"She turns in early. 'I suppose you 're going to lock the door?' she asks me.
"'What's the use? They's other keys. The islands are near at hand, and they could put you off in a boat. I 'm not going to lock the door,' I tells her, 'but I 'm going to sleep outside it, up against it. It opens out, and the smallest movement will wake me up. You 're beat.'
"'All right! I 'm beat,' she says, and she turns in.
"I puts myself against the door, and falls asleep on the deck. It might have been ten minutes after it, but it was really hours, the door opens. It's the middle of the night, for the stars are high, and there 's nothing to be seen, and the waves keep lapping the bow of the schooner and she dips pretty like a cantering horse. And suddenly I 'm awake and lonely and wet with dew. I looks up and there 's Janssen above me, big and handsome and her eyes like the stars.
"'You 're not comfortable there, McCarthy,' she whispers.
"'I can't say as I 'm on a bed of roses,' I tells her.
"'Why don't you come inside?'
"'I don't know what you mean,' I says.
"'Never mind what I mean,' she laughs. 'Come on in.'
"'I think I 'll stay where I am,' I says kind of short.
"'I 'm not accustomed to having invitations like this refused.' There was a kind of jar in her voice.
"'They 's lots of things you 're not accustomed to, you better get accustomed to right away,' I says. 'You 're accustomed to fine hotels. Now you got to get used to the Tombs. You 're accustomed to lying down on couches. Now you got to get accustomed to sitting up, very straight, in a chair at Sing Sing.' I did n't want to be brutal toward her, Judge, but I did n't want her to be making passes like that at me.
"What she says to me then I could n't tell, Judge. But she closes the door with a slam and leaves me be.
"I notices the wind is getting kind o' high, and that when the schooner pitches she sort of jars, and that under the green light on the starboard sight of the boat the water is rushing past very quick. The boat is lying over and the sailors pass me quick as lightning and in the cordage the air is whining like a broken fiddle-string, but over it all I can hear Janssen cursing in her cabin, cursing just like the girls cursed in the old days when a pinch was made in the Tenderloin, cursing me because I would n't fall for her."
II
As Officer McCarthy paused for an instant in his story the eyes of the court-room seemed by common consent to turn to Anna Janssen in the dock. The jury looked at her with knitted brows; the spectators with puzzled glances. It seemed impossible that this calm, majestic figure could once have acted the siren of the streets to the officer bringing her from her Tahitian sanctuary. Immobile, somehow immaculate, with strange superhuman dignity, she did not blush, she did not smile. Only a genre shadow of pain was about her eyes, such as creeps about the eyes of some one who remembers old, all-but-forgotten painful things of phases of life long by.
Out of those firm lips like a rose in bloom could blasphemy have flowed in a sluggish lecherous stream? Out of that glorious bronze throat, fit for Magnificats? It seemed impossible, was impossible.
The judge looked at her with moved, understanding eyes. The district attorney cast at her puzzled glances. Donegan looked neither at her, nor at anything. He just drowsed like a dog....
"All next day," McCarthy went on, "the blow grew worse. They reefed down sail until we were flying along under top and foresails. The funny thing was that here and there the sky was blue. You 'd have thought all was going to get fair in an hour or two, but it did n't. And the captain stood by the man at the wheel and looked worried.
"You had to shout to make yourself heard. 'Ain't it going to calm down, Captain?' I says.
"'I don't know,' he says. 'I wish to God I was out of these islands,' he says. 'If I was all alone in the middle of the Pacific, I would n't give a damn, but these here coral insects,' he says, 'they 're always building, and they sure do bother me. And these charts of the Marquesas,' he says, 'they ain't worth a damn. I wish I was out of these islands,' he says; 'I sure do.'
"'Oh, you 'll be all right, Cap,' I says.
"'You get for'a'd out o' here,' he barks at me.
"'I 'll talk to you later about that,' I says, but I goes off, because I see he 's worried.
"All we get to eat that day is a cup of coffee and a sandwich. And night comes and we 're still plunging on.
"And then we hear thunder.
"Janssen won't turn in. She 's scared, she says, and she sticks by me. And the thunder keeps up, and comes closer, and it gets very dark.
