CHAPTER I

[Picture: Book cover]

’TWIXT LAND & SEA

TALES

BY

JOSEPH CONRAD

A SMILE OF FORTUNE

THE SECRET SHARER

FREYA OF THE SEVEN

ISLES

[Picture: Decorative graphic]

_Life is a tragic folly_

_Let us laugh and be jolly_

_Away with melancholy_

_Bring me a branch of holly_

_Life is a tragic folly_

A. SYMONS.

* * * * *

LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.

ALDINE HOUSE, COVENT GARDEN · 1920

FIRST EDITION _October_ 1912

REPRINTED _November_ 1912; _January_ 1913; _November_ 1918;

_December_ 1920

* * * * *

_All rights reserved_

* * * * *

TO

CAPTAIN C. M. MARRIS

LATE MASTER AND OWNER

OF THE

ARABY MAID: ARCHIPELAGO TRADER

IN MEMORY OF THOSE

OLD DAYS OF ADVENTURE

CONTENTS

PAGE

A Smile of Fortune 1

The Secret Sharer 99

Freya of the Seven Isles 161

A SMILE OF FORTUNE

HARBOUR STORY

EVER since the sun rose I had been looking ahead. The ship glided gently

in smooth water. After a sixty days’ passage I was anxious to make my

landfall, a fertile and beautiful island of the tropics. The more

enthusiastic of its inhabitants delight in describing it as the “Pearl of

the Ocean.” Well, let us call it the “Pearl.” It’s a good name. A

pearl distilling much sweetness upon the world.

This is only a way of telling you that first-rate sugar-cane is grown

there. All the population of the Pearl lives for it and by it. Sugar is

their daily bread, as it were. And I was coming to them for a cargo of

sugar in the hope of the crop having been good and of the freights being

high.

Mr. Burns, my chief mate, made out the land first; and very soon I became

entranced by this blue, pinnacled apparition, almost transparent against

the light of the sky, a mere emanation, the astral body of an island

risen to greet me from afar. It is a rare phenomenon, such a sight of

the Pearl at sixty miles off. And I wondered half seriously whether it

was a good omen, whether what would meet me in that island would be as

luckily exceptional as this beautiful, dreamlike vision so very few

seamen have been privileged to behold.

But horrid thoughts of business interfered with my enjoyment of an

accomplished passage. I was anxious for success and I wished, too, to do

justice to the flattering latitude of my owners’ instructions contained

in one noble phrase: “We leave it to you to do the best you can with the

ship.” . . . All the world being thus given me for a stage, my abilities

appeared to me no bigger than a pinhead.

Meantime the wind dropped, and Mr. Burns began to make disagreeable

remarks about my usual bad luck. I believe it was his devotion for me

which made him critically outspoken on every occasion. All the same, I

would not have put up with his humours if it had not been my lot at one

time to nurse him through a desperate illness at sea. After snatching

him out of the jaws of death, so to speak, it would have been absurd to

throw away such an efficient officer. But sometimes I wished he would

dismiss himself.

We were late in closing in with the land, and had to anchor outside the

harbour till next day. An unpleasant and unrestful night followed. In

this roadstead, strange to us both, Burns and I remained on deck almost

all the time. Clouds swirled down the porphyry crags under which we lay.

The rising wind made a great bullying noise amongst the naked spars, with

interludes of sad moaning. I remarked that we had been in luck to fetch

the anchorage before dark. It would have been a nasty, anxious night to

hang off a harbour under canvas. But my chief mate was uncompromising in

his attitude.

“Luck, you call it, sir! Ay—our usual luck. The sort of luck to thank

God it’s no worse!”

And so he fretted through the dark hours, while I drew on my fund of

philosophy. Ah, but it was an exasperating, weary, endless night, to be

lying at anchor close under that black coast! The agitated water made

snarling sounds all round the ship. At times a wild gust of wind out of

a gully high up on the cliffs struck on our rigging a harsh and plaintive

note like the wail of a forsaken soul.

CHAPTER I

By half-past seven in the morning, the ship being then inside the harbour

at last and moored within a long stone’s-throw from the quay, my stock of

philosophy was nearly exhausted. I was dressing hurriedly in my cabin

when the steward came tripping in with a morning suit over his arm.

Hungry, tired, and depressed, with my head engaged inside a white shirt

irritatingly stuck together by too much starch, I desired him peevishly

to “heave round with that breakfast.” I wanted to get ashore as soon as

possible.

“Yes, sir. Ready at eight, sir. There’s a gentleman from the shore

waiting to speak to you, sir.”

This statement was curiously slurred over. I dragged the shirt violently

over my head and emerged staring.

“So early!” I cried. “Who’s he? What does he want?”

On coming in from sea one has to pick up the conditions of an utterly

unrelated existence. Every little event at first has the peculiar

emphasis of novelty. I was greatly surprised by that early caller; but

there was no reason for my steward to look so particularly foolish.

“Didn’t you ask for the name?” I inquired in a stern tone.

“His name’s Jacobus, I believe,” he mumbled shamefacedly.

“Mr. Jacobus!” I exclaimed loudly, more surprised than ever, but with a

total change of feeling. “Why couldn’t you say so at once?”

But the fellow had scuttled out of my room. Through the momentarily

opened door I had a glimpse of a tall, stout man standing in the cuddy by

the table on which the cloth was already laid; a “harbour” table-cloth,

stainless and dazzlingly white. So far good.

I shouted courteously through the closed door, that I was dressing and

would be with him in a moment. In return the assurance that there was no

hurry reached me in the visitor’s deep, quiet undertone. His time was my

own. He dared say I would give him a cup of coffee presently.

“I am afraid you will have a poor breakfast,” I cried apologetically.

“We have been sixty-one days at sea, you know.”

A quiet little laugh, with a “That’ll be all right, Captain,” was his

answer. All this, words, intonation, the glimpsed attitude of the man in

the cuddy, had an unexpected character, a something friendly in

it—propitiatory. And my surprise was not diminished thereby. What did

this call mean? Was it the sign of some dark design against my

commercial innocence?

Ah! These commercial interests—spoiling the finest life under the sun.

Why must the sea be used for trade—and for war as well? Why kill and

traffic on it, pursuing selfish aims of no great importance after all?

It would have been so much nicer just to sail about with here and there a

port and a bit of land to stretch one’s legs on, buy a few books and get

a change of cooking for a while. But, living in a world more or less

homicidal and desperately mercantile, it was plainly my duty to make the

best of its opportunities.

My owners’ letter had left it to me, as I have said before, to do my best

for the ship, according to my own judgment. But it contained also a

postscript worded somewhat as follows:

“Without meaning to interfere with your liberty of action we are writing

by the outgoing mail to some of our business friends there who may be of

assistance to you. We desire you particularly to call on Mr. Jacobus, a

prominent merchant and charterer. Should you hit it off with him he may

be able to put you in the way of profitable employment for the ship.”

Hit it off! Here was the prominent creature absolutely on board asking

for the favour of a cup of coffee! And life not being a fairy-tale the

improbability of the event almost shocked me. Had I discovered an

enchanted nook of the earth where wealthy merchants rush fasting on board

ships before they are fairly moored? Was this white magic or merely some

black trick of trade? I came in the end (while making the bow of my tie)

to suspect that perhaps I did not get the name right. I had been

thinking of the prominent Mr. Jacobus pretty frequently during the

passage and my hearing might have been deceived by some remote similarity

of sound. . . The steward might have said Antrobus—or maybe Jackson.

But coming out of my stateroom with an interrogative “Mr. Jacobus?” I was

met by a quiet “Yes,” uttered with a gentle smile. The “yes” was rather

perfunctory. He did not seem to make much of the fact that he was Mr.

Jacobus. I took stock of a big, pale face, hair thin on the top,

whiskers also thin, of a faded nondescript colour, heavy eyelids. The

thick, smooth lips in repose looked as if glued together. The smile was

faint. A heavy, tranquil man. I named my two officers, who just then

came down to breakfast; but why Mr. Burns’s silent demeanour should

suggest suppressed indignation I could not understand.

While we were taking our seats round the table some disconnected words of

an altercation going on in the companionway reached my ear. A stranger

apparently wanted to come down to interview me, and the steward was

opposing him.

“You can’t see him.”

“Why can’t I?”

“The Captain is at breakfast, I tell you. He’ll be going on shore

presently, and you can speak to him on deck.”

“That’s not fair. You let—”

“I’ve had nothing to do with that.”

“Oh, yes, you have. Everybody ought to have the same chance. You let

that fellow—”

The rest I lost. The person having been repulsed successfully, the

steward came down. I can’t say he looked flushed—he was a mulatto—but he

looked flustered. After putting the dishes on the table he remained by

the sideboard with that lackadaisical air of indifference he used to

assume when he had done something too clever by half and was afraid of

getting into a scrape over it. The contemptuous expression of Mr.

Burns’s face as he looked from him to me was really extraordinary. I

couldn’t imagine what new bee had stung the mate now.

The Captain being silent, nobody else cared to speak, as is the way in

ships. And I was saying nothing simply because I had been made dumb by

the splendour of the entertainment. I had expected the usual

sea-breakfast, whereas I beheld spread before us a veritable feast of

shore provisions: eggs, sausages, butter which plainly did not come from

a Danish tin, cutlets, and even a dish of potatoes. It was three weeks

since I had seen a real, live potato. I contemplated them with interest,

and Mr. Jacobus disclosed himself as a man of human, homely sympathies,

and something of a thought-reader.

“Try them, Captain,” he encouraged me in a friendly undertone. “They are

excellent.”

“They look that,” I admitted. “Grown on the island, I suppose.”

“Oh, no, imported. Those grown here would be more expensive.”

I was grieved at the ineptitude of the conversation. Were these the

topics for a prominent and wealthy merchant to discuss? I thought the

simplicity with which he made himself at home rather attractive; but what

is one to talk about to a man who comes on one suddenly, after sixty-one

days at sea, out of a totally unknown little town in an island one has

never seen before? What were (besides sugar) the interests of that crumb

of the earth, its gossip, its topics of conversation? To draw him on

business at once would have been almost indecent—or even worse:

impolitic. All I could do at the moment was to keep on in the old

groove.

“Are the provisions generally dear here?” I asked, fretting inwardly at

my inanity.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he answered placidly, with that appearance of

saving his breath his restrained manner of speaking suggested.

He would not be more explicit, yet he did not evade the subject. Eyeing

the table in a spirit of complete abstemiousness (he wouldn’t let me help

him to any eatables) he went into details of supply. The beef was for

the most part imported from Madagascar; mutton of course was rare and

somewhat expensive, but good goat’s flesh—

“Are these goat’s cutlets?” I exclaimed hastily, pointing at one of the

dishes.

Posed sentimentally by the sideboard, the steward gave a start.

“Lor’, no, sir! It’s real mutton!”

Mr. Burns got through his breakfast impatiently, as if exasperated by

being made a party to some monstrous foolishness, muttered a curt excuse,

and went on deck. Shortly afterwards the second mate took his smooth red

countenance out of the cabin. With the appetite of a schoolboy, and

after two months of sea-fare, he appreciated the generous spread. But I

did not. It smacked of extravagance. All the same, it was a remarkable

feat to have produced it so quickly, and I congratulated the steward on

his smartness in a somewhat ominous tone. He gave me a deprecatory smile

and, in a way I didn’t know what to make of, blinked his fine dark eyes

in the direction of the guest.

The latter asked under his breath for another cup of coffee, and nibbled

ascetically at a piece of very hard ship’s biscuit. I don’t think he

consumed a square inch in the end; but meantime he gave me, casually as

it were, a complete account of the sugar crop, of the local business

houses, of the state of the freight market. All that talk was

interspersed with hints as to personalities, amounting to veiled

warnings, but his pale, fleshy face remained equable, without a gleam, as

if ignorant of his voice. As you may imagine I opened my ears very wide.

Every word was precious. My ideas as to the value of business friendship

were being favourably modified. He gave me the names of all the

disponible ships together with their tonnage and the names of their

commanders. From that, which was still commercial information, he

condescended to mere harbour gossip. The _Hilda_ had unaccountably lost

her figurehead in the Bay of Bengal, and her captain was greatly affected

by this. He and the ship had been getting on in years together and the

old gentleman imagined this strange event to be the forerunner of his own

early dissolution. The _Stella_ had experienced awful weather off the

Cape—had her decks swept, and the chief officer washed overboard. And

only a few hours before reaching port the baby died.

Poor Captain H— and his wife were terribly cut up. If they had only been

able to bring it into port alive it could have been probably saved; but

the wind failed them for the last week or so, light breezes, and . . .

the baby was going to be buried this afternoon. He supposed I would

attend—

“Do you think I ought to?” I asked, shrinkingly.

He thought so, decidedly. It would be greatly appreciated. All the

captains in the harbour were going to attend. Poor Mrs. H— was quite

prostrated. Pretty hard on H— altogether.

“And you, Captain—you are not married I suppose?”

“No, I am not married,” I said. “Neither married nor even engaged.”

Mentally I thanked my stars; and while he smiled in a musing, dreamy

fashion, I expressed my acknowledgments for his visit and for the

interesting business information he had been good enough to impart to me.

But I said nothing of my wonder thereat.

“Of course, I would have made a point of calling on you in a day or two,”

I concluded.

He raised his eyelids distinctly at me, and somehow managed to look

rather more sleepy than before.

“In accordance with my owners’ instructions,” I explained. “You have had

their letter, of course?”

By that time he had raised his eyebrows too but without any particular

emotion. On the contrary he struck me then as absolutely imperturbable.

“Oh! You must be thinking of my brother.”

It was for me, then, to say “Oh!” But I hope that no more than civil

surprise appeared in my voice when I asked him to what, then, I owed the

pleasure. . . . He was reaching for an inside pocket leisurely.

“My brother’s a very different person. But I am well known in this part

of the world. You’ve probably heard—”

I took a card he extended to me. A thick business card, as I lived!

Alfred Jacobus—the other was Ernest—dealer in every description of ship’s

stores! Provisions salt and fresh, oils, paints, rope, canvas, etc.,

etc. Ships in harbour victualled by contract on moderate terms—

“I’ve never heard of you,” I said brusquely.

His low-pitched assurance did not abandon him.

“You will be very well satisfied,” he breathed out quietly.

I was not placated. I had the sense of having been circumvented somehow.

Yet I had deceived myself—if there was any deception. But the confounded

cheek of inviting himself to breakfast was enough to deceive any one.

And the thought struck me: Why! The fellow had provided all these

eatables himself in the way of business. I said:

“You must have got up mighty early this morning.”

He admitted with simplicity that he was on the quay before six o’clock

waiting for my ship to come in. He gave me the impression that it would

be impossible to get rid of him now.

“If you think we are going to live on that scale,” I said, looking at the

table with an irritated eye, “you are jolly well mistaken.”

“You’ll find it all right, Captain. I quite understand.”

Nothing could disturb his equanimity. I felt dissatisfied, but I could

not very well fly out at him. He had told me many useful things—and

besides he was the brother of that wealthy merchant. That seemed queer

enough.

I rose and told him curtly that I must now go ashore. At once he offered

the use of his boat for all the time of my stay in port.

“I only make a nominal charge,” he continued equably. “My man remains

all day at the landing-steps. You have only to blow a whistle when you

want the boat.”

And, standing aside at every doorway to let me go through first, he

carried me off in his custody after all. As we crossed the quarter-deck

two shabby individuals stepped forward and in mournful silence offered me

business cards which I took from them without a word under his heavy eye.

It was a useless and gloomy ceremony. They were the touts of the other

ship-chandlers, and he placid at my back, ignored their existence.

