recited Selden. "Eh? Twenty thousand--and I've got you by the short
hairs!" His eyes shone in the moonlight with a fanatic gleam. "_Thus
saith the Lord God; An adversary there shall be, and he shall bring down
thy strength from thee!_"
* * * * *
Then Captain Wetherbee relaxed and laughed in his chest to match the
note of the reef. "Blackmail and piracy! My colonial oath, deacon, I
never saw your beat. So you've dropped to me! I go bail you asked a
blessing on the enterprise!"
Selden did not deny it.
"Let's hear the rest," urged Wetherbee, while his chuckle echoed the lap
of waves among dark pilings. "What's your notion? Did you picture me
sticking up the consignors as they walk aboard the plank and passing you
your share in a little hand bag?"
The deacon shuffled nervously.
"It can't matter how you do it."
"Can't it? Now, don't you go disappointing me." He stole a step nearer.
"Those pearls have been locked in the strong room of the Brisbane
steamer since early afternoon. Now then. How the devil am I--are we--to
nab 'em? Come! You're the little personal Providence in this affair, at
50 per cent. Don't tell me with all your knowing you didn't know
_that_!"
"It's your deliver," said Selden, "anyhow."
"Well, let's take counsel--I'm agreeable to have an adversary. Goodness
knows I haven't had much amusement so far--the thing's been so rotten
easy. By way of a text--Brother Seldom--and a point of departure: did
you ever hear of the _Volga_? Ever hear of the _Quetta_ or the _Mecca_;
or a dozen of other ships lost one time or another between here and Cape
Flattery?
"Pity about them too--they fell a trifle off the track. Just a few
fathom off the track among these millions of reefs that will rip the
heart out of anything afloat. Suppose for the sake of argument our
Brisbane steamer which we're both so interested in--out there at the
dock head--suppose she should happen to go wandering this trip--say,
somewhere around Tribulation Passage, two hours out. Suppose she
should--as a slant of luck." His voice lowered with obscurely evil
suggestion. "Would it occur to you we might have any chance of salvage
on those pearls?"
"I--I don't understand," stammered Selden. "The passage is lighted.
There's a light on Tribulation Shoal."
"So there is. What a helpful chap you are to work with! You keep it to
port as you turn the Blackbird Reef. It's a fourth order fixed
dioptric--unattended. The keeper lives on Horn Island. But suppose,
now--suppose that light were moved, either way?"
"Move the light!"
"In effect, merely; in effect. A man might very readily land there from
the lee and blanket that light to the westward. And if that same man,
with something like a discarded lightship lantern aboard his lugger,
should then anchor half a mile away, and show his light at the
masthead--hey? A fifty-foot elevation is visible at nearly fourteen
miles twenty-five feet up. But a twenty-five-foot elevation gives a
total of only eleven point four.... You begin to see the possibilities
for error--particularly if the pilot of the oncoming steamer should
happen to be, as you wisely suggest, a bit of a sot with a hazy eye--"
"My God! You're going to wreck her!"
"Hush!" said Wetherbee very loudly.
Selden whirled around to find a black-skinned native standing impassive
behind him. At the same instant a steel grip locked his wrists. "Not
that!" he gasped, struggling. "My God, man, you wouldn't! You daren't!"
"No? And yet you said you knew my little methods." "Honest" Wetherbee
shifted a thumb to his throat and smiled into his face. "I've a mind to
show you, deacon--shall I--how far I _have_ come and how cleverly I
_have_ covered my tracks?... Hya, you fella boy--that fella boat all
ready? Then bear a hand her one time. We've got a passenger."
* * * * *
Now, it is a fact that no one knows or is ever likely to know the actual
explanation for the wreck of the Brisbane steamer, which left Thursday
Island that night and came to grief some two hours later on Tribulation
Shoals. Other craft have gone the same way from natural causes, and
Thursday has kept no suspect tradition of them. The only man who might
have denied the yarn as afterward colored in local legend--and
incidentally a libel on his own memory--was the pilot who had her in
charge. And he never came back, drunk or sober. But the records declare
that about four o'clock of a fair enough morning, wind and sea then
running high, the 2,000-ton _Fernshawe_ went clear off her course among
the graveyards where a coral ledge stripped her plates as neatly as a
butcher's knife lays open a carcass. She sank inside of five minutes,
and her survivors were hurried.
