CHAPTER XII

The Moorsoms did manage to catch the homeward mail boat all right, but

had only twenty-four hours in town. Thus the sentimental Willie could

not see very much of them. This did not prevent him afterwards from

relating at great length, with manly tears in his eyes, how poor Miss

Moorsom—the fashionable and clever beauty—found her betrothed in Malata

only to see him die in her arms. Most people were deeply touched by the

sad story. It was the talk of a good many days.

But the all-knowing Editor, Renouard’s only friend and crony, wanted to

know more than the rest of the world. From professional incontinence,

perhaps, he thirsted for a full cup of harrowing detail. And when he

noticed Renouard’s schooner lying in port day after day he sought the

sailing master to learn the reason. The man told him that such were his

instructions. He had been ordered to lie there a month before returning

to Malata. And the month was nearly up. “I will ask you to give me a

passage,” said the Editor.

He landed in the morning at the bottom of the garden and found peace,

stillness, sunshine reigning everywhere, the doors and windows of the

bungalow standing wide open, no sight of a human being anywhere, the

plants growing rank and tall on the deserted fields. For hours the

Editor and the schooner’s crew, excited by the mystery, roamed over the

island shouting Renouard’s name; and at last set themselves in grim

silence to explore systematically the uncleared bush and the deeper

ravines in search of his corpse. What had happened? Had he been

murdered by the boys? Or had he simply, capricious and secretive,

abandoned his plantation taking the people with him. It was impossible

to tell what had happened. At last, towards the decline of the day, the

Editor and the sailing master discovered a track of sandals crossing a

strip of sandy beach on the north shore of the bay. Following this track

fearfully, they passed round the spur of the headland, and there on a

large stone found the sandals, Renouard’s white jacket, and the Malay

sarong of chequered pattern which the planter of Malata was well known to

wear when going to bathe. These things made a little heap, and the

sailor remarked, after gazing at it in silence—

“Birds have been hovering over this for many a day.”

“He’s gone bathing and got drowned,” cried the Editor in dismay.

“I doubt it, sir. If he had been drowned anywhere within a mile from the

shore the body would have been washed out on the reefs. And our boats

have found nothing so far.”

Nothing was ever found—and Renouard’s disappearance remained in the main

inexplicable. For to whom could it have occurred that a man would set

out calmly to swim beyond the confines of life—with a steady stroke—his

eyes fixed on a star!

Next evening, from the receding schooner, the Editor looked back for the

last time at the deserted island. A black cloud hung listlessly over the

high rock on the middle hill; and under the mysterious silence of that

shadow Malata lay mournful, with an air of anguish in the wild sunset, as

if remembering the heart that was broken there.

* * * * *

_Dec._ 1913.

THE PARTNER

“And that be hanged for a silly yarn. The boatmen here in Westport have

been telling this lie to the summer visitors for years. The sort that

gets taken out for a row at a shilling a head—and asks foolish

questions—must be told something to pass the time away. D’ye know

anything more silly than being pulled in a boat along a beach? . . . It’s

like drinking weak lemonade when you aren’t thirsty. I don’t know why

they do it! They don’t even get sick.”

A forgotten glass of beer stood at his elbow; the locality was a small

respectable smoking-room of a small respectable hotel, and a taste for

forming chance acquaintances accounts for my sitting up late with him.

His great, flat, furrowed cheeks were shaven; a thick, square wisp of

white hairs hung from his chin; its waggling gave additional point to his

deep utterance; and his general contempt for mankind with its activities

and moralities was expressed in the rakish set of his big soft hat of

black felt with a large rim, which he kept always on his head.

His appearance was that of an old adventurer, retired after many unholy

experiences in the darkest parts of the earth; but I had every reason to

believe that he had never been outside England. From a casual remark

somebody dropped I gathered that in his early days he must have been

somehow connected with shipping—with ships in docks. Of individuality he

had plenty. And it was this which attracted my attention at first. But

he was not easy to classify, and before the end of the week I gave him up

with the vague definition, “an imposing old ruffian.”

One rainy afternoon, oppressed by infinite boredom, I went into the

smoking-room. He was sitting there in absolute immobility, which was

really fakir-like and impressive. I began to wonder what could be the

associations of that sort of man, his “milieu,” his private connections,

his views, his morality, his friends, and even his wife—when to my

surprise he opened a conversation in a deep, muttering voice.

I must say that since he had learned from somebody that I was a writer of

stories he had been acknowledging my existence by means of some vague

growls in the morning.

He was essentially a taciturn man. There was an effect of rudeness in

his fragmentary sentences. It was some time before I discovered that

what he would be at was the process by which stories—stories for

periodicals—were produced.

What could one say to a fellow like that? But I was bored to death; the

weather continued impossible; and I resolved to be amiable.

“And so you make these tales up on your own. How do they ever come into

your head?” he rumbled.

I explained that one generally got a hint for a tale.

“What sort of hint?”

“Well, for instance,” I said, “I got myself rowed out to the rocks the

other day. My boatman told me of the wreck on these rocks nearly twenty

years ago. That could be used as a hint for a mainly descriptive bit of

story with some such title as ‘In the Channel,’ for instance.”

It was then that he flew out at the boatmen and the summer visitors who

listen to their tales. Without moving a muscle of his face he emitted a

powerful “Rot,” from somewhere out of the depths of his chest, and went

on in his hoarse, fragmentary mumble. “Stare at the silly rocks—nod

their silly heads [the visitors, I presume]. What do they think a man

is—blown-out paper bag or what?—go off pop like that when he’s hit—Damn

silly yarn—Hint indeed! . . . A lie?”

You must imagine this statuesque ruffian enhaloed in the black rim of his

hat, letting all this out as an old dog growls sometimes, with his head

up and staring-away eyes.

“Indeed!” I exclaimed. “Well, but even if untrue it _is_ a hint,

enabling me to see these rocks, this gale they speak of, the heavy seas,

etc., etc., in relation to mankind. The struggle against natural forces

and the effect of the issue on at least one, say, exalted—”

He interrupted me by an aggressive—

“Would truth be any good to you?”

“I shouldn’t like to say,” I answered, cautiously. “It’s said that truth

is stranger than fiction.”

“Who says that?” he mouthed.

“Oh! Nobody in particular.”

I turned to the window; for the contemptuous beggar was oppressive to

look at, with his immovable arm on the table. I suppose my unceremonious

manner provoked him to a comparatively long speech.

“Did you ever see such a silly lot of rocks? Like plums in a slice of

cold pudding.”

I was looking at them—an acre or more of black dots scattered on the

steel-grey shades of the level sea, under the uniform gossamer grey mist

with a formless brighter patch in one place—the veiled whiteness of the

cliff coming through, like a diffused, mysterious radiance. It was a

delicate and wonderful picture, something expressive, suggestive, and

desolate, a symphony in grey and black—a Whistler. But the next thing

said by the voice behind me made me turn round. It growled out contempt

for all associated notions of roaring seas with concise energy, then went

on—

“I—no such foolishness—looking at the rocks out there—more likely call to

mind an office—I used to look in sometimes at one time—office in

London—one of them small streets behind Cannon Street Station. . . ”

He was very deliberate; not jerky, only fragmentary; at times profane.

“That’s a rather remote connection,” I observed, approaching him.

“Connection? To Hades with your connections. It was an accident.”

“Still,” I said, “an accident has its backward and forward connections,

which, if they could be set forth—”

Without moving he seemed to lend an attentive ear.

“Aye! Set forth. That’s perhaps what you could do. Couldn’t you now?

There’s no sea life in this connection. But you can put it in out of

your head—if you like.”

“Yes. I could, if necessary,” I said. “Sometimes it pays to put in a

lot out of one’s head, and sometimes it doesn’t. I mean that the story

isn’t worth it. Everything’s in that.”

It amused me to talk to him like this. He reflected audibly that he

guessed story-writers were out after money like the rest of the world

which had to live by its wits: and that it was extraordinary how far

people who were out after money would go. . . Some of them.

Then he made a sally against sea life. Silly sort of life, he called it.

No opportunities, no experience, no variety, nothing. Some fine men came

out of it—he admitted—but no more chance in the world if put to it than

fly. Kids. So Captain Harry Dunbar. Good sailor. Great name as a

skipper. Big man; short side-whiskers going grey, fine face, loud voice.

A good fellow, but no more up to people’s tricks than a baby.

“That’s the captain of the _Sagamore_ you’re talking about,” I said,

confidently.

After a low, scornful “Of course” he seemed now to hold on the wall with

his fixed stare the vision of that city office, “at the back of Cannon

Street Station,” while he growled and mouthed a fragmentary description,

jerking his chin up now and then, as if angry.

It was, according to his account, a modest place of business, not shady

in any sense, but out of the way, in a small street now rebuilt from end

to end. “Seven doors from the Cheshire Cat public house under the

railway bridge. I used to take my lunch there when my business called me

to the city. Cloete would come in to have his chop and make the girl

laugh. No need to talk much, either, for that. Nothing but the way he

would twinkle his spectacles on you and give a twitch of his thick mouth

was enough to start you off before he began one of his little tales.

Funny fellow, Cloete. C-l-o-e-t-e—Cloete.”

“What was he—a Dutchman?” I asked, not seeing in the least what all this

had to do with the Westport boatmen and the Westport summer visitors and

this extraordinary old fellow’s irritable view of them as liars and

fools. “Devil knows,” he grunted, his eyes on the wall as if not to miss

a single movement of a cinematograph picture. “Spoke nothing but

English, anyway. First I saw him—comes off a ship in dock from the

States—passenger. Asks me for a small hotel near by. Wanted to be quiet

and have a look round for a few days. I took him to a place—friend of

mine. . . Next time—in the City—Hallo! You’re very obliging—have a

drink. Talks plenty about himself. Been years in the States. All sorts

of business all over the place. With some patent medicine people, too.

Travels. Writes advertisements and all that. Tells me funny stories.

Tall, loose-limbed fellow. Black hair up on end, like a brush; long

face, long legs, long arms, twinkle in his specs, jocular way of

speaking—in a low voice. . . See that?”

I nodded, but he was not looking at me.

“Never laughed so much in my life. The beggar—would make you laugh

telling you how he skinned his own father. He was up to that, too. A

man who’s been in the patent-medicine trade will be up to anything from

pitch-and-toss to wilful murder. And that’s a bit of hard truth for you.

Don’t mind what they do—think they can carry off anything and talk

themselves out of anything—all the world’s a fool to them. Business man,

too, Cloete. Came over with a few hundred pounds. Looking for something

to do—in a quiet way. Nothing like the old country, after all, says he. . .

And so we part—I with more drinks in me than I was used to. After a

time, perhaps six months or so, I run up against him again in Mr. George

Dunbar’s office. Yes, _that_ office. It wasn’t often that I . . .

However, there was a bit of his cargo in a ship in dock that I wanted to

ask Mr. George about. In comes Cloete out of the room at the back with

some papers in his hand. Partner. You understand?”

“Aha!” I said. “The few hundred pounds.”

“And that tongue of his,” he growled. “Don’t forget that tongue. Some

of his tales must have opened George Dunbar’s eyes a bit as to what

business means.”

“A plausible fellow,” I suggested.

“H’m! You must have it in your own way—of course. Well. Partner.

George Dunbar puts his top-hat on and tells me to wait a moment. . .

