We were for the most part a queer lot out on that desolate southwest
African coast, in charge of the various trading stations that were
scattered along the coast, from the Gaboon River, past the mouth of the
mighty Congo, to the Portuguese city of St. Paul de Loanda. A mixture of
all sorts, especially bad sorts: broken-down clerks, men who could not
succeed anywhere else, sailors, youths, and some whose characters would
not have borne any investigation; and we very nearly all drank hard, and
those who didn’t drink hard took more than was good for them.
I don’t know exactly what induced me to go out there. I was young
for one thing, the country was unknown, the berth was vacant, and the
conditions of it easy.
Imagine a high rocky point or headland, stretching out sideways into
the sea, and at its base a small river winding into a country that
was seemingly a blank in regard to inhabitants or cultivation; a land
continuing for miles and miles, as far as the eye could see, one expanse
of long yellow grass, dotted here and there with groups of bastard
palms. In front of the headland rolled the lonely South Atlantic; and,
as if such conditions were not dispiriting enough to existence upon the
Point, there was yet another feature which at times gave the place a
still more ghastly look. A long way off the shore, the heaving surface
of the ocean began, in anything like bad weather, to break upon the
shoals of the coast. Viewed from the top of the rock, the sea at such
times looked, for at least two miles out, as if it were scored over with
lines of white foam; but lower down, near the beach, each roller could
be distinctly seen, and each roller had a curve of many feet, and was an
enormous mass of water that hurled itself shoreward until it curled and
broke.
When I first arrived on the Point there was, I may say, only one house
upon it, and that belonged to Messrs. Flint Brothers, of Liverpool. It
was occupied by one solitary man named Jackson; he had had an assistant,
but the assistant had died of fever, and I was sent to replace him.
Jackson was a man of fifty at least, who had been a sailor before he
had become an African trader. His face bore testimony to the winds
and weather it had encountered, and wore habitually a grave, if not
melancholy, expression. He was rough but kind to me, and though strict
was just, which was no common feature in an old African hand to one who
had just arrived on the coast.
He kept the factory--we called all houses on the coast factories--as
neat and clean as if it had been a ship. He had the floor of the portion
we dwelt in holystoned every week; and numberless little racks and
shelves were fitted up all over the house. The outside walls glittered
with paint, and the yard was swept clean every morning; and every
Sunday, at eight o’clock and sunset, the ensign was hoisted and lowered,
and an old cannon fired at the word of command. Order and rule were with
Jackson observed from habit, and were strictly enforced by him on all
the natives employed in the factory.
Although I have said the country looked as if uninhabited, there were
numerous villages hidden away in the long grass and brushwood, invisible
at a distance, being huts of thatch or mud, and not so high as the
grass among which they were placed. From these villages came most of our
servants, and also the middlemen, who acted as brokers between us, the
white men, and the negroes who brought ivory and gum and india-rubber
from the far interior for sale. Our trade was principally in ivory,
and when an unusually large number of elephants’ tusks arrived upon the
Point for sale, it would be crowded with Bushmen, strange and uncouth,
and hideously ugly, and armed, and then we would be very busy; for
sometimes as many as two hundred tusks would be brought to us at the
same time, and each of these had to be bargained for and paid for by
exchange of cotton cloths, guns, knives, powder, and a host of small
wares.
For some time after my arrival our factory, along with the others on
the coast belonging to Messrs. Flint Brothers, was very well supplied
by them with goods for the trade; but by degrees their shipments became
less frequent, and small when they did come. In spite of repeated
letters we could gain no reason from the firm for this fact, nor could
the other factories, and gradually we found ourselves with an empty
storehouse, and nearly all our goods gone. Then followed a weary
interval, during which we had nothing whatever to do, and day succeeded
day through the long hot season. It was now that I began to feel that
Jackson had become of late more silent and reserved with me than ever
he had been. I noticed, too, that he had contracted a habit of wandering
out to the extreme end of the Point, where he would sit for hours gazing
upon the ocean before him. In addition to this, he grew morose and
uncertain in his temper toward the natives, and sometimes he would fall
asleep in the evenings on a sofa, and talk to himself at such a rate
while asleep that I would grow frightened and wake him, when he would
stare about him for a little until he gathered consciousness, and then
he would stagger off to bed to fall asleep again almost immediately.
Also, his hands trembled much, and he began to lose flesh. All this
troubled me, for his own sake as well as my own, and I resolved to ask
him to see the doctor of the next mail-steamer that came. With this
idea I went one day to the end of the Point, and found him in his usual
attitude, seated on the long grass, looking seaward. He did not hear me
approach, and when I spoke he started to his feet, and demanded fiercely
why I disturbed him. I replied, as mildly as I could, for I was rather
afraid of the glittering look that was in his eyes, that I wished to ask
him if he did not feel ill.
He regarded me with a steady but softened glance for a little, and then
said:
“My lad, I thank you for your trouble; but I want no doctor. Do you
think I’m looking ill?”
“Indeed you are,” I answered, “ill and thin; and, do you know, I hear
you talk to yourself in your sleep nearly every night.”
“What do I say?” he asked eagerly.
“That I cannot tell,” I replied. “It is all rambling talk; the same
things over and over again, and nearly all about one person--Lucy.”
