"And I have a notion that even you, Captain Barnaby, will never dispute
that fact."
He threw back his head suddenly--for all the world like the dancing
faun--and laughed silently at the stars.
My tongue was dry in my mouth as I tried to make some rejoinder. He
baffled me completely, and meanwhile I was in a tingle of fear lest the
mate should come up on deck to see what progress the tide had made, or
lest the sound of our voices might waken the girl in Joyce's state-room.
"I can promise you that," I attempted to assure him in weak, sepulchral
tones. "And now, if you like, I'll put you ashore in the small boat. You
must be getting chilly in that wet sleeping-suit."
"As a matter of fact I am, and I was wondering if you would not offer me
something to drink."
"You shall have a bottle to take along," I promised, with alacrity, but
he demurred.
"There is no sociability in that. And you seem very lonesome here--stuck
for two more hours at least. Come, Captain, fetch your bottle and we
will share it together."
He got down from the rail, stretched his arms lazily above his head, and
dropped into one of the deck chairs that had been placed aft for the
convenience of my two passengers.
"And cigars, too, Captain," he suggested, with a politeness that was
almost impertinence. "We'll have a cozy hour or two out of this tedious
wait for the tide to lift you off."
I contemplated him helplessly. There was no alternative but to fall in
with whatever mad caprice might seize his brain. If I opposed him, it
would lead to high and querulous words; and the hideous fact of his
presence there--of his mere existence--I was bound to conceal at all
hazards.
"I must ask you to keep quiet," I said, stiffly.
"As a tomb," he agreed, and his eyes twinkled disagreeably in the
darkness. "You forget that I am supposed to be in one."
I went stealthily down into the cabin, where I secured a box of cigars
and the first couple of bottles that my hands laid hold of in the
locker. They proved to contain an old Tokay wine which I had treasured
for several years to no particular purpose. The ancient bottles clinked
heavily in my grasp as I mounted again to the deck.
"Now this is something like," he purred, watching like a cat my every
motion as I set the glasses forth and guardedly drew the cork. He
saluted me with a flourish and drank.
To an onlooker that pantomime in the darkness would have seemed utterly
grotesque. I tasted the fragrant, heavy wine and waited--waited in an
agony of suspense--my ears strained desperately to catch the least sound
from below. But a profound silence enveloped the schooner, broken only
by the occasional rhythmic snore of the mate.
"You seem rather ill at ease," Farquharson observed from the depths of
the deck chair when he had his cigar comfortably aglow. "I trust it
isn't this little impromptu call of mine that's disturbing you. After
all, life has its unusual moments, and this, I think, is one of them."
He sniffed the bouquet of his wine and drank. "It is rare moments like
this--bizarre, incredible, what you like--that compensate for the tedium
of years."
His disengaged hand had fallen to the side of the chair, and I now
observed in dismay that a scarf belonging to Joyce's wife had been left
lying in the chair, and that his fingers were absently twisting the
silken fringe.
"I wonder that you stick it out, as you do, on this island," I forced
myself to observe, seeking safety in the commonplace, while my eyes, as
if fascinated, watched his fingers toying with the ends of the scarf. I
was forced to accept the innuendo beneath his enigmatic utterances. His
utter baseness and depravity, born perhaps of a diseased mind, I could
understand. I had led him to bait a trap with the fiction of his own
death, but he could not know that it had been already sprung upon his
unsuspecting victims.
He seemed to regard me with contemptuous pity. "Naturally, you wonder. A
mere skipper like yourself fails to understand--many things. What can
you know of life cooped up in this schooner? You touch only the surface
of things just as this confounded boat of yours skims only the top of
the water. Once in a lifetime you may come to real grips with
life--strike bottom, eh?--as your schooner has done now. Then you're
aground and quite helpless. What a pity!"
He lifted his glass and drank it off, then thrust it out to be refilled.
"Life as the world lives it--bah!" he dismissed it with the scorn of one
who counts himself divested of all illusions. "Life would be an infernal
bore if it were not for its paradoxes. Now you, Captain Barnaby, would
never dream that in becoming dead to the world--in other people's
belief--I have become intensely alive. There are opened up infinite
possibilities----"
He drank again and eyed me darkly, and then went on in his crack-brained
way, "What is life but a challenge to pretense, a constant exercise in
duplicity, with so few that come to master it as an art? Every one goes
about with something locked deep in his heart. Take yourself, Captain
Barnaby. You have your secrets--hidden from me, from all the
world--which, if they could be dragged out of you----"
His deep-set eyes bored through the darkness upon me. Hunched up in the
deck chair, with his legs crossed under him, he was like an animated
Buddha venting a dark philosophy and seeking to undermine my mental
balance with his sophistry.
"I'm a plain man of the sea," I rejoined, bluntly. "I take life as it
comes."
He smiled derisively, drained his glass, and held it out again. "But you
have your secrets, rather clumsily guarded, to be sure----"
"What secrets?" I cried out, goaded almost beyond endurance.
He seemed to deprecate the vigor of my retort and lifted a cautioning
hand. "Do you want every one on board to hear this conversation?"
