Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
An Adventure Story
1913
I. Missionary and Red-Headed Beggar
II. Red-Headed Beggar and Missionary
III. The Spy and the Dead Boatswain
IV. I Go Aboard the Kut Sang
V. The Dead Man in the Passage
VI. The Red-Headed Man Makes an Accusation
VII. I Turn Spy Myself
VIII. Mr. Harris Has a Few Ideas
IX. A Fight in the Dark
X. The Devil's Admiral
XI. A Council of War
XII. The Battle on the Bridge
XIII. We Plan an Expedition
XIV. The Pursuit Ashore
XV. Two Thieves and a Fight
XVI. The Gold and the Pirates
XVII. The Art of Thirkle
XVIII. Big Stakes in a Big Game
XIX. "One Man Less in the Forecastle Mess"
XX. The Last
Captain Riggs had a trunk full of old logbooks, and he said any of themwould make a better story than the Kut Sang. The truth of it was, hedidn't want me to write this story. There were things he didn't wish tosee in type, perhaps because he feared to read about himself and what hadhappened in the old steamer in the China Sea.
"Folks don't care nothing about cargo-boats," he would say, taking hispipe out of his mouth and shaking his head gravely, whenever I hintedthat I would like to tell of our adventure of the Kut Sang. "They wantyarns of them floating hotels called liners, with palm-gardens in 'em andbands playing at their meals and games and so on going from eight bellsto the bos'n's watch.
"It was mostly fighting in the Kut Sang, and the mess you and me andpoor Harris and the black boy there got into wouldn't be just the quietsort of reading folks want these days. It was all over in a night and aday, anyway—look at them Northern Spy apples, Mr. Trenholm!"
He wanted to forget the Kut Sang and the awful night we had in her. Heimagined he didn't figure to advantage in the story, and he winced whenI mentioned certain events, although I always insisted that he was thebravest man among us, having a better realization of the odds against us.Those who have faced danger know it takes a brave man to admit that he isbeaten, and still keep up the fight.
We all have better memories for our brave moments than for the fear whichthreatened for a time to prove us cowards. The man who has faced deathand says he was not afraid is either a fool or a liar; and, if only aliar, still a fool for telling himself that which he knows to be a lie.The bravery of the seaman is that he fears the sea and knows itsruthlessness and its ultimate victory, and accepts it as a part of hisday's work. This is a sea-story.
Captain Riggs had log-book stories that were good, and they might haveserved him for a volume of marine memoirs. But I was with him whenwe freighted the Kut Sang with adventure and sailed out of Manila, sohis musty records of rescues and wrecks lacked life for me. In the oldlogbooks I found no men to compare with the Rev. Luther Meeker; orPetrak, the little red-headed beggar; or Long Jim or Buckrow or Thirkle.I never found in their pages a cabin-boy l