A MATTER OF JUSTICE
It was quite evident that the man wanted something; but Captain Kettle
did not choose definitely to ask for his wishes. Over-curiosity is not a
thing that pays with Orientals. Stolid indifference, on the other hand,
may earn easy admiration.
But at last the man took his courage in a firmer grip, and came up from
the _Parakeet's_ lower deck, where the hands were working cargo, and
advanced under the bridge deck awnings to Captain Kettle's long chair
and salaamed low before him.
Kettle seemed to see the man for the first time. He looked up from the
accounts he was laboring at. "Well?" he said, curtly.
It was clear the Arab had no English. It was clear also that he feared
being watched by his fellow countrymen in the lighter which was
discharging date bags alongside. He manoeuvred till the broad of his
back covered his movements, materialized somehow or other a scrap of
paper from some fold of his burnous, dropped this into Kettle's lap
without any perceptible movement of either his arms or hands, and then
gave another stately salaam and moved away to the place from which
he had come.
"If you are an out-of-work conjuror," said Kettle to the retreating
figure, "you've come to the wrong place to get employment here."
The Arab passed out of sight without once turning his head, and Kettle
glanced down at the screw of paper which lay on his knees, and saw on it
a scrawl of writing.
"Hullo," he said, "postman, were you; not conjuror? I didn't expect any
mail here. However, let's see. Murray's writing, by James!" he muttered,
as he flattened out the grimy scrap of paper, and then he whistled-with
surprise and disgust as he read.
"_Dear Captain_," the letter ran. "_I've got into the deuce
of a mess, and if you can bear a hand to pull me out, it
would be a favor I should never forget. I got caught up that
side street to the left past the mosque, but they covered my
head with a cloth directly after, and hustled me on for half
an hour, and where I am now, the dickens only knows. It's a
cellar. But perhaps bearer may know, who's got my watch. The
trouble was about a woman, a pretty little piece who I was
photographing. You see_--"
And here the letter broke off.
"That's the worst of these fancy, high-toned mates," Kettle grumbled.
"What does he want to go ashore for at a one-eyed hole like this? There
are no saloons--and besides he isn't a drinking man. Your new-fashioned
mate isn't. There are no girls for him to kiss--seeing that they are all
Mohammedans, and wear a veil. And as for going round with that
photography box of his, I wonder he hasn't more pride. I don't like to
see a smart young fellow like him, that's got his master's ticket all
new and ready in his chest, bringing himself down to the level of a
common, dirty-haired artist. Well, Murray's got a lot to learn before he
finds an owner fit to trust him with a ship of his own."
Kettle read the hurried letter through a second time, and then got up
out of his long chair, and put on his spruce white drill uniform coat,
and exchanged his white canvas shoes for another pair more newly
pipeclayed. His steamer might merely be a common cargo tramp, the town
he was going to visit ashore might be merely the usual savage settlement
one meets with on the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf, but the little
sailor did not dress for the admiration of fashionable crowds. He was
smart and spruce always out of deference to his own self-respect.
He went up to the second mate at the tally desk on the main deck below,
and gave him some instructions. "I'm going ashore," he said, "and leave
you in charge. Don't let too many of these niggers come aboard at once,
and tell the steward to keep all the doors to below snugly fastened. I
locked the chart-house myself when I came out. Have you heard about
the mate?"
"No, sir."
"Ah, I thought the news would have been spread well about the ship
before it came to me. He's got in trouble ashore, and I suppose I must
go, and see the Kady, and get him bailed out."
The second mate wiped the dust and perspiration from his face with his
bare arm, and leant on the tally-desk, and grinned. Here seemed to be an
opportunity for the relaxation of stiff official relations. "What's
tripped him?" he asked. "Skirt or photographing?"
"He will probably tell you himself when he comes back," said Kettle
coldly. "I shall send him to his room for three days when he gets
on board."
The second mate pulled his face into seriousness. "I don't suppose he
got into trouble intentionally, sir."
"Probably not, but that doesn't alter the fact that he has managed it
somehow. I don't engage my mates for amusements of that kind, Mr. Grain.
I've got them here to work, and help me do my duty by the owners. If
they take up low class trades like artisting, they must be prepared to
stand the consequences. You'll remember the orders I've given you? If
I'm wanted, you'll say I'll probably be back by tea."