George always looked as though he were making a few thousands a year—a

city swell. . . Come along, old man! And he and Captain Harry go out

together—some business with a solicitor round the corner. Captain Harry,

when he was in England, used to turn up in his brother’s office regularly

about twelve. Sat in a corner like a good boy, reading the paper and

smoking his pipe. So they go out. . . Model brothers, says Cloete—two

love-birds—I am looking after the tinned-fruit side of this cozy little

show. . . Gives me that sort of talk. Then by-and-by: What sort of old

thing is that _Sagamore_? Finest ship out—eh? I dare say all ships are

fine to you. You live by them. I tell you what; I would just as soon

put my money into an old stocking. Sooner!”

* * * * *

He drew a breath, and I noticed his hand, lying loosely on the table,

close slowly into a fist. In that immovable man it was startling,

ominous, like the famed nod of the Commander.

“So, already at that time—note—already,” he growled.

“But hold on,” I interrupted. “The _Sagamore_ belonged to Mundy and

Rogers, I’ve been told.”

He snorted contemptuously. “Damn boatmen—know no better. Flew the

firm’s _house-flag_. That’s another thing. Favour. It was like this:

When old man Dunbar died, Captain Harry was already in command with the

firm. George chucked the bank he was clerking in—to go on his own with

what there was to share after the old chap. George was a smart man.

Started warehousing; then two or three things at a time: wood-pulp,

preserved-fruit trade, and so on. And Captain Harry let him have his

share to work with. . . I am provided for in my ship, he says. . . But

by-and-by Mundy and Rogers begin to sell out to foreigners all their

ships—go into steam right away. Captain Harry gets very upset—lose

command, part with the ship he was fond of—very wretched. Just then, so

it happened, the brothers came in for some money—an old woman died or

something. Quite a tidy bit. Then young George says: There’s enough

between us two to buy the _Sagamore_ with. . . But you’ll need more money

for your business, cries Captain Harry—and the other laughs at him: My

business is going on all right. Why, I can go out and make a handful of

sovereigns while you are trying to get your pipe to draw, old man. . .

Mundy and Rogers very friendly about it: Certainly, Captain. And we will

manage her for you, if you like, as if she were still our own. . . Why,

with a connection like that it was good investment to buy that ship.

Good! Aye, at the time.”

The turning of his head slightly toward me at this point was like a sign

of strong feeling in any other man.

“You’ll mind that this was long before Cloete came into it at all,” he

muttered, warningly.

“Yes. I will mind,” I said. “We generally say: some years passed.

That’s soon done.”

He eyed me for a while silently in an unseeing way, as if engrossed in

the thought of the years so easily dealt with; his own years, too, they

were, the years before and the years (not so many) after Cloete came upon

the scene. When he began to speak again, I discerned his intention to

point out to me, in his obscure and graphic manner, the influence on

George Dunbar of long association with Cloete’s easy moral standards,

unscrupulously persuasive gift of humour (funny fellow), and

adventurously reckless disposition. He desired me anxiously to elaborate

this view, and I assured him it was quite within my powers. He wished me

also to understand that George’s business had its ups and downs (the

other brother was meantime sailing to and fro serenely); that he got into

low water at times, which worried him rather, because he had married a

young wife with expensive tastes. He was having a pretty anxious time of

it generally; and just then Cloete ran up in the city somewhere against a

man working a patent medicine (the fellow’s old trade) with some success,

but which, with capital, capital to the tune of thousands to be spent

with both hands on advertising, could be turned into a great

thing—infinitely better-paying than a gold-mine. Cloete became excited

at the possibilities of that sort of business, in which he was an expert.

I understood that George’s partner was all on fire from the contact with

this unique opportunity.

“So he goes in every day into George’s room about eleven, and sings that

tune till George gnashes his teeth with rage. Do shut up. What’s the

good? No money. Hardly any to go on with, let alone pouring thousands

into advertising. Never dare propose to his brother Harry to sell the

ship. Couldn’t think of it. Worry him to death. It would be like the

end of the world coming. And certainly not for a business of that kind!

. . . Do you think it would be a swindle? asks Cloete, twitching his

mouth. . . George owns up: No—would be no better than a squeamish ass if

he thought that, after all these years in business.

“Cloete looks at him hard—Never thought of _selling_ the ship. Expected

the blamed old thing wouldn’t fetch half her insured value by this time.

Then George flies out at him. What’s the meaning, then, of these silly

jeers at ship-owning for the last three weeks? Had enough of them,

anyhow.

“Angry at having his mouth made to water, see. Cloete don’t get excited. . .

I am no squeamish ass, either, says he, very slowly. ’Tisn’t selling

your old _Sagamore_ wants. The blamed thing wants tomahawking (seems the

name _Sagamore_ means an Indian chief or something. The figure-head was

a half-naked savage with a feather over one ear and a hatchet in his

belt). Tomahawking, says he.

“What do you mean? asks George. . . Wrecking—it could be managed with

perfect safety, goes on Cloete—your brother would then put in his share

of insurance money. Needn’t tell him exactly what for. He thinks you’re

the smartest business man that ever lived. Make his fortune, too. . .

George grips the desk with both hands in his rage. . . You think my

brother’s a man to cast away his ship on purpose. I wouldn’t even dare

think of such a thing in the same room with him—the finest fellow that

ever lived. . . Don’t make such noise; they’ll hear you outside, says

Cloete; and he tells him that his brother is the salted pattern of all

virtues, but all that’s necessary is to induce him to stay ashore for a

voyage—for a holiday—take a rest—why not? . . . In fact, I have in view

somebody up to that sort of game—Cloete whispers.

“George nearly chokes. . . So you think I am of that sort—you think _me_

capable—What do you take me for? . . . He almost loses his head, while

Cloete keeps cool, only gets white about the gills. . . I take you for a

man who will be most cursedly hard up before long. . . He goes to the

door and sends away the clerks—there were only two—to take their lunch

hour. Comes back . . . What are you indignant about? Do I want you to

rob the widow and orphan? Why, man! Lloyd’s a corporation, it hasn’t

got a body to starve. There’s forty or more of them perhaps who

underwrote the lines on that silly ship of yours. Not one human being

would go hungry or cold for it. They take every risk into consideration.

Everything I tell you. . . That sort of talk. H’m! George too upset to

speak—only gurgles and waves his arms; so sudden, you see. The other,

warming his back at the fire, goes on. Wood-pulp business next door to a

failure. Tinned-fruit trade nearly played out. . . You’re frightened, he

says; but the law is only meant to frighten fools away. . . And he shows

how safe casting away that ship would be. Premiums paid for so many,

many years. No shadow of suspicion could arise. And, dash it all! a

ship must meet her end some day. . .

“I am not frightened. I am indignant,” says George Dunbar.

“Cloete boiling with rage inside. Chance of a lifetime—his chance! And

he says kindly: Your wife’ll be much more indignant when you ask her to

get out of that pretty house of yours and pile in into a two-pair

back—with kids perhaps, too. . .

“George had no children. Married a couple of years; looked forward to a

kid or two very much. Feels more upset than ever. Talks about an honest

man for father, and so on. Cloete grins: You be quick before they come,

and they’ll have a rich man for father, and no one the worse for it.

That’s the beauty of the thing.

“George nearly cries. I believe he did cry at odd times. This went on

for weeks. He couldn’t quarrel with Cloete. Couldn’t pay off his few

hundreds; and besides, he was used to have him about. Weak fellow,

George. Cloete generous, too. . . Don’t think of my little pile, says

he. Of course it’s gone when we have to shut up. But I don’t care, he

says. . . And then there was George’s new wife. When Cloete dines there,

the beggar puts on a dress suit; little woman liked it; . . . Mr. Cloete,

my husband’s partner; such a clever man, man of the world, so amusing! . . .

When he dines there and they are alone: Oh, Mr. Cloete, I wish George

would do something to improve our prospects. Our position is really so

mediocre. . . And Cloete smiles, but isn’t surprised, because he had put

all these notions himself into her empty head. . . What your husband

wants is enterprise, a little audacity. You can encourage him best, Mrs.

Dunbar. . . She was a silly, extravagant little fool. Had made George

take a house in Norwood. Live up to a lot of people better off than

themselves. I saw her once; silk dress, pretty boots, all feathers and

scent, pink face. More like the Promenade at the Alhambra than a decent

home, it looked to me. But some women do get a devil of a hold on a

man.”

“Yes, some do,” I assented. “Even when the man is the husband.”

“My missis,” he addressed me unexpectedly, in a solemn, surprisingly

hollow tone, “could wind me round her little finger. I didn’t find it

out till she was gone. Aye. But she was a woman of sense, while that

piece of goods ought to have been walking the streets, and that’s all I

can say. . . You must make her up out of your head. You will know the

sort.”

“Leave all that to me,” I said.

“H’m!” he grunted, doubtfully, then going back to his scornful tone: “A

month or so afterwards the _Sagamore_ arrives home. All very jolly at

first. . . Hallo, George boy! Hallo, Harry, old man! . . . But by and by

Captain Harry thinks his clever brother is not looking very well. And

George begins to look worse. He can’t get rid of Cloete’s notion. It

has stuck in his head. . . There’s nothing wrong—quite well. . . Captain

Harry still anxious. Business going all right, eh? Quite right. Lots

of business. Good business. . . Of course Captain Harry believes that

easily. Starts chaffing his brother in his jolly way about rolling in

money. George’s shirt sticks to his back with perspiration, and he feels

quite angry with the captain. . . The fool, he says to himself. Rolling

in money, indeed! And then he thinks suddenly: Why not? . . . Because

Cloete’s notion has got hold of his mind.

“But next day he weakens and says to Cloete . . . Perhaps it would be

best to sell. Couldn’t you talk to my brother? and Cloete explains to

him over again for the twentieth time why selling wouldn’t do, anyhow.

No! The _Sagamore_ must be tomahawked—as he would call it; to spare

George’s feelings, maybe. But every time he says the word, George

shudders. . . I’ve got a man at hand competent for the job who will do

the trick for five hundred, and only too pleased at the chance, says

Cloete. . . George shuts his eyes tight at that sort of talk—but at the

same time he thinks: Humbug! There can be no such man. And yet if there

was such a man it would be safe enough—perhaps.

“And Cloete always funny about it. He couldn’t talk about anything

without it seeming there was a great joke in it somewhere. . . Now, says

he, I know you are a moral citizen, George. Morality is mostly funk, and

I think you’re the funkiest man I ever came across in my travels. Why,

you are afraid to speak to your brother. Afraid to open your mouth to

him with a fortune for us all in sight. . . George flares up at this: no,

he ain’t afraid; he will speak; bangs fist on the desk. And Cloete pats

him on the back. . . We’ll be made men presently, he says.

“But the first time George attempts to speak to Captain Harry his heart

slides down into his boots. Captain Harry only laughs at the notion of

staying ashore. He wants no holiday, not he. But Jane thinks of

remaining in England this trip. Go about a bit and see some of her

people. Jane was the Captain’s wife; round-faced, pleasant lady. George

gives up that time; but Cloete won’t let him rest. So he tries again;

and the Captain frowns. He frowns because he’s puzzled. He can’t make

it out. He has no notion of living away from his _Sagamore_. . .

“Ah!” I cried. “Now I understand.”

“No, you don’t,” he growled, his black, contemptuous stare turning on me

crushingly.

“I beg your pardon,” I murmured.

