THE LAND OF THE SHADOW
It was towards the end of the afternoon when the skipper of the
West-coast mailboat, peering through his glasses, made out two palms
that rose apparently straight out of the sea. He watched them for some
minutes, and then took their bearing carefully upon the compass, before
he rang for half speed and called Austin to the bridge.
"That's your island, and we'll run in until I get under six fathoms," he
said. "After that it will have to be the surfboat, and I fancy you will
be very wet when you get ashore."
It seemed to Austin that this was more than probable, for although there
was not an air of wind to wrinkle it, a long heave came up in vast, slow
undulations out of the southern horizon, and the little mailboat swung
over them with sharply slanted spars and funnel. She stopped once for a
few moments while the deep-sea lead plunged from her forecastle, and
then, with propeller throbbing slowly, crept on again. She had come out
of her course already under the terms of the bargain Austin had made
with the Las Palmas agent, for some of those steamers have the option of
stopping for odd boatloads of cargo and passengers wherever they can be
found along the surf-swept beaches, and since no offer he could make
would have tempted her skipper to venture further in among the shoals,
Austin had fixed upon that island as the nearest point of access to the
_Cumbria_. He did not, however, know how he was to reach her when he got
there.
In the meanwhile they were slowly raising the land, or the nearest
approach to it to be found in that part of Africa, which consists of
mire and mangroves intersected everywhere by lanes of water. It lay
ahead, a grey smear streaked with drifting mist against which the palms
that had now grown into a cluster rose dim and indistinct, and a thin
white line stretched between themselves and it. The skipper appeared to
watch the latter anxiously.
"There's considerable surf running in on the beach, and I'm a little
uneasy about my boat," he said. "I suppose it wouldn't suit you to go on
with us, and look for a better place to get ashore to-morrow?"
"No," said Austin, decisively. "I'm far enough from where I'm going
already, and one would scarcely fancy that there are many facilities for
getting about in this country."
The skipper made a little gesture of resignation. "That's a fact," he
said. "Well, I can't go back on the agent, but if the boat turns you and
the boys out before you get there you can't blame me."
Austin laughed. He had got many a wet jacket, and had once or twice had
to swim for it, in the surf of the Canary beaches, though he was quite
aware that there are very few places where the sea runs in and breaks as
it does on the hammered coast of Western Africa. Indeed, as he watched
the blur of steamy mangroves grow clearer, and the filmy spouting
increase in whiteness, he could have fancied that nature, in placing
that barrier of tumbling foam along its shore, had meant it as a warning
that the white man was not wanted there. The air was hot and heavy, the
sky a dingy grey, the sea a dim, slatey green, and there came off
across the steep heave a dull booming like the sound of distant thunder.
It was not an encouraging prospect, and Austin knew from what he had
heard about the country that he was not likely to be more favourably
impressed with it upon closer acquaintance. He also felt that if there
was not quite so much at stake he could very willingly leave the salving
of the _Cumbria_ to Jefferson and take the next steamer back again. He
could fix upon no sufficient reason for his being there at all, since
the very uncertain profits on a quarter share in the venture did not
account for it. In one respect, also, Jacinta's favourable opinion could
scarcely be of any practical value to him, since she would naturally
marry a man of means by and by, and forget all about him. Still, she
had, dropping now and then a barbed word which rankled in his memory,
striven to stir him to endeavour; and now he was watching the spray
drive across a beach of Western Africa, while he wondered what the
result of it all would be, and whether he or the men he had brought with
him would escape the fever. So far as he was concerned, it did not seem
to greatly matter. He had taken life easily, but he realised that it had
very little to offer him, and it was, perhaps, fortunate that he did so,
since it is, as a rule, broken men and those who have nothing to fall
back upon who accomplish what is most worth doing in the lands that lie
beneath the shadow.
In any case, it was clear that he had broken down the last bridge behind
him when the mailboat stopped and lay rolling more wildly than ever
athwart the long swell. A big surfboat sank down her side amidst a
clatter of blocks and complaining of davit-falls, down which a cluster
of almost naked black men slid on board. It was not an easy matter to
descend after them. The steamer rolled one way, the boat another, while
the latter swung up one moment almost level with her rail and swooped
down beneath a fathom of streaming side the next. Austin, Bill, the
fireman, and the Canarios, however, accomplished it, and there was a
waving of hats among the cluster of passengers who watched them above.
Then the negroes, perched six or seven on either side, took up the
paddles, and Austin was sensible of a momentary sinking of his heart as
the boat slid out from the rolling steamer. She was a part of the
civilisation he had been accustomed to, and when a sonorous blast of her
whistle came throbbing after him in farewell he sighed.
He would, however, at least not look behind, and sitting in the
stern-sheets, out of the paddlers' way, he tossed the Canarios a bundle
of maize-husk cigarettes, and passed one to Bill, the fireman, who
glanced at it scornfully. Then he made himself as comfortable as he
could upon the box of dynamite while he lighted another, for that
compound of nitro-glycerine is supposed to require a detonator, and
nobody is very particular who has lived in Spain. The black men wanted
cigarettes, too, but Austin did not hand them any. The island was still
a good way off, and it seemed to him advisable that they should devote
their attention to their paddling.
