fruit-merchants--dark-skinned men in white linen suits, smoking
pale-coloured long cigars. But Marian and Gwendolen stayed up on deck,
watching the night coming down like a shutter, and the lamps beginning
to shine in the crooked streets and behind the windows of the houses.
Now that it was cooler the people were taking the air, and gaily-dressed
women sauntered up and down; and in front of a cafe, where there were a
lot of little tables, some men were singing and playing guitars. It was
all so strange, it was like being in a theatre, and the air was full of
spice-scents and the scent of oranges; and it was hard to believe that
they were even in the same world with school and Peter Street and
Fairbarrow Down.
But next morning it all seemed more real again, and Captain Jeremy took
them round the town; and they had lunch with one of the fruit-merchants
in a low-walled house built round a courtyard. After lunch they slept in
long armchairs, and when they woke up queer sorts of drinks were brought
to them; and then it was time to go back to the ship again and watch
the cases of fruit being packed in the hold. After a day or two, when
they had learned their way about, Captain Jeremy let them go ashore
alone; and by the end of the week they had explored every corner of the
town, and even gone for walks along the country roads. Some of these
were broad roads leading to other towns, but most of them became
mule-tracks after a mile or two; and they seldom went very far up these
because of the heat, which was greater then even the inhabitants had
ever known.
Day after day, through the still air, the great sun emptied itself into
the town; and the streets cracked, and the barometer fell, and Captain
Jeremy looked anxiously at the weather; and it was upon the hottest day
of all--the day before they were leaving--that Gwendolen suddenly
gripped Marian's arm.
It was early in the morning, before the sun was at its steepest, and
they had wandered past the cathedral into the outskirts of the town,
where a little track between two high garden walls had tempted them to
explore it. It had led them into a sort of garden, untidy and deserted,
and on the other side of this there stood a house--a yellow-walled house
with latticed windows and violet shadows under its broken roof. Beside
the front door stood a crooked pot, and the front door itself was a cave
of darkness, and up in the right-hand corner, under the roof, was a
little window standing open. Gwendolen found herself shaking all over.
"Why, it's the very house," she said, "of the sorrowful picture."
And so it was, and as they stood looking up at it, it seemed more
sorrowful to Gwendolen than ever. For there was the little window almost
beseeching her in actual words to go and comfort it; and she even had a
feeling that for all these years it had been crying in vain to her
across half the world. But there was the front door too, dark with
anger, and before they could move a man came out of it. He was a big man
with a fat face, and he stood blinking for a moment in the sunshine; and
then they saw him frown as he caught sight of them; and he shouted words
at them that they didn't understand.
But it was evident that he wanted them to go away, and they saw him
touch a knife that he wore in his belt; and so they ran back again up
the little track, and there in the street they met Lancelot. He was
grinning as usual, and he looked so big and strong that they could
almost have hugged him on the spot; but his face grew serious when they
told him what had happened, and he stroked his chin and became
thoughtful.
"Well, it's a good thing," he said, "that you come away. In this here
town you have to be careful. But I'll have a turn round and see if I can
find anything out about this here house and the feller as lives in it."
Then he mopped his face and looked at the sky and told them to go back
again to the ship; and a couple of hours later he came aboard and
beckoned them to talk to him while he smoked his pipe. Everything was
ready now for the ship to sail next morning, and most of the other
sailors were asleep, and Captain Jeremy had gone to lunch again with the
fruit-merchant in the town.
"Well, this here feller," said Lancelot, "seems a queer sort of cove,
with a bad name, and he lives all alone; and his wife ran away from him
six years ago, taking their only little girl along with her. But there's
some folks believe that he went after her and killed her--anyway, she
was found dead in the forest--but what happened to Pepita, who was three
years old at the time, nobody knows, for she's never been seen."
Then he smoked his pipe for a minute. "But I tell you what," he said.
"He's pretty sure to be asleep just now. And if you like I'll go and
have a look at the house, and see what there is to it, and come and tell
you."
"But I must come too," said Gwendolen. "I really must."
