I stumbled upon one curious character in the Island of Mani.
He became a sore annoyance to me in the course of time. My first
glimpse of him was in a sort of public room in the town of
Lahaina. He occupied a chair at the opposite side of the
apartment, and sat eyeing our party with interest for some
minutes, and listening as critically to what we were saying as if
he fancied we were talking to him and expecting him to reply. I
thought it very sociable in a stranger. Presently, in the course
of conversation, I made a statement bearing upon the subject
under discussion—and I made it with due modesty, for there was
nothing extraordinary about it, and it was only put forth in
illustration of a point at issue. I had barely finished when this
person spoke out with rapid utterance and feverish anxiety:
“Oh, that was certainly remarkable, after a fashion, but you
ought to have seen my chimney—you ought to have seen my chimney,
sir! Smoke! I wish I may hang if—Mr. Jones, you remember that
chimney—you must remember that chimney! No, no—I recollect,
now, you warn’t living on this side of the island then. But I am
telling you nothing but the truth, and I wish I may never draw
another breath if that chimney didn’t smoke so that the smoke
actually got caked in it and I had to dig it out with a pickaxe!
You may smile, gentlemen, but the High Sheriff’s got a hunk of it
which I dug out before his eyes, and so it’s perfectly easy for
you to go and examine for yourselves.”
The interruption broke up the conversation, which had already
begun to lag, and we presently hired some natives and an
out-rigger canoe or two, and went out to overlook a grand
surf-bathing contest.
Two weeks after this, while talking in a company, I looked up
and detected this same man boring through and through me with his
intense eye, and noted again his twitching muscles and his
feverish anxiety to speak. The moment I paused, he said:
“Beg your pardon, sir, beg your pardon, but it can only be
considered remarkable when brought into strong outline by
isolation. Sir, contrasted with a circumstance which occurred in
my own experience, it instantly becomes commonplace. No, not
that—for I will not speak so discourteously of any experience in
the career of a stranger and a gentleman—but I am obliged to say
that you could not, and you would not ever again refer to this
tree as a large one, if you could behold, as I have, the great
Yakmatack tree, in the island of Ounaska, sea of Kamtchatka—a
tree, sir, not one inch less than four hundred and fifteen feet
in solid diameter!—and I wish I may die in a minute if it isn’t
so! Oh, you needn’t look so questioning, gentlemen; here’s old
Cap Saltmarsh can say whether I know what I’m talking about or
not. I showed him the tree.”
Captain Saltmarsh—"Come, now, cat your anchor, lad—you’re
heaving too taut. You promised to show me that stunner, and I
walked more than eleven mile with you through the cussedest
jungle I ever see, a hunting for it; but the tree you showed me
finally warn’t as big around as a beer cask, and you know that
your own self, Markiss.”
“Hear the man talk! Of course the tree was reduced that way,
but didn’t I explain it? Answer me, didn’t I? Didn’t I say I
wished you could have seen it when I first saw it? When you got
up on your ear and called me names, and said I had brought you
eleven miles to look at a sapling, didn’t I explain to you that
all the whale-ships in the North Seas had been wooding off of it
for more than twenty-seven years? And did you s’pose the tree
could last for-ever, con-found it? I don’t see why you want to
keep back things that way, and try to injure a person that’s
never done you any harm.”
Somehow this man’s presence made me uncomfortable, and I was
glad when a native arrived at that moment to say that Muckawow,
the most companionable and luxurious among the rude war-chiefs of
the Islands, desired us to come over and help him enjoy a
missionary whom he had found trespassing on his grounds.
I think it was about ten days afterward that, as I finished a
statement I was making for the instruction of a group of friends
and acquaintances, and which made no pretence of being
extraordinary, a familiar voice chimed instantly in on the heels
of my last word, and said:
“But, my dear sir, there was nothing remarkable about that
horse, or the circumstance either—nothing in the world! I mean
no sort of offence when I say it, sir, but you really do not know
anything whatever about speed. Bless your heart, if you could
only have seen my mare Margaretta; there was a beast!—there was
lightning for you! Trot! Trot is no name for it—she flew! How
she could whirl a buggy along! I started her out once,
sir—Colonel Bilgewater, you recollect that animal perfectly
well—I started her out about thirty or thirty-five yards ahead
of the awfullest storm I ever saw in my life, and it chased us
upwards of eighteen miles! It did, by the everlasting hills! And
I’m telling you nothing but the unvarnished truth when I say that
not one single drop of rain fell on me—not a single drop, sir!
