The Cruise of the Jasper B.
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Don Marquis >> The Cruise of the Jasper B.
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14 THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.
BY DON MARQUIS
TO ALL THE COPYREADERS ON ALL THE NEWSPAPERS OF AMERICA
CHAPTER I
A BRIGHT BLADE LEAPS FROM A RUSTY SCABBARD
On an evening in April, 191-, Clement J. Cleggett walked sedately
into the news room of the New York Enterprise with a drab-colored
walking-stick in his hand. He stood the cane in a corner,
changed his sober street coat for a more sober office jacket,
adjusted a green eyeshade below his primly brushed grayish hair,
unostentatiously sat down at the copy desk, and unobtrusively
opened a drawer.
From the drawer he took a can of tobacco, a pipe, a pair of
scissors, a paste-pot and brush, a pile of copy paper, a penknife
and three half-lengths of lead pencil.
The can of tobacco was not remarkable. The pipe was not
picturesque. The scissors were the most ordinary of scissors.
The copy paper was quite undistinguished in appearance. The lead
pencils had the most untemperamental looking points.
Cleggett himself, as he filled and lighted the pipe, did it in
the most matter-of-fact sort of way. Then he remarked to the head
of the copy desk, in an average kind of voice:
"H'lo, Jim."
"H'lo, Clegg," said Jim, without looking up. "Might as well begin
on this bunch of early copy, I guess."
For more than ten years Cleggett had done the same thing at the
same time in the same manner, six nights of the week.
What he did on the seventh night no one ever thought to inquire.
If any member of the Enterprise staff had speculated about it at
all he would have assumed that Cleggett spent that seventh
evening in some way essentially commonplace, sober, unemotional,
quiet, colorless, dull and Brooklynitish.
Cleggett lived in Brooklyn. The superficial observer might have
said that Cleggett and Brooklyn were made for each other.
The superficial observer! How many there are of him! And how
much he misses! He misses, in fact, everything.
At two o'clock in the morning a telegraph operator approached the
copy desk and handed Cleggett a sheet of yellow paper, with the
remark:
"Cleggett--personal wire."
It was a night letter, and glancing at the signature Cleggett saw
that it was from his brother who lived in Boston. It ran:
Uncle Tom died yesterday. Don't faint now.
He splits bulk fortune between you and me.
Lawyers figure nearly $500,000 each. Mostly
easily negotiable securities. New will made
month ago while sore at president temperance
outfit. Blood thicker than Apollinaris after all.
Poor Uncle Tom.
Edward.
Despite Edward's thoughtful warning, Cleggett did nearly faint.
Nothing could have been less expected. Uncle Tom was an
irascible prohibitionist, and one of the most deliberately
disobliging men on earth. Cleggett and his brother had long
ceased to expect anything from him. For twenty years it had been
thoroughly understood that Uncle Tom would leave his entire
estate to a temperance society. Cleggett had ceased to think of
Uncle Tom as a possible factor in his life. He did not doubt
that Uncle Tom had changed the will to gain some point with the
officials of the temperance society, intending to change it once
again after he had been deferred to, cajoled, and flattered
enough to placate his vanity. But death had stepped in just in
time to disinherit the enemies of the Demon Rum.
Cleggett read the wire through twice, and then folded it and put
it into his pocket. He rose and walked toward the managing
editor's room. As he stepped across the floor there was a little
dancing light in his eyes, there was a faint smile upon his lips,
that were quite foreign to the staid and sober Cleggett that the
world knew. He was quiet, but he was almost jaunty, too; he felt
a little drunk, and enjoyed the feeling.
He opened the managing editor's door with more assurance than he
had ever displayed before. The managing editor, a pompous, tall,
thin man with a drooping frosty mustache, and cold gray eyes in a
cold gray face that somehow reminded one of the visage of a
walrus, was preparing to go home.
"Well?" he said, shortly.
He was a man for whom Cleggett had long felt a secret antipathy.
The man was, in short, the petty tyrant of Cleggett's little
world.
"Can you spare me a couple of minutes, Mr. Wharton?" said
Cleggett. But he did not say it with the air of a person who
really sues for a hearing.
"Yes, yes--go on." Mr. Wharton, who had risen from his chair,
sat down again. He was distinctly annoyed. He was ungracious.
He was usually ungracious with Cleggett. His face set itself in
the expression it always took when he declined to consider
raising a man's salary. Cleggett, who had been refused a raise
regularly every three months for the past two years, was familiar
with the look.
"Go on, go on--what is it?" asked Mr. Wharton unpleasantly,
frowning and stroking the frosty mustache, first one side and
then the other.
