THE FEELING ON THE COAST
"Well, Carter-me-lad," said Captain Image, coming into the room, "they
tell me you're the most unpopular man in Liverpool. They want to give
you dinners, and put your photo in the papers, and hear you make a
speech, and you won't have anything to do with anybody. What's broke?
Tin troubling you?"
"Oh! tin's all right. But I've got a constitutional dislike to
marching along at the tail of a brass band, that's all. Besides I feel
an awful humbug when all these silly stay-at-home people insist on
believing that the one and only reason I went up country was to chop
down old Kallee's private crucifixion tree. Have a cigar?"
"Not me in here, me lad. I came home from the Islands with the old
_M'poso_ full of passengers, and I've smoked myself half sick on
cigars. I'll suck at a pipe. By the way, I've got a message for you
from Kallee. The old sinner came on board himself when we were lying
off Edmondson's factory trying to get your ore, and nearly drank the
ship dry before I could get quit of him. Owe-it Slade's been palming
off I.O.U.'s on him. He'd got quite a sheaf of them. He says when you
marry Laura he'll give them to you as a wedding present, or words to
that effect. But in the meanwhile if he can catch Slade he's just
going to chop his head off to prevent him putting any more paper into
circulation."
"Well?"
"Well, you see, me lad, Slade owes our fo'c'sle shop a matter of four
pounds odd which we can't collect, and he's got a Holland gun of mine
that I shouldn't really like to lose. Besides, come to thinking of it,
I suppose Laura's fond of him anyway. Couldn't you do something for
him?"
Carter stared. "Has he left O'Neill and Craven's, then?"
Captain Image stopped down the tobacco in his pipe with a horny
forefinger. "Why, no, and you'll have to pay to get him away."
"But what mortal use is he to me?"
Captain Image's pipe worked hard and he spoke in jerks. "Rubber
palaver. Owe-it Slade's the smartest man at dem rubber palaver on the
Coast."
"Pooh! That slackster!"
"That's where you're making the usual mistake. Slade's got his faults.
He wastes his money, he never pays his bills, he sponges for all
eternity, and he makes out he was born lazy. But don't you believe
him. Who got Miss Kate all these rubber properties that she's floated
off into such whacking big companies?"
"Miss Kate O'Neill."
"No more than you did, me lad. It was just Owe-it Slade. And to
think," Captain Image added with a sigh, "I always put that man down as
a borrowing waster, and never even hustled him to collect cargo for me.
Why, if I'd known then what I know now, I could have bought rubber
lands through him, for a half surf boat full of gin, that I might have
sold to a company myself, and dined off turkey in my own house ashore
every day for all the rest of my natural life. Why, my Christian Aunt!
I might even have married, if I'd worked him properly."
Captain Image dabbed with his forefinger on Carter's coat sleeve and
left a print of tobacco ash. "You buy up Owe-it Slade, me lad, and not
only is your fortune made, but--well," he added rather lamely, "you buy
him up and just remember I told you to."
"But--what were you going to say?"
"Well," said Image desperately, "I didn't intend to tell you, but all
up and down the Coast, and in the hotels in Las Palmas, and even in the
bars and offices here, the boys don't like the way Miss Kate is playing
it on you. It's all right for a girl to take to business, if she's
built that way, but she ought to play the game. Of course the general
idea is, me lad, that you and she started sweet-hearting and had a
turn-up, but of course I'm in the know, and I've called 'em dam' liars
every time they've started that tale, and told 'em about Laura and how
you were fixed up long before Miss Kate came down onto the Coast. Why,
Carter-me-lad, I've backed up my words with bets to that extent that if
you were to marry the lady now by any kind of accident, I should stand
to lose what with one fiver and another, a matter of two hundred and
fifty pounds."
Carter laughed. "That puts it finally out of the region of
possibility, doesn't it? I can't let you lose a pile like that. But
all the same I'm not going to interfere with Miss O'Neill. If Slade's
useful to her, let her keep him. I'm much obliged to a lot of
officious idiots for sympathizing with me, but really they're moving on
a lot too fast. It will be quite time for other people to be sorry for
me when I start in to be sorry for myself. Besides, I thought you, at
any rate, were a strong admirer of Miss O'Neill's?"
"I am," said Captain Image patiently. He always flattered himself that
he left the more eloquent parts of his speech at Sierra Leone on each
trip north, and picked them up again there next voyage for vigorous use
on the Coast. It was his pride that he conformed most suitably to
Liverpool's sedate atmosphere. "I admire Miss Kate as a lady more than
anyone I know, and if she were only twenty years older, and I could
afford it, I wouldn't mind going in for her myself. But it's her
business ideas, as she showed them over that factory of Edmondson's,
that I can't stand. The way she stuck up the rent on you, me lad, is
the limit. Why, if that sort of thing went on, nobody would be safe.
It's Oil-Trust morals. I'm Welsh myself, but I do draw the line
somewhere."
"What, Welsh?" said Carter politely. "I should never have guessed it."
"I am," said Captain Image with sturdy truth, "and many times, look
you, I am proud of it. Which reminds me that little red-bearded Kettle
that you employed to run your launch and the mine is Welsh also. I
don't want to go against a fellow-countryman who's down on his luck,
but I saw him with my own eyes give old Kallee an illustrated methody
tract on bigamy when he was on the _M'poso_, and if His Portliness
finds anyone kind enough to translate it for him, there'll be the devil
to pay. Kallee's black, but he's a king, and he's not the kind to let
any man tamper with his domestic happiness. Now about Slade----"
"We'll drop Slade. He's Miss O'Neill's man. If Miss O'Neill chooses
to amuse herself by gunning for me, that's her concern. But I don't
shoot back."