“Boy!” he cried out, as if in pain, or as if something had touched him
to the quick, “sit you down, and I’ll tell you why I think of her--she
was my wife.”
He moved nearer to the edge of the cliff, and we sat down, almost over
the restless sea beneath us.
“She lives in my memory,” he continued, speaking more to himself than
to me, and looking far out to the horizon, beneath which the setting
sun had begun to sink, “in spite of all I can do or think of to make
her appear base in my eyes. For she left me to go with another man--a
scoundrel. This was how it was,” he added, quickly: “I married her, and
thought her as pure as a flower; but I could not take her to sea with
me because I was only the mate of a vessel, so I left her among her
own friends, in the village where she was born. In a little cottage by
herself I settled her, comfortable and happy as I thought. God! how
she hung round my neck and sobbed when I went away the first time!
and yet--yet--within a year she left me.” And he stopped for several
minutes, resting his head upon his hands. “At first I could get no trace
of her,” he resumed. “Her friends knew nothing more of her than that
she had left the village suddenly. Gradually I found out the name of the
scoundrel who had seduced her away. He had bribed her friends so that
they were silent; but I overbribed them with the last money I had, and
I followed him and my wife on foot. I never found them, nor did I ever
know why she had deserted me for him. If I had only known the reason; if
I could have been told of my fault; if she had only written to say that
she was tired of me; that I was too old, too rough for her soft ways,--I
think I could have borne the heavy stroke the villain had dealt me
better. The end of my search was that I dropped down in the streets of
Liverpool, whither I thought I had tracked them, and was carried to
the hospital with brain-fever upon me. Two months afterward I came out
cured, and the sense of my loss was deadened within me, so that I
could go to sea again, which I did, before the mast, under the name of
Jackson, in a bark that traded to this coast here.” And the old sailor
rose to his feet and turned abruptly away, leaving me sitting alone.
I saw that he did not wish to be followed, so I stayed where I was and
watched the gray twilight creep over the face of the sea, and the night
quickly succeed to it. Not a cloud had been in the sky all day long, and
as the darkness increased the stars came out, until the whole heavens
were studded with glittering gems.
Suddenly, low down, close to the sea, a point of light flickered and
disappeared, shone again for a moment, wavered and went out, only to
reappear and shine steadily. “A steamer’s masthead light,” I thought,
and ran to the house to give the news; but Jackson had already seen
the light, and pronounced that she had anchored until the morning. At
daybreak there she was, dipping her sides to the swell of the sea as
it rolled beneath her. It was my duty to go off to her in one of the
surf-boats belonging to the factory; and so I scrambled down the cliff
to the little strip of smooth beach that served us for a landing-place.
When I arrived there I found that the white-crested breakers were
heavier than I had thought they would be. However, there was the boat
lying on the beach with its prow toward the waves, and round it were the
boat-boys with their loincloths girded, ready to start; so I clambered
into the stern, or rather--for the boat was shaped alike at stem and
stern--the end from which the steersman, or _patrao_, used his long oar.
With a shout the boys laid hold of the sides of the boat, and the next
moment it was dancing on the spent waves next to the beach. The patrao
kept its head steady, and the boys jumped in and seized the oars, and
began pulling with a will, standing up to their stroke. Slowly the
heavy craft gathered way, and approached a dark and unbroken roller that
hastened toward the beach. Then the patrao shouted to the crew, and they
lay on their oars, and the wave with a roar burst right in front of the
boat, sending the spray of its crest high above our heads.
“_Rema! rema forca!_” (“Row strongly!”) now shouted the patrao, speaking
Portuguese, as mostly all African coast natives do; and the crew gave
way. The next roller we had to meet in its strength; and save for the
steady force of the patrao’s oar, I believe it would have tossed us
aside and we would have been swept under its curving wall of water. As
it was, the good boat gave a mighty bound as it felt its force, and its
stem pitched high into the air as it slid down its broad back into the
deep.
Another and yet another wave were passed, and we could now see them
breaking behind us, shutting out the beach from view. Then the last
roller was overcome, and there was nothing but the long heave of the
deep sea to contend against. Presently we arrived at the steamer, whose
side towered above us--an iron wall.
A shout came to me, pitching and lurching with the boat far below, “Come
on board at once.” But to come on board was only to be done by watching
a chance as the boat rose on the top of a roller. Taking such a one, I
seized the side-ropes, swung a moment in mid-air, and the next was on
the streamer’s clean white deck. Before me stood a tall man with black
hair and whiskers and dark piercing eyes, who asked me if I was the
agent for Flint Brothers. I answered that the agent was on shore, and
that I was his assistant. Whereupon he informed me that he had been
appointed by the firm to liquidate all their stations and businesses on
the coast, and “he would be obliged by my getting his luggage into the
boat.” This was said in a peremptory sort of way, as if he had spoken to
a servant; and very much against the grain I obeyed his orders.
That the man was new to the coast was evident, and my consolation was
that he would be very soon sick of it and pretty well frightened before
he even got on shore, for the weather was freshening rapidly, a fact
of which he appeared to take no heed. Not so the boat-boys, who were
anxious to be off. At last we started, and I soon had my revenge. As
we drew near the shore the rollers became higher and higher, and I
perceived that my gentleman clutched the gunwale of the boat very
tightly, and when the first wave that showed signs of breaking overtook
us, he grew very white in the face until it had passed.
