DESMOND VENTURES A HINT
It was blowing hard, and the deluge which had blotted out the dingy
daylight and beaten flat the white spouting along the hammered beach
had just ceased suddenly when Desmond lay upon a settee at the head of
the _Palestrina_'s companion stairway. Though the long, sandy point to
the north of her afforded a partial shelter, she was rolling savagely
with a half-steam ready and two anchors down. Desmond had wedged
himself fast with his feet against the balustrade, but he found it
somewhat difficult to remain where he was, and the little room was
uncomfortably hot, though one door and the lee ports were open. The
two that looked forward were swept by spray that beat on them like a
shot, and overhead funnel-guy and wire rigging screamed in wild
arpeggios under the impact of the muggy gale.
The _Palestrina_'s owner was, however, used to that. It rains and
blows somewhat hard on that coast at certain seasons, and he had lain
there several weeks growling at the heat and the weather, for he was
also one of the men who can keep a promise. Just then he had an
unlighted pipe and a letter which he had received from Las Palmas a
month earlier in one hand. It was from an Englishman he had brought
out to Grand Canary, and though its contents did not directly concern
him he had given it a good deal of thought once or twice already. His
forehead grew a trifle furrowed as he opened it again.
"We have been wondering what Lister came back for, and the general
notion is that you had had enough of him," said his friend. "In any
case, he seems quite content with Las Palmas, and the British colony
are watching his proceedings with quiet interest. After cleaning out
several Spaniards at the casino he has apparently devoted himself to
Miss Ratcliffe's service. It is not evident that he receives a great
deal of encouragement from the lady herself, but her mother is
ostentatiously gracious to him. She may have a purpose in this."
Desmond crumpled the letter in one hand. "Crosbie always was
a--tattler, but it's more than possible that he's right," he said.
Then he sighed. "And I put Lister on board the mail-boat and sent him
there! If I'd only known what the result would be I'd have drowned
him."
He lay still for another few moments filling his pipe, and then flung
the tobacco pouch across the room, for a sojourn off those beaches
would probably try the temper of most white men, and the Hibernian
nature now and then came uppermost in him.
"Damp," he said. "Reeking, dripping, putrid, like everything else on
this forlorn coast! It would be a boon to humanity if somebody bought
the besotted continent and scuttled it."
He rose to his feet as a man in bedraggled white uniform appeared in
the doorway.
"You were speaking, sir?" he said.
"I was," said Desmond. "I suggested that it was a pity somebody
couldn't torpedo this benighted continent. Any word from the men you
sent ashore?"
"They've signaled from the rise," said the _Palestrina_'s mate. "No
sign of him yet. I don't expect them off until to-morrow. The surf's
running steep." Desmond made a gesture of concurrence as he glanced at
the filmy spray-cloud that drove like smoke up the wet and glistening
beach. It was flung aloft by a wild white welter of crumbling seas,
and he realized that the boat's crew who had gone ashore could not
rejoin the _Palestrina_ before the morning, at least. They went every
day to watch for a lumbering ox team or a band of carriers plodding
seaward across the littoral, and it seemed they had once more signaled
that there was no sign of either. Then he moved towards the door
bareheaded, with only an unbuttoned duck jacket over his thin singlet,
and the mate ventured a deprecatory protest.
"She's throwing it over her in sheets forward," he said.
Desmond disregarded him, and staggering clear of the deck-house stood
with feet spread well apart gazing at the stretch of leaden sea while,
as the _Palestrina_'s bows went up, the spray that whirled in over her
weather rail wet him to the skin. He saw the livid tops of the combers
that rolled by the point and heard the jarring cables ring, and then
turned his eyes shorewards and gazed across the waste of misty
littoral.
"It's a cheerful place, but now and then you feel you might get to
like it," he said. "Perhaps it's the uncertainty as to when the fever
will get you that gives living here a zest. When you come to think of
it, some of us have curious notions."
He appeared to be considering the point as they edged back under the
lee of the deck-house, and the mate grinned.
"The men don't take kindly to it, sir," he said. "They've been
worrying me lately as to how long we're stopping here."
"A week," said Desmond. "Ormsgill's time is running out, and he'll be
here or send us word by then. He said he would, and what that man says
you can count on being done."
Something in his tone suggested that the question might be considered
as closed, and they discussed other matters while the deck heaved and
slanted under them until a man forward flung up an arm and turned
towards them with a cry which the wind swept away. In another moment
Desmond scrambled half-way up the bridge ladder, and clung there with
the mate close beneath him gazing at the white welter where the seas
swept by the point. There was a sail just outshore of it, a little
strip of gray canvas that appeared and vanished amidst the serried
ranks of tumbling combers. It drew out of them and drove furiously
towards the _Palestrina_, and when a strip of white hull grew into
visibility beneath it Desmond looked down at his mate.
