The Red Cross Girl

R >> Richard Harding Davis >> The Red Cross Girl

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

But few of the customers recognized the significance of the
button. They thought it meant that David belonged to the Y. M. C.
A. or was a teetotaler. David, with his gentle manners and pale,
ascetic face, was liable to give that impression.

When Wyckoff mentioned marriage, the reason David blushed was
because, although no one in the office suspected it, he wished to
marry the person in whom the office took the greatest pride. This
was Miss Emily Anthony, one of Burdett and Sons' youngest, most
efficient, and prettiest stenographers, and although David did
not cut as dashing a figure as did some of the firm's travelling
men, Miss Anthony had found something in him so greatly to admire
that she had, out of office hours, accepted his devotion, his
theatre tickets, and an engagement ring. Indeed, so far had
matters progressed, that it had been almost decided when in a few
months they would go upon their vacations they also would go upon
their honeymoon. And then a cloud had come between them, and from
a quarter from which David had expected only sunshine.

The trouble befell when David discovered he had a great-
great-grandfather. With that fact itself Miss Anthony was almost
as pleased as was David himself, but while he was content to bask
in another's glory, Miss Anthony saw in his inheritance only an
incentive to achieve glory for himself.

From a hard-working salesman she had asked but little, but from
a descendant of a national hero she expected other things. She
was a determined young person, and for David she was an ambitious
young person. She found she was dissatisfied. She found she was
disappointed. The great-great-grandfather had opened up a new
horizon--had, in a way, raised the standard. She was as fond of
David as always, but his tales of past wars and battles, his
accounts of present banquets at which he sat shoulder to shoulder
with men of whom even Burdett and Sons spoke with awe, touched
her imagination.

"You shouldn't be content to just wear a button," she urged. "If
you're a Son of Washington, you ought to act like one."

"I know I'm not worthy of you," David sighed.

"I don't mean that, and you know I don't," Emily replied
indignantly. "It has nothing to do with me! I want you to be
worthy of yourself, of your grandpa Hiram!"

"But HOW?" complained David. "What chance has a twenty-five
dollar a week clerk--"

It was a year before the Spanish-American War, while the patriots
of Cuba were fighting the mother country for their independence.

"If I were a Son of the Revolution," said Emily, "I'd go to Cuba
and help free it."

"Don't talk nonsense," cried David. "If I did that I'd lose my
job, and we'd never be able to marry. Besides, what's Cuba done
for me? All I know about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar and
it made me ill."

"Did Lafayette talk like that?" demanded Emily. "Did he ask what
have the American rebels ever done for me?"

"If I were in Lafayette's class," sighed David, "I wouldn't be
selling automatic punches."

"There's your trouble," declared Emily "You lack self-
confidence. You're too humble, you've got fighting blood and you
ought to keep saying to yourself, 'Blood will tell,' and the
first thing you know, it WILL tell! You might begin by going into
politics in your ward. Or, you could join the militia. That takes
only one night a week, and then, if we DID go to war with Spain,
you'd get a commission, and come back a captain!"

Emily's eyes were beautiful with delight. But the sight gave
David no pleasure. In genuine distress, he shook his head.

"Emily," he said, "you're going to be awfully disappointed in
me."

Emily's eyes closed as though they shied at some mental picture.
But when she opened them they were bright, and her smile was kind
and eager.

"No, I'm not," she protested; "only I want a husband with a
career, and one who'll tell me to keep quiet when I try to run it
for him."

"I've often wished you would," said David.

"Would what? Run your career for you?"

"No, keep quiet. Only it didn't seem polite to tell you so."

"Maybe I'd like you better," said Emily, "if you weren't so
darned polite."

A week later, early in the spring of 1897, the unexpected
happened, and David was promoted into the flying squadron. He now
was a travelling salesman, with a rise in salary and a commission
on orders. It was a step forward, but as going on the road meant
absence from Emily, David was not elated. Nor did it satisfy
Emily. It was not money she wanted. Her ambition for David could
not be silenced with a raise in wages. She did not say this, but
David knew that in him she still found something lacking, and
when they said good-by they both were ill at ease and completely
unhappy. Formerly, each day when Emily in passing David in the
office said good-morning, she used to add the number of the days
that still separated them from the vacation which also was to be
their honeymoon. But, for the last month she had stopped counting
the days--at least she did not count them aloud.