"I just stepped in to tell you," said Cleggett quietly, "that I
don't think much of the way you are running the Enterprise."
Wharton stopped stroking his mustache so quickly and so amazedly
that one might have thought he had run into a thorn amongst the
hirsute growth and pricked a finger. He glared. He opened his
mouth. But before he could speak Cleggett went on:
"Three years ago I made a number of suggestions to you. You
treated me contemptuously--very contemptuously!"
Cleggett paused and drew a long breath, and his face became quite
red. It was as if the anger in which he could not afford to
indulge himself three years before was now working in him with
cumulative effect. Wharton, only partially recovered from the
shock of Cleggett's sudden arraignment, began to stammer and
bluster, using the words nearest his tongue:
"You d-damned im-p-pertinent------"
"Just a moment," Cleggett interrupted, growing visibly angrier,
and seeming to enjoy his anger more and more. "Just a word more.
I had intended to conclude my remarks by telling you that my
contempt for YOU, personally, is unbounded. It is boundless,
sir! But since you have sworn at me, I am forced to conclude
this interview in another fashion."
And with a gesture which was not devoid of dignity Cleggett drew
from an upper waistcoat pocket a card and flung it on Wharton's
desk. After which he stepped back and made a formal bow.
Wharton looked at the card. Bewilderment almost chased the anger
from his face.
"Eh," he said, "what's this?"
"My card, sir! A friend will wait on you tomorrow!"
"Tomorrow? A friend? What for?"
Cleggett folded his arms and regarded the managing editor with a
touch of the supercilious in his manner.
"If you were a gentleman," he said, "you would have no difficulty
in understanding these things. I have just done you the honor of
challenging you to a duel."
Mr. Wharton's mouth opened as if he were about to explode in a
roar of incredulous laughter. But meeting Cleggett's eyes, which
were, indeed, sparkling with a most remarkable light, his jaw
dropped, and he turned slightly pale. He rose from his chair and
put the desk between himself and Cleggett, picking up as he did
so a long pair of shears.
"Put down the scissors," said Cleggett, with a wave of his hand.
"I do not propose to attack you now."
And he turned and left the managing editor's little office,
closing the door behind him.
The managing editor tiptoed over to the door and, with the
scissors still grasped in one hand, opened it about a quarter of
an inch. Through this crack Wharton saw Cleggett walk jauntily
towards the corner where his hat and coat were hanging. Cleggett
took off his worn office jacket, rolled it into a ball, and flung
it into a waste paper basket. He put on his street coat and hat
and picked up the drab-colored cane. Swinging the stick he moved
towards the door into the hall. In the doorway he paused, cocked
his hat a trifle, turned towards the managing editor's door,
raised his hand with his pipe in it with the manner of one who
points a dueling pistol, took careful aim at the second button of
the managing editor's waistcoat, and clucked. At the cluck the
managing editor drew back hastily, as if Cleggett had actually
presented a firearm; Cleggett's manner was so rapt and fatal that
it carried conviction. Then Cleggett laughed, cocked his hat on
the other side of his head and went out into the corridor
whistling. Whistling, and, since faults as well as virtues must
be told, swaggering just a little.
When the managing editor had heard the elevator come up, pause,
and go down again, he went out of his room and said to the city
editor:
"Mr. Herbert, don't ever let that man Cleggett into this office
again. He is off--off mentally. He's a dangerous man. He's a
homicidal maniac. More'n likely he's been a quiet, steady drinker
for years, and now it's begun to show on him."
But nothing was further from Cleggett than the wish ever to go
into the Enterprise office again. As he left the elevator on the
ground floor he stabbed the astonished elevator boy under the
left arm with his cane as a bayonet, cut him harmlessly over the
head with his cane as a saber, tossed him a dollar, and left the
building humming:
"Oh, the Beau Sabreur of the Grande Armee
Was the Captain Tarjeanterre!"
It is thus, with a single twitch of her playful fingers, that
Fate will sometimes pluck from a man the mask that has obscured
his real identity for many years. It is thus that Destiny will
suddenly draw a bright blade from a rusty scabbard!
CHAPTER II
THE ROOM OF ILLUSION
That part of Brooklyn in which Cleggett lived overlooks a wide
sweep of water where the East River merges with New York Bay.
From his windows he could gaze out upon the bustling harbor craft
and see the ships going forth to the great mysterious sea.
He walked home across the Brooklyn Bridge, and as he walked he
still hummed tunes. Occasionally, still with the rapt and fatal
manner which had daunted the managing editor, he would pause and
flex his wrist, and then suddenly deliver a ferocious thrust with
his walking-stick.
