in him. There was the legs of three or four black chaps kicking about me
in the water. I couldn't see much, but I saw the game was up at a glance,
gave my valve a tremendous twist, and went bubbling down again after poor
Always, in as awful a state of scare and astonishment as you can well
imagine. I passed young Sanders and the nigger going up again and
struggling still a bit, and in another moment I was standing in the dim
again on the deck of the _Ocean Pioneer_.
"Gummy, thinks I, here's a fix! Niggers? At first I couldn't see anything
for it but Stifle below or Stabs above. I didn't properly understand how
much air there was to last me out, but I didn't feel like standing very
much more of it down below. I was hot and frightfully heady, quite apart
from the blue funk I was in. We'd never reckoned with these beastly
natives, filthy Papuan beasts. It wasn't any good coming up where I was,
but I had to do something. On the spur of the moment, I clambered over the
side of the brig and landed among the weeds, and set off through the
darkness as fast as I could. I just stopped once and knelt, and twisted
back my head in the helmet and had a look up. It was a most extraordinary
bright green-blue above, and the two canoes and the boat floating there
very small and distant like a kind of twisted H. And it made me feel sick
to squint up at it, and think what the pitching and swaying of the three
meant.
"It was just about the most horrible ten minutes I ever had, blundering
about in that darkness--pressure something awful, like being buried in
sand, pain across the chest, sick with funk, and breathing nothing as it
seemed but the smell of rum and mackintosh. Gummy! After a bit, I found
myself going up a steepish sort of slope. I had another squint to see if
anything was visible of the canoes and boats, and then kept on. I stopped
with my head a foot from the surface, and tried to see where I was going,
but, of course, nothing was to be seen but the reflection of the bottom.
Then out I dashed, like knocking my head through a mirror. Directly I got
my eyes out of the water, I saw I'd come up a kind of beach near the
forest. I had a look round, but the natives and the brig were both hidden
by a big hummucky heap of twisted lava. The born fool in me suggested a
run for the woods. I didn't take the helmet off, but I eased open one of
the windows, and, after a bit of a pant, went on out of the water. You'd
hardly imagine how clean and light the air tasted.
"Of course, with four inches of lead in your boot soles, and your head in
a copper knob the size of a football, and been thirty-five minutes under
water, you don't break any records running. I ran like a ploughboy going
to work. And half-way to the trees I saw a dozen niggers or more, coming
out in a gaping, astonished sort of way to meet me.
"I just stopped dead, and cursed myself for all the fools out of London. I
had about as much chance of cutting back to the water as a turned turtle.
I just screwed up my window again to leave my hands free, and waited for
them. There wasn't anything else for me to do.
"But they didn't come on very much. I began to suspect why. 'Jimmy
Goggles,' I says, 'it's your beauty does it.' I was inclined to be a
little lightheaded, I think, with all these dangers about and the change
in the pressure of the blessed air. 'Who're ye staring at?' I said, as if
the savages could hear me. 'What d'ye take me for? I'm hanged if I don't
give you something to stare at,' I said, and with that I screwed up the
escape valve and turned on the compressed air from the belt, until I was
swelled out like a blown frog. Regular imposing it must have been. I'm
blessed if they'd come on a step; and presently one and then another went
down on their hands and knees. They didn't know what to make of me, and
they was doing the extra polite, which was very wise and reasonable of
them. I had half a mind to edge back seaward and cut and run, but it
seemed too hopeless. A step back and they'd have been after me. And out of
sheer desperation I began to march towards them up the beach, with slow,
heavy steps, and waving my blown-out arms about, in a dignified manner.
And inside of me I was singing as small as a tomtit.
"But there's nothing like a striking appearance to help a man over a
difficulty,--I've found that before and since. People like ourselves,
who're up to diving dresses by the time we're seven, can scarcely imagine
the effect of one on a simple-minded savage. One or two of these niggers
cut and run, the others started in a great hurry trying to knock their
brains out on the ground. And on I went as slow and solemn and
silly-looking and artful as a jobbing plumber. It was evident they took
me for something immense.
