The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 4, 1906, Page 4

4 PPUURP P IO PP PO T TNy N ] fhis wstory published to- — “The Wreck of the Boat"—is the tenth n series of thrill- stories by Cuteliffe detafling “The Ad- of Captain Kettle.” want something that the blood and Mft g 2 : ing Hyne ventures e will you warm rou out of the dead level of every-day commonplaceness, de miss these stirring ex- % periences of Captain Kettle, . Ome complete story of adven- £ ture will appear every week in The Sunday Call until the series Is fink 5 “utcliffe Hyne.) HERB was consider- able trouble and K th bringing the life- boat alongs: e gale that had blown them out into human muscles can put forth d perate stress; and they reached the swa ing deck glanks, bruised and breathless and gasping, but for the time being safe. he cattle boat's mate who had been a considerab breeze blowing, but -8ssisting their arrival sorted them into R castes with ready perception. “Now, you two dagos,” he sald to the Portuguese, ) er and .get away forrard—port side—and bid Capta Kettle's gome of our firemen to give vou a bunk. revent the boat I'll tell the steward to bring you along nently swamped. Mc- a tot of rum directly.” He clapped a Portuguese baled in- friendly hand on McTodd's shoulder. was always ~BO'®D” he sald, “take this gentileman ¢rom con. SOWR to the messroom apd pass the word to one of the engineers to come and give him & welcome.” And then he turned as through the blow. to an equal and shook Kettle by the r to have hand. “Very glad to welcome you aboard, eboat a lee, old fellow—beg pardon, ‘captain’ I v e ve been more read- Should have sald: didn’t see the lace on your sleeve before. Come below with me, & A e e i S ceptain, and T'll fix you up with some e ks do this dry things outside and some wet things without ave mes she worked in before we have any further chatter.” le, got to “Mr. Mate,” said Kettle, “ ve I better go up on the of tarm polite, but hadn’t bridge and say ‘howdy' to the skipper first? e The mate of the catile boat grinned and ., tucked his arm irside Captain Kettle's € d dragged bim off with kindly force oward the companfonway Take the cinch from me, aptain, and don't. The retence of the T such a mortal fear for the with it. If he'd he'd have seen 1. He sald it was suicide u up with such a sea ond mate and I put e ugly he just had to Here's the companion. Step inside her com s fair eryin 1-don’t fanc after farmers Kettle savagely they al gger stew d McTo ain to lel his mates ing her in the ook - @ they slree ‘with you, chpiain wn whe you the at s e ridge > on this ship, and there's no r me K Kettle it. It's not to my ik they put § 1 old Conway boy, and y ey put a sa to respect discipline. How- " re she was sicked ol y you'll see for yourself es! if we'd a week's how thir in before we dump you back on dry ‘nud again. Now, here we are at roora, and the ge of clothes at drawer beneath the bed and un- derwear below the ettee here. You and 1 sre much of a build, and the Kkit's quite at your service till your own is dry recom- ag e 5 yance to The mate was back again in ten min- e ins wave top Utes—éripping, cheerful, hospitable. “Holy sea anq taflors!” said be, “how you do set off ; Ses B0 clothes!, Those old duds came out of 2 s s slop-chest once, and I've been ashamed P g of thew bbiness more years than I ve a way of m look well think about; but ¥ g them that makes care rryiy th ting and quite new. Well, I tell you v the ¢ I'm pigased to see spruce man on this r =hip yme into the bin now 1 peek ordered y¢ meal, and I saw rd as I came past the door try- ing to-hold it down in the fiddles. The old girl cin roll a bit 't she ‘4 rhould say your farmyard’s getting well ‘hurned up.” “Yiu should just g into those cattle- deck, and see. Jt's just hades for the or ‘prutes. We're out of the river Plate, wow., and we've carrled-bad weather s ever since we got our anchors. adly stowed, and_ there he s sald gazed le ship and they just crammed wh for-th . as Inany sheep and cows into her as she'd hold You'll prople or board of you before you're have the cruelty to animal d’cked, and then your skipper had ratter lnok out ; captain, quite as 3 do, and there isn't a man = inore sorry for himself in all . the s - Western Oce be fined heav- o o ily and have hi itd, so sure . as ever he sets Legally, e 1 suppose, he's ri but really - he's no more to blame you. s oY of the ship, just as the engines, he mates, or the tablespoons are. the whole bags o' tricks was let - wire from Liverpool to a South n dago. If he'd talked he'd . ve got the straight kickout from the o owners and no furthet argument. You the are little bits of owners.” worst sort.” matter who they are.” A e s got to do as he's told.” . o ajd Kettle with a sigh, T th know g “Well,” said the mate, thank your best lttle sta only here as a passenger. Th the wet floor Kettle frer the 3 ed to, t, under three ing’ up toward beastly and the ship stinks, the a fool and’ everything’s as uncomfort- as can be. But here’s one fin sement ahead of you, and that’ vy and cheer up the other passe ; “Stowaway?" “No, bona fide the Hfebo rer enger, if you can boat's upper bridge 4 Sl vty ol gine any gne being mug enousa to . two at any bOOK a room on a foul cattle-lo: in the lifeboat were tramp like this. But I guess it ity because she was hard up. She was a governe: or something of thut sor: Buenos Ayres, lost her berth and wa ed to get back in cheap. 