Them minutes passed awful slow, but no one come near us so it looks like he swallered the lie, and we relaxed some. It quit raining after awhile and we stretched our legs again. The ferry went through a channel into the next bay and we seen another steamer coming in the other direction, which passed us pretty close with a heap of whistle blowing. The same deckhand as before seen us watching her slide by and says:
“That’s the Mirabelle. She goes all the way up to Sacramento. We just do the short haul to the end of the bay for those that don’t have the cash to go the whole route in comfort.”
“You must make a heap of money on it,” says I.
“Not me, friend, the owner. Mr. Wyeth, he’s the one that cashes in. They say he’s the richest man in Frisco. Owns the Cornucopia Mercantile Company, biggest on the coast. Anything you want to buy, he can sell, from ferry passage to a hand-carved bed. He’s got a finger in every pie in town.”
“I reckon that includes the ones we just lately et,” says I.
He laughed and went away to coil ropes and other deckhand stuff. There’s a patch of light low in the sky where the sun is, and we watched it slide down behind the brownish hills. The sky and water got grayer and darker while we’re watching and the wind come blowing even harder across the bay, so cold we felt it even through our rain slickers. It was miserable to watch the light die away so we walked around and around the deck just keeping warm, and by the time we come through another channel into the third bay it’s night, and way over yonder we seen the lights of San Francisco winking and blinking and looking mighty welcome in all that darkness.
“There she is, Jim, the city that’s got streets paved with gold.”
“Das something’ I got to see befo’ I b’lieves it.”
“You and me both. It’s most likely pure exaggerment, but it’ll be kind of exciting to see anyhow.”
When we come closer we seen the reason for the lights blinking that way, and it’s a whole forest of masts and crosstrees on ships in the bay, hundreds of them I reckon, all riding at anchor without even a masthead light burning so’s you don’t run smack into them. The masts and such kind of swayed on the swell and blocked off the city lights behind for just a fraction of time then swayed back again, so the lights twinkled like stars. I never seen a true sailing ship before in my life and now there’s more than I can count, just black shadows on the water. Some was a considerable size but even the biggest ain’t got no lights burning, not at the portholes or bow or stern, not nowhere. When the ferry slowed down and nosed in among them it give me the strangest feeling, like being in a graveyard at night. Says I:
“Jim, there ain’t no one aboard all them ships. They’re deserted, each and every one.…”
“How dat be, you reckon?”
“It do beat all.… There ain’t even no night watchmen as I can see, not a soul. They’re ghost ships.”
It give me a shiver to watch them all sliding by, big and silent and dark, and then the answer come to me.
“Jim, you remember that sailor that Thaddeus told of, the one that’s been to the islands? Well he jumped ship here, and it looks like he warn’t the only one. All the crews has gone to the diggings.… There ain’t no one to sail the ships out to sea again.…”
“Den how we goin’ to get away on one of ’em?”
“I reckon we ain’t,” says I, and got that old familiar feeling I get when a situation I figured is going to be fine and dandy turns around and bites me, kind of like a lead weight sinking down through my belly. All of them ships could of took us away to freedom, and all the sailors has gone ashore to dig for gold and left them to rot. It’s a bitter pill, as they say. If it was gold fever that saved us from getting chased last night it’s gold fever that’s sunk our hopes tonight, which is what the judge would of called a double-edged sword that cuts both ways.
We felt forlorn and hopeless while the ferry slid along through that floating graveyard, and when we come to the dock and tied up it warn’t so exciting as I figured to walk down the gangplank and set foot on land. There’s a fair crowd on the wharf waiting, most of them women with bright colored dresses and painted faces and showing a lot of their chests even in winter, so they’re whores. We seen Orville Treece go down the plank first, and he just pushed straight through the women like they ain’t there and headed off down the wharf, so we fooled him definite. But it ain’t much consolation.