We parted on the quay, after he had expressed quietly the hope of seeing

me often “at the store.” He had a smoking-room for captains there, with

newspapers and a box of “rather decent cigars.” I left him very

unceremoniously.

My consignees received me with the usual business heartiness, but their

account of the state of the freight-market was by no means so favourable

as the talk of the wrong Jacobus had led me to expect. Naturally I

became inclined now to put my trust in his version, rather. As I closed

the door of the private office behind me I thought to myself: “H’m. A

lot of lies. Commercial diplomacy. That’s the sort of thing a man

coming from sea has got to expect. They would try to charter the ship

under the market rate.”

In the big, outer room, full of desks, the chief clerk, a tall, lean,

shaved person in immaculate white clothes and with a shiny,

closely-cropped black head on which silvery gleams came and went, rose

from his place and detained me affably. Anything they could do for me,

they would be most happy. Was I likely to call again in the afternoon?

What? Going to a funeral? Oh, yes, poor Captain H—.

He pulled a long, sympathetic face for a moment, then, dismissing from

this workaday world the baby, which had got ill in a tempest and had died

from too much calm at sea, he asked me with a dental, shark-like smile—if

sharks had false teeth—whether I had yet made my little arrangements for

the ship’s stay in port.

“Yes, with Jacobus,” I answered carelessly. “I understand he’s the

brother of Mr. Ernest Jacobus to whom I have an introduction from my

owners.”

I was not sorry to let him know I was not altogether helpless in the

hands of his firm. He screwed his thin lips dubiously.

“Why,” I cried, “isn’t he the brother?”

“Oh, yes. . . . They haven’t spoken to each other for eighteen years,” he

added impressively after a pause.

“Indeed! What’s the quarrel about?”

“Oh, nothing! Nothing that one would care to mention,” he protested

primly. “He’s got quite a large business. The best ship-chandler here,

without a doubt. Business is all very well, but there is such a thing as

personal character, too, isn’t there? Good-morning, Captain.”

He went away mincingly to his desk. He amused me. He resembled an old

maid, a commercial old maid, shocked by some impropriety. Was it a

commercial impropriety? Commercial impropriety is a serious matter, for

it aims at one’s pocket. Or was he only a purist in conduct who

disapproved of Jacobus doing his own touting? It was certainly

undignified. I wondered how the merchant brother liked it. But then

different countries, different customs. In a community so isolated and

so exclusively “trading” social standards have their own scale.

CHAPTER II

I WOULD have gladly dispensed with the mournful opportunity of becoming

acquainted by sight with all my fellow-captains at once. However I found

my way to the cemetery. We made a considerable group of bareheaded men

in sombre garments. I noticed that those of our company most approaching

to the now obsolete sea-dog type were the most moved—perhaps because they

had less “manner” than the new generation. The old sea-dog, away from

his natural element, was a simple and sentimental animal. I noticed

one—he was facing me across the grave—who was dropping tears. They

trickled down his weather-beaten face like drops of rain on an old rugged

wall. I learned afterwards that he was looked upon as the terror of

sailors, a hard man; that he had never had wife or chick of his own, and

that, engaged from his tenderest years in deep-sea voyages, he knew women

and children merely by sight.

Perhaps he was dropping those tears over his lost opportunities, from

sheer envy of paternity and in strange jealousy of a sorrow which he

could never know. Man, and even the sea-man, is a capricious animal, the

creature and the victim of lost opportunities. But he made me feel

ashamed of my callousness. I had no tears.

I listened with horribly critical detachment to that service I had had to

read myself, once or twice, over childlike men who had died at sea. The

words of hope and defiance, the winged words so inspiring in the free

immensity of water and sky, seemed to fall wearily into the little grave.

What was the use of asking Death where her sting was, before that small,

dark hole in the ground? And then my thoughts escaped me altogether—away

into matters of life—and no very high matters at that—ships, freights,

business. In the instability of his emotions man resembles deplorably a

monkey. I was disgusted with my thoughts—and I thought: Shall I be able

to get a charter soon? Time’s money. . . . Will that Jacobus really put

good business in my way? I must go and see him in a day or two.

Don’t imagine that I pursued these thoughts with any precision. They

pursued me rather: vague, shadowy, restless, shamefaced. Theirs was a

callous, abominable, almost revolting, pertinacity. And it was the

presence of that pertinacious ship-chandler which had started them. He

stood mournfully amongst our little band of men from the sea, and I was

angry at his presence, which, suggesting his brother the merchant, had

caused me to become outrageous to myself. For indeed I had preserved

some decency of feeling. It was only the mind which—

It was over at last. The poor father—a man of forty with black, bushy

side-whiskers and a pathetic gash on his freshly-shaved chin—thanked us

all, swallowing his tears. But for some reason, either because I

lingered at the gate of the cemetery being somewhat hazy as to my way

back, or because I was the youngest, or ascribing my moodiness caused by

remorse to some more worthy and appropriate sentiment, or simply because

I was even more of a stranger to him than the others—he singled me out.

Keeping at my side, he renewed his thanks, which I listened to in a

gloomy, conscience-stricken silence. Suddenly he slipped one hand under

my arm and waved the other after a tall, stout figure walking away by

itself down a street in a flutter of thin, grey garments:

“That’s a good fellow—a real good fellow”—he swallowed down a belated

sob—“this Jacobus.”

And he told me in a low voice that Jacobus was the first man to board his

ship on arrival, and, learning of their misfortune, had taken charge of

everything, volunteered to attend to all routine business, carried off

the ship’s papers on shore, arranged for the funeral—

“A good fellow. I was knocked over. I had been looking at my wife for

ten days. And helpless. Just you think of that! The dear little chap

died the very day we made the land. How I managed to take the ship in

God alone knows! I couldn’t see anything; I couldn’t speak; I couldn’t.

. . . You’ve heard, perhaps, that we lost our mate overboard on the

passage? There was no one to do it for me. And the poor woman nearly

crazy down below there all alone with the . . . By the Lord! It isn’t

fair.”

We walked in silence together. I did not know how to part from him. On

the quay he let go my arm and struck fiercely his fist into the palm of

his other hand.

“By God, it isn’t fair!” he cried again. “Don’t you ever marry unless

you can chuck the sea first. . . . It isn’t fair.”

I had no intention to “chuck the sea,” and when he left me to go aboard

his ship I felt convinced that I would never marry. While I was waiting

at the steps for Jacobus’s boatman, who had gone off somewhere, the

captain of the _Hilda_ joined me, a slender silk umbrella in his hand and

the sharp points of his archaic, Gladstonian shirt-collar framing a

small, clean-shaved, ruddy face. It was wonderfully fresh for his age,

beautifully modelled and lit up by remarkably clear blue eyes. A lot of

white hair, glossy like spun glass, curled upwards slightly under the

brim of his valuable, ancient, panama hat with a broad black ribbon. In

the aspect of that vivacious, neat, little old man there was something

quaintly angelic and also boyish.

He accosted me, as though he had been in the habit of seeing me every day

of his life from my earliest childhood, with a whimsical remark on the

appearance of a stout negro woman who was sitting upon a stool near the

edge of the quay. Presently he observed amiably that I had a very pretty

little barque.

I returned this civil speech by saying readily:

“Not so pretty as the _Hilda_.”

At once the corners of his clear-cut, sensitive mouth dropped dismally.

“Oh, dear! I can hardly bear to look at her now.”

Did I know, he asked anxiously, that he had lost the figurehead of his

ship; a woman in a blue tunic edged with gold, the face perhaps not so

very, very pretty, but her bare white arms beautifully shaped and

extended as if she were swimming? Did I? Who would have expected such a

things . . . After twenty years too!

Nobody could have guessed from his tone that the woman was made of wood;

his trembling voice, his agitated manner gave to his lamentations a

ludicrously scandalous flavour. . . . Disappeared at night—a clear fine

night with just a slight swell—in the gulf of Bengal. Went off without a

splash; no one in the ship could tell why, how, at what hour—after twenty

years last October. . . . Did I ever hear! . . .

I assured him sympathetically that I had never heard—and he became very

doleful. This meant no good he was sure. There was something in it

which looked like a warning. But when I remarked that surely another

figure of a woman could be procured I found myself being soundly rated

for my levity. The old boy flushed pink under his clear tan as if I had

proposed something improper. One could replace masts, I was told, or a

lost rudder—any working part of a ship; but where was the use of sticking

up a new figurehead? What satisfaction? How could one care for it? It

was easy to see that I had never been shipmates with a figurehead for

over twenty years.

“A new figurehead!” he scolded in unquenchable indignation. “Why! I’ve

been a widower now for eight-and-twenty years come next May and I would

just as soon think of getting a new wife. You’re as bad as that fellow

Jacobus.”

I was highly amused.

“What has Jacobus done? Did he want you to marry again, Captain?” I

inquired in a deferential tone. But he was launched now and only grinned

fiercely.

“Procure—indeed! He’s the sort of chap to procure you anything you like

for a price. I hadn’t been moored here for an hour when he got on board

and at once offered to sell me a figurehead he happens to have in his

yard somewhere. He got Smith, my mate, to talk to me about it. ‘Mr.

Smith,’ says I, ‘don’t you know me better than that? Am I the sort that

would pick up with another man’s cast-off figurehead?’ And after all

these years too! The way some of you young fellows talk—”

I affected great compunction, and as I stepped into the boat I said

soberly:

“Then I see nothing for it but to fit in a neat fiddlehead—perhaps. You

know, carved scrollwork, nicely gilt.”

He became very dejected after his outburst.

“Yes. Scrollwork. Maybe. Jacobus hinted at that too. He’s never at a

loss when there’s any money to be extracted from a sailorman. He would

make me pay through the nose for that carving. A gilt fiddlehead did you

say—eh? I dare say it would do for you. You young fellows don’t seem to

have any feeling for what’s proper.”

He made a convulsive gesture with his right arm.

“Never mind. Nothing can make much difference. I would just as soon let

the old thing go about the world with a bare cutwater,” he cried sadly.

Then as the boat got away from the steps he raised his voice on the edge

of the quay with comical animosity:

“I would! If only to spite that figurehead-procuring bloodsucker. I am

an old bird here and don’t you forget it. Come and see me on board some

day!”

I spent my first evening in port quietly in my ship’s cuddy; and glad

enough was I to think that the shore life which strikes one as so pettily

complex, discordant, and so full of new faces on first coming from sea,

could be kept off for a few hours longer. I was however fated to hear

the Jacobus note once more before I slept.

Mr. Burns had gone ashore after the evening meal to have, as he said, “a

look round.” As it was quite dark when he announced his intention I

didn’t ask him what it was he expected to see. Some time about midnight,

while sitting with a book in the saloon, I heard cautious movements in

the lobby and hailed him by name.

Burns came in, stick and hat in hand, incredibly vulgarised by his smart

shore togs, with a jaunty air and an odious twinkle in his eye. Being

asked to sit down he laid his hat and stick on the table and after we had

talked of ship affairs for a little while:

“I’ve been hearing pretty tales on shore about that ship-chandler fellow

who snatched the job from you so neatly, sir.”

I remonstrated with my late patient for his manner of expressing himself.

But he only tossed his head disdainfully. A pretty dodge indeed:

boarding a strange ship with breakfast in two baskets for all hands and

calmly inviting himself to the captain’s table! Never heard of anything

so crafty and so impudent in his life.

I found myself defending Jacobus’s unusual methods.

“He’s the brother of one of the wealthiest merchants in the port.” The

mate’s eyes fairly snapped green sparks.

“His grand brother hasn’t spoken to him for eighteen or twenty years,” he

declared triumphantly. “So there!”

“I know all about that,” I interrupted loftily.

“Do you sir? H’m!” His mind was still running on the ethics of

commercial competition. “I don’t like to see your good nature taken

advantage of. He’s bribed that steward of ours with a five-rupee note to

let him come down—or ten for that matter. He don’t care. He will shove

that and more into the bill presently.”

“Is that one of the tales you have heard ashore?” I asked.

He assured me that his own sense could tell him that much. No; what he

had heard on shore was that no respectable person in the whole town would

come near Jacobus. He lived in a large old-fashioned house in one of the

quiet streets with a big garden. After telling me this Burns put on a

mysterious air. “He keeps a girl shut up there who, they say—”

“I suppose you’ve heard all this gossip in some eminently respectable

place?” I snapped at him in a most sarcastic tone.

The shaft told, because Mr. Burns, like many other disagreeable people,

was very sensitive himself. He remained as if thunderstruck, with his

mouth open for some further communication, but I did not give him the

chance. “And, anyhow, what the deuce do I care?” I added, retiring into

my room.

And this was a natural thing to say. Yet somehow I was not indifferent.

I admit it is absurd to be concerned with the morals of one’s

ship-chandler, if ever so well connected; but his personality had stamped

itself upon my first day in harbour, in the way you know.

After this initial exploit Jacobus showed himself anything but intrusive.

He was out in a boat early every morning going round the ships he served,

and occasionally remaining on board one of them for breakfast with the

captain.

As I discovered that this practice was generally accepted, I just nodded

to him familiarly when one morning, on coming out of my room, I found him

in the cabin. Glancing over the table I saw that his place was already

laid. He stood awaiting my appearance, very bulky and placid, holding a

beautiful bunch of flowers in his thick hand. He offered them to my

notice with a faint, sleepy smile. From his own garden; had a very fine

old garden; picked them himself that morning before going out to

business; thought I would like. . . . He turned away. “Steward, can you

oblige me with some water in a large jar, please.”

I assured him jocularly, as I took my place at the table, that he made me

feel as if I were a pretty girl, and that he mustn’t be surprised if I

blushed. But he was busy arranging his floral tribute at the sideboard.

“Stand it before the Captain’s plate, steward, please.” He made this

request in his usual undertone.

The offering was so pointed that I could do no less than to raise it to

my nose, and as he sat down noiselessly he breathed out the opinion that

a few flowers improved notably the appearance of a ship’s saloon. He

wondered why I did not have a shelf fitted all round the skylight for

flowers in pots to take with me to sea. He had a skilled workman able to

fit up shelves in a day, and he could procure me two or three dozen good

plants—

The tips of his thick, round fingers rested composedly on the edge of the

table on each side of his cup of coffee. His face remained immovable.

Mr. Burns was smiling maliciously to himself. I declared that I hadn’t

the slightest intention of turning my skylight into a conservatory only

to keep the cabin-table in a perpetual mess of mould and dead vegetable

matter.

“Rear most beautiful flowers,” he insisted with an upward glance. “It’s

no trouble really.”

“Oh, yes, it is. Lots of trouble,” I contradicted. “And in the end some

fool leaves the skylight open in a fresh breeze, a flick of salt water

gets at them and the whole lot is dead in a week.”

Mr. Burns snorted a contemptuous approval. Jacobus gave up the subject

passively. After a time he unglued his thick lips to ask me if I had

seen his brother yet. I was very curt in my answer.

“No, not yet.”

“A very different person,” he remarked dreamily and got up. His

movements were particularly noiseless. “Well—thank you, Captain. If

anything is not to your liking please mention it to your steward. I

suppose you will be giving a dinner to the office-clerks presently.”

“What for?” I cried with some warmth. “If I were a steady trader to the

port I could understand it. But a complete stranger! . . . I may not

turn up again here for years. I don’t see why! . . . Do you mean to say

it is customary?”

“It will be expected from a man like you,” he breathed out placidly.

“Eight of the principal clerks, the manager, that’s nine, you three

gentlemen, that’s twelve. It needn’t be very expensive. If you tell

your steward to give me a day’s notice—”

“It will be expected of me! Why should it be expected of me? Is it

because I look particularly soft—or what?”

