Guided by the sound of the falling wheat, S. Behrman crawled on hands and knees toward the hatchway. Once more he raised his voice in a shout for help. His bleeding throat and raw, parched lips refused to utter but a wheezing moan. Once more he tried to look toward the one patch of faint light above him. His eyelids, clogged with chaff, could no longer open. The Wheat poured about his waist as he raised himself upon his knees.
Reason fled. Deafened with the roar of the grain, blinded and made dumb with its chaff, he threw himself forward with clutching fingers, rolling upon his back, and lay there, moving feebly, the head rolling from side to side. The Wheat, leaping continuously from the chute, poured around him. It filled the pockets of the coat, it crept up the sleeves and trouser legs, it covered the great, protuberant stomach, it ran at last in rivulets into the distended, gasping mouth. It covered the face. Upon the surface of the Wheat, under the chute, nothing moved but the Wheat itself. There was no sign of life. Then, for an instant, the surface stirred. A hand, fat, with short fingers and swollen veins, reached up, clutching, then fell limp and prone. In another instant it was covered. In the hold of the Swanhilda there was no movement but the widening ripples that spread flowing from the ever-breaking, ever-reforming cone; no sound, but the rushing of the Wheat that continued to plunge incessantly from the iron chute in a prolonged roar, persistent, steady, inevitable.
Conclusion
The Swanhilda cast off from the docks at Port Costa two days after Presley had left Bonneville and the ranches and made her way up to San Francisco, anchoring in the stream off the City front. A few hours after her arrival, Presley, waiting at his club, received a despatch from Cedarquist to the effect that she would clear early the next morning and that he must be aboard of her before midnight.
He sent his trunks aboard and at once hurried to Cedarquist’s office to say goodbye. He found the manufacturer in excellent spirits.
“What do you think of Lyman Derrick now, Presley?” he said, when Presley had sat down. “He’s in the new politics with a vengeance, isn’t he? And our own dear Railroad openly acknowledges him as their candidate. You’ve heard of his canvass.”
“Yes, yes,” answered Presley. “Well, he knows his business best.”
But Cedarquist was full of another idea: his new venture—the organizing of a line of clipper wheat ships for Pacific and Oriental trade—was prospering.
“The Swanhilda is the mother of the fleet, Pres. I had to buy her, but the keel of her sister ship will be laid by the time she discharges at Calcutta. We’ll carry our wheat into Asia yet. The Anglo-Saxon started from there at the beginning of everything and it’s manifest destiny that he must circle the globe and fetch up where he began his march. You are up with procession, Pres, going to India this way in a wheat ship that flies American colours. By the way, do you know where the money is to come from to build the sister ship of the Swanhilda? From the sale of the plant and scrap iron of the Atlas Works. Yes, I’ve given it up definitely, that business. The people here would not back me up. But I’m working off on this new line now. It may break me, but we’ll try it on. You know the ‘Million Dollar Fair’ was formally opened yesterday. There is,” he added with a wink, “a Midway Pleasance in connection with the thing. Mrs. Cedarquist and our friend Hartrath ‘got up a subscription’ to construct a figure of California—heroic size—out of dried apricots. I assure you,” he remarked With prodigious gravity, “it is a real work of art and quite a ‘feature’ of the Fair. Well, good luck to you, Pres. Write to me from Honolulu, and bon voyage. My respects to the hungry Hindu. Tell him ‘we’re coming, Father Abraham, a hundred thousand more.’ Tell the men of the East to look out for the men of the West. The irrepressible Yank is knocking at the doors of their temples and he will want to sell ’em carpet-sweepers for their harems and electric light plants for their temple shrines. Goodbye to you.”
“Goodbye, sir.”
“Get fat yourself while you’re about it, Presley,” he observed, as the two stood up and shook hands.
“There shouldn’t be any lack of food on a wheat ship. Bread enough, surely.”
“Little monotonous, though. ‘Man cannot live by bread alone.’ Well, you’re really off. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, sir.”
And as Presley issued from the building and stepped out into the street, he was abruptly aware of a great wagon shrouded in white cloth, inside of which a bass drum was being furiously beaten. On the cloth, in great letters, were the words:
“Vote for Lyman Derrick, Regular Republican