"Then up jumped one and began pointing, making extraordinary gestures to
me as he did so, and all the others began sharing their attention between
me and something out at; sea. 'What's the matter now?' I said. I turned
slowly on account of my dignity, and there I saw, coming round a point,
the poor old _Pride of Banya_ towed by a couple of canoes. The sight
fairly made me sick. But they evidently expected some recognition, so I
waved my arms in a striking sort of non-committal manner. And then I
turned and stalked on towards the trees again. At that time I was praying
like mad, I remember, over and over again: 'Lord help me through with it!
Lord help me through with it!' It's only fools who know nothing of danger
can afford to laugh at praying."
"But these niggers weren't going to let me walk through and away like
that. They started a kind of bowing dance about me, and sort of pressed me
to take a pathway that lay through the trees. It was clear to me they
didn't take me for a British citizen, whatever else they thought of me,
and for my own part I was never less anxious to own up to the old country.
"You'd hardly believe it, perhaps, unless you're familiar with savages,
but these poor, misguided, ignorant creatures took me straight to their
kind of joss place to present me to the blessed old black stone there. By
this time I was beginning to sort of realise the depth of their ignorance,
and directly I set eyes on this deity I took my cue. I started a baritone
howl, 'wow-wow,' very long on one note, and began waving my arms about a
lot, and then very slowly and ceremoniously turned their image over on its
side and sat down on it. I wanted to sit down badly, for diving dresses
ain't much wear in the tropics. Or, to put it different like, they're a
sight too much. It took away their breath, I could see, my sitting on
their joss, but in less time than a minute they made up their minds and
were hard at work worshipping me. And I can tell you I felt a bit relieved
to see things turning out so well, in spite of the weight on my shoulders
and feet.
"But what made me anxious was what the chaps in the canoes might think
when they came back. If they'd seen me in the boat before I went down, and
without the helmet on--for they might have been spying and hiding since
over night--they would very likely take a different view from the others.
I was in a deuce of a stew about that for hours, as it seemed, until the
shindy of the arrival began.
"But they took it down--the whole blessed village took it down. At the
cost of sitting up stiff and stern, as much like those sitting Egyptian
images one sees as I could manage, for pretty nearly twelve hours, I
should guess at least, on end, I got over it. You'd hardly think what it
meant in that heat and stink. I don't think any of them dreamt of the man
inside. I was just a wonderful leathery great joss that had come up with
luck out of the water. But the fatigue! the heat! the beastly closeness!
the mackintosheriness and the rum! and the fuss! They lit a stinking fire
on a kind of lava slab there was before me, and brought in a lot of gory
muck--the worst parts of what they were feasting on outside, the Beasts--
and burnt it all in my honour. I was getting a bit hungry, but I
understand now how gods manage to do without eating, what with the smell
of burnt-offerings about them. And they brought in a lot of the stuff
they'd got off the brig and, among other stuff, what I was a bit relieved
to see, the kind of pneumatic pump that was used for the compressed air
affair, and then a lot of chaps and girls came in and danced about me
something disgraceful. It's extraordinary the different ways different
people have of showing respect. If I'd had a hatchet handy I'd have gone
for the lot of them--they made me feel that wild. All this time I sat as
stiff as company, not knowing anything better to do. And at last, when
nightfall came, and the wattle joss-house place got a bit too shadowy for
their taste--all these here savages are afraid of the dark, you know--and
I started a sort of 'Moo' noise, they built big bonfires outside and left
me alone in peace in the darkness of my hut, free to unscrew my windows a
bit and think things over, and feel just as bad as I liked. And Lord! I
was sick.
"I was weak and hungry, and my mind kept on behaving like a beetle on a
pin, tremendous activity and nothing done at the end of it. Come round
just where it was before. There was sorrowing for the other chaps, beastly
drunkards certainly, but not deserving such a fate, and young Sanders with
the spear through his neck wouldn't go out of my mind. There was the
treasure down there in the _Ocean Pioneer_, and how one might get it
and hide it somewhere safer, and get away and come back for it. And there
was the puzzle where to get anything to eat. I tell you I was fair
rambling. I was afraid to ask by signs for food, for fear of behaving too
human, and so there I sat and hungered until very near the dawn. Then the
village got a bit quiet, and I couldn't stand it any longer, and I went
out and got some stuff like artichokes in a bowl and some sour milk. What
was left of these I put away among the other offerings, just to give them
a hint of my tastes. And in the morning they came to worship, and found me
sitting up stiff and respectable on their previous god, just as they'd
left me overnight. I'd got my back against the central pillar of the hut,
and, practically, I was asleep. And that's how I became a god among the
heathen--false god, no doubt, and blasphemous, but one can't always pick
and choose.
