SATAN IN PARADISE
He had divided Ratcliffe and Jude into watches, port and starboard.
Jude turned in first, relieving him somewhere about two in the morning.
At six, when Ratcliffe turned out and came on deck, he found Satan at
the wheel, relinquished by Jude, and day pursuing the Sarah across a
wrinkled sea of tourmaline and hinted blue. Away ahead somewhere to the
south lay Cormorant Cay, the true tomb, if the chart indications were
correct, of the _Nombre de Dios_.
A strong sailing wind was blowing, and Satan gave their speed at seven
knots. He refused to hand over the wheel.
“I’ve had a snooze on deck,” said he, “while the kid took charge. We’re
nearly sixty miles south of Lone, and if this wind holds will be on to
Cormorant somewhere about eight bells.”
“Not a sign of those chaps,” said Ratcliffe, looking back over the sea,
clear of Cleary and Sellers and their dirty crowd.
“Naw; they’ll be just about rousin’ up now and rubbin’ their eyes.”
“You don’t think they’ll try to follow us?”
“Not likely, I don’t think. They’re wastin’ time and money if they
cruise after us. Cark’s got his business in Havana to attend to, and
Cleary’s the same. What’s gettin’ me is the fac’ that Sellers has
spotted the kid for what she is. It’ll be all over Havana, and she
knows it.”
“Well, it had to come out some time.”
“Maybe.”
“Look here, Satan!” said Ratcliffe. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the
girl and what’s to become of her. She can’t go on as she is. We must
fix up something.”
“That’s easy said.”
“Well, I’ve grown fonder of her than any person I’ve ever met, that’s
the truth. There’s no one like her; she’s gold right through.”
“She ain’t bad.”
“This sort of thing was all right when she was a child,” went on
Ratcliffe; “but she’s growing out of that. Why, even in the little time
since I’ve come aboard, she seems different, somehow.”
“Well, if you ask me,” said Satan, “you seem to have made a change in
her. She’s brightened up, somehow, has more sass in her. Y’see, when
we were cruisin’ round since Pap died, me, she, and the nigger, there
wasn’t much company, and she was gettin’ a bit down-hearted. Then, when
you came aboard, she picked up. She hadn’t laughed for weeks till she
saw you in that pajama rig; then she chummed onto you.”
“She did.”
“Liked you from the first minute she saw you. There’s no two ways
about Jude,—it’s either like or the other thing, right off.”
“Well, I’m pretty much the same—and I don’t want to lose sight of
her—or you.”
“How’d you mean?”
“Oh, just that. I’m bothering about when this cruise is over. That’s
bothering me a lot. Well, we’ll leave it at that for the present.”
Satan turned his lantern face to starboard for half a moment to
expectorate right over the starboard rail—maybe also to hide a grin.
“I reckon it’ll come all right somehow,” said he. “We ain’t much in
the world, but we’re straight. Reckon you’re straight too. That’s all
I want. That feller Thelusson, y’remember I told you he wanted to come
for a cruise with us. Well, he was straight enough s’far as dollars
went, but I wouldn’t have had him on this ship, not if he’d paid me
a dollar a minute and a bonus for every knot we made—not with Jude
aboard—Here’s the wheel for a sec’, if you’ll take it whiles I get
some coffee ready.”
Toward noon a wreath of gulls in the sky showed Cormorant.
Jude was at the wheel, Satan forward on the lookout.
Twenty minutes later Satan came running aft, fetched the old glass out
of its sling, and went forward with it.
“There’s a hooker on the sands!” cried he. “Looks like a small fruiter
or suthin’ hove up.”
Ratcliffe, standing beside him, could see nothing,—the sand, owing
to their low level, was invisible from the deck of the _Sarah_,—then,
straining his eyes, he made out a speck on the sea-line.
“Mast’s gone,” said Satan, “white painted, not more’n fifty ton, and
she’s layin’ in the lagoon. She must have come in over the sand where
it narrows to the westward. There’s a pinch of sand there that’s near
under water at flood, and the seas come right over it in an east’ard
gale.”
He handed the glass to Ratcliffe.
