Humorous stories, American; Short stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
When this questionable passenger came on board the ship, he brought
nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief marked
“B. G.,” one cotton sock marked “L. W. C.,” one woolen one marked “D.
F.,” and a night-shirt marked “O. M. R.” And yet during the voyage he
worried more about his “trunk,” and gave himself more airs about it,
than all the rest of the passengers put together. If the ship was “down
by the head,” and would not steer, he would go and move his “trunk”
further aft, and then watch the effect. If the ship was “by the stern,”
he would suggest to Columbus to detail some men to “shift that baggage.”
In storms he had to be gagged, because his wailings about his “trunk”
made it impossible for the men to hear the orders. The man does not
appear to have been openly charged with any gravely unbecoming thing,
but it is noted in the ship's log as a “curious circumstance” that
albeit he brought his baggage on board the ship in a newspaper, he took
it ashore in four trunks, a queensware crate, and a couple of champagne
baskets. But when he came back insinuating, in an insolent, swaggering
way, that some of this things were missing, and was going to search
the other passengers' baggage, it was too much, and they threw him
overboard. They watched long and wonderingly for him to come up, but not
even a bubble rose on the quietly ebbing tide. But while every one was
most absorbed in gazing over the side, and the interest was momentarily
increasing, it was observed with consternation that the vessel was
adrift and the anchor-cable hanging limp from the bow. Then in the
ship's dimmed and ancient log we find this quaint note:
“In time it was discouvered yt ye troblesome passenger hadde gone downe
and got ye anchor, and toke ye same and solde it to ye dam sauvages from
ye interior, saying yt he hadde founde it, ye sonne of a ghun!”
Yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with pride
that we call to mind the fact that he was the first white person who
ever interested himself in the work of elevating and civilizing our
Indians. He built a commodious jail and put up a gallows, and to
his dying day he claimed with satisfaction that he had had a more
restraining and elevating influence on the Indians than any other
reformer that ever labored among them. At this point the chronicle
becomes less frank and chatty, and closes abruptly by saying that the
old voyager went to see his gallows perform on the first white man ever
hanged in America, and while there received injuries which terminated in
his death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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