CHAPTER XV.
A CHEAP BOARDING-HOUSE.
Chase had waited and longed for the hour of his liberation, and now that it had arrived, he did not enjoy it as he had thought he would. He looked at the ship which had been his home for so many long months, then at the captain, who had won his heart by the kindness and consideration with which he had always treated him, and had half a mind to turn back and ask to be received again as one of the crew. But there was that long voyage that the Petrel had yet to make, and Chase had grown heartily weary of the blue water and hard ship’s fare. The vessel was going, in the first place, back to the Sandwich Islands, then to China, and home by the way of the Cape of Good Hope; and no one on board of her knew just how long it would take to make the voyage. Before it was half over, Chase hoped to be among friends once more.
With a long-drawn sigh the boy hurried away, and so very much engrossed was he with his thoughts that he missed seeing something that would have astonished him beyond measure, and might have been the means of saving him from many hardships and privations that he afterward suffered. During the time he had been on board the Petrel, Uncle Dick Gaylord’s schooner had been launched, and had made her voyage around the Horn to San Francisco. She was now lying at her anchorage in the harbor, and she attracted Chase’s attention, just as she attracted the notice of everybody, sailor or landsman, who passed that way. He did not look at her, however, until after he had passed her stern, on which were painted her name and the name of the port to which she belonged—“Stranger: Bellville.”
How Chase’s heart would have throbbed could he have seen those two words! He knew nothing of the extended tour his friends had undertaken, for the Club themselves had not known of it, until that memorable Christmas morning when Uncle Dick revealed to them the secret to which he had so often alluded. Chase never dreamed that that little vessel had brought Walter and the rest to that part of the world, and that she was waiting there until they should return from their trip over the mountains. The man in blue, who was leaning over her rail, looking at him as he passed, could have told him all about it, if Chase had known enough to ask him; but the boy only just glanced at him, ran his eye over the schooner, said to himself that she was a beautiful little craft, and undoubtedly a “trotter,” and then throwing his bundle down beside a warehouse, seated himself on it to think over his situation, and decide upon his future movements; for, as yet, he had not been able to make up his mind what he ought to do, although he had been constantly turning the matter over in his mind ever since he learned that he was to be discharged at San Francisco. He must make up his mind to something before he wrote to his father, so that he could tell him just what he intended to do, and Mr. Chase might know where to send assistance or meet him in case of necessity. But the longer he pondered the matter, the more undecided he became; and he finally resolved to begin the letter, hoping that before it was completed something would suggest itself to him.
Having come to this determination, Chase shouldered his bundle and hurried away again. He went up one street and down another, and finally, as he was passing along, glanced through an open door into what proved to be the reading-room of a hotel. There were several gentlemen in the room, some absorbed in their papers, others engaged in writing, and the long table was abundantly supplied with pens, ink and note-paper. Here was as good a place as he could find, Chase thought; so he entered without ceremony, deposited his bundle in one corner, and drew a chair up to the table. His entrance attracted the attention of several gentlemen, who looked at him in surprise, and one of them, after giving him a cold, impudent stare, got up and moved farther away from him.
“Suit yourself, my dear fellow,” thought Chase. “Your room is as good as your company. I wonder if strangers are so unwelcome in this country that you feel called upon to insult every one you meet!”
He drew a sheet of paper toward him, picked up a pen and was about to dip it in the ink, when a dapper little clerk, with his hair parted in the middle, came up and slapped him on the shoulder.
“There is a sailor’s boarding-house around the corner, two streets below here,” said he, indicating the direction with the little finger of his left hand, which bore a large seal-ring.
“Is there?” said Chase. “Well, I am not looking for a sailor’s boarding-house just now. I simply wish to write a letter.”
“But you can’t do it here,” said the clerk, taking the pen from the boy’s fingers. “None but gentlemen stop here. This is a first-class hotel.”
“O, it is, is it?” exclaimed Chase, rising and picking up his bundle. “Then I should think the proprietors would employ first-class people for their servants.”
Almost too angry to speak plainly, Chase made the best of his way to the street. This little incident reminded him of something of which he had always been aware, but which he had never expected to have brought home to him in this way, that distinctions exist on shore as well as on ship-board. The clothing he wore was against him. That hotel was for gentlemen only; and as a sailor is not supposed to be a gentleman, he could not stop there even long enough to write a letter to his father.
“Perhaps it serves me just right. I have been too much in the habit of judging people by their clothes, but I will never do it again,” thought Chase, who now saw how unjust were the conclusions that might be drawn by measuring men and boys by such a standard. “I wonder if that clerk would have any greater respect for me if he knew that my father could buy him and his hotel! By the way——”
Here Chase stopped and looked down at the ground a moment in a brown study, and then turned and slowly retraced his steps. Might it not be a good plan, after all, he asked himself, to take the clerk’s advice and go to the sailor’s boarding-house? It would be sheer folly for him to attempt the journey across the plains without any money in his pocket, and the best thing he could do would be to procure a cheap boarding-place, and stay there until he could receive assistance from home. He would write for money at once, and while it was coming he could find something to do that would bring him enough to pay his board. This was the best idea that had yet suggested itself to him, and Chase resolved to act upon it.
