CHAPTER IV.

THE ADVENT OF MR. O'ROURKE AND HIS SERVANT

The company of the _Laura_ was small and undistinguished. The captain was a Nova Scotian, big and red, who had, once upon a time, skippered a full-rigged ship, and who still sighed at the memory of it as he looked along the narrow, dirty decks of his present craft. The mate was a New Yorker, with a master's certificate and a head full of stories of the prowess of the American Navy. The chief engineer had once been a good man in his profession, but the whiskey of his mother country had surely and slowly brought him down to his present berth. The half-dozen passengers were of little interest to Hemming, and the days dragged for him, sickening with memories. In self-defence he reverted to fiction, and even attempted verse.

One morning, in the Gulf of Mexico, the _Laura_ was signalled by an open boat with a rubber blanket for sail. The engines slowed. Hemming was on the bridge at the time, and turned the captain's glass upon the little craft.

"What do you make of it, sir?" inquired the skipper, from the door of the tiny chart-room below.

"She looks like a ship's boat," replied Hemming. "The sail is rigged square, with a boat-hook and an oar for yards, and has a hole in the middle; it's a poncho, I think. There's a nigger forward, waving a shirt, and a white man aft, smoking."

The captain hurried up to the bridge and took the glass. After aiming it at the bobbing stranger, he turned to Hemming.

"My boat," he said, "and the same damn fool aboard her."

"Your boat?" inquired Hemming.

The mariner glared, with angry eyes, across the glinting water. Suddenly his face cleared. "I win," he cried. "I bet him ten dollars he'd have to get out inside six weeks, and by cracky, so he has!"

"Who is he?" asked the Englishman.

"He's Mr. O'Rourke, the man who's lookin' for trouble," replied the big Nova Scotian.

"What's he doing with your boat, and why didn't he take a decent sail while he was about it?" Hemming asked.

"He had a decent enough sail when I saw him last," explained the skipper, "and I don't mean to say that he's a thief. He paid for the boat, right enough, though he bargained pretty close. He wanted to see more of Cuba, you know, but the Spaniards wouldn't have anything more to do with him, because of something he wrote, so he just got me to steam in five weeks ago, and let him off in the port life-boat. Now he's back again, with a nigger."

"What's his game?" asked Hemming.

"Search me,--unless it's just trouble," said the mariner, returning the glass and hurrying down to the deck.

By this time the _Laura_ was rolling lazily. The captain ordered a man to stand ready with a line; the poncho was lowered, aboard the adventurous rowboat, and the nigger manned the oars; the white man in the stern sheets stood up and raised his Panama hat, and the passengers along the _Laura's_ rail replied with cheers. The captain leaned far over the side. "What about that bet?" he shouted. The stranger drew his hand from a pocket of his ragged ducks and held something aloft,--something crumpled and green. Then he regained his soaring seat, and gripped the tiller.

The captain lifted a beaming countenance to Hemming on the bridge. "That's the first white man who ever got out of Cuba with ten dollars," he bawled. Evidently the captain did not consider Spaniards as white men.

The line was thrown, and went circling and unfolding through the air until it fell into the boat. The ladder was unlashed and dropped over the _Laura's_ side. In a minute O'Rourke and the pacifico were on the deck, and in another minute the port life-boat was back on its davits. O'Rourke was warmly welcomed aboard. Even the chief engineer appeared from below to shake his hand. The captain hurried him to the chart-room, and beckoned to Hemming from the door. When Hemming entered, he found the newcomer lying full length on the locker, with a glass of whiskey and water in his left hand, and the other under his head. He got stiffly to his feet upon the Englishman's entrance, and, after shaking hands cordially, lay down again.

"Now what do you think of that?" queried the skipper, glancing from O'Rourke to the other.

O'Rourke laughed good-naturedly, but with a note of weariness. "I must confess it was not exactly a Sunday-school picnic," he said, "and a chap's insides get fearfully squirmy on a diet of sugar-cane and a few random plantains."

The skipper, who had been carefully, even lovingly, mixing drinks in two more glasses, eyed O'Rourke severely.

"You'd better get married, and give up them tomfool actions," he said, "or some fine day the Spaniards will catch up to you, and then,--well, you'll be sorry, that's all."

"They caught up to several of our party this time," remarked O'Rourke, casually.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Hemming, straightening his eye-glass.

The man with the Irish name and non-committal accent turned his head on the locker, and smiled at the other adventurer.

"They were not particular pals of mine," he said, reassuringly, "so I didn't stay to inquire their fate."

"You're fool enough to have stayed," remarked the skipper.

Hemming stared at the free and easy language of the mariner, and at O'Rourke's good-natured way of taking it, for he had not yet become entirely accustomed to the ways of the world outside the army, and this O'Rourke, though unshaven and in tatters, was certainly a gentleman, by Hemming's standards. The master of the _Laura_ may have read something of this in his passenger's face, for he turned to him and said: "Mr. O'Rourke and I are pretty good friends. We've played ashore together, and we've sailed together more than once, and when I call him a fool, why, it's my way of saying he's the bangest-up, straight-grained man I know. I never call him a fool before his inferiors, and if it came to any one else calling him anything, why--" and he slapped his big red hand on the chart-room table with a blow that rocked the bottles.

"Shut up," said O'Rourke, blushing beneath his bristles and tan, "or Captain Hemming will take me for as silly an ass as he takes you."