Captain Kettle went off then in a shore-boat, past a small fleet of
pearling dhows, which rolled at their anchors, and after a long
pull--for the sea was shallow, and the anchorage lay five miles
out--stepped on to the back of a burly Arab, and was carried the last
mile dry-shod. Parallel to him were lines of men carrying out cargo to
the lighters which would tranship it to the _Parakeet_, and Kettle
looked upon these with a fine complacency.
His tramping for cargo had been phenomenally successful. He was filling
his holds at astonishingly heavy freights. And not only would this bring
him credit with his owners, which meant promotion in due course to a
larger ship, but in the mean time, as he drew his 2-1/2 per cent, on the
profits, it represented a very comfortable matter of solid cash for that
much-needing person himself. He hugged himself with pleasure when he
thought of this new found prosperity. It represented so many things
which he would be able to do for his wife and family, which through so
many years narrow circumstances had made impossible.
The burly Arab on whose hips he rode pick-a-back stepped out of the
water at last, and Kettle jumped down from his perch, and picked his
way daintily among the litter of the foreshore toward the white houses
of the town which lay beyond.
It was the first time he had set foot there. So great was his luck at
the time, that he had not been forced to go ashore in the usual way
drumming up cargo. The shippers had come off begging him to become their
carrier, and he had muleted them in heavy freights accordingly. So he
stepped into the town with many of the feelings of a conqueror, and
demanded to be led to the office of a man with whom he had done
profitable business that very morning.
Of course, "office" in the Western meaning of the term there was none.
The worthy Rad el Moussa transacted affairs on the floor of his general
sitting-room, and stored his merchandise in the bed-chambers, or
wherever it would be out of reach of pilfering fingers. But he received
the little sailor with fine protestations of regard, and (after some
giggles and shuffling as the women withdrew) inducted him to the dark
interior of his house, and set before him delicious coffee and some
doubtful sweetmeats.
Kettle knew enough about Oriental etiquette not to introduce the matter
on which he had come at the outset of the conversation. He passed and
received the necessary compliments first, endured a discussion of local
trade prospects, and then by an easy gradation led up to the powers of
the local Kady. He did not speak Arabic himself, and Rad el Moussa had
no English. But they had both served a life apprenticeship to sea
trading, and the curse of the Tower of Babel had very little power over
them. In the memories of each there were garnered scraps from a score of
spoken languages, and when these failed, they could always draw on the
unlimited vocabulary of the gestures and the eyes. And for points that
were really abstruse, or which required definite understanding, there
always remained the charcoal stick and the explanatory drawing on the
face of a whitewashed wall.
When the conversation had lasted some half an hour by the clock, and a
slave brought in a second relay of sweetmeats and thick coffee, the
sailor mentioned, as it were incidentally, that one of his officers had
got into trouble in the town. "It's quite a small thing," he said
lightly, "but I want him back as soon as possible, because there's work
for him to do on the steamer. See what I mean?"
Rad el Moussa nodded gravely. "Savvy plenty," said he.
Now Kettle knew that the machinery of the law in these small Arabian
coast towns was concentrated in the person of the Kady, who, for
practical purposes, must be made to move by that lubricant known as palm
oil; and so he produced some coins from his pocket and lifted his
eyebrows inquiringly.
Rad el Moussa nodded again, and made careful inspection of the coins,
turning them one by one with his long brown fingers, and biting those he
fancied most as a test of their quality. Finally, he selected a gold
twenty-franc piece and two sovereigns, balanced and chinked them
carefully in his hand, and then slipped them into some private
receptacle in his wearing apparel.
"I say," remarked Kettle, "that's not for you personally, old tintacks.
That's for the Kady."
Rad pointed majestically to his own breast. "El Kady," he said.
"Oh, you are his Worship, are you?" said Kettle. "Why didn't you say so
before? I don't think it was quite straight of you, tintacks, but
perhaps that's your gentle Arab way. But I say, Whiskers, don't you try
being too foxy with me, or you'll get hurt. I'm not the most patient man
in the world with inferior nations. Come, now, where's the mate?"
Rad spread his hands helplessly.
"See, here, it's no use your trying that game. You know that I want
Murray, my mate."
"Savvy plenty."
"Then hand him out, and let me get away back on board."
"No got," said Rad el Moussa; "no can."
"Now look here, Mister," said Captain Kettle, "I've paid you honestly
for justice, and if I don't have it, I'll start in pulling down your old
town straight away. Give up the mate, Rad, and let me get back
peacefully to my steamboat, or, by James! I'll let loose a wild
earthquake here. If you want battle, murder, and sudden death, Mr. Rad
el Moussa, just you play monkey tricks with me, and you'll get 'em
cheap. Kady, are you? Then, by James! you start in without further talk,
and give me the justice that I've bought and paid for."
