My Friend The Murderer | Page 5

me that I knew something about that cach��, and I felt like laughing; but he was watching me, and it struck me that he had a nasty, vindictive kind of mind.
"I'm going up on the bridge," I said, for he was not a man whose acquaintance I cared much about making.
He wouldn't hear of my leaving him, though. "We're both miners," he says, "and we're pals for the voyage. Come down to the bar. I'm not too poor to shout."
I couldn't refuse him well, and we went down together; and that was the beginning of the trouble. What harm was I doing any one on the ship? All I asked for was a quiet life, leaving others alone and getting left alone myself. No man could ask fairer than that. And now just you listen to what came of it.
We were passing the front of the ladies' cabin, on our way to the saloon, when out comes a servant lass--a freckled currency she-devil--with a baby in her arms. We were brushing past her, when she gave a scream like a railway whistle, and nearly dropped the kid. My nerves gave a sort of a jump when I heard that scream, but I turned and begged her pardon, letting on that I thought I might have trod on her foot. I knew the game was up, though, when I saw her white face, and her leaning against the door and pointing.
"It's him!" she cried; "it's him! I saw him in the court-house. Oh, don't let him hurt the baby!"
"Who is it?" asked the steward and half a dozen others in a breath.
"It's him--Maloney--Maloney, the murderer--oh, take him away--take him away!"
I don't rightly remember what happened just at that moment. The furniture and me seemed to get kind of mixed, and there was cursing, and smashing, and some one shouting for his gold, and a general stamping round. When I got steadied a bit, I found somebody's hand in my mouth. From what I gathered afterward, I concluded that it belonged to that same little man with the vicious way of talking. He got some of it out again, but that was because the others were choking me. A poor chap can get no fair play in this world when once he is down--still, I think he will remember me till the day of his death--longer, I hope.
They dragged me out on to the poop and held a damned court-martial--on me, mind you; me, that had thrown over my pals in order to serve them. What were they to do with me? Some said this, some said that; but it ended by the captain deciding to send me ashore. The ship stopped, they lowered a boat, and I was hoisted in, the whole gang of them hooting at me from over the bulwarks, I saw the man I spoke of tying up his hand, though, and I felt that things might be worse.
I changed my opinion before we got to the land. I had reckoned on the shore being deserted, and that I might make my way inland; but the ship had stopped too near the Heads, and a dozen beach-combers and such like had come down to the water's edge and were staring at us, wondering what the boat was after. When we got to the edge of the surf the cockswain hailed them, and after singing out who I was, he and his men threw me into the water. You may well look surprised--neck and crop into ten feet of water, with sharks as thick as green parrots in the bush, and I heard them laughing as I floundered to the shore.
I soon saw it was a worse job than ever. As I came scrambling out through the weeds, I was collared by a big chap with a velveteen coat, and half a dozen others got round me and held me fast. Most of them looked simple fellows enough, and I was not afraid of them; but there was one in a cabbage-tree hat that had a very nasty expression on his face, and the big man seemed to be chummy with him.
They dragged me up the beach, and then they let go their hold of me and stood round in a circle.
"Well, mate," says the man with the hat, "we've been looking out for you some time in these parts."
"And very good of you, too," I answers.
"None of your jaw," says he. "Come, boys, what shall it be--hanging, drowning, or shooting? Look sharp!"
This looked a bit too like business. "No, you don't!" I said. "I've got government protection, and it'll be murder."
"That's what they call it," answered the one in the velveteen coat, as cheery as a piping crow.
"And you're going to murder me for being a ranger?"
"Ranger be