Doubloons—and the Girl

CHAPTER I

ON THE BLIND SIDE OF CHANCE

Allen Drew, glancing carelessly about as he started for the shore-end of the pier, suddenly saw the girl coming in his direction. From that moment – dating from the shock of that first glimpse of her – the current of his life was changed.

Women were rare enough down here on the East River docks; one of the type of this gloriously beautiful girl seemed an impossibility – an hallucination. Curiosity was not even blended with his second glance at her. An emotion never before conceived in his heart and brain gripped him.

Somehow she fitted the day and fitted, too, his mood. The very spirit of April seemed incarnated in her, so springy her step, so lissom the swaying of her young body, so warm and pink the color in her cheeks. Her dress, of some light gray material, had a dash of color lent to it by the bunch of violets at her waist. Her figure was slender and slightly above the middle height. A distracting dimple dented the velvet of her right cheek, and above her small mouth and perfectly formed nose a pair of hazel eyes looked frankly out upon the world. Her oval face was surmounted by a dainty toque, from under which a vagrant tendril of hair had escaped. This blew about her ears, glistening like gold in the sunshine.

Drew saw beautiful women every day of his life. He could not fail to do so in a city where they abound. But aside from the day and his mood, there was much about this slip of a girl that stirred him mightily and set his pulse to galloping.

He had lunched heartily, if not sumptuously, at one of the queer little restaurants that seem to have struck their roots into Fulton Market and endured for generations. There were no shaded candles on the table, and finger bowls would have evoked a puzzled stare or a frown from most patrons of the place. But the food was abundant and well cooked, and at twenty-two, with a keen appetite and the digestion of an ostrich, one asks for little more.

Drew paid his check and stepped out into the crooked side street that led to the East River, only a block distant. From force of habit, his steps turned in the direction of the chandlery shop where he was employed. On reaching South Street, he remembered a commission that had been given him to execute; so, turning to the right, he walked briskly toward the Battery.

It was a glorious day in early April. A sudden shower, vanishing almost as quickly as it had come, had washed the rough pavement of the old street to a semblance of cleanliness. In a very real sense it had also washed the air until it shimmered with the translucence of a pearl. A soft wind blew up from the south and the streets were drenched with sunshine.

It was a day that might have prompted a hermit to leave his cave, a philosopher to renounce his books, a miser to give a penny to a beggar. It spoke of youth and love and growing things, of nest building in the trees, of water rippling over stones, of buds bursting into bloom, of grass blades pushing through the soil.

Yet, despite this – or perhaps because of it – Allen Drew was conscious of a vague restlessness. A feeling of discontent haunted him and robbed the day of beauty. Something was lacking, and he had a sense of incompleteness that was quite at variance with his usual complacent outlook on life. He was not given to minute self-analysis, but as this feeling persisted and bothered him, he began harking back to the events of the morning in the hope of finding an explanation. Was there anything he had done that was wrong or anything that he had neglected to do that came in his province? He cudgeled his brains, but thought of nothing that should give him uneasiness.

He had corrected that imperfect invoice and sent it on to White & Tenny. He had reminded his employer that their stock of compasses was low and should be replenished. He had directed young Winters to answer that cablegram from Kingston. Try as he would, he could think of no omission. The books were strictly up to date and everything was moving in the usual routine.

Ah, there he had it! Routine! That was the key to the enigma. It was just that unvarying smooth routine, that endless grinding away at the same familiar things that to-day, when everything about him spoke of change and growth and freedom, was making him restless and perturbed. He was just a cog in the ever-turning wheel. He was a slave to his desk, and not the less a slave because his chains happened to be invisible.

"It won't do," he murmured to himself. "I've got to have a change – some excitement – something!"

With the springtime fermenting in his blood and stirring him to rebellion, he went on, turning out now and then to avoid the trucks that, with a cheerful disregard for police regulations, backed up on the sidewalks to receive their loads from the warehouse doors, until he reached Wall Street. Just beyond was Jones Lane, whose sylvan name seemed strangely out of place in the whirl and hubbub of that crowded district. Here he turned, and, picking his way across the muddy street, went out on the uncovered pier that stretched for five hundred feet into the river.

