The King and Captain O'Shea/Chapter 1

OUNG Captain Michael O'Shea, shipmaster, sat by a window of the Jolly Mermaid tavern, at Blackwall on the Thames, below London. His companion, Johnny Kent, was a stout, red-faced, gray-headed man who had sailed the seas in many kinds of steamers as chief engineer. These two leisurely drank mugs of bitter beer, and gazed with professional interest at the crowded shipping of that great seaport thoroughfare which sailormen call London River. The Jolly Mermaid was one of a jostling row of ancient buildings with bow windows and balconies painted in bright hues, which overhung the tide at Blackwall to remind one of the maritime London of towering frigates and high-pooped galleons and stout seamen of Devon. The near-by shore was filled with shipyards and weedy wharves, and a little way downriver was the entrance of the vast inland basin called the East India Docks, where soared a wonderful confusion of spars and rigging, and the red funnels of the Union Castle liners lay side by side.

On the turbid river moved in procession a singular variety of craft—drifting Thames barges with dyed sails, square-riggers in tow, Norwegian tramps half hidden beneath uncouth deckloads of lumber, rusty Spanish fruiters, coastwise schooners, spray-stained steam trawlers from the Dogger Bank, stubby Dutch eel-schuits, stately mail boats homeward bound from the tropics, sooty colliers from Cardiff.

They slid past with an incessant din of whistles, which, warning, expostulating, shouted the rules of the road in the language of the sea.

These familiar sights and sounds pleased Captain O'Shea, and he was contented with his seat by the window of the Jolly Mermaid and the excellent brew dispensed by the apple-cheeked young woman behind the bar. Amphibious loafers drifted in and out, or cast anchor on the wharf alongside—riggers, watermen, dock laborers, sailors who seemed to have a world of time on their hands. Their gait was slouching, their attire careless, and their conversation peppered with sanguinary references to their eyes.

"'Tis a restful place, Johnny, and as diverting as a theater," observed O'Shea.

The chief engineer returned rather fretfully:

"I'm willing to be idle in this bit of slack water for a while, and sort of pull myself together, Cap'n Mike. But this don't earn wages, and I ain't makin' much headway toward buyin' that farm down in the State o' Maine."

Whimsical amusement lighted O' Shea's bold, smooth-shaven features as he replied:

"I am not a man to seek a humdrum life, afloat or ashore, you impatient old pirate! There was a lot of fuss kicked up at home about that last voyage of ours, as ye well know. And there was a strong chance that we would be laid by the heels in one of Uncle Sam's jails for breaking the laws between nations. We are better off where we are."

"Governments are touchy, but it's dog-goned foolishness to hold it against us," grumbled Johnny Kent. "We were peacefully runnin' a cargo of guns and cartridges ashore for them rebellious patriots in the Caribbean, and most strictly mindin' our own business. That Spanish gunboat got in our way, and her intentions was plain blood-thirsty. What if we did ram her and then blow her up? She interfered with men who were try in' to make an honest livin' on the high seas."

"Argue as far as you like, Johnny. It won't alter the fact that it was healthier for you and me to make ourselves hard to find."

"But it's discouragin' to look for another ship here in England, Cap'n Mike. We can't show Board of Trade certificates. We're fish out of water. American masters' and engineers' papers are no good among these Britishers."

"'Tis not easy to find our kind of a ship anywhere," O'Shea reminded him. "Big risks and big wages is our game. There are no revolutions popping the lid off in Central or South America, and we will sit tight and trust in my lucky star. I have a gold piece or two left in the toe of the sock where I stowed it against times like this. And we have not sunk so low that we must sign on for a lawful voyage in a ship that does not dodge every smoke she sights."

Johnny Kent crooked a finger at the barmaid, and sought consolation in another mug of bitter, while Captain O'Shea turned to a morning newspaper and ran his eye down the ship-news column to note the arrivals and departures. Then he cast a cursory glance at the foreign dispatches, which might perchance disclose some disturbance of the world's peace and an opportunity for venturesome men used to alarms and stratagems. There was a report of the seizure of a German steamer for smuggling arms to a Persian Gulf port. O'Shea brightened, and decided to investigate the contraband trade of the Persian Gulf and ascertain who was instigating it.

