THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NSW YORK BOSTON - CHICAGO - DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE 
 TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 BY 
 
 JACK LONDON 
 
 Author of "The Call of the Wild," "The Strength 
 of the Strong," "The Valley of the Moon" 
 
 Sforo fork 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1916 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1911 
 
 BY THE RED BOOK CORPORATION 
 BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 BY THE CENTURY COMPANY 
 
 BY THE CURRIER PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 BY THE ABBOTT & BRIGGS COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1912 
 BY THE CURRIER PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1914 
 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1916 
 BY JACK LONDON 
 
 Set up ani electrotyped. PuLUbhed, September, 1916. 
 
 .at 
 
i 
 
 . W//V) 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN i 
 
 THE ETERNITY OF FORMS 63 
 
 TOLD IN THE DROOLING WARD 87 
 
 THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 108 
 
 THE PRODIGAL FATHER 136 
 
 THE FIRST POET 166 
 
 FINIS 184 
 
 THE END OF THE STORY 221 
 
 345184 
 
THE 
 TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 I 
 
 E.W, order, and restraint had carved Fred 
 erick Travers face. It was the strong, 
 firm face of one used to power and who had 
 used power with wisdom and discretion. Clean 
 living had made the healthy skin, and the 
 lines graved in it were honest lines. Hard 
 and devoted work had left its wholesome handi 
 work, that was all. Every feature of the man 
 told the same story, from the clear blue of the 
 eyes to the full head of hair, light brown, 
 touched with grey, and smoothly parted and 
 drawn straight across above the strong-domed 
 forehead. He was a seriously groomed man, 
 and the light summer business suit no more than 
 befitted his alert years, while it did not shout 
 
2 TI-K TURTLES. OF TASMAN 
 
 aloud that its possessor was likewise the posses 
 sor of numerous millions of dollars and prop 
 erty. 
 
 For Frederick Travers hated ostentation. 
 The machine that waited outside for him under 
 the porte-cochere was sober black. It was the 
 most expensive machine in the county, yet he did 
 not care to flaunt its price or horse-power in a 
 red flare across the landscape, which also was 
 mostly his, from the sand dunes and the ever 
 lasting beat of the Pacific breakers, across the 
 fat bottomlands and upland pastures, to the far 
 
 summits clad with redwood forest and wreathed 
 
 t 
 
 in fog and cloud. 
 
 A rustle of skirts caused him to look over his 
 shoulder. Just the faintest hint of irritation 
 showed in his manner. Not that his daughter 
 was the object, however. Whatever it was, it 
 seemed to lie on the desk before him. 
 
 What is that outlandish name again?" she 
 asked. " I know I shall never remember it. 
 See, IVe brought a pad to write it down." 
 
 Her voice was low and cool, and she was a 
 tall, well-formed, clear-skinned young woman. 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 3 
 
 In her voice and complacence she, too, showed 
 the drill-marks of order and restraint. 
 
 Frederick Travers scanned the signature of 
 one of two letters on the desk. " Bronislawa 
 Plaskoweitzkaia Travers," he read; then spelled 
 the difficult first portion, letter by letter, while 
 his daughter wrote it down. 
 
 " Now, Mary," he added, " remember Tom 
 was always harum scarum, and you must make 
 allowances for this daughter of his. Her very 
 name is ah disconcerting. I haven t seen 
 him for years, and as for her ..." A shrug 
 epitomised his apprehension. He smiled with 
 an effort at wit. " Just the same, they re as 
 much your family as mine. If he is my brother, 
 he is your uncle. And if she s my niece, you re 
 both cousins." 
 
 Mary nodded. " Don t worry, father. I ll 
 be nice to her, poor thing. What nationality 
 was her mother? to get such an awful 
 name." 
 
 " I don t know. Russian, or Polish, or Span 
 ish, or something. It was just like Tom. She 
 was an actress or singer I don t remember. 
 
4 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 They met in Buenos Ayres. It was an elope 
 ment. Her husband " 
 
 " Then she was already married! " 
 
 Mary s dismay was unfeigned and spontane 
 ous, and her father s irritation grew more pro 
 nounced. He had not meant that. It had 
 slipped out. 
 
 " There was a divorce afterward, of course. 
 I never knew the details. Her mother died out 
 in China no; in Tasmania. It was in China 
 that Tom " His lips shut with almost a 
 snap. He was not going to make any more 
 slips. Mary waited, then turned to the door, 
 where she paused. 
 
 " I ve given her the rooms over the rose 
 court," she said. " And I m going now to take 
 a last look." 
 
 Frederick Travers turned back to the desk, 
 as if to put the letters away, changed his mind, 
 and slowly and ponderingly reread them. 
 
 "Dear Fred: 
 
 " It s been a long time since I was so near to the 
 old home, and I d like to take a run up. Unfor- 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 5 
 
 tunately, I played ducks and drakes with my Yucatan 
 project I think I wrote about it and I m broke 
 as usual. Could you advance me funds for the run? 
 I d like to arrive first class. Polly is with me, you 
 know. I wonder how you two will get along. 
 
 " TOM. 
 
 " P. S. If it doesn t bother you too much, send 
 it along next mail." 
 
 "Dear Uncle Fred": 
 
 the other letter ran, in what seemed to him a 
 
 strange, foreign-taught, yet distinctly feminine 
 
 hand. 
 
 " Dad doesn t know I am writing this. He told 
 me what he said to you. It is not true. He is com 
 ing home to die. He doesn t know it, but I ve talked 
 with the doctors. And he ll have to come home, for 
 we have no money. We re in a stuffy little board 
 ing house, and it is not the place for Dad. He s 
 helped other persons all his life, and now is the time 
 to help him. He didn t play ducks and drakes in 
 Yucatan. I was with him, and I know. He dropped 
 all he had there, and he was robbed. He can t play 
 the business game against New Yorkers. That ex 
 plains it all, and I am proud he can t. 
 
 " He always laughs and says I ll never be able to 
 
6 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 get along with you. But I don t agree with him. 
 Besides, I ve never seen a really, truly blood relative 
 in my life, and there s your daughter. Think of it! 
 a real live cousin ! 
 " In anticipation, 
 " Your niece, 
 " BRONISLAWA PLASKOWEITZKAIA TRAVERS. 
 
 " P. S. You d better telegraph the money, or you 
 won t see Dad at all. He doesn t know how sick he 
 is, and if he meets any of his old friends he ll be off 
 and away on some wild goose chase. He s beginning 
 to talk Alaska. Says it will get the fever out of his 
 bones. Please know that we must pay the boarding 
 house, or else we ll arrive without luggage. 
 
 " B. P. T." 
 
 Frederick Travers opened the door of a 
 large, built-in safe and methodically put the let 
 ters away in a compartment labelled " Thomas 
 Travers." 
 
 " Poor Tom! Poor Tom!" he sighed 
 aloud. 
 
II 
 
 THE big motor car waited at the station, 
 and Frederick Travers thrilled as he al 
 ways thrilled to the distant locomotive whistle 
 of the train plunging down the valley of Isaac 
 Travers River. First of all westering white- 
 men, had Isaac Travers gazed on that splendid 
 valley, its salmon-laden waters, its rich bottoms, 
 and its virgin forest slopes. Having seen, he 
 had grasped and never let go. " Land-poor, 1 
 they had called him in the mid-settler period. 
 But that had been in the days when the placers 
 petered out, when there were no wagon roads 
 nor tugs to draw in sailing vessels across the 
 perilous bar, and when his lonely grist mill had 
 been run under armed guards to keep the ma 
 rauding Klamaths off while wheat was ground. 
 Like father, like son, and what Isaac Travers 
 had grasped, Frederick Travers had held. It 
 had been the same tenacity of hold. Both had 
 
 7 
 
8 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 been far-visioned. Both had foreseen the 
 transformation of the utter West, the coming of 
 the railroad, and the building of the new empire 
 on the Pacific shore. 
 
 Frederick Travers thrilled, too, at the loco 
 motive whistle, because, more than any man s, 
 it was his railroad. His father had died still 
 striving to bring the railroad in across the moun 
 tains that averaged a hundred thousand dollars 
 to the mile. He, Frederick, had brought it in. 
 He had sat up nights over that railroad; 
 bought newspapers, entered politics, and sub 
 sidised party machines; and he had made pil 
 grimages, more than once, at his own expense, 
 to the railroad chiefs of the East. While all 
 the county knew how many miles of his land 
 were crossed by the right of way, none of the 
 county guessed nor dreamed the number of his 
 dollars which had gone into guaranties and rail 
 road bonds. He had done much for his county, 
 and the railroad was his last and greatest 
 achievement, the capstone of the Travers ef 
 fort, the momentous and marvellous thing that 
 had been brought about just yesterday. It had 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 9 
 
 been running two years, and, highest proof of 
 all of his judgment, dividends were in sight. 
 And farther reaching reward was in sight. It 
 was written in the books that the next Governor 
 of California was to be spelled, Frederick A. 
 Travers. 
 
 Twenty years had passed since he had seen 
 his elder brother, and then it had been after a 
 gap of ten years. He remembered that night 
 well. Tom was the only man who dared run 
 the bar in the dark, and that last time, between 
 nightfall and the dawn, with a southeaster 
 breezing up, he had sailed his schooner in and 
 out again. There had been no warning of his 
 coming a clatter of hoofs at midnight, a 
 lathered horse in the stable, and Tom had ap 
 peared, the salt of the sea on his face as his 
 mother attested. An hour only he remained, 
 and on a fresh horse was gone, while rain 
 squalls rattled upon the windows and the rising 
 wind moaned through the redwoods, the mem 
 ory of his visit a whiff, sharp and strong, from 
 the wild outer world. A week later, sea-ham 
 mered and bar-bound for that time, had arrived 
 
io THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 the revenue cutter Bear, and there had been a 
 column of conjecture in the local paper, hints of 
 a heavy landing of opium and of a vain quest 
 for the mysterious schooner Halcyon. Only 
 Fred and his mother, and the several house 
 Indians, knew of the stiffened horse in the barn 
 and of the devious way it was afterward 
 smuggled back to the fishing village on the 
 beach. 
 
 Despite those twenty years, it was the same 
 old Tom Travers that alighted from the Pull 
 man. To his brother s eyes, he did not look 
 sick. Older he was of course. The Panama 
 hat did not hide the grey hair, and though in 
 definably hinting of shrunkenness, the broad 
 shoulders were still broad and erect. As for 
 the young woman with him, Frederick Travers 
 experienced an immediate shock of distaste. 
 He felt it vitally, yet vaguely. It was a chal 
 lenge and a mock, yet he could not name nor 
 place the source of it. It might have been the 
 dress, of tailored linen and foreign cut, the 
 shirtwaist, with its daring stripe, the black wil- 
 fulness of the hair, or the flaunt of poppies on 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN n 
 
 the large straw hat or it might have been the 
 flash and colour of her the black eyes and 
 brows, the flame of rose in the cheeks, the white 
 of the even teeth that showed too readily. " A 
 spoiled child," was his thought, but he had no 
 time to analyse, for his brother s hand was in his 
 and he was making his niece s acquaintance. 
 
 There it was again. She flashed and talked 
 like her colour, and she talked with her hands as 
 well. He could not avoid noting the smallness 
 of them. They were absurdly small, and his 
 eyes went to her feet to make the same discov 
 ery. Quite oblivious of the curious crowd on 
 the station platform, she had intercepted his at 
 tempt to lead to the motor car and had ranged 
 the brothers side by side. Tom had been 
 laughingly acquiescent, but his younger brother 
 was ill at ease, too conscious of the many eyes 
 of his townspeople. He knew only the old 
 Puritan way. Family displays were for the 
 privacy of the family, not for the public. He 
 was glad she had not attempted to kiss him. It 
 was remarkable she had not. Already he ap 
 prehended anything of her. 
 
12 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 She embraced them and penetrated them with 
 sun-warm eyes that seemed to see through them, 
 and over them, and all about them. 
 
 " You re really brothers," she cried, her 
 hands flashing with her eyes. " Anybody can 
 see it. And yet there is a difference I don t 
 know. I can t explain." 
 
 In truth, with a tact that exceeded Frederick 
 Travers farthest disciplined forbearance, she 
 did not dare explain. Her wide artist-eyes had 
 seen and sensed the whole trenchant and essen 
 tial difference. Alike they looked, of the un 
 mistakable same stock, their features reminiscent 
 of a common origin; and there resemblance 
 ceased. Tom was three inches taller, and well- 
 greyed was the long, Viking moustache. His 
 was the same eagle-like nose as his brother s, 
 save that it was more eagle-like, while the blue 
 eyes were pronouncedly so. The lines of the 
 face were deeper, the cheek-bones higher, the 
 hollows larger, the weather-beat darker. It 
 was a volcanic face. There had been fire there, 
 and the fire still lingered. Around the corners 
 of the eyes were more laughter-wrinkles and in 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 13 
 
 the eyes themselves a promise of deadlier seri 
 ousness than the younger brother possessed. 
 Frederick was bourgeois in his carriage, but in 
 Tom s was a certain careless ease and distinc 
 tion. It was the same pioneer blood of Isaac 
 Travers in both men, but it had been retorted in 
 widely different crucibles. Frederick repre 
 sented the straight and expected line of descent. 
 His brother expressed a vast and intangible 
 something that was unknown in the Travers 
 stock. And it was all this that the black-eyed 
 girl saw and knew on the instant. All that had 
 been inexplicable in the two men and their re 
 lationship cleared up in the moment she saw 
 them side by side. 
 
 " Wake me up," Tom was saying. " I can t 
 believe I arrived on a train. And the popula 
 tion? There were only four thousand thirty 
 years ago." 
 
 " Sixty thousand now," was the other s an 
 swer. " And increasing by leaps and bounds. 
 Want to spin around for a look at the city? 
 There s plenty of time." 
 
 As they sped along the broad, well-paved 
 
i 4 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 streets, Tom persisted in his Rip Van Winkle 
 pose. The waterfront perplexed him. Where 
 he had once anchored his sloop in a dozen feet 
 of water, he found solid land and railroad 
 yards, with wharves and shipping still farther 
 out. 
 
 " Hold on! Stop! " he cried, a few blocks 
 on, looking up at a solid business block. 
 "Where is this, Fred?" 
 
 " Fourth and Travers don t you remem 
 ber?" 
 
 Tom stood up and gazed around, trying to 
 discern the anciently familiar configuration of 
 the land under its clutter of buildings. 
 
 " I ... I think . . ." he began hesitantly. 
 " No ; by George, I m sure of it. We used 
 to hunt cottontails over that ground, and 
 shoot blackbirds in the brush. And there, 
 where the bank building is, was a pond." He 
 turned to Polly. " I built my first raft there, 
 and got my first taste of the sea." 
 
 " Heaven knows how many gallons of it," 
 Frederick laughed, nodding to the chauffeur. 
 " They rolled you on a barrel, I remember." 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 15 
 
 "Oh! More!" Polly cried, clapping her 
 hands. 
 
 " There s the park," Frederick pointed out a 
 little later, indicating a mass of virgin redwoods 
 on the first dip of the bigger hills. 
 
 " Father shot three grizzlies there one after 
 noon, * was Tom s remark. 
 
 " I presented forty acres of it to the city," 
 Frederick went on. " Father bought the 
 quarter section for a dollar an acre from 
 Leroy." 
 
 Tom nodded, and the sparkle and flash in his 
 eyes, like that of his daughter, were unlike any 
 thing that ever appeared in his brother s eyes. 
 
 Yes," he affirmed, " Leroy, the negro 
 squawman. I remember the time he carried 
 you and me on his back to Alliance, the night 
 the Indians burned the ranch. Father stayed 
 behind and fought." 
 
 " But he couldn t save the grist mill. It was 
 a serious setback to him." 
 
 " Just the same he nailed four Indians." 
 
 In Polly s eyes now appeared the flash and 
 sparkle. 
 
1 6 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 " An Indian-fighter ! " she cried. " Tell me 
 about him." 
 
 Tell her about Travers Ferry," Tom said. 
 
 That s a ferry on the Klamath River on 
 the way to Orleans Bar and Siskiyou. There 
 was great packing into the diggings in those 
 days, and, among other things, father had 
 made a location there. There was rich bench 
 farming land, too. He built a suspension 
 bridge wove the cables on the spot with 
 sailors and materials freighted in from the 
 coast. It cost him twenty thousand dollars. 
 The first day it was open, eight hundred mules 
 crossed at a dollar a head, to say nothing of the 
 toll for foot and horse. That night the river 
 rose. The bridge was one hundred and forty 
 feet above low water mark. Yet the freshet 
 rose higher than that, and swept the bridge 
 away. He d have made a fortune there other 
 
 wise." 
 
 " That wasn t it at all," Tom blurted out im 
 patiently. " It was at Travers Ferry that 
 father and old Jacob Vance were caught by a 
 war party of Mad River Indians. Old Jacob 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 17 
 
 was killed right outside the door of the log 
 cabin. Father dragged the body inside and 
 stood the Indians off for a week. Father was 
 some shot. He buried Jacob under the cabin 
 floor." 
 
 " I still run the ferry," Frederick went on, 
 " though there isn t so much travel as in the old 
 days. I freight by wagon-road to the Reserva 
 tion, and then mule-back on up the Klamath and 
 clear in to the forks of Little Salmon. I have 
 twelve stores on that chain now, a stage-line to 
 the Reservation, and a hotel there. Quite a 
 tourist trade is beginning to pick up." 
 
 And the girl, with curious brooding eyes, 
 looked from brother to brother as they so dif 
 ferently voiced themselves and life. 
 
 " Ay, he was some man, father was," Tom 
 murmured. 
 
 There was a drowsy note in his speech that 
 drew a quick glance of anxiety from her. The 
 machine had turned into the cemetery, and now 
 halted before a substantial vault on the crest of 
 the hill. 
 
 " I thought you d like to see it," Frederick 
 
1 8 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 was saying. " I built that mausoleum myself, 
 most of it with my own hands. Mother wanted 
 it. The estate was dreadfully encumbered. 
 The best bid I could get out of the contractors 
 was eleven thousand. I did it myself for a 
 little over eight." 
 
 " Must have worked nights," Tom mur 
 mured admiringly and more sleepily than be 
 fore. 
 
 " I did, Tom, I did. Many a night by lan 
 tern-light. I was so busy. I was reconstruct 
 ing the water works then the artesian wells 
 had failed and mother s eyes were troubling 
 her. [You remember cataract I wrote you. 
 She was too weak to travel, and I brought the 
 specialists up from San Francisco. Oh, my 
 hands were full. I was just winding up the dis 
 astrous affairs of the steamer line father had es 
 tablished to San Francisco, and I was keeping 
 up the interest on mortgages to the tune of one 
 hundred and eighty thousand dollars." 
 
 A soft stertorous breathing interrupted him. 
 Tom, chin on chest, was asleep. Polly, with a 
 significant look, caught her uncle s eye. Then 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 19 
 
 her father, after an uneasy restless movement, 
 lifted drowsy lids. 
 
 " Deuced warm day," he said with a bright 
 apologetic laugh. " I ve been actually asleep. 
 Aren t we near home? " 
 
 Frederick nodded to the chauffeur, and the 
 car rolled on. 
 
Ill 
 
 fTlHE house that Frederick Travers had built 
 1 when his prosperity came, was large and 
 costly, sober and comfortable, and with no more 
 pretence than was naturally attendant on the 
 finest country home in the county. Its atmos 
 phere was just the sort that he and his daughter 
 would create. But in the days that followed 
 his brother s home-coming, all this was changed. 
 Gone was the subdued and ordered repose. 
 Frederick was neither comfortable nor happy. 
 There was an unwonted flurry of life and viola 
 tion of sanctions and traditions. Meals were 
 irregular and protracted, and there were mid 
 night chafing-dish suppers and bursts of laugh 
 ter at the most inappropriate hours. 
 
 Frederick was abstemious. A glass of wine 
 at dinner was his wildest excess. Three cigars 
 a day he permitted himself, and these he 
 smoked either on the broad veranda or in the 
 
 20 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 21 
 
 smoking room. What else was a smoking room 
 for? Cigarettes he detested. Yet his brother 
 was ever rolling thin, brown-paper cigarettes 
 and smoking them wherever he might happen 
 to be. A litter of tobacco crumbs was always 
 to be found in the big easy chair he frequented 
 and among the cushions of the window-seats. 
 Then there were the cocktails. Brought up 
 under the stern tutelage of Isaac and Eliza 
 Travers, Frederick looked upon liquor in the 
 house as an abomination. Ancient cities had 
 been smitten by God s wrath for just such prac 
 tices. Before lunch and dinner, Tom, aided 
 and abetted by Polly, mixed an endless variety 
 of drinks, she being particularly adept with 
 strange swivel-stick concoctions learned at the 
 ends of the earth. To Frederick, at such times, 
 it seemed that his butler s pantry and dining 
 room had been turned into bar-rooms. When 
 he suggested this, under a facetious show, Tom 
 proclaimed that when he made his pile he would 
 build a liquor cabinet in every living room of 
 his house. 
 
 And there were more young men at the house 
 
22 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 than formerly, and they helped in disposing of 
 the cocktails. Frederick would have liked to 
 account in that manner for their presence, but 
 he knew better. His brother and his brother s 
 daughter did what he and Mary had failed to 
 do. They were the magnets. Youth and joy 
 and laughter drew to them. The house was 
 lively with young life. Ever, day and night, 
 the motor cars honked up and down the 
 gravelled drives. There were picnics and ex 
 peditions in the summer weather, moonlight 
 sails on the bay, starts before dawn or home 
 comings at midnight, and often, of nights, the 
 many bedrooms were filled as they had never 
 been before. Tom must cover all his boyhood 
 ramblings, catch trout again on Bull Creek, 
 shoot quail over Walcott s Prairie, get a deer 
 on Round Mountain. That deer was a cause 
 of pain and shame to Frederick. What if it 
 was closed season? Tom had triumphantly 
 brought home the buck and gleefully called it 
 sidehill-salmon when it was served and eaten 
 at Frederick s own table. 
 
 They had clambakes at the head of the bay 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 23 
 
 and musselbakes down by the roaring surf; and 
 Tom told shamelessly of the Halcyon, and of 
 the run of contraband, and asked Frederick be 
 fore them all how he had managed to smuggle 
 the horse back to the fishermen without dis 
 covery. All the young men were in the con 
 spiracy with Polly to pamper Tom to his heart s 
 desire. And Frederick heard the true inward 
 ness of the killing of the deer; of its purchase 
 from the overstocked Golden Gate Park; of its 
 crated carriage by train, horse-team and mule- 
 back to the fastnesses of Round Mountain; 
 of Tom falling asleep beside the deer-run the 
 first time it was driven by; of the pursuit by the 
 young men, the jaded saddle horses, the scram 
 bles and the falls, and the roping of it at Burnt 
 Ranch Clearing; and, finally, of the triumphant 
 culmination, when it was driven past a second 
 time and Tom had dropped it at fifty yards. 
 To Frederick there was a vague hurt in it all. 
 When had such consideration been shown him? 
 There were days when Tom could not go out, 
 postponements of outdoor frolics, when, still the 
 centre, he sat and drowsed in the big chair ? wak- 
 
24 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 ing, at times, in that unexpected queer, bright 
 way of his, to roll a cigarette and call for his 
 ukulele a sort of miniature guitar of Portu 
 guese invention. Then, with strumming and 
 tumtuming, the live cigarette laid aside to the 
 imminent peril of polished wood, his full bari 
 tone would roll out in South Sea hulas and 
 sprightly French and Spanish songs. 
 
 One, in particular, had pleased Frederick at 
 first. The favourite song of a Tahitian king, 
 Tom explained the last of the Pomares, who 
 had himself composed it and was wont to lie 
 on his mats by the hour singing it. It consisted 
 of the repetition of a few syllables. " E men 
 ru ru a van" it ran, and that was all of it, sung 
 in a stately, endless, ever-varying chant, accom 
 panied by solemn chords from the ukelele. 
 Polly took great joy in teaching it to her uncle, 
 but when, himself questing for some of this gen 
 ial flood of life that bathed about his brother, 
 Frederick essayed the song, he noted suppressed 
 glee on the part of his listeners, which increased, 
 through giggles and snickers, to a great out 
 burst of laughter. To his disgust and dismay, 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 25 
 
 he learned that the simple phrase he had re 
 peated and repeated was nothing else than " I 
 am so drunk." He had been made a fool of. 
 Over and over, solemnly and gloriously, he, 
 Frederick Travers, had announced how drunk 
 he was. After that, he slipped quietly out of 
 the room whenever it was sung. Nor could 
 Polly s later explanation that the last word was 
 " happy," and not " drunk," reconcile him; for 
 she had been compelled to admit that the old 
 king was a toper, and that he was always in his 
 cups when he struck up the chant. 
 
 Frederick was constantly oppressed by the 
 feeling of being out of it all. He was a social 
 being, and he liked fun, even if it were of a 
 more wholesome and dignified brand than that 
 to which his brother was addicted. He could 
 not understand why in the past the young people 
 had voted his house a bore and come no more, 
 save on state and formal occasions, until now, 
 when they flocked to it and to his brother, but 
 not to him. Nor could he like the way the 
 young women petted his brother, and called him 
 Tom, while it was intolerable to see them twist 
 
26 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 and pull his buccaneer moustache in mock pun 
 ishment when his sometimes too-jolly banter 
 sank home to them. 
 
 Such conduct was a profanation to the mem 
 ory of Isaac and Eliza Travers. There was too 
 much an air of revelry in the house. The long 
 table was never shortened, while there was extra 
 help in the kitchen. Breakfast extended from 
 four until eleven, and the midnight suppers, en 
 tailing raids on the pantry and complaints from 
 the servants, were a vexation to Frederick. 
 The house had become a restaurant, a hotel, he 
 sneered bitterly to himself; and there were times 
 when he was sorely tempted to put his foot 
 down and reassert the old ways. But somehow 
 the ancient sorcery of his masterful brother was 
 too strong upon him; and at times he gazed 
 upon him with a sense almost of awe, groping to 
 fathom the alchemy of charm, baffled by the 
 strange lights and fires in his brother s eyes, and 
 by the wisdom of far places and of wild nights 
 and days written in his face. What was it? 
 What lordly vision had the other glimpsed? 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 27 
 
 he, the irresponsible and careless one ? Freder 
 ick remembered a line of an old song " Along 
 the shining ways he came" Why did his 
 brother remind him of that line? Had he, 
 who in boyhood had known no law, who in man 
 hood had exalted himself above law, in truth 
 found the shining ways ? \^ 
 
 There was an unfairness about v it that per 
 plexed Frederick, until he found solace in dwell 
 ing upon the failure Tom had made of life. 
 Then it was, in quiet intervals, that he got some 
 comfort and stiffened his own pride by showing 
 Tom over the estate. 
 
 " You have done well, Fred," Tom would 
 say. " You have done very well." 
 
 He said it often, and often he drowsed in the 
 big smooth-running machine. 
 
 " Everything orderly and sanitary and spick 
 and span not a blade of grass out of place," 
 was Polly s comment. " How do you ever 
 manage it? I should not like to be a blade of 
 grass on your land," she concluded, with a little 
 shivery shudder. 
 
28 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 " You have worked hard," Tom said. 
 
 " Yes, I have worked hard," Frederick af 
 firmed. " It was worth it." 
 
 He was going to say more, but the strange 
 flash in the girl s eyes brought him to an un 
 comfortable pause. He felt that she measured 
 him, challenged him. For the first time his 
 honourable career of building a county common 
 wealth had been questioned and by a chit of 
 a girl, the daughter of a wastrel, herself but a 
 flighty, fly-away, foreign creature. 
 
 Conflict between them was inevitable. He 
 had disliked her from the first moment of 
 meeting. She did not have to speak. Her 
 mere presence made him uncomfortable. He 
 felt her unspoken disapproval, though there 
 were times when she did not stop at that. Nor 
 did she mince language. She spoke forthright, 
 like a man, and as no man had ever dared to 
 speak to him. 
 
 " I wonder if you ever miss what youVe 
 missed," she told him. " Did you ever, once 
 in your life, turn yourself loose and rip things 
 up by the roots? Did you ever once get drunk? 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 29 
 
 Or smoke yourself black in the face ? Or dance 
 a hoe-down on the ten commandments? Or 
 stand up on your hind legs and wink like a good 
 fellow at God?" 
 
 " Isn t she a rare one!" Tom gurgled. 
 " Her mother over again." 
 
 Outwardly smiling and calm, there was a chill 
 of horror at Frederick s heart. It was in 
 credible. 
 
 " I think it is the English," she continued, 
 " who have a saying that a man has not lived 
 until he has kissed his woman and struck his 
 man. I wonder confess up, now if you 
 ever struck a man." 
 
 "Have you?" he countered. 
 
 She nodded, an angry reminiscent flash in her 
 eyes, and waited. 
 
 " No, I have never had that pleasure," he 
 answered slowly. " I early learned control." 
 
 Later, irritated by his self-satisfied compla 
 cence and after listening to a recital of how he 
 had cornered the Klamath salmon-packing, 
 planted the first oysters on the bay and estab 
 lished that lucrative monopoly, and of how, 
 
30 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 after exhausting litigation and a campaign of 
 years he had captured the water front of Wil- 
 liamsport and thereby won to control of the 
 Lumber Combine, she returned to the charge. 
 
 " You seem to value life in terms of profit 
 and loss," she said. " I wonder if you have 
 ever known love." 
 
 The shaft went home. He had not kissed 
 his woman. His marriage had been one of 
 policy. It had saved the estate in the days 
 when he had been almost beaten in the struggle 
 to disencumber the vast holdings Isaac Travers 
 wide hands had grasped. The girl was a witch. 
 She had probed an old wound and made it hurt 
 again. He had never had time to love. He 
 had worked hard. He had been president of 
 the chamber of commerce, mayor of the city, 
 state senator, but he had missed love. At 
 chance moments he had come upon Polly, openly 
 and shamelessly in her father s arms, and he 
 had noted the warmth and tenderness in their 
 eyes. Again he knew that he had missed love. 
 Wanton as was the display, not even in private 
 did he and Mary so behave. Normal, formal, 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 31 
 
 and colourless, she was what was to be expected 
 of a loveless marriage. He even puzzled to 
 decide whether the feeling he felt for her was 
 love. Was he himself loveless as well? 
 
 In the moment following Polly s remark, he 
 was aware of a great emptiness. It seemed 
 that his hands had grasped ashes, until, glancing 
 into the other room, he saw Tom asleep in the 
 big chair, very grey and aged and tired. He 
 remembered all that he had done, all that he 
 possessed. Well, what did Tom possess? 
 What had Tom done? save play ducks and 
 drakes with life and wear it out until all that 
 remained was that dimly flickering spark in a 
 dying body. 
 
 What bothered Frederick in Polly was that 
 she attracted him as well as repelled him. His 
 own daughter had never interested him in that 
 way. Mary moved along frictionless grooves, 
 and to forecast her actions was so effortless that 
 it was automatic. But Polly! many-hued, 
 protean-natured, he never knew what she was 
 going to do next. 
 
 "Keeps you guessing, eh?" Tom chuckled. 
 
32 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 She was irresistible. She had her way with 
 Frederick in ways that in Mary would have been 
 impossible. She took liberties with him, 
 cosened him or hurt him, and compelled 
 always in him a sharp awareness of her exis 
 tence. 
 
 Once, after one of their clashes, she devilled 
 him at the piano, playing a mad damned thing 
 that stirred and irritated him and set his pulse 
 pounding wild and undisciplined fancies in the 
 ordered chamber of his brain. The worst of 
 it was she saw and knew just what she was do 
 ing. She was aware before he was, and she 
 made him aware, her face turned to look at 
 him, on her lips a mocking, contemplative smile 
 that was almost a superior sneer. It was this 
 that shocked him into consciousness of the orgy 
 his imagination had been playing him. From 
 the wall above her, the stiff portraits of Isaac 
 and Eliza Travers looked down like reproach 
 ful spectres. Infuriated, he left the room. 
 He had never dreamed such potencies resided 
 in music. And then, and he remembered it 
 with shame, he had stolen back outside to listen, 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 33 
 
 and she had known, and once more she had 
 devilled him. 
 