His immobility struck me as dignified suddenly, his imperturbable quality

as dangerous. “There’s plenty of time to think about that,” I concluded

weakly with a gesture that tried to wave him away. But before he

departed he took time to mention regretfully that he had not yet had the

pleasure of seeing me at his “store” to sample those cigars. He had a

parcel of six thousand to dispose of, very cheap.

“I think it would be worth your while to secure some,” he added with a

fat, melancholy smile and left the cabin.

Mr. Burns struck his fist on the table excitedly.

“Did you ever see such impudence! He’s made up his mind to get something

out of you one way or another, sir.”

At once feeling inclined to defend Jacobus, I observed philosophically

that all this was business, I supposed. But my absurd mate, muttering

broken disjointed sentences, such as: “I cannot bear! . . . Mark my

words! . . .” and so on, flung out of the cabin. If I hadn’t nursed him

through that deadly fever I wouldn’t have suffered such manners for a

single day.

CHAPTER III

JACOBUS having put me in mind of his wealthy brother I concluded I would

pay that business call at once. I had by that time heard a little more

of him. He was a member of the Council, where he made himself

objectionable to the authorities. He exercised a considerable influence

on public opinion. Lots of people owed him money. He was an importer on

a great scale of all sorts of goods. For instance, the whole supply of

bags for sugar was practically in his hands. This last fact I did not

learn till afterwards. The general impression conveyed to me was that of

a local personage. He was a bachelor and gave weekly card-parties in his

house out of town, which were attended by the best people in the colony.

The greater, then, was my surprise to discover his office in shabby

surroundings, quite away from the business quarter, amongst a lot of

hovels. Guided by a black board with white lettering, I climbed a narrow

wooden staircase and entered a room with a bare floor of planks littered

with bits of brown paper and wisps of packing straw. A great number of

what looked like wine-cases were piled up against one of the walls. A

lanky, inky, light-yellow, mulatto youth, miserably long-necked and

generally recalling a sick chicken, got off a three-legged stool behind a

cheap deal desk and faced me as if gone dumb with fright. I had some

difficulty in persuading him to take in my name, though I could not get

from him the nature of his objection. He did it at last with an almost

agonised reluctance which ceased to be mysterious to me when I heard him

being sworn at menacingly with savage, suppressed growls, then audibly

cuffed and finally kicked out without any concealment whatever; because

he came back flying head foremost through the door with a stifled shriek.

To say I was startled would not express it. I remained still, like a man

lost in a dream. Clapping both his hands to that part of his frail

anatomy which had received the shock, the poor wretch said to me simply:

“Will you go in, please.” His lamentable self-possession was wonderful;

but it did not do away with the incredibility of the experience. A

preposterous notion that I had seen this boy somewhere before, a thing

obviously impossible, was like a delicate finishing touch of weirdness

added to a scene fit to raise doubts as to one’s sanity. I stared

anxiously about me like an awakened somnambulist.

“I say,” I cried loudly, “there isn’t a mistake, is there? This is Mr.

Jacobus’s office.”

The boy gazed at me with a pained expression—and somehow so familiar! A

voice within growled offensively:

“Come in, come in, since you are there. . . . I didn’t know.”

I crossed the outer room as one approaches the den of some unknown wild

beast; with intrepidity but in some excitement. Only no wild beast that

ever lived would rouse one’s indignation; the power to do that belongs to

the odiousness of the human brute. And I was very indignant, which did

not prevent me from being at once struck by the extraordinary resemblance

of the two brothers.

This one was dark instead of being fair like the other; but he was as

big. He was without his coat and waistcoat; he had been doubtless

snoozing in the rocking-chair which stood in a corner furthest from the

window. Above the great bulk of his crumpled white shirt, buttoned with

three diamond studs, his round face looked swarthy. It was moist; his

brown moustache hung limp and ragged. He pushed a common, cane-bottomed

chair towards me with his foot.

“Sit down.”

I glanced at it casually, then, turning my indignant eyes full upon him,

I declared in precise and incisive tones that I had called in obedience

to my owners’ instructions.

“Oh! Yes. H’m! I didn’t understand what that fool was saying. . . .

But never mind! It will teach the scoundrel to disturb me at this time

of the day,” he added, grinning at me with savage cynicism.

I looked at my watch. It was past three o’clock—quite the full swing of

afternoon office work in the port. He snarled imperiously: “Sit down,

Captain.”

I acknowledged the gracious invitation by saying deliberately:

“I can listen to all you may have to say without sitting down.”

Emitting a loud and vehement “Pshaw!” he glared for a moment, very

round-eyed and fierce. It was like a gigantic tomcat spitting at one

suddenly. “Look at him! . . . What do you fancy yourself to be? What

did you come here for? If you won’t sit down and talk business you had

better go to the devil.”

“I don’t know him personally,” I said. “But after this I wouldn’t mind

calling on him. It would be refreshing to meet a gentleman.”

He followed me, growling behind my back:

“The impudence! I’ve a good mind to write to your owners what I think of

you.”

I turned on him for a moment:

“As it happens I don’t care. For my part I assure you I won’t even take

the trouble to mention you to them.”

He stopped at the door of his office while I traversed the littered

anteroom. I think he was somewhat taken aback.

“I will break every bone in your body,” he roared suddenly at the

miserable mulatto lad, “if you ever dare to disturb me before half-past

three for anybody. D’ye hear? For anybody! . . . Let alone any damned

skipper,” he added, in a lower growl.

The frail youngster, swaying like a reed, made a low moaning sound. I

stopped short and addressed this sufferer with advice. It was prompted

by the sight of a hammer (used for opening the wine-cases, I suppose)

which was lying on the floor.

“If I were you, my boy, I would have that thing up my sleeve when I went

in next and at the first occasion I would—”

What was there so familiar in that lad’s yellow face? Entrenched and

quaking behind the flimsy desk, he never looked up. His heavy, lowered

eyelids gave me suddenly the clue of the puzzle. He resembled—yes, those

thick glued lips—he resembled the brothers Jacobus. He resembled both,

the wealthy merchant and the pushing shopkeeper (who resembled each

other); he resembled them as much as a thin, light-yellow mulatto lad may

resemble a big, stout, middle-aged white man. It was the exotic

complexion and the slightness of his build which had put me off so

completely. Now I saw in him unmistakably the Jacobus strain, weakened,

attenuated, diluted as it were in a bucket of water—and I refrained from

finishing my speech. I had intended to say: “Crack this brute’s head for

him.” I still felt the conclusion to be sound. But it is no trifling

responsibility to counsel parricide to any one, however deeply injured.

“Beggarly—cheeky—skippers.”

I despised the emphatic growl at my back; only, being much vexed and

upset, I regret to say that I slammed the door behind me in a most

undignified manner.

It may not appear altogether absurd if I say that I brought out from that

interview a kindlier view of the other Jacobus. It was with a feeling

resembling partisanship that, a few days later, I called at his “store.”

That long, cavern-like place of business, very dim at the back and

stuffed full of all sorts of goods, was entered from the street by a

lofty archway. At the far end I saw my Jacobus exerting himself in his

shirt-sleeves among his assistants. The captains’ room was a small,

vaulted apartment with a stone floor and heavy iron bars in its windows

like a dungeon converted to hospitable purposes. A couple of cheerful

bottles and several gleaming glasses made a brilliant cluster round a

tall, cool red earthenware pitcher on the centre table which was littered

with newspapers from all parts of the world. A well-groomed stranger in

a smart grey check suit, sitting with one leg flung over his knee, put

down one of these sheets briskly and nodded to me.

I guessed him to be a steamer-captain. It was impossible to get to know

these men. They came and went too quickly and their ships lay moored far

out, at the very entrance of the harbour. Theirs was another life

altogether. He yawned slightly.

“Dull hole, isn’t it?”

I understood this to allude to the town.

“Do you find it so?” I murmured.

“Don’t you? But I’m off to-morrow, thank goodness.”

He was a very gentlemanly person, good-natured and superior. I watched

him draw the open box of cigars to his side of the table, take a big

cigar-case out of his pocket and begin to fill it very methodically.

Presently, on our eyes meeting, he winked like a common mortal and

invited me to follow his example. “They are really decent smokes.” I

shook my head.

“I am not off to-morrow.”

“What of that? Think I am abusing old Jacobus’s hospitality? Heavens!

It goes into the bill, of course. He spreads such little matters all

over his account. He can take care of himself! Why, it’s business—”

I noted a shadow fall over his well-satisfied expression, a momentary

hesitation in closing his cigar-case. But he ended by putting it in his

pocket jauntily. A placid voice uttered in the doorway: “That’s quite

correct, Captain.”

The large noiseless Jacobus advanced into the room. His quietness, in

the circumstances, amounted to cordiality. He had put on his jacket

before joining us, and he sat down in the chair vacated by the

steamer-man, who nodded again to me and went out with a short, jarring

laugh. A profound silence reigned. With his drowsy stare Jacobus seemed

to be slumbering open-eyed. Yet, somehow, I was aware of being

profoundly scrutinised by those heavy eyes. In the enormous cavern of

the store somebody began to nail down a case, expertly: tap-tap . . .

tap-tap-tap.

Two other experts, one slow and nasal, the other shrill and snappy,

started checking an invoice.

“A half-coil of three-inch manilla rope.”

“Right!”

“Six assorted shackles.”

“Right!”

“Six tins assorted soups, three of paté, two asparagus, fourteen pounds

tobacco, cabin.”

“Right!”

“It’s for the captain who was here just now,” breathed out the immovable

Jacobus. “These steamer orders are very small. They pick up what they

want as they go along. That man will be in Samarang in less than a

fortnight. Very small orders indeed.”

The calling over of the items went on in the shop; an extraordinary

jumble of varied articles, paint-brushes, Yorkshire Relish, etc., etc. . . .

“Three sacks of best potatoes,” read out the nasal voice.

At this Jacobus blinked like a sleeping man roused by a shake, and

displayed some animation. At his order, shouted into the shop, a

smirking half-caste clerk with his ringlets much oiled and with a pen

stuck behind his ear, brought in a sample of six potatoes which he

paraded in a row on the table.

Being urged to look at their beauty I gave them a cold and hostile

glance. Calmly, Jacobus proposed that I should order ten or fifteen

tons—tons! I couldn’t believe my ears. My crew could not have eaten

such a lot in a year; and potatoes (excuse these practical remarks) are a

highly perishable commodity. I thought he was joking—or else trying to

find out whether I was an unutterable idiot. But his purpose was not so

simple. I discovered that he meant me to buy them on my own account.

“I am proposing you a bit of business, Captain. I wouldn’t charge you a

great price.”

I told him that I did not go in for trade. I even added grimly that I

knew only too well how that sort of spec. generally ended.

He sighed and clasped his hands on his stomach with exemplary

resignation. I admired the placidity of his impudence. Then waking up

somewhat:

“Won’t you try a cigar, Captain?”

“No, thanks. I don’t smoke cigars.”

“For once!” he exclaimed, in a patient whisper. A melancholy silence

ensued. You know how sometimes a person discloses a certain unsuspected

depth and acuteness of thought; that is, in other words, utters something

unexpected. It was unexpected enough to hear Jacobus say:

“The man who just went out was right enough. You might take one,

Captain. Here everything is bound to be in the way of business.”

I felt a little ashamed of myself. The remembrance of his horrid brother

made him appear quite a decent sort of fellow. It was with some

compunction that I said a few words to the effect that I could have no

possible objection to his hospitality.

Before I was a minute older I saw where this admission was leading me.

As if changing the subject, Jacobus mentioned that his private house was

about ten minutes’ walk away. It had a beautiful old walled garden.

Something really remarkable. I ought to come round some day and have a

look at it.

He seemed to be a lover of gardens. I too take extreme delight in them;

but I did not mean my compunction to carry me as far as Jacobus’s

flower-beds, however beautiful and old. He added, with a certain

homeliness of tone:

“There’s only my girl there.”

It is difficult to set everything down in due order; so I must revert

here to what happened a week or two before. The medical officer of the

port had come on board my ship to have a look at one of my crew who was

ailing, and naturally enough he was asked to step into the cabin. A

fellow-shipmaster of mine was there too; and in the conversation, somehow

or other, the name of Jacobus came to be mentioned. It was pronounced

with no particular reverence by the other man, I believe. I don’t

remember now what I was going to say. The doctor—a pleasant, cultivated

fellow, with an assured manner—prevented me by striking in, in a sour

tone:

“Ah! You’re talking about my respected papa-in-law.”

Of course, that sally silenced us at the time. But I remembered the

episode, and at this juncture, pushed for something noncommittal to say,

I inquired with polite surprise:

“You have your married daughter living with you, Mr. Jacobus?”

He moved his big hand from right to left quietly. No! That was another

of his girls, he stated, ponderously and under his breath as usual. She

. . . He seemed in a pause to be ransacking his mind for some kind of

descriptive phrase. But my hopes were disappointed. He merely produced

his stereotyped definition.

“She’s a very different sort of person.”

“Indeed. . . . And by the by, Jacobus, I called on your brother the other

day. It’s no great compliment if I say that I found him a very different

sort of person from you.”

He had an air of profound reflection, then remarked quaintly:

“He’s a man of regular habits.”

He might have been alluding to the habit of late siesta; but I mumbled

something about “beastly habits anyhow”—and left the store abruptly.

CHAPTER IV

MY little passage with Jacobus the merchant became known generally. One

or two of my acquaintances made distant allusions to it. Perhaps the

mulatto boy had talked. I must confess that people appeared rather

scandalised, but not with Jacobus’s brutality. A man I knew remonstrated

with me for my hastiness.

I gave him the whole story of my visit, not forgetting the tell-tale

resemblance of the wretched mulatto boy to his tormentor. He was not

surprised. No doubt, no doubt. What of that? In a jovial tone he

assured me that there must be many of that sort. The elder Jacobus had

been a bachelor all his life. A highly respectable bachelor. But there

had never been open scandal in that connection. His life had been quite

regular. It could cause no offence to any one.

I said that I had been offended considerably. My interlocutor opened

very wide eyes. Why? Because a mulatto lad got a few knocks? That was

not a great affair, surely. I had no idea how insolent and untruthful

these half-castes were. In fact he seemed to think Mr. Jacobus rather

kind than otherwise to employ that youth at all; a sort of amiable

weakness which could be forgiven.

This acquaintance of mine belonged to one of the old French families,

descendants of the old colonists; all noble, all impoverished, and living

a narrow domestic life in dull, dignified decay. The men, as a rule,

occupy inferior posts in Government offices or in business houses. The

girls are almost always pretty, ignorant of the world, kind and agreeable

and generally bilingual; they prattle innocently both in French and

English. The emptiness of their existence passes belief.

I obtained my entry into a couple of such households because some years

before, in Bombay, I had occasion to be of use to a pleasant, ineffectual

young man who was rather stranded there, not knowing what to do with

himself or even how to get home to his island again. It was a matter of

two hundred rupees or so, but, when I turned up, the family made a point

of showing their gratitude by admitting me to their intimacy. My

knowledge of the French language made me specially acceptable. They had

meantime managed to marry the fellow to a woman nearly twice his age,

comparatively well off: the only profession he was really fit for. But

it was not all cakes and ale. The first time I called on the couple she

spied a little spot of grease on the poor devil’s pantaloons and made him

a screaming scene of reproaches so full of sincere passion that I sat

terrified as at a tragedy of Racine.

Of course there was never question of the money I had advanced him; but

his sisters, Miss Angele and Miss Mary, and the aunts of both families,

who spoke quaint archaic French of pre-Revolution period, and a host of

distant relations adopted me for a friend outright in a manner which was

almost embarrassing.