Johnny Kent was moved to begin an aimless yarn about a certain wicked skipper of Yankee clipper fame who fetched his second mate all the way home from Cape Town doubled up in a hencoop as a punishment for impertinence. It was one of those garrulous, interminable yarns which box the compass without maintaining steerage way. O'Shea listened politely, but with a manner slightly absent-minded, having heard the tale of the unfortunate second mate and the hencoop in at least five different ports.

The yarn was cut short, and the two men screwed around in their chairs to stare at a visitor whose presence in the humble longshore tavern of the Jolly Mermaid was most extraordinary.

He was an elderly and very dignified gentleman, of a spare figure and the stiffly erect carriage of an army officer. His features, thin and rather refined than forceful, were given an air of distinction by a white mustache and imperial. From the silk hat and frock coat with the ribbon of an order in the lapel to the tan gaiters and patent-leather shoes, he was dressed with fastidious nicety. In a club window of Pall Mall, he would have been a conspicuous ornament. In the dingy taproom of the Jolly Mermaid, he was startlingly incongruous.

The stranger had the grand manner, and it fitted him like a glove. He was not offensively self-important, but one knew him to be a personage who expected the world to show him deference. The barmaid, who was no dunce at reading human nature, bobbed a curtsy, and withheld the flippant persiflage which was wont to delight the nautical patrons of the place.

A moment later there entered the tavern a brisk young man with a sandy complexion and a roving eye, who was smartly, but a trifle showily, attired—a keen, up-to-snuff young man, who knew his way about. With a respectful bow he addressed the impressive elderly gentleman:

"I told him to meet us here, if your majesty pleases."

The apple-cheeked barmaid was threatened with a fainting spell at the intimation that royalty stood within the tavern walls, but rallied bravely to suggest, in a fluttered voice:

"There's a tidy little back room, your royal 'ighness, where you can set quiet and privatelike without common folks starin' and gawkin' at your worship."

"Thanks. I am rather tired after tramping about the docks," amiably replied the personage, in the pleasantly modulated accents of the cultivated Englishman. To the brisk young man he said:

"Let us sit down, and look over some of the memoranda while we are waiting."

"Certainly, your majesty," quoth the young man; and with this they passed into the little back room and closed the door. A beefy dock laborer ripped out an oath of amazement, and clattered from the bar to tell his friends that "one o' them blighted, bleedin' kings was in the Jolly Mermaid, large as life, so 'elp me!"

That brace of exiled mariners, Captain O'Shea and Johnny Kent, gazed blankly at each other, and, being seasoned persons of wide experience, tacitly agreed to wait and try to fathom the riddle. They had dealt with presidents of uneasy republics near the equator, and had violently interfered in affairs of state; but a real king, to be surveye4 at close range, was a fascinating novelty.

Johnny Kent had carefully adjusted his spectacles to his nose to survey this rare spectacle, and he now shoved them up beyond his bushy brows before he hoarsely confided to his comrade:

"I thought they went about disguised, Cap'n Mike, same as we run a blockade with no lights and the steamer's name boards covered up. Is he the real king, or is it just play actin'?"

"Europe is full of kings that have been kicked out of their berths," answered O'Shea. "Maybe this one is a has-been, but he doesn't look to me like a counterfeit. And I would not set him down for a lunatic out for a stroll with his keeper."

"He handles himself as sane as you or me," agreed the chief engineer. "But this is surely a dog-goned queer place to find a stray king."

"'Tis worth watching, Johnny. I'm on my beam ends for puzzlement."

Ere long there appeared from the street a bow-legged, barrel-chested, hairy-fisted man with a rolling gait, whom a landlubber might have classified as a rough and hearty British seaman accustomed to command vessels in the merchant trade. A captious critic would have, perhaps, surmised that he had been pickled in rum as well as in brine. Glancing at a card held between a grimy thumb and finger, he asked the barmaid:

"Is Baron Frederick Martin Strothers hereabouts, my girl? Captain Handy's compliments."

"If you mean the dashin' young man with the red weskit, 'e is settin' in yonder with his majesty."

"Right you are!" exclaimed Captain Handy. "My business with his majesty, but the baron has charge of the arrangements as minister of finance. A nipper of Scotch whisky, neat, miss, before I talk to 'em."

"What sort of a king is 'e, and what's his bloomin' handle?" she eagerly besought him. "Are you makin' gyme of me?"

The hearty British shipmaster looked inscrutable, tossed the whisky into his heated coppers, and slowly assured her:

"Women's curiosity is the fatal weakness of the sex, my dear. A king is a king wherever you find him. And my advice to you is not to go bragging about and telling all hands that his majesty has patronized the Jolly Mermaid."

