A GRIM TALE OF THE SEA
I have often tried to figure just what effect on the succeeding train of
events my earlier arrival in Townsville might have had. I have never
come to any very definite conclusions in that connection. There were two
or three things that were pretty well bound to happen, and if they
hadn't come about one way, there is little doubt that they would have
done so in another. Had I been there when the _Cora_ arrived, it is
probable that I would have learned definitely at once (instead of
somewhat tardily) that Bell had _not_ died of the plague. Certainly, on
learning that fact, my impulse would have been to try to force Allen to
an immediate showdown--to insist on his proving that the dope he had put
in the American's whisky at Kai had not been the direct cause of the
latter's death. Such a showdown would have been impossible to bring
about at the time, however: for one reason, because Allen had been put
into quarantine immediately, and, for another, because, completely
played out by thirty-six hours at the wheel without relief, he had sunk
into a sleep from which he had not rallied for over two days. Similar
considerations would have prevented my seeing Rona. Besides being in
quarantine she was in a state of raving delirium, which would have made
it impossible for her to convey coherent information. Even Ranga,
unaffected in mind and body though he was, I would hardly have been
permitted to talk with when he landed, any more than I was two days
later. No, everything considered, I fail to see where my earlier arrival
would have made much difference in what happened. It must have been
slated anyhow, I think--just bound to come off however the incidentals
shaped.
Still askance at what he rated as my temerity in making an open landing
in Townsville, Captain Tancred had somewhat reluctantly granted my
request for a boat to take me ashore as soon as the quarantine officials
were through with the ship. I couldn't, of course, go off in the
quarantine launch, but one of the doctors lingered a few minutes to tell
me what he knew of the _Cora_. Although her captain had died twenty-four
hours before the schooner anchored, his remains had not been buried at
sea. This, it appeared, had been largely due to the protests of some
sort of a Kanaka girl the Skipper had had with him. According to the
Bo'sun's statement (fine upstanding fellow that looked like some kind of
a Java man), she had gone plumb off her chump. Tried to knife the Mate
first, and then plumped down by the Skipper's remains and threatened to
stick the first man to touch it. The Mate, endeavouring to humour her,
had not insisted on the burial--a reprehensible weakness on his part....
Common prudence demanded that the dead on a plague ship should be
scuppered as soon as the breath was out of their bodies. That is, with a
white man; with a nigger it did no harm to anticipate that event by an
hour or so--as long as you were sure the fellow was going to whiff out
anyway.
The funny part of it was, though (the Doctor went on), that the Skipper
had not died of the plague at all. They had not, it was true, made any
post-mortem in the rush of things; but it was certain, nevertheless,
that his body had not displayed even the preliminary evidences of
infection--no swelling of the glands of the groin or under the arms.
Magnificent physical specimen the chap was, but plainly a man who had
punished an ocean of booze in his day. And yet--confound it all!--there
was no evidence that the fellow had drunk himself to death, either. Now
if it had been the Mate--_he_ was exuding alcohol from every
pore--absolutely reeking with it. Almost made a man drunk to breathe the
air down to leeward of him. Seemed to have been on one glorious spree
all the way from--somewhere up Solomon-way, he thought it was. Harried
the niggers like a fiend, according to the Bo'sun. Clubbed three or four
of them to death for not stepping lively enough to his orders. Lucky
thing the Skipper had scuppered all but one of the guns the first day
out. But not all the booze he had soaked up had effected the nerve of
the Mate. Kept his head and his legs to the last, finishing up with a
straight twenty-four-hour trick at the wheel. Said none of the crew knew
the Barrier Reef as well as he did. Had one nigger holding a parasol
over him, another playing a concertina, another waiting handy with a
bottle of whisky, and a fourth standing by to block any rushes from the
Kanaka girl with her knife. Funny thing it never occurred to him to have
her disarmed and tied up, or shut up. Grabbed the bottle of whisky and
started to brain the Bo'sun with it every time the latter tried to push
in and relieve him at the wheel.
A chap of terrible determination and iron nerves, that Mate was,
observed the Doctor. But no wonder.... Think who he was! Allen! The
Honourable Hartley Allen! The great Allen! Son of old Sir Jim Allen!
Melbourne Cup winner! Best horseman in all Australia! Crooked as they
make 'em--but how he could ride! Sent off to the Islands four or five
years back for raising some sort of hell. His old Ticket-of-Leave had
given him away when they came to strip him for a bath. No possible
mistake about it. One of the doctors at the Quarantine Station had set a
broken collar-bone for him once after he had fallen in a steeplechase at
Coolgardie. Found the marks of the old compound fracture still humping
up on the clavicle--the left one....
