  There was one singular consequence of Belasco’s interest in ships and his somewhat extravagant and sentimental fancy which is worth special record. The tragedian John McCullough used frequently to recite, with pathetic effect, a ballad, once widely known, by Arthur Matthison (1826-1883), called “The Little Hero,”—originally named “The Stow “The story of ’The Little Hero’ related the adventures of a stowaway who was discovered in his hiding-place by the sailors when they were in mid-ocean, and the lad was forced to work, and was beaten and starved into the bargain. As a boy I had read a like tale, which had so stirred my imagination that I used to dream of it by night, and in my spare time by day I would wander along the wharves to gaze at the shipping. How it happened I don’t quite know, but my feet led me on board a boat and, simply as an experiment, I hid myself. Then a rash notion came into my head! Suppose I stayed where I was and put into practice what the poem had so graphically described! For thirty hours I crouched behind my sable bulwark, and after interminable sailing it seemed to me about time that I was discovered, so I made myself visible. I was dragged up on JOHN MC CULLOUGH “This was the noblest Roman of them all!” —Julius Caesar Photograph by Sarony. deck with no tender touch, and there the analogy between the little hero and myself vanished. The captain of the schooner was a friend of my father’s. ’Aren’t you Humphrey’s boy?’ he asked, and I was obliged to confess to my identity. ’Take him downstairs and wash him,’ the captain ordered, for contact with the coal had made me look like a blackamoor; despite my protestations that this was not the correct treatment for a stowaway, I was taken below. ’Give him something to eat,’ he called after us, but I was as obdurate as a militant suffragette in the matter of food. Later on, when I was ’swabbed down,’ I was taken on deck again, where I was obliged to tell the captain my story, and the reasons for my escapade. ’I’ll be blazed if I lick you as you seem to want!’ said he. I was reciting the story to the queer group gathered about me, when I suddenly realized that my old enemy seasickness was creeping over me. ’Let me scrub the floor,’ I pleaded. ’They always do.’ At first they laughingly refused, but presently, to humor me, I was put to work on a brass rail that needed shining. However, the smell of the oil polish hastened my catastrophe. I was put to bed and very glad to be there. From Vancouver I was shipped home, where I found my mother rejoiced to get me back. She was not so perturbed as she might have been, because the poor lady was used to my ’disappearances’ in search of adventure and the romantic. She always knew that I was doing something or other to gain new impressions, and her heart was wonderfully attuned to mine.” |
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