Neither has any one ever told the true adventures of the _Fancy Free_,
the flash little lugger that happened somehow to be missing from
week-end rendezvous at the same hour. Her crew were mostly inarticulate,
and those who might have talked of strange comings and goings were
"black fella boy know nothing." Her passenger spent the night praying in
the bilge; and as for her commander, he left no report. But it is
equally certain that when the next dawn spread the iridescence of a
pigeon's breast over those empty waters it struck out the hull and spars
of Captain Wetherbee's vessel, anchored fair between the tips of two
sunken masts.
Captain Wetherbee himself straddled the deck in diving rig, and while a
native helper held ready his great gleaming copper helm he mocked a
limp, bedraggled, white-faced creature that clung by the rail.
"You'll note for yourself, Brother Seldom," he was saying. "Not a trace
of evidence. We've not been spied. The lantern is sunk. These poor
cattle haven't a glimmer. Here are we, and there are the pearls, twenty
thousand pounds' worth--just overside. Within three hours I'll be off on
the pearling banks about my business, and I never heard of any lost
steamer. Next week, or any time I choose, I'll be walking the streets of
Thursday to hear the news. And who so surprised as Captain Wetherbee,
that hardworking man? 'Honest' Wetherbee, with a fortune in his belt to
dispose at leisure!"...
His pallid face took a diabolic glow in the first sun.
"Except yourself, of course," he added. "_You're_ evidence. King's
evidence. I'm not forgetting you. I'll even give you your chance. Are
you coming, old 50 per cent? Yes--down there! With me! Hell--what kind
of an adversary do you call yourself? Come on and share. Now's your time
to get level and change your luck once for all. Fight it out with
me--what? No?... Damn it, deacon, I thought you were going to be
amusing.... I'll knock your silly head in when I come back."
He climbed to the ladder, but a final odd fancy occurred to him, a
parting twist to the other's torment; and he summoned the big negro
mate.
"You see that fella white man? Mebbe he wants to go below--good; you
give him that other suit. Mebbe he raises hell or touches the pump; you
knock seven bells out of him. Otherwise no order. You savee?"
Buttermilk saveed with a vacant grin.
There hung for a moment after the helmet had been locked a singled-eyed
and monstrous red ghoul of the sea that presently lowered itself and
sank....
Wetherbee landed easily on the boat deck of the _Fernshawe_ well away
aft. It was hardly bright enough as yet above him, and he had to feel
his path a foot at a time in somber green twilight. Quick fishes steered
to and fro about him, silent and curious witnesses of this invasion. He
gave no heed, he had no care of sharks or diamond fish or any possible
danger, too intent on his errand, too elate and confident.
Balancing on his hands like an acrobat, he crawled over the edge, down
to the main deck, and began to explore forward.
In one hand he held a short and heavy steel crowbar, with a fine ground
tip. In the other he drew the coils of his life line and air tube. They
lengthened after him as he entered by the main companion, passed the
door to the saloon, and up a long, dark passage to a thwartship
corridor. There, as he had known from a vague and general familiarity
with its plan, was the door to the steamer's strong room. The lock
proved a trifle in the nip of his powerful jimmy....
* * * * *
When he groped out into the passage, twenty minutes later, he carried
slung to his belt, a sagging canvas bag.
It seemed to him that the ship must have moved in the interval of his
search. Some shifting of cargo or fracture of the coral supports had
tilted her sharply by the stern. He walked down a noticeable slope, and
halfway he met a dead man, sliding on an upward current.
The stranger bobbed into him and went asprawl like a clumsy and
apologetic passer-by. His sightless eyes peered into Wetherbee's with
mild reproach. Wetherbee thrust him off, and he went bowing and spinning
gravely on his course.
Wetherbee cared for no such matters. His nerve remained unshaken, his
pulses calm, as befitted a man who had played out the end of a difficult
game to rewarded success. But as he resumed his retreat down the passage
he caught a glimpse of something surely quite as human and lively as
himself.
The light was somewhat stronger now and flooding in through the side
panel made a kind of proscenium of the landing by the main companionway.
And in that space he descried a dim form facing him there, looking
toward him: a man as tall as himself, clad like himself in diving
rig--like himself in polished copper helmet. He knew only two helmets of
that particular shape and color. One he wore. The other he had left on
the deck of the _Fancy Free_, his spare diving gear. No man of his crew
ever could have worn it, for none of them used an apparatus. Therefore
he knew that Deacon Selden had come down after all to dispute the prize
with him and to claim vengeance on the spot.