"'What's that?' Janssen says.
"'It strikes me it is n't thunder at all. It's some boat in distress firing a gun,' I tells her. 'It's too bad we can't do anything for them. But I don't think we can.'
"'I 'm afraid, McCarthy,' Janssen says. 'That's no gun.'
"'Maybe it's a lot of guns,' I says. 'Maybe it's the French navy practising. They take a funny night for it,' I says.
"'I 'm scared, McCarthy,' she whimpers, and comes close.
"'We 'll be all right,' I tells her.
"'I 'm scared,' she cries. 'Put your arms around me, McCarthy, please.'
"'Oh, come off!' I tells her. That game don't go, Janssen. What's the use?'
"'I 'm scared, honest. They's something going to happen.' The boat does a little jazz step, and the guns is right in our ears. And overhead, Judge, the stars were out. 'Please take me in your arms, McCarthy--just like I was your sister.'
"'Well, you ain't just like you was my sister. And they 's been too many arms around you for me to put mine. But you can hold on to me,' I says.
"And then my teeth come together with a jar and my spine is near driven through my skull, and something hits me on the head. And all the water in the world comes over me. And I know nothing."
The witness, it seemed, here underwent a strange dramatic transformation. Until now in his recital, his story had been a story all could understand, a policeman's story, told in a policeman's voice, in a policeman's words. To the court-room he was a figure within their ken, a person to warm the hearts of burgesses. Honest, homely, speaking in dialect, he stood in their eyes for the typical and honored defender of city families and city homes. Great figures, those men! They make heroism casual. We may call the New York police grafters; we may call them brutes and tyrants; we may call them the scum of Ireland. We can never call them cowards.
There is on record the case of--shall I say O'Kelly? A homicidal maniac, armed to the teeth, took refuge in a cellar. "And then what?" "I goes down into the cellar and I gets him out." "Good God! You went down alone into that dark hole after--" "Oh, that was not'in'; he was easy!"
You can have your great regiments--your Old Guard at Waterloo; your Rough Riders of San Juan Hill, your Black Watch, your Bashi-Bazouks; your Bersaglieri. Give me the New York police!
Up to now McCarthy had been only a New York policeman, telling in a dry way the facts of a case. But a new dignity arose in him of a sudden. He was no longer dealing with the processes of his profession but with big human phenomena. Until now he had been deferential to court and officers, a cog in the legal machine. Suddenly he assumed individuality, poise, dignity. He became bigger than the personnel of the case, as big as the woman in the dock. And curiously his language changed to fit the newer individuality, turning from the idioms of the sidewalks of New York to what we term, in that archaic phrase which has so much of dignity, the King's English.
"I came to," he resumed. "At first it was blackness and a terrible headache, and the thought in my brain: 'Where is Janssen? I've lost Janssen.' And then my head cleared, and my eyes opened. And I was lying on the sand in the dawn, and Janssen was bathing my head.
"'So there you are!' I said.
"And then it struck me. Where 's the ship?
"I got up on my elbow and looked around. We were on a strand, with trees behind us and a bay in front and the sun just coming up, bright as a golden eagle. In front of us was a sort of bay where the water was still and sparkling, like wine sparkles. And then I look out further. And there 's a sort of wall of crags between the bay and the sea, and on the other side of it the sea is pounding, pounding, pounding, like a man crazy with anger. _Swish! Crash! Boom!_ And then I notice pieces of timber, a bale, a piece of cloth in the lagoon.
"The schooner 's gone, I understand. There 's been a wreck.
"'Where are the rest?' I ask Janssen.
"'There are no rest.' She throws her arms out. 'Just you and I!'
"Then after a while I said: 'We 're in a pretty bad way here--shipwrecked; without anything to eat; with a very small chance of rescue. We 're up against it. There is n't even water.'
"But she only laughed.
"'We 're not so bad as you 'd think,' she says. 'There 's water. I found it when I looked for something to bathe that cut on your head. And as for food, I 'd been in these islands a while before they put me in the--place--at Papeete. There 's bananas, and there 's cocoanuts, and there 's breadfruit. And that cove is full of fish.'