The Belted Seas Part 17

"By the tomb of my mother, you shall pay!" gurgled Bill.

"Come off!" says Flannagan kindly. "She hadn't any tomb, an' ye disremember who she was."

"Why," says Madame Bill, "the Senor Flannagan on that point speaks nearly the truth."

"A-r-r-r! I'll have your blood!" says the Minister.

"An' me givin' ye the soft word," says Flannagan, "an' apologies for takin' ye for a decorated rubber ball, an' bouncin' ye on the floor!

'Twas wrong of me. Sure, now, Misther Bill, an' is there more needed between gentlemen?" He looked for help to Madame Bill, who gazed at the smoke of her cheroot and seemed absent-minded.

"Listen, my Georgio," she began at last, "I have considered, and I say you have done foolishly to scatter the soldiers about the city to hurry and to inquire, so that the people become excited. Hear in the Plaza already how they cry out like children, and each one is angry at a different thing."

The Minister started, and listened, and wiped his wet forehead with his sleeve. The roar in the Plaza was increasing. He sprang to his feet, and puffed, and he says:

"The military is scattered! It is a mob! I must go! Attend me, my wife!"

But Flannagan enclosed his collar. "Respict for me own intherests," he says, "is me proudest virtue. Would ye have me missin' the sight of a rivolution from a private box, an' the shpectacle of explodin' liberty?

An' ye'll be havin' me blood to-morry by the tomb of your mother? Ah, now!"

"Let me go!" he says, shrieking and struggling. "I accept your apology!

Say no more!"

Flannagan looked at Madame Bill. The crowd was shouting more in unison now. They says, "Vivo Alvarez!" and "Bill al fuego!" which the latter means, as you or I might say, "To h.e.l.l with Bill!" The Minister s.h.i.+vered and struggled, but more moderate.

"The military will be confused, will do nothing without order!" he pleaded to Madame Bill.

"The military," says the tin-type man, from the shutters, speaking through his nose, soft and scornful, "they appear to feel tolerable good. There's a batch of 'em on the steps under here, a-sittin' in their sins, and shoutin' 'Down with Bill!' very hearty like."

"Mutiny!" howled the Minister. "Alas!" and he sat down, wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and panted, and appeared more composed.

Flannagan sat down, too. "I do be feelin' warm the same," he says.

"Shall we have a drink?"

Madame Bill was still turning things over in her mind. "Doubtless they so shout," she says. "They are not without sense. Listen again, my Georgio. I have considered. It is perhaps not bad. Moreover, it is done.

But the Department of the Military is not good for you. It worries you, therefore you disturb it, therefore it does not like you. Also, we have lost popularity in Rosalia. But in the interior, as yet, no. Therefore, consider. Senor Alvarez is perhaps generous. If he overthrow the government, he will desire there come an election, and who knows? We may for him go to the interior, and in reward be Minister of Agriculture, which is cooler. But if he overthrow not the government, but by compromise become Minister of Military and Internal Peace, then my Georgio will be in innocence a victim, and perhaps will have to hide, which is hot and dull, or go to the dungeons of La Libertad, which is dull and wet; or we would escape from the country in the distinguished s.h.i.+p of the Senor Buckingham, or in the Imperial Company of Senor Flannagan, which would be better."

"An' it's proud I'd be to have ye," says Flannagan, "as I said, ma'am, in the capitals of the world. Hivins!" he says, "the tropical advertis.e.m.e.nts! By the mimory of Ireland, 'tis a filibuster expedition I foresee! Me genius is long suppressed."

Madame Bill shrugged her shoulders. "Who knows? Therefore be calm, little one. We will see what they do in the Plaza."

The fallen or falling Minister emptied a gla.s.s of iced wine, and looked more contented than before. He was a pleasant enough man as a rule, except when not digesting well, and generally submissive to Madame Bill.

We put out the lights and opened the shutters, and all looked out on the Plaza except David, who woke up, and taking things in, appeared to say to himself, "They're doing something else," and went to sleep again.

The Plaza was a boiling mess, but the military were enjoying themselves in good order. They were collected on the steps of La Libertad below, about five hundred of them. They seemed to be leading the cheering. The hotel across the Plaza was lit up and the windows full of heads.

