i, jacob king, was born in new york city. i ran away to sea at the age of 14, and at 19 i was a ship’s officer.

at 19 i was a man, not a young man but a grown man, and any one who has followed the sea will know what that means. the sea ripens a man early, ripens him and fixes his mind for good or for evil, according to his capacity to understand the life about him. nowadays on shore i see young fellows of 19 that are not much better than children, except that they have stretched enough to wear long trousers. that is the life of the land, where such a thing as responsibility seems to be unknown until men have begun to decay. i was not that way; and if i had had a better mind i might have made a success of life. i think i would have been successful ashore, anyway, for i was quick and clever and never shirked work; but mostly i think so because i was hard and young and brazen. i knew how to fight and i knew how to[193] bluff. ashore, it would have been enough to know how to bluff, i should not have had to fight. at sea a man cannot succeed, permanently, without actual worth and fighting and winning. on the land, so far as my observation goes, actual worth is by no means necessary to success. any number of things may make a landsman successful; he may acquire money or fame and his success is measured by what of these things he has acquired; it is not measured by the stuff in him, as it is at sea, but by what he gets hold of; and if he cannot keep hold of it he becomes a failure again, though he is no worse a man than before. landsmen do not value the man but what he has. by that measure i have become, i suppose, a pretty successful person ashore; i, who was a disgrace to salt water, can hold up my head here with some of the best of them. i am not famous, it is true, but i have a fortune of $200,000 more or less, a pretty considerable figure in these days.

at 19 i was a ship’s officer and at 21 i was a first mate. it was then, on my first passage as chief officer, that the first of a series of events which i have to relate occurred. the ship on which i was then was the fast clipper china castle, john hawkins, master, and the passage was from boston to shanghai. captain hawkins was a young man in years, like myself—about 26, i think. he had sailed the china castle between new york and san francisco at the time of the california gold rush and was now taking her out on her first passage to the east. at last she was to be put into the tea trade, for which she had been built, but from which she had been taken from her very launching for the immensely profitable california route. besides myself and captain[194] hawkins there was in the cabin mrs. hawkins, his young wife; she is the only other person aft who matters in my story. she had not been married to captain hawkins long, only a year or so, and this was her first passage with him and a sort of deferred honeymoon.

mrs. hawkins was a beautiful woman, a young woman, of course. she was, i think, two or three years younger than her husband and about as much older than i. she was very pleasant, as agreeable as she was beautiful; and she did not stand on ceremony as a captain’s wife is likely to do. i suppose this was partly because it was her first voyage and it may have been partly because we were all about the same age; but it was mainly her own gracious nature. i, for my part, had not seen or met many women and i had never seen or met any woman like her. from a boy i had been to sea, and while i had been on ships where the captains had their wives along they had never been women of my own age. they had never been good-looking women, let alone being half so lovely as keturah hawkins, and i had never been aft as first officer and privileged to associate with them on terms of something resembling social equality. of course, social equality is impossible on board a ship; but in so far as it could be brought about mrs. hawkins brought it about in the cabin of the china castle. that and her beauty turned my head. she used to wear splendid jewels that her husband had got for her, though they were nothing to what he procured afterward, i judge, in the orient. she had very fine blue eyes, a bright and flashing blue such as you see in midocean, particularly in the tropics in fine weather, the blue of deepest water. her hair was a dark red, in great[195] coils as thick as the heaviest rope cable aboard the ship, and her skin was a white that did not seem to tan or lose its whiteness from wind or weather, though sometimes a faint freckle or two would appear upon it. her grandniece, though but a young girl, is wonderfully like her in every appearance. the sight of this girl tears me to pieces. it brings it all back. it brings back the hour in which i went clean out of my senses, sitting there alone in the cabin with keturah hawkins. she did not scream or struggle, but in a moment she ran away and bolted herself in her room. of course when the captain came down from the poop deck, where his regular pacing had been audible over our heads all this time, she told him.