“H’m! Very well, then. Captain Harry looks very stern, and George

crumples all up inside. . . He sees through me, he thinks. . . Of course

it could not be; but George, by that time, was scared at his own shadow.

He is shirking it with Cloete, too. Gives his partner to understand that

his brother has half a mind to try a spell on shore, and so on. Cloete

waits, gnawing his fingers; so anxious. Cloete really had found a man

for the job. Believe it or not, he had found him inside the very

boarding-house he lodged in—somewhere about Tottenham Court Road. He had

noticed down-stairs a fellow—a boarder and not a boarder—hanging about

the dark—part of the passage mostly; sort of ‘man of the house,’ a

slinking chap. Black eyes. White face. The woman of the house—a widow

lady, she called herself—very full of Mr. Stafford; Mr. Stafford this and

Mr. Stafford that. . . Anyhow, Cloete one evening takes him out to have a

drink. Cloete mostly passed away his evenings in saloon bars. No

drunkard, though, Cloete; for company; liked to talk to all sorts there;

just habit; American fashion.

“So Cloete takes that chap out more than once. Not very good company,

though. Little to say for himself. Sits quiet and drinks what’s given

to him, eyes always half closed, speaks sort of demure. . . I’ve had

misfortunes, he says. The truth was they had kicked him out of a big

steam-ship company for disgraceful conduct; nothing to affect his

certificate, you understand; and he had gone down quite easily. Liked

it, I expect. Anything’s better than work. Lived on the widow lady who

kept that boarding-house.”

“That’s almost incredible,” I ventured to interrupt. “A man with a

master’s certificate, do you mean?”

“I do; I’ve known them ’bus cads,” he growled, contemptuously. “Yes.

Swing on the tail-board by the strap and yell, ‘tuppence all the way.’

Through drink. But this Stafford was of another kind. Hell’s full of

such Staffords; Cloete would make fun of him, and then there would be a

nasty gleam in the fellow’s half-shut eye. But Cloete was generally kind

to him. Cloete was a fellow that would be kind to a mangy dog. Anyhow,

he used to stand drinks to that object, and now and then gave him half a

crown—because the widow lady kept Mr. Stafford short of pocket-money.

They had rows almost every day down in the basement. . .

“It was the fellow being a sailor that put into Cloete’s mind the first

notion of doing away with the _Sagamore_. He studies him a bit, thinks

there’s enough devil in him yet to be tempted, and one evening he says to

him . . . I suppose you wouldn’t mind going to sea again, for a spell? . . .

The other never raises his eyes; says it’s scarcely worth one’s while

for the miserable salary one gets. . . Well, but what do you say to

captain’s wages for a time, and a couple of hundred extra if you are

compelled to come home without the ship. Accidents will happen, says

Cloete. . . Oh! sure to, says that Stafford; and goes on taking sips of

his drink as if he had no interest in the matter.

“Cloete presses him a bit; but the other observes, impudent and languid

like: You see, there’s no future in a thing like that—is there? . . Oh!

no, says Cloete. Certainly not. I don’t mean this to have any future—as

far as you are concerned. It’s a ‘once for all’ transaction. Well, what

do you estimate your future at? he asks. . . The fellow more listless

than ever—nearly asleep.—I believe the skunk was really too lazy to care.

Small cheating at cards, wheedling or bullying his living out of some

woman or other, was more his style. Cloete swears at him in whispers

something awful. All this in the saloon bar of the Horse Shoe, Tottenham

Court Road. Finally they agree, over the second sixpennyworth of Scotch

hot, on five hundred pounds as the price of tomahawking the _Sagamore_.

And Cloete waits to see what George can do.

“A week or two goes by. The other fellow loafs about the house as if

there had been nothing, and Cloete begins to doubt whether he really

means ever to tackle that job. But one day he stops Cloete at the door,

with his downcast eyes: What about that employment you wished to give me?

he asks. . . You see, he had played some more than usual dirty trick on

the woman and expected awful ructions presently; and to be fired out for

sure. Cloete very pleased. George had been prevaricating to him such a

lot that he really thought the thing was as well as settled. And he

says: Yes. It’s time I introduced you to my friend. Just get your hat

and we will go now. . .

“The two come into the office, and George at his desk sits up in a sudden

panic—staring. Sees a tallish fellow, sort of nasty-handsome face, heavy

eyes, half shut; short drab overcoat, shabby bowler hat, very

careful—like in his movements. And he thinks to himself, Is that how

such a man looks! No, the thing’s impossible. . . Cloete does the

introduction, and the fellow turns round to look behind him at the chair

before he sits down. . . A thoroughly competent man, Cloete goes on . . .

The man says nothing, sits perfectly quiet. And George can’t speak,

throat too dry. Then he makes an effort: H’m! H’m! Oh

yes—unfortunately—sorry to disappoint—my brother—made other

arrangements—going himself.

“The fellow gets up, never raising his eyes off the ground, like a modest

girl, and goes out softly, right out of the office without a sound.

Cloete sticks his chin in his hand and bites all his fingers at once.

George’s heart slows down and he speaks to Cloete. . . This can’t be

done. How can it be? Directly the ship is lost Harry would see through

it. You know he is a man to go to the underwriters himself with his

suspicions. And he would break his heart over me. How can I play that

on him? There’s only two of us in the world belonging to each other. . .

“Cloete lets out a horrid cuss-word, jumps up, bolts away into his room,

and George hears him there banging things around. After a while he goes

to the door and says in a trembling voice: You ask me for an

impossibility. . . Cloete inside ready to fly out like a tiger and rend

him; but he opens the door a little way and says softly: Talking of

hearts, yours is no bigger than a mouse’s, let me tell you. . . But

George doesn’t care—load off the heart, anyhow. And just then Captain

Harry comes in. . . Hallo, George boy. I am little late. What about a

chop at the Cheshire, now? . . . Right you are, old man. . . And off they

go to lunch together. Cloete has nothing to eat that day.

“George feels a new man for a time; but all of a sudden that fellow

Stafford begins to hang about the street, in sight of the house door.

The first time George sees him he thinks he made a mistake. But no; next

time he has to go out, there is the very fellow skulking on the other

side of the road. It makes George nervous; but he must go out on

business, and when the fellow cuts across the road-way he dodges him. He

dodges him once, twice, three times; but at last he gets nabbed in his

very doorway. . . What do you want? he says, trying to look fierce.

“It seems that ructions had come in the basement of that boarding-house,

and the widow lady had turned on him (being jealous mad), to the extent

of talking of the police. _That_ Mr. Stafford couldn’t stand; so he

cleared out like a scared stag, and there he was, chucked into the

streets, so to speak. Cloete looked so savage as he went to and fro that

he hadn’t the spunk to tackle him; but George seemed a softer kind to his

eye. He would have been glad of half a quid, anything. . . I’ve had

misfortunes, he says softly, in his demure way, which frightens George

more than a row would have done. . . Consider the severity of my

disappointment, he says. . .

“George, instead of telling him to go to the devil, loses his head. . . I

don’t know you. What do you want? he cries, and bolts up-stairs to

Cloete. . . . Look what’s come of it, he gasps; now we are at the mercy

of that horrid fellow. . . Cloete tries to show him that the fellow can

do nothing; but George thinks that some sort of scandal may be forced on,

anyhow. Says that he can’t live with that horror haunting him. Cloete

would laugh if he weren’t too weary of it all. Then a thought strikes

him and he changes his tune. . . Well, perhaps! I will go down-stairs

and send him away to begin with. . . He comes back. . . He’s gone. But

perhaps you are right. The fellow’s hard up, and that’s what makes

people desperate. The best thing would be to get him out of the country

for a time. Look here, the poor devil is really in want of employment.

I won’t ask you much this time: only to hold your tongue; and I shall try

to get your brother to take him as chief officer. At this George lays

his arms and his head on his desk, so that Cloete feels sorry for him.

But altogether Cloete feels more cheerful because he has shaken the ghost

a bit into that Stafford. That very afternoon he buys him a suit of blue

clothes, and tells him that he will have to turn to and work for his

living now. Go to sea as mate of the _Sagamore_. The skunk wasn’t very

willing, but what with having nothing to eat and no place to sleep in,

and the woman having frightened him with the talk of some prosecution or

other, he had no choice, properly speaking. Cloete takes care of him for

a couple of days. . . Our arrangement still stands, says he. Here’s the

ship bound for Port Elizabeth; not a safe anchorage at all. Should she

by chance part from her anchors in a north-east gale and get lost on the

beach, as many of them do, why, it’s five hundred in your pocket—and a

quick return home. You are up to the job, ain’t you?

“Our Mr. Stafford takes it all in with downcast eyes. . . I am a

competent seaman, he says, with his sly, modest air. A ship’s chief mate

has no doubt many opportunities to manipulate the chains and anchors to

some purpose. . . At this Cloete thumps him on the back: You’ll do, my

noble sailor. Go in and win. . .

“Next thing George knows, his brother tells him that he had occasion to

oblige his partner. And glad of it, too. Likes the partner no end.

Took a friend of his as mate. Man had his troubles, been ashore a year

nursing a dying wife, it seems. Down on his luck. . . George protests

earnestly that he knows nothing of the person. Saw him once. Not very

attractive to look at. . . And Captain Harry says in his hearty way,

That’s so, but must give the poor devil a chance. . .

“So Mr. Stafford joins in dock. And it seems that he did manage to

monkey with one of the cables—keeping his mind on Port Elizabeth. The

riggers had all the cable ranged on deck to clean lockers. The new mate

watches them go ashore—dinner hour—and sends the ship-keeper out of the

ship to fetch him a bottle of beer. Then he goes to work whittling away

the forelock of the forty-five-fathom shackle-pin, gives it a tap or two

with a hammer just to make it loose, and of course that cable wasn’t safe

any more. Riggers come back—you know what riggers are: come day, go day,

and God send Sunday. Down goes the chain into the locker without their

foreman looking at the shackles at all. What does he care? He ain’t

going in the ship. And two days later the ship goes to sea. . . ”

* * * * *

At this point I was incautious enough to breathe out another “I see,”

which gave offence again, and brought on me a rude “No, you don’t”—as

before. But in the pause he remembered the glass of beer at his elbow.

He drank half of it, wiped his mustaches, and remarked grimly—

“Don’t you think that there will be any sea life in this, because there

ain’t. If you’re going to put in any out of your own head, now’s your

chance. I suppose you know what ten days of bad weather in the Channel

are like? I don’t. Anyway, ten whole days go by. One Monday Cloete

comes to the office a little late—hears a woman’s voice in George’s room

and looks in. Newspapers on the desk, on the floor; Captain Harry’s wife

sitting with red eyes and a bag on the chair near her. . . Look at this,

says George, in great excitement, showing him a paper. Cloete’s heart

gives a jump. Ha! Wreck in Westport Bay. The _Sagamore_ gone ashore

early hours of Sunday, and so the newspaper men had time to put in some

of their work. Columns of it. Lifeboat out twice. Captain and crew

remain by the ship. Tugs summoned to assist. If the weather improves,

this well-known fine ship may yet be saved. . . You know the way these

chaps put it. . . Mrs. Harry there on her way to catch a train from

Cannon Street. Got an hour to wait.