It was with the eldest brother (he was employed at a desk in my

consignee’s office) that I was having this talk about the merchant

Jacobus. He regretted my attitude and nodded his head sagely. An

influential man. One never knew when one would need him. I expressed my

immense preference for the shopkeeper of the two. At that my friend

looked grave.

“What on earth are you pulling that long face about?” I cried

impatiently. “He asked me to see his garden and I have a good mind to go

some day.”

“Don’t do that,” he said, so earnestly that I burst into a fit of

laughter; but he looked at me without a smile.

This was another matter altogether. At one time the public conscience of

the island had been mightily troubled by my Jacobus. The two brothers

had been partners for years in great harmony, when a wandering circus

came to the island and my Jacobus became suddenly infatuated with one of

the lady-riders. What made it worse was that he was married. He had not

even the grace to conceal his passion. It must have been strong indeed

to carry away such a large placid creature. His behaviour was perfectly

scandalous. He followed that woman to the Cape, and apparently travelled

at the tail of that beastly circus to other parts of the world, in a most

degrading position. The woman soon ceased to care for him, and treated

him worse than a dog. Most extraordinary stories of moral degradation

were reaching the island at that time. He had not the strength of mind

to shake himself free. . . .

The grotesque image of a fat, pushing ship-chandler, enslaved by an

unholy love-spell, fascinated me; and I listened rather open-mouthed to

the tale as old as the world, a tale which had been the subject of

legend, of moral fables, of poems, but which so ludicrously failed to fit

the personality. What a strange victim for the gods!

Meantime his deserted wife had died. His daughter was taken care of by

his brother, who married her as advantageously as was possible in the

circumstances.

“Oh! The Mrs. Doctor!” I exclaimed.

“You know that? Yes. A very able man. He wanted a lift in the world,

and there was a good bit of money from her mother, besides the

expectations. . . Of course, they don’t know him,” he added. “The doctor

nods in the street, I believe, but he avoids speaking to him when they

meet on board a ship, as must happen sometimes.”

I remarked that this surely was an old story by now.

My friend assented. But it was Jacobus’s own fault that it was neither

forgiven nor forgotten. He came back ultimately. But how? Not in a

spirit of contrition, in a way to propitiate his scandalised

fellow-citizens. He must needs drag along with him a child—a girl. . . .

“He spoke to me of a daughter who lives with him,” I observed, very much

interested.

“She’s certainly the daughter of the circus-woman,” said my friend. “She

may be his daughter too; I am willing to admit that she is. In fact I

have no doubt—”

But he did not see why she should have been brought into a respectable

community to perpetuate the memory of the scandal. And that was not the

worst. Presently something much more distressing happened. That

abandoned woman turned up. Landed from a mail-boat. . . .

“What! Here? To claim the child perhaps,” I suggested.

“Not she!” My friendly informant was very scornful. “Imagine a painted,

haggard, agitated, desperate hag. Been cast off in Mozambique by

somebody who paid her passage here. She had been injured internally by a

kick from a horse; she hadn’t a cent on her when she got ashore; I don’t

think she even asked to see the child. At any rate, not till the last

day of her life. Jacobus hired for her a bungalow to die in. He got a

couple of Sisters from the hospital to nurse her through these few

months. If he didn’t marry her _in extremis_ as the good Sisters tried

to bring about, it’s because she wouldn’t even hear of it. As the nuns

said: ‘The woman died impenitent.’ It was reported that she ordered

Jacobus out of the room with her last breath. This may be the real

reason why he didn’t go into mourning himself; he only put the child into

black. While she was little she was to be seen sometimes about the

streets attended by a negro woman, but since she became of age to put her

hair up I don’t think she has set foot outside that garden once. She

must be over eighteen now.”

Thus my friend, with some added details; such as, that he didn’t think

the girl had spoken to three people of any position in the island; that

an elderly female relative of the brothers Jacobus had been induced by

extreme poverty to accept the position of gouvernante to the girl. As to

Jacobus’s business (which certainly annoyed his brother) it was a wise

choice on his part. It brought him in contact only with strangers of

passage; whereas any other would have given rise to all sorts of

awkwardness with his social equals. The man was not wanting in a certain

tact—only he was naturally shameless. For why did he want to keep that

girl with him? It was most painful for everybody.

I thought suddenly (and with profound disgust) of the other Jacobus, and

I could not refrain from saying slily:

“I suppose if he employed her, say, as a scullion in his household and

occasionally pulled her hair or boxed her ears, the position would have

been more regular—less shocking to the respectable class to which he

belongs.”

He was not so stupid as to miss my intention, and shrugged his shoulders

impatiently.

“You don’t understand. To begin with, she’s not a mulatto. And a

scandal is a scandal. People should be given a chance to forget. I dare

say it would have been better for her if she had been turned into a

scullion or something of that kind. Of course he’s trying to make money

in every sort of petty way, but in such a business there’ll never be

enough for anybody to come forward.”

When my friend left me I had a conception of Jacobus and his daughter

existing, a lonely pair of castaways, on a desert island; the girl

sheltering in the house as if it were a cavern in a cliff, and Jacobus

going out to pick up a living for both on the beach—exactly like two

shipwrecked people who always hope for some rescuer to bring them back at

last into touch with the rest of mankind.

But Jacobus’s bodily reality did not fit in with this romantic view.

When he turned up on board in the usual course, he sipped the cup of

coffee placidly, asked me if I was satisfied—and I hardly listened to the

harbour gossip he dropped slowly in his low, voice-saving enunciation. I

had then troubles of my own. My ship chartered, my thoughts dwelling on

the success of a quick round voyage, I had been suddenly confronted by a

shortage of bags. A catastrophe! The stock of one especial kind, called

pockets, seemed to be totally exhausted. A consignment was shortly

expected—it was afloat, on its way, but, meantime, the loading of my ship

dead stopped, I had enough to worry about. My consignees, who had

received me with such heartiness on my arrival, now, in the character of

my charterers, listened to my complaints with polite helplessness. Their

manager, the old-maidish, thin man, who so prudishly didn’t even like to

speak about the impure Jacobus, gave me the correct commercial view of

the position.

“My dear Captain”—he was retracting his leathery cheeks into a

condescending, shark-like smile—“we were not morally obliged to tell you

of a possible shortage before you signed the charter-party. It was for

you to guard against the contingency of a delay—strictly speaking. But

of course we shouldn’t have taken any advantage. This is no one’s fault

really. We ourselves have been taken unawares,” he concluded primly,

with an obvious lie.

This lecture I confess had made me thirsty. Suppressed rage generally

produces that effect; and as I strolled on aimlessly I bethought myself

of the tall earthenware pitcher in the captains’ room of the Jacobus

“store.”

With no more than a nod to the men I found assembled there, I poured down

a deep, cool draught on my indignation, then another, and then, becoming

dejected, I sat plunged in cheerless reflections. The others read,

talked, smoked, bandied over my head some unsubtle chaff. But my

abstraction was respected. And it was without a word to any one that I

rose and went out, only to be quite unexpectedly accosted in the bustle

of the store by Jacobus the outcast.

“Glad to see you, Captain. What? Going away? You haven’t been looking

so well these last few days, I notice. Run down, eh?”

He was in his shirt-sleeves, and his words were in the usual course of

business, but they had a human note. It was commercial amenity, but I

had been a stranger to amenity in that connection. I do verily believe

(from the direction of his heavy glance towards a certain shelf) that he

was going to suggest the purchase of Clarkson’s Nerve Tonic, which he

kept in stock, when I said impulsively:

“I am rather in trouble with my loading.”

Wide awake under his sleepy, broad mask with glued lips, he understood at

once, had a movement of the head so appreciative that I relieved my

exasperation by exclaiming:

“Surely there must be eleven hundred quarter-bags to be found in the

colony. It’s only a matter of looking for them.”

Again that slight movement of the big head, and in the noise and activity

of the store that tranquil murmur:

“To be sure. But then people likely to have a reserve of quarter-bags

wouldn’t want to sell. They’d need that size themselves.”

“That’s exactly what my consignees are telling me. Impossible to buy.

Bosh! They don’t want to. It suits them to have the ship hung up. But

if I were to discover the lot they would have to—Look here, Jacobus! You

are the man to have such a thing up your sleeve.”

He protested with a ponderous swing of his big head. I stood before him

helplessly, being looked at by those heavy eyes with a veiled expression

as of a man after some soul-shaking crisis. Then, suddenly:

“It’s impossible to talk quietly here,” he whispered. “I am very busy.

But if you could go and wait for me in my house. It’s less than ten

minutes’ walk. Oh, yes, you don’t know the way.”

He called for his coat and offered to take me there himself. He would

have to return to the store at once for an hour or so to finish his

business, and then he would be at liberty to talk over with me that

matter of quarter-bags. This programme was breathed out at me through

slightly parted, still lips; his heavy, motionless glance rested upon me,

placid as ever, the glance of a tired man—but I felt that it was

searching, too. I could not imagine what he was looking for in me and

kept silent, wondering.

“I am asking you to wait for me in my house till I am at liberty to talk

this matter over. You will?”

“Why, of course!” I cried.

“But I cannot promise—”

“I dare say not,” I said. “I don’t expect a promise.”

“I mean I can’t even promise to try the move I’ve in my mind. One must

see first . . . h’m!”

“All right. I’ll take the chance. I’ll wait for you as long as you

like. What else have I to do in this infernal hole of a port!”

Before I had uttered my last words we had set off at a swinging pace. We

turned a couple of corners and entered a street completely empty of

traffic, of semi-rural aspect, paved with cobblestones nestling in grass

tufts. The house came to the line of the roadway; a single story on an

elevated basement of rough-stones, so that our heads were below the level

of the windows as we went along. All the jalousies were tightly shut,

like eyes, and the house seemed fast asleep in the afternoon sunshine.

The entrance was at the side, in an alley even more grass-grown than the

street: a small door, simply on the latch.

With a word of apology as to showing me the way, Jacobus preceded me up a

dark passage and led me across the naked parquet floor of what I supposed

to be the dining-room. It was lighted by three glass doors which stood

wide open on to a verandah or rather loggia running its brick arches

along the garden side of the house. It was really a magnificent garden:

smooth green lawns and a gorgeous maze of flower-beds in the foreground,

displayed around a basin of dark water framed in a marble rim, and in the

distance the massed foliage of varied trees concealing the roofs of other

houses. The town might have been miles away. It was a brilliantly

coloured solitude, drowsing in a warm, voluptuous silence. Where the

long, still shadows fell across the beds, and in shady nooks, the massed

colours of the flowers had an extraordinary magnificence of effect. I

stood entranced. Jacobus grasped me delicately above the elbow,

impelling me to a half-turn to the left.

I had not noticed the girl before. She occupied a low, deep, wickerwork

arm-chair, and I saw her in exact profile like a figure in a tapestry,

and as motionless. Jacobus released my arm.

“This is Alice,” he announced tranquilly; and his subdued manner of

speaking made it sound so much like a confidential communication that I

fancied myself nodding understandingly and whispering: “I see, I see.” . . .

Of course, I did nothing of the kind. Neither of us did anything; we

stood side by side looking down at the girl. For quite a time she did

not stir, staring straight before her as if watching the vision of some

pageant passing through the garden in the deep, rich glow of light and

the splendour of flowers.

Then, coming to the end of her reverie, she looked round and up. If I

had not at first noticed her, I am certain that she too had been unaware

of my presence till she actually perceived me by her father’s side. The

quickened upward movement of the heavy eyelids, the widening of the

languid glance, passing into a fixed stare, put that beyond doubt.

Under her amazement there was a hint of fear, and then came a flash as of

anger. Jacobus, after uttering my name fairly loud, said: “Make yourself

at home, Captain—I won’t be gone long,” and went away rapidly. Before I

had time to make a bow I was left alone with the girl—who, I remembered

suddenly, had not been seen by any man or woman of that town since she

had found it necessary to put up her hair. It looked as though it had

not been touched again since that distant time of first putting up; it

was a mass of black, lustrous locks, twisted anyhow high on her head,

with long, untidy wisps hanging down on each side of the clear sallow

face; a mass so thick and strong and abundant that, nothing but to look

at, it gave you a sensation of heavy pressure on the top of your head and

an impression of magnificently cynical untidiness. She leaned forward,

hugging herself with crossed legs; a dingy, amber-coloured, flounced

wrapper of some thin stuff revealed the young supple body drawn together

tensely in the deep low seat as if crouching for a spring. I detected a

slight, quivering start or two, which looked uncommonly like bounding

away. They were followed by the most absolute immobility.

The absurd impulse to run out after Jacobus (for I had been startled,

too) once repressed, I took a chair, placed it not very far from her, sat

down deliberately, and began to talk about the garden, caring not what I

said, but using a gentle caressing intonation as one talks to soothe a

startled wild animal. I could not even be certain that she understood

me. She never raised her face nor attempted to look my way. I kept on

talking only to prevent her from taking flight. She had another of those

quivering, repressed starts which made me catch my breath with

apprehension.

Ultimately I formed a notion that what prevented her perhaps from going

off in one great, nervous leap, was the scantiness of her attire. The

wicker armchair was the most substantial thing about her person. What

she had on under that dingy, loose, amber wrapper must have been of the

most flimsy and airy character. One could not help being aware of it.

It was obvious. I felt it actually embarrassing at first; but that sort

of embarrassment is got over easily by a mind not enslaved by narrow

prejudices. I did not avert my gaze from Alice. I went on talking with

ingratiating softness, the recollection that, most likely, she had never

before been spoken to by a strange man adding to my assurance. I don’t

know why an emotional tenseness should have crept into the situation.

But it did. And just as I was becoming aware of it a slight scream cut

short my flow of urbane speech.

The scream did not proceed from the girl. It was emitted behind me, and

caused me to turn my head sharply. I understood at once that the

apparition in the doorway was the elderly relation of Jacobus, the

companion, the gouvernante. While she remained thunderstruck, I got up

and made her a low bow.

The ladies of Jacobus’s household evidently spent their days in light

attire. This stumpy old woman with a face like a large wrinkled lemon,

beady eyes, and a shock of iron-grey hair, was dressed in a garment of

some ash-coloured, silky, light stuff. It fell from her thick neck down

to her toes with the simplicity of an unadorned nightgown. It made her

appear truly cylindrical. She exclaimed: “How did you get here?”

Before I could say a word she vanished and presently I heard a confusion

of shrill protestations in a distant part of the house. Obviously no one

could tell her how I got there. In a moment, with great outcries from

two negro women following her, she waddled back to the doorway,

infuriated.

“What do you want here?”

I turned to the girl. She was sitting straight up now, her hands posed

on the arms of the chair. I appealed to her.

“Surely, Miss Alice, you will not let them drive me out into the street?”

Her magnificent black eyes, narrowed, long in shape, swept over me with

an indefinable expression, then in a harsh, contemptuous voice she let

fall in French a sort of explanation:

“_C’est papa_.”

I made another low bow to the old woman.

She turned her back on me in order to drive away her black henchwomen,

then surveying my person in a peculiar manner with one small eye nearly

closed and her face all drawn up on that side as if with a twinge of

toothache, she stepped out on the verandah, sat down in a rocking-chair

some distance away, and took up her knitting from a little table. Before

she started at it she plunged one of the needles into the mop of her grey

hair and stirred it vigorously.

Her elementary nightgown-sort of frock clung to her ancient, stumpy, and

floating form. She wore white cotton stockings and flat brown velvet

slippers. Her feet and ankles were obtrusively visible on the foot-rest.