The fifth of these lunges had an unexpected result. Cleggett
directed it toward the door of an unpainted toolhouse, a
temporary structure near one of the immense stone pillars from
which the bridge is swung. But, as he lunged, the toolhouse door
opened, and a policeman, who was coming out wiping his mouth on
the back of his hand, received a jab in the pit of a somewhat
protuberant stomach.
The officer grunted and stepped backward; then he came on,
raising his night-stick.
"Why, it's--it's McCarthy!" exclaimed Cleggett, who had also
sprung back, as the light fell on the other's face.
"Mr. Cleggett, by the powers!" said the officer, pausing and
lowering his lifted club. "Are ye soused, man? Or is it your
way of sayin' good avenin' to your frinds?"
Cleggett smiled. He had first known McCarthy years before when
he was a reporter, and more recently had renewed the acquaintance
in his walks across the bridge.
"I didn't know you were there, McCarthy," he said.
"No?" said the officer. "And who were ye jabbin' at, thin?"
"I was just limbering up my wrist," said Cleggett.
"'Tis a quare thing to do," persisted McCarthy, albeit
good-humoredly. "And now I mind I've seen ye do the same before,
Mr. Cleggett. You're foriver grinnin' to yersilf an' makin' thim
funny jabs at nothin' as ye cross the bridge. Are ye subjict to
stiffness in the wrists, Mr. Cleggett?"
"Perhaps it's writer's cramp," said Cleggett, indulging the
pleasant humor that was on him. He was really thinking that, with
$500,000 of his own, he had written his last headline, edited his
last piece of copy, sharpened his last pencil.
"Writer's cramp? Is it so?" mused McCarthy. "Newspapers is great
things, ain't they now? And so's writin' and readin'. Gr-r-reat
things! But if ye'll take my advise, Mr. Cleggett, ye'll kape
that writin' and readin' within bounds. Too much av thim rots
the brains."
"I'll remember that," said Cleggett. And he playfully jabbed the
officer again as he turned away.
"G'wan wid ye!" protested McCarthy. "Ye're soused! The scent av
it's in the air. If I'm compilled to run yez in f'r assaultin'
an officer ye'll get the cramps out av thim wrists breakin'
stone, maybe. Cr-r-r-amps, indade!"
Cramps, indeed! Oh, Clement J. Cleggett, you liar! And yet, who
does not lie in order to veil his inmost, sweetest thoughts from
an unsympathetic world?
That was not an ordinary jab with an ordinary cane which Cleggett
had directed towards the toolhouse door. It was a thrust en
carte; the thrust of a brilliant swordsman; the thrust of a
master; a terrible thrust. It was meant for as pernicious a
bravo as ever infested the pages of romantic fiction. Cleggett
had been slaying these gentry a dozen times a day for years. He
had pinked four of them on the way across the bridge, before
McCarthy, with his stomach and his realism, stopped the lunge
intended for the fifth. But this is not exactly the sort of
thing one finds it easy to confide to a policeman, be he ever so
friendly a policeman.
Cleggett--Old Clegg, the copyreader--Clegg, the commonplace--C.
J. Cleggett, the Brooklynite-this person whom young reporters
conceived of as the staid, dry prophet of the dusty Fact--was
secretly a mighty reservoir of unwritten, unacted, unlived,
unspoken romance. He ate it, he drank it, he breathed it, he
dreamed it. The usual copyreader, when he closes his eyes and
smiles upon a pleasant inward vision, is thinking of starting a
chicken-farm in New Jersey. But Cleggett--with gray sprinkled in
his hair, sober of face and precise of manner, as the world knew
him--lived a hidden life which was one long, wild adventure.
Nobody had ever suspected it. But his room might have given to
the discerning a clue to the real man behind the mask which he
assumed--which he had been forced to assume in order to earn a
living. When he reached the apartment, a few minutes after his
encounter on the bridge, and switched the electric light on, the
gleams fell upon an astonishing clutter of books and arms. . . .
Stevenson, cavalry sabers, W. Clark Russell, pistols, and Dumas;
Jack London, poignards, bowie knives, Stanley Weyman, Captain
Marryat, and Dumas; sword canes, Scottish claymores, Cuban
machetes, Conan Doyle, Harrison Ainsworth, dress swords, and
Dumas; stilettos, daggers, hunting knives, Fenimore Cooper, G. P.
