A SUDDEN VISITOR
As a rider reins in his stumbling horse, so did I rein in my stumbling
nerves. It was now or never, I told myself. If those final touches were
not given before I stirred from my tracks, they would never be given. I
closed my eyes and my ears--not with my hands but by a sheer effort of
will--and then, inch by inch, as though I were dragging it by the
throat, brought the phantom prototype back and forced it to merge with
the face on the canvas. The tip of my brush flashed twice, thrice. Then
I relaxed the tentacles of my will, and as the phantom face, receding,
blurred to blankness, it left behind, where a wisp of green-smeared
camel's hair had touched the canvas, an expression of hell-haunted
terror streaming from the unnaturally dilated eyes of the _completed_
picture-face.
I was breathing heavily, like a coolie who throws down his back-breaking
burden at the end of a hard climb, when I tossed aside my brush and
palette, but no wretch of a human pack-mule ever knew the depth of
relief that was mine. A carrier could only experience the physical
satisfaction of feeling his back was freed of a load: mine was the
spiritual ecstasy of knocking off the shackles that had threatened to
bind my soul. And now I was free to rush to the arms of the "Green
Lady"! No more need of rationing my absinthe. I spilled the remaining
contents of the bottle at my elbow in the bowl of half-melted cracked
ice, and wolfed it greedily over the tilted brim.
"Ple-ese, Whit-nee, I have the great hur-ree." Again came the
click-clack of the imprisoned latch and the thud of a knee or shoulder
against the door.
"One moment, Rona!" Steadied and alert, I set down the emptied bowl,
threw a hastily-snatched couch-cover over the canvas so that the space
upon which I had worked was hidden, and stepped to the door. Already I
felt the exaltation and relief of having banished the dread phantom. And
the picture face on the canvas--how easy it was to blot out! The hanging
corner of an old steamer-rug....
Rona pushed in eagerly as I swung back the door, Suey relaxing his
restraining grip and backing away noiselessly at my reassuring nod. All
the old verve showed in the girl's high-flung head and flashing eye.
Sullenness, depression, sadness alike were gone, replaced by an air of
eagerness, of suppressed excitement. She was still wearing the baggy
_holakau_ the lady missionaries had wished upon her, but with it--looped
over her breasts and under her shoulders _sarong_-fashion--was the
peacock shawl, outlining softly the lithe curves of shoulder and hip and
flowing clingingly in folds of amber and scintillant opalescence below
her knees.
"Whit-nee, I come to make the good-bye," she gushed cooingly, catching
her breath. "Tonight I take boat go Seengapo. Whit-nee, I come here to
tell you I ver-ree sor-ree I make you troubl' 'bout the pick-yur. I
tella you lie, Whit-nee. I cannot--make--the pick-yur. Bel-la, he say--"
At that instant a strange thing happened. Two or three times since she
entered the room, Rona's eyes, as though drawn there irresistibly, had
wandered from mine to what could have appeared to her no more than a
corner of plaid rug hanging over a broad blank of tightly stretched
canvas. She had done this again as she started to speak, and it was a
slight widening of her eyes that caused me to turn and follow her
glance. The hastily-flung rug was slowly slipping back off the easel.
The fringed corner hanging down in front was rising. Possibly a draught
from the open door had started the movement, or perhaps the swishing
blows a wind-lashed tree was dealing the side of the house. Whatever was
the cause, the effect was that of an invisible hand slowly drawing up a
curtain.
Rona's tongue framed the sentence that was in her mind, but the
words came brokenly as her puzzled wonderment increased. As her
double-syllabled rendition of Bell's name fell from her lips the
accelerating slide of the curtain quickened to a run, and, with a flirt
of green fringe, the masking corner disappeared over the top of the
frame. The Face--"Slant" Allen's hell-haunted face, tortured and
terrible--glared out at her from the broad white field of the canvas.
There was sheer amazement in the down-drop of the girl's lean jaw and a
suggestion of terror in the gasp with which she filled her deflated
lungs. But the piercing "_ey-yu_" with which that air was forced out
again was a battle-cry. Fortunately, I was standing a couple of paces
nearer the canvas than was she; but even with that handicap in my favour
it was a near squeak. I caught the gleam of a flashing blade and a quick
grab sunk my crooked fingers deep into the flesh of a thrusting arm.
