Read Ebook: The Devil's Admiral by Moore Frederick Ferdinand

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Ebook has 1496 lines and 71964 words, and 30 pages

CHAPTER

MISSIONARY AND RED-HEADED BEGGAR

We all have better memories for our brave moments than for the fear which threatened for a time to prove us cowards. The man who has faced death and says he was not afraid is either a fool or a liar; and, if only a liar, still a fool for telling himself that which he knows to be a lie. The bravery of the seaman is that he fears the sea and knows its ruthlessness and its ultimate victory, and accepts it as a part of his day's work. This is a sea-story.

The deep, bright red band on her funnel gave her a touch of coquetry, but she had the drabness of senility; she was worn out, and working, when she should have gone to the junk pile years before. But her very antiquity charmed me, for her scars and wrinkles told of hard service in the China Sea; and there was an air of comfort about her, such as one finds in an ancient house that has sheltered several generations.

I am quite sure that if Captain Riggs were still alive he would agree that the story should begin with my first sight of the missionary and the little red-headed man, so I will launch the narrative with an account of how I first met the Rev. Luther Meeker.

He was in the midst of a litter of nondescript baggage on the Manila mole when I came ashore from a rice-boat that had brought me across the China Sea from Saigon. The first glance marked him as a missionary, for he wore a huge crucifix cut out of pink shell, and as he hobbled about on the embankment it bobbed at the end of a black cord hung from his neck.

He was a thin old man, clad in duck, turning yellow with age. When he threw the helmet back it exposed a wrinkled brow and a baldish head, except for a few wisps of hair at the temples. He appeared to be of great age--a fossil, an animated mummy, a relic from an ancient graveyard; and the stoop of his lean shoulders accentuated these impressions. It was plain that the tropics were fast making an end of him.

He was whining querulously as I stepped ashore, and the first words I heard him say were:

"An organ! An organ! An organ in a cedarwood box! An organ in a cedarwood box, and the sign of the cross on the ends! Oh, why do you try my soul? Such stupidity! Such awful stupidity!"

The native porters were grinning at him as they simulated a frantic search for his organ in a cedarwood box, but they probably knew all the time where it was. He was surrounded by baskets and chests; and, if the crucifix were not enough to indicate his profession, black lettering on his possessions advertised him as "The Rev. Luther Meeker, London Evangelical Society." The multiplicity of labels proclaimed him a traveller known from Colombo to Vladivostok, and he must have been wandering over Asia for years, as his luggage was as ancient as himself.

Fighting my way out of the multitude on the river-bank, I gained the cable office near the customhouse and reported myself in Manila, bought all the newspapers I could to learn how the war was going in Manchuria, and to anticipate if possible where I might be ordered next.

I revelled in the noise and crowds as only one can after a week at sea. While I was on the way from Saigon the Russian armies might have been beaten or the Japanese fleet destroyed. There might be orders sending me anywhere, but I hoped that I would leave Manila for the Strait of Malacca to meet the Baltic fleet. What I feared most was the end of the war, for a war-correspondent without a war is deprived of his profession. I was young and ambitious, then, and seeking a journalistic reputation at the cable's mouth.

There was a letter in my coat-pocket which had been given to me in Saigon to deliver to the Russian consul in Manila. It was an errand for the cable-operator there, who had done me favours, and I was to leave it at the Hong-Kong-Shanghai Bank for the consul, who would call for it. That bank carried an expense account for me, so the delivery of the letter was of no trouble. The envelope was long and official-looking, and it fell to the floor of the bus as I clambered in.

Meeker picked it up and handed it to me, but for the instant he held it he read the address:

Russian Consul, Care Hong-Kong-Shanghai Bank, Manila Courtesy Mr. James A. Trenholm, Amalgamated Press

"My dear sir," said Meeker, "you have dropped a document--allow me."

"Thank you," I replied, and took the letter, which was quite bulky and sealed with a splotch of black wax imprinted with a coat of arms or a crest, or some such insignia. I fear I betrayed my irritation over Meeker's reading the address.

"No offence, I trust, my dear sir," he said, mild surprise in his tone.

"None whatever," I snapped back; but our companions in the bus smiled and winked at me openly, as if they appreciated my cold manner toward the missionary.

He said no more to me, but remarked to no one in particular that "an austere manner is a poor passport in this country," which implied that I was new to the East, and would learn better if I stayed long enough. I ignored the remark, somewhat pleased that I had rebuffed him, for I well knew he would talk me into a fever if I did not keep him at a distance; and, furthermore, I did not relish the idea of having him intrude upon me at the hotel. My dislike for him was not because he was a missionary, but because he was a common enough type of bore. He was over suave, and his peevishness jarred my none too steady nerves.

The bus was not a pleasant place for me after that, so I dropped off in Plaza Moraga, when I observed the signboard of the very bank mentioned. I cashed a draft and handed the letter to the clerk at the barred window.

"Oh, yes, we have been waiting for that!" he said as he took the envelope. "Mr. Trego! Here are your papers for the consul," he called to a man somewhere behind the frosted glass wall. "We appreciate your kindness very much, Mr. Trenholm."