David did not ask her why this was so. He did not dare. And,
sooner than learn the truth that she had decided not to marry
him, or that she was even considering not marrying him, he asked
no questions, but in ignorance of her present feelings set forth
on his travels. Absence from Emily hurt just as much as he had
feared it would. He missed her, needed her, longed for her. In
numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to the frequency with
which he moved, her letters never caught up with him. It was
almost a relief. He did not care to think of what they might tell
him.

The route assigned David took him through the South and kept him
close to the Atlantic seaboard. In obtaining orders he was not
unsuccessful, and at the end of the first month received from the
firm a telegram of congratulation. This was of importance chiefly
because it might please Emily. But he knew that in her eyes the
great-great-grandson of Hiram Greene could not rest content with
a telegram from Burdett and Sons. A year before she would have
considered it a high honor, a cause for celebration. Now, he
could see her press her pretty lips together and shake her pretty
head. It was not enough. But how could he accomplish more. He
began to hate his great-great-grandfather. He began to wish Hiram
Greene had lived and died a bachelor.

And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and
spanked him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made
him her favorite son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an
abrupt and arbitrary manner.

On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled
to leave the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same
minute, and they left exactly on time. As never before in the
history of any Southern railroad has this miracle occurred, it
shows that when Dame Fortune gets on the job she is omnipotent.
She placed David on the train to Miami as the train he wanted
drew out for Tampa, and an hour later, when the conductor looked
at David's ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and dumped David over
the side into the heart of a pine forest. If he walked back along
the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would
find a flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going
north. In an hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.

There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was
hidden by fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled
forward, at one moment he would see the rails like streaks of
silver, and the next would be encompassed in a complete and
bewildering darkness. He made his way from tie to tie only by
feeling with his foot. After an hour he came to a shed. Whether
it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in mind, he
did not know, and he never did know. He was too tired, too hot,
and too disgusted to proceed, and dropping his suit case he sat
down under the open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for
the train or daylight. So far as he could see, on every side of
him stretched a swamp, silent, dismal, interminable. From its
black water rose dead trees, naked of bark and hung with
streamers of funereal moss. There was not a sound or sign of
human habitation. The silence was the silence of the ocean at
night David remembered the berth reserved for him on the train to
Tampa and of the loathing with which he had considered placing
himself between its sheets. But now how gladly would he welcome
it! For, in the sleeping-car, ill-smelling, close, and stuffy, he
at least would have been surrounded by fellow-sufferers of his
own species. Here his companions were owls, water-snakes, and
sleeping buzzards.

I am alone," he told himself, "on a railroad embankment, entirely
surrounded by alligators."

And then he found he was not alone.

In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from
him there flashed suddenly the face of a man. Then the match went
out and the face with it. David noted that it had appeared at
some height above the level of the swamp, at an elevation higher
even than that of the embankment. It was as though the man had
been sitting on the limb of a tree. David crossed the tracks and
found that on the side of the embankment opposite the shed there
was solid ground and what once had been a wharf. He advanced over
this cautiously, and as he did so the clouds disappeared, and in
the full light of the moon he saw a bayou broadening into a
river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf an
ocean-going tug. It was from her deck that the man, in lighting
his pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm
engine-room and the company of his fellow creatures, David's
heart leaped with pleasure. He advanced quickly. And then
something in the appearance of the tug, something mysterious,
secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No lights showed from
her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks were empty.
But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from her
funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood
uncertainly, questioning whether to make his presence known or
return to the loneliness of the shed. The question was decided
for him. He had not considered that standing in the moonlight he
was a conspicuous figure. The planks of the wharf creaked and a
man came toward him. As one who means to attack, or who fears
attack, he approached warily. He wore high boots, riding
breeches, and a sombrero. He was a little man, but his movements
were alert and active. To David he seemed unnecessarily excited.
He thrust himself close against David.

"Who the devil are you?" demanded the man from the tug. "How'd
you get here?"

"I walked," said David.

"Walked?" the man snorted incredulously.