"Now, I don't want to crack myself up as a god beyond my merits, but I
must confess that while I was god to these people they was extraordinary
successful. I don't say there's anything in it, mind you. They won a
battle with another tribe--I got a lot of offerings I didn't want through
it--they had wonderful fishing, and their crop of pourra was exceptional
fine. And they counted the capture of the brig among the benefits I
brought 'em. I must say I don't think that was a poor record for a
perfectly new hand. And, though perhaps you'd scarcely credit it, I was
the tribal god of those beastly savages for pretty nearly four months...
"What else could I do, man? But I didn't wear that diving-dress all the
time. I made 'em rig me up a sort of holy of holies, and a deuce of a time
I had too, making them understand what it was I wanted them to do. That
indeed was the great difficulty--making them understand my wishes. I
couldn't let myself down by talking their lingo badly, even if I'd been
able to speak at all, and I couldn't go flapping a lot of gestures at
them. So I drew pictures in sand and sat down beside them and hooted like
one o'clock. Sometimes they did the things I wanted all right, and
sometimes they did them all wrong. They was always very willing,
certainly. All the while I was puzzling how I was to get the confounded
business settled. Every night before the dawn I used to march out in full
rig and go off to a place where I could see the channel in which the
_Ocean Pioneer_ lay sunk, and once even, one moonlight night, I tried
to walk out to her, but the weeds and rocks and dark clean beat me. I
didn't get back till full day, and then I found all those silly niggers
out on the beach praying their sea-god to return to them. I was that vexed
and tired, messing and tumbling about, and coming up and going down again,
I could have punched their silly heads all round when they started
rejoicing. Hanged if I like so much ceremony.
"And then came the missionary. That missionary! _What_ a Guy! Gummy!
It was in the afternoon, and I was sitting in state in my outer temple
place, sitting on that old black stone of theirs, when he came. I heard a
row outside and jabbering, and then his voice speaking to an interpreter.
'They worship stocks and stones,' he said, and I knew what was up, in a
flash. I had one of my windows out for comfort, and I sang out straight
away on the spur of the moment. 'Stocks and stones!' I says. 'You come
inside,' I says, 'and I'll punch your blooming Exeter Hall of a head.'
"There was a kind of silence and more jabbering, and in he came, Bible in
hand, after the manner of them--a little sandy chap in specks and a pith
helmet. I flatter myself that me sitting there in the shadows, with my
copper head and my big goggles, struck him a bit of a heap at first.
'Well,' I says, 'how's the trade in scissors?' for I don't hold with
missionaries.
"I had a lark with that missionary. He was a raw hand, and quite
outclassed by a man like me. He gasped out who was I, and I told him to
read the inscription at my feet if he wanted to know. There wasn't no
inscription; why should there be? but down he goes to read, and his
interpreter, being of course as superstitious as any of them, more so by
reason of his seeing missionary close to, took it for an act of worship
and plumped down like a shot. All my people gave a howl of triumph, and
there wasn't any more business to be done in my village after that
journey, not by the likes of him.
"But, of course, I was a fool to choke him off like that. If I'd had any
sense I should have told him straight away of the treasure and taken him
into Co. I've no doubt he'd have come into Co. A child, with a few hours
to think it over, could have seen the connection between my diving dress
and the loss of the _Ocean Pioneer_. A week after he left I went out
one morning and saw the _Motherhood_, the salver's ship from Starr
Race, towing up the channel and sounding. The whole blessed game was up,
and all my trouble thrown away. Gummy! How wild I felt! And guying it in
that stinking silly dress! Four months!"
The sunburnt man's story degenerated again. "Think of it," he said, when
he emerged to linguistic purity once more. "Forty thousand pounds' worth
of gold."
