JACINTA IS NOT CONTENT
Darkness was closing down on the faintly shining sea, and the dull
murmur of the surf grew louder as the trade-breeze died away, when
Jacinta and Muriel Gascoyne sat in the stern of a white gig which two
barefooted Canarios pulled across Las Palmas harbour on the evening on
which Austin was to sail. In front of them the spray still tossed in
filmy clouds about the head of the long, dusky mole, and the lonely
Isleta hill cut black as ebony against a cold green transparency, while
skeins of lights twinkled into brilliancy round the sweep of bay.
Jacinta, however, saw nothing of this. She was watching the
_Estremedura_'s dark hull rise higher above the line of mole, and
listening to one of the boatmen who accompanied the rhythmic splash of
oars with a little melodious song. She long afterwards remembered its
plaintive cadence and the words of it well.
"Las aves marinas vuelen encima la mar," he sang, and then while the
measured thud and splash grew a trifle faster, "No pueden escapar las
penas del amor."
He did not seem to know the rest of it, and when she had heard the
stanza several times Jacinta, who saw Muriel's eyes fixed upon her
enquiringly, made a little half-impatient gesture.
"It's the usual sentimental rubbish, though he sings passably well.
'Even the sea birds cannot escape the pains of love,'" she said.
"Absurd, isn't it? like most of the men one comes across nowadays, they
probably spend all their time in search of something to eat. Still, I
suppose--you--would sympathise with the man whose perverted imagination
led him to write that song."
Muriel looked at her with a hint of reproach in her big blue eyes, which
were very reposeful. "I don't think I ever quite understood you, and I
don't now, but I once went to see an English gullery," she said. "There
were rows of nests packed so close that one could scarcely pick a way
between, with little, half-feathered things in most of them. They all
had their mouths open."
Jacinta laughed musically. "Of course," she said. "You are delightful.
But never mind me. Go on a little further."
"It was the big gulls I was thinking of," said Muriel gravely. "They
didn't fly away, but hung just above us in a great white cloud,
wheeling, screaming, and now and then making little swoops at our heads.
It didn't seem to matter what happened to them, but any one could see
they were in an agony of terror lest we should tread upon some of the
little, half-feathered nestlings. I came away as soon as the others
would let me. It seemed a cruelty to frighten them."
"It seems to me," said Jacinta, "that you are anticipating, or confusing
things considerably, but I'll try not to offend you by making that a
little plainer, though, I should almost like to. I'm in quite a prickly
humour to-night."
She sat silent a moment or two, while a trace of colour crept in her
companion's face, looking out towards the eastern haze, as she had done
of late somewhat frequently.
"Yes," she said, reflectively, "I feel that it would be a relief to make
you upset and angry. You are so aggravatingly sure of everything, and
serene. Of course, that is, perhaps, only natural, after all. You have,
in one respect, got just what you wanted, and have sense enough to be
content with it."
Muriel turned and looked at her with a trace of bewilderment, for there
was an unusual hardness in Jacinta's tone.
"Wouldn't everybody be content in such a case?" she asked.
"Oh, dear no!" and Jacinta laughed. "I, for one, would begin to look for
flaws in the thing, whatever it was, and wonder if it wouldn't be wiser
to change it for something else. In fact, I don't mind telling you I
feel like that to-night. You see, for a year at least, I have been
trying to bring a certain thing about, and--now I have succeeded--I wish
I hadn't. Of course, you won't understand me, and I don't mean you to;
but you may as well remember that it's a somewhat perilous thing to keep
on giving people good advice. Some day they will probably act upon it."
"But that ought to please one."
Jacinta glanced once more into the soft darkness that crept up from the
East with a little shiver. "Well," she said sharply, "in my case it
certainly doesn't."
They were alongside the _Estremedura_ in another minute, but the seaman
they found on deck did not know where Austin was, and led them down to
Macallister's room. It was beneath the spar-deck, and very hot, for the
dynamo was not running that night, and a big oil lamp lighted it. It was
also full of tobacco smoke, and--for the port was open--the rumble of
the long swell tumbling against the mole came throbbing into it. A big
man in very shabby serge, with a hard face, sat opposite the engineer,
until the latter, seeing the two women, laid a hand upon his shoulder.
"Out ye get!" he said, and his guest was projected suddenly into the
dimly-lighted space about the after-hatch.
Then he smiled upon the newcomers affably. "Come away in," he said. "Was
it me or Mr. Austin ye came to see?"
"On this occasion it was Mr. Austin," said Jacinta, who found a place
opposite him, beside Muriel, on a settee. "Of course, that was because
he is going away. Isn't he here?"