Though this tirade was in an alien tongue, Rad el Moussa caught the
drift from Captain Kettle's accompanying gesticulations, which supplied
a running translation as he went on. Rad saw that his visitor meant
business, and signed that he would go out and fetch the imprisoned mate
forthwith.
"No, you don't," said Kettle promptly. "If your Worship once left here,
I might have trouble in finding you again. I know how easy it is to hide
in a-warren like this town of yours. Send one of your hands with
a message."
Now, to convey this sentence more clearly, Kettle had put his fingers
on the Arab's clothing, when out fell a bag of pearls, which came
unfastened. The pearls rolled like peas about the floor, and the Arab,
with gritting teeth, whipped out a knife. Promptly Kettle drew also, and
covered him with a revolver.
"See here," he said, "I'm not a thief, though perhaps you think I pulled
out that jewelry purse on purpose. It was an accident, Rad, so I'll
forgive your hastiness. But your Worship mustn't pull out cutlery on me.
I'll not stand that from any man living. That's right, put it up. Back
goes the pistol into its pocket, and now we're friends again. Pick up
the pearls yourself, and then you'll be certain I haven't grabbed any,
and then send one of your men to fetch my mate and do as I want. You're
wasting a great deal of my time, Rad el Moussa, over a very simple job."
The Arab gathered the pearls again into the pouch and put it back to its
place among his clothes. His face had grown savage and lowering, but it
was clear that this little spitfire of a sailor, with his handy pistol,
daunted him. Kettle, who read these signs, was not insensible to the
compliment they implied, but at the same time he grew, if anything,
additionally cautious. He watched his man with a cat-like caution, and
when Rad called a slave and gave him orders in fluent Arabic, he made
him translate his commands forthwith.
Rad el Moussa protested that he had ordered nothing more than the
carrying out of his visitor's wishes. But it seemed to Kettle that he
protested just a trifle too vehemently, and his suspicions deepened.
He tapped his pistol in its resting-place, and nodded his head
meaningly. "You've friends in this town," he said, "and I dare say
you'll have a goodish bit of power in your small way. I've neither, and
I don't deny that if you bring up all your local army to interfere, I
may have a toughish fight of it; but whatever happens to me in the long
run, you may take it as straight from yours truly that you'll go to your
own funeral if trouble starts. So put that in your hookah and smoke it,
tintacks, and give me the other tube."
Captain Kettle was used to the dilatory ways of the East, and he was
prepared to wait, though never doubting that Murray would be surrendered
to him in due time, and he would get his own way in the end. So he
picked up one of the snaky tubes of the great pipe, and put the amber
mouthpiece between his lips; and there for an hour the pair of them
squatted on the divan, with the hookah gurgling and reeking between
them. From time to time a slave-girl came and replenished the pipe with
tobacco or fire as was required. But these were the only interruptions,
and between whiles they smoked on in massive silence.
At the end of that hour, the man-slave who had been sent out with the
message re-entered the room and delivered his tidings. Rad el Moussa in
his turn passed it on. Murray was even then waiting in the justice
chamber, so he said, at the further side of the house, and could be
taken away at once. Kettle rose to his feet, and the Arab stood before
him with bowed head and folded arms.
Captain Kettle began to feel shame for having pressed this man too
hardly. It seemed that he had intended to act honestly all along, and
the suspiciousness of his behavior doubtless arose from some difficulty
of custom or language. So the sailor took the Rad's limp hand in his own
and shook it cordially, and at the same time made a handsome apology for
his own share of the misunderstanding.
"Your Worship must excuse me," he said, "but I'm always apt to be a bit
suspicious about lawyers. What dealings I've had with them have nearly
always turned out for me unfortunately. And now, if you don't mind,
we'll go into your court-house, and you can hand me over my mate, and
I'll take him back to the ship. Enough time's been wasted already by
both of us."
The Arab, still bowed and submissive, signed toward the doorway, and
Kettle marched briskly out along the narrow dark passage beyond, with
Rad's sandals shuffling in escort close at his rear. The house seemed a
large one, and rambling. Three times Rad's respectful fingers on his
visitor's sleeve signed to him a change of route. The corridors, too, as
is the custom in Arabia, where coolness is the first consideration, were
dimly lit; and with the caution which had grown to be his second nature,
Kettle instinctively kept all his senses on the alert for inconvenient
surprises. He had no desire that Rad el Moussa should forget his
submissiveness and stab him suddenly from behind, neither did he
especially wish to be noosed or knifed from round any of the dusky
sudden corners.
