The Storyteller.

Waikato Argus, Volume I, Issue 50, 31 October 1896, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Storyteller.

A SHIP OF '4l ♦ CHAPTER 11. The day following " steamer night " was usually stale and flat at San Francisco. The reaction from the feverish exaltation of the previous twenty-four hours was seen in the listless faces and lounging feet of promenaders, and was noticablc in the deserted offices and warehouses still redolent of last night's gas, and strewn with the dead ashes of last night's fires. There was a brier pause before the busy life which ran its course from " steamer day " to " steamer day " was once more taken up. In that interval a few anxious speculators and investors breathed freely, some critical situation relieved, or some impending catas'rophe momentarily averted. In particular, a single stroke of good fortune that morning befell Mr. Nott. He not only secured a new tenant, but, as he sagaciously believed, introduced into the Pontiac a counteracting influence to the subtle fascinations of de ForrierC3. Tne new tenant apparently possessed a combination of business shrewdness and brusque frankness that strongly impressed his landlord. "You see, Ilosey," said Nott, complacently describing the interview to his danghter, "when I sorter intimated in a keerless kind o' way that sugar kettles and hair dye was about played out cz securities, he just planked down the money for two months in advance. ' There,' sez he, ' that's pur security —now where's mine ?' 'I recon I don't hitch on, pardner ;' sez I, 1 security what for ? ' S'pose you sell the ship?' sez ho, ' afore two months is up. I've heard that old Sleight wants to buy her." «Then you get back your money' sez I. ' And lose my room,' sez he, ' not much old man. You sign a paper that whoever buys the ship inside 0' two months hez to buy me cz a tenant with it ; that's on the square.' So I signed the paper. It was mighty cute in tho joung feller, wasn't it ? " he said, scanning his daughter's pretty puzzled face a little anxiously ; " and don't you sec ez I ain't goiu' to sell the Pontiac, its just about ez cute in me, eh ? He's a contractor somewhere around ycr, and wants to be near his work. So he takes the room next to the Frenchman, that that ship captain quit for the mines, and succeeds naterally to his chest and things. He's mighty peart-looking, that young feller, Ilosey—long black moustaches, all his own colour, Rosey—and he's a regular high-stepper, you bet. I recon he's not only been a gontleman, bntezNWM". Some of them contractors are very high-toned ?" " I don't think we have any right # to give him the captain's chest, 'father," said Rosey ; " there may be some private things in it. There were some letters and photographs in the hair-dye man's trunk you gave the photographer.' " That's just it, Rosey," returned Abncr Nott with sublime unconsciousness, " photographs and love letters you can't sell for cash, and I don't mind givin 'cm away if they kin make a feller creature happy." " I'ufc, father, have we the right to give 'em away r " " They're collateral security, Rosey," said her father grimly. " Co-la-te-ral," he continued, emphasising each syllable by tapping the fist of one hand in the open palm of the other. " Co-la-te-ral," is the word the big business sharps ycr about call 'em. You can't get round that." He paused a moment, and then, as a new idea seemed to be painfully borne in his round eyes, continued cautiously, " Was that the reason why you wouldn't touch any of them dresses from the trunks of that opery gal ez skodadled for Sacrameto ] And yet them trunks l regularly bought at auction— Rosey—at auction, on spec—and they didn't realise the cost of drayage." A slight colour mounted to Rosey's face. " No," she said, hastily, !' not that." Hesitating a moment she then drew softly to his side and placing her arnn round his neck, turned his broad, foolish face towards her own. " Father," she began, " when mother died, would yon have liked anyone to take her trunks and paw round her things and wear them?" "When your mother died, just this side o' Sweetwater, Rosey," said Mr. Nott, with beaming unconsciousness, " she hadn't any trunks. I reckon she hadn't even an extra gown hanging up in" the waggin' 'ccpt the petticoat tZ she had wrapped around yer. It was about ezrnuch ez wp could do to shirmish round with Injins, alkali, and cold. and we sorter forgot to dress for dinner. She never thought, Uosey, that you and me would live to be inhabitin' a paliss of a real ship. Ef she had .she would have died a proud woman." He turned his small, loving, boarlike eyes upon her as a pretcrnatually innocent and trusting companion of Ulysses might have regarded the transforming Circe. Rosey turned away with the fain tost sigh. The habitual look of abstraction returned to her eyes as if she had once more taken refuge in her own ideal world. Unfortunately the change did not escipo either the sensitive observation or the fatuous misconception of the sagacious parent. " Ye'll ha mount in' a few furbelows and fixins, Uosey, 1 reckon cz only natural; Mubbu ye.'ll