She began to rock herself slightly, while she knitted. I had resumed my

seat and kept quiet, for I mistrusted that old woman. What if she

ordered me to depart? She seemed capable of any outrage. She had

snorted once or twice; she was knitting violently. Suddenly she piped at

the young girl in French a question which I translate colloquially:

“What’s your father up to, now?”

The young creature shrugged her shoulders so comprehensively that her

whole body swayed within the loose wrapper; and in that unexpectedly

harsh voice which yet had a seductive quality to the senses, like certain

kinds of natural rough wines one drinks with pleasure:

“It’s some captain. Leave me alone—will you!”

The chair rocked quicker, the old, thin voice was like a whistle.

“You and your father make a pair. He would stick at nothing—that’s well

known. But I didn’t expect this.”

I thought it high time to air some of my own French. I remarked

modestly, but firmly, that this was business. I had some matters to talk

over with Mr. Jacobus.

At once she piped out a derisive “Poor innocent!” Then, with a change of

tone: “The shop’s for business. Why don’t you go to the shop to talk

with him?”

The furious speed of her fingers and knitting-needles made one dizzy; and

with squeaky indignation:

“Sitting here staring at that girl—is that what you call business?”

“No,” I said suavely. “I call this pleasure—an unexpected pleasure. And

unless Miss Alice objects—”

I half turned to her. She flung at me an angry and contemptuous “Don’t

care!” and leaning her elbow on her knees took her chin in her hand—a

Jacobus chin undoubtedly. And those heavy eyelids, this black irritated

stare reminded me of Jacobus, too—the wealthy merchant, the respected

one. The design of her eyebrows also was the same, rigid and ill-omened.

Yes! I traced in her a resemblance to both of them. It came to me as a

sort of surprising remote inference that both these Jacobuses were rather

handsome men after all. I said:

“Oh! Then I shall stare at you till you smile.”

She favoured me again with an even more viciously scornful “Don’t care!”

The old woman broke in blunt and shrill:

“Hear his impudence! And you too! Don’t care! Go at least and put some

more clothes on. Sitting there like this before this sailor riff-raff.”

The sun was about to leave the Pearl of the Ocean for other seas, for

other lands. The walled garden full of shadows blazed with colour as if

the flowers were giving up the light absorbed during the day. The

amazing old woman became very explicit. She suggested to the girl a

corset and a petticoat with a cynical unreserve which humiliated me. Was

I of no more account than a wooden dummy? The girl snapped out:

“Shan’t!”

It was not the naughty retort of a vulgar child; it had a note of

desperation. Clearly my intrusion had somehow upset the balance of their

established relations. The old woman knitted with furious accuracy, her

eyes fastened down on her work.

“Oh, you are the true child of your father! And _that_ talks of entering

a convent! Letting herself be stared at by a fellow.”

“Leave off.”

“Shameless thing!”

“Old sorceress,” the girl uttered distinctly, preserving her meditative

pose, chin in hand, and a far-away stare over the garden.

It was like the quarrel of the kettle and the pot. The old woman flew

out of the chair, banged down her work, and with a great play of thick

limb perfectly visible in that weird, clinging garment of hers, strode at

the girl—who never stirred. I was experiencing a sort of trepidation

when, as if awed by that unconscious attitude, the aged relative of

Jacobus turned short upon me.

She was, I perceived, armed with a knitting-needle; and as she raised her

hand her intention seemed to be to throw it at me like a dart. But she

only used it to scratch her head with, examining me the while at close

range, one eye nearly shut and her face distorted by a whimsical,

one-sided grimace.

“My dear man,” she asked abruptly, “do you expect any good to come of

this?”

“I do hope so indeed, Miss Jacobus.” I tried to speak in the easy tone

of an afternoon caller. “You see, I am here after some bags.”

“Bags! Look at that now! Didn’t I hear you holding forth to that

graceless wretch?”

“You would like to see me in my grave,” uttered the motionless girl

hoarsely.

“Grave! What about me? Buried alive before I am dead for the sake of a

thing blessed with such a pretty father!” she cried; and turning to me:

“You’re one of these men he does business with. Well—why don’t you leave

us in peace, my good fellow?”

It was said in a tone—this “leave us in peace!” There was a sort of

ruffianly familiarity, a superiority, a scorn in it. I was to hear it

more than once, for you would show an imperfect knowledge of human nature

if you thought that this was my last visit to that house—where no

respectable person had put foot for ever so many years. No, you would be

very much mistaken if you imagined that this reception had scared me

away. First of all I was not going to run before a grotesque and

ruffianly old woman.

And then you mustn’t forget these necessary bags. That first evening

Jacobus made me stay to dinner; after, however, telling me loyally that

he didn’t know whether he could do anything at all for me. He had been

thinking it over. It was too difficult, he feared. . . . But he did not

give it up in so many words.

We were only three at table; the girl by means of repeated “Won’t!”

“Shan’t!” and “Don’t care!” having conveyed and affirmed her intention

not to come to the table, not to have any dinner, not to move from the

verandah. The old relative hopped about in her flat slippers and piped

indignantly, Jacobus towered over her and murmured placidly in his

throat; I joined jocularly from a distance, throwing in a few words, for

which under the cover of the night I received secretly a most vicious

poke in the ribs from the old woman’s elbow or perhaps her fist. I

restrained a cry. And all the time the girl didn’t even condescend to

raise her head to look at any of us. All this may sound childish—and yet

that stony, petulant sullenness had an obscurely tragic flavour.

And so we sat down to the food around the light of a good many candles

while she remained crouching out there, staring in the dark as if feeding

her bad temper on the heavily scented air of the admirable garden.

Before leaving I said to Jacobus that I would come next day to hear if

the bag affair had made any progress. He shook his head slightly at

that.

“I’ll haunt your house daily till you pull it off. You’ll be always

finding me here.”

His faint, melancholy smile did not part his thick lips.

“That will be all right, Captain.”

Then seeing me to the door, very tranquil, he murmured earnestly the

recommendation: “Make yourself at home,” and also the hospitable hint

about there being always “a plate of soup.” It was only on my way to the

quay, down the ill-lighted streets, that I remembered I had been engaged

to dine that very evening with the S— family. Though vexed with my

forgetfulness (it would be rather awkward to explain) I couldn’t help

thinking that it had procured me a more amusing evening. And

besides—business. The sacred business—.

In a barefooted negro who overtook me at a run and bolted down the

landing-steps I recognised Jacobus’s boatman, who must have been feeding

in the kitchen. His usual “Good-night, sah!” as I went up my ship’s

ladder had a more cordial sound than on previous occasions.

CHAPTER V

I KEPT my word to Jacobus. I haunted his home. He was perpetually

finding me there of an afternoon when he popped in for a moment from the

“store.” The sound of my voice talking to his Alice greeted him on his

doorstep; and when he returned for good in the evening, ten to one he

would hear it still going on in the verandah. I just nodded to him; he

would sit down heavily and gently, and watch with a sort of approving

anxiety my efforts to make his daughter smile.

I called her often “Alice,” right before him; sometimes I would address

her as Miss “Don’t Care,” and I exhausted myself in nonsensical chatter

without succeeding once in taking her out of her peevish and tragic self.

There were moments when I felt I must break out and start swearing at her

till all was blue. And I fancied that had I done so Jacobus would not

have moved a muscle. A sort of shady, intimate understanding seemed to

have been established between us.

I must say the girl treated her father exactly in the same way she

treated me.

And how could it have been otherwise? She treated me as she treated her

father. She had never seen a visitor. She did not know how men behaved.

I belonged to the low lot with whom her father did business at the port.

I was of no account. So was her father. The only decent people in the

world were the people of the island, who would have nothing to do with

him because of something wicked he had done. This was apparently the

explanation Miss Jacobus had given her of the household’s isolated

position. For she had to be told something! And I feel convinced that

this version had been assented to by Jacobus. I must say the old woman

was putting it forward with considerable gusto. It was on her lips the

universal explanation, the universal allusion, the universal taunt.

One day Jacobus came in early and, beckoning me into the dining-room,

wiped his brow with a weary gesture and told me that he had managed to

unearth a supply of quarter-bags.

“It’s fourteen hundred your ship wanted, did you say, Captain?”

“Yes, yes!” I replied eagerly; but he remained calm. He looked more

tired than I had ever seen him before.

“Well, Captain, you may go and tell your people that they can get that

lot from my brother.”

As I remained open-mouthed at this, he added his usual placid formula of

assurance:

“You’ll find it correct, Captain.”

“You spoke to your brother about it?” I was distinctly awed. “And for

me? Because he must have known that my ship’s the only one hung up for

bags. How on earth—”

He wiped his brow again. I noticed that he was dressed with unusual

care, in clothes in which I had never seen him before. He avoided my

eye.

“You’ve heard people talk, of course. . . . That’s true enough. He . . .

I . . . We certainly. . . for several years . . .” His voice declined to

a mere sleepy murmur. “You see I had something to tell him of, something

which—”

His murmur stopped. He was not going to tell me what this something was.

And I didn’t care. Anxious to carry the news to my charterers, I ran

back on the verandah to get my hat.

At the bustle I made the girl turned her eyes slowly in my direction, and

even the old woman was checked in her knitting. I stopped a moment to

exclaim excitedly:

“Your father’s a brick, Miss Don’t Care. That’s what he is.”

She beheld my elation in scornful surprise. Jacobus with unwonted

familiarity seized my arm as I flew through the dining-room, and breathed

heavily at me a proposal about “A plate of soup” that evening. I

answered distractedly: “Eh? What? Oh, thanks! Certainly. With

pleasure,” and tore myself away. Dine with him? Of course. The merest

gratitude—

But some three hours afterwards, in the dusky, silent street, paved with

cobble-stones, I became aware that it was not mere gratitude which was

guiding my steps towards the house with the old garden, where for years

no guest other than myself had ever dined. Mere gratitude does not gnaw

at one’s interior economy in that particular way. Hunger might; but I

was not feeling particularly hungry for Jacobus’s food.

On that occasion, too, the girl refused to come to the table.

My exasperation grew. The old woman cast malicious glances at me. I

said suddenly to Jacobus: “Here! Put some chicken and salad on that

plate.” He obeyed without raising his eyes. I carried it with a knife

and fork and a serviette out on the verandah. The garden was one mass of

gloom, like a cemetery of flowers buried in the darkness, and she, in the

chair, seemed to muse mournfully over the extinction of light and colour.

Only whiffs of heavy scent passed like wandering, fragrant souls of that

departed multitude of blossoms. I talked volubly, jocularly,

persuasively, tenderly; I talked in a subdued tone. To a listener it

would have sounded like the murmur of a pleading lover. Whenever I

paused expectantly there was only a deep silence. It was like offering

food to a seated statue.

“I haven’t been able to swallow a single morsel thinking of you out here

starving yourself in the dark. It’s positively cruel to be so obstinate.

Think of my sufferings.”

“Don’t care.”

I felt as if I could have done her some violence—shaken her, beaten her

maybe. I said:

“Your absurd behaviour will prevent me coming here any more.”

“What’s that to me?”

“You like it.”

“It’s false,” she snarled.

My hand fell on her shoulder; and if she had flinched I verily believe I

would have shaken her. But there was no movement and this immobility

disarmed my anger.

“You do. Or you wouldn’t be found on the verandah every day. Why are

you here, then? There are plenty of rooms in the house. You have your

own room to stay in—if you did not want to see me. But you do. You know

you do.”

I felt a slight shudder under my hand and released my grip as if

frightened by that sign of animation in her body. The scented air of the

garden came to us in a warm wave like a voluptuous and perfumed sigh.

“Go back to them,” she whispered, almost pitifully.

As I re-entered the dining-room I saw Jacobus cast down his eyes. I

banged the plate on the table. At this demonstration of ill-humour he

murmured something in an apologetic tone, and I turned on him viciously

as if he were accountable to me for these “abominable eccentricities,” I

believe I called them.

“But I dare say Miss Jacobus here is responsible for most of this

offensive manner,” I added loftily.

She piped out at once in her brazen, ruffianly manner:

“Eh? Why don’t you leave us in peace, my good fellow?”

I was astonished that she should dare before Jacobus. Yet what could he

have done to repress her? He needed her too much. He raised a heavy,

drowsy glance for an instant, then looked down again. She insisted with

shrill finality:

“Haven’t you done your business, you two? Well, then—”

She had the true Jacobus impudence, that old woman. Her mop of iron-grey

hair was parted, on the side like a man’s, raffishly, and she made as if

to plunge her fork into it, as she used to do with the knitting-needle,

but refrained. Her little black eyes sparkled venomously. I turned to

my host at the head of the table—menacingly as it were.

“Well, and what do you say to that, Jacobus? Am I to take it that we

have done with each other?”

I had to wait a little. The answer when it came was rather unexpected,

and in quite another spirit than the question.

“I certainly think we might do some business yet with those potatoes of

mine, Captain. You will find that—”

I cut him short.

“I’ve told you before that I don’t trade.”

His broad chest heaved without a sound in a noiseless sigh.

“Think it over, Captain,” he murmured, tenacious and tranquil; and I

burst into a jarring laugh, remembering how he had stuck to the

circus-rider woman—the depth of passion under that placid surface, which

even cuts with a riding-whip (so the legend had it) could never raffle

into the semblance of a storm; something like the passion of a fish would

be if one could imagine such a thing as a passionate fish.

That evening I experienced more distinctly than ever the sense of moral

discomfort which always attended me in that house lying under the ban of

all “decent” people. I refused to stay on and smoke after dinner; and

when I put my hand into the thickly-cushioned palm of Jacobus, I said to

myself that it would be for the last time under his roof. I pressed his

bulky paw heartily nevertheless. Hadn’t he got me out of a serious

difficulty? To the few words of acknowledgment I was bound, and indeed

quite willing, to utter, he answered by stretching his closed lips in his

melancholy, glued-together smile.

“That will be all right, I hope, Captain,” he breathed out weightily.

“What do you mean?” I asked, alarmed. “That your brother might yet—”

“Oh, no,” he reassured me. “He . . . he’s a man of his word, Captain.”

My self-communion as I walked away from his door, trying to believe that

this was for the last time, was not satisfactory. I was aware myself

that I was not sincere in my reflections as to Jacobus’s motives, and, of

course, the very next day I went back again.

How weak, irrational, and absurd we are! How easily carried away

whenever our awakened imagination brings us the irritating hint of a

desire! I cared for the girl in a particular way, seduced by the moody

expression of her face, by her obstinate silences, her rare, scornful

words; by the perpetual pout of her closed lips, the black depths of her

fixed gaze turned slowly upon me as if in contemptuous provocation, only

to be averted next moment with an exasperating indifference.

Of course the news of my assiduity had spread all over the little town.

I noticed a change in the manner of my acquaintances and even something

different in the nods of the other captains, when meeting them at the

landing-steps or in the offices where business called me. The

old-maidish head clerk treated me with distant punctiliousness and, as it

were, gathered his skirts round him for fear of contamination. It seemed

to me that the very niggers on the quays turned to look after me as I

passed; and as to Jacobus’s boatman his “Good-night, sah!” when he put me

on board was no longer merely cordial—it had a familiar, confidential

sound as though we had been partners in some villainy.

My friend S— the elder passed me on the other side of the street with a

wave of the hand and an ironic smile. The younger brother, the one they

had married to an elderly shrew, he, on the strength of an older

friendship and as if paying a debt of gratitude, took the liberty to

utter a word of warning.

“You’re doing yourself no good by your choice of friends, my dear chap,”

he said with infantile gravity.

As I knew that the meeting of the brothers Jacobus was the subject of

excited comment in the whole of the sugary Pearl of the Ocean I wanted to

know why I was blamed.