The pier was buzzing with activity. Bales and boxes and barrels by the thousands were scattered about in what seemed to be the wildest confusion. Gangs of sweating stevedores trundled their heavy burdens over the gangplanks of the vessels that lay on either side, and great cranes and derricks, their giant claws seizing tons of merchandise at a time, swung creakingly overhead to disgorge their loads into yawning hatchways.

Drew threaded his way through the tangled maze until he reached the end of the pier where the bark Normandy was lying.

"Captain Peters around anywhere?" he asked of the second officer, who was superintending the work of the seamen, and had just relieved himself of some remarks that would have made a truck driver envious.

"Below in his cabin, sir," was the answer, and Drew went aboard, walked aft, and swung himself down the narrow stairs that led to the captain's quarters.

He found the skipper sitting at his table, looking over a sheaf of bills of lading.

"Good afternoon, Captain Peters," was Drew's greeting.

"Howdy," responded the captain. "Jest sit down an' make yerself comf'table. I'll be through with these papers in jest a minute or two."

His work concluded, the captain shoved the bills aside with a sigh of relief and looked up.

"I s'pose ye come to see me about that windlass?" he remarked. "But first," he added, as Drew was about to reply, "won't ye have somethin' to wet yer whistle?"

He reached for a decanter and a couple of glasses. Drew smilingly declined, and the captain, nothing daunted, poured out enough for two and drank it in a single Gargantuan swallow.

"I just came to say," explained Drew, as the captain set down the glass, smacking his lips complacently, "that we'll have that windlass over to you by to-morrow, or the next day at the latest. The factory held us up."

"That's all right," replied the captain good-naturedly. "I haven't been worryin' about it. I've been dealin' with Tyke Grimshaw goin' on twenty year an 'he ain't never put me in a hole yet. I knew it would come along in plenty of time fur sailin'."

"By the way, when do you sail, Captain?" asked Drew.

"In a week, more or less. It all depends on how soon we get our cargo stowed."

"What are you carrying?"

"Mostly machinery an' cotton prints fur China and Japan."

"And what will you bring back?"

"Ain't sure about that yet. Owners' orders will be waitin' fur me when we get to Hong Kong. Probably load up with tea and such truck. Maybe get some copra at some of the islands."

China, Japan, the South Seas! Lands of mystery, adventure and romance! Lands of eternal summer! Azure seas studded with islands like emeralds! Velvet nights spangled with flaming stars!

The wanderlust seized on Allen Drew more fiercely than before, and his heart sickened with longing.

"It must be wonderful to see all those places," he ventured.

"Huh?" said the captain, looking at him blankly.

"I mean," explained the landsman, half ashamed of his enthusiasm, "that everything is so different – so old – so mysterious – so beautiful – . You know what I mean," he ended lamely.

The captain sniffed.

"Pooty enough, I s'pose," he grunted. "But I never pay no 'tention to that. What with layin' my course an' loadin' my cargo an' followin' owners orders, my mind's what ye might call pooty well took up."

The irony of it all! The captain who did not care a copper for romance was going into the very thick of it, while he, Allen Drew, who panted for it, was doomed to forego it forever. Of what use to have the soul of a Viking, if your job is that of a chandler's clerk?

The captain applied himself to the decanter again and Drew roused from his momentary reverie.

"Well," he observed, as he took his hat from the table on which he had thrown it, "I'll keep a sharp eye out for that windlass and see that it is shipped to you the minute it reaches us from the factory."

"All right," responded the captain, rising to his feet. "I'll be lookin' for it. I wouldn't dare risk the old one fur another v'yage."

They shook hands, and Drew climbed the stairs, crossed the deck and went out on to the wharf.

The river was a scene almost as busy as that which lay behind him in the crowded streets of the metropolis. Snorting tugs were darting to and fro, lines of barges were being convoyed toward the Sound, ferryboats were leaving and entering their slips, tramp steamers were poking their way up from Quarantine, and a huge ocean liner was moving majestically toward the Narrows and the open sea beyond.

