* * * * *
Mrs. Stanleigh was a large bland woman, inclined to stoutness and to
making confidences, with an intense dislike of the tropics and physical
discomforts of any sort. How her niece prevailed upon her to make that
surreptitious trip to Muloa, which we set out upon two days later, I
have never been able to imagine. The accommodations aboard the schooner
were cramped, to say the least, and the good lady had a perfect horror
of volcanoes. The fact that Lakalatcha had behind it a record of a
century or more of good conduct did not weigh with her in the least. She
was convinced that it would blow its head off the moment the _Sylph_ got
within range. She was fidgety, talkative, and continually concerned over
the state of her complexion, inspecting it in the mirror of her bag at
frequent intervals and using a powder-puff liberally to mitigate the
pernicious effects of the tropic sun. But once having been induced to
make the voyage, I must admit she stuck manfully by her decision,
ensconcing herself on deck with books and cushions and numerous other
necessities to her comfort, and making the best of the sleeping quarters
below. As the captain of the _Sylph_, she wanted me to understand that
she had intrusted her soul to my charge, declaring that she would not
draw an easy breath until we were safe again in Port Charlotte.
"This dreadful business of Eleanor's," was the way she referred to our
mission, and she got round quite naturally to telling me of Farquharson
while acquainting me with her fears about volcanoes. Some years before,
Pompeii and Herculaneum had had a most unsettling effect upon her
nerves. Vesuvius was slightly in eruption at the time. She confessed to
never having had an easy moment while in Naples. And it was in Naples
that her niece and Farquharson had met. It had been, as I surmised, a
swift, romantic courtship, in which Farquharson, quite irreproachable in
antecedents and manners, had played the part of an impetuous lover.
Italian skies had done the rest. There was an immediate marriage, in
spite of Mrs. Stanleigh's protests, and the young couple were off on a
honeymoon trip by themselves. But when Mrs. Stanleigh rejoined her
husband at Nice, and together they returned to their home in Sussex, a
surprise was in store for them. Eleanor was already there--alone,
crushed, and with lips absolutely sealed. She had divested herself of
everything that linked her to Farquharson; she refused to adopt her
married name.
"I shall bless every saint in heaven when we have quite done with this
dreadful business of Eleanor's," Mrs. Stanleigh confided to me from her
deck-chair. "This trip that she insists on making herself seems quite
uncalled for. But you needn't think, Captain Barnaby, that I'm going to
set foot on that dreadful island--not even for the satisfaction of
seeing Mr. Farquharson's grave--and I'm shameless enough to say that it
_would_ be a satisfaction. If you could imagine the tenth part of what I
have had to put up with, all these months we've been traveling about
trying to locate the wretch! No, indeed--I shall stay right here on this
boat and intrust Eleanor to your care while ashore. And I should not
think it ought to take long, now should it?"
I confessed aloud that I did not see how it could. If by any chance the
girl's secret conjecture about Leavitt's identity was right, it would be
verified in the mere act of coming face to face with him, and in that
event it would be just as well to spare the unsuspecting aunt the shock
of that discovery.
We reached Muloa just before nightfall, letting go the anchor in placid
water under the lee of the shore while the _Sylph_ swung to and the
sails fluttered and fell. A vast hush lay over the world. From the shore
the dark green of the forest confronted us with no sound or sign of
life. Above, and at this close distance blotting out half the sky over
our heads, towered the huge cone of Lakalatcha with scarred and
blackened flanks. It was in one of its querulous moods. The feathery
white plume of steam, woven by the wind into soft, fantastic shapes, no
longer capped the crater; its place had been usurped by thick, dark
fumes of smoke swirling sullenly about. In the fading light I marked the
red, malignant glow of a fissure newly broken out in the side of the
ragged cone, from which came a thin, white trickle of lava.
There was no sign of Leavitt, although the _Sylph_ must have been
visible to him for several hours, obviously making for the island. I
fancied that he must have been unusually absorbed in the vagaries of his
beloved volcano. Otherwise he would have wondered what was bringing us
back again and his tall figure in shabby white drill would have greeted
us from the shore. Instead, there confronted us only the belt of dark,
matted green girdling the huge bulk of Lakalatcha which soared skyward,
sinister, mysterious, eternal.
In the brief twilight the shore vanished into dim obscurity. Miss
Stanleigh, who for the last hour had been standing by the rail, silently
watching the island, at last spoke to me over her shoulder:
"Is it far inland--the place? Will it be difficult to find in the dark?"
