“Life in my uncle’s palace,” he said, so sweetly and persuasively that
the suggestiveness of it caused a thrill in me.
His uncle could nominate me to posts of honour fit for a _caballero_.
I seemed to wake up. “Your uncle the pirate!” I cried, and was amazed at
my own words.
Tomas Castro sprang up, and placed his rough, hot hand over my lips.
“Be quiet, John Kemp, you fool!” he hissed with sudden energy.
He had spruced himself, but I seemed to see the rags still nutter about
him. He had combed out his beard, but I could not forget the knots that
had been in it.
“I told your worship how foolish and wrong-headed these English are,” he
said sardonically to Carlos. And then to me, “If the senor speaks loudly
again, I shall kill him.”
He was evidently very frightened of something.
Carlos, silent as an apparition at the foot of the ladder, put a finger
to his lips and glanced upwards.
Castro writhed his whole body, and I stepped backwards. “I know what Rio
Medio is,” I said, not very loudly. “It is a nest of pirates.”
Castro crept towards me again on the points of his toes. “Señor Don Juan
Kemp, child of the devil,” he hissed, looking very much frightened, “you
must die!”
I smiled. He was trembling all over. I could hear the talking and
laughing that went on under the break of the poop. Two women were
kissing, with little cries, near the hatchway. I could hear them
distinctly.
Tomas Castro dropped his ragged cloak with a grandiose gesture.
“By my hand!” he added with difficulty.
He was really very much alarmed. Carlos was gazing up the hatch. I was
ready to laugh at the idea of dying by Tomas Castro’s hand while, within
five feet of me, people were laughing and kissing. I should have laughed
had I not suddenly felt his hand on my throat. I kicked his shins hard,
and fell backwards over a chest. He went back a step or two, flourished
his arm, beat his chest, and turned furiously upon Carlos.
“He will get us murdered,” he said. “Do you think we are safe here? If
these people here heard that name they wouldn’t wait to ask who
your worship is. They would tear us to pieces in an instant. I tell
you--_moi_, Tomas Castro--he will ruin us, this white fool-------”
Carlos began to cough, shaken speechless as if by an invisible devil.
Castro’s eyes ran furtively all round him, then he looked at me. He made
an extraordinary swift motion with his right hand, and I saw that he was
facing me with a long steel blade displayed. Carlos continued to cough.
The thing seemed odd, laughable still. Castro began to parade round
me: it was as if he were a cock performing its saltatory rites before
attacking. There was the same tenseness of muscle. He stepped with
extraordinary care on the points of his toes, and came to a stop about
four feet from me. I began to wonder what Rooksby would have thought of
this sort of thing, to wonder why Castro himself found it necessary to
crouch for such a long time. Up above, the hum of many people, still
laughing, still talking, faded a little out of mind. I understood,
horribly, how possible it would be to die within those few feet of them.
Castro’s eyes were dusky yellow, the pupils a great deal inflated,
the lines of his mouth very hard and drawn immensely tight. It seemed
extraordinary that he should put so much emotion into such a very easy
killing. I had my back against the bulkhead, it felt very hard against
my shoulder-blades. I had no dread, only a sort of shrinking from the
actual contact of the point, as one shrinks from being tickled. I opened
my mouth. I was going to shriek a last, despairing call, to the light
and laughter of meetings above when Carlos, still shaken, with one white
hand pressed very hard upon his chest, started forward and gripped his
hand round Castro’s steel. He began to whisper in the other’s hairy ear.
I caught:
“You are a fool. He will not make us to be molested, he is my kinsman.”
Castro made a reluctant gesture towards Barnes’ chest that lay between
us.
“We could cram him into that,” he said.
“Oh, bloodthirsty fool,” Carlos answered, recovering his breath; “is
it always necessary to wash your hands in blood? Are we not in enough
danger? Up--up! Go see if the boat is yet there. We must go quickly;
up--up-------” He waved his hand towards the scuttle.
“But still,” Castro said. He was reluctantly fitting his wooden hand
upon the blue steel. He sent a baleful yellow glare into my eyes, and
stooped to pick up his ragged cloak.
“Up--mount!” Carlos commanded.
Castro muttered, “_Vamos_,” and began clumsily to climb the ladder, like
a bale of rags being hauled from above. Carlos placed his foot on the
steps, preparing to follow him. He turned his head round towards me, his
hand extended, a smile upon his lips.
“Juan,” he said, “let us not quarrel. You are very young; you cannot
understand these things; you cannot weigh them; you have a foolish idea
in your head. I wished you to come with us because I love you, Juan. Do
you think I wish you evil? You are true and brave, and our families are
united.” He sighed suddenly.
“I do not want to quarrel!” I said. “I don’t.”
I did not want to quarrel; I wanted more to cry. I was very lonely, and
he was going away. Romance was going out of my life.
