FROM THE FOUR WINDS
[Illustration]
FROM THE FOUR
WINDS
BY
JOHN SINJOHN
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE, 1897
[All rights reserved.]
CONTENTS
Page
The Running Amok of Synge Sahib 2
Dick Denver’s Idea 26
Ashes 56
‘Tally-ho’--Budmash 72
The Doldrums 100
The Capitulation of Jean Jacques 124
The Spirit of the Karroo 152
A Prairie Oyster 176
According to his Lights 206
The Demi-Gods 228
THE RUNNING AMOK OF SYNGE SAHIB
A yellow stain is a yellow stain,
Though the heart is white and the brain is white;
And a lonely man is a lonely man,
That’s reason eno’ for me.
--Doggerel Meditations of John Hay.
‘You lucky beggars. Oh! You lucky beggars!’
The speaker rose, and stood stretching a languid length against the
railing of the verandah, his tall figure outlined in its white clothes
against the overhanging foliage.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Clemenson, ‘you fellows don’t seem to have
such a bad time out here; only wish I were going to stay, instead of
toddling back to the beautiful and salubrious climate of the British
Isles which you seem to covet so much; what d’you say, Taplin?’
He waved the end of his cigarette, glowing in the dark, towards another
recumbent figure.
‘Um--um,’ the second globe-trotter lay back, looking curiously at the
face of the man standing, and offered no further reply.
‘I can’t stay up to see you off,’ said the first speaker--‘I should
go cracked. “You can ’ear their paddles chunkin!”’--he broke into the
air of ‘Mandalay,’ and shook his hand with an almost menacing gesture
towards the lagoon.
‘Well! _Saiandra_, you fellows, you’ve cheered us up amazingly; don’t
forget to look in on me if you’re ever fools enough to come back to
this forsaken paradise. Send me that new magazine if you can get it
in Sydney, Clemenson. Good-night, Mrs Hay; I know you won’t think me
rude for making tracks. Look after them, Hay; see you up in court
to-morrow afternoon, I suppose? Got to go round the coolie quarters
in the morning. _Bon soir, la compagnie._’ He shook hands with the
globe-trotters, swung himself over the verandah rails, and walked
uncertainly down the narrow path that threaded the grove of shadowy
palms. For a minute nobody spoke; then Clemenson said with a sigh:
‘Poor old Synge, how down he is to-night. He _is_ a good chap. I
wish he’d stayed to see us off. I hate saying good-bye before it’s
necessary.’ He flicked off a mosquito, and bent down to adjust the
bath-towel wrapped round his feet and ankles.
‘Barring mosquitoes and flies, this is heaven, I believe,’ he went
on, lying back to look up at the sky gleaming with stars through the
fern-like tracery of the flamboyante trees.
‘Pardon me, under certain circumstances it’s hell,’ said a fourth voice.
‘Hay, you’re an unsentimental brute, you’ve no poetry in your carcase;
ask Taplin and Mrs Hay what they think. Wake up, Taplin, old chap;
hanged if you’re not sleeping away the last chance of heaven you’ll
ever get.’
‘Am I?’ grunted the latter. He was gazing intently from under the broad
brim of his hat at Mrs Hay. Sitting forward in her chair, her face ashy
white, she was looking with an intent, scared expression at her husband.
‘I must go, too, I’m afraid,’ she said, ‘the infant will want me;
little wretch, she always cries on hot nights if she’s left long.
Good-bye, Mr Clemenson; good-bye, Mr Taplin; _bon voyage_; come and see
me in England when I come home next year.’
Her manner was nervous and hurried, and her face, still turned towards
her husband, had not lost its scared expression.
‘You won’t be long, Jack, will you?’ With a wave of her hand she
disappeared into the house. The men had all risen, their bath-towel
armour, dislodged, lay in heaps on the verandah floor, and the
increasing ‘Ping! Ping!’ announced a winged attack along the line.
‘I say, this _is_ a sell. I thought you and Mrs Hay were coming out to
see us off; it was to have been an all-night sitting for the last, you
know, and now here you are one by one deserting, and leaving us to face
this abominable melancholy departure alone.’ Thus Clemenson, ruefully.