 When Mary asked him what he thought of 
 Polly s playing, an unbidden contrast leaped to 
 his mind. Mary s music reminded him of 
 church. It was cold and bare as a Methodist 
 meeting house. But Polly s was like the mad 
 and lawless ceremonial of some heathen temple 
 where incense arose and nautch girls writhed. 
 
 " She plays like a foreigner," he answered, 
 pleased with the success and oppositeness of his 
 evasion. 
 
 " She is an artist," Mary affirmed solemnly. 
 " She is a genius. When does she ever prac 
 tise ? When did she ever practise ? You know 
 how I have. My best is like a five-finger exer 
 cise compared with the foolishest thing she rip 
 ples off. Her music tells me things oh, 
 things wonderful and unutterable. Mine tells 
 me, one-two-three, one-two-three. Oh, it is 
 maddening! I work and work and get no 
 where. It is unfair. Why should she be born 
 that way, and not I?" 
 
 " Love," was Frederick s immediate and 
 
34 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 secret thought; but before he could dwell upon 
 the conclusion, the unprecedented had happened 
 and Mary was sobbing in a break-down of tears. 
 He would have liked to take her in his arms, 
 after Tom s fashion, but he did not know how. 
 He tried, and found Mary as unschooled as 
 himself. It resulted only in an embarrassed 
 awkwardness for both of them. 
 
 The contrasting of the two girls was inevi 
 table. Like father like daughter. Mary was 
 no more than a pale camp-follower of a gor 
 geous, conquering general. Frederick s thrift 
 had been sorely educated in the matter of 
 clothes. He knew just how expensive Mary s 
 clothes were, yet he could not blind himself to 
 the fact that Polly s vagabond makeshifts, cheap 
 and apparently haphazard, were always all 
 right and far more successful. Her taste was 
 unerring. Her ways with a shawl were inimi 
 table. With a scarf she performed miracles. 
 
 " She just throws things together," Mary 
 complained. " She doesn t even try. She can 
 dress in fifteen minutes, and when she goes 
 swimming she beats the boys out of the dressing 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 35 
 
 rooms." Mary was honest and incredulous 
 in her admiration. " I can t see how she does 
 it. No one could dare those colours, but they 
 look just right on her." 
 
 " She s always threatened that when I be 
 came finally flat broke she d set up dressmaking 
 and take care of both of us," Tom contributed. 
 
 Frederick, looking over the top of a news 
 paper, was witness to an illuminating scene; 
 Mary, to his certain knowledge, had been 
 primping for an hour ere she appeared. 
 
 " Oh ! How lovely! " was Polly s ready ap 
 preciation. Her eyes and face glowed with 
 honest pleasure, and her hands wove their de 
 light in the air. " But why not wear that 
 bow ... so ... and thus?" 
 
 Her hands flashed to the task, and in a mo 
 ment the miracle of taste and difference 
 achieved by her touch was apparent even to 
 Frederick. 
 
 Polly was like her father, generous to the 
 point of absurdity with her meagre possessions. 
 Mary admired a Spanish fan a Mexican 
 treasure that had come down from one of the 
 
36 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 grand ladies of the Court of the Emperor Max 
 imilian. Polly s delight flamed like wild-fire. 
 Mary found herself the immediate owner of 
 the fan, almost labouring under the fictitious 
 impression that she had conferred an obligation 
 by accepting it. Only a foreign woman could 
 do such things, and Polly was guilty of similar 
 gifts to all the young women. It was her way. 
 It might be a lace handkerchief, a pink Paumo- 
 tan pearl, or a comb of hawksbill turtle. It 
 was all the same. Whatever their eyes rested 
 on in joy was theirs. To women, as to men, 
 she was irresistible. 
 
 " I don t dare admire anything any more," 
 was Mary s plaint. " If I do she always gives 
 it to me." 
 
 Frederick had never dreamed such a creature 
 could exist. The women of his own race and 
 place had never adumbrated such a possibility. 
 He knew that whatever she did her quick 
 generosities, her hot enthusiasms or angers, her 
 birdlike caressing ways was unbelievably sin 
 cere. Her extravagant moods at the same time 
 shocked and fascinated him. Her voice was as 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 37 
 
 mercurial as her feelings. There were no even 
 tones, and she talked with her hands. Yet, in 
 her mouth, English was a new and beautiful 
 language, softly limpid, with an audacity of 
 phrase and tellingness of expression that con 
 veyed subtleties and nuances as unambiguous and 
 direct as they were unexpected from one of such 
 childlikeness and simplicity. He woke up of 
 nights and on his darkened eyelids saw bright 
 memory-pictures of the backward turn of her 
 vivid, laughing face. 
 
IV 
 
 EKE daughter like father. Tom, too, had 
 been irresistible. All the world still 
 called to him, and strange men came from time 
 to time with its messages. Never had there 
 been such visitors to the Travers home. Some 
 came with the reminiscent roll of the sea in their 
 gait. Others were black-browed ruffians; still 
 others were fever-burnt and sallow; and about 
 all of them was something bizarre and outland 
 ish. Their talk was likewise bizarre and out 
 landish, of things to Frederick unguessed and 
 undreamed, though he recognised the men for 
 what they were soldiers of fortune, adven 
 turers, free lances of the world. But the big 
 patent thing was the love and loyalty they bore 
 their leader. They named him variously 
 Black Tom, Blondine, Husky Travers, Male- 
 mute Tom, Swiftwater Tom but most of all 
 he was Captain Tom. Their projects and 
 
 38 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 39 
 
 propositions were equally various, from the 
 South Sea trader with the discovery of a new 
 guano island and the Latin-American with a 
 nascent revolution on his hands, on through 
 Siberian gold chases and the prospecting of the 
 placer benches of the upper Kuskokeem, to 
 darker things that were mentioned only in whis 
 pers. And Captain Tom regretted the tem 
 porary indisposition that prevented immediate 
 departure with them, and continued to sit and 
 drowse more and more in the big chair. It was 
 Polly, with a camaraderie distasteful to her 
 uncle, who got these men aside and broke the 
 news that Captain Tom would never go out on 
 the shining ways again. But not all of them 
 came with projects. Many made love-calls on 
 their leader of old and unforgetable days, and 
 Frederick sometimes was a witness to their meet 
 ing, and he marvelled anew at the mysterious 
 charm in his brother that drew all men to him. 
 " By the turtles of Tasman ! " cried one, 
 " when I heard you was in California, Captain 
 Tom, I just had to come and shake hands. I 
 reckon you ain t forgot Tasman, eh? nor the 
 
40 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 scrap at Thursday Island. Say old Tasman 
 was killed by his niggers only last year up Ger 
 man New Guinea way. Remember his cook- 
 boy? Ngani-Ngani? He was the ring 
 leader. Tasman swore by him, but Ngani- 
 Ngani hatcheted him just the same." 
 
 " Shake hands with Captain Carlsen, Fred," 
 was Tom s introduction of his brother to an 
 other visitor. " He pulled me out of a tight 
 place on the West Coast once. I d have cashed 
 in, Carlsen, if you hadn t happened along." 
 
 Captain Carlsen was a giant hulk of a man, 
 with gimlet eyes of palest blue, a slash-scarred 
 mouth that a blazing red beard could not quite 
 hide, and a grip in his hand that made Frederick 
 squirm. 
 
 A few minutes later, Tom had his brother 
 aside. 
 
 " Say, Fred, do you think it will bother to 
 advance me a thousand? " 
 
 " Of course," Frederick answered splendidly. 
 " You know half of that I have is yours, Tom." 
 
 And when Captain Carlsen departed, Fred- 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 41 
 
 crick was morally certain that the thousand dol 
 lars departed with him. 
 
 Small wonder Tom had made a failure of 
 life and come home to die. Frederick sat at 
 his own orderly desk taking stock of the differ 
 ence between him and his brother. Yes, and if 
 it hadn t been for him, there would have been 
 no home for Tom to die in. 
 
 Frederick cast back for solace through their 
 joint history. It was he who had always been 
 the mainstay, the dependable one. Tom had 
 laughed and rollicked, played hooky from 
 school, disobeyed Isaac s commandments. To 
 the mountains or the sea, or in hot water with 
 the neighbours and the town authorities it 
 was all the same ; he was everywhere save where 
 the dull plod of work obtained. And work was 
 work in those backwoods days, and he, Freder 
 ick, had done the work. Early and late and 
 all days he had been at it. He remembered the 
 season when Isaac s wide plans had taken one 
 of their smashes, when food had been scarce on 
 the table of a man who owned a hundred 
 
42 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 thousand acres, when there had been no money 
 to hire harvesters for the hay, and when Isaac 
 would not let go his grip on a single one of his 
 acres. He, Frederick, had pitched the hay, 
 while Isaac mowed and raked. Torn had lain 
 in bed and run up a doctor bill with a broken 
 leg* gained by falling off the ridge-pole of the 
 barn which place was the last in the world 
 to which any one would expect to go to pitch 
 hay. About the only work Tom had ever done, 
 it seemed to him, was to fetch in venison and 
 bear-oil, to break colts, and to raise a din in the 
 valley pastures and wooded canyons with his 
 bear-hounds. 
 
 Tom was the elder, yet when Isaac died, the 
 estate, with all its vast possibilities would have 
 gone to ruin, had not he, Frederick, buckled 
 down to it and put the burden on his back. 
 Work! He remembered the enlargement of 
 the town water-system how he had manoeu 
 vred and financed, persuaded small loans at 
 ruinous interest, and laid pipe and made joints 
 by lantern light while the workmen slept, and 
 then been up ahead of them to outline and direct 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 43 
 
 and rack his brains over the raising of the next 
 week-end wages. For he had carried on old 
 Isaac s policy. He would not let go. The 
 future would vindicate. 
 
 And Tom! with a bigger pack of bear 
 dogs ranging the mountains and sleeping out a 
 week at a time. Frederick remembered the 
 final conference in the kitchen Tom, and he, 
 and Eliza Travers, who still cooked and baked 
 and washed dishes on an estate that carried a 
 hundred and eighty thousand dollars in mort 
 gages. 
 
 " Don t divide," Eliza Travers had pleaded, 
 resting her soap-flecked, parboiled arms. 
 " Isaac was right. It will be worth millions. 
 The country is opening up. We must all pull 
 together." 
 
 " I don t want the estate," Tom cried. " Let 
 Frederick have it. What I want . . ." 
 
 He never completed the sentence, but all the 
 vision of the world burned in his eyes. 
 
 " I can t wait," he went on. " You can have 
 the millions when they come. In the mean 
 time let me have ten thousand. I ll sign off 
 
44 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 quitclaim to everything. And give me the old 
 schooner, and some day I ll be back with a pot 
 of money to help you out." 
 
 Frederick could see himself, in that far past 
 day, throwing up his arms in horror and cry 
 ing: 
 
 " Ten thousand! when I m strained to the 
 breaking point to raise this quarter s interest! " 
 
 " There s the block of land next to the court 
 house," Tom had urged. " I know the bank 
 has a standing offer for ten thousand." 
 
 " But it will be worth a hundred thousand in 
 ten years," Frederick had objected. 
 
 " Call it so. Say I quitclaim everything for 
 a hundred thousand. Sell it for ten and let me 
 have it. It s all I want, and I want it now. 
 You can have the rest." 
 
 And Tom had had his will as usual (the block 
 had been mortgaged instead of sold) , and sailed 
 away in the old schooner, the benediction of the 
 town upon his head, for he had carried away in 
 his crew half the riff-raff of the beach. 
 
 The bones of the schooner had been left on 
 the coast of Java. That had been when Eliza 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 45 
 
 Travers was being operated on for her eyes, 
 and Frederick had kept it from her until indubi 
 table proof came that Tom was still alive. 
 
 Frederick went over to his files and drew out 
 a drawer labelled " Thomas Travers." In it 
 were packets, methodically arranged. He 
 went over the letters. They were from every 
 where China, Rangoon, Australia, South 
 Africa, the Gold Coast, Patagonia, Armenia, 
 Alaska. Briefly and infrequently written, they 
 epitomised the wanderer s life. Frederick ran 
 over in his mind a few of the glimpsed high 
 lights of Tom s career. He had fought in 
 some sort of foreign troubles in Armenia. He 
 had been an officer in the Chinese army, and it 
 was a certainty that the trade he later drove in 
 the China Seas was illicit. He had been caught 
 running arms into Cuba. It seemed he had 
 always been running something somewhere that 
 it ought not to have been run. And he had 
 never outgrown it. One letter, on crinkly tis 
 sue paper, showed that as late as the Japanese- 
 Russian War he had been caught running coal 
 into Port Arthur and been taken to the prize 
 
46 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 court at Sasebo, where his steamer was confis 
 cated and he remained a prisoner until the end 
 of the war. 
 
 Frederick smiled as he read a paragraph: 
 " How do you prosper? Let me know any 
 time a few thousands will help you." He 
 looked at the date, April 18, 1883, and opened 
 another packet. "May $th" 1883, was the 
 dated sheet he drew out. "Five thousand will 
 put me on my feet again. If you can, and love 
 me, send it along pronto that s Spanish for 
 rush." 
 
 He glanced again at the two dates. It was 
 evident that somewhere between April i8th and 
 May 5th Tom had come a cropper. With a 
 smile, half bitter, Frederick skimmed on 
 through the correspondence : There s a 
 wreck on Midway Island. A fortune In It, sal 
 vage you know. Auction In two days. Cable 
 me four thousand" The last he examined, 
 ran : " A deal I can swing with a little cash. 
 It s big, I tell you. It s so big I don t dare tell 
 you." He remembered that deal a Latin- 
 American revolution. He had sent the cash, 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 47 
 
 and Tom had swung it, and himself as well, into 
 a prison cell and a death sentence. 
 
 Tom had meant well, there was no denying 
 that. And he had always religiously for 
 warded his I O U s. Frederick musingly 
 weighed the packet of them in his hand, as 
 though to determine if any relation existed be 
 tween the weight of paper and the sums of 
 money represented on it. 
 
 He put the drawer back in the cabinet and 
 passed out. Glancing in at the big chair he 
 saw Polly just tiptoeing from the room. Tom s 
 head lay back, and his breathing was softly 
 heavy, the sickness pronouncedly apparent on 
 his relaxed face. 
 
U T HAVE worked hard," Frederick explained 
 JL to Polly that evening on the veranda, un 
 aware that when a man explains it is a sign his 
 situation is growing parlous. " I have done 
 what came to my hand how creditably it is 
 for others to say. And I have been paid for 
 it. I have taken care of others and taken care 
 of myself. The doctors say they have never 
 seen such a constitution in a man of my years. 
 Why, almost half my life is yet before me, and 
 we Travers are a long-lived stock. I took care 
 of myself, you see, and I have myself to show 
 for it. I was not a waster. I conserved my 
 heart and my arteries, and yet there are few 
 men who can boast having done as much work 
 as I have done. Look at that hand. Steady, 
 eh? It will be as steady twenty years from 
 now. There is nothing in playing fast and 
 loose with oneself." 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 49 
 
 And all the while Polly had been following 
 the invidious comparison that lurked behind his 
 words. 
 
 " You can write * Honourable before your 
 name, 1 she flashed up proudly. u But my 
 father has been a king. He has lived. Have 
 you lived? What have you got to show for 
 it? Stocks and bonds, and houses and servants 
 pouf! Heart and arteries and a steady 
 hand is that all? Have you lived merely to 
 live? Were you afraid to die? I d rather 
 sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, 
 than live a thousand years watching my diges 
 tion and being afraid of the wet. When you 
 are dust, my father will be ashes. That is the 
 difference." 
 
 " But my dear child " he began. 
 
 "What have you got to show for it?" she 
 flamed on. * Listen ! " 
 
 From within, through the open window, came 
 the tinkling of Tom s ukulele and the rollicking 
 lilt of his voice in an Hawaiian hula. It ended 
 in a throbbing, primitive love-call from the sen 
 suous tropic night that no one could mistake. 
 
50 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 There was a burst of young voices, and a 
 clamour for more. Frederick did not speak. 
 He had sensed something vague and significant. 
 
 Turning, he glanced through the window at 
 Tom, flushed and royal, surrounded by the 
 young men and women, under his Viking mous 
 tache lighting a cigarette from a match held to 
 * him by one of the girls. It abruptly struck 
 Frederick that never had he lighted a cigar at 
 a match held in a woman s hand. 
 
 " Doctor Tyler says he oughtn t to smoke 
 it only aggravates," he said; and it was all he 
 could say. 
 
 As the fall of the year came on, a new type 
 of men began to frequent the house. They 
 proudly called themselves " sour-doughs," and 
 they were arriving in San Francisco on the win 
 ter s furlough from the gold-diggings of Alaska. 
 More and more of them came, arid they pre 
 empted a large portion of one of the down-town 
 hotels. Captain Tom was fading with the 
 season, and almost lived in the big chair. He 
 drowsed oftener and longer, but whenever he 
 awoke he was surrounded by his court of young 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 51 
 
 people, or there was some comrade waiting to 
 sit and yarn about the old gold days and plan 
 for the new gold days. 
 
 For Tom Husky Travers, the Yukoners 
 named him never thought that the end ap 
 proached. A temporary illness, he called it, 
 the natural enfeeblement following upon a pro 
 longed bout with Yucatan fever. In the spring 
 he would be right and fit again. Cold weather 
 was what he needed. His blood had been 
 cooked. In the meantime it was a case of take 
 it easy and make the most of the rest. 
 
 And no one undeceived him not even the 
 Yukoners, who smoked pipes and black cigars 
 and chewed tobacco on Frederick s broad ver 
 andas until he felt like an intruder in his own 
 house. There was no touch with them. They 
 regarded him as a stranger to be tolerated. 
 They came to see Tom. And their manner of 
 seeing him was provocative of innocent envy 
 pangs to Frederick. Day after day he watched 
 them. He would see the Yukoners meet, per 
 haps one just leaving the sick room and one 
 just going in. They would clasp hands, sol- 
 
52 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 emnly and silently, outside the door. The new 
 comer would question with his eyes, and the 
 other would shake his head. And more than 
 once Frederick noted the moisture in their eyes. 
 Then the newcomer would enter and draw his 
 chair up to Tom s, and with jovial voice proceed 
 to plan the outfitting for the exploration of the 
 upper Kuskokeem; for it was there Tom was 
 bound in the spring. Dogs could be had at 
 Larabee s a clean breed, too, with no taint of 
 the soft Southland strains. It was rough coun 
 try, it was reported, but if sour-doughs couldn t 
 make the traverse from Larabee s in forty days 
 they d like to see a chechako do it in sixty. 
 
 And so it went, until Frederick wondered, 
 when he came to die, if there was one man in 
 the county, much less in the adjoining county, 
 who would come to him at his bedside. 
 
 Seated at his desk, through the open windows 
 would drift whiffs of strong tobacco and 
 rumbling voices, and he could not help catching 
 snatches of what the Yukoners talked. 
 
 " D ye recollect that Koyokuk rush in the 
 early nineties?" he would hear one say. 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 53 
 
 " Well, him an me was pardners then, tradin 
 an such. We had a dinky little steamboat, the 
 Blatterbat. He named her that, an it stuck. 
 He was a caution. Well, sir, as I was sayin , 
 him an me loaded the little Blatterbat to the 
 guards an started up the Koyokuk, me firin an 
 engineerin an him steerin , an both of us deck- 
 handin . Once in a while we d tie to the bank 
 an cut firewood. It was the fall, an mush-ice 
 was comin down, an everything gettin ready 
 for the freeze up. You see, we was north of 
 the Arctic Circle then an still headin north. 
 But they was two hundred miners in there 
 needin grub if they wintered, an we had the 
 grub. 
 
 " Well, sir, pretty soon they begun to pass us, 
 driftin down the river in canoes an rafts. 
 They was pullin out. We kept track of them. 
 When a hundred an ninety-four had passed, 
 we didn t see no reason for keepin on. So we 
 turned tail and started down. A cold snap had 
 come, an the water was fallin fast, an dang 
 me if we didn t ground on a bar up-stream 
 side. The Blatterbat hung up solid. Couldn t 
 
54 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 budge her. * It s a shame to waste all that 
 grub, says I, just as we was pullin out in a 
 canoe. * Let s stay an eat it, says he. An 
 dang me if we didn t. We wintered right there 
 on the Blatterbat, huntin and tradin with the 
 Indians, an when the river broke next year we 
 brung down eight thousand dollars worth of 
 skins. Now a whole winter, just two of us, is 
 goin some. But never a cross word out of 
 him. Best-tempered pardner I ever seen. But 
 fight!" 
 
 " Huh! " came the other voice. " I remem 
 ber the winter Oily Jones allowed he d clean out 
 Forty Mile. Only he didn t, for about the 
 second yap he let off he ran afoul of Husky 
 Travers. It was in the White Caribou. I m 
 a wolf! yaps Jones. You know his style, a 
 gun in his belt, fringes on his moccasins, and 
 long hair down his back. I m a wolf, he 
 yaps, * an this is my night to howl. Hear me, 
 you long lean makeshift of a human critter? 
 an this to Husky Travers." 
 
 Well?" the other voice queried, after a 
 pause. 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 55 
 
 " In about a second an a half Oily Jones was 
 on the floor an Husky on top askin somebody 
 kindly to pass him a butcher knife. What s he 
 do but plumb hack off all of Oily Jones long 
 hair. Now howl, damn you, howl, says 
 Husky, gettin up." 
 
 " He was a cool one, for a wild one," the 
 first voice took up. " I seen him buck roulette 
 in the Little Wolverine, drop nine thousand in 
 two hours, borrow some more, win it back in 
 fifteen minutes, buy the drinks, an cash in 
 dang me, all in fifteen minutes." 
 
 One evening Tom was unusually brightly 
 awake, and Frederick, joining the rapt young 
 circle, sat and listened to his brother s serio 
 comic narrative of the night of wreck on the 
 island of Blang; of the swim through the sharks 
 where half the crew was lost; of the great pearl 
 which Desay brought ashore with him; of the 
 head-decorated palisade that surrounded the 
 grass palace wherein dwelt the Malay queen 
 with her royal consort, a shipwrecked Chinese 
 Eurasian; of the intrigue for the pearl of 
 Desay; of mad feasts and dances in the barbaric 
 
56 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 night, and quick dangers and sudden deaths; of 
 the queen s love-making to Desay, of Desay s 
 love-making to the queen s daughter, and of 
 Desay, every joint crushed, still alive, staked 
 out on the reef at low tide to be eaten by the 
 sharks; of the coming of the plague; of the 
 beating of tom-toms and the exorcising of the 
 devil-devil doctors; of the flight over the man- 
 trapped, wild-pig runs of the mountain bush- 
 men; and of the final rescue by Tasman, he who 
 was hatcheted only last year and whose head re 
 posed in some Melanesian stronghold and 
 all breathing of the warmth and abandon and 
 savagery of the burning islands of the sun. 
 
 And despite himself, Frederick sat entranced; 
 and when all the tale was told, he was aware of 
 a queer emptiness. He remembered back to his 
 boyhood, when he had pored over the illustra 
 tions in the old-fashioned geography. He, too, 
 had dreamed of amazing adventure in far 
 places and desired to go out on the shining ways. 
 And he had planned to go; yet he had known 
 only work and duty. Perhaps that was the 
 difference. Perhaps that was the secret of the 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 57 
 
 strange wisdom in his brother s eyes. For the 
 moment, faint and far, vicariously, he glimpsed 
 the lordly vision his brother had seen. He re 
 membered a sharp saying of Polly s. " You 
 have missed romance. You traded it for divi 
 dends." She was right, and yet, not fair. 
 He had wanted romance, but the work had 
 been placed ready to his hand. He had 
 toiled and moiled, day and night, and been 
 faithful to his trust Yet he had missed love 
 and the world-living that was forever a-whisper 
 in his brother. And what had Tom done to 
 deserve it? a wastrel and an idle singer of 
 songs. 
 
 His place was high. He was going to be the 
 next governor of California. But what man 
 would come to him and lie to him out of love? 
 The thought of all his property seemed to put 
 a dry and gritty taste in his mouth. Property I 
 Now that he looked at it, one thousand dollars 
 was like any other thousand dollars; and one 
 day (of his days) was like any other day. He 
 had never made the pictures in the geography 
 come true. He had not struck his man, nor 
 
58 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 lighted his cigar at a match held in a woman s 
 hand. A man could sleep in only one bed at a 
 time Tom had said that. He shuddered as 
 he strove to estimate how many beds he owned, 
 how many blankets he had bought. And all the 
 beds and blankets would not buy one man to 
 come from the end of the earth, and grip his 
 hand, and cry, " By the turtles of Tasman! " 
 
 Something of all this he told Polly, an under 
 current of complaint at the unfairness of things 
 in his tale. And she had answered: 
 
 " It couldn t have been otherwise. Father 
 bought it. He never drove bargains. It was 
 a royal thing, and he paid for it royally. You 
 grudged the price, don t you see. You saved 
 your arteries and your money and kept your feet 
 dry." 
 
VI 
 
 ON an afternoon in the late fall all were 
 gathered about the big chair and Captain 
 Tom. Though he did not know it, he had 
 drowsed the whole day through and only just 
 awakened to call for his ukulele and light a 
 cigarette at Polly s hand. But the ukulele lay 
 idle on his arm, and though the pine logs 
 crackled in the huge fireplace he shivered and 
 took note of the cold. 
 
 " It s a good sign," he said, unaware that the 
 faintness of his voice drew the heads of his lis 
 teners closer. " The cold weather will be a 
 tonic. It s a hard job to work the tropics out 
 of one s blood. But I m beginning to shape up 
 now for the Kuskokeem. In the spring, Polly, 
 we start with the dogs, and you ll see the mid 
 night sun. How your mother would have liked 
 the trip. She was a game one. Forty sleeps 
 with the dogs, and we ll be shaking out yellow 
 
 59 
 
60 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 nuggets from the moss-roots. Larabee has 
 some fine animals. I know the breed. They re 
 timber wolves, that s what they are, big grey 
 timber wolves, though they sport brown about 
 one in a litter isn t that right, Bennington? " 
 
 " One in a litter, that s just about the 
 average," Bennington, the Yukoner, replied 
 promptly, but in a voice hoarsely unrecognis 
 able. 
 
 " And you must never travel alone with 
 them," Captain Tom went on. " For if you 
 fall down they ll jump you. Larabee s brutes 
 only respect a man when he stands upright on 
 his legs. When he goes down, he s meat. I 
 remember coming over the divide from Tanana 
 to Circle City. That was before the Klondike 
 strike. It was in 94 ... no, 95, and the 
 bottom had dropped out of the thermometer. 
 There was a young Canadian with the outfit. 
 His name was ... it was a peculiar one . . . 
 wait a minute ... it will come to me. . . ." 
 
 His voice ceased utterly, though his lips still 
 moved. A look of unbelief and vast surprise 
 dawned on his face. Followed a sharp, con- 
 
BY THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 61 
 
 vulsive shudder. And in that moment, without 
 warning, he saw Death. He looked clear-eyed 
 and steady, as if pondering, then turned to 
 Polly. His hand moved impotently, as if to 
 reach hers, and when he found it, his fingers 
 could not close. He gazed at her with a great 
 smile that slowly faded. The eyes drooped as 
 the life went out, and remained a face of 
 quietude and repose. The ukulele clattered to 
 the floor. One by one they went softly from 
 the room, leaving Polly alone. 
 
 From the veranda, Frederick watched a man 
 coming up the driveway. By the roll of the 
 sea in his walk, Frederick could guess for whom 
 the stranger came. The face was swarthy with 
 sun and wrinkled with age that was given the lie 
 by the briskness of his movements and the alert 
 ness in the keen black eyes. In the lobe of each 
 ear was a tiny circlet of gold. 
 
 " How do you do, sir," the man said, and it 
 was patent that English was not the tongue he 
 had learned at his mother s knee. " How s 
 Captain Tom? They told me in the town that 
 he was sick." 
 
62 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 " My brother is dead/ Frederick answered. 
 
 The stranger turned his head and gazed out 
 over the park-like grounds and up to the distant 
 redwood peaks, and Frederick noted that he 
 swallowed with an effort. 
 
 " By the turtles of Tasman, he was a man," 
 he said, in a deep, changed voice. 
 
 " By the turtles of Tasman, he was a man," 
 Frederick repeated; nor did he stumble over the 
 unaccustomed oath. 
 
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS 
 
 A STRANGE life has come to an end in the death 
 of Mr. Sedley Crayden, of Crayden Hill. 
 
 Mild, harmless, he was the victim of a strange 
 delusion that kept him pinned, night and day, in his 
 chair for the last two years of his life. The mys 
 terious death, or, rather, disappearance, of his elder 
 brother, James Crayden, seems to have preyed upon 
 his mind, for it was shortly after that event that his 
 delusion began to manifest itself. 
 
 Mr. Crayden never vouchsafed any explanation of 
 his strange conduct. There was nothing the matter 
 with him physically; and, mentally, the alienists found 
 him normal in every way save for his one remarkable 
 idiosyncrasy. His remaining in his chair was purely 
 voluntary, an act of his own will. And now he is 
 dead, and the mystery remains unsolved. 
 
 Extract from the Newton Courier-Times. 
 
 Briefly, I was Mr. Sedley Crayden s confidential 
 servant and valet for the last eight months of his 
 life. During that time he wrote a great deal in a 
 manuscript that he kept always beside him, except 
 
 63 
 
6 4 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 when he drowsed or slept, at which times he invariably 
 locked it in a desk drawer close to his hand. 
 
 I was curious to read what the old gentleman 
 wrote, but he was too cautious and cunning. I never 
 got a peep at the manuscript. If he were engaged 
 upon it when I attended on him, he covered the top 
 sheet with a large blotter. It was I who found him 
 dead in his chair, and it was then that I took the 
 liberty of abstracting the manuscript. I was very 
 curious to read it, and I have no excuses to offer. 
 
 After retaining it in my secret possession for several 
 years, and after ascertaining that Mr. Crayden left 
 no surviving relatives, I have decided to make the 
 nature of the manuscript known. It is very long, 
 and I have omitted nearly all of it, giving only the 
 more lucid fragments. It bears all the earmarks of 
 a disordered mind, and various experiences are re 
 peated over and over, while much is so vague and in 
 coherent as to defy comprehension. Nevertheless, 
 from reading it myself, I venture to predict that if 
 an excavation is made in the main basement, some 
 where in the vicinity of the foundation of the great 
 chimney, a collection of bones will be found which 
 should very closely resemble those which James Cray- 
 den once clothed in mortal flesh. 
 
 Statement of Rudolph Heckler. 
 
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS 65 
 
 Here follows the excerpts from the manu 
 script, made and arranged by Rudolph Heck 
 ler: 
 
 I never killed my brother. Let this be my 
 first word and my last. Why should I kill him ? 
 We lived together in unbroken harmony for 
 twenty years. We were old men, and the fires 
 and tempers of youth had long since burned out. 
 We never disagreed even over the most trivial 
 things. Never was there such amity as ours. 
 We were scholars. We cared nothing for the 
 outside world. Our companionship and our 
 books were all-satisfying. Never were there 
 such talks as we held. Many a night we have 
 sat up till two and three in the morning, con 
 versing, weighing opinions and judgments, re 
 ferring to authorities in short, we lived at 
 high and friendly intellectual altitudes. 
 
 He disappeared. I suffered a great shock. 
 Why should he have disappeared? Where 
 could he have gone? It was very strange. I 
 was stunned. They say I was very sick for 
 
66 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 weeks. It was brain fever. This was caused 
 by his inexplicable disappearance. It was at 
 the beginning of the experience I hope here to 
 relate, that he disappeared. 
 
 How I have endeavoured to find him. I am 
 not an excessively rich man, yet have I offered 
 continually increasing rewards. I have adver 
 tised in all the papers, and sought the aid of all 
 the detective bureaus. At the present moment, 
 the rewards I have out aggregate over fifty 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 They say he was murdered. They also say 
 murder will out. Then I say, why does not his 
 murder come out? Who did it? Where is 
 he? Where is Jim? My Jim? 
 