He trudged to the rear room, hat in hand, and timidly knocked on the door. As it opened, the quick ear of Captain O'Shea heard the mysterious personage saying to the brisk young man:

"A steamer of the tonnage of this Tyneshire Glen is what I wish. If your investigation has satisfied you that she is thoroughly seaworthy, and in good repair, and Captain Handy also recommends her"

The door closed behind Captain Handy; and O'Shea, glancing in that direction, smiled cynically, and observed to Johnny Kent:

"Did you size him up? You know the kind. Every big port has them—broken shipmasters, disrated mates, beach combers that aren't fit to take a scow to sea." "Sure! They've borrowed money off me from Baltimore to Singapore. As long as they can find a decent suit of clothes and the price of a shave, they'll throw bluffs at anybody that will listen to 'em. This Captain Handy must have sighted an easy mark in the offing."

O'Shea pondered for a moment, and asked:

"Did ye hear mention of the Tyneshire Glen steamer just now? Do you happen to know the vessel? I can't place her."

Johnny Kent grunted as if he had sat upon a tack, and answered with heated emphasis:

"Maybe it's the old Tyneshire Glen that was carryin' cotton out of Savannah years ago. I went aboard to see her chief once, and her plates was rusted so thin that I could have thrown a wrench through 'em."

Captain Handy had left the, door of the back room unlatched, and a gusty draft of sea breeze blew it partly open. The watchful pair in the taproom had a glimpse of Captain Handy standing stolidly between his majesty and the minister of finance, and heard him huskily declaim:

"The Tyneshire Glen is a bargain at thirty thousand pounds—and you needn't take my word for it. Baron Strothers here has interviewed the brokers that have her for sale, and he knows the price they put on her. And they won't take a penny less."

"I have full confidence in the judgment of my minister of finance, with Captain Handy's expert opinion to assist him," easily replied his majesty.

"Most of my papers were lost at sea," hastily put in Captain Handy, as if to forestall an awkward question. "They were tied up in a packet, your royal 'ighness, when the Falls of Clyde steamer went down, and I saved the lives of forty-seven passengers, and was the last man to leave her when she foundered under my feet. The newspapers praised me so that a modest man 'u'd blush to repeat it."

"Baron Strothers has examined your record, so he informs me, and advises me that you are to be depended upon," was the warm assurance.

In the taproom, O'Shea chuckled skeptically, and said to Johnny Kent:

"'Tis likely enough he lost his papers, but I mistrust his version of the story. What kind of a flimflam is this, anyhow? The king and the minister of finance are discussing a rotten ship and a rotten skipper as if the both of them were to be taken seriously."

After more conversation which the listeners failed to catch, the trio in the back room ended the session, and prepared to leave the tavern. As they walked out past the bar, Captain Handy was arguing with awkward gestures, the elderly personage was listening courteously, and the brisk young man was alertly keeping an eye on both, as if he had an absorbing interest in the interview. In front of the tavern they parted, Captain Handy to turn in the direction of the East India Docks, the puzzling pair of notables to seek the railroad station.

Upon O'Shea and Johnny Kent there fell a prolonged spell of silence. Each was piecing theories together, and discarding them as unsatisfactory. They were uncommonly shrewd men of their kind, but in this instance conjecture was all adrift. Of one thing they were convinced: This royal visitation had not been an elaborate hoax, and the explanation of lunacy was finally and emphatically dismissed.

"'Tis no case of barnacles on the intellect," was the verdict of O'Shea, "barring the fact that he ought to have more sense than to listen to the palaver of a rascal like this Captain Handy. Why didn't we think to follow them up and see where they went?"

"I'm too short-winded to make a good sleuthhound, Cap'n Mike, and it ain't dignified for a man of my years."

"Well, then, who is this Captain Handy?" demanded O'Shea. "We'll try another tack."

He questioned the barmaid, who was disappointing.

"He never showed hisself in 'ere before," said she. "You're more likely to find out about 'im at the docks."

"Say, Cap'n Mike," exclaimed Johnny Kent, with puckered brow, "ain't there some kind of a book written about kings, their habits and their names, and the various breeds of 'em? And where you're most apt to find 'em? Do they generally run around loose?"

"I'm not personally acquainted with a whole lot of them, Johnny, but as a rule 'tis safe to bet they don't come wandering into sailors' taverns convoyed by the minister of finance."