Books: Ranson\'s Folly
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Richard Harding Davis >> Ranson\'s Folly
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"Well, that's all," said Keating, suspiciously. "The fellows asked me
to speak to you about it and to tell you to take a brace. Now, for
instance, we have a sort of mess-table at the hotels and we'd like to
ask you to belong, but--well--you see how it is--we have the officers
to lunch whenever they're on shore, and you're so disreputable"--
Keating scowled at Channing, and concluded, impotently, "Why don't
you get yourself some decent clothes and--and a new hat?"
Channing removed his hat to his knee and stroked it with affectionate
pity.
"It is a shocking bad hat," he said. "Well, go on."
"Oh, it's none of my business," exclaimed Keating, impatiently. "I'm
just telling you what they're saying. Now, there's the Cuban
refugees, for instance. No one knows what they're doing here, or
whether they're real Cubans or Spaniards."
"Well, what of it?"
"Why, the way you go round with them and visit them, it's no wonder
they say you're a spy."
Channing stared incredulously, and then threw back his head and
laughed with a shout of delight.
"They don't, do they?" he asked.
"Yes, they do, since you think it's so funny. If it hadn't been for
us the day you went over to Guantanamo the marines would have had you
arrested and court-martialed."
Channing's face clouded with a quick frown, "Oh," he exclaimed, in a
hurt voice, "they couldn't have thought that."
"Well, no," Keating admitted grudgingly, "not after the fight,
perhaps, but before that, when you were snooping around the camp like
a Cuban after rations." Channing recognized the picture with a laugh.
"I do," he said, "I do. But you should have had me court-martialed
and shot; it would have made a good story. 'Our reporter shot as a
spy, his last words were--' what were my last words, Keating?"
Keating turned upon him with impatience, "But why do you do it?" he
demanded. "Why don't you act like the rest of us? Why do you hang out
with all those filibusters and runaway Cubans?"
"They have been very kind to me," said Channing, soberly. "They are a
very courteous race, and they have ideas of hospitality which make
the average New Yorker look like a dog hiding a bone."
"Oh, I suppose you mean that for us," demanded Keating. "That's a
slap at me, eh?"
Channing gave a sigh and threw himself back against the trunk of the
palm, with his hands clasped behind his head.
"Oh, I wasn't thinking of you at all, Keating," he said. "I don't
consider you in the least." He stretched himself and yawned wearily.
"I've got troubles of my own." He sat up suddenly and adjusted the
objectionable hat to his head.
"Why don't you wire the C. P.," he asked, briskly, "and see if they
don't want an extra man? It won't cost you anything to wire, and I
need the job, and I haven't the money to cable."
"The Consolidated Press," began Keating, jealously. "Why--well, you
know what the Consolidated Press is? They don't want descriptive
writers--and I've got all the men I need."
Keating rose and stood hesitating in some embarrassment. "I'll tell
you what I could do, Channing," he said, "I could take you on as a
stoker, or steward, say. They're always deserting and mutinying; I
have to carry a gun on me to make them mind. How would you like that?
Forty dollars a month, and eat with the crew?"
For a moment Channing stood in silence, smoothing the sand with the
sole of his shoe. When he raised his head his face was flushing.
"Oh, thank you," he said. "I think I'll keep on trying for a paper--
I'll try a little longer. I want to see something of this war, of
course, and if I'm not too lazy I'd like to write something about it,
but--well--I'm much obliged to you, anyway."
"Of course, if it were my money, I'd take you on at once," said
Keating, hurriedly.
Channing smiled and nodded. "You're very kind," he answered. "Well,
good-by."
A half-hour later, in the smoking-room of the hotel, Keating
addressed himself to a group of correspondents.
"There is no doing anything with that man Channing," he said, in a
tone of offended pride. "I offered him a good job and he wouldn't
take it. Because he got a story in the International Magazine, he's
stuck on himself, and he won't hustle for news--he wants to write
pipe-dreams. What the public wants just now is news."
"That's it," said one of the group, "and we must give it to them--
even if we have to fake it."
Great events followed each other with great rapidity. The army ceased
beating time, shook itself together, adjusted its armor and moved,
and, to the delight of the flotilla of press-boats at Port Antonio,
moved, not as it had at first intended, to the north coast of Cuba,
but to Santiago, where its transports were within reach of their
megaphones.
"Why, everything's coming our way now!" exclaimed the World manager
in ecstasy. "We've got the transports to starboard at Siboney, and
the war-ships to port at Santiago, and all we'll need to do is to sit
on the deck with a field-glass, and take down the news with both
hands."
