The Ebb-Tide | Page 6

helpfulness, they beat him between the shoulders; and when the poor
wretch lay back ghastly and spent after a paroxysm of coughing, they
would sometimes peer into his face, doubtfully exploring it for any
mark of life. There is no one but has some virtue: that of the clerk was
courage; and he would make haste to reassure them in a pleasantry not
always decent.
'I'm all right, pals,' he gasped once: 'this is the thing to strengthen the
muscles of the larynx.'
'Well, you take the cake!' cried the captain.
'O, I'm good plucked enough,' pursued the sufferer with a broken
utterance. 'But it do seem bloomin' hard to me, that I should be the only
party down with this form of vice, and the only one to do the funny
business. I think one of you other parties might wake up. Tell a fellow
something.'
'The trouble is we've nothing to tell, my son,' returned the captain.
'I'll tell you, if you like, what I was thinking,' said Herrick.
'Tell us anything,' said the clerk, 'I only want to be reminded that I ain't
dead.'
Herrick took up his parable, lying on his face and speaking slowly and
scarce above his breath, not like a man who has anything to say, but
like one talking against time.
'Well, I was thinking this,' he began: 'I was thinking I lay on Papeete
beach one night--all moon and squalls and fellows coughing--and I was
cold and hungry, and down in the mouth, and was about ninety years of
age, and had spent two hundred and twenty of them on Papeete beach.
And I was thinking I wished I had a ring to rub, or had a fairy
godmother, or could raise Beelzebub. And I was trying to remember
how you did it. I knew you made a ring of skulls, for I had seen that in
the Freischultz: and that you took off your coat and turned up your
sleeves, for I had seen Formes do that when he was playing Kaspar, and
you could see (by the way he went about it) it was a business he had
studied; and that you ought to have something to kick up a smoke and a
bad smell, I dare say a cigar might do, and that you ought to say the
Lord's Prayer backwards. Well, I wondered if I could do that; it seemed
rather a feat, you see. And then I wondered if I would say it forward,

and I thought I did. Well, no sooner had I got to WORLD WITHOUT
END, than I saw a man in a pariu, and with a mat under his arm, come
along the beach from the town. He was rather a hard-favoured old party,
and he limped and crippled, and all the time he kept coughing. At first I
didn't cotton to his looks, I thought, and then I got sorry for the old soul
because he coughed so hard. I remembered that we had some of that
cough mixture the American consul gave the captain for Hay. It never
did Hay a ha'porth of service, but I thought it might do the old
gentleman's business for him, and stood up. "Yorana!" says I.
"Yorana!" says he. "Look here," I said, "I've got some first-rate stuff in
a bottle; it'll fix your cough, savvy? Harry my and I'll measure you a
tablespoonful in the palm of my hand, for all our plate is at the
bankers." So I thought the old party came up, and the nearer he came,
the less I took to him. But I had passed my word, you see.'
'Wot is this bloomin' drivel?' interrupted the clerk. 'It's like the rot there
is in tracts.'
'It's a story; I used to tell them to the kids at home,' said Herrick. 'If it
bores you, I'll drop it.'
'O, cut along!' returned the sick man, irritably. 'It's better than nothing.'
'Well,' continued Herrick, 'I had no sooner given him the cough mixture
than he seemed to straighten up and change, and I saw he wasn't a
Tahitian after all, but some kind of Arab, and had a long beard on his
chin. "One good turn deserves another," says he. "I am a magician out
of the Arabian Nights, and this mat that I have under my arm is the
original carpet of Mohammed Ben Somebody-or-other. Say the word,
and you can have a cruise upon the carpet." "You don't mean to say this
is the Travelling Carpet?" I cried. "You bet I do," said he. "You've been
to America since last I read the Arabian Nights," said I, a little
suspicious. "I should think so," said he. "Been everywhere. A man with
a carpet like this isn't going to moulder