"Did the little missionary come back?" I asked.
"Oh yes! bless him! And he pledged his reputation there was a man inside
the god, and started out to see as much with tremendous ceremony. But
wasn't--he got sold again. I always did hate scenes and explanations, and
long before he came I was out of it all--going home to Banya along the
coast, hiding in bushes by day, and thieving food from the villages by
night. Only weapon, a spear. No clothes, no money. Nothing. My face, my
fortune, as the saying is. And just a squeak of eight thousand pounds of
gold--fifth share. But the natives cut up rusty, thank goodness, because
they thought it was him had driven their luck away."
XXIV.
MISS WINCHELSEA'S HEART.
Miss Winchelsea was going to Rome. The matter had filled her mind for a
month or more, and had overflowed so abundantly into her conversation that
quite a number of people who were not going to Rome, and who were not
likely to go to Rome, had made it a personal grievance against her. Some
indeed had attempted quite unavailingly to convince her that Rome was not
nearly such a desirable place as it was reported to be, and others had
gone so far as to suggest behind her back that she was dreadfully "stuck
up" about "that Rome of hers." And little Lily Hardhurst had told her
friend Mr. Binns that so far as she was concerned Miss Winchelsea might
"go to her old Rome and stop there; _she_ (Miss Lily Hardhurst)
wouldn't grieve." And the way in which Miss Winchelsea put herself upon
terms of personal tenderness with Horace and Benvenuto Cellini and Raphael
and Shelley and Keats--if she had been Shelley's widow she could not have
professed a keener interest in his grave--was a matter of universal
astonishment. Her dress was a triumph of tactful discretion, sensible, but
not too "touristy"'--Miss Winchelsea had a great dread of being
"touristy"--and her Baedeker was carried in a cover of grey to hide its
glaring red. She made a prim and pleasant little figure on the Charing
Cross platform, in spite of her swelling pride, when at last the great day
dawned, and she could start for Rome. The day was bright, the Channel
passage would be pleasant, and all the omens promised well. There was the
gayest sense of adventure in this unprecedented departure.
She was going with two friends who had been fellow-students with her at
the training college, nice honest girls both, though not so good at
history and literature as Miss Winchelsea. They both looked up to her
immensely, though physically they had to look down, and she anticipated
some pleasant times to be spent in "stirring them up" to her own pitch of
AEsthetic and historical enthusiasm. They had secured seats already, and
welcomed her effusively at the carriage door. In the instant criticism of
the encounter she noted that Fanny had a slightly "touristy" leather
strap, and that Helen had succumbed to a serge jacket with side pockets,
into which her hands were thrust. But they were much too happy with
themselves and the expedition for their friend to attempt any hint at the
moment about these things. As soon as the first ecstasies were over--
Fanny's enthusiasm was a little noisy and crude, and consisted mainly
in emphatic repetitions of "Just _fancy_! we're going to Rome, my
dear!--Rome!"--they gave their attention to their fellow-travellers. Helen
was anxious to secure a compartment to themselves, and, in order to
discourage intruders, got out and planted herself firmly on the step. Miss
Winchelsea peeped out over her shoulder, and made sly little remarks about
the accumulating people on the platform, at which Fanny laughed gleefully.
They were travelling with one of Mr. Thomas Gunn's parties--fourteen days
in Rome for fourteen pounds. They did not belong to the personally
conducted party, of course--Miss Winchelsea had seen to that--but they
travelled with it because of the convenience of that arrangement. The
people were the oddest mixture, and wonderfully amusing. There was a
vociferous red-faced polyglot personal conductor in a pepper-and-salt
suit, very long in the arms and legs and very active. He shouted
proclamations. When he wanted to speak to people he stretched out an arm
and held them until his purpose was accomplished. One hand was full of
papers, tickets, counterfoils of tourists. The people of the personally
conducted party were, it seemed, of two sorts; people the conductor wanted
and could not find, and people he did not want and who followed him in a
steadily growing tail up and down the platform. These people seemed,
indeed, to think that their one chance of reaching Rome lay in keeping
close to him. Three little old ladies were particularly energetic in his
pursuit, and at last maddened him to the pitch of clapping them into a
carriage and daring them to emerge again. For the rest of the time, one,
two, or three of their heads protruded from the window wailing inquiries
about "a little wicker-work box" whenever he drew near. There was a very
stout man with a very stout wife in shiny black; there was a little old
man like an aged hostler.
