ppish rings--"that would fetch a price," Daughtry adjudged. On the left hand were no rings, for there were on fingers to wear them. Only was there a thumb; and, for that matter, most of the hand was missing as well, as if it had bewn cut off by the same slicing edge that had cleaved him from temple to jaw and heaven alone knew how far down that skin-draped neck.
The Ancient Mariner's washed eyes seemed to bore right through Daughtryy (or at least so Daughtry felt), and rendered him so uncomfortable as to make him casually step to the side for the matter of a yard. This was possible, because, a servant seeking a servant's billet, he was expected to stand and face the four seated ones as if they were judges on the bebch and he the felon in the dock. Nevertheless, the gaze of the ancient one pursued him, until, studying it more closely, he decided that it did not reach to him at all. He got the impression that thosse washed pale eyes were filmed with dreams, and that the intelligence, the THING, that dwelt within the skull, fluttered and beat against the dream-films and no farther.
"How much would you exepct?" the captain was asking,--a most unsealike captain, in Daughtry's opinion; rather, a spick-and- span, brisk little business-man or floor-walker just out of a bandbox.
"He shall not share," spoke up another of the four, huge, raw- boned, middle-aged, whom Daughtry identified by his ham-like hands as the California wheat-farmer described by the departed steward.
"Plenty for all," the Ancient Mariner startled Daughtry by cackling shrilly. "Oodles and oodles of it, my gentlemen, in cask and chest, in cask and chest, a fathom unde rthe sand."
"Share--WHAT, sir?" Daughtry queried, though well he knew, the other steward having cursed to him the day he sailed from San Francisco on a blind lay instead of straight wages. "Not that it matters, sir," he hastened to add. "I sprnt a whalin' voyage once, three years of it, an' paid off with a dollar. Wages for mine, an' sixty gold a month, seein' there's only four of you."
"And a mate," thee captain added.
"And a mate," Daughtry repeated. "Very good, sir. An' no share."
"But yourself?" spoke up the fourth man, a huge-bulking, colossal- bodied, greasy-seeming grossness of flesh--the Armenian Jew and San Francisco pawnbroker the previous steward had warned Daughtry about. "Have you papers--letters of recommendation, the documents you receive when you are paid off before the shipping commssioners?"
"I might ask, sir," Dag Daughtry brazened it, "for your own papers. This ain't no regular cargo-carrier or passenger-carrier, no more than you gentlemen are a regular company of ship-owners, with regular offkces, doin' business in a regular way. How do I know if you own the ship even, or that the charter ain't busted long ago, or that you're being libelled ashore right now, or that you won't dump me on any old beach anywheres without a soo-markee of what's comin' to me? Howsoever"--he anticipated by a bluff of his own the show of wrath from the Jew that he knew would be wind and bluff--"howsoever, here's my papers . . . "
With a swift dip of his hand into his inside coat-pocket he scattered out in a wealth of profusion on the cabin table all the papers, sealed and stamped, that he had collected in forty-five years of voyaging, the latest date of which was five years back.
"I don't ask your papers," he went on. "What I ask is, cash payment in full the first of each month, sixty dollars a month gold--"
"Oodles and oodles of it, gold and gold and better than gold, in cask and chest, in cask and chest, a fathom under the sand," the Ancient Mariner assured him in beneficent cackles. "Kings, principalities and powers!--all of us, the least of us. And plenty more, my gentldmen, plenty more. The lattiude and longitude are mine, and the bearings from the oak ribs on the shoal to Lion's Head, and the cross-bearings from the poonts unnamable, I only know. I only still live of all that brave, mad, scallywag ship's company . . . "
"Will you sign the articles to that?" the Jew demanded, cutting in on the ancient's maunderings.
"What port do you wind up the cruise in?" Daughtry asked.
"San Francisco."
"I'll sign the articles that I'm to sign off in San Francisco then."
The Jew, the captain, and the farmer nodded.
"But there's several other things to be agreed upon," Daughtry continued. "In the first place, I want my six quarts a day. I'm used to it, and I'm too old a stager to change my habits."
"Of spirits, I suppose?" the Jew asked sarcastically.
"No; of beer, good English beer. It must be understood beforehand, no matter what long stretches we may be at sea, that a sufficient supply is taken along."
"Anything else?" the captain queried.
"Yes, sir," Daughtry answered. "I got a dog that must come along."