It was then that I first saw the little red-headed man. He was looking in at the door, but scurried away when the Sikh guard inside moved toward him. The little man wore a white canvas navy-cap; but his appearance was dirty and disreputable, and he had the aspect of a beggar. His visage was wizened and villainous and shot with pock-marks under a coppery stubble of red beard, and his little mole-like eyes were that close together that they seemed fastened to his nose.

The clerk kept me waiting for signatures, and finally handed out my gold. As I filled my purse I was conscious of some one behind me, and, glancing over my shoulder, I saw the Rev. Luther Meeker.

RED-HEADED BEGGAR AND MISSIONARY

Turning my back on him, I edged toward a desk. It seemed to me that he had not recognized me as the austere man in the bus, or perhaps he chose to pass without encountering me again. He stared about the place, leaning on one leg for a minute as if undecided what to do next, or not quite sure he was in the right establishment.

I could hear voices in a room close at hand, and Meeker turned toward the door, walking silently in his cloth deck-shoes, and passed into the room. I heard a man give a cry of astonishment, followed by a growl of wrath, and Meeker ran out again, retreating backward and holding his hands up in protest.

"My dear sirs!" he whined. "No offence, I am sure! I hope you have taken no offence, for none was intended, and I did not mean to disturb any person--I was simply asking alms for a seamen's chapel, and I do most sincerely beg your pardons, gentlemen."

He went into the street, and a sallow-faced man with a slender malacca cane held in his hand as if it were a rapier, came to the door of the room and said something in French, indignant that he should be disturbed. He waved the cane menacingly after Meeker and slammed the door.

Leaving the bank, I turned toward the Escolta, which is the principal business street of Manila. The shop windows attracted me, and I sauntered for half an hour or more. I wanted a new field-glass, and as I stood on the pavement at a corner and looked in at a jeweller's window I caught the image of Meeker in the glass, which was thrown in a shadow by an awning.

I turned without thinking Meeker could have any interest in what I might do, and saw him half a block away talking to the little red-headed beggar who had looked in at the bank door. Meeker evidently caught me looking at him, for he whispered to the beggar, who hastened away, taking a furtive glance at me over his shoulder as he left. I turned toward Meeker, and he swung away down the street as I approached him, with more nimbleness than I supposed was in his old bones.

"I suppose the pest will be at my heels for the next week," I told myself, annoyed at the way the missionary crossed my path. That was the fourth time I had seen him in an hour, and I dreaded to go to the hotel, sure I would meet him again--for, of course, he could not have gone anywhere else but to the Oriente.

I thought it strange that he should be talking to the little beggar, although it never occurred to me that they were watching me; and, even if they were, I would have not concerned myself much about it. As it was, I ascribed Meeker's embarrassment when I last saw him to what had passed between us in the bus, and concluded that he was trying to avoid me, which I considered a praiseworthy effort on his part.

There was a possibility of orders awaiting me at the hotel; and, although it was not yet noon, I hailed a rig and drove there. The clerk passed over the familiar yellow envelope, and my message read: "Proceed to Hong-Kong for orders." I replied that I would leave at once, and the message was gone before I discovered that there wasn't a steamer for Hong-Kong before the end of the week, five days away.

It would have sounded silly to dispatch another message, telling of lack of steamers. I had supposed a steamer sailed every day or two, and my temper was ruffled at my mistake and the prospect of fretting away a week in the heat of Manila.

It was hard to make him understand, for he was a Filipino who insisted on speaking English, although I had a working knowledge of Spanish. He first mistook me for a stevedore, then for the manager, and next for the Hong-Kong-Shanghai Bank. I stormed at him, irritated that I should have to shout my business for the benefit of the loafers in the hotel office.

"I am very sorry," he said, without explaining his sorrow.

I growled something at him to the effect that I wondered if I was ever to lose sight of him. He bowed again and grinned.

"How do you know?" I asked, still curt with him, but feeling a trifle ashamed of myself for insulting him.

"Because they have just refused me, my dear sir--allow me--the Rev. Luther Meeker of the London Evangelical Society," and he gave me a card which had seen considerable service.

"It won't avail you anything to visit the office," he said, with sad mien and a sneer on his lips.

"And why not?"

"If they wouldn't let me go, a man of the cloth, with credentials from the Bishop of Salisbury, your case is hopeless."

The talk about the bank seemed to help me wonderfully, for he had a whispered conversation with a gray-bearded old gentleman, who looked me over with a shrewd eye, and nodded his assent to my buying a ticket.

"You won't find her equal to a liner, and the ticket is sold with the understanding that she is a cargo-boat, and if you are willing to take pot-luck with Captain Riggs, that is your affair. However, it is understood that you are not to make unreasonable complaints or demands of the master."

My answer to this was to dump a handful of gold coins on the counter before he could change his mind. I told him I was willing to go to Hong Kong in a coal-barge.

"You will find it lonesome on the passage," he said.

"I'll manage all right," I replied, not quite rid of my asperity over their lack of decision about taking a passenger.

"We have already sold one ticket," continued the clerk, as he put down figures on a pad. He glanced at me with a quizzical expression, and then smiled.

"One passenger will help," I commented, for something better to say.

"If he doesn't talk an arm off you before you reach Hong-Kong, I'll give you the ticket for sixpence. He's a missionary," he grinned.

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