It was not without difficulty that I brought the excited young medico
round to speaking of Bell again. The astounding fact that he himself,
with his own hands, had actually helped to put the great and only
Hartley Allen to bed, was proving almost too much for him. It was
certainly not less than three separate times that he assured me that it
was his own silk pajamas that were encasing the limbs of the resurrected
hero. He switched subjects reluctantly, rising to go to his waiting
launch.
"Nothing in the world the matter with the big fellow--not even too much
drink," he said as he began shuffling his health sheets together. "He
must have passed away from the sheer mental strain of the stunt he had
tackled. Intense nervous strain--that was the one thing written all over
the man. Face was starting to bloat a bit from the heat by the time I
saw it first; but, even so, it still showed the lines of the most
terrible mental suffering. Seemed to have gone out fighting hard to pull
himself together--shoulders hunched up, finger-nails clenched deep into
palms, lower lip bitten clean through."
"May not those--those things you mention have been caused by physical
rather than mental agony?" I asked, speaking very slowly to hide the
agitation aroused by this significant intelligence. "Isn't that about
the way a man would repress his feelings if he was racked with--with
stomach cramps--if he had eaten something that disagreed with him?"
"Possibly so," admitted the Doctor, with the air of a man weighing
an idea that had not occurred to him before; "but somehow that
wasn't the suggestion they carried to me--nor to any of us. Fact is,
though, we didn't give the matter very much attention. That chap was
dead--finished,--while the other white man and the girl--to say nothing
of forty or fifty niggers--were alive. Then, with the excitement of
finding we had the great Hartley Allen on our hands--and, on top of
that, having the girl run _amuck_ and give us the slip complete,--there
was enough else to think about. The only--"
"The girl gave you the slip?" I interrupted. "How was that? You didn't
mention it before."
"Bolted and drowned herself in the creek," he replied; "or at least
there's every reason to believe she drowned herself, though they haven't
found her body yet. She wasn't going to leave the Skipper, even when we
started to take his body away for burial.... And of course we couldn't
allow her to leave the Station until her period of quarantine was over.
Had to take her away from the body by main force. She fought the whole
lot of us with tooth and nail and a wicked little curly-bladed dagger.
Stood us all off, too, and looked like getting ready to use the knife on
herself when the big Malay (who chanced to be there, but had taken no
part in the shindy up to that moment) stepped in, caught her wrist and
took the nasty little toy away from her.
"The big yellow man seemed to have rather a quieting effect on the girl.
Blind mad as she was, she didn't try to stick him. It seemed to steady
her a good deal when he talked to her in her own lingo. She was panting
like a cat coming out of a fit when we left her, but was quite over her
raving--wasn't even sobbing aloud. She was coming out of her
hysteria--getting rational again. Her eyes, though still wild and almost
throwing off sparks of anger, were quite free of the crazy look. It
looked like our trouble with her was about over, but, to be on the safe
side, we locked her up in one of the 'mad' rooms. That was the last
anyone has seen of her alive--or any other way, for that matter.
"You wouldn't have believed the thing possible!" he ejaculated
feelingly, turning back from the door and slapping the table
resoundingly with his portfolio. "That room was made to confine
dangerous lunatics in, and it had fulfilled its purpose, too--up to
night before last. To make it perfectly secure, it had been constructed
without windows--nothing but a two-by-two hole up against the
twelve-foot-high ceiling admitted light and air. There were no beds or
chairs to be broken up when the occupant had tantrums.... Just sleeping
mats, a sheet, a blanket and a mosquito net. No more. Even the wash
basin was brought in and taken out by the attendant.
"In locking the girl in, no precautions were omitted except that of
strapping her in a strait-jacket, and we had never resorted to that save
in violent cases. The window--or rather air-hole--was so high and so
small that it had never been considered worth while to put bars on it.
But as it was the only conceivable way she could have got out (the
attendant is absolutely trustworthy, and the key was not in his hands
more than a minute or two anyway), we would have been forced to conclude
that the girl had reached it with wings--had not we found the lower four
or five feet of wall marked with the prints of the toes and balls of the
bare feet which had apparently been violently projected against it. That
led us to get a ladder and light and examine about the window more
closely. For a foot or more below it the wall was splashed with blood
and slightly scratched, where lacerated fingers had clawed at the narrow
ledge.