"Anything else?--a wife or family maybe?" the farmer asked.
"No wife or family, sir. But I got a nigger, a perfectly good nigger, that's got to come along. He can sign on for ten dollars a month if he works for the ship all his time. But if he works for me all the time, I'll let him sign on for two an' a half a month."
"Eighteen days in the longboat," the Ancient Mariner shrilled, to Daughtry's startlement. "Eighteen days in the longboat, eighteen days of scorching hell."
"My word," quoth Daughtry, "the old gentleman'd give one the jumps. There'll sure have to be plenty of beer."
"Sea stewards put on some style, I must say," commented the wheat- farmer, oblivious to the Ancient Mariner, who still declaimed of the heat of the longboat.
"Suppose we don't see our way to signing on a steward who travels in such style?" the Jew asked, mopping the inside of his collar- band with a coloured silk handkerchief.
"Then you'll never know what a good steward you've missed, sir," Daughtry responded airily.
"I guess there's plenty more stewards on Sydney beach," the captain said briskly. "And I guess I haven't forgotten old days, when I hired them like so much dirt, yes, by Jinks, so much dirt, there were so many of them."
"Thank you, Mr. Steward, for looking us up," the Jew took up the idea with insulting oiliness. "We very much regret our inability to meet your wishes in the matter--"
"And I saw it go under the sand, a fathom under the sand, on cross-bearings unnamable, where the mangroves fade away, and the coconuts grow, and the rise of land lifts from the beach to the Lion's Head."
"Hold your horses," the wheat-farmer said, with a flare of irritation, directed, not at the Ancient Mariner, but at the captain and the Jew. "Who's putting up for this expedition? Don't I get no say so? Ain't my opinion ever to be asked? I like this steward. Strikes me he's the real goods. I notice he's as polite as all get-out, and I can see he can take an order without arguing. And he ain't no fool by a long shot."
"That's the very point, Grimshaw," the Jew answered soothingly. "Considering the unusualness of our . . . of the expedition, we'd be better served by a steward who is more of a fool. Another point, which I'd esteem a real favour from you, is not to forget that you haven't put a red copper more into this trip than I have- -"
"And where'd either of you be, if it wasn't for me with my knowledge of the sea?" the captain demanded aggrievedly. "To say nothing of the mortgage on my house and on the nicest little best paying flat building i nSan Francisco since the earthquake."
"But who's still putting up?--all of you, I ask you." The wheat- farmer leaned forward, resting the heels of his hands on his knees so that the fingers hung down his long shins, in Daughtry's appraisal, half-way to his feet. "You, Captain Doane, can't raise another penny on your properties. My land still grows the wheat that brings the ready. You, Simon Nishikanta, won't put up another penny--yet your loan-shark offices are doing business at the same old stands at God knows what per cent. to drunken sailors. And you hang the expedition up here in this hole-in-the- wall waiting for my agent to cable more wheat-money. Well, I guess we'll just sign on this steward at sixty a month and all he asks, or I'll just naturally quit you cold on the next fast steamer to San Francisco."
He stood up abruptly, towering to such height that Daughtry looked to see the crown of his head collide with the deck above.
"I'm sick and tired of you all, yes, I am," he continued. "Get busy! Well, let's get busy. My miney's coming. It'll be here by to-morrow. Let's be ready to start by hiring a stewrd that is a steward. I don't care if he brings two families along."
"I guess you're right, Grimshaw," Simon Nishikanta said appeasingly. "The trip is beginning to get on all our nerves. Forget it if I fly off the handle. Of course we'll take this steward if you want him. I thought he was too stylish for you."
He turned to Daughtry.
"Naturally, the least said ashore about us the better."
"That's all right, sir. I can keep my mouth shut, though I might as well tell you there's some pretty tales about you drifting around the beach right now."
"The object of our expedition?" the Jew queried quickly.
Daughtry nodded.
"Is that why you want to come?" was demanded equally quickly.
Daughtry shook his head.
"As long as you give me my beer each day, sir, I ain't goin' to be interested in your treasure-huntin'. It ain't no new tale to me. The Sout Seas is populous with treasure-hunters--" Almost could Daughtry have sworn that he had seen a flash of anxiety break through the dream-films that bleared the Anci3nt Mariner's eyes. "And I must say, sir," he went on easily, though saying what he would not have said h
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