crushed limes in a glass beside him in case he should awake with the
thirst of fever upon him. Then we made our way through the unnatural
gloom thrown by that menacing cloud. The river had risen so high that
the little bay which I have described at the end of the island had
become almost obliterated through the submerging of its flanking
peninsula. The great raft of driftwood, with the huge black tree in the
middle, was swaying up and down in the swollen current.
"That's one good thing a flood will do for us," said the Doctor. "It
carries away all the vegetable stuff which is brought down on to the
east end of the island. It came down with the freshet the other day, and
here it will stay until a flood sweeps it out into the main stream.
Well, here's our room, and here are some books and here is my tobacco
pouch, and we must try and put in the night as best we may."
By the light of our single lantern the great lonely room looked very
gaunt and dreary. Save for the piles of staves and heaps of hoops there
was absolutely nothing in it, with the exception of the mattress for the
Doctor, which had been laid in the corner. We made a couple of seats and
a table out of the staves, and settled down together for a long vigil.
Severall had brought a revolver for me and was himself armed with a
double-barrelled shot-gun. We loaded our weapons and laid them cocked
within reach of our hands. The little circle of light and the black
shadows arching over us were so melancholy that he went off to the
house, and returned with two candles. One side of the cooperage was
pierced, however, by several open windows, and it was only by screening
our lights behind staves that we could prevent them from being
extinguished.
The Doctor, who appeared to be a man of iron nerves, had settled down to
a book, but I observed that every now and then he laid it upon his knee,
and took an earnest look all round him. For my part, although I tried
once or twice to read, I found it impossible to concentrate my thoughts
upon the book. They would always wander back to this great empty silent
room, and to the sinister mystery which overshadowed it. I racked my
brains for some possible theory which would explain the disappearance of
these two men. There was the black fact that they were gone, and not the
least tittle of evidence as to why or whither. And here we were waiting
in the same place--waiting without an idea as to what we were waiting
for. I was right in saying that it was not a one-man job. It was trying
enough as it was, but no force upon earth would have kept me there
without a comrade.
What an endless, tedious night it was! Outside we heard the lapping and
gurgling of the great river, and the soughing of the rising wind.
Within, save for our breathing, the turning of the Doctor's pages, and
the high, shrill ping of an occasional mosquito, there was a heavy
silence. Once my heart sprang into my mouth as Severall's book suddenly
fell to the ground and he sprang to his feet with his eyes on one of the
windows.
"Did you see anything, Meldrum?"
"No. Did you?"
"Well, I had a vague sense of movement outside that window." He caught
up his gun and approached it. "No, there's nothing to be seen, and yet I
could have sworn that something passed slowly across it."
"A palm leaf, perhaps," said I, for the wind was growing stronger every
instant.
"Very likely," said he, and settled down to his book again, but his eyes
were for ever darting little suspicious glances up at the window. I
watched it also, but all was quiet outside.
And then suddenly our thoughts were turned into a new direction by the
bursting of the storm. A blinding flash was followed by a clap which
shook the building. Again and again came the vivid white glare with
thunder at the same instant, like the flash and roar of a monstrous
piece of artillery. And then down came the tropical rain, crashing and
rattling on the corrugated iron roofing of the cooperage. The big hollow
room boomed like a drum. From the darkness arose a strange mixture of
noises, a gurgling, splashing, tinkling, bubbling, washing,
dripping--every liquid sound that nature can produce from the thrashing
and swishing of the rain to the deep steady boom of the river. Hour
after hour the uproar grew louder and more sustained.
"My word," said Severall, "we are going to have the father of all the
floods this time. Well, here's the dawn coming at last and that is a
blessing. We've about exploded the third night superstition anyhow."
A grey light was stealing through the room, and there was the day upon
us in an instant. The rain had eased off, but the coffee-coloured river
was roaring past like a waterfall. Its power made me fear for the anchor
of the _Gamecock_.
"I must get aboard," said I. "If she drags she'll never be able to beat
up the river again."
"The island is as good as a breakwater," the Doctor answered. "I can
give you a cup of coffee if you will come up to the house."
I was chilled and miserable, so the suggestion was a welcome one. We
left the ill-omened cooperage with its mystery still unsolved, and we
splashed our way up to the house.
"There's the spirit lamp," said Severall. "If you would just put a light
to it, I will see how Walker feels this morning."