Taplin lit a cigarette.
‘What’s wrong, Hay?’ he said, and pointed with it down the path.
‘Oh! It’s all right. Nothing, nothing; my wife’s tired, and the
infant’s not well; that’s all.’
‘Nonsense, man, I saw Synge’s face, and I saw your wife’s, that’s
enough; I say again, what’s wrong?’
Hay leant silently against the rail, a cloud gathering upon his face.
‘Upon my honour I believe there’s nothing wrong,’ he said slowly, as
though weighing a thought within himself, ‘only my wife’s rather given
to nervous fits, you know.’ This apologetically.
‘Ummm.... Well, if you won’t tell us you won’t--beg your pardon for
asking; are we keeping you up?’
Again a silence, then Hay said to himself:
‘Oh! D----n it, it can’t be.’
He turned to the other two.
‘Look here, you fellows,’ he said, ‘you’re gentlemen, and you’re both
of you fond of old Synge; what I say to you now, whatever you may think
of it, goes no further?’
‘Certainly not,’ from Clemenson. Taplin shook his head; he was nothing
if not brief.
‘Well! It’s a longish yarn, and I think I’ll just go in and speak to my
wife before I begin.’
He turned and went into the house.
The two globe-trotters, left to themselves on the verandah, looked at
each other without a word. Through the darkness and stillness of the
tropical night the humming of mosquitoes was waning, and the silence
was only broken by an occasional cry, or the barking of a dog from the
coolie quarters. A table covered with drinks and packs of cards was
pushed aside, and the dying lamp cast a flickering glow on the two
recumbent figures. The fragrance of lime and pepper trees came floating
gently in on the warm night air. Clemenson sat flicking restlessly
and distractedly at the now sleepy mosquitoes with his handkerchief,
and Taplin, smoking quietly, looked down the path where Synge had
disappeared. Both were relieved when Hay reappeared from the house, and
sinking into a long chair, took up the word.
‘I’m going to tell you chaps one of the most extraordinary yarns
you’ll ever hear. I don’t attempt to explain it--I don’t know anything
about heredity--thank heaven _I’m_ not a doctor--but I’ve been in the
Strait Settlements, and I’ve seen things there that--Still I _don’t_
understand, and I don’t care to,--all I know is, the thing happened.’
He paused a minute to concoct himself a drink, and then went on:
‘You fellows have been here three weeks--jolly glad we’ve been to have
you--and you’ve seen a lot of Synge. I suppose you’ve both noticed that
somewhere or other about him there’s blood that isn’t white?’ Nods from
his listeners.
‘Yes; there’s not much of it, it hardly shows, but there’s no doubt
it’s there. What it is I’ve never asked him, of course. I believe he’s
very sensitive about it,--why, I don’t know, I’m sure--I only mention
this, you know, because it hits off my theory of the why of what I’m
going to tell you; besides,’ he muttered half to himself, ‘one mustn’t
talk to him about the Strait Settlements. Well,’ he lighted a cigar,
and pulled deeply at it for some minutes before going on, ‘when I first
came to the Fijis they sent me up as Commissioner to a small island
about a hundred miles north of this, called Luma. Why in heaven’s name
they wanted a Commissioner there, the Colonial Office only knows. I
went up with the wife and the infant, and for six months we were the
only white people on the island; then the measles came, and they sent
up a doctor--for his sins, poor old Synge. That place was a paradise
for beauty, but a regular hell for loneliness. We had Judy (whom you
know we brought over from Singapore with us), and another coolie, for
servants, and Synge abode in a large native hut about a quarter of a
mile away. Barring a ship’s calling, perhaps once in three months,
with mails, not a soul ever came near that blessed place; solitary
confinement was a joke to it.’
He paused, and drew a long whiff from his cigar; a breeze growing
amongst the palm leaves sighed thro’ the verandah and blew the smoke
into a wreath around his head. Clemenson shivered; the spirit of
desolation seemed to have got into the tone of Hay’s voice.