Channing followed these events with envy. Once or twice, as a special
favor, the press-boats carried him across to Siboney and Daiquiri,
and he was able to write stories of what he saw there; of the landing
of the army, of the wounded after the Guasimas fight, and of the
fever-camp at Siboney. His friends on the press-boats sent this work
home by mail on the chance that the Sunday editor might take it at
space rates. But mail matter moved slowly and the army moved quickly,
and events crowded so closely upon each other that Channing's
stories, when they reached New York, were ancient history and were
unpublished, and, what was of more importance to him, unpaid for. He
had no money now, and he had become a beach-comber in the real sense
of the word. He slept the warm nights away among the bananas and
cocoanuts on the Fruit Company's wharf, and by calling alternately on
his Cuban exiles and the different press-boats, he was able to obtain
a meal a day without arousing any suspicions in the minds of his
hosts that it was his only one.
He was sitting on the stringer of the pier-head one morning, waiting
for a press-boat from the "front," when the Three Friends ran in and
lowered her dingy, and the "World" manager came ashore, clasping a
precious bundle of closely written cable-forms. Channing scrambled to
his feet and hailed him.
"Have you heard from the chief about me yet?" he asked. The "World"
man frowned and stammered, and then, taking Channing by the arm,
hurried with him toward the cable-office.
"Charlie, I think they're crazy up there," he began, "they think they
know it all. Here I am on the spot, but they think--"
"You mean they won't have me," said Channing. "But why?" he asked,
patiently. "They used to give me all the space I wanted."
"Yes, I know, confound them, and so they should now," said the
"World" man, with sympathetic indignation. "But here's their cable;
you can see it's not my fault." He read the message aloud. "Channing,
no. Not safe, take reliable man from Siboney." He folded the
cablegram around a dozen others and stuck it back in his hip-pocket.
"What queered you, Charlie," he explained, importantly, "was that
last break of yours, New Year's, when you didn't turn up for a week.
It was once too often, and the chief's had it in for you ever since.
You remember?"
Channing screwed up his lips in an effort of recollection.
"Yes, I remember," he answered, slowly. "It began on New Year's eve
in Perry's drug-store, and I woke up a week later in a hack in
Boston. So I didn't have such a run for my money, did I? Not good
enough to have to pay for it like this. I tell you," he burst out
suddenly, "I feel like hell being left out of this war, with all the
rest of the boys working so hard. If it weren't playing it low down
on the fellows that have been in it from the start, I'd like to
enlist. But they enlisted for glory, and I'd only do it because I
can't see the war any other way, and it doesn't seem fair to them.
What do you think?"
"Oh, don't do that," protested the World manager. "You stick to your
own trade. We'll get you something to do. Have you tried the
Consolidated Press yet?"
Channing smiled grimly at the recollection.
"Yes, I tried it first."
"It would be throwing pearls to swine to have you write for them, I
know, but they're using so many men now. I should think you could get
on their boat."
"No, I saw Keating," Channing explained. "He said I could come along
as a stoker, and I guess I'll take him up, it seems--"
"Keating said--what?" exclaimed the "World" man. "Keating? Why, he
stands to lose his own job, if he isn't careful. If it wasn't that
he's just married, the C. P. boys would have reported him a dozen
times."
"Reported him, what for?"
"Why--you know. His old complaint."
"Oh, that," said Channing. "My old complaint?" he added.
"Well, yes, but Keating hasn't been sober for two weeks, and he'd
have fallen down on the Guasimas story if those men hadn't pulled him
through. They had to, because they're in the syndicate. He ought to
go shoot himself; he's only been married three months and he's
handling the biggest piece of news the country's had in thirty years,
and he can't talk straight. There's a time for everything, I say,"
growled the "World" man.
"It takes it out of a man, this boat-work," Channing ventured, in
extenuation. "It's very hard on him."
"You bet it is," agreed the "World" manager, with enthusiasm.
"Sloshing about in those waves, sea-sick mostly, and wet all the
time, and with a mutinous crew, and so afraid you'll miss something
that you can't write what you have got." Then he added, as an after-
thought, "And our cruisers thinking you're a Spanish torpedo-boat and
chucking shells at you."
"No wonder Keating drinks," Channing said, gravely. "You make it seem
almost necessary."