They did it, swaying rhythmically, with toes in a loop of fibre, and
naked black bodies that straightened suddenly and bent again, while some
kept up a measured hissing and the rest broke into a little doleful
song. A brawny man, with a blue stripe down his forehead, stood upright
grasping the sculling oar astern, and the boat swung along smoothly,
with big, dim slopes of water rolling up astern of her. They, however,
grew steeper as she drew in with the shore, and the easy dip and swing
became a succession of fierce rushes, during which she drove onwards,
lifted high, with the foam seething to her gunwale, and then swooped
suddenly into the hollow. When she did so Austin, glancing aft, could
see a great slope of water that grew steeper and steeper as it came
speeding after her.
Then the slopes became ridges that frothed above and roared, and the
paddles whirled faster, while the big muscles bunched beneath the
helmsman's skin, and the veins began to stand out on his sable forehead.
The boat no longer sailed inshore. She sped like a toboggan on an icy
slide, though it seemed to Austin that the comparison was faulty,
because she went fastest uphill, while when he rose upright for a moment
he could see no shore at all. There was only a succession of parallel
white ridges in front of them and a filmy cloud of spray. The afternoon
was also wearing through, and the vapours from the steaming swamps
obscured the dingy heavens.
It was even less consoling to glance astern, for the surf that sweeps
the fever coast was evidently rather worse than usual that day, as it is
now and then for no very apparent reason. The ridges had become walls,
with great frothing crests and sides that were smeared with spumy lines.
They had the vast, slow lift and fall of the ocean behind them, and were
running up a smoothly slanted plane of shoals.
The black men paddled faster, and they no longer sang. They hissed and
shrieked and whistled, while the thud of their paddles rose in a
strenuous rhythm like the tapping of a great drum, and the craft
careered at furious speed beneath them, driven by the sea. The foam
stood feet above her now when she sped along, very like an arrow, and
boiled in over her high, pointed stern every now and then. There was a
foot of brine inside her that swilled to and fro, and every man was
dripping, while the roar of the tumbling rollers had grown bewildering.
They appeared to be crumbling upon hammered sand not very far away.
How the negroes meant to beach her, Austin did not know, and he was
content that it was their business and not his. The Canarios were
evidently uneasy, for, sailormen as they were, they had never run
through surf like this; but they were also of Iberian extraction, and,
when discussion is clearly useless, and the last crisis must be faced,
the Spaniard is, at least, as capable of calm resignation as most other
men. In any case, there is certainly no better boat-boy than the West
African Kroo, and Austin left the affair to the helmsman, when there was
a sudden horrifying crash that threw three or four of the paddlers down
together. It was evident that they had touched bottom, but, fortunately
for them, the swirl of the shore-running sea dragged them off again, and
they went up, not more than half swamped, sideways, with the foam
seething into her, on the next roller. Then the spouting chaos about
them seemed to suddenly melt away, and Austin, wiping the water from his
eyes, saw that they were sliding round a sandy beach into a little bay.
In another few minutes they were out on the sand, though they toiled for
the next half hour helping the negroes to tilt the great boat and run
her in again when they had emptied the water out of her. It was done at
last, and Austin felt almost sorry, while he was once more sensible of
vague but unpleasant misgivings when the negroes drove her lurching out
into the spray. Night was not very far away, and he had no notion of
where he was to sleep, or what he was to eat, for that matter, since the
provisions the steward had given him were, for the most part, saturated.
A little muddy creek oozed down amidst the mangroves across the bay, and
there were a few huts, apparently made of rammed soil, beside it, as
well as a canoe. The light was going when they reached them, and Bill,
who went into the nearest, came out suddenly.
"There's a dead nigger inside," he said.
Austin looked at him with a little smile. He had reasons for surmising
that the man's nerves were good, but his voice had an uncertain tone in
it, and his eyes were anxious.
"Well," he said, "I suppose one must expect to come across a dead nigger
now and then in this country."
Bill glanced furtively over his shoulder towards the hut, as though he
desired to be rather farther away from it.
"That one wasn't nice to look at," he said. "What did they leave him
there for when there's a creek just outside the door, and where are the
rest of them? I'd like to know what he died of. It might be catchin'."
Austin was once more sensible of a little thrill of apprehension as he
looked about him and considered the question. On the one side a tuft of
palms dominated the narrow strip of sand, but the little ridge of high
land behind it was covered with apparently impenetrable jungle.
Elsewhere the dingy mangroves rose from black depths of mire on slimy
roots and pale stems that glimmered, blanched, amidst the drifting steam
that clung about them. Night was close at hand, and, though there was no
sign of the land breeze yet, the air was thick and heavy with a hot,
sour smell. The clamour of the surf made the deep silence more apparent,
for there was no sound of life about the clustered huts. Austin knew
that the black man is frequently stricken by the pestilence, and as he
stood there on the little strip of desolate beach he felt his courage
melting away from him. The Canarios he also saw were standing close
together and murmuring excitedly, while every now and then one of them
would glance askance at the huts.
