PAGE 11
By The Turtles Of Tasman
by
“I don’t want the estate,” Tom cried. “Let Frederick have it. What I want….”
He never completed the sentence, but all the vision of the world burned in his eyes.
“I can’t wait,” he went on. “You can have the millions when they come. In the meantime let me have ten thousand. I’ll sign off quitclaim to everything. And give me the old schooner, and some day I’ll be back with a pot of money to help you out.”
Frederick could see himself, in that far past day, throwing up his arms in horror and crying:
“Ten thousand!–when I’m strained to the breaking point to raise this quarter’s interest!”
“There’s the block of land next to the court house,” Tom had urged. “I know the bank has a standing offer for ten thousand.”
“But it will be worth a hundred thousand in ten years,” Frederick had objected.
“Call it so. Say I quitclaim everything for a hundred thousand. Sell it for ten and let me have it. It’s all I want, and I want it now. You can have the rest.”
And Tom had had his will as usual (the block had been mortgaged instead of sold), and sailed away in the old schooner, the benediction of the town upon his head, for he had carried away in his crew half the riff-raff of the beach.
The bones of the schooner had been left on the coast of Java. That had been when Eliza Travers was being operated on for her eyes, and Frederick had kept it from her until indubitable proof came that Tom was still alive.
Frederick went over to his files and drew out a drawer labelled “Thomas Travers.” In it were packets, methodically arranged. He went over the letters. They were from everywhere–China, Rangoon, Australia, South Africa, the Gold Coast, Patagonia, Armenia, Alaska. Briefly and infrequently written, they epitomised the wanderer’s life. Frederick ran over in his mind a few of the glimpsed highlights of Tom’s career. He had fought in some sort of foreign troubles in Armenia. He had been an officer in the Chinese army, and it was a certainty that the trade he later drove in the China Seas was illicit. He had been caught running arms into Cuba. It seemed he had always been running something somewhere that it ought not to have been run. And he had never outgrown it. One letter, on crinkly tissue paper, showed that as late as the Japanese-Russian War he had been caught running coal into Port Arthur and been taken to the prize court at Sasebo, where his steamer was confiscated and he remained a prisoner until the end of the war.
Frederick smiled as he read a paragraph: “How do you prosper? Let me know any time a few thousands will help you.” He looked at the date, April 18, 1883, and opened another packet. “May 5th,” 1883, was the dated sheet he drew out. “Five thousand will put me on my feet again. If you can, and love me, send it along pronto–that’s Spanish for rush.”
He glanced again at the two dates. It was evident that somewhere between April 18th and May 5th Tom had come a cropper. With a smile, half bitter, Frederick skimmed on through the correspondence: “There’s a wreck on Midway Island. A fortune in it, salvage you know. Auction in two days. Cable me four thousand.” The last he examined, ran: “A deal I can swing with a little cash. It’s big, I tell you. It’s so big I don’t dare tell you.” He remembered that deal–a Latin-American revolution. He had sent the cash, and Tom had swung it, and himself as well, into a prison cell and a death sentence.
Tom had meant well, there was no denying that. And he had always religiously forwarded his I O U’s. Frederick musingly weighed the packet of them in his hand, as though to determine if any relation existed between the weight of paper and the sums of money represented on it.