Her question staggered me, for she was clearly bent on seeking out
Leavitt at once. A strange calmness overlay her. She paid no heed to
Lakalatcha's gigantic, smoke-belching cone, but, with fingers gripping
the rail, scanned the forbidding and inscrutable forest, behind which
lay the answer to her torturing doubt.
I acceded to her wish without protest. Leavitt's bungalow lay a quarter
of a mile distant. There would be no difficulty in following the path. I
would have a boat put over at once, I announced in a casual way which
belied my real feelings, for I was beginning to share some of her secret
tension at this night invasion of Leavitt's haunts.
This feeling deepened within me as we drew near the shore. Leavitt's
failure to appear seemed sinister and enigmatic. I began to evolve a
fantastic image of him as I recalled his queer ways and his uncanny
tricks of speech. It was as if we were seeking out the presiding deity
of the island, who had assumed the guise of a Caliban holding unearthly
sway over its unnatural processes.
With Williams, the boatswain, carrying a lantern, we pushed into the
brush, following the choked trail that led to Leavitt's abode. But the
bungalow, when we had reached the clearing and could discern the
outlines of the building against the masses of the forest, was dark and
deserted. As we mounted the veranda, the loose boards creaked hollowly
under our tread; the doorway, from which depended a tattered curtain of
coarse burlap, gaped black and empty.
The lantern, lifted high in the boatswain's hand, cleft at a stroke the
darkness within. On the writing-table, cluttered with papers and bits of
volcanic rock, stood a bottle and half-empty glass. Things lay about in
lugubrious disorder, as if the place had been hurriedly ransacked by a
thief. Some of the geological specimens had tumbled from the table to
the floor, and stray sheets of Leavitt's manuscripts lay under his
chair. Leavitt's books, ranged on shelving against the wall, alone
seemed undisturbed. Upon the top of the shelving stood two enormous
stuffed birds, moldering and decrepit, regarding the sudden illumination
with unblinking, bead-like eyes. Between them a small dancing faun in
greenish bronze tripped a Bacchic measure with head thrown back in a
transport of derisive laughter.
For a long moment the three of us faced the silent, disordered room, in
which the little bronze faun alone seemed alive, convulsed with
diabolical mirth at our entrance. Somehow it recalled to me Leavitt's
own cynical laugh. Suddenly Miss Stanleigh made toward the photographs
above the bookshelves.
"This is he," she said, taking up one of the faded prints.
"Yes--Leavitt," I answered.
"_Leavitt_?" Her fingers tightened upon the photograph. Then, abruptly,
it fell to the floor. "Yes, yes--of course." Her eyes closed very
slowly, as if an extreme weakness had seized her.
In the shock of that moment I reached out to support her, but she
checked my hand. Her gray eyes opened again. A shudder visibly went over
her, as if the night air had suddenly become chill. From the shelf the
two stuffed birds regarded us dolefully, while the dancing faun, with
head thrown back in an attitude of immortal art, laughed derisively.
"Where is he? I must speak to him," said Miss Stanleigh.
"One might think he were deliberately hiding," I muttered, for I was at
a loss to account for Leavitt's absence.
"Then find him," the girl commanded.
I cut short my speculations to direct Williams to search the hut in the
rear of the bungalow, where, behind bamboo palings, Leavitt's Malay
servant maintained an aloof and mysterious existence. I sat down beside
Miss Stanleigh on the veranda steps to find my hands sooty from the
touch of the boards. A fine volcanic ash was evidently drifting in the
air and now to my ear, attuned to the profound stillness, the wind bore
a faint humming sound.
"Do you hear that?" I whispered. It was like the far-off murmur of a
gigantic caldron, softly a-boil--a dull vibration that seemed to reach
us through the ground as well as through the air.
The girl listened a moment, and then started up. "I hear
voices--somewhere."
"Voices?" I strained my ears for sounds other than the insistent ferment
of the great cone above our heads. "Perhaps Leavitt----"
"Why do you still call him Leavitt?"
"Then you're quite certain----" I began, but an involuntary exclamation
from her cut me short.
The light of Williams's lantern, emerging from behind the bamboo
palings, disclosed the burly form of the boatswain with a shrinking
Malay in tow. He was jabbering in his native tongue, with much
gesticulation of his thin arms, and going into contortions at every
dozen paces in a sort of pantomime to emphasize his words. Williams
urged him along unceremoniously to the steps of the veranda.
"Perhaps you can get the straight of this, Mr. Barnaby," said the
boatswain. "He swears that the flame-devil in the volcano has swallowed
his master alive."