"A big surf-boat. It's Ormsgill," he said.
There was certainty in his tone, as well as a little ring of
satisfaction which was, perhaps, warranted, for it is, after all,
something to be the friend of a man who does just what he has promised
and never arrives too late. In the meanwhile the object they were
watching had grown into a bellying lug-sail that reeled to lee and to
weather with the sea streaming from the foot of it, and a patch of
foam-swept hull. The boat came on furiously, and when the mate sprang
from the ladder roaring orders Desmond could see three or four black
figures through the spray that whirled over her. There was also
another man in white garments standing upright in her stern, and
Desmond was wholly sure of his identity. Then she was lost for awhile,
and only swept into sight again abreast of the _Palestrina_'s dipping
bows, hove high with half her length lifted out of the crest of a
breaking sea.
She drove forward with it, the foam standing half a man's height above
her stern and the foot of the slanted lug-sail washing in the brine,
while a bent white figure struggled with the great steering oar. She
swooped like a toboggan plunging down an icy slide when she was level
with the _Palestrina_'s bridge, and some of the men who watched her
from the latter's rail held their breath as the smoking sea passed on
and another gathered itself together astern of her. The helmsman, they
knew, must bring the dripping, half-swamped boat on the wind to reach
the strip of lee beneath the steamer's stern, and when he did it
there was every prospect of her rolling over.
In another moment several black objects rose and grappled with the
lug-sail sheet, and the big boat tilted until all one side of her was
in the air. Then she went up in the midst of a white spouting as the
slope of water behind fell upon her. Still, the slanted lug-sail rose
out of it, and then came down thrashing furiously while naked black
figures half-seen in the spray bent from her gunwale with swinging
paddles as she drove towards the _Palestrina_'s quarter. After that
there was a hoarse shouting, and the lines flew from the reeling
taffrail as she slid under the steamer's stern.
In another minute or two Ormsgill swung himself on board through the
gangway. He had no hat, and the water ran from him, but he shook hands
with Desmond unconcernedly.
"Ask them to hand that fellow up," he said pointing to a man who sat
huddled in the water that swirled up and down inside the plunging
boat. "We took rather a heavy one over two or three hours ago, and he
brought up on the after thwart when the big oar jumped its crutch. As
he's the only Kroo among them, I took the helm myself after that. I
don't fancy he has broken anything."
Desmond hustled him into the deck-house when the negro had been
brought on deck and the dripping boat rode astern, and an hour later
he sat at dinner with his comrade in the little white saloon. Darkness
had closed down in the meanwhile, and the lamp that swung above their
heads flung a soft light across the table, where dainty glassware and
silver glittered on the snowy cloth. Ormsgill smiled as he glanced at
it and the glowing blotch of color in his wine glass.
"After all, this kind of thing has its advantages, especially when one
has been accustomed to squatting in the wood smoke over a calabash of
palm oil or some other unhallowed nigger compound," he said. "It's a
trifle pleasant to wear clothes that fit you, too. Father Tiebout's
and those Dom Clemente lent me didn't. I had to cut the wrists off the
latter's jacket."
Desmond looked at him reflectively over his cigar, for he had
something to say, and was a trifle uncertain as to how he should set
about it.
"Well," he said, "I suppose it is nice for a while, especially, as you
say, when it's a change. The point is, would it satisfy you long?"
"A dinner like this one is generally acceptable."
"We'll admit it. The trouble is that these civilized comforts are apt
to cost you something. I mean one has usually to give up something
else for the sake of them. You begin to understand?"
"I'm not sure that I do," said Ormsgill. "I'll ask you to go on."
Desmond laughed, though he did not feel quite at ease. He remembered
the letter in his pocket, and felt that there was a responsibility on
him, and that was a thing which, inconsequent as he was, he seldom
shrank from. This was not a man who talked about his duty; in fact,
any reference to the subject usually roused in him a sense of
opposition. He contented himself with doing it when he recognized it,
and since singleness of purpose is not invariably an efficient
substitute for mental ability, it was not altogether his fault when at
times he did it clumsily. There was also a subtle bond between him and
the man who sat opposite him. Affection was not the right term, and it
was more than _camaraderie_, an elusive something that could not be
defined and was yet in their case a compelling force.
"Well," he said, "those quagmires and forests up yonder appeal to you.
It's a little difficult for any reasonable person to see why they
should, but they certainly do. So does the sea. The love of it's in
both of us."
He stopped with a lifted hand, and, for the ports were open, Ormsgill
heard the deep rumble of the eternal surf on the hammered beach. He
also heard the onward march of the white hosts of tumbling seas, and
the shrill scream of the wire rigging singing to the gale. It was the
turmoil of the elemental conflict that must rage in one form or
another by sea and in the wilderness while the world endures, and
there is a theme in its clashing harmonies that stirs the hearts of
men. Ormsgill felt the thrill of it, and Desmond's eyes glistened.