In fact he was as much on the _qui vive_ as he ever had been in all his
long, wild, adventurous life, and yet Rad el Moussa, who meant treachery
all along, took him captive by the most vulgar of timeworn stratagems.
Of a sudden the boarding of the floor sank beneath Kettle's feet. He
turned, and with a desperate effort tried to throw himself backward
whence he had come. But the boarding behind reared up and hit him a
violent blow on the hands and head, and he fell into a pit below.
For an instant he saw through the gloom the face of Rad el Moussa turned
suddenly virulent, spitting at him in hate, and then the swing-floor
slammed up into place again, and all view of anything but inky blackness
was completely shut away.
Now the fall, besides being disconcerting, was tolerably deep; and but
for the fact that the final blow from the flooring had shot him against
the opposite side of the pit, and so broken his descent at the expense
of his elbows and heels, he might very well have landed awkwardly, and
broken a limb or his back in the process. But Captain Owen Kettle was
not the man to waste time over useless lamentation or rubbing of
bruises. He was on fire with fury at the way he had been tricked, and
thirsting to get loose and be revenged. He had his pistol still in its
proper pocket, and undamaged, and if the wily Rad had shown himself
anywhere within range just then, it is a certain thing that he would
have been shot dead to square the account.
But Kettle was, as I have said, wedged in with darkness, and for the
present, revenge must wait until he could see the man he wanted to shoot
at. He scrambled to his feet, and fumbled in his pocket for a match. He
found one, struck it on the sole of his trim white shoe, and
reconnoitred quickly.
The place he was in was round and bottle shaped, measuring some ten feet
across its floor, and tapering to a small square, where the trap gave it
entrance above. It was a prison clearly, and there was evidence that it
had been recently used. It was clear also that the only official way of
releasing a prisoner was to get him up by a ladder or rope through the
small opening to which the sides converged overhead. Moreover, to all
common seeming, the place was simply unbreakable, at least to any
creature who had not either wings or the power of crawling up the
under-side of a slant like a fly.
But all these things flashed through Kettle's brain in far less time
than it takes to read them here. He had only two matches in his
possession, and he wished to make all possible use of the first, so as
to keep the second for emergencies; and so he made his survey with the
best of his intelligence and speed.
The walls of this bottle-shaped prison were of bricks built without
visible mortar, and held together (it seemed probable) by the weight of
earth pressing outside them; but just before the match burned his
fingers and dropped to the floor, where it promptly expired, his eye
fell upon an opening in the masonry. It was a mere slit, barely three
inches wide, running vertically up and down for some six courses of the
brick, and it was about chin-high above the ground.
He marked this when the light went out, and promptly went to it and
explored it with his arm. The slit widened at the other side, and there
was evidently a chamber beyond. He clapped his hands against the lip of
the slit, and set his feet against the wall, and pulled with the utmost
of his strength. If once he could widen the opening sufficiently to
clamber through, possibilities lay beyond. But from the weight of wall
pressing down above, he could not budge a single brick by so much as a
hairs-breadth, and so he had to give up this idea, and, stewing with
rage, set about further reconnoitring.
The darkness put his eyes out of action, but he had still left his hands
and feet, and he went round with these, exploring carefully.
Presently his search was rewarded. Opposite the opening he had
discovered before, was another slit in the overhanging wall of this
bottle-shaped prison, and this also he attacked in the hope of wrenching
free some of the bricks. He strained and panted, till it seemed as
though the tendons of his body must break, but the wall remained whole
and the slit unpassable; and then he gave way, almost childishly, to his
passion of rage, and shouted insults and threats at Rad el Moussa in the
vain hope that some one would hear and carry them. And some one did
hear, though not the persons he expected.
A voice, muffled and foggy, as though it came from a long distance, said
in surprise: "Why, Captain, have they got you here, too?"
Under cover of the darkness, Kettle blushed for shame at his outcry.
"That you, Murray? I didn't know you were here. How did you guess it
was me?"
The distant voice chuckled foggily. "I've heard you giving your blessing
to the hands on board, sir, once or twice, and I recognized some of the
words. What have they collared you for? You don't photograph. Have you
been messing round with some girl?"
"Curse your impudence; just you remember your position and mine. I'll
have respect from my officers, even if I am in a bit of a fix."
"Beg pardon, sir. Sorry I forgot myself. It sha'n't occur again."