 We were so happy together. He had a re 
 markable mind, a most remarkable mind, so 
 firmly founded, so widely informed, so rigidly 
 logical, that it was not at all strange that we 
 agreed in all things. Dissension was unknown 
 between us. Jim was the most truthful man 
 I have ever met. In this, too, we were similar, 
 
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS 67 
 
 as we were similar in our intellectual honesty. 
 We never sacrificed truth to make a point. We 
 had no points to make, we so thoroughly agreed. 
 It is absurd to think that we could disagree on 
 anything under the sun. 
 
 
 
 I wish he would come back. Why did he 
 go? Who can ever explain it? I am lonely 
 now, and depressed with grave forebodings 
 frightened by terrors that are of the mind and 
 that put at naught all that my mind has ever 
 conceived. Form is mutable. This is the last 
 word of positive science. The dead do not 
 come back. This is incontrovertible. The 
 dead are dead, and that is the end of it, and of 
 them. And yet I have had experiences here 
 here, in this very room, at this very desk, 
 that But wait. Let me put it down in 
 black and white, in words simple and unmis 
 takable. Let me ask some questions. Who 
 mislays my pen? That is what I desire to 
 know. Who uses up my ink so rapidly? Not 
 I. And yet the ink goes. 
 
 The answer to these questions would settle 
 
68 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 all the enigmas of the universe. I know the 
 answer. I am not a fool. And some day, if 
 I am plagued too desperately, I shall give the 
 answer myself. I shall give the name of him 
 who mislays my pen and uses up my ink. It is 
 so silly to think that I could use such a quantity 
 of ink. The servant lies. I know. 
 
 I have got me a fountain pen. I have al 
 ways disliked the device, but my old stub had 
 to go. I burned it in the fireplace. The ink I 
 keep under lock and key. I shall see if I can 
 not put a stop to these lies that are being written 
 about me. And I have other plans. It is not 
 true that I have recanted. I still believe that I 
 live in a mechanical universe. It has not been 
 proved otherwise to me, for all that I have 
 peered over his shoulder and read his malicious 
 statement to the contrary. He gives me credit 
 for no less than average stupidity. He thinks 
 I think he is real. How silly. I know he is a 
 brain-figment, nothing more. 
 
 There are such things as hallucinations. 
 
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS 69 
 
 Even as I looked over his shoulder and read, 
 I knew that this was such a thing. If I were 
 only well it would be interesting. All my life 
 I have wanted to experience such phenomena. 
 And now it has come to me. I shall make the 
 most of it. What is imagination? It can 
 make something where there is nothing. How 
 can anything be something where there is noth 
 ing? How can anything be something and 
 nothing at the same time? I leave it for the 
 metaphysicians to ponder. I know better. 
 No scholastics for me. This is a real world, 
 and everything in it is real. What is not real, 
 is not. Therefore he is not. Yet he tries to 
 fool me into believing that he is ... when all 
 the time I know he has no existence outside of 
 my own brain cells. 
 
 I saw him to-day, seated at the desk, writing. 
 It gave me quite a shock, because I had thought 
 he was quite dispelled. Nevertheless, on look 
 ing steadily, I found that he was not there 
 the old familiar trick of the brain. I have 
 
70 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 dwelt too long on what has happened. I am 
 becoming morbid, and my old indigestion is hint 
 ing and muttering. I shall take exercise. 
 Each day I shall walk for two hours. 
 
 It is impossible. I cannot exercise. Each 
 time I return from my walk, he is sitting in my 
 chair at the desk. It grows more difficult to 
 drive him away. It is my chair. Upon this 
 I insist It was his, but he is dead and it is no 
 longer his. How one can be befooled by the 
 phantoms of his own imagining! There is 
 nothing real in this apparition. I know it. I 
 am firmly grounded with my fifty years of 
 study. The dead are dead. 
 
 
 
 And yet, explain one thing. To-day, before 
 going for my walk, I carefully put the fountain 
 pen in my pocket before leaving the room. I 
 remember it distinctly. I looked at the clock 
 at the time. It was twenty minutes past ten. 
 Yet on my return there was the pen lying on 
 the desk. Some one had been using it. There 
 
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS 71 
 
 was very little ink left. I wish he would not 
 write so much. It is disconcerting. 
 
 There was one thing upon which Jim and I 
 were not quite agreed. He believed in the 
 eternity of the forms of things. Therefore, 
 entered in immediately the consequent belief in 
 immortality, and all the other notions of the 
 metaphysical philosophers. I had little pa 
 tience with him in this. Painstakingly I have 
 traced to him the evolution of his belief in the 
 eternity of forms, showing him how it has 
 arisen out of his early infatuation with logic and 
 mathematics. Of course, from that warped, 
 squinting, abstract view-point, it is very easy to 
 believe in the eternity of forms. 
 
 I laughed at the unseen world. Only the 
 real was real, I contended, and what one did 
 not perceive, was not, could not be. I believed 
 in a mechanical universe. Chemistry and 
 physics explained everything. " Can no being 
 be?" he demanded in reply. I said that his 
 question was but the major promise of a falla 
 cious Christian Science syllogism. Oh, believe 
 
72 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 me, I know my logic, too. But he was very 
 stubborn. I never had any patience with 
 philosophic idealists. 
 
 Once, I made to him my confession of faith. 
 It was simple, brief, unanswerable. Even as I 
 write it now I know that it is unanswerable. 
 Here it is. I told him : " I assert, with 
 Hobbes, that it is impossible to separate thought 
 from matter that thinks. I assert, with Bacon, 
 that all human understanding arises from the 
 world of sensations. I assert, with Locke, that 
 all human ideas are due to the functions of the 
 senses. I assert, with Kant, the mechanical 
 origin of the universe, and that creation is a 
 natural and historical process. I assert, with 
 Laplace, that there is no need of the hypothesis 
 of a creator. And, finally, I assert, because of 
 all the foregoing, that form is ephemeral. 
 Form passes. Therefore we pass." 
 
 I repeat, it was unanswerable. Yet did he 
 answer with Paley s notorious fallacy of the 
 watch. Also, he talked about radium, and all 
 but asserted that the very existence of matter 
 
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS 73 
 
 had been exploded by these later-day labora 
 tory researches. It was childish. I had not 
 dreamed he could be so immature. 
 
 How could one argue with such a man? I 
 then asserted the reasonableness of all that is. 
 To this he agreed, reserving, however, one ex 
 ception. He looked at me, as he said it, in a 
 way I could not mistake. The inference was 
 obvious. That he should be guilty of so cheap 
 a quip in the midst of a serious discussion, 
 astounded me. 
 
 
 
 The eternity of forms. It is ridiculous. 
 Yet is there a strange magic in the words. If 
 it be true, then has he not ceased to exist. 
 Then does he exist. This is impossible. 
 
 I have ceased exercising. As long as I re 
 main in the room, the hallucination does not 
 bother me. But when I return to the room 
 after an absence, he is always there, sitting at 
 the desk, writing. Yet I dare not confide in a 
 physician. I must fight this out by myself. 
 
74 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 He grows more importunate. To-day, con 
 sulting a book on the shelf, I turned and found 
 him again in the chair. This is the first time 
 he has dared do this in my presence. Never 
 theless, by looking at him steadily and sternly 
 for several minutes, I compelled him to vanish. 
 This proves my contention. He does not exist. 
 If he were an eternal form I could not make 
 him vanish by a mere effort of my will. 
 
 This is getting damnable. To-day I gazed 
 at him for an entire hour before I could make 
 him leave. Yet it is so simple. What I see 
 is a memory picture. For twenty years I was 
 accustomed to seeing him there at the desk. 
 The present phenomenon is merely a recrudes 
 cence of that memory picture a picture which 
 was impressed countless times on my conscious 
 ness. 
 
 I gave up to-day. He exhausted me, and 
 still he would not go. I sat and watched him 
 hour after hour. He takes no notice of me, 
 but continually writes. I know what he writes, 
 
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS 75 
 
 for I read it over his shoulder. It is not true. 
 
 He is taking an unfair advantage. 
 
 
 
 Query: He is a product of my consciousness; 
 is it possible, then, that entities may be created 
 
 by consciousness? 
 
 
 
 We did not quarrel. To this day I do not 
 know how it happened. Let me tell you. 
 Then you will see. We sat up late that never- 
 to-be-forgotten last night of his existence. It 
 was the old, old discussion the eternity of 
 forms. How many hours and how many nights 
 we had consumed over it! 
 
 On this night he had been particularly irritat 
 ing, and all my nerves were screaming. He 
 had been maintaining that the human soul was 
 itself a form, an eternal form, and that the 
 light within his brain would go on forever and 
 always. I took up the poker. 
 
 " Suppose," I said, " I should strike you dead 
 with this? " 
 
 " I would go on," he answered. 
 
 " As a conscious entity?" I demanded. 
 
 " Yes, as a conscious entity," was his reply. 
 
76 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 I should go on, from plane to plane of higher 
 existence, remembering my earth-life, you, this 
 very argument ay, and continuing the argu 
 ment with you." 
 
 It was only argument.* I swear it was only 
 argument. I never lifted a hand. How could 
 I ? He was my brother, my elder brother, Jim. 
 
 I cannot remember. I was very exasper 
 ated. He had always been so obstinate in this 
 metaphysical belief of his. The next I knew, 
 he was lying on the hearth. Blood was run 
 ning. It was terrible. He did not speak. 
 He did not move. He must have fallen in a 
 fit and struck his head. I noticed there was 
 blood on the poker. In falling he must have 
 struck upon it with his head. And yet I fail 
 to see how this can be, for I held it in my hand 
 all the time. I was still holding it in my hand 
 as I looked at it. 
 
 It is an hallucination. That is a conclusion 
 of common sense. I have watched the growth 
 of it. At first it was only in the dimmest light 
 
 * (Forcible ha! ha! comment of Rudolph Heckler on 
 margin.) 
 
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS 77 
 
 that I could see him sitting in the chair. But 
 as the time passed, and the hallucination, by 
 repetition, strengthened, he was able to appear 
 in the chair under the strongest lights. That 
 is the explanation. It is quite satisfactory. 
 
 I shall never forget the first time I saw it. 
 I had dined alone downstairs. I never drink 
 wine, so that what happened was eminently 
 normal. It was in the summer twilight that I 
 returned to the study. I glanced at the desk. 
 There he was, sitting. So natural was it, that 
 before I knew I cried out "Jim!" Then I 
 remembered all that had happened. Of course 
 it was an hallucination. I knew that. I took 
 the poker and went over to it. He did not 
 move nor vanish. The poker cleaved through 
 the non-existent substance of the thing and 
 struck the back of the chair. Fabric of fancy, 
 that is all it was. The mark is there on the 
 chair now where the poker struck. I pause 
 from my writing and turn and look at it 
 press the tips of my fingers into the indentation. 
 
78 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 He did continue the argument. I stole up 
 to-day and looked over his shoulder. He was 
 writing the history of our discussion. It was 
 the same old nonsense about the eternity of 
 forms. But as I continued to read, he wrote 
 down the practical test I had made with the 
 poker. Now this is unfair and untrue. I 
 made no test. In falling he struck his head on 
 the poker. 
 
 Some day, somebody will find and read what 
 he writes. This will be terrible. I am sus 
 picious of the servant, who is always peeping 
 and peering, trying to see what I write. I 
 must do something. Every servant I have had 
 is curious about what I write. 
 
 Fabric of fancy. That is all it is. There 
 is no Jim who sits in the chair. I know that. 
 Last night, when the house was asleep, I went 
 down into the cellar and looked carefully at the 
 soil around the chimney. It was untampered 
 with. The dead do not rise up. 
 
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS 79 
 
 Yesterday morning, when I entered the study, 
 there he was in the chair. When I had dis 
 pelled him, I sat in the chair myself all day. 
 I had my meals brought to me. And thus I 
 escaped the sight of him for many hours, for 
 he appears only in the chair. I was weary, but 
 I sat late, until eleven o clock. Yet, when I 
 stood up to go to bed, I looked around, and 
 there he was. He had slipped into the chair 
 on the instant. Being only fabric of fancy, all 
 day he had resided in my brain. The moment 
 it was unoccupied, he took up his residence in 
 the chair. Are these his boasted higher planes 
 of existence his brother s brain and a chair? 
 After all, was he not right? Has his eternal 
 form become so attenuated as to be an hallu 
 cination? Are hallucinations real entities? 
 Why not? There is food for thought here. 
 Some day I shall come to a conclusion upon 
 it. 
 
 He was very much disturbed to-day. He 
 could not write, for I had made the servant 
 
8o THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 carry the pen out of the room in his pocket. 
 But neither could I write. 
 
 The servant never sees him. This is strange. 
 Have I developed a keener sight for the un 
 seen ? Or rather does it not prove the phantom 
 to be what it is a product of my own morbid 
 consciousness? 
 
 He has stolen my pen again. Hallucinations 
 cannot steal pens. This is unanswerable. And 
 yet I cannot keep the pen always out of the 
 room. I want to write myself. 
 
 I have had three different servants since my 
 trouble came upon me, and not one has seen 
 him. Is the verdict of their senses right? 
 And is that of mine wrong? Nevertheless, the 
 ink goes too rapidly. I fill my pen more often 
 than is necessary. And furthermore, only to 
 day I found my pen out of order. I did not 
 break it. 
 
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS Si 
 
 I have spoken to him many times, but he 
 never answers. I sat and watched him all 
 morning. Frequently he looked at me, and it 
 was patent that he knew me. 
 
 By striking the side of my head violently with 
 the heel of my hand, I can shake the vision of 
 him out of my eyes. Then I can get into the 
 chair; but I have learned that I must move very 
 quickly in order to accomplish this. Often he 
 fools me and is back again before I can sit 
 down. 
 
 It is getting unoearable. He is a jack-in-the- 
 box the way he pops into the chair. He does 
 not assume form slowly. He pops. That is 
 the only way to describe it. I cannot stand 
 looking at him much more. That way lies mad 
 ness, for it compels me almost to believe in the 
 reality of what I know is not. Besides, hallu 
 cinations do not pop. 
 
 Thank God he only manifests himself in the 
 
82 THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 
 
 chair. As long as I occupy the chair I am quit 
 
 of him. 
 
 
 
 My device for dislodging him from the chair 
 by striking my head, is failing. I have to hit 
 much more violently, and I do not succeed per 
 haps more than once in a dozen trials. My 
 head is quite sore where I have so repeatedly 
 struck it. I must use the other hand. 
 
 My brother was right There is an unseen 
 world. Do I not see it? Am I not cursed 
 with the seeing of it all the time? Call it a 
 thought, an idea, anything you will, still it is 
 there. It is unescapable. Thoughts are en 
 tities. We create with every act of thinking. 
 I have created this phantom that sits in my chair 
 and uses my ink. Because I have created him 
 is no reason that he is any the less real. He 
 is an idea; he is an entity: ergo, ideas are en 
 tities, and an entity is a reality. 
 
 
 
 Query: If a man, with the whole historical 
 process behind him, can create an entity, a real 
 
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS 83 
 
 thing, then is not the hypothesis of a Creator 
 made substantial? If the stuff of life can 
 create, then it is fair to assume that there can 
 be a He who created the stuff of life. It is 
 merely a difference of degree. I have not yet 
 made a mountain nor a solar system, but I have 
 made a something that sits in my chair. This 
 being so, may I not some day be able to make a 
 mountain or a solar system? 
 
 All his days, down to to-day, man has lived 
 in a maze. He has never seen the light. I 
 am convinced that I am beginning to see the 
 light not as my brother saw it, by stumbling 
 upon it accidentally, but deliberately and ra 
 tionally. My brother is dead. He has ceased. 
 There is no doubt about it, for I have made 
 another journey down into the cellar to see. 
 The ground was untouched. I broke it my 
 self to make sure, and I saw what made me 
 sure. My brother has ceased, yet have I re 
 created him. This is not my old brother, yet 
 it is something as nearly resembling him as I 
 
84 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 could fashion it. I am unlike other men. I 
 am a god. I have created. 
 
 Whenever I leave the room to go to bed, I 
 look back, and there is my brother sitting in 
 the chair. And then I cannot sleep because of 
 thinking o-f him sitting through all the long 
 night-hours. And in the morning, when I open 
 the study door, there he is, and I know he has 
 sat there the night long. 
 
 I am becoming desperate from lack of sleep. 
 I wish I could confide in a physician. 
 
 Blessed sleep 1 I have won to it at last. 
 Let me tell you. Last night I was so worn that 
 I found myself dozing in my chair. I rang for 
 the servant and ordered him to bring blankets. 
 I slept. All night was he banished from my 
 thoughts as he was banished from my chair. I 
 shall remain in it all day. It is a wonderful 
 relief. 
 
THE ETERNITY OF FORMS 85 
 
 It is uncomfortable to sleep in a chair. But 
 it is more uncomfortable to lie in bed, hour 
 after hour, and not sleep, and to know that he 
 is sitting there in the cold darkness. 
 
 It is no use. I shall never be able to sleep 
 in a bed again. I have tried it now, numerous 
 times, and every such night is a horror. If I 
 could but only persuade him to go to bed ! But 
 no. He sits there, and sits there I know he 
 does while I stare and stare up into the 
 blackness and think and think, continually 
 think, of him sitting there. I wish I had never 
 heard of the eternity of forms. 
 
 The servants think I am crazy. That is but 
 to be expected, and it is why I have never called 
 in a physician. 
 
 I am resolved. Henceforth this hallucina 
 tion ceases. From now on I shall remain in 
 the chair. I shall never leave it. I shall re 
 main in it night and day and always. 
 
86 THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 
 
 I have succeeded. For two weeks I have not 
 seen him. Nor shall I ever see him again. I 
 have at last attained the equanimity of mind 
 necessary for philosophic thought. I wrote a 
 complete chapter to-day. 
 
 It is very wearisome, sitting in a chair. The 
 weeks pass, the months come and go, the seasons 
 change, the servants replace each other, while 
 I remain. I only remain. It is a strange life 
 I lead, but at least I am at peace. 
 
 . 
 
 He comes no more. There is no eternity of 
 forms. I have proved it. For nearly two 
 years now, I have remained in this chair, and I 
 have not seen him once. True, I was severely 
 tried for a time. But it is clear that what I 
 thought I saw was merely hallucination. He 
 never was. Yet I do not leave the chair. I 
 am afraid to leave the chair. 
 
TOLD IN THE DROOLING WARD 
 
 ME? I m not a drooler. I m the assist 
 ant. I don t know what Miss Jones or 
 Miss Kelsey could do without me. There are 
 fifty-five low-grade droolers in this ward, and 
 how could they ever all be fed if I wasn t 
 around? I like to feed droolers. They 
 don t make trouble. They can t. Something s 
 wrong with most of their legs and arms, and 
 they can t talk. They re very low-grade. I 
 can walk, and talk, and do things. You must 
 be careful with the droolers and not feed them 
 too fast. Then they choke. Miss Jones says 
 I m an expert. When a new nurse comes I 
 show her how to do it. It s funny watching a 
 new nurse try to feed them. She goes at it so 
 slow and careful that supper time would be 
 around before she finished shoving down their 
 breakfast. Then I show her, because I m an 
 expert. Dr. Dalrymple says I am, and he 
 
 87 
 
88 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 ought to know. A drooler can eat twice as 
 fast if you know how to make him. 
 
 My name s Tom. I m twenty-eight years 
 old. Everybody knows me in the institution. 
 This is an institution, you know. It belongs to 
 the State of California and is run by politics. 
 I know. I ve been here a long time. Every 
 body trusts me. I run errands all over the 
 place, when I m not busy with the droolers. I 
 like droolers. It makes me think how lucky 
 I am that I ain t a drooler. 
 
 I like it here in the Home. I don t like the 
 outside. I know. I ve been around a bit, and 
 run away, and adopted. Me for the Home, 
 and for the drooling ward best of all. I don t 
 look like a drooler, do I? You can tell the 
 difference soon as you look at me. I m an as 
 sistant, expert assistant. That s going some 
 for a feeb. Feeb? Oh, that s feeble-minded. 
 I thought you knew. We re all feebs in here. 
 
 But I m a high-grade feeb. Dr. Dalrymple 
 says I m too smart to be in the Home, but I 
 never let on. It s a pretty good place. And I 
 don t throw fits like lots of the feebs. You 
 
TOLD IN THE DROOLING WARD 89 
 
 see that house up there through the trees. 
 The high-grade epilecs all live in it by them 
 selves. They re stuck up because they ain t 
 just ordinary feebs. They call it the club 
 house, and they say they re just as good as any 
 body outside, only they re sick. I don t like 
 them much. They laugh at me, when they 
 ain t busy throwing fits. But I don t care. I 
 never have to be scared about falling down and 
 busting my head. Sometimes they run around 
 in circles trying to find a place to sit down quick, 
 only they don t. Low-grade epilecs are dis 
 gusting, and high-grade epilecs put on airs. 
 I m glad I ain t an epilec. There ain t any 
 thing to them. They just talk big, that s all. 
 
 Miss Kelsey says I talk too much. But I 
 talk sense, and that s more than the other feebs 
 do. Dr. Dalrymple says I have the gift of 
 language. I know it. You ought to hear me 
 talk when Fm by myself, or when I ve got a 
 drooler to listen. Sometimes I think I d like 
 to be a politician, only it s too much trouble. 
 They re all great talkers; that s how they hold 
 their jobs. 
 
90 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 Nobody s crazy in this institution. They re 
 just feeble in their minds. Let me tell you 
 something funny. There s about a dozen high- 
 grade girls that set the tables in the big dining 
 room. Sometimes when they re done ahead of 
 time, they all sit down in chairs in a circle and 
 talk. I sneak up to the door and listen, and I 
 nearly die to keep from laughing. Do you 
 want to know what they talk? It s like this. 
 They don t say a word for a long time. And 
 then one says, " Thank God I m not feeble 
 minded." And all the rest nod their heads and 
 look pleased. And then nobody says anything 
 for a time. After which the next girl in the 
 circle says, " Thank God I m not feeble 
 minded," and they nod their heads all over 
 again. And it goes on around the circle, and 
 they never say anything else. Now they re real 
 feebs, ain t they? I leave it to you. I m not 
 that kind of a feeb, thank God. 
 
 Sometimes I don t think I m a feeb at all. I 
 play in the band and read music. We re all 
 supposed to be feebs in the band except the 
 leader. He s crazy. We know it, but we 
 
TOLD IN THE DROOLING WARD 91 
 
 never talk about it except amongst ourselves. 
 His job is politics, too, and we don t want him 
 to lose it. I play the drum. They can t get 
 along without me in this institution. I was sick 
 once, so I know. It s a wonder the drooling 
 ward didn t break down while I was in hospital. 
 
 I could get out of here if I wanted to. I m 
 not so feeble as some might think. But I don t 
 let on. I have too good a time. Besides, 
 everything would run down if I went away. 
 I m afraid some time they ll find out I m not a 
 feeb and send me out into the world to earn my 
 own living. I know the world, and I don t like 
 it. The Home is fine enough for me. 
 
 You see how I grin sometimes. I can t help 
 that. But I can put it on a lot. I m not bad, 
 though. I look at myself in the glass. My 
 mouth is funny, I know that, and it lops down, 
 and my teeth are bad. You can tell a feeb any 
 where by looking at his mouth and teeth. But 
 that doesn t prove I m a feeb. It s just because 
 I m lucky that I look like one. 
 
 I know a lot. If I told you all I know, you d 
 be surprised. But when I don t want to know, 
 
92 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 or when they want me to do something I don t 
 want to do, I just let my mouth lop down and 
 laugh and make foolish noises. I watch the 
 foolish noises made by the low-grades, and I can 
 fool anybody. And I know a lot of foolish 
 noises. Miss Kelsey called me a fool the other 
 day. She was very angry, and that was where I 
 fooled her. 
 
 Miss Kelsey asked me once why I don t write 
 a book about feebs. I was telling her what was 
 the matter with little Albert. He s a drooler, 
 you know, and I can always tell the way he 
 twists his left eye what s the matter with him. 
 So I was explaining it to Miss Kelsey, and, be 
 cause she didn t know, it made her mad. But 
 some day, mebbe, I ll write that book. Only 
 it s so much trouble. Besides, I d sooner 
 talk. 
 
 Do you know what a micro is? It s the kind 
 with the little heads no bigger than your fist. 
 They re usually droolers, and they live a long 
 time. The hydros don t drool. They have the 
 big heads, and they re smarter. But they never 
 grow up. They always die. I never look at 
 
TOLD IN THE DROOLING WARD 93 
 
 one without thinking he s going to die. Some 
 times, when I m feeling lazy, or the nurse is mad 
 at me, I wish I was a drooler with nothing to do 
 and somebody to feed me. But I guess I d 
 sooner talk and be what I am. 
 
 Only yesterday Doctor Dalrymple said to me, 
 " Tom," he said, " I just don t know what I d 
 do without you." And he ought to know, see 
 ing as he s had the bossing of a thousand feebs 
 for going on two years. Dr. Whatcomb was 
 before him. They get appointed, you know. 
 It s politics. I ve seen a whole lot of doctors 
 here in my time. I was here before any of 
 them. I ve been in this institution twenty-five 
 years. No, I ve got no complaints. The insti 
 tution couldn t be run better. 
 
 It s a snap to be a high-grade feeb. Just 
 look at Doctor Dalrymple. He has troubles. 
 He holds his job by politics. You bet we high- 
 graders talk politics. We know all about it, 
 and it s bad. An institution like this oughtn t 
 to be run on politics. Look at Doctor Dalrym 
 ple. He s been here two years and learned a 
 lot. Then politics will come along and throw 
 
94 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 him out and send a new doctor who don t know 
 anything about feebs. 
 
 I ve been acquainted with just thousands of 
 nurses in my time. Some of them are nice. 
 But they come and go. Most of the women get 
 married. Sometimes I think I d like to get 
 married. I spoke to Dr. Whatcomb about it 
 once, but he told me he was very sorry, because 
 feebs ain t allowed to get married. I ve been 
 in love. She was a nurse. I won t tell you 
 her name. She had blue eyes, and yellow hair, 
 and a kind voice, and she liked me. She told 
 me so. And she always told me to be a good 
 boy. And I was, too, until afterward, and then 
 I ran away. You see, she went off and got 
 married, and she didn t tell me about it. 
 
 I guess being married ain t what it s cracked 
 up to be. Dr. Anglin and his wife used to fight. 
 I ve seen them. And once I heard her call him 
 a feeb. Now nobody has a right to call any 
 body a feeb that ain t. Dr. Anglin got awful 
 mad when she called him that. But he didn t 
 last long. Politics drove him out, and Doctor 
 Mandeville came. He didn t have a wife. I 
 
TOLD IN THE DROOLING WARD 95 
 
 heard him talking one time with the engineer. 
 The engineer and his- wife fought like cats and 
 dogs, and that day Doctor Mandeville told him 
 he was damn glad he wasn t tied to no petti 
 coats. A petticoat is a skirt. I knew what he 
 meant, if I was a feeb. But I never let on. 
 You hear lots when you don t let on. 
 
 I ve seen a lot in my time. Once I was 
 adopted, and went away on the railroad over 
 forty miles to live with a man named Peter 
 Bopp and his wife. They had a ranch. Doc 
 tor Anglin said I was strong and bright, and I 
 said I was, too. That was because I wanted to 
 be adopted. And Peter Bopp said he d give me 
 a good home, and the lawyers fixed up the 
 papers. 
 
 But I soon made up my mind that a ranch was 
 no place for me. Mrs. Bopp was scared to 
 death of me and wouldn t let me sleep in the 
 house. They fixed up the woodshed and made 
 me sleep there. I had to get up at four o clock 
 and feed the horses, and milk cows, and carry 
 the milk to the neighbours. They called it 
 chores, but it kept me going all day. I chopped 
 
96 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 wood, and cleaned chicken houses, and weeded 
 vegetables, and did most everything on the 
 place. I never had any fun. I hadn t no time. 
 
 Let me tell you one thing. I d sooner feed 
 mush and milk to feebs than milk cows with the 
 frost on the ground. Mrs. Bopp was scared to 
 let me play with her children. And I was 
 scared, too. They used to make faces at 
 me when nobody was looking, and call me 
 " Looney." Everybody called me Looney 
 Tom. And the other boys in the neighbour 
 hood threw rocks at me. You never see any 
 thing like that in the Home here. The feebs 
 are better behaved. 
 
 Mrs. Bopp used to pinch me and pull my hair 
 when she thought I was too slow, and I only 
 made foolish noises and went slower. She said 
 I d be the death of her some day. I left the 
 boards off the old well in the pasture, and the 
 pretty new calf fell in and got drowned. Then 
 Peter Bopp said he was going to give me a lick 
 ing. He did, too. He took a strap halter and 
 went at me. It was awful. I d never had a 
 licking in my life. They don t do such things 
 
TOLD IN THE DROOLING WARD 97 
 
 in the Home, which is why I say the Home is 
 the place for me. 
 
 I know the law, and I knew he had no right 
 to lick me with a strap halter. That was being 
 cruel, and the guardianship papers said he 
 mustn t be cruel. I didn t say anything. I just 
 waited, which shows you what kind of a feeb I 
 am. I waited a long time, and got slower, and 
 made more foolish noises; but he wouldn t send 
 me back to the Home, which was what I wanted. 
 But one day, it was the first of the month, Mrs. 
 Brown gave me three dollars, which was for her 
 milk bill with Peter Bopp. That was in the 
 morning. When I brought the milk in the eve 
 ning I was to bring back the receipt. But I 
 didn t. I just walked down to the station, 
 bought a ticket like any one, and rode on the 
 train back to the Home. That s the kind of a 
 feeb I am. 
 
 Doctor Anglin was gone then, and Doctor 
 Mandeville had his place. I walked right into 
 his office. He didn t know me. " Hello," he 
 said, " this ain t visiting day." " I ain t a visi 
 tor," I said. "I m Tom. I belong here." 
 
98 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 Then he whistled and showed he was surprised. 
 I told him all about it, and showed him the 
 marks of the strap halter, and he got madder 
 and madder all the time and said he d attend to 
 Mr. Peter Bopp s case. 
 
 And mebbe you think some of them little 
 droolers weren t glad to see me. 
 
 I walked right into the ward. There was 
 a new nurse feeding little Albert. " Hold on," 
 I said. " That ain t the way. Don t you see 
 how he s twisting that left eye? Let me show 
 you." Mebbe she thought I was a new doctor, 
 for she just gave me the spoon, and I guess I 
 filled little Albert up with the most comfortable 
 meal he d had since I went away. Droolers 
 ain t bad when you understand them. I heard 
 Miss Jones tell Miss Kelsey once that I had an 
 amazing gift in handling droolers. 
 
 Some day, mebbe, I m going to talk with 
 Doctor Dalrymple and get him to give me a 
 declaration that I ain t a feeb. Then I ll get 
 him to make me a real assistant in the drooling 
 ward, with forty dollars a month and my board. 
 And then I ll marry Miss Jones and live right on 
 
TOLD IN THE DROOLING WARD 99 
 
 here. And if she won t have me, I ll marry 
 Miss Kelsey or some other nurse. There s lots 
 of them that want to get married. And I won t 
 care if my wife gets mad and calls me a feeb. 
 What s the good? And I guess when one s 
 learned to put up with droolers a wife won t be 
 much worse. 
 
 I didn t tell you about when I ran away. I 
 hadn t no idea of such a thing, and it was 
 Charley and Joe who put me up to it. They re 
 high-grade epilecs, you know. I d been up to 
 Doctor Wilson s office with a message, and was 
 going back to the drooling ward, when I saw 
 Charley and Joe hiding around the corner of 
 the gymnasium and making motions to me. I 
 went over to them. 
 
 " Hello," Joe said. " How s droolers? " 
 " Fine," I said. " Had any fits lately? " 
 That made them mad, and I was going on, 
 when Joe said, " We re running away. Come 
 
 on." 
 
 "What for?" I said. 
 
 " We re going up over the top of the rnoun- 
 tain," Joe said. 
 
ioo THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 " And find a gold mine," said Charley. 
 u We don t have fits any more. We re 
 cured." 
 
 " All right," I said. And we sneaked around 
 back of the gymnasium and in among the trees. 
 Mebbe we walked along about ten minutes, 
 when I stopped. 
 