"Lord," he said, "we're curiously made. What in the name of wonder is
it that appeals to us in driving a swamping surf-boat over those
combers, or standing on the bridge ramming her full speed into it with
the green seas going over her forward and everything battened down?
Still, there is something. While we can do that kind of thing we can't
stay at home."
Ormsgill smiled curiously. He was acquainted with some of the
characteristics of the wild Celtic strain, and knew that his comrade
now and then let himself go. "I think," he said, "considering where
you come from, you should understand it more readily than I can do."
"You're not exempt," said Desmond, "you cold-blooded Saxons. What did
you run that boat down the coast under the whole lug-sail for when
she'd have gone nearly dry with two reefs tied down?"
"I don't know. Still, she lost the wind in the hollows. One had to
keep her ahead of the seas."
Desmond laughed scornfully. "Is that it? When the boy went down with
the breath knocked out of him as she took in a green sea, something
came over you as you grabbed the steering oar. You went suddenly
crazy, fighting crazy. You'd have rolled her over or run her under
before you tied a reef in."
He stopped a moment, and made a little gesture as of one throwing
something away. "Still, you'll have to give all that up when you marry
and settle down, though it's a little difficult to imagine you going
round in a frock coat and tight patent boots, growing fat, and
overfeeding yourself like a--Strasburg goose. I suppose it is your
intention to be married some day?"
"I believe it is," said Ormsgill quietly.
Desmond laid down his cigar and looked at him. "Well, I may be on
dangerous ground, but when I get steam up I seldom allow a thing like
that to influence me. Anyway, I've been worrying over you lately. The
question is--are you going to marry the right girl, one who would take
you as you are and encourage you to be more so? It isn't every woman
who could put up with a man of your kind, but there are a few."
His comrade's expression might have warned another man, but Desmond
went on.
"I don't know if my views are worth anything, and some of my friends
doubt it, but you shall have them. After all, the matter's rather an
important one. The wife for you is one who would sympathize with your
notions even if she knew they were crazy ones, because they were
yours, and when they led you into lumber, as such notions generally
do, stand beside you smiling to face the world and the devil. There
are such women. I've met one or two."
There was silence for a moment or two when he stopped, and Ormsgill,
gazing straight before him with vacant eyes, saw a dark-eyed girl with
dusky hair and a face of the pale ivory tint sitting where the
moonlight streamed in between a colonnade of slender pillars. As it
happened, Desmond saw her, too, and sighed. Then Ormsgill seemed to
rouse himself.
"I am," he said, "going to marry Miss Ratcliffe, as I think you must
be quite aware."
Desmond could have laughed. He fancied that it would have been almost
warranted, but he laid a restraint upon himself. "Then," he said, "if
you have both made up your minds and the thing is settled what in the
name of wonder are you wandering about Africa for? The fact that you
like it doesn't count. Why don't you go back--now--to her? It would
be considerably wiser."
Ormsgill looked at him with half-closed eyes. "I'll have to ask you to
speak plainly."
"I'll try," and Desmond made a little deprecatory gesture. "There are
women it isn't wise to leave too long alone. They were not made to
live that way, and if they find it insupportable you can't blame them.
How many years is it since Miss Ratcliffe has had more than a few
weeks of your company, and is it natural that a young woman should be
quietly content while the man she is to marry wanders through these
forests endeavoring to throw his life away? Besides that, the thing
might very possibly not commend itself to her mother."
The lines grew a trifle deeper on Ormsgill's forehead, and his eyes
were grave. "I have," he said, "been a little afraid of what her
mother might do myself."
"Then why don't you go across to Grand Canary and make sure she
doesn't try to influence the girl? Isn't it only reasonable that she
should expect you to be there and save her all unpleasantness in case
of anything of that kind happening?"
Ormsgill said nothing for several minutes, but it was borne in upon
his comrade that his efforts had been thrown away. He had, however,
after all, not expected them to be successful. At length Ormsgill
spoke quietly.
"I can't go," he said. "Domingo has carried those boys away into the
interior and I pledged myself that they should go home when their
time was up. As it is, unless I can take them from him they will be
driven to death in a few years. For that, I think, I should be held
responsible."
He rose with a little sigh. "Dick," he said, "I have this thing to do,
and even if it costs me a good deal it must be done. I am going back
inland, and may be three or four months away. You can't stay here.
After all, I don't know that I shall have much difficulty in getting
the boys out of the country when I come down again."
Desmond smiled. "I may go to Las Palmas or Madeira, but I'll be here
when you want me. We can fix that later. It seems to me I've said
quite enough to-night."
Then they went up the companion, and Ormsgill talked of other matters
as they sat under the lee of the deck-house, and watched the white
seas sweep out of the darkness and vanish into it again.