The Dreamers: A Club, John Kendrick Bangs [books to read for beginners .txt] 📗
- Author: John Kendrick Bangs
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But to return to my despatch—which [172]from this point must disregard space and move quickly. Passing Cape Bolinao, we soon reached Subig Bay, fifty miles from Manila. Recognizing the cape by the crop of hemp on its brow, I rang up the Boston and the Concord.
“Search Subig Bay,” I ordered.
“Who’s this?” came the answer from the other end.
“Never mind who I am,” said I. “Search Subig Bay for Spaniards.”
“Hello!” said the Boston.
“Who the deuce are you?” cried the Concord.
“I’m seventeen-five-six,” I replied, with some sarcasm, for that was not my number.
“I want sixteen-two-one,” retorted the Boston.
“Ring off,” said the Concord. “What do you mean by giving me seventeen-five-six?”
“Hello, Boston and Concord,” I put in in commanding tones. “I’m Dewey.”
This is the only false statement I ever[173] made, but it was in the interests of my country, and my reply was electrical in its effect. The Boston immediately blew off steam, and the Concord sounded all hands to quarters.
“What do you want, Commodore?” they asked simultaneously.
“Search Subig Bay for Spaniards, as I have already ordered you,” I replied, “and woe be unto you if you don’t find any.”
“What do you want ’em for, Commodore?” asked the Boston.
“To engage, you idiot,” I replied, scornfully. “What did you suppose—to teach me Spanish?”
Both vessels immediately piped all hands on deck and set off. Two hours later they returned, and the telephone subaltern reported, “No Spaniards found.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
“All gone to Cuba,” replied the Boston. “Shall we pipe all hands to Cuba?”
“Wires too short to penetrate without a bust,” replied the Concord.
“On to Manila!” was my answer. “Ding [174]the torpedoes—go ahead! Give us Spaniards or give us death!”
These words inspired every ship in the line, and we immediately strained forward, except the McCulloch, which I despatched at once to Hong-kong to cable my last words to you in time for the Adirondack edition of your Sunday issue leaving New York Thursday afternoon.
The rest of us immediately proceeded. In a short while, taking advantage of the darkness for which I had provided by turning the clock back so that the sun by rising at the usual hour should not disclose our presence, we turned Corregidor and headed up the Boca Grande towards Manila. As we were turning Corregidor the telephone-bell rang, and somebody who refused to give his name, but stating that he was aboard the Petrel, called me up.
“Hello!” said I.
“Is this Dewey?” said the Petrel.
“Yes,” said I.
“There are torpedoes ahead,” said the Petrel.[175]
“What of it?” said I.
“How shall we treat ’em?”
“Blow ’em off—to soda water,” I answered, sarcastically.
“Thank you, sir,” the Petrel replied, as she rang off.
Then somebody from the Baltimore rang me up.
“Commodore Dewey,” said the Baltimore, “there are mines in the harbor.”
“Well, what of it?” I replied.
“What shall we do?” asked the Baltimore.
“Treat them coldly, as they do in the Klondike,” said I.
“But they aren’t gold-mines,” replied the Baltimore.
“Then salt ’em,” said I, dryly. “Apply for a certificate of incorporation, water your stock, sell out, and retire.”
“Thank you, Commodore,” the Baltimore answered. “How many shares shall we put you down for?”
“None,” said I. “But if you’ll use your surplus to start a life-insurance company, [176] I’ll take out a policy for forty-eight hours, and send you my demand note to pay for the first premium.”
I mention this merely to indicate to your readers that I felt myself in a position of extreme peril, and did not forget my obligations to my family. It is a small matter, but if you will search the pages of history you will see that in the midst of the greatest dangers the greatest heroes have thought of apparently insignificant details.
At this precise moment we came in sight of the fortresses of Manila. Signalling the Raleigh to heave to, I left the flag-ship and jumped aboard the cruiser, where I discharged with my own hand the after-forecastle four-inch gun. The shot struck Corregidor, and, glancing off, as I had designed, caromed on the smoke-stack of the Reina Cristina, the flag-ship of Admiral Montojo. The Admiral, unaccustomed to such treatment, immediately got out of bed, and, putting on his pajamas, appeared on the bridge.[177]
[178]
A CLEVER CAROM[179]
“Who smoked our struck-stack?” he demanded, in broken English.
“The enemy,” cried his crew, with some nervousness. I was listening to their words through the megaphone.
“Then let her sink,” said he, clutching his brow sadly with his clinched fist. “Far be it from me to stay afloat in Manila Bay on the 1st of May, and so cast discredit on history!”
The Reina Cristina immediately sank, according to the orders of the Admiral, and I turned my attention to the Don Juan de Austria. Rowing across the raging channel to the Baltimore, I boarded her and pulled the lanyard of the port boom forty-two. The discharge was terrific.
“What has happened?” I asked, coolly, as the explosion exploded. “Did we hit her?”
“We did, your honor,” said the Bo’s’n’s mate, “square in the eye; only, Commodore, it ain’t a her this time—it’s a him. It’s the Don Juan de—”[180]
“Never mind the sex,” I cried. “Has she sank?”
“No, sir,” replied the Bo’s’n’s mate, “she ’ain’t sank yet. She’s a-waiting orders.”
“Fly signals to sink,” said I, sternly, for I had resolved that she should go down.
They did so, and the Don Juan de Austria immediately disappeared beneath the waves. Her commander evidently realized that I meant what I signalled.
“Are there any more of the enemy afloat?” I demanded, jumping from the deck of the Baltimore to that of the Concord.
“No, Commodore,” replied the captain of the latter.
“Then signal the enemy to charter two more gunboats and have ’em sent out. I can’t be put off with two boats when I’m ready to sink four,” I replied.