"And so must I," said Marian. "We must both come," and after a while
they persuaded him to take them, and they set off again through the
town. It was now so hot that it seemed as if the very earth must begin
to melt and crumble away; and when they came to the house there were no
signs of life--there was only that little window, dark and aching. For a
moment they stood listening at the front door, and then they cautiously
stepped inside; and there, in a lower room, asleep on the floor, they
saw the big man with the fat face. Then they stole upstairs until they
came to the little room under the roof to which the window belonged; and
then, as they pushed the door open, the tears sprang to their eyes, and
Lancelot swore a great oath.
For there they saw, tied to a staple in the wall, a little girl of about
nine years old, ragged and scarred, with timid dark eyes and cheeks
like a flower that has never seen the sun. Tied across her mouth was a
dirty cloth, and when she first saw them she shrank away; but as
Gwendolen went up to her with outstretched arms, her eyes widened in
sheer astonishment. Then Lancelot stooped and cut the rope that bound
her, and pulled away the cloth that was gagging her mouth; and then he
jumped round just as the little girl's father came stumbling fiercely
into the room.
Gwendolen heard him shouting something and using the word Pepita; and as
she clasped the little girl in her arms she knew why it was that all
these years the sorrowful picture seemed to have been calling to her. It
was because the little girl's pain and longing for freedom had somehow
stolen into the painter's brush. Then she saw Lancelot's fist shoot out
like a bullet, and Pepita's father tumble to the floor; and then
Lancelot shouted to them to hurry away, and picking up Pepita, he ran
down the stairs. In less than a minute they were in the little track
between the high garden walls; and in a few seconds more they were out
in the street, and then a most strange and awful thing happened. For
Marian stopped short and pointed with her finger.
"Why, what's the matter," she cried, "with the cathedral tower?"
They all stared at it, and saw it rock to and fro; and then Lancelot
swung round toward the open country.
"Run for your lives," he said, and then, as they followed him, they felt
the ground beneath them rise and fall. Then they heard a crash, and
people shouting, and then all was still again, and they stopped
running. Lancelot wiped his forehead.
"Well, now you know," he said, "what an earthquake's like. Lucky it
wasn't a worse one."
And there was the cathedral tower still standing on its foundations, but
when they looked for Pepita's house it had fallen down like a pack of
cards, a fitting grave for Pepita's father. For they heard in the
evening that he had been killed; and Pepita afterward told them how he
had killed her mother, and how he had kept her for all those years tied
to the wall in that dark upper room. As for Captain Jeremy, he was so
rejoiced at seeing Marian and Gwendolen safe that he told Lancelot he
would have forgiven him if he had brought fifty Pepitas on board.
Lancelot was very pleased about that, because, in his heart of hearts,
he knew that he ought never to have let them come with him. But, as he
told Gwendolen, all was well that ended well, and he hoped that she
would allow him to take care of Pepita.
Gwendolen wasn't quite sure at first, but when they arrived home her
aunt and Mrs Robertson thought it a good idea. For Mrs Robertson had
made up her mind to marry Lancelot, and Pepita was just the little girl,
she said, that she had always wanted.
We're going the way that Drake went,
We shall see what Drake's men saw,
A coppery curly cobra-snake,
And a scarlet-cloaked macaw.
For we're going the way that Drake went,
We're taking the jungle trail,
And we'll bring you a dark-eyed damsel home,
And a cock with a golden tail.
THE MOON-BOY'S FRIEND
[Illustration: The Lagoon]
XIII
THE MOON-BOY'S FRIEND
It was about a week after Marian and Gwendolen had arrived home from
Porto Blanco that Uncle Joe suddenly asked Cuthbert and Doris to spend a
fortnight with him at Redington-on-Sea. It was not the sort of town that
Uncle Joe liked, because it was full of big houses and glittering
hotels; and most of the people in it wore expensive clothes, and it had
a long pier, with a theatre at the end. But he always went there in the
first week of August, when Mr Parker took his annual holiday, so that he
could visit an old friend of his, who had lodgings on the Marine Parade.
This old friend was called Colonel Stookley, and he had lost both his
legs as the result of wounds; and Uncle Joe generally took rooms next
door and played chess with him every evening. He had been very brave,
but was now rather wheezy, besides having something wrong with his
liver; and as he had lost most of his friends he was always glad to see
Uncle Joe. Generally Uncle Joe went to see him alone, so that he could
be with him most of the day; but this year he thought that Cuthbert
needed a change, and he asked Doris, because Marian had just had a
voyage. At first they were afraid that they would have to take their
best clothes, but Uncle Joe said that he didn't mind. So long as they
brushed their teeth every day they could wear what they liked, he said,
and they could paddle and swim as much as they pleased.