And I swear to it! But my dog was a-swimming behind the wagon all
the way!”
For a week or two I stayed mostly within doors, for I seemed
to meet this person everywhere, and he had become utterly hateful
to me. But one evening I dropped in on Captain Perkins and his
friends, and we had a sociable time. About ten o’clock I chanced
to be talking about a merchant friend of mine, and without really
intending it, the remark slipped out that he was a little mean
and parsimonious about paying his workmen. Instantly, through the
steam of a hot whiskey punch on the opposite side of the room, a
remembered voice shot—and for a moment I trembled on the
imminent verge of profanity:
“Oh, my dear sir, really you expose yourself when you parade
that as a surprising circumstance. Bless your heart and hide, you
are ignorant of the very A B C of meanness! ignorant as the
unborn babe! ignorant as unborn twins! You don’t know anything
about it! It is pitiable to see you, sir, a well-spoken and
prepossessing stranger, making such an enormous pow-wow here
about a subject concerning which your ignorance is perfectly
humiliating! Look me in the eye, if you please; look me in the
eye. John James Godfrey was the son of poor but honest parents in
the State of Mississippi—boyhood friend of mine—bosom comrade
in later years. Heaven rest his noble spirit, he is gone from us
now. John James Godfrey was hired by the Hayblossom Mining
Company in California to do some blasting for them—the
“Incorporated Company of Mean Men,” the boys used to call it.
“Well, one day he drilled a hole about four feet deep and put
in an awful blast of powder, and was standing over it ramming it
down with an iron crowbar about nine foot long, when the cussed
thing struck a spark and fired the powder, and scat! away John
Godfrey whizzed like a skyrocket, him and his crowbar! Well, sir,
he kept on going up in the air higher and higher, till he didn’t
look any bigger than a boy—and he kept going on up higher and
higher, till he didn’t look any bigger than a doll—and he kept
on going up higher and higher, till he didn’t look any bigger
than a little small bee—and then he went out of sight! Presently
he came in sight again, looking like a little small bee—and he
came along down further and further, till he looked as big as a
doll again—and down further and further, till he was as big as a
boy again—and further and further, till he was a full-sized man
once more; and then him and his crowbar came a wh-izzing down and
lit right exactly in the same old tracks and went to r-ramming
down, and r-ramming down, and r-ramming down again, just the same
as if nothing had happened! Now do you know, that poor cuss
warn’t gone only sixteen minutes, and yet that Incorporated
Company of Mean Men DOCKED HIM FOR THE LOST TIME!”
I said I had the headache, and so excused myself and went
home. And on my diary I entered “another night spoiled” by this
offensive loafer. And a fervent curse was set down with it to
keep the item company. And the very next day I packed up, out of
all patience, and left the Island.
Almost from the very beginning, I regarded that man as a
liar.
The line of points represents an interval of years. At the end
of which time the opinion hazarded in that last sentence came to
be gratifyingly and remarkably endorsed, and by wholly
disinterested persons. The man Markiss was found one morning
hanging to a beam of his own bedroom (the doors and windows
securely fastened on the inside), dead; and on his breast was
pinned a paper in his own handwriting begging his friends to
suspect no innocent person of having any thing to do with his
death, for that it was the work of his own hands entirely. Yet
the jury brought in the astounding verdict that deceased came to
his death “by the hands of some person or persons unknown!” They
explained that the perfectly undeviating consistency of Markiss’s
character for thirty years towered aloft as colossal and
indestructible testimony, that whatever statement he chose to
make was entitled to instant and unquestioning acceptance as a
lie. And they furthermore stated their belief that he was not
dead, and instanced the strong circumstantial evidence of his own
word that he was dead—and beseeched the coroner to delay the
funeral as long as possible, which was done. And so in the
tropical climate of Lahaina the coffin stood open for seven days,
and then even the loyal jury gave him up. But they sat on him
again, and changed their verdict to “suicide induced by mental
aberration”—because, said they, with penetration, “he said he
was dead, and he was dead; and would he have told the truth if he
had been in his right mind? No, sir.”