[181]
[182]
SINKING THE CASTILLAThe Concord immediately telephoned to the Spanish commandant at the Manila Café de la Paix, who as quickly chartered [183] the Castilla and the Velasco—two very good boats that had recently come in in ballast with the idea of loading up with bananas and tobacco.
While waiting for these vessels to come out and be sunk, I ordered all hands to breakfast, thus reviving their falling courage. It was a very good breakfast, too. We had mush and hominy and potatoes in every style, beefsteak, chops, liver and bacon, chicken hash, buckwheat cakes and fish-balls, coffee, tea, rolls, toast, and brown bread.
Just as we were eating the latter the Castilla and Velasco came out. I fired my revolver at the Castilla and threw a fish-ball at the Velasco. Both immediately burst into flames.
Manila was conquered.
The fleet gone, the city fell. It not only fell, but slid, and by nightfall Old Glory waved over the citadel.
The foe was licked.
To-morrow I am to see Dewey again.
I think I shall resign to-night.[184]
P.S.—Please send word to the magazines that all articles by Dewey must be written by Me. Terms, $500 per word. The strain has been worth it.
[185]
X THE MYSTERY OF PINKHAM’S DIAMOND STUDBeing the tale told by the holder of the eleventh ball, Mr. Fulton Streete
“It is the little things that tell in detective work, my dear Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes as we sat over our walnuts and coffee one bitter winter night shortly before his unfortunate departure to Switzerland, whence he never returned.
“I suppose that is so,” said I, pulling away upon the very excellent stogie which mine host had provided—one made in Pittsburg in 1885, and purchased by Holmes, whose fine taste in tobacco had induced him to lay a thousand of these down in his cigar-cellar for three years,[186] and then keep them in a refrigerator, overlaid with a cloth soaked in Château Yquem wine for ten. The result may be better imagined than described. Suffice it to say that my head did not recover for three days, and the ash had to be cut off the stogie with a knife. “I suppose so, my dear Holmes,” I repeated, taking my knife and cutting three inches of the stogie off and casting it aside, furtively, lest he should think I did not appreciate the excellence of the tobacco, “but it is not given to all of us to see the little things. Is it, now?”
“Yes,” he said, rising and picking up the rejected portion of the stogie. “We all see everything that goes on, but we don’t all know it. We all hear everything that goes on, but we are not conscious of the fact. For instance, at this present moment there is somewhere in this world a man being set upon by assassins and yelling lustily for help. Now his yells create a certain atmospheric disturbance. Sound is merely vibration, and, once set[187] going, these vibrations will run on and on and on in ripples into the infinite—that is, they will never stop, and sooner or later these vibrations must reach our ears. We may not know it when they do, but they will do so none the less. If the man is in the next room, we will hear the yells almost simultaneously—not quite, but almost—with their utterance. If the man is in Timbuctoo, the vibrations may not reach us for a little time, according to the speed with which they travel. So with sight. Sight seems limited, but in reality it is not. Vox populi, vox Dei. If vox, why not oculus? It is a simple proposition, then, that the eye of the people being the eye of God, the eye of God being all-seeing, therefore the eye of the people is all-seeing—Q. E. D.”
I gasped, and Holmes, cracking a walnut, gazed into the fire for a moment.
“It all comes down, then,” I said, “to the question, who are the people?”
Holmes smiled grimly. “All men,” he replied, shortly; “and when I say all[188] men, I mean all creatures who can reason.”
“Does that include women?” I asked.
“Certainly,” he said. “Indubitably. The fact that women don’t reason does not prove that they can’t. I can go up in a balloon if I wish to, but I don’t. I can read an American newspaper comic supplement, but I don’t. So it is with women. Women can reason, and therefore they have a right to be included in the classification whether they do or don’t.”
“Quite so,” was all I could think of to say at the moment. The extraordinary logic of the man staggered me, and I again began to believe that the famous mathematician who said that if Sherlock Holmes attempted to prove that five apples plus three peaches made four pears, he would not venture to dispute his conclusions, was wise. (This was the famous Professor Zoggenhoffer, of the Leipsic School of Moral Philosophy and Stenography.—Ed.)
“Now you agree, my dear Watson,” he[189] said, “that I have proved that we see everything?”
“Well—” I began.
“Whether we are conscious of it or not?” he added, lighting the gas-log, for the cold was becoming intense.
“From that point of view, I suppose so—yes,” I replied, desperately.
“Well, then, this being granted, consciousness is all that is needed to make us fully informed on any point.”
“No,” I said, with some positiveness. “The American people are very conscious, but I can’t say that generally they are well-informed.”
I had an idea this would knock him out, as the Bostonians say, but counted without my host. He merely laughed.
“The American is only self-conscious. Therefore he is well-informed only as to self,” he said.
“You’ve proved your point, Sherlock,” I said. “Go on. What else have you proved?”
“That it is the little things that tell,” [190] he replied. “Which all men would realize in a moment if they could see the little things—and when I say ‘if they could see,’ I of course mean if they could be conscious of them.”
“Very true,” said I.
“And I have the gift of consciousness,” he added.
I thought he had, and I said so. “But,” I added, “give me a concrete example.” It had been some weeks since I had listened to any of his detective stories, and I was athirst for another.
He rose up and walked over to his pigeon-holes, each labelled with a letter, in alphabetical sequence.
“I have only to refer to any of these to do so,” he said. “Choose your letter.”
“Really, Holmes,” said I, “I don’t need to do that. I’ll believe all you say. In fact, I’ll write it up and sign my name to any statement you choose to make.”
[191]
[192]
THE LAMP-POSTS WERE TWISTED“Choose your letter, Watson,” he retorted. “You and I are on
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