"You'll go to your room for three days when we get back on board."
"Ay, ay, sir."
"I decided that before I left the ship. I can't have my officers staying
away from duty without leave on any excuse. And if they have such low
tastes as to bring themselves on the level of common mop-headed portrait
painters and photographers, they must pay for it."
"Ay, ay, sir."
"What were you run in for?"
"Oh, photographing."
"There you are, then! And did they bring you straight along here?"
"Yes, sir. And lowered me in a bowline to this cellar."
"Ah," said Kettle, "then you don't want so much change out of them. They
dropped me, and some one will have a heavy bill to square up for, over
that. Do you know whose house this is?"
"Haven't a notion. After I'd been here an hour or so, some heathen
sneaked round to a peep-hole in the wall and offered to take off a
message to the ship, on payment. I hadn't any money, so I had to give up
my watch, and before I'd written half the letter he got interrupted and
had to clear off with what there was. Did he bring off the
message, sir?"
"He did. And I came ashore at once. You remember Rad el Moussa?"
"The man that consigned all that parcel of figs for London?"
"That man. I considered that as he'd been doing business with the
steamer, he was the best person to make inquiries of ashore. So I came
to him, and asked where I could find the Kady to bail you out. He
shuffled a bit, and after some talk he admitted he was the Kady, and
took palm-oil from me in the usual way, and then I'll not deny that we
had a trifle of a disagreement. But he seemed to simmer down all right,
said he'd send along for you, and after a bit of time said you'd come,
and wouldn't I walk through the house and see you myself. The crafty old
fox had got his booby trap rigged in the mean time, and then I walked
straight into it like the softest specimen of blame' fool you
can imagine."
"Rad el Moussa," came the foggy comment. "By Jove! Captain, I believe
we're in an awkward place. He's the biggest man in this town far and
away, and about the biggest blackguard also from what I've heard. He's a
merchant in every line that comes handy, from slaves and palm fibre to
horses and dates; he runs most of those pearling dhows that we saw
sweltering about at the anchorage; and he's got a little army of his own
with which he raids the other coast towns and the caravans up-country
when he hears they've got any truck worth looting. I say, this is
scaring. I've been taking the thing pretty easily up to now, thinking it
would come all right in time. But if I'd known it was old Rad who had
grabbed me, I tell you I should have sat sweating."
"It takes a lot more than a mere nigger, with his head in clouts, to
scare me," said Kettle truculently, "and I don't care tuppence what he
may be by trade. He's got a down on me at present, I'll grant, but I'm
going to give Mr. Rad el Moussa fits a little later on, and you may
stand by and look on, if you aren't frightened to be near him."
"I'm not a funk in the open," grumbled Murray, "and you know it. You've
seen me handle a crew. But I'm in a kind of cellar here, and can't get
out, and if anybody chooses they can drop bricks on me, and I can't stop
them. Have they been at you about those rifles, sir?"
"What rifles? No, nobody's said 'rifles' to me ashore here."
"It seems we've got some cases of rifles on board for one of those
little ports up the coast. I didn't know it."
"Nor did I," said Kettle, "and you can take it from me that we haven't.
Smuggling rifles ashore is a big offence here in the Persian Gulf, and
I'm not going to put myself in the way of the law, if I know it."
"Well, I think you're wrong, sir," said the Mate. "I believe they're in
some cases that are down on the manifest as 'machinery.' I saw them
stowed down No. 3 hold, and I remember one of the stevedores in London
joking about them when they were struck below."
"Supposing they were rifles, what than?"
"Rad wants them. He says they're consigned to some of his neighbors up
coast, who'll raid him as soon as they're properly armed; and he doesn't
like the idea. What raiding's done, he likes to do himself, and at the
same time he much prefers good Brummagen rifles to the local
ironmonger's blunderbusses."
"Well," said Kettle, "I'm waiting to hear what he thought you could do
with the rifles supposing they were on board."
"Oh, he expected me to broach cargo and bring them here ashore to him.
He's a simple-minded savage."
"By James!" said Kettle, "the man's mad. What did he think I should be
doing whilst one of my mates was scoffing cargo under my blessed nose?"
"Ah, you see," said the foggy voice, with sly malice, "he did not know
you so well then, sir. That was before he persuaded you to come into his
house to stay with him."
It is probable that Captain Kettle would have found occasion to make
acid comment on this repartee from his inferior officer, but at that
moment another voice addressed him from the slit at the other side of
his prison, and he turned sharply round. To his surprise this new person
spoke in very tolerable English.