Hurling the arrested figure back toward the door, I stooped and picked
up a knife--that beautifully balanced Portuguese throwing-knife that
Allen and I had been flinging at the swelling bole of the big
bottle-tree the previous Sunday. To this day I do not know whether Rona
thought she was attacking a reincarnation or a ghost, or was only bent
on destroying an uncannily life-like portrait that awakened savage
memories.
I swished the fallen rug from under the easel and rehung it--evenly this
time--before turning to confront Rona, where she was readjusting--with
raised elbows and twinkling thumbs--the hitch of the peacock shawl in
the opposite corner of the room. She had scrambled to her feet again,
but gave no sign of returning to the attack. Her eyes were snapping with
anger and excitement, but I did not have the feeling that she
entertained any especial personal resentment against me for the rough
handling I had given her.
"So it was you after all," I said slowly, fingering the tapering blade
of the tell-tale knife.
Her lips moved as though in reply, but if she said anything coherent it
was drowned in the roar of a sudden gust of wind that buffetted the
bungalow at that moment. I turned to the girl again after closing the
north windows. Her eyes were fixed on vacancy now, and her head, with
the clean-cut chin slightly elevated, was turned sideways in an attitude
of listening. As the banging of the trees died down my own duller
tympana registered a new vibration--and yet not quite new--something
that I had heard very recently. Ah, now I had it! The baying of a hound,
very near and very eager. A red-hot scent beyond doubt, I told myself.
But why were Rawdon's "nigger-chasers" running at that hour, and into
the teeth of a rising hurricane? There was questioning in both our
glances as the girl's eyes met mine, but in hers certainly no hint of
fear.
Before either of us spoke a firm, quick step sounded from the back of
the house, and a moment later, following a light tap on the door, Ranga
entered from my bedroom. If he was surprised at Rona's presence, or at
her somewhat dishevelled appearance, he gave no sign of it. Nor was
there about me--now that I was holding the knife behind my
back--anything to suggest to the Malay that he had stumbled upon a
situation in the least out of the normal.
Tuan "Slant" was sleeping heavily, he said, and so he had snatched the
opportunity to come up for some of his own Borneo tobacco and a change
of clothes. They had nothing in the hospital large enough for him. Tuan
"Slant" was growing stronger in body, but--he finished by tapping his
temple and shaking his head dubiously.
A heavier broadside of the gathering storm shook the house again, this
time sending a shudder through its stout frame and wringing a vibrant
_ping_ from the tautened "hurricane cables" that guyed its windward
corners. Out of the heart of that blast came the bell-mouthed baying of
the nearing hound. He was still sounding his clear bugle notes as he
swung in through the gate from the road, but down the driveway, with the
incense of the burning trail conjuring visions of an imminent quarry in
his brain, he began tearing his throat with harsh, savage yelps of
eagerness. I was looking for his charge to come against the closed front
door, but a sudden shower of claw-spurned gravel rat-a-tat-ing against
the glass of the French windows told that he had wheeled in his tracks
and was circling to the rear of the house. A yell and a clatter of
saucepans from the kitchen, a scramble of slipping claws upon the
hardwood floor of the back hallway, and in from the open door of my
bedroom--drooling-fanged, bloody-eyed and bloody-minded--came dashing
that black bolt of canine fury, closing on his cornered quarry for the
death-grapple.
Ranga, on entering, had moved a step or two aside from the door, a
survival doubtless of his training at sea, where an idle man blocking a
companionway or a ladder is liable to be taught manners by a rap on the
head. Rona was still in the corner to which I had hurled her. I was at
the opposite corner, near the big canvas and twenty feet or more from
the girl. The flying hound tried to check himself at the doorway, but
the polished floor gave him no grip for his claws. Down on his haunches,
with forefeet poked rigidly ahead, he slid the full width of the room,
tobogganing on a smooth-running Samoan mat for the last half of the
distance.
With the certainty of Rona's guilt fixed in my mind by her possession of
Allen's knife, I had no doubt, from the moment the hound's baying
indicated it had turned into the clearing, that it was hot on her trail.
But even so, the brute's entry by the bedroom door had been so
unexpected and so swift that I had not stirred from my tracks to the
girl's defence when the snarling animal, shooting across the room,
brought up against the wall close beside her. Even Ranga, leaping
forward instantly as he had, was scarcely past the middle of the floor
when the beast regained its balance and bearings almost at the girl's
feet. Drawing back into the angle of the walls and crouching low like a
cornered cat, Rona awaited the attack, while Ranga, barehanded, and I
with the throwing-knife rushed in to her aid. Without an instant's
hesitation, the savage beast spun to a full right-about and, brushing
the girl's advanced knee as though it was no more than the piano stool,
launched itself full at the throat of the yellow man.
