One man speculated
as to the probable price the head would fetch; and the general vote was
for two pounds, or two pounds ten. "It wouldn't give me no pleasure,"
said one of us, "to have that ginger-nob in my chest." "Nor me, it
wouldn't," said another; "I draw the line at having a corpse on my
tobacker." "And I do," said several. Clearly the Frenchman was
destined for a town museum.
It was more than a year after that I heard of the end of the El Dorado
hunter. I was in New York when I heard it, serving behind the bar of a
saloon. One evening, as I was mixing cocktails, I heard myself hailed
by a customer; and there was Billy Neeld, one of our quartermasters,
just come ashore from an Atlantic Transport boat. We had a drink
together, and yarned of old times. The names of our old shipmates were
like incantations. The breathing of them brought the past before us;
the past which was so recent, yet so far away; the past which is so
dear to a sailor and so depressing to a landsman. So and so was dead,
and Jimmy had gone among the Islands, and Dick had pulled out for home
because "he couldn't stick that Mr. Jenkins." Very few of them
remained on the Coast; the brothers of the Coast are a shifty crowd.
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