DOS REALES.
HE had to have a name, of course. So one day when he met us on the Mole and I had given him a quarter of a dollar by mistake for a copper "dump" or two-cent piece, and he had hurried off, throwing glances of trepidation behind him every now and then as he ran up the wharf lest I should overhaul him and demand return of change, I called him "Dos Reales." And always after that he seemed to know the name.
But that was a long while ago. Years before the Spanish fleet knocked the
lower town to pieces. Dos Reales must be getting on in years by this time, even if he still lives.
He was a large dog, of no particular breed, and of the color of a ripe horsechestnut. A dog of no vices. He scorned to run in debt, always paying cash down for what h® ate, and lodging no one knew where. I have'nt the slightest doubt, however, that he paid for bed as well as board. A very Beau Hickmann of a dog. Courteous, affable, self-possessed, never seeking an acquaintance but always glad to meet any friend of a friend of his, always opening his mouth for money when any one whom he knew came near him. Bones and garbage he left to the plebeians of his race. I have often seen him turn up his nose with quiet contempt at ordinary pups squabbling for refuse edibles, as he, having
dined well, lay at full length in the sun with an air of lazily smoking his afterdinner cigar.
No one knew where he came from. Dr. Reid, the wholesale druggist, whose shop is in Cochrane or Commercial street, I forget which—at any rate it isn't far from the Custom House which stands or did stand, before Admiral Nunez shelled it, right across the way from the gate of the Mole—and you turned to the right from the Custom House to go there—Dr. Reid, who knew more about the town than any other American in it, told me that he believed Dos Reales was left on shore by some merchantship's boat when quite a little puppy, and that when he found himself thrown upon his own resources, as you may Say, he organized and adopted his own method of support in life.
It seemed to me that the dog deserved a good deal of credit for this. In fact, every one gave it to him.
He would stand on the upper step of the long flight of landing stairs, watching our boat as it came from the ship. He knew the flag perfectly well, and would bark a hoarse and gruff "good morning!" as the officer in charge called out "way enough! trail oars!" and the coxswain steered her in towards the stairs, and the men let their oars swim loose in the beckets that hung alongside, and threw over the little fenders of stuffed leather that looked like biscuits over-done, and the bow and stroke-oar, each armed with a boat hook, made desperate dives at piles and stairs to check her headway.
The gruffness was all put on, however. He would come up to us as we landed, laying his big, honest head in the hand of one and giving his paw to another, while he winked at a third and wagged his tail vociferously as the last one out of the boat came over the cap-sill. Then he would draw back from the group, sit down, open his mouth and look a request for money. Usually each of us gave him a "dump." He would close his teeth on the coin, wave a goodbye with his tail, and walk away to the town.
He patronised two butchers, a baker, and two cafés. At the butcher's he bought beef or mutton. He never ate pork. He always selected some choice cut, with plenty of juice and not too much bone in it. He liked a little bone for medico-chemical reasons probably. From the butcher's he would go to the baker's or one of the cafés, and purchase either plain bread or sweet cake, either or both as his taste or his means dictated, and then he would lie down in some quiet corner and eat his breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, like a christian.
I wanted to tell you about his habits and peculiarities first, you know, so that you might feel acquainted with him.
We were all going to dine at Henry Caldwell's one night just after we arrived. Henry was a good-hearted, whole-souled fellow, who liked nothing better than to have his friends come to see him. He was a lumber merchant. His partner, Don Somebody-or-other, I forget his name, lived away down in the Patagonian woods, near the German city of Port Montt, where he cut lumber and sent it up to Valparaiso, and Henry attended there to its sale.
Caldwell's home was a snug little house on Concepcion Hill, right up in
the air three hundred feet above the lower town, and not half that distance back from where Cochrane street would have been had its location marked the summit instead of the base-line of the precipitous front of the hill. A zig-zag path, for mules and foot-travelers only, ran up the face of the bluff.