Many thousand American soldiers had lost themselves in a jungle, and
had broken out of it at the foot of San Juan Hill. Not wishing to
return into the jungle, they took the hill. On the day they did this
Channing had the good fortune to be in Siboney. The "World" man had
carried him there and asked him to wait around the waterfront while
he went up to the real front, thirteen miles inland. Channing's duty
was to signal the press-boat when the first despatch-rider rode in
with word that the battle was on. The World man would have liked to
ask Channing to act as his despatch-rider, but he did not do so,
because the despatch-riders were either Jamaica negroes or newsboys
from Park Row--and he remembered that Keating had asked Channing to
be his stoker.
Channing tramped through the damp, ill-smelling sand of the beach,
sick with self-pity. On the other side of those glaring, inscrutable
mountains, a battle, glorious, dramatic, and terrible, was going
forward, and he was thirteen miles away. He was at the base, with the
supplies, the sick, and the skulkers.
It was cruelly hot. The heat-waves flashed over the sea until the
transports in the harbor quivered like pictures on a biograph. From
the refuse of company kitchens, from reeking huts, from thousands of
empty cans, rose foul, enervating odors, which deadened the senses
like a drug. The atmosphere steamed with a heavy, moist humidity.
Channing staggered and sank down suddenly on a pile of railroad-ties
in front of the commissary's depot. There were some Cubans seated
near him, dividing their Government rations, and the sight reminded
him that he had had nothing to eat. He walked over to the wide door
of the freight-depot, where a white-haired, kindly faced, and
perspiring officer was, with his own hands, serving out canned beef
to a line of Cubans. The officer's flannel shirt was open at the
throat. The shoulder-straps of a colonel were fastened to it by
safety-pins. Channing smiled at him uneasily.
"Could I draw on you for some rations?" he asked. "I'm from the Three
Friends. I'm not one of their regular accredited correspondents," he
added, conscientiously, "I'm just helping them for to-day."
"Haven't you got a correspondent's pass?" asked the officer. He was
busily pouring square hardtack down the throat of a saddle-bag a
Cuban soldier held open before him.
"No," said Channing, turning away, "I'm just helping."
The officer looked after him, and what he saw caused him to reach
under the counter for a tin cup and a bottle of lime-juice.
"Here," he said, "drink this. What's the matter with you--fever? Come
in here out of that sun. You can lie down on my cot, if you like."
Channing took the tin cup and swallowed a warm mixture of boiled
water and acrid lime-juice.
"Thank you," he said, "but I must keep watch for the first news from
the front."
A man riding a Government mule appeared on the bridge of the lower
trail, and came toward them at a gallop. He was followed and
surrounded by a hurrying mob of volunteers, hospital stewards, and
Cubans.
The Colonel vaulted the counter and ran to meet him.
"This looks like news from the front now," he cried.
The man on the mule was from civil life. His eyes bulged from their
sockets and his face was purple. The sweat ran over it and glistened
on the cords of his thick neck.
"They're driving us back!" he shrieked.
"Chaffee's killed, an' Roosevelt's killed, an' the whole army's
beaten!" He waved his arms wildly toward the glaring, inscrutable
mountains. The volunteers and stevedores and Cubans heard him, open-
mouthed and with panic-stricken eyes. In the pitiless sunlight he was
a hideous and awful spectacle.
"They're driving us into the sea!" he foamed.
"We've got to get out of here, they're just behind me. The army's
running for its life. They're running away!"
Channing saw the man dimly, through a cloud that came between him and
the yellow sunlight. The man in the saddle swayed, the group about
him swayed, like persons on the floor of a vast ball-room. Inside he
burned with a mad, fierce hatred for this shrieking figure in the
saddle. He raised the tin cup and hurled it so that it hit the man's
purple face.
"You lie!" Channing shouted, staggering. "You lie! You're a damned
coward. You lie!" He heard his voice repeating this in different
places at greater distances. Then the cloud closed about him,
shutting out the man in the saddle, and the glaring, inscrutable
mountains, and the ground at his feet rose and struck him in the
face.
Channing knew he was on a boat because it lifted and sank with him,
and he could hear the rush of her engines. When he opened his eyes he
was in the wheel-house of the Three Friends, and her captain was at
the wheel, smiling down at him. Channing raised himself on his elbow.
"The despatch-rider?" he asked.
"That's all right," said the captain, soothingly. "Don't you worry.
He come along same time you fell, and brought you out to us. What
ailed you--sunstroke?"
Channing sat up. "I guess so," he said.
When the Three Friends reached Port Antonio, Channing sought out the
pile of coffee-bags on which he slept at night and dropped upon them.
Before this he had been careful to avoid the place in the daytime, so
that no one might guess that it was there that he slept at night, but
this day he felt that if he should drop in the gutter he would not
care whether anyone saw him there or not. His limbs were hot and
heavy and refused to support him, his bones burned like quicklime.