He exulted; he could have wished it so and not otherwise. He had meant
to kill Selden anyhow. But this was the time and the place and the
manner to kill him; a manner to match and to complete his crime as an
artistic achievement. One blow on the helmet would crush the fellow's
eardrums. And leave no trace--no trace at all! He could bear the body
quite openly to Port Kennedy, and even inter it with honors for an
unfortunate hand who had died in the line of duty. No trace. Everybody
outgeneraled, duped, and defeated and himself free as air.
And the cream of it was: Selden was going to fight! He saw that when he
took a stride and the other moved up with him. He stretched out a hand
to steady for a rush. So did the other. He swung up his armed fist. The
other did the like....
Laughing loud inside his casque, he flung the bar above his head, and
went to meet the adversary in crashing impact.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, above in the sunshine, on the deck of the _Fancy Free_, a
limp and wild-eyed gentleman, who had once been deacon in his far past,
continued to call abroad with prayful fervor, if any help might come:
"_The wicked man lieth in wait secretly as a lion.... Lo, he hath
said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his wrong in his
heart.... Let him be snared in his own pit: in the net which he hid
is his own foot taken.... Lord, break Thou the arm of the wicked
and the evil man...!_"
And when the first luggers came flying from Port Kennedy to the scene of
the wreck and the first investigators went below, they found the
lifeless body of Captain Wetherbee, the only honest man that ever came
to Thursday Island by sea, who had been drowned there: impaled among the
shards and splinters of a broken mirror that had served to mask a saloon
door aboard the murdered Brisbane steamer.
MEANING--CHASE YOURSELF
At the moment I first saw Angus Jones I was taking my ease on Funchal
beach. I lay by an upturned market boat, careful to keep even my feet in
the shade. This is a prime precaution when you wear three toes leaking
through either shoe and you live under a sun that burns like the white
hot spot in a crown sheet. It was breathless noon. The waves came
marching in to hiss on the basalt cobbles. Nevertheless and after a
manner I was taking my ease, the only thing I was still free to take in
all Madeira and the last thing I shall ever give up anywhere.
Off the one quay lay a rusted tramp with the lines of a wash boiler and
the flag of Siam--of all tropic flags--hanging over her stern like a
dishrag to a nail. With shoutings a half-naked crew hauled bags and
crates out of her into shore boats. Her decks were a litter of teak
beams, ill-stowed. She carried a sloven list that brought her port
chains under, and she shouldered at her anchor like a drunken man at a
post. Moreover, the reek of her was an offense along the water front.
And yet I desired her, with all her untidiness, her filth, her unseemly
violence of activity, for presently when her cargo was out she would
stagger off the roadstead as she had come and bear away for some other
port--any other port. Happy ship that could be free to head up into the
world again. Happy souls aboard who should leave the black beach of
Funchal behind them! And so I lay and watched and envied her and them,
admonishing sand hoppers between whiles.
"Do you chance to have the loan of a match about you?"...
I sat up the better to stare. The stranger stood all of seven feet, it
seemed to me, built like a lath, hung around and about with the wreck of
tweeds. But what struck me was his headgear. He wore one of those wool
caps, half an inch thick, with which an inscrutable Providence has moved
the peasantry of this blistering isle to inflict themselves. He had the
ear flaps down. It made me sweat again to see him. But he seemed
amazingly cool. And so indeed he was, for this was Angus Jones.
"Do you find yourself in need of a fire?" I asked.
"It's for a light to my pipe."
"I'd rather not disturb myself," I told him, "but a smoke is an
inducement. If the tobacco is worth it, I can probably raise a match or
two from some fisherman."
"Rest yourself again," he said, observing me with interest. "I see you
are a man of judgment.... It was my idea if I could beg a match I could
also beg the rest."
So we reclined in the shade together, Angus Jones and I, and conversed
in the liberal fashion of our calling.
"I am newly come from over yon." He hooked a thumb toward the mountains
that wall the almost unknown North Coast. "The cheese from ewes is
sustaining but monotonous. The people are of an incredible simplicity.
They talk pure Portuguese of the fourteenth century, and they count on
their fingers."
"You should have stayed there," I made answer. "The people here are
sophisticated by tourists and poverty. Also cheese is superior to cactus
fruit, and from sugar cane one turns at last with loathing."
"Do you work for it?"
I was long since lost to shame. I confessed how I ballyhooed at the door
of an embroidery shop whenever a ship loosed English passengers for a
two-hour visit.