The men in front of us got argued over on account of there’s more whores than miners, but some men showed the wisdom of Solomon and quieted things down by marching off with whores on both arms. When Jim and me come down the plank there’s just three or four left. They warn’t about to sell theirselfs to no nigger, but they flapped around me like buzzards fixing to tear me open.
“Hello, little miner,” says one with a mouthful of rotten teeth. “I’ve been waiting all day for you. Let’s go to a place I know and you can tell me all about it.”
“All about what?”
“Anything at all. Ain’t you lonely for company?”
“No, ma’am, thank you anyway.”
She kind of hisses at me and says a few things I ain’t about to repeat and the others joined in, talking the disgustingest kind of language. We pushed through with their smell thick in our nostrils, paint and powder and perfume enough to make you puke, and was soon free of them. They stayed by the plank, waiting for the deckhands to finish work proberly, and we come to the end of the wharf where it joins onto a street with buildings two and three stories high along it. There warn’t too many people around when we set off down that street and there ain’t no lights so it’s considerable gloomy in between them high walls. We was halfway along when a woman come rushing up, not a whore I judged, and she’s real upset and says:
“Please help me! My little girl is under a box that fell on her! I can’t lift it off! Please come and help!”
“Yes, ma’am,” says I. “Where is she?”
“Down here.… Oh, please hurry!”
She rushed down a little alley and we followed on. She says over her shoulder:
“I told her not to play here after dark, but she never listens.… Oh, pray God she won’t die.…”
We turned a corner and something come down hard on my head from behind. I felt Jim fall against me on his way to the ground and I followed him down with a crash. There’s footsteps and voices, the woman and a couple of men, then nothing at all for a little while. Then Jim is shaking me by the shoulder.
“Huck …” he says, “Huck … we bin robbed.”
31
Roughing It—Work for Idle Hands—A Small World—Whiskey by the Bay—Shady Business—No Help Wanted
They took everything except our clothes. The gold was gone and my Hawken too, so even if the ships in the bay warn’t deserted we never could of paid for tickets now. It’s fickle fate again. We come all this way and worked hard for our gold, but at the end of the rainbow there’s just sore heads and the cozy fact that we’re stuck in a city where a pie costs a week’s wages and we ain’t got a cent between us. If I never had of give a bribe to the uniform on the ferry we would of at least had twenty dollars still, but I did so we ain’t. It’s enough to make a growed man cry, but we never, just picked ourselfs up and walked back along the alley to the street.
“Jim,” says I, “from now on we don’t trust no one.”
“Dat goes double for me.”
We wandered around town, and if you ain’t ever been there let me tell you San Francisco is a big place, with tall buildings that’s even made of brick, some of them, and a heap of streets that ain’t paved with gold after all, only mud. We got muddied up to our knees, mighty discomforting, and was hungry as wolves in winter. There was plenty of people around, and more women than I seen since Missouri, whores mostly, but still outnumbered ten to one by men. There was Chinamen too, and we heard all kinds of foreign talk like Orville Treece told us we would, but after awhile we had trouble hearing it over the grumbling in our bellies. Says I:
“Jim, there ain’t nothing else for it. We got to beg.”
We warn’t neither of us happy to do it, but Jim seen the sense in swallering pride so’s we can swaller food straight after. We agreed it’s best if I done the begging; a skinny boy is more pitiful than a big nigger, so Jim stood off to one side and I went up to a drunk that’s got new clothes on, a lucky miner I reckon.
“Pardon me, sir,” says I. “Could you spare a dollar for a starving orphan that ain’t et in three days?”
“A dollar?” he says, looking me up and down. “What kind of piker do you take me for, you little squirt? Here’s ten.”
He slapped a coin in my hand and went off, but he must of been drunker than I figured because it’s a twenty-dollar gold eagle. I done it plenty more times for an hour or so. Some men give me a good cussing but most give me money, and we ended up with forty-seven dollars. Maybe that sounds a lot for just an hour’s begging, but when we went into an eating house that’s packed and noisy with men and et our fill we come out again with four dollars seventy cents. I seen that the generousness I got ain’t such a big thing as I figured in a place like this, and I got begging again so’s we can get a bed for the night.