‘Those beastly measles! Synge worked like a horse; the unfortunate
devils of natives did their level best to die, and it was the work of
two average men and a boy to save the life of any one of them--stupid
beggars--but he pulled a lot of ’em through somehow. Then my infant got
’em, only a year old, and had a roughish time; there again Synge did
the trick, and then--hanged if, to put the finishing touch, he didn’t
go and get ’em himself--and badly too. Measles in a climate like this
aren’t any kind of a joke, and the poor old chap nearly turned up his
toes: but he came round at last--mainly thanks to Judy’s cooking. They
left him awfully weak and depressed; I used to go and sit with him a
lot, and he was fearfully down, always talking about the misery of
dying in a dog’s hole of a prison, as he called the place, and pining
for home. He had a fox-terrier called Wasp, that he was awfully fond
of, and when we weren’t with him he used to lie and talk to her by the
hour about his people at home and a certain girl, and Cambridge, and
the cursedness of things generally, and the poor little beggar would
sit up at the end of the bed, catching flies, and blink her eyes at
him, and let on to understand the whole caboodle. I often heard him
yarning away when I was coming in; you can hear anything in those
native houses. He had a sort of double one--one for a bedroom and one
for a sitting-room. Well, he got better by degrees, but the stronger
he got physically, the more gloomy and depressed he seemed to grow;
it was like having a funeral in your coat-tail pocket to be with him;
it didn’t cheer matters up for us, and to make things worse, the mail
missed--through a hurricane or some misbegotten reason--and we didn’t
see a ship, except at a distance, for nearly six months.’
Hay paused and shook himself, as if to free his mind from the
recollection. Clemenson muttered, ‘Lively!’ Taplin bit his forefinger
sympathetically.
‘Well,’ Hay went on rapidly, ‘one morning Synge came down to us at
breakfast, and said in his sarcastic way, “Something’s gone wrong with
the works of Providence; there’s actually a ship in.” So there was;
she brought the mails; Synge had some letters; and she went away
that afternoon. I remember Judy saying to me at tiffin, “Wasp hab had
five chickens, in honour ob de ship. Synge Sahib dip dem in de big
punch-bowl and call dem names--say he chrisey dem. Will de Sahib hab
gravy wid de blue man?” Judy’s information is always dished up with
some cookery--he meant blanc-mange--but good Lord! How infernally
long-winded I am! In the afternoon I went over to see Synge; he’d gone
asleep in his chair--it was beastly hot weather. His letters and papers
were all strewn about the place, and a big Malay kriss that he’d been
cutting papers with was lying beside him. Wasp, licking those five
blessed puppies, was sitting at his feet. He looked so tired that I
went away without waking him; perhaps if I had, things would have been
different.’
Hay paused again, and turned with a shiver to look over his shoulder
down the path, listening intently; the other two noticed for the first
time that the butt of a revolver was sticking out of his coat pocket.
‘Well, my boys, I expect I’ve bored you so far, but I shan’t with the
rest of my yarn.’ He turned to them again, speaking hurriedly and low.
‘That night I was sitting in the dining-room pretty late, writing up
my Commissioner’s log. The wife had gone to bed; it was a mighty hot
night, and the infant had been making herself felt. I was smoking, and
not over and above busy--the Luma Commissioner isn’t given that way.
There was a bright moon, and it was very still and peaceful, much the
same as this. It happened I was just thinking what rummy noises one
hears at night, when I heard quite the rummiest noise I’ve ever heard
or ever want to; it was the cry as of a creature that had lost its soul
and “couldn’t tell whe--ere to find it.” He broke into the old tune,
which came on the top of the intense solemnity of the last few words
with a weird effect that sent a shudder through his listeners.