David Page and I were the only officers going from the ship that evening. Harry Finn, once on the stage in Boston, (you remember his father, the great comedian, dead long ago, a man of immense dramatic genius in his day and generation) was at that time in commercial business in Valparaiso, and three Chilean gentlemen were to complete the party. Henry Caldwell's cosy little dinners were perfection, and Page and I were anticipating a delightful evening.
"Don Ricardo isn't well enough to come to-night," said Henry.
He and David and I were walking slowly up the zig-zag path. "He's quite sick, in fact. Almost dangerously so, his clerk told me this afternoon."
I was very sorry. Don Ricardo was a civil engineer, at that time engaged in some way on the Valparaiso and Santiago railroad. He was most agreeable company, speaking English perfectly, and appreciating fully, which is one of the hardest things that a foreigner can do, all the points of a joke in our language. I was sorry we should'nt see him, and very sorry to hear of his illness.
Dinner went off very well. Mrs. Caldwell always handled her table and her guests in the most pleasantly efficient manner possible. Every one was naturally a little subdued at first by the Don's absence and its cause, but as the wine went round we grew more like ourselves; and when our coffee had been poured and our cigars lighted, and Peta, the pretty table-girl, had made everything about the table snug and comfortable for a long sitting, we talked of
people and things and felt certain Don Ricardo would be better by morning.
Perhaps he was.
There came a knock at the door, and one entered whose face was a face of sorrow and mourning.
Don Ricardo was dead.
Burials are such sad _ necessities! Why isn't the old classical incremation better? A retort to hold the body; a furnace to reduce it to ashes; an urn to hold the dust. I doubt if the daily, sickening thought that the hands which were ever devotedly ours for every need and tender care, the eyes that read love in return in our own, the lips that kissed us into life and light, are going back to their dust in slow and loathsome and crawling decay and corruption, is as pleasant as it might be. Still, tastes differ. Burials may be more christianlike. It doesn't seem so to me—that's all.
Sincere mourners carried Don Ricardo's body to its grave.
And when we came back to Caldwell's and sat there at the open windows in his little parlor, and talked about the dead man, wondering what friends or relatives he had in his old home somewhere up near Santiago, wondering what they would say when they heard of his death, we grew very melancholy. We were all away from home, too. Very far away. All with stout hearts. All with good courage. But what befell Don Ricardo might come to us, would in all certainty reach us somewhere. Perhaps while we were still strangers in a strange land.
Page and I said "Good-night" to Mrs. Caldwell, and started to go down town.
"T'll go with you," said Henry. "I can't sleep just yet. And Lizzie, why don't you go to bed, child? You're tired out, youknow. Ill be back soon."
The night was perfect. Stilland cool. The moon was nearly full.
At our feet, so far below us that the
houses and ships were tuys in size, lay the crescent of the lower town traced in triple lines of gas-light from the three business streets: lay the bay of silver undulating in slow magnificence as the ground-swell came in with the first of the flood.
At our left was the hill of the "MainTop," looking by day like a gigantic leprous abscess ready for the knife; reeking both by night and day in its dens of misery and disease with more than the leper's foulness; a thing of beauty in the moonlight now.
Behind us, peak above peak, rising in snowy splendor till their king, Aconcagua, 23,000 feet above the sea, carried earth in unearthly grandeur to heaven, reigned the Andes of Chile.
And the Southern Cross shone out. Dimmed in glory by the moon, yet still radiant with the everlasting light that its stars gave forth ages before the world was, it hung in the midnight sky just over the churchyard where Don Ricardo slept, and pointed upward to God.
"Let's go round to his quarters a moment," said Henry. "The outer door was left unlocked this afternoon, and somebody may take a notion to steal something. You'll have plenty of time to reach the Mole."
Our boat had orders that night to wait till we came, and as the house where the Don had lived wasn't much out of our way, we went.