"It did not take us long to figure that, taking the whole length of the
room to get going in, the girl had flung herself up the wall something
in the way that a terrier will run six or eight feet up the side of a
house for a ball or handkerchief fastened there. That's the only way we
could account for the toe-prints on the wall, though it is quite
possible that, after failing to pull off the trick in that fashion--it's
a stunt that looks dead hopeless for anything but a monkey,--she managed
it with a straight spring, high enough to get her fingers over the
ledge. Even from there, not one woman in a million could pull herself
up. But we had already remarked on the extreme wiriness of the girl (a
regular human ape she was for agility), and so found it a bit easier to
accept the evidence of our eyes. In some way or another she had managed
it.
"The air-hole opened out under the eaves of the sheet-iron roof," the
Doctor went on, forgetting his waiting launch in the interest of the
story, and seating himself again at the table. "It must have taken some
jolly snaky wriggling to crawl through the hole, out over the eaves and
on top of the roof; but she did it, else she could never have jumped
across the big banyan, where we found some twigs broken at the point she
hit, and some wisps of silk floss. The other side of that banyan--a
hundred feet from the wall of the hospital--spreads until it comes to
about fifteen feet from the station wall. The wall is ten feet high, has
broken glass on the top of it, with three or four strands of barbed wire
above that.
"Swinging to the ground by a pendent air-root on the side she had landed
in, the girl crossed under the tree--the marks of her bare feet showing
plainly in the soft earth--and used a similar ladder with which to mount
on the other side. To be sure of clearing the barbed wire, she had
climbed to a firm perch fully twenty-five feet from the ground, and made
her final jump from there. Luckily for her, the cane field on the other
side of the wall had been flooded but a day or two before--though I
don't doubt she would have jumped just the same if it had been to a
cobblestone pavement.
"We found the deep prints of her feet, knees and hands where she had
sprawled on striking. Her tracks down to the edge of a sprouting row of
seed-cane, and the marks where she had crawled up out of a deep
irrigating ditch to the road, were all we had to indicate the direction
she had taken. As she had seemed plumb daft about the dead Skipper, we
figured that she had probably broken out with the idea of going to his
grave, and perhaps making an end of herself there. If that was it, she
failed. There were no signs whatever of her having been near the fresh
mound we had tucked the big fellow away under. It was some distance away
from the Station, and, in the night, it isn't likely she would have met
anyone to ask the way of. The only grave she found was her own, and not
a very restful one at that, I'm afraid.
"We had noticed that she seemed to set great store by a big yellow shawl
she wore--rather a fine old piece of Oriental work it looked, with a
dragon or some other kind of wild animal embroidered on it. Well, when
we found that lying on the bank of Ross Creek, just a bit inland of the
town, we felt so sure that it marked the jumping-off place for her in
more ways than one. For that reason, what search has been pressed since
has been in the form of shooting alligators, and seeing if one of them
appears to have enjoyed anything extra-special in the way of tucker
lately."
An impatient toot from his launch carried the Doctor to the door again,
where he paused long enough to assure me for the third or fourth time
that it would be most unlikely that permission would be granted me to
see the Mate or the Boatswain of the _Cora_ until their spell of
quarantine was over. If I was really anxious about it, he would gladly
put in a word for me with the Chief. I would have to show good reason
for my request, of course. Perhaps, if it chanced that I was able to
shed any light on how the schooner came to get into such a mess--I cut
him short by saying that I might call at the Quarantine Station when I
came ashore a little later. What I knew about the sailing of the _Cora_
from Kai happened to be the one thing I didn't care to confide to
anyone--just yet. Asking the Mate to order my boat to stand by for me a
few minutes longer, I went to my cabin to be alone while I turned the
fresh developments over in my mind.
I had been prepared to await the coming of the _Cora_ indefinitely. In
fact, what I expected above anything else was that the final news would
be a report that she had been found piled up on any one of a thousand
reefs that spread their coral claws all the way from the Louisiades to
the Great Barrier. And in case she did get through, I was quite prepared
to learn that both of the white men and the girl had succumbed to the
plague. But to be told that, after the schooner had avoided disaster,
and all three of them the plague, that the two upon whom my interest and
affection had centred were gone--dead,--was just a bit staggering. It
was now up to me to determine upon a definite course of action, and,
since it was now out of the question attempting to follow my first
impulse of going to Allen at once and forcing a showdown, I wanted time
to think.
