NOCTURNAL VISITORS
Jefferson was standing at the open door of the house beneath the
_Cumbria_'s bridge when Austin first caught sight of him, as he groped
his way forward along the slanted deck. The black, impenetrable
obscurity that descends upon the tropic swamps when the air is full of
vapour, hung over the stranded steamer, and the man's gaunt figure cut
with harsh sharpness against the stream of light. The thin duck he wore
clung about him, soaked with perspiration and the all-pervading damp,
emphasising the attenuated spareness of his frame, and Austin could
almost have fancied it was a draped skeleton he was gazing at. Still, he
was a trifle reassured when he felt the firm grasp of a hot, bony hand.
"So you have come?" said the American. "It's good to get a grip of you.
I guessed you would."
He drew Austin into the deck-house, and they sat down opposite each
other, and said nothing for almost a minute, though there was a little
smile in Jefferson's face as he leaned back against the bulkhead. His
hair, which had grown long since he left Las Palmas, hung low and wet
upon his forehead, and the big cheek bones showed through the
tight-stretched skin, which was blanched, though there was a faint
yellow tinge in it which relieved its dead whiteness. This had its
significance, for the coast fever has not infrequently an unpleasant
after effect upon the white man's constitution.
"It isn't quite a sanatorium," he said, as though he guessed his
comrade's thoughts. "Port Royal, Santos, Panama--I know them all--aren't
a patch on these swamps. Still, we needn't worry now you have come."
Austin smiled as he looked at him. "To be correct, I'm not quite sure
that I did," he said, reflectively. "I mean, it wasn't exactly because I
wished to."
"Ah!" said Jefferson, as comprehension dawned on him. "Then the quarter
share--that offer stands good--didn't bring you? Well, I was wondering
if she would make you go."
Austin was a trifle astonished, for, though he had a somewhat hardly
acquired acquaintance with human nature, it had never occurred to him
that the patronage Jacinta extended to her masculine friends naturally
attracted some attention, or that in this particular case the onlookers
might most clearly grasp the points of the game.
"I can't quite see why she should have wanted me to," he said.
There was another brief silence, during which the men looked at one
another. This was not a subject either of them had meant to talk about.
Indeed, it was one which, under different circumstances, they would have
kept carefully clear of, but both realised that conventional niceties
did not count for much just then: They were merely men who had
henceforth to face the grim realities of existence with the shadow of
death upon them, and they knew that the primitive humanity in them would
become apparent as the veneer wore through.
"Still," said Jefferson, "I can think of one reason. There was a time
when Muriel was good to her, and Jacinta can't forget it. She's not that
kind. The first day I met her I felt that she was taking stock of me,
and I knew I'd passed muster when she made you stop the _Estremedura_.
Perhaps, it wasn't very much in itself, but I was thankful. I've done a
few tough things in my time, but I know I'd never have got Muriel if
that girl had been against me. Still, it wasn't altogether because of
Muriel she sent you."
Austin showed his astonishment this time, and Jefferson smiled. "You
can't quite figure how I came to understand a thing of that kind? Well,
some of you smart folks have made the same mistake before. You don't
seem to remember when you waste ten minutes working a traverse round
what you could say in one, that however you dress it up, human nature's
much the same. Now you're astonished at me. I'm talking. Sometimes I
feel I have to. You want to know just why she really sent you?"
"To be frank, I have asked myself the question, and couldn't be quite
sure it was altogether because she wanted me to get this unfortunate
steamboat off."
"It wasn't. You're getting as near to it as one could expect of an
Englishman. It hurts some of you to let anybody know what you really
think. Well, I'll try to make my notion clear to you. There was a lady
in France who threw her glove among the lions long ago, but the man who
went down for it was of no great account after all. He hadn't sense
enough to see the point of the thing."
"There were apparently folks who sympathised with him," said Austin,
with a reflective air. "I'm not sure the man could reasonably have been
expected to go at all, since the lady in question evidently only wished
to show everybody how far he would venture to please her."
"Now it seems to me quite likely that she meant to do a good deal more.
The man may have been content to fool his time away making pretty
speeches to the court ladies and walking round dressed in silk while
the rest of them rode out in steel. Can't you fancy that she wanted him
to find out that he had the grit of the boldest of them, and could do
something worth while, too? She probably knew he had, or she would never
have sent him."
A little colour crept into Austin's face, but he laughed. "One could, no
doubt, imagine a good many other reasons, and most of them would
probably be as wide of the mark. Any way, they don't concern us. If the
thing ever happened, it was a very long while ago. We know better now."
"Well, I guess you can't help it," and there was a twinkle in
Jefferson's eyes. "Your shell's quite a good fit, and you don't like to
come out of it, though I almost thought you were going to a moment or
two ago."