i don’t know why he didn’t shoot me dead; well, yes, i think i do. i think his wife interceded for me and i think he believed the proper punishment could only be something everlastingly shameful and as painful as possible. he had me triced up by the thumbs and flogged in the sight of the crew. i was flogged till i lost consciousness. it was two days before i could stand a watch. my only idea then was to kill him. i told him so, which was an unnecessary thing to do. he took precautions, however, such as seeing that i had no weapons, and never giving me an opportunity to attack him. mrs. hawkins kept to her room; i had my work to do, and that went on as though nothing had happened. no private affair, no matter how serious, relaxes the discipline of the sea. when i told captain hawkins that i would kill him some day he only looked at me and said: “you’re a good ship’s officer but you’re a disgrace to salt water. if you want to kill a man, the first man for you to kill is jacob king.”

[196]i thought he meant suicide—“go drown yourself” as the contemptuous phrase of the fo’c’s’le puts it. it was years before i saw what he meant by that “if you want to kill a man, the first man for you to kill is jacob king.” i know now just what he was driving at. i have killed jacob king. i have killed my man. i won’t need to kill another.

but that has come a long time after. a long time. too long, maybe.

when we reached shanghai i got my discharge, of course, and a good discharge it was, for i had done my work well and captain hawkins, as fine a seaman as ever lived, was strictly just. i stayed ashore awhile and lived an evil life, drinking and smoking opium and consorting with thieves and ticket-of-leave men and all the riffraff of an eastern seaport. all the while i was haunted by the remembrance of keturah hawkins. drunk or sober, sane or in opium dreams, i saw her—saw her great cables of dark red hair, her white skin, her dazzling blue eyes, her delightful smile that she had smiled expressly for the benefit of the young and capable first mate of her husband’s fine ship. if i had been able to do it i would have possessed myself of her even then. i would have killed her husband, i would have killed every one aboard the china castle, to have her. in opium dreams i did kill them all; i slew all shanghai and burned the city and launched as many ships to pursue her as were launched to bring back helen from ancient troy. all dreams, all mad delusions! i was a fevered, burning, babbling, stupefied wretch of a sailor with no money in my pockets and nothing to fall back upon but a splendid ruggedness of body and a good discharge as first mate.

[197]the good discharge was sufficient to get me a berth on a ship sailing for san francisco. once at sea again i was all right except in my mind. that had been all twisted and distorted by the punishment inflicted upon me by captain hawkins. i couldn’t get over the disgrace of it; which was deserved, of course, though i didn’t think so. i kept thinking of myself as a man who had been shamed beyond all deserving. i was convinced that i had merely been too rashly assuming, and that if i had gone about it differently or had taken more time, had not acted so impulsively—— all this was self-deception, of course, and it degraded keturah hawkins, in my thoughts, at least. perhaps i thought that if i could not lift myself up to her i could pull her down to my level. what i didn’t see was that a good woman—or a good man either, likely—cannot be lowered by whatever baseness any one may choose to think or say. the only person that is lowered is the thinker or the sayer. you’ll find this and a whole lot more coiled away in that poem of emerson’s about brahma: “i am the thinker and the thought,” or something like that, it runs. i don’t know whether a man makes the thought that passes through his mind, but i do know that the thought makes the man. at least, it made me. i was still jacob king, but i wasn’t the same jacob king. something in me had been poisoned. the slow poisoning of——? the swiftest poison is not the most sure.

i was very bad, i mean mentally, when i got to san francisco, and the life i led there did not mend me. gradually as i kept seeing the image of keturah hawkins in all states of sleep and waking, at all hours and under the influence of all sorts of drugs and in the midst of all kinds of surroundings[198] the image itself faded; or changed and coarsened. i did not notice that the dazzling blue, as of sunshine trying vainly to shaft through unfathomable depths, had disappeared from her eyes, but soon i could no longer see those heavy cables of dark red hair, made up of so many twisted strands, nor the wonderful milky whiteness of the skin. the features became indistinct, and soon i saw clearly nothing but the magnificent jewels she had worn—the ropes of pearls that took lustre from her skin; the emeralds that shone in green drops in the rich, dark, smouldering red of her hair; the sapphires that seemed to condense and make permanent the more brilliant blue of her eyes. about these gems that she had worn there was the glitter, the undying glitter of hard stones. all that was lovely, all that was spiritual, all that was human in the vision of her perished; and still the splendour of those jewels remained. i used to see her as an imperceptible outline—no face, no rounded arm, no wealth of hair, just an imagined outline with here and there certain gorgeous jewels in an ornamental and decorative arrangement—fastened on the air. at such times i went clean crazy, but i could do nothing. i was getting too besotted to straighten up for any length of time. and there wasn’t any cure. how could there be? i couldn’t cure myself. i was being poisoned by the irremediable past. how abolish the past? it’s all very well to talk about living a thing down, but the only thing that can be lived down is the thing that wasn’t entirely so. my past was.