R. James, broadswords, Dumas; Gustave Aimard, Rudyard Kipling,
dueling swords, Dumas; F. Du Boisgobey, Malay krises, Walter
Scott, stick pistols, scimitars, Anthony Hope, single sticks,
foils, Dumas; jungles of arms, jumbles of books; arms of all
makes and periods; arms on the walls, in the corners, over the
fireplace, leaning against the bookshelves, lying in ambush under
the bed, peeping out of the wardrobe, propping the windows open,
serving as paper weights; pictures, warlike and romantic prints
and engravings, pinned to the walls with daggers; in the
wardrobe, coats and hats hanging from poignards and stilettos
thrust into the wood instead of from nails or hooks. But of all
the weapons it was the rapiers, of all the books it was Dumas,
that he loved. There was Dumas in French, Dumas in English,
Dumas with pictures, Dumas unillustrated, Dumas in cloth, Dumas
in leather, Dumas in boards, Dumas in paper covers. Cleggett had
been twenty years getting these arms and books together; often he
had gone without a dinner in order to make a payment on some
blade he fancied. And each weapon was also a book to him; he
sensed their stories as he handled them; he felt the
personalities of their former owners stirring in him when he
picked them up. It was in that room that he dreamed; which is to
say, it was in that room that he lived his real life.
Cleggett walked over to his writing desk and pulled out a bulky
manuscript. It was his own work. Is it necessary to hint that
it was a tale essentially romantic in character?
He flung it into the grate and set fire to it. It represented
the labor of two years, but as he watched it burn, stirring the
sheets now and then so the flames would catch them more readily,
he smiled, unvisited by even the most shadowy second thought of
regret.
For why the deuce should a man with $500,000 in his pocket write
romances? Why should anyone write anything who is free to live?
For the first time in his existence Cleggett was free.
He picked up a sword. It was one of his favorite rapiers.
Sometimes people came out of the books--sometimes shadowy forms
came back to claim the weapons that had been theirs--and Cleggett
fought them. There was not an unscarred piece of furniture in
the place. He bent the flexible blade in his hands, tried the
point of it, formally saluted, brought the weapon to parade,
dallied with his imaginary opponent's sword for an instant. . . .
It seemed as if one of those terrible, but brilliant, duels, with
which that room was so familiar, was about to be enacted. . . .
But he laid the rapier down. After all, the rapier is scarcely a
thing of this century. Cleggett, for the first time, felt a
little impatient with the rapier. It is all very well to DREAM
with a rapier. But now, he was free; reality was before him; the
world of actual adventure called. He had but to choose!
He considered. He tried to look into that bright, adventurous
future. Presently he went to the window, and gazed out. Tides
of night and mystery, flooding in from the farther, dark,
mysterious ocean, all but submerged lower Manhattan; high and
beautiful above these waves of shadow, triumphing over them and
accentuating them, shone a star from the top of the Woolworth
building; flecks of light indicated the noble curve of that great
bridge which soars like a song in stone and steel above the
shifting waters; the river itself was dotted here and there with
moving lights; it was a nocturne waiting for its Whistler; here
sea and city met in glamour and beauty and illusion.
But it was not the city which called to Cleggett. It was the sea.
A breeze blew in from the bay and stirred his window curtains; it
was salt in his nostrils. . . .And, staring out into the
breathing night, he saw a succession of pictures. . . .
Stripped to a pair of cotton trousers, with a dripping cutlass in
one hand and a Colt's revolver in the other, an adventurer at the
head of a bunch of dogs as desperate as himself fought his way
across the reeking decks of a Chinese junk, to close in single
combat with a gigantic one-eyed pirate who stood by the helm with
a ring of dead men about him and a great two-handed sword
upheaved. . . . This adventurer was--Clement J. Cleggett! . . .
Through the phosphorescent waters of a summer sea, reckless of
cruising sharks, a sailor's clasp knife in his teeth, glided
noiselessly a strong swimmer; he reached the side of a schooner
yacht from which rose the wild cries of beauty in distress,
swarmed aboard with a muttered prayer that was half a curse,
swept the water from his eyes, and with pale, stern face went
about the bloody business of a hero. . . . Again, this
adventurer was Clement J. Cleggett!
Cleggett turned from the window.
"I'll do it," he cried. "I'll do it!"
He grasped a cutlass.
"Pirates!" he cried, swinging it about his head. "That's the
thing--pirates and the China Seas!"
And with one frightful sweep of his blade he disemboweled a sofa
cushion; the second blow clove his typewriting machine clean to
the tattoo marks upon its breast; the third decapitated a
sectional bookcase.
But what is a sectional bookcase to a man with $500,000 in his
pocket and the Seven Seas before him?
CHAPTER III
A SCHOONER, A SKIPPER, AND A SKULL
It was a few days later, when a goodly number of the late Uncle
Tom's easily negotiable securities had been converted into cash,
and the cash deposited in the bank, that Cleggett bought the
Jasper B.