So they met Uncle Joe at the station at eleven o'clock on the 3rd of
August, and a couple of hours later they were having lunch with him in
the big dining-car of the express. Through the windows, as they rocked
along, trying their best not to spill their soup, they could see the
harvesters at work in the fields, and ribbons of flowers as they crashed
through the little stations; and a couple of hours after that, where
some hills had broken apart, Doris was the first of them to see a stitch
of blue; and by half-past four they were talking to the landlady of
number 70 Marine Parade.
This was next door to where Colonel Stookley lodged, and the landlady's
name was Mrs Bodkin; and she gave Doris a kiss, and said that she was
tall for her age and that Cuthbert's cheeks would soon have some roses
in them. Then she showed them their bedrooms, which were at the top of
the house, looking out to sea over the esplanade; and they found that
they could talk to each other out of the windows and watch the people in
the gardens below.
These were very trim gardens, like the garden in Bellington Square,
separated by railings from the flagged esplanade; and beyond the
esplanade there were terraces of pebbles, crumbling into a stretch of
hard, wet sand.
As it was tea-time there were not many people about; but by six o'clock
there were people everywhere--people in the gardens, listening to the
band, and looking sideways at each other's clothes; people on the
esplanade, sauntering up and down, and saying how-do-you-do to their
friends; people on the pier staring through telescopes, and people on
the beach reading magazines, and people on the sands building castles or
paddling with their children on the fringe of the sea. The tide was so
low that nobody was bathing, and weed-capped rocks stood out of the
water; and after they had paddled a little Doris suggested that they
should go and listen to the pierrots.
This was the hour--just before the children's bedtime, and before the
grown-up people went home to dinner--when the pierrots and
beach-entertainers were all at their busiest, trying to earn money. Upon
a wooden platform, with three chairs and a piano, two men and two girls
were singing and dancing; and a hundred yards away from them, on a
similar sort of stand, there were three banjo-players with blackened
faces. But there were such crowds round each of these platforms that
Cuthbert and Doris couldn't get near them; and there was a conjurer, a
little farther on, who seemed to be even more popular. They watched him
for a minute or two, and saw the people raining pennies on him, but they
were too far away to be able to see his tricks; and then they saw a
clown, farther along still, turning somersaults on the sand.
There were a few children round him, some of them with nurses, but the
people on the esplanade were taking very little notice of him; and by
the time that Cuthbert and Doris reached him, he had stopped
somersaulting and was wiping his forehead. Standing near him, dressed
like a gipsy, was a woman, who was evidently his wife, and sitting on
the sand was a queer-looking boy about fourteen who seemed to be their
son. The clown was dressed in a baggy sort of smock, tied round his
ankles with pink ribbon, and his face was white, with a crimson diamond
painted on the middle of each cheek. His lips had been coloured to make
them seem smiling, and he wore a wig of carroty hair, but his eyes were
tired, and underneath his wig they could see some of his own hair, which
was quite grey.
Then his wife brought a little box round, but none of the children
seemed to have any pennies, and the two or three grown-up people who had
been watching the performance turned aside without giving anything.
Cuthbert and Doris heard one of them say that it was a rotten show and
not worth a farthing; and then the old clown began to sing a song about
a cheese that climbed out of the window. Some of the nurses laughed a
little, but the children didn't understand it, and Cuthbert and Doris
thought it rather stupid, but the woman had noticed them and brought
them the box, and they each put a penny in it, though they didn't much
want to. Then the old clown and his wife pretended to have a quarrel,
and she kept knocking him down with an umbrella; but what interested
them most was the queer-looking boy, who kept laughing to himself and
playing with his fingers. Once or twice he got up and went straying
among the audience, and they could see his mother watching him rather
anxiously; and presently he came and talked to them and told them that
he was a moon-boy and that his name was Albert Hezekiah.
It was now nearly seven, and the tide was coming in, and there was
nobody left to watch the old clown, so his wife stopped hitting him with
the umbrella and helped him on with a shabby blue overcoat. Then they
emptied the pennies out of the box, and the old clown counted them in
the palm of his hand.