He left me, but was back in an instant with a dreadful face.
"He's gone!" he cried hoarsely.
The words sent a thrill of horror through me. I stood with the lamp in
my hand, glaring at him.
"Yes, he's gone!" he repeated. "Come and look!"
I followed him without a word, and the first thing that I saw as I
entered the bedroom was Walker himself lying huddled on his bed in the
grey flannel sleeping suit in which I had helped to dress him on the
night before.
"Not dead, surely!" I gasped.
The Doctor was terribly agitated. His hands were shaking like leaves in
the wind.
"He's been dead some hours."
"Was it fever?"
"Fever! Look at his foot!"
I glanced down and a cry of horror burst from my lips. One foot was not
merely dislocated, but was turned completely round in a most grotesque
contortion.
"Good God!" I cried. "What can have done this?"
Severall had laid his hand upon the dead man's chest.
"Feel here," he whispered.
I placed my hand at the same spot. There was no resistance. The body was
absolutely soft and limp. It was like pressing a sawdust doll.
"The breast-bone is gone," said Severall in the same awed whisper. "He's
broken to bits. Thank God that he had the laudanum. You can see by his
face that he died in his sleep."
"But who can have done this?"
"I've had about as much as I can stand," said the Doctor, wiping his
forehead. "I don't know that I'm a greater coward than my neighbors, but
this gets beyond me. If you're going out to the _Gamecock_----"
"Come on!" said I, and off we started. If we did not run it was because
each of us wished to keep up the last shadow of his self-respect before
the other. It was dangerous in a light canoe on that swollen river, but
we never paused to give the matter a thought. He bailing and I paddling
we kept her above water, and gained the deck of the yacht. There, with
two hundred yards of water between us and this cursed island we felt
that we were our own men once more.
"We'll go back in an hour or so," said he. "But we need a little time to
steady ourselves. I wouldn't have had the niggers see me as I was just
now for a year's salary."
"I've told the steward to prepare breakfast. Then we shall go back,"
said I. "But in God's name, Doctor Severall, what do you make of it
all?"
"It beats me--beats me clean. I've heard of Voodoo deviltry, and I've
laughed at it with the others. But that poor old Walker, a decent,
God-fearing, nineteenth-century, Primrose-League Englishman should go
under like this without a whole bone in his body--it's given me a shake,
I won't deny it. But look there, Meldrum, is that hand of yours mad or
drunk, or what is it?"
Old Patterson, the oldest man of my crew, and as steady as the Pyramids,
had been stationed in the bows with a boat-hook to fend off the drifting
logs which came sweeping down with the current. Now he stood with
crooked knees, glaring out in front of him, and one forefinger stabbing
furiously at the air.
"Look at it!" he yelled. "Look at it!"
And at the same instant we saw it.
A huge black trunk was coming down the river, its broad glistening back
just lapped by the water. And in front of it--about three feet in
front--arching upwards like the figure-head of a ship, there hung a
dreadful face, swaying slowly from side to side. It was flattened,
malignant, as large as a small beer-barrel, of a faded fungoid colour,
but the neck which supported it was mottled with a dull yellow and black
As it flew past the _Gamecock_ in the swirl of the waters I saw two
immense coils roll up out of some great hollow in the tree, and the
villainous head rose suddenly to the height of eight or ten feet,
looking with dull, skin-covered eyes at the yacht. An instant later the
tree had shot past us and was plunging with its horrible passenger
towards the Atlantic.
"What was it?" I cried.
"It is our fiend of the cooperage," said Dr. Severall, and he had become
in an instant the same bluff, self-confident man that he had been
before. "Yes, that is the devil who has been haunting our island. It is
the great python of the Gaboon."
I thought of the stories which I had heard all down the coast of the
monstrous constrictors of the interior, of their periodical appetite,
and of the murderous effects of their deadly squeeze. Then it all took
shape in my mind. There had been a freshet the week before. It had
brought down this huge hollow tree with its hideous occupant. Who knows
from what far distant tropical forest it may have come! It had been
stranded on the little east bay of the island. The cooperage had been
the nearest house. Twice with the return of its appetite it had carried
off the watchman. Last night it had doubtless come again, when Severall
had thought he saw something move at the window, but our lights had
driven it away. It had writhed onwards and had slain poor Walker in his
sleep.
"Why did it not carry him off?" I asked.
