THE PROFESSOR'S DAUGHTERS
In the old days, when slave-carrying was a game followed by gentlemen
with nerve, the officer with the best nose on board the man-o'-war that
overhauled a suspected slave carrier was always sent aboard to make an
examination. It was his business to sniff at the air in the hold in an
endeavour to distinguish the "slave smell." No matter how the wily
slaver disinfected the place, the odour of caged niggers remained, and a
long-nosed investigator could always detect it.
Now the trouble odour on board a ship is the same as the slave smell. An
experienced investigator can detect it immediately, and when I climbed
over the low bulwarks of _The Waif_ I got a whiff. I couldn't tell
exactly where it was, but I knew that Dame Trouble was aboard the craft.
It's a sort of sixth sense with a sailorman to be able to detect a
stormy atmosphere, and I felt that the yacht wasn't the place that the
dove of peace would choose as a permanent abode. I don't know how the
information came to me. It seemed to filter in through the pores of my
skin, but it was information that I felt sure was correct.
Captain Newmarch was a bilious Englishman with a thin, scrawny beard. He
endeavoured to make one word do the work of two--or three if they were
very short words--and working up a conversation with him was as tough a
job as one could lay hold of. Sometimes a word came to the tip of his
tongue, felt the atmosphere, as you might say, then slid back into his
throat with a little protesting gurgle, and after a ten minutes'
conversation with him, those little gurgles from the strangled words
made me look upon him as a sort of morgue for murdered sentences.
Professor Herndon, the head of the expedition, was on the deck when the
captain and I came up out of the cabin, and Herndon was everything the
comic papers show in the make-up of science professors, with a little
bit extra for good luck. He was sixty inches of nerves, wrinkles, and
whiskers, with special adornments in the shape of a blue smoking cap,
and a pair of spectacles with specially ground lenses of an enormous
thickness.
Newmarch grunted something which the Professor and I took to be an
introduction, and he put a skinny hand into mine.
"You have been a long while in the Islands?" he squeaked.
"Longer than I care to say," I replied.
"Have you been around the spot we are making for?" he asked.
"I was on Penrhyn Island for three months," I answered. "I was helping a
German scientist who was studying the family habits of turtles."
I made a foolish break by admitting that I possessed any knowledge of
Polynesia. The Professor had left his home at sunny Sausalito, on the
shores of San Francisco Bay, in search of that kind of stuff, and before
I could do a conversational backstep he had pushed me against the side
of the galley and was deluging me with questions, the answers to which
he entered in shorthand in a notebook that was bulkier than a Dutchman's
Bible. The old spectacled ancient could fire more queries in three
minutes than any human gatling that ever gripped a brief, and I looked
around for relief.
And the wonder is that the relief came. I forgot the Professor and his
anxiety concerning the "temba-temba" devil dance when my eyes happened
to catch sight of the vision that was approaching from the companionway.
A boat carrying a science expedition to one of the loneliest groups in
the Pacific was not the place where one would expect to find the
handsomest girl in all the world, and my tongue refused to mould my
words. The girl was tall, of graceful build, and possessed of a quiet
beauty that had a most peculiar effect upon me. Only that afternoon, as
I lay in the shadow of the pile of pearl shell on Levuka wharf, I had
thought of crossing to Auckland and shipping up to 'Frisco so that I
could hear good women laugh and talk as I had heard them in my dreams
during the years I had spent around the Islands, and now the woman of my
dreams was in front of me. But I was afraid of her. When she came toward
me I thought of the years I had wasted down in that lonely quarter where
ambition is strangled by lassitude bred in tropical sunshine, and the
ghost of the man I might have been banged me fair between the two eyes.
"My daughter, Miss Edith Herndon," squeaked the Professor, and when I
put out my big hand to take her little one I thought I'd fall down on
the deck on account of the Niagara of blood that seemed to rush to my
brain.
It's funny how all the little imperfections in your dress and manner
rise up suddenly and bang you hard on the bump of observation when you
find yourself in front of some one whose good opinion you want to earn.
I felt it so the moment I stood before the girl in the cream serge suit.
My drill outfit, that I had thought rather clean when I brushed the
shell grit from it after my sleep on the wharf, looked as black as the
devil's tail when she appeared. My hands appeared to be several degrees
larger than the prize hams that come out of Kansas, and my tongue, as if
it recognized the stupidity of the remarks I attempted to make, started
to play fool stunts as if it wanted to go down my throat and choke me to
death.
The girl guessed the sort of predicament I was in at that moment. God
only knows how many months had passed since I had spoken to a woman like
her. Not that good women are lacking in the Islands, but because they
were on a different plane to me. I had been belting native crews on
trading schooners between the Carolines and the Marquesas, and when
ashore I had little opportunity for speaking to a woman of the type of
Edith Herndon.