There's a sort of irregular, threecornered plaza in the lower town. I don't remember its name. Perhaps it has none. Four or five streets make it in uniting and crossing each other. It's the only open space in the city of that especial shape, however, and is near Cochrane street. There is a long twostory building on one side of it, that has a balcony or open veranda running the entire length of its front, on a level with the floor of the second story. Its projecting width is some seven feet, about that of the sidewalk belowit. At
each end a stairway, set against the wall, goes from the sidewalk to the balcony. These stairways are about four feet wide, and are set sloping towards each other. Nearer each other at the top, I mean, than they are at the bottom. Convergent. One word would have told what two sentences didn't. The ground floor is cut up into eight or ten retail shops, each one the width of an ordinary house-lot here in San Francisco, and forty or forty-five feet deep. The second story has as many suites of rooms as there are shops below. There are three rooms in each suite; the front one lighted from the balcony, the second and third by windows in the roof. These rooms communicate with the balcony only, each suite being isolated from its neighbor, and the only way to reach them from the street is by the outside Stairways and the veranda. Just remember how this is, so that you can understand what I tell you.
We walked slowly along and stopped on our way at the English club house to get some brandy and cigars. We hadn't felt like either drinking or smoking before during the evening, but the mental and physical fatigue of the day began to tell. We talked with the manager, Whip, (I wonder whether he's still in existence, what he did in the bombardment, and whether he'll remember me when he sees this) lighted our cigars at one of the tiny braseros of burning charcoal that stood on the bar, came out into the moonlight and walked on towards the plaza.
We came into the plaza in such a direction that the house where Don Ricardo had lived was directly before us. To reach either of the stairways leading to the balcony it was necessary to make a detour either to the right or left. The moonlight fell squarely on the face of the building, but just as we entered the open space a cloud dimmed and almost quenched it. The stairs on the left were a little nearer to us than the others,
(we had come down on the left-hand side of the street from Cochrane) so turning that way, Caldwell leading, we traversed one side of the triangle and began to go up the stairway. Caldwell first, I next, and Page last.
Henry's head was just above the level of the floor of the balcony, when he stopped and looked intently forward. I was two or three stairs below him and stopped when he did. He looked ahead, put his left hand back with a gesture of warning, and then said, without turning round, speaking in a hoarse whisper, "or heaven's sake, doctor, look!"
I passed up by his side. Page followed. We three stood together on the same step of the stairway.
The moon shone out with renewed brilliancy, and there, leaning against a stanchion of the veranda rail not a dozen yards from us, and looking down into the plaza, dressed in his old-time wear, standing in his old familiar attitude, was Don Ricardo! Dead—buried fathom deep in red clay—and here!
As we stood the figure turned. The moonlight fell across its face, showing it white and ghastly and still. Then with slow and noiseless steps it entered the open door of Don Ricardo's quarters.
The little plaza was silent. From a distance came the sound of the foot-fall of some vigilante walking his beat, the bark of vagrant dogs, the deadened roar of the surf on the beach of the bay.
We looked at each other, turned, went down the stairs, then took counsel.
Regarding the right of a man, alive or dead, to enter his lodgings, there can be no doubt. The question is one of ability merely. To the best of our knowledge in the case of the Don, this ability had no existence.
Caldwell went along the sidewalk to the right hand stairway. Page took up a position in the road that enabled him to command a view of the veranda from end to end, and I began to re-ascend the stairs on the left. Henry and I reached
the veranda at the same time and walked towards each other and the door where the figure had disappeared.
The front room was vacant of everything but its ordinary furniture. The chairs stood in their usual places. Books, instruments and papers lay undisturbed on the large table in the centre of the floor. Caldwell lighted a match and with it the standing gas-light on the table. Every portion of the room was visible then, and no living beings were in it but ourselves. Walking out on the balcony I called to Page and he came up.
The door of the middle room was closed but not locked. We opened it and went in.
Don Ricardo had used this second room fora work-place. Drawing-boards, surveying implements, and two or three chairs were its only contents.
The back room door was shut. Lighting the gas in the working room we opened it cautiously.
A draft of air blew towards us and
the gas-jet in the second room fluttered
and flapped and nearly went out. Closing the door quickly, Caldwell scraped a match on the heel of his boot and ignited the gas at the bracket on the wall at the head of the bed.