Drew took off his hat and let the soft breeze cool his brow. Things seemed hopelessly out of gear. He felt like a trapped animal. So he imagined a squirrel might feel, turning the wheel endlessly in the narrow limits of its cage. Or, to make the image human, his thoughts wandered to the shorn and blinded Samson grinding his tale of corn in the Philistine town.

He found himself envying a man who leaned against a neighboring spile. He was a tall, spare fellow, dressed a little better than the common run of sailors, but unmistakably a sea-faring man. What Drew especially noted was that the stranger had only one eye – and that set in a rather forbidding countenance. Ordinarily he might have pitied him, but in his present mood Drew envied him. The stranger's one remaining eye had, after all, seen more of the world than his own two good optics would likely ever see.

From these fruitless and fantastic musings he roused himself with an effort. A glance at his watch startled him. This would never do. As long as he took Tyke Grimshaw's money he must do Tyke Grimshaw's work.

"Back to the treadmill," he said to himself, grimly; and it was then, as he started for the head of the pier, that he first saw the girl.

He slackened his pace instantly, so as to have her the longer in sight, mentally blessing the bales and boxes that made her progress slow. Not for the world would he have offended her by staring; but he stole covert glances at her from time to time; and with each swift glance the impression she had made upon him grew in strength.

She came on, seemingly unconscious of his presence, until they were almost opposite each other. One hand held her dress from contact with the litter of the dock; in the other she carried what appeared to be a packet of letters. The path she chose led her to the very edge of the dock.

Drew would have passed the next instant had the girl not stopped suddenly, a startled expression becoming visible on her face. The young man turned swiftly. The one-eyed seaman, whose appearance he had previously marked, stood almost at his elbow and confronted the girl.

She stepped back to avoid the seaman, and her foot caught in a coil of rope. For a moment she swayed on the verge of the dock – then Drew's hand shot out, and he caught her arm, steadying her. But the packet she carried flew from her hand and disappeared beyond the stringpiece of the pier.

The girl uttered a little cry of distress. Drew shot a belligerent glance at the one-eyed man.

"What do you want?" he demanded, with truculence. "Isn't the dock broad enough for you to pass without annoying the lady? Get along with you!"

The one-eyed man uttered an oath, but moved away, though slowly. Drew turned to the girl again, hat in hand, a smile chasing the frown from his face.

CHAPTER II

TYKE GRIMSHAW AND HIS AFFAIRS

"I beg your pardon," Drew said, bowing low, "but can I be of any further assistance?"

The girl looked up at him a little doubtfully, but what she saw in his frank brown eyes must have reassured her, for she spoke without hesitation.

"You are very kind," she answered, "but I fear it is too late. I had some letters in my hand, and when I slipped they went into the water. I'm afraid you can't get them."

Mentally resolving to dive for them if such a procedure became necessary, Drew stepped upon the stringpiece of the pier beside her and looked down.

She gave a joyous exclamation as she saw the package lying in the bottom of a small boat that floated at the stern of a steamer moored to the pier.

"Oh, there they are!" she cried delightedly. "How lucky!" Then her face changed. "But after all it is going to be hard to get them," she added. "The pier is high and there don't seem to be any cleats here to climb down by."

"Easiest thing in the world," returned Drew confidently. "I'll go aboard the steamer, haul the boat up to the stern, and drop into it."

"But the stern is so very high," she said, measuring it with her eye.

"That doesn't matter," he replied. "If you'll just wait here, I'll go aboard and be back with the letters before you know it." He glanced around swiftly. "I don't think that fellow will trouble you again."

"I am not at all afraid of that man. He only startled me for the moment. But I hate to put you to so much trouble," she added, looking at him shyly.

"It will be a pleasure," protested Drew, returning her look with another from which he tried to exclude any undue warmth.

It is to be feared that he was not altogether successful, judging from the faint flush that rose in her cheek as she dropped her gaze before his.