San Francisco don’t close down after midnight like most towns, just keeps on riproaring along with the streets jammed and all the lights on and music coming out of saloons and plenty of laughing and drinking and brawling going on all around. Maybe folks sleep in the daytime when there ain’t so much racket. I collected fifty-three dollars but got discouraged when a man never liked my face and pushed me off the sidewalk into the mud. I sunk in so deep Jim had to haul me out. I reckon there’s worse mud in the country, but it’s all under the Mississippi. I got cleaned off the best I can and we went into a hotel that ain’t too grand looking, but soon as we walked in the lobby the clerk says:
“No niggers.”
So we walked out again and tried another place next door, but they never liked niggers neither, and the other four we tried along the street was the same. Both of us was considerable wearied by now, and we finally drug ourselves behind a big brick warehouse that’s got empty crates and cases stacked around in a yard and crawled inside the driest. Back home I slept in a hogshead barrel in summertime, but warn’t fool enough to try it through winter. We shivered and shaked the whole night long and never got three winks of sleep, never mind forty, and in the morning crawled out again feeling like life ain’t worth the living, Jim says:
“Huck, dis kinder setup goin’ to kill us for sure.”
“I know it. We got to get some real money and buy horses and maybe catch up with Thaddeus. Wait on … If them ships in the bay is crying out for sailors I reckon we can get work on board one or other of them. I bet there’s captains that’ll give us a heap of money to help them sail away out of here. It don’t matter if they ain’t going to no islands, just so long as we get clear of San Francisco before the bulldog catches us up.”
“You reckon he ain’t goin’ to be fool’ by de lies you tol’ back at de diggin’s?”
“We can’t afford to take no chance on it. He’s a smart detective, I got to admit it, and he ain’t going to quit till he sniffs us out.”
We had a simple breakfast for thirty-six dollars then headed for the waterfront. There’s a place there with a sign out front that says: SHIPPING OFFICE.
We went in but there warn’t no one around except for a clerk with his feet on the desk and his nose in a newspaper. He give us a look and says:
“Well?”
“Pardon me, we was wondering if there’s a ship we can sign on for sailoring.”
“New in town?” he asks.
“Just yesterday.”
“Well, the shipping hereabouts is one-way. They come in and don’t go out again. Take a look out the window and you’ll see what I mean.”
“We seen it already, thank you. Ain’t there no ships at all that’s leaving? Ain’t there captains by the score hollering for men to splice the capstan and luff the buntline and such?”
“The captains are all at the diggings, the same as the men. Try again in a month or two, but things will still be the same.”
“Thank you,” says I.
“You’re welcome,” says he.
We went out and wandered the streets again, not knowing what else to do. We seen a place called Portsmouth Square that’s got one side burned down, which must of been the Christmas Eve fire the ferryman told of. They never wasted no time in building it up again and most of the frontage is already filled with wood frames for new buildings.
“Jim,” says I, “maybe we can earn our keep without begging after all.”
I asked one of the builders which one is the foreman and got pointed to a big man in a derby hat with a cigar in his mouth. Me and Jim went over and waited till he finished hollering at someone about nails, then I say:
“Pardon us, sir, but we need a job.”
“Ever done carpentering?” he says.
“Not for a living.”
“Bricklaying?”
“Well … no.”
“The nigger can haul bricks and mortar for the laying team and you can haul planks. Fifty dollars a day for you and thirty for the nigger.”
“That ain’t fair. He can do three times more’n me with one hand behind him.”
“All right then,” he says. “Forty.”
“We’ll take it.”
“Albie!” he hollers. “Two new men for you!”