What the Doctor had told me of the way Bell appeared to have died had
instantly reawakened my suspicions of Allen. Had the _kor-klee_, working
with a recurrent effect, finally proved fatal? Or had Allen, perhaps,
administered a second and stronger dose? He would have had a hundred
opportunities to do that had he desired to. Rona's attacks on the Mate,
indicating the deadliest hatred, seemed to prove that her first
suspicions of him had not weakened during the voyage--more likely,
indeed, had hardened to a certainty. The belief I had been entertaining
that Allen had made up his mind to play the game out on the square was
not very deeply grounded.
My sense of personal loss in the passing of Bell and Rona was not a
thing I cared to let myself dwell upon for the moment. There was no
question that the news of Rona's death had shocked me even more than
that of Bell's. Not that there was anything more between us than I have
already told. I had never let myself think of her in terms of physical
possession, though the sheer animal attraction of the girl was beyond
anything I had ever experienced in a woman. But her appeal to the
artistic side of me had been stronger even than that. Just as the thrill
I felt at the first sight of her bathing in the pink-lipped bowl of the
reef had made the very world itself seem more wonderful and beautiful,
so now the depression that filled me on realizing that I was never again
to have sight of her made the world seem emptier and drearier.
Another thing: there was no denying that Bell, splendid fellow that he
was, had shot his bolt. A real come-back with him was too much to
expect. The most that could have been hoped for was that he would
"finish in style," and that I was assured he had done, no matter in what
agony of soul and body his brave spirit had taken flight. But Rona's
bolt was still unsped. The girl had hardly begun to finger Life's
bowstring. It was almost as hard to think of the flaming, soaring spirit
of her as quenched, as it was to believe that the matchless perfection,
the supple gracefulness of her body--_shooting alligators to see if any
of them had been enjoying anything extra-special in tucker lately_! I
could not pursue that line of thought any further. I agreed with the
Doctor that the fact that the girl had parted with her beloved shawl
indicated that she had reached a jumping-off place--a point where she
had no further use for it. I could not picture her--living--without its
amber-bright flame streaming about her limbs. The wonder was that she
had not kept it for a shroud. As I came out upon the deck to go to my
boat, the intermittent crack of rifle shots along the shore told me that
the "search" had not been abandoned.
Beyond deciding to go ashore and see if anything further could be
learned, I had made no plans. It seemed that about the best I could do
would be to wait in Townsville until Allen and Ranga were out of
quarantine, and then let things shape as they would; but always assuming
that, in case the former could not satisfy me he was innocent of Bell's
death, I should do what I could to settle the reckoning with him. That
would be my atonement--to Bell and to myself--for my sorry failure to
"measure up" the day the _Cora Andrews_ came to Kai Lagoon.
Captain Tancred, who had never quite settled it in his own mind how a
man who openly admitted he had been living in the Kai colony for months
would not have to be smuggled ashore on the quiet if he expected to
avoid arrest in Australia, met me at the gangway.
"Best to leave the luggage aboard, lad," he began genially; "then
that'll be ain less thing ye'll hae to bother wi' if ye're haen' to cut
an' run for it. If ye're not back ag'in by the time I'm gettin' awa',
than I'll be sendin' it in for ye on the Company's launch. But ye'd best
be hangin' on wi' me a bittie, an' tak' me to see them pictur's ye've
been tellin' me aboot in Sydney toon."
My pictures! The Exhibition had slipped my mind completely, driven out
by the news of the _Cora_ and the anxieties that had followed in its
train. I had told Captain Tancred something of my coming show, but had
hardly convinced him. He was far too considerate to say outright that he
didn't believe me, but my Kai origin could not be ignored. If I was to
have an exhibition of paintings in Sydney, then why was I stopping off
in Townsville? On that point--since I didn't want to go into the _Cora_
affair with anyone until I knew how things were going to shape--I had
hardly been able to reassure the old sceptic. I might be an artist all
right enough--I don't think he had any serious doubts on that
score,--but I must also be some kind of a crook. He was plainly
convinced in his own mind that I was trying to slip into Australia on
the quiet, and was rather hurt because I would not take him into my
confidence and let him help me.
But why not take in the Exhibition? In nine days, with any luck in
connections, I could go to Sydney and back, with a day or two to spare.
Even if the trip ran over that time, it was not likely that the man I
wanted to see would be getting away immediately.... And, in any event, I
would know how to find him, whether in Australia or the Islands.