1 guess we could afford to cut rates and make n the en- “He's frerent skipper anything @ Drofit there.” pe ad “Poor lady.” ptu I've mot seen much of her mys2If. pound of putty.” The second mate and I are most of t lose the boat. crew of this ship (as the Old Man cb- r aboard in one jects to our driving the regular deck ece i hands), and when-we're not it work 1 among their cow pens we're asleep. I can’t stop to introdn with ives we shall be lucky. you. You must chum on. Her na b up a line. Stand negie.” Miss- Carnegie.” Kettle repeated, and caught. The “that sounds familiar. Does she write up over a huge Yoetry?” her jagged bilge The mate yawned. “Don’t know. then she squelched Never asked her.. But perhaps she does. She lgoks H1 enough.” The mate went off to his room then, turned in ail standing, and was promptly asleep. Kettle, with mem- ories of the past refreshed, took paper and a scratchy pen and fell to con- cocting verse. 2 He wondered, and at the same time he half dreaded, whether this was the same Miss Carnegle whom he had known be- of her sides as though had been from eggshell. Other line hds who stood nd the four men in ach seized an end half hoisted from above, up the rusted plat- waves from under- the greedy clamored at their heels s -, fore. In days past she had given him a It was a toss-up even then whether commission to liberate her lover from fthe they would be dragged from their hold; French penal settlement at Cayerne. % With infinite danger and difficulty he nad wrenched the man free from his warders, and then, finding him a worthiess fellow. had by force married him to an old Ja- maican negregs and sent the girl thelr marriage lines as a token of her release. He had had no word or sign from her since, and was in some dread now lest she might bitterly resent the liberty he had taken in meddling so far with her affairs. However, like it or~not, there was no avoiding the meeting now, and so he went on—somewhat feverishly — with his writ- ing. The "squalid meal entitled tea came on and he had to move his papers. A grimy steward spread a dirty cloth, wetted it liberally with water, and shipped fiddles to try and induce the tableware to keep in place despite the rolling. The steward mentioned that none of the officers would be down, that the two passengers would meal together, and in fact did his best to be affable; but Kettle listened with cold inattention, and the steward began to wish him over the side, whence he had come, 4 The laying of the table was ended at last. The steward put on his jacket, clanged a bell in the alleyway and then came back and stood swaying in the mid- dle of the cabin, armed with a large tin- 7teapot. all ready to commence business. So heavy was the roll that at times he had to put his hand on the floor for sup- port. ¥ Captain Kettle watched the door with a haggard face. He was beginning to real- ize that an embtion was stirred within him that should have no place in his sys- tem. He told himself sternly that he was a married man with a family; that he had a deep affection for both his wife and children; that, in cold fact, he had seen Miss Carnegie in the flesh but once be- 'fore. But there was no getting oyer the memory that she made poetry, a craft that he adored, and he could not forget that she had aiready lved in his mind for more months than he dared count. His conscience took him by the ear, and sighed out the word love. On the in- stant all his pride of manhood was up in arms, and he rejected the imputation with scorn; and then, after some thought, formulated his liking for the girl in the term interest. But he knew full well that his sentiment was something deeper than that. His chest heaved when he thought of her. Ther the distance he heard her approz>hing. He wiped the moisture from his face with the mate's pocket- wandkerchief. Above the din of the seas and the noise from the crowded cattle pens outside he could,make out the faint rustle of draperies, and the 7 CUTCLIFFE, nY 45 THE SAN FRANCISCO. SUNDAY CALL. - PRI S ) uncertain footstéps of some one pain- fully making way along, hand over hand, against the bulkhgad. A bunch of fingeérs appeared round the jamb of the door, slender white fingers, one of them decked with a queer old ring, which he had seen just once before and had pictured a thousand times since. And then the girl herselt stepped'out into the cabin, swaying to the roll of the ship. She nodded to him with instant rec- ognition. “It was you they picked up out of the boat? Oh; I am so glad you are safe.” Kettle strode out toward her on his steady sea legs and stood before her, still not daring to take her hand. “You have forgiven me?' he murmured. “What I did was a liberty, I know, but it I.had not