A man about twenty-three or -four come up on the trot and got give orders about us and set us to work. It warn’t easy hauling that lumber without no sleep the night before, but I soldiered on and Jim done the same with barrowloads of bricks. At the end of the day we lined up with the rest of the men for our wages. We never done a full day’s work so I only got forty and Jim got thirty. Albie come over and seen what we got and says:
“You’ll get more tomorrow, only you got to turn up at eight o’clock sharp to get a full day’s pay. After a few days you can get even more.”
“How so?”
“Workers is the rarest birds in town right now with everyone haring off to the diggings. Any man that stays put can earn good money, even if he’s just a dishwasher. You let Herb get used to your face for a couple of days and work hard then ask him for a hundred dollars a day, which is what the rest of us is getting.”
“How come Herb never told us that?”
“On account of he’ll mark you down on the pay sheet for a hundred and pocket what he don’t pay you. He’s a sonovabitch, but if you say you’ll quit if you don’t get full wages he’ll pay up. Like I say, it ain’t easy to find men that’s willing to do laboring.”
“Thank you for the facts. Ain’t you got gold fever your own self?”
“I done a spell of mining,” he says, “but never had no luck. I reckon I’ll give it another try when I get enough saved for a grubstake. Building work ain’t so bad, not as bad as farmwork. You ever done that?”
“No, we done deckhanding on riverboats.”
“Say, are you from Missouri? You got that kind of sound, same as me.”
“Well … I got brung up there, but I got born in Illinois.”
“What’s your name?” he says. “Mine’s Albie Aintree.”
I near fell over when he told it, but I can’t rightly tell him I et food at his folks’ farm and told his Ma a slew of lies and tied up his Pa and stole their horse. Ain’t it peculiar the way you can meet up with someone you heard about two thousand mile away? Says I:
“I’m Jack Winterbough and this here’s Ben.”
He shook hands with us, even with Jim, which is mighty strange for a Missourian, then says why don’t we go and get fed a meal someplace. We done it and while we et he told all about how he hated working on his Pa’s farm just outside of St. Petersburg, which is a little river town we maybe heard of, being rivermen, and how he left home after his Pa called him a lazy dog. He got a steamboat down to New Orleans and worked his way on a ship down t
o Panama then rode muleback over the skinny stretch of land that keeps the Pacific out of the Atlantic and get et alive by moskeeters on the way. Then he worked on another ship up to San Francisco and walked to the diggings from there and walked all the way back again when he never struck it rich. It’s a mighty interesting story, but I never got the chance to tell him the usual lies about how Jim and me got here because the owner of the eating house says we got to leave and make room for them that’s waiting for a meal. We went outside and Albie says:
“Where are you staying?”
“Oh … we got a place a few blocks over yonder.”
“You’re mighty lucky. The boarding house I’m at is the cheapest in town and they don’t take no niggers.”
“We had to search around awhile to find this’n,” says I.
“Well,” he says, “I reckon I’d invite you back to my place for a snort, but I need all the sleep I can get, working like I do. You both better catch plenty too if you want to be on time tomorrow.”
We give our goodnights and me and Jim wandered off into the streets, just as tired as tired can be. I done some more begging to keep my hand in just in case the building job don’t work out, and I must of looked truly pathetical; I got sixty-eight dollars and a gold nugget without hardly trying. After that we went back to the warehouse yard and this time got some boxes fixed up so the wind don’t come through so much and even found a heap of straw packing that’s dry to fill a crate with so it’s middling comfortable, then dropped asleep.
When we woke up it’s hard to tell what time it is seeing as we ain’t got no pocket watch, and we never wanted to be late. Soon as we got on the street I ask the time off a man and got ten dollars too. It ain’t even half-past seven yet so we filled up with breakfast then strolled around to Portsmouth Square. We worked hard all day, but it’s easier than yesterday with a good sleep behind us, and when we collected our money Herb the foreman says:
“I want every man here tomorrow same as usual. There’s a fifty dollar bonus.”