“Cloete takes George aside and whispers: Ship saved yet! Oh, damn! That

must never be; you hear? But George looks at him dazed, and Mrs. Harry

keeps on sobbing quietly: . . . I ought to have been with him. But I am

going to him. . . We are all going together, cries Cloete, all of a

sudden. He rushes out, sends the woman a cup of hot bovril from the shop

across the road, buys a rug for her, thinks of everything; and in the

train tucks her in and keeps on talking, thirteen to the dozen, all the

way, to keep her spirits up, as it were; but really because he can’t hold

his peace for very joy. Here’s the thing done all at once, and nothing

to pay. Done. Actually done. His head swims now and again when he

thinks of it. What enormous luck! It almost frightens him. He would

like to yell and sing. Meantime George Dunbar sits in his corner,

looking so deadly miserable that at last poor Mrs. Harry tries to comfort

him, and so cheers herself up at the same time by talking about how her

Harry is a prudent man; not likely to risk his crew’s life or his own

unnecessarily—and so on.

“First thing they hear at Westport station is that the life-boat has been

out to the ship again, and has brought off the second officer, who had

hurt himself, and a few sailors. Captain and the rest of the crew, about

fifteen in all, are still on board. Tugs expected to arrive every

moment.

“They take Mrs. Harry to the inn, nearly opposite the rocks; she bolts

straight up-stairs to look out of the window, and she lets out a great

cry when she sees the wreck. She won’t rest till she gets on board to

her Harry. Cloete soothes her all he can. . . All right; you try to eat

a mouthful, and we will go to make inquiries.

“He draws George out of the room: Look here, she can’t go on board, but I

shall. I’ll see to it that he doesn’t stop in the ship too long. Let’s

go and find the coxswain of the life-boat. . . George follows him,

shivering from time to time. The waves are washing over the old pier;

not much wind, a wild, gloomy sky over the bay. In the whole world only

one tug away off, heading to the seas, tossed in and out of sight every

minute as regular as clockwork.

“They meet the coxswain and he tells them: Yes! He’s going out again.

No, they ain’t in danger on board—not yet. But the ship’s chance is very

poor. Still, if the wind doesn’t pipe up again and the sea goes down

something might be tried. After some talk he agrees to take Cloete on

board; supposed to be with an urgent message from the owners to the

captain.

“Whenever Cloete looks at the sky he feels comforted; it looks so

threatening. George Dunbar follows him about with a white face and

saying nothing. Cloete takes him to have a drink or two, and by and by

he begins to pick up. . . That’s better, says Cloete; dash me if it

wasn’t like walking about with a dead man before. You ought to be

throwing up your cap, man. I feel as if I wanted to stand in the street

and cheer. Your brother is safe, the ship is lost, and we are made men.

“Are you certain she’s lost? asks George. It would be an awful blow

after all the agonies I have gone through in my mind, since you first

spoke to me, if she were to be got off—and—and—all this temptation to

begin over again. . . For we had nothing to do with this; had we?

“Of course not, says Cloete. Wasn’t your brother himself in charge?

It’s providential. . . Oh! cries George, shocked. . . Well, say it’s the

devil, says Cloete, cheerfully. I don’t mind! You had nothing to do

with it any more than a baby unborn, you great softy, you. . . Cloete has

got so that he almost loved George Dunbar. Well. Yes. That was so. I

don’t mean he respected him. He was just fond of his partner.

“They go back, you may say fairly skipping, to the hotel, and find the

wife of the captain at the open window, with her eyes on the ship as if

she wanted to fly across the bay over there. . . Now then, Mrs. Dunbar,

cries Cloete, you can’t go, but I am going. Any messages? Don’t be shy.

I’ll deliver every word faithfully. And if you would like to give me a

kiss for him, I’ll deliver that too, dash me if I don’t.

“He makes Mrs. Harry laugh with his patter. . . Oh, dear Mr. Cloete, you

are a calm, reasonable man. Make him behave sensibly. He’s a bit

obstinate, you know, and he’s so fond of the ship, too. Tell him I am

here—looking on. . . Trust me, Mrs. Dunbar. Only shut that window,

that’s a good girl. You will be sure to catch cold if you don’t, and the

Captain won’t be pleased coming off the wreck to find you coughing and

sneezing so that you can’t tell him how happy you are. And now if you

can get me a bit of tape to fasten my glasses on good to my ears, I will

be going. . .

“How he gets on board I don’t know. All wet and shaken and excited and

out of breath, he does get on board. Ship lying over, smothered in

sprays, but not moving very much; just enough to jag one’s nerve a bit.

He finds them all crowded on the deck-house forward, in their shiny

oilskins, with faces like sick men. Captain Harry can’t believe his

eyes. What! Mr. Cloete! What are you doing here, in God’s name? . . .

Your wife’s ashore there, looking on, gasps out Cloete; and after they

had talked a bit, Captain Harry thinks it’s uncommonly plucky and kind of

his brother’s partner to come off to him like this. Man glad to have

somebody to talk to. . . It’s a bad business, Mr. Cloete, he says. And

Cloete rejoices to hear that. Captain Harry thinks he had done his best,

but the cable had parted when he tried to anchor her. It was a great

trial to lose the ship. Well, he would have to face it. He fetches a

deep sigh now and then. Cloete almost sorry he had come on board,

because to be on that wreck keeps his chest in a tight band all the time.

They crouch out of the wind under the port boat, a little apart from the

men. The life-boat had gone away after putting Cloete on board, but was

coming back next high water to take off the crew if no attempt at getting

the ship afloat could be made. Dusk was falling; winter’s day; black

sky; wind rising. Captain Harry felt melancholy. God’s will be done.

If she must be left on the rocks—why, she must. A man should take what

God sends him standing up. . . Suddenly his voice breaks, and he squeezes

Cloete’s arm: It seems as if I couldn’t leave her, he whispers. Cloete

looks round at the men like a lot of huddled sheep and thinks to himself:

They won’t stay. . . Suddenly the ship lifts a little and sets down with

a thump. Tide rising. Everybody beginning to look out for the

life-boat. Some of the men made her out far away and also two more tugs.

But the gale has come on again, and everybody knows that no tug will ever

dare come near the ship.

“That’s the end, Captain Harry says, very low. . . . Cloete thinks he

never felt so cold in all his life. . . And I feel as if I didn’t care to

live on just now, mutters Captain Harry . . . Your wife’s ashore, looking

on, says Cloete . . . Yes. Yes. It must be awful for her to look at the

poor old ship lying here done for. Why, that’s our home.

“Cloete thinks that as long as the _Sagamore’s_ done for he doesn’t care,

and only wishes himself somewhere else. The slightest movement of the

ship cuts his breath like a blow. And he feels excited by the danger,

too. The captain takes him aside. . . The life-boat can’t come near us

for more than an hour. Look here, Cloete, since you are here, and such a

plucky one—do something for me. . . He tells him then that down in his

cabin aft in a certain drawer there is a bundle of important papers and

some sixty sovereigns in a small canvas bag. Asks Cloete to go and get

these things out. He hasn’t been below since the ship struck, and it

seems to him that if he were to take his eyes off her she would fall to

pieces. And then the men—a scared lot by this time—if he were to leave

them by themselves they would attempt to launch one of the ship’s boats

in a panic at some heavier thump—and then some of them bound to get

drowned. . . There are two or three boxes of matches about my shelves in

my cabin if you want a light, says Captain Harry. Only wipe your wet

hands before you begin to feel for them. . .

“Cloete doesn’t like the job, but doesn’t like to show funk, either—and

he goes. Lots of water on the main-deck, and he splashes along; it was

getting dark, too. All at once, by the mainmast, somebody catches him by

the arm. Stafford. He wasn’t thinking of Stafford at all. Captain

Harry had said something as to the mate not being quite satisfactory, but

it wasn’t much. Cloete doesn’t recognise him in his oilskins at first.

He sees a white face with big eyes peering at him. . . Are you pleased,

Mr. Cloete . . . ?

“Cloete is moved to laugh at the whine, and shakes him off. But the

fellow scrambles on after him on the poop and follows him down into the

cabin of that wrecked ship. And there they are, the two of them; can

hardly see each other. . . You don’t mean to make me believe you have had

anything to do with this, says Cloete. . .

“They both shiver, nearly out of their wits with the excitement of being

on board that ship. She thumps and lurches, and they stagger together,

feeling sick. Cloete again bursts out laughing at that wretched creature

Stafford pretending to have been up to something so desperate. . . Is

that how you think you can treat me now? yells the other man all of a

sudden. . .

“A sea strikes the stern, the ship trembles and groans all round them,

there’s the noise of the seas about and overhead, confusing Cloete, and

he hears the other screaming as if crazy. . . Ah, you don’t believe me!

Go and look at the port chain. Parted? Eh? Go and see if it’s parted.

Go and find the broken link. You can’t. There’s no broken link. That

means a thousand pounds for me. No less. A thousand the day after we

get ashore—prompt. I won’t wait till she breaks up, Mr. Cloete. To the

underwriters I go if I’ve to walk to London on my bare feet. Port cable!

Look at her port cable, I will say to them. I doctored it—for the

owners—tempted by a low rascal called Cloete.

“Cloete does not understand what it means exactly. All he sees is that

the fellow means to make mischief. He sees trouble ahead. . . Do you

think you can scare me? he asks,—you poor miserable skunk. . . And

Stafford faces him out—both holding on to the cabin table: No, damn you,

you are only a dirty vagabond; but I can scare the other, the chap in the

black coat. . .

“Meaning George Dunbar. Cloete’s brain reels at the thought. He doesn’t

imagine the fellow can do any real harm, but he knows what George is;

give the show away; upset the whole business he had set his heart on. He

says nothing; he hears the other, what with the funk and strain and

excitement, panting like a dog—and then a snarl. . . A thousand down,

twenty-four hours after we get ashore; day after to-morrow. That’s my

last word, Mr. Cloete. . . A thousand pounds, day after to-morrow, says

Cloete. Oh yes. And to-day take this, you dirty cur. . . He hits

straight from the shoulder in sheer rage, nothing else. Stafford goes

away spinning along the bulk-head. Seeing this, Cloete steps out and

lands him another one somewhere about the jaw. The fellow staggers

backward right into the captain’s cabin through the open door. Cloete,

following him up, hears him fall down heavily and roll to leeward, then

slams the door to and turns the key. . . There! says he to himself, that

will stop you from making trouble.”

“By Jove!” I murmured.

The old fellow departed from his impressive immobility to turn his

rakishly hatted head and look at me with his old, black, lack-lustre

eyes.

“He did leave him there,” he uttered, weightily, returning to the

contemplation of the wall. “Cloete didn’t mean to allow anybody, let

alone a thing like Stafford, to stand in the way of his great notion of

making George and himself, and Captain Harry, too, for that matter, rich

men. And he didn’t think much of consequences. These patent-medicine

chaps don’t care what they say or what they do. They think the world’s

bound to swallow any story they like to tell. . . He stands listening for

a bit. And it gives him quite a turn to hear a thump at the door and a

sort of muffled raving screech inside the captain’s room. He thinks he

hears his own name, too, through the awful crash as the old _Sagamore_

rises and falls to a sea. That noise and that awful shock make him clear

out of the cabin. He collects his senses on the poop. But his heart

sinks a little at the black wildness of the night. Chances that he will

get drowned himself before long. Puts his head down the companion.

Through the wind and breaking seas he can hear the noise of Stafford’s

beating against the door and cursing. He listens and says to himself:

No. Can’t trust him now. . .