"What _can_ such people want in Rome?" asked Miss Winchelsea. "What
can it mean to them?" There was a very tall curate in a very small straw
hat, and a very short curate encumbered by a long camera stand. The
contrast amused Fanny very much. Once they heard some one calling for
"Snooks." "I always thought that name was invented by novelists," said
Miss Winchelsea. "Fancy! Snooks. I wonder which _is_ Mr. Snooks."
Finally they picked out a very stout and resolute little man in a large
check suit. "If he isn't Snooks, he ought to be," said Miss Winchelsea.
Presently the conductor discovered Helen's attempt at a corner in
carriages. "Room for five," he bawled with a parallel translation on his
fingers. A party of four together--mother, father, and two daughters--
blundered in, all greatly excited. "It's all right, Ma--you let me," said
one of the daughters, hitting her mother's bonnet with a handbag she
struggled to put in the rack. Miss Winchelsea detested people who banged
about and called their mother "Ma." A young man travelling alone followed.
He was not at all "touristy" in his costume, Miss Winchelsea observed; his
Gladstone bag was of good pleasant leather with labels reminiscent of
Luxembourg and Ostend, and his boots, though brown, were not vulgar. He
carried an overcoat on his arm. Before these people had properly settled
in their places, came an inspection of tickets and a slamming of doors,
and behold! they were gliding out of Charing Cross Station on their way to
Rome.
"Fancy!" cried Fanny, "we are going to Rome, my dear! Rome! I don't seem
to believe it, even now."
Miss Winchelsea suppressed Fanny's emotions with a little smile, and the
lady who was called "Ma" explained to people in general why they had "cut
it so close" at the station. The two daughters called her "Ma" several
times, toned her down in a tactless, effective way, and drove her at last
to the muttered inventory of a basket of travelling requisites. Presently
she looked up. "Lor!" she said, "I didn't bring _them_!" Both the
daughters said "Oh, Ma!" But what "them" was did not appear.
Presently Fanny produced Hare's _Walks in Rome_, a sort of mitigated
guide-book very popular among Roman visitors; and the father of the two
daughters began to examine his books of tickets minutely, apparently in a
search after English words. When he had looked at the tickets for a long
time right way up, he turned them upside down. Then he produced a fountain
pen and dated them with considerable care. The young man having completed
an unostentatious survey of his fellow-travellers produced a book and fell
to reading. When Helen and Fanny were looking out of the window at
Chislehurst--the place interested Fanny because the poor dear Empress of
the French used to live there--Miss Winchelsea took the opportunity to
observe the book the young man held. It was not a guide-book but a little
thin volume of poetry--_bound_. She glanced at his face--it seemed a
refined, pleasant face to her hasty glance. He wore a little gilt
_pince-nez_. "Do you think she lives there now?" said Fanny, and Miss
Winchelsea's inspection came to an end.
For the rest of the journey Miss Winchelsea talked little, and what she
said was as agreeable and as stamped with refinement as she could make it.
Her voice was always low and clear and pleasant, and she took care that on
this occasion it was particularly low and clear and pleasant. As they came
under the white cliffs the young man put his book of poetry away, and when
at last the train stopped beside the boat, he displayed a graceful
alacrity with the impedimenta of Miss Winchelsea and her friends. Miss
Winchelsea "hated nonsense," but she was pleased to see the young man
perceived at once that they were ladies, and helped them without any
violent geniality; and how nicely he showed that his civilities were to be
no excuse for further intrusions. None of her little party had been out of
England before, and they were all excited and a little nervous at the
Channel passage. They stood in a little group in a good place near the
middle of the boat--the young man had taken Miss Winchelsea's carry-all
there and had told her it was a good place--and they watched the white
shores of Albion recede and quoted Shakespeare and made quiet fun of their
fellow-travellers in the English way.