THE BEACH BY MOONLIGHT
White-Man's-Trouble was abominably frightened during that night march
along the beach to Malla-Nulla, and did not mind showing it. Indeed,
the fact that he screwed up his determination sufficiently to make the
trip at all, says a great deal for his admiration of Carter.
Carter, on the other hand, though he was fully alive to the desperate
risks that lay ahead, felt himself to be the white man in command, and
adjusted his demeanor accordingly. To look at him one might have
thought that he was merely taking exercise and the evening air for the
general good of his health.
Had there been cover he would have taken it, but there was none. The
beach was the only path; the bush which walled it on one side was
impassable, and though the sea might have been considered an
alternative route, they had only cotton-wood dug-outs at the Smooth
River factory, and it would have taken at least a surf-boat to get out
over the Smooth River bar, to say nothing of landing, when the time
came, through the rollers which crashed always on Malla-Nulla beach.
So he marched along where the sand was wet and hard, just above the
cream of surf, and he carried the twelve-bore, hammers downwards, over
his shoulder, with his forefinger on the trigger guard above. He was
very grateful for those past days of rabbit shooting in Upper
Wharfedale which had taught him to be so quick and deadly on a sudden
mark.
The surf on one side, and the night noises of Africa on the other,
roared in their ears as they marched, and every now and again they came
into a cloud of fireflies, which switched their tiny lamps in and out
with inconceivable rapidity, and left them quite blinded during the
intervals of darkness.
So that on the whole, as Carter realized very fully, if the King of
Okky had set men to waylay them, these could scarcely be incompetent
enough to miss their mark. But he did not admit this knowledge to
White-Man's-Trouble. When that Krooboy stated things exactly as they
were, Carter pooh-poohed his deductions lightly enough, and stormed at
the man because he was ignorant of the most approved method of
pipe-claying shoes.
An African moon floated cleanly overhead, and great African stars
punctured the purple roof of heaven, and to Carter's chilled fancy he
and the Krooboy were as conspicuous as two actors strutting under lime
light. But there were two things he overlooked, and these I believe
must have been the salvation of the pair of them. The thick night
mists were steaming out of the forest, and from the surf the thick
white sea smoke drove in on the land breeze to meet them. This
translucent fog, though it might not be very apparent to the eyes of
the walkers themselves, would be quite enough to screen them from the
gaze of hostile pickets who, after the manner of Africans, were already
half scared out of their dusky skins by the fear of ghosts.
They had made the journey out to Smooth River in five and a quarter
hours; they completed the journey back to Malla-Nulla in four, which
meant good travelling; and because a heavy march like this may not be
undertaken without physical payment in the stewy climate of the Coast,
Carter felt certain premonitory symptoms which told him that a good
thumping dose of fever would be his when once he slackened his efforts
and gave it a chance to take charge. But he was not much alarmed at
the circumstance. As he told himself coolly enough, either by the time
the fever came on he would have rejoined Mr. Smith at Malla-Nulla, who
in that case was perfectly capable of looking after him, or he would
have rejoined Mr. Smith in the Shades Beyond, and a fever owing to his
body left behind on earth would not matter. As it happened neither of
these alternatives had to be bargained with.
Malla-Nulla factory was eaves deep in white wet mist when they got to
it, and found it earthy-smelling and empty. It was unmarked by fire,
unsmirched by signs of battle, and, strangest of all, unlooted.
The pair of them charged up the veranda steps, Carter in the lead, with
the twelve-bore held ready for an instant discharge. The Krooboy with
matchet uplifted and teeth at the snarl looked the very picture of
savage desperation and ferocity. They stepped into the empty mess-room
and lit matches and a lamp. The land breeze sang through the bamboo
walls, and Carter's home-made punkah swished overhead to the unseen
impulse of the water wheel; but of quick human life, there was not a
trace.
He had fitted up bells about the place, or rather strings that actuated
wooden clappers which could beat on wooden drums. He set these all
a-clang and listened. The place reeked of its usual mildew, and the
smell nauseated him. They had got rid of the mildew scent at the
Smooth River factory. But there was not a murmur of reply to his
clamor.
White-Man's-Trouble delivered himself of wisdom. "Oh, Carter, I think
dem Smith, an' all dem boys at factory lib for die. Dis place lib for
full of ghosts. I fit for run back for Smooth River."
"Run away, then," said Carter, who was beginning to examine the
mess-room systematically.
