The Cruise of the Jasper B. | Page 3

derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate
your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due.
Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois
Benedictine College" within the 60 days following each date you
prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO? The Project gratefully accepts contributions in

money, time, scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts,
royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution you
can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association /
Illinois Benedictine College".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

THE CRUISE OF THE JASPER B.
BY DON MARQUIS

TO ALL THE COPYREADERS ON ALL THE NEWSPAPERS OF
AMERICA

CHAPTER I
A BRIGHT BLADE LEAPS FROM A RUSTY SCABBARD
On an evening in April, 191-, Clement J. Cleggett walked sedately into
the news room of the New York Enterprise with a drab-colored
walking-stick in his hand. He stood the cane in a corner, changed his
sober street coat for a more sober office jacket, adjusted a green
eyeshade below his primly brushed grayish hair, unostentatiously sat
down at the copy desk, and unobtrusively opened a drawer.
From the drawer he took a can of tobacco, a pipe, a pair of scissors, a
paste-pot and brush, a pile of copy paper, a penknife and three
half-lengths of lead pencil.
The can of tobacco was not remarkable. The pipe was not picturesque.
The scissors were the most ordinary of scissors. The copy paper was
quite undistinguished in appearance. The lead pencils had the most
untemperamental looking points.
Cleggett himself, as he filled and lighted the pipe, did it in the most
matter-of-fact sort of way. Then he remarked to the head of the copy

desk, in an average kind of voice:
"H'lo, Jim."
"H'lo, Clegg," said Jim, without looking up. "Might as well begin on
this bunch of early copy, I guess."
For more than ten years Cleggett had done the same thing at the same
time in the same manner, six nights of the week.
What he did on the seventh night no one ever thought to inquire. If any
member of the Enterprise staff had speculated about it at all he would
have assumed that Cleggett spent that seventh evening in some way
essentially commonplace, sober, unemotional, quiet, colorless, dull and
Brooklynitish.
Cleggett lived in Brooklyn. The superficial observer might have said
that Cleggett and Brooklyn were made for each other.
The superficial observer! How many there are of him! And how much
he misses! He misses, in fact, everything.
At two o'clock in the morning a telegraph operator approached the copy
desk and handed Cleggett a sheet of yellow paper, with the remark:
"Cleggett--personal wire."
It was a night letter, and glancing at the signature Cleggett saw that it
was from his brother who lived in Boston. It ran:
Uncle Tom died yesterday. Don't faint now. He splits bulk fortune
between you and me. Lawyers figure nearly $500,000 each. Mostly
easily negotiable securities. New will made month ago while sore at
president temperance outfit. Blood thicker than Apollinaris after all.
Poor Uncle Tom.
Edward.
Despite Edward's thoughtful warning, Cleggett did nearly faint.

Nothing could have been less expected. Uncle Tom was an irascible
prohibitionist, and one of the most deliberately disobliging men on
earth. Cleggett and his brother had long ceased to expect anything from
him. For twenty years it had been thoroughly understood that Uncle
Tom would leave his entire estate to a temperance society. Cleggett had
ceased to think of Uncle Tom as a possible factor in his life. He did not
doubt that Uncle Tom had changed the will to gain some point with the
officials of the temperance society, intending to change it once again
after he had been deferred to, cajoled, and flattered enough to placate
his vanity. But death had stepped in just in time to disinherit the
enemies of the Demon Rum.
Cleggett read the wire through twice, and then folded it and put it into
his pocket. He rose and walked toward the managing editor's room. As
he stepped across the floor there was a little dancing light in his eyes,
there was a faint smile upon his lips, that were quite foreign to the staid
and sober Cleggett that the world knew. He was quiet, but he was
almost jaunty, too; he felt a little drunk, and enjoyed the feeling.
He opened the managing editor's door with more assurance than he had
ever displayed before. The managing editor, a pompous, tall, thin man
with a drooping frosty mustache, and cold gray eyes in a cold gray face
that somehow reminded one of the visage