"Not good enough," decided Angus Jones. "Though, mark you, I should
never admit a town of this size to be as barren as you say. Still I am
fed up with Madeira. I am disappointed in Madeira. Is it believable,
after my stay of a month, I have yet to meet the famous wine of the name
on its native heath?"
"Quite, since it does not exist. You could have met only an inferior
imported Malaga with a fake label."
"Can such things be?" asked Jones, with an expression of pain.
"Oh, it's all a fraud. Like the coasters from the Monte that have to be
shoved, and the embroidery, which is cheaper in Paris, and the beggars,
who are the only wealthy citizens by escaping the taxes."
He considered.
"I think I shall not stay. Tell me, how does a lad like you or me set
about getting away from Madeira?"
"How much money have you?"
"As much as a gentleman needs."
"Not good enough," I echoed. "This is the one place in the world you
cannot leave without paying for the privilege."
He looked down on my bitterness from between his ear flaps.
"Man," he said, "when dealing with people of a racial simplicity, never
talk of paying. 'Tis in the nature of the lesser nationalities to bear
the white man as a burden."
And I laughed. It was a blessing to laugh. I thought I had forgotten
how.
"Tell me that after a month in Funchal," I said. "I will teach you a
new way of cooking cactus and how to steal sugar cane when the moon is
full."
He regarded me solemnly and shook his head.
"How long have you been here?"
"So long I would surely slip on my ear if I should ever again walk on
anything but cobbles."
"'Tis living among these islanders has taught you such simplicity. Mark
me. For two days I have not eaten. I require food, liquor, and to be
helped on my way. Your case is much the same, I take it. Good. Now I
say--I, Angus Jones--that all these things shall be procured for the two
of us.... Come, and let me restore your faith."
* * * * *
For the sake of the jest I bestirred myself and went with him, well
knowing what he would find. We climbed to the deserted Rua Da Praia,
past the red stone tower that is known as Benger's Folly, and in a
cave-like office under the blue arms of the South American Line we
approached its greasy little agent....
"Passige? Passige? Maybeso. Sometimes iss a trimmer or two dead coming
up from Rio und they need a man to Hamburg. Only you must shovel coal
all day and night. Ha, ha! How will you like that? Show me anyways your
exit receipt und I will take down the names."
"My which?" asked Angus Jones.
"Have you not paid your exit, to the customs?"
"I propose to take my exit, not pay it," said Angus Jones.
"Ha, ha. But first, my friend, you must pay. Naturally you get no wages
for a passige, therefore We cannot advance it."
"But why should--"
The agent waved his arms and faded in the cave.
"I am busy," said he, "_Va-se'mbora_!"
We proceeded along the rua to the sign of the Elder-Dempsters....
"To ship?" A bilious Anglo-Portuguese behind the desk eyed us up and
down. "Would a captain's cabin at forty pounds suit you?"
"Thanks," said Angus Jones. "I'll consider it. But in the meanwhile--"
"Have you paid the Government tax?"
"I am unable--"
"Enough," snapped the Anglo-Portuguese. "_Va-se'mbora!_"....
At the Booth Line agency we encountered a lank gentleman with a languid
smile who further enlightened Angus Jones.
"Take on hands at Madeira? You're crazy. Do you suppose we want the port
closed to us for shipping monarchist suspects? They always head for
Brazil, and we're watched every minute."
"I am not a monarchist, nor yet a suspect," said Angus Jones.
"You're the only man around here who can say so. A word of advice. Go
straight to the _alfandega_ and pay your tax. If any one hears you're
trying to get away without squaring yourself with the authorities,
you'll more likely get a free passage to jail."
"Sir--!"
"And I'll ask you kindly not to hang about my place. Now, I've done my
best for you. _Va-se'mbora!_"
In the street Angus Jones deigned to question me.
"What is this unlucky tax?"
"It is levied on every one who chooses to export himself from these
salubrious shores," I explained. "It is a matter of five hundred reis."
That brought him to a dead halt in his tracks.
"How did you thrive in the mountains?" I was moved to ask.
"Moderately, as a corn doctor. It is their simple custom to wear shoes
three sizes too small. The only drawback was the absence of currency.
When I came to collect, what was my grief to find they still rely on
barter and exchange."
"Then you will be relieved to hear, possibly, that five hundred reis is
no more than half a dollar."
"The simplicity of them!" cried Angus Jones. "Do you know, it is a
relief. And yet, it scarce betters us, for he who lacks the penny also
lacks the pound.