"He is not," and Macallister beamed at her. "In one way, it's not that
much of a pity. There's twice the light-heartedness in me that there is
in Mr. Austin."
"I can quite believe it. Still, light-heartedness of one kind is now and
then a little inconvenient. Where has he gone?"
"To the town. I don't expect him until he calls for his man--the one
I've just hove out--when the West-coast mailboat comes in. She won't
stop more than half an hour, but there's no sign of her yet."
Jacinta sighed whimsically, perhaps to hide what she felt.
"Then I'm afraid we shall not see him, which is a pity, because I've
been thinking over the nice things I meant to say to him, and now
they're all wasted," she said. "You will tell him that we came to say
good-bye to him, won't you, and that I'm just a little vexed he never
called to tell us anything about his expedition."
Macallister grinned sardonically, and though Jacinta was usually a very
self-possessed young woman, she appeared to find his gaze a trifle
disconcerting.
"Well," he said, "I know all about it. He has sold everything he had,
and he borrowed AL40. One way or another he has another AL60 of his own."
Jacinta looked up sharply. "He has no more than that?"
"It's not likely," and Macallister watched her with a faint twinkle in
his eyes. "I do not know why he would not have the AL200 Mr. Brown
offered him. Maybe ye do."
There was a just perceptible trace of colour in Jacinta's cheek. "I
hardly see how you could expect me to when I never heard of it until
this moment," she said. "Would AL100 be enough for Mr. Austin?"
"I'm thinking it would. No for everybody under the same circumstances,
but enough for him. There are folks in these islands who have only seen
the outside of Mr. Austin, which, ye may observe, is in one sense quite
a natural thing."
He stopped a moment, and smiled upon her genially. "It's not his fault
that he's no quite so well favoured as I am. What would ye expect of an
Englishman? Still, there are men aboard here who have seen what's
underneath--I mean the other side of him--at nights when he brought the
dispatch off through the surf, and once--though that was not his
business--when I was sick, an' they let water down in the starboard
boiler."
"Still," said Jacinta, "he would naturally have to have so many things."
"He has four good men, a little box o' drugs, and a case o' dynamite.
Farquhar's going on to Australia with mining stores, and he gave it
him."
It seemed absurdly insufficient, and Jacinta struggled with an almost
hysterical inclination to laugh. It was, she realised, a very big thing
Austin had undertaken, and his equipment consisted of a case of dynamite
and a box of drugs, which, on his own confession, he knew very little
about. Still, she saw that Macallister, who, she fancied, ought to
know, rated manhood far higher than material. It was Muriel who broke
the silence.
"But they will want a doctor," she said, with a little tremour in her
voice.
Macallister shook his head. "Ye would not get one to go there for AL500,
and he would be no use if he did," he said. "Ye will remember that
malaria fever does not stay on one long. It goes away when it has shaken
the strength out o' ye--and now and then comes back again--while by the
time Austin gets there Mr. Jefferson will be----"
He stopped with some abruptness, but though she shivered, Muriel looked
at him with steady eyes.
"Ah!" she said, "you mean he will either be better, or that no doctor
could cure him then?"
Macallister made her a little inclination, and it was done with a grave
deference that Jacinta had scarcely expected from him.
"Just that," he said. "I'm thinking ye are one of the women a man can
tell the truth to. It is a pity there are not more o' them. It is no a
healthy country Mr. Austin is going to, but I have been five years on
the coast o' it, and ye see me here."
"I wonder," said Jacinta, "whether you, who know all about ships and
engines, did not feel tempted to go with Mr. Austin?"
The engineer smiled curiously. "Tempted!" he said. "It was like trying
to be teetotal with a whisky bottle in the rack above one's bunk; but I
am a married man, with a wife who has a weakness for buying dining-room
suites."
"Dining-room suites! What have they to do with it?"
"Just everything," and Macallister sighed. "She will only have the
biggest ones the doors will let in, and she has furnished a good many
dining-rooms altogether. Ye will mind that we lived here and there and
everywhere, while she's back in England now. Ye would not meet a better
woman, but on AL20 a month ye cannot buy unlimited red-velvet chairs and
sideboards with looking-glasses at the back o' them."
Jacinta laughed as she rose. "You will tell Mr. Austin we are sorry we
did not see him."
"I will," and Macallister stood up, too. "Perhaps ye mean it this time,
and I'm a little sorry for him myself. There are men who get sent off
with bands and speeches and dinners to do a smaller thing, but Mr.