"Not at all," began Hemming, awkwardly, and, when the others roared with laughter, he hid his confusion by draining his glass. He had never before been laughed at quite so violently, but he found, rather to his surprise, that he liked it.

After lunch, O'Rourke (whose full name was Bertram St. Ives O'Rourke) retired to his stateroom, and did not reappear until dinner-time. He looked better then, clean shaven, and attired in one of the skipper's extra warm-weather suits. He filled the borrowed clothes well enough in length and in breadth of shoulder, but confessed, at table, that the trousers lapped twice around his waist. During the simple meal, the conversation was all of the internal disturbance of Cuba, and all the passengers, as well as the skipper, seemed interested in the matter and well informed of recent incidents. Hemming listened keenly, now and then putting a question. O'Rourke told a part of his adventures during his last stay in the island, and sketched, in vivid and well-chosen words, the daily life of the patriots. It was not as romantic as Hemming had hoped.

"It's a low sort of fighting on both sides,--not the kind you have mixed in," said O'Rourke to Hemming.

"I?" exclaimed Hemming, while the dusky passengers and burly skipper pricked up their ears.

"I saw your initials--H.H.--on your cigarette case," he explained, "and I have read some good things signed H.H., by an Englishman, on English army life, so of course I spotted you."

"I'm doing work for the New York News Syndicate now," said Hemming.

After dinner, O'Rourke led the way to the chart-room. From the locker he produced a small typewriting machine. This he oiled, and set up on the table. The skipper winked at Hemming.

"I wish I'd smashed the danged thing while he was away," he said. O'Rourke paid not the slightest attention to this pleasantry, but inserted a sheet of paper, of which he had a supply stored in the same place of safety.

"Now," said he, seating himself on a camp-stool before the machine, "I don't mind how much you two talk, but I have some work to do."

"You, too?" laughed the Englishman.

"I'm only a free-lance," said O'Rourke, and, lighting a cigarette, he began clicking the keys. For more than an hour he worked steadily, while the skipper and Hemming sat side by side on the locker and told stories. The door was hooked open, and a fresh breeze kept the room cool, and circled the pungent smoke.

When Hemming turned in, he found that He could not sleep. His brain jumped and kept busy, in spite of him. Now he lived again his exciting days in Northern India. From this he flashed to the Norfolk tennis lawn, where Molly Travers listened again to his ardent vows. He turned over and tried to win himself to slumber by counting imaginary sheep. But that only seemed to suggest to his memory the care-free days of his youth. Again he built forts in the warm earth of the potting-house. Again he fled from the red-headed gardener, and stumbled into piled-up ranks of flowerpots, hurling them to destruction. Again he watched his father, in pink and spurs, trot down the avenue in the gold, rare sunlight of those days. Feeling that these good memories would carry him safely to the land of peace, he closed his eyes,--only to find his mind busy with that last day in London. He climbed swiftly from his berth, and, after slipping his feet into his shoes, ascended to the deck. He did not wait to change his pajamas for anything more conventional. There was not a breath of wind. The stars burned big and white; the water over the side flashed away in silver fire, and farther out some rolling fish broke its trail of flame; to starboard lay a black suggestion of land. Looking forward, he saw that the door of the chart-room stood open, emitting a warm flood of lamplight. He went up to the lower bridge, or half-deck, where the chart-room stood, and glanced within. The skipper lay on the locker, snoring peacefully, and O'Rourke still clicked at the typewriter. Hemming stole quietly in and poured himself a glass of water from the clay bottle on the rack.

"Don't let me disturb you," he said to the worker. "I'll just have a smoke to kill wakefulness."

"If you can't sleep," said O'Rourke, "just listen to this as long as your eyes will stay open."

He sorted over his pages of copy and began to read. His voice was low-pitched, and through it sounded the whispering of the steamer's passage across the rocking waters. The style was full of colour, and Hemming was keenly interested from start to finish. Not until the last page was turned over did O'Rourke look up.

"What! not asleep yet!" he exclaimed.

"That seems to me very fine," said Hemming, seriously, "and I should certainly take it for literature of an unusually high order if I did not know that journalists cannot write literature."

"Do you think it will do?" asked O'Rourke, modestly.

"My dear chap," replied Hemming, "it will do for anything,--for a book, or to carve on a monument. It's a dashed sight too good for any newspaper."

"It certainly wouldn't do for a newspaper," laughed the younger man. "Just imagine an editor with a blue pencil, loose on those descriptions of vegetation. When I do newspaper stuff, I throw in the blood and leave out the beauty. That is for _Griffin's Magazine_."

"Are you sure of your market?" asked the Englishman, wondering for even in England, _Griffin's_ was known for its quality.

"It was ordered," said O'Rourke, "and this will make the ninth article I have done for them within five years. After months of seeing and feeling things, I put the heart of it all, at one sitting, into a story for _Griffin's_. After that I cook my experiences and hard-earned knowledge into lesser dishes for lesser customers. Sometimes I even let it off in lyrics."

"You must flood the magazines," remarked Hemming, dryly.

"Not I. To begin with, I place a great deal of my work with publications of which you have never heard, and then, as I am young and very productive, I write under three names, using my own for only the things I wish to stand."

He arose and turned out the light, and to Hemming's amazement gray dawn was on the sea and the narrow decks, and on the morning wind came the odour of coffee.

"I think we are both good for a nap now," said O'Rourke. They left the master of the boat slumbering on his narrow couch, and went to their staterooms; and before Hemming fell asleep, with his face to the draft of the port, he thanked God in his heart for a new friend.