“Funny,” said Ratcliffe, “if you were right about the _Nombre de Dios_
being sunk here and we come to have a look for her and find another
wreck.”
“Well, I don’t take no shares in the _Nombre de Dios_,” said Satan.
“I ran here more for somewhere to run to than with any thought of the
_Nombre_. She’s a hundred foot under the sand if she’s here at all; but
it’s luck all the same. There’ll be pickin’s. There was a big blow two
weeks ago from the east,—that’s what’s done her,—and the salvage men
won’t be here yet, if they ever come.”
He stuck the glass to his eye.
“She’s a yacht, that’s what she is, one of them small cruisers, not
more’n fifty or sixty, and her fittin’s will just do for us, if she’s
not been stripped. There’s all sorts of folks come from New York and
Philadelphia and N’ y’Orleans, cruisin’ about these seas in tubs like
that,—fishin’ mostly.”
The _Sarah_ held on, almost due south, with the daring of a sea-bird,
Satan giving directions to the steersman and seeming absolutely
regardless of the death and dangers around them,—reefs that they
shaved, rocks that waved fathom-long ribbons of fuci a few feet under
water,—he avoided them all.
South, east, and west Cormorant Cay is devoid of danger. Only here to
the north do the reefs and rocks show, and it is just here that the
only entrance to the lagoon lies.
The place consists really of two sandspits widely separated to the
north so as to form a pondlike harbor running from five to ten fathoms
deep. Farther south the sandspits join so as to form a wide street,
like the spit to eastward of Lone Reef.
They held on. The sound of the gentle surf on the sands came now, and a
full view of the lagoon water reflecting the sun-blaze like a mirror.
On the still lagoon, with strange stereoscopic effect seen between the
two sand-arms holding off the wrinkled sea, lay the craft, floating on
an even keel, and showing a stump of mainmast against the skyline. From
her lines she had been a yacht.
“Why, Go’ bless my soul, she’s anchored!” cried Satan. “Derelic’ and
anchored. The people must have got away in a boat or suthin’. There’s
not a sign of them. Port—hard—port—as you were—steady—so!”
He ran to let go the halyards.
Another anchor had been bent on to some spare chain. It was heaved
over, and the _Sarah_ came up to it, swinging less than fifty yards
from the stranger. She was a picture, a forty-ton fishing yawl, white
painted, gracile as a fish, dismasted, abandoned, and swinging to a
taut anchor chain; beyond her and the emerald of the lagoon lay the
great stretch of sands, running due south, blanketing to the heat and
showing ponds of aquamarine and storms of gulls.
The anchor down, Satan stood with his eyes fixed on his prey; Jude
too. They seemed considering her as a butcher might consider a carcass
before he cut it up.
“Aren’t you going to board her?” asked Ratcliffe.
“Have you ever seen a dead b’ar?” asked Satan. “Sometimes a b’ar isn’t
as dead as he looks, and sometimes a derelic’ isn’t as empty as it
looks. It’s a common thing for men on the Florida coast to hide in a
driftin’ canoe and rise up and laugh at them that come out to collect
it. I can’t make out that anchor chain bein’ down, and I’ll just give
them one hour whiles we have dinner.”
When they came on deck again after the meal, they dropped the dinghy,
and the three of them put off for the derelict.
She must have been dismasted outside the sands, for not a spar lay in
the water alongside,—dismasted and driven over by a big wave, her crew
clinging to her. On the bow was her name, _Haliotis_. They tied up and
scrambled on board. The deck ran flush fore and aft. The wheel looked
all right, but was jammed and immovable; the binnacle glass was smashed.
Satan stood, whistling and looking about him. Then he dived below,
followed by the others. The cabin had been left in good order. It was a
bit over-gilded and decorated for a plain man’s taste, but everything
was of the best, and a hanging lamp of solid brass still swung over
the center-table. The walls were of bird’s-eye maple, the cushions of
the best blue cloth, and the fittings of the tiny sleeping cabins to
match.
There was plenty of stuff lying about,—books, clothes, boots. The
people had evidently put off in a hurry, not caring much what they took
as long as they got away. Perhaps they had taken advantage of a passing
steamer.