Ranga's counter was swift, sure and terrible. He might have been
fighting bloodhounds barehanded from childhood, for all the surprise and
dismay he showed at the sudden attack. Where my own instinct (if I had
not tried to side-step the charge completely) would have been to grapple
for the brute's throat from beneath, he simply struck--or rather
grabbed--down from above. The impact crushed the snarling beast to the
floor, but when Ranga raised his arm again he was gripping his
struggling canine adversary by the scruff of the neck. Or rather, I
thought it was the scruff. In reality his grip was a bit more inclusive.
Holding the floundering black form at arm's length with no more effort
than if it had been a terrier, Ranga suddenly tightened his hold. I saw
the hound's red-lidded eyes grow slant and elongated like a Chinaman's
as the skin of its scalp was drawn backward in the relentless vise
closing from behind; then a grinding snick cut short an unearthly scream
of pain, and the hound was dangling limp and lifeless with a crumpled
spine at the end of a gibbet of knotted yellow muscle. Ranga tossed
lightly aside what a moment before had been a flying bolt of wrath, and
where the great head doubled under against a flowered chintz
window-curtain I saw the sprawling outline of a tooth-torn ear,
doubtless the scar of a fight with a luckier ending.
In its strangely terrible tenseness, the electrically charged silence
that succeeded has no parallel in my experience. Not a word was spoken.
The only sound was the banging of the wind-wrenched trees against the
house and the nearing mutter of the thunder in the north. The
significance of the fact that it was Ranga the dog had been trailing was
lost upon neither Rona nor me, nor yet upon the big Malay himself. The
latter met my questioning glance steadily for a moment, but it was the
girl's piercing stare of fierce concentration that drew and held his
troubled black eyes. While one might have counted fifty those two stood
and (as I have since understood) communed with eye and mind. It was a
sudden thunder-clap that broke the connection and checked the interflow
of thought. Ranga had not winced at the blinding flash and
close-following crash, but Rona's higher strung nerves fluttered for an
instant, and the wire was down. But Ranga's words indicated that the
message was about complete.
"Yes, I did it, Tuan," he said quietly, turning toward me as though
answering my unspoken question. "It had to be, Tuan, and--yes, I did
it."
It was not until afterwards I recalled that it was to Rona I addressed
my protest. "But 'Slant' swore to me that he did not kill Bell; that he
was in no way responsible for his death, first or last."
A spasm of passion twisted the girl's face to the seeming of an ape's as
she caught the drift of my words, and her reply was almost a scream.
"Not ke-el Bel-la? 'Slan' do worse than ke-el. He--"
The chorus of the leashed pack that checked her words came from so close
at hand that it made itself heard above the now unbroken roar of the
storm. There was the clang of shod hoofs on a metalled road, too, and I
thought I could distinguish the shouts of men. The hunt was closing in
for the kill.
"I think I go now, Tuan. I like the better to fight outside." Ranga's
voice was as quiet and controlled as when he had told me the news from
the hospital a few minutes before; but there was the lust of battle in
his flashing eyes, eagerness for action in the quick heave of his chest.
There was no time to debate and decide the question as to who had
committed the outrage upon Hartley Allen, or of what justification
there might have been for it. One thing only was clear to me, and that
was that I was not going to throw either Rona or Ranga to the dogs--no,
nor to the law either--if there was any way of avoiding it. My mind--as
was always the case when I had fasted long and drunk absinthe
sparingly--worked with lightning swiftness.
"Don't fight unless you have to," I said, stepping closer to Ranga as
the wind and thunder threatened to drown my voice. "Follow down the
stream over the falls. Jump won't hurt you--plenty of water at the
bottom. That'll throw off the dogs. Then follow the path by the flume
down to the sea. The rain'll kill your trail for the dogs. It ought to
be starting any minute now. Wait for me on the pier by the old sugar
mill. I'll come for you in a boat as soon as I can."
Baring his teeth in a quick grin of comprehension, the big fellow
wheeled and started for the front door. I caught his arm and checked him
just in time. "This way!" I shouted. "Through my bedroom window. Beat
it! _Lekas!_"
Again that intelligent tooth-flash of understanding. Ranga's
foreshortened bulk was making a blurred blot against the blue-green
lightning flash playing across the rear bedroom window as I turned to
answer a heavy banging at the front door. Everything considered, I have
always felt that I got away fairly well with the situation with which I
now found myself confronted. It was Harpool, the Chief of Police, who
staggered into the room, bracing back against the push of the still
rising wind. The flutter of the lightning revealed two or three horses
in the driveway, and three or four men following a bunch of howling dogs
around the corner of the house.