“When he gets back to the top of the deck-house he says to Captain Harry,

who asks him if he got the things, that he is very sorry. There was

something wrong with the door. Couldn’t open it. And to tell you the

truth, says he, I didn’t like to stop any longer in that cabin. There

are noises there as if the ship were going to pieces. . . Captain Harry

thinks: Nervous; can’t be anything wrong with the door. But he says:

Thanks—never mind, never mind. . . All hands looking out now for the

life-boat. Everybody thinking of himself rather. Cloete asks himself,

will they miss him? But the fact is that Mr. Stafford had made such poor

show at sea that after the ship struck nobody ever paid any attention to

him. Nobody cared what he did or where he was. Pitch dark, too—no

counting of heads. The light of the tug with the lifeboat in tow is seen

making for the ship, and Captain Harry asks: Are we all there? . . .

Somebody answers: All here, sir. . . Stand by to leave the ship, then,

says Captain Harry; and two of you help the gentleman over first. . .

Aye, aye, sir. . . Cloete was moved to ask Captain Harry to let him stay

till last, but the life-boat drops on a grapnel abreast the fore-rigging,

two chaps lay hold of him, watch their chance, and drop him into her, all

safe.

“He’s nearly exhausted; not used to that sort of thing, you see. He sits

in the stern-sheets with his eyes shut. Don’t want to look at the white

water boiling all around. The men drop into the boat one after another.

Then he hears Captain Harry’s voice shouting in the wind to the coxswain,

to hold on a moment, and some other words he can’t catch, and the

coxswain yelling back: Don’t be long, sir. . . What is it? Cloete asks

feeling faint. . . Something about the ship’s papers, says the coxswain,

very anxious. It’s no time to be fooling about alongside, you

understand. They haul the boat off a little and wait. The water flies

over her in sheets. Cloete’s senses almost leave him. He thinks of

nothing. He’s numb all over, till there’s a shout: Here he is! . . .

They see a figure in the fore-rigging waiting—they slack away on the

grapnel-line and get him in the boat quite easy. There is a little

shouting—it’s all mixed up with the noise of the sea. Cloete fancies

that Stafford’s voice is talking away quite close to his ear. There’s a

lull in the wind, and Stafford’s voice seems to be speaking very fast to

the coxswain; he tells him that of course he was near his skipper, was

all the time near him, till the old man said at the last moment that he

must go and get the ship’s papers from aft; would insist on going

himself; told him, Stafford, to get into the life-boat. . . He had meant

to wait for his skipper, only there came this smooth of the seas, and he

thought he would take his chance at once.

“Cloete opens his eyes. Yes. There’s Stafford sitting close by him in

that crowded life-boat. The coxswain stoops over Cloete and cries: Did

you hear what the mate said, sir? . . . Cloete’s face feels as if it were

set in plaster, lips and all. Yes, I did, he forces himself to answer.

The coxswain waits a moment, then says: I don’t like it. . . And he turns

to the mate, telling him it was a pity he did not try to run along the

deck and hurry up the captain when the lull came. Stafford answers at

once that he did think of it, only he was afraid of missing him on the

deck in the dark. For, says he, the captain might have got over at once,

thinking I was already in the life-boat, and you would have hauled off

perhaps, leaving me behind. . . True enough, says the coxswain. A minute

or so passes. This won’t do, mutters the coxswain. Suddenly Stafford

speaks up in a sort of hollow voice: I was by when he told Mr. Cloete

here that he didn’t know how he would ever have the courage to leave the

old ship; didn’t he, now? . . . And Cloete feels his arm being gripped

quietly in the dark. . . Didn’t he now? We were standing together just

before you went over, Mr. Cloete? . . .

“Just then the coxswain cries out: I’m going on board to see. . . Cloete

tears his arm away: I am going with you. . .

“When they get aboard, the coxswain tells Cloete to go aft along one side

of the ship and he would go along the other so as not to miss the

captain. . . And feel about with your hands, too, says he; he might have

fallen and be lying insensible somewhere on the deck. . . When Cloete

gets at last to the cabin companion on the poop the coxswain is already

there, peering down and sniffing. I detect a smell of smoke down there,

says he. And he yells: Are you there, sir? . . . This is not a case for

shouting, says Cloete, feeling his heart go stony, as it were. . . Down

they go. Pitch dark; the inclination so sharp that the coxswain, groping

his way into the captain’s room, slips and goes tumbling down. Cloete

hears him cry out as though he had hurt himself, and asks what’s the

matter. And the coxswain answers quietly that he had fallen on the

captain, lying there insensible. Cloete without a word begins to grope

all over the shelves for a box of matches, finds one, and strikes a

light. He sees the coxswain in his cork jacket kneeling over Captain

Harry. . . Blood, says the coxswain, looking up, and the match goes out.

. .

“Wait a bit, says Cloete; I’ll make paper spills. . . He had felt the

back of books on the shelves. And so he stands lighting one spill from

another while the coxswain turns poor Captain Harry over. Dead, he says.

Shot through the heart. Here’s the revolver. . . He hands it up to

Cloete, who looks at it before putting it in his pocket, and sees a plate

on the butt with _H. Dunbar_ on it. . . His own, he mutters. . . Whose

else revolver did you expect to find? snaps the coxswain. And look, he

took off his long oilskin in the cabin before he went in. But what’s

this lot of burnt paper? What could he want to burn the ship’s papers

for? . . .

Cloete sees all, the little drawers drawn out, and asks the coxswain to

look well into them. . . There’s nothing, says the man. Cleaned out.

Seems to have pulled out all he could lay his hands on and set fire to

the lot. Mad—that’s what it is—went mad. And now he’s dead. You’ll

have to break it to his wife. . .

“I feel as if I were going mad myself, says Cloete, suddenly, and the

coxswain begs him for God’s sake to pull himself together, and drags him

away from the cabin. They had to leave the body, and as it was they were

just in time before a furious squall came on. Cloete is dragged into the

life-boat and the coxswain tumbles in. Haul away on the grapnel, he

shouts; the captain has shot himself. . .

“Cloete was like a dead man—didn’t care for anything. He let that

Stafford pinch his arm twice without making a sign. Most of Westport was

on the old pier to see the men out of the life-boat, and at first there

was a sort of confused cheery uproar when she came alongside; but after

the coxswain has shouted something the voices die out, and everybody is

very quiet. As soon as Cloete has set foot on something firm he becomes

himself again. The coxswain shakes hands with him: Poor woman, poor

woman, I’d rather you had the job than I. . .

“Where’s the mate?” asks Cloete. He’s the last man who spoke to the

master. . . Somebody ran along—the crew were being taken to the Mission

Hall, where there was a fire and shake-downs ready for them—somebody ran

along the pier and caught up with Stafford. . . Here! The owner’s agent

wants you. . . Cloete tucks the fellow’s arm under his own and walks away

with him to the left, where the fishing-harbour is. . . I suppose I

haven’t misunderstood you. You wish me to look after you a bit, says he.

The other hangs on him rather limp, but gives a nasty little laugh: You

had better, he mumbles; but mind, no tricks; no tricks, Mr. Cloete; we

are on land now.

“There’s a police office within fifty yards from here, says Cloete. He

turns into a little public house, pushes Stafford along the passage. The

landlord runs out of the bar. . . This is the mate of the ship on the

rocks, Cloete explains; I wish you would take care of him a bit to-night. . .

What’s the matter with him? asks the man. Stafford leans against the

wall in the passage, looking ghastly. And Cloete says it’s nothing—done

up, of course. . . I will be responsible for the expense; I am the

owner’s agent. I’ll be round in an hour or two to see him.

And Cloete gets back to the hotel. The news had travelled there already,

and the first thing he sees is George outside the door as white as a

sheet waiting for him. Cloete just gives him a nod and they go in. Mrs.

Harry stands at the head of the stairs, and, when she sees only these two

coming up, flings her arms above her head and runs into her room. Nobody

had dared tell her, but not seeing her husband was enough. Cloete hears

an awful shriek. . . Go to her, he says to George.

“While he’s alone in the private parlour Cloete drinks a glass of brandy

and thinks it all out. Then George comes in. . . The landlady’s with

her, he says. And he begins to walk up and down the room, flinging his

arms about and talking, disconnected like, his face set hard as Cloete

has never seen it before. . . What must be, must be. Dead—only brother.

Well, dead—his troubles over. But we are living, he says to Cloete; and

I suppose, says he, glaring at him with hot, dry eyes, that you won’t

forget to wire in the morning to your friend that we are coming in for

certain. . .

“Meaning the patent-medicine fellow. . . Death is death and business is

business, George goes on; and look—my hands are clean, he says, showing

them to Cloete. Cloete thinks: He’s going crazy. He catches hold of him

by the shoulders and begins to shake him: Damn you—if you had had the

sense to know what to say to your brother, if you had had the spunk to

speak to him at all, you moral creature you, he would be alive now, he

shouts.

“At this George stares, then bursts out weeping with a great bellow. He

throws himself on the couch, buries his face in a cushion, and howls like

a kid. . . That’s better, thinks Cloete, and he leaves him, telling the

landlord that he must go out, as he has some little business to attend to

that night. The landlord’s wife, weeping herself, catches him on the

stairs: Oh, sir, that poor lady will go out of her mind. . .

“Cloete shakes her off, thinking to himself: Oh no! She won’t. She will

get over it. Nobody will go mad about this affair unless I do. It isn’t

sorrow that makes people go mad, but worry.

“There Cloete was wrong. What affected Mrs. Harry was that her husband

should take his own life, with her, as it were, looking on. She brooded

over it so that in less than a year they had to put her into a Home. She

was very, very quiet; just gentle melancholy. She lived for quite a long

time.

“Well, Cloete splashes along in the wind and rain. Nobody in the

streets—all the excitement over. The publican runs out to meet him in

the passage and says to him: Not this way. He isn’t in his room. We

couldn’t get him to go to bed nohow. He’s in the little parlour there.

We’ve lighted him a fire. . . You have been giving him drinks too, says

Cloete; I never said I would be responsible for drinks. How many? . . .

Two, says the other. It’s all right. I don’t mind doing that much for a

shipwrecked sailor. . . Cloete smiles his funny smile: Eh? Come. He

paid for them. . . The publican just blinks. . . Gave you gold, didn’t

he? Speak up! . . . What of that! cries the man. What are you after,

anyway? He had the right change for his sovereign.

“Just so, says Cloete. He walks into the parlour, and there he sees our

Stafford; hair all up on end, landlord’s shirt and pants on, bare feet in

slippers, sitting by the fire. When he sees Cloete he casts his eyes

down.

“You didn’t mean us ever to meet again, Mr. Cloete, Stafford says,

demurely. . . That fellow, when he had the drink he wanted—he wasn’t a

drunkard—would put on this sort of sly, modest air. . . But since the

captain committed suicide, he says, I have been sitting here thinking it

out. All sorts of things happen. Conspiracy to lose the ship—attempted

murder—and this suicide. For if it was not suicide, Mr. Cloete, then I

know of a victim of the most cruel, cold-blooded attempt at murder;

somebody who has suffered a thousand deaths. And that makes the thousand

pounds of which we spoke once a quite insignificant sum. Look how very

convenient this suicide is. . .

“He looks up at Cloete then, who smiles at him and comes quite close to

the table.