The Krooboy cowered in a chair and covered his eyes. "Oh, Carter, I no
fit for march back alone. Dem ghosts plenty-too-much fond o' Kroo
chop. Oh, Carter, you no be dam fool an' stay here. You lib back for
Smooth River all-e-same me."
"My pagan friend, don't get too familiar. The next time I hear you
calling me names, I shall break my knuckles up against one of the
places where the worsted's been shaved off your skull. Observe"--said
Carter, and poured some whiskey onto the table top and set light to
it--"Observe those blue flames that crawl and flicker about, but do not
burn the wood. In those the ghosts that have been threatening you are
now being most painfully consumed. Do you believe it?"
"I fit for see 'em die," said White-Man's-Trouble devoutly. "Oh,
Carter, you plenty-much-fine witch doctor. I fit for pipe-clay dem
shoes, three pair a day. Oh, Carter, if Okky men lib for come, you
burn them, too?"
"Certainly," said Carter, "anything to soothe your nerves. Though, as
a matter of fact, I should demonstrate to them with a shotgun, not by
burning methylated. Now, just nose around, boy, and help me to find
out where Mr. Smith's evaporated to. They can't have eaten him, or
some of them must have stayed behind to digest the meal; and they can't
have kidnapped him, or he'd have broken up the happy home before he
condescended to go, and as we see it now, it's no more squalid than
usual. So now, Trouble, produce Mr. Smith."
"Smith? Oh, Carter, dem Smith lib for surf boat."
"How on earth do you know that?"
"Dem surf boat no lib for beach. Dem paddles no lib for veranda, Okky
man no fit for boat boy. So Malla-Nulla Krooboy, dey boat boy for dem
Smith in Malla-Nulla surf boat. Savvy?"
"I do clearly. But why the deuce didn't you tell me all this before?"
"Because," said the Krooboy simply, "I too plenty-much frightened o'
dem ghosts before you burn 'em."
"I wonder," said Carter thoughtfully, "if I shall ever understand all
the workings of the African mind." He went onto the veranda and peered
out into the mists. A fleecy blanket covered the sea and blotted out
the water, and all things of low elevation that floated thereon. In
the distance, between him and the moon, the two black mastheads of an
invisible steamer ploughed through the whiteness, but between him and
it a whole fleet of canoes and surf boats might have been snugly tucked
away from his sight.
Then a sudden pang of coldness came upon him, which made him button up
his white drill coat, and step back into the mess-room and huddle into
a chair.
"Fever lib," said White-Man's-Trouble looking at him critically.
"I'm in for my usual two days' touch," said Carter, with the
listlessness of the malaria already creeping over him.
"You fit for quinine-palaver?"
"I suppose so."
The Krooboy fetched the quinine bottle from Mr. Smith's well-filled
medicine shelf.
"I'd some pills of my own somewhere."
"Steamah pills. Dem Cappy Image pills no dam good. I eat dem box
myself."
"You thieving scoundrel!"
"Oh, Carter, I tell you dem pills no good." He laid a hand on his
midriff. "No fit for give you even small-small twist there. Oh,
Carter, I save you lose your temper over dem pills when I eat 'em mine
self."
"I wish they'd been calomel. You'll get poisoned one of these days,
Trouble, if you don't stop stealing. I've some corrosive sublimate
tabloids for skin preserving stowed away somewhere, and if you bolt one
of those, you lib for die one-time. Here, give me a dose of quinine."
The Krooboy found a cigarette paper, tapped it full of the feathery
white powder, and rolled it up. Carter put it on his tongue and
swilled it down with whiskey and water. "Quick, now, get me some
blankets," he chattered. "I shall burst if I don't sweat directly."
White-Man's-Trouble packed him with rugs and coats, till in the baking
atmosphere of the mess-room one wondered that any skin could resist the
invitation.
But presently the wraps were flung aside, and Carter sat aching and
burning in his clammy drill clothes, with his skin bone-dry, and a feel
in his head as though it were moving in and out like a concertina.
"That last's the quinine," he told himself; and then, "I say, Trouble,
you'd better think for your own neck now. I shall be otherwise
occupied for the next thirty hours. You'll be well advised if you went
away back to Smooth River. If the Okky men come here and knock me on
the head, I really don't care. And if they'll only chop my unwholesome
carcass, and get indigestion from it afterwards, I feel I shall get a
grim enjoyment from watching their writhings from my own comfortable
(or maybe uncomfortable) seat on the Other Side."
"You lib for bad fever," said White-Man's-Trouble thoughtfully.