Austin he just slips away with his box o' dynamite and his few
sailormen."
He stopped and looked hard at her a moment before he turned to Muriel.
"Still, we'll have the big drum out when he brings Mr. Jefferson and the
_Cumbria_ back again, and if there's anything that can be broken left
whole in this ship that night it will be no fault o' mine."
They went out and left him, but Jacinta stopped when they came upon the
man he had ejected from his room, sitting on the companion stairway and
smoking a very objectionable pipe. She also held a little purse
concealed beneath her hand.
"You are going back with Mr. Austin to the _Cumbria_?" she said.
The man stood up. "In course," he said. "It's eight pound a month, all
found, an' a bonus."
"Ah!" said Jacinta. "I suppose there is nothing else?"
The man appeared to ruminate over this, until a light broke in on him.
"Well," he said, "Mr. Jefferson does the straight thing, an' he fed us
well. That is, as well as he could, considering everything."
Jacinta smiled at Muriel. "You will notice the answer. He is a man!"
Then she held out a strip of crinkly paper. "That will make you almost a
month to the good, and if you do everything you can to make things
easier for the man who wants to get the _Cumbria_ off, there will
probably be another waiting for you when you come back again."
The man, who took the crinkly paper, gazed at it in astonishment, and
then made a little sign of comprehension. "Thank you kindly, miss, but
which one am I to look after special? You see, there's two of them."
Jacinta was apparently not quite herself that night, for the swift
colour flickered into her face, and stayed there a moment.
"Both," she said decisively. "Still, you are never to tell anybody about
that note."
The man once more gazed at her with such evident bewilderment that
Muriel broke into a little half-audible laugh. Then he grinned suddenly,
and touched his battered cap.
"Well, we'll make it--both," he said.
They went up the companion, and left him apparently chuckling, but
Jacinta appeared far from pleased when she got into the waiting boat.
"That was to have gone to England for a hat and one or two things I
really can't do without--though I shall probably have to now," she said.
"Oh, aren't they stupid sometimes--I felt I could have shaken him."
In the meanwhile the man in the fireman's serge went back to
Macallister's room.
"Give me an envelope--quick!" he said.
Macallister got him one, and he slipped a strip of paper inside before
he addressed it and tossed it across the table.
"You'll post that. There's a Castle boat home to-morrow, and I'd sooner
trust you with it than myself," he said, with a little sigh, which,
however, once more changed to a chuckle.
"If there's money inside it ye're wise," said Macallister drily. "Still,
what are ye grinning in yon fashion for?"
"I was thinking it's just as well I've only--one--old woman. It would
make a big hole in eight pounds a month--an' a bonus--if I had any more
of 'em. But you get that letter posted before I want it back."
"Wanting," said Macallister, reflectively, "is no always getting. Maybe,
it's now and then fortunate it is so, after all."
It was two hours later, and Jacinta stood on the flat roof of Pancho
Brown's house looking down upon the close-packed Spanish town, when the
crash of a mail gun rose from the harbour and was lost in the drowsy
murmur of the surf. Then the other noises in the hot streets below her
went on again, but Jacinta scarcely heard the hum of voices and the
patter of feet as she watched a blinking light slide out from among the
others in the harbour. It rose higher and swung a little as it crept
past the mole, then a cluster of lower lights lengthened into a row of
yellow specks, and she could make out the West-coast liner's dusky hull
that moved out with slanting spars faster into the faintly shining sea.
Jacinta closed one hand as she leaned upon the parapet and watched it,
until she turned with a little start at the sound of footsteps. She was,
one could have fancied, not particularly pleased to see Muriel Gascoyne
then.
"We were wondering what had become of you, and Mrs. Hatherly is waiting
to go home," said the latter. Then she turned and caught a glimpse of
the moving lights that were closing in on one another and growing dim
again. "That must be the African boat?"
"It is. She is taking out six careless sailormen whose lives are,
perhaps, after all, of some value to them."
Muriel looked at her, and wished she could see her face. "Every one of
them may be of some value to somebody else."
"I suppose so," and Jacinta laughed curiously. "You obvious people are
now and then to be envied, Muriel."
"If there is anything you would like to tell me----" and Muriel laid a
hand upon her arm with a gesture of sympathy.
"There isn't. We all have our discontented fits, and mine is, no doubt,
more than usually unreasonable since everything has turned out as I
wanted it."
Then she rose and turned towards the stairway with a little laugh which
Muriel fancied had a hint of pride in it. "I really don't think I would
have had anything done differently, after all, and now I must not keep
Mrs. Hatherly waiting."