liked you so well I should not have dared to do it.” | She cast down her eves and flushed. “You are the kindest man-I ever met,’ she said. “The very kindest” She took his hand in both hers and gripped it with nervous force. "I shall never forget what you did for me, captain.” The grimy steward behind them coughed and rattled the teapot lid, and 8o they sat themselves at the table and the business of tea began. All of the ship’s officers were either looking atter the work entailed by the heavy weather on deck, or sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion in their b-1ks, and so none Joined them at the meal.” But the steward incessantly hovered at thelr elbows, and it was only durls ful abgences that their talk thing like unrestrained. “You said you liked poetry,” the girl whispered shyly when the first of these opportunities came. “I wrote the most s any~ heartfelt verses that ever came from. his fit< SHE FOLLEP - ANV 3HE PITCHEY ~AND SHE LALLOVID AYIONG THY: JFAS -~ - ~ titute, and although shé\ma not say this— spoke cheerfully of the future, in fact— Kettle was torn with pity for her state. But what, he asked himself with fierce scorn, could he do? He was penniless himself; he had a wife and family de- ing on him; and who was he to take this young unmarried . girl under his charge? They talked long on that and other da: always avolding vital questions: 4nd meanwhile the reeking cattle wallowed north, carrying with her, it seemed, a little charmed circlg of evil weather as her constant accompaniment. Between times when he was not in at- “tendance on Miss Carnegie, Kettle watched the life of the steamer with pro— fessional interest and all a strong man's contempt for a weak commander. The ‘tween decks was an Aceldama. In heavy weather the cattle pens smashed, the poor beasts broke their légs, gored ome another and were surged about in horri- ble melees. The cattlemen were half-in- ‘had béen lured out capable, wholly mutinous. They dealt - nt, out compressed hay-and water when the bat without finding employment, and sick gangways were cleared and held to it that at heart had bought with the last of her this was the ing and end of their scanty store of mouey a cheap passage duty. To pass down the winch chain and home in this cattle-boat. haul out the dead and wounded was a She would land in England entirely des- plece of employment that they flatly re- me over that noble thing you tried to do for a poor stranger like me.” Coptain Kettle blushed like a maid. “For one of the magazines?" he asked. She shook her head sadly. “It was not published when I left England, and it had been sent back to me from four magazine offices. = That was nothing new. They never would take any of my stuff.” Kettle's fingers twitched suggestively. “I'd like to-talk a minute or 80 with some of those edifors. I'd make- them sit up.” “That wouldd't make them print my peems.” s A - ““Wouldn't it, miss? Well, perhaps vou know best there. But I'd guarantee I'd hinder them from printing anything else for a while, the inlcy-fingered brutes. The twaddling storles those editors * set up a-type about low-down pirates and detec- tive bugs are enough to make one sick.” It ap) that Miss Carnegie's father had died since she and Kettle had last met, and the girl had found herself left A < 2 B Q:\ fused to tamper with. sald the deckhands could do it. The deckhands, scenting a weak com- mander, said they had been hired as sail- or men and-also declined to meddle, and They ~ as a consequence this necessary sepulture business was done by the mates. In Kettle's first and only interview with the cattle boat’s captain he saw this operation going on through a hatchway before his very face. The mate and the second mate clambered down by the bat- tens and went along the flithy gangway below, dragging the winch chain after them. The place was cluttered with car- casses and jammed with broken pens, all surging together to the roll of the ship. The lowings and the groans of the cattle were awful. But at last a bit of rope was made fast round a dead beast’s horns and the word was given to haul. The winch elattered and the chain drew. The two men below, jumping to this side and that for their lives, handspiked the car- cass free of obstacles, and at last it came up the hateh, a battered, shapeless rag. almost unrecognizable. A mob of men, sulky, sullen and afraid. stood around the hatch, and one of these. when the vpoor remains came up and swung to the roll of the ship over the side, cut the bowline with his knife and let the carcass plop into the raging seas. The chain clashed back again down be- tween the ironecoamings of the hatch, and the two mates below went om with thelr work. No one offered to help them. No one, as Kettle grimly noted, was made to do sh. . “Do your three mal run this ship. captain? asked Kettle at last. “They are®handy fellows." “If you ask me, I should call them poor drivers. What for do they put in all the work themselves when there are that meb. of deck hands and cattle hands sf around doing the gentleman as though Continued on page 8. b 4