"Capt'n, I want t'make contrack wid you."
"The deuce you do. And who might you be, anyway?"
"I cullud gen'lem'n, sar. Born _Zanzibar_. Used to be fireman on P. and
O. I want arsk you--"
"Is this the Arabian Nights? How the mischief did you get here, anyway?"
"Went on burst in Aden, sar. Th'ole Chief fired me out. Went Yemen.
Caught for slave. Taken caravan. Brought here. But I'm very clever
gen'lem'n, sar, an' soon bought myself free. Got slave of my own now.
An' three wives. Bought 'nother wife yesterday."
"You nasty beast!" said Kettle.
"Sar, you insult me. Not bally Christian any longer. Hard-shell
Mohammedan now, sar, and can marry as many wives as I can buy."
"I'm sure the Prophet's welcome to you. Look here, my man. Pass down a
rope's end from aloft there, and let me get on deck, and I'll give you a
sovereign cash down, and a berth in my steamboat's stoke-hold if you
want one. I'm not asking you to help me more. I guess I'm quite
competent to find my way on board, and to wipe this house tolerably
clean before it's quit of me."
"Nothing of the kind, sar," said the man behind the slit. "You insult
me, sar. I very big gen'lem'n here, sar, an' a sovereign's no use to me.
Besides, I partner to ole man Rad, an' he say he want dem rifles you got
on your ole tramp."
"Does he, indeed? Then you can tell him, Mr. Nigger
runaway-drunken-fireman, that I'll see you and him in somewhere a big
sight hotter than Arabia before he gets them. I didn't know they were
rifles; if I had known before this, I'd not have put them ashore; but as
things are now, I'll land them into the hands of those that ordered
them, and I hope they come round to this town of yours and give you
fits. And see here, you talk more respectful about my steamboat, or
you'll get your shins kicked, daddy."
"An ole tramp," said the man relishingly. "I served on P. an' O., sar,
an' on P. an' O. we don't care 'sociate wid tramps' sailors."
"You impudent black cannibal. You'll be one of the animals those
passenger lines carry along to eat the dead babies, to save the trouble
of heaving them overboard."
The ex-fireman spluttered. But he did not continue the contest. He
recognized that he had to deal with a master in the cheerful art of
insult, and so he came back sulkily to business.
"Will you give Rad dem rifles, you low white fellow?"
"No, I won't."
"Very well. Den we shall spiflicate you till you do," said the man, and
after that Kettle heard his slippers shuffling away.
"I wonder what spiflicating is?" mused Kettle, but he did not remain
cudgelling his brain over this for long. It occurred to him that if this
negro could come and go so handily to the outside of this underground
prison, there must be a stairway somewhere near, and though he could not
enlarge the slit to get at it that way, it might be possible to burrow a
passage under the wall itself. For a tool, he had spied a broken crock
lying on the floor, and with the idea once in his head, he was not long
in putting it to practical effect. He squatted just underneath the slit,
and began to quarry the earth at the foot of the wall with skill and
determination.
But if Kettle was prompt, his captors were by no means dilatory. Between
Kettle's prison and the mate's was another of those bottle-shaped
_oubliettes_, and in that there was presently a bustle of movement.
There came the noises of some one lighting a fire, and coughing as he
fanned smouldering embers into a glow with his breath, and then more
coughing and some curses as the fire-lighter took his departure. The
door above clapped down into place, and then there was the sound of
someone dragging over that and over the doors of the other two prisons
what seemed to be carpets, or heavy rugs.
There was something mysterious in this manoeuvre at first, but the
secret of it was not kept for long. An acrid smell stole out into the
air, which thickened every minute in intensity. Kettle seemed dimly to
recognize it, but could not put a name to it definitely. Besides, he was
working with all his might at scraping away the earth from the foot of
the wall, and had little leisure to think of other things.
The heat was stifling, and the sweat dripped from him, but he toiled on
with a savage glee at his success. The foundations had not been dug out;
they were "floating" upon the earth surface; and the labor of
undermining would, it appeared, be small.
But Murray in the other prison had smelt the reek before, and was able
to put a name to it promptly. "By Jove! Captain," he shouted mistily
from the distance, "they're going to smoke us to death; that's
the game."
"Looks like trying it," panted the little sailor, from his work.
"That's dried camel's dung they're burning. There's no wood in Arabia
here, and that's their only fuel. When the smoke gets into your lungs,
it just tears you all to bits. I say, Skipper, can't you come to some
agreement with Rad over those blessed rifles? It's a beastly death to
die, this."
