CHAPTER XIII
THE OLD SAILOR WITH THE WOODEN LEG
IT was only in the country—in the woods and sheltered fence corners—that the patches of snow still remained on this sixth day of April. In New York the sun shone warmly upon the sidewalks, washed clean by the shower of the night before, and the tiny patches of grass in the parks and squares were quite green again.
About the middle of the forenoon a man stumped along a street leading to what remains of the Battery park—a man dressed in a half uniform of navy blue, and with a face (where the beard did not hide the cuticle) as brown as a berry.
At first glance one would have pronounced this person to be a sailor, and have been correct in the surmise, too.
The man’s frame was of huge mold, with massive development of chest and limbs, and a head like a lion’s. But his bronzed cheeks were somewhat hollow, and his step halting, this latter not altogether owing to the fact that his right leg had been amputated at the knee and the deficiency supplied by an old fashioned wooden leg.
Still, despite his evident infirmity, the old seaman looked cheerfully out upon the world on this bright April morning, and pegged along the sidewalk and into the park with smiling good nature.
Not a beggar had accosted him during his walk down town without having a nickel tossed to him, and it was with vast contentment that the wooden legged sailor at length seated himself upon a bench, from which vantage point he could overlook the bay and its multitudinous shipping.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, sniffing the air which blew in from the sea, like a hungry dog. “This is life, this is! Thank heaven I’ve got away from them swabs of doctors at last. Another week at that ere hospital would ha’ been the death o’ me. Still, I reckon they meant well ’nough.”
He sat there for some time in cheerful silence, and drank in the exhilarating air, his pea cloth jacket thrown open to the breeze, baring the broad expanse of flannel shirt beneath.
“A few days o’ this’ll put me right on my feet,” he said, with delight, “better’n all the tonics the old sawbones ever invented. Lord! if I’d had this breeze a-blowin’ inter my winder up there to the hospital, I’d been out a fortnight ago.
“The old man ain’t dead yet. It was a pretty hard tug, I admit; but here I be!”
He slapped his leg with such vigor that a flock of sparrows flew up with sudden affright from the path; but this energetic gesture was taken in another sense by the group of urchins which had gathered near by to talk and fight (much after the manner of their feathered prototypes, by the way) over the morning’s sale of papers.
At the old man’s motion half a dozen of these sharp eyed little rascals broke away from the group, and ran shrieking toward him, wildly waving their few remaining wares in his face.
“’Ere you are, sir! Tribune, Sun, World!”
“Tribune,” said the old sailor, laughing heartily as though he saw something extremely ludicrous in their mistake.
“My last ’un, sir. Thankee!”
The successful Arab pocketed his money and went back to his friends, while the sailor slowly unfolded the sheet and took up the thread of his reflections again.
“Once I get my sea legs on,” he thought, fumbling in his pocket for a pair of huge, steel bowed spectacles, which he carefully wiped and placed astride his nose “once I get my sea legs on, I’ll take a trip up ter Rhode Island and see the cap’n’s boy, unless he turns up in answer to my letter.
“Poor lad! he’s doubtless heart broken by Cap’n Horace’s death, and won’t feel much like goin’ into this ’ere treasure huntin’ business; but for his own good I’ll have ter rouse him up. It would be what the cap’n would wish, I know.”
He let the paper lie idly on his knee a moment, and a mist rose in his eyes.
“Never mind if the old brig has gone to pieces before we get there,” he muttered. “I’ve got a little shot in the locker yet, an’ the boy shan’t come ter want. I’ll do my duty by him as though he was my own son, that I will!”
He picked up the paper again, and turned naturally to the shipping news, which he ran over carelessly, smiling the while. Finally his eye was attracted by something near the bottom of the column.
“Eh, what’s this?” he exclaimed. “What’s this about the Silver Swan?”
With great excitement he read the following news item, following each line of the text with his stumpy forefinger:
Captain Millington, of the English steamer Manitoba, which arrived here yesterday from Brazil, reports that he passed a very dangerous wreck in latitude 22:03, longitude 70:32. It was the hull of a brig, apparently in good condition, but with her masts snapped off close to the decks, and all her rigging carried away. The name on her stern was Silver Swan, Boston.
This is the same derelict reported by the steamer Montevideo at Savannah several weeks ago. According to Captain Millington, the wreck of the brig is a great menace to all vessels plying between this and South American ports, as its course seems to be right across the great highway followed by most of the steamship lines.
It will be remembered that the Silver Swan was wrecked over two months ago on Reef Eight, southwest of Cuba, grounding, according to the report of the survivors of her crew, upright on the rock. The captain of the Montevideo sighted her not far from the reef, from which she was doubtless loosened by the westerly gale of February 13th; but since that time she has floated some distance to the north and east, and if she follows the same tactics as many of her sister derelicts, she may zigzag across the course of the South American steamers for months.
The cruisers Kearsarge and Vesuvius are both lying in port at present, and it will be respectfully suggested to the Navy Department that one or both of those vessels be sent to destroy this and several others of the most dangerous derelicts now floating off our coast.
With this forcible and exceedingly salty ejaculation, the old sailor with the wooden leg dropped the newspaper to the walk, and his spectacles along with it, and springing up, trampled upon them both.
But in his great excitement he noticed neither the torn paper nor the ruined glasses. He stumped up and down the walk for several moments before he became calm enough to think coherently.
In fact, the blue-coated policeman on the corner had begun to eye him suspiciously.
“The Silver Swan afloat—a derelict!” he muttered. “This ’ere is a sitiwation I didn’t look for. An’ then, them blasted cruisers are liable to go down there and blow her into kingdom come any minute. The Silver Swan on Reef Eight was bad enough, but the Silver Swan afloat, at the mercy of the gales as well as other vessels, is worse!
“Now, what in creation’ll I do about it? I haven’t heard from the boy yet, and there’s little enough time as it is. Why, she might sink ’most any time with all them di’monds the cap’n told about aboard her!
“I’ll take a steamer to get down there ahead of them confounded iron pots” (by this disrespectful term did he designate Uncle Sam’s cruisers), “but who under the canopy’s got a steamer to charter?
“By the great horn spoon, I have it!” he exclaimed, after a moment’s thought. “Adoniram Pepper is just the fellow.”
With this declaration he jammed his hat on his head, and stumped off as rapidly as one good leg and one wooden one could carry him, toward the shipping merchant’s office on Water Street.