The next one or two breakers were small, much to his relief I could see,
though he said nothing. Before he had well recovered his equanimity,
however, a tremendous wave approached us somewhat suddenly. Appalled by
its threatening aspect, he sprang from his seat and seized the arm of
the patrao, who roughly shook him off.
“My God!” he cried, “we are swamped!” and for the moment it really
looked like it; but the patrao, with a dexterous sweep of his long oar,
turned the boat’s head toward the roller. It broke just as it reached
us, and gave us the benefit of its crest, which came in over the
topsides of the boat as it passed by, and deluged every one of us.
I laughed, although it was no laughing matter, at the plight the
liquidator was now in. He was changed in a moment from the spruce and
natty personage into a miserable and draggled being. From every part of
him the salt water was streaming, and the curl was completely taken out
of his whiskers. He could not speak from terror, which the boat-boys
soon saw, for none are quicker than negroes to detect signs of fear
in those whom they are accustomed to consider superior to themselves.
Familiar with the surf, and full of mischievous fun, they began to shout
and gesticulate with the settled purpose of making matters appear worse
than they were, and of enjoying the white man’s discomfiture,--all but
the patrao, who was an old hand, and on whom depended the safety of
us all. He kept a steady lookout seaward, and stood upright and firm,
grasping his oar with both hands. With him it was a point of honour to
bring the white men intrusted to his care safely through the surf.
We waited for more than half an hour, bow on, meeting each roller as it
came to us; and by the end of that time the unfortunate liquidator had
evidently given up all hope of ever reaching the shore. Luckily, the
worst was soon to pass. After one last tremendous wave there was a lull
for a few moments, and the patrao, who had watched for such a chance,
swiftly turned the boat round, and giving the word to the crew, they
pulled lustily toward the shore. In a few minutes we were again in
safety. The boat grounded on the beach, the oars were tossed into the
sea; the crew sprang overboard; some of them seized the new arrival; I
clambered on the back of the patrao; a crowd of negroes, who had been
waiting on the beach, laid hold of the tow-rope of the boat, and it and
we were landed simultaneously on the dry sand.
Once on shore Mr. Bransome, for that was the new man’s name, rapidly
recovered his presence of mind and manner, and, by way of covering his
past confusion, remarked that he supposed the surf was seldom so bad as
it then was. I replied in an offhand way, meaning to make fun of him,
that what he had passed through was nothing, and appealed to the patrao
to confirm what I had said. That negro, seeing the joke, grinned all
over his black face; and Mr. Bransome, perceiving that he was being
laughed at, snatched a good-sized stick from a native standing near, and
struck the patrao repeatedly over the back.
In vain Sooka, for that was the patrao’s name, protested, and demanded
to know what wrong thing he had done. The agent was furious, and
showered his blows upon the black. Equally in vain I shouted that Sooka
had done well by us, and that he, Mr. Bransome, was making an enemy of
a man who would have him now and then in his power. At length Sooka
took to his heels, and sure enough, when he had got a little way off, he
began to threaten vengeance for what he had received. I sympathised with
him, for I knew what a loss to his dignity it was to be beaten without
cause before his fellows, and I feared that Mr. Bransome would indeed be
sorry, sooner or later, for what he had done.
I now suggested to him, by way of diverting his thoughts from poor
Sooka, that standing on the beach in wet clothes was the very way to
catch the coast-fever straight off, and he instantly suffered himself to
be carried up the factory. There Jackson received him in a sort of
“who on earth are you?” manner; and Mr. Bransome, clearing his throat,
announced himself and his authority, adding that he intended to make the
factory a point of departure to all the others on the coast; then,
very abruptly, he requested Jackson to prepare quarters for him without
delay.
The change that came over Jackson’s face as he learned the quality of
the stranger and his requests was great. The old salt, who had been king
of his house and of the Point for so long a time, had evidently
never even thought of the probability of such an intrusion as was now
presented to him, and he was amazed at what he considered to be the
unwarrantable assurance of the stranger. However, he recovered himself
smartly, and asked the new man if he had any written credentials.
“Certainly,” replied he, pulling out a document all wet with salt water.
“Here is a letter from Messrs. Flint Brothers, of which, no doubt, you
will have a copy in your mail-bag.”
Jackson took the letter and opened it, and seemed to read it slowly to
himself. All at once he started, looked at the new agent, advanced a
step or two toward him, muttering, “Bransome, Bransome,” then stopped
and asked him in a strange constrained voice, “Is _your_ name Bransome?”
“Yes,” replied the latter, astonished at the old man’s question.
“I knew a Bransome once,” said Jackson, steadily, “and he was a
scoundrel.”
For a moment the two men looked at each other--Jackson with a gleam of
hatred in his eyes, while Bransome had a curiously frightened expression
on his face, which blanched slightly. But he quickly resumed his
composure and peremptory way, and said, “Show me a room; I must get
these wet things off me.”
As, however, he addressed himself this time to me rather than to
Jackson,--who, indeed, regarded him no longer, but stood with the letter
loose in his hand, looking at the floor of the room, as if in deep
meditation,--I showed him into my own room, where I ordered his trunks
to be brought. These, of course, were wet; but he found some things in
the middle of them that were not more than slightly damp, and with the
help of a pair of old canvas trousers of mine he managed to make his
appearance at dinner-time.