His mind awhirl, the young man hurried up to the gangway of the steamer where he found one of the officers. He briefly explained that he wanted to secure a package that a young lady had dropped into the boat lying astern, and the officer, with an appreciative grin, readily granted permission to him to go aboard.

Drew hurried to the stern, which, as the steamer had discharged her cargo, rose fully twenty feet from the water. He hauled in the boat until it lay directly beneath. Then he gathered up the slack of the painter and wound it about a cleat until it was taut. This done, he dropped over the rail and let himself down by the rope until his feet touched the thwart of the tender.

He worked his way aft carefully, and picking up the package placed it in his breast pocket. Then he caught hold of the rope and climbed up, hand over hand.

It was unaccustomed work for a landsman, but Drew was supple and athletic and he mounted rapidly. Not for a fortune would he have faltered with those hazel eyes fixed upon him. With the girl watching him, he felt as though he could have climbed to the top of the Woolworth Building.

It was his misfortune that he could not see the look of admiration in her eyes as they followed his movements – a look, however, which by the exercise of maidenly repression she had changed to one of mere gratitude when at last, breathing a little quickly, he approached her with the packet he had recovered in his hand.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, taking it eagerly and clasping it tightly, "how very good of you to take all that trouble! I don't know how to thank you enough."

"It was no trouble at all," Drew responded. "I count myself lucky to have happened along just when you needed me."

His speech won him a radiant smile, and he promptly decided that the dimple in her cheek was not merely distracting. It was divine!

There was a moment of embarrassed silence. The young man was wild to pursue the conversation. But he was too much of a gentleman to presume on the service he had rendered, and he knew that he should lift his hat and depart.

One feeble resource was left by which he might reconcile duty with desire.

"It's very hard getting about on this crowded pier," he ventured, "and you see there are some rough characters around. You might perhaps like to have me see you safely to the street when you are ready to go?"

She hesitated for a moment, her own inclination evidently battling with convention. But convention won.

"I think not," she said, flashing him a smile that softened her refusal and at the same time completed his undoing. "You see it is broad daylight and I am perfectly safe. Thank you for the offer though, and thank you again for what you have done for me."

It was dismissal, none the less final because it was gracious, and Drew yielded to the inevitable.

He glanced back once or twice, assuring himself that it was his plain duty to keep her in sight in order to see that nothing happened to her. He found himself wishing that she would drop the letters overboard again – that the one-eyed man would reappear – that something would occur, however slight, to call him to her side once more. It was with a thrill of exultation that he saw her approach the gangplank of the Normandy.

Then, for a moment, at least, he was sure he was going to have his wish. He spied the one-eyed man coming into view from behind a heap of freight and approach the boarding-plank. He spoke to the girl and she halted.

Drew was on the point of darting back to the girl's rescue. But the seaman's attitude was respectful, and it seemed that what he said was not offensive. At least, the girl listened attentively, nodded when the man had finished speaking, and as the latter fell back she tripped lightly aboard the Normandy, and so disappeared.

Drew's curiosity was so great that he might have lingered until the girl came ashore again, but the one-eyed man was coming up the dock and the young fellow was cooler now and felt that it would not be the part of wisdom to have another altercation with the rough looking stranger. Perhaps, after all, the one-eyed man had merely spoken to the girl to ask pardon for having previously startled her.

"Well," Drew said to himself, "Peters knows her and can tell me all about her. Anyhow I know her name and I'll find out where she lives if I have to search New York from end to end."

For on the envelope that had lain uppermost when he had picked up the package from the grating of the tender, he had seen the name, "Ruth Adams." The address had escaped him in that momentary glance, and although he could have easily repaired the omission while he was passing back along the steamer's deck, his instincts revolted at anything that looked like prying.

But there was nothing in his code that forbade his using every legitimate means of searching her out and securing an introduction in the way dictated by the approved forms, and he promised himself that the episode should not end here.