"You aren't dead--by a long chalk--yet. More'm I. I'd hate to
be--smoke-dried like a ham--as bad as any Jew. But I don't start in--to
scoff the cargo--on my own ship--at any bally price."
There was a sound of distant coughing, and then the misty question:
"What are you working at?"
"Taking--exercise," Kettle gasped, and after that, communication between
the two was limited to incessant staccato coughs.
More and more acrid grew the air as the burning camel's dung saturated
it further and further with smoke, and more and more frenzied grew
Kettle's efforts. Once he got up and stuffed his coat in the embrasure
from which the smoke principally came. But that did little enough good.
The wall was all chinks, and the bitter reek came in unchecked. He felt
that the hacking coughs were gnawing away his strength, and just now the
utmost output of his thews was needed.
He had given up his original idea of mining a passage under the wall.
Indeed, this would have been a labor of weeks with the poor broken crock
which was his only tool, for the weight of the building above had turned
the earth to something very near akin to the hardness of stone. But he
had managed to scrape out a space underneath one brick, and found that
it was loosened, and with trouble could be dislodged; and so he was
burrowing away the earth from beneath others, to drop more bricks down
from their places, and so make a gangway through the solid wall itself.
But simple though this may be in theory, it was tediously difficult work
in practice. The bricks jammed even when they were undermined, and the
wall was four bricks thick to its further side. Moreover, every
alternate course was cross-pinned, and the workman was rapidly becoming
asphyxiated by the terrible reek which came billowing in from the
chamber beyond.
Still, with aching chest, and bleeding fingers, and smarting eyes,
Kettle worked doggedly on, and at last got a hole made completely
through. What lay in the blackness beyond he did not know; either Rad el
Moussa or the fireman might be waiting to give him a _coup de grace_ the
moment his head appeared; but he was ready to accept every risk. He felt
that if he stayed in the smoke of that burning camel's dung any longer
he would be strangled.
The hole in the brickwork was scarcely bigger than a fox-earth, but he
was a slightly built man, and with a hard struggle he managed to push
his way through. No one opposed him. He found and scraped his only
remaining match, and saw that he was in another bottle-shaped chamber
similar to the one he had left; but in this there was a doorway. There
was pungent smoke reek here also, and, though its slenderness came to
him as a blessed relief after what he had been enduring, he lusted
desperately for a taste of the pure air outside.
The door gave to his touch, and he found a stair. He ran up this and
stepped out into the corridor, where Rad had lured him to capture, and
then, walking cautiously by the wall so as not to step into any more
booby-traps, he came to the place where he calculated Murray would be
jailed. A large thick carpet had been spread over the door so as to
prevent any egress of the stinging smoke, or any ingress of air, and
this he pulled away, and lifted the trap.
There was no sound from below. "Great heavens," he thought, "was the
mate dead?" He hailed sharply, and a husky voice answered. Seeing
nothing else at hand that would serve, he lowered an end of the carpet,
keeping a grip on the other, and presently Murray got a hold and
clambered up beside him.
In a dozen whispered words Kettle told his plans, and they were on the
point of starting off to carry them out, when the _slop-slop_ of
slippers made itself heard advancing down the corridors. Promptly the
pair of them sank into the shadows, and presently the ex-fireman came up
whistling cheerfully an air from some English music-hall. He did not see
them till they were almost within hand-grips, and then the tune froze
upon his lips in a manner that was ludicrous.
But neither Kettle nor his mate had any eye for the humors of the
situation just then. Murray plucked the man's legs artistically from
beneath him, and Kettle gripped his hands and throat. He thrust his
savage little face close down to the black man's. "Now," he said,
"where's Rad? Tell me truly, or I'll make you into dog's meat. And speak
quietly. If you make a row, I'll gouge your eyes out."
"Rad, he in divan," the fellow stuttered in a scared whisper. "Sort o'
front shop you savvy, sar. Don' kill me."
"I can recommend my late state-room," said Murray.
"Just the ticket," said Kettle. So into the _oubliette_ they toppled
him, clapping down the door in its place above. "There you may stay, you
black beast," said his judge, "to stew in the smoke you raised yourself.
If any of your numerous wives are sufficiently interested to get you
out, they may do so. If not, you pig, you may stay and cure into bacon.
I'm sure I sha'n't miss you. Come along, Mr. Mate."