Jackson was not at the meal. He had left the house shortly after his
interview with the new agent, and had, I fancied, gone on one of his
solitary rambles. At any rate he did not return until late that night.
I thought Mr. Bransome seemed to be somewhat relieved when he saw
that the old man was not coming; and he became more affable than I had
expected him to be, and relinquished his arrogant style altogether when
he began to question me about Jackson--who he was? what had he been?
how long he had lived on the coast? To all which questions I returned
cautious answers, remembering that I was under a promise to the old man
not to repeat his story.
By the next morning, to my surprise, Jackson appeared to have become
reconciled to the fact that he had been superseded by a man who knew
nothing of the coast, and of his own accord he offered to tell Mr.
Bransome the clues to the letter-locks on the doors of the various
store-rooms; for we on the coast used none but letter-locks, which
are locks that do not require a key to open them. But Mr. Bransome
expressed, most politely, a wish that Jackson should consider himself
still in charge of the factory, at any rate until the whole estate of
the unfortunate Flint Brothers could be wound up; and he trusted that
his presence would make no difference to him.
This was a change, on the part of both men, from the manners of the
previous day; and yet I could not help thinking that each but ill
concealed his aversion to the other.
Months now slipped away, and Mr. Bransome was occupied in going up and
down the coast in a little steamer, shutting up factory after factory,
transferring their goods to ours, and getting himself much disliked by
all the Europeans under him, and hated by the natives, especially by
the boat-boys, who were a race or tribe by themselves, coming from one
particular part of the coast. He had, of course, been obliged to order
the dismissal of many of them, and this was one reason why they hated
him; but the chief cause was his treatment of Sooka, the patrao. That
man never forgave Mr. Bransome for beating him so unjustly; and the
news of the deed had travelled very quickly, as news does in savage
countries, so that I think nearly all of Sooka’s countrymen knew of the
act and resented it.
Mr. Bransome was quite unaware of the antipathy he had thus created
toward himself, except so far as Sooka was concerned; and him he never
employed when he had to go off to vessels or land from them, but always
went in the other boat belonging to the factory, which was steered by a
much younger negro. In addition to humbling Sooka in this way, Bransome
took the opportunity of disgracing him whenever he could do so.
Therefore, one day when two pieces of cloth from the cargo-room were
found in the boatmen’s huts, it was no surprise to me that Sooka was at
once fastened upon by Mr. Bransome as the thief who had stolen them,
and that he was tied to the flogging-post in the middle of the yard, and
sentenced to receive fifty lashes with the cat that was kept for such
a purpose, and all without any inquiry being made. In vain did the
unfortunate man protest his innocence. A swarthy Kroot-boy from Cape
Coast laid the cat on his brown shoulders right willingly, for he also
was an enemy of Sooka’s; and in a few minutes the poor fellow’s flesh
was cut and scored as if by a knife.
After the flogging was over Mr. Bransome amused himself by getting out
his rifle and firing fancy shots at Sooka, still tied to the post; that
is, he tried to put the bullets as close to the poor wretch as he could
without actually wounding him. To a negro, with his dread of firearms,
this was little short of absolute torture, and at each discharge Sooka
writhed and crouched as close to the ground as he could, while his
wide-opened eyes and mouth, and face of almost a slate colour, showed
how terribly frightened he was. To Mr. Bransome it appeared to be
fine sport, for he fired at least twenty shots at the man before he
shouldered his rifle and went indoors. Jackson said nothing to this
stupid exhibition of temper, but as soon as it was over he had Sooka
released; and I knew he attended to his wounds himself, and poured
friar’s balsam into them, and covered his back with a soft shirt--for
all which, no doubt, the negro was afterward grateful. Whether Mr.
Bransome got to know of this, and was offended at it, I do not know, but
shortly afterward he ceased to live with us.
There was between the factory and the sea, and a little to the right of
the former, a small wooden cottage which had been allowed to fall into a
dilapidated state from want of some one to live in it. This Mr. Bransome
gave orders to the native carpenters to repair and make weather-tight;
and when they had done so, he caused a quantity of furniture to be
brought from St. Paul de Loanda and placed within in it. Then he
transferred himself and his baggage to the cottage.
Jackson displayed complete indifference to this change on the part of
the agent. In fact, there had been, ever since the arrival of the latter
upon the Point, and in spite of apparent friendliness, a perceptible
breach, widening daily, between the two men. As to the reason of this I
had my own suspicions, for I had made the discovery that Jackson had for
some time past been drinking very heavily.
In addition to the brandy which we white men had for our own use, I had,
to my horror, found out that he was secretly drinking the coarse
and fiery rum that was sold to the natives; and as I remembered the
mutterings and moanings that had formerly alarmed me, I wondered that I
had not guessed the cause of them at the time; but until the arrival of
Mr. Bransome, Jackson had always kept charge of the spirits himself, and
he was such a secret old fellow that there was no knowing what he had
then taken. Now that I was aware of his failing, I was very sorry for
the old sailor; for on such a coast and in such a climate there was only
one end to it; and although I could not actually prevent him from taking
the liquor, I resolved to watch him, and if such symptoms as I had seen
before again appeared, to tell Mr. Bransome of them at all hazards. But
I was too late to prevent what speedily followed my discovery. It had
come about that the same mail-steamer that had brought out Mr. Bransome
had again anchored off the Point, and again the weather was coarse and
lowering. A stiff breeze had blown for some days, which made the rollers
worse than they had been for a long while. Both Mr. Bransome and Jackson
watched the weather with eager looks, but each was differently affected
by it. Bransome appeared to be anxious and nervous, while Jackson was
excited, and paced up and down the veranda, and kept, strange to say,
for it was contrary to his late habit, a watch upon Bransome’s every
movement.