‘By George! You fellows may just “lift up your hearts” that you’ve
never heard a sound like that; it sent the blue creeps through _me_--I
sat there wondering what the deuce it was, till, looking through the
window, I saw in a bright patch of moonlight in front of the house a
naked figure, dancing a kind of fantastic dance, and brandishing a
streak of silver above its head; then I heard that awful cry again,
and the figure darted forward and disappeared. I sat there rubbing my
eyes, and wishing for a drink, when the door opened with a crash, and
Judy almost fell into the room, his eyes starting out of his head with
fright, and his teeth chattering. “Sahib! quick! quick! Synge Sahib
kill Wasp, and kill de chickens; Synge Sahib run amok! Synge Sahib run
amok!” and the beggar fell on the floor, and grovelled underneath the
table. “What the devil!” I began--then suddenly came that cry again,
quite close this time. I dashed out of the room, and made down the
landing for my wife’s room. My God! What do you think I saw?’
In his intensity he leaned forward, staring straight at the opposite
wall, with his hand gripping the butt of the pistol, and in his eyes
they could almost read the words that followed.
‘Over the child’s cot stood that naked figure, with that devilish
streak in its hand. My wife, in her nightdress, stood shrieking and
clutching at the figure’s arm with both hands. I reeled back, then
I picked up the first thing that came handy, a knob of sorts, or a
boot-jack--I don’t know--and threw it with all my force. Praise the
Lord! I hit it; it turned, and by all the great and awful powers, it
was Synge--Synge transfigured--a Malay,--you chaps make no mistake--a
Malay, if ever there was one, in every line of his face and figure.
Barring a towel wound round him, he was stark naked, and his flesh
was yellow, not white; and whether my eyes went wrong or not I don’t
know, but his hair seemed to hang down his naked back, instead of being
cropped short, as it always is. His eyes were blazing and glaring with
a sort of green light like a wild cat’s. That devilish silver streak
was his Malay kriss, and he brandished it like one possessed. I’ve
seen Malays run amok twice--once in Bangkok, and once in Sumatra--and
if Synge wasn’t at that moment a Malay, and a Malay amok, I’m a German
Jew. He didn’t look mad, only mad murderous. But there wasn’t much time
for psychological speculation, I can tell you; I just had that one
look from him, and then he came for me. It flashed through me, there
was only one chance, and that was tracks away from the house. I took
that chance, and went through the window--which I concluded afterwards
must have been shut--and made those tracks. There was a straight path
from the house through the native village, leading out beyond on to
a long stretch of hard white sand. We went through the village--what
a funk the natives were in! They scattered on each side for us--the
cry had drawn them, as it had me. I remember thinking--just shows how
little the mind is in hand--how amusing it must have been for them to
see their revered Commissioner hunted by their respected doctor in a
state of nature, and wondering if they had humour enough to appreciate
the situation; we were the only white men in the island, you know. I
used to be a bit of a sprinter at school, and in the ordinary course
of things could give Synge about 30 yards in the 100, but that night
I could only just keep away, if it can be called keeping away from a
man whose breath you can feel on your neck, and whose hand you can see
coming over your shoulder. It wasn’t the sort of seclusion I could
have wished for. Twice he grabbed at me and missed, and then we got
on to the sand, and, for some reason or other, I drew away a yard or
two--perhaps my wind was better than his, though for that matter I
don’t believe he had a wind, or legs either, that night.’ Hay spoke in
a meditative voice that was half comic.
‘But altogether,’ he went on, ‘it was a rum business. Well, I knew that
what I had to do was to hold on ahead till we got to a creek about 100
yards wide that ran from the lagoon, inland. If I could get there first
I was safe; I was a good swimmer, and in those days old Synge couldn’t
swim more than a few strokes. Still, if murder-madness could make a man
run half as fast again, it could probably make him swim. However, it
was the only chance. That was a ghastly run, and a ghostly one, too.
