“I must believe what you say,” she said. She added suddenly, with a sort
of tremulous, warm feeling, “There, there. I don’t mean to be unkind. I
knew nothing, and a married woman can’t be too careful. For all I could
have told, you might have been a--a libertine; one of the poor lost
souls that Satan...”
Manuel, as if struggling with the waves, managed to free his lips.
“Excellency, help!” he spluttered, like a drowning man.
“I will give the young lady every care,” Mrs. Williams said, “until
light shall be vouchsafed.”
She shut the door.
“You will go too far, Sebright,” Williams remonstrated; “and I’ll have
to give you the sack.”
“It’s all right, captain. I can turn her round my little finger,” said
the young man cheerily. “Somebody has to do it if you won’t--or can’t.
What shall we do with that yelping Dago? He’s a distressful beast to
have about the decks.”
“Put him in the coal-hole, I suppose, as far as Havana. I won’t rest
till I see him on his way to the gallows. The Captain-General shall
be made sick of this business, or my name isn’t Williams. I’ll make a
breeze over it at home. You shall help in that, Kemp. You ain’t afraid
of big-wigs. Not you. You ain’t afraid of anything....”
“He’s a devil of a fellow, and a dead shot,” threw in Sebright. “And
jolly lucky for us, too, sir. It’s simply marvellous that you should
turn up like this, Mr. Kemp. We hadn’t a grain of powder that wasn’t
caked solid in the canisters. Nothing’ll take it out of my head that
somebody had got at the magazine while we lay in Kingston....”
It did not occur to Williams to ask whether I was wounded, or tired, or
hungry. And yet all through the West Indies the dinners you got on board
the Lion were famous in shipping circles. But festive men of his stamp
are often like that. They do it more for the glory and romance of the
hospitality, and he could not, perhaps, under the circumstances, expect
me to intone “for he is a jolly good fellow” over the wine. He was by
no means a bad or unfeeling man; only he was not hungry himself, and
another’s mere necessity of that sort failed to excite his imagination.
I know he was no worse than other men, and I have reason to remember him
with gratitude; but, at the time, I was surprised and indignant at the
extraordinary way he took my presence for granted, as if I had come off
casually in a shore boat to idle away an hour or two on board. Since his
wife appeared satisfied, he did not seem to desire any explanation. I
felt as if I had for him no independent existence. When I had ceased
to be a source of domestic difficulty, I became a precious sort of
convenience, a most welcome person (“an English gentleman to back me
up,” he repeated several times), who would help him to make “these old
women at the Admiralty sit up!” A burning shame, this! It had gone on
long enough, God knows, but if they were to tackle an old trader, like
the “Lion”, now, it was time the whole country should hear of it. His
owner, J. Perkins, his wife’s uncle, wasn’t the man to go to sleep over
the job. Parliament should hear of it. Most fortunate I was there to
be produced--eye-witness--nobleman’s son. He knew I could speak up in a
good cause.
“And by the way, Kemp,” he said, with sudden annoyance, recollecting
himself, as it were, “you never turned up for that dinner--sent no word,
nor anything....”
Williams had been talking to me, but it was with Sebright that I felt
myself growing intimate. The young mate of the “Lion” stood by, very
quiet, listening with a capable smile. Now he said, in a tone of dry
comment:
“Jolly sight more useful turning up here.”
“I was kidnapped away from Ramon’s back shop, if that’s a sufficient
apology. It’s rather a long story.”
“Well, you can’t tell it on deck, that’s very clear,” Sebright had to
shout to me. “Not while this infernal noise--what the deuce’s up? It
sounds more like a dog-fight than anything else.”
As we ran towards the main hatch I recognized the aptness of the
comparison. It was that sort of vicious, snarling, yelping clamour which
arises all at once and suddenly dies.
“Castro! Thou Castro!”
“Malediction... My eyelids...”
“Thou! Englishman’s dog!”
“Ha! _Porco_.”
The voices ceased. Castro ran tiptoeing lightly, mantled in ample folds.
He assumed his hat with a brave tap, crouched swiftly inside his cloak.
It touched the deck all round in a black cone surmounted by a peering,
quivering head. Quick as thought he hopped and sank low again. Everybody
watched with wonder this play, as of some large and diabolic toy. For
my part, knowing the deadly purpose of these preliminaries, I was struck
with horror. Had he chosen to run on him at once, nothing could have
saved Manuel. The poor wretch, vigorously held in front of Castro, was
far too terrified to make a sound. With an immovable sailor on each
side, he scuffled violently, and cowered by starts as if tied up between
two stone posts. His dumb, rapid panting was in our ears. I shouted:
“Stop, Castro! Stop!... Stop him, some of you! He means to kill the
fellow!”
Nobody heeded my shouting. Castro flung his cloak on the deck, jumped on
it, kicked it aside, all in the same moment as it seemed, dodged to the
right, to the left, drew himself up, and stepped high, paunchy in his
tight smalls and short jacket, making all the time a low, sibilant
sound, which was perfectly blood-curdling.
