TOMMIE
Hank and Candon were asleep, whilst George stood as officer of the
watch. A great blaze of light fanning up beyond the coast hills showed
the _Wear Jack_ under all plain sail and the gulls following her, royal
terns and loons and black-headed gulls, whilst far above a Brandt’s
cormorant formed an escort in the blue, wheeling, dropping as though to
pierce the deck, and then passing off with a cry, northward, towards
the vanished islands.
Away over there to the east, fog held the lower hills and made a
country of rolling snow to the sea edge, a country now white, now
golden as the great sun rose above it, now breaking here and there, and
now flying before the wind like the banners of a shattered army.
At eight o’clock, when they had breakfasted somehow out of materials
supplied by Charley, Hank suddenly took the wheel of affairs.
Not a sound had broken the ominous silence down below and up to now the
barred-out men had not spoken a word on the matter.
“It’s lucky for us we have a crew of Chinks,” said Hank suddenly
and apropos of nothing, “the Chinks don’t know and if they did they
wouldn’t care. If we took our breakfast standing on our heads it would
be all the same to them. Well, see here, you fellows, what we going to
do? We have to get done with this business right now. I’ve got a stiff
back sleeping in the scuppers and I don’t propose to feed for the rest
of my natural on this Chow junk. Seeing I did the talking last night, I
propose going down to prospect and have a parley.”
“Right!” said the other two with a sudden brightening, as though a
burden had been lifted from them.
“If she won’t open,” said Hank, as he got on his long legs, “I’ll bust
that door in. You keep your ears skinned at the hatch and come along
down if there’s trouble.”
They moved up close to the hatch and Hank went down. They heard his
knock and almost immediately on the knock a clear voice say: “Yes?”
Then Hank: “It’s come day now, will you open? I want to have a word
with you.”
The voice: “Yes. I will open, on one condition, that after I have drawn
the bolts you will wait till I give the word before you come in.”
“Right.”
“If you don’t, I’ll shoot.”
“Right.”
They heard the bolts being drawn. Then, after a moment, giving her time
to get to the other end of the cabin, they heard her cry, “Come in.”
Then her voice: “Well?”
Silence.
The voice: “Well—what on earth is the matter with you? Can’t you speak?”
Hank: “I’m clean knocked out. Suffering Moses!”
The voice: “I don’t want to know anything about Moses and his
sufferings, I just want to know who you are, the name of this ship, and
what you mean. Don’t come nearer!”
Hank: “I’m not—Can’t you see I’m hit? This has been a mistake.”
The voice: “I should think so.”
Hank: “Now I see you in the light of day, the whole thing has jumped
together in my head—Lord! what a mistake.”
The voice: “Well?”
Hank: “I’ll get on deck for a moment if you don’t mind. I’m hit.”
The voice: “So you have said. Well, get on deck and recover yourself
and be quick about it—if it’s a mistake you’ve got to mend it and get
me back—go on.”
Hank came on deck, he beckoned to the others and led them forward.
“Boys.”
“Go _on_!”
“Boys, it’s Tommie Coulthurst.”
The awful silence that followed this crushing announcement lasted for
full twenty seconds, a silence broken only by the slash of the bow
wash, the creak of a block and the cry of the gulls.
Then George said: “Oh, Lord!”
“You ain’t mistaken?” asked Candon feebly. Hank did not even reply.
“But we’ve busted their ship,” said George, as if protesting against
the enormity of the idea that had just put itself together in his
brain, “and I nearly did for that gink with the guitar.”
“I know,” said Hank, “and I downed that other chap and hauled that Jew
woman off you by the left leg—well, there we are. “What’s wrong with
this cruise anyhow?”
“I dunno,” said George. “My head’s turned inside out. Down with you,
Hank, and get her up—get her up, we’ve gotta try and explain. Down with
you.”
Hank started aft on a run and vanished. A minute later a deck chair
appeared at the hatch, followed by Hank. After Hank came a little
hand holding a Lugger pistol, and then the head and body of Tommie
Coulthurst.
She looked smaller even than by the firelight, small but so exquisitely
proportioned that you did not bother about her size. She had no hat,
her steadfast seaweed brown eyes were fixed on the men before her and
the strange and extraordinary thing was that her face as she gazed at
them brought them comfort of a kind.
For Tommie’s face, though small enough, had nothing small in it. It was
good to look upon as Truth and Honesty and Courage could make it and
Beauty had lent a hand.
Hank put out the chair.
“Will you sit down,” said Hank.
Before sitting down she took a glance round at the deck and the Chink
at the wheel. Then as though the pistol were bothering her, she
threw it into the scupper. She seemed to have read everything in the
situation and found no danger.
“Well,” said she, “what on earth is it all?”
“It’s a mistake,” said Hank.
“So you have told me—but seems to me we are getting further from Santa
Barbara, we are going down the coast, aren’t we?”
“We are,” said George, “and I’ll put the ship about right away if you
like—only I’d ask you to listen to us first and a few miles more or
less don’t matter.”
“Go on,” said Tommie.
George, who had recovered his wits sooner than the others, had seized
on an idea. Maybe it was Tommie’s face that inspired it.
“The whole of this business is a most awful mix-up,” he began. “First
I’d better tell you who we are. My name’s Du Cane. George Harley du
Cane. This is Mr. Hank Fisher, and this is Mr. Candon. I don’t know if
you have read in the papers of a yacht putting out from San Francisco
to catch Vanderdecken, the man who has been raiding yachts?”
“Yes,” said Tommie, “I know about it.”
“Well, this is the yacht. We got along down to San Nicolas and going
ashore we saw a Chinese camp. We spotted you through a glass and came
to the conclusion you were in the hands of Chinese white slavers. We
made up our minds to rescue you.”
“Good Lord!” said Tommie, sitting forward in her chair with wide pupils.
“And seems to me we did it,” said George. “Can you imagine anything
more horrible?”
Tommie’s mouth was open, relaxed, yet in a way rigid. She seemed in the
grip of petrified laughter.
“Not only that,” went on George, “but we knocked the mast out of that
junk. She chased us and we rammed her. What was she? Part of your show?”
Tommie’s mouth had suddenly closed itself, laughter had vanished and
her eyes shone.
“Yes, part of our show.”
“And those were real Chinks—hatchet men?”
“Yep—we always work with real stuff.”
“We ought to have recognized you,” went on George, “we’ve seen you
often enough in the pictures and the press, but the distance was too
big, besides looking from a distance you gave us the impression—we saw
you throw yourself down.”
“I was showing Mr. Althusen a pose,” said Tommie.
“Althusen?”
“The producer.”
“Was that the man playing the guitar by the fire?”
“Yep.” Her eyes still blazed strangely. Hank thought she was going to
fly out at them.
“He smashed his guitar on me,” said George. “It’s awful.”
“I think it’s _splendid_!” said Tommie.