“You killed Harry Dunbar, he whispers. . . The fellow glares at him and

shows his teeth: Of course I did! I had been in that cabin for an hour

and a half like a rat in a trap. . . Shut up and left to drown in that

wreck. Let flesh and blood judge. Of course I shot him! I thought it

was you, you murdering scoundrel, come back to settle me. He opens the

door flying and tumbles right down upon me; I had a revolver in my hand,

and I shot him. I was crazy. Men have gone crazy for less.

“Cloete looks at him without flinching. Aha! That’s your story, is it?

. . . And he shakes the table a little in his passion as he speaks. . .

Now listen to mine. What’s this conspiracy? Who’s going to prove it?

You were there to rob. You were rifling his cabin; he came upon you

unawares with your hands in the drawer; and you shot him with his own

revolver. You killed to steal—to steal! His brother and the clerks in

the office know that he took sixty pounds with him to sea. Sixty pounds

in gold in a canvas bag. He told me where they were. The coxswain of

the life-boat can swear to it that the drawers were all empty. And you

are such a fool that before you’re half an hour ashore you change a

sovereign to pay for a drink. Listen to me. If you don’t turn up day

after to-morrow at George Dunbar’s solicitors, to make the proper

deposition as to the loss of the ship, I shall set the police on your

track. Day after to-morrow. . .

“And then what do you think? That Stafford begins to tear his hair.

Just so. Tugs at it with both hands without saying anything. Cloete

gives a push to the table which nearly sends the fellow off his chair,

tumbling inside the fender; so that he has got to catch hold of it to

save himself. . .

“You know the sort of man I am, Cloete says, fiercely. I’ve got to a

point that I don’t care what happens to me. I would shoot you now for

tuppence.

“At this the cur dodges under the table. Then Cloete goes out, and as he

turns in the street—you know, little fishermen’s cottages, all dark;

raining in torrents, too—the other opens the window of the parlour and

speaks in a sort of crying voice—

“You low Yankee fiend—I’ll pay you off some day.

“Cloete passes by with a damn bitter laugh, because he thinks that the

fellow in a way has paid him off already, if he only knew it.”

* * * * *

My impressive ruffian drank what remained of his beer, while his black,

sunken eyes looked at me over the rim.

“I don’t quite understand this,” I said. “In what way?”

He unbent a little and explained without too much scorn that Captain

Harry being dead, his half of the insurance money went to his wife, and

her trustees of course bought consols with it. Enough to keep her

comfortable. George Dunbar’s half, as Cloete feared from the first, did

not prove sufficient to launch the medicine well; other moneyed men

stepped in, and these two had to go out of that business, pretty nearly

shorn of everything.

“I am curious,” I said, “to learn what the motive force of this tragic

affair was—I mean the patent medicine. Do you know?”

He named it, and I whistled respectfully. Nothing less than Parker’s

Lively Lumbago Pills. Enormous property! You know it; all the world

knows it. Every second man, at least, on this globe of ours has tried

it.

“Why!” I cried, “they missed an immense fortune.”

“Yes,” he mumbled, “by the price of a revolver-shot.”

He told me also that eventually Cloete returned to the States, passenger

in a cargo-boat from Albert Dock. The night before he sailed he met him

wandering about the quays, and took him home for a drink. “Funny chap,

Cloete. We sat all night drinking grogs, till it was time for him to go

on board.”

It was then that Cloete, unembittered but weary, told him this story,

with that utterly unconscious frankness of a patent-medicine man stranger

to all moral standards. Cloete concluded by remarking that he, had “had

enough of the old country.” George Dunbar had turned on him, too, in the

end. Cloete was clearly somewhat disillusioned.

As to Stafford, he died, professed loafer, in some East End hospital or

other, and on his last day clamoured “for a parson,” because his

conscience worried him for killing an innocent man. “Wanted somebody to

tell him it was all right,” growled my old ruffian, contemptuously. “He

told the parson that I knew this Cloete who had tried to murder him, and

so the parson (he worked among the dock labourers) once spoke to me about

it. That skunk of a fellow finding himself trapped yelled for mercy. . .

Promised to be good and so on. . . Then he went crazy . . . screamed and

threw himself about, beat his head against the bulkheads . . . you can

guess all that—eh? . . . till he was exhausted. Gave up. Threw himself

down, shut his eyes, and wanted to pray. So he says. Tried to think of

some prayer for a quick death—he was that terrified. Thought that if he

had a knife or something he would cut his throat, and be done with it.

Then he thinks: No! Would try to cut away the wood about the lock. . .

He had no knife in his pocket. . . he was weeping and calling on God to

send him a tool of some kind when suddenly he thinks: Axe! In most ships

there is a spare emergency axe kept in the master’s room in some locker

or other. . . Up he jumps. . . Pitch dark. Pulls at the drawers to find

matches and, groping for them, the first thing he comes upon—Captain

Harry’s revolver. Loaded too. He goes perfectly quiet all over. Can

shoot the lock to pieces. See? Saved! God’s providence! There are

boxes of matches too. Thinks he: I may just as well see what I am about.

“Strikes a light and sees the little canvas bag tucked away at the back

of the drawer. Knew at once what that was. Rams it into his pocket

quick. Aha! says he to himself: this requires more light. So he pitches

a lot of paper on the floor, set fire to it, and starts in a hurry

rummaging for more valuables. Did you ever? He told that East-End

parson that the devil tempted him. First God’s mercy—then devil’s work.

Turn and turn about. . .

“Any squirming skunk can talk like that. He was so busy with the drawers

that the first thing he heard was a shout, Great Heavens. He looks up

and there was the door open (Cloete had left the key in the lock) and

Captain Harry holding on, well above him, very fierce in the light of the

burning papers. His eyes were starting out of his head. Thieving, he

thunders at him. A sailor! An officer! No! A wretch like you deserves

no better than to be left here to drown.

“This Stafford—on his death-bed—told the parson that when he heard these

words he went crazy again. He snatched his hand with the revolver in it

out of the drawer, and fired without aiming. Captain Harry fell right in

with a crash like a stone on top of the burning papers, putting the blaze

out. All dark. Not a sound. He listened for a bit then dropped the

revolver and scrambled out on deck like mad.”

The old fellow struck the table with his ponderous fist.

“What makes me sick is to hear these silly boat-men telling people the

captain committed suicide. Pah! Captain Harry was a man that could face

his Maker any time up there, and here below, too. He wasn’t the sort to

slink out of life. Not he! He was a good man down to the ground. He

gave me my first job as stevedore only three days after I got married.”

As the vindication of Captain Harry from the charge of suicide seemed to

be his only object, I did not thank him very effusively for his material.

And then it was not worth many thanks in any case.

For it is too startling even to think of such things happening in our

respectable Channel in full view, so to speak, of the luxurious

continental traffic to Switzerland and Monte Carlo. This story to be

acceptable should have been transposed to somewhere in the South Seas.

But it would have been too much trouble to cook it for the consumption of

magazine readers. So here it is raw, so to speak—just as it was told to

me—but unfortunately robbed of the striking effect of the narrator; the

most imposing old ruffian that ever followed the unromantic trade of

master stevedore in the port of London.

* * * * *

_Oct._ 1910.

THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES

A FIND

This tale, episode, experience—call it how you will—was related in the

fifties of the last century by a man who, by his own confession, was

sixty years old at the time. Sixty is not a bad age—unless in

perspective, when no doubt it is contemplated by the majority of us with

mixed feelings. It is a calm age; the game is practically over by then;

and standing aside one begins to remember with a certain vividness what a

fine fellow one used to be. I have observed that, by an amiable

attention of Providence, most people at sixty begin to take a romantic

view of themselves. Their very failures exhale a charm of peculiar

potency. And indeed the hopes of the future are a fine company to live

with, exquisite forms, fascinating if you like, but—so to speak—naked,

stripped for a run. The robes of glamour are luckily the property of the

immovable past which, without them, would sit, a shivery sort of thing,

under the gathering shadows.

I suppose it was the romanticism of growing age which set our man to

relate his experience for his own satisfaction or for the wonder of his

posterity. It could not have been for his glory, because the experience

was simply that of an abominable fright—terror he calls it. You would

have guessed that the relation alluded to in the very first lines was in

writing.

This writing constitutes the Find declared in the sub-title. The title

itself is my own contrivance, (can’t call it invention), and has the

merit of veracity. We will be concerned with an inn here. As to the

witches that’s merely a conventional expression, and we must take our

man’s word for it that it fits the case.

The Find was made in a box of books bought in London, in a street which

no longer exists, from a second-hand bookseller in the last stage of

decay. As to the books themselves they were at least twentieth-hand, and

on inspection turned out not worth the very small sum of money I

disbursed. It might have been some premonition of that fact which made

me say: “But I must have the box too.” The decayed bookseller assented

by the careless, tragic gesture of a man already doomed to extinction.

A litter of loose pages at the bottom of the box excited my curiosity but

faintly. The close, neat, regular handwriting was not attractive at

first sight. But in one place the statement that in A.D. 1813 the writer

was twenty-two years old caught my eye. Two and twenty is an interesting

age in which one is easily reckless and easily frightened; the faculty of

reflection being weak and the power of imagination strong.

In another place the phrase: “At night we stood in again,” arrested my

languid attention, because it was a sea phrase. “Let’s see what it is

all about,” I thought, without excitement.

Oh! but it was a dull-faced MS., each line resembling every other line in

their close-set and regular order. It was like the drone of a monotonous

voice. A treatise on sugar-refining (the dreariest subject I can think

of) could have been given a more lively appearance. “In A.D. 1813, I was

twenty-two years old,” he begins earnestly and goes on with every

appearance of calm, horrible industry. Don’t imagine, however, that

there is anything archaic in my find. Diabolic ingenuity in invention

though as old as the world is by no means a lost art. Look at the

telephones for shattering the little peace of mind given to us in this

world, or at the machine guns for letting with dispatch life out of our

bodies. Now-a-days any blear-eyed old witch if only strong enough to

turn an insignificant little handle could lay low a hundred young men of

twenty in the twinkling of an eye.

If this isn’t progress! . . . Why immense! We have moved on, and so you

must expect to meet here a certain naiveness of contrivance and

simplicity of aim appertaining to the remote epoch. And of course no

motoring tourist can hope to find such an inn anywhere, now. This one,

the one of the title, was situated in Spain. That much I discovered only

from internal evidence, because a good many pages of that relation were

missing—perhaps not a great misfortune after all. The writer seemed to

have entered into a most elaborate detail of the why and wherefore of his

presence on that coast—presumably the north coast of Spain. His

experience has nothing to do with the sea, though. As far as I can make

it out, he was an officer on board a sloop-of-war. There’s nothing

strange in that. At all stages of the long Peninsular campaign many of

our men-of-war of the smaller kind were cruising off the north coast of

Spain—as risky and disagreeable a station as can be well imagined.

It looks as though that ship of his had had some special service to

perform. A careful explanation of all the circumstances was to be

expected from our man, only, as I’ve said, some of his pages (good tough

paper too) were missing: gone in covers for jampots or in wadding for the

fowling-pieces of his irreverent posterity. But it is to be seen clearly

that communication with the shore and even the sending of messengers

inland was part of her service, either to obtain intelligence from or to

transmit orders or advice to patriotic Spaniards, guerilleros or secret

juntas of the province. Something of the sort. All this can be only

inferred from the preserved scraps of his conscientious writing.