The moon was full, and the sea gleamed in silver and black ridges, and
that blessed sand shone in the bright moonlight like burnished plate,
and we two white figures fled over it like disembodied spirits, with
the whole of Nature--sea, sky, and land--looking on and mocking at what
was meant to be as grim a tragedy as ever came about. And yet all the
time, you know, I couldn’t help seeing the comic side--the only two
white men on the island--sworn pals, you beggars! sworn pals--and the
one chasing the other for dear life, and no mortal reason--it appealed
to me very much, that is, as much as the discomfort of the blamed thing
would allow. All things come to an end, and so did that run. I must
have made record time, but it seemed like a couple of hours. I never
got more than about two yards away--it varied from that to about two
inches--and I can tell you I was all out at the end of that half mile,
when we came to the creek. There wasn’t time or space to dive, and I
went in plum bang--anyhow. I could see or feel the whirr of the kriss
in the air as he came after me. When I came up and struck out, he was
a yard or so behind, swimming desperately for me, with the kriss still
in his hand. “Good Lord!” I thought, “it’s all over now; the beggar
can swim, and I’m about done.” Quick as lightning I turned on my back
and kicked out with all my might, and, as luck would have it, I caught
him on the head with my foot, and down he went. I twisted round and
drew myself out on to the bank--phew! I _was_ done. In a minute or so
he came to the surface panting and gasping, and turned himself round
and round, looking for me, with that wolfish glare still in his eyes,
and the kriss still grasped firm. When he saw me, I sang out from
the bank, “Drop it, old man, the game’s up.” He gave that hideous cry
again, and tried to swim ashore, but in a stroke or two he threw up his
hands and went down. I lay still, trying to get my wind, and watching
for him to come up again. In a minute he did, almost black in the face,
but still with that murderous light in his eyes and the kriss in his
hand. I called out--“Synge, dear old chap, easy on, that’ll do,” but
just as I sang out he went down the third time, and this time he stayed
there.’
Hay stopped short with a shiver. The dawn was breaking in a long grey
streak over the distant reef, and with it came a wave of chill air. The
faces of all three men looked almost haggard in the growing light, and
Taplin said, ‘Go on, man,’ in a voice that sounded harsh and strange.
‘There was only one thing to be done,’ continued Hay, slowly, ‘and I
can tell you I didn’t care about doing it one little bit. Diving for
a madman with a kriss in his hand in twelve feet of water, even if he
_has_ gone down three times, is no sort of a pastime. Well, I found him
at the second go, quite motionless at the bottom, and pulled him up
ashore. He was unconscious all right, but I had the devil’s own trouble
to get that silver streak out of his paw. Then I sat on my haunches,
and rubbed him, and prayed the gods to send me help. Presently they
did, in the shape of my wife and Judy, on horseback, with brandy and
pistols. Judy wouldn’t come anywhere near, though he could see him
lying like a log; but my wife, who, like most women where there’s
illness, is an angel, helped me to get him on to a horse. Poor old
chap, he was mighty limp and light, and the madness had clean gone
out of him; his skin was white again, and his hair shorn--I suppose
I must have been a bit mixed there. We held him on, and got him back
somehow, and gave him brandy, and gradually he came back to life; but
he had brain fever and was delirious for days. Then I got to know
how fearfully the loneliness had weighed on him, and bitten into his
marrow. At last he came round, and got all right again by degrees. He’s
never had the faintest idea of what happened that night; the fever
seemed to have wiped it clean out of his memory, and of course we’ve
never told him. We got shifted here soon afterwards, and this place is
chalks better than Luma, if it isn’t exactly the vortex of society. The
saddest thing, as it turned out, over that business, was poor little
Wasp. After we got back with him I went over to his quarters to fetch
away his things, and there, lying on his bed, was that poor little
beggar and four of the pups dead as door-nails, with kriss stabs right
through them. The fifth pup was alive and whining piteously; we took
her home and dragged her up somehow, and here she is.’
Hay touched a sleepy fox-terrier with his foot.
‘We had to tell Synge a yarn about Wasp’s death. I’ve forgotten how
it went now, but I remember it was very artistic and untrue, and the
whitest sort of a lie. Well, I’m tired of yarning, and that’s the
whole show, and now perhaps you understand why my wife looked so queer
to-night, and why’--he broke off, and tapped the butt end of the
revolver. There was a long silence, which Clemenson broke with:
‘You don’t mean to say that you can go on living here with the
possibility of that happening again?’