“I have been the occasion of a move which may end in a reconciliation

surely desirable from the point of view of the proprieties—don’t you

know?”

“Of course, if that girl were disposed of it would certainly facilitate—”

he mused sagely, then, inconsequential creature, gave me a light tap on

the lower part of my waistcoat. “You old sinner,” he cried jovially,

“much you care for proprieties. But you had better look out for

yourself, you know, with a personage like Jacobus who has no sort of

reputation to lose.”

He had recovered his gravity of a respectable citizen by that time and

added regretfully:

“All the women of our family are perfectly scandalised.”

But by that time I had given up visiting the S— family and the D— family.

The elder ladies pulled such faces when I showed myself, and the

multitude of related young ladies received me with such a variety of

looks: wondering, awed, mocking (except Miss Mary, who spoke to me and

looked at me with hushed, pained compassion as though I had been ill),

that I had no difficulty in giving them all up. I would have given up

the society of the whole town, for the sake of sitting near that girl,

snarling and superb and barely clad in that flimsy, dingy, amber wrapper,

open low at the throat. She looked, with the wild wisps of hair hanging

down her tense face, as though she had just jumped out of bed in the

panic of a fire.

She sat leaning on her elbow, looking at nothing. Why did she stay

listening to my absurd chatter? And not only that; but why did she

powder her face in preparation for my arrival? It seemed to be her idea

of making a toilette, and in her untidy negligence a sign of great effort

towards personal adornment.

But I might have been mistaken. The powdering might have been her daily

practice and her presence in the verandah a sign of an indifference so

complete as to take no account of my existence. Well, it was all one to

me.

I loved to watch her slow changes of pose, to look at her long

immobilities composed in the graceful lines of her body, to observe the

mysterious narrow stare of her splendid black eyes, somewhat long in

shape, half closed, contemplating the void. She was like a spellbound

creature with the forehead of a goddess crowned by the dishevelled

magnificent hair of a gipsy tramp. Even her indifference was seductive.

I felt myself growing attached to her by the bond of an irrealisable

desire, for I kept my head—quite. And I put up with the moral discomfort

of Jacobus’s sleepy watchfulness, tranquil, and yet so expressive; as if

there had been a tacit pact between us two. I put up with the insolence

of the old woman’s: “Aren’t you ever going to leave us in peace, my good

fellow?” with her taunts; with her brazen and sinister scolding. She was

of the true Jacobus stock, and no mistake.

Directly I got away from the girl I called myself many hard names. What

folly was this? I would ask myself. It was like being the slave of some

depraved habit. And I returned to her with my head clear, my heart

certainly free, not even moved by pity for that castaway (she was as much

of a castaway as any one ever wrecked on a desert island), but as if

beguiled by some extraordinary promise. Nothing more unworthy could be

imagined. The recollection of that tremulous whisper when I gripped her

shoulder with one hand and held a plate of chicken with the other was

enough to make me break all my good resolutions.

Her insulting taciturnity was enough sometimes to make one gnash one’s

teeth with rage. When she opened her mouth it was only to be abominably

rude in harsh tones to the associate of her reprobate father; and the

full approval of her aged relative was conveyed to her by offensive

chuckles. If not that, then her remarks, always uttered in the tone of

scathing contempt, were of the most appalling inanity.

How could it have been otherwise? That plump, ruffianly Jacobus old maid

in the tight grey frock had never taught her any manners. Manners I

suppose are not necessary for born castaways. No educational

establishment could ever be induced to accept her as a pupil—on account

of the proprieties, I imagine. And Jacobus had not been able to send her

away anywhere. How could he have done it? Who with? Where to? He

himself was not enough of an adventurer to think of settling down

anywhere else. His passion had tossed him at the tail of a circus up and

down strange coasts, but, the storm over, he had drifted back shamelessly

where, social outcast as he was, he remained still a Jacobus—one of the

oldest families on the island, older than the French even. There must

have been a Jacobus in at the death of the last Dodo. . . . The girl had

learned nothing, she had never listened to a general conversation, she

knew nothing, she had heard of nothing. She could read certainly; but

all the reading matter that ever came in her way were the newspapers

provided for the captains’ room of the “store.” Jacobus had the habit of

taking these sheets home now and then in a very stained and ragged

condition.

As her mind could not grasp the meaning of any matters treated there

except police-court reports and accounts of crimes, she had formed for

herself a notion of the civilised world as a scene of murders,

abductions, burglaries, stabbing affrays, and every sort of desperate

violence. England and France, Paris and London (the only two towns of

which she seemed to have heard), appeared to her sinks of abomination,

reeking with blood, in contrast to her little island where petty larceny

was about the standard of current misdeeds, with, now and then, some more

pronounced crime—and that only amongst the imported coolie labourers on

sugar estates or the negroes of the town. But in Europe these things

were being done daily by a wicked population of white men amongst whom,

as that ruffianly, aristocratic old Miss Jacobus pointed out, the

wandering sailors, the associates of her precious papa, were the lowest

of the low.

It was impossible to give her a sense of proportion. I suppose she

figured England to herself as about the size of the Pearl of the Ocean;

in which case it would certainly have been reeking with gore and a mere

wreck of burgled houses from end to end. One could not make her

understand that these horrors on which she fed her imagination were lost

in the mass of orderly life like a few drops of blood in the ocean. She

directed upon me for a moment the uncomprehending glance of her narrowed

eyes and then would turn her scornful powdered face away without a word.

She would not even take the trouble to shrug her shoulders.

At that time the batches of papers brought by the last mail reported a

series of crimes in the East End of London, there was a sensational case

of abduction in France and a fine display of armed robbery in Australia.

One afternoon crossing the dining-room I heard Miss Jacobus piping in the

verandah with venomous animosity: “I don’t know what your precious papa

is plotting with that fellow. But he’s just the sort of man who’s

capable of carrying you off far away somewhere and then cutting your

throat some day for your money.”

There was a good half of the length of the verandah between their chairs.

I came out and sat down fiercely midway between them.

“Yes, that’s what we do with girls in Europe,” I began in a grimly

matter-of-fact tone. I think Miss Jacobus was disconcerted by my sudden

appearance. I turned upon her with cold ferocity:

“As to objectionable old women, they are first strangled quietly, then

cut up into small pieces and thrown away, a bit here and a bit there.

They vanish—”

I cannot go so far as to say I had terrified her. But she was troubled

by my truculence, the more so because I had been always addressing her

with a politeness she did not deserve. Her plump, knitting hands fell

slowly on her knees. She said not a word while I fixed her with severe

determination. Then as I turned away from her at last, she laid down her

work gently and, with noiseless movements, retreated from the verandah.

In fact, she vanished.

But I was not thinking of her. I was looking at the girl. It was what I

was coming for daily; troubled, ashamed, eager; finding in my nearness to

her a unique sensation which I indulged with dread, self-contempt, and

deep pleasure, as if it were a secret vice bound to end in my undoing,

like the habit of some drug or other which ruins and degrades its slave.

I looked her over, from the top of her dishevelled head, down the lovely

line of the shoulder, following the curve of the hip, the draped form of

the long limb, right down to her fine ankle below a torn, soiled flounce;

and as far as the point of the shabby, high-heeled, blue slipper,

dangling from her well-shaped foot, which she moved slightly, with quick,

nervous jerks, as if impatient of my presence. And in the scent of the

massed flowers I seemed to breathe her special and inexplicable charm,

the heady perfume of the everlastingly irritated captive of the garden.

I looked at her rounded chin, the Jacobus chin; at the full, red lips

pouting in the powdered, sallow face; at the firm modelling of the cheek,

the grains of white in the hairs of the straight sombre eyebrows; at the

long eyes, a narrowed gleam of liquid white and intense motionless black,

with their gaze so empty of thought, and so absorbed in their fixity that

she seemed to be staring at her own lonely image, in some far-off mirror

hidden from my sight amongst the trees.

And suddenly, without looking at me, with the appearance of a person

speaking to herself, she asked, in that voice slightly harsh yet mellow

and always irritated:

“Why do you keep on coming here?”

“Why do I keep on coming here?” I repeated, taken by surprise. I could

not have told her. I could not even tell myself with sincerity why I was

coming there. “What’s the good of you asking a question like that?”

“Nothing is any good,” she observed scornfully to the empty air, her chin

propped on her hand, that hand never extended to any man, that no one had

ever grasped—for I had only grasped her shoulder once—that generous,

fine, somewhat masculine hand. I knew well the peculiarly efficient

shape—broad at the base, tapering at the fingers—of that hand, for which

there was nothing in the world to lay hold of. I pretended to be

playful.

“No! But do you really care to know?”

She shrugged indolently her magnificent shoulders, from which the dingy

thin wrapper was slipping a little.

“Oh—never mind—never mind!”

There was something smouldering under those airs of lassitude. She

exasperated me by the provocation of her nonchalance, by something

elusive and defiant in her very form which I wanted to seize. I said

roughly:

“Why? Don’t you think I should tell you the truth?”

Her eyes glided my way for a sidelong look, and she murmured, moving only

her full, pouting lips:

“I think you would not dare.”

“Do you imagine I am afraid of you? What on earth. . . . Well, it’s

possible, after all, that I don’t know exactly why I am coming here. Let

us say, with Miss Jacobus, that it is for no good. You seem to believe

the outrageous things she says, if you do have a row with her now and

then.”

She snapped out viciously:

“Who else am I to believe?

“I don’t know,” I had to own, seeing her suddenly very helpless and

condemned to moral solitude by the verdict of a respectable community.

“You might believe me, if you chose.”

She made a slight movement and asked me at once, with an effort as if

making an experiment:

“What is the business between you and papa?”

“Don’t you know the nature of your father’s business? Come! He sells

provisions to ships.”

She became rigid again in her crouching pose.

“Not that. What brings you here—to this house?”

“And suppose it’s you? You would not call that business? Would you?

And now let us drop the subject. It’s no use. My ship will be ready for

sea the day after to-morrow.”

She murmured a distinctly scared “So soon,” and getting up quickly, went

to the little table and poured herself a glass of water. She walked with

rapid steps and with an indolent swaying of her whole young figure above

the hips; when she passed near me I felt with tenfold force the charm of

the peculiar, promising sensation I had formed the habit to seek near

her. I thought with sudden dismay that this was the end of it; that

after one more day I would be no longer able to come into this verandah,

sit on this chair, and taste perversely the flavour of contempt in her

indolent poses, drink in the provocation of her scornful looks, and

listen to the curt, insolent remarks uttered in that harsh and seductive

voice. As if my innermost nature had been altered by the action of some

moral poison, I felt an abject dread of going to sea.

I had to exercise a sudden self-control, as one puts on a brake, to

prevent myself jumping up to stride about, shout, gesticulate, make her a

scene. What for? What about? I had no idea. It was just the relief of

violence that I wanted; and I lolled back in my chair, trying to keep my

lips formed in a smile; that half-indulgent, half-mocking smile which was

my shield against the shafts of her contempt and the insulting sallies

flung at me by the old woman.

She drank the water at a draught, with the avidity of raging thirst, and

let herself fall on the nearest chair, as if utterly overcome. Her

attitude, like certain tones of her voice, had in it something masculine:

the knees apart in the ample wrapper, the clasped hands hanging between

them, her body leaning forward, with drooping head. I stared at the

heavy black coil of twisted hair. It was enormous, crowning the bowed

head with a crushing and disdained glory. The escaped wisps hung

straight down. And suddenly I perceived that the girl was trembling from

head to foot, as though that glass of iced water had chilled her to the

bone.

“What’s the matter now?” I said, startled, but in no very sympathetic

mood.

She shook her bowed, overweighted head and cried in a stifled voice but

with a rising inflection:

“Go away! Go away! Go away!”

I got up then and approached her, with a strange sort of anxiety. I

looked down at her round, strong neck, then stooped low enough to peep at

her face. And I began to tremble a little myself.

“What on earth are you gone wild about, Miss Don’t Care?”

She flung herself backwards violently, her head going over the back of

the chair. And now it was her smooth, full, palpitating throat that lay

exposed to my bewildered stare. Her eyes were nearly closed, with only a

horrible white gleam under the lids as if she were dead.

“What has come to you?” I asked in awe. “What are you terrifying

yourself with?”

She pulled herself together, her eyes open frightfully wide now. The

tropical afternoon was lengthening the shadows on the hot, weary earth,

the abode of obscure desires, of extravagant hopes, of unimaginable

terrors.

“Never mind! Don’t care!” Then, after a gasp, she spoke with such

frightful rapidity that I could hardly make out the amazing words: “For

if you were to shut me up in an empty place as smooth all round as the

palm of my hand, I could always strangle myself with my hair.”

For a moment, doubting my ears, I let this inconceivable declaration sink

into me. It is ever impossible to guess at the wild thoughts that pass

through the heads of our fellow-creatures. What monstrous imaginings of

violence could have dwelt under the low forehead of that girl who had

been taught to regard her father as “capable of anything” more in the

light of a misfortune than that of a disgrace; as, evidently, something

to be resented and feared rather than to be ashamed of? She seemed,

indeed, as unaware of shame as of anything else in the world; but in her

ignorance, her resentment and fear took a childish and violent shape.

Of course she spoke without knowing the value of words. What could she

know of death—she who knew nothing of life? It was merely as the proof

of her being beside herself with some odious apprehension, that this

extraordinary speech had moved me, not to pity, but to a fascinated,

horrified wonder. I had no idea what notion she had of her danger. Some

sort of abduction. It was quite possible with the talk of that atrocious

old woman. Perhaps she thought she could be carried off, bound hand and

foot and even gagged. At that surmise I felt as if the door of a furnace

had been opened in front of me.

“Upon my honour!” I cried. “You shall end by going crazy if you listen

to that abominable old aunt of yours—”

I studied her haggard expression, her trembling lips. Her cheeks even

seemed sunk a little. But how I, the associate of her disreputable

father, the “lowest of the low” from the criminal Europe, could manage to

reassure her I had no conception. She was exasperating.

“Heavens and earth! What do you think I can do?”

“I don’t know.”

Her chin certainly trembled. And she was looking at me with extreme

attention. I made a step nearer to her chair.

“I shall do nothing. I promise you that. Will that do? Do you

understand? I shall do nothing whatever, of any kind; and the day after

to-morrow I shall be gone.”

What else could I have said? She seemed to drink in my words with the

thirsty avidity with which she had emptied the glass of water. She

whispered tremulously, in that touching tone I had heard once before on

her lips, and which thrilled me again with the same emotion:

“I would believe you. But what about papa—”

“He be hanged!” My emotion betrayed itself by the brutality of my tone.

“I’ve had enough of your papa. Are you so stupid as to imagine that I am

frightened of him? He can’t make me do anything.”

All that sounded feeble to me in the face of her ignorance. But I must

conclude that the “accent of sincerity” has, as some people say, a really

irresistible power. The effect was far beyond my hopes,—and even beyond

my conception. To watch the change in the girl was like watching a

miracle—the gradual but swift relaxation of her tense glance, of her

stiffened muscles, of every fibre of her body. That black, fixed stare

into which I had read a tragic meaning more than once, in which I had

found a sombre seduction, was perfectly empty now, void of all

consciousness whatever, and not even aware any longer of my presence; it

had become a little sleepy, in the Jacobus fashion.

But, man being a perverse animal, instead of rejoicing at my complete

success, I beheld it with astounded and indignant eyes. There was

something cynical in that unconcealed alteration, the true Jacobus

shamelessness. I felt as though I had been cheated in some rather

complicated deal into which I had entered against my better judgment.

Yes, cheated without any regard for, at least, the forms of decency.