Then a hush fell everywhere, and the faces were turned toward the portico, with the six great pillars and lamps on each, that formed the centre of the Plaza front of La Libertad. Two men stood on the top step, one in a sombrero, and the other in black coat and tall hat. The tall hat, by his gestures, was addressing the crowd, but we couldn't hear him.

"The President and Alvarez," says Madame Bill, very calm. "They compromise. My Georgio will be hot and dull."

The crowd cried "Vivo" everything except Bill. They wanted him "al fuego" just the same, which, as you might say, means something like: "Oh, take him away. Put him somewhere and boil him!" They seemed distressed with him that way, and I took it Madame Bill was right that he'd been too lively with his military, and it was up with him. A band began to play by the hotel.

"My wife is ever right," says Bill, and began feeling toward the table for the iced wine. "Carambos! It is not with Madame Bill to be discouraged. No! Bueno! All right, my wife. What did you say?"

Madame Bill said we'd leave him there, which we did, after closing the shutters. We left him drinking iced wine, eating mangoes, blowing smoke, and looking like a porpoise in respect to complexion, but shorter and fatter than a porpoise, and remarkable youthful.

It came on the Monday following and my cargo was s.h.i.+pped. There was a platform put up on the Plaza, and I heard Flannagan making a speech there, in which the feeling was eloquent, and the languages as they came along. The tin-type man, under the platform, was taking tin-types to make a man remember how he was depraved. David's spots were running with the heat, but he scratched them and made no trouble. The j.a.panese sat on their heels and smiled.

"For a thousand years," says Flannagan, "by the imerald seas of the Orient, have the ancesthors of me frinds on me right developed the soopleness of limb an' the art that is becalled by the Mahatmas an'

thim Boodhists 'the art of the symbolical attichude,' as discovered and practised in the Injian Ocean's coral isles, which by the same they do expriss their feelin's till ye get a mysthical pain in your stomick wid lookin' at 'em. 'Twas so done," he says, "by the imerald seas of the Orient."

That evening they came secretly aboard, Flannagan and the Company, and with them Bill and Madame Bill. We weighed anchor the next morning, and got away. The Bill family became an addition and a credit to the Flannagan and Imperial, as it turned out.

CHAPTER XIII.

FLANNAGAN AND STEVEY TODD--CAPTAIN BUCKINGHAM RETURNS TO GREENOUGH--THE NARRATIVE CONTINUED.

The Flannagan and Imperial was the last cargo I carried, but I carried it near five years. It was what you might call a continuous cargo; the _Annalee_ was in partners.h.i.+p with it; that is, Flannagan and I went into partners.h.i.+p together. Madame Bill's influence appeared to act expansive on Flannagan's ideas, and they expanded the Company. She was an uncommon woman, with a pus.h.i.+ng mind, and exhibited as "The Princess Popocatapetl, Lineal Descendant of Montezuma and Queen of the Caribbeans." Flannagan engaged Bill to exhibit as "The Fat Boy," and he was very successful in this way, weighing two hundred, and in height four feet eight inches, though thirty to forty years old. His face was round and smooth as an apple, and he wore a little jacket and sailor hat, and carried a piece of gingerbread in general, when on exhibition; and in that way he looked as young as might be needed, and satisfactory to every one. Flannagan used to rent the advertising s.p.a.ce on Bill's legs, for "Infants' Foods"

and "Patent Medicines for Dyspepsia," which was popular and profitable.

But I was saying Madame Bill was a handsome woman, and valuable, and Flannagan himself hadn't a better eye for giving the public sensations.

She expanded his ideas. Yet Flannagan had a knack. He was grand at speech-making, and sudden and spectacular by nature.

He s.h.i.+pped with me then from Rosalia to the different ports I was billed for that voyage, picking up more additions to the Company, till it was a large company. I was free to admit he made good profits out of the seaport cities between South America and Charleston; so at Charleston, when he offered me a partners.h.i.+p, I felt agreeable, and took it, on this agreement; I to put in the use and management of the _Annalee_, and he to put in "The Flannagan and Imperial;" I to run the s.h.i.+p and he to run the show. The profits should be divided half-yearly, after paying expenses of s.h.i.+p and show.