 " What s the matter? " said Joe. 
 
 " Wait," I said. " I got to go back." 
 
 "What for? "said Joe. 
 
 And I said, " To get little Albert." 
 
 And they said I couldn t, and got mad. But 
 I didn t care. I knew they d wait. You see, 
 I ve been here twenty-five years, and I know the 
 back trails that lead up the mountain, and 
 Charley and Joe didn t know those trails. 
 That s why they wanted me to come. 
 
 So I went back and got little Albert. He 
 can t walk, or talk, or do anything except drool, 
 and I had to carry him in my arms. We went 
 on past the last hayfield, which was as far as I d 
 ever gone. Then the woods and brush got so 
 thick, and me not finding any more trail, we fol 
 lowed the cow-path down to a big creek and 
 
TOLD IN THE DROOLING WARD 101 
 
 crawled through the fence which showed where 
 the Home land stopped. 
 
 We climbed up the big hill on the other side 
 of the creek. It was all big trees, and no brush, 
 but it was so steep and slippery with dead leaves 
 we could hardly walk. By and by we came to 
 a real bad place. It was forty feet across, and 
 if you slipped you d fall a thousand feet, or 
 mebbe a hundred. Anyway, you wouldn t fall 
 just slide. I went across first, carrying little 
 Albert. Joe came next. But Charley got 
 scared right in the middle and- sat down. 
 
 " I m going to have a fit," he said. 
 
 " No, you re not," said Joe. " Because if 
 you was you wouldn t a sat down. You take 
 all your fits standing." 
 
 " This is a different kind of a fit," said Char 
 ley, beginning to cry. 
 
 He shook and shook, but just because he 
 wanted to he couldn t scare up the least kind of 
 a fit. 
 
 Joe got mad and used awful language. But 
 that didn t help none. So I talked soft and 
 kind to Charley. That s the way to handle 
 
102 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 feebs. If you get mad, they get worse. I 
 know. I m that way myself. That s why I 
 was almost the death of Mrs. Bopp. She got 
 mad. 
 
 It was getting along in the afternoon, and I 
 knew we had to be on our way, so I said to 
 Joe: 
 
 " Here, stop your cussing and hold Albert. 
 I ll go back and get him." 
 
 And I did, too; but he was so scared and 
 dizzy he crawled along on hands and knees 
 while I helped him. When I got him across 
 and took Albert back in my arms, I heard some 
 body laugh and looked down. And there was 
 a man and woman on horseback looking up at 
 us. He had a gun on his saddle, and it was her 
 who was laughing. 
 
 "Who in hell s that?" said Joe, getting 
 scared. " Somebody to catch us? " 
 
 " Shut up your cussing," I said to him. 
 " That is the man who owns this ranch and 
 writes books." 
 
 " How do you do, Mr. Endicott," I said 
 down to him. 
 
TOLD IN THE DROOLING WARD 103 
 
 "Hello," he said. " What are you doing 
 here?" 
 
 " We re running away," I said. 
 
 And he said, " Good luck. But be sure and 
 get back before dark." 
 
 " But this is a real running away," I said. 
 
 And then both he and his wife laughed. 
 
 " All right," he said. " Good luck just the 
 same. But watch out the bears and mountain 
 lions don t get you when it gets dark." 
 
 Then they rode away laughing, pleasant like; 
 but I wished he hadn t said that about the bears 
 and mountain lions. 
 
 After we got around the hill, I found a trail, 
 and we went much faster. Charley didn t have 
 any more signs of fits, and began laughing and 
 talking about gold mines. The trouble was 
 with little Albert. He was almost as big as 
 me. You see, all the time I d been calling him 
 little Albert, he d been growing up. He was 
 so heavy I couldn t keep up with Joe and Char 
 ley. I was all out of breath. So I told them 
 they d have to take turns in carrying him, which 
 they said they wouldn t. Then I said I d leave 
 
io 4 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 them and they d get lost, and the mountain lions 
 and bears would eat them. Charley looked 
 like he was going to have a fit right there, and 
 Joe said, " Give him to me." And after that 
 we carried him in turn. 
 
 We kept right on up that mountain. I don t 
 think there was any gold mine, but we might 
 a got to the top and found it, if we hadn t lost 
 the trail, and if it hadn t got dark, and if little 
 Albert hadn t tired us all out carrying him. 
 Lots of feebs are scared of the dark, and Joe 
 said he was going to have a fit right there. 
 Only he didn t. I never saw such an unlucky 
 boy. He never could throw a fit when he 
 wanted to. Some of the feebs can throw fits as 
 quick as a wink. 
 
 By and by it got real black, and we were 
 hungry, and we didn t have no fire. You see, 
 they don t let feebs carry matches, and all we 
 could do was just shiver. And we d never 
 thought about being hungry. You see, feebs 
 always have their food ready for them, and 
 that s why it s better to be a feeb than earning 
 your living in the world. 
 
TOLD IN THE DROOLING WARD 105 
 
 And worse than everything was the quiet. 
 There was only one thing worse, and it was the 
 noises. There was all kinds of noises every 
 once in a while, with quiet spells in between. I 
 reckon they were rabbits, but they made noises 
 in the brush like wild animals you know, 
 rustle rustle, thump, bump, crackle crackle, just 
 like that. First Charley got a fit, a real one, 
 and Joe threw a terrible one. I don t mind fits 
 in the Home with everybody around. But out 
 in the woods on a dark night is different. You 
 listen to me, and never go hunting gold mines 
 with epilecs, even if they are high-grade. 
 
 I never had such an awful night. When Joe 
 and Charley weren t throwing fits they were 
 making believe, and in the darkness the shivers 
 from the cold which I couldn t see seemed like 
 fits, too. And I shivered so hard I thought I 
 was getting fits myself. And little Albert, with 
 nothing to eat, just drooled and drooled. I 
 never seen him as bad as that before. Why, he 
 twisted that left eye of his until it ought to have 
 dropped out. I couldn t see it, but I could tell 
 from the movements he made. And Joe just 
 
106 THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 
 
 lay and cussed and cussed, and Charley cried 
 and wished he was back in the Home. 
 
 We didn t die, and next morning we went 
 right back the way we d come. And little Al 
 bert got awful heavy. Doctor Wilson was mad 
 as could be, and said I was the worst feeb in 
 the institution, along with Joe and Charley. 
 But Miss Striker, who was a nurse in the drool 
 ing ward then, just put her arms around me and 
 cried, she was that happy I d got back. I 
 thought right there that mebbe I d marry her. 
 But only a month afterward she got married to 
 the plumber that came up from the city to fix 
 the gutter-pipes of the new hospital. And little 
 Albert never twisted his eye for two days, it was 
 that tired. 
 
 Next time I run away I m going right over 
 that mountain. But I ain t going to take epilecs 
 along. They ain t never cured, and when they 
 get scared or excited they throw fits to beat the 
 band. But I ll take little Albert. Somehow 
 I can t get along without him. And anyway, 
 I ain t going to run away. The drooling ward s 
 a better snap than gold mines, and I hear there s 
 
TOLD IN THE DROOLING WARD 107 
 
 a new nurse coming. Besides, little Albert s 
 bigger than I am now, and I could never carry 
 him over a mountain. And he s growing bigger 
 every day. It s astonishing. 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 
 
 HE lay on his back. So heavy was his sleep 
 that the stamp of hoofs and cries of the 
 drivers from the bridge that crossed the creek 
 did not rouse him. Wagon after wagon, 
 loaded high with grapes, passed the bridge on 
 the way up the valley to the winery, and the 
 coming of each wagon was like an explosion of 
 sound and commotion in the lazy quiet of the 
 afternoon. 
 
 But the man was undisturbed. His head had 
 slipped from the folded newspaper, and the 
 straggling unkempt hair was matted with the 
 foxtails and burrs of the dry grass on which it 
 lay. He was not a pretty sight. His mouth 
 was open, disclosing a gap in the upper row 
 where several teeth at some time had been 
 knocked out. He breathed stertorously, at 
 times grunting and moaning with the pain of his 
 sleep. Also, he was very restless, tossing his 
 
 108 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 109 
 
 arms about, making jerky, half-convulsive move 
 ments, and at times rolling his head from side 
 to side in the burrs. This restlessness seemed 
 occasioned partly by some internal discomfort, 
 and partly by the sun that streamed down on 
 his face and by the flies that buzzed and lighted 
 and crawled upon the nose and cheeks and eye 
 lids. There was no other place for them to 
 crawl, for the rest of the face was covered with 
 matted beard, slightly grizzled, but greatly dirt- 
 stained and weather-discoloured. 
 
 The cheek-bones were blotched with the blood 
 congested by the debauch that was evidently be 
 ing slept off. This, too, accounted for the per 
 sistence with which the flies clustered around the 
 mouth, lured by the alcohol-laden exhalations. 
 He was a powerfully built man, thick-necked, 
 broad-shouldered, with sinewy wrists and toil- 
 distorted hands. Yet the distortion was not 
 due to recent toil, nor were the callouses other 
 than ancient that showed under the dirt of the 
 one palm upturned. From time to time this 
 hand clenched tightly and spasmodically into a 
 fist, large, heavy-boned and wicked-looking. 
 
no THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 The man lay in the dry grass of a tiny glade 
 that ran down to the tree-fringed bank of the 
 stream. On either side of the glade was a 
 fence, of the old stake-and-rider type, though 
 little of it was to be seen, so thickly was it over 
 grown by wild blackberry bushes, scrubby oaks 
 and young madrono trees. In the rear, a gate 
 through a low paling fence led to a snug, squat 
 bungalow, built in the California Spanish style 
 and seeming to have been compounded directly 
 from the landscape of which it was so justly a 
 part. Neat and trim and modestly sweet was 
 the bungalow, redolent of comfort and repose, 
 telling with quiet certitude of some one that 
 knew, and that had sought and found. 
 
 Through the gate and into the glade came as 
 dainty a little maiden as ever stepped out of an 
 illustration made especially to show how dainty 
 little maidens may be. Eight years she might 
 have been, and, possibly, a trifle more, or less. 
 Her little waist and little black-stockinged calves 
 showed how delicately fragile she was; but the 
 fragility was of mould only. There was no hint 
 of anaemia in the clear, healthy complexion nor 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY in 
 
 in the quick, tripping step. She was a little, 
 delicious blond, with hair spun of gossamer gold 
 and wide blue eyes that were but slightly veiled 
 by the long lashes. Her expression was of 
 sweetness and happiness; it belonged by right to 
 any face that sheltered in the bungalow. 
 
 She carried a child s parasol, which she was 
 careful not to tear against the scrubby branches 
 and bramble bushes as she sought for wild pop 
 pies along the edge of the fence. They were 
 late poppies, a third generation, which had been 
 unable to resist the call of the warm October 
 sun. 
 
 Having gathered along one fence, she turned 
 to cross to the opposite fence. Midway in the 
 glade she came upon the tramp. Her startle 
 was merely a startle. There was no fear in 
 it. She stood and looked long and curiously at 
 the forbidding spectacle, and was about to turn 
 back when the sleeper moved restlessly and 
 rolled his hand among the burrs. She noted 
 the sun on his face, and the buzzing flies; her 
 face grew solicitous, and for a moment she de 
 bated with herself. Then she tiptoed to his 
 
ii2 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 side, interposed the parasol between him and 
 the sun, and brushed away the flies. After a 
 time, for greater ease, she sat down beside 
 him. 
 
 An hour passed, during which she occasion 
 ally shifted the parasol from one tired hand 
 to the other. At first the sleeper had been rest 
 less, but, shielded from the flies and the sun, his 
 breathing became gentler and his movements 
 ceased. Several times, however, he really 
 frightened her. The first was the worst, com 
 ing abruptly and without warning. u Christ ! 
 How deep ! How deep ! " the man murmured 
 from some profound of dream. The parasol 
 was agitated; but the little girl controlled her 
 self and continued her self-appointed ministra 
 tions. 
 
 Another time it was a gritting of teeth, as of 
 some intolerable agony. So terribly did the 
 teeth crunch and grind together that it seemed 
 they must crash into fragments. A little later 
 he suddenly stiffened out. The hands clenched 
 and the face set with the savage resolution of 
 the dre-am. The eyelids trembled from the 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 113 
 
 shock of the fantasy, seemed about to open, but 
 did not. Instead, the lips muttered: 
 
 " No; by God, no. And once more no. 1 
 won t peach." The lips paused, then went on. 
 " You might as well tie me up, warden, and cut 
 me to pieces. That s all you can get outa me 
 blood. That s all any of you-uns has ever got 
 outa me in this hole." 
 
 After this outburst the man slept gently on, 
 while the little girl still held the parasol aloft 
 and looked down with a great wonder at the 
 frowsy, unkempt creature, trying to reconcile it 
 with the little part of life that she knew. To 
 her ears came the cries of men, the stamp of 
 hoofs on the bridge, and the creak and groan 
 of wagons heavy-laden. It was a breathless 
 California Indian summer day. Light fleeces 
 of cloud drifted in the azure sky, but to the west 
 heavy cloud banks threatened with rain. A bee 
 droned lazily by. From farther thickets came 
 the calls of quail, and from the fields the songs 
 of meadow larks. And oblivious to it all slept 
 Ross Shanklin Ross Shanklin, the tramp and 
 outcast, ex-convict 4379, the bitter and unbreak- 
 
 
n 4 THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 
 
 able one who had defied all keepers and sur 
 vived all brutalities. 
 
 Texas-born, of the old pioneer stock that was 
 always tough and stubborn, he had been unfor 
 tunate. At seventeen years of age he had been 
 apprehended for horse-stealing. Also, he had 
 been convicted of stealing seven horses which 
 he had not stolen, and he had been sentenced to 
 fourteen years imprisonment. This was severe 
 under any circumstances, but with him it had 
 been especially severe, because there had been 
 no prior convictions against him. The senti 
 ment of the people who believed him guilty had 
 been that two years was adequate punishment 
 for the youth, but the county attorney, paid ac 
 cording to the convictions he secured, had made 
 seven charges against him and earned seven 
 fees. Which goes to show that the county at 
 torney valued twelve years of Ross Shanklin s 
 life at less than a few dollars. 
 
 Young Ross Shanklin had toiled in hell; he 
 had escaped, more than once; and he had been 
 caught and sent back to toil in other and various 
 hells. He had been triced up and lashed till he 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 115 
 
 fainted, had been revived and lashed again. 
 He had been in the dungeon ninety days at a 
 time. He had experienced the torment of the 
 straight] acket. He knew what the humming 
 bird was. He had been farmed out as a chattel 
 by the state to the contractors. He had been 
 trailed through swamps by blood hounds. 
 Twice he had been shot. For six years on end 
 he had cut a cord and a half of wood each day 
 in a convict lumber camp. Sick or well, he had 
 cut that cord and a half or paid for it under a 
 whip-lash knotted and pickled. 
 
 And Ross Shanklin had not sweetened under 
 the treatment. He had sneered, and cursed, 
 and defied. He had seen convicts, after the 
 guards had manhandled them, crippled in body 
 for life, or left to maunder in mind to the end of 
 their days. He had seen convicts, even his 
 own cell-mate, goaded to murder by their 
 keepers, go to the gallows cursing God. He 
 had been in a break in which eleven of his kind 
 were shot down. He had been throilgh a mu 
 tiny, where, in the prison yard, with gatling guns 
 trained upon them, three hundred convicts had 
 
n6 THE TURTLES OF TASM AN 
 
 been disciplined with pick-handles wielded by 
 brawny guards. 
 
 He had known every infamy of human 
 cruelty, and through it all he had never been 
 broken. He had resented and fought to the 
 last, until, embittered and bestial, the day came 
 when he was discharged. Five dollars were 
 given him in payment for the years of his labour 
 and the flower of his manhood. And he had 
 worked little in the years that followed. Work 
 he hated and despised. He tramped, begged 
 and stole, lied or threatened as the case might 
 warrant, and drank to besottedness whenever 
 he got the chance. 
 
 The little girl was looking at him when he 
 awoke. Like a wild animal, all of him was 
 awake the instant he opened his eyes. The 
 first he saw was the parasol, strangely obtruded 
 between him and the sky. He did not start nor 
 move, though his whole body seemed slightly to 
 tense. His eyes followed down the parasol 
 handle to the tight-clutched little fingers, and 
 along the arm to the child s face. Straight and 
 unblinking, he looked into her eyes, and she, re- 
 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 117 
 
 turning the look, was chilled and frightened by 
 his glittering eyes, cold and harsh, withal blood 
 shot, and with no hint in them of the warm 
 humanness she had been accustomed to see and 
 feel in human eyes. They were the true prison 
 eyes the eyes of a man who had learned to 
 talk little, who had forgotten almost how to 
 talk. 
 
 " Hello," he said finally, making no effort to 
 change his position. " What game are you up 
 to?" 
 
 His voice was gruff and husky, and at first it 
 had been harsh; but it had softened queerly in a 
 feeble attempt at forgotten kindliness. 
 
 "How do you do?" she said. "I m not 
 playing. The sun was on your face, and 
 mamma says one oughtn t to sleep in the sun." 
 
 The sweet clearness of her child s voice was 
 pleasant to him, and he wondered why he had 
 never noticed it in children s voices before. He 
 sat up slowly and stared at her. He felt that 
 he ought to say something, but speech with him 
 was a reluctant thing. 
 
 " I hope you slept well," she said gravely. 
 
n8 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 11 1 sure did," he answered, never taking his 
 eyes from her, amazed at the fairness and deli 
 cacy of her. " How long was you holdin that 
 contraption up over me? " 
 
 " O-oh," she debated with herself, " a long, 
 long time. I thought you would never wake 
 up." 
 
 " And I thought you was a fairy when I first 
 seen you." 
 
 He felt elated at his contribution to the con 
 versation. 
 
 " No, not a fairy," she smiled. 
 
 He thrilled in a strange, numb way at the 
 immaculate whiteness of her small even teeth. 
 
 " I was just the good Samaritan," she added. 
 
 " I reckon I never heard of that party." 
 
 He was cudgelling his brains to keep the con 
 versation going. Never having been at close 
 quarters with a child since he was man-grown, 
 he found it difficult. 
 
 " What a funny man not to know about the 
 good Samaritan. Don t you remember? A 
 certain man went down to Jericho " 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 119 
 
 " I reckon I ve been there," he interrupted. 
 
 " I knew you were a traveller! " she cried, 
 clapping her hands. " Maybe you saw the 
 exact spot." 
 
 "What spot?" 
 
 " Why, where he fell among thieves and was 
 left half dead. And then the good Samaritan 
 went to him, and bound up his wounds, and 
 poured in oil and wine was that olive oil, do 
 you think? " 
 
 He shook his head slowly. 
 
 " I reckon you got me there. Olive oil is 
 something the dagoes cooks with. I never 
 heard of it for busted heads." 
 
 She considered his statement for a moment. 
 
 " Well," she announced, " we use olive oil in 
 our cooking, so we must be dagoes. I never 
 knew what they were before. I thought it was 
 slang." 
 
 " And the Samaritan dumped oil on his 
 head," the tramp muttered reminiscently. 
 " Seems to me I recollect a sky pilot sayin some 
 thing about that old gent. D ye know, I ve 
 
120 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 been looking for him off n on all my life, and 
 never scared up hide or hair of him. They 
 ain t no more Samaritans." 
 
 ;< Wasn t I one? " she asked quickly. 
 
 He looked at her steadily, with a great curi 
 osity and wonder. Her ear, by a movement 
 exposed to the sun, was transparent. It seemed 
 he could almost see through it. He was 
 amazed at the delicacy of her colouring, at the 
 blue of her eyes, at the dazzle of the sun- 
 touched golden hair. And he was astounded by 
 her fragility. It came to him that she was 
 easily broken. His eye went quickly from his 
 huge, gnarled paw to her tiny hand in which 
 it seemed to him he could almost see the blood 
 circulate. He knew the power in his muscles, 
 and he knew the tricks and turns by which men 
 use their bodies to ill-treat men. In fact, he 
 knew little else, and his mind for the time ran 
 in its customary channel. It was his way of 
 measuring the beautiful strangeness of her. 
 He calculated a grip, and not a strong one, that 
 could grind her little fingers to pulp. He 
 thought of fist-blows he had given to men s 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 121 
 
 heads, and received on his own head, and felt 
 that the least of them could shatter hers like an 
 eggshell. He scanned her little shoulders and 
 slim waist, and knew in all certitude that with 
 his two hands he could rend her to pieces. 
 
 " Wasn t I one? " she insisted again. 
 
 He came back to himself with a shock 
 or away from himself, as the case happened. 
 He was loth that the conversation should 
 cease. 
 
 " What? " he answered. " Oh, yes; you bet 
 you was a Samaritan, even if you didn t have 
 no^ olive oil." He remembered what his mind 
 had been dwelling on, and asked, " But ain t you 
 afraid?" 
 
 She looked at him uncomprehendingly. 
 
 " Of ... of me ? " he added lamely. 
 
 She laughed merrily. 
 
 " Mamma says never to be afraid of any 
 thing. She says that if you re good, and you 
 think good of other people, they ll be good, 
 too." 
 
 " And you was thinkin good of me when you 
 kept the sun off," he marvelled. 
 
122 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 " But it s hard to think good of bees and 
 nasty crawly things," she confessed. 
 
 " But there s men that is nasty and crawly 
 things," he argued. 
 
 " Mamma says no. She says there s good in 
 every one." 
 
 " I bet you she locks the house up tight at 
 night just the same," he proclaimed trium 
 phantly. 
 
 " But she doesn t. Mamma isn t afraid of 
 anything. That s why she lets me play out here 
 alone when I want. Why, we had a robber 
 once. Mamma got right up and found him. 
 And what do you think! He was only a poor 
 hungry man. And she got him plenty to eat 
 from the pantry, and afterward she got him 
 work to do." 
 
 Ross Shanklin was stunned. The vista 
 shown him of human nature was unthinkable. 
 It had been his lot to live in a world of suspicion 
 and hatred, of evil-believing and evil-doing. It 
 had been his experience, slouching along village 
 streets at nightfall, to see little children, scream 
 ing with fear, run from him to their mothers. 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 123 
 
 He had even seen grown women shrink aside 
 from him as he passed along the sidewalk. 
 
 He was aroused by the girl clapping her 
 hands as she cried out. 
 
 " I know what you are ! You re an open air 
 crank. That s why you were sleeping here in 
 the grass." 
 
 He felt a grim desire to laugh, but repressed 
 it. 
 
 " And that s what tramps are open air 
 cranks," she continued. " I often wondered. 
 Mamma believes in the open air. I sleep on the 
 porch at night. So does she. This is our land. 
 You must have climbed the fence. Mamma lets 
 me when I put on my climbers they re 
 bloomers, you know. But you ought to be told 
 something. A person doesn t know when they 
 snore because they re asleep. But you do worse 
 than that. You grit your teeth. That s bad. 
 Whenever you are going to sleep you must think 
 to yourself, I won t grit my teeth, I won t grit 
 my teeth, over and over, just like that, and by 
 and by you ll get out of the habit. 
 
 " All bad things are habits. And so are all 
 
i2 4 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 good things. And it depends on us what kind 
 our habits are going to be. I used to pucker my 
 eyebrows wrinkle them all up, but mamma 
 said I must overcome that habit. She said that 
 when my eyebrows were wrinkled it was an ad 
 vertisement that my brain was wrinkled inside, 
 and that it wasn t good to have wrinkles in the 
 brain. And then she smoothed my eyebrows 
 with her hand and said I must always think 
 smooth smooth inside, and smooth outside. 
 And do you know, it was easy. I haven t 
 wrinkled my brows for ever so long. I ve 
 heard about filling teeth by thinking. But I 
 don t believe that. Neither does mamma." 
 
 She paused, rather out of breath. Nor did 
 he speak. Her flow of talk had been too much 
 for him. Also, sleeping drunkenly, with open 
 mouth, had made him very thirsty. But, rather 
 than lose one precious moment, he endured the 
 torment of his scorching throat and mouth. 
 He licked his dry lips and struggled for 
 speech. 
 
 " What is your name? " he managed at last. 
 
 " Joan." 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 125 
 
 She looked her own question at him, and it 
 was not necessary to voice it. 
 
 " Mine is Ross Shanklin," he volunteered, 
 for the first time in forgotten years giving his 
 real name. 
 
 " I suppose you ve travelled a lot." 
 
 " I sure have, but not as much as I might 
 have wanted to." 
 
 " Papa always wanted to travel, but he was 
 too busy at the office. He never could get much 
 time. He went to Europe once with mamma. 
 That was before I was born. It takes money 
 to travel." 
 
 Ross Shanklin did not know whether to agree 
 with this statement or not. 
 
 " But it doesn t cost tramps much for ex 
 penses," she took the thought away from him. 
 " Is that why you tramp? " 
 
 He nodded and licked his lips. 
 
 " Mamma says it s too bad that men must 
 tramp to look for work. But there s lots of 
 work now in the country. All the farmers in 
 the valley are trying to get men. Have you 
 been working? " 
 
126 THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 
 
 He shook his head, angry with himself that 
 he should feel shame at the confession when his 
 savage reasoning told him he was right in 
 despising work. But this was followed by 
 another thought. This beautiful little creature 
 was some man s child. She was one of the re 
 wards of work. 
 
 " I wish I had a little girl like you," he 
 blurted out, stirred by a sudden consciousness of 
 passion for paternity. u I d work my hands 
 off. I ... I d do anything." 
 
 She considered his case with fitting gravity. 
 
 " Then you aren t married? " 
 
 " Nobody would have me." 
 
 " Yes they would, if . . ." 
 
 She did not turn up her nose, but she favoured 
 his dirt and rags with a look of disapprobation 
 he could not mistake. 
 
 " Go on," he half-shouted. " Shoot it into 
 me. If I was washed if I wore good clothes 
 if I was respectable if I had a job and 
 worked regular if I wasn t what I am." 
 
 To each statement she nodded. 
 
 " Well, I ain t that kind," he rushed on. 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 127 
 
 " I m no good. I m a tramp. I don t want to 
 work, that s what. And I like dirt." 
 
 Her face was eloquent with reproach as she 
 said, " Then you were only making believe when 
 you wished you had a little girl like me? " 
 
 This left him speechless, for he knew, in all 
 the deeps of his new-found passion, that that 
 was just what he did want. 
 
 With ready tact, noting his discomfort, she 
 sought to change the subject. 
 
 " What do you think of God? " she asked. 
 
 " I ain t never met him. What do you think 
 about him ? " 
 
 His reply was evidently angry, and she was 
 frank in her disapproval. 
 
 " You are very strange," she said. " You 
 get angry so easily. I never saw anybody be 
 fore that got angry about God, or work, or be 
 ing clean." 
 
 " He never done anything for me," he mut 
 tered resentfully. He cast back in quick review 
 of the long years of toil in the convict camps 
 and mines. " And work never done anything 
 for me neither." 
 
128 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 An embarrassing silence fell. 
 
 He looked at her, numb and hungry with the 
 stir of the father-love, sorry for his ill temper, 
 puzzling his brain for something to say. She 
 was looking off and away at the clouds, and he 
 devoured her with his eyes. He reached out 
 stealthily and rested one grimy hand on the very 
 edge of her little dress. It seemed to him that 
 she was the most wonderful thing in the world. 
 The quail still called from the coverts, and the 
 harvest sounds seemed abruptly to become very 
 loud. A great loneliness oppressed him. 
 
 " I m . . . I m no good," he murmured 
 huskily and repentantly. 
 
 But, beyond a glance from her blue eyes, she 
 took no notice. The silence was more embar 
 rassing than ever. He felt that he could give 
 the world just to touch with his lips that hem of 
 her dress where his hand rested. But he was 
 afraid of frightening her. He fought to find 
 something to say, licking his parched lips and 
 vainly attempting to articulate something, any 
 thing. 
 
 " This ain t Sonoma Valley," he declared 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 129 
 
 finally. " This is fairy land, and you re a fairy. 
 Mebbe I m asleep and dreaming. I don t 
 know. You and me don t know how to talk 
 together, because, you see, you re a fairy and 
 don t know nothing but good things, and I m a 
 man from the bad, wicked world." 
 
 Having achieved this much, he was left gasp 
 ing for ideas like a stranded fish. 
 
 " And you re going to tell me about the bad, 
 wicked world," she cried, clapping her hands. 
 " I m just dying to know." 
 
 He looked at her, startled, remembering the 
 wreckage of womanhood he had encountered on 
 the sunken ways of life. She was no fairy. 
 She was flesh and blood, and the possibilities of 
 wreckage were in her as they had been in him 
 even when he lay at his mother s breast. And 
 there was in her eagerness to know. 
 
 " Nope," he said lightly, " this man from 
 the bad, wicked world ain t going to tell you 
 nothing of the kind. He s going to tell you of 
 the good things in that world. He s going to 
 tell you how he loved hosses when he was a 
 shaver, and about the first hoss he straddled, 
 
130 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 and the first boss he owned. Hosses ain t like 
 men. They re better. They re clean clean 
 all the way through and back again. And, little 
 fairy, I want to tell you one thing there sure 
 ain t nothing in the world like when you re set- 
 tin a tired boss at the end of a long day, and 
 when you just speak, and that tired animal lifts 
 under you willing and hustles along. Hosses! 
 They re my long suit. I sure dote on bosses. 
 Yep. I used to be a cowboy once." 
 
 She clapped her hands in the way that tore so 
 delightfully to his heart, and her eyes were 
 dancing, as she exclaimed: 
 
 " A Texas cowboy! I always wanted to see 
 one ! I heard papa say once that cowboys are 
 bow-legged. Are you? " 
 
 " I sure was a Texas cowboy," he answered. 
 " But it was a long time ago. And I m sure 
 bow-legged. You see, you can t ride much 
 when you re young and soft without getting the 
 legs bent some. Why, I was only a three-year- 
 old when I begun. He was a three-year-old, 
 too, fresh-broken. I led him up alongside the 
 fence, dumb to the top rail, and dropped on. 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 131 
 
 He was a pinto, and a real devil at bucking, but 
 I could do anything with him. I reckon he 
 knowed I was only a little shaver. Some bosses 
 knows lots more n you think." 
 
 For half an hour Ross Shanklin rambled on 
 with his horse reminiscences, never unconscious 
 for a moment of the supreme joy that was his 
 through the touch of his hand on- the hem of 
 her dress. The sun dropped slowly into the 
 cloud bank, the quail called more insistently, and 
 empty wagon after empty wagon rumbled back 
 across the bridge. Then came a woman s 
 voice. 
 
 "Joan! Joan!" it called. "Where are 
 you, dear? " 
 
 The little girl answered, and Ross Shanklin 
 saw a woman, clad in a soft, clinging gown, 
 come through the gate from the bungalow. 
 She was a slender, graceful woman, and to 
 his charmed eyes she seemed rather to float 
 along than walk like ordinary flesh and 
 blood. 
 
 What have you been doing all afternoon? " 
 the woman asked, as she came up. 
 
132 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 Talking, mamma," the little girl replied. 
 " IVe had a very interesting time." 
 
 Ross Shanklin scrambled to his feet and stood 
 watchfully and awkwardly. The little girl took 
 the mother s hand, and she, in turn, looked at 
 him frankly and pleasantly, with a recognition 
 of his humanness that was a new thing to him. 
 In his mind ran the thought: the woman who 
 ain t afraid. Not a hint was there of the 
 timidity he was accustomed to seeing in women s 
 eyes. And he was quite aware, and never more 
 so, of his bleary-eyed, forbidding appearance. 
 
 " How do you do? " she greeted him sweetly 
 and naturally. 
 
 " How do you do, ma am," he responded, un 
 pleasantly conscious of the huskiness and raw 
 ness of his voice. 
 
 " And did you have an interesting time, 
 too? " she smiled. 
 
 " Yes, ma am. I sure did. I was just tell 
 ing your little girl about hosses." 
 
 " He was a cowboy, once, mamma," she 
 cried. 
 
 The mother smiled her acknowledgment to 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 133 
 
 him, and looked fondly down at the little girl. 
 The thought that came into Ross Shanklin s 
 mind was the awfulness of the crime if any one 
 should harm either of the wonderful pair. 
 This was followed by the wish that some terrible 
 danger should threaten, so that he could fight, 
 as he well knew how, with all his strength and 
 life, to defend them. 
 
