The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories Part 21

'Which four?'

'We four--for Millet helped to carry his own coffin. In disguise, you know. Disguised as a relative--distant relative.'

'Astonis.h.i.+ng!'

'But true just the same. Well, you remember how the pictures went up.

Money? We didn't know what to do with it. There's a man in Paris to-day who owns seventy Millet pictures. He paid us two million francs for them. And as for the bushels of sketches and studies which Millet shovelled out during the six weeks that we were on the road, well, it would astonish you to know the figure we sell them at nowadays--that is, when we consent to let one go!'

'It is a wonderful history, perfectly wonderful!'

'Yes--it amounts to that.'

'Whatever became of Millet?'

'Can you keep a secret?'

'I can.'

'Do you remember the man I called your attention to in the dining room to-day? That was Francois Millet.'

'Great--'

'Scott! Yes. For once they didn't starve a genius to death and then put into other pockets the rewards he should have had himself. This song-bird was not allowed to pipe out its heart unheard and then be paid with the cold pomp of a big funeral. We looked out for that.'

MY DEBUT AS A LITERARY PERSON

In those early days I had already published one little thing ('The Jumping Frog') in an Eastern paper, but I did not consider that that counted. In my view, a person who published things in a mere newspaper could not properly claim recognition as a Literary Person: he must rise away above that; he must appear in a magazine. He would then be a Literary Person; also, he would be famous--right away. These two ambitions were strong upon me. This was in 1866. I prepared my contribution, and then looked around for the best magazine to go up to glory in. I selected the most important one in New York. The contribution was accepted. I signed it 'MARK TWAIN;' for that name had some currency on the Pacific coast, and it was my idea to spread it all over the world, now, at this one jump. The article appeared in the December number, and I sat up a month waiting for the January number; for that one would contain the year's list of contributors, my name would be in it, and I should be famous and could give the banquet I was meditating.

I did not give the banquet. I had not written the 'MARK TWAIN'

distinctly; it was a fresh name to Eastern printers, and they put it 'Mike Swain' or 'MacSwain,' I do not remember which. At any rate, I was not celebrated and I did not give the banquet. I was a Literary Person, but that was all--a buried one; buried alive.

My article was about the burning of the clipper-s.h.i.+p 'Hornet' on the line, May 3, 1866. There were thirty-one men on board at the time, and I was in Honolulu when the fifteen lean and ghostly survivors arrived there after a voyage of forty-three days in an open boat, through the blazing tropics, on ten days' rations of food. A very remarkable trip; but it was conducted by a captain who was a remarkable man, otherwise there would have been no survivors. He was a New Englander of the best sea-going stock of the old capable times--Captain Josiah Mitch.e.l.l.

I was in the islands to write letters for the weekly edition of the Sacramento 'Union,' a rich and influential daily journal which hadn't any use for them, but could afford to spend twenty dollars a week for nothing. The proprietors were lovable and well-beloved men: long ago dead, no doubt, but in me there is at least one person who still holds them in grateful remembrance; for I dearly wanted to see the islands, and they listened to me and gave me the opportunity when there was but slender likelihood that it could profit them in any way.

I had been in the islands several months when the survivors arrived. I was laid up in my room at the time, and unable to walk. Here was a great occasion to serve my journal, and I not able to take advantage of it.

Necessarily I was in deep trouble. But by good luck his Excellency Anson Burlingame was there at the time, on his way to take up his post in China, where he did such good work for the United States. He came and put me on a stretcher and had me carried to the hospital where the s.h.i.+pwrecked men were, and I never needed to ask a question. He attended to all of that himself, and I had nothing to do but make the notes.

It was like him to take that trouble. He was a great man and a great American, and it was in his fine nature to come down from his high office and do a friendly turn whenever he could.

We got through with this work at six in the evening. I took no dinner, for there was no time to spare if I would beat the other correspondents.

I spent four hours arranging the notes in their proper order, then wrote all night and beyond it; with this result: that I had a very long and detailed account of the 'Hornet' episode ready at nine in the morning, while the other correspondents of the San Francisco journals had nothing but a brief outline report--for they didn't sit up. The now-and-then schooner was to sail for San Francisco about nine; when I reached the dock she was free forward and was just casting off her stern-line. My fat envelope was thrown by a strong hand, and fell on board all right, and my victory was a safe thing. All in due time the s.h.i.+p reached San Francisco, but it was my complete report which made the stir and was telegraphed to the New York papers, by Mr. Cash; he was in charge of the Pacific bureau of the 'New York Herald' at the time.

When I returned to California by-and-by, I went up to Sacramento and presented a bill for general correspondence at twenty dollars a week. It was paid. Then I presented a bill for 'special' service on the 'Hornet'

matter of three columns of solid nonpareil at a hundred dollars a column. The cas.h.i.+er didn't faint, but he came rather near it. He sent for the proprietors, and they came and never uttered a protest. They only laughed in their jolly fas.h.i.+on, and said it was robbery, but no matter; it was a grand 'scoop' (the bill or my 'Hornet' report, I didn't know which): 'Pay it. It's all right.' The best men that ever owned a newspaper.

