have done, attracted by some bit of color or
movement which was new to it. The brown madder dress I now saw was
dotted with little spots of red, like sprays of berries; the
yellow-ochre hat was wound with a blue ribbon, and tied with a bow on
one side. I could see, too, that she wore slippers, and that her hair
was platted in two pig-tails, and hung down her back, the ends fastened
with a ribbon that matched the one on her hat.

She stood quite still, her face perfectly impassive, her little hands
clasped together, the brim of her hat shading her eyes, which looked
straight at my canvas.

I gave no sign of her presence. It is dangerous to break down the
reserve of silence, which is often the only barrier between an out-door
painter and the crowds that surround him. Persisted in, it not only
compels their respect, even to the lowering of their voices and the
tip-toeing in and out of the circle about you, but shortens the time of
their visits, a consummation devoutly to be wished. So I worked on in
silence, never turning toward this embodiment of one of Boutet do
Monvel's drawings, whose absorbed face I could see out of one corner
of my eye.

Then a ripple of laughter broke the stillness, and a little finger was
thrust out, stopping within a hair's-breadth of the dot of Chinese
white, still wet, which topped my burnt-umber figure.

"Très drôle, Monsieur!"

The voice was sweeter than the laugh. One of those flute-like,
bird-throated voices that children often have who live in the open all
their lives, chasing butterflies or gathering wild flowers.

Then came a halloo from the greensward. The priest was coming toward us,
calling out, as he walked:

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