 " You ll have to come along, dear," the 
 mother said. " It s growing late." She looked 
 at Ross Shanklin hesitantly. " Would you care 
 to have something to eat? " 
 
 " No, ma am, thanking you kindly just the 
 same. I ... I ain t hungry." 
 
 * Then say good-bye, Joan," she counselled. 
 
 " Good-bye." The little girl held out her 
 hand, and her eyes lighted roguishly. " Good 
 bye, Mr. Man from the bad, wicked world." 
 
 To him, the touch of her hand as he pressed 
 it in his was the capstone of the whole adven 
 ture. 
 
 " Good-bye, little fairy," he mumbled. " I 
 reckon I got to be pullin along." 
 
 But he did not pull along. He stood staring 
 
134 THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 
 
 after his vision until it vanished through the 
 gate. The day seemed suddenly empty. He 
 looked about him irresolutely, then climbed the 
 fence, crossed the bridge, and slouched along 
 the road. He was in a dream. He did not 
 note his feet nor the way they led him. At 
 times he stumbled in the dust-filled ruts. 
 
 A mile farther on, he aroused at the cross 
 roads. Before him stood the saloon. He 
 came to a stop and stared at it, licking his 
 lips. He sank his hand into his pants pocket 
 and fumbled a solitary dime. " God ! " he mut 
 tered. "God!" Then, with dragging, re 
 luctant feet, went on along the road. 
 
 He came to a big farm. He knew it must 
 be big, because of the bigness of the house and 
 the size and number of the barns and outbuild 
 ings. On the porch, in shirt sleeves, smoking a 
 cigar, keen-eyed and middle-aged, was the 
 farmer. 
 
 " What s the chance for a job? " Ross Shank- 
 lin asked. 
 
 The keen eyes scarcely glanced at him. 
 
 " A dollar a day and grub," was the answer. 
 
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY 135 
 
 Ross Shanklin swallowed and braced himself. 
 
 " I ll pick grapes all right, or anything. But 
 what s the chance for a steady job? You ve 
 got a big ranch here. I know hosses. I was 
 born on one. I can drive team, ride, plough, 
 break, do anything that anybody ever done with 
 hosses." 
 
 The other looked him over with an apprais 
 ing, incredulous eye. 
 
 1 You don t look it," was the judgment. 
 
 " I know I don t. Give me a chance. That s 
 all. I ll prove it." 
 
 The farmer considered, casting an anxious 
 glance at the cloud bank into which the sun had 
 sunk. 
 
 " I m short a teamster, and I ll give you the 
 chance to make good. Go and get supper with 
 the hands." 
 
 Ross Shanklin s voice was very husky, and he 
 spoke with an effort. 
 
 " All right. I ll make good. Where can I 
 get a drink of water and wash up ? " 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 
 
 JOSIAH CHILDS was ordinarily an ordi 
 nary-appearing, prosperous business man. 
 He wore a sixty-dollar, business-man s suit, his 
 shoes were comfortable and seemly and made 
 from the current last, his tie, collars and cuffs 
 were just what all prosperous business men 
 wore, and an up-to-date, business-man s derby 
 was his wildest adventure in head-gear. Oak 
 land, California, is no sleepy country town, and 
 Josiah Childs, as the leading grocer of a rushing 
 Western metropolis of three hundred thousand, 
 appropriately lived, acted, and dressed the part. 
 But on this morning, before the rush of cus 
 tom began, his appearance at the store, while it 
 did not cause a riot, was sufficiently startling to 
 impair for half an hour the staff s working ef 
 ficiency. He nodded pleasantly to the two de- 
 
 136 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 137 
 
 livery drivers loading their wagons for the first 
 trip of the morning, and cast upward the inevi 
 table, complacent glance at the sign that ran 
 across the front of the building CHILDS 
 CASH STORE. The lettering, not too large, 
 was of dignified black and gold, suggestive of 
 noble spices, aristocratic condiments, and every 
 thing of the best (which was no more than to be 
 expected of a scale of prices ten per cent, higher 
 than any other grocery in town). But what 
 Josiah Childs did not see as he turned his back 
 on the drivers and entered, was the helpless and 
 mutual fall of surprise those two worthies per 
 petrated on each other s necks. They clung to 
 gether for support. 
 
 "Did you catch the kicks, Bill?" one 
 moaned. 
 
 " Did you pipe the head-piece? " Bill moaned 
 back. 
 
 " Now if he was goin to a masquerade 
 ball . . ." 
 
 " Or attendin a reunion of the Rough Rid 
 ers . . ." 
 
 " Or goin huntin bear . . ." 
 
i 3 8 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 " Or swearin off his taxes . . ." 
 
 " Instead of goin all the way to the effete 
 East Monkton says he s going clear to Bos 
 ton. . . ." 
 
 The two drivers held each other apart at 
 arm s length, and fell limply together again. 
 
 For Josiah Childs outfit was all their actions 
 connotated. His hat was a light fawn, stiff- 
 rimmed John B. Stetson, circled by a band of 
 Mexican stamped leather. Over a blue flannel 
 shirt, set off by a drooping Windsor tie, was a 
 rough-and-ready coat of large-ribbed corduroy. 
 Pants of the same material were thrust into 
 high-laced shoes of the sort worn by surveyors, 
 explorers, and linemen. 
 
 A clerk at a near counter almost petrified at 
 sight of his employer s bizarre rig. Monkton, 
 recently elevated to the managership, gasped, 
 swallowed, and maintained his imperturbable at- 
 tentiveness. The lady bookkeeper, glancing 
 down from her glass eyrie on the inside balcony, 
 took one look and buried her giggles in the day 
 book. Josiah Childs saw most of all this, but 
 he did not mind. He was starting on his vaca- 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 139 
 
 tion, and his head and heart were buzzing with 
 plans and anticipations of the most adventurous 
 vacation he had taken in ten years. Under his 
 eyelids burned visions of East Falls, Connecti 
 cut, and of all the home scenes he had been 
 born to and brought up in. Oakland, he was 
 thoroughly aware, was more modern than East 
 Falls, and the excitement caused by his garb 
 was only to be expected. Undisturbed by the 
 sensation he knew he was creating among his 
 employes, he moved about, accompanied by his 
 manager, making last suggestions, giving final 
 instructions, and radiating fond, farewell 
 glances at all the loved details of the business he 
 had built out of nothing. 
 
 He had a right to be proud of Childs Cash 
 Store. Twelve years before he had landed in 
 Oakland with fourteen dollars and forty-three 
 cents. Cents did not circulate so far West, and 
 after the fourteen dollars were gone, he con 
 tinued to carry the three pennies in his pocket 
 for a weary while. Later, when he had got a 
 job clerking in a small grocery for eleven dollars 
 a week, and had begun sending a small monthly 
 
140 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 postal order to one, Agatha Childs, East Falls, 
 Connecticut, he invested the three coppers in 
 postage stamps. Uncle Sam could not reject his 
 own lawful coin of the realm. 
 
 Having spent all his life in cramped New 
 England, where sharpness and shrewdness had 
 been whetted to razor-edge on the harsh stone 
 of meagre circumstance, he had found himself 
 abruptly in the loose and free-and-easy West, 
 where men thought in thousand-dollar bills and 
 newsboys dropped dead at sight of copper cents. 
 Josiah Childs bit like fresh acid into the new 
 industrial and business conditions. He had 
 vision. He saw so many ways of making 
 money all at once, that at first his brain was in 
 a whirl. 
 
 At the same time, being sane and conserva 
 tive, he had resolutely avoided speculation. 
 The solid and substantial called to him. Clerk 
 ing at eleven dollars a week, he took note of the 
 lost opportunities, of the openings for safe enter 
 prise, of the countless leaks in the business. If, 
 despite all this, the boss could make a good liv 
 ing, what couldn t he, Josiah Childs, do with his 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 141 
 
 Connecticut training? It was like a bottle of 
 wine to a thirsty hermit, this coming to the ac 
 tive, generous-spending West after thirty-five 
 years in East Falls, the last fifteen of which had 
 been spent in humdrum clerking in the hum 
 drum East Falls general store. Josiah Childs 
 head buzzed with the easy possibilities he saw. 
 But he did not lose his head. No detail was 
 overlooked. He spent his spare hours in study 
 ing Oakland, its people, how they made their 
 money, and why they spent it and where. He 
 walked the central streets, watching the drift of 
 the buying crowds, even counting them and com 
 piling the statistics in various notebooks. He 
 studied the general credit system of the trade, 
 and the particular credit systems of the different 
 districts. He could tell to a dot the average 
 wage or salary earned by the householders of 
 any locality, and he made it a point of thorough 
 ness to know every locality from the waterfront 
 slums to the aristocratic Lake Merritt and Pied 
 mont sections, from West Oakland, where dwelt 
 the railroad employes, to the semi-farmers of 
 Fruitvale at the opposite end of the city. 
 
142 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 Broadway, on the main street and in the very 
 heart of the shopping district, where no grocer 
 had ever been insane enough to dream of es 
 tablishing a business, was his ultimate selection. 
 But that required money, while he had to start 
 from the smallest of beginnings. His first 
 store was on lower Filbert, where lived the nail- 
 workers. In half a year, three other little cor 
 ner groceries went out of business while he was 
 compelled to enlarge his premises. He under 
 stood the principle of large sales at small profits, 
 of stable qualities of goods, and of a square 
 deal. He had glimpsed, also, the secret of ad 
 vertising. Each week he set forth one article 
 that sold at a loss to him. This was not an 
 advertised loss, but an absolute loss. His one 
 clerk prophesied impending bankruptcy when 
 butter, that cost Childs thirty cents, was sold 
 for twenty-five cents, when twenty-two-cent 
 coffee was passed across the counter at eighteen 
 cents. The neighbourhood housewives came 
 for these bargains and remained to buy other ar 
 ticles that sold at a profit. Moreover, the 
 whole neighbourhood came quickly to know 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 143 
 
 Josiah Childs, and the busy crowd of buyers in 
 his store was an attraction in itself. 
 
 But Josiah Childs made no mistake. He 
 knew the ultimate foundation on which his pros 
 perity rested. He studied the nail works until 
 he came to know as much about them as the 
 managing directors. Before the first whisper 
 had stirred abroad, he sold his store, and with 
 a modest sum of ready cash went in search of a 
 new location. Six months later the nail woiks 
 closed down, and closed down forever. 
 
 His next store was established on Adeline 
 Street, where lived a comfortable, salaried class. 
 Here, his shelves carried a higher-grade and a 
 more diversified stock. By the same old 
 method, he drew his crowd. He established a 
 delicatessen counter. He dealt directly with 
 the farmers, so that his butter and eggs were 
 not only always dependable but were a shade 
 better than those sold by the finest groceries in 
 the city. One of his specialties was Boston 
 baked beans, and so popular did it become that 
 the Twin Cabin Bakery paid him better than 
 handsomely for the privilege of taking it over. 
 
144 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 He made time to study the farmers, the very 
 apples they grew, and certain farmers he taught 
 how properly to make cider. As a side-line, 
 his New England apple cider proved his great 
 est success, and before long, after he had in 
 vaded San Francisco, Berkeley, and Alameda, 
 he ran it as an independent business. 
 
 But always his eyes were fixed on Broadway. 
 Only one other intermediate move did he make, 
 which was to as near as he could get to the 
 Ashland Park Tract, where every purchaser of 
 land was legally pledged to put up no home 
 that should cost less than four thousand dollars. 
 After that came Broadway. A strange swirl 
 had come in the tide of the crowd. The drift 
 was to Washington Street, where real estate 
 promptly soared while on Broadway it was as 
 if the bottom had fallen out. One big store 
 after another, as the leases expired, moved to 
 Washington. 
 
 The crowd will come back, Josiah Childs 
 said, but he said it to himself. He knew the 
 crowd. Oakland was growing, and he knew 
 why it was growing. Washington Street was 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 145 
 
 too narrow to carry the increasing traffic. 
 Along Broadway, in the physical nature of 
 things, the electric cars, ever in greater num 
 bers, would have to run. The realty dealers 
 said that the crowd would never come back, 
 while the leading merchants followed the crowd. 
 And then it was, at a ridiculously low figure, 
 that Josiah Childs got a long lease on a modern, 
 Class A building on Broadway, with a buying 
 option at a fixed price. It was the beginning 
 of the end for Broadway, said the realty dealers, 
 when a grocery was established in its erstwhile 
 sacred midst. Later, when the crowd did come 
 back, they said Josiah Childs was lucky. Also, 
 they whispered among themselves that he had 
 cleared at least fifty thousand on the transac 
 tion. 
 
 It was an entirely different store from his 
 previous ones. There were no more bargains. 
 Everything was of the superlative best, and 
 superlative best prices were charged. He 
 catered to the most expensive trade in town. 
 Only those who could carelessly afford to pay 
 ten per cent, more than anywhere else, patron- 
 
146 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 ised him, and so excellent was his service that 
 they could not afford to go elsewhere, His 
 horses and delivery wagons were more ex 
 pensive and finer than any one else s in town. 
 He paid his drivers, and clerks, and bookkeep 
 ers higher wages than any other store could 
 dream of paying. As a result, he got more 
 efficient men, and they rendered him and his 
 patrons a more satisfying service. In short, to 
 deal at Childs Cash Store became almost the 
 infallible index of social status. 
 
 To cap everything, came the great San Fran 
 cisco earthquake and fire, which caused one 
 hundred thousand people abruptly to come 
 across the Bay and live in Oakland. Not least 
 to profit from so extraordinary a boom, was 
 Josiah Childs. And now, after twelve years 
 absence, he was departing on a visit to East 
 Falls, Connecticut. In the twelve years he had 
 not received a letter from Agatha, nor had he 
 seen even a photograph of his and Agatha s 
 boy. 
 
 Agatha and he had never got along together. 
 Agatha was masterful. Agatha had a tongue. 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 147 
 
 She was strong on old-fashioned morality. 
 She was unlovely in her rectitude. Josiah 
 never could quite make out how he had hap 
 pened to marry her. She was two years his 
 senior, and had long ranked as an old maid. 
 She had taught school, and was known by the 
 young generation as the sternest disciplinarian 
 in its experience. She had become set in her 
 ways, and when she married it was merely an 
 exchange of a number of pupils for one. 
 Josiah had to stand the hectoring and nagging 
 that thitherto had been distributed among 
 many. As to how the marriage came about, 
 his Uncle Isaac nearly hit it off one day when 
 he said in confidence : " Josiah, when Agatha 
 married you it was a case of marrying a 
 struggling young man. I reckon you was over 
 powered. Or maybe you broke your leg- and 
 couldn t get away." 
 
 " Uncle Isaac," Josiah answered, " I didn t 
 break my leg. I ran my dangdest, but she just 
 plum run me down and out of breath." 
 
 "Strong in the wind, eh?" Uncle Isaac 
 chuckled. 
 
148 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 " We ve ben married five years now," Josiah 
 agreed, " and I ve never known her to lose it." 
 
 " And never will," Uncle Isaac added. 
 
 This conversation had taken place in the last 
 days, and so dismal an outlook proved too much 
 for Josiah Childs. Meek he was, under 
 Agatha s firm tuition, but he was very healthy, 
 and his promise of life was too long for his 
 patience. He was only thirty-three, and he 
 came of a long-lived stock. Thirty-three more 
 years with Agatha and Agatha s nagging was 
 too hideous to contemplate. So, between a 
 sunset and a rising, Josiah Childs disappeared 
 from East Falls. And from that day, for 
 twelve years, he had received no letter from 
 her. Not that it was her fault. He had care 
 fully avoided letting her have his address. 
 His first postal money orders were sent to her 
 from Oakland, but in the years that followed 
 he had arranged his remittances so that they 
 bore the scattered postmarks of most of the 
 states west of the Rockies. 
 
 But twelve years, and the confidence born of 
 deserved success, had softened his memories. 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 149 
 
 After all, she was the mother of his boy, and it 
 was incontestable that she had always meant 
 well. Besides, he was not working so hard 
 now, and he had more time to think of things 
 besides his business. He wanted to see the boy, 
 whom he had never seen and who had turned 
 three before his father ever learned he was a 
 father. Then, too, homesickness had begun to 
 crawl in him. In a dozen years he had not 
 seen snow, and he was always wondering if New 
 England fruits and berries had not a finer tang 
 than those of California. Through hazy 
 vistas he saw the old New England life, and 
 he wanted to see it again in the flesh before he 
 died. 
 
 And, finally, there was duty. Agatha was 
 his wife. He would bring her back with him 
 to the West. He felt that he could stand it. 
 He was a man, now, in the world of men. He 
 ran things, instead of being run, and Agatha 
 would quickly find it out. Nevertheless, he 
 wanted Agatha to come to him for his own sake. 
 So it was that he had put on his frontier rig. 
 He would be the prodigal father, returning as 
 
150 THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 
 
 penniless as when he left, and it would be up to 
 her whether or not she killed the fatted calf. 
 Empty of hand, and looking it, he would come 
 back wondering if he could get his old job in 
 the general store. Whatever followed would 
 be Agatha s affair. 
 
 By the time he said good-bye to his staff and 
 emerged on the sidewalk, five more of his de 
 livery wagons were backed up and loading. 
 He ran his eye proudly over them, took a last 
 fond glance at the black-and-gold letters, and 
 signalled the electric car at the corner. 
 
II 
 
 HE ran up to East Falls from New York. 
 In the Pullman smoker he became ac 
 quainted with several business men. The con 
 versation, turning on the West, was quickly led 
 by him. As president of the Oakland Chamber 
 of Commerce, he was an authority. His words 
 carried weight, and he knew what he was talk 
 ing about, whether it was Asiatic trade, the 
 Panama Canal, or the Japanese coolie question. 
 It was very exhilarating, this stimulus of re 
 spectful attention accorded him by these pros 
 perous Eastern men, and before he knew it he 
 was at East Falls. 
 
 He was the only person who alighted, and the 
 station was deserted. Nobody was there ex 
 pecting anybody. The long twilight of a Jan 
 uary evening was beginning, and the bite of the 
 keen air made him suddenly conscious that his 
 clothing was saturated with tobacco smoke. 
 151 
 
i 5 2 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 He shuddered involuntarily. Agatha did not 
 tolerate tobacco. He half-moved to toss the 
 fresh-lighted cigar away, then it was borne in 
 upon him that this was the old East Falls at 
 mosphere overpowering him, and he resolved 
 to combat it, thrusting the cigar between his 
 teeth and gripping it with the firmness of a 
 dozen years of Western resolution. 
 
 A few steps brought him into the little main 
 street. The chilly, stilted aspect of it shocked 
 him. Everything seemed frosty and pinched, 
 just as the cutting air did after the warm balmi- 
 ness of California. Only several persons, 
 strangers to his recollection, were abroad, and 
 they favoured him with incurious glances. 
 They were wrapped in an uncongenial and 
 frosty imperviousness. His first impression 
 was surprise at his surprise. Through the wide 
 perspective of twelve years of Western life, he 
 had consistently and steadily discounted the size 
 and importance of East Falls; but this was 
 worse than all discounting. Things were more 
 meagre than he had dreamed. The general 
 store took his breath away. Countless myriads 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 153 
 
 of times he had contrasted it with his own 
 spacious emporium, but now he saw that in 
 justice he had overdone it. He felt certain 
 that it could not accommodate two of his 
 delicatessen counters, and he knew that he could 
 lose all of it in one of his storerooms. 
 
 He took the familiar turning to the right at 
 the head of the street, and as he plodded along 
 the slippery walk he decided that one of the 
 first things he must do was to buy sealskin cap 
 and gloves. The thought of sleighing cheered 
 him for a moment, until, now on the outskirts 
 of the village, he was sanitarily perturbed by 
 the adjacency of dwelling houses and barns. 
 Some were even connected. Cruel memories 
 of bitter morning chores oppressed him. The 
 thought of chapped hands and chilblains was 
 almost terrifying, and his heart sank at sight of 
 the double storm-windows, which he knew were 
 solidly fastened and unraisable, while the small 
 ventilating panes, the size of ladies handker 
 chiefs, smote him with sensations of suffocation. 
 Agatha ll like California, he thought, calling to 
 his mind visions of roses in dazzling sunshine 
 
154 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 and the wealth of flowers that bloomed the 
 twelve months round. 
 
 And then, quite illogically, the years were 
 bridged and the whole leaden weight of East 
 Falls descended upon him like a damp sea fog. 
 He fought it from him, thrusting it off and aside 
 by sentimental thoughts on the u honest snow," 
 the " fine elms," the " sturdy New England 
 spirit," and the " great homecoming." But at 
 sight of Agatha s house he wilted. Before he 
 knew it, with a recrudescent guilty pang, he had 
 tossed the half-smoked cigar away and slack 
 ened his pace until his feet dragged in the old 
 lifeless, East Falls manner. He tried to re 
 member that he was the owner of Childs Cash 
 Store, accustomed to command, whose words 
 were listened to with respect in the Employers 
 Association, and who wielded the gavel at the 
 meetings of the Chamber of Commerce. He 
 strove to conjure visions of the letters in black 
 and gold, and of the string of delivery wagons 
 backed up to the sidewalk. But Agatha s New 
 England spirit was as sharp as the frost, and it 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 155 
 
 travelled to him through solid house-walls and 
 across the intervening hundred yards. 
 
 Then he became aware that despite his will 
 he had thrown the cigar away. This brought 
 him an awful vision. He saw himself going 
 out in the frost to the woodshed to smoke. His 
 memory of Agatha he found less softened by the 
 lapse of years than it had been when three thou 
 sand miles intervened. It was unthinkable. 
 No; he couldn t do it. He was too old, too 
 used to smoking all over the house, to do the 
 woodshed stunt now. And everything de 
 pended on how he began. He would put his 
 foot down. He would smoke in the house that 
 very night ... in the kitchen, he feebly 
 amended. No, by George, he would smoke 
 now. He would arrive smoking. Mentally 
 imprecating the cold, he exposed his bare hands 
 and lighted another cigar. His manhood 
 seemed to flare up with the match. He would 
 show her who was boss. Right from the drop 
 of the hat he would show her. 
 
 Josiah Childs had been born in this house. 
 
156 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 And it was long before he was born that his 
 father had built it. Across the low stone fence, 
 Josiah could see the kitchen porch and door, the 
 connected woodshed, and the several outbuild 
 ings. Fresh from the West, where everything 
 was new and in constant flux, he was astonished 
 at the lack of change. Everything was as it 
 had always been. He could almost see him 
 self, a boy, doing the chores. There, in the 
 woodshed, how many cords of wood had he 
 bucksawed and split! Well, thank the Lord, 
 that was past. 
 
 The walk to the kitchen showed signs of re 
 cent snow-shovelling. That had been one of 
 his tasks. He wondered who did it now, and 
 suddenly remembered that Jiis own son must be 
 twelve. In another moment he would have 
 knocked at the kitchen door, but the skreek of 
 a bucksaw from the woodshed led him aside. 
 He looked in and saw a boy hard at work. 
 Evidently, this was his son. Impelled by the 
 wave of warm emotion that swept over him, he 
 all but rushed in upon the lad. He controlled 
 himself with an effort. 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 157 
 
 u Father here?" he asked curtly, though 
 from under the stiff brim of his John B. Stetson 
 he studied the boy closely. 
 
 Sizable for his age, he thought. A mite 
 spare in the ribs maybe, and that possibly due 
 to rapid growth. But the face strong and 
 pleasing and the eyes like Uncle Isaac s. 
 When all was said, a darn good sample. 
 
 " No, sir," the boy answered, resting on the 
 saw-buck. 
 
 "Where is he?" 
 
 " At sea," was the answer. 
 
 Jqsiah Childs felt a something very akin to 
 relief and joy tingle through him. Agatha had 
 married again evidently a seafaring man. 
 Next, came an ominous, creepy sensation. 
 Agatha had committed bigamy. He remem 
 bered Enoch Arden, read aloud to the class by 
 the teacher in the old schoolhouse, and began 
 to think of himself as a hero. He would do 
 the heroic. By George, he would. He would 
 sneak away and get the first train for Cali 
 fornia. She would never know. 
 
 But there was Agatha s New England moral- 
 
158 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 ity, and her New England conscience. She re 
 ceived a regular remittance. She knew he was 
 alive. It was impossible that she could have 
 done this thing. He groped wildly for a solu 
 tion. Perhaps she had sold the old home, and 
 this boy was somebody else s boy. 
 
 " What is your name ? " Josiah asked. 
 
 " Johnnie, " came the reply. 
 
 " Last name I mean? " 
 
 " Childs, Johnnie Childs." 
 
 " And your father s name? first name? " 
 
 " Josiah Childs." 
 
 " And he s away at sea, you say ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 This set Josiah wondering again. 
 
 " What kind of a man is he? " 
 
 " Oh, he s all right a good provider, Mom 
 says. And he is. He always sends his money 
 home, and he works hard for it, too, Mom says. 
 She says he always was a good worker, and he s 
 better n other men she ever saw. He don t 
 smoke, or drink, or swear, or do anything he 
 oughtn t. And he never did. He was always 
 that way, Mom says, and she knew him all her 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 159 
 
 life before ever they got married. He s a very 
 kind man, and never hurts anybody s feelings. 
 Mom says he s the most considerate man she 
 ever knew." 
 
 Josiah s heart went weak. Agatha had done 
 it after all had taken a second husband when 
 she knew her first was still alive. Well, he had 
 learned charity in the West, and he could be 
 charitable. He would go quietly away. No 
 body would ever know. Though it was rather 
 mean of her, the thought flashed through him, 
 that she should go on cashing his remittances 
 when she was married to so model and steady- 
 working a seafaring husband who brought his 
 wages home. He cudgelled his brains in an 
 effort to remember such a man out of all the 
 East Falls men he had known. 
 
 "What s he look like?" 
 
 " Don t know. Never saw him. He s at 
 sea all the time. But I know how tall he is. 
 Mom says I m goin to be bigger n him, and he 
 was five feet eleven. There s a picture of him 
 in the album. His face is thin, and he has 
 whiskers." 
 
160 THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 
 
 A great illumination came to Josiah. He 
 was himself five feet eleven. He had worn 
 whiskers, and his face had been thin in those 
 days. And Johnnie had said his father s name 
 was Josiah Childs. He, Josiah, was this model 
 husband who neither smoked, swore, nor drank. 
 He was this seafaring man whose memory had 
 been so carefully shielded by Agatha s forgiv 
 ing fiction. He warmed toward her. She 
 must have changed mightily since he left. He 
 glowed with penitence. Then his heart sank as 
 he thought of trying to live up to this reputation 
 Agatha had made for him. This boy with the 
 trusting blue eyes would expect it of him. Well, 
 he d have to do it. Agatha had been almighty 
 square with him. He hadn t thought she had 
 it in her. 
 
 The resolve he might there and then have 
 taken was doomed never to be, for he heard the 
 kitchen door open to give vent to a woman s 
 nagging, irritable voice. 
 
 " Johnnie ! you ! " it cried. 
 
 How often had he heard it in the old days: 
 " Josiah ! you ! " A shiver went through 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 161 
 
 him. Involuntarily, automatically, with a guilty 
 start, he turned his hand back upward so that 
 the cigar was hidden. He felt himself shrink 
 ing and shrivelling as she stepped out on the 
 stoop. It was his unchanged wife, the same 
 shrew wrinkles, with the same sour-drooping 
 corners to the thin-lipped mouth. But there 
 was more sourness, an added droop, the lips 
 were thinner, and the shrew wrinkles were 
 deeper. She swept Josiah with a hostile, with 
 ering stare. 
 
 " Do you think your father would stop work 
 to talk to tramps? " she demanded of the boy, 
 who visibly quailed, even as Josiah. 
 
 " I was only answering his questions," 
 Johnnie pleaded doggedly but hopelessly. 
 " He wanted to know " 
 
 " And I suppose you told him," she snapped. 
 "What business is it of his prying around? 
 No, and he gets nothing to eat. As for you, 
 get to work at once. I ll teach you, idling at 
 your chores. Your father waVt like that. 
 Can t I ever make you like him? " 
 
 Johnnie bent his back, and the bucksaw re- 
 
162 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 sumed its protesting skreek. Agatha surveyed 
 Josiah sourly. It was patent she did not recog 
 nise him. 
 
 " You be off," she commanded harshly. 
 " None of your snooping around here." 
 
 Josiah felt the numbness of paralysis creeping 
 over him. He moistened his lips and tried to 
 say something, but found himself bereft of 
 speech. 
 
 " You be off, I say," she rasped in her high- 
 keyed voice, " or I ll put the constable after 
 you." 
 
 Josiah turned obediently. He heard the 
 door slam as he went down the walk. As in a 
 nightmare he opened the gate he had opened 
 ten thousand times and stepped out on the side 
 walk. He felt dazed. Surely it was a dream. 
 Very soon he would wake up with a sigh of re 
 lief. He rubbed his forehead and paused in 
 decisively. The monotonous complaint of the 
 bucksaw came to his ears. If that boy had any 
 of the old Childs spirit in him, sooner or later 
 he d run away. Agatha was beyond the en 
 durance of human flesh. She had not changed, 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 163 
 
 unless for the worse, if such a thing were pos 
 sible. That boy would surely run for it, may 
 be soon. Maybe now. 
 
 Josiah Childs straightened up and threw his 
 shoulders back. The great-spirited West, with 
 its daring and its carelessness of consequences 
 when mere obstacles stand in the way of its de 
 sire, flamed up in him. He looked at his watch, 
 remembered the time table, and spoke to him 
 self, solemnly, aloud. It was an affirmation of 
 faith : 
 
 " I don t care a hang about the law. That 
 boy can t be crucified. I ll give her a double 
 allowance, four times, anything, but he goes 
 with me. She can follow on to California if 
 she wants, but I ll draw up an agreement, in 
 which what s what, and she ll sign it, and live 
 up to it, by George, if she wants to stay. And 
 she will," he added grimly. " She s got to 
 have somebody to nag." 
 
 He opened the gate and strode back to the 
 woodshed door. Johnnie looked up, but kept 
 on sawing. 
 
 " What d you like to do most of anything in 
 
1 64 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 the world?" Josiah demanded in a tense, low 
 voice. 
 
 Johnnie hesitated, and almost stopped saw 
 ing. Josiah made signs for him to keep it up. 
 
 " Go to sea," Johnnie answered. " Along 
 with my father." 
 
 Josiah felt himself trembling. 
 
 " Would you? " he asked eagerly. 
 
 " Would I ! " 
 
 The look of joy on Johnnie s face decided 
 everything. 
 
 " Come here, then. Listen. I m your 
 father. I m Josiah Childs. Did you ever 
 want to run away? " 
 
 Johnnie nodded emphatically. 
 
 " That s what I did," Josiah went on. " I 
 ran away." He fumbled for his watch hur 
 riedly. " We ve just time to catch the train for 
 California. I live there now. Maybe Agatha, 
 your mother, will come along afterward. I ll 
 tell you all about it on the train. Come on." 
 
 He gathered the half-frightened, half-trust 
 ing boy into his arms for a moment, then, hand 
 in hand, they fled across the yard, out of the 
 
THE PRODIGAL FATHER 165 
 
 gate, and down the street. They heard the 
 kitchen door open, and the last they heard was : 
 " Johnnie ! you ! Why ain t you sawing? 
 I ll attend to your case directly ! " 
 
THE FIRST POET 
 
 SCENE : A summer plain, the eastern side 
 of which is bounded by grassy hills of lime 
 stone, the other sides by a forest. The hill 
 nearest to the plain terminates in a cliff, in the 
 face of which, nearly at the level of the ground, 
 are four caves, with low, narrow entrances. 
 Before the caves, and distant from them less 
 than one hundred feet, is a broad, flat rock, on 
 which are laid several sharp slivers of flint, 
 which, like the rock, are blood-stained. Between 
 the rock and the cave-entrances, on a low pile of 
 stones, is squatted a man, stout and hairy. 
 Across his knees is a thick club, and behind him 
 crouches a woman. At his right and left are 
 two men somewhat resembling him, and like 
 him, bearing wooden clubs. These four face 
 the west, and between them and the bloody rock 
 squat some threescore of cave-folk, talking 
 loudly among themselves. It is late afternoon. 
 