“Around the corner, two streets below,” he thought, recalling the clerk’s words, and glancing in at the reading-room as he passed. “I’ll make it my business to come back here in a few days—just as soon as I can get some shore-clothes—and I’ll see if that fellow will raise any objections to me then.”
Chase easily found the house of which he was in search, for its location was pointed out by a weather-beaten sign, bearing a picture that might once have represented a frigate under full sail; but he was not very well pleased with it after he found it. It was not as neat as he expected to see it. Like the sign over the sidewalk, it was dingy and weather-stained, and some of the frosted panes in the windows were broken out, their places being supplied by rough boards and thick brown wrapping-paper, which were tacked over the holes. The house looked as though it had passed through a battle, as indeed it had, several of them; and if Chase had been there the night before, he would have seen the police make a raid upon it in force. While he stood undecided whether to enter or look further for lodgings, the door opened, and a rough-looking man in his shirt-sleeves appeared on the threshold. He had seen Chase through the window.
“Why, Jack, how de do?” he exclaimed, seizing the boy’s hand and giving it a cordial grip and shake. “When did your ship arrive? Step right into the house. I was looking for you and you were looking for me, I know. All the boys know where to come to get plenty to eat and drink.”
Chase was surprised at this greeting. The man acted and talked as if he had seen him before. Without saying a word he allowed himself to be led into the house, surrendered his bundle when the landlord offered to take it from his hand, and seated himself in a chair pointed out to him.
Before the man addressed him again, Chase had a few moments’ leisure in which to take a rapid survey of his surroundings. He saw enough in that time to make him wish that he had never come in there. The room was dirty in the extreme; the walls and the ceiling, the former adorned with cheap prints representing engagements at sea, were of a dingy brown color—made so, no doubt, by tobacco-smoke; the floor was covered with sawdust and littered with cigar-stumps, and a man dressed in the garb of a sailor was nodding in one corner. One end of the room was occupied by a bar, behind which the landlord was stowing away the bundle Chase had given him. Having done this, he placed a glass on the counter and gave the boy a friendly wink, the meaning of which the latter plainly understood.
“No, sir,” said he, emphatically.
“Temperance?” asked the man.
“The worst kind,” replied Chase.
“Stick to it. You’ll be a captain some day.”
“I think not,” returned the boy; “I have had enough of sailoring already, and I’ll never put my foot on a ship again as one of the crew. I will carry a hod on shore first.”
“Ah! ran away from home, did you?”
“No, I did not. I shipped aboard the Petrel in Cuba, supposing that she was bound for the States; but she took me to the Sandwich Islands and then brought me here. I want to go home by the easiest and quickest route I can find, and I shall start as soon as I receive money from my father.”
“You ain’t strapped, be you?”
“Not quite. I want to write a letter to my father at once,” continued Chase. “I shall hear from him in ten days or two weeks, and, in the meantime, I want some cheap place to stay.”
“Well, you’re in it now. You couldn’t find a better place in Fr’isco. How much be you going to ask your father for?”
“I suppose it will take considerable money to buy me some shore-clothes and pay my railroad, stage and steamboat fare all the way home,” said Chase, rather surprised at the question—“two hundred dollars, perhaps.”
“Every cent of it, and more,” said the man, slapping his hand on the counter. “Travelling is high, I can tell you. Is the old man rich?”
“He’s got some money,” answered Chase, who wondered how the man could tell that it would take more than two hundred dollars to pay his fare home when he did not know where he lived.
“Then ask him for three hundred. You’ll need it all, and you can stay here till it comes. I won’t charge you a cent, either. But, I say——”
Here the man came out from behind the counter, drew a chair up by Chase’s side, and slapping him on the knee, said, in a confidential tone:
“I say, you’d best leave the money you’ve got in my hands, as a sort of security, you know. I’ll take care of it for you. There’s some pretty rough fellows comes around here sometimes, and they wouldn’t mind taking it away from you, if they knew you had it. Eh?”
“How much do you charge a day for boarding and lodging?”
“A dollar.”
“If I pay you every day as long as I stay here, won’t that satisfy you?”
“No, it won’t. You see, if there’s any robbing and stealing done, I shall be blamed for it, because I’m sorter responsible for you while you are here.”
“You needn’t be. I can take care of myself. Besides, I may conclude not to stay with you, you know. I shall probably find some place I like better,” said the boy, glancing about the room.
“O, you’ll stay, I’ll bet you on that,” said the landlord, with a laugh and a look that Chase did not like.
“I don’t think you will compel me to stay against my will,” said the boy, rising to his feet. “I have no desire to stop in a house frequented by men who do ‘robbing and stealing.’ I think I can find more agreeable quarters. At any rate, I will look around a little before I decide. I’ll trouble you for my bundle.”
“And I’ll trouble you to sit down,” said the man, pushing him back into his chair. “You needn’t think you’re going to go out on the street to carry tales to the police about my house.”