"I took the wrong train," explained David pleasantly. "They put
me off about a mile below here. I walked back to this flag
station. I'm going to wait here for the next train north."

The little man laughed mockingly.

"Oh, no you're not," he said. "If you walked here, you can just
walk away again!" With a sweep of his arm, he made a vigorous and
peremptory gesture.

"You walk!" he commanded.

"I'll do just as I please about that," said David.

As though to bring assistance, the little man started hastily
toward the tug.

"I'll find some one who'll make you walk!" he called. "You WAIT,
that's all, you WAIT!"

David decided not to wait. It was possible the wharf was private
property and he had been trespassing. In any case, at the flag
station the rights of all men were equal, and if he were in for a
fight he judged it best to choose his own battle-ground. He
recrossed the tracks and sat down on his suit case in a dark
corner of the shed. Himself hidden in the shadows he could see in
the moonlight the approach of any other person.

"They're river pirates," said David to himself, "or smugglers.
They're certainly up to some mischief, or why should they object
to the presence of a perfectly harmless stranger?"

Partly with cold, partly with nervousness, David shivered.

"I wish that train would come," he sighed. And instantly? as
though in answer to his wish, from only a short distance down the
track he heard the rumble and creak of approaching cars. In a
flash David planned his course of action.

The thought of spending the night in a swamp infested by
alligators and smugglers had become intolerable. He must escape,
and he must escape by the train now approaching. To that end the
train must be stopped. His plan was simple. The train was moving
very, very slowly, and though he had no lantern to wave, in order
to bring it to a halt he need only stand on the track exposed to
the glare of the headlight and wave his arms. David sprang
between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in amazement his
arms fell to his sides. For the train, now only a hundred yards
distant and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no
head-light, and though in the moonlight David was plainly
visible, it blew no whistle, tolled no bell. Even the passenger
coaches in the rear of the sightless engine were wrapped in
darkness. It was a ghost of a train, a Flying Dutchman of a
train, a nightmare of a train. It was as unreal as the black
swamp, as the moss on the dead trees, as the ghostly tug-boat
tied to the rotting wharf.

"Is the place haunted!" exclaimed David.

He was answered by the grinding of brakes and by the train coming
to a sharp halt. And instantly from every side men fell from it
to the ground, and the silence of the night was broken by a
confusion of calls and eager greeting and questions and sharp
words of command.

So fascinated was David in the stealthy arrival of the train and
in her mysterious passengers that, until they confronted him, he
did not note the equally stealthy approach of three men. Of these
one was the little man from the tug. With him was a fat, red-faced
Irish-American He wore no coat and his shirt-sleeves were drawn
away from his hands by garters of pink elastic, his derby hat was
balanced behind his ears, upon his right hand flashed an enormous
diamond. He looked as though but at that moment he had stopped
sliding glasses across a Bowery bar. The third man carried the
outward marks of a sailor. David believed he was the tallest man
he had ever beheld, but equally remarkable with his height was
his beard and hair, which were of a fierce brick-dust red. Even
in the mild moonlight it flamed like a torch.

"What's your business?" demanded the man with the flamboyant
hair.

"I came here," began David, "to wait for a train--"

The tall man bellowed with indignant rage.

"Yes," he shouted; "this is the sort of place any one would pick
out to wait for a train!"

In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a catcher's
glove. "Don't you lie to ME!" he bullied. "Do you know who I am?
Do you know WHO you're up against? I'm--"

The barkeeper person interrupted.

"Never mind who you are," he said. "We know that. Find out who HE
is."

David turned appealingly to the barkeeper.

"Do you suppose I'd come here on purpose?" he protested. "I'm a
travelling man--"

"You won't travel any to-night," mocked the red-haired one.
"You've seen what you came to see, and all you want now is to get
to a Western Union wire. Well, you don't do it. You don't leave
here to-night!"

As though he thought he had been neglected, the little man in
riding-boots pushed forward importantly.

"Tie him to a tree!" he suggested.

"Better take him on board," said the barkeeper, "and send him
back by the pilot. When we're once at sea, he can't hurt us any."

"What makes you think I want to hurt you?" demanded David. "Who
do you think I am?"

"We know who you are," shouted the fiery-headed one. "You're a
blanketty-blank spy! You're a government spy or a Spanish spy,
and whichever you are you don't get away to-night!"

