I
Yes, the _Star of Troy_ had slipped into the harbour of Sandakan, and
rode there at anchor in a dreamy way, as though, despite her grim and
business-like appearance, it had suddenly become her destiny to drift
idly at her ease forever upon an idle tropic sea. A little dry-looking
smoke dribbled off her stack. There appeared no signs of life aboard.
Visitors were usually received in Captain Utterbourne’s snug little
white cabin—or his “shop,” as he preferred calling it: a delightful
place, walls and beamed ceiling scrupulously painted, floor dark and
highly polished. There were a couple of good brass ships’ lamps, always
perfectly spotless and shining. A faint aroma of metal polish merged with
that thrilling, indefinable scent which belongs in greater or less degree
to the cabins of all ships.
Elsa, looking very cool and wise, was mixing something in a shaker,
assisted by a young Chinese boy whom Captain Utterbourne had picked up in
Hong Kong, and who was supremely devoted. The girl spoke to him now and
then in low tones, and he smiled at her with affectionate understanding.
Captain Utterbourne, turning a fresh cigar about with slightly mincing
appreciation, was receiving accounts of the wreck of the _Skipping
Goone_ as they fell indiscriminately from the lips of Captain Bearman,
Xenophon Curry, and a certain young man with a very sophisticated face
and troubled eyes whom Elsa had encountered by the roadside during the
afternoon. The master of the _Star of Troy_ seemed rather to have an eye
on Jerome, and there was something like amazement lurking behind the
efficient poker mask.
“I never had such a run of bad luck in my life,” Captain Bearman whined,
his embittered lips seeming rather to steal over and fold in the words
than cleanly to emit them. “I simply go below for a wink of sleep, and
before I can get back again that ass of a mate....” His manner was an
odd blend of self-conscious indignation and uneasy dignity. “First the
rudder—then he lets her jibe—and I’m knocked off my ship into the sea! I
can’t tell you, Captain, what I went through out there in the water—that
mate....” His face gleamed white with the rage that was in him. “He ought
to be brought to trial—I mean to see about it. It amounts to mutiny, I
say!”
Captain Bearman’s eyes went rapidly about; and he was harassed by a
disagreeable sense of not having quite succeeded, after all, in defending
his position. However, this was but a logical phase of his destiny, which
always, in the end, must simply be bowed to.
“Lord, Lord!” exclaimed the impresario. “It seems incredible we should
go through what we did and all live to tell the tale! But when I saw my
scenery going,” he continued with a sigh, “I knew that was the end of the
world tour. It takes the ground from under a man—everything wiped out in
an hour....” He looked tired and seemed even to have aged; but nothing
could ever rob that smile of its incorrigible strength and sweetness—a
smile so full of confidence in the inherent good of an often enough
unfathomable scheme of things. However, transcending everything else
just now was the startling and ludicrous aspect of the impresario’s head
without the toupee, which had been, for all who knew him, so essential
a feature. Without the boyish bangs he had somehow a naked, lost look,
which lured out smiles all round, though the situation was grave and
sober. It was like the laughing twist of a comet’s tail through empyreans
of stern and awful purpose. Or it was like the drunken porter’s
soliloquy in _Macbeth_.
Elsa superintended the distribution of the drink she had been concocting,
and they all sat sipping. Jerome’s eyes rested upon a map of the world
covering one wall of the cabin. There was the whole world outspread;
the route of his adventurous travels, with their complement of personal
growth, could be traced league by league. He felt some one gazing at him
curiously, and when he turned met Elsa’s eyes.
Talk broadened to consideration of other sea disasters, the theme seeming
to hold a subtle fascination; and Utterbourne, discoursing about “runs of
luck,” aired certain slightly nebulous theories about “rhythm” in such
matters. And then they returned to the wreck of the _Skipping Goone_,
and Jerome, conscious that Captain Utterbourne was following him with
quizzical attention, told at some length of the tussles he was having
over insurance and the cargo tangle generally.
“There’s been some rumpus about witnesses—it’s lucky I had presence of
mind to grab the books before leaving the schooner.” He laughed shortly.
“It’s worse than any mix-up I ever got into in the chandlery line!”
He drank the last of his cocktail; and the Captain, staring at him
blankly, mused: “How the devil has a fellow of this type managed to
change so utterly in one short year? How the devil?” There was a glow
behind the sleeping quiet of his baffling eyes. Experience, the Captain
concluded with a sly wink of relish, must have acted in the case of
young Stewart—h’m?—like a sly milligram of radium. For the Captain was
very fond of analysing people—considered himself extremely clever at it;
and, while he sometimes made mistakes of which nobody knew anything, he
was, on the whole, a pretty shrewd judge of human nature. And with him
analysis always moved hand in hand with the musing query: Is this a man
I can use somewhere? The process had become really subconscious. As he
watched Jerome he narrowed his eyes a little.
“We seem to be a deadly poison—h’m?” observed Captain Utterbourne a
little later in his lynx-like drawl, conversation having by this time
turned upon one of his most cherished themes: the deleterious influence
of civilization on the human race, and especially the havoc wrought by
Christianity. It was perhaps a trifle vague; but the other captain,
setting down his glass, nodded with that peculiar brand of admiring
speechlessness one would expect to encounter in a satellite who seemed
thus to convey: “Exactly what I’ve always insisted, but these fools
won’t listen to reason—you can’t get ’em to!” And from time to time, as
startling figures emerged concerning the decline of savage life under
enlightened rule, Mr. Curry would cry: “Is it possible?”—almost as
though, right on top of all his own troubles, he half recognized here a
human challenge to do something.
“By the way, dad,” demanded Elsa, “speaking of savages in general and
Borneo in particular, when do we sail on?”
For a moment Turk met Turk, with faces that defied each other in the
matter of inscrutability.
“Anxious already—h’m?” her father parried—for he loved to pit query
against query.
“Not especially,” she replied with a restless toss of her head, yet
without accentuating, as she so often did at such times, the drooping of
her cow-brown eyes. “I find these places a bit dull, Captain,” she added,
drawling. “I suppose it’s the effect of civilization.” Her dry thrust
went home, and his eyes subtly twinkled. At such times he looked ever so
human and guileless.
“Well,” capitulated Captain Utterbourne, his words lethargically
purring, “I’m liable to be held up here some little time by fellows who
are bringing down some tobacco from the interior. I didn’t know,” he
suggested with icy, tempting hesitation, giving his daughter a playful
yet challenging look, “but we might slip off together some day down
toward Sarawak to see if we couldn’t capture a few ourangs, or perhaps
a rhinoceros or two. Maybe you’d find that more exciting. I understand
there’s still a little wild life left in the remoter realm of the raja.”