have to prink up a little now tlv\t we've got a gentleman contractor in the ship. I'll see what I kin pick up in Montgomery Street." And indeed he succeeded a few hours later in accomplishing with equal infe'icifcy his generous design. When she returned from her household tasks she found on her berth a purple velvet bonnet of extraordinary make, and a pair of white satin s'ippers. " They'll do for a start off, Rosey," he explained, " and I got 'em at my figgers." " But I go out so seldom, father, and a bonnet " " That's so," interrupted Mr. Notf, complacently, " it might be jest ez well for a young gal like yer to appear ez if she did go our, or would go out if she wanted to. 80 yon kin be wearin' that ar headstall kinder like this evening' when the contractor's here, ez if you'd jest come in from a pasear." Miss Rosey did rnt however immediately avail herself of lvr father's purchase, but contented herself with the usual scarlet ribbon that like a snood confined her brown hair when she returned to h:;r tasks. The space between the galley and the l.ulkwarks hid b en her favourite reso t in summer when not actually engaged In household work: It was now lightly roofed over with boards and tarpaulin against the winter rain, but still 'afforded her a verandah-like fpico before the galley door, where sh) could road or sew, looking ov.-r the bow of the Pontiac to the tossing bay or the further range of the Contra Costa hills. Miss Ilosey b ought the pjrple prodigy, p.utly to please her father, partly with a view of subjecting it to violent radical changes. But after trying it on before the tiny mirror in the galley once or twice, her thoughts wandered away, and she fell into one of her habitual reveries seated on a little stool before the galley door. She wis rouse 1 from it by the slight shaking and rattling of the doors of a small hatch on the deck, not a dozin yards from where she Bit. It had been evidently fastened from bo'ow during the wet weather, but as she gazed, the fastenings were removed, the dcors were su Idenly lifted and the head and shoulders of young man emerged from the deck. Tartly from her father's description, and partly from the impossibility of its being anybody else, she at once conceived it to be the now lodger. Sho had time to note that he svas young and good-looking, graver perhaps than became his sudden pantomimic appearance, but before she could observe him closely, he had turned, closed the hatch with a certain familiar dexterity, and walked slowly towards the bows Even in her slight bewilderment, she observed tint his step upon the deck seemed different to her father's or the photographer's, and that he laid his hand on various objects with a half-caressing ease and habit. Presently he paused and turned back, and glancing at the galley door for the first time encountered her wondering eyes. It seemed so evident that shfc had been a curious spectator of his abrupt entrance on dock that he was at first disconcerted and confused. But after a second gl nice at her hj appeared to resume his composure, and advanced a little defiantly towards the galley. " I suppes"! I fright neJ you, popping-up the fore hatch just now ? " " The what ? " asked Rosey. " The fore hatch," he repeated impatiently, in licating it with a gesture. " And that's the fore hatch 1 " she said abstractedly. " You seem to know ships." " Y'es—a little," he Slid quietly. " I was below, and unfastened the hatch to come up the quickest way and take a look round. I've ju.it hired a room here," he added explanatorily. "I thought so," said Uosey simply, " you're the contractor ? " " The contractor ! oh, yes ! You seem to know it all." " Father's told me." "Oh, he's your father—Nott? Certainly. I see now," he continued, looking at her with a half repressed smile. " Certainly, Miss Nott, good morning," he half added and walked down the companion way, Something in the direction of his eyes as he turned away made Rosey lift her hands to her head. She had forgotten to remove her father's blameful gift. She snatched it off and ran quickly to the companion way, " Sir ! " she called, The young man turned half way down the steps and looked up. There was a faintcolour in her cheeks, and her pretty brown hair was slightly dishevelled from the hasty removal of the bonnet. " Father's very particular about strangers being on the deck," she said a little sharply. " Oil —ah—l'm sorry I intruded." " I—1—thought Til till you," sMd Rosey, frightened by her boldness into a feeble anti-climax. " Thank you," She came back slowly to the galley and picked up the unfortunate bonnet with a slight sense of remorse. Why should she feel angry with her poor father's unhappy offering ? And what business had this strange young man to use the ship so familiarly ? Yet she was vaguely conscious that she and her father with all their love and their domestic experience of it 1 icked a certain instinctive ease in its possession

