Adventure, November 1915 — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

9 4 t 4 ‘fs » 7 Mas, , , M LSehd 9 pe a ee ee bs Sp Gey ANSE ATs BRE AGE DAES AL "To DS a By At it af LY o AAN ES , fat tt ¥. AY Rit ay wel SLA TNR Saatchi RS I tas pA CVE IN Ah i a eee ¥ rT AT he a | iN : a. Tt. PAG ee eae gay 4 iT Cf - a) / 18 | Adventure “T had headaches for weeks steady an’ never got rid of them till years after, an’—I couldn’t remember a thing of what happen- ed before I fell from the cliff. I used to sit in the sun like a skeleton, gettin’ well little by little an’ puzzlin’ over who I was, where I come from an’ what I’d done. All no good. They brought me my hat, a knife, a watch-key, the watch an’ a few coins. “There was a name in the hat—Jared Fellowes—which I supposed was mine, though I wasn’t sure of it. I knew I must have come there in a boat, for the natives swam ’round an’ got mine, but there was no name on it. I had a hazy idea, or instinct, that I was a sailor. My arm had been badly twisted an’ I didn’t try to wind up the watch for a long time. Then I saw the figgers in the lid, but they didn’t mean nothing. “The Board of Health come over about three months after I landed. They quaran- tined me for a while, but I was allright. I didn’t have any open wound, an’ leprosy ain’t contagious, only infectious. Then they released me, sendin’ me to Honolulu as Jared Fellowes—on account of the hat— supposed to be an American citizen. A doc- tor said he might bring back my memory by an operation, but I had no money to pay for it an’ I was shy of bein’ experimented on as a pauper patient. So I drifted’round, callin’ myself by my real name an’ never knowin’ it for sure. You see a sailor buys so much stuff from junk dealers or the slop- chest I might easy be wearing some other chap’s cap. “IT shipped on South Sea traders and blackbirders raidin’ islands for plantation labor, able seaman an’ once second mate, without papers. I was on a whaler for four years. I showed the figgers in the watch to a mate one time, but they was nothin’ marked on the charts of them days, an’ I give that up as a clue. “When the war came I was in Boston, after the whalin’ v’yage, an’ I volunteered. I come out a sergeant. They tell me they’s a pension comin’ to me, but I don’t aim to take it. I volunteered, an’ that would be like sayin’ I had a string on my offer all the time, ’pears like to me. Anyhow, if I’d had that pension I wouldn’t have been freezin’ an’ starvin’ that night in Madison Square an’ then—” he looked around with a smile— “T wouldn’t be here. “Well, after the war, I drifted back to Californy. There was the keeper of a boardin’-house had a daughter who took a fancy to me, saved me from gettin’ shang- haied on a hell-ship once, an’ we married. She was a good woman, too good for me, a long sight. Her father’s ways driv’ her opposite, an’ she was strong for religion. ‘By an’ by I got to seein’ things the way she did. We had a little farm on the coast near Monterey an’ did fairly well. We had two youngsters, a boy an’ a gal. The boy sickened an’ passed-away when he was five, an’ the gal lived till she was ten. Mary, she believed there must be some sin that set a curse on us, an’ it made a bit of a shadow between us, me not bein’ able to remember the first part of my life, an’ she thinkin’ in the back of her head all the time that I must have done somethin’ to bring the curse on us. “Fifteen years after we was married she got a cancer that took her finally. Seemed like they was somethin’ against us all right. I was a sort of a head man in the church, an’ Mary an’ me we prayed for light many a time, but it didn’t come. At the end of the Summer of seventy-six I went to San Francisco about the shipment of some cattle. On the way back the side- rod of the engine snapped an’ the train went off the track. They took some of us who was hurt back to San José where the company’s surgeons worked over us. I’d got another clip on the head ‘and they raised the bone an’ put in a ‘pan,’ I think they called it.” ““Trephined you,” suggested Addams. ‘“‘That’s the word. The doc’ told me they was a blood clot an’ asked me about my memory. When he told me it would prob- ably all come back I was happy at first an’ then a bit afraid, on account of the wife’s an’ my own beliefs, in case I’d done some crime that had brought the curse on us an’ our kiddies. But the doc’ said I’d prob- ably have to have some strong clue or link with the past to start things. “My name didn’t mean any more to me than it did before. Doc’ said it was all there in the cells ready to light up, waitin’ for something to start the current an’ turn the switch. “T saw the figgers in my watch next time I wound it—it was still goin’ well—an’ somethin’ seemed to be tryin’ to talk, ’way back in my brain. It give me a headache, but went no farther. I used to moon about, tryin’ to think, with my wife boostin’ me Gomichbooks (E@)