At that moment the smoke-wrapped cone of Lakalatcha was cleft by a sheet
of flame, and we confronted each other in a sort of blood-red dawn.
"There is no reason why we should quarrel," he went on, after darkness
had enveloped us again. "But there are times which call for plain
speaking. Major Stanleigh is probably hardly aware of just what he said
to me under a little artful questioning. It seems that a lady who--shall
we say, whom we both have the honor of knowing?--is in love. Love, mark
you. It is always interesting to see that flower bud twice from the same
stalk. However, one naturally defers to a lady, especially when one is
very much in her way. _Place aux dames_, eh? Exit poor Farquharson! You
must admit that his was an altruistic soul. Well, she has her
freedom--if only to barter it for a new bondage. Shall we drink to the
happy future of that romance?"
He lifted to me his glass with ironical invitation, while I sat aghast
and speechless, my heart pounding against my ribs. This intolerable
colloquy could not last forever. I deliberated what I should do if we
were surprised. At the sound of a footfall or the soft creak of a plank
I felt that I might lose all control and leap up and brain him with the
heavy bottle in my grasp. I had an insane desire to spring at his throat
and throttle his infamous bravado, tumble him overboard and annihilate
the last vestige of his existence.
"Come, Captain," he urged, "you, too, have shared in smoothing the path
for these lovers. Shall we not drink to their happy union?"
A feeling of utter loathing went over me. I set my glass down. "It would
be a more serviceable compliment to the lady in question if I strangled
you on the spot," I muttered, boldly.
"But you are forgetting that I am already dead." He threw his head back
as if vastly amused, then lurched forward and held out his glass a
little unsteadily to be refilled.
He gave me a quick, evil look. "Besides, the noise might disturb your
passengers."
I could feel a cold perspiration suddenly breaking out upon my body.
Either the fellow had obtained an inkling of the truth in some
incredible way, or was blindly on the track of it, guided by some
diabolical scent. Under the spell of his eyes I could not manage the
outright lie which stuck in my throat.
"What makes you think I have passengers?" I parried, weakly.
With intent or not, he was again fingering the fringe of the scarf that
hung over the arm of the chair.
"It is not your usual practice, but you have been carrying them lately."
He drained his glass and sat staring into it, his head drooping a little
forward. The heavy wine was beginning to have its effect upon him, but
whether it would provoke him to some outright violence or drag him down
into a stupor, I could not predict. Suddenly the glass slipped from his
fingers and shivered to pieces on the deck. I started violently at the
sound, and in the silence that followed I thought I heard a footfall in
the cabin below.
He looked up at length from his absorbed contemplation of the bits of
broken glass. "We were talking about love, were we not?" he demanded,
heavily.
I did not answer. I was straining to catch a repetition of the sound
from below. Time was slipping rapidly away, and to sit on meant
inevitable discovery. The watch might waken or the mate appear to
surprise me in converse with my nocturnal visitor. It would be folly to
attempt to conceal his presence and I despaired of getting him back to
the shore while his present mood held, although I remembered that the
small boat, which had been lowered after we went aground, was still
moored to the rail amidships.
Refilling my own glass, I offered it to him. He lurched forward to take
it, but the fumes of the wine suddenly drifted clear of his brain. "You
seem very much distressed," he observed, with ironic concern. "One might
think you were actually sheltering these precious love-birds."
Perspiration broke out anew upon my face and neck. "I don't know what
you are talking about," I bluntly tried to fend off his implications. I
felt as if I were helplessly strapped down and that he was about to
probe me mercilessly with some sharp instrument. I strove to turn the
direction of his thoughts by saying, "I understand that the Stanleighs
are returning to England."
"The Stanleighs--quite so," he nodded agreement, and fixed me with a
maudlin stare. Something prompted me to fill his glass again. He drank
it off mechanically. Again I poured, and he obediently drank. With an
effort he tried to pick up the thread of our conversation:
"What did you say? Oh, the Stanleighs ... yes, yes, of course." He
slowly nodded his head and fell silent. "I was about to say ..." He
broke off again and seemed to ruminate profoundly.... "Love-birds----" I
caught the word feebly from his lips, spoken as if in a daze. The glass
hung dripping in his relaxed grasp.
It was a crucial moment in which his purpose seemed to waver and die in
his clouded brain. A great hope sprang up in my heart, which was
hammering furiously. If I could divert his fuddled thoughts and get him
back to shore while the wine lulled him to forgetfulness.
I leaned forward to take the glass which was all but slipping from his
hand when Lakalatcha flamed with redoubled fury. It was as if the
mountain had suddenly bared its fiery heart to the heavens, and a
muffled detonation reached my ears.
Farquharson straightened up with a jerk and scanned the smoking peak,
from which a new trickle of white-hot lava had broken forth in a
threadlike waterfall. He watched its graceful play as if hypnotized, and
began babbling to himself in an incoherent prattle. All his faculties
seemed suddenly awake, but riveted solely upon the heavy laboring of the
mountain. He was chiding it in Malay as if it were a fractious child.
When I ventured to urge him back to shore he made no protest, but
followed me into the boat. As I pushed off and took up the oars he had
eyes for nothing but the flaming cone, as if its leaping fires held for
him an Apocalyptic vision.