"I don't like to be pulled out. One feels that it isn't decent. The
shell's the best of some of us," said Austin.
"Then we'll come down to business. You brought the giant powder?"
"A case of it, with fuses and detonators," and Austin's relief at the
change of subject was evident. "Are you contemplating blowing her up?"
"No, sir. She's worth too much. It is, however, quite likely that we'll
make a hole in the mangrove forest and shake up the bottom of this
creek. That is, when we're ready. There's a good deal to be put through
first."
"Have you found the gum?"
"I haven't looked. She's full to the orlops, and we haven't started in
to pump her out. Didn't seem much use in trying while she had so much
weight in her, and we'll want all the coal we've got. When we have hove
most of it and the oil out I'll start the big centrifugal. You see, she
hasn't a donkey on deck. That's why, though it cost me a good deal, I
bought the locomotive boiler. You folks have a library of Shipping
Acts, but you don't show much sense when you let anything under 2,000
tons go to sea with her pumps run from the main engines. When you most
want steam for pumping it's when your fires are drowning out."
It was once more evident to Austin that Jefferson knew his business, and
had foreseen most of the difficulties he would have to grapple with.
Still, he fancied, by his face, that he had not quite anticipated all.
"Where are you putting the oil you take out of her?" he asked.
"On a strip of sand up a creek. That's one of the few things that are
worrying me. We'll have to get it on board as soon as we float her off
when the rain comes, or the creek will get it ahead of us. The next
point is that it will be a little rough on the men who have to watch it
after working all day long."
"To watch it! Who is likely to meddle with it here?"
"Niggers," said Jefferson drily. "They cleaned most everything they
could come at off the boat before I got to her, but they couldn't break
out cargo with the water in her, and didn't know enough to get at the
provisions in the lazaret. Still, while these particular swamps don't
seem to belong to anybody, there's trade everywhere, and oil's a
marketable commodity."
"Where's the Frenchman who chartered the _Cumbria_?"
"Dead. I've been up to his place in the launch. I found it caved in, and
trees growing up in it already. Nature straightens things up quite
smartly in this country. Any way, I'll show you round to-morrow; and, in
the meanwhile, it's about time that Spaniard brought you some supper."
"It seems to me that everybody who had anything to do with this
unfortunate vessel invariably died."
Jefferson smiled a trifle grimly. "That's a fact," he said.
Then one of the Canarios brought in a simple meal, and when they had
eaten and talked for another hour, Austin stretched himself out on the
settee and Jefferson climbed into his slanted bunk. They left the light
burning and the door wide open, and both of them lay down dressed as
they were; but while Jefferson seemed to fall into a somewhat restless
doze, Austin found that sleep fled the further from him the more he
courted it that night. It was very hot, for one thing, and stranded
steamer and mangrove forest alike seemed filled with mysterious noises
that stirred his imagination and disturbed his rest. It was only by a
strenuous effort he lay still for a couple of hours, and then, rising
softly, with a little sigh, went out into the night.
The darkness closed about him, black and impenetrable, when he stepped
out of the stream of light before the deck-house door, and the feeble
flame of the match he struck to light his pipe as he leaned upon the
rail only made it more apparent. He could see nothing whatever when the
match went out, but the oily gurgle of the creek beneath him suggested
the height of the steamer's hove-up side. She lay, so Jefferson had told
him, with her inshore bilge deep in the mire, and two big derrick-booms
slung from the wire hawser that ran from her stern to the mangroves
along what should have been the bank, as a precaution against any
nocturnal call by negroes in canoes. Her outshore side, which he looked
down from, was, he surmised by the slant of deck, between ten and
fifteen feet above the creek.
It was a little cooler there, and the sounds were less disquieting than
they had been in the room. He could localise and identify some of them
now--the splash of falling moisture, the trickle of the stream, and the
soft fanning of unseen wings as one of the great bats which abound in
that country stooped towards the light. Still, behind these were
mysterious splashings among the mangroves and wallowings in the creek,
while the thick, hot darkness seemed to pulse with life. He could almost
fancy he heard the breathing of unseen things, and it did not seem
strange to him that the dusky inhabitants of that country should believe
in malevolent deities. Indeed, as he leaned upon the rail, with its
darkness enfolding him, he was troubled by a sense of his own
insignificance and a longing to escape from that abode of fear and
shadow. Other men, including those who had come out with a salvage
expedition, had found the floating of the _Cumbria_ too big a thing for
them, and he already understood that there are parts of the tropics
where the white man is apt to find his courage melt away from him as
well as his bodily vigour.