I was on the point of opening up at the Chief with a facetious sally
about the way he was sending his hounds around to frighten my lady
visitors, when I chanced to glance to the corner where Rona had been,
and lo--I had no lady visitor! The girl was gone, but whether under the
couch or out of one of the windows I could not guess. So I only gaped
rather stupidly and said nothing, leaving the Chief to open the attack.
I was glad the face on the canvas was covered, and only wished there had
been time to throw something over the crumpled remnants of the big
black-and-tan.
"I am quite satisfied it isn't you we want, Mr. Whitney," Harpool began,
with a shade of embarrassment, I thought. "But the fact remains that
Rawdon's hounds have followed a live scent straight to this house, and I
have every reason to believe they are on the trail of the man who tied
up Hartley Allen. Perhaps you can explain--"
"I think I can," I cut in, anxious to gain time for the fugitive, but
realizing that no end would be served by trying to conceal his identity.
"You're right that it was a hot scent. Just a few degrees too hot for
your canine deputy there in the corner. It's the end of _his_ trail, I'm
afraid."
The Chief strode over to the limp corpse and turned it with his foot.
"Who killed this hound?" he demanded angrily, regarding me suspiciously
for the first time.
"Not I, Chief," I replied jauntily; "but can't you guess? You can see
for yourself that he hasn't been shot--or clubbed--or poisoned. Well,
then--look at that neck. Do you know of more than one man in these parts
capable of snapping a bloodhound's spine between his thumb and
forefinger?" (I added that little thumb-and-forefinger touch with malice
aforethought, for I wanted to impress upon Harpool--for whatever it
might be worth--that it was no old broken-down of a "Squid" Saunders
that he was going to try to run to earth out there in the darkness.)
The Chief's honest eyes opened with amazement as the answer dawned upon
him. "You don't mean the big Malay?" he ejaculated incredulously. "Why,
he has been tending Allen like a sister for two days. Everyone in the
hospital has been speaking about his devotion."
"No other," I answered. "Ranga came up from the hospital less than half
an hour ago to get a shift of togs. Five minutes later that hound came
tearing in through the back entrance and flew at his throat--right here
in my studio. You see the result. That fellow can drop a horse with his
fist--a dog is no more than a flea to him."
"I can hardly believe it," said the Chief, shaking his head; "but the
fact remains that if the hound went for him, he's our man. I hope we
won't have to shoot him.... But Rawdon will never stand by and see his
dogs pinched out like that. This fellow was his best hound by a mile.
Drive him crazy when he finds it's been dished. Gawd, that neck might
have been run over by a steam tram! What in hell--"
A bedlam of howls and yells and savage oaths rising from the rear of the
house at this juncture broke in upon the Chief and caused him to bolt on
the double through the door of the corridor leading to the kitchen. The
unearthly racket, with the rattle of pistol shots spattering through it,
made me certain that Ranga had run afoul of the hunt at his first jump.
Shuddering at the thought of the terrible fight that must ensue, I
pushed on after Harpool, reaching the further end of the corridor just
in time to catch his reeling form as he staggered back from a bullet
that had burned his scalp the instant he opened the kitchen door.
Astride the sill of a kicked-in window sat old Rawdon, his bearded face
distorted with fury and pain, coughing, sneezing, cursing, and firing
impartially at all parts of the long, low room. Under the sink, almost
at Rawdon's feet but quite out of pistol range, crouched Suey, blinking
blandly and rubbing his almond eyes. He it was who was the author of an
unpremeditated diversion which was the only thing in the world that
prevented Ranga being nabbed at the outset.
The late black-and-tan, in following Ranga's trail, had entered the
kitchen by snapping his way through the light screen door. To prevent
his lines being thus penetrated a second time, the foxy Celestial, when
he heard the main pack rallying to the attack, closed and bolted the
heavy outside door of his domain and, with a little surprise packet in
his hand, took station beside the little swinging window above the sink.
Waiting with true Oriental restraint till the clamouring enemy was
compactly bunched upon the porch outside, Suey gently raised the screen
and emptied the contents of a can of red pepper into their midst. The
paprika appeared to have been pretty fairly divided between three of the
most oncoming of the dogs and their equally forward master. The hounds
quit for the night, then and there, but the old bushranger's fighting
spirit urged him on to make the best stand he could with his automatic.