it was in san francisco that i got acquainted with a man named hosea hand and came into a strange relationship with his brother, one richard hand. hosea hand was a[199] sailor, one of the crew of the ship on which i had come from shanghai. he was younger than i, and after we got to san francisco and the ship’s discipline relaxed i saw a good deal of him, first and last. one day in a lonely mood he told me his story. his brother had cheated him out of an inheritance, or so he figured, and he had run away to sea, like myself, as a boy. two things about the story struck me: his brother, if what he said was true, might pay money to have him stay away from home—not that hosea hand had any thought of returning home but i could represent him as being bent on doing so, and myself as able to keep him away, for a price; the other thing—and this impressed and excited me much the more strongly—was that the hand farm was on long island not far from the little town of blue port where keturah hawkins had her home. i turned the whole thing over in my mind during the sodden days and nights of a week. i do not believe that in the condition i was in all that time i was capable of reaching a bold decision—not even boldly evil. at last i wrote to richard hand. i told him that i, a stranger to him, not only knew his brother’s whereabouts but knew his story; and i had found hosea hand resolved to return home and settle accounts. i could keep the boy away, but must have something for doing it. it would be a sensible thing for him to do business with me. i wanted money, and i wanted information. his reply and its enclosure would be evidence of good faith.

he replied; and it was plain that he was frightened. hosea hand was no longer in san francisco, having shipped on a vessel for new york. richard hand did not send much money, but any sum looked large to me at the moment. i[200] spent the money in one night, and began to consider how i could get more, or how i should proceed next, having in mind the fact that the young brother had expressed an intention of going home. if he did so, i knew he would not bother richard hand further than to tell him to his face that he was a cheat and might go to the devil as fast as he liked. then i should be unable to get more money. i wrote to richard hand—the letter would reach him before his brother appeared—asking about captain hawkins. where was he, where was his wife, what were their means, what connections had they? richard hand sent back a pretty full account of the hawkinses. both were at sea at the time. there was property. they had no child as yet. mrs. hawkins had an older sister, married, with two children, a boy and a girl. their name was smiley and the girl was named after mrs. hawkins. in the event of the hawkinses remaining childless, these two would most likely inherit their property. all this did not interest me much and i wrote no more to richard hand at that time. of a sudden the passion for that woman of the dark red hair and milky skin reawakened in me. i was young; i shook off my dissipation, and set out to find her.

in all sorts of ships and in any sort of berth i went about the world, from seaport to seaport; and as i was a good ship’s officer i had no trouble to get about. i sailed from san francisco to new york, and there i heard that captain hawkins had left the china castle and was somewhere on the western ocean, as seamen term the north atlantic, with cotton for liverpool. i followed, as nearly as possible, but got to liverpool after he had sailed on his return trip.[201] a long chase followed. there is no point in setting it down here. it lasted for years. we three ranged from singapore to boston and from rotterdam to the cape settlement. twice in that time i caught glimpses of keturah hawkins. once i saw her standing on the afterdeck of her husband’s ship, clearing from havre as we entered the harbour; again i saw her driven past, on a boulevard in rio de janeiro. the third time i did not have merely a glimpse of her but met her face to face.