Captain Image shook his head sadly. "Well, me lad, if you won't lift a
hand to help yourself, I don't see there's anything more to be said."
He put his pipe in his pocket, stood up and prepared to go. "Oh, by
the way, did anyone tell you about old Swizzle-Stick Smith?"
"Not dead, is he?"
"Lord bless you, no, me lad. Very much the reverse. Look here, what
was your idea of that man?"
"In what way?"
"What was he before he became the disreputable old palm oil ruffian you
first knew at Malla-Nulla?"
"Oh, I suppose he was less disreputable once. He'd let himself drift,
that's all. One does get into frightfully slack ways in those lonely
factories."
"Did he strike you as the usual type of man a factory agent's made of?"
"Why, no."
"Gentleman, wasn't he, or had been once? Always used to hitch up the
knees of his pyjamas when he sat down; spoke well; knew Latin; could
swear round any man on the Coast when he was that side out; and had a
pleasant way of making you feel you were dirt when the mood took him
that way?"
Carter laughed. "He had some characteristic little ways."
"Ever strike you he'd been a soldier once?"
"I suppose it did."
"Well, me lad, when I was tied up by that Edmondson factory, a boat
swung up to my ladder and a military party stepped out. Quite the
swell, I can tell you: nobby white helmet, hair cut with scissors,
smart gray mustache, gray imperial bristling underneath it,
clean-shaved chin, white drill coat with concertina pockets, white
drill pants with a crease down the shin, latest thing in pipe-clayed
shoes. If it hadn't been for the old trick with the eye-glass and the
black ribbon, I take my dick I shouldn't have known him.
"'Hullo Swizzle-Stick Smith,' said I, 'you are a howler. Whose kit
have you been robbing?'
"'Captain Image,' says he, 'allow me--ar--to present to you Mr. Smith,
a new acquaintance. It is not--ar--my wish to be mistaken for any of
your discreditable--ar--pot companions of the past.' That to me, and
on my own deck, me lad. What do you think of that?"
"I bet you boiled."
Captain Image scratched his head vexedly. "The rum part of it is, I
didn't. Somehow I took the man at his own valuation. There didn't
seem anything else left to do. He went into my chart house, and sat
there as solid as if he'd been the governor of a colony with six
letters after his name. Just drank one cocktail and took three
swallows at it, I'll trouble you, and actually left a second to stand
by itself on the tray. When I handed him the tobacco tin to see if
he'd got that frowsy old pipe in his pocket, I'm hanged if he didn't
pull out a book of cigarette papers and roll himself a smoke with
those. Well, me lad, when I remembered Swizzle-Stick Smith's opinion
of cigarettes, you might have knocked me down with a teaspoon."
"He scared me out of cigarette smoking at Malla-Nulla," said Carter.
"He was pretty emphatic over the weak-kneed crowd (as he called them)
who only smoked cigarettes. But why all this revolution in Mr. Smith's
habits? Did he give any reason for it?"
"That's the amazing thing, he didn't--at least not a proper reason. He
just let me see that the new Mr. Smith--I got to calling him Major, by
the way--was no relation to the Swizzle-Stick Smith that was, and then
went back over the side to his boat."
"I suppose," said Carter thoughtfully, "he wanted the reformation to be
advertised."
"Well, you don't think I'd keep a choice bit like that to myself," said
Captain Image. "Naturally I spread the news, though I certainly didn't
tell all the Coast, as I've told you, the way that the late
Swizzle-Stick Smith made me feel second man in my own chart house. But
that man doesn't need any advertising; the most genial drunk wouldn't
take liberties with him, and you'd fall into calling him Major yourself
if you sat with him for ten minutes. My Christian Aunt! just think
what a filthy old palm oil ruffian he used to be."
"Did he give any reason for pulling up?"
"Oh, I asked him that. Managed to slip it in, you know. And he
answered as dry as you please, 'Urgent private affairs, Captain Image,'
and then tagged on some Latin, which, as he remarked would be the case,
I didn't understand. You know, me lad," said the sailor thoughtfully,
"he's a gentleman right through, but I shouldn't think that even in his
palmy days he was a man who would have got on particularly well with
the people. A bit superior, I should call it, with those who hadn't
been birched in the same public school where he was birched."
"I suppose," said Carter, "this is another instance of Miss O'Neill's
influence."
"As to that," said Image, "I can't say, me lad; but this I can tell
you, the Major's what he calls 'sent in his papers' to O'Neill and
Craven's."
"The deuce he has. What on earth for?"
"Can't tell you. Old Crewdson gave me the news. I said to him I
didn't suppose the loss of Swizzle-Stick Smith, even now that he had
changed himself into Major Smith, would make their firm put up the
shutters. But Crewdson wouldn't take it as a joke. He told me Miss
Kate was very sorry indeed to lose him, and had herself written to ask
him to come and see her here in England. Now, me lad, what's her game
in that?"
"I didn't know," said Carter resolutely, "and I don't want to know. As
I tell you, I flatly refuse to interfere in any of Miss O'Neill's
affairs."