"The thunder and lightning must have scared the brute away. There's your
steward, Meldrum. The sooner we have breakfast and get back to the
island the better, or some of those niggers might think that we had been
frightened."
X
JELLAND'S VOYAGE
"Well," said our Anglo-Jap as we all drew up our chairs round the
smoking-room fire, "it's an old tale out yonder, and may have spilt over
into print for all I know. I don't want to turn this club-room into a
chestnut stall, but it is a long way to the Yellow Sea, and it is just
as likely that none of you have ever heard of the yawl _Matilda_, and of
what happened to Henry Jelland and Willy McEvoy aboard of her.
"The middle of the sixties was a stirring time out in Japan. That was
just after the Simonosaki bombardment, and before the Daimio affair.
There was a Tory party and there was a Liberal party among the natives,
and the question that they were wrangling over was whether the throats
of the foreigners should be cut or not. I tell you all, politics have
been tame to me since then. If you lived in a treaty port, you were
bound to wake up and take an interest in them. And to make it better,
the outsider had no way of knowing how the game was going. If the
opposition won it would not be a newspaper paragraph that would tell him
of it, but a good old Tory in a suit of chain mail, with a sword in each
hand, would drop in and let him know all about it in a single upper cut.
"Of course it makes men reckless when they are living on the edge of a
volcano like that. Just at first they are very jumpy, and then there
comes a time when they learn to enjoy life while they have it. I tell
you there's nothing makes life so beautiful as when the shadow of death
begins to fall across it. Time is too precious to be dawdled away then,
and a man lives every minute of it. That was the way with us in
Yokohama. There were many European places of business which had to go on
running, and the men who worked them made the place lively for seven
nights in the week.
"One of the heads of the European colony was Randolph Moore, the big
export merchant. His offices were in Yokohama, but he spent a good deal
of his time at his house up in Jeddo, which had only just been opened to
the trade. In his absence he used to leave his affairs in the hands of
his head clerk, Jelland, whom he knew to be a man of great energy and
resolution. But energy and resolution are two-edged things, you know,
and when they are used against you you don't appreciate them so much.
"It was gambling that set Jelland wrong. He was a little dark-eyed
fellow with black curly hair--more than three-quarters Celt, I should
imagine. Every night in the week you would see him in the same place, on
the left-hand side of the croupier at Matheson's _rouge et noir_ table.
For a long time he won, and lived in better style than his employer. And
then came a turn of luck, and he began to lose so that at the end of a
single week his partner and he were stone broke, without a dollar to
their names.
"This partner was a clerk in the employ of the same firm--a tall,
straw-haired young Englishman called McEvoy. He was a good boy enough at
the start, but he was clay in the hands of Jelland, who fashioned him
into a kind of weak model of himself. They were for ever on the prowl
together, but it was Jelland who led and McEvoy who followed. Lynch and
I and one or two others tried to show the youngster that he could come
to no good along that line, and when we were talking to him we could
win him round easily enough, but five minutes of Jelland would swing him
back again. It may have been animal magnetism or what you like, but the
little man could pull the big one along like a sixty-foot tug in front
of a full-rigged ship. Even when they had lost all their money they
would still take their places at the table and look on with shining eyes
when any one else was raking in the stamps.
"But one evening they could keep out of it no longer. Red had turned up
sixteen times running, and it was more than Jelland could bear. He
whispered to McEvoy, and then said a word to the croupier.
"'Certainly, Mr. Jelland; your cheque is as good as notes,' said he.
"Jelland scribbled a cheque and threw it on the black. The card was the
king of hearts, and the croupier raked in the little bit of paper.
Jelland grew angry, and McEvoy white. Another and a heavier cheque was
written and thrown on the table. The card was the nine of diamonds.
McEvoy leaned his head upon his hands and looked as if he would faint.
'By God!' growled Jelland, 'I won't be beat,' and he threw on a cheque
that covered the other two. The card was the deuce of hearts. A few
minutes later they were walking down the Bund, with the cool night-air
playing upon their fevered faces.
"'Of course you know what this means,' said Jelland, lighting a cheroot;
'we'll have to transfer some of the office money to our current account.
There's no occasion to make a fuss over it. Old Moore won't look over
the books before Easter. If we have any luck, we can easily replace it
before then.'
"'But if we have no luck?' faltered McEvoy.