it was totally unexpected. i did not even know that the other vessel in the harbour of almeria was her husband’s. almeria is a spanish town with nothing to recommend it to any one except the trader. i was in ballast and called on the chance of a cargo—grapes or anything. above the town, on the bare brown hills, lies the ruin of the moorish fort, just a long enclosure, a masonry wall about shoulder high, with embrasures. it is the only thing to see. she had come ashore to see it, leaving her husband supervising the work of loading cargo, a job he never left entirely to his mate. i was wandering around with a young spaniard; not that either of us could understand the other very well but some kind of company seemed essential. we came upon her, all alone, a foolhardy thing, but she had superb self-confidence. she lifted her eyes, saw me, half turned and started away, walking steadily but with no appearance of flight. i overtook her. i don’t know, as i live, what i said, but whatever it was she never answered, nor did she look at me. as we passed through the gateway out of the fort she paused for an instant and gave a beggar a small coin. at that moment i saw captain hawkins approaching.

[202]he looked straight at me, never moving a muscle of his face, approached her, and said something in an undertone, a request to wait, i imagine. then he came toward me and i turned and led the way into the fort, within those shell-like walls four centuries old. inside i faced him. it was easy to see what was coming.

i was beaten, badly beaten. his fists, hard as iron belaying pins, broke down my defence and hammered blows upon my head, my shoulders, my body. i was soon winded and down, and still he did not leave off beating me. he kicked me about as i grovelled there in the fine dust of that moorish citadel, the outpost of granada. i was a dog and he used me like a dog. when i was senseless he left. how i got out of it i don’t know; i think the young spaniard got others to help him and put me on board my vessel. when i recovered the next day the other ship had gone.

all the evil in me was loosed by this adventure. i swore to myself that i would be revenged upon those people and any and all of their people, and that i would live if only to accomplish that. but eighteen months in which i lost all track of the hawkinses cooled that purpose. i married, and keturah hawkins was half forgotten. of my marriage it is not necessary to say anything. it took place in san francisco and was forced upon me at the point of a pistol. my wife died within a year. i left the sea and became a prospector when i was not an idler. i was nearly 50 when a child was born. this is the boy known as guy vanton. after his mother’s death, very shortly after, i struck it rich. concerning my money and the source of it i have nothing to say; concerning the boy’s mother nothing except that we[203] were not married. i may not be his father, but i am the only father he has known. all these things i have told him. i would save him, if possible, from what has befallen me. you will see what that is shortly.

after i became rich—so rich that i could not waste my substance in a night, or a week, or a year; so old that caution was the stronger impulse always and made me hoard what i had—after the death of guy vanton’s mother i lived just outside san francisco with the boy and the memories of a vicious life. there is nothing like old age to intensify the good or evil in a man. here was i with my memories, which all at once, in my loneliness, became vivid, alive, crawling. i thought of keturah hawkins and writhed. i thought of her jewels and a terrible greed filled me. i thought of that flogging on the china castle and my shoulders twitched; of the impact of captain hawkins’s fists and quivered, half raising a protective arm. i wrote again to richard hand and learned that these two people were dead; that their nephew had married and displeased keturah hawkins; that her fortune had gone to her niece. from richard hand i was able to learn something about these persons and to figure out a way i might strike at them and hurt or crush them. how was i able to get this out of him? partly by threats to show him up as compounding with me to keep his brother out of a lawful inheritance; partly with money. i have no time for details and there are things that are better to go forever unrecorded.

it was i, jacob king, who hired a man to make love to and fascinate john smiley’s wife. it was an easy thing to do, with her husband mostly absent on the beach. to avoid[204] the townspeople’s eyes was more difficult, but it was managed with secret meetings of one sort or another. she was led to leave him, taking her baby girl with her; eventually she was led to me. how much of this richard hand surmised i don’t know or care. but he had no part in it beyond giving me facts about the smileys to go upon.