Further, it could not but have a salutary effect on my nerves to get
quite beyond the attraction I felt that Quarantine Station would have
for me if I lingered within physical reach of it. Nothing but absinthe,
and more absinthe, and then more absinthe, could be depended upon to
relieve my nerves once they were fully wrought up, as I knew they must
be if I remained in Townsville in enforced inaction, fretting my heart
out with impatience. And too much absinthe would mean only one
thing--that I would begin the day on which I was to meet "Slant" Allen
for a final showdown in a condition of mind and body precisely similar
to that in which I had entered upon another day of accursed memory--and,
doubtless, with equally shameful consequences to myself.
These thoughts flashed through my mind in a fraction of the time I have
taken to set them down. My reply to Captain Tancred followed close upon
his suggestion that I leave my luggage aboard.
"I think I'll be going through to Sydney with you, Captain--or at least
as far as Brisbane," I said, motioning to the steward to bring up the
bags he had already stowed in the waiting boat. "I know no one whose
opinion on my daubs I'd rather have than yours. But I'll pay my little
visit ashore here just the same, counting on you to get my kit landed in
the unlikely event of my not being aboard again when you get under way
this afternoon."
I was not long in coming to the conclusion that there was nothing new to
be learned ashore, that is, with respect to what had happened on the
_Cora_ in the course of her voyage from Kai. This was not because the
story was not on everyone's lips.... Quite to the contrary, indeed, the
town was agog with the dramatic suddenness of the arrival of the plague
ship and its astonishing sequel. But as no one had been allowed to see
any of the survivors, such accounts as were current were only those
which had been passed out by the quarantine people, and about all the
latter knew I felt that I had already gathered that morning from the
Doctor on the _Utupua_. Bell's name was not mentioned, and not a man I
talked with knew that the dead white man had been the Skipper.
For Townsville--for all of Australia--the overwhelming appeal of the
event was in the fact that a black-birding schooner had been brought
into port by an ex-Ticket-of-Leavester, who had _volunteered_ to risk
his life in an attempt to save those of half a hundred plague-stricken
niggers. That one circumstance in itself was wonderful enough, but when,
on top of it, the announcement was made that the hero was none other
than the former idol of sporting Australia, the Hon. Hartley Allen,
popular imagination was stirred as rarely ever before. What man in all
the Antipodes had not envied Allen, the supremely successful owner,
rider and sportsman? What woman had not been intrigued by the romantic
dash of him? What boy had not dreamed of growing up in his image?
Townsville, delirious with the dramatic appeal of this splendid act on
the part of a man who had tasted the wine of adulation as he had drunk
the dregs of infamy, was but a microcosm of Sydney and Melbourne,
Brisbane and Adelaide, to all of which the news had been flashed by
wire. Every town and hamlet, from Cairns to Hobart, from Perth to
Woolongong, were dispatching telegrams of congratulation to a man who
was still muttering in his drunken sleep behind the walls of the
Townsville Quarantine Station. Sydney was competing with Brisbane for
the honour of being the first to bestow the "Freedom of the City" upon
the man both of them had had some share in transporting. A special from
Sydney to the local sheet, hinted darkly of what might happen to the
misguided official who attempted to revive any of the old charges
against the man "whose sublime courage had emblazoned his name upon the
tablets of undying fame.... A hand that is raised today against the Hon.
Hartley Allen is a hand that is raised against the noblest traditions of
Australia."
I had to elbow through half of a densely packed block to read that last
on the bulletin in front of the _Trumpet's_ office. The mob cheered
wildly as the message was chalked up on the blackboard--cheered the
stirring sentiment and growled ominously at the suggestion that any hand
would dare to be raised against the Hon. Hartley Allen and the noblest
traditions of Australia. As I elbowed my way out again, I wondered just
what the Charters Towers miner, who had manifested his exuberant
approval by slapping me on the back, would have thought--nay, what he
would have done--had he known that the hand fingering the guard of the
revolver in the right side-pocket of my shooting jacket (I had brought
the useful little weapon on the off chance that it might be needed) was
rather more likely than not to be raised against at least one of those
cherished institutions he was so anxious to uphold.
I began to perceive that the line between dealing out retributive
justice to a blackguard of a murderer and assassinating a national hero
in cold blood might easily become too hairlike in its tenuousness for a
red-eyed Australian jury to admit the existence of it. For it was
nothing less than a national hero that "Slant" Allen was becoming, even
before he roused from the heavy sleep which had held him ever since he
collapsed over the wheel as the _Cora_ came to anchor. That
circumstance, I told myself, complicated my task beyond measure, though
I couldn't, of course, allow it to make any difference in my program in
the event Allen wasn't able to satisfy me that he was guiltless of the
murder of my friend. But if things should transpire which might make
Allen anxious to put _me_ out of the way--if he, not I were the
attacking party--that would simplify things greatly. I began to ponder
that felicitous possibility.