The sky-light was open. Left so by the undertaker's attendants to ventilate the room, about which the odor of chlorine still lingered from the disinfecting agents used after the Don's death. The blank wall checked our further progress.
The bed was stripped. We looked below it. We looked in the movable closet or wardrobe standing on the right. We opened the drawers of the bureau on the other side of the room. We made a variety of absurd investigations into every nook and corner—and found nothing.
Page sat down and lighted a fresh cigar, offering one to Caldwell at the same time and another to me. The smell of chlorine was unpleasant and we joined him in smoking, Thus far our
search to understand the mystery ended in nothing more tangible. Ended in smoke.
Sailors are almost always superstitious. I have been one myself and I know of what I speak. Things come to men who go down to the sea in ships and do business in the great waters that landsmen never dream of. Old shellbacks believe in marvellous happenings because they must. Wouldn't the testimony of a dozen witnesses, men of truth and honor, combining to tell how each and every one of them had seen me kill you or you kill me, send me or you to the gallows? Very good. I can bring you the attested oaths of a thousand men who have seen that embodiment of the terrible, the Shrouded Demon of the Sea; who have found themselves working away up and out on a yard-arm in some night of storm and darkness, sideby-side with something that wore the form and features of a shipmate dead, sewed in his hammock and launched overboard days before, with a thirty-two pound shot at his heels; who have seen a ship with everything set, manned by no mortal men, drive straight into the teeth of a gale and vanish, shadowy masts and spars going over the side of a ghostly hull, which rose and plunged and sunk, while groans and shrieks of men and women came over the surging sea to the ears of the horrified witnesses, and have had this drama of death three times repeated in their sight in an hour. Superstition is hardly the term to apply to this sort of thing. It's simply a belief in facts as patent to the eyes of those who see them as are the ordinary scenes of a city to a lounger in its streets. What's the use of saying they can't be, when they ere?
So two of us being of the sea, we sat, and smoked, and talked, of this apparition. If one of us only had seen it, the others might have doubted its reality, and attributed the whole thing to the fumes of Mr. Whip's strong water acting
on a system wearied with the toil of the day. But it had been seen by all three. And, as if to confirm its reality, the portrait of the Don, hanging on the wall directly beneath the skylight, parted its fastenings suddenly, as if unseen hands had cut the cord, and fell on the floor with a crash that shivered its heavy frame and tore the canvas from its stretcher. Fell at our feet—and the painted face, rent from forehead to chin, looked up mournfully at us from the ruin.
"Let's get out of this," said Page. "I'm going aboard ship."
He threw his half-smoked cigar away, and went through the other rooms to the balcony. I saw no reason for remaining, and went out after him. Caldwell turned off the gas in each room as he left it, and followed us.
We stopped at Whip's again on our way to the Mole. I have great doubt of either the need or benefit of brandy under ordinary circumstances. But
there's probably no fact more firmly established than the one of there always being some especial reason why a drink
should be taken. We had taken our first one that night to revive us. Page suggested the second to quiet our nerves; and Page being then and now aman using but little stimulant, a suggestion of this sort from him carrying weight, in consequence, and meaning something, we agreed to it.
Two or three men had come into the club-house since our first call, and when we went up stairs the second time we heard them talking and laughing out in the moonlight, through the open door at the end of the central hall. There was a balcony there that overhung the water.
Caldwell recognized their voices, and asked Whip to send our brandy out there after us.
Page knew one of the party, an old Scotchman, named McLerie, and Henry was evidently well known to all of them. They made room for us at the table
where they were sitting. Presently the servant in attendance at the bar brought out our decanter and glasses, and we all drank together.
" What's the matter with you three?" said McLerie. "Caldwell there looks as if he had seen a ghost. What has happened?"
Then Page told him about what we had seen on the balcony, and how we looked through the rooms and found nothing, and wanted to know what he thought of it.