Considering the way he was being racked with coughs and sneezes, and
that he only blazed away at the creak of an opening door his streaming
eyes could not locate, his shot that welcomed the Chief was by no means
uncreditable. It cut a neat furrow through Harpool's stubby pompadour
and even drew a drop or two of blood.
The Chief's fervent swearing stayed Rawdon's murderous hand just as he
had finished fumbling a fresh clip of cartridges into his emptied
"thirty-eight" and was about to start fusillading anew. Roaring mad as
he was, his first thought was for the dogs. "Get a wet rag round the
muzzles o' Dingo an' Jackaroo 'fore you let 'em inter this 'ell 'ole,"
he growled between sneezes. "Our bloke's somew'ere in this 'ere 'ouse,"
he went on, laving his smarting eyes at the water-tap of the sink above
Suey's jack-knifed form. "Don't let 'im slope by the front door, Chief,
now we've got 'im in 'is 'ole."
"Sloped already," snapped Harpool laconically, adding that most of the
sloping had been done while Rawdon was setting his dogs on a "bally
Chink cook." In a few terse sentences the Chief explained the way things
stood, giving it as his opinion that their man would be trying to follow
the stream right across the plantation and down through the belt of bush
to the mangrove swamps. The loss of the big black-and-tan was so great a
calamity for the old bushranger that it had the effect of sobering
rather than further exciting him. His red rage burned white and flamed
inwardly rather than outwardly. "I'll know 'ow to even up for 'im
killin' Starlight w'en I gets that bloody wombat in a patch o' dry bush.
Nice bit o' a torch that greasy 'ulk o' 'im'll make. Come along! We'll
'ave a better chance o' makin' a quick bag if we get 'im in sight 'fore
the rain starts."
There were still left two dogs with undamaged "noses." Fearful that
these, if they took the bridle-path down the right side of the creek,
might pick up Ranga's trail where he would have left the stream at the
pool, I made bold to suggest a plan calculated to carry them wide of
that danger point. "Why don't you ford here," I said, "and push straight
across the plantation to the end of the big loop the stream makes round
the nigger village? Your man will be all of an hour making that point if
he wades by the stream. You can make it through the cane in twenty
minutes and be waiting there to bag him."
The Chief was inclined to favour the plan--until Rawdon cut in
sarcastically with: "An' wot's to pervent the bloody bloke's givin' us
the slip a 'undred times 'tween 'ere an' there? One hound down each side
o' the stream--that's the only way to be sure o' clappin' our 'ooks
inter 'im."
That was sound reasoning of course--from Rawdon's standpoint,--and I
didn't dare urge my plan any further. Ten minutes later, when a sudden
eager baying came down the wind from the direction of the waterfall, I
felt sure my worst fears were realized. It was, therefore, with only the
faintest hopes of success, that I pulled myself together to take the
first step in making good my promise to pick up Ranga at the pier of the
old sugar mill.
The priceless Suey had crawled out from under the sink as the sounds of
the hunt grew faint, and turned to tidying the kitchen as though
cleaning up after a pack of bloodhounds was just a pleasant little
incidental of the day's work. When I ordered him to get me out a fresh
bottle of absinthe he did not even forget the cracked ice. I told him I
should probably be away for most of the night, and that if Rona showed
up in the interim to see that she was made comfortable till my return.
"All lightee girl-ee. Otha fell-ee too much peppa can have," he said
decisively. I told him to do what he liked to Rawdon, but to give the
Chief a shake-down if he asked for it.
Quaffing a couple of glasses of raw absinthe, I filled a flask, pulled
on a pair of riding-boots and a raincoat, and pushed out onto the
veranda. The wind had not increased greatly in force, but the lightning
and thunder were flashing and crashing almost simultaneously overhead,
and the first big drops of rain were beginning to spatter. The moon was
hidden behind a dense pall of black cloud, so that it was by the
incessant flicker of the lightning that I sized up the three
saddle-horses tied at the side of the driveway and picked the rangy
waler of the Chief as the likeliest rough-weather beast. I had no
compunction to taking him, as the bunch would be breaking away anyhow as
soon as the sagging bottom of the cloud overhead dropped its contents on
them. I preferred not to have my own saddle-horse left standing in the
town if it could be avoided. There would be enough tell-tale posts on
the course I was going to try to negotiate without deliberately planting
another one.
