The Trail of 98 (6 page)

"Lucky beggar," I said, "to have some one who cares so much about his
going."

"Unlucky, you mean, lad. You don't want to have any strings on you when you
play this game."

He pointed to a long-haired young man in a flowing-end tie.

"See that pale-faced, artistic-looking guy alongside him. That's his partner.
Ineffectual, moony sort of a mut. He's a wood-carver; they call him Globstock;
told me his knowledge of wood-carving would come in handy when we came to make
boats at Lake Bennett. Then there's a third. See that little fellow shooting off
his face?"

I saw a weazened, narrow-chested mannikin, with an aggressive certainty of
feature.

"He's a professor, plumb-full of book dope on the Yukon. He's Mister Wise
Mike. He knows it all. Hear his monologue on 'How It Should Be Done.' He's going
to live on deck to inure himself to the rigours of the Arctic climate. Works
with a pair of spring dumb-bells to get up his muscle so's he can shovel out the
nuggets."

Our eyes roved round from group to group, picking out characteristic
figures.

"See that big bleached-blond Englishman? Came over with me on the Pullman
from New York. 'Awfully bored, don't you know.' When we got to 'Frisco, he says
to me: 'Thank God, old chappie, the worst part of the journey's over.' Then
there's
Romulus and Remus,
the twins, strapping young fellows. Only way I know them apart is one laces his
boots tight, the other slack. They think the world of each other."

He swung around to where Salvation Jim was talking to two men.

"There's a pair of winners. I put my money on them. Nothing on earth can stop
those fellows, native-born Americans, all grit and get-up. See that tall one
smoking a cigar and looking at the women? He's an athlete. Name's Mervin; all
whipcord and whalebone; springy as a bent bow. He's a type of the Swift. He's
bound to get there. See the other. Hewson's his name; solid as a tower; muscled
like a bear; built from the ground up. He represents the Strong. Look at the
grim, determined face of him. You can't down a man like that."

He indicated another group.

"Now there's three birds of prey. Bullhammer, Marks and Mosher. The big,
pig-eyed heavy-jowled one is Bullhammer. He's in the saloon business. The
middle-sized one in the plug hat is Marks. See his oily, yellow face dotted with
pimples. He's a phoney piece of work; calls himself a mining broker. The third's
Jake Mosher. He's an out-and-out gambler, a sure-thing man, once was a
parson."

I looked again. Mosher had just taken off his hat. His high-domed head was of
monumental baldness, his eyes close-set and crafty, his nose negligible.
The rest of his face was
mostly beard. It grew black as the Pit to near the bulge of his stomach, and
seemed to have drained his scalp in its rank luxuriance. Across the deck came
the rich, oily tones of his voice.

"A bad-looking bunch," I said.

"Yes, there's heaps like them on board. There's a crowd of dance-hall girls
going up, and the usual following of parasites. Look at that Halfbreed. There's
a man for the country now, part Scotch, part Indian; the quietest man on the
boat; light, but tough as wire nails."

I saw a lean, bright-eyed brown man with flat features, smoking a
cigarette.

"Say! Just get next to those two Jews, Mike and Rebecca Winklestein. They're
going to open up a sporty restaurant."

The man was a small bandy-legged creature, with eyes that squinted, a
complexion like ham fat and waxed moustaches. But it was the woman who seized my
attention. Never did I see such a strapping Amazon, six foot if an inch, and
massive in proportion. She was handsome too, in a swarthy way, though near at
hand her face was sensuous and bold. Yet she had a suave, flattering manner and
a coarse wit that captured the crowd. Dangerous, unscrupulous and cruel, I
thought; a man-woman, a shrew, a termagant!

But I was growing weary of the crowd and longed to go below. I was no longer
interested, yet the voice of the Prodigal droned in my ear.

"There's an old man and
his granddaughter, relatives of the Winklesteins, I believe. I think the old
fellow's got a screw loose. Handsome old boy, though; looks like a Hebrew
prophet out of a job. Comes from Poland. Speaks Yiddish or some such jargon;
Only English he knows is 'Klondike, Klondike.' The girl looks heartbroken, poor
little beggar."

"Poor little beggar!" I heard the words indeed, but my mind was far away. To
the devil with Polish Jews and their granddaughters. I wished the Prodigal would
leave me to my own thoughts, thoughts of my Highland home and my dear ones. But
no! he persisted:

"You're not listening to what I'm saying. Look, why don't you!"