They fell upon Rad el Moussa placidly resting among the cushions of the
divan, with the stem of the water-pipe between his teeth, and his mind
probably figuring out plans of campaign in which the captured rifles
would do astonishing work.
Kettle had no revolver in open view, but Rad had already learned how
handily that instrument could be produced on occasion, and had the wit
to make no show of resistance. The sailor went up to him, delicately
extracted the poignard from his sash, and broke the blade beneath his
feet. Then he said to him, "Stand there," pointing to the middle of the
floor, and seated himself on the divan in the attitude of a judge.
"Now, Mr. Rad el Moussa, I advise you to understand what's going to be
said to you now, so that it'll be a lesson to you in the future.
"I came to you, not very long ago, asking for your card to the Kady. I
told you my business was about the mate here, and you said you were Kady
yourself. Whether you are or not I don't know, and I don't vastly care,
but anyway, I paid for justice in hard money, and you said you'd give up
the mate. You didn't do that. You played a trick on me, which I'll own
up I was a fool to get caught by; and I make no doubt that you've been
laughing at me behind my back with that nasty nigger partner of yours.
"Well, prisoner at the bar, let alone I'm a blooming Englishman--and
Englishmen aren't sent into this world to be laughed at by any
foreigners--I'm myself as well, and let me tell you I don't stand either
being swindled out of justice when I've paid for it, or being played
tricks on afterward. So you are hereby sentenced to the fine of one bag
of pearls, to be paid on the spot, and furthermore to be incarcerated in
one of those smoke boxes down the alleyway yonder till you can find your
own way out. Now, prisoner, don't move during the next operation, or
I'll shoot you. Mr. Mate, you'll find a small bag inside the top part of
his nightgown, on the left-hand side. Got 'em?"
"Here they are, sir," said Murray.
"Thanks," said Kettle, and put the bag in his pocket. "And now, if you
please, Mr. Mate, we'll just put His Whiskers into that cellar with the
nigger, and leave him there to get smoked into a better and, we'll hope,
a more penitent frame of mind."
They completed this pious act to their entire satisfaction, and left
the house without further interruption. The townspeople were just
beginning to move about again after the violence of the midday heat, but
except for curious stares, they passed through the narrow streets
between the whitewashed houses quite without interruption. And in due
time they came to the beach, and hired a shore boat, which took them off
to the steamer.
But here Kettle was not inclined to linger unnecessarily. He saw Grain,
the second mate, and asked Mm how much more cargo there was to come off.
"The last lighter load is alongside this minute, sir."
"Then hustle it on deck as quick as you can, and then call the
carpenter, and go forward and heave up."
Grain looked meaningly at Murray. "Am I to take the fore deck, sir."
"Yes, I appoint you acting mate for three days; and Mr. Murray goes to
his room for that time for getting into trouble ashore. Now put some
hurry into things, Mr. Grain; I don't want to stay here longer
than's needful."
Grain went forward about his business, but Murray, who looked somewhat
disconsolate, Kettle beckoned into the chart-house. He pulled out the
pearl bag, and emptied its contents on to the chart table. "Now, look
here, my lad," said he, "I have to send you to your room because I said
I would, and because that's discipline; but you can pocket a thimblefull
of these seed pearls just to patch up your wounded feelings, as your
share of old Rad el Moussa's fine. They are only seed pearls, as I say,
and aren't worth much. We were due to have more as a sheer matter of
justice, but it wasn't to be got. So we must make the best of what there
is. You'll bag £20 out of your lot if you sell them in the right place
ashore. I reckoned my damages at £500, and I guess I've got here
about £200."
"Thank you, sir," said Murray. "But it's rather hard being sent to my
room for a thing I could no more help than you could."
"Discipline, my lad. This will probably teach you to leave photographing
to your inferiors in the future. There's no persuading me that it isn't
that photograph box that's at the bottom of the whole mischief. Hullo,
there's the windlass going already. I'll just lock up these pearls in
the drawer, and then I must go on the bridge. Er, and about going to
your room, my lad: as long as I don't see you for three days you can do
much as you like. I don't want to be too hard. But as I said to old Rad
el Moussa, justice is justice, and discipline's got to be kept."
"And what about the rifles, sir?"
Captain Kettle winked pleasantly. "I don't know that they are rifles.
You see the cases are down on the manifest as 'machinery,' and I'm going
to put them ashore as such; but I don't mind owning to you, Mr. Mate,
that I hope old Rad finds out he was right in his information. I suppose
his neighbors will let him know within the next week or so whether they
are rifles really, or whether they aren't."