University of San Francisco - USF Don Yearbook (San Francisco, CA)

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24 THE I ON ATI AX told them. They laughed in return. ‘Just the man we want’, they said. ‘We want an American merely for appearance’ sake. We’ll do the business. You sign papers and draw your salary.’ They did the business and me in the bargain. They ruined the bank and pocketed the profits. Hundreds of poor Dagos lost their all. The revolutionary funds of the Carbonari vanished into air. Imagine a hornet’s nest. One of the directors called on me. ‘You better skeep’, he said, ‘tonight.’ ‘I’ll stay’, I replied. ‘Yes’, he said with a broad smile, ‘if the Carbonari catch, you stay.’ You know now why I would never ship a Dago.” The mate looked grave. “Have they ever made an attempt?” he asked. “More than once”, the captain replied, “the last time in Calcutta. One of the assailants was of the very build of that Dago yonder, but his beard was thick and bushy. If that fellow had a beard, I’d say he was the same. Beards can be shaved.” The distant sail no longer interested the Italian. The workings of his heart were no longer reflected in his face. lie rose, stretched himself, turned and quietly went his way, respectfully saluting captain and mate as he passed them, the model seaman of the Lady Louise. III. It was a gray, stormy afternoon of late December. The Callao-bound bark, Lady Louise, with decks awash, was laboring in the throes of a cold Antarctic storm. With every spar bending, and the rigging shrieking in the gale, the little craft struggled on, now poised atop of a green mountain of water, now scudding down long, sullen slopes that seemed half a mile in length, to disappear seemingly lost in the valley beneath. Captain Bellnay and the mate scanned the horizon with anxious eyes. Suddenly the sharp voice of the captain was heard above the storm. “How’s the course, helm?”

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THE DERELICT 23 the galleys of Palermo! They say he was pardoned—bah they always say these things. How often must he have cursed those whiskers that sent him there—whiskers that I wore to fasten my deeds on him and get revenge! Let him eat his heart out.” The eyes of the Italian glistened. “He is there for life. I need not worry.” The scene in his mind had changed and brought him back to his reception on the Lady Louise, but his eyes still kept their fire. “Dago”, he muttered, “Dago. So they call us when they rob 11s. We are fine people, nice people, when we toil and slave and put our money in their banks—and when they fleece us—Dagos. But he knows we are on his track.” His eyes were fixed intently on the distant sail. The Italian had proved himself an excellent seaman. Quiet, prompt, respectful, he was possessed of a strength and endurance that seemed out of all proportion to his frame. He was a favorite with the mate and with the crew. No one dared impose upon him. He troubled no one. “Fine seaman, that”, said the mate, as he noticed the gaze of the captain intently fixed upon the quiet figure by the rail. “Been a great help to me. I ’m glad you took him.” “It was the mistake of my life”, said the captain slowly. But we are all fools sometimes. It is the last voyage for one or the other or both.” “Tut, tut, Cap’n”, said the mate. “I fear that you allow your dark fancies to get the better of you. I can’t for the life of me see why you dislike him.” “If your life were forfeited”, said the captain, “forfeited innocently;—but you may as well hear the story. Perhaps you can help me. There is an incident in my history of which I have never hitherto spoken. I was at one time the president of an Italian bank in New York. You will think it strange. So it was from many points of view, but not from one. That was my undoing. When the offer was made me, I laughed at the idea. I knew nothing of banking. So I

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THE DERELICT 25 “North by west, sir.” “Bring her west by south. Run up the staysails, men.” Each man sprang forward to do his duty. The wind caught the big body of the Swede and for a time he could make no headway. Then he stopped. Every moment counted. The sail was loosed. “We can do by ourselves”, sang out a melodious voice. “Pull.” In desperation the men obeyed. What strength there was in those arms no one had suspected. The sail rose, up—halfway—yes; they would make it, though the biting cold ate into their muscles, and the snow that had begun to fall made their foothold less secure. Would the ropes hold? IIow they tugged and strained! Hold? As if the storm had hitherto been toying with them, now it bore down upon them with all its fury; the sails disappeared into the cloud of driving snow over the lee rail, as a sudden blast blew them to shreds. In a blinding swirl of snow, the green seas were charging over the weather rail and spilling out of the lee scuppers, while the icy waves snarled round the seamen’s legs. Every one from the mate down was mustered to rig preventer stays to the bowsprit. The helmsman lashed his wheel to bear a hand. The cook was sent out on the bowsprit with the rest to assist in hitching a heavy hawser around the end of a spar. At this moment, as if rejoicing to have trapped them, the sea lifted itself up in a mountainous, seething wall to windward, and having gathered in itself the fury of a hundred waves, it swept down with a hideous roar and crashed headlong on the ship. “Hang on!” bellowed the captain. “Hang on!” “Hang on to what?” The cry was the cry of instinctive desire,—not of reason. The sea in hoarse merriment laughed outright. Those men might have been flies, so easily did it do its work. One alone by the steel-like tenacity of his grip and his more than human agility in avoiding the brunt of the wave remained, one dark and dripping object clinging desperately to a bobstay. Perhaps, too, the demons of the