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Updated: May 29, 2025
Craney was a yellow-looking man at that time, and glad enough when I told him I was going to bring him some fruit, and take passage to Panama, and look after him. Then I bargained with Rickhart for a passage for two. The next day I went back up to the Helen Mar, and found Stevey Todd had a board fence in front of her, and was charging admission, and he had a new advertisement tacked on the fence.
I never knew a meaner ship, though I've known meaner men than Rickhart on the whole. Stevey Todd said he was going with us, and there Rickhart disagreed with him again, and his argument was the same as before. "You ain't," he says, and seemed to prove it, though Stevey Todd claimed he wasn't convinced.
A few neighbours had dropped in to hear the news of the parish, and the latest tidings from the world at large. They had not been seated long ere a loud rap sounded upon the door, and when it was opened, a man encased in a heavy coat entered. "Is Parson John here?" were his first words. "Yes," Mr. Rickhart replied. "He's in the sitting-room. Do you want to see him? Is it a wedding, Sam?
They brought cocoa-beans in caravans and boatloads for a while, and they said it was many years since they'd had such a harvest, or such a tremblor, and Himself was a great magician. The time went by. I heard in Corazon one day that Captain Rickhart had put into port there on his back voyage, and inquired some for us, but that was a month before.
And then, coming through the forecastle, some one spoke to me from a bunk and he says: "When'd you drop in, Tommy?" and I stopped, and stared, and pretty soon I made him out. It was Julius R. Craney. He certainly was sick. He said he had shipped with Rickhart from New York, to go to California and make his fortune, but thought now he wouldn't live so far.
Rickhart came straight for Stevey Todd, and handed him his passage money. "You're no passenger" he says. "You're a cook. You hear me!" Which appeared like a rash statement, that Stevey Todd wasn't one to take off-hand like that without argument, but Rickhart shoved him into the galley before he got his ideas arranged right.
Sometimes I was out of my head. But when we sighted Punta Ananias, I was clear enough to tell Captain Rickhart he'd have a burial shortly, or put me on shore. "I've got no fancy for that," he says, and took a look at me. I didn't suppose he'd haul up, but he did.
He'd buried two men already down the coast, and the thing must have got on his nerves, for he anchored overnight, and sent Craney and me to the lighthouse in a boat. "You forfeit your passage money," he says, and told the mate to buy what truck he could, and tell the Dago in the lighthouse he could keep our remains. Rickhart was a rough man, and his ship was a rotten ship.
The captain's name was Rickhart, a rough man, and the Jane Allen was an unclean boat, a brigantine, come from bad weather around the Horn. I went aboard to look her over, and didn't like her. I was making up my mind to go and see if the other mightn't be going by Panama too.
"You're the Jane Allen's cook," says Rickhart, and appeared to be right, though his style of argument wasn't what Clyde had trained us to. Stevey Todd had no proper outfit to meet it. The victuals he had to serve up on the Jane Allen was a worriment to his conscience too, being tainted and bad, and by-and-by I came down too with ship's fever, and Craney got sicker again with scurvy.
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