The poor fellow seemed indeed in a state of complete funk. With his thin
legs quaking under him, he poured forth in Malay a crazed, distorted
tale. According to Wadakimba, Leavitt--or Farquharson, to give him his
real name--had awakened the high displeasure of the flame-devil within
the mountain. Had we not observed that the cone was smoking furiously?
And the dust and heavy taint of sulphur in the air? Surely we could
feel the very tremor of the ground under our feet. All that day the
enraged monster had been spouting mud and lava down upon the white
_tuan_, who had remained in the bungalow, drinking heavily and bawling
out maledictions upon his enemy. At length, in spite of Wadakimba's
efforts to dissuade him, he had set out to climb to the crater, vowing
to show the flame-devil who was master. He had compelled the terrified
Wadakimba to go with him a part of the way. The white _tuan_--was he
really a god, as he declared himself to be?--had gone alone up the
tortuous, fissured slopes, at times lost to sight in yellowish clouds of
gas and steam, while his screams of vengeance came back to Wadakimba's
ears. Overhead, Lakalatcha continued to rumble and quiver and clear his
throat with great showers of mud and stones.
Farquharson must have indeed parted with his reason to have attempted
that grotesque sally. Listening to Wadakimba's tale, I pictured the
crazed man, scorched to tatters, heedless of bruises and burns,
scrambling up that difficult and perilous ascent, and hurling his
ridiculous blasphemy into the flares of smoke and steam that issued from
that vast caldron lit by subterranean fires. At its simmering the whole
island trembled. A mere whiff of the monster's breath and he would have
been snuffed out, annihilated in an instant. According to Wadakimba, the
end had indeed come in that fashion. It was as if the mountain had
suddenly given a deep sigh. The blast had carried away solid rock. A
sheet of flame had licked the spot where Farquharson had been hurled
headlong, and he was not.
Wadakimba, viewing all this from afar, had scuttled off to his hut.
Later he had ventured back to the scene of the tragedy. He had picked up
Farquharson's scorched helmet, which had been blown off to some
distance, and he also exhibited a pair of binoculars washed down by the
tide of lava, scarred and twisted by the heat, from which the lenses had
melted away.
I translated for Miss Stanleigh briefly, while she stood turning over in
her hands the twisted and blackened binoculars, which were still warm.
She heard me through without question or comment, and when I proposed
that we get back to the _Sylph_ at once, mindful of her aunt's
distressed nerves, she assented with a nod. She seemed to have lost the
power of speech. In a daze she followed as I led the way back through
the forest.
* * * * *
Major Stanleigh and his wife deferred their departure for England until
their niece should be properly married to Joyce. At Eleanor's wish, it
was a very simple affair, and as Joyce's bride she was as eager to be
off to his rubber-plantation in Malduna as he was to set her up there as
mistress of his household. I had agreed to give them passage on the
_Sylph_, since the next sailing of the mail-boat would have necessitated
a further fortnight's delay.
Mrs. Stanleigh, with visions of seeing England again, and profoundly
grateful to a benevolent Providence that had not only brought "this
dreadful business of Eleanor's" to a happy termination, but had averted
Lakalatcha's baptism of fire from descending upon her own head, thanked
me profusely and a little tearfully. It was during the general chorus of
farewells at the last moment before the _Sylph_ cast off. Her last
appeal, cried after us from the wharf where she stood frantically waving
a wet handkerchief, was that I should give Muloa a wide berth.
It brought a laugh from Joyce. He had discovered the good lady's extreme
perturbation in regard to Lakalatcha, and had promptly declared for
spending a day there with his bride. It was an exceptional opportunity
to witness the volcano in its active mood. Each time that Joyce had
essayed this teasing pleasantry, which never failed to draw Mrs.
Stanleigh's protests, I observed that his wife remained silent. I
assumed that she had decided to keep her own counsel in regard to the
trip she had made there.
"I'm trusting you not to take Eleanor near that dreadful island, Mr.
Barnaby," was the admonition shouted across the widening gap of water.
It was a quite unnecessary appeal, for Joyce, who was presently sitting
with his wife in a sheltered quarter of the deck, had not the slightest
interest in the smoking cone which was as yet a mere smudge upon the
horizon. Eleanor, with one hand in Joyce's possession, at times watched
it with a seemingly vast apathy until some ardent word from Joyce would
draw her eyes back to his and she would lift to him a smile that was
like a caress. The look of weariness and balked purpose that had once
marked her expression had vanished. In the week since she had married
Joyce she seemed to have grown younger and to be again standing on the
very threshold of life with girlish eagerness. She hung on Joyce's every
word, communing with him hour after hour, utterly content, indifferent
to all the world about her.