Every now and then, too, he would rub his hands together as if in eager
expectation, and would chuckle to himself as he glanced seaward. Of his
own accord he gave orders to Sooka to get both the surf-boats ready for
launching, and to make the boys put on their newest loin-cloths; and
then, when everything was in readiness, he asked Bransome if he was
going off to the steamer.
“I fear I must,” said Bransome; “but I--I don’t like the look of those
cursed rollers.”
At this Jackson laughed, and said something about “being afraid of very
little.”
“The beach is perfectly good,” he added; “Sooka knows, and Sooka is the
oldest patrao on the Point.”
And Sooka, who was standing by, made a low obeisance to the agent, and
said that “the beach lived for well,” which was his way of expressing in
English that the sea was not heavy.
At that moment a gun was fired from the steamer as a signal to be quick,
and Bransome said, “I will go, but not in that black blackguard’s boat;
it need not come,” and he went down to the beach.
It was one of Jackson’s rules that when a boat went through the surf
there should be some one to watch it, so I walked to the end of the
Point to see the agent put off. He got away safely; and I, seeing
Sooka’s boat lying on the beach, and thinking that it would be as well
to have it hauled up under the boat-shed, was on the point of returning
to the factory to give the necessary order, when, to my surprise, I saw
the boat’s crew rush down the beach to the boat and begin to push it
toward the sea.
I waved my arms as a signal to them to stop, but they paid no attention
to me; and I saw them run the boat into the water, jump into her, and
pull off, all singing a song to their stroke in their own language,
the sound of which came faintly up to the top of the Point. “Stupid
fellows!” I muttered to myself, “they might have known that the boat
was not wanted;” and I was again about to turn away, when I was suddenly
seized from behind, and carried to the very edge of the cliff, and then
as suddenly released.
I sprang to one side, and turning round saw Jackson, with a look of such
savage fury on his face that I retreated a step or two in astonishment
at him. He perceived my alarm, and burst out into a fit of laughter,
which, instead of reassuring me, had the opposite effect, it was
so demoniacal in character. “Ha! ha!” he laughed again, “are you
frightened?” and advancing toward me, he put his face close to mine,
peering into it with bloodshot eyes, while his breath, reeking of
spirits, poured into my nostrils.
Involuntarily I put up my arm to keep him off. He clutched it, and,
pointing with his other hand to the sea, whispered hoarsely, “What do
you hear of the surf? Will the breakers be heavier before sundown? See
how they begin to curve! Listen how they already thunder, thunder,
on the beach! I tell you they are impatient--they seek some one,” he
shouted. “Do you know,” he continued, lowering his voice again, and
speaking almost confidentially, “sooner or later some one is drowned
upon that bar?” And even as he spoke a fresh line of breakers arose from
the deep, farther out than any had been before. This much I observed,
but I was too greatly unnerved by the strange manner of Jackson to pay
further heed to the sea. It had flashed across my mind that he was on
the verge of an attack of delirium tremens, from the effects of the
liquor he had been consuming for so long, and the problem was to get him
back to the house quietly.
Suddenly a thought struck me. Putting my arm within his, I said,
as coolly as I could, “Never mind the sea, Jackson; let us have a
_matabicho_” (our local expression for a “drink”). He took the bait, and
came away quietly enough to the house. Once there, I enticed him into
the dining-room, and shutting to the door quickly, I locked it on the
outside, resolving to keep him there until Mr. Bransome should return;
for, being alone, I was afraid of him.
Then I went back to the end of the Point to look for the return of the
two boats. When I reached it I saw that the rollers had increased
in size in the short time that I had been absent, and that they were
breaking, one after another, as fast as they could come shoreward; not
pygmy waves, but great walls of water along their huge length before
they fell.
A surf such as I had never yet seen had arisen. I stood and anxiously
watched through a glass the boats at the steamer’s side, and at length,
to my relief, I saw one of them leave her, but as it came near I saw, to
my surprise, that Mr. Bransome was not in the boat, and that it was not
the one that Sooka steered. Quickly it was overtaken by the breakers,
but escaped their power, and came inshore on the back of a majestic
roller that did not break until it was close to the beach, where the
boat was in safety.
Not without vague apprehension at his imprudence, but still not
anticipating any actual harm from it, I thought that Mr. Bransome had
chosen to come back in Sooka’s boat, and I waited and waited to see _it_
return, although the daylight had now so waned that I could no longer
distinguish what was going on alongside the steamer. At last I caught
sight of the boat, a white speck upon the waters, and, just as it
entered upon the dangerous part of the bar, I discerned to my infinite
amazement, that two figures were seated in the stern--a man and a
woman--a white woman; I could see her dress fluttering in the wind, and
Sooka’s black figure standing behind her.
