Read Ebook: Assignats by Leverage Henry

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Ebook has 230 lines and 13960 words, and 5 pages

Produced by: Roger Frank and Sue Clark

Assignats

by Henry Leverage

When Ivan with the long surname walked down the beach at Novgorod he found three men. These men were sitting on their haunches staring out over the Japan Sea. Ivan spoke to them in English.

"I have a ship," he said.

The first man glanced at the second; the second stared at the third. They rose from their haunches and wrapped their rags around gaunt limbs.

"A ship in this accursed port?" asked one.

"A bloody lie!" exclaimed a second castaway.

"Ah hae me doots," rasped a third derelict.

"It is a fact, gentlemen," said Ivan with the long surname. "The ship is loading between here and Vladivostok. She wants but a master, a mate and an engineer."

The three men grew sad. They had been broken on the rack of peace. They had come ashore at Novgorod in a leaking sampan. The government of Japan was at that moment interested in their whereabouts.

"Our papers were lost in a great storm at sea," said the leader of the trio, whom men called "Micky" McMasters. "You mind the vast simoom?"

Ivan, the Russian, spread out his hands. His great spade-shaped beard fluttered in the warm Japanese breeze. He thumped a be-medaled chest.

"He talks like a poet writes," whispered "Red" Landyard, a Yankee mate, to Mike Monkey, the Scotch engineer.

"Ah hae noo doot he's read a wee bit. How otherwise would he know we were on the beach at Novgorod? There is a price on our heads."

Micky McMasters edged the big Russian away from his whispering companions.

"This ship," asked the little skipper, "this boat you 'ave loading between 'ere and Vladivostok--what flag does she fly?"

"Her home flag is Chinese. Her crew are loyal Russians. Her cargo, now going aboard, is caravan tea. This tea must be taken to America where Victoria on the Island of Vancouver is. Do you know the route?"

Micky felt his heart thump like a mallet inside a cask. He had sweated and toiled and starved on the mud flats of Novgorod. He sensed the coming of a bitter Winter. And here was a hard-eyed Russian offering him and his mates a ship for the Pacific broadside, where white men walked and roses bloomed and shirts could be worn.

"I've steamed and sailed, man and boy," he explained, "going on thirty years. I'm 'Umber born--at Great Grimsby on the North Sea. My mate, the tall man with the red face, is an American out of New Bedford. My first engineer came from Tyneside--where they build good ships. We take no back-slack from nobody. Show me your ship, says I, and I'll work 'er across the Japan Sea and east by the line to Victoria."

"That is settled," said Ivan Alexandrovski. "You may come with me."

Micky McMasters gathered the tattered collar of his dungaree coat around his unshaven neck.

"One more question before it becomes a contract," he said suspiciously. "Are you loyal Russian or are you Bolshevik?"

Ivan with the long surname smiled blandly. He stroked his straggling beard. He stared down at the little castaway.

"Loyal Russian," he said. "I have a home in Vladivostok--where Allied troops are guarding."

Micky turned, jerked his head toward his mates who stood shivering in their rags, and shouted:

"Ye arranged about terms?" asked Mike Monkey, siding up to the skipper and glancing at the Russian.

"Terms?"

"Bonuses and wages?"

"We'll leave that to our noble friend."

Mike gulped and spat to the mud flat.

"Last time Ah left that," he said, "Ah had nothing coming to me when Ah went ashore."

The Russian drew himself erect.

"The scale of wages," he declared, "shall be, for you three officers, one thousand rubles a week--paid at Victoria."

"How much is a ruble?" asked Mike.

"Two shillin'," hissed the cockney skipper.

"Twa shillin'? That make a hundred pun a week! Ah hae noo doot it'll be well earned before the end of the passage."

The Russian led the way up the beach. Two hours stiff walking brought the castaways to a cove in which lay a rusty tramp flying the Chinese flag and swarming with coolies--like ants on a cockroach.

Mike Monkey stared at the boxes which the coolies were carrying aboard the ship.

"Tay!" he spat. "Aya, it may be tay and it may be something else. Them ain't Chinese marks on the sides."

"Russian!" explained Ivan. "Come with me aboard my ship. You can see the boxes are marked with Russian letters."

"Be careful!" he warned. "Don't ask no bloomin' questions. Wait till we cross the Sea o' Japan!"

Mike gulped. He eyed the decrepit back-stays and standing rigging of the tramp. He ranged a fluttering glance along the dirty planks of the freighter. He shifted his tongue in his mouth as he stared at the drunken-looking funnel, which bore evidences of poorly patched shot holes.

"A rum hooker," he told Red Landyard. "She's had her name painted out about five times. She's no more'n eight hundred tons, if she's that. She's a broodin' menace ov some kind. Ah wash my hands of this voyage."

"You're 'ands need washin'!" snapped Micky McMasters. "Drop below and look over the engines. See hif there's any coal or supplies aboard. Report to me on the bridge."

"D'ye call that a bridge?" Mike pointed forward of the tipsy funnel, which was painted light blue.

"Hit's a better bridge than the mud flats of Novgorod!" Micky said. "Get below and report. I'm skipper 'ere!"

Mike's report, delivered between champs upon a chew of Chinese tobacco borrowed from a coolie, was tense and bitter.

"Ye hae no conception of the state of things below," he told Micky McMasters. "There's only one double-door boiler. It was made in Canton--China. The engines are cross-compound of the vintage of Isaac Watt and Robert Fulton. The coal is Japanese--twa bunkers of it. The stokehold leaks and the shaft-alley is full of bilge muck. Ah saw the stuffin'-boxes jettin' water myself. The last engineer of this packet wrote wot he thought of it on the ditty-box door. He said enough. His name was MacFarland."

"What's that got to do with hus?"

Mike walked from starboard to port of the tramp. He stared down at the line of coolies who were staggering aboard under the last of the boxes. He watched the yellow hands of the gang in the forehold reach for the cargo. He came back to Micky McMasters.

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