‘Oh! This is different; Luma was specially designed by a beneficent
Providence for lone madness. Personally I don’t admit the
possibility--wouldn’t do, you know,’ he shuddered,--‘and forewarned is
forearmed; besides, these things are with the Fates, and if it _should_
come about, it’s better with _us_ than with people who don’t know and
wouldn’t understand, and--we’re fond of Synge.’
Clemenson lay back and whistled softly, and the three sat on in silence
and watched the grey turn to red, and the glow steal from over the
lagoon, flecking the green growing things with light, and chasing the
sentinel stars back into their boxes; and they listened to the murmurs
of the wakening island world, till the splash of oars in the narrow
winding river hard by warned the globe-trotters that the time for
departure was come.
‘Time’s up,’ said Hay, ‘there’s Missa Tanner and his boat,’ and he
pointed through the red clusters of the flamboyante trees to the tall
figure of a Fijian coming up the bank of the stream towards the house.
Taplin rose and stretched himself, then he walked over to Hay and shook
him hard by the hand.
‘You’re a good chap,’ he said, ‘a thundering good chap; and your
wife’s a brick--tell her so.’
‘Thanks,’ said Hay.
Half an hour later, the boat, held in the stream by the oars of
the convict crew, waited, while from the stern-sheets the two
globe-trotters said good-bye to their host.
‘Remember, you fellows, nobody’s ever heard a word of that yarn--you
won’t forget that?’
‘All right, old chap,’ said Clemenson; ‘but I say, just one thing: how
do you account for it? Wasn’t it temporary insanity, pure and simple?’
‘Certainly not; that I’ll take my solemn Dick--but I don’t account for
it, and I don’t try to; all I know is, as Judy says: “Synge Sahib run
amok.”’
* * * * *
The boat drifted away down the stream to join the steamer lying out
beyond the line of white reef. The globe-trotters lay back in the stern
silently, and from across the lagoon as they watched, the group of
houses grew smaller and smaller through the palm-groves, and the sugar
plantations, beginning to teem with working life and labour, faded
into a blurr.
Presently Clemenson, still looking backward, said, with a sigh, ‘By
gum!’
Taplin nodded.
DICK DENVER’S IDEA
‘A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree,
The more you beat ’em the better they be.’
This was always a good lie; there is such an amount of truth in it.
SCENE I
‘You are quite mistaken, I didn’t speak to him.’
‘That’s a lie! I saw you myself,--and I tell you, if you can’t behave
yourself better than to go talking to a blackguard adventurer like
that, you stay down here till this d----d voyage is over.’
The brutal voice, raised in anger, subsided into a sort of growl; the
first, a woman’s, was silent.
‘Why don’t you answer? Curse it, d’you think it’s your “duty,”’ with a
sneer, ‘to stand there like a mummy? By God, a mummy’s a fool to you!’
The man’s voice rose again in a harsh crescendo.
Dick Denver, leaning against the ship’s side, involuntarily took his
cigar from his lips, and ground his teeth.
‘I judge domestic felicity has its shady side,’ he muttered, with
a soul-satisfying drawl; ‘thank the Almighty for His infinite
mercies!’--presumably referring to his own unencumbered condition.
‘Poor little woman, she looked very sweet at dinner. Gosh! _I_ was the
blackguard adventurer!’ He laughed softly, and shrugged his shoulders.
‘What an everlasting brute the fellow is; that unfortunate woman must
have considerable of a bad time. Ah! Well,--no affair of yours, Dick,
my son.’
He turned, and from over the ship’s side watched the rings of smoke
curling away from his cigar. A rustle as of silken garments caught
his ear, and over his shoulder he saw a woman’s figure coming from
the hatchway. Standing back in shadow, he watched her move listlessly
towards a long deck chair, half-way between him and the hatch. He could
catch a long-drawn sigh, half a sob, and see the shiver of the slight
form as she sank into it. A whisper came floating along the deck to
where he stood. ‘God! How I hate him! How I hate him! How long? How
long?’