In the cabin that evening at dinner, when the two of them deigned to
take polite cognizance of my existence, I announced to Joyce that I
proposed to hug the island pretty close during the night. It would save
considerable time.
"Just as you like, Captain," Joyce replied, indifferently.
"We may get a shower of ashes by doing so, if the wind should shift." I
looked across the table at Mrs. Joyce.
"But we shall reach Malduna that much sooner?" she queried.
I nodded. "However, if you feel any uneasiness, I'll give the island a
wide berth." I didn't like the idea of dragging her--the bride of a
week--past that place with its unspeakable memories, if it should really
distress her.
Her eyes thanked me silently across the table. "It's very kind of you,
but"--she chose her words with significant deliberation--"I haven't a
fear in the world, Mr. Barnaby."
Evening had fallen when we came up on deck. Joyce bethought himself of
some cigars in his state-room and went back. For the moment I was alone
with his wife by the rail, watching the stars beginning to prick through
the darkening sky. The _Sylph_ was running smoothly, with the wind
almost aft; the scud of water past her bows and the occasional creak of
a block aloft were the only sounds audible in the silence that lay like
a benediction upon the sea.
"You may think it unfeeling of me," she began, quite abruptly, "but all
this past trouble of mine, now that it is ended, I have completely
dismissed. Already it begins to seem like a horrid dream. And as for
that island"--her eyes looked off toward Muloa now impending upon us and
lighting up the heavens with its sudden flare--"it seems incredible that
I ever set foot upon it.
"Perhaps you understand," she went on, after a pause, "that I have not
told my husband. But I have not deceived him. He knows that I was once
married, and that the man is no longer living. He does not wish to know
more. Of course he is aware that Uncle Geoffrey came out here to--to see
a Mr. Leavitt, a matter which he has no idea concerned me. He thanks the
stars for whatever it was that did bring us out here, for otherwise he
would not have met me."
"It has turned out most happily," I murmured.
"It was almost disaster. After meeting Mr. Joyce--and I was weak enough
to let myself become engaged--to have discovered that I was still
chained to a living creature like that.... I should have killed myself."
"But surely the courts----"
She shook her head with decision. "My church does not recognize that
sort of freedom."
We were drawing steadily nearer to Muloa. The mountain was breathing
slowly and heavily--a vast flare that lifted fanlike in the skies and
died away. Lightning played fitfully through the dense mass of smoke and
choking gases that hung like a pall over the great cone. It was like the
night sky that overhangs a city of gigantic blast-furnaces, only
infinitely multiplied. The sails of the _Sylph_ caught the ruddy tinge
like a phantom craft gliding through the black night, its canvas still
dyed with the sunset glow. The faces of the crew, turned to watch the
spectacle, curiously fixed and inhuman, were picked out of the gloom by
the same fantastic light. It was as if the schooner, with masts and
riggings, etched black against the lurid sky, sailed on into the Day of
Judgment.
It was after midnight. The _Sylph_ came about, with sails trembling, and
lost headway. Suddenly she vibrated from stem to stern, and with a soft
grating sound that was unmistakable came to rest. We were aground in
what should have been clear water, with the forest-clad shore of Muloa
lying close off to port.
The helmsman turned to me with a look of silly fright on his face, as
the wheel revolved useless in his hands. We had shelved with scarcely a
jar sufficient to disturb those sleeping below, but in a twinkling
Jackson, the mate, appeared on deck in his pajamas, and after a swift
glance toward the familiar shore turned to me with the same dumfounded
look that had frozen upon the face of the steersman.
"What do you make of this?" he exclaimed, as I called for the lead.
"Be quiet about it," I said to the hands that had started into movement.
"Look sharp now, and make no noise." Then I turned to the mate, who was
perplexedly rubbing one bare foot against the other and measuring with
his eye our distance from the shore. The _Sylph_ should have turned the
point of the island without a mishap, as she had done scores of times.
"It's the volcano we have to thank for this," was my conjecture. "Its
recent activity has caused some displacement of the sea bottom."
Jackson's head went back in sudden comprehension. "It's a miracle you
didn't plow into it under full sail."
We had indeed come about in the very nick of time to avoid disaster. As
matters stood I was hopeful. "With any sort of luck we ought to float
clear with the tide."
