LITMIR.BIZ

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onta him like a cobble­stone an’ hair like a livin’ flame. But no matter about that.

      It’s his death I’m steerin’ for. The course is well buoyed, too. No danger my forgettin’ that!

      Shifty, he run down pow’ful fast after Trefethen was took. While I was alive, nobody ever noticed no love lost betwixt ’em, for the old man was some bucko, and him an’ Shifty had a few set-tos now an’ again.

      Fact is, once or twice after a mix, when Shifty spit, they was teeth bounced on the deck o’ the Benicia Boy. But all this an’ all that didn’t seem to matter none.

      After Tref hove anchor for the last time Shifty failed right up.

      He’d never been no great of a hand to wrastle with prayer till then. But afterward he used to spend his evenin’s in port over to the mission loft, an’ sev­eral times I heerd he asked for special intercession at th’ throne; an’ at times he’d exhort his own self.

      They say he bellered somethin’ fierce, an’ could be heerd ’way down to Front Street, when the spirit operated right lively.

      Second voyage after Trefethen’s takin’ off I see Shifty had got mighty pickid, an’ had a cough onta him. But he signed articles again that spring—1887—as mate on the Cyrus Cobb.

      Oh, I fergot to say he quit the Ben­icia Boy right away after the death o’ Tref, an’ never went anigh her again or set foot on her decks when her an’ him happened to be in port together.

      There was some talk about it at the time, but folks said it was because he felt so stove up he couldn’t endure for to see the old hooker.

      So that passed all right, an’ nobody suspicioned the real reason, which I’m a comin’ to now mighty quick.

      As I was sayin’, the spring of ’87 see Shifty in bad shape.

      That summer, when he come in from the provinces with the Cyrus Cobb, the hand o’ death had him plumb by the collar of his oilers. He’d fell away so he didn’t no more’n half fill ’em, nohow, an’ he spit blood. But he still signed again.

      He was goin’ to croak with his sea-boots on, looked like; but he didn’t, after all, but upstairs in Mariners’ House, in Sallie’s front north room, like I told you already.

      That November, the 17th, when the Cyrus Cobb come in again on her last run, Shifty hired the room for a month an’ paid cash down, an’ took to his bed.

      He died December 9, about 11.30 p.m., so Sallie was in just a little over a week’s rent. She tried fer to have him get a doctor, or somethin’, but he wouldn’t.

      He took them last weeks mighty ca’m, considerin’; just laid there an’ drunk rum an’ molasses, read his Bible, an’ prayed, an’ then banged on the floor, an’ they fetched him another noggin.

      Some of us boys used to call in an’ see him every day, an’ them as could prayed with him. I was one as couldn’t, which makes it all the stranger he sh’d send fer me that last night an’ tell me—what he did.

      Didn’t seem as I was extry close to him no p’ticular way; an’ yet, after all, he sent fer me. I’m blowed, fellas, if I know why!

      Now, I ain’t such a much on this here descriptive business. It’ll take some regular smart Alick with a pen or typewriter to set it all out good an’ proper.

      You ask me about cro’jicks, dead-eyes, an’ Plim’s’l-marks, an’ I bate you four fingers on the choppin’-block I’m there with the goods quicker’n white lightnin’. Or anythin’ else belongin’ and ap­per­tainin’ to ships, sail or steam. But this storybook business leaves me on a lee shore with all anchors draggin’.

      However, I’ll do my best with it. You take it plain, with no trimmin’s, an’ afterward bodge it up to suit yourselves. That’s fair, ain’t it?

      Here’s what happened:

      III.

      SHIFTY SENT FER ME about a quarter to eleven. I was down in the bar playin’ Pede with Lefty Jacobs of the Orient Star an’ a couple o’ stokers from the old Geranium, the light­house tender, you know.

      Sallie, she sticks her head in the door an’ beckons me, an’ I drops as good a hand as a man could wish to see in a month o’ Sundays an’ goes.

      “You’re wanted up in No. 18,” says she. “Shifty Tripp’s askin’ fer you. Couldn’t you let somebody else set in on the game an’ humor him? I’ll have whatever drinks you was goin’ to order,” says she, “sent right up, an’ no extra charge, same as I usually get for what’s served away from the bar.”

      She was kind of generous that way at times, Sallie was. I thanked her an’ said I’d give my order later, an’ went on up.

      I found Shifty propped in bed, with his long-necker an’ his Bible handy.

      Somethin’ in the shine of his eye, as the raw light from the lamp hit it, started me kind of. He looked all fevered up, Shifty did. Thinks I to myself, thinks I: “You’re close to harbor, old buck!”

      So his first words don’t take me aback as much’s they might ­otherwise ha’ done if I hadn’t been expectin’ nothin’.

      “Come in,” he croaks very husky, hardly able to talk at all. “Heave a line an’ come alongside, Amos,” says he. “I’m dyin’ this very night. Turn me a drink, there—my hand shakes so I spill a’most every damn drop! That’s right—there! Amos,” says he, “I’m goin’ to glory before twelve on that there clock; that is, if I git this here sin off’n my chest—”

      “What sin, Shifty? Which p’ticu­lar one?”

      I draws up a chair an’ sets down by the bed, so-fashion.

      “My hatches is open a’ready,” says he, not payin’ no heed, “to let the im­mortal soul out o’ my sin-blackened hold. I want her to come forth a shinin’ with glory, Amos! I want to sign my articles with my cap’n aloft,” says he, “with no contraband in my dunnage! Lemme clear everythin’ out,” he says; “an’ arter that I’m ready!”

      I makes out to grin an’ takes a nip myself.

      “Ferget it, Shifty!” says I, tryin’ fer to cheer him, though in my marrer-bones I know it’s gospel he’s as good as pork. I’d seen a plenty go, an’ I knowed. “Ferget. it! You just got one o’ your—”

      “Got nothin’!” he wheezes, coughin’ violent an’ swearin’ at the same time. He clutches the Book to his caved-in chest. “I got my walkin’-papers this time, sure, an’ you know it, Ame. Reckon I sense the condition o’ my own hull an’ cargo better’n what you do!” he gasps, resentful.

      “I got to have a regular gam with you an’ git it over with, Amos. I’m openin’ up at all seams; the pumps can’t hold me nohow. I’m goin’ down, now, inside of half an hour by that damn chronometer!” An’ he nods at the tin clock on the shelf. “That’s all!”

      Comes a little silence, with only the ticking of the clock, the sputter-sputter of the lamp, and the wooo-wooo-ooo of the wind up the stovepipe.

      “Down,” says he, “same as the Benicia Boy jest missed doin’ time Gash Trefethen got his! An’ that,” he adds, “is what I wants to gam about ’fore I founders. Un’stand?”

      “Why, what about it?” I inquires, wonderin’. “What in Tophet is there to tell?”

      He signals for another two fingers o’ rum an’ then thinks a minute.

      “Amos.”

      “What?”

      “I got murder on my soul!”

      “Th’ hell you say! Who?”

      “Trefethen!”

      “Tref—

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