He added musically, “You even do not understand. There is someone else
who speaks for you to me, always--someone else. But one day you will. I
shall come back for you--one day.” He looked at me and smiled. It
stirred unknown depths of emotion in me. I would have gone with him,
then, had he asked me. “One day,” he repeated, with an extraordinary
cadence of tone.
His hand was grasping mine; it thrilled me like a woman’s; he stood
shaking it very gently.
“One day,” he said, “I shall repay what I owe you. I wished you with me,
because I go into some danger. I wanted you. Good-by. _Hasta mas ver_.”
He leaned over and kissed me lightly on the cheek, then climbed away. I
felt that the light of Romance was going out of my life. As we reached
the top of the ladder, somebody began to call harshly, startlingly. I
heard my own name and the words, “mahn ye were speerin’ after.”
The light was obscured, the voice began clamouring insistently.
“John Kemp, Johnnie Kemp, noo. Here’s the mahn ye were speerin’ after.
Here’s Macdonald.”
It was the voice of Barnes, and the voice of the every day. I discovered
that I had been tremendously upset. The pulses in my temples were
throbbing, and I wanted to shut my eyes--to sleep! I was tired; Romance
had departed. Barnes and the Macdonald he had found for me represented
all the laborious insects of the world; all the ants who are forever
hauling immensely heavy and immenlsely unimportant burdens up weary
hillocks, down steep places, getting nowhere and doing nothing.
Nevertheless I hurried up, stumbling at the hatchway against a man who
was looking down. He said nothing at all, and I was dazed by the light.
Barnes remarked hurriedly, “This ’ll be your Mr. Macdonald”; and,
turning his back on me, forgot my existence. I felt more alone than
ever. The man in front of me held his head low, as if he wished to butt
me.
I began breathlessly to tell him I had a letter from
“my--my--Rooksby--brother-in-law--Ralph Rooks-by”--I was panting as if I
had run a long way. He said nothing at all. I fumbled for the letter in
an inner pocket of my waistcoat, and felt very shy. Macdonald maintained
a portentous silence; his enormous body was enveloped rather than
clothed in a great volume of ill-fitting white stuff; he held in his
hand a great umbrella with a vivid green lining. His face was very pale,
and had the leaden transparency of a boiled artichoke; it was fringed
by a red beard streaked with gray, as brown flood-water is with foam.
I noticed at last that the reason for his presenting his forehead to
me was an incredible squint--a squint that gave the idea that he was
performing some tortuous and defiant feat with the muscles of his neck.
He maintained an air of distrustful inscrutability. The hand which took
my letter was very large, very white, and looked as if it would feel
horribly flabby. With the other he put on his nose a pair of enormous
mother-of-pearl-framed spectacles--things exactly like those of a
cobra’s--and began to read. He had said precisely nothing at all. It was
for him and what he represented that I had thrown over Carlos and
what _he_ represented. I felt that I deserved to be received with
acclamation. I was not. He read the letter very deliberately, swaying,
umbrella and all, with the slow movement of a dozing elephant. Once he
crossed his eyes at me, meditatively, above the mother-of-pearl rims. He
was so slow, so deliberate, that I own I began to wonder whether Carlos
and Castro were still on board. It seemed to be at least half an
hour before Macdonald cleared his throat, with a sound resembling the
coughing of a defective pump, and a mere trickle of a voice asked:
“Hwhat evidence have ye of identitee?”
I hadn’t any at all, and began to finger my buttonholes as shamefaced
as a pauper before a Board. The certitude dawned upon me suddenly that
Carlos, even if he would consent to swear to me, would prejudice my
chances.
I cannot help thinking that I came very near to being cast adrift upon
the streets of Kingston. To my asseverations Macdonald returned
nothing but a series of minute “humphs.” I don’t know what overcame his
scruples; he had shown no signs of yielding, but suddenly turning on his
heel made a motion with one of his flabby white hands. I understood it
to mean that I was to follow him aft.
The decks were covered with a jabbering turmoil of negroes with muscular
arms and brawny shoulders. All their shining black faces seem to be
momentarily gashed open to show rows of white teeth, and were spotted
with inlaid eyeballs. The sounds coming from them were a bewildering
noise. They were hauling baggage about aimlessly. A large soft bundle
of bedding nearly took me off my legs. There wasn’t room for emotion.
Macdonald laid about him with the handle of the umbrella a few inches
from the deck; but the passage that he made for himself closed behind
him.
Suddenly, in the pushing and hurrying, I came upon a little clear space
beside a pile of boxes. Stooping over them was the angular figure of
Nichols, the second mate. He looked up at me, screwing his yellow eyes
together.
“Going ashore,” he asked, “’long of that Puffing Billy?”
“What business is it of yours’” I mumbled sulkily.
Sudden and intense threatening came into his yellow eyes:
“Don’t you ever come to you know where,” he said; “I don’t want no spies
on what I do. There’s a man there’ll crack your little backbone if he
catches you. Don’t yeh come now. Never.”