Ratcliffe picked up a book, a volume of O. Henry. There was a name in
it,—J. Seligmann.
Jude, delving in the starboard after-cabin, came out holding up
something. It was a pair of boots, women’s, patent leather with white
suede tops and heels three inches high.
“Look at them things!” said Jude with a burst of suppressed laughter.
“A girl’s boots,” said Ratcliffe. “Try them on, Jude.”
“If I wore them things,” said Jude, “I’d have to walk on my hands.
There’s dead loads more of stuff, and the place smells as if a polecat
had been living there.”
Ratcliffe stuck his head into the little cabin. It reeked of California
poppy as though a bottle of it had been upset, California poppy and
cosmetic scents. Clothes were lying about in disorder; a woman’s white
yachting cap, deck shoes, lingerie, bursting like froth out of a cabin
trunk, gave added touch to the hysterical distraction of the scene.
One could see her, the woman, rushing about saving or collecting her
valuables, leaving everything else, and calling on the gods to witness
that she would never set foot again on another small yacht for a
pleasure cruise among the islands.
Jude picked out a frilled garment from the lingerie box, looked at
it, rolled it up, and cast it with a chuckle into the bunk, then she
reached up and opened the little port.
Ratcliffe left her pursuing her investigations, attracted by the whoops
of Satan, who seemed pursuing things about the deck.
Satan, with his hair wild and his eyes ablaze, had rapidly sampled his
treasure. Everything he wanted had been left. Had he found the _Nombre
de Dios_ with gold to her hatches, it is doubtful if his excitement
would have been so intense.
“Look at that!” cried he, pointing to the mast winch. “Wantin’
it—should think I had been! Come along and see!” He led the way
to a heap of raffle and broken spars forward. “Look at them gaff
jaws, galvanized an’ covered with hide, and me with old wooden ones
creakin’ like an old shoe! There’s a mainsheet buffer too! Camper
Nicholson’s—rubber—cringles—come along to the sail room!”
They went to the sail room, then to the galley,—everywhere finds,
glorious finds, with this rough sum total:
In the sail room, sixty fathoms of new manila rope, an eighty-foot
otter trawl, harpoons and grains and a seine net, a trysail, square
sails, two jibs; in the galley, cooking gear, an Atkey cooking stove
to burn coal or coke; in addition to all this some splendid blocks
with patent sheaves with ball bearings which run so much better than
dummies, a lower mainsheet block and two quarter-blocks, fathoms of
galvanized chain, and two Nicholson’s patent anchors. Other things
included lamps, a pair of binoculars, a sextant and a chronometer,
charts, and lastly, glorious but useless, in a little engine room
the auxiliary, a 13–15 horse-power petrol-paraffin Kelvin engine,
two-cylinder, with the shaft running out through the quarter, and a
spare Bergius propeller, which shuts up and opens out automatically
when in motion.
When they came on deck again after a rapid glance at these things a
brain-wave came to Ratcliffe.
“Look here!” said he. “Why not tow her back to Havana and claim
salvage? She’s worth a lot and she’s derelict.”
“Not me,” said Satan. “Have you ever claimed salvage? First there’s
the tow, and we’re underhanded. Then there’s the lawyers. What’s to
stop this Seligmann whoever he is poppin’ up an’ swearin’ against me.
He’d say he left her with the anchor down in harbor; it amounts to
that, though she’s derelic’ right enough. Not me! I’ll take what I want
without no lawyers to help me. She’s my meat, by all the laws of the
sea, and that’s the end of it.”
Appeared Jude from the cabin hatch, carrying as a trophy a go-ashore
hat she had unearthed from somewhere, a crushed-strawberry-colored
straw hat—or was it a bonnet? It had long strings and a rose stuck on
one side of it.
“Look what that catawampus has left behind her!” cried Jude.
“Quit your foolin’,” cried Satan, “and come along and lend a hand.
Here, h’ist these things into the dinghy!”
Jude flung the hat down the open skylight, and the rank burglary of the
_Haliotis_ began.