“I have no intention of doing anything of the kind, for I don’t know anything about your hotel, and I don’t want to,” said Chase, trying hard to keep up a bold front, although his heart sank within him.
The boy had been in the house scarcely ten minutes, and he began to see that he had got himself into trouble by coming there. He was in one of those low sailor boarding-houses of which he had heard and read so much, kept by a man known as a “landshark,” who, while he pretended to make a business of feeding and sheltering seafaring men, gained the principal part of his living by robbing them. Those who came into his house with full pockets, never took a cent out with them. Probably his cupidity had been excited by the mention of the large amount that Chase expected his father to send him immediately upon the receipt of his letter. If he could keep the boy there until the money arrived, Chase would never see a cent of it. He would retain it all himself, and wind up the business by shipping his lodger off on some vessel, pocketing his advance, which would amount to twenty or fifty dollars more, according to the length of the voyage for which he was shipped. Chase had heard much of landsharks from the sailors on board the Petrel, and he understood the situation perfectly, but he was at a loss how to get out of it. It would be folly to irritate the man, so he tried to appease him.
“There’s no use in getting angry over it,” said he. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to hand out your money, and let me take care of it for you,” said the landlord.
“There it is,” said Chase, producing the five-dollar bill.
“This ain’t no account. We use gold in this country. Where’s the rest? Better let me have it all, because I’m responsible, you know.”
“You’ve got it all now. I haven’t another cent.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Then you had better sound me,” said Chase. “My wages amounted to only seventy-five dollars, and the articles I drew from the slop-chest used them all up.”
“Well, you’re a nice lad to come ashore after a long voyage, ain’t you now?” said the landlord, who did not try to conceal his disgust.
“I am not worth robbing, am I?” said Chase, to himself.
“I believe you’re a deserter,” continued the landlord, “else you’d have more money.”
“I couldn’t very well have deserted in broad daylight with a bundle over my shoulder,” said Chase. “And besides, there’s my certificate of discharge.”
“That may be all right, and then again it may not,” said the landlord, holding the document upside down while he looked at it. “There’s a law that governs us boarding-house keepers, and you must stay here till I find out whether or not you are all right.”
“Very good,” replied the boy, who knew that he could not help himself. “Send somebody down to the Petrel with that discharge, and if Captain Pratt doesn’t say it is correct, I am willing to go back.”
“Perhaps he’ll put you in jail. That’s what they do with deserters sometimes.”
“I’ll risk it. Now, if you will furnish me with writing materials, I’ll write that letter. The sooner that money gets here, the better it will suit me.”
“Will the old man be sure and send it?”
“Of course he will.”
“Do you know anybody here in Fr’isco?”
“Not a soul.”
“Then you had better tell him to send the money to me—John McKay is my name—because you can’t get it, being a stranger. You’ll need somebody to prove who you be.”
“Couldn’t you do that?”
“Well, no; I couldn’t. I don’t know you from a side of sole leather. I never seen you before. If it is sent to me I can get it easy enough, no matter whether it comes by check or express.”
“And then you can hand it over to me?”
“Of course, and I will, too—every cent. I’m honest.”
“O, I don’t doubt it,” said Chase. “You look honest.”
“Well, I’ll go and get the pen, ink and paper for you, and then I’ll show you to a room up-stairs, where you’ll be quiet and peaceable like, and there won’t be nobody to bother you.”
“I can write the letter down here just as well,” said Chase, who was afraid that if he went up-stairs he might not be allowed to come down again very soon, “and then I can take it to the post-office myself.”
“But I don’t want you to write it down here, because there’s always fellows coming in. When you get it writ, I can send it to the office for you. Don’t forget my name—John McKay.”
“I won’t,” said Chase, rising to his feet. He executed this movement with the determination of making a bold strike for his freedom. The landlord was moving toward the counter, and Chase stood ready for a spring, intending, as soon as he went behind it, to dart for the door and run out into the street. But the man acted as if he suspected his design, for he walked straight to the door, locked it and put the key into his pocket.
“That’s just to keep everybody out till I come back,” said he, by way of explanation.
The landlord then went behind his counter, and after overhauling the contents of a drawer, found the writing materials and a stamped envelope. Nodding to Chase to follow, he led the way out of the barroom, up two flights of uncarpeted stairs, along a narrow, winding hall, and finally opened a door which led into a room so dark that Chase could not see a single thing in it. There were windows in it, however, for little streaks of light came in through what appeared to be closed blinds.
“Can’t you give me a better room than this?” asked Chase, with an involuntary shudder. “I can’t see to write in here.”
“You can after a while,” said the landlord. “It ain’t so dark as it looks at first sight. Now, how long before I shall come back?”
“O, give me an hour. I’ve got a good deal to say, and besides it takes me a long time to write a letter.”
The man deposited the writing materials on a rough table in one corner of the room, and then went out, closing the door after him, and turning a key in the lock as he did so. Chase heard it and knew that he was a prisoner.