Next we come upon the panegyric of a very fine sailor, a member of the

ship’s company, having the rating of the captain’s coxswain. He was

known on board as Cuba Tom; not because he was Cuban however; he was

indeed the best type of a genuine British tar of that time, and a

man-of-war’s man for years. He came by the name on account of some

wonderful adventures he had in that island in his young days, adventures

which were the favourite subject of the yarns he was in the habit of

spinning to his shipmates of an evening on the forecastle head. He was

intelligent, very strong, and of proved courage. Incidentally we are

told, so exact is our narrator, that Tom had the finest pigtail for

thickness and length of any man in the Navy. This appendage, much cared

for and sheathed tightly in a porpoise skin, hung half way down his broad

back to the great admiration of all beholders and to the great envy of

some.

Our young officer dwells on the manly qualities of Cuba Tom with

something like affection. This sort of relation between officer and man

was not then very rare. A youngster on joining the service was put under

the charge of a trustworthy seaman, who slung his first hammock for him

and often later on became a sort of humble friend to the junior officer.

The narrator on joining the sloop had found this man on board after some

years of separation. There is something touching in the warm pleasure he

remembers and records at this meeting with the professional mentor of his

boyhood.

We discover then that, no Spaniard being forthcoming for the service,

this worthy seaman with the unique pigtail and a very high character for

courage and steadiness had been selected as messenger for one of these

missions inland which have been mentioned. His preparations were not

elaborate. One gloomy autumn morning the sloop ran close to a shallow

cove where a landing could be made on that iron-bound shore. A boat was

lowered, and pulled in with Tom Corbin (Cuba Tom) perched in the bow, and

our young man (Mr. Edgar Byrne was his name on this earth which knows him

no more) sitting in the stern sheets.

A few inhabitants of a hamlet, whose grey stone houses could be seen a

hundred yards or so up a deep ravine, had come down to the shore and

watched the approach of the boat. The two Englishmen leaped ashore.

Either from dullness or astonishment the peasants gave no greeting, and

only fell back in silence.

Mr. Byrne had made up his mind to see Tom Corbin started fairly on his

way. He looked round at the heavy surprised faces.

“There isn’t much to get out of them,” he said. “Let us walk up to the

village. There will be a wine shop for sure where we may find somebody

more promising to talk to and get some information from.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Tom falling into step behind his officer. “A bit

of palaver as to courses and distances can do no harm; I crossed the

broadest part of Cuba by the help of my tongue tho’ knowing far less

Spanish than I do now. As they say themselves it was ‘four words and no

more’ with me, that time when I got left behind on shore by the

_Blanche_, frigate.”

He made light of what was before him, which was but a day’s journey into

the mountains. It is true that there was a full day’s journey before

striking the mountain path, but that was nothing for a man who had

crossed the island of Cuba on his two legs, and with no more than four

words of the language to begin with.

The officer and the man were walking now on a thick sodden bed of dead

leaves, which the peasants thereabouts accumulate in the streets of their

villages to rot during the winter for field manure. Turning his head Mr.

Byrne perceived that the whole male population of the hamlet was

following them on the noiseless springy carpet. Women stared from the

doors of the houses and the children had apparently gone into hiding.

The village knew the ship by sight, afar off, but no stranger had landed

on that spot perhaps for a hundred years or more. The cocked hat of Mr.

Byrne, the bushy whiskers and the enormous pigtail of the sailor, filled

them with mute wonder. They pressed behind the two Englishmen staring

like those islanders discovered by Captain Cook in the South Seas.

It was then that Byrne had his first glimpse of the little cloaked man in

a yellow hat. Faded and dingy as it was, this covering for his head made

him noticeable.

The entrance to the wine shop was like a rough hole in a wall of flints.

The owner was the only person who was not in the street, for he came out

from the darkness at the back where the inflated forms of wine skins hung

on nails could be vaguely distinguished. He was a tall, one-eyed

Asturian with scrubby, hollow cheeks; a grave expression of countenance

contrasted enigmatically with the roaming restlessness of his solitary

eye. On learning that the matter in hand was the sending on his way of

that English mariner toward a certain Gonzales in the mountains, he

closed his good eye for a moment as if in meditation. Then opened it,

very lively again.

“Possibly, possibly. It could be done.”

A friendly murmur arose in the group in the doorway at the name of

Gonzales, the local leader against the French. Inquiring as to the

safety of the road Byrne was glad to learn that no troops of that nation

had been seen in the neighbourhood for months. Not the smallest little

detachment of these impious _polizones_. While giving these answers the

owner of the wine-shop busied himself in drawing into an earthenware jug

some wine which he set before the heretic English, pocketing with grave

abstraction the small piece of money the officer threw upon the table in

recognition of the unwritten law that none may enter a wine-shop without

buying drink. His eye was in constant motion as if it were trying to do

the work of the two; but when Byrne made inquiries as to the possibility

of hiring a mule, it became immovably fixed in the direction of the door

which was closely besieged by the curious. In front of them, just within

the threshold, the little man in the large cloak and yellow hat had taken

his stand. He was a diminutive person, a mere homunculus, Byrne

describes him, in a ridiculously mysterious, yet assertive attitude, a

corner of his cloak thrown cavalierly over his left shoulder, muffling

his chin and mouth; while the broad-brimmed yellow hat hung on a corner

of his square little head. He stood there taking snuff, repeatedly.

“A mule,” repeated the wine-seller, his eyes fixed on that quaint and

snuffy figure. . . “No, señor officer! Decidedly no mule is to be got in

this poor place.”

The coxswain, who stood by with the true sailor’s air of unconcern in

strange surroundings, struck in quietly—

“If your honour will believe me Shank’s pony’s the best for this job. I

would have to leave the beast somewhere, anyhow, since the captain has

told me that half my way will be along paths fit only for goats.”

The diminutive man made a step forward, and speaking through the folds of

the cloak which seemed to muffle a sarcastic intention—

“Si, señor. They are too honest in this village to have a single mule

amongst them for your worship’s service. To that I can bear testimony.

In these times it’s only rogues or very clever men who can manage to have

mules or any other four-footed beasts and the wherewithal to keep them.

But what this valiant mariner wants is a guide; and here, señor, behold

my brother-in-law, Bernardino, wine-seller, and alcade of this most

Christian and hospitable village, who will find you one.”

This, Mr. Byrne says in his relation, was the only thing to do. A youth

in a ragged coat and goat-skin breeches was produced after some more

talk. The English officer stood treat to the whole village, and while

the peasants drank he and Cuba Tom took their departure accompanied by

the guide. The diminutive man in the cloak had disappeared.

Byrne went along with the coxswain out of the village. He wanted to see

him fairly on his way; and he would have gone a greater distance, if the

seaman had not suggested respectfully the advisability of return so as

not to keep the ship a moment longer than necessary so close in with the

shore on such an unpromising looking morning. A wild gloomy sky hung

over their heads when they took leave of each other, and their

surroundings of rank bushes and stony fields were dreary.

“In four days’ time,” were Byrne’s last words, “the ship will stand in

and send a boat on shore if the weather permits. If not you’ll have to

make it out on shore the best you can till we come along to take you

off.”

“Right you are, sir,” answered Tom, and strode on. Byrne watched him

step out on a narrow path. In a thick pea-jacket with a pair of pistols

in his belt, a cutlass by his side, and a stout cudgel in his hand, he

looked a sturdy figure and well able to take care of himself. He turned

round for a moment to wave his hand, giving to Byrne one more view of his

honest bronzed face with bushy whiskers. The lad in goatskin breeches

looking, Byrne says, like a faun or a young satyr leaping ahead, stopped

to wait for him, and then went off at a bound. Both disappeared.

Byrne turned back. The hamlet was hidden in a fold of the ground, and

the spot seemed the most lonely corner of the earth and as if accursed in

its uninhabited desolate barrenness. Before he had walked many yards,

there appeared very suddenly from behind a bush the muffled up diminutive

Spaniard. Naturally Byrne stopped short.

The other made a mysterious gesture with a tiny hand peeping from under

his cloak. His hat hung very much at the side of his head. “Señor,” he

said without any preliminaries. “Caution! It is a positive fact that

one-eyed Bernardino, my brother-in-law, has at this moment a mule in his

stable. And why he who is not clever has a mule there? Because he is a

rogue; a man without conscience. Because I had to give up the _macho_ to

him to secure for myself a roof to sleep under and a mouthful of _olla_

to keep my soul in this insignificant body of mine. Yet, señor, it

contains a heart many times bigger than the mean thing which beats in the

breast of that brute connection of mine of which I am ashamed, though I

opposed that marriage with all my power. Well, the misguided woman

suffered enough. She had her purgatory on this earth—God rest her soul.”

Byrne says he was so astonished by the sudden appearance of that

sprite-like being, and by the sardonic bitterness of the speech, that he

was unable to disentangle the significant fact from what seemed but a

piece of family history fired out at him without rhyme or reason. Not at

first. He was confounded and at the same time he was impressed by the

rapid forcible delivery, quite different from the frothy excited

loquacity of an Italian. So he stared while the homunculus letting his

cloak fall about him, aspired an immense quantity of snuff out of the

hollow of his palm.

“A mule,” exclaimed Byrne seizing at last the real aspect of the

discourse. “You say he has got a mule? That’s queer! Why did he refuse

to let me have it?”

The diminutive Spaniard muffled himself up again with great dignity.

“_Quien sabe_,” he said coldly, with a shrug of his draped shoulders.

“He is a great _politico_ in everything he does. But one thing your

worship may be certain of—that his intentions are always rascally. This

husband of my _defunta_ sister ought to have been married a long time ago

to the widow with the wooden legs.” {188}

“I see. But remember that, whatever your motives, your worship

countenanced him in this lie.”

The bright unhappy eyes on each side of a predatory nose confronted Byrne

without wincing, while with that testiness which lurks so often at the

bottom of Spanish dignity—

“No doubt the señor officer would not lose an ounce of blood if I were

stuck under the fifth rib,” he retorted. “But what of this poor sinner

here?” Then changing his tone. “Señor, by the necessities of the times

I live here in exile, a Castilian and an old Christian, existing

miserably in the midst of these brute Asturians, and dependent on the

worst of them all, who has less conscience and scruples than a wolf. And

being a man of intelligence I govern myself accordingly. Yet I can

hardly contain my scorn. You have heard the way I spoke. A caballero of

parts like your worship might have guessed that there was a cat in

there.”

“What cat?” said Byrne uneasily. “Oh, I see. Something suspicious. No,

señor. I guessed nothing. My nation are not good guessers at that sort

of thing; and, therefore, I ask you plainly whether that wine-seller has

spoken the truth in other particulars?”

“There are certainly no Frenchmen anywhere about,” said the little man

with a return to his indifferent manner.

“Or robbers—_ladrones_?”

“_Ladrones en grande_—no! Assuredly not,” was the answer in a cold

philosophical tone. “What is there left for them to do after the French?

And nobody travels in these times. But who can say! Opportunity makes

the robber. Still that mariner of yours has a fierce aspect, and with

the son of a cat rats will have no play. But there is a saying, too,

that where honey is there will soon be flies.”

This oracular discourse exasperated Byrne. “In the name of God,” he

cried, “tell me plainly if you think my man is reasonably safe on his

journey.”

