77. CHAPTER LXXVII.
I STUMBLED upon one curious character in the Island of
Mani. He became a sore annoyance to me in the course of time.
My first glimpse of him was in a sort of public room in the town of
Lahaina. He occupied a chair at the opposite side of the
apartment, and sat eyeing our party with interest for some minutes,
and listening as critically to what we were saying as if he fancied
we were talking to him and expecting him to reply. I thought it
very sociable in a stranger. Presently, in the course of
conversation, I made a statement bearing upon the subject under
discussion—and I made it with due modesty, for there was nothing
extraordinary about it, and it was only put forth in illustration of a
point at issue. I had barely finished when this person spoke out
with rapid utterance and feverish anxiety:
"Oh, that was certainly remarkable, after a fashion, but you
ought to have seen my chimney—you
ought to have seen my chimney,
sir! Smoke! I wish I may hang if—Mr. Jones, you remember that
chimney—you must remember
that chimney! No, no—I recollect, now, you warn't
living on this side of the island then. But I am telling you nothing
but the truth, and I wish I may never draw another breath if that
chimney didn't smoke so that the smoke actually
got caked in it and I had to
dig it out with a pickaxe! You may smile,
gentlemen, but the High Sheriff's got a hunk of it which I dug out
before his eyes, and so it's perfectly easy for you to go and
examine for yourselves."
The interruption broke up the conversation, which had
already begun to lag, and we presently hires some natives and an
out-rigger canoe or two, and went out to overlook a grand
surf-bathing contest.
Two weeks after this, while talking in a company, I looked up
and detected this same man boring through and through me with
his intense eye, and noted again his twitching muscles and his
feverish anxiety to speak. The moment I paused, he said:
"Beg your
pardon, sir, beg your pardon, but it can only be considered
remarkable when brought into strong outline by isolation. Sir,
contrasted with a circumstance which occurred in my own
experience, it instantly becomes commonplace. No, not that—for I
will not speak so discourteously of any experience in the career of
a stranger and a gentleman—but I
am obliged to
say that you could not, and you would not
ever again refer to this tree as a large one,
if you could behold, as I have, the great Yakmatack tree, in
the island of Ounaska, sea of Kamtchatka—a tree, sir, not one inch
less than four hundred and fifteen feet in solid diameter!—and I
wish I may die in a minute if it isn't so! Oh, you needn't look so
questioning, gentlemen; here's old Cap Saltmarsh can say whether
I know what I'm talking about or not. I showed him the tree."
Captain Saltmarsh—"Come, now,
cat your anchor, lad—you're heaving too taut. You
promised to show me
that stunner, and I walked more than eleven mile with
you through the cussedest jungle I ever
see, a hunting for it; but the tree you showed me finally
warn't as big around as a beer cask,
and you know
that your own self, Markiss."
"Hear the man talk! Of course the
tree was reduced that way, but didn't
I explain it?
Answer me, didn't I? Didn't I say I wished you could have
seen it when I first
saw it? When you got up on your ear and called me names,
and said I had brought you eleven miles to look at a sapling, didn't
I explain to you
that all the whale-ships in the North Seas had been
wooding off of it for more than twenty-seven years? And did you
s'pose the tree could last
for-ever, con-found it?
I
don't see why you want to keep back things that way, and try to
injure a person that's never done
you any
harm."
Somehow this man's presence made me uncomfortable, and I
was glad when a native arrived at that moment to say that
Muckawow, the most companionable and luxurious among the
rude war-chiefs of the Islands, desired us to come over and help
him enjoy a missionary whom he had found trespassing on his
grounds.
I think it was about ten days afterward that, as I finished a
statement I was making for the instruction of a group of friends
and acquaintances, and which made no pretence of being
extraordinary, a familiar voice chimed instantly in on the heels of
my last word, and said:
"But, my dear sir, there was
nothing remarkable about that horse,
or the circumstance either—nothing
in the world! I mean no sort of offence when I say it, sir, but you
really do not know anything whatever about speed. Bless your
heart, if you could only have seen my mare
Margaretta; there was
a beast!—there was
lightning for you! Trot! Trot is no name
for it—she flew! How she
could whirl
a buggy along! I started her out once, sir—Colonel Bilgewater,
you recollect that animal
perfectly well—I started her out about thirty
or thirty-five yards ahead of the awfullest storm I ever saw in my
life, and it chased us upwards of eighteen miles! It did, by the
everlasting hills! And I'm telling you nothing but the unvarnished
truth when I say that not one single drop of rain fell on me—not a
single
drop, sir! And I swear to it!