The cane fields in the valley were glistening with the opening volleys
of the rain as I spurred across the clearing, stabbing the night with
silver gleams in the lightning flashes as the bayonets of massed troops
throw off the rays of the sun. The wind was behind me as far as the main
road; then side-on, but broken by the wall of the thick-growing trees. I
put the waler at top speed, anxious to cover all the distance possible
while the footing was good. I was halfway to town before the storm let
go in real earnest, and from then on it was about as much of a swim as a
ride, especially after the hillsides began to spill off on the lower
levels. My mount was a sensible beast, evidently no stranger to tropical
cloudbursts. He took the initiative readily when I ceased to urge him,
and kept plugging right on through the storm at a good steady
business-like jog. Nothing but my good fortune in getting a jump on the
rain prevented my going out in this first lap of my race, as all of the
four bridges I had to cross must have washed away within a very few
minutes from the time I put them behind me. Indeed, one of the two
horses I had left in the driveway, after both had broken away as I had
anticipated, was drowned in trying to flounder through an open crossing.
The worst of the terrific downpour was over as I rode into the town, but
the wind--as was to be expected--was blowing with increased force.
Everyone had been driven indoors by the rain, so that it was in an empty
street I dismounted and left my horse, knowing that he would be pawing
at his own stable door within a very few minutes. The rest of the way to
the landing I covered on foot. As I had feared, the creek was empty of
launches. I would have to see what could be done at the Burns, Phillip
offices, which, busy with manifests and other odds and ends of business
incident to an imminent steamer sailing, were still lighted up. It was
an alternative I was very reluctant to resort to, as I had been hoping
that my visit to Captain Tancred might be managed on the quiet. Just as
I turned to go a red light, bobbing past the outer end of the jetty,
caught the tail of my eye, and, on the off chance that it might be a
craft I could hire, I held on at the steps. Smartly handled in the nasty
cross-lop, a small but powerful steam launch bumped in alongside the
landing stage.
"Can I get you to take me off to the _Mambare_?" I demanded of the
uniformed youth who came bounding up the steps.
"Glad to do it, sir. This is her launch," was the cheery reply. "Just in
for clearance papers. Be back in a jiffy. Climb aboard and make yourself
comfy in the cabin." Then, as an apparent afterthought: "You're sailing
with us, aren't you? Can't take off visitors at this hour. No way to get
back. Getting under way at midnight." He had so little doubt that I was
a belated passenger, perhaps delayed by the rain, that my nod was quite
sufficient to reassure him. Five minutes later we were shoving off for
the run back to the line of lights where the _Mambare_ tugged at her
moorings.
The sea was white with foam outside the jetties, but with waves and wind
almost dead astern the sturdy little launch made very comfortable
weather of it. It was by no means as bad as it had been coming in, said
the young officer, who turned out to be a freight clerk. As the gangway
was already raised and the launch had to come in anyway, we remained
aboard her and were hoisted right up and swung in to the chocks on the
_Mambare's_ boat-deck. My companion hurried at once to his office to go
over his pouch of papers, while I, locating it without asking anyone for
directions, went forward to the Captain's cabin under the bridge.
The faint shadow of constraint on Captain Tancred's face as I entered
disappeared the instant his ready mind divined I had come to him for
help. "So they're after ye at last, lad," he said, sympathy and
satisfaction queerly blended in his deep voice. "Weel, noo, tell me a'
aboot it. I ken we'll be findin' a way oot for ye."
I told him all that he needed to know as quickly as possible, making a
point, however, of omitting to state that the man I wanted him to
smuggle away to the Islands had confessed to committing the outrage upon
Hartley Allen. "Slant" was an old friend of "Choppy's," and I felt sure
that the latter, far from being a witting party to helping the man who
had attacked him escape from justice, would undoubtedly lend every aid
to placing him where he would receive his just deserts. Luckily, the
quixotic old Scot was not a man to ask searching questions. He was
plainly disappointed that it was not I who was fleeing the law, but
there was ready consolation in the fact that a friend of mine, in very
sore straits, might be saved from being torn to pieces by a pack of
bloodhounds if he was picked up at a certain point on the north coast
before morning.