i subjected mary smiley to all the tortures i could devise. she lived with me though she was john smiley’s wife. she was a silly, childish creature and she was absolutely at my mercy. i made her life a hell for several years. in the meantime, her little girl was growing—into a tiny image of keturah hawkins. it was that which conquered me, or the settled wickedness within me. i, who had set out to wreak remotely my revenge on keturah hawkins, was myself becoming the victim of a living punishment. for here was keturah hawkins in the house with me. every physical characteristic was there in the child later known as mermaid smiley, the daughter of john smiley and mary rogers smiley, the grandniece of the woman i remembered. the child had keturah hawkins’s hair, eyes, skin, and features; even, in embryo, her manner. i could torture her silly and pitiable mother and the child would enter the room, a living taunt to me. here she was, and she would outlive me; she would be flesh and blood, wonderful glinting hair, flashing blue eyes, matchless white skin, unconquerably alive and superb, unconquerably young and gay when i was not merely a cruel and old and despicable man, but dust. she would dance on my grave.

i stood it as long as i could and then something happened within me, a mental overthrow comparable to the physical[205] defeats i had suffered because of keturah hawkins. something in the continual presence of that child rained blows upon me until i was numb in my mind, until i couldn’t think or plan at all, until the torture i could inflict on her mother was a meaningless thing; and there had always been a terrible futility about it for the reason that i could not make my revenge anywhere near complete and satisfactory. i could not, for instance, communicate to john and keturah smiley the triumph of vengeance that was mine. john hawkins was not alive to witness it; keturah hawkins—— was she alive, in the person of that child, to see it? perhaps, and perhaps she was alive in the person of that child to thwart it. she would beat me down; dead or living she would best me. a superstitious, or perhaps a holy, terror laid hold of me so that i dared not lay hands on the little girl, or even say to her things that might bring tears to childish eyes. i dared not, i tell you! and besides, it would be laying hands on keturah herself.

you see the situation? do you see how the poison of evil had worked in me all these years, how it had dominated me for a time, how it had lain dormant, how it had cropped out hideously like some unspeakable and inexterminable disease? silently through the years it had corrupted me, corrupting my mind even more than my body, more insidiously and more surely, and with more deadly a result. and at last from a small boat on san francisco bay—we had gone into the city to live—john smiley’s wife was drowned. i was left with the child on my hands and with no embodiment for my fancied vengeance. i think i went nearly insane then, if i was not insane already.

[206]i determined to make what atonement i could. i took certain cowardly precautions and prepared to send the child back to her father. there is something supernatural in the manner in which that return was accomplished. i did not learn of it for some years. i took the boy, guy, and went to paris, taking a servant with me in the semblance of my wife and his mother. she became an invalid abroad, but i have not cast her off.

in paris i came to see that my atonement must be as complete as i could make it. so i came back to new york and made inquiries through richard hand. i was then “captain vanton,” or “buel vanton” but i wrote him as jacob king. he replied; from what he told me—and i paid him, of course—i was able to piece together the truth that was hidden from him and from others. the next step was the appearance of captain vanton in blue port.

the rest, externally, is known; what can never be known is the suffering i have endured. it is all deserved and much more, no doubt, but endurance is nearing an end. i am probably insane in some peculiar fashion. i see nothing but jewels; jewels arranged as if in the hair and on the bosom of an invisible woman. then i see keturah hawkins, a very young keturah hawkins, but keturah hawkins beyond question, pass along the street—and she wears no jewels. i think her aunt has them, and some day in my madness i shall break in and steal them, just to handle them, these stones that touched her white skin and were nested in that wine-dark hair. pray god, i may never lay hold of them or i shall go raving mad! the girl, this reincarnation of the woman i once held in my arms, i have no further concern[207] with. if ever she comes to me to know her story i shall tell her. but she is keturah. she knows.

the boy, young guy, i have kept close by me, and i have told him some of this shameful story in order that, if he does indeed have any of my blood in his veins, he may have, in knowledge of the truth, some antidote to its poison. the girl will have money, and i will provide for the boy.

the girl and boy are friends; something else may ripen of their friendship. if he is my son and if, as may be, she loves him, or comes to love him, will that be a final triumphant twist in my favour against keturah? will that be the last word—my word—in this problem of revenge? you see, you see how deeply it has poisoned me. perhaps i will anticipate the end.

the signature of “jacob king” completed this narrative, obviously too incredible in its statements and too monomaniacal in its tone to have any bearing on the death of captain buel vanton from a pistol wound, self-inflicted.