"He was a gay, mad young dog, grandly careless of his largess, fearless as a lion's whelp, lithe and beautiful as a leopard, and mad, a trifle mad of the deviltries and whimsies that tickled in that fine brain of his. Look you, steward. Before we sailed in the Gloucester fishing-schooner, purchased by the doctor, and that was like a yacht and showed her heels to most yachts, he had me to his house to advise about personal equipment. We were overhauling in a gear-room, when suddenly he spoke:
"'I wonder how my lady will take my long absence. What say you?
Shall she go along?'
"And I had not known that he had any wife or lady. And I looked my surprise and incredulity.
"'Just that you do not believe I shall take her on the cruise,' he laughed, wickedly, madly, in my astonished face. 'Come, you shall meet her.'
"Straight to his bedroom and his bed he led me, and, turning down the covers, showed there to me, asleep as she had slept for many a thousand years, the mummy of a slender Egyptian maid.
"And she sailed with us on the long vain voyage to the South Seas and back again, and, steward, on my honour, I grew quite fond of the dear maid myself.
The Ancient Mariner gazed dreamily into his glass, and Dag Daughtry took advantage of the pause to ask:
"But the young doctor? How did he take the failure to find the treasure?"The Ancient Mariner's face lighted with joy.
"He called me a delectable old fraud, with his arm on my shoulder while he did it. Why, steward, I had come to love that young man like a splendid son. And with his arm on my shoulder, and I know there was more than mere kindness in it, he told me we had barely reached the River Plate when he discovered me. With laughter, and with more than one slap of his hand on my shoulder that was more caress than jollity, he pointed out the discrepancies in my tale (which I have since amended, steward, thanks to him, and amended well), and told me that the voyage had been a grand success, making him eternally my debtor.
"What could I do? I told him the truth. To him even did I tell my family name, and the shame I had saved it from by forswearing it.
"He put his arm on my shoulder, I tell you, and . . . "The Ancient Mariner ceased talking because of a huskiness in his throat, and a moisture from his eyes trickled down both cheeks.
Dag Daughtry pledged him silently, and in the draught from his glass he recovered himself.
"He told me that I should come and live with him, and, to his great lonely house he took me the very day we landed in Boston.
Also, he told me he would make arrangements with his lawyers--the idea tickled his fancy--'I shall adopt you,' he said. 'I shall adopt you along with Isthar'--Isthar was the little maid's name, the little mummy's name.
"Here was I, back in life, steward, and legally to be adopted.
But life is a fond betrayer. Eighteen hours afterward, in the morning, we found him dead in his bed, the little mummy maid beside him. Heart-failure, the burst of some blood-vessel in the brain--I never learned.
"I prayed and pleaded with them for the pair to be buried together. But they were a hard, cold, New England lot, his cousins and his aunts, and they presented Isthar to the museum, and me they gave a week to be quit of the house. I left in an hour, and they searched my small baggage before they would let me depart.
"I went to New York. It was the same game there, only that I had more money and could play it properly. It was the same in New Orleans, in Galveston. I came to California. This is my fifth voyage. I had a hard time getting these three interested, and spent all my little store of money before they signed the agreement. They were very mean. Advance any money to me! The very idea of it was preposterous. Though I bided my time, ran up a comfortable hotel bill, and, at the very last, ordered my own generous assortment of liquors and cigars and charged the bill to the schooner. Such a to-do! All three of them raged and all but tore their hair . . . and mime. They said it could not be. Ifell promptly sick. I told them they got on my nerves and made me sick. The more they raged, the sicker I got. Then they gave in.
As promptly I grew better. And here we are, out of water and heading soon most likely for the Marquesas to fill our barrels.
Then they will return and try for it again!""You think so, sir?"
"I shall remember even more important data, steward," the Ancient Mariner smiled. "Without doubt they will return. Oh, I know them well. They are meagre, narrow, grasping fools.""Fools! all fools! a ship of fools!" Dag Daughtry exulted;repeating what he had expressed in the hold, as he bored the last barrel, listened to the good water gurgling away into the bilge, and chuckled over his discovery of the Ancient Mariner on the same lay as his own.