We located the cove of the old sugar mill on the chart without
difficulty, and in his bulky volume of "Sailing Directions" found the
comforting assurance that it afforded especially good shelter in a
northerly blow. There was no surf, it was stated, and the shore was
almost steep-to. This was all in our favour. He was sailing at midnight,
the Captain said. The hurricane was central over the New Hebrides, so it
was only the tail of it flirting across the Great Barrier--nothing he
would dream of sticking in harbour for. Doubtless he would be able to
find an excuse to heave-to off the cove, while I piloted the launch in
to get our man. Then, if I didn't care to return and take a pleasure
voyage with him to Insulinde and the Straits, I could drop off and make
the best of my way home.
The Captain had just finished telling me how he had made a point of
bringing his old launch crew with him from the _Utupua_--"the lads I use
for speshul wark, ye ken"--when the freight clerk who had brought me off
entered the cabin with a number of papers and letters. On the top of the
pile was a red envelope marked "Rush." "Choppy" tore the letter open at
once. The up-flop of his grizzled side-burns at the sudden flexing of
the jaw muscles at their roots gave me warning of the coming jolt.
"We'll nae be gettin' under wa' the nicht, Ryerson," he said quietly to
the freight clerk. "Will ye be sae guid as to bid the Chief an' the Mate
to step this wa'. Mair carga the morrow," he added by way of
explanation. To the Chief Engineer, when he came, the Captain merely
countermanded an order for steam on the capstan at seven bells, and
warned him to keep the pressure in the boilers high for fear the steamer
might part a mooring cable if the wind increased. The Mate he ordered to
be ready to handle a consignment of silver bullion and ingot copper that
would come in a tug from the _Moresby_ as soon as she arrived from the
south in the morning. He also told him to have the crew of the steam
launch called away at once, so as to put "yon gentleman" ashore as
quickly as possible. If the Mate was lively about it, "Choppy"
suggested, he might find that the fires of the launch had not yet been
drawn from her trip to the landing. If so, that would save time in
getting up steam.
Not until all of this was ordered did he turn to me with: "The de'il's
ain luck, lad. Nae gettin' awa' afore eight bells, noon, the morrow.
Shipment frae Broken Hill catchin' up wi' us in the _Moresby_."
"That means that the game's up and you're sending me back because
there's no hope of doing anything?" I asked in dismay.
"Nae, nae, lad," he soothed. "No' so fast. Just a wee bit o' a shift o'
program, that's a'. True I'm sendin' ye ashore in the launch, but when
she comes back I'm hopin' tae find oor mon in yer place. Do ye ken noo
wha' I'm drivin' at?"
"Do you mean to send the launch all the way round from here?" I demanded
in astonishment; "and then to keep him aboard here in the harbour for
ten or twelve hours before you sail? Isn't that asking for trouble both
ways? Even if the launch stands up against the gale outside, aren't you
done for if they come off from town and make a search of the steamer?"
Old "Choppy's" blue eyes twinkled merrily at the latter suggestion. The
police never did seem to have any luck in searching his ships, he
laughed. As for the launch--it was new, its engine was unusually
powerful, and it would have "Pisco" at the wheel. "Pisco," he explained,
was a Chilean who had been with him for years, and had never been known
to fail at a pinch. He thought that combination ought to win out. I
didn't mind a bit of slap-banging off the point, did I? That settled it.
If he was willing to risk his own launch and his own career to save _my_
friend, it was not for me to hang back. Fifteen minutes later we had
been lowered over the side and were rounding under the _Mambare's_ fine
clipper bows into the teeth of the gusty norther. It had been agreed
that I should pilot "Pisco" to the rendezvous and deliver my man into
his care. "Choppy" undertook to do the rest.
What the hard-bit old sea-dog had characterized as a "bit o'
slap-banging" off the point proved to be a frontal attack upon as
ruffianly a bunch of headseas as it was ever my lot to face in anything
smaller than a ninety-ton schooner. Stoutly built and over-engined as
she was, the launch was quite equal to the task of driving her nose
through the waves, but--not being built for submarine service--proved a
dismal failure at getting rid of the solid green water that deluged her
as a consequence. Knot by knot, cursing fluently in picturesque _roto_
Spanish the while, "Pisco" rang down the engine, until finally the
pugnacious little craft ceased tunnelling the bases of the seas and
contented herself with boring neat round holes in their curling crests.
By this method she shipped no more water than her scuppers could put
back where it came from. The only fear now was that enough spray might
splash down her squat funnel to quench the fires, and to minimize the
chances of this, the resourceful "Pisco" made the lookout stand so that
his broad chest would receive and deflect the heaviest rushes of the
threatening flood. Fortunately, the distance to be run head-on to the
seas was comparatively short. Once round the point the alteration of
course brought the wind and the waves on the starboard beam, and though
she now just about rolled her side-lights under, it was fairly quiet
going compared to the buffeting outside.