And she understood the feeling that held me tongue-tied. To make me feel
at my ease she started to tell of everything that had happened from the
moment that _The Waif_ had cleared Sydney Heads, and the time she
spent in that recital was as precious to me as the two-minute interval
between rounds is to a prize-fighter who has been knocked silly the
moment before the round ends. I had shaken the dizziness out of my head
when she finished, and I had obtained control over my tongue.
"You must tell us a lot about the South Seas," she cried. "You have been
down here such a long time that you must have many interesting things to
relate. Captain Newmarch will not talk, and Mr. Leith refuses to see
anything picturesque in the sights he has seen during his wanderings."
"Who is Mr. Leith?" I asked.
"He is father's partner in this expedition," she said quietly. "He has
lived down here for many years, but he will not tell us much. And
Barbara is anxious to know everything she can."
"Barbara?" I stammered. "Then--then there is another lady aboard?"
"Oh, yes! my sister," cried the girl. "I think I hear her coming now."
There was no question about the latter part of her remark. A burst of
laughter that was more infectious than influenza came from the
companion-stairs, and immediately in its wake came a girl who made me
think, as I compared her to Miss Edith, of a beautiful yacht alongside a
stately liner. Barbara Herndon was sunshine personified. Laughter went
with her wherever she went, and a pair of Tongans, polishing brasses,
immediately put their molars on view, as if they had understood what
caused the smiles upon her pretty face as she came toward us.
"Oh, you are the new mate?" she cried, as I was introduced. "Mr. Holman
was just telling me about you. He said that you repeated a chapter of
'Pilgrim's Progress' every time you woke up after a sleep."
I blushed as I made a mental resolve that I would punch the head of that
youngster when I had a suitable opportunity, and in between my
stammering explanations I made notes on the differences between the two
girls. Edith was as stately as Juno, with a face that was so sweet and
restful that a glance at it was better than an opiate for a man whose
nerves were all out of tune. She had that kind of repose that you see
sometimes on the face of an Oriental statue, the repose that comes to
women who have met great trials or for whom great trials are waiting.
Barbara was altogether different. She found the world rather an amusing
place, and it seemed as if she took it for granted that her sister was
capable of shouldering the cares of the family, leaving her free to
smile at all the amusing incidents she found in the course of the day.
It appeared to me that I was an amusing incident to her at that moment.
She returned to the fool story that Holman had told, and I couldn't
sidestep her questions.
"But it is true that you were quoting Bunyan on the wharf when Mr.
Holman found you, isn't it?" she asked mischievously.
"No, it isn't true," I spluttered. "I only asked Mr. Holman a question
to see if he was familiar with 'Pilgrim's Progress'."
"Why did you ask him that?" she quizzed. "I'm sure he looks a perfectly
respectable young man."
Miss Edith was smiling, but she took pity upon me at last and
endeavoured to rescue me from my tormentor.
"Oh, Barbara!" she cried reprovingly, "Mr. Verslun will think you are
very inquisitive. You must not pry into his private affairs."
"But it is nothing private," I gurgled. "I simply asked Mr. Holman a
question in an endeavour to find out what a Maori and a Fijian were
talking about."
"Oh, it is something mysterious!" cried the younger girl. "I knew it! I
knew it! We are getting into the region of mystery at last! Oh, Mr.
Verslun, you are a perfect treasure! It has been a nasty, dull, old trip
from the moment we left Sydney Harbour, and you are the first person to
bring a little colour into the voyage."
She was so worked up at the thought of hearing something wonderfully
mysterious and romantic that I started to make a long yarn out of that
incident on the wharf just for her benefit. Miss Edith was interested
too, but I was convinced, as I polished up the points of the little tale
and endeavoured to pull in a thrill, that the elder sister was deriving
her pleasure from watching the face of the younger one, and not from my
story.
"It pleases Barbara," she cried, when I had told how Toni had denied all
knowledge of his friend, and how the Maori had sent the farewell chant
after the boat. "She thinks she will see and hear wonderful things
before we get back to civilization."
"I hope she will," I said, and little did I dream that the wish I
expressed at that moment should come true in such a remarkable manner
before we had returned.
"And you don't know what they meant by their song about the white
waterfall and Black Fernando's hell?" murmured Barbara.
"No, I don't," I replied. "The Maori ran away when I attempted to
cross-examine him, and Toni denies all knowledge of the duet on the
wharf."
"Oh, we must ask him again!" she cried. "There he is near the wheel.
I'll go and bring him!"