"'Tut, man, we must take things as they come. You stick to me, and I'll
stick to you, and we'll pull through together. You shall sign the
cheques to-morrow night, and we shall see if your luck is better than
mine.'
"But if anything it was worse. When the pair rose from the table on the
following evening, they had spent over L5,000 of their employer's money.
But the resolute Jelland was as sanguine as ever.
"'We have a good nine weeks before us before the books will be
examined,' said he. 'We must play the game out, and it will all come
straight.'
"McEvoy returned to his rooms that night in an agony of shame and
remorse. When he was with Jelland he borrowed strength from him; but
alone he recognised the full danger of his position, and the vision of
his old white-capped mother in England, who had been so proud when he
had received his appointment, rose up before him to fill him with
loathing and madness. He was still tossing upon his sleepless couch when
his Japanese servant entered the bedroom. For an instant McEvoy thought
that the long-expected outbreak had come, and plunged for his revolver.
Then, with his heart in his mouth, he listened to the message which the
servant had brought.
"Jelland was downstairs, and wanted to see him.
"What on earth could he want at that hour of night? McEvoy dressed
hurriedly and rushed downstairs. His companion, with a set smile upon
his lips, which was belied by the ghastly pallor of his face, was
sitting in the dim light of a solitary candle, with a slip of paper in
his hands.
"'Sorry to knock you up, Willy,' said he. 'No eavesdroppers, I suppose?'
"McEvoy shook his head. He could not trust himself to speak.
"'Well, then, our little game is played out. This note was waiting for
me at home. It is from Moore, and says that he will be down on Monday
morning for an examination of the books. It leaves us in a tight place.'
"'Monday!' gasped McEvoy; 'to-day is Friday.'
"'Saturday, my son, and 3 A.M. We have not much time to turn round in.'
"'We are lost!' screamed McEvoy.
"'We soon will be, if you make such an infernal row,' said Jelland
harshly. 'Now do what I tell you, Willy, and we'll pull through yet.'
"'I will do anything--anything.'
"'That's better. Where's your whisky? It's a beastly time of the day to
have to get your back stiff, but there must be no softness with us, or
we are gone. First of all, I think there is something due to our
relations, don't you?'
"McEvoy stared.
"'We must stand or fall together, you know. Now I, for one, don't intend
to set my foot inside a felon's dock under any circumstances. D'ye see?
I'm ready to swear to that. Are you?'
"'What d'you mean?' asked McEvoy, shrinking back.
"'Why, man, we all have to die, and it's only the pressing of a
trigger. I swear that I shall never be taken alive. Will you? If you
don't, I leave you to your fate.'
"'All right. I'll do whatever you think best.'
"'You swear it?'
"'Yes.'
"'Well, mind, you must be as good as your word. Now we have two clear
days to get off in. The yawl _Matilda_ is on sale, and she has all her
fixings and plenty of tinned stuff aboard. We'll buy the lot to-morrow
morning, and whatever we want, and get away in her. But, first, we'll
clear all that is left in the office. There are 5,000 sovereigns in the
safe. After dark we'll get them aboard the yawl, and take our chance of
reaching California. There's no use hesitating, my son, for we have no
ghost of a look-in in any other direction. It's that or nothing.'
"'I'll do what you advise.'
"'All right; and mind you get a bright face on you to-morrow, for if
Moore gets the tip and comes before Monday, then----' He tapped the
side-pocket of his coat and looked across at his partner with eyes that
were full of a sinister meaning.
"All went well with their plans next day. The _Matilda_ was bought
without difficulty; and, though she was a tiny craft for so long a
voyage, had she been larger two men could not have hoped to manage her.
She was stocked with water during the day, and after dark the two clerks
brought down the money from the office and stowed it in the hold. Before
midnight they had collected all their own possessions without exciting
suspicion, and at two in the morning they left their moorings and stole
quietly out from among the shipping. They were seen, of course, and were
set down as keen yachtsmen who were on for a good long Sunday cruise;
but there was no one who dreamed that that cruise would only end either
on the American coast or at the bottom of the North Pacific Ocean.
Straining and hauling, they got their mainsail up and set their foresail
and jib. There was a slight breeze from the south-east, and the little
craft went dipping along upon her way. Seven miles from land, however,
the wind fell away and they lay becalmed, rising and falling on the long
swell of a glassy sea. All Sunday they did not make a mile, and in the
evening Yokohama still lay along the horizon.