On came the boat, impelled by the swift-flowing seas, for a quarter of
an hour it was tossed on the crests of the waves. Again and again it
rose and sank with them as they came rolling in, but somehow, after
a little further time, it seemed to me that it did not make such way
toward the shore as it should have done.
I lifted the glass to my eyes, and I saw that the boys were hardly
pulling at all, though the boat was not close to the rocks that were
near the cliff. Nor did Sooka seem to be conscious of a huge roller that
was swiftly approaching him. In my excitement I was just on the point of
shouting to warn those in the boat of their danger, although I knew that
they could not understand what I might say, when I saw Jackson standing
on the edge of the cliff, a little way off, dressed in his shirt and
trousers only. He had escaped from the house! He perceived that I saw
him, and came running up on me, and I threw myself on my guard. However,
he did not attempt to touch me, but stopped and cried:
“Did I not tell you that somebody would be drowned by those waves? Watch
that boat! watch it! it is doomed; and the scoundrel, the villain, who
is in it will never reach the shore alive!” and he hissed the last word
through his clenched teeth.
“Good God, Jackson!” I said, “don’t say that! Look, there is a white
woman in the boat!”
At the words his jaw dropped, his form, which a moment before had swayed
with excitement, became rigid, and his eyes stared at me as if he knew,
but comprehended not, what I had said. Then he slowly turned his face
toward the sea, and, as he did so, the mighty breaker that had been
coming up astern of the boat curled over it. For a moment or two it
rushed forward, a solid body of water, carrying the boat with it; and
in those moments I saw, to my horror, Sooka give one sweep with his oar,
which threw the boat’s side toward the roller. I saw the boat-boys leap
clear of the boat into the surf; I saw the agonised faces of the man and
the woman upturned to the wave above them, and then the billow broke,
and nothing was seen but a sheet of frothy water. The boat and those in
it had disappeared. For the crew I had little concern--I knew they would
come ashore safely enough; but for Mr. Bransome and the woman,
whoever she was, there was little hope. They had not had time to throw
themselves into the sea before the boat had capsized, and their clothing
would sink them in such a surf, even if they had escaped being crushed
by the boat. Besides, I feared there had been some foul play on the part
of Sooka. Quickly as he had done it, I had seen him with his oar put the
boat beyond the possibility of escaping from the wave, and I remembered
how he had been treated by Bransome.
With such thoughts I ran along the cliff to the pathway that led down to
the beach; and as I ran, I saw Jackson running before me, not steadily
or rightly, but heavily, and swaying from side to side as he went.
Quickly I passed him, but he gave no sign that he knew any one was near
him; and as I leaped down on to the first ledge of rock below me, I saw
that he was not following me, but had disappeared among the brushwood.
When I got down to the beach, I found that the boat’s crew had reached
the shore in safety, but of the two passengers nothing had been seen.
The capsized boat was sometimes visible as it lifted on the rollers,
but through my glass I saw that no one was clinging to it. I called for
Sooka, but Sooka was missing. Every one had seen him land, but he had
disappeared mysteriously. In vain I questioned the other boys as to the
cause of the disaster. The only answer I could get out of them was an
appeal to look to the sea and judge for myself. The woman was a
white woman from the big ship, was all they could say about her; and,
negro-like, they evidently considered the loss of a woman or so of very
little consequence.
All I could do was to set a watch along the beach to look for the bodies
when they should be washed ashore, and this done, I returned to the
factory. My next desire was to find Sooka. He could hardly have gone
far, so I sent for a runner to take a message to the native king under
whose protection we on the Point were, and after whom the Point was
called, and who was bound to find the missing man for me if he could, or
if he had not been bribed to let him pass.
In my sorrow at what had happened, and in my doubt as to the cause of
it, I had forgotten all about Jackson; but after I had despatched
my messenger to the king, I went to look for him. I discovered him
crouching in a corner of his own bedroom in the dark.
“Are they found?” he asked, in a voice so hollow and broken that I
hardly knew it; and before I could answer him, he whispered to himself,
“No, no; they are drowned--drowned.”
I tried to lead him into the lighted dining-room, but he only crouched
the closer to his corner. At length by the promise of the ever-potent
temptation, liquor, I got him to leave the room. He could scarcely walk,
though, now, and he trembled so violently that I was glad to give him
part of a bottle of brandy that I had by me. He filled a tumbler half
full of the spirits, and drank it off. This put strength into him, and
for a little he was calm; but as he again and again applied himself to
the bottle, he became drunk, and swore at me for my impudence in giving
orders without his sanction. On this I tried to take the bottle from
him, but he clutched it so firmly that I had to let it go; whereupon he
immediately put it to his lips and swallowed the rest of the liquor that
was in it. After which he gave a chuckle, and staggered to a couch, on
which he tumbled, and lay with his eyes open for a long while. At last
he fell asleep, but I was too nervous to do likewise, and sat watching
him the most of the night; at least, when I awoke it was daylight, and
it seemed to me that I had been asleep for a few minutes.
Jackson was still lying on the couch, and his face was calm and peaceful
as he softly breathed. The morning, too, was fine, and as I walked on to
the veranda I saw the sea sparkling in the sunlight, and there was not
a sound from it save a far-off and drowsy murmur. Not a sign remained
on its broad surface of the wrath of the day before. It was wonderfully
calm. Lying here and there on the veranda, rolled up in their clothes,
were the servants of the factory, sleeping soundly on the hard planks.