The homunculus, undergoing one of his rapid changes, seized the officer’s

arm. The grip of his little hand was astonishing.

“Señor! Bernardino had taken notice of him. What more do you want? And

listen—men have disappeared on this road—on a certain portion of this

road, when Bernardino kept a _meson_, an inn, and I, his brother-in-law,

had coaches and mules for hire. Now there are no travellers, no coaches.

The French have ruined me. Bernardino has retired here for reasons of

his own after my sister died. They were three to torment the life out of

her, he and Erminia and Lucilla, two aunts of his—all affiliated to the

devil. And now he has robbed me of my last mule. You are an armed man.

Demand the _macho_ from him, with a pistol to his head, señor—it is not

his, I tell you—and ride after your man who is so precious to you. And

then you shall both be safe, for no two travellers have been ever known

to disappear together in these days. As to the beast, I, its owner, I

confide it to your honour.”

They were staring hard at each other, and Byrne nearly burst into a laugh

at the ingenuity and transparency of the little man’s plot to regain

possession of his mule. But he had no difficulty to keep a straight face

because he felt deep within himself a strange inclination to do that very

extraordinary thing. He did not laugh, but his lip quivered; at which

the diminutive Spaniard, detaching his black glittering eyes from Byrne’s

face, turned his back on him brusquely with a gesture and a fling of the

cloak which somehow expressed contempt, bitterness, and discouragement

all at once. He turned away and stood still, his hat aslant, muffled up

to the ears. But he was not offended to the point of refusing the silver

_duro_ which Byrne offered him with a non-committal speech as if nothing

extraordinary had passed between them.

“I must make haste on board now,” said Byrne, then.

“_Vaya usted con Dios_,” muttered the gnome. And this interview ended

with a sarcastic low sweep of the hat which was replaced at the same

perilous angle as before.

Directly the boat had been hoisted the ship’s sails were filled on the

off-shore tack, and Byrne imparted the whole story to his captain, who

was but a very few years older than himself. There was some amused

indignation at it—but while they laughed they looked gravely at each

other. A Spanish dwarf trying to beguile an officer of his majesty’s

navy into stealing a mule for him—that was too funny, too ridiculous, too

incredible. Those were the exclamations of the captain. He couldn’t get

over the grotesqueness of it.

“Incredible. That’s just it,” murmured Byrne at last in a significant

tone.

They exchanged a long stare. “It’s as clear as daylight,” affirmed the

captain impatiently, because in his heart he was not certain. And Tom

the best seaman in the ship for one, the good-humouredly deferential

friend of his boyhood for the other, was becoming endowed with a

compelling fascination, like a symbolic figure of loyalty appealing to

their feelings and their conscience, so that they could not detach their

thoughts from his safety. Several times they went up on deck, only to

look at the coast, as if it could tell them something of his fate. It

stretched away, lengthening in the distance, mute, naked, and savage,

veiled now and then by the slanting cold shafts of rain. The westerly

swell rolled its interminable angry lines of foam and big dark clouds

flew over the ship in a sinister procession.

“I wish to goodness you had done what your little friend in the yellow

hat wanted you to do,” said the commander of the sloop late in the

afternoon with visible exasperation.

“Do you, sir?” answered Byrne, bitter with positive anguish. “I wonder

what you would have said afterwards? Why! I might have been kicked out

of the service for looting a mule from a nation in alliance with His

Majesty. Or I might have been battered to a pulp with flails and

pitch-forks—a pretty tale to get abroad about one of your officers—while

trying to steal a mule. Or chased ignominiously to the boat—for you

would not have expected me to shoot down unoffending people for the sake

of a mangy mule. . . And yet,” he added in a low voice, “I almost wish

myself I had done it.”

Before dark those two young men had worked themselves up into a highly

complex psychological state of scornful scepticism and alarmed credulity.

It tormented them exceedingly; and the thought that it would have to last

for six days at least, and possibly be prolonged further for an

indefinite time, was not to be borne. The ship was therefore put on the

inshore tack at dark. All through the gusty dark night she went towards

the land to look for her man, at times lying over in the heavy puffs, at

others rolling idle in the swell, nearly stationary, as if she too had a

mind of her own to swing perplexed between cool reason and warm impulse.

Then just at daybreak a boat put off from her and went on tossed by the

seas towards the shallow cove where, with considerable difficulty, an

officer in a thick coat and a round hat managed to land on a strip of

shingle.

“It was my wish,” writes Mr. Byrne, “a wish of which my captain approved,

to land secretly if possible. I did not want to be seen either by my

aggrieved friend in the yellow hat, whose motives were not clear, or by

the one-eyed wine-seller, who may or may not have been affiliated to the

devil, or indeed by any other dweller in that primitive village. But

unfortunately the cove was the only possible landing place for miles; and

from the steepness of the ravine I couldn’t make a circuit to avoid the

houses.”

“Fortunately,” he goes on, “all the people were yet in their beds. It

was barely daylight when I found myself walking on the thick layer of

sodden leaves filling the only street. No soul was stirring abroad, no

dog barked. The silence was profound, and I had concluded with some

wonder that apparently no dogs were kept in the hamlet, when I heard a

low snarl, and from a noisome alley between two hovels emerged a vile cur

with its tail between its legs. He slunk off silently showing me his

teeth as he ran before me, and he disappeared so suddenly that he might

have been the unclean incarnation of the Evil One. There was, too,

something so weird in the manner of its coming and vanishing, that my

spirits, already by no means very high, became further depressed by the

revolting sight of this creature as if by an unlucky presage.”

He got away from the coast unobserved, as far as he knew, then struggled

manfully to the west against wind and rain, on a barren dark upland,

under a sky of ashes. Far away the harsh and desolate mountains raising

their scarped and denuded ridges seemed to wait for him menacingly. The

evening found him fairly near to them, but, in sailor language, uncertain

of his position, hungry, wet, and tired out by a day of steady tramping

over broken ground during which he had seen very few people, and had been

unable to obtain the slightest intelligence of Tom Corbin’s passage.

“On! on! I must push on,” he had been saying to himself through the hours

of solitary effort, spurred more by incertitude than by any definite fear

or definite hope.

The lowering daylight died out quickly, leaving him faced by a broken

bridge. He descended into the ravine, forded a narrow stream by the last

gleam of rapid water, and clambering out on the other side was met by the

night which fell like a bandage over his eyes. The wind sweeping in the

darkness the broadside of the sierra worried his ears by a continuous

roaring noise as of a maddened sea. He suspected that he had lost the

road. Even in daylight, with its ruts and mud-holes and ledges of

outcropping stone, it was difficult to distinguish from the dreary waste

of the moor interspersed with boulders and clumps of naked bushes. But,

as he says, “he steered his course by the feel of the wind,” his hat

rammed low on his brow, his head down, stopping now and again from mere

weariness of mind rather than of body—as if not his strength but his

resolution were being overtaxed by the strain of endeavour half suspected

to be vain, and by the unrest of his feelings.

In one of these pauses borne in the wind faintly as if from very far away

he heard a sound of knocking, just knocking on wood. He noticed that the

wind had lulled suddenly.

His heart started beating tumultuously because in himself he carried the

impression of the desert solitudes he had been traversing for the last

six hours—the oppressive sense of an uninhabited world. When he raised

his head a gleam of light, illusory as it often happens in dense

darkness, swam before his eyes. While he peered, the sound of feeble

knocking was repeated—and suddenly he felt rather than saw the existence

of a massive obstacle in his path. What was it? The spur of a hill? Or

was it a house! Yes. It was a house right close, as though it had risen

from the ground or had come gliding to meet him, dumb and pallid; from

some dark recess of the night. It towered loftily. He had come up under

its lee; another three steps and he could have touched the wall with his

hand. It was no doubt a _posada_ and some other traveller was trying for

admittance. He heard again the sound of cautious knocking.

Next moment a broad band of light fell into the night through the opened

door. Byrne stepped eagerly into it, whereupon the person outside leaped

with a stifled cry away into the night. An exclamation of surprise was

heard too, from within. Byrne, flinging himself against the half closed

door, forced his way in against some considerable resistance.

A miserable candle, a mere rushlight, burned at the end of a long deal

table. And in its light Byrne saw, staggering yet, the girl he had

driven from the door. She had a short black skirt, an orange shawl, a

dark complexion—and the escaped single hairs from the mass, sombre and

thick like a forest and held up by a comb, made a black mist about her

low forehead. A shrill lamentable howl of: “Misericordia!” came in two

voices from the further end of the long room, where the fire-light of an

open hearth played between heavy shadows. The girl recovering herself

drew a hissing breath through her set teeth.

It is unnecessary to report the long process of questions and answers by

which he soothed the fears of two old women who sat on each side of the

fire, on which stood a large earthenware pot. Byrne thought at once of

two witches watching the brewing of some deadly potion. But all the

same, when one of them raising forward painfully her broken form lifted

the cover of the pot, the escaping steam had an appetising smell. The

other did not budge, but sat hunched up, her head trembling all the time.

They were horrible. There was something grotesque in their decrepitude.

Their toothless mouths, their hooked noses, the meagreness of the active

one, and the hanging yellow cheeks of the other (the still one, whose

head trembled) would have been laughable if the sight of their dreadful

physical degradation had not been appalling to one’s eyes, had not

gripped one’s heart with poignant amazement at the unspeakable misery of

age, at the awful persistency of life becoming at last an object of

disgust and dread.

To get over it Byrne began to talk, saying that he was an Englishman, and

that he was in search of a countryman who ought to have passed this way.

Directly he had spoken the recollection of his parting with Tom came up

in his mind with amazing vividness: the silent villagers, the angry

gnome, the one-eyed wine-seller, Bernardino. Why! These two unspeakable

frights must be that man’s aunts—affiliated to the devil.

Whatever they had been once it was impossible to imagine what use such

feeble creatures could be to the devil, now, in the world of the living.

Which was Lucilla and which was Erminia? They were now things without a

name. A moment of suspended animation followed Byrne’s words. The

sorceress with the spoon ceased stirring the mess in the iron pot, the

very trembling of the other’s head stopped for the space of breath. In

this infinitesimal fraction of a second Byrne had the sense of being

really on his quest, of having reached the turn of the path, almost

within hail of Tom.

“They have seen him,” he thought with conviction. Here was at last

somebody who had seen him. He made sure they would deny all knowledge of

the Ingles; but on the contrary they were eager to tell him that he had

eaten and slept the night in the house. They both started talking

together, describing his appearance and behaviour. An excitement quite

fierce in its feebleness possessed them. The doubled-up sorceress

flourished aloft her wooden spoon, the puffy monster got off her stool

and screeched, stepping from one foot to the other, while the trembling

of her head was accelerated to positive vibration. Byrne was quite

disconcerted by their excited behaviour. . . Yes! The big, fierce Ingles

went away in the morning, after eating a piece of bread and drinking some

wine. And if the caballero wished to follow the same path nothing could

be easier—in the morning.

“You will give me somebody to show me the way?” said Byrne.

“Si, señor. A proper youth. The man the caballero saw going out.”

“But he was knocking at the door,” protested Byrne. “He only bolted when

he saw me. He was coming in.”

“No! No!” the two horrid witches screamed out together. “Going out.

Going out!”

After all it may have been true. The sound of knocking had been faint,

elusive, reflected Byrne. Perhaps only the effect of his fancy. He

asked—

“Who is that man?”