I strained at the oars as if in a race, with all eternity at stake,
blindly urging the boat ahead through water that flashed crimson at
every stroke. The mountain now flamed like a beacon, and I rowed for
dear life over a sea of blood.
Farquharson sat entranced before the spectacle, chanting to himself a
kind of insane ritual, like a Parsee fire-worshiper making obeisance
before his god. He was rapt away to some plane of mystic exaltation, to
some hinterland of the soul that merged upon madness. When at length the
boat crunched upon the sandy shore he got up unsteadily from the stern
and pointed to the pharos that flamed in the heavens.
"The fire upon the altar is lit," he addressed me, oracularly, while the
fanatic light of a devotee burned in his eyes. "Shall we ascend and
prepare the sacrifice?"
I leaned over the oars, panting from my exertions, indifferent to his
rhapsody.
"If you'll take my advice, you'll get back at once to your bungalow and
strip off that wet sleeping-suit," I bluntly counseled him, but I might
as well have argued with a man in a trance.
He leaped over the gunwale and strode up the beach. Again he struck his
priestlike attitude and invoked me to follow.
"The fire upon the altar waits," he repeated, solemnly. Suddenly he
broke into a shrill laugh and ran like a deer in the direction of the
forest that stretched up the slopes of the mountain.
The mate's face, thrust over the rail as I drew alongside the schooner,
plainly bespoke his utter bewilderment. He must have though me bereft of
my senses to be paddling about at that hour of the night. The tide had
made, and the _Sylph_, righting her listed masts, was standing clear of
the shoal. The deck was astir, and when the command was given to hoist
the sails it was obeyed with an uneasy alacrity. The men worked
frantically in a bright, unnatural day, for Lakalatcha was now
continuously aflame and tossing up red-hot rocks to the accompaniment of
dull sounds of explosion.
My first glance about the deck had been one of relief to note that Joyce
and his wife were not there, although the commotion of getting under
sail must have awakened them. A breeze had sprung up which would prove a
fair wind as soon as the _Sylph_ stood clear of the point. The mate gave
a grunt of satisfaction when at length the schooner began to dip her bow
and lay over to her task. Leaving him in charge, I started to go below,
when suddenly Mrs. Joyce, fully dressed, confronted me. She seemed to
have materialized out of the air like a ghost. Her hair glowed like
burnished copper in the unnatural illumination which bathed the deck,
but her face was ashen, and the challenge of her eyes made my heart stop
short.
"You have been awake long?" I ventured to ask.
"Too long," she answered, significantly, with her face turned away,
looking down into the water. She had taken my arm and drawn me toward
the rail. Now I felt her fingers tighten convulsively. In the droop of
her head and the tense curve of her neck I sensed her mad impulse which
the dark water suggested.
"Mrs. Joyce!" I remonstrated, sharply.
She seemed to go limp all over at the words. I drew her along the deck
for a faltering step or two, while her eyes continued to brood upon the
water rushing past. Suddenly she spoke:
"What other way out is there?"
"Never that," I said, shortly. I urged her forward again. "Is your
husband asleep?"
"Thank God, yes!"
"Then you have been awake----"
"For over an hour," she confessed, and I detected the shudder that went
over her body.
"The man is mad----"
"But I am married to him." She stopped and caught at the rail like a
prisoner gripping at the bars that confine him. "I cannot--cannot endure
it! Where are you taking me? Where _can_ you take me? Don't you see that
there is no escape--from this?"
The _Sylph_ rose and sank to the first long roll of the open sea.
"When we reach Malduna----" I began, but the words were only torture.
"I cannot--cannot go on. Take me back!--to that island. Let me live
abandoned--or rather die----"
"Mrs. Joyce, I beg of you...."
The schooner rose and dipped again.
For what seemed an interminable time we paced the deck together while
Lakalatcha flamed farther and farther astern. Her words came in fitful
snatches as if spoken in a delirium, and at times she would pause and
grip the rail to stare back, wild-eyed, at the receding island.
Suddenly she started, and in a sort of blinding, noonday blaze I saw her
face blanch with horror. It was as if at that moment the heavens had
cracked asunder and the night had fallen away in chaos. Turning, I saw
the cone of the mountain lifting skyward in fragments--and saw no more,
for the blinding vision remained seared upon the retina of my eyes.
Across the water, slower paced, came the dread concussion of sound.
"Good God! It's carried away the whole island!" I heard the mate's voice
bellowing above the cries of the men. The _Sylph_ scudded before the
approaching storm of fire redescending from the sky....
The first gray of the dawn disclosed Mrs. Joyce still standing by the
rail, her hand nestling within the arm of her husband, indifferent to
the heavy grayish dust that fell in benediction upon her like a silent
shower of snow.
* * * * *
The island of Muloa remains to-day a charred cinder lapped about by the
blue Pacific. At times gulls circle over its blackened and desolate
surface devoid of every vestige of life. From the squat, truncated mass
of Lakalatcha, shorn of half its lordly height, a feeble wisp of smoke
still issues to the breeze, as if Vulcan, tired of his forge, had banked
its fire before abandoning it.