WE GO ASHORE AND LEARN STRANGE THINGS
I have told how it came about that I sailed for Ken's Island, and now I
shall tell what happened when I went ashore to find Ruth Bellenden.
We put off from the ship at six bells in the morning watch. Dolly Venn,
who was rated as fourth officer, was with me in the launch, and Harry
Doe, the boatswain, at the tiller. I left Mister Jacob on the bridge,
and gave him my orders to stand in-shore as near as might be, and to
look for my coming at sunset--no later. "Whatever passes," said I, "the
night will find me on board again. I trust to bring you good news,
Mister Jacob--the best news."
"Which would be that we were to 'bout ship and home again," says he;
and that I did not contradict.
Now, we were to the westward of the island when we put off, and neither
my glass nor the others showed any good landing there. As the launch
drew in towards the cliffs I began to get the lie of the place more
clearly; and especially of what I call the mainland, which was
wonderfully fresh and green in the sunlight and seemed to have some of
the tropic luxuriance of more southern islands. About four miles long,
I judged it to be, from the high black rock to which it rose at the
southward point, to the low dog's-nosed reef which defended it to the
north. Trees I could see, palms and that kind, and ripe green grasses
on a stretch of real down-like land; but the cliffs themselves were
steep and unpromising, and the closer we drew the less I liked the look
of it.
"Dolly, my lad," I said at last, "you were the wise one, after all.
Yon's no shore for an honest man; he being made like a man and not like
an eagle. Let's try the starboard tack and see what luck will send us."
We headed the launch almost due south, and began to round the headland.
The men were elated, they didn't know at what; Dolly Venn had a boy's
delight in the difficulty.
"An ugly shore, sir," he said, pleased at my compliment. "A very ugly
shore. It would be a bad night which found a ship in these parts and no
better light than the fool's beacon we saw yesterday."
"As true as the parson's word," said I, "but, ugly or beautiful, I'll
be up on those heights before twelve o'clock if I have to swim ashore.
And speaking of that," said I, "there are men up yonder, or I'm a
Dutchman!" Well, he clapped his glass to his eye and searched the green
grass land as I had done; but the light was overstrong and the cliff
quickly shut the view from us, so that we found ourselves presently in
the loom of vast black rocks, with the tide running like a whirlpool,
and a great sword-fish reef a mile from the shore, perhaps, to catch
any fool that didn't want sea room. I took the tiller myself from this
point, and standing well out I brought the launch round gingerly
enough, but the water was deep and good once we were on the lee side;
and no sooner did we head north again than I espied the cove and knew
where Ruth Bellenden had gone ashore.
"It's there, lad," said I, "yonder, where the sand sparkles. There'll
be a way up the cliff and good anchorage. No one but an Irishman would
buy an island without a harbour; you tell Mr. Bligh that when we go
aboard again."
"Mr. Bligh says he's only Irish on the mother's side, sir; that's what
makes him bighearted towards the women. He'll be dying to come ashore
if there are any petticoats hereabouts."
"They haven't much use for that same garment on the Pacific Islands,"
said I. "Peter can marry cheap here, if it's the milliners' bills he's
minding--but I doubt, lad, from the look of it, whether we'll find a
jewel in this port. It's a wild-looking place, to be sure it is."
Indeed, and it was. Viewed from the eastward sea, I call Ken's Island
the most fearsome place I have come across in all my fifteen years
afloat. Vast cliffs, black and green and crystal, rose up sheer from
the water in precipices for all the world like mighty steps. By here
and there, as the ground sloped away to the northward, there were
forests of teak (at least, I judged them to be that), pretty woods with
every kind of palm, green valleys and grassy pastures. The sands of the
cove were white as snow, and shone like so many precious stones pounded
up to make a sea beach. On the north side only was there barrenness--
for that seemed but a tongue of low land and black rock thrust straight
out into the sea. But elsewhere it was a spectacle to impress a man;
and I began, perhaps, to admit that Edmond Czerny had more than a
crank's whim in his mind when he took little Ruth Bellenden to such a
shore for her honeymoon. He had a fancy for wild places, said I, and
this was the very spot for him. But Miss Ruth, who had always been one
for the towns and cities and the bright things of life--what did she
think of it? I should learn that, if she were ashore yonder. Now, we
put straight in to the cove where the silver sand was, and no sooner
was I ashore than I espied a rickety wooden ladder rising almost
straight up to the cliff's head, which hereabouts was no more than
sixty feet high. Neither man nor beast was on the beach, nor did I make
out any sign of human habitation whatever. It was just a little sandy
bay, lone and desolate; but directly I slipped out of the launch I
discovered footprints leading to the ladder's foot, and I knew that men
had gone up before me, that very morning it must be, seeing that the
tide had ebbed and the sand was still wet. At another time I might have
asked myself why nobody came out to meet us, and why there was no
lookout for the island to hail a strange ship in the offing; but I was
too eager to go ashore, and, for that matter, had my feet on the sand
almost before the launch grounded.