"On Monday morning down came Randolph Moore from Jeddo, and made
straight for the offices. He had had the tip from some one that his
clerks had been spreading themselves a bit, and that had made him come
down out of his usual routine; but when he reached his place and found
the three juniors waiting in the street with their hands in their
pockets he knew that the matter was serious.
"'What's this?' he asked. He was a man of action, and a nasty chap to
deal with when he had his topmasts lowered.
"'We can't get in,' said the clerks.
"Where is Mr. Jelland?'
"'He has not come to-day.'
"'And Mr. McEvoy?'
"'He has not come either.'
"Randolph Moore looked serious. 'We must have the door down,' said he.
"They don't build houses very solid in that land of earthquakes, and in
a brace of shakes they were all in the office. Of course, the thing told
its own story. The safe was open, the money gone, and the clerks fled.
Their employer lost no time in talk.
"'Where were they seen last?'
"'On Saturday they bought the _Matilda_ and started for a cruise.'
"Saturday! The matter seemed hopeless if they had got two days' start.
But there was still the shadow of a chance. He rushed to the beach and
swept the ocean with his glasses.
"'My God!' he cried. 'There's the _Matilda_ out yonder. I know her by
the rake of her mast. I have my hand upon the villains after all!'
"But there was a hitch even then. No boat had steam up, and the eager
merchant had not patience to wait. Clouds were banking up along the
haunch of the hills, and there was every sign of an approaching change
of weather. A police boat was ready with ten armed men in her, and
Randolph Moore himself took the tiller as she shot out in pursuit of the
becalmed yawl.
"Jelland and McEvoy, waiting wearily for the breeze which never came,
saw the dark speck which sprang out from the shadow of the land and grew
larger with every swish of the oars. As she drew nearer, they could see
also that she was packed with men, and the gleam of weapons told what
manner of men they were. Jelland stood leaning against the tiller, and
he looked at the threatening sky, the limp sails, and the approaching
boat.
"'It's a case with us, Willy,' said he. 'By the Lord, we are two most
unlucky devils, for there's wind in that sky, and another hour would
have brought it to us.'
"McEvoy groaned.
"'There's no good softening over it, my lad,' said Jelland. 'It's the
police boat right enough, and there's old Moore driving them to row like
hell. It'll be a ten-dollar job for every man of them.'
"Willy McEvoy crouched against the side with his knees on the deck. 'My
mother! my poor old mother!' he sobbed.
"'She'll never hear that you have been in the dock anyway,' said
Jelland. 'My people never did much for me, but I will do that much for
them. It's no good, Mac. We can chuck our hands. God bless you, old man!
Here's the pistol!'
"He cocked the revolver, and held the butt towards the youngster. But
the other shrunk away from it with little gasps and cries. Jelland
glanced at the approaching boat. It was not more than a few hundred
yards away.
"'There's no time for nonsense,' said he. 'Damn it! man, what's the use
of flinching? You swore it!'
"'No, no, Jelland!'
"'Well, anyhow, I swore that neither of us should be taken. Will you do
it?'
"'I can't! I can't!'
"'Then I will for you.'
"The rowers in the boat saw him lean forwards, they heard two pistol
shots, they saw him double himself across the tiller, and then, before
the smoke had lifted, they found that they had something else to think
of.
"For at that instant the storm broke--one of those short sudden squalls
which are common in these seas. The _Matilda_ heeled over, her sails
bellied out, she plunged her lee-rail into a wave, and was off like a
frightened deer. Jelland's body had jammed the helm, and she kept a
course right before the wind, and fluttered away over the rising sea
like a blown piece of paper. The rowers worked frantically, but the yawl
still drew a head, and in five minutes it had plunged into the storm
wrack never to be seen again by mortal eye. The boat put back, and
reached Yokohama with the water washing half-way up to the thwarts.
"And that was how it came that the yawl _Matilda_, with a cargo of five
thousand pounds and a crew of two dead young men, set sail across the
Pacific Ocean. What the end of Jelland's voyage may have been no man
knows. He may have foundered in that gale, or he may have been picked up
by some canny merchant-man, who stuck to the bullion and kept his mouth
shut, or he may still be cruising in that vast waste of waters, blown
north to the Behring Sea, or south to the Malay Islands. It's better to
leave it unfinished than to spoil a true story by inventing a tag to
it."
XI