With an easy, indolent, and in its indolence supple, feline movement, she

rose from the chair, so provokingly ignoring me now, that for very rage I

held my ground within less than a foot of her. Leisurely and tranquil,

behaving right before me with the ease of a person alone in a room, she

extended her beautiful arms, with her hands clenched, her body swaying,

her head thrown back a little, revelling contemptuously in a sense of

relief, easing her limbs in freedom after all these days of crouching,

motionless poses when she had been so furious and so afraid.

All this with supreme indifference, incredible, offensive, exasperating,

like ingratitude doubled with treachery.

I ought to have been flattered, perhaps, but, on the contrary, my anger

grew; her movement to pass by me as if I were a wooden post or a piece of

furniture, that unconcerned movement brought it to a head.

I won’t say I did not know what I was doing, but, certainly, cool

reflection had nothing to do with the circumstance that next moment both

my arms were round her waist. It was an impulsive action, as one

snatches at something falling or escaping; and it had no hypocritical

gentleness about it either. She had no time to make a sound, and the

first kiss I planted on her closed lips was vicious enough to have been a

bite.

She did not resist, and of course I did not stop at one. She let me go

on, not as if she were inanimate—I felt her there, close against me,

young, full of vigour, of life, a strong desirable creature, but as if

she did not care in the least, in the absolute assurance of her safety,

what I did or left undone. Our faces brought close together in this

storm of haphazard caresses, her big, black, wide-open eyes looked into

mine without the girl appearing either angry or pleased or moved in any

way. In that steady gaze which seemed impersonally to watch my madness I

could detect a slight surprise, perhaps—nothing more. I showered kisses

upon her face and there did not seem to be any reason why this should not

go on for ever.

That thought flashed through my head, and I was on the point of

desisting, when, all at once, she began to struggle with a sudden

violence which all but freed her instantly, which revived my exasperation

with her, indeed a fierce desire never to let her go any more. I

tightened my embrace in time, gasping out: “No—you don’t!” as if she were

my mortal enemy. On her part not a word was said. Putting her hands

against my chest, she pushed with all her might without succeeding to

break the circle of my arms. Except that she seemed thoroughly awake

now, her eyes gave me no clue whatever. To meet her black stare was like

looking into a deep well, and I was totally unprepared for her change of

tactics. Instead of trying to tear my hands apart, she flung herself

upon my breast and with a downward, undulating, serpentine motion, a

quick sliding dive, she got away from me smoothly. It was all very

swift; I saw her pick up the tail of her wrapper and run for the door at

the end of the verandah not very gracefully. She appeared to be limping

a little—and then she vanished; the door swung behind her so noiselessly

that I could not believe it was completely closed. I had a distinct

suspicion of her black eye being at the crack to watch what I would do.

I could not make up my mind whether to shake my fist in that direction or

blow a kiss.

CHAPTER VI

EITHER would have been perfectly consistent with my feelings. I gazed at

the door, hesitating, but in the end I did neither. The monition of some

sixth sense—the sense of guilt, maybe, that sense which always acts too

late, alas!—warned me to look round; and at once I became aware that the

conclusion of this tumultuous episode was likely to be a matter of lively

anxiety. Jacobus was standing in the doorway of the dining-room. How

long he had been there it was impossible to guess; and remembering my

struggle with the girl I thought he must have been its mute witness from

beginning to end. But this supposition seemed almost incredible.

Perhaps that impenetrable girl had heard him come in and had got away in

time.

He stepped on to the verandah in his usual manner, heavy-eyed, with glued

lips. I marvelled at the girl’s resemblance to this man. Those long,

Egyptian eyes, that low forehead of a stupid goddess, she had found in

the sawdust of the circus; but all the rest of the face, the design and

the modelling, the rounded chin, the very lips—all that was Jacobus,

fined down, more finished, more expressive.

His thick hand fell on and grasped with force the back of a light chair

(there were several standing about) and I perceived the chance of a

broken head at the end of all this—most likely. My mortification was

extreme. The scandal would be horrible; that was unavoidable. But how

to act so as to satisfy myself I did not know. I stood on my guard and

at any rate faced him. There was nothing else for it. Of one thing I

was certain, that, however brazen my attitude, it could never equal the

characteristic Jacobus impudence.

He gave me his melancholy, glued smile and sat down. I own I was

relieved. The perspective of passing from kisses to blows had nothing

particularly attractive in it. Perhaps—perhaps he had seen nothing? He

behaved as usual, but he had never before found me alone on the verandah.

If he had alluded to it, if he had asked: “Where’s Alice?” or something

of the sort, I would have been able to judge from the tone. He would

give me no opportunity. The striking peculiarity was that he had never

looked up at me yet. “He knows,” I said to myself confidently. And my

contempt for him relieved my disgust with myself.

“You are early home,” I remarked.

“Things are very quiet; nothing doing at the store to-day,” he explained

with a cast-down air.

“Oh, well, you know, I am off,” I said, feeling that this, perhaps, was

the best thing to do.

“Yes,” he breathed out. “Day after to-morrow.”

This was not what I had meant; but as he gazed persistently on the floor,

I followed the direction of his glance. In the absolute stillness of the

house we stared at the high-heeled slipper the girl had lost in her

flight. We stared. It lay overturned.

After what seemed a very long time to me, Jacobus hitched his chair

forward, stooped with extended arm and picked it up. It looked a slender

thing in his big, thick hands. It was not really a slipper, but a low

shoe of blue, glazed kid, rubbed and shabby. It had straps to go over

the instep, but the girl only thrust her feet in, after her slovenly

manner. Jacobus raised his eyes from the shoe to look at me.

“Sit down, Captain,” he said at last, in his subdued tone.

As if the sight of that shoe had renewed the spell, I gave up suddenly

the idea of leaving the house there and then. It had become impossible.

I sat down, keeping my eyes on the fascinating object. Jacobus turned

his daughter’s shoe over and over in his cushioned paws as if studying

the way the thing was made. He contemplated the thin sole for a time;

then glancing inside with an absorbed air:

“I am glad I found you here, Captain.”

I answered this by some sort of grunt, watching him covertly. Then I

added: “You won’t have much more of me now.”

He was still deep in the interior of that shoe on which my eyes too were

resting.

“Have you thought any more of this deal in potatoes I spoke to you about

the other day?”

“No, I haven’t,” I answered curtly. He checked my movement to rise by an

austere, commanding gesture of the hand holding that fatal shoe. I

remained seated and glared at him. “You know I don’t trade.”

“You ought to, Captain. You ought to.”

I reflected. If I left that house now I would never see the girl again.

And I felt I must see her once more, if only for an instant. It was a

need, not to be reasoned with, not to be disregarded. No, I did not want

to go away. I wanted to stay for one more experience of that strange

provoking sensation and of indefinite desire, the habit of which had made

me—me of all people!—dread the prospect of going to sea.

“Mr. Jacobus,” I pronounced slowly. “Do you really think that upon the

whole and taking various’ matters into consideration—I mean everything,

do you understand?—it would be a good thing for me to trade, let us say,

with you?”

I waited for a while. He went on looking at the shoe which he held now

crushed in the middle, the worn point of the toe and the high heel

protruding on each side of his heavy fist.

“That will be all right,” he said, facing me squarely at last.

“Are you sure?”

“You’ll find it quite correct, Captain.” He had uttered his habitual

phrases in his usual placid, breath-saving voice and stood my hard,

inquisitive stare sleepily without as much as a wink.

“Then let us trade,” I said, turning my shoulder to him. “I see you are

bent on it.”

I did not want an open scandal, but I thought that outward decency may be

bought too dearly at times. I included Jacobus, myself, the whole

population of the island, in the same contemptuous disgust as though we

had been partners in an ignoble transaction. And the remembered vision

at sea, diaphanous and blue, of the Pearl of the Ocean at sixty miles

off; the unsubstantial, clear marvel of it as if evoked by the art of a

beautiful and pure magic, turned into a thing of horrors too. Was this

the fortune this vaporous and rare apparition had held for me in its hard

heart, hidden within the shape as of fair dreams and mist? Was this my

luck?

“I think”—Jacobus became suddenly audible after what seemed the silence

of vile meditation—“that you might conveniently take some thirty tons.

That would be about the lot, Captain.”

“Would it? The lot! I dare say it would be convenient, but I haven’t

got enough money for that.”

I had never seen him so animated.

“No!” he exclaimed with what I took for the accent of grim menace.

“That’s a pity.” He paused, then, unrelenting: “How much money have you

got, Captain?” he inquired with awful directness.

It was my turn to face him squarely. I did so and mentioned the amount I

could dispose of. And I perceived that he was disappointed. He thought

it over, his calculating gaze lost in mine, for quite a long time before

he came out in a thoughtful tone with the rapacious suggestion:

“You could draw some more from your charterers. That would be quite

easy, Captain.”

“No, I couldn’t,” I retorted brusquely. “I’ve drawn my salary up to

date, and besides, the ship’s accounts are closed.”

I was growing furious. I pursued: “And I’ll tell you what: if I could do

it I wouldn’t.” Then throwing off all restraint, I added: “You are a bit

too much of a Jacobus, Mr. Jacobus.”

The tone alone was insulting enough, but he remained tranquil, only a

little puzzled, till something seemed to dawn upon him; but the unwonted

light in his eyes died out instantly. As a Jacobus on his native heath,

what a mere skipper chose to say could not touch him, outcast as he was.

As a ship-chandler he could stand anything. All I caught of his mumble

was a vague—“quite correct,” than which nothing could have been more

egregiously false at bottom—to my view, at least. But I remembered—I had

never forgotten—that I must see the girl. I did not mean to go. I meant

to stay in the house till I had seen her once more.

“Look here!” I said finally. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take as

many of your confounded potatoes as my money will buy, on condition that

you go off at once down to the wharf to see them loaded in the lighter

and sent alongside the ship straight away. Take the invoice and a signed

receipt with you. Here’s the key of my desk. Give it to Burns. He will

pay you.”

He got up from his chair before I had finished speaking, but he refused

to take the key. Burns would never do it. He wouldn’t like to ask him

even.

“Well, then,” I said, eyeing him slightingly, “there’s nothing for it,

Mr. Jacobus, but you must wait on board till I come off to settle with

you.”

“That will be all right, Captain. I will go at once.”

He seemed at a loss what to do with the girl’s shoe he was still holding

in his fist. Finally, looking dully at me, he put it down on the chair

from which he had risen.

“And you, Captain? Won’t you come along, too, just to see—”

“Don’t bother about me. I’ll take care of myself.”

He remained perplexed for a moment, as if trying to understand; and then

his weighty: “Certainly, certainly, Captain,” seemed to be the outcome of

some sudden thought. His big chest heaved. Was it a sigh? As he went

out to hurry off those potatoes he never looked back at me.

I waited till the noise of his footsteps had died out of the dining-room,

and I waited a little longer. Then turning towards the distant door I

raised my voice along the verandah:

“Alice!”

Nothing answered me, not even a stir behind the door. Jacobus’s house

might have been made empty for me to make myself at home in. I did not

call again. I had become aware of a great discouragement. I was

mentally jaded, morally dejected. I turned to the garden again, sitting

down with my elbows spread on the low balustrade, and took my head in my

hands.

The evening closed upon me. The shadows lengthened, deepened, mingled

together into a pool of twilight in which the flower-beds glowed like

coloured embers; whiffs of heavy scent came to me as if the dusk of this

hemisphere were but the dimness of a temple and the garden an enormous

censer swinging before the altar of the stars. The colours of the

blossoms deepened, losing their glow one by one.

The girl, when I turned my head at a slight noise, appeared to me very

tall and slender, advancing with a swaying limp, a floating and uneven

motion which ended in the sinking of her shadowy form into the deep low

chair. And I don’t know why or whence I received the impression that she

had come too late. She ought to have appeared at my call. She ought to

have . . . It was as if a supreme opportunity had been missed.

I rose and took a seat close to her, nearly opposite her arm-chair. Her

ever discontented voice addressed me at once, contemptuously:

“You are still here.”

I pitched mine low.

“You have come out at last.”

“I came to look for my shoe—before they bring in the lights.”

It was her harsh, enticing whisper, subdued, not very steady, but its low

tremulousness gave me no thrill now. I could only make out the oval of

her face, her uncovered throat, the long, white gleam of her eyes. She

was mysterious enough. Her hands were resting on the arms of the chair.

But where was the mysterious and provoking sensation which was like the

perfume of her flower-like youth? I said quietly:

“I have got your shoe here.” She made no sound and I continued: “You had

better give me your foot and I will put it on for you.”

She made no movement. I bent low down and groped for her foot under the

flounces of the wrapper. She did not withdraw it and I put on the shoe,

buttoning the instep-strap. It was an inanimate foot. I lowered it

gently to the floor.

“If you buttoned the strap you would not be losing your shoe, Miss Don’t

Care,” I said, trying to be playful without conviction. I felt more like

wailing over the lost illusion of vague desire, over the sudden

conviction that I would never find again near her the strange, half-evil,

half-tender sensation which had given its acrid flavour to so many days,

which had made her appear tragic and promising, pitiful and provoking.

That was all over.

“Your father picked it up,” I said, thinking she may just as well be told

of the fact.

“I am not afraid of papa—by himself,” she declared scornfully.

“Oh! It’s only in conjunction with his disreputable associates,

strangers, the ‘riff-raff of Europe’ as your charming aunt or great-aunt

says—men like me, for instance—that you—”

“I am not afraid of you,” she snapped out.

“That’s because you don’t know that I am now doing business with your

father. Yes, I am in fact doing exactly what he wants me to do. I’ve

broken my promise to you. That’s the sort of man I am. And now—aren’t

you afraid? If you believe what that dear, kind, truthful old lady says

you ought to be.”

It was with unexpected modulated softness that the affirmed:

“No. I am not afraid.” She hesitated. . . . “Not now.”

“Quite right. You needn’t be. I shall not see you again before I go to

sea.” I rose and stood near her chair. “But I shall often think of you

in this old garden, passing under the trees over there, walking between

these gorgeous flower-beds. You must love this garden—”

“I love nothing.”

I heard in her sullen tone the faint echo of that resentfully tragic note

which I had found once so provoking. But it left me unmoved except for a

sudden and weary conviction of the emptiness of all things under Heaven.

“Good-bye, Alice,” I said.

She did not answer, she did not move. To merely take her hand, shake it,

and go away seemed impossible, almost improper. I stooped without haste

and pressed my lips to her smooth forehead. This was the moment when I

realised clearly with a sort of terror my complete detachment from that

unfortunate creature. And as I lingered in that cruel self-knowledge I

felt the light touch of her arms falling languidly on my neck and

received a hasty, awkward, haphazard kiss which missed my lips. No! She

was not afraid; but I was no longer moved. Her arms slipped off my neck

slowly, she made no sound, the deep wicker arm-chair creaked slightly;

only a sense of my dignity prevented me fleeing headlong from that

catastrophic revelation.

I traversed the dining-room slowly. I thought: She’s listening to my

footsteps; she can’t help it; she’ll hear me open and shut that door.

And I closed it as gently behind me as if I had been a thief retreating

with his ill-gotten booty. During that stealthy act I experienced the

last touch of emotion in that house, at the thought of the girl I had

left sitting there in the obscurity, with her heavy hair and empty eyes

as black as the night itself, staring into the walled garden, silent,

warm, odorous with the perfume of imprisoned flowers, which, like

herself, were lost to sight in a world buried in darkness.

The narrow, ill-lighted, rustic streets I knew so well on my way to the

harbour were extremely quiet. I felt in my heart that the further one

ventures the better one understands how everything in our life is common,

short, and empty; that it is in seeking the unknown in our sensations

that we discover how mediocre are our attempts and how soon defeated!