Then he commenced to wonder dispassionately why Jacinta had sent him, or
if he had, after all, been warranted in considering that she had done
so. She had, though he admitted it unwillingly, at least, not bidden him
go, but she had certainly done what she could to make him understand
that he was wasting his life on board the _Estremedura_. It would have
been a consolation to feel that he was obeying her command and doing her
a definite service, if it was only to bring Jefferson home to Muriel
Gascoyne; but she had not laid one upon him, and even Jefferson seemed
to understand that her purpose went further.
He was less pleased with the fancy that Jacinta had undertaken what she
apparently considered his reformation. He had been, in some respects,
content as he was, for while there was no other woman he had the same
regard for, he had forced himself to recognise that it was quite out of
the question that she should ever entertain more than kindliness for
him. Austin could be practical, and remembered that young women with her
advantages, as a rule, looked higher than a steamboat purser, while even
if Jefferson succeeded in his venture, and he went home with four or
five thousand pounds, which appeared just then distinctly unlikely,
Jacinta was the only daughter of a man whose income was supposed to
amount to as much a year.
Austin sighed a little as he decided that he did not really know why he
had come. In the meanwhile he was there, and there was nothing to be
gained by being sorry, especially as he could not even console himself
with the fancy that Jacinta was grieving over him. She was probably, as
usual, far too busy by that time with somebody else's affairs. He was
also averse from permitting himself to feel any glow of
self-congratulation over the fancy that he was doing a chivalrous thing.
In fact, he saw it with realistic clearness of vision as one that was
wholly nonsensical, and it did not occur to him that the essence of all
that was best in the old knightly days might be surviving still, and,
indeed, live on, indestructible, even in the hearts of practical,
undemonstrative Englishmen, as well as garlic-scented Spaniards, and
seafaring Americans. Still, when he had yielded himself instinctively to
Jacinta's will he had vaguely realised that, after all, the bonds of
service are now and then more profitable to a man than dominion.
In the meanwhile the damp soaked through his clothing, and his physical
nature shrank from the hot steaminess and the sour odours of
putrefaction. It was unpleasant to stand there in that thick darkness,
and even a little hard upon the nerves, but he had had enough of the
deck-house, and he could not sleep, which is by no means an unusual
difficulty with white men in the tropics. It was a relief when at last
a sound that grew louder fixed his attention, and resolved itself into a
measured thudding. Here were evidently canoes coming down the creek, but
Austin was a little uncertain what to do. He had no wish to rouse the
worn-out men, who probably needed all the sleep they could get, if this
was a usual occurrence; but it did not appear advisable that there
should be nobody but himself on deck in case the canoes ran alongside.
He was considering what he should do when Jefferson, who held a glinting
object in his hand, appeared in the door of the deck-house. Then there
was a patter of feet on a ladder below, and another dim figure
materialised out of the darkness.
"That ---- Funnel-paint come back again," said the half-seen man.
Jefferson laughed unpleasantly. "He's getting monotonous, but he's
taking steep chances this time."
The beat of paddles slackened a little, there was a murmur of voices
beneath the steamer's side, and Jefferson leaned out, looking down into
the impenetrable blackness beneath him. A scraping sound came out of it,
and apparently moved along, while, when the half-seen man thrust a big
block of coal upon him, Austin turned and strode softly after Jefferson,
who walked forward beside the rail.
"Better let him have it now, sir," said the other man. "She's quite low
on the other quarter, and if they try swimming round her stern the booms
won't stop them."
Then there was a vivid streak in the darkness, and a detonation that was
twice repeated, while Austin, who hurled his lump of coal down with all
his strength, caught a whiff of acrid smoke. There was also a splash
below, and a confused clamour that was lost in the hasty thud of paddles
as the invisible canoes got away. Then, while the Canarios came
floundering across the deck, a single voice rose up.
"Bimeby we done lib for cut you t'roat!" it said.
"Oh, go to the devil!" said Jefferson, and the big revolver flashed
again.
There was no answer, and the splash of paddles slowly died away. It was
evident that the affair was over, and Austin fancied that nobody was
much the worse. Jefferson sauntered towards him snapping the spent
shells out of his pistol.
"Funnel-paint is getting on my nerves. I'll have to drop half a stick of
giant powder on him next time he comes," he said.
"He didn't make much of a show," said Austin. "You think he meant to
come on board?"
"If there had been nobody round he would have done so, but how far he'd
have gone then is another question. He probably knows that nigger
stockades are apt to get blown up when a white man disappears, and it's
quite likely his nerve would have failed him. Any way, he's hanging out
at a village up the creek, and we'll probably go round to-morrow with
some giant powder and make a protest. In the meanwhile, I don't know any
reason why you shouldn't go to sleep again."
Austin went back with him to the house beneath the bridge, and, though
it was not perceptibly cooler, found sleep come to him. His vague
apprehensions had vanished in the face of a definite peril.