"Ten and a half," he said, "not much of a catch, old lady," and then
they looked round for Albert Hezekiah.
He was still talking to Cuthbert and Doris, and the old clown and his
wife came up to them. The woman spoke to Doris.
"Don't you be frightened," she said, and the old clown tapped his
forehead.
"He's a little bit touched," he said, "that's all, my dear. But he's a
good lad and he's quite harmless."
Then they said good-night, and the moon-boy shook hands with them and
told them that he liked them, because they had nice faces; and two or
three times during the next few days they saw him playing about near his
father and mother. Then one day they saw him alone, and he told them
that his father was ill in bed, and that his mother had sent for the
doctor, and that they had no money to pay the rent with. It seemed
rather funny to think of a clown being ill, but Doris and Cuthbert each
gave him sixpence, and he ran off singing, and they didn't see him
again till the last day of their holiday.
This was a bright hot day, and they had bathed in the morning, and then
Mrs Bodkin had cut them some sandwiches, and they had had their lunch on
the top of Capstan Beacon, which was a high hill about five miles away.
Then they had walked inland and had tea at a little village; and it was
toward dusk, just as they were reaching the town, that they saw the
moon-boy in the middle of a group of boys on a piece of waste land near
the gas-works. He was waving his arms and looking rather bewildered, and
the other boys were mocking him and singing a sort of song, "Loony,
loony, moon-boy; loony, loony, loo"; and when they came nearer they saw
that he was crying, and that one of the bigger boys was throwing stones
at him.
Doris was so angry that she could hardly speak, but she caught hold of
the boy who was throwing stones, and when he tried to hit her she
slapped his face and told him that he was the biggest coward that she
had ever seen. Then he tried to hit her again, but Cuthbert jumped in
front of her, and after a minute or two Cuthbert knocked him down; and
then the other boys ran away, after throwing stones at them and calling
them names.
"Little beasts," said Doris, "look what they've done," and Cuthbert saw
that they had cut the moon-boy's cheek. So Doris took out her
handkerchief and stopped the bleeding, and then they both took the
moon-boy home. He was so excited at first that he lost the way, but at
last he stopped in front of a little house; and in a back room they
found the old clown, sitting up in bed and trying to shave himself. His
wife was at the fireplace, frying some fish; and when they heard what
had happened to their son, they shook hands with Cuthbert and Doris and
thanked them over and over again.
"Luck's against us, you see," said the old clown. "We're getting past
work, and the people won't laugh at us. And this here boy of ours is all
that we have, and there's nobody else to look after him."
"Excepting one," said the moon-boy, and the old clown began to laugh.
"That's one of his crazes," he said. "He says that he has a friend who
comes and talks to him once a week."
"Out of the sea," said the boy. "He comes out of the sea. I never see
him except by the sea."
"Nor there either," said his mother, "if the truth was known." But when
Cuthbert and Doris said good-bye the moon-boy followed them into the
street and began speaking to them in a whisper.
"I tell you what," he said. "If you'll meet me to-night at ten o'clock
just by the lighthouse I'll show him to you, if you'll promise not to
laugh. Because if you laugh, he won't come."
For a moment they hesitated because they were pretty sure that Uncle Joe
wouldn't allow it; but then they decided that they needn't ask him, as
he would be sure to be playing chess with Colonel Stookley. So they
promised to be there, though they thought it very likely that the
moon-boy wouldn't come; and just before ten they were on the little
path that led from the town toward the lighthouse.
This was about a mile from the end of the esplanade, under a great cliff
called Gannet Head, and at low tide it was possible to reach the
lighthouse by climbing over some fifty yards of rocks. But the tide was
high to-night, and the little path that slanted down across the face of
the cliff came to an end upon a slab of rock not more than a foot above
the water. There was no moon, but the stars were so bright that the air
was full of a sort of sparkle; and the sea was so still that the water
beneath them hardly seemed to rise and fall. _Clup, clup_ it went, with
a lazy sort of sticky sound, like a piece of gum-paper flapping against
a post, and then slowly becoming unstuck again before doing it all once
more.
At first they could see nobody, but as they stood looking about them
they heard a soft whistle a little farther on; and there was the
moon-boy, with his arms round his knees, squatting on another ledge of
rock. This was broader and flatter than the one at the bottom of the
path, and a little higher above the water; and Cuthbert and Doris were
soon sitting beside him and wondering what was going to happen.