"However, we will concede the point of departure, temporarily. Remains
the populace, the great and generous heart that animates the bosom of
the native race. What is a steamship agent?... Man, he also is a
stranger living on their simplicity."
* * * * *
We turned into a maze of cobbled ways behind the market, passing between
rows of shuttered shops. It was the offseason, and in this midday hour
the city dozed.
"Here should be the local version of a delicatessen," said Angus Jones
before the store of Joao Gomez. We entered where Joao sat intrenched
amid sugar loaves and tinned goods and silvered sausages, beneath a
flock of lard balloons no rounder nor shinier than his face.
"Good morning," said Angus Jones. "I hope you are quite well. I hope all
your family are quite well. Behold in me, sir, a learned medico recently
come from London with healing for these islands. Any and all ills to
which flesh is heir are banished by a certain marvelous drug of which I
am the happy possessor. Have you boils, fever, gangrene, distemper? Do
you sneeze, palpitate, or feel pain in sinciput or occiput, tibia,
diaphragm or appendix? Are you subject to measles, dropsy, pyromania, or
falling arch?"
Joao Gomez had opened one eye far enough to envisage the eloquent
intruder and to locate his broom.
"_Va-se'mbora_!" quoth Joao, and we were eager so to do, for the broom
was the ancient kind made of switches, and it stung....
"Note the error in style," said Angus Jones with a slight frown. "My
context is too sauced and savored. I must mend it. A crisper brevity
serves our need with such simple people."
At the bazaar where Martinho Agostinho Sousa sold stamps, liquors,
basketware, and curios of many sorts to the marauding tourist we
reconnoitered.
"I like the name," declared Angus Jones. "There is a wistful dampness
about it. That Agostinho, now. What piquant promise! And Sousa--if
pronounced in the simplest manner. Can this be an omen?"
Martinho was within and welcomed us with purrings and graceful gestures.
"Good morning," said Angus Jones. "I see you deal in many things fine
and rare. I have here an article which I am forced to sell for a shade
of its value. You can make a thousand per cent profit from the first
collector. Give me a dollar and call it square."...
He opened a thin wallet and laid on the counter a faded internal-revenue
stamp such as seals a packet of tobacco in a happier land. Martinho
looked at it and from it to Angus Jones, and his suavity departed from
him.
"What t' Sam Hill you take me for? And me that run a gin mill in
Lawrence, Mass.! Do I look like a fall guy?... Beat it, you long-legged
hobo! On your way!"
Thus he pursued us with rude outcry, but at the end lapsed and blew us
along with a final vernacular blast: "_Va-se'mbora_!"
We arrived with speed at the Praca da Constituicao, the main square.
Angus Jones was somewhat winded but unsubdued.
"How could I know a wretched exile had returned to contaminate the soil
with foreign vulgarity?" he inquired. "Give me a native institution."
Then with an evil humor I pointed out to him the Golden Gate, hospitably
open to all vagrant airs that stirred among the plane trees.
"That is the social heart and center of Funchal," I told him, quite
truly.
* * * * *
The hairy and muscular proprietor of the Golden Gate was nodding over
the great porcelain handles of his beer pumps like a switchman in his
tower.
"Good morning," said Angus Jones. "I see you have no billiard marker.
'Tis a great pity, but soon mended."
The proprietor rolled out with a formidable roar, rubbing his eyes.
"_Pedro, my glasses!_ Billiar'? On the minute, mos' honorable sir. How
stupid am I that a ship should be in and I catched in a sleeping! We
have a ver' fine table of billiar', French or English, if you please
should look. _Pedro, my glasses!_ Is it a Castle Liner you arrive by,
mos' honorable? Will you have beer or wheesky-sod'?" He bobbed and
leered, blind as an owl. I might have warned Angus Jones, but I did not.
I only stood where I had a clear space to the door.
"All in good time," said Angus Jones. "I speak of a marker. In
billiards, if you mark me, the marking is a proper art. Now, there I
meet you as an expert. Give me charge of your billiard room, and I'll
double your business."
"Billiar'? Yes, yes; only wait.... Pedro!"
Pedro appeared as from a trap, with a pair of spectacles.
"Do I get the job?" asked Angus Jones.
"Jobe!" exclaimed the proprietor. "What jobe?" He put on his glasses and
eyed the applicant up and down. "Ah-h-h! You wish--? ... What is here?"
he bellowed, and fell back on his bar.
"I seek a place as billiard marker," said Angus Jones.
"_Sagrada Familia!_ Pig spy of a monarchist!"