The next morning, with the fever still upon him, he hurried
restlessly between the wharves and the cable-office, seeking for
news. There was much of it; it was great and trying news, the
situation outside of Santiago was grim and critical. The men who had
climbed San Juan Hill were clinging to it like sailors shipwrecked on
a reef unwilling to remain, but unable to depart. If they attacked
the city Cervera promised to send it crashing about their ears. They
would enter Santiago only to find it in ruins. If they abandoned the
hill, 2,000 killed and wounded would have been sacrificed in vain.
The war-critics of the press-boats and of the Twitchell House saw but
two courses left open. Either Sampson must force the harbor and
destroy the squadron, and so make it possible for the army to enter
the city, or the army must be reinforced with artillery and troops in
sufficient numbers to make it independent of Sampson and indifferent
to Cervera.
On the night of July 2d, a thousand lies, a thousand rumors, a
thousand prophecies rolled through the streets of Port Antonio, were
filed at the cable-office, and flashed to the bulletin-boards of New
York City.
That morning, so they told, the batteries on Morro Castle had sunk
three of Sampson's ships; the batteries on Morro Castle had
surrendered to Sampson; General Miles with 8,000 reinforcements had
sailed from Charleston; eighty guns had started from Tampa Bay, they
would occupy the mountains opposite Santiago and shell the Spanish
fleet; the authorities at Washington had at last consented to allow
Sampson to run the forts and mines, and attack the Spanish fleet; the
army had not been fed for two days, the Spaniards had cut it off from
its base at Siboney; the army would eat its Fourth of July dinner in
the Governor's Palace; the army was in full retreat; the army was to
attack at daybreak.
When Channing turned in under the fruit-shed on the night of July 2d,
there was but one press-boat remaining in the harbor. That was the
Consolidated Press boat, and Keating himself was on the wharf,
signalling for his dingy. Channing sprang to his feet and ran toward
him, calling him by name. The thought that he must for another day
remain so near the march of great events and yet not see and feel
them for himself, was intolerable. He felt if it would pay his
passage to the coast of Cuba, there was no sacrifice to which he
would not stoop. Keating watched him approach, but without sign of
recognition. His eyes were heavy and bloodshot.
"Keating," Channing begged, as he halted, panting, "won't you take me
with you? I'll not be in the way, and I'll stoke or wait on table, or
anything you want, if you'll only take me."
Keating's eyes opened and closed, sleepily. He removed an unlit cigar
from his mouth and shook the wet end of it at Channing, as though it
were an accusing finger.
"I know your game," he murmured, thickly. "You haven't got a boat and
you want to steal a ride on mine--for your paper. You can't do it,
you see, you can't do it."
One of the crew of the dingy climbed up the gangway of the wharf and
took Keating by the elbow. He looked at him and then at Channing and
winked. He was apparently accustomed to this complication. "I haven't
got a paper, Keating," Channing argued, soothingly. "Who have you got
to help you?" he asked. It came to him that there might be on the
boat some Philip sober, to whom he could appeal from Philip drunk.
"I haven't got anyone to help me," Keating answered, with dignity. "I
don't need anyone to help me." He placed his hand heavily and
familiarly on the shoulder of the deck-hand. "You see that man?" he
asked. "You see tha' man, do you? Well, tha' man he's too good for me
an' you. Tha' man--used to be the best reporter in New York City, an'
he was too good to hustle for news, an' now he's--now he can't get a
job--see? Nobody'll have him, see? He's got to come and be a stoker."
He stamped his foot with indignation.
"You come an' be a stoker," he commanded. "How long you think I'm
going to wait for a stoker? You stoker, come on board and be a
stoker."
Channing smiled, guiltily, at his good fortune, He jumped into the
bow of the dingy, and Keating fell heavily in the stern.
The captain of the press-boat helped Keating safely to a bunk in the
cabin and received his instructions to proceed to Santiago Harbor.
Then he joined Channing. "Mr. Keating is feeling bad to-night. That
bombardment off Morro," he explained, tactfully, "was too exciting.
We always let him sleep going across, and when we get there he's
fresh as a daisy. What's this he tells me of your doing stoking?"
"I thought there might be another fight tomorrow, so I said I'd come
as a stoker."
The captain grinned.
"Our Sam, that deck-hand, was telling me. He said Mr. Keating put it
on you, sort of to spite you--is that so?"
"Oh, I wanted to come," said Channing.