"Do you, Dolly, come up with me," said I; "the others will stand by to
anchor until we come down again. If it's not in an hour, lads, go back
and get your dinners; but look for me at sunset anyway, for I've no
mind to sleep ashore, and that you may be sure of."
They took the orders and pushed the launch off. Dolly and I ran up the
crazy ladder and found ourselves at the cliff's head, but no better off
in the matter of seeing than we had been before. True, the launch
looked far down, like a toy ship in a big basin of blue water; we could
distinguish the sword-fish reef, as the lad called it, and other reefs
to the east and north, but the place we stood on was shut in by a black
wood of teak and blue ebony, and, save for the rustling of the great
leaves, we couldn't hear a sound. As for the path through the
plantation, that was covered with long, rank grass, and some pit or
other--I don't know what it was--gave a pungent, heavy odour which
didn't suit a seaman's lungs. I was set against the place from the
first--didn't like it, and told the lad as much.
"Dolly," said I, "the sooner we have a ship's planking under our feet
again the better for our constitutions. If there's a house in this
locality, the ladder is the road to it, unless one of Peter Bligh's
countrymen built it. Put your best foot foremost, my lad. We'll dine
early if we don't lunch late."
With this I struck the path through the wood and went straight on, not
listening to the lad's chatter nor making any myself. The shade was
welcome enough; there were pretty places for those that had eyes to see
them--waterfalls splashing down from the moss-grown rocks above; little
pools, dark and wonderfully blue; here and there a bit of green, which
might have been the lawn of a country house. But of dwelling or of
people I saw nothing, and to what the boy fancied that he saw I paid no
heed.
"You're dreaming it, young gentleman," said I, "for look now, who
should be afraid of two unarmed seamen, and why should any honest man
be ashamed to show his face? If there are men peeping behind the trees,
well, let them peep, and good luck go with them. It doesn't trouble me,
and I don't suppose it will take your appetite away. You aren't afraid
of them, surely?"
It was an unkind thing to have said, and the lad rightly turned upon
me.
"Why, sir," cried he, "I would never be afraid while I was with you."
"Proudly put, my boy, and a compliment I won't forget. What sort of men
did you say that they were?"
"One was old, with a goat's beard. He wore ragged breeches and a
seaman's blouse. I saw him directly we entered the wood. The others
were up in the hills above the waterfall. They carried rifles."
"Come, come, Dolly," exclaimed I. "Put them in Prussian blue at once,
and fly the German ensign. Rifles in a place like this--and two unarmed
strangers against them! Why should the rogues hide their beautiful
faces? If they would know all about us, what's to prevent them? Do we
look like highwaymen or honest fellows? Be sure, my lad, that the young
lady I am going to see wouldn't have any blacklegs about her house.
Ruth Bellenden's too clever for that. She'd send them about their
business quick enough, as she's sent many a one when I was the skipper
of her yacht. Did they tell you that, Dolly--that your skipper used to
sail the smartest schooner-yacht that ever flew the ensign----"
The boy looked up at me and admitted frankly that he knew something.
"They said the young lady owned the Manhattan, sir. I never asked much
about it. The men were fond of her, I believe."
"Adored her, lad. She was the daughter of Rupert Bellenden, who made a
mint of money by building the Western American Railroad, and afterwards
in the steel way. He was drowned at sea when the Elbe went down. His
son got the business, but the daughter took the house and fortune--at
least, the best part of it. She was always a rare one for the sea, and
owned a biggish boat in her father's time. When he died she bought the
Manhattan, more's the pity, for it carried her to Mediterranean ports,
and there she took up with the fiddler. He was a Chevalier or
something, and could look a woman through and through. What money he
had was made, the Lord knows where, not out of fiddling, I'll be bound,
for his was no music to set the tongue lilting. He'd been in the
Pacific a while, they say, and was a Jack-of-all-trades in America.
That's how he came across these islands, you may imagine--slap in the
sea-way to Yokohama as they are. There's been many a good ship ashore
on Ken's Island, lad, believe me, and there'll be many another. 'Tis no
likely place to bring a young wife to, and none but a madman would have
done it."
I told him all this just in a natural way, as one man speaking to
another of something which troubled his mind. Not that he made much of
it--how should he?--for there were a hundred things to look at, and his
eyes were here and there and everywhere; now up at the great black
rocks above us; now peering into a deep gorge, over which a little
wooden bridge carried us, just for all the world like a scaffold thrown
from tree to tree of the wood. It was a rare picture, I admit, and when
we came out of the thicket at last and saw the lower island spread
before us like a chart, with its fields of crimson flowers, its
waterfalls, its bits of pasture, and its blue seas beyond, a man might
well have stood to tell himself that Nature never made a fairer place.