David had not the faintest idea what the man meant, but he knew
his self-respect was being ill-treated, and his self-respect
rebelled.

"You have made a very serious mistake," he said, "and whether you
like it or not, I AM leaving here to-night, and YOU can go to the
devil!"

Turning his back David started with great dignity to walk away.
It was a short walk. Something hit him below the ear and he found
himself curling up comfortably on the ties. He had a strong
desire to sleep, but was conscious that a bed on a railroad
track, on account of trains wanting to pass, was unsafe. This
doubt did not long disturb him. His head rolled against the steel
rail, his limbs relaxed. From a great distance, and in a strange
sing-song he heard the voice of the barkeeper saying,
"Nine--ten--and OUT!"

When David came to his senses his head was resting on a coil of
rope. In his ears was the steady throb of an engine, and in his
eyes the glare of a lantern. The lantern was held by a
pleasant-faced youth in a golf cap who was smiling
sympathetically. David rose on his elbow and gazed wildly about
him. He was in the bow of the ocean-going tug, and he saw that
from where he lay in the bow to her stern her decks were packed
with men. She was steaming swiftly down a broad river. On either
side the gray light that comes before the dawn showed low banks
studded with stunted palmettos. Close ahead David heard the roar
of the surf.

"Sorry to disturb you," said the youth in the golf cap, "but we
drop the pilot in a few minutes and you're going with him."

David moved his aching head gingerly, and was conscious of a bump
as large as a tennis ball behind his right ear.

"What happened to me?" he demanded.

"You were sort of kidnapped, I guess," laughed the young man. "It
was a raw deal, but they couldn't take any chances. The pilot
will land you at Okra Point. You can hire a rig there to take you
to the railroad."

"But why?" demanded David indignantly. "Why was I kidnapped? What
had I done? Who were those men who--"

From the pilot-house there was a sharp jangle of bells to the
engine-room, and the speed of the tug slackened.

"Come on," commanded the young man briskly. "The pilot's going
ashore. Here's your grip, here's your hat. The ladder's on the
port side. Look where you're stepping. We can't show any lights,
and it's dark as--"

But, even as he spoke, like a flash of powder, as swiftly as one
throws an electric switch, as blindingly as a train leaps from
the tunnel into the glaring sun, the darkness vanished and the
tug was swept by the fierce, blatant radiance of a search-light.

It was met by shrieks from two hundred throats, by screams,
oaths, prayers, by the sharp jangling of bells, by the blind rush
of many men scurrying like rats for a hole to hide in, by the
ringing orders of one man. Above the tumult this one voice rose
like the warning strokes of a fire-gong, and looking up to the
pilot-house from whence the voice came, David saw the barkeeper
still in his shirt-sleeves and with his derby hat pushed back
behind his ears, with one hand clutching the telegraph to the
engine-room, with the other holding the spoke of the wheel.

David felt the tug, like a hunter taking a fence, rise in a great
leap. Her bow sank and rose, tossing the water from her in black,
oily waves, the smoke poured from her funnel, from below her
engines sobbed and quivered, and like a hound freed from a leash
she raced for the open sea. But swiftly as she fled, as a thief
is held in the circle of a policeman's bull's-eye, the shaft of
light followed and exposed her and held her in its grip. The
youth in the golf cap was clutching David by the arm. With his
free hand he pointed down the shaft of light. So great was the
tumult that to be heard he brought his lips close to David's ear.

"That's the revenue cutter!" he shouted. "She's been laying for
us for three weeks, and now," he shrieked exultingly, "the old
man's going to give her a race for it."

From excitement, from cold, from alarm, David's nerves were
getting beyond his control.

"But how," he demanded, "how do I get ashore?"

"You don't!"

"When he drops the pilot, don't I--"

"How can he drop the pilot?" yelled the youth. "The pilot's got
to stick by the boat. So have you."

David clutched the young man and swung him so that they stood
face to face.

"Stick by what boat?" yelled David. "Who are these men? Who are
you? What boat is this?"