The mate cocked a doubtful eye at Lakalatcha, uncomfortably close above
our heads, flaming at intervals and bathing the deck with an angry glare
of light. "If she should begin spitting up a little livelier ..." he
speculated with a shrug, and presently took himself off to his bunk
after an inspection below had shown that none of the schooner's seams
had started. There was nothing to do but to wait for the tide to make
and lift the vessel clear. It would be a matter of three or four hours.
I dismissed the helmsman; and the watch forward, taking advantage of the
respite from duty, were soon recumbent in attitudes of heavy sleep.
The wind had died out and a heavy torpor lay upon the water. It was as
if the stars alone held to their slow courses above a world rigid and
inanimate. The _Sylph_ lay with a slight list, her spars looking
inexpressibly helpless against the sky, and, as the minutes dragged, a
fine volcanic ash, like some mortal pestilence exhaled by the monster
cone, settled down upon the deck, where, forward in the shadow, the
watch curled like dead men.
Alone, I paced back and forth--countless soft-footed miles, it seemed,
through interminable hours, until at length some obscure impulse
prompted me to pause before the open skylight over the cabin and thrust
my head down. A lamp above the dining-table, left to burn through the
night, feebly illuminated the room. A faint snore issued at regular
intervals from the half-open door of the mate's state-room. The door of
Joyce's state-room opposite was also upon the hook for the sake of air.
Suddenly a soft thump against the side of the schooner, followed by a
scrambling noise, made me turn round. The dripping, bedraggled figure of
a man in a sleeping-suit mounted the rope ladder that hung over the
side, and paused, grasping the rail. I had withdrawn my gaze so suddenly
from the glow of the light in the cabin that for several moments the
intruder from out of the sea was only a blurred form with one leg swung
over the rail, where he hung as if spent by his exertions.
Just then the sooty vapors above the ragged maw of the volcano were rent
by a flare of crimson, and in the fleeting instant of unnatural daylight
I beheld Farquharson barefooted, and dripping with sea-water,
confronting me with a sardonic, triumphant smile. The light faded in a
twinkling, but in the darkness he swung his other leg over the rail and
sat perched there, as if challenging the testimony of my senses.
"Farquharson!" I breathed aloud, utterly dumfounded.
"Did you think I was a ghost?" I could hear him softly laughing to
himself in the interval that followed. "You should have witnessed
Wadakimba's fright at my coming back from the dead. Well, I'll admit I
almost was done for."
Again the volcano breathed in torment. It was like the sudden opening of
a gigantic blast-furnace, and in that instant I saw him vividly--his
thin, saturnine face, his damp black hair pushed sleekly back, his lips
twisted to a cruel smile, his eyes craftily alert, as if to some
ambushed danger continually at hand. He was watching me with a sort of
malicious relish in the shock he had given me.
"It was not your intention to stop at Muloa," he observed, dryly, for
the plight of the schooner was obvious.
"We'll float clear with the tide," I muttered.
"But in the meantime"--there was something almost menacing in his
deliberate pause--"I have the pleasure of this little call upon you."
A head lifted from among the inert figures and sleepily regarded us
before it dropped back into the shadows. The stranded ship, the
recumbent men, the mountain flaming overhead--it was like a phantom
world into which had been suddenly thrust this ghastly and incredible
reality.
"Whatever possessed you to swim out here in the middle of the night?" I
demanded, in a harsh whisper.
He chose to ignore the question, while I waited in a chill of suspense.
It was inconceivable that he could be aware of the truth of the
situation and deliberately bent on forcing it to its unspeakable, tragic
issue.
"Of late, Captain Barnaby, we seem to have taken to visiting each other
rather frequently, don't you think?"
It was lightly tossed off, but not without its evil implication; and I
felt his eyes intently fixed upon me as he sat hunched up on the rail in
his sodden sleeping-suit, like some huge, ill-omened bird of prey.
To get rid of him, to obliterate the horrible fact that he still existed
in the flesh, was the instinctive impulse of my staggered brain. But
the peril of discovery, the chance that those sleeping below might
awaken and hear us, held me in a vise of indecision.
"If I could bring myself to reproach you, Captain," he went on,
ironically polite, "I might protest that your last visit to this island
savored to a too-inquisitive intrusion. You'll pardon my frankness. I
had convinced you and Major Stanleigh that Farquharson was dead. To the
world at large that should have sufficed. That I choose to remain alive
is my own affair. Your sudden return to Muloa--with a lady--would have
upset everything, if Fate and that inspired fool of a Malay had not
happily intervened. But now, surely, there can be no doubt that I am
dead?"