The Belted Seas | Page 7

on Clyde's book, were, "Robert Sadler, James Hagan, Stephen
Todd, Julius R. Craney, Abimelech Dalrimple, Thomas Buckingham."
Kid Sadler, as he was known there and then and since, was a powerful
man, bony and tall, with a scrawny throat, ragged, dangling moustache,
big hands, little wrinkles around his eyes, and a hoarse voice. I
wouldn't go so far as to say I could give you his character, for I never
made it out; yet I'd say he was given to sentiment, and to turning out
poetry like a corn-shucker, and singing it to misfit and uneducated
tunes, and given to joyfulness and depression by turns, and to
misleading his fellow-man when he was joyful, and suffering remorse
for it afterward pretty regular, taking turns, like fever and chills; which
qualities, when you take them apart, don't seem likely to fit together
again, and I'm not saying they did fit in Sadler. They appeared to me to
project over the edges. I never made him out.
Hagan I never knew to be called any name but "Irish," or "Little Irish,"
except by Clyde himself. He was small and chunky in build, and
nervous in his mind, and had red fuzzy hair that stuck up around his
head like an aureole. Generally silent he was, except when excited, and
seemed even then to be settled to his place in this world, which was to
be Sadler's heeler. He followed Sadler all his after days, so far as I
know, same as Stevey Todd did me. I don't know why, but I'd say as to
Irish, that he was a man without much stiffness or stay-by, if left to
himself, whereas Sadler was one that would rather be in trouble than
not, if he had the choice.
As to Craney, I'll say this. When Clyde and I were coming out of the
inlet, he gave me a hundred and forty dollars, and he says,
"Look out for Craney," but I had no notion what he meant by it. Now,
soon after we landed in Colon, Craney and Abe Dalrimple got a chance

for a passage to New York, and my hundred and forty went off
somewhere about the same time. Sadler, Irish, nor Stevey Todd didn't
take it, for they didn't have it, not to speak of other reasons. Abe's given
to wandering in his mind, but he don't wander that way either. Now,
there were thieves enough in Colon, and Craney never owned to it, but
I'll say he showed a weakness afterward for putting cash into my pocket,
that I shouldn't have said was natural to him without further reasons.
But supposing he'd been there before, he surely put more back in the
end than he ever took out. On the other hand, if I'd had the money in
Colon I might have gone back to the Windwards and to the triangle of
three trees, with Sadler, Irish, and Stevey Todd, and so back to
Greenough and Madge Pemberton, and been a hotel-keeper maybe,
which is a good trade in Greenough. Craney was ambitious and
enterprising. He had, as you might say, soaring ideas, and he'd been a
valuable man to Clyde for the complicated schemes he was always
setting up. He was a medium-sized man, with light hair and eyebrows,
and a yellowish face, and a frame lean, though sinewy, and had only
one good eye, the other pale like a fish's. His business eye always
looked like it was boring a hole in some ingenious idea. As an arguer
on the Hebe Maitland his style was airy and gorgeous, contrary to the
style of Stevey Todd, who was a cautious arguer, and gingerly.
Craney was about forty years old at the time of the _Hebe Maitland's_
loss, and Sadler about the same.
There were four of us then, left at Colon, after Craney and Abe had
gone. Pretty soon we were badly off. We couldn't seem to get berths,
and not much to eat. One day I up and says:
"I'm going across the Isthmus. Who else?" and Sadler says, "One of
'em's me," and we all went, footing thirty miles the first day, and slept
among the rocks on a hillside.
The fourth day we went down the watershed to the town of Panama.
There we found a ship ready in port that was short of hands, and
shipped on her to go round the Horn. She was named the _Helen Mar_.
* * * * *

Captain Buckingham paused to fill his pipe again, and Stevey Todd
said:
"'Intent to deceive and deception pursuant,' was my words, and I never
give in," and Uncle Abimelech piped up to a crazy tune:
"You can arguy here and arguy there, But them that dangles in the air
They surely was mistook