We ran under this agreement several years, and exhibited all the way from Boston to Rio, according to the season, and sometimes went inland up navigable rivers, such as to Albany and Philadelphia. We summered northward and wintered southward, and did better than most shows on transportation expenses, besides having an open season through the year.

Prosperity kept us together until after Bill died, which came from his being too ambitious, and proud of his line in the profession, and having his heart set on two hundred and fifty pounds. Stevey Todd, here, he got too interested in helping Bill along in his career, and fattening him up to a high standard. But Bill's digestion was never good. He died rather young.

Stevey Todd has cooked for me so long, that it's got to the point that other victuals than Stevey Todd's seem unfriendly strangers, likely to be hostile. I claim that, as a cook, Stevey's a bold and skilful one, and enterprising. But outside the galley he's a backward man and caution's his motto, and in argument he's, as you might say, a gradual man. His nature, as differing there from Flannagan's, might be seen in this way. For when Bill was dead, Flannagan and Stevey Todd each wanted to marry Madame Bill, and their notions of it were as different as sharks are different from mud-turtles, Flannagan's notion mainly resembling a shark's, as follows. He says:

"Popo," he says, pretty quick, "Bill's off. Here's to him, an' may his ghost weigh two hundred and fifty. I'm on," he says. "Whin shall it be?"

Then a madder woman than Madame Bill was seldom seen, for she threw Montezuma's crown at Flannagan, and chased him under the tent ropes with the gilt-headed and feather-tufted spear of the Queen of the Caribbeans, which ruined an eighteen-dollar crown and stuck Flannagan vicious in the shoulder-blade with the spear.

Whereas Stevey Todd bided a while, as a cautious man would do, until some decent time had gone by; and then he gets me, as a friend, in ambush inside the cabin window for precaution and testimony, and plants the scornful typist at a distance to take photographs that might be useful, and then he brings Madame Bill to the window.

"Now," he says to her, "supposing there was a man that we'll call middle-aged, and that might be a cook maybe by profession, for it wouldn't do no harm if we took it he had leanings that way, and if you said he was as good a one as ever stepped into a galley, I wouldn't go so far as to say so myself, nor yet deny it, for Bill had that opinion himself, and he was a man of good judgment on things that had to do with his line, though when his feelings moved him he was apt to put it warm, nor I ain't denying that when his digestion was otherwise, his remarks was sometimes contrary. Now, supposing there was a lady, whose merits I wouldn't nowise try to state, but if you was to say her talents was good, and her weight a hundred and forty, I wouldn't say you was wrong, which I've heard it put that as a Lineal Descendant she was worth climbing the volcano to see, which supposing she complimented it by borrowing that name, it's no harm if she did. Now, supposing those parties was talking of this thing and that, as anybody might do, and, say, they got to talking of the show business maybe, or, say, they happened to mention such a thing as matrimony, now," says Stevey Todd, "what would be your idea of that last as a subject of conversation between those parties?"

Madame Bill didn't answer the question, though it seemed to me put delicate, but she burst into melodious laughter, and ran away, and the tin-type man, whose natural expression was dislike of his fellow man, he looked disgusted more'n you'd believe, and went away too. Then Stevey Todd put his head through the window, and he says:

"Now, supposing a party acted in such or such a way to one party, which acted another way to another party, what would you say might happen to be her meaning?"

I gave my opinion candid, and truthful. I said, as to Madame Bill, I judged something or other pleased her, and by her behaviour to Flannagan it looked as if there was something then which she hadn't liked, though what it might be in either case was more than I could say, but speaking generally it looked hopeful for Stevey Todd, and I stated that same opinion. Stevey Todd went back to the galley, and it seemed to me the difference between his nature and Flannagan's was something to wonder at and admire, and when I saw Flannagan he seemed to have the same opinion with me, for he says:

"Powers an' fryin' pans! Thot cook!" he says. "Thot galley shlave! Thot boiled pertaty widout salt! Shall a barrel of flour put me in the soup?

Tell me thot!"