"Well," said McLerie, after a pause of a few minutes, during which he emptied his glass and lighted a fresh cigar, "I think that whoever or whatever it was you saw, went out of the third room, through the open skylight. I don't believe there was anything unreal about the affair. You were all thinking of the Don; there was somebody standing at his door. The moonlight is uncertain at best. I haven't the slightest doubt about there being a man there, but I am perfectly sure that it was a man, and no ghost. That's my idea. Page and the doctor know very well how easily an active man might mount on the bureau, cling to projections here and there in the wall of the room, and be out on the roof in less time than it took you to get there from the front door. I don't believe in supernatural agency when I can account for a thing by ordinary rules."
We sat there and talked the matter over for a long time. As usual, each one of the party had his own theory to advance and his own illustrations to tell. Whip was a remarkably patient man with good customers, the summer night was short, and the bay below us began to reflect the first faint approach of sunrise before our conversation ended. We had forgotten all about our boat. Caldwell had unwittingly far overstayed his promised time for returning home. But we knew our men didn't care, and we trusted that the captain would find but little fault when he heard our rea sons for delay, and Henry's wife had undoubtedly gone to bed to sleep quietly till he came. She was a very sensible woman.
So we all got under way for the Mole. Caldwell and our new friends insisted on going down to see us safely off for the ship. Our boat lay bumping gently every now and then against the lower stair of the landing. There was one man in her, fast asleep. Page woke him up, and started him off after the rest of the crew. We all sat down on the long bench that runs along inside the railing on the cap-sill of the pier, and waited for the crew to come.
Dos Reales had preferred camping out that night to retiring to his usual lodging-house, wherever that might be. So we judged, at least, for after the sound of several prolonged yawns, and a variety of scratchings and slippings of claws on the wooden floor of the wharf, had come to us from a little distance, he made his appearance, walking sleepily towards us, through the morning twilight. He rubbed a "good morning" against each one of us, and then sat down and opened his mouth for money for his breakfast.
" You're too early, old fellow," said I; "there are no shops open yet. Lie down, sir!"
After waiting a while, and looking wonderingly at the absence of his usual remittances, he appeared to think so too, and curled himself up at my feet to resume his interrupted slumbers.
The coming daylight came nearer. The lanterns on the Mole began to grow dim, and the chilly land breeze from the mountains to lessen in strength.
There was a steady footstep coming down the pier from the entrance gate.
"There comes the coxswain," said Page. "The crew are close behind him. Let's get into the boat."
We were shaking hands with our shore friends, and saying "good bye," when Caldwell exclaimed: "McLerie!
87 Look there!" We turned and looked up the Mole.
The steady footsteps had ceased, but a figure stood about a dozen yards from us, shadowy and vague in the dim light, wearing the features and dress of the dead Don Ricardo—stood in his old familiar attitude, looking far out seaward, unconscious, apparently, of us or of anything else of earth.
McLerie shrank back.
"What do you think xow?" whispered Page.
McLerie braced himself as if against some physica! shock, waited a moment, and then exclaiming, "Man or ghost, I'll make it speak!" he started with a firm step towards the figure.
But Dos Reales was too quick for him. With a bark of joyful greeting he sprang up and ran towards the apparition, satisfied that he had at last found some one who would give him what he wanted. After his usual manner, he sat down close to the figure, and opened his mouth for the expected coins.
The apparition burst into a loud laugh.
It was a twin-brother of Don Ricardo's. The affair of the night before had been impromptu on his part. He had seen our heads above the upper step of the balcony stairs, suspected what we thought, and resolved to carry out the delusion by doing exactly what McLerie surmised he had done—climbing rapidly out on the roof through the open skylight, and dislodging, or rather loosening, the nail that sustained the picture, as it gave him a momentary stand-point in his ascent.. This morning he had merely walked out for fresh air. At the gate of the Mole he had heard our voices, and supposed them to be those of boatmen. Coming nearer, he had recognized us, and resolved to maintain the illusion of the balcony of the night before; but Dos Reales interfered.
The affair didn't lessen either Page's belief or mine in ghosts, however.