“He has a blade on his forearm!” I yelled. “He’s armed, I tell you!”
No one could comprehend my distress. A sailor, raising a lamp, had a
broad smile. Somebody laughed outright. Castro planted himself before
Manuel, nodded menacingly, and stooped ready for a spring. I was too
late in my grab at his collar, but Manuel’s guardians, acting with
precision, put out one arm each to meet his rush, and he came flying
backwards upon me, as though he had rebounded from a wall.
He had almost knocked me down, and while I staggered to keep my feet the
air resounded with urgent calls to shoot, to fire, to bring him down!...
“Kill him, Señor!” came in an entreating yell from Castro. And I became
aware that Manuel had taken this opportunity to wrench himself free. I
heard the hard thud of his leap. Straight from the hatch (as I was told
later by the marvelling sailors) he had alighted with both feet on the
rail. I only saw him already there, sitting on his heels, jabbering and
nodding at us like an enormous baboon. “Shoot, sir! Shoot!” “Kill! Kill,
Señor! As you love your life--kill!”
Unwittingly, without volition, as if compelled by the suggestion of the
bloodthirsty cries, my hand drew the remaining pistol out of my belt. I
raised it, and found myself covering the strange antics of an infuriated
ape. He tore at his flanks with both hands in the idea, I suppose,
of stripping for a swim. Rags flew from him in all directions; an
astounding eruption of rags round a huddled-up figure crouching, wildly
active, in front of the muzzle. I had him. I was sure of my shot. He was
only an ape. A dead ape. But why? Wherefore? To what end? What could it
matter whether he lived or died. He sickened me, and I pitied him, as I
should have pitied an ape.
I lowered my arm an almost imperceptible fraction of a second before he
sprang up and vanished. The sound of the heavy plunge was followed by
a regretful clamour all over the decks, and a general rush to the side.
There was nothing to be seen; he had gone through the layer of fog
covering the water. No one heard him blow or splutter. It was as if a
lump of lead had fallen overboard.
Williams wouldn’t have had this happen for a five-pound note. Sebright
expressed the hope that he wouldn’t cheat the gallows by drowning. The
two men who had held him slunk away abashed. To lower a boat for
the purpose of catching him in the water would have been useless and
imprudent.
“His friends can’t be far off yet in the boats,” growled the bo’sun;
“and if they don’t pick him up, they would be more than likely to pick
up our chaps.”
Somebody expectorated in so marked a manner that I looked behind me.
Castro had resumed his cloak, and was draping himself with deliberate
dignity. When this undertaking had been accomplished, he came up very
close to me, and without a word looked up balefully from the heavy folds
thrown across his mouth and chin under the very tip of his hooked nose.
“I could not do it,” I said. “I could not. It would have been useless.
Too much like murder, Tomas.”
“Oh! the inconstancy, the fancifulness of these English,” he
generalized, with suppressed passion, right into my face. “I don’t know
what’s worse, their fury or their pity. The childishness of it! The
childishness.... Do you imagine, Señor, that Manuel or the Juez O’Brien
shall some day spare you in their turn? If I didn’t know the courage of
your nation...”
“I despise the _Juez_ and Manuel alike,” I interrupted angrily. I
despised Castro, too, at that moment, and he paid me back with interest.
There was no mistaking his scathing tone.
“I know you well. You scorn your friends, as well as your foes. I have
seen so many of you. The blessed saints guard us from the calamity of
your friendship....”
“No friendship could make an assassin of me, Mr. Castro....”
“... Which is only a very little less calamitous than your enmity,” he
continued, in a cold rage. “A very little less. You let Manuel go....
Manuel!... Because of your mercy.... Mercy! Bah! It is all your
pride--your mad pride. You shall rue it, Señor. Heaven is just. You
shall rue it, Señor.”
He denounced me prophetically, wrapped up with an air of midnight
secrecy; but, after all, he had been a friend in the act, if not in the
spirit, and I contented myself by asking, with some pity for his
imbecile craving after murder:
“Why? What can Manuel do to me? He at least is completely helpless.”
“Did the Señor Don Juan ever ask himself what Manuel could do to
me--Tomas Castro? To me, who am poor and a vagabond, and a friend of
Don Carlos, may his soul rest with God. Are all you English like princes
that you should never think of anybody but yourselves?”
He revolted and provoked me, as if his opinion of the English could
matter, or his point of view signify anything against the authority of
my conscience. And it is our conscience that illumines the romantic side
of our life. His point of view was as benighted and primitive as the
point of view of hunger; but, in his fidelity to the dead architect of
my fortunes, he reflected dimly the light of Carlos’ romance, and I had
taken advantage of it, not so much for the saving of my life as for the
guarding of my love. I had reached that point when love displaces one’s
personality, when it becomes the only ground under our feet, the only
sky over our head, the only light of vision, the first condition of
thought--when we are ready to strive for it, as we fight for the breath
of our body. Brusquely I turned my back on him, and heard the repeated
clicking of flint against his blade. He lighted a cigarette, and crossed
the deck to lean cloaked against the bulwark, smoking moodily under his
slouched hat.