Carter clutched at the Krooboy's brawny hand and wrung it
enthusiastically. "Hullo, Pater! Fancy seeing you out here in this
filthy hole! Well, sir, it is real good of you to leave Wharfedale and
come all this way to look me up. How's the Mater? All right, eh? And
did she do you in the eye this year over the roses, or did you manage
to snip off the buds ahead of her? You didn't happen to bring any beer
with you, did you, sir? Nice cool draught of Pateley ale, in your big
silver tankard that you won for stewing Hindoo babies alive at the
burning ghats? We've got muggers here, too.... Lord, what rot I'm
talking, and you aren't the Pater at all, but only a dashed good sort
of an ugly nigger with a blue frying pan tattooed across the bridge of
your nose. White-Man's-Trouble, tell me solemnly and truly. Why do
noses have bridges? Why, for instance, not ferries? Wake up, you
image, and give me a civil answer."
"You lib for dam bad fever," said White-Man's-Trouble still more
thoughtfully, "an' if you lib for die, Okky men catch me one-time. So
I fit for make you well one-time. Oh, Carter, you hear, I plenty-much
fine doctor."
"You a doctor! With peacock's feathers growing out behind your ears
instead of whiskers!"
"I savvy nothing white-man's drug-palaver. But I savvy plenty cure
fever Krooboy fashion."
"Do you? Which of you? What rot I'm talking! But upon my Sam, the
Pater's gone, and there are three distinct White-Man's-Troubles
standing there all in a row. I'll just talk to the middle one, and you
others shut up. Now, then, sir, you say you savvy Krooboy
doctor-palaver?"
"Savvy plenty."
"Then, doc, I offer myself as a patient. Never mind sending in to
Grasington for your amputating tools. Remember you are a Dales doctor,
and as you've pointed out with offensive cheerfulness many times, you
saw me into this hot and wicked world, and I know you jolly well hope
to see me out. You catch the patient and we do the rest, as the
undertakers say when they send round their cards about top hats and gun
cases. Special quotations for fever patients F.O.B., for then a couple
of firebars out of the engine room does the trick, and saves the cost
of an elaborate coffin."
"Oh, Carter, listen to me."
"Well?"
"I lib for Krooboy quarters for fetich ju-ju. You sit here. No run
away. Savvy?"
"Be long gone?"
"I come back one-time."
"All right. Give my compliments to Miss Slade, and say we had a jolly
walk in the moonlight and found everything all right when we got here,
except that Mr. Swizzle-Stick--whose other name I forget--had eloped
with the assistant typewriter. Say, it was rather a nuisance about the
typewriter woman, because she was the one who made the jellies, jolly
cool yellow jellies with just a drop of sherry in them that were
perfectly ripping when you had been sick. My mother used to make
jellies like that herself for us kids when we were sick----"
He was still rambling on when the Krooboy returned, and by that time
the fever was burning dangerously high. It was not running its normal
course. He had undergone abnormal exertion, and the resulting fever
was correspondingly fierce.
White-Man's-Trouble came in out of the warm moist night outside, with
some liquid in a cracked teacup. The patient refused to know him, and
so the Krooboy picked him up in his enormous arms and got the liquid
down his throat by drenching him as a nurse might drench a fractious
child.
Carter coughed and spat, but the dose was down, and in three minutes it
had started its work. In five minutes it had laid him out, and then
White-Man's-Trouble carried him into the next room and laid him on a
bed. Then from a bag he produced materials and did with them what will
not be set down here.... And after that he groped around inside the
mosquito bar, killed what insects were lodged there, pulled down the
netting, and tucked it accurately round the mattress.
Then he took up his matchet again, spat in his great right hand to get
a good grip on the hilt, lay down on the mat before the door and went
to sleep.
The room pinged with mosquitoes; a leopard roared persistently from the
bush at the back of the factory, and a rat somewhere up in the rafters
gnawed at a sounding piece of board with irritating persistence.
Moreover, of course there was the probability of the Okky men coming to
the factory at any moment for that much talked-of massacre. But none
of these things disturbed White-Man's-Trouble. He suddenly wished for
sleep, and therefore to sleep he promptly resigned himself. All
thoughts of anything beyond that immediate desire were blotted out from
his simple brain. The patient might awake, and rave, or want
assistance; but that did not matter. Nothing mattered beyond his wish
there and then for sleep.
The beautiful unreliability of his tribe was strongly present in
White-Man's-Trouble.