In the glare of the search-light David saw the eyes of the youth
staring at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a
madman. Wrenching himself free, the youth pointed at the
pilot-house. Above it on a blue board in letters of gold-leaf a
foot high was the name of the tug. As David read it his breath
left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down his spine. The name
he read was The Three Friends.

"THE THREE FRIENDS!" shrieked David. "She's a filibuster! She's a
pirate! Where're we going?

"To Cuba!"

David emitted a howl of anguish, rage, and protest.

"What for?" he shrieked.

The young man regarded him coldly.

"To pick bananas," he said.

"I won't go to Cuba," shouted David. "I've got to work! I'm paid
to sell machinery. I demand to be put ashore. I'll lose my job if
I'm not put ashore. I'll sue you! I'll have the law--"

David found himself suddenly upon his knees. His first thought
was that the ship had struck a rock, and then that she was
bumping herself over a succession of coral reefs. She dipped,
dived, reared, and plunged. Like a hooked fish, she flung herself
in the air, quivering from bow to stern. No longer was David of a
mind to sue the filibusters if they did not put him ashore. If
only they had put him ashore, in gratitude he would have crawled
on his knees. What followed was of no interest to David, nor to
many of the filibusters, nor to any of the Cuban patriots. Their
groans of self-pity, their prayers and curses in eloquent
Spanish, rose high above the crash of broken crockery and the
pounding of the waves. Even when the search-light gave way to a
brilliant sunlight the circumstance was unobserved by David. Nor
was he concerned in the tidings brought forward by the youth in
the golf cap, who raced the slippery decks and vaulted the
prostrate forms as sure-footedly as a hurdler on a cinder track.
To David, in whom he seemed to think he had found a congenial
spirit, he shouted Joyfully, "She's fired two blanks at us!" he
cried; "now she's firing cannon-balls!"

"Thank God," whispered David; "perhaps she'll sink us!"

But The Three Friends showed her heels to the revenue cutter, and
so far as David knew hours passed into days and days into weeks.
It was like those nightmares in which in a minute one is whirled
through centuries of fear and torment. Sometimes, regardless of
nausea, of his aching head, of the hard deck, of the waves that
splashed and smothered him, David fell into broken slumber.
Sometimes he woke to a dull consciousness of his position. At
such moments he added to his misery by speculating upon the other
misfortunes that might have befallen him on shore. Emily, he
decided, had given him up for lost and married--probably a navy
officer in command of a battle-ship. Burdett and Sons had cast
him off forever. Possibly his disappearance had caused them to
suspect him; even now they might be regarding him as a defaulter,
as a fugitive from justice. His accounts, no doubt, were being
carefully overhauled. In actual time, two days and two nights had
passed; to David it seemed many ages.

On the third day he crawled to the stern, where there seemed less
motion, and finding a boat's cushion threw it in the lee scupper
and fell upon it. From time to time the youth in the golf cap had
brought him food and drink, and he now appeared from the cook's
galley bearing a bowl of smoking soup.

David considered it a doubtful attention.

But he said, "You're very kind. How did a fellow like you come to
mix up with these pirates?"

The youth laughed good-naturedly.

"They're not pirates, they're patriots," he said, "and I'm not
mixed up with them. My name is Henry Carr and I'm a guest of
Jimmy Doyle, the captain."

"The barkeeper with the derby hat?" said David.

"He's not a barkeeper, he's a teetotaler," Carr corrected, "and
he's the greatest filibuster alive. He knows these waters as you
know Broadway, and he's the salt of the earth. I did him a favor
once; sort of mouse-helping-the-lion idea. Just through dumb luck
I found out about this expedition. The government agents in New
York found out I'd found out and sent for me to tell. But I
didn't, and I didn't write the story either. Doyle heard about
that. So, he asked me to come as his guest, and he's promised
that after he's landed the expedition and the arms I can write as
much about it as I darn please."

"Then you're a reporter?" said David.

"I'm what we call a cub reporter," laughed Carr. "You see, I've
always dreamed of being a war correspondent. The men in the
office say I dream too much. They're always guying me about it.
But, haven't you noticed, it's the ones who dream who find their
dreams come true. Now this isn't real war, but it's a near war,
and when the real thing breaks loose, I can tell the managing
editor I served as a war correspondent in the Cuban-Spanish
campaign. And he may give me a real job!"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15