For my part, I began to believe again that Edmond Czerny knew what he
was about when he built a house for Miss Ruth on such a spot; and I was
just about to tell the lad as much when a man came running up the path
and, hailing us in a loud voice, asked us where the devil we were going
to--or something not more civil. And, at this, I brought to and looked
him up and down and answered him as a seaman should.
"To the devil yourself," said I; "what's that to do with you, and what
may your name happen to be?"
He was a big man, dressed in blue serge, with a peak cap and a seaman's
blouse. He had a long brown beard and a pock-marked face, and he
carried a spy-glass under his arm. He had come up from the grassy
valley below--and there I first saw the roof of a low bungalow, and the
gardens about it. That was Ruth's home, I said, and this fellow was one
of Czerny's yacht hands.
"Not so fast, not so fast," cried he; "do you know that this is private
land, and you've no business ashore here?"
"Why," says I, "haven't we come ashore to see you, my beauty, and
doesn't the spectacle reward us? 'Bout ship," says I, "and have done
with it. My business is with your mistress, whom I knew before your
brother was hanged at 'Frisco."
He swore a big oath at this, and, I do believe, was half of the mind to
try which was the better man; but when he had looked down at the
gardens of the bungalow, and a white figure was plainly to be seen
there, he seemed to think better of it, and changed his tone entirely.
"Avast," cries he, with a bit of a laugh, "you're one of the right
sort, and no mistaking that! And where would you be from, and what
would you be wanting here?" he asks, grown civil as a bagman with a bit
of ribbon to sell.
"Shipmate," says I, "if I'm one of the right sort, my port's
Southampton and my flag's the ensign. Take me down to Mme. Czerny, whom
I see among the flower-beds yonder, and you shall know enough about me
in five minutes to bring the tears to your beautiful eyes. And come,"
says I, chaffing him, "are there any girls in this bit of a paradise?
If so," says I, "I should call 'em lucky when I look at you."
Well, he took it sourly enough, but I could see he was mighty curious
to hear more about me, and as we went down a winding path to the
bungalow in the valley he put many questions to me, and I tried to
answer them civilly. Like all seamen he had no silent wits of his own,
and every word he thought, that he must speak.
"The guv'nor's not here," he said; "gone to 'Frisco. Lucky for you, for
he don't like strangers. Aye," he goes on, "he's a wonderful man for
his own way; to be sure he is. You'll be aboard and away before sunset,
or you might see him. Take my advice and put about. The shore's
unwholesome," says he.
"By the looks of you," says I, "you've nothing more than jaundice, and
that I can put up with. As for your guv'nor, I remember him well when
he and I did the light fandango together in European ports. He was
always a wonder with the fiddle. My mistress could lead him like a
pug-dog. I don't doubt she's a bit of a hand at it still."
Now, this set him thinking, and he put two and two together, I suppose,
and knew pretty well who I was.
"You'll be Jasper Begg that sailed the lady's yacht Manhattan?" says
he. "Well, I've heard of you often, and from her own lips. She'll be
pleased to see you, right enough--though what the guv'nor might say is
another matter. You see," he went on, "this same island is a paradise,
sure as thunder; but it's lonely for women-kind, and your mistress, she
don't take to it kindly. Not that she's complaining, or anything of
that sort. A lady who has rings for her fingers and bells for her toes,
and all real precious, same as any duchess might wear, she don't
complain long. Why, my guv'nor could make his very teeth out of diamonds
and not miss 'em, come to that! But his missus is always plaguing him
to take her to Europe, and that game. As if he don't want a wife in his
own home, and not in another man's, which is sense, Mister Begg, though
it is spoke by a plain seaman."
I said, "Aye, aye," and held my tongue, knowing that he would go on
with it. We were almost down at the house now, and the cliffs stood
like a great cloud of solid rock, above which a loom of smoke was
floating. Dolly walked at my heels like a patient dog. My own feelings
are not for me to tell. I was going to see Ruth Bellenden again. Why,
she was there in yonder garden, and nothing between us but this great
hulking yellow boy, who took to buttonholing me as a parson buttonholes
his churchwarden when he wants a new grate in his drawing-room.
"Now," says he, standing before me as one who had half a mind to block
the road, "you be advised by me, Mister Begg, and cut this job short.
Don't you be listening to a woman's parley, for it's all nonsense. I've
done wrong to let you ashore, perhaps--perhaps I haven't; but, ashore
or afloat, it's my business to see that the guv'nor's orders is carried
out, and carried out they will be, one man or twenty agen 'em. Do you
take a plain word or do you not, Mister Begg?"
"I take whatever's going, and don't trouble about the sugar," says I;
and then, putting him aside, I lifted the latch of the garden gate, and
went in and saw Miss Ruth.