Dick Denver, vagabond, adventurer, gambler--what you will--was a man
with a soft heart, and a curious hardened inability to witness distress
without a desire to offer his help, which, owing to his manner of
life, was generally found to be worse than useless. Watching her as
she lay with profile half-turned from him, her chin resting dejectedly
in her hand, the fair hair clustering low on her white forehead, and a
pitiful droop in the corner of the little mouth,--he was conscious of
a desire, gradually concentrating in the toe of his boot, to kick the
originator of so much unhappiness. As he leant forward for a better
look, a puff of wind caught the brim of his large felt hat, and blew it
along the deck to the chair where she was sitting. Glad of the excuse,
he moved towards her. She turned her head, and a gleam from the moon,
half-hidden in the hurrying clouds, lit up a sweet pale face with deep
grey eyes. A word of apology, and he bent forward to pick up his hat,
catching a glimpse, as he did so, of a tear on her cheek. A great
compassion smote his vagabond heart. He straightened himself and said:
‘Aren’t you cold, sitting up here so late?’
A soft musical voice was one of Mr Denver’s chief accomplishments; it
was useful at poker, and was found attractive even by victims.
‘Oh! no, thank you; see, I have this shawl,’ pointing to a flimsy
concoction of silk and lace that hung over the arm of the chair
in a sufficiently useless way. Without a word he took it up, and
with the deftest fingers--was not Mr Denver a dealer of the first
water?--wrapped it round the shoulders and slender throat. A little
smile, half surprise, half thanks, was his reward.
‘The dew’s very heavy in these seas. Guess my cigar’ll bother you?’
‘Oh, no, not in the least, thank you. Don’t throw it away,’ as Dick
made a motion in that direction. Thankfully retaining it, he stretched
his length on the next chair, and emitted silent but contented puffs.
An attractive length, sinewy but slight; under the shady hat a drawn,
clean-cut, clean-shaven face, bronzed from original fairness to a deep
tan; lazily veiled grey eyes, rather deep-set, and a firm mouth--all
these things Dick turned to his companion, and spake in his most
musical and least nasal voice. She listened with pleasure, but with
an apparent and growing uneasiness, and with ear strained to catch
the least sound of an approach from the cabin; and, in spite of the
nonchalance of his voice and attitude, Mr Denver was no less on the
strain than she; ‘for,’ thought he, ‘the powers forbid that I cause her
to have more abuse from my friend below.’
The moon had burst through the clouds and was flooding the deck
with silver light, and Dick improved the shining hour. The ship was
bound for the West Indies; he discoursed of the islands and his
own experiences there, and she listened, with an evident interest
in spite of her fears. Never yet was woman (or man either, for the
matter of that) uninterested when Dick Denver talked, which he did but
seldom; his voice, as he might have phrased it himself, was ‘kind of
seductive.’ Presently, however, he rose, and hat in hand, said:
‘You’ll pardon me, but I guess you’d better go down; your shawl’s quite
wet.’
She rose with a little shiver, held out her hand without a word, and
turning, went down the hatchway with the same listless, dejected step
as before. Dick watched her go, pushed his hat high up on his head, and
whistled softly and expressively; then he stooped suddenly, raising
himself again with a handkerchief in his hand, the corners of which he
examined with unscrupulous care till he read a name. Holding it softly
in his hand, he pitched away the end of his cigar. Presently he began
whistling again. Nobody ever heard Mr Denver whistle, except in moments
of profound thought; evidently he was cogitating deeply. After a minute
or two he took a pack of cards out of his pocket, and caressing them
with his unoccupied hand, raised his head and voice, and spake to the
moon with a meditative drawl:
‘’Pears I can feel kind of a sorrow for the animal!’ He then put the
handkerchief in his breast-pocket and idled down the hatch. Dick
Denver was always solitary in his habits, and made a point of a
cabin to himself, otherwise his conduct that night with a small lace
pocket-handkerchief might have been considered somewhat out of keeping
with the character of a professional black sheep. It is impossible
to disguise the fact that Mr Denver, in spite of his notorious
insouciance, was an impressionable man.