confidence and decision. His horny hands and wrists were covered with
tattoo-marks, and when his lips parted, his teeth showed up white and
blemishless. His voice was the effortless deep bass of a church organ,
and would disturb the tranquility of a gas flame fifty yards away.
“They’re wonderful pictures,” said Barrow. “We’ve been examining them.”
“It is very bleasant dot you like dem,” said Handel, the German, greatly
pleased. “Und you, Herr Tracy, you haf peen bleased mit dem too,
alretty?”
“I can honestly say I have never seen anything just like them before.”
“Schon!” cried the German, delighted. “You hear, Gaptain? Here is a
chentleman, yes, vot abbreviate unser aart.”
The captain was charmed, and said:
“Well, sir, we’re thankful for a compliment yet, though they’re not as
scarce now as they used to be before we made a reputation.”
“Getting the reputation is the up-hill time in most things, captain.”
“It’s so. It ain’t enough to know how to reef a gasket, you got to make
the mate know you know it. That’s reputation. The good word, said at
the right time, that’s the word that makes us; and evil be to him that
evil thinks, as Isaiah says.”
“It’s very relevant, and hits the point exactly,” said Tracy.
“Where did you study art, Captain?”
“I haven’t studied; it’s a natural gift.”
“He is born mit dose cannon in him. He tondt haf to do noding, his
chenius do all de vork. Of he is asleep, and take a pencil in his hand,
out come a cannon. Py crashus, of he could do a clavier, of he could do
a guitar, of he could do a vashtub, it is a fortune, heiliger Yohanniss
it is yoost a fortune!”
“Well, it is an immense pity that the business is hindered and limited in
this unfortunate way.”
The captain grew a trifle excited, himself, now:
“You’ve said it, Mr. Tracy!–Hindered? well, I should say so. Why, look
here. This fellow here, No. 11, he’s a hackman,–a flourishing hackman,
I may say. He wants his hack in this picture. Wants it where the cannon
is. I got around that difficulty, by telling him the cannon’s our
trademark, so to speak-proves that the picture’s our work, and I was
afraid if we left it out people wouldn’t know for certain if it was a
Saltmarsh–Handel–now you wouldn’t yourself–”
“What, Captain? You wrong yourself, indeed you do. Anyone who has once
seen a genuine Saltmarsh-Handel is safe from imposture forever. Strip
it, flay it, skin it out of every detail but the bare color and
expression, and that man will still recognize it–still stop to
worship–”
“Oh, how it makes me feel to hear dose oxpressions!–”
–“still say to himself again as he had, said a hundred times before, the
art of the Saltmarsh-Handel is an art apart, there is nothing in the
heavens above or in the earth beneath that resembles it,–”
“Py chiminy, nur horen Sie einmal! In my life day haf I never heard so
brecious worts.”
“So I talked him out of the hack, Mr. Tracy, and he let up on that, and
said put in a hearse, then–because he’s chief mate of a hearse but don’t
own it–stands a watch for wages, you know. But I can’t do a hearse any
more than I can a hack; so here we are–becalmed, you see. And it’s the
same with women and such. They come and they want a little johnry
picture–”
“It’s the accessories that make it a ‘genre?'”
“Yes–cannon, or cat, or any little thing like that, that you heave into
whoop up the effect. We could do a prodigious trade with the women if we
could foreground the things they like, but they don’t give a damn for
artillery. Mine’s the lack,” continued the captain with a sigh, “Andy’s
end of the business is all right I tell you he’s an artist from way
back!”
“Yoost hear dot old man! He always talk ‘poud me like dot,” purred the
pleased German.
“Look at his work yourself! Fourteen portraits in a row. And no two of
them alike.”
“Now that you speak of it, it is true; I hadn’t noticed it before. It is