I gave "Pisco" his course for the first leg in by the lights of the big
sugar central, and then, as we opened up the inner bay, gave him a
bearing on the notch--barely guessable against the overcast west--where
the old cartroad grade pierced the brow of the cliff. The clouds were
racing overhead and the baffling cross-gusts on the surface would have
made it bad business for a sailing craft. But for a launch the task was
a comparatively simple one. The loom of the old mill was discernible
against the darker opacity of the cliff at a couple of hundred yards,
and the right-angling lines of the pier at half that distance. As the
latter was sure to have been built of the eternally-lasting _jarra_, I
knew that it would be as solid and serviceable as the day it was
abandoned.
I had not thought it best to risk dampening Captain Tancred's enthusiasm
by confessing that I thought it was a good ten-to-one against my man's
turning up at the rendezvous. Indeed, I could see no grounds whatever
for hoping that Ranga had shaken the pursuit--already at his heels--and
won through to the appointed place. Nothing short of a miracle could
have compassed it, I told myself. It was on the off chance that the
miracle had been wrought that I was keeping my promise.
"'Bout half a point to sta'boa'd, Tuan. Way nuf now! Steady!" That deep
rumbling voice from the darkness was a welcome surprise. "Pisco,"
heeding the quiet directions, brought his launch alongside the broad
solid flight of steps as neatly as he would have laid her up to the
_Mambare's_ gangway in broad daylight.
Ranga was coming down the steps--with a slowness which I attributed to
the fact that they were probably very slippery--when I heard a thud on
the deck behind me, such a sound as a heavy, soft bundle thrown down
from above might have made in striking. A second or two later there was
an ejaculation of astonishment somewhere aft, probably from "Pisco," I
thought, as the words were Spanish. I did not try to puzzle out the
purport of them at the moment, as my attention was occupied with Ranga,
who seemed to be hesitating at the last moment about coming aboard.
Twice or thrice he drew back his foot from the rail, as though uncertain
of his balance. And when the great bulk of him finally did surge
forward, it was with a lurch that took all my strength to check it and
prevent his reeling on across the narrow bow and over the other side. He
steadied himself slowly, with a great intake of breath. "Sorry--make
trouble,--Tuan. Now--I go aft."
"I am leaving you here, Ranga," I said quickly, for I was getting
nervous about a movement of lights I had observed along the flume in the
rear of the big sugar mill. "Captain Tancred will look after you on the
steamer, and put you off wherever you want to go. He also has some money
for you. Good luck!"
The big fellow took a long shuddering breath, and when he spoke it was
as though he had rallied himself from a spell of faintness by sheer
force of will. "Some day, Tuan--I pay you back--for all you do. So
long." He turned with painful deliberation and started to edge along
aft. I was a bit surprised that he had not grasped my extended hand, but
could not be sure that he had been aware of it in the dark. It did not
occur to me until afterwards that he had not used his own hands on the
rail of the stairway in descending, and that he had seemed to shoulder
his way back to the cockpit rather than to grope. I waited until his
swaying shoulders ceased to blot the blinking of the phosphorescent seas
astern, and then swung off to the stairs.
"All clear!" I called softly to "Pisco," as I felt the solid step
underfoot. "Shove off when you're ready. _Buena fortuna!_"
It was doubtless "Pisco's" ejaculation in Spanish a few moments before,
lurking in the back of my mind, that prompted me to speed the spirited
coxswain in his own tongue. On the heels of that "_Buena fortuna!_" the
words he had spoken flashed up in my memory. "_Cristo! Porqué la
muchacha?_" It could hardly have been a sarcastic dig at Ranga's
hesitancy in stepping aboard, I reflected as I mounted the
slippery--astonishingly slippery--steps. He would not have expressed it
quite that way in that case. A sudden slip in a slimy patch at the head
of the steps put an end to conjecture for the moment, and when I
regained my feet the answer was written across the cabin doorway of the
turning launch. The lamp inside had--purposely--been turned very low,
and the blurred silhouette of the figure that came groping out to where
Ranga had collapsed on a cockpit transom might easily have been that of
any one of old "Choppy's" true and tried launch crew. But wet amber silk
reflects a deal of light, and there was only one peacock shawl in the
world--or in that neck of the world at least.