So, to please him, I turned full round and looked. An old man, patriarchal in
aspect, crouched on the deck. Erect by his side, with her hand on his shoulder,
stood a slim figure in black, the figure of a girl. Indifferently my eyes
travelled from her feet to her face. There they rested. I drew a deep breath. I
forgot everything else. Then for the first time I sawBerna.

I will not try to depict the girl. Pen descriptions are so futile. I will
only say that her face was very pale, and that she had large pathetic grey eyes.
For the rest, her cheeks were woefully pinched and her lips drooped wistfully.
'Twas the face, I thought, of a virgin martyr with a fear-haunted look hard to
forget. All this I saw, but most of all I
saw those great, grey eyes gazing unseeingly over the crowd,
ever so sadly fixed on that far-away East of her dreams and memories.

"Poor little beggar!"

Then I cursed myself for a sentimental impressionist and I went below.
Stateroom forty-seven was mine. We three had been separated in the shuffle, and
I knew not who was to be my room-mate. Feeling very downhearted, I stretched
myself on the upper berth, and yielded to a mood of penitential sadness. I heard
the last gang-plank thrown off, the great crowd cheer, the measured throb of the
engines, yet still I sounded the depths of reverie. There was a bustle outside
and growing darkness. Then, as I lay, there came voices to my door, guttural
tones blended with liquid ones; lastly a timid knock. Quickly I answered it.

"Is this room number forty-seven?" a soft voice asked.

Even ere she spoke I divined it was the Jewish girl of the grey eyes, and now
I saw her hair was like a fair cloud, and her face fragile as a flower.

"Yes," I answered her.

She led forward the old man.

"This is my grandfather. The Steward told us this was his room."

"Oh, all right; he'd better take the lower berth."

"Thank you, indeed; he's an old man and not very strong."

Her voice was clear and sweet, and there was an infinite tenderness in the
tone.

"You must come in," I
said. "I'll leave you with him for a while so that you can make him
comfortable."

"Thank you again," she responded gratefully.

So I withdrew, and when I returned she was gone; but the old man slept
peacefully.

It was late before I turned in. I went on deck for a time. We were cleaving
through blue-black night, and on our right I could dimly discern the coast
festooned by twinkling lights. Every one had gone below, I thought, and the
loneliness pleased me. I was very quiet, thinking how good it all was, the balmy
wind, the velvet vault of the night frescoed with wistful stars, the
freedom-song of the sea; how restful, how sane, how loving!

Suddenly I heard a sound of sobbing, the merciless sobbing of a woman's
breast. Distinct above the hollow breathing of the sea it assailed me, poignant
and insistent. Wonderingly I looked around. Then, in a shadow of the upper deck,
I made out a slight girl-figure, crouching all alone. It was Grey Eyes, crying
fit to break her heart.

"Poor little beggar!" I muttered.

"Gr-r-ryou little brat! If you open your face to him I'll kill you, kill
you, see!"

The voice was Madam Winklestein's, and the words, hissed in a whisper of
incredible malignity, arrested me as if I had been struck by a live wire. I
listened. Behind the stateroom door there followed a silence, grimly intense;
then a dull pounding; then the same savage undertone.

"See here, Berna, we're next to you twowe're onto your curves. We know the
old man's got the stuff in his gold-belt, two thousand in bills. Now, my dear,
my sweet little angel what thinks she's too good to mix with the likes o' us, we
need the mon, see!" (Knock, knock.) "And we're goin' to have it, see!" (Knock,
knock.) "That's where you come in, honey, you're goin' to get it for us. Ain't
you now, darlin'!" (Knock, knock, knock.)

Faintly, very faintly, I heard a voice:

"No."

If it be possible to scream in a whisper, the woman did it.

"You will! you will! Oh! oh! oh! There's the cursed mule spirit of your
mother in you. She'd never tell us the name of the man that was the ruin of 'er,
blast 'er."

"Don't speak of my mother, you vile woman!"

The voice of the virago
contracted to an intensity of venom I have never heard the equal of.

"Vile woman! Vile woman! You, you to call
me
a vile woman, me that's
been three times jined in holy wedlock.... Oh, you bastard brat! You whelp of
sin! You misbegotten scum! Oh, I'll fix you for that, if I've got to swing for
it."