 166 
 
THE FIRST POET 167 
 
 The name of him on the pile of stones is Uk, 
 the name of his mate, Ala; and of those at his 
 right and left, Ok and Un. 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Be still! 
 
 (Turning to the woman behind him) 
 
 Thou seest that they become still. None 
 save me can make his kind be still, except per 
 haps the chief of the apes, when in the night he 
 deems he hears a serpent. ... At whom dost 
 thou stare so long? At Oan? Oan, come to 
 me! 
 
 Oan: 
 
 I am thy cub. 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Oan, thou art a fool ! 
 
 Ok and Un: 
 
 Ho ! ho ! Oan is a fool ! 
 
 All the Tribe: 
 Ho ! ho ! Oan is a fool ! 
 
1 68 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 Oan: 
 Why am I a fool? 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Dost thou not chant strange words? Last 
 night I heard thee chant strange words at the 
 mouth of thy cave. 
 
 Oan: 
 
 Ay! they are marvellous words; they were 
 born within me in the dark. 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Art thou a woman, that thou shouldst bring 
 forth? Why dost thou not sleep when it is 
 dark? 
 
 Oan: 
 I did half sleep; perhaps I dreamed. 
 
 Uk: 
 
 And why shouldst thou dream, not having 
 had more than thy portion of flesh ? Hast thou 
 slain a deer in the forest and brought it not to 
 the Stone ? 
 
THE FIRST POET 169 
 
 All the Tribe: 
 
 Wa! iWa! He hath slain in the forest, 
 and brought not the meat to the Stone 1 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Be still, ye I 
 (To Ala) 
 
 Thou seest that they become still. . . . Oan, 
 hast thou slain and kept to thyself? 
 
 Oan: 
 
 Nay, thou knowest that I am not apt at the 
 chase. Also it irks me to squat on a branch all 
 day above a path, bearing a rock upon my 
 thighs. Those words did but awaken within 
 me when I was peaceless in the night. 
 
 Uk: 
 And why wast thou peaceless in the night? 
 
 Oan: 
 
 Thy mate wept, for that thou didst beat her. 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Ay! she lamented loudly. But thou shalt 
 make thy half-sleep henceforth at the mouth of 
 
1 70 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 the cave, so that when Gurr the tiger cometh, 
 thou shalt hear him sniff between the boulders, 
 and shalt strike the flints, whose stare he hatest. 
 Gurr cometh nightly to the caves. 
 
 One of the Tribe: 
 Ay I Gurr smelleth the Stone I 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Be still! 
 
 (To Ala) 
 
 Had he not become still, Ok and Un would 
 have beaten him with their clubs. . . . But, 
 Oan, tell us those words that were born to thee 
 when Ala did weep. 
 
 Oan (arising): 
 
 They are wonderful words. They are such : 
 The bright day is gone 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Now I see thou art liar as well as fool: be 
 hold, the day is not gone ! 
 
THE FIRST POET 171 
 
 Oan: 
 
 But the day was gone in that hour when my 
 song was born to me. 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Then shouldst thou have sung it only at that 
 time, and not when it is yet day. But beware 
 lest thou awaken me in the night. Make thou 
 many stars, that they fly in the whiskers of Gurr. 
 
 Oan: 
 My song is even of stars. 
 
 Uk: 
 
 It was Ul, thy father s wont, ere I slew him 
 with four great stones, to climb to the tops of 
 the tallest trees and reach forth his hand, to 
 see if he might not pluck a star. But I said: 
 ;< Perhaps they be as chestnut-burs." And all 
 the tribe did laugh. Ul was also a fool. But 
 what dost thou sing of stars? 
 
 Oan: 
 I will begin again: 
 
172 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 The bright day is gone. 
 
 The night maketh me sad, sad, sad 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Nay, the night maketh thee sad; not sad, sad, 
 sad. For when I say to Ala, " Gather thou 
 dried leaves," I say not, " Gather thou dried 
 leaves, leaves, leaves." Thou art a fool! 
 
 Ok and Un: 
 
 Thou art a fool ! 
 
 All the Tribe: 
 Thou art a fool ! 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Yea, he is a fool. But say on, Oan, and tell 
 us of thy chestnut-burs. 
 
 Oan: 
 I will begin again: 
 
 The bright day is gone 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Thou dost not say, " gone, gone, gone ! " 
 
THE FIRST POET 173 
 
 Oan: 
 
 I am thy cub. Suffer that I speak: so shall 
 the tribe admire greatly. 
 
 Uk: 
 Speak on! 
 
 Oan: 
 I will begin once more : 
 
 The bright day is gone. 
 
 The night maketh me sad, sad 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Said I not that u sad " should be spoken but 
 once ? Shall I set Ok and Un upon thee with 
 their branches? 
 
 Oan: 
 
 But it was so born within me even " sad, 
 sad " 
 
 Uk: 
 
 If again thou twice or thrice say " sad," thou 
 shalt be dragged to the Stone. 
 
174 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 Oan: 
 Ow ! Ow ! I am thy cub ! Yet listen : 
 
 The bright day is gone. 
 The night maketh me sad 
 
 Ow! Ow! thou makest me more sad than 
 the night doth ! The song 
 
 Uk: 
 Ok! Un! Be prepared! 
 
 Oan (hastily): 
 Nay! have mercy! I will begin afresh: 
 
 The bright day is gone. 
 The night maketh me sad. 
 The the the 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Thou hast forgotten, and art a fool! See, 
 Ala, he is a fool ! 
 
 Ok and Un: 
 He is a fool ! 
 
 All the Tribe: 
 He is a fool ! 
 
THE FIRST POET 175 
 
 Oan: 
 
 I am not a fool! This is a new thing. In 
 the past, when ye did chant, O men, ye did leap 
 about the Stone, beating your breasts and crying, 
 " Hai, hai, hai! " Or, if the moon was great, 
 " Hai, hai! hai, hai, hai!" But this song is 
 made even with such words as ye do speak, and 
 is a great wonder. One may sit at the cave s 
 mouth, and moan it many times as the light 
 goeth out of the sky. 
 
 One of the Tribe: 
 
 Ay! even thus doth he sit at the mouth of 
 our cave, making us marvel, and more especially 
 the women. 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Be still! . . . When I would make women 
 marvel, I do show them a wolf s brains upon my 
 club, or the great stone that I cast, or perhaps 
 do whirl my arms mightily, or bring home much 
 meat. How should a man do otherwise? I 
 will have no songs in this place. 
 
176 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 Can: 
 
 Yet suffer that I sing my song unto the tribe. 
 Such things have not been before. It may be 
 that they shall praise thee, seeing that I who do 
 make this song am thy cub. 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Well, let us have the song. 
 
 Oan (facing the tribe) : 
 
 The bright day is gone. 
 
 The night maketh me sa sad. 
 
 But the stars are very white. 
 
 They whisper that the day shall return. 
 
 O stars ; little pieces of the day ! 
 
 Uk: 
 
 This is indeed madness. Hast thou heard a 
 star whisper? Did Ul, thy father, tell thee 
 that he heard the stars whisper when he was in 
 the tree-top? And of what moment is it that 
 a star be a piece of the day, seeing that its light 
 is of no value? Thou art a fool ! 
 
 Ok and Un: 
 
 Thou art a fool ! 
 
THE FIRST POET 177 
 
 All the Tribe: 
 Thou art a fool ! 
 
 Oan: 
 
 But it was so born unto me. And at that 
 birth it was as though I would weep, yet had not 
 been stricken; I was moreover glad, yet none 
 had given me a gift of meat 
 
 Uk: 
 
 It is a madness. How shall the stars profit 
 us ? Will they lead us to a bear s den, or where 
 the deer foregather, or break for us great bones 
 that we come at their marrow ? Will they tell 
 us anything at all? Wait thou until the night, 
 and we shall peer forth from between the 
 boulders, and all men shall take note that the 
 stars cannot whisper. . . . Yet it may be that 
 they are pieces of the day. This is a deep mat 
 ter. 
 
 Oan: 
 
 Ay! they are pieces of the moon I 
 
1 78 THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 
 
 Uk: 
 
 What further madness is this? How shall 
 they be pieces of two things that are not the 
 same ? Also it was not thus in the song. 
 
 Oan: 
 
 I will make me a new song. We do change 
 the shape of wood and stone, but a song is made 
 out of nothing. Ho ! ho ! I can fashion things 
 from nothing! Also I say that the stars come 
 down at morning and become the dew. 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Let us have no more of these stars. It may 
 be that a song is a good thing, if it be of what 
 a man knoweth. Thus, if thou singest of my 
 club, or of the bear that I slew, of the stain on 
 the Stone, or the cave and the warm leaves in 
 the cave, it might be well. 
 
 Oan: 
 
 I will make thee a song of Ala 1 
 
 Uk (furiously): 
 
 Thou shalt make me no such song! Thou 
 shalt make me a song of the deer-liver that thou 
 
THE FIRST POET 179 
 
 hast eaten! Did I not give to thee of the liver 
 of the she-deer, because thou didst bring me 
 crawfish? 
 
 Oan: 
 
 Truly I did eat of the liver of the she-deer; 
 but to sing thereof is another matter. 
 
 Uk: 
 
 It was no labour for thee to sing of the stars. 
 See now our clubs and casting-stones, with which 
 we slay flesh to eat; also the caves in which we 
 dwell, and the Stone whereon we make sacrifice; 
 wilt thou sing no song of those? 
 
 Oan: 
 
 It may be that I shall sing thee songs of them. 
 But now, as I strive here to sing of the doe s 
 liver, no words are born unto me : I can but sing, 
 "Oliver! O red liver!" 
 
 Uk: 
 
 That is a good song: thou seest that the liver 
 is red. It is red as blood. 
 
 Oan: 
 But I love not the liver, save to eat of it. 
 
i8o THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Yet the song of it is good. When the moon 
 is full we shall sing it about the Stone. We 
 shall beat upon our breasts and sing, " O liver! 
 O red liver ! " And all the women in the caves 
 shall be affrightened. 
 
 Oan: 
 
 I will not have that song of the liver! It 
 shall be Ok s song; the tribe must say, " Ok hath 
 made the song! " 
 
 Ok: 
 
 Ay! I shall be a great singer; I shall sing 
 of a wolfs heart, and say, " Behold, it is red! " 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Thou art a fool, and shalt sing only, " Hai, 
 hai ! " as thy father before thee. But Oan shall 
 make me a song of my club, for the women listen 
 to his songs. 
 
 Oan: 
 
 I will make thee no songs, neither of thy club, 
 nor thy cave, nor thy doe s-liver. Yea ! though 
 thou give me no more flesh, yet will I live alone 
 
THE FIRST POET 181 
 
 in the forest, and eat the seed of grasses, and 
 likewise rabbits, that are easily snared. And I 
 will sleep in a tree-top, and I will sing nightly : 
 
 The bright day is gone. 
 The night maketh me sad, sad, sad, 
 sad, sad, sad 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Ok and Un, arise and slay ! 
 (Ok and Un rush upon Oan, who stoops and 
 picks up two casting-stones, with one of which 
 he strikes Ok between the eyes, and with the 
 other mashes the hand of Un, so that he 
 drops his club. Uk arises.) 
 
 Uk: 
 
 Behold! Gurr cometh! he cometh swiftly 
 from the wood ! 
 
 (The Tribe, including Oan and Ala, rush for 
 the cave-mouths. As Oan passes Uk, the lat 
 ter runs behind Oan and crushes his skull with 
 a blow of his club.) 
 
 Uk: 
 
 O men! O men with the heart of hyenas! 
 Behold, Gurr cometh not! I did but strive to 
 
1 82 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 deceive you, that I might the more easily slay 
 this singer, who is very swift of foot. . . . 
 Gather ye before me, for I would speak wis 
 dom. ... It is not well that there be any song 
 among us other than what our fathers sang in 
 the past, or, if there be songs, let them be of 
 such matters as are of common understanding. 
 If a man sing of a deer, so shall he be drawn, 
 it may be, to go forth and slay a deer, or even 
 a moose. And if he sing of his casting-stones, 
 it may be that he become more apt in the use 
 thereof. And if he sing of his cave, it may be 
 that he shall defend it more stoutly when Gurr 
 teareth at the boulders. But it is a vain thing 
 to make songs of the stars, that seem scornful 
 even of me; or of the moon, which is never two 
 nights the same; or of the day, which goeth 
 about its business and will not linger though one 
 pierce a she-babe with a flint. But as for me, 
 I would have none of these songs. For if I 
 sing of such in the council, how shall I keep my 
 wits? And if I think thereof, when at the 
 chase, it may be that I babble it forth, and the 
 meat hear and escape. And ere it be time to 
 
THE FIRST POET 183 
 
 eat, I do give my mind solely to the care of my 
 hunting-gear. And if one sing when eating, he 
 may fall short of his just portion. And when 
 one hath eaten, doth not he go straightway to 
 sleep? So where shall men find a space for 
 singing? But do ye as ye will: as for me, I 
 will have none of these songs and stars. 
 
 Be it also known to all the women that if, re 
 membering these wild words of Oan, they do 
 sing them to themselves, or teach them to the 
 young ones, they shall be beaten with brambles. 
 Cause swiftly that the wife of Ok cease from her 
 wailing, and bring hither the horses that were 
 slain yesterday, that I may apportion them. 
 Had Oan wisdom, he might have eaten thereof; 
 and had a mammoth fallen into our pit, he might 
 have feasted many days. But Oan was a fool! 
 
 Un: 
 Oan was a fool ! 
 
 d II the Tribe: 
 Oan was a fool ! 
 
FINIS 
 
 IT was the last of Morganson s bacon. In all 
 his life he had never pampered his stomach. 
 In fact, his stomach had been a sort of negligible 
 quantity that bothered him little, and about 
 which he thought less. But now, in the long 
 absence of wonted delights, the keen yearning of 
 his stomach was tickled hugely by the sharp, 
 salty bacon. 
 
 His face had a wistful, hungry expression. 
 The cheeks were hollow, and the skin seemed 
 stretched a trifle tightly across the cheek-bones. 
 His pale blue eyes were troubled. There was 
 that in them that showed the haunting immi 
 nence of something terrible. Doubt was in 
 them, and anxiety and foreboding. The thin 
 lips were thinner than they were made to be, 
 and they seemed to hunger towards the polished 
 frying-pan. 
 
 He sat back and drew forth a pipe. He 
 looked into it with sharp scrutiny, and tapped it 
 
 184 
 
FINIS 185 
 
 emptily on his open palm. He turned the hair- 
 seal tobacco pouch inside out and dusted the 
 lining, treasuring carefully each flake and mite 
 of tobacco that his efforts gleaned. The result 
 was scarce a thimbleful. He searched in his 
 pockets, and brought forward, between thumb 
 and forefinger, tiny pinches of rubbish. Here 
 and there in this rubbish were crumbs of tobacco. 
 These he segregated with microscopic care, 
 though he occasionally permitted small particles 
 of foreign substance to accompany the crumbs 
 to the hoard in his palm. He even deliberately 
 added small, semi-hard woolly fluffs, that had 
 come originally from the coat lining, and that 
 had lain for long months in the bottoms of the 
 pockets. 
 
 At .the end of fifteen minutes he had the pipe 
 part filled/ He lighted it from the camp fire, 
 and sat forward on the blankets, toasting his 
 moccasined feet and smoking parsimoniously. 
 When the pipe was finished he sat on, brooding 
 into the dying flame of the fire. Slowly the 
 worry went out of his eyes and resolve came in. 
 Out of the chaos of his fortunes he had finally 
 
1 86 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 achieved a way. But it was not a pretty way. 
 His face had become stern and wolfish, and the 
 thin lips were drawn very tightly. 
 
 ^VVith resolve came action. He pulled him 
 self stiffly to his feet and proceeded to break 
 camp. He packed the rolled blankets, the fry 
 ing-pan, rifle, and axe on the sled, and passed 
 a lashing around the load. Then he warmed 
 his hands at the fire and pulled on his mittens. 
 He was foot-sore, and limped noticeably as he 
 took his place at the head of the sled. . When 
 he put the looped haul-rope over his shoulder, 
 and leant his weight against it to start the sled, 
 he winced. His flesh was galled by many days 
 of contact with the haul-ropqj 
 
 The trail led along the frozen breast of the 
 Yukon. At the end of four hours he came 
 around a bend and entered the town of Minto. 
 It was perched on top of a high earth bank in 
 the midst of a clearing, and consisted of a road 
 house, a saloon, and several cabins. He left his 
 sled at the door and entered the saloon. 
 
 " Enough for a drink? " he asked, laying an 
 apparently empty gold sack upon the bar. 
 
FINIS 187 
 
 The barkeeper looked sharply at it and him, 
 then set out a bottle and a glass. 
 
 " Never mind the dust," he said. 
 
 " Go on and take it," Morganson insisted. 
 
 The barkeeper held the sack mouth down 
 ward over the scales and shook it, and a few 
 flakes of gold dust fell out. Morganson took 
 the sack from him, turned it inside out, and 
 dusted it carefully. 
 
 " I thought there was half-a-dollar in it," he 
 said. 
 
 " Not quite," answered the other, " but near 
 enough. I ll get it back with the down weight 
 on the next comer." 
 
 Morganson shyly poured the whisky into the 
 glass, partly filling it. 
 
 " Go on, make it a man s drink," the bar 
 keeper encouraged. 
 
 Morganson tilted the bottle and filled the 
 glass to the brim. He drank the liquor slowly, 
 pleasuring in the fire of it that bit his tongue, 
 sank hotly down his throat, and with warm, 
 gentle caresses permeated his stomach. 
 
 " Scurvy, eh? " the barkeeper asked. 
 
1 88 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 " A touch of it," he answered. " But I 
 haven t begun to swell yet. Maybe I can get to 
 Dyea and fresh vegetables, and beat it out." 
 
 " Kind of all in, I d say," the other laughed 
 sympathetically. : * No dogs, no money, and 
 the scurvy. I d try spruce tea if I was you." 
 
 At the end of half-an-hour, Morganson said 
 good-bye and left the saloon. He put his 
 galled shoulder to the haul-rope and took the 
 river-trail south. An hour later he halted. 
 An inviting swale left the river and led off to the 
 right at an acute angle. He left his sled and 
 limped up the swale for half a mile. Between 
 him and the river was three hundred yards of 
 flat ground covered with cottonwoods. He 
 crossed the cottonwoods to the bank of the 
 Yukon. The trail went by just beneath, but he 
 did not descend to it. South toward Selkirk 
 he could see the trail widen its sunken length 
 through the snow for over a mile. But to the 
 north, in the direction of Minto, a tree-covered 
 out-jut in the bank a quarter of a mile away 
 screened the trail from him. 
 
 He seemed satisfied with the view and re- 
 
FINIS 189 
 
 turned to the sled the way he had come. He 
 put the haul-rope over his shoulder and dragged 
 the sled up the swale. The snow was unpacked 
 and soft, and it was hard work. The runners 
 clogged and stuck, and he was panting severely 
 ere he had covered the half-mile. Night had 
 come on by the time he had pitched his small 
 tent, set up the sheet-iron stove, and chopped a 
 supply of firewood. He had no candles, and 
 contented himself with a pot of tea before crawl 
 ing into his blankets. 
 
 In the morning, as soon as he got up, he drew 
 on his mittens, pulled the flaps of his cap down 
 over his ears, and crossed through the cotton- 
 woods to the Yukon. He took his rifle with 
 him. As before, he did not descend the bank. 
 He watched the empty trail for an hour, beating 
 his hands and stamping his feet to keep up the 
 circulation, then returned to the tent for break 
 fast. There was little tea left in the canister 
 half a dozen drawings at most; but so 
 meagre a pinch did he put in the teapot that he 
 bade fair to extend the lifetime of the tea in 
 definitely. His entire food supply consisted of 
 
190 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 half-a-sack of flour and a part-full can of baking 
 powder. He made biscuits, and ate them 
 slowly, chewing each mouthful with infinite 
 relish. When he had had three he called a halt. 
 He debated a while, reached for another biscuit, 
 then hesitated. He turned to the part sack of 
 flour, lifted it, and judged its weight. 
 
 " I m good for a couple of weeks," he spoke 
 aloud. 
 
 " Maybe three," he added, as he put the bis 
 cuits away. 
 
 Again he drew on his mittens, pulled down 
 his ear-flaps, took the rifle, and went out to 
 his station on the river bank. He crouched in 
 the snow, himself unseen, and watched. After 
 a few minutes of inaction, the frost began to 
 bite in, and he rested the rifle across his knees 
 and beat his hands back and forth. Then the 
 sting in his feet became intolerable, and he 
 stepped back from the bank and tramped heavily 
 up and down among the trees. But he did not 
 tramp long at a time. Every several minutes 
 he came to the edge of the bank and peered up 
 and down the trail, as though by sheer will he 
 
FINIS 191 
 
 could materialise the form of a man upon it. 
 The short morning passed, though it had seemed 
 century-long to him, and the trail remained 
 empty. 
 
 It was easier in the afternoon, watching by 
 the bank. The temperature rose, and soon the 
 snow began to fall dry and fine and crystal 
 line. There was no wind, and it fell straight 
 down, in quiet monotony. He crouched with 
 eyes closed, his head upon his knees, keeping 
 his watch upon the trail with his ears. But no 
 whining of dogs, churning of sleds, nor cries 
 of drivers broke the silence. With twilight he 
 returned to the tent, cut a supply of firewood, 
 ate two biscuits, and crawled into his blankets. 
 He slept restlessly, tossing about and groaning; 
 and at midnight he got up and ate another bis 
 cuit. 
 
 Each day grew colder. Four biscuits could 
 not keep up the heat of his body, despite the 
 quantities of hot spruce tea he drank, and he 
 increased his allowance, morning and evening, 
 to three biscuits. In the middle of the day he 
 ate nothing, contenting himself with several 
 
192 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 cups of excessively weak real tea. This pro 
 gramme became routine. In the morning three 
 biscuits, at noon real tea, and at night three 
 biscuits. In between he drank spruce tea for 
 his scurvy. He caught himself making larger 
 biscuits, and after a severe struggle with him 
 self went back to the old size. 
 
 On the fifth day the trail returned to life. 
 To the south a dark object appeared, and 
 grew larger. Morganson became alert. He 
 worked his rifle, ejecting a loaded cartridge 
 from the chamber, by the same action replacing 
 it with another, and returning the ejected cart 
 ridge into the magazine. He lowered the trig 
 ger to half-cock, and drew on his mitten to keep 
 the trigger-hand warm. As the dark object 
 came nearer he made it out to be a man, without 
 dogs or sled, travelling light. He grew nerv 
 ous, cocked the trigger, then put it back to half- 
 cock again. The man developed into an Indian, 
 and Morganson, with a sigh of disappointment, 
 dropped the rifle across his knees. The Indian 
 went on past and disappeared towards Minto 
 behind the out-jutting clump of trees. 
 
FINIS 193 
 
 But Morganson conceived an idea. He 
 changed his crouching spot to a place where cot- 
 tonwood limbs projected on either side of him. 
 Into these with his axe he chopped two broad 
 notches. Then in one of the notches he rested 
 the barrel of his rifle and glanced along the 
 sights. He covered the trail thoroughly in that 
 direction. He turned about, rested the rifle 
 in the other notch, and, looking along the sights, 
 swept the trail to the clump of trees behind 
 which it disappeared. 
 
 He never descended to the trail. A man 
 travelling the trail could have no knowledge of 
 his lurking presence on the bank above. The 
 snow surface was unbroken. There was no 
 place where his tracks left the main trail. 
 
 As the nights grew longer, his periods of day 
 light watching of the trail grew shorter. Once 
 a sled went by with jingling bells in the dark 
 ness, and with sullen resentment he chewed his 
 biscuits and listened to the sounds. Chance 
 conspired against him. Faithfully he had 
 watched the trail for ten days, suffering from 
 the cold all the prolonged torment of the 
 
i 9 4 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 damned, and nothing had happened. Only an 
 Indian, travelling light, had passed in. Now, 
 in the night, when it was impossible for him to 
 watch, men and dogs and a sled loaded with life, 
 passed out, bound south to the sea and the sun 
 and civilisation. 
 
 So it was that he conceived of the sled for 
 which he waited. It was loaded with life, his 
 life. His life was fading, fainting, gasping 
 away in the tent in the snow. He was weak 
 from lack of food, and could not travel of him 
 self. But on the sled for which he waited were 
 dogs that would drag him, food that would fan 
 up the flame of his life, money that would 
 furnish sea and sun and civilisation. Sea and 
 sun and civilisation became terms interchange 
 able with life, his life, and they were loaded 
 there on the sled for which he waited. The 
 idea became an obsession, and he grew to think 
 of himself as the rightful and deprived owner 
 of the sled-load of life. 
 
 His flour was running short, and he went 
 back to two biscuits in the morning and two bis 
 cuits at night. Because of this his weakness 
 
FINIS 195 
 
 increased and the cold bit in more savagely, and 
 day by day he watched by the dead trail that 
 would not live for him. At last the scurvy en 
 tered upon its next stage. The skin was unable 
 longer to cast off the impurity of the blood, and 
 the result was that the body began to swell. 
 His ankles grew puffy, and the ache in them kept 
 him awake long hours at night. Next, the 
 swelling jumped to his knees, and the sum of his 
 pain was more than doubled. 
 
 Then there came a cold snap. The temper 
 ature went down and down forty, fifty, sixty 
 degrees below zero. He had no thermometer, 
 but this he knew by the signs and natural phe 
 nomena understood by all men in that country 
 the crackling of water thrown on the snow, 
 the swift sharpness of the bite of the frost, and 
 the rapidity with which his breath froze and 
 coated the canvas walls and roof of the tent. 
 Vainly he fought the cold and strove to main 
 tain his watch on the bank. In his weak con 
 dition he was an easy prey, and the frost sank 
 its teeth deep into him before he fled away to 
 the tent and crouched by the fire. His nose 
 
196 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 and cheeks were frozen and turned black, and 
 his left thumb had frozen inside the mitten. 
 He concluded that he would escape with the 
 loss of the first joint. 
 
 Then it was, beaten into the tent by the frost, 
 t the trail, with monstrous irony, suddenly 
 teemed with life, j Three sleds went by the first 
 day, and two tile second. Once, during each 
 day, he fought his way out to the bank only to 
 succumb and retreat, and each of the two times, 
 within half-an-hour after he retreated, a sled 
 went by. 
 
 The cold snap broke, and he was able to re 
 main by the bank once more, and the trail died 
 again. For a week he crouched and watched, 
 and never life stirred along it, not a soul passed 
 in or out. He had cut down to one biscuit night 
 and morning, and somehow he did not seem 
 to notice it. Sometimes he marvelled at the 
 way life remained in him. He never would 
 have thought it possible to endure so much. 
 
 When the trail fluttered anew with life it 
 was life with which he could not cope. A de 
 tachment of the North-West police went by, a 
 
FINIS 197 
 
 score of them, with many sleds and dogs; and 
 he cowered down on the bank above, and they 
 were unaware of the menace of death that 
 lurked in the form of a dying man beside the 
 trail. 
 
 His frozen thumb gave him a great deal of 
 trouble. While watching by the bank he got 
 into the habit of taking his mitten off and thrust 
 ing the hand inside his shirt so as to rest the 
 thumb in the warmth of his arm-pit. A mail 
 carrier came over the trail, and Morganson let 
 him pass. A mail carrier was an important 
 person, and was sure to be missed immediately. 
 
 On the first day after his last flour had gone 
 it snowed. It was always warm when the snow 
 fell, and he sat out the whole eight hours of day 
 light on the bank, without movement, terribly 
 hungry and terribly patient, for all the world 
 like a monstrous spider waiting for its prey. 
 But the prey did not come, and he hobbled back 
 to the tent through the darkness, drank quarts 
 of spruce tea and hot water, and went to bed. 
 The next morning circumstance eased its grip 
 on him. As he started to come out of the tent 
 
198 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 he saw a huge bull-moose crossing the swale 
 some four hundred yards away. Morganson 
 felt a surge and bound of the blood in him, and 
 then went unaccountably weak. A nausea over 
 powered him, and he was compelled to sit down 
 a moment to recover. Then he reached for his 
 rifle and took careful aim. The first shot was 
 a hit: he knew it; but the moose turned and 
 broke for the wooded hillside that came down 
 to the swale. Morganson pumped bullets 
 wildly among the trees and brush at the fleeing 
 animal, until it dawned upon him that he was 
 exhausting the ammunition he needed for the 
 sled-load of life for which he waited. 
 
 He stopped shooting, and watched. He 
 noted the direction of the animal s flight, and, 
 high up on the hillside in an opening among the 
 trees, saw the trunk of a fallen pine. Continu 
 ing the moose s flight in his mind he saw that it 
 must pass the trunk. He resolved on one more 
 shot, and in the empty air above the trunk he 
 aimed and steadied his wavering rifle. The 
 animal sprang into his field of vision, with lifted 
 fore-legs as it took the leap. He pulled the 
 
FINIS 199 
 
 trigger. With the explosion the moose seemed 
 to somersault in the air. It crashed down to 
 earth in the snow beyond and flurried the snow 
 into dust. 
 
 Morganson dashed up the hillside at least 
 he started to dash up. The next he knew he 
 was coming out of a faint and dragging himself 
 to his feet. He went up more slowly, pausing 
 from time to time to breathe and to steady his 
 reeling senses. At last he crawled over the 
 trunk. The moose lay before him. He sat 
 down heavily upon the carcase and laughed. 
 He buried his face in his mittened hands and 
 laughed some more. 
 
 He shook the hysteria from him. He drew 
 his hunting knife and worked as rapidly as his 
 injured thumb and weakness would permit him. 
 He did not stop to skin the moose, but quartered 
 it with its hide on. It was a Klondike of meat. 
 
 When he had finished he selected a piece of 
 meat weighing a hundred pounds, and started 
 to drag it down to the tent. But the snow was 
 soft, and it was too much for him. He ex 
 changed it for a twenty-pound piece, and, with 
 
200 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 many pauses to rest, succeeded in getting it to 
 the tent. He fried some of the meat, but ate 
 sparingly. Then, and automatically, he went 
 out to his crouching place on the bank. There 
 were sled-tracks in the fresh snow on the trail. 
 The sled-load of life had passed by while he had 
 been cutting up the moose. 
 
 But he did not mind. He was glad that the 
 sled had not passed before the coming of the 
 moose. The moose had changed his plans. 
 Its meat was worth fifty cents a pound, and he 
 was but little more than three miles from Minto. 
 He need no longer wait for the sled-load of 
 life. The moose was the sled-load of life. He 
 would sell it. He would buy a couple of dogs 
 at Minto, some food and some tobacco, and 
 the dogs would haul him south along the trail to 
 the sea, the sun, and civilisation. 
 
 He felt hungry. The dull, monotonous ache 
 of hunger had now become a sharp and insistent 
 pang. He hobbled back to the tent and fried 
 a slice of meat. After that he smoked two 
 whole pipefuls of dried tea leaves. Then he 
 fried another slice of moose. He was aware 
 
FINIS 201 
 
 of an unwonted glow of strength, and went out 
 and chopped some firewood. He followed that 
 up with a slice of meat. Teased on by the food, 
 his hunger grew into an inflammation. It be 
 came imperative every little while to fry a slice 
 of meat. He tried smaller slices and found 
 himself frying oftener. 
 
 In the middle of the day he thought of the 
 wild animals that might eat his meat, and he 
 climbed the hill, carrying along his axe, the 
 haul rope, and a sled lashing. In his weak 
 state the making of the cache and storing of 
 the meat was an all-afternoon task. He cut 
 young saplings, trimmed them, and tied them 
 together into a tall scaffold. It was not so 
 strong a cache as he would have desired to 
 make, but he had done his best. To hoist the 
 meat to the top was heart-breaking. The 
 larger pieces defied him until he passed the rope 
 over a limb above, and, with one end fast to a 
 piece of meat, put all his weight on the other 
 end. 
 
