The Valley of the Giants | Page 4

to load
a cargo of clear redwood for foreign delivery. She was a big Bath-built

clipper, and her master a lusty down-Easter, a widower with one
daughter who had come with him around the Horn. John Cardigan saw
this girl come up on the quarter-deck and stand by with a heaving-line
in her hand; calmly she fixed her glance upon him, and as the ship was
shunted in closer to the dock, she made the cast to Cardigan. He caught
the light heaving-line, hauled in the heavy Manila stern-line to which it
was attached, and slipped the loop of the mooring-cable over the
dolphin at the end of the dock.
"Some men wanted aft here to take up the slack of the stern-line on the
windlass, sir," he shouted to the skipper, who was walking around on
top of the house. "That girl can't haul her in alone."
"Can't. I'm short-handed," the skipper replied. "Jump aboard and help
her."
Cardigan made a long leap from the dock to the ship's rail, balanced
there lightly a moment, and sprang to the deck. He passed the bight of
the stern-line in a triple loop around the drum of the windlass, and
without awaiting his instructions, the girl grasped the slack of the line
and prepared to walk away with it as the rope paid in on the windlass.
Cardigan inserted a belaying-pin in the windlass, paused and looked at
the girl. "Raise a chantey," he suggested. Instantly she lifted a sweet
contralto in that rollicking old ballad of the sea--"Blow the Men
Down."
For tinkers and tailors and lawyers and all, Way! Aye! Blow the men
down! They ship for real sailors aboard the Black Ball, Give me some
time to blow the men down.
Round the windlass Cardigan walked, steadily and easily, and the girl's
eyes widened in wonder as he did the work of three powerful men.
When the ship had been warped in and the slack of the line made fast
on the bitts, she said:
"Please run for'd and help my father with the bow-lines. You're worth
three foremast hands. Indeed, I didn't expect to see a sailor on this
dock."

"I had to come around the Horn to get here, Miss," he explained, "and
when a man hasn't money to pay for his passage, he needs must work
it."
"I'm the second mate," she explained. "We had a succession of gales
from the Falklands to the Evangelistas, and there the mate got her in
irons and she took three big ones over the taffrail and cost us eight men.
Working short-handed, we couldn't get any canvas on her to speak
of--long voyage, you know, and the rest of the crew got scurvy."
"You're a brave girl," he told her.
"And you're a first-class A. B.," she replied. "If you're looking for a
berth, my father will be glad to ship you."
"Sorry, but I can't go," he called as he turned toward the companion
ladder. "I'm Cardigan, and I own this sawmill and must stay here and
look after it."
There was a light, exultant feeling in his middle-aged heart as he
scampered along the deck. The girl had wonderful dark auburn hair and
brown eyes, with a milk-white skin that sun and wind had sought in
vain to blemish. And for all her girlhood she was a woman--bred from
a race (his own people) to whom danger and despair merely furnished a
tonic for their courage. What a mate for a man! And she had looked at
him pridefully.
They were married before the ship was loaded, and on a knoll of the
logged-over lands back of the town and commanding a view of the bay,
with the dark-forested hills in back and the little second-growth
redwoods flourishing in the front yard, he built her the finest home in
Sequoia. He had reserved this building-site in a vague hope that some
day he might utilize it for this very purpose, and here he spent with her
three wonderfully happy years. Here his son Bryce was born, and here,
two days later, the new-made mother made the supreme sacrifice of
maternity.
For half a day following the destruction of his Eden John Cardigan sat

dumbly beside his wife, his great, hard hand caressing the auburn head
whose every thought for three years had been his happiness and
comfort. Then the doctor came to him and mentioned the matter of
funeral arrangements.
Cardigan looked up at him blankly. "Funeral arrangements?" he
murmured. "Funeral arrangements?" He passed his gnarled hand over
his leonine head. "Ah, yes, I suppose so. I shall attend to it."
He rose and left the house, walking with bowed head out of Sequoia,
up the abandoned and decaying skid-road through the second-growth
redwoods to the dark green blur