The 'Hornet' survivors reached the Sandwich Islands the 15th of June.

They were mere skinny skeletons; their clothes hung limp about them and fitted them no better than a flag fits the flag-staff in a calm. But they were well nursed in the hospital; the people of Honolulu kept them supplied with all the dainties they could need; they gathered strength fast, and were presently nearly as good as new. Within a fortnight the most of them took s.h.i.+p for San Francisco; that is, if my dates have not gone astray in my memory. I went in the same s.h.i.+p, a sailing-vessel.

Captain Mitch.e.l.l of the 'Hornet' was along; also the only pa.s.sengers the 'Hornet' had carried. These were two young men from Stamford, Connecticut--brothers: Samuel and Henry Ferguson. The 'Hornet' was a clipper of the first cla.s.s and a fast sailer; the young men's quarters were roomy and comfortable, and were well stocked with books, and also with canned meats and fruits to help out the s.h.i.+p-fare with; and when the s.h.i.+p cleared from New York harbour in the first week of January there was promise that she would make quick and pleasant work of the fourteen or fifteen thousand miles in front of her. As soon as the cold lat.i.tudes were left behind and the vessel entered summer weather, the voyage became a holiday picnic. The s.h.i.+p flew southward under a cloud of sail which needed no attention, no modifying or change of any kind, for days together. The young men read, strolled the ample deck, rested and drowsed in the shade of the canvas, took their meals with the captain; and when the day was done they played dummy whist with him till bed-time. After the snow and ice and tempests of the Horn, the s.h.i.+p bowled northward into summer weather again, and the trip was a picnic once more.

Until the early morning of the 3rd of May. Computed position of the s.h.i.+p 112 degrees 10 minutes longitude, lat.i.tude 2 degrees above the equator; no wind, no sea--dead calm; temperature of the atmosphere, tropical, blistering, unimaginable by one who has not been roasted in it. There was a cry of fire. An unfaithful sailor had disobeyed the rules and gone into the b.o.o.by-hatch with an open light to draw some varnish from a cask. The proper result followed, and the vessel's hours were numbered.

There was not much time to spare, but the captain made the most of it.

The three boats were launched--long-boat and two quarter-boats. That the time was very short and the hurry and excitement considerable is indicated by the fact that in launching the boats a hole was stove in the side of one of them by some sort of collision, and an oar driven through the side of another. The captain's first care was to have four sick sailors brought up and placed on deck out of harm's way--among them a 'Portyghee.' This man had not done a day's work on the voyage, but had lain in his hammock four months nursing an abscess. When we were taking notes in the Honolulu hospital and a sailor told this to Mr. Burlingame, the third mate, who was lying near, raised his head with an effort, and in a weak voice made this correction--with solemnity and feeling:

'Raising abscesses! He had a family of them. He done it to keep from standing his watch.'

Any provisions that lay handy were gathered up by the men and two pa.s.sengers and brought and dumped on the deck where the 'Portyghee'

lay; then they ran for more. The sailor who was telling this to Mr.

Burlingame added:

'We pulled together thirty-two days' rations for the thirty-one men that way.'

The third mate lifted his head again and made another correction--with bitterness:

'The "Portyghee" et twenty-two of them while he was soldiering there and n.o.body noticing. A d.a.m.ned hound.'

The fire spread with great rapidity. The smoke and flame drove the men back, and they had to stop their incomplete work of fetching provisions, and take to the boats with only ten days' rations secured.

Each boat had a compa.s.s, a quadrant, a copy of Bowditch's 'Navigator,'

and a Nautical Almanac, and the captain's and chief mate's boats had chronometers. There were thirty-one men all told. The captain took an account of stock, with the following result: four hams, nearly thirty pounds of salt pork, half-box of raisins, one hundred pounds of bread, twelve two-pound cans of oysters, clams, and a.s.sorted meats, a keg containing four pounds of b.u.t.ter, twelve gallons of water in a forty-gallon 'scuttle-b.u.t.t', four one-gallon demijohns full of water, three bottles of brandy (the property of pa.s.sengers), some pipes, matches, and a hundred pounds of tobacco. No medicines. Of course the whole party had to go on short rations at once.

The captain and the two pa.s.sengers kept diaries. On our voyage to San Francisco we ran into a calm in the middle of the Pacific, and did not move a rod during fourteen days; this gave me a chance to copy the diaries. Samuel Ferguson's is the fullest; I will draw upon it now.

When the following paragraph was written the doomed s.h.i.+p was about one hundred and twenty days out from port, and all hands were putting in the lazy time about as usual, as no one was forecasting disaster.