 Once in the tent, he proceeded to indulge in 
 a prolonged and solitary orgy. He did not 
 
202 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 need friends. His stomach and he were com 
 pany. Slice after slice and many slices of meat 
 he fried and ate. He ate pounds of the meat. 
 He brewed real tea, and brewed it strong. He 
 brewed the last he had. It did not matter. 
 On the morrow he would be buying tea in 
 Minto. When it seemed he could eat no more, 
 he smoked. He smoked all his stock of dried 
 tea leaves. What of it? On the morrow he 
 would be smoking tobacco. He knocked out 
 his pipe, fried a final slice, and went to bed. 
 He had eaten so much he seemed bursting, yet 
 he got out of his blankets and had just one more 
 mouthful of meat. 
 
 In the morning he awoke as from the sleep 
 of death. In his ears were strange sounds. 
 He did not know where he was, and looked 
 about him stupidly until he caught sight of the 
 frying-pan with the last piece of meat in it, 
 partly eaten. Then he remembered all, and 
 with a quick start turned his attention to the 
 strange sounds. He sprang from the blankets 
 with an oath. His scurvy-ravaged legs gave 
 way under him and he winced with the pain. 
 
FINIS 203 
 
 He proceeded more slowly to put on his mocca 
 sins and leave the tent. 
 
 From the cache up the hillside arose a con 
 fused noise of snapping and snarling, punctuated 
 by occasional short, sharp yelps. He increased 
 his speed at much expense of pain, and cried 
 loudly and threateningly. He saw the wolves 
 hurrying away through the snow and under 
 brush, many of them, and he saw the scaffold 
 down on the ground. The animals were heavy 
 with the meat they had eaten, and they were con 
 tent to slink away and leave the wreckage. 
 
 The way of the disaster was clear to him. 
 The wolves had scented his cache. One of 
 them had leapt from the trunk of the fallen tree 
 to the top of the cache. He could see marks 
 of the brute s paws in the snow that covered the 
 trunk. He had not dreamt a wolf could leap 
 so far. A second had followed the first, and a 
 third and fourth, until the flimsy scaffold had 
 gone down under their weight and movement. 
 
 His eyes were hard and savage for a moment 
 as he contemplated the extent of the calamity; 
 then the old look of patience returned into them, 
 
204 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 and he began to gather together the bones well 
 picked and gnawed. There was marrow in 
 them, he knew; and also, here and there, as he 
 sifted the snow, he found scraps of meat that 
 had escaped the maws of the brutes made care 
 less by plenty. 
 
 He spent the rest of the morning dragging 
 the wreckage of the moose down the hillside. 
 In addition, he had at least ten pounds left of 
 the chunk of meat he had dragged down the 
 previous day. 
 
 " I m good for weeks yet," was his comment 
 as he surveyed the heap. 
 
 He had learnt how to starve and live. He 
 cleaned his rifle and counted the cartridges that 
 remained to him. There were seven. He 
 loaded the weapon and hobbled out to his 
 crouching-place on the bank. All day he 
 watched the dead trail. He watched all the 
 week, but no life passed over it. 
 
 Thanks to the meat he felt stronger, though 
 his scurvy was worse and more painful. He 
 now lived upon soup, drinking endless gallons 
 of the thin product of the boiling of the moose 
 
FINIS 205 
 
 bones. The soup grew thinner and thinner as 
 he cracked the bones and boiled them over and 
 over; but the hot water with the essence of the 
 meat in it was good for him, and he was more 
 vigorous than he had been previous to the shoot 
 ing of the moose. 
 
 It was in the next week that a new factor en 
 tered into Morganson s life. He wanted to 
 know the date. It became an obsession. He 
 pondered and calculated, but his conclusions 
 were rarely twice the same. The first thing in 
 the morning and the last thing at night, and all 
 day as well, watching by the trail, he worried 
 about it. He awoke at night and lay awake for 
 hours over the problem. To have known the 
 date would have been of no value to him ; but his 
 curiosity grew until it equalled his hunger and 
 his desire to live. Finally it mastered him, and 
 he resolved to go to Minto and find out. 
 
 It was dark when he arrived at Minto, but 
 this served him. No one saw him arrive. Be 
 sides, he knew he would have moonlight by 
 which to return. He climbed the bank and 
 pushed open the saloon door. The light daz- 
 
206 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 zled him. The source of it was several candles, 
 but he had been living for long in an unlighted 
 tent. As his eyes adjusted themselves, he saw 
 three men sitting around the stove. They were 
 trail-travellers he knew it at once ; and since 
 they had not passed in, they were evidently 
 bound out. They would go by his tent next 
 morning. 
 
 The barkeeper emitted a long and marvelling 
 whistle. 
 
 " I thought you was dead," he said. 
 
 "Why?" Morganson asked in a faltering 
 voice. 
 
 He had become unused to talking, and he 
 was not acquainted with the sound of his own 
 voice. It seemed hoarse and strange. 
 
 " YouVe been dead for more n two months, 
 now," the barkeeper explained. " You left 
 here going south, and you never arrived at Sel 
 kirk. Where have you been? " 
 
 " Chopping wood for the steamboat com 
 pany," Morganson lied unsteadily. 
 
 He was still trying to become acquainted with 
 his own voice. He hobbled across the floor and 
 
FINIS 207 
 
 leant against the bar. He knew he must lie 
 consistently; and while he maintained an ap 
 pearance of careless indifference, his heart was 
 beating and pounding furiously and irregularly, 
 and he could not help looking hungrily at the 
 three men by the stove. They were the pos 
 sessors of life his life. 
 
 " But where in hell you been keeping your 
 self all this time? " the barkeeper demanded. 
 
 " I located across the river, 7 he answered. 
 " I ve got a mighty big stack of wood chopped." 
 
 The barkeeper nodded. His face beamed 
 with understanding. 
 
 " I heard sounds of chopping several times," 
 he said. "So that was you, eh? Have a 
 drink?" 
 
 Morganson clutched the bar tightly. A 
 drink ! He could have thrown his arms around 
 the man s legs and kissed his feet. He tried 
 vainly to utter his acceptance ; but the barkeeper 
 had not waited and was already passing out the 
 bottle. 
 
 " But what did you do for grub? " the latter 
 asked. " You don t look as if you could chop 
 
208 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 wood to keep yourself warm. You look terri 
 bly bad, friend. 7 
 
 Morganson yearned towards the delayed bot 
 tle and gulped dryly. 
 
 " I did the chopping before the scurvy got 
 bad," he said. " Then I got a moose right at 
 the start. IVe been living high all right. It s 
 the scurvy that s run me down." 
 
 He filled the glass, and added, " But the 
 spruce tea s knocking it, I think." 
 
 " Have another," the barkeeper said. 
 
 The action of the two glasses of whisky on 
 Morganson s empty stomach and weak condition 
 was rapid. The next he knew he was sitting 
 by the stove on a box, and it seemed as though 
 ages had passed. A tall, broad-shouldered, 
 black-whiskered man was paying for drinks. 
 Morganson s swimming eyes saw him drawing 
 a greenback from a fat roll, and Morganson s 
 swimming eyes cleared on the instant. They 
 were hundred-dollar bills. It was life! His 
 life ! He felt an almost irresistible impulse to 
 snatch the money and dash madly out into the 
 night. 
 
FINIS 209 
 
 The black-whiskered man and one of his com 
 panions arose. 
 
 " Come on, Oleson," the former said to the 
 third one of the party, a fair-haired, ruddy- 
 faced giant. 
 
 Oleson came to his feet, yawning and stretch 
 ing. 
 
 " What are you going to bed so soon for? " 
 the barkeeper asked plaintively. " It s early 
 yet." 
 
 " Got to make Selkirk to-morrow," said he of 
 the black whiskers. 
 
 " On Christmas Day! " the barkeeper cried. 
 
 " The better the day the better the deed," the 
 other laughed. 
 
 As the three men passed out of the door it 
 came dimly to Morganson that it was Christmas 
 Eve. That was the date. That was what he 
 had come to Minto for. But it was over 
 shadowed now by the three men themselves, and 
 the fat roll of hundred-dollar bills. 
 
 The door slammed. 
 
 " That s Jack Thompson," the barkeeper 
 said. " Made two millions on Bonanza and 
 
r 
 
 210 THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 
 
 Sulphur, and got more coming. I m going to 
 bed. Have another drink first." 
 
 Morganson hesitated. 
 
 " A Christmas drink," the other urged. 
 " It s all right. I ll get it back when you sell 
 your wood." 
 
 Morganson mastered his drunkenness long 
 enough to swallow the whisky, say good night, 
 and get out on the trail. It was moonlight, 
 and he hobbled along through the bright, silvery 
 quiet, with a vision of life before him that took 
 the form of a roll of hundred-dollar bills. 
 
 He awoke. It was dark, and he was in his 
 blankets. He had gone to bed in his moccasins 
 and mittens, with the flaps of his cap pulled 
 down over his ears. He got up as quickly as 
 his crippled condition would permit, and built 
 the fire and boiled some water. As he put the 
 spruce-twigs into the teapot he noted the first 
 glimmer of the pale morning light. He caught 
 up his rifle and hobbled in a panic out to the 
 bank. As he crouched and waited, it came to 
 him that he had forgotten to drink his spruce 
 tea. The only other thought in his mind was 
 
FINIS 211 
 
 the possibility of John Thompson changing his 
 mind and not travelling Christmas Day. 
 
 Dawn broke and merged into day. It was 
 cold and clear. Sixty below zero was Mor- 
 ganson s estimate of the frost. Not a breath 
 stirred the chill Arctic quiet. He sat up sud 
 denly, his muscular tensity increasing the hurt of 
 the scurvy. He had heard the far sound of a 
 man s voice and the faint whining of dogs. He 
 began beating his hands back and forth against 
 his sides. It was a serious matter to bare the 
 trigger hand to sixty degrees below zero, and 
 against that time he needed to develop all the 
 warmth of which his flesh was capable. 
 
 They came into view around the outjutting 
 clump of trees. To the fore was the third man 
 whose name he had not learnt. Then came 
 eight dogs drawing the sled. At the front of 
 the sled, guiding it by the gee-pole, walked John 
 Thompson. The rear was brought up by Ole- 
 son, the Swede. He was certainly a fine man, 
 Morganson thought, as he looked at the bulk of 
 him in his squirrel-skin parka. The men and 
 dogs were silhouetted sharply against the white 
 
212 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 of the landscape. They had the seeming of two 
 dimension, cardboard figures that worked me 
 chanically. 
 
 Morganson rested his cocked rifle in the notch 
 in the tree. He became abruptly aware that his 
 fingers were cold, and discovered that his right 
 hand was bare. He did not know that he had 
 taken off the mitten. He slipped it on again 
 hastily. The men and dogs drew closer, and he 
 could see their breaths spouting into visibility in 
 the cold air. When the first man was fifty 
 yards away, Morganson slipped the mitten from 
 his right hand. He placed the first finger on 
 the trigger and aimed low. When he fired the 
 first man whirled half around and went down on 
 the trail. 
 
 In the instant of surprise, Morganson pulled 
 the trigger on John Thompson too low, for 
 the latter staggered and sat down suddenly on 
 the sled. Morganson raised his aim and fired 
 again. John Thompson sank down backward 
 along the top of the loaded sled. 
 
 Morganson turned his attention to Oleson. 
 At the same time that he noted the latter run- 
 
FINIS 213 
 
 ning away towards Minto he noted that the 
 dogs, coming to where the first man s body 
 blocked the trail, had halted. Morganson fired 
 at the fleeing man and missed, and Oleson 
 swerved. He continued to swerve back and 
 forth, while Morganson fired twice in rapid suc 
 cession and missed both shots. Morganson 
 stopped himself just as he was pulling the trig 
 ger again. He had fired six shots. Only one 
 more cartridge remained, and it was in the 
 chamber. It was imperative that he should not 
 miss his last shot. 
 
 He held his fire and desperately studied Ole- 
 son s flight. The giant was grotesquely curving 
 and twisting and running at top speed along the 
 trail, the tail of his parka flapping smartly be 
 hind. Morganson trained his rifle on the man 
 and with a swaying action followed his erratic 
 flight. Morganson s finger was getting numb. 
 He could scarcely feel the trigger. " God help 
 me," he breathed a prayer aloud, and pulled 
 the trigger. The running man pitched forward 
 on his face, rebounded from the hard trail, and 
 slid along, rolling over and over. He threshed 
 
2i 4 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 for a moment with his arms and then lay quiet. 
 
 Morganson dropped his rifle (worthless now 
 that the last cartridge was gone) and slid down 
 the bank through the soft snow. Now that he 
 had sprung the trap, concealment of his lurking- 
 place was no longer necessary. He hobbled 
 along the trail to the sled, his fingers making in 
 voluntary gripping and clutching movements in 
 side the mittens. 
 
 The snarling of the dogs halted him. The 
 leader, a heavy dog, half Newfoundland and 
 half Hudson Bay, stood over the body of the 
 man that lay on the trail, and menaced Morgan- 
 son with bristling hair and bared fangs. The 
 other seven dogs of the team were likewise 
 bristling and snarling. Morganson approached 
 tentatively, and the team surged towards him. 
 He stopped again and talked to the animals, 
 threatening and cajoling by turns. He noticed 
 the face of the man under the leader s feet, and 
 was surprised at how quickly it had turned white 
 with the ebb of life and the entrance of the frost. 
 John Thompson lay back along the top of the 
 loaded sled, his head sunk in a space between 
 
FINIS 215 
 
 two sacks and his chin tilted upwards, so that 
 all Morganson could see was the black beard 
 pointing skyward. 
 
 Finding it impossible to face the dogs Mor 
 ganson stepped off the trail into the deep snow 
 and floundered in a wide circle to the rear of the 
 sled. Under the initiative of the leader, the 
 team swung around in its tangled harness. 
 Because of his crippled condition, Morganson 
 could move only slowly. He saw the animals 
 circling around on him and tried to retreat. He 
 almost made it, but the big leader, with a savage 
 lunge, sank its teeth into the calf of his leg. 
 The flesh was slashed and torn, but Morganson 
 managed to drag himself clear. 
 
 He cursed the brutes fiercely, but could not 
 cow them. They replied with neck-bristling 
 and snarling, and with quick lunges against their 
 breastbands. He remembered Oleson, and 
 turned his back upon them and went along the 
 trail. He scarcely took notice of his lacerated 
 leg. It was bleeding freely; the main artery 
 had been torn, but he did not know it. 
 
 Especially remarkable to Morganson was the 
 
216 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 extreme pallor of the Swede, who the preceding 
 night had been so ruddy-faced. Now his face 
 was like white marble. What with his fair hair 
 and lashes he looked like a carved statue rather 
 than something that had been a man a few 
 minutes before. Morganson pulled off his mit 
 tens and searched the body. There was no 
 money-belt around the waist next to the skin, 
 nor did he find a gold-sack. In a breast pocket 
 he lit on a small wallet. With fingers that 
 swiftly went numb with the frost, he hurried 
 through the contents of the wallet. There were 
 letters with foreign stamps and postmarks on 
 them, and several receipts and memorandum 
 accounts, and a letter of credit for eight hundred 
 dollars. That was all. There was no money. 
 He made a movement to start back toward 
 the sled, but found his foot rooted to the trail. 
 He glanced down and saw that he stood in a 
 fresh deposit of frozen red. There was red 
 ice on his torn pants leg and on the moccasin 
 beneath. With a quick effort he broke the 
 frozen clutch of his blood and hobbled along 
 the trail to the sled. The big leader that had 
 
FINIS 217 
 
 bitten him began snarling and lunging, and was 
 followed in this conduct by the whole team. 
 
 Morganson wept weakly for a space, and 
 weakly swayed from one side to the other. 
 Then he brushed away the frozen tears that 
 gemmed his lashes. It was a joke. Malicious 
 chance was having its laugh at him. Even John 
 Thompson, with his heaven-aspiring whiskers, 
 was laughing at him. 
 
 He prowled around the sled demented, at 
 times weeping and pleading with the brutes for 
 his life there on the sled, at other times raging 
 impotently against them. Then calmness came 
 upon him. He had been making a fool of him 
 self. All he had to do was to go to the tent, 
 get the axe, and return and brain the dogs. 
 He d show them. 
 
 In order to get to the tent he had to go wide 
 of the sled and the savage animals. He 
 stepped off the trail into the soft snow. Then 
 he felt suddenly giddy and stood still. He was 
 afraid to go on for fear he would fall down. 
 He stood still for a long time, balancing himself 
 on his crippled legs that were trembling vio- 
 
218 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 lently from weakness. He looked down and 
 saw the snow reddening at his feet. The blood 
 flowed freely as ever. He had not thought the 
 bite was so severe. He controlled his giddiness 
 and stooped to examine the wound. The snow 
 seemed rushing up to meet him, and he recoiled 
 from it as from a blow. He had a panic fear 
 that he might fall down, and after a struggle 
 he managed to stand upright again. He was 
 afraid of that snow that had rushed up to him. 
 Then the white glimmer turned black, and 
 the next he knew he was awakening in the snow 
 where he had fallen. He was no longer giddy. 
 The cobwebs were gone. But he could not get 
 up. There was no strength in his limbs. His 
 body seemed lifeless. By a desperate effort he 
 managed to roll over on his side. In this posi 
 tion he caught a glimpse of the sled and of John 
 Thompson s black beard pointing skyward. 
 Also he saw the lead dog licking the face of the 
 man who lay on the trail. Morganson watched 
 curiously. The dog was nervous and eager. 
 Sometimes it uttered short, sharp yelps, as 
 though to arouse the man, and surveyed him 
 
FINIS 219 
 
 with cars cocked forward and wagging tail. 
 At last it sat down, pointed its nose upward, and 
 began to howl. Soon all the team was howling. 
 
 Now that he was down, Morganson was no 
 longer afraid. He had a vision of himself be 
 ing found dead in the snow, and for a while he 
 wept in self-pity. But he was not afraid. The 
 struggle had gone out of him. When he tried 
 to open his eyes he found that the wet tears had 
 frozen them shut. He did not try to brush the 
 ice away. It did not matter. He had not 
 dreamed death was so easy. He was even angry 
 that he had struggled and suffered through so 
 many weary weeks. He had been bullied and 
 cheated by the fear of death. Death did not 
 hurt. Every torment he had endured had been 
 a torment of life. Life had defamed death. 
 It was a cruel thing. 
 
 But his anger passed. The lies and frauds 
 of life were of no consequence now that he was 
 coming to his own. He became aware of drow 
 siness, and felt a sweet sleep stealing upon him, 
 balmy with promises of easement and rest. He 
 heard faintly the howling of the dogs, and had 
 
220 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 a fleeting thought that in the mastering of his 
 flesh the frost no longer bit. Then the light 
 and the thought ceased to pulse beneath the tear- 
 gemmed eyelids, and with a tired sigh of com 
 fort he sank into sleep. 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 
 I 
 
 table was of hand-hewn spruce boards, 
 I_ and the men who played whist had fre 
 quent difficulties in drawing home their tricks 
 across the uneven surface. Though they sat in 
 their undershirts, the sweat noduled and oozed 
 on their faces ; yet their feet, heavily moccasined 
 and woollen-socked, tingled with the bite of the 
 frost. Such was the difference of temperature 
 in the small cabin between the floor level and a 
 yard or more above it. The sheet-iron Yukon 
 stove roared red-hot, yet, eight feet away, on 
 the meat-shelf, placed low and beside the door, 
 lay chunks of solidly frozen moose and bacon. 
 The door, a third of the way up from the bot 
 tom, was a thick rime. In the chinking between 
 the logs at the back of the bunks the frost 
 showed white and glistening. A window of 
 
 221 
 
222 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 oiled paper furnished light. The lower portion 
 of the paper, on the inside, was coated an inch 
 deep with the frozen moisture of the men s 
 breath. 
 
 They played a momentous rubber of whist, 
 for the pair that lost was to dig a fishing hole 
 through the seven feet of ice and snow that 
 covered the Yukon. 
 
 " It s mighty unusual, a cold snap like this in 
 March," remarked the man who shuffled. 
 " What would you call it, Bob ? " 
 
 " Oh, fifty-five or sixty below all of that. 
 What do you make it, Doc ! " 
 
 Doc turned his head and glanced at the lower 
 part of the door with a measuring eye. 
 
 " Not a bit worse than fifty. If anything, 
 slightly under say forty-nine. See the ice on 
 the door. It s just about the fifty mark, but 
 you ll notice the upper edge is ragged. The 
 time she went seventy the ice climbed a full four 
 inches higher." He picked up his hand, and 
 without ceasing from sorting called " Come in," 
 to a knock on the door. 
 
 The man who entered was a big, broad- 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 223 
 
 shouldered Swede, though his nationality was 
 not discernible until he had removed his ear- 
 flapped cap and thawed away the ice which had 
 formed on beard and moustache and which 
 served to mask his face. While engaged in 
 this, the men at the table played out the hand. 
 
 " I hear one doctor faller stop this camp," 
 the Swede said inquiringly, looking anxiously 
 from face to face, his own face haggard and 
 drawn from severe and long endured pain. " I 
 come long way. North fork of the Whyo." 
 
 " I m the doctor. What s the matter? " 
 
 In response, the man held up his left hand, 
 the second finger of which was monstrously 
 swollen. At the same time he began a ram 
 bling, disjointed history of the coming and 
 growth of his affliction. 
 
 " Let me look at it," the doctor broke in im 
 patiently. " Lay it on the table. There, like 
 that." 
 
 Tenderly, as if it were a great boil, the man 
 obeyed. 
 
 " Humph," the doctor grumbled. " A weep 
 ing sinew. And travelled a hundred miles to 
 
224 THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 
 
 have it fixed. I ll fix it in a jiffy. You watch 
 me, and next time you can do it yourself." 
 
 Without warning, squarely and at right 
 angles, and savagely, the doctor brought the 
 edge of his hand down on the swollen crooked 
 finger. The man yelled with consternation and 
 agony. It was more like the cry of a wild beast, 
 and his face was a wild beast s as he was about 
 to spring on the man who had perpetrated the 
 joke. 
 
 " That s all right," the doctor placated 
 sharply and authoritatively. " How do you 
 feel? Better, eh? Of course. Next time you 
 can do it yourself Go on and deal, Stroth- 
 ers. I think we ve got you." 
 
 Slow and ox-like, on the face of the Swede 
 dawned relief and comprehension. The pang 
 over, the finger felt better. The pain was gone. 
 He examined the finger curiously, with wonder 
 ing eyes, slowly crooking it back and forth. 
 He reached into his pocket and pulled out a 
 gold-sack. 
 
 "How much?" 
 
 The doctor shook his head impatiently. 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 225 
 
 " Nothing. I m not practising -= Your play, 
 Bob." 
 
 The Swede moved heavily on his feet, re- 
 examined the finger, then turned an admiring 
 gaze on the doctor. 
 
 " You are good man. What your name ? " 
 
 " Linday, Doctor Linday," Strothers an 
 swered, as if solicitous to save his opponent 
 from further irritation. 
 
 " The day s half done," Linday said to the 
 Swede, at the end of the hand, while he shuffled. 
 " Better rest over to-night. It s too cold for 
 travelling. There s a spare bunk." 
 
 He was a slender brunette of a man, lean- 
 cheeked, thin-lipped, and strong. The smooth- 
 shaven face was a healthy sallow. All his 
 movements were quick and precise. He did 
 not fumble his cards. The eyes were black, 
 direct, and piercing, with the trick of seeming 
 to look beneath the surfaces of things. His 
 hands, slender, fine and nervous, appeared made 
 for delicate work, and to the most casual eye 
 they conveyed an impression of strength. 
 
 Our game," he announced, drawing in the 
 
 u 
 
226 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 last trick. " Now for the rub and who digs the 
 fishing hole. * 
 
 A knock at the door brought a quick exclama 
 tion from him. 
 
 " Seems we just can t finish this rubber," he 
 complained, as the door opened. " What s the 
 matter with you?. 99 this last to the stranger 
 who entered. 
 
 The newcomer vainly strove to move his ice 
 bound jaws and jowls. That he had been on 
 trail for long hours and days was patent. The 
 skin across the cheekbones was black with re 
 peated frost-bite. From nose to chin was a 
 mass of solid ice perforated by the hole through 
 which he breathed. Through this he had also 
 spat tobacco juice, which had frozen, as it 
 trickled, into an amber-coloured icicle, pointed 
 like a Van Dyke beard. 
 
 He shook his head dumbly, grinned with his 
 eyes, and drew near to the stove to thaw his 
 mouth to speech. He assisted the process with 
 his fingers, clawing off fragments of melting 
 ice which rattled and sizzled on the stove. 
 
 " Nothing the matter with me," he finally 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 227 
 
 announced. " But if they s a doctor in the out 
 fit he s sure needed. They s a man up the Little 
 Peco that s had a ruction with a panther, an the 
 way he s clawed is something scand lous." 
 
 " How far up? " Doctor Linday demanded. 
 
 " A matter of a hundred miles." 
 
 " How long since? " 
 
 " I ve ben three days comin down." 
 
 "Bad?" 
 
 " Shoulder dislocated. Some ribs broke for 
 sure. Right arm broke. An clawed clean to 
 the bone most all over but the face. We sewed 
 up two or three bad places temporary, and tied 
 arteries with twine." 
 
 " That settles it," Linday sneered. " Where 
 were they? " 
 
 " Stomach." 
 
 " He s a sight by now." 
 
 " Not on your life. Washed clean with bug- 
 killin dope before we stitched. Only tempo 
 rary anyway. Had nothin but linen thread, 
 but washed that, too." 
 
 " He s as good as dead," was Linday s judg 
 ment, as he angrily fingered the cards. 
 
228 THE TURTLES OF T ASM AN 
 
 " Nope. That man ain t goin to die. He 
 knows I ve come for a doctor, an he ll make out 
 to live until you get there. He won t let him 
 self die. I know him." 
 
 " Christian Science and gangrene, eh? " came 
 the sneer. " Well, I m not practising. Nor 
 can I see myself travelling a hundred miles at 
 fifty below for a dead man. * 
 
 " I can see you, an for a man a long ways 
 from dead." 
 
 Linday shook his head. " Sorry you had 
 your trip for nothing. Better stop over for the 
 night." 
 
 " Nope. We ll be pullin out in ten minutes." 
 
 " What makes you so cocksure? " Linday de 
 manded testily. 
 
 Then it was that Tom Daw made the speech 
 of his life. 
 
 u Because he s just goin on livin till you get 
 there, if it takes you a week to make up your 
 mind. Besides, his wife s with him, not 
 sheddin a tear, or nothin , an she s helpin him 
 live till you come. They think a almighty heap 
 of each other, an she s got a will like hisn. If 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 229 
 
 he weakened, she d just put her immortal soul 
 into hisn an make him live. Though he ain t 
 weakenin none, you can stack on that. I ll 
 stack on it. I ll lay you three to one, in ounces, 
 he s alive when you get there. I got a team of 
 dawgs down the bank. You ought to allow to 
 start in ten minutes, an we ought to make it 
 back in less n three days because the trail s 
 broke. I m goin down to the dawgs now, an 
 I ll look for you in ten minutes." 
 
 Tom Daw pulled down his earflaps, drew on 
 his mittens, and passed out. 
 
 " Damn him ! " Linday cried, glaring vindic 
 tively at the closed door. 
 
II 
 
 night, long after dark, with twenty- 
 JL five miles behind them, Linday and Tom 
 Daw went into camp. It was a simple but ade 
 quate affair: a fire built in the snow; alongside, 
 their sleeping-furs spread in a single bed on a 
 mat of spruce boughs; behind the bed an oblong 
 of canvas stretched to refract the heat. Daw 
 fed the dogs and chopped ice and firewood. 
 Linday s cheeks burned with frost-bite as he 
 squatted over the cooking. They ate heavily, 
 smoked a pipe and talked while they dried their 
 moccasins before the fire, and turned in to sleep 
 the dead sleep of fatigue and health. 
 
 Morning found the unprecedented cold snap 
 broken. Linday estimated the temperature at 
 fifteen below and rising. Daw was worried. 
 That day would see them in the canyon, he ex 
 plained, and if the spring thaw set in the canyon 
 
 230 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 231 
 
 would run open water. The walls of the can 
 yon were hundreds to thousands of feet high. 
 They could be climbed, but the going would be 
 slow. 
 
 Camped well in the dark and forbidding 
 gorge, over their pipe that evening they com 
 plained of the heat, and both agreed that the 
 thermometer must be above zero the first 
 time in six months. 
 
 " Nobody ever heard tell of a panther this 
 far north," Daw was saying. " Rocky called 
 it a cougar. But I shot a-many of em down in 
 Curry County, Oregon, where I come from, an 
 we called em panther. Anyway, it was a big 
 ger cat than ever I seen. It was sure a monster 
 cat. Now how d it ever stray to such out of the 
 way huntin range? that s the question." 
 
 Linday made no comment. He was nodding. 
 Propped on sticks, his moccasins steamed un 
 heeded and unturned. The dogs, curled in 
 furry balls, slept in the snow. The crackle of 
 an ember accentuated the profound of silence 
 that reigned. He awoke with a start and gazed 
 at Daw, who nodded and returned the gaze. 
 
232 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 Both listened. From far off came a vague dis 
 turbance that increased to a vast and sombre 
 roaring. As it neared, ever-increasing, riding 
 the mountain tops as well as the canyon depths, 
 bowing the forest before it, bending the meagre, 
 crevice-rooted pines on the walls of the gorge, 
 they knew it for what it was. A wind, strong 
 and warm, a balmy gale, drove past them, 
 flinging a rocket-shower of sparks from the fire. 
 The dogs, aroused, sat on their haunches, bleak 
 noses pointed upward, and raised the long wolf 
 howl. 
 
 " It s the Chinook," Daw said. 
 
 " It means the river trail, I suppose? " 
 
 " Sure thing. And ten miles of it is easier 
 than one over the tops." Daw surveyed Lin- 
 day for a long, considering minute. * We ve 
 just had fifteen hours of trail," he shouted 
 above the wind, tentatively, and again waited. 
 " Doc," he said finally, " are you game? " 
 
 For answer, Linday knocked out his pipe and 
 began to pull on his damp moccasins. Between 
 them, and in few minutes, bending to the force 
 of the wind, the dogs were harnessed, camp 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 233 
 
 broken, and the cooking outfit and unused sleep 
 ing furs lashed on the sled. Then, through the 
 darkness, for a night of travel, they churned 
 out on the trail Daw had broken nearly a week 
 before. And all through the night the Chinook 
 roared and they urged the weary dogs and 
 spurred their own jaded muscles. Twelve 
 hours of it they made, and stopped for break 
 fast after twenty-seven hours on trail. 
 
 " An hour s sleep," said Daw, when they 
 had wolfed pounds of straight moose-meat fried 
 with bacon. 
 
 Two hours he let his companion sleep, afraid 
 himself to close his eyes. He occupied him 
 self with making marks upon the soft-surfaced, 
 shrinking snow. Visibly it shrank. In two 
 hours the snow level sank three inches. From 
 every side, faintly heard and near, under the 
 voice of the spring wind, came the trickling of 
 hidden waters. The Little Peco, strengthened 
 by the multitudinous streamlets, rose against the 
 manacles of winter, riving the ice with crash- 
 ings and snappings. 
 
 Daw touched Linday on the shoulder; 
 
234 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 touched him again ; shook, and shook violently. 
 
 " Doc," he murmured admiringly. " You 
 can sure go some." 
 
 The weary black eyes, under heavy lids, ac 
 knowledged the compliment. 
 
 " But that ain t the question. Rocky is 
 clawed something scand lous. As I said be 
 fore, I helped sew up his in ards. Doc . . ." 
 He shook the man, whose eyes had again closed. 
 " I say, Doc ! The question is : can you go 
 some more? hear me? I say, can you go 
 some more? " 
 
 The weary dogs snapped and whimpered 
 when kicked from their sleep. The going was 
 slow, not more than two miles an hour, and the 
 animals took every opportunity to lie down in 
 the wet snow. 
 