Would not the fact that I was the only living man (Ranga, whatever he
had seen or heard, would hardly need to be reckoned with as a witness)
who knew the actual facts about the way he had "volunteered" to join the
_Cora_ at Kai awaken a desire in Allen's lawless breast to seal my mouth
for good and all, now that he had so much to lose by the truth's coming
out? The feeling that such would be the case--that the dizzily mounting
fortunes of the ex-beach-comber would ultimately impel him to seek me
out for an understanding--grew on me more and more as I turned the
situation over in my mind, until at last it became a certainty, against
which I felt justified in preparing as a boxer trains for a definitely
scheduled prize fight.
I did not reckon it worth while to call at the Quarantine Station, which
was some distance from the town and not easy to reach. I did, however,
just before I put off to the ship, meet the young doctor with whom I had
talked in the morning. The only thing which he was able to add to what
he had already told me was in connection with the question I had raised
respecting the cause of Bell's death. To be certain that he had been
correct in stating that the latter had not died of plague, he had made a
special inquiry. In response to this he had been shown a slide made from
a smear they had taken of the late Skipper's blood. The bacteriologist
had seen to that immediately the body was landed. It showed no traces
whatever of plague bacilli. I could be quite assured on that point. The
Chief was unwilling to hazard an opinion as to what the real cause of
the man's death might have been. He seemed rather to regret that he had
failed to order a post-mortem. Allen was still sleeping heavily, but
would be right as a trivet beyond a doubt as soon as he woke up and gave
them a chance to sweat some of the alcohol out of his hide. Pulse steady
as a church.... Temperature a shade sub-normal. Marvellous
constitution.... Wonderful fellow altogether. Any word of the girl? No,
nothing. Ten pounds reward had been offered for the recovery of her
body, or any recognizable part of it. Search was still going on, and he
pointed across to the opposite foreshore, where a couple of spindling
Hindu coolies--evidently sugar plantation contract hands--were earnestly
engaged in performing "_hari-kiri_" upon a plethoric 'gator they had
just bagged and towed to the beach.
The Doctor was already beginning to look ahead. Did I fancy Allen would
be able to wangle it so as to get an entry in for the Melbourne Cup in
the short time that remained before that classic was run? Entries closed
some time ago, of course. He'd have to square it with the stewards some
way. They might make a special exception, seeing who Allen was, and what
he had just done. Any horse with his colours would carry a barrel of
money, just out of sentiment if nothing else. Did I think he would
wangle an entry?
"No," I replied, stepping down into my boat. "No, I'm afraid the chances
are all against it." My mind had been torn with doubt over a number of
things that day.... It was a relief to be asked to express an opinion on
a matter respecting which I had no doubt.... Not a shred of it.
Captain Tancred welcomed me back to the _Utupua_ with a significant
grin. "So ye didna find the outlook ashore to yer likin' lad?" he boomed
boisterously, thumping me on the back. "Weel, dinna ye mind, since ye
wasna nabbed. I'll be findin' a wa' to slip ye aff in Sydney sae they
wan't be puttin' nose to yer trail till ye're clean awa'." The look on
the old boy's face was a study when, a few days later, after the tugs
had nosed his ship into her berth at the Circular Quay, I stalked
brazenly off down the gangway, with no more regard for the two Bobbies
guarding the dock gate than they had for me. He had exacted two promises
from me before he let me go: one, that I was to take him to see my
pictures, and the other, that I would not fail to let him know if there
ever came a time when he could be of Service to me.... "Real sarvice,
lad; you'll be twiggin' wha' I mean." I gave both promises freely, just
as I kept them later--yes, both of them.
As I had trunks, with all the common accessories of civilization, stored
at the _Australia_, my transformation from a beach-comber to a fairly
correct imitation of a comfortably heeled artist was the matter of but a
few hours. My appearance at the Exhibition could not have been better
timed. The affair had been extremely well handled from the first. I had
been sending pictures to Sydney from all parts of the South Seas for the
last eighteen months, packing them up as completed and getting them off
whenever opportunity offered. Two or three had been lost, but, on the
whole, I reckoned the plan safer than trying to take them round with me
in one lot, at the risk of losing the bunch.