"If there was any niggers but dead ones in the place they'd have been
out by now," said Bill.
"The _Cumbria_ should lie about north from here up the biggest creek,"
said Austin. "If we borrowed the canoe yonder you could find your way to
her?"
"I'd try that, or anything, so long as it was to get out of this."
He glanced towards the hut again, and Austin, who could not quite
explain it, then or afterwards, became sensible that if he waited much
longer he would say or do something that would not be seemly in one who
was there as leader. He felt that had he been alone he would probably
have turned and run.
"Well," he said, as quietly as he could contrive, "we will run the canoe
down. I believe some of the things they get are infectious now and
then."
He had no need to repeat the order. The Canarios jumped at the word, and
in another few minutes they had launched the canoe and were paddling her
out of the creek clumsily, as men unaccustomed to the oar might do. It
opened into a wider one, through which the heave of the sea pulsed
languidly, until they crawled round a point and the streamy mangroves
closed in on them. Then suddenly the thick, hot darkness fell.
They moored the canoe to a slimy stem, and lay down in her, packed like
herrings; but in spite of the mosquitoes Austin slept a little of the
night. He was glad when all the swamps steamed again as the dawn broke
suddenly upon them; and when they had eaten they took up the paddles.
The mists thinned and melted, the sun that sucked the damp from their
dew-soaked clothing scorched their skin, and the glare from the yellow
water became intolerable. Still, it was evident that it would not be
advisable to waste any time, and through the long hot hours the canoe
crept on.
Now she slid into steamy shadow among the mangrove islets, skirting
belts of mire, and now crept, a slender strip of hull, packed with
wearied and perspiring humanity, across broad reaches of flaming water
that moved on inland under her, streaked with smears of yellow foam. It
was evident to Austin that the flood tide ran longer than usual there,
as it sometimes does about an island, or the Guinea stream had backed it
up along the shore. The stream, however, did not only set up the creek,
but slid through the forest, where the trees rose on arched roots above
the water; and here and there they had to paddle hard to avoid being
drawn into branch-roofed tunnels that smelt like open sewers. The refuse
of leagues of forest seemed to lie rotting there.
By afternoon Austin's hands were bleeding, and one of his knees was raw
where he pressed it as a point of resistance to paddle from on the
craft's bottom; but he took his place when his turn came, though his
eyes were dazzled, and the headache that had crept upon him was growing
insufferable. He was now distinctly anxious as to when they would reach
the _Cumbria_, for, though Bill said she lay up a big muddy creek north
of the island, he appeared by no means sure that was the one, and Austin
felt he could not logically blame him. Creeks, it was evident, were
bewilderingly plentiful in that country, and there were no distinctive
features in the scenery. Dingy, white-stemmed mangroves, fermenting
mire, and yellow water, were all the same, and as they crept on past
bend and island there was no sign of change.
The shadows lay black upon the water when they stopped again, all of
them horribly cramped, and aching in every limb; but when they had sat
portentiously silent, with the craft moored to a mangrove root, for half
an hour or so, Bill stood up in the bow.
"Did you hear anything, Mr. Austin?" he asked.
Austin fancied that he did, though for a moment or two he was not sure
that it was not the ticking of his watch, for the sound, which was very
faint, had a beat in it. Then it grew a little louder, and he felt a
curious thrill of satisfaction.
"Engines!" he said sharply. "It's the launch."
She swung out, apparently from the mangroves, in another few minutes,
and came on towards them, clanking and wheezing horribly, with the
yellow foam piled about her, but Austin felt that he had never seen
anything more welcome than that strip of mire-daubed hull with the plume
of smoke streaming away from it. Then she stopped close alongside them,
and Austin shook hands with Tom as he climbed on board.
"Did you come across any niggers, sir?" asked the latter.
"No," said Austin. "How's Mr. Jefferson?"
"Comin' round," said Tom, with a grin. "I've worked most of the
fever--an' the sunstroke--out of him. It was a big load off me when, as
I took him his mixture one morning, he looks up at me. 'Who the devil
are you poisoning?' says he, quite sensible, an' like himself again."
"You were coming down to look for us?"
"We were--an' uncommonly glad to see you. The blame niggers is getting
aggravating. Came down, two canoe loads of 'em, a night or two ago, an'
only sheered off when we tumbled one o' them over with a big lump o'
coal. Wall-eye dropped it on to the man in the bow of her from the
bridge, an' so far as we could make out it doubled him up
considerable."
Wall-eye was apparently the squinting Spaniard who acted as fireman, and
when he saw Tom glance at him he stood up, with a grimy hand clenched,
and unloosed a flood of Castilian invective. Austin, who smiled as he
watched him, felt that while most of what he said could not be
effectively rendered into cold Anglo-Saxon, it was probably more or less
warranted. In the meanwhile the launch was coming round with backed
propeller, and in another moment or two she was clanking away into the
darkness that descended suddenly, towards the _Cumbria_.