The captain laughed, comprehendingly. "I guess we'll be in a bad
way," he said, "when we need you in the engine-room." He settled
himself for conversation, with his feet against the rail and his
thumbs in his suspenders. The lamps of Port Antonio were sinking into
the water, the moonlight was flooding the deck.
"That was quite something of a bombardment Sampson put up against
Morro Castle this morning," he began, critically. He spoke of
bombardments from the full experience of a man who had seen shells
strike off Coney Island from the proving-grounds at Sandy Hook. But
Channing heard him, eagerly. He begged the tugboat-captain to tell
him what it looked like, and as the captain told him he filled it in
and saw it as it really was.
"Perhaps they'll bombard again to-morrow," he hazarded, hopefully.
"We can't tell till we see how they're placed on the station," the
captain answered. "If there's any firing we ought to hear it about
eight o'clock to-morrow morning. We'll hear 'em before we see 'em."
Channing's conscience began to tweak him. It was time, he thought,
that Keating should be aroused and brought up to the reviving air of
the sea, but when he reached the foot of the companion-ladder, he
found that Keating was already awake and in the act of drawing the
cork from a bottle. His irritation against Channing had evaporated
and he greeted him with sleepy good-humor.
"Why, it's ol' Charlie Channing," he exclaimed, drowsily. Channing
advanced upon him swiftly.
"Here, you've had enough of that!" he commanded. "We'll be off Morro
by breakfast-time. You don't want that."
Keating, giggling foolishly, pushed him from him and retreated with
the bottle toward his berth. He lurched into it, rolled over with his
face to the ship's side, and began breathing heavily.
"You leave me 'lone," he murmured, from the darkness of the bunk.
"You mind your own business, you leave me 'lone."
Channing returned to the bow and placed the situation before the
captain. That gentleman did not hesitate. He disappeared down the
companion-way, and, when an instant later he returned, hurled a
bottle over the ship's side.
The next morning when Channing came on deck the land was just in
sight, a rampart of dark green mountains rising in heavy masses
against the bright, glaring blue of the sky. He strained his eyes for
the first sight of the ships, and his ears for the faintest echoes of
distant firing, but there was no sound save the swift rush of the
waters at the bow. The sea lay smooth and flat before him, the sun
flashed upon it; the calm and hush of early morning hung over the
whole coast of Cuba.
An hour later the captain came forward and stood at his elbow.
"How's Keating?" Channing asked. "I tried to wake him, but I
couldn't."
The captain kept his binoculars to his eyes, and shut his lips
grimly. "Mr. Keating's very bad," he said. "He had another bottle
hidden somewhere, and all last night--" he broke off with a relieved
sigh. "It's lucky for him," he added, lowering the glasses, "that
there'll be no fight to-day."
Channing gave a gasp of disappointment. "What do you mean?" he
protested.
"You can look for yourself," said the captain, handing him the
glasses. "They're at their same old stations. There'll be no
bombardment to-day. That's the Iowa, nearest us, the Oregon's to
starboard of her, and the next is the Indiana. That little fellow
close under the land is the Gloucester."
He glanced up at the mast to see that the press-boat's signal was
conspicuous, they were drawing within range.
With the naked eye, Channing could see the monster, mouse-colored
war-ships, basking in the sun, solemn and motionless in a great
crescent, with its one horn resting off the harbor-mouth. They made
great blots on the sparkling, glancing surface of the water. Above
each superstructure, their fighting-tops, giant davits, funnels, and
gibbet-like yards twisted into the air, fantastic and
incomprehensible, but the bulk below seemed to rest solidly on the
bottom of the ocean, like an island of lead. The muzzles of their
guns peered from the turrets as from ramparts of rock.
Channing gave a sigh of admiration.
"Don't tell me they move," he said. "They're not ships, they're
fortresses!"
On the shore there was no sign of human life nor of human habitation.
Except for the Spanish flag floating over the streaked walls of
Morro, and the tiny blockhouse on every mountain-top, the squadron
might have been anchored off a deserted coast. The hills rose from
the water's edge like a wall, their peaks green and glaring in the
sun, their valleys dark with shadows. Nothing moved upon the white
beach at their feet, no smoke rose from their ridges, not even a palm
stirred. The great range slept in a blue haze of heat. But only a few
miles distant, masked by its frowning front, lay a gayly colored,
red-roofed city, besieged by encircling regiments, a broad bay
holding a squadron of great war-ships, and gliding cat-like through
its choked undergrowth and crouched among the fronds of its
motionless palms were the ragged patriots of the Cuban army, silent,
watchful, waiting. But the great range gave no sign. It frowned in
the sunlight, grim and impenetrable.
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