(Diary entry) May 2. Lat.i.tude 1 degree 28 minutes N., longitude 111 degrees 38 minutes W. Another hot and sluggish day; at one time, however, the clouds promised wind, and there came a slight breeze --just enough to keep us going. The only thing to chronicle to-day is the quant.i.ties of fish about; nine bonitos were caught this forenoon, and some large albacores seen. After dinner the first mate hooked a fellow which he could not hold, so he let the line go to the captain, who was on the bow. He, holding on, brought the fish to with a jerk, and snap went the line, hook and all. We also saw astern, swimming lazily after us, an enormous shark, which must have been nine or ten feet long. We tried him with all sorts of lines and a piece of pork, but he declined to take hold. I suppose he had appeased his appet.i.te on the heads and other remains of the bonitos we had thrown overboard.

Next day's entry records the disaster. The three boats got away, retired to a short distance, and stopped. The two injured ones were leaking badly; some of the men were kept busy baling, others patched the holes as well as they could. The captain, the two pa.s.sengers, and eleven men were in the long-boat, with a share of the provisions and water, and with no room to spare, for the boat was only twenty-one feet long, six wide, and three deep. The chief mate and eight men were in one of the small boats, the second mate and seven men in the other. The pa.s.sengers had saved no clothing but what they had on, excepting their overcoats.

The s.h.i.+p, clothed in flame and sending up a vast column of black smoke into the sky, made a grand picture in the solitudes of the sea, and hour after hour the outcasts sat and watched it. Meantime the captain ciphered on the immensity of the distance that stretched between him and the nearest available land, and then scaled the rations down to meet the emergency; half a biscuit for dinner; one biscuit and some canned meat for dinner; half a biscuit for tea; a few swallows of water for each meal. And so hunger began to gnaw while the s.h.i.+p was still burning.

(Diary entry) May 4. The s.h.i.+p burned all night very brightly, and hopes are that some s.h.i.+p has seen the light and is bearing down upon us. None seen, however, this forenoon, so we have determined to go together north and a little west to some islands in 18 degrees or 19 degrees north lat.i.tude and 114 degrees to 115 degrees west longitude, hoping in the meantime to be picked up by some s.h.i.+p. The s.h.i.+p sank suddenly at about 5 A.M. We find the sun very hot and scorching, but all try to keep out of it as much as we can.

They did a quite natural thing now: waited several hours for that possible s.h.i.+p that might have seen the light to work her slow way to them through the nearly dead calm. Then they gave it up and set about their plans. If you will look at the map you will say that their course could be easily decided. Albemarle Island (Galapagos group) lies straight eastward nearly a thousand miles; the islands referred to in the diary as 'some islands' (Revillagigedo Islands) lie, as they think, in some widely uncertain region northward about one thousand miles and westward one hundred or one hundred and fifty miles. Acapulco, on the Mexican coast, lies about north-east something short of one thousand miles. You will say random rocks in the ocean are not what is wanted; let them strike for Acapulco and the solid continent. That does look like the rational course, but one presently guesses from the diaries that the thing would have been wholly irrational--indeed, suicidal. If the boats struck for Albemarle they would be in the doldrums all the way; and that means a watery perdition, with winds which are wholly crazy, and blow from all points of the compa.s.s at once and also perpendicularly. If the boats tried for Acapulco they would get out of the doldrums when half-way there--in case they ever got half-way--and then they would be in lamentable case, for there they would meet the north-east trades coming down in their teeth, and these boats were so rigged that they could not sail within eight points of the wind. So they wisely started northward, with a slight slant to the west. They had but ten days' short allowance of food; the long-boat was towing the others; they could not depend on making any sort of definite progress in the doldrums, and they had four or five hundred miles of doldrums in front of them yet. They are the real equator, a tossing, roaring, rainy belt, ten or twelve hundred miles broad, which girdles the globe.

It rained hard the first night and all got drenched, but they filled up their water-b.u.t.t. The brothers were in the stern with the captain, who steered. The quarters were cramped; no one got much sleep. 'Kept on our course till squalls headed us off.'

Stormy and squally the next morning, with drenching rains. A heavy and dangerous 'cobbling' sea. One marvels how such boats could live in it.

Is it called a feat of desperate daring when one man and a dog cross the Atlantic in a boat the size of a long-boat, and indeed it is; but this long-boat was overloaded with men and other plunder, and was only three feet deep. 'We naturally thought often of all at home, and were glad to remember that it was Sacrament Sunday, and that prayers would go up from our friends for us, although they know not our peril.'

The captain got not even a cat-nap during the first three days and nights, but he got a few winks of sleep the fourth night. 'The worst sea yet.' About ten at night the captain changed his course and headed east-north-east, hoping to make Clipperton Rock. If he failed, no matter; he would be in a better position to make those other islands. I will mention here that he did not find that rock.

On May 8 no wind all day; sun blistering hot; they take to the oars.

Plenty of dolphins, but they couldn't catch any. 'I think we are all beginning to realise more and more the awful situation we are in.' 'It often takes a s.h.i.+p a week to get through the doldrums; how much longer, then, such a craft as ours?' 'We are so crowded that we cannot stretch ourselves out for a good sleep, but have to take it any way we can get it.'

Of course this feature will grow more and more trying, but it will be human nature to cease to set it down; there will be five weeks of it yet--we must try to remember that for the diarist; it will make our beds the softer.