But my dog was a-swimming behind the
wagon all the way!"
For a week or two I stayed mostly within doors, for I seemed
to meet this person everywhere, and he had become utterly hateful
to me. But one evening I dropped in on Captain Perkins and his
friends, and we had a sociable time. About ten o'clock I chanced
to be talking about a merchant friend of mine, and without really
intending it, the remark slipped out that he was a little mean and
parsimonious about paying his workmen. Instantly, through the
steam of a hot whiskey punch on the opposite side of the room, a
remembered voice shot—and for a moment I trembled on the
imminent verge of profanity:
"Oh, my dear sir, really you expose yourself when you parade
that as a surprising circumstance.
Bless your heart and hide, you are
ignorant of the very A B C of meanness! ignorant as the unborn
babe! ignorant as unborn twins! You
don't know anything about it!
It is pitiable to see you, sir, a well-spoken and
prepossessing stranger, making such an enormous pow-wow here
about a subject concerning which your ignorance is perfectly
humiliating! Look me in the eye, if you please; look me in the eye.
John James Godfrey was the son of poor but honest parents in the
State of Mississippi—boyhood friend of mine—bosom comrade in
later years. Heaven rest his noble spirit, he is gone from us now.
John James Godfrey was hired by the Hayblossom Mining
Company in California to do some blasting for them—the
"Incorporated Company of Mean Men," the boys used to call it.
Well, one day he drilled a hole about four feet deep and put in an
awful blast of powder, and was standing over it ramming it down
with an iron crowbar about nine foot long, when the cussed thing
struck a spark and fired the powder, and scat! away John Godfrey
whizzed like a skyrocket, him and his crowbar! Well, sir, he kept
on going up in the air higher and higher, till he didn't look any
bigger than a boy—and he kept going on up higher and higher, till
he didn't look any bigger than a doll-and he kept on going up
higher and higher, till he didn't look any bigger than a little small
bee—and then
he went out of sight! Presently he came in sight again, looking
like a little small bee—and he came along down further and further,
till he looked as big as a doll again—and down further and further,
till he was as big as a boy again—and further and further, till he
was a full-sized man once more; and then him and his crowbar
came a wh-izzing down and lit right exactly in the same old tracks
and went to r-ramming down, and r-ramming down, and
r-ramming down again, just the same as if nothing had happened!
Now do you know, that poor cuss warn't gone only sixteen
minutes, and yet that Incorporated Company of Mean Men
DOCKED HIM FOR THE LOST TIME!"
I said I had the headache, and so excused myself and went
home. And on my diary I entered "another night spoiled" by this
offensive loafer. And a fervent curse was set down with it to keep
the item company. And the very next day I packed up, out of all
patience, and left the Island.
Almost from the very beginning, I regarded that man as a
liar.
The line of points represents an interval of years. At the end
of which time the opinion hazarded in that last sentence came to
be gratifyingly and remarkably endorsed, and by wholly
disinterested persons. The man Markiss was found one morning
hanging to a beam of his own bedroom (the doors and windows
securely fastened on the inside), dead; and on his breast was
pinned a paper in his own handwriting begging his friends to
suspect no innocent person of having any thing to do with his
death, for that it was the work of his own hands entirely. Yet the
jury brought in the astounding verdict that deceased came to his
death "by the hands of some person or persons unknown!" They
explained that the perfectly undeviating consistency of Markiss's
character for thirty years towered aloft as colossal and
indestructible testimony, that whatever statement he chose to make
was entitled to instant and unquestioning acceptance as
a lie. And they furthermore
stated their belief that he was not dead,
and instanced the
strong circumstantial evidence of his own word that
he
was dead—and beseeched the
coroner to delay the funeral as long as
possible, which was done. And so in the tropical climate of
Lahaina the coffin stood open for seven days, and then even the
loyal jury gave him up. But they sat on him again, and changed
their verdict to "suicide induced by mental aberration"—because,
said they, with penetration, "he said he was dead, and
he
was dead; and would he
have told the truth if he had been in his right
mind?
No, sir."