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast," especially when that breast is a youthful one, and Allen Drew's thoughts spun a dozen rainbow visions as he made his way back to the shop whose insistent call he had for the last hour put aside. He walked automatically and only that sixth sense peculiar to city dwellers prevented his being run down more than once. But the objurgations of startled drivers as they brought up their vehicles with a jerk bothered him not a whit. His physical presence was on South Street but his real self was on the crowded pier where he had left Ruth Adams.

Still moving on mechanically, he entered the door of the chandlery shop, over which a signboard, dingy with age, announced that "T. Grimshaw" was the proprietor. He nodded absently in response to the salutations of Sam, the negro porter, and Winters, the junior clerk, and sat down at his desk.

The building that housed the chandlery shop was a very old one, dating back to a time previous to the Revolution. When it was erected the Boston "Tea Party" was still in the future. If its old walls could have spoken they might have told of the time when almost all New York was housed below Chambers Street; when the "Bouwerie," free from its later malodorous associations, was a winding country lane where lads and lasses carried on their courtships in the long summer evenings; when Cherry Hill, now notorious for its fights and factions, was the abode of the city's wealth and fashion; when Collect Pond, on whose site the Tombs now stands, was the skating center where New York's belles and beaux disported themselves; when merry parties picnicked in the woods and sylvan glades of Fourteenth Street.

Those same walls, looking across the East River, had seen the prison ship Jersey, in whose foul and festering holds had died so many patriots. And they had shaken to the salvos of artillery that greeted Washington, when, at the end of the Revolutionary War, he had landed at the Battery and had gone in pomp to Fraunce's Tavern for a farewell dinner to his officers.

In its day it had been a stout and notable building, and even now it might be good for another hundred years. But the inexorable march of progress and the worth of the land on which it stood had sealed its doom. Grimshaw had occupied it for twenty years, but when he sought to renew his lease he had been told that no renewal would be granted. He could still occupy the building and pay the rent from month to month. But he now held possession only on sufferance, and it was distinctly understood that he might be called upon to vacate at any time on a few days' notice.

But "threatened men live long," and it was beginning to look as though the same might be said of the old building. For two years the months had come and gone without any hint of change, and Tyke had settled down in the belief that the building would last as long as he did. After that it did not matter. He had no kith or kin to whom to leave his business.

He was a grim and grizzled old fellow, well on in his sixties. In his earlier days he had been a master mariner, and had sailed all the Seven Seas. He had rounded the Horn a dozen times; had scudded with reefed topsails in the "roaring forties"; had lost two fingers of his left hand in a fight with Malay pirates; had battled with waterspouts, tornadoes and typhoons; had harpooned whales in the Arctic; had lost a ship by fire, and been shipwrecked twice; and from these combats with men and nature he had emerged as tough and hardy as a pine knot.

The profits of a notable whaling expedition from which he had returned with the tanks filled to bursting, barrels crowded on the deck, and the very scuppers running oil, together with a tidy little inheritance that fell to him about the same time, had enabled him to buy the chandlery shop from its former proprietor and settle down to spend the rest of his life ashore and yet in sight and scent of salt water.

How he had gained the name of "Tyke," by which everybody called him, nobody knew. He himself never volunteered to tell, and in all his bills and accounts used only the initial "T." Some of his employees favored Tyrus, others Titus. One in a wild flight of fancy suggested Ticonderoga. But the mystery remained unsolved, and, after all, as the checks that bore the scrawl, "T. Grimshaw," were promptly honored at the bank, it did not matter.

He was not what could be called an enterprising business man and there were many houses in his line that made a more pretentious appearance, carried a larger stock, and had a much more extensive trade. But he lived frugally, discounted his bills, and had such a broad acquaintance among seafaring men that each year's end showed a neat profit on his books.

His store force was modest, being only three in number. Allen Drew was a sort of general manager, and Tyke was growing more and more into the habit of leaving the conduct of the business to him. Winters was the junior clerk. He had come direct from high school and was now in his second year of service. Then there was Sam, the colored porter and man of all work, whose last name was as much a mystery as Grimshaw's first.