She raced madly after the Fijian and hauled him before us in triumph. I
was more convinced than ever that it was Toni who had blundered over
his lesson on the wharf, but Toni denied the charge more vehemently than
he did on the boat. He asserted in reply to Barbara Herndon's questions,
that he could not sing a note, that he was absolutely ignorant of white
waterfalls, and the only hell he knew was the one spoken of by the
missionary in Lower George Street, Sydney; and the girl sighed as she
gave up the effort.
"It seemed such a nice mystery to unravel," she murmured, "but if Toni
persists in saying that he knows nothing of the white waterfall the
investigation falls to the ground."
The Fijian was backing away with renewed protestations when a head came
round the corner of the galley, and a voice that was deeper than the
caves of Atiu fired a question at us.
"What about the white waterfall?"
"Oh, Mr. Leith," cried Miss Barbara, "we have just been investigating a
mystery. Mr. Verslun discovered it this afternoon in Levuka. But you
haven't met Mr. Verslun yet, have you?"
"I haven't," growled the owner of the voice.
"Mr. Verslun, this is Mr. Leith, who is father's partner," said Miss
Barbara. "He knows a lot about the Islands, but he refuses to tell any
of his experiences."
I looked at the man who stood in front of me, and a curious thing
flashed through my mind. I was reminded at that moment of a story I had
read of a man charged with an attempt upon the life of a prince. The
would-be murderer informed the judge that a terrible hate of the
princeling had gripped him the moment he put eyes on him, and he had
made the attempt upon his life before he had managed to control the
unexplainable surge of hate. I understood the emotion that had gripped
that unfortunate as I stood face to face with Leith. A feeling of
revulsion gripped me, and I experienced a peculiar squalmy sensation as
I took his hand. It was unexplainable. Perhaps some ancestor of mine had
unsatisfactory dealings with a man of the same unusual type in a faraway
past, and the transmitted hate had suddenly sprung into the conscious
area. I do know that you can keep a secretary-bird away from snakes till
it grows old, but the first reptile it sees it immediately starts out to
beat him up. I had the inherited hate that makes the secretary-bird rush
madly at a snake that may be the first of its species that it has ever
seen, and I guess that Leith had no love to spare for me from the moment
he took my hand.
He was a huge brute, fully six feet tall, and he was the possessor of
two of the strongest-looking hands I had ever seen. They were claws,
that's what they were. The great fingers were slightly crooked, as if
waiting, like the tentacles of an octopus, for something to get in their
grip. The body was heavy, and, in a manner that I cannot explain, it
made me think of animals that lived and died in long past ages. The big
brute looked so capable of making an inexcusable attack that one's
primitive instincts warned one to keep in a state of readiness for the
onslaught that seemed imminent.
But it was the face that was specially unattractive. It was a sallow,
flat face, and the strange eyes did nothing to lighten it. They were
dead, lustreless eyes. They had a coldness in them that reminded me of
the icicle eyes of the crocodile, and, curiously, I associated that
reptile's notions of fair warfare with Leith as I looked at him. That
sullen face, with the eyes that would never brighten at a tale of
daring, or dim from a story of pathos, belonged to a man who would
imitate crocodile tactics by lying quiet till his prey was within
striking distance.
"What is all this about the white waterfall?" he repeated, after the
crooked fingers had dropped my hand.
"Oh, it's something that happened to Mr. Verslun," replied Miss Barbara.
"Where?" asked Leith.
"On the wharf over there," I answered coldly, nodding toward the
structure as I spoke. "It's really nothing important though, and I
related it solely for Miss Herndon's amusement."
"But Toni?" he growled, turning toward the two girls.
"Oh, Toni puts forward an alibi," laughed the youngest sister. "He
asserts that he was in the boat when the incident happened and he
persists in saying that he knows nothing about the matter."
Leith again turned toward me, and his brows straightened as he looked me
in the eyes. "Can't you tell the story over again?" he asked.
"I'd rather not," I said, somewhat rudely. "I'm tired of it. It was
really only a small happening that I am afraid I expanded a little in an
endeavour to thrill Miss Herndon, and the story is now her personal
property."
"But the bare facts?" he growled.
"There are no bare facts," I replied. "I covered them with fiction, and
I think Miss Herndon is going to copyright the whole."
He took the remark as a direct refusal on my part to give him an outline
of the affair to satisfy his curiosity, and I felt elated at noting the
sudden glint of anger that appeared in the lustreless eyes.
The two girls stood silent for a moment while Leith and I surveyed each
other without speaking, then a Tahitian boy broke the awkward silence by
informing me that the captain wished to see me in the cabin, and I
hurriedly excused myself to the sisters and went below.
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