"Where's your friend?" asked Cuthbert.
The moon-boy touched his lips.
"_H'shh_," he said. "He'll be here in a minute. He was here half an hour
ago, and I told him all about you."
"But where's he gone?" said Doris.
The moon-boy shook his head.
"I don't know," he said. "He might be anywhere. He spends his life
pulling children out of the water. But nobody ever sees him except me."
Doris suddenly felt her heart beginning to beat quicker.
"Why, I believe I know him!" she said. "Is he a saint?"
The moon-boy nodded.
"Yes, he's a patron saint," he said. "He's the patron saint of water."
"Then I do know him," said Doris. "At least, I've heard of him, and I've
met his brother, St Uncus."
"This one's St William," said the moon-boy, "but he's generally known as
Fat Bill."
And then they heard a pant, and there, sitting beside them, was an
enormous man with a red face. Like his brother, he was nearly bald, but
he was about seven times as large, and he had blue eyes and a double
chin, and there was a big landing-net in his right hand.
"Good evening," he said, "pleased to meet you. I've heard about the girl
of you from my brother Uncus. And the boy of you I saw last year,
pulling a little nipper out of a stream."
Cuthbert blushed.
"That was young Liz," he said, "Beardy Ned's kid, but it was quite
easy."
"Maybe it was," said Fat Bill, "but, as it happened, you really helped
to save two nippers. You see, there was a kid, just at the same moment,
fell into a lagoon off Hotoneeta."
"What's Hotoneeta?" asked Cuthbert.
"Bit of an island," he said, "a hundred miles south of the equator."
He cleared his throat.
"Well, I couldn't save 'em both, because I was pulling a boy out of Lake
Windermere; and I was just going for Liz when I saw that you were after
her, so that I was able to land Blossom-blossom just in time."
"Was that her name?" asked Doris.
Fat Bill nodded.
"That's the English of it," he said. "But her people are savages."
Then he disappeared for a moment, and there was nothing but the
starlight and the _clup, clup_ of the water; and it was while he was
gone that there came into Doris's mind a wild but just possible idea.
She turned to Cuthbert.
"I tell you what," she said. "Why shouldn't he take us to Hotoneeta? I
expect he could somehow, if he really wanted to; and you _did_ help to
save Blossom-blossom."
Cuthbert considered.
"Well, of course he _might_," he said, and then Fat Bill was sitting
beside them again.
"Just been to Ohio," he said, "to a place called Columbus--kid fell into
a lake there--nobody by."
He laid down his landing-net and rubbed his hands.
"It's a hard life," he said, "being a saint."
But he looked so comfortable, sitting on the rock, with his fat thighs
spread out beneath him, that Doris was almost sure that he wouldn't
mind, and so she asked him if he would take them. He stroked his chin
for a moment and looked at her thoughtfully.
"Well, of course I _could_," he said, "though it would be rather
irregular. But Albert Hezekiah here would have to look after my
landing-net, because I've only got two hands."
So they all three of them looked at the moon-boy, and he promised to
take care of the landing-net; and then Fat Bill held out his hands, and
Cuthbert and Doris each took one of them. The moment they did so they
were, of course, in In-between Land, because that was where Fat Bill and
his brother lived; and the rocks looked ghostly, just like dream-rocks,
and they could see the moon-boy's soul, like a tiny flame. But the next
moment they were alone on a shore of the whitest sand that they had ever
seen, and the dawn was coming up over an enormous sea, stiller than
stillness and breathlessly blue. At their feet lay a shallow lagoon--or
at least it looked shallow--trembling with colour; and strange-petalled
weeds swung to and fro in it, and the silver-scaled fishes slid between
them.
It was so hot that they wanted to throw their clothes away, and the
jungle behind them was full of odours--sleepy odours, like the odours of
a medicine-chest--and nodding, red-lipped flowers. Leading from the
shore, between the walls of the jungle, was a narrow path of grass and
sand; and standing in the middle of it, still as an idol, was a little
dark-brown naked girl. Fat Bill had gone, but they knew that it was
Blossom-blossom, and then she gave a yell and fled from sight; and
Cuthbert and Doris couldn't help laughing as they began to explore the
rim of the lagoon.