Presently, as the sun rose in the heavens and warmed the air, the place
began to show signs of life, and one of the watch that I had set on the
beach came running across the yard to tell me that the bodies had come
ashore.
Immediately upon hearing this I called the hammock-bearers together,
and going down to the beach, I went a considerable way along it toward
a dark spot, which I knew to be a group of natives. On coming up to the
group, I found at least fifty negroes collected round the drowned man
and woman, all chattering and squabbling among themselves, and probably
over the plunder, for I saw that the bodies had been stripped to
their underclothing. Rushing into the crowd, with the aid of a stick
I dispersed it, so far as to make the wretches stand back. The man, of
course, was Bransome, there was no doubt as to that, although he had
received a terrible blow on the left temple, most likely from the
pointed stem of the boat as it had toppled over upon him, and his face
was distorted and twisted to one side. The woman was evidently English,
young and pretty, although her long hair, heavy and wet, was polluted by
the sand that stuck to it, and her half-open eyes were filled with
the same. On her lips there lingered a slight smile. She was of middle
height, of slender figure, and delicately nurtured, as the small
bare feet and little hands showed. As I looked at the latter I saw a
wedding-ring on her finger, and I thought, “It is Bransome’s wife.” I
tried to take the ring away, but it would not come off her finger--which
I might have known, because the natives would not have left it there
had they been able to remove it. I then ordered the bearers to lay the
bodies in the hammocks; and that done, our little party wended its way
along the shore homeward, while the natives I had dispersed followed one
after another in African fashion.
Arrived at the factory, I bade the boys place the bodies side by side on
a spare bed in an empty room, and then I sent them to dig a grave in the
little burial-ground on the Point, where two or three worm-eaten wooden
crosses marked the resting-places of former agents of Messrs. Flint
Brothers.
As quick interment was necessary in such a climate, even on that very
day, I went to call Jackson in order that he might perform the duty
that was his--that of reading the burial service over the dead, and of
sealing up the desk and effects of Mr. Bransome. But Jackson was not in
the factory. I guessed, however, where he was; and sure enough I found
him in his accustomed haunt at the end of the Point. The moment he saw
me he tried to hide himself among the brushwood, but I was too quick for
him, and spied him as he crouched behind a dwarf palm.
“I know, I know,” he cried, as I ran up to him; “I saw you come along
the beach. Bury them, bury them out of sight.”
“Come, Mr. Jackson,” I replied, “it isn’t fair to put all the trouble on
to me. I am sure I have had enough of the weariness and anxiety of this
sad business. You must take your share of it. I want you to read the
service for the dead over them.”
“No, no,” he almost shrieked; “bury them quick; never mind me. Put them
out of sight.”
“I will not,” I said, resolutely. “For your own sake you must, at any
rate, view the bodies.”
“They have not been murdered?” He replied. But the startled look with
which I received the suggestion his words implied seemed to make him
recollect himself, for he rose and took my arm without saying more. As
he did so, I felt for the first time a sort of repugnance toward him.
Up to that moment my feeling had been one of pity and anxiety on his
account, but now I loathed him. This he seemed instinctively to feel,
and he clung closely to me.
Once at the factory I determined that there should be no more delay on
his part, and I took him to the door of the room where the bodies had
been laid, but at it he made a sudden halt and would not enter. Covering
his face with his hands, he trembled violently as I pushed the door open
and advanced to the bedside. The room, hushed and in semi-darkness; the
white sheet, whose surface showed too plainly the forms beneath it;
and the scared, terrified face of the man who, with brain afire,
stood watching, with staring eyes, the bed, made a scene I have never
forgotten.
Slowly I turned down the upper part of the sheet, and Jackson, as if
fascinated by the act, advanced a step or two into the room, but with
face averted. Gradually he turned it toward the bodies, and for a moment
his gaze rested upon them. The next instant he staggered forward, looked
at the woman’s face, panted for breath once or twice, and then, with
uplifted hands and a wild cry of “Lucy!” fell his length upon the floor.
When I stooped over him he was in convulsions, and dark matter was
oozing out of his mouth. The climax had come. I shouted for the
servants, and they carried him to his own room, and placed him on his
own bed.
How I got through that day I hardly know. Alone I buried Bransome
and his wife, and alone I returned from the hurried task to watch by
Jackson’s bedside. None of the natives would stay near him. For two days
he lay unconscious. At the end of that time he seemed to have some idea
of the outside world, for his eyes met mine with intelligence in their
look, and on bending over him I heard him whisper, “Forgive me!” Then
he relapsed into unconsciousness again. Through the long hours his eyes
remained ever open and restless; he could not eat, nor did he sleep, and
I was afraid he would pass away through weakness without a sign,
being an old man. On the third day he became delirious, and commenced
chattering and talking to himself, and imagining that all kinds of
horrid shapes and creatures were around and near him. I had to watch him
narrowly in order to prevent him stealing out of his bed, which he
was ready to do at any moment to avoid the tortures which he fearfully
imagined awaited him. By these signs I knew that he was in the middle
of an attack of delirium tremens, and I tried to quiet him by means of
laudanum, but it had no effect upon him. I got him, however, to swallow
a little soup, which sustained him. My own boy was the only negro I had
been able to induce to stay in the room, and he would only remain in it
while I was there.