Her scalding words were capped with an oath too foul to repeat, and once more
came the horrible pounding, like a head striking the woodwork. Unable to bear it
any longer, I rapped sharply on the door.

Silence, a long, panting silence; then the sound of a falling body; then the
door opened a little and the twitching face of Madam appeared.

"Is there somebody sick?" I asked. "I'm sorry to trouble you, but I was
thinking I heard groans andI might be able to do something."

Piercingly she looked at me. Her eyes narrowed to slits and stabbed me with
their spite. Her dark face grew turgid with impotent anger. As I stood there she
was like to have killed me. Then like a flash her expression changed. With a
dirty bejewelled hand she smoothed her tousled hair. Her coarse white teeth
gleamed in a gold-capped smile. There was honey in her tone.

"Why, no! my niece in here's got a toothache, but I guess we can fix it
between us. We don't need no help, thanks, young feller."

"Oh, that's all right," I said. "If you should, you know, I'll be
nearby."

Then I moved away,
conscious that her eyes followed me malevolently.

The business worried me sorely. The poor girl was being woefully abused, that
was plain. I felt indignant, angry and, last of all, anxious. Mingled with my
feelings was a sense of irritation that I should have been elected to overhear
the affair. I had no desire just then to champion distressed damsels, least of
all to get mixed up in the family brawls of unknown Jewesses. Confound her,
anyway! I almost hated her. Yet I felt constrained to watch and wait, and even
at the cost of my own ease and comfort to prevent further violence.

For that matter there were all kinds of strange doings on board, drinking,
gambling, nightly orgies and hourly brawls. It seemed as if we had shipped all
the human dregs of the San Francisco deadline. Never, I believe, in those times
when almost daily the Argonaut-laden boats were sailing for the Golden North,
was there one in which the sporting element was so dominant. The social hall
reeked with patchouli and stale whiskey. From the staterooms came shrill
outbursts of popular melody, punctuated with the popping of champagne corks.
Dance-hall girls, babbling incoherently, reeled in the passageways, danced on
the cabin table, and were only held back from licentiousness by the restraint of
their bullies. The day was one long round of revelry, and the night was pregnant
with sinister sound.

Already among the better element a moral secession was apparent. Convention
they had left behind
with
their boiled shirts and their store clothes, and crazed with the idea of speedy
fortune, they were even now straining at the leash of decency. It was a howling
mob, elately riotous, and already infected by the virus of the goldophobia.

Oh, it was good to get on deck of a night, away from this saturnalia, to
watch the beacon stars strewn vastly in the skyey uplift, to listen to the
ancient threnody of the outcast sea. Blue and silver the nights were, and
crystal clear, with a keen wind that painted the cheek and kindled the eye. And
as I sat in silent thought there came to me Salvation Jim. His face was grim,
his eyes brooding. From the brilliantly lit social hall came a blare of
music-hall melody.

"I don't like the way of things a bit," he said; "I don't like it. Look here
now, lad, I've lived round mining camps for twenty years, I've followed the
roughest callings on earth, I've tramped the States all over, yet never have I
seen the beat of this. Mind you, I ain't prejudiced, though I've seen the error
of my ways, glory to God! I can make allowance once in a while for the boys
gettin' on a jamboree, but by Christmas! Say! There's enough evil on this boat
to stake a sub-section in Hell. There's men should be at home with their dinky
little mothers an' their lovin' wives an' children, down there right now in that
cabin buyin' wine for them painted Jezebels.

"There's doctors an' lawyers an' deacons in the church back in old Ohio, that
never made a bad
break in
their lives, an' now they're rowin' like barroom bullies for the kisses of a
baggage. In the bay-window of their souls the devil lolls an' grins an' God is
freezin' in the attic. You mark my words, boy; there's a curse on this northern
gold. The Yukon's a-goin' to take its toll. You mark my words."

"Oh, Jim," I said, "you're superstitious."

"No, I ain't. I've just got a hunch. Here we are a bit of floatin' iniquity
glidin' through the mystery of them strange seas, an' the very officers on dooty
sashed to the neck an' reekin' from the arms of the scented hussies below. It'll
be God's mercy if we don't crash on a rock, an' go down good an' all to the
bitter bottom. But it don't matter. Sooner or later there's goin' to be a
reckonin'. There's many a one shoutin' an' singin' to-night'll leave his bones
to bleach up in that bleak wild land."