He discovered her near the town of Fairport, Long Island, one
afternoon. The vessel lay in one of the canals which reach
inward from the Great South Bay. She looked as if she might have
been there for some time. Evidently, at one period, the Jasper
B. had played a part in some catch-coin scheme of summer
entertainment; a scheme that had failed. Little trace of it
remained except a rotting wooden platform, roofless and built
close to the canal, and a gangway arrangement from this platform
to the deck of the vessel.
The Jasper B. had seen better days; even a landsman could tell
that. But from the blunt bows to the weather-scarred stern, on
which the name was faintly discernible, the hulk had an air about
it, the air of something that has lived; it was eloquent of a
varied and interesting past.
And, to complete the picture, there sat on her deck a gnarled and
brown old man. He smoked a short pipe which was partially hidden
in a tangle of beard that had once been yellowish red but was now
streaked with dirty white; he fished earnestly without apparent
result, and from time to time he spat into the water. Cleggett's
nimble fancy at once put rings into his ears and dowered him with
a history.
Cleggett noticed, as he walked aboard the vessel, that she seemed
to be jammed not merely against, but into the bank of the canal.
She was nearer the shore than he had ever seen a vessel of any
sort. Some weeds grew in soil that had lodged upon the deck; in
a couple of places they sprang as high as the rail. Weeds grew
on shore; in fact, it would have taken a better nautical
authority than Cleggett to tell offhand just exactly where the
land ended and the Jasper B. began. She seemed to be possessed
of an odd stability; although the tide was receding the Jasper B.
was not perceptibly agitated by the motion of the water. Of
anchor, or mooring chains or cables of any sort, there was no
sign.
The brown old man--he was brown not only as to the portions of
his skin visible through his hair and whiskers, but also as to
coat and trousers and worn boots and cap and pipe and flannel
shirt--turned around as Cleggett stepped aboard, and stared at
the invader with a shaggy-browed intensity that was embarrassing.
It occurred to Cleggett that the old man might own the vessel and
make a home of her.
"I beg your pardon if I am intruding," ventured Cleggett,
politely, "but do you live here?"
The brown old man made an indeterminate motion of his head,
without otherwise replying at once. Then he took a cake of dark,
hard-looking tobacco from the starboard pocket of his trousers
and a clasp knife from the port side. He shaved off a fresh
pipeful, rolled it in his palms, knocked the old ash from his
pipe, refilled and relighted it, all with the utmost
deliberation. Then he cut another small piece of tobacco from
the "plug" and popped it into his mouth. Cleggett perceived with
surprise that he smoked and chewed tobacco at the same time. As
he thus refreshed himself he glanced from time to time at
Cleggett as if unfavorably impressed. Finally he closed his
knife with a click and suddenly piped out in a high, shrill
voice:
"No! Do you?"
"I--er--do I what?" It had taken the old man so long to answer
that Cleggett had forgotten his own question, and the shrill
fierceness of the voice was disconcerting.
He regarded Cleggett contemptuously, spat on the deck, and then
demanded truculently:
"D'ye want to buy any seed potatoes?"
"Why--er, no," said Cleggett.
"Humph!" said the brown one, with the air of meaning that it was
only to be expected of an idiot like Cleggett that he would NOT
want to buy any seed potatoes. But after a further embarrassing
silence he relented enough to give Cleggett another chance.
"You want some seed corn!" he announced rather than asked.
"No. I------"
"Tomato plants!" shrilled the brown one, as if daring him to deny
it.
"No."
He turned his back on Cleggett, as if he had lost interest, and
began to wind up his fishing line on a squeaky reel.
"Who owns this boat?" Cleggett touched him on the elbow.
"Thinkin' of buyin' her?"
"Perhaps. Who owns her?"
"What would you do with her?"
"I might fix her up and sail her. Who owns her?"
"She'll take a sight o' fixin'."
"No doubt. Who did you say owned her?"
The old man, who had finished with the rusty reel, deigned to
look at Cleggett again.
"Dunno as I said."
"But who DOES own her?"
"She's stuck fast in the mud and her rudder's gone."
"I see you know a lot about ships," said Cleggett, deferentially,
giving up the attempt to find out who owned her. "I picked you
out for an old sailor the minute I saw you." He thought he
detected a kindlier gleam in the old man's eye as that person
listened to these words.
"The' ain't a stick in her," said the ancient fisherman. "She's
got no wheel and she's got no nothin'. She used to be used as a
kind of a barroom and dancin' platform till the fellow that used
her for such went out o' business."
He paused, and then added:
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