 " Twenty miles of it, and we ll be through the 
 gorge," Daw encouraged. " After that the ice 
 can go to blazes, for we can take to the bank, 
 and it s only ten more miles to camp. Why, 
 Doc, we re almost there. And when you get 
 Rocky fixed up, you can come down in a canoe 
 in one day." 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 235 
 
 But the ice grew more uneasy under them, 
 breaking loose from the shore-line and rising 
 steadily inch by inch. In places where it still 
 held to the shore, the water overran and they 
 waded and slushed across. The Little Peco 
 growled and muttered. Cracks and fissures 
 were forming everywhere as they battled on for 
 the miles that each one of which meant ten 
 along the tops. 
 
 " Get on the sled, Doc, an take a snooze," 
 Daw invited. 
 
 The glare from the black eyes prevented him 
 from repeating the suggestion. 
 
 As early as midday they received definite 
 warning of the beginning of the end. Cakes of 
 ice, borne downward in the rapid current, began 
 to thunder beneath the ice on which they stood. 
 The dogs whimpered anxiously and yearned for 
 the bank. 
 
 " That means open water above," Daw ex 
 plained. " Pretty soon she ll jam somewheres, 
 an the river ll raise a hundred feet in a hundred 
 minutes. It s us for the tops if we can find a 
 way to climb out. Come on! Hit her up! 
 
236 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 An just to think, the Yukon ll stick solid for 
 weeks." 
 
 Unusually narrow at this point, the great 
 walls of the canyon were too precipitous to 
 scale. Daw and Linday had to keep on; and 
 they kept on till the disaster happened. With 
 a loud explosion, the ice broke asunder midway 
 under the team. The two animals in the 
 middle of the string went into the fissure, and 
 the grip of the current on their bodies dragged 
 the lead-dog backward and in. Swept down 
 stream under the ice, these three bodies began 
 to drag to the edge the two whining dogs that 
 remained. The men held back frantically on 
 the sled, but were slowly drawn along with it. 
 It was all over in the space of seconds. Daw 
 slashed the wheel-dog s traces with his sheath- 
 knife, and the animal whipped over the ice-edge 
 and was gone. The ice on which they stood, 
 broke into a large and pivoting cake that ground 
 and splintered against the shore ice and rocks. 
 Between them they got the sled ashore and up 
 into a crevice in time to see the ice-cake up- 
 edge, sink, and down-shelve from view. 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 237 
 
 Meat and sleeping furs were made into packs, 
 and the sled was abandoned. Linday resented 
 Daw s taking the heavier pack, but Daw had his 
 will. 
 
 " You got to work as soon as you get there. 
 Come on." 
 
 It was one in the afternoon when they started 
 to climb. At eight that evening they cleared 
 the rim and for half an hour lay where they had 
 fallen. Then came the fire, a pot of coffee, and 
 an enormous feed of moosemeat. But first 
 Linday hefted the two packs, and found his own 
 lighter by half. 
 
 " You re an iron man, Daw," he admired. 
 
 " Who ? Me ? Oh, pshaw ! You ought to 
 see Rocky. He s made out of platinum, an 
 armour plate, an pure gold, an all strong 
 things. I m mountaineer, but he plumb beats 
 me out. Down in Curry County I used to 
 
 most kill the boys when we run bear. So when 
 
 < 
 
 I hooks up with Rocky on our first hunt I had 
 a mean idea to show m a few. I let out the 
 links good an generous, most nigh keepin up 
 with the dawgs, an along comes Rocky a- 
 
238 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 treadin on my heels. I knowed he couldn t last 
 that way, and I just laid down an did my 
 dangdest. An there he was, at the end of an 
 other hour, a-treadin steady an regular on my 
 heels. I was some huffed. 4 Mebbe you d like 
 to come to the front an show me how to travel, 
 I says. Sure, says he. An he done it! I 
 stayed with m, but let me tell you I was plumb 
 tuckered by the time the bear tree d. 
 
 " They ain t no stoppin that man. He ain t 
 afraid of nothin . Last fall, before the freeze- 
 up, him an me was headin for camp about twi 
 light. I was clean shot out ptarmigan 
 an he had one cartridge left. An the dawgs 
 tree d a she grizzly. Small one. Only 
 weighed about three hundred, but you know 
 what grizzlies is. * Don t do it, says I, 
 when he ups with his rifle. * You only got 
 that one shot, an it s too dark to see the 
 sights. 
 
 " Climb a tree, says he. I didn t climb no 
 tree, but when that bear come down a-cussin 
 among the dawgs, an only creased, I want to 
 tell you I was sure hankerin for a tree. It was 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 239 
 
 some ruction. Then things come on real bad. 
 The bear slid down a hollow against a big log. 
 Downside, that log was four feet up an down. 
 Dawgs couldn t get at bear that way. Upside 
 was steep gravel, an the dawgs d just natu 
 rally slide down into the bear. They was no 
 jumpin back, an the bear was a-manglin em 
 fast as they come. All underbrush, gettin 
 pretty dark, no cartridges, nothin . 
 
 " What s Rocky up an do? He goes down 
 side of log, reaches over with his knife, an be 
 gins slashin . But he can only reach bear s 
 rump, an dawgs bein ruined fast, one-two-three 
 time. Rocky gets desperate. He don t like to 
 lose his dawgs. He jumps on top log, grabs 
 bear by the slack of the rump, an heaves over 
 back ard right over top of that log. Down 
 they go, kit an kaboodle, twenty feet, bear, 
 dawgs, an Rocky, slidin , cussin , an scratchin , 
 ker-plump into ten feet of water in the bed of 
 stream. They all swum out different ways. 
 Nope, he didn t get the bear, but he saved the 
 dawgs. That s Rocky. They s no stoppin 
 him when his mind s set." 
 
2 4 o THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 It was at the next camp that Linday heard 
 how Rocky had come to be injured. 
 
 " I d ben up the draw, about a mile from the 
 cabin, lookin for a piece of birch likely enough 
 for an axe-handle. Comin back I heard the 
 darndest goings-on where we had a bear trap 
 set. Some trapper had left the trap in an old 
 cache an Rocky d fixed it up. But the goings- 
 on. It was Rocky an his brother Harry. 
 First I d hear one yell and laugh, an then the 
 other, like it was some game. An what do you 
 think the fool game was ? I ve saw some pretty 
 nervy cusses down in Curry County, but they 
 beat all. They d got a whoppin big panther 
 in the trap an was takin turns rappin it on the 
 nose with a light stick. But that wa n t the 
 point. I just come out of the brush in time to 
 see Harry rap it. Then he chops six inches off 
 the stick an passes it to Rocky. You see, that 
 stick was growin shorter all the time. It ain t 
 as easy as you think. The panther d slack 
 back an hunch down an spit, an it was mighty 
 lively in duckin the stick. An you never 
 knowed when it d jump. It was caught by the 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 241 
 
 hind leg, which was curious, too, an it had 
 some slack I m tellin you. 
 
 " It was just a game of dare they was playin , 
 an the stick gettin shorter an 1 shorter an the 
 panther madder n madder. Bimeby they 
 wa n t no stick left only a nubbin, about four 
 inches long, an it was Rocky s turn. Better 
 quit now, says Harry. What for? says 
 Rocky. * Because if you rap him again they 
 won t be no stick left for me, Harry answers. 
 * Then you ll quit an I win, says Rocky with a 
 laugh, an goes to it. 
 
 " An I don t want to see anything like it 
 again. That cat d bunched back an down till 
 it had all of six feet slack in its body. An 
 Rocky s stick four inches long. The cat got 
 him. You couldn t see one from t other. No 
 chance to shoot. It was Harry, in the end, that 
 got his knife into the panther s jugular." 
 
 " If I d known how he got it I d never have 
 come," was Linday s comment. 
 
 Daw nodded concurrence. 
 
 " That s what she said. She told me sure 
 not to whisper how it happened." 
 
242 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 "Is he crazy ?" Linday demanded in his 
 wrath. 
 
 " They re all crazy. Him an his brother 
 are all the time devilin each other to torn-fool 
 things. I seen them swim the riffle last fall, bad 
 water an mush-ice runnin on a dare. They 
 ain t nothin they won t tackle. An she s most 
 as bad. Not afraid some herself. She ll do 
 anything Rocky ll let her. But he s almighty 
 careful with her. Treats her like a queen. 
 No camp-work or such for her. That s why 
 another man an me are hired on good wages. 
 They ve got slathers of money an they re sure 
 dippy on each other. 4 Looks like good 
 huntinY says Rocky, when they struck that sec 
 tion last fall. Let s make a camp then, says 
 Harry. An me all the time thinkin they was 
 lookin for gold. Ain t ben a prospect pan 
 washed the whole winter." 
 
 Linday s anger mounted. " I haven t any 
 patience with fools. For two cents I d turn 
 back." 
 
 " No you wouldn t," Daw assured him con 
 fidently. " They ain t enough grub to turn 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 243 
 
 back, an we ll be there to-morrow. Just got 
 to cross that last divide an drop down to the 
 cabin. An they s a better reason. You re too 
 far from home, an I just naturally wouldn t let 
 you turn back." 
 
 Exhausted as Linday was, the flash in his 
 black eyes warned Daw that he had overreached 
 himself. His hand went out. 
 
 " My mistake, Doc. Forget it. I reckon 
 I m gettin some cranky what of losin them 
 dawgs." 
 
Ill 
 
 NOT one day, but three days later, the two 
 men, after being snowed in on the sum 
 mit by a spring blizzard, staggered up to a cabin 
 that stood in a fat bottom beside the roaring 
 Little Peco. Coming in from the bright sun 
 shine to the dark cabin, Linday observed little 
 of its occupants. He was no more than aware 
 of two men and a woman. But he was not 
 interested in them. He went directly to the 
 bunk where lay the injured man. The latter 
 was lying on his back, with eyes closed, and 
 Linday noted the slender stencilling of the brows 
 and the kinky silkiness of the brown hair. 
 Thin and wan, the face seemed too small for the 
 muscular neck, yet the delicate features, despite 
 their waste, were firmly moulded. 
 
 "What dressings have you been using?" 
 Linday asked of the woman. 
 
 244 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 245 
 
 " Corrosive sublimate, regular solution," 
 came the answer. 
 
 He glanced quickly at her, shot an even 
 quicker glance at the face of the injured 
 man, and stood erect. She breathed sharply, 
 abruptly biting off the respiration with an effort 
 of will. Linday turned to the men. 
 
 " You clear out chop wood or something. 
 Clear out." 
 
 One of them demurred. 
 
 This is a serious case," Linday went on. 
 " I want to talk to his wife." 
 
 " I m his brother," said the other. 
 
 To him the woman looked, praying him with 
 her eyes. He nodded reluctantly and turned 
 toward the door. 
 
 "Me, too?" Daw queried from the bench 
 where he had flung himself down. 
 
 " You, too." 
 
 Linday busied himself with a superficial ex 
 amination of the patient while the cabin was 
 emptying. 
 
 "So?" he said. "So that s your Rex 
 Strang." 
 
246 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 She dropped her eyes to the man in the bunk 
 as if to reassure herself of his identity, and then 
 in silence returned Linday s gaze. 
 
 " Why don t you speak? " 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. " What is the 
 use? You know it is Rex Strang." 
 
 Thank you. Though I might remind you 
 that it is the first time I have ever seen him. 
 Sit down." He waved her to a stool, himself 
 taking the bench. " I m really about all in, 
 you know. There s no turnpike from the 
 Yukon here." 
 
 He drew a penknife and began extracting a 
 thorn from his thumb. 
 
 * What are you going to do ? " she asked, 
 after a minute s wait. 
 
 " Eat and rest up before I start back." 
 
 " What are you going to do about . . ." 
 She inclined her head toward the unconscious 
 man. 
 
 11 Nothing." 
 
 She went over to the bunk and rested her 
 fingers lightly on the tight-curled hair. 
 
 " You mean you will kill him," she said 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 247 
 
 slowly. " Kill him by doing nothing, for you 
 can save him if you will." 
 
 " Take it that way." He considered a 
 moment, and stated his thought with a harsh 
 little laugh. " From time immemorial in this 
 weary old world it has been a not uncommon 
 custom so to dispose of wife-stealers." 
 
 " You are unfair, Grant," she answered 
 gently. " You forget that I was willing and 
 that I desired. I was a free agent. Rex never 
 stole me. It was you who lost me. I went 
 with him, willing and eager, with song on my 
 lips. As well accuse me of stealing him. We 
 went together." 
 
 " A good way of looking at it," Linday con 
 ceded. " I see you are as keen a thinker as 
 ever, Madge. That must have bothered him." 
 
 " A keen thinker can be a good lover " 
 
 " And not so foolish," he broke in. 
 
 " Then you admit the wisdom of my course ? " 
 
 He threw up his hands. " That s the devil 
 of it, talking with clever women. A man al 
 ways forgets and traps himself. I wouldn t 
 wonder if you won him with a syllogism." 
 
248 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 Her reply was the hint of a smile in her 
 straight-looking blue eyes and a seeming ema 
 nation of sex pride from all the physical being 
 of her. 
 
 u No, I take that back, Madge. If you d 
 been a numbskull you d have won him, or any 
 one else, on your looks, and form, and carriage. 
 I ought to know. I ve been through that par 
 ticular mill, and, the devil take me, I m not 
 through it yet." 
 
 His speech was quick and nervous and irri 
 table, as it always was, and, as she knew, it was 
 always candid. She took her cue from his last 
 remark. 
 
 " Do you remember Lake Geneva?" 
 
 " I ought to. I was rather absurdly happy." 
 
 She nodded, and her eyes were luminous. 
 " There is such a thing as old sake. Won t 
 you, Grant, please, just remember back ... a 
 little . . . oh, so little ... of what we were 
 to each other . . . then?" 
 
 " Now you re taking advantage," he smiled, 
 and returned to the attack on his thumb. He 
 drew the thorn out, inspected it critically, then 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 249 
 
 concluded. " No, thank you. I m not playing 
 the Good Samaritan." 
 
 " Yet you made this hard journey for an un 
 known man, n she urged. 
 
 His impatience was sharply manifest. " Do 
 you fancy I d have moved a step had I known 
 he was my wife s lover? " 
 
 " But you are here . . . now. And there 
 he lies. What are you going to do ?" 
 
 " Nothing. Why should I ? I am not at 
 the man s service. He pilfered me." 
 
 She was about to speak, when a knock came 
 on the door. 
 
 " Get out! " he shouted. 
 
 " If you want any assistance " 
 
 " Get out ! Get a bucket of water ! Set it 
 down outside ! " 
 
 " You are going to . . .?" she began trem 
 ulously. 
 
 " Wash up." 
 
 She recoiled from the brutality, and her lips 
 tightened. 
 
 " Listen, Grant," she said steadily. " I shall 
 tell his brother. I know the Strang breed. If 
 
250 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 you can forget old sake, so can I. If you don t 
 do something, he ll kill you. Why, even Tom 
 Daw would if I asked." 
 
 * You should know me better than to 
 threaten," he reproved gravely, then added, 
 with a sneer: "Besides, I don t see how kill 
 ing me will help your Rex Strang." 
 
 She gave a low gasp, closed her lips tightly, 
 and watched his quick eyes take note of the 
 trembling that had beset her. 
 
 " It s not hysteria, Grant," she cried hastily 
 and anxiously, with clicking teeth. " You never 
 saw me with hysteria. I ve never had it. I 
 don t know what it is, but I ll control it. I am 
 merely beside myself. It s partly anger ; 
 with you. And it s apprehension and fear. I 
 don t want to lose him. I do love him, Grant. 
 He is my king, my lover. And I have sat here 
 beside him so many dreadful days now. Oh, 
 Grant, please, please." 
 
 " Just nerves," he commented drily. " Stay 
 with it. You can best it. If you were a man 
 I d say take a smoke." 
 
 She went unsteadily back to the stool, where 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 251 
 
 she watched him and fought for control. 
 From the rough fireplace came the singing of 
 a cricket. Outside two wolf-dogs bickered. 
 The injured man s chest rose and fell perceptibly 
 under the fur robes. She saw a smile, not al 
 together pleasant, form on Linday s lips. 
 
 "How much do you love him?" he asked. 
 
 Her breast filled and rose, and her eyes shone 
 with a light unashamed and proud. He 
 nodded in token that he was answered. 
 
 " Do you mind if I take a little time ? " He 
 stopped, casting about for the way to begin. 
 " I remember reading a story Herbert Shaw 
 wrote it, I think. I want to tell you about it. 
 There was a woman, young and beautiful; a 
 man magnificent, a lover of beauty and a 
 wanderer. I don t know how much like your 
 Rex Strang he was, but I fancy a sort of re 
 semblance. Well, this man was a painter, a 
 bohemian, a vagabond. He kissed oh, sev 
 eral times and for several weeks and rode 
 away. She possessed for him what I thought 
 you possessed for me ... at Lake Geneva. 
 In ten years she wept the beauty out of her face. 
 
252 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 Some women turn yellow, you know, when grief 
 upsets their natural juices. 
 
 " Now it happened that the man went blind, 
 and ten years afterward, led as a child by the 
 hand, he stumbled back to her. There was 
 nothing left. He could no longer paint. And 
 she was very happy, and glad he could not see 
 her face. Remember, he worshipped beauty. 
 And he continued to hold her in his arms and 
 believe in her beauty. The memory of it was 
 vivid in him. He never ceased to talk about it, 
 and to lament that he could not behold it. 
 
 " One day he told her of five great pictures 
 he wished to paint. If only his sight could be 
 restored to paint them, he could write finis and 
 be content. And then, no matter how, there 
 came into her hands an elixir. Anointed on 
 his eyes, the sight would surely and fully re 
 
 turn." 
 
 Linday shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " .You see her struggle. With sight, he could 
 paint his five pictures. Also, he would leave 
 her. Beauty was his religion. It was impos 
 sible that he could abide her ruined face. Five 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 253 
 
 days she struggled. Then she anointed his 
 eyes." 
 
 Linday broke off and searched her with his 
 eyes, the high lights focused sharply in the bril 
 liant black. 
 
 " The question is, do you love Rex Strang as 
 much as that? " 
 
 " And if I do? " she countered. 
 
 "Do you?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " You can sacrifice ? You can give him up ? " 
 
 Slow and reluctant was her " Yes." 
 
 " And you will come with me? " 
 
 " Yes." This time her voice was a whisper. 
 " When he is well yes." 
 
 " You understand. It must be Lake Geneva 
 over again. You will be my wife." 
 
 She seemed to shrink and droop, but her head 
 nodded. 
 
 " Very well." He stood up briskly, went to 
 his pack, and began unstrapping. " I shall 
 need help. Bring his brother in. Bring them 
 all in. Boiling water let there be lots of it. 
 I ve brought bandages, but let me see what you 
 
254 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 have in that line. Here, Daw, build up that 
 fire and start boiling all the water you can. 
 Here you," to the other man, " get that 
 table out and under the window there. Clean 
 it; scrub it; scald it. Clean, man, clean, as you 
 never cleaned a thing before. You, Mrs. 
 Strang, will be my helper. No sheets, I sup 
 pose. Well, we ll manage somehow. You re 
 his brother, sir. I ll give the anaesthetic, but 
 you must keep it going afterward. Now listen, 
 while I instruct you. In the first place but 
 before that, can you take a pulse? . . ." 
 
IV 
 
 NOTED for his daring and success as a 
 surgeon, through the days and weeks 
 that followed Linday exceeded himself in dar 
 ing and success. Never, because of the fright 
 ful mangling and breakage, and because of the 
 long delay, had he encountered so terrible a 
 case. But he had never had a healthier speci 
 men of human wreck to work upon. Even then 
 he would have failed, had it not been for the 
 pati ent s catlike vitality and almost uncanny 
 physical and mental grip on life. 
 
 There were days of high temperature and 
 delirium; days of heart-sinking when Strang s 
 pulse was barely perceptible ; days when he lay 
 conscious, eyes weary and drawn, the sweat of 
 pain on his face. Linday was indefatigable, 
 cruelly efficient, audacious and fortunate, daring 
 hazard after hazard and winning. He was not 
 content to make the man live. He devoted 
 255 
 
256 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 himself to the intricate and perilous problem of 
 making him whole and strong again. 
 
 " He will be a cripple? " Madge queried. 
 
 " He will not merely walk and talk and be a 
 limping caricature of his former self," Linday 
 told her. " He shall run and leap, swim riffles, 
 ride bears, fight panthers, and do all things to 
 the top of his fool desire. And, I warn you, 
 he will fascinate women just as of old. Will 
 you like that? Are you content? Remember, 
 you will not be with him." 
 
 " Go on, go on," she breathed. " Make 
 him whole. Make him what he was." 
 
 More than once, whenever Strang s recupera 
 tion permitted, Linday put him under the 
 anaesthetic and did terrible things, cutting and 
 sewing, rewiring and connecting up the dis 
 rupted organism. Later, developed a hitch in 
 the left arm. Strang could lift it so far, and 
 no farther. Linday applied himself to the 
 problem. It was a case of more wires, 
 shrunken, twisted, disconnected. Again it was 
 cut and switch and ease and disentangle. And 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 257 
 
 all that saved Strang was his tremendous vitality 
 and the health of his flesh. 
 
 " You will kill him," his brother complained. 
 " Let him be. For God s sake let him be. 
 A live and crippled man is better than a whole 
 and dead one." 
 
 Linday flamed in wrath. "You get out! 
 Out of this cabin with you till you can come 
 back and say that I make him live. Pull by 
 God, man, you ve got to pull with me with all 
 your soul. Your brother s travelling a hair 
 line razor-edge. Do you understand? A 
 thought can topple him off. Now get out, and 
 come back sweet and wholesome, convinced be 
 yond all absoluteness that he will live and be 
 what he was before you and he played the fool 
 together. Get out, I say." 
 
 The brother, with clenched hands and threat 
 ening eyes, looked to Madge for counsel. 
 
 " Go, go, please," she begged. " He is 
 right. I know he is right." 
 
 Another time, when Strang s condition 
 seemed more promising, the brother said: 
 
258 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 " Doc, you re a wonder, and all this time I ve 
 forgotten to ask your name." 
 
 " None of your damn business. Don t 
 bother me. Get out." 
 
 The mangled right arm ceased from its heal 
 ing, burst open again in a frightful wound. 
 
 " Necrosis," said Linday. 
 
 " That does settle it," groaned the brother. 
 
 "Shut up!" Linday snarled. "Get out! 
 Take Daw with you. Take Bill, too. Get 
 rabbits alive healthy ones. Trap them. 
 Trap everywhere." 
 
 " How many? " the brother asked. 
 
 " Forty of them four thousand forty 
 thousand all you can get. You ll help me, 
 Mrs. Strang. I m going to dig into that arm 
 and size up the damage. Get out, you fellows. 
 You for the. rabbits." 
 
 And he dug in, swiftly, unerringly, scraping 
 away disintegrating bone, ascertaining the ex 
 tent of the active decay. 
 
 " It never would have happened," he told 
 Madge, " if he hadn t had so many other things 
 needing vitality first. Even he didn t have 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 259 
 
 vitality enough to go around. I was watching 
 it, but I had to wait and chance it. That piece 
 must go. He could manage without it, but 
 rabbit-bone will make it what it was." 
 
 From the hundreds of rabbits brought in, he 
 weeded out, rejected, selected, tested, selected 
 and tested again, until he made his final choice. 
 He used the last of his chloroform and achieved 
 the bone-graft living bone to living bone, 
 living man and living rabbit immovable and in- 
 dissolubly bandaged and bound together, their 
 mutual processes uniting and reconstructing a 
 perfect arm. 
 
 And through the whole trying period, es 
 pecially as Strang mended, occurred passages 
 of talk between Linday and Madge. Nor was 
 he kind, nor she rebellious. 
 
 " It s a nuisance," he told her. " But the 
 law is the law, and you ll need a divorce before 
 we can marry again. What do you say? 
 Shall we go to Lake Geneva ? " 
 
 " As you will," she said. 
 
 And he, another time: " What the deuce 
 did you see in him anyway? I know he had 
 
260 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 money. But you and I were managing to get 
 along with some sort of comfort. My practice 
 was averaging around forty thousand a year 
 then I went over the books afterward. 
 Palaces and steam yachts were about all that 
 was denied you." 
 
 " Perhaps youVe explained it," she an 
 swered. " Perhaps you were too interested in 
 your practice. Maybe you forgot me." 
 
 " Humph," he sneered. " And may not 
 your Rex be too interested in panthers and short 
 sticks?" 
 
 He continually girded her to explain what he 
 chose to call her infatuation for the other man. 
 
 " There is no explanation," she replied. 
 And, finally, she retorted, " No one can explain 
 love, I least of all. I only knew love, the 
 divine and irrefragable fact, that is all. There 
 was once, at Fort Vancouver, a baron of the 
 Hudson Bay Company who chided the resident 
 Church of England parson. The dominie had 
 written home to England complaining that the 
 Company folk, from the head factor down, 
 were addicted to Indian wives. * Why didn t 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 261 
 
 you explain the extenuating circumstances ? de 
 manded the baron. Replied the dominie : l A 
 cow s tail grows downward. I do not attempt 
 to explain why the cow s tail grows downward. 
 I merely cite the fact. " 
 
 "Damn clever women!" cried Linday, his 
 eyes flashing his irritation. 
 
 >l What brought you, of all places, into the 
 Klondike? " she asked once. 
 
 " Too much money. No wife to spend it. 
 Wanted a rest. Possibly overwork. I tried 
 Colorado, but their telegrams followed me, and 
 some of them did themselves. I went on to 
 Seattle. Same thing. Ransom ran his wife 
 out to me in a special train. There was no 
 escaping it. Operation successful. Local news 
 papers got wind of it. You can imagine the 
 rest. I had to hide, so I ran away to Klondike. 
 And well, Tom Daw found me playing whist 
 in a cabin down on the Yukon." 
 
 Came the day when Strang s bed was carried 
 out of doors and into the sunshine. 
 
 " Let me tell him now," she said to Linday. 
 
 "No; wait," he answered. 
 
262 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 Later, Strang was able to sit up on the edge 
 of the bed, able to walk his first giddy steps, 
 supported on either side. 
 
 " Let me tell him now," she said. 
 
 " No. I m making a complete job of this. 
 I want no set-backs. There s a slight hitch still 
 in that left arm. It s a little thing, but I am 
 going to remake him as God made him. To 
 morrow I ve planned to get into that arm and 
 take out the kink. It will mean a couple of 
 days on his back. I m sorry there s no more 
 chloroform. He ll just have to bite his teeth 
 on a spike and hang on. He can do it. He s 
 got grit for a dozen men." 
 
 Summer came on. The snow disappeared, 
 save on the far peaks of the Rockies to the east. 
 The days lengthened till there was no darkness, 
 the sun dipping at midnight, due north, for a 
 few minutes beneath the horizon. Linday 
 never let up on Strang. He studied his walk, 
 his body movements, stripped him again and 
 again and for the thousandth time made him 
 flex all his muscles. Massage was given him 
 without end, until Linday declared that Tom 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 263 
 
 Daw, Bill, and the brother were properly quali 
 fied for Turkish bath and osteopathic hospital 
 attendants. But Linday was not yet satisfied. 
 He put Strang through his whole repertoire of 
 physical feats, searching him the while for hid 
 den weaknesses. He put him on his back again 
 for a week, opened up his leg, played a deft 
 trick or two with the smaller veins, scraped a 
 spot of bone no larger than a coffee grain till 
 naught but a surface of healthy pink remained 
 to be sewed over with the living flesh. 
 
 " Let me tell him," Madge begged. 
 
 " Not yet," was the answer. " You will tell 
 him only when I am ready." 
 
 July passed, and August neared its end, when 
 he ordered Strang out on trail to get a moose. 
 Linday kept at his heels, watching him, studying 
 him. He was slender, a cat in the strength of 
 his muscles, and he walked as Linday had seen 
 no man walk, effortlessly, with all his body, 
 seeming to lift the legs with supple muscles 
 clear to the shoulders. But it was without 
 heaviness, so easy that it invested him with a 
 peculiar grace, so easy that to the eye the speed 
 
264 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 was deceptive. It was the killing pace of which 
 Tom Daw had complained. Linday toiled be 
 hind, sweating and panting; from time to time, 
 when the ground favoured, making short runs 
 to keep up. At the end of ten miles he called a 
 halt and threw himself down on the moss. 
 
 " Enough ! " he cried. " I can t keep up 
 with you." 
 
 He mopped his heated face, and Strang sat 
 down on a spruce log, smiling at the doctor, 
 and, with the camaraderie of a pantheist, at all 
 the landscape. 
 
 " Any twinges, or hurts, or aches, or hints of 
 aches?" Linday demanded. 
 
 Strang shook his curly head and stretched his 
 lithe body, living and joying in every fibre of 
 it. 
 
 * You ll do, Strang. For a winter or two 
 you may expect to feel the cold and damp in 
 the old wounds. But that will pass, and per 
 haps you may escape it altogether." 
 
 " God, Doctor, you have performed miracles 
 with me. I don t know how to thank you. I 
 don t even know your name." 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 265 
 
 " Which doesn t matter. I ve pulled you 
 through, and that s the main thing." 
 
 " But it s a name men must know out in the 
 world," Strang persisted. " I ll wager I d 
 recognise it if I heard it." 
 
 " I think you would," was Linday s answer. 
 " But it s beside the matter. I want one final 
 test, and then I m done with you. Over the 
 divide at the head of this creek is a tributary 
 of the Big Windy. Daw tells me that last year 
 you went over, down to the middle fork, and 
 back again, in three days. He said you nearly 
 killed him, too. You are to wait here and camp 
 to-night. I ll send Daw along with the camp 
 outfit. Then it s up to you to go to the middle 
 fork and back in the same time as last year." 
 
"1VT OW," Linday said to Madge. " You 
 
 A. i have an hour in which to pack. I ll 
 go and get the canoe ready. Bill s bringing in 
 the moose and won t get back till dark. We ll 
 make my cabin to-day, and in a week we ll be in 
 Dawson." 
 
 u I was in hope . . ." She broke off 
 proudly. 
 
 " That I d forego the fee?" 
 
 " Oh, a compact is a compact, but you needn t 
 have been so hateful in the collecting. You 
 have not been fair. You have sent him away 
 for three days, and robbed me of my last words 
 to him." 
 
 " Leave a letter." 
 
 " I shall tell him all." 
 
 " Anything less than all would be unfair to 
 the three of us," was Linday s answer. 
 
 When he returned from the canoe, her outfit 
 was packed, the letter written. 
 
 266 
 
THE END OF THE STORY 267 
 
 " Let me read it," he said, " if you don t 
 mind." 
 
 Her hesitation was momentary, then she 
 passed it over. 
 
 " Pretty straight," he said, when he had 
 finished it. " Now, are you ready? " 
 
 He carried her pack down to the bank, and, 
 kneeling, steadied the canoe with one hand 
 while he extended the other to help her in. He 
 watched her closely, but without a tremor she 
 held out her hand to his and prepared to step 
 on board. 
 
 " Wait," he said. " One moment. You re 
 member the story I told you of the elixir. I 
 failed to tell you the end. And when she had 
 anointed his eyes and was about to depart, it 
 chanced she saw in the mirror that her beauty 
 had been restored to her. And he opened his 
 eyes, and cried out with joy at the sight of her 
 beauty, and folded her in his arms." 
 
 She waited, tense but controlled, for him to 
 continue, a dawn of wonder faintly beginning 
 to show in her face and eyes. 
 
 " You are very beautiful, Madge." He 
 
268 THE TURTLES OF TASMAN 
 
 paused, then added drily, " The rest is obvious. 
 I fancy Rex Strang s arms won t remain long 
 empty. Good-bye." 
 
 " Grant . . ." she said, almost whispered, 
 and in her voice was all the speech that needs 
 not words for understanding. 
 
 He gave a nasty little laugh. " I just wanted 
 to show you I wasn t such a bad sort. Coals 
 of fire, you know." 
 
 " Grant . . ." 
 
 He stepped into the canoe and put out a 
 slender, nervous hand. 
 
 " Good-bye," he said. 
 
 She folded both her own hands about his. 
 
 " Dear, strong hand," she murmured, and 
 bent and kissed it. 
 
 He jerked it away, thrust the canoe out from 
 the bank, dipped the paddle in the swift rush of 
 the current, and entered the head of the riffle 
 where the water poured glassily ere it burst 
 into a white madness of foam. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
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