that that half indidorcntstranger had shown on first treading its deck. She walked to the hatchway and examined it with a new interest. Succeeding in lifting the hatch, she gazed at the lower deck. As she already knew the ladder had long since been removed to make room for one of the partitions, the only way the stranger could have reached it was by leaping to one of the To make sure of this ehe let herself down holding on to the rings and dropping a couple of feet to the deck belo.v. She was in the narrow passage her father had penetrated the previous night. Before her was the door leading to de Ferrieres's loft, always: locked. It was silent within ; it was the hour when the old Frenchman made his habitual promenade in the city. But the light from the newly-opened hatch allowed her to see more of the mysterious recesses of the forward bulkhead than she had known before, and she was startled by observing another yawning hatchway at her feet from which the closelyfitting door had been lifted, and which the new lodger had evidently forgotten to close again, The young girl stooped down and peered cautiously into the black abyss. Nothing was to be seen, nothing heard but the distant gurgle'and click of water in some remoter depth. She replaced the hatch and turned by way of the passage to the cabin. When her father came home that night she briefly recounted the interview with his curiosity. She did this with a possible increase of her usual shyness and abstraction, and apparently more as a duty than a colloquial recreation. But it pleased Mr. Nott also to give it more than his usual misconception. " Looking round tho ship, svas he—eh, Rosey ?" he said with infinite archness. "In course, kinder swecpin' round tho galley, and offerin' to fetch you wood and water, eh ?" Even when the young girl had picked up her book with the usual faint smile of affectionate tolerance, and then drifted away in its pages, Mr. Nott chuckled audibly. " 1 reckon old Frenchy didn't come by when the young one was bedevlin' you there." " What, father?" said Rosey, lifting her abstracted eyes to his face. At the moment it seemed impossible that any human intelligence was super-human. " I was say in' that Mr. Fcrrieres didn't happen in while the voung feller was there —eh !" "No, father," answered Rosey, with an effort to follow him out of the pages of her book, " Why ?" But Mr. Nott did not. reply. Later in the evening he awkwardly waylaid the new lodger before the cabin door as that gentleman would have passed on to his room. " I'm afraid," said the young man, glancing at Rosey, " that 1 intruded upon your daughter today. I was a little curious to see the old ship, and 1 didn't know what part of it was private." " There ain't no private part to this yer ship—that cz, 'cepting the rooms and lofts," said Mr. Nott, authoritatively. Then, subjecting the anxious look of his daughter to his usual faculty for misconception, he added, " Thar ain't no place, whar you haven't as much right to go ez any other man ; thar ain't any man, furriner or Amerykan, young or old, dyed or unclyed, ez hev got any better rights. You hear me, young fellow. Mr. Renshaw—my darter. My darter—Mr. Renshaw. Rosey, give the gentleman a chair. She's only jest come in from a promeynado, and hez just taken off her bonnet," he added, with an arch look at Rosey, and a hurried look around the cabin, as if l-.e hoped to see the missing gift visible to the general eye. "So take a scut a minit, won't ye ?" But Mr. Renshaw, after an observant glance at the young girl's abstracted face, brusquely excused himself. " I've got a letter to write," he said, with a half bow to Rosey. "Good nignt." He crossed the passage to the room that had been assigned to him, and closing the door way to some irritability of temper in his efforts to light the lamp and adjust his writing materials-, For his excuse to .Mr, Nott was more truthful than most polite pretexts. He had, indeed, a letter to write, and one that, being yet young in duplicity, tho near presence of his host rendered difficult, For it ran as follows : " Dkaii Slkigjit, " As I found I couldn't get a chance to make any examination of the ship except as occasion offered, I just went in to rent loggings in her from the God-forsakcu old ass who owns her, and here I am a tenant for two months. I contracted for that time in case the old fool should sell out to some one else, before, Fxcept that she's cut up a little between decks by the partitions for lofts that that Pike county idiot has put into her, she looks but little changed, and her fore-hold, as far as 1 can judge, is intact, It seems that Xott bought her just as she stands, with her cargo half out, but he wasn't here when she broke cargo. If anybody else had bought her but this cursed Missourian, who hasn't got the hayseed out of his hair, I might have found out something from him, and s;.veil myself this kind of fooling, wi ich isn't in my line, If 1 could get possession of a loft on th: main deck, well forward, just over tho !orc-hpld| I

could satisfy myself in a few hours, 1 h the loft is rented by that crazy Frenchman who parade? Montgomery Street every afternoon, and though old Pike county wants to turn him out, I'm afraid I can't get it for a week to come, "If anything should happen to me, just you waltz down here and corral my things at once, for this old frontier pirate has a way of confiscating his lodgers' trunks. " Youhs, Dick," ( To be roHtlintnf),