I had sent a messenger to the nearest station, where I remembered there
was a Portuguese doctor; but he had not returned by the evening of the
fourth day. That night, worn out with watching, I had dozed off to sleep
on a chair placed by the sick man’s bed, when all at once I was awakened
by a loud report, and I jumped up to find the room filled with smoke.
As it cleared away I saw that Jackson was standing in the middle of
the room with a revolver in his hand. As I confronted him he laughed a
devilish laugh and cocked the weapon, crying as he did so, “It was you
who tempted me with your smooth face and unsuspicious way, and you
shall die, though I suffer doubly in hell for it. Hist!” and he stopped
suddenly and listened. “Don’t you hear the breakers? Hark, how they
roar! They say they are ready, always ready,” and staring in front of
him, he advanced, as if following the sign of an invisible hand, to the
door, unconsciously placing, to my infinite relief, the revolver on the
top of a chest of drawers as he passed by it. I did not dare to move,
and he opened the door and walked into the front room. Then I followed
him. For a little he remained in the room, glaring vacantly about him,
and muttering to himself; but seeing the outer door open he made a rush
toward it, and disappeared into the darkness of the night. Calling to
the boy, I ran after him, and easily came up to him, when he turned, and
picking up a heavier stone than I thought he could have lifted, threw it
at me. I dodged it and closed with him. Once in my arms I found I could
hold him, and my servant and I carried him back into the factory. We
placed him on the floor of the dining-room, and he was too exhausted
to move for a while. By degrees, however, he recovered sufficiently to
stand; and as soon as he could do so by himself, with devilish cunning
he made for the lamp, which he struck, quick as lightning, with a stick
that had been lying on the table. In an instant the great round globe
fell to pieces, but luckily the chimney was not broken, and the lamp
remained alight, and before he could strike another blow at it I had
grappled with him again. This time he struggled violently for a few
moments, and seemed to think that he was dealing with Bransome, for he
shrieked, “What! have you come back from the sea? You are wet! you are
wet!” and shuddering, he tried to free himself from my hold; and I, not
liking to hurt him, let him go, taking care to keep myself between him
and the lamp.
“Back from me, you villain of hell!” he cried, as soon as he was free.
“What have you done with her? what have you done with her?” And then,
in a tone of weird and pathetic sorrow, “Where is my little one that I
loved? I have sought her many a year; oh, why did she forsake me? Aha,
Sooka! we were right to send him to the hell whence he came--the lying,
false-hearted scoundrel, to steal away my white dove!”
After which he drew from his finger a solid gold ring which he always
wore, and threw it from him, saying, with a wild laugh, “There! that’s
for any one that likes it; I’m a dead man.” He then staggered toward his
own room, and I, remembering the loaded revolver which still lay on
the chest of drawers, tried to intercept him. In his rage, for I verily
believe that he also remembered that the weapon was there, he spat in my
face, and struck me with all his force between the eyes; but I stuck to
him, and with the help of the boy, who had been all this time in hiding,
but who came forward at my call, I laid him for the last time upon his
bed. There he lay exhausted for the remainder of the night; but there
was no rest for me; I felt that I had to watch him now for my own
safety.
Toward morning, however, his breathing became, all at once, very heavy
and slow, and I bent over him in alarm. As I did so, I heard him
sigh faintly, “Lucy!” and at that moment the native boy softly placed
something upon the bed. I took it up. It was the ring the sick man had
thrown away in the night, and as I looked at it I saw “James, from Lucy”
engraved on its inside surface, and I knew that the dead woman was his
wife.
As the first faint streaks of dawn stole into the room, the
slow-drawn breathing of the dying man ceased. I listened--it came
again--once--twice--and then all was silence. He was dead, and I
realised in the sudden stillness that had come upon the room that I was
alone. Yet he had passed away so quietly after his fitful fever that I
could not bring myself to believe that he was really gone, and I stood
looking at the body, fearing to convince myself of the truth by touching
it.
So entranced was I by that feeling of awe which comes to almost every
one in the presence of death, that I did not hear the shouting of the
hammock-boy outside, or the footsteps of a white man coming into
the room; and not until he touched me on the shoulder did I turn and
recognise the sallow face of the Portuguese doctor whom I had sent for,
and who had thus arrived too late. However, he served to help me to bury
the mortal part of Jackson in the little graveyard beside the body of
his wife and that of the man who had come between them when alive. And
such was without doubt the fact; for when the doctor had gone, and I
was alone again, I collected and made an inventory of the dead men’s
effects, and in Jackson’s desk I found his diary, or, as he himself
would have called it, his log; and in that log was noted, on the very
day that Bransome had arrived on the Point, his suspicion of the man,
and later on his conviction that Bransome was indeed he who had injured
him.
Sooka was never found; but when the mail-steamer returned from the south
coast, I discovered that the younger patrao had made his crew row away
suddenly from the steamer’s side, while Mr. Bransome had been engaged
below, and was out of sight. So it was evident that the pair had been in
league together to insure Sooka his revenge. What share Jackson had had
in the murder of his enemy I did not care to think of, but feared the
worst.
For myself, I had to remain on the Point for many months, until the
factory was finally closed--for no purchaser was ever found for it;
and doubtless, by this time, the buildings are in ruins, and long grass
hides the graves of those who sleep upon King Bemba’s Point.