Jacobus’s boatman was waiting at the steps with an unusual air of

readiness. He put me alongside the ship, but did not give me his

confidential “Good-evening, sah,” and, instead of shoving off at once,

remained holding by the ladder.

I was a thousand miles from commercial affairs, when on the dark

quarter-deck Mr. Burns positively rushed at me, stammering with

excitement. He had been pacing the deck distractedly for hours awaiting

my arrival. Just before sunset a lighter loaded with potatoes had come

alongside with that fat ship-chandler himself sitting on the pile of

sacks. He was now stuck immovable in the cabin. What was the meaning of

it all? Surely I did not—

“Yes, Mr. Burns, I did,” I cut him short. He was beginning to make

gestures of despair when I stopped that, too, by giving him the key of my

desk and desiring him, in a tone which admitted of no argument, to go

below at once, pay Mr. Jacobus’s bill, and send him out of the ship.

“I don’t want to see him,” I confessed frankly, climbing the poop-ladder.

I felt extremely tired. Dropping on the seat of the skylight, I gave

myself up to idle gazing at the lights about the quay and at the black

mass of the mountain on the south side of the harbour. I never heard

Jacobus leave the ship with every single sovereign of my ready cash in

his pocket. I never heard anything till, a long time afterwards, Mr.

Burns, unable to contain himself any longer, intruded upon me with his

ridiculously angry lamentations at my weakness and good nature.

“Of course, there’s plenty of room in the after-hatch. But they are sure

to go rotten down there. Well! I never heard . . . seventeen tons! I

suppose I must hoist in that lot first thing to-morrow morning.”

“I suppose you must. Unless you drop them overboard. But I’m afraid you

can’t do that. I wouldn’t mind myself, but it’s forbidden to throw

rubbish into the harbour, you know.”

“That is the truest word you have said for many a day, sir—rubbish.

That’s just what I expect they are. Nearly eighty good gold sovereigns

gone; a perfectly clean sweep of your drawer, sir. Bless me if I

understand!”

As it was impossible to throw the right light on this commercial

transaction I left him to his lamentations and under the impression that

I was a hopeless fool. Next day I did not go ashore. For one thing, I

had no money to go ashore with—no, not enough to buy a cigarette.

Jacobus had made a clean sweep. But that was not the only reason. The

Pearl of the Ocean had in a few short hours grown odious to me. And I

did not want to meet any one. My reputation had suffered. I knew I was

the object of unkind and sarcastic comments.

The following morning at sunrise, just as our stern-fasts had been let go

and the tug plucked us out from between the buoys, I saw Jacobus standing

up in his boat. The nigger was pulling hard; several baskets of

provisions for ships were stowed between the thwarts. The father of

Alice was going his morning round. His countenance was tranquil and

friendly. He raised his arm and shouted something with great heartiness.

But his voice was of the sort that doesn’t carry any distance; all I

could catch faintly, or rather guess at, were the words “next time” and

“quite correct.” And it was only of these last that I was certain.

Raising my arm perfunctorily for all response, I turned away. I rather

resented the familiarity of the thing. Hadn’t I settled accounts finally

with him by means of that potato bargain?

This being a harbour story it is not my purpose to speak of our passage.

I was glad enough to be at sea, but not with the gladness of old days.

Formerly I had no memories to take away with me. I shared in the blessed

forgetfulness of sailors, that forgetfulness natural and invincible,

which resembles innocence in so far that it prevents self-examination.

Now however I remembered the girl. During the first few days I was for

ever questioning myself as to the nature of facts and sensations

connected with her person and with my conduct.

And I must say also that Mr. Burns’ intolerable fussing with those

potatoes was not calculated to make me forget the part which I had

played. He looked upon it as a purely commercial transaction of a

particularly foolish kind, and his devotion—if it was devotion and not

mere cussedness as I came to regard it before long—inspired him with a

zeal to minimise my loss as much as possible. Oh, yes! He took care of

those infamous potatoes with a vengeance, as the saying goes.

Everlastingly, there was a tackle over the after-hatch and everlastingly

the watch on deck were pulling up, spreading out, picking over,

rebagging, and lowering down again, some part of that lot of potatoes.

My bargain with all its remotest associations, mental and visual—the

garden of flowers and scents, the girl with her provoking contempt and

her tragic loneliness of a hopeless castaway—was everlastingly dangled

before my eyes, for thousands of miles along the open sea. And as if by

a satanic refinement of irony it was accompanied by a most awful smell.

Whiffs from decaying potatoes pursued me on the poop, they mingled with

my thoughts, with my food, poisoned my very dreams. They made an

atmosphere of corruption for the ship.

I remonstrated with Mr. Burns about this excessive care. I would have

been well content to batten the hatch down and let them perish under the

deck.

That perhaps would have been unsafe. The horrid emanations might have

flavoured the cargo of sugar. They seemed strong enough to taint the

very ironwork. In addition Mr. Burns made it a personal matter. He

assured me he knew how to treat a cargo of potatoes at sea—had been in

the trade as a boy, he said. He meant to make my loss as small as

possible. What between his devotion—it must have been devotion—and his

vanity, I positively dared not give him the order to throw my

commercial-venture overboard. I believe he would have refused point

blank to obey my lawful command. An unprecedented and comical situation

would have been created with which I did not feel equal to deal.

I welcomed the coming of bad weather as no sailor had ever done. When at

last I hove the ship to, to pick up the pilot outside Port Philip Heads,

the after-hatch had not been opened for more than a week and I might have

believed that no such thing as a potato had ever been on board.

It was an abominable day, raw, blustering, with great squalls of wind and

rain; the pilot, a cheery person, looked after the ship and chatted to

me, streaming from head to foot; and the heavier the lash of the downpour

the more pleased with himself and everything around him he seemed to be.

He rubbed his wet hands with a satisfaction, which to me, who had stood

that kind of thing for several days and nights, seemed inconceivable in

any non-aquatic creature.

“You seem to enjoy getting wet, Pilot,” I remarked.

He had a bit of land round his house in the suburbs and it was of his

garden he was thinking. At the sound of the word garden, unheard,

unspoken for so many days, I had a vision of gorgeous colour, of sweet

scents, of a girlish figure crouching in a chair. Yes. That was a

distinct emotion breaking into the peace I had found in the sleepless

anxieties of my responsibility during a week of dangerous bad weather.

The Colony, the pilot explained, had suffered from unparalleled drought.

This was the first decent drop of water they had had for seven months.

The root crops were lost. And, trying to be casual, but with visible

interest, he asked me if I had perchance any potatoes to spare.

Potatoes! I had managed to forget them. In a moment I felt plunged into

corruption up to my neck. Mr. Burns was making eyes at me behind the

pilot’s back.

Finally, he obtained a ton, and paid ten pounds for it. This was twice

the price of my bargain with Jacobus. The spirit of covetousness woke up

in me. That night, in harbour, before I slept, the Custom House galley

came alongside. While his underlings were putting seals on the

storerooms, the officer in charge took me aside confidentially. “I say,

Captain, you don’t happen to have any potatoes to sell.”

Clearly there was a potato famine in the land. I let him have a ton for

twelve pounds and he went away joyfully. That night I dreamt of a pile

of gold in the form of a grave in which a girl was buried, and woke up

callous with greed. On calling at my ship-broker’s office, that man,

after the usual business had been transacted, pushed his spectacles up on

his forehead.

“I was thinking, Captain, that coming from the Pearl of the Ocean you may

have some potatoes to sell.”

I said negligently: “Oh, yes, I could spare you a ton. Fifteen pounds.”

He exclaimed: “I say!” But after studying my face for a while accepted

my terms with a faint grimace. It seems that these people could not

exist without potatoes. I could. I didn’t want to see a potato as long

as I lived; but the demon of lucre had taken possession of me. How the

news got about I don’t know, but, returning on board rather late, I found

a small group of men of the coster type hanging about the waist, while

Mr. Burns walked to and fro the quarterdeck loftily, keeping a triumphant

eye on them. They had come to buy potatoes.

“These chaps have been waiting here in the sun for hours,” Burns

whispered to me excitedly. “They have drank the water-cask dry. Don’t

you throw away your chances, sir. You are too good-natured.”

I selected a man with thick legs and a man with a cast in his eye to

negotiate with; simply because they were easily distinguishable from the

rest. “You have the money on you?” I inquired, before taking them down

into the cabin.

“Yes, sir,” they answered in one voice, slapping their pockets. I liked

their air of quiet determination. Long before the end of the day all the

potatoes were sold at about three times the price I had paid for them.

Mr. Burns, feverish and exulting, congratulated himself on his skilful

care of my commercial venture, but hinted plainly that I ought to have

made more of it.

That night I did not sleep very well. I thought of Jacobus by fits and

starts, between snatches of dreams concerned with castaways starving on a

desert island covered with flowers. It was extremely unpleasant. In the

morning, tired and unrefreshed, I sat down and wrote a long letter to my

owners, giving them a carefully-thought-out scheme for the ship’s

employment in the East and about the China Seas for the next two years.

I spent the day at that task and felt somewhat more at peace when it was

done.

Their reply came in due course. They were greatly struck with my

project; but considering that, notwithstanding the unfortunate difficulty

with the bags (which they trusted I would know how to guard against in

the future), the voyage showed a very fair profit, they thought it would

be better to keep the ship in the sugar trade—at least for the present.

I turned over the page and read on:

“We have had a letter from our good friend Mr. Jacobus. We are pleased

to see how well you have hit it off with him; for, not to speak of his

assistance in the unfortunate matter of the bags, he writes us that

should you, by using all possible dispatch, manage to bring the ship back

early in the season he would be able to give us a good rate of freight.

We have no doubt that your best endeavours . . . etc. . . etc.”

I dropped the letter and sat motionless for a long time. Then I wrote my

answer (it was a short one) and went ashore myself to post it. But I

passed one letter-box, then another, and in the end found myself going up

Collins Street with the letter still in my pocket—against my heart.

Collins Street at four o’clock in the afternoon is not exactly a desert

solitude; but I had never felt more isolated from the rest of mankind as

when I walked that day its crowded pavement, battling desperately with my

thoughts and feeling already vanquished.

There came a moment when the awful tenacity of Jacobus, the man of one

passion and of one idea, appeared to me almost heroic. He had not given

me up. He had gone again to his odious brother. And then he appeared to

me odious himself. Was it for his own sake or for the sake of the poor

girl? And on that last supposition the memory of the kiss which missed

my lips appalled me; for whatever he had seen, or guessed at, or risked,

he knew nothing of that. Unless the girl had told him. How could I go

back to fan that fatal spark with my cold breath? No, no, that

unexpected kiss had to be paid for at its full price.

At the first letter-box I came to I stopped and reaching into my

breast-pocket I took out the letter—it was as if I were plucking out my

very heart—and dropped it through the slit. Then I went straight on

board.

I wondered what dreams I would have that night; but as it turned out I

did not sleep at all. At breakfast I informed Mr. Burns that I had

resigned my command.

He dropped his knife and fork and looked at me with indignation.

“You have, sir! I thought you loved the ship.”

“So I do, Burns,” I said. “But the fact is that the Indian Ocean and

everything that is in it has lost its charm for me. I am going home as

passenger by the Suez Canal.”

“Everything that is in it,” he repeated angrily. “I’ve never heard

anybody talk like this. And to tell you the truth, sir, all the time we

have been together I’ve never quite made you out. What’s one ocean more

than another? Charm, indeed!”

He was really devoted to me, I believe. But he cheered up when I told

him that I had recommended him for my successor.

“Anyhow,” he remarked, “let people say what they like, this Jacobus has

served your turn. I must admit that this potato business has paid

extremely well. Of course, if only you had—”

“Yes, Mr. Burns,” I interrupted. “Quite a smile of fortune.”

But I could not tell him that it was driving me out of the ship I had

learned to love. And as I sat heavy-hearted at that parting, seeing all

my plans destroyed, my modest future endangered—for this command was like

a foot in the stirrup for a young man—he gave up completely for the first

time his critical attitude.

“A wonderful piece of luck!” he said.

THE SECRET SHARER

AN EPISODE FROM THE COAST

CHAPTER I

ON my right hand there were lines of fishing-stakes resembling a

mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in

its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if

abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other

end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as the

eye could reach. To the left a group of barren islets, suggesting ruins

of stone walls, towers, and blockhouses, had its foundations set in a

blue sea that itself looked solid, so still and stable did it lie below

my feet; even the track of light from the westering sun shone smoothly,

without that animated glitter which tells of an imperceptible ripple.

And when I turned my head to take a parting glance at the tug which had

just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line of the

flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a perfect and

unmarked closeness, in one levelled floor half brown, half blue under the

enormous dome of the sky. Corresponding in their insignificance to the

islets of the sea, two small clumps of trees, one on each side of the

only fault in the impeccable joint, marked the mouth of the river Meinam

we had just left on the first preparatory stage of our homeward journey;

and, far back on the inland level, a larger and loftier mass, the grove

surrounding the great Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on which the eye

could rest from the vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep of the

horizon. Here and there gleams as of a few scattered pieces of silver

marked the windings of the great river; and on the nearest of them, just

within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land became lost to my

sight, hull and funnel and masts, as though the impassive earth had

swallowed her up without an effort, without a tremor. My eye followed

the light cloud of her smoke, now here, now there, above the plain,

according to the devious curves of the stream, but always fainter and

farther away, till I lost it at last behind the mitre-shaped hill of the

great pagoda. And then I was left alone with my ship, anchored at the

head of the Gulf of Siam.

She floated at the starting-point of a long journey, very still in an

immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the eastward by

the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her decks. There was not

a sound in her—and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on

the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky. In this

breathless pause at the threshold of a long passage we seemed to be

measuring our fitness for a long and arduous enterprise, the appointed

task of both our existences to be carried out, far from all human eyes,

with only sky and sea for spectators and for judges.

There must have been some glare in the air to interfere with one’s sight,

because it was only just before the sun left us that my roaming eyes made

out beyond the highest ridge of the principal islet of the group

something which did away with the solemnity of perfect solitude. The

tide of darkness flowed on swiftly; and with tropical suddenness a swarm

of stars came out above the shadowy earth, while I lingered yet, my hand

resting lightly on my ship’s rail as if on the shoulder of a trusted

friend. But, with all that multitude of celestial bodies staring down at

one, the comfort of quiet communion with her was gone for good. And

there were also disturbing sounds by this time—voices, footsteps forward;

the steward flitted along the maindeck, a busily ministering spirit; a

hand-bell tinkled urgently under the poop-deck. . . .

I found my two officers waiting for me near the supper table, in the

lighted cuddy. We sat down at once, and as I helped the chief mate, I

said:

“Are you aware that there is a ship anchored inside the islands? I saw

her mastheads above the ridge as the sun went down.”

He raised sharply his simple face, overcharged by a terrible growth of

whisker, and emitted his usual ejaculations: “Bless my soul, sir! You

don’t say so!”

My second mate was a round-cheeked, silent young man, grave beyond his

years, I thought; but as our eyes happened to meet I detected a slight

quiver on his lips. I looked down at once. It was not my part to

encourage sneering on board my ship. It must be said, too, that I knew

very little of my officers. In consequence of certain events of no

particular significance, except to myself, I had been appointed to the

command only a fortnight before. Neither did I know much of the hands

forward. All these people had been together for eighteen months or so,

and my position was that of the only stranger on board. I mention this

because it has some bearing on what is to follow. But what I felt most

was my being a stranger to the ship; and if all the truth must be told, I

was somewhat of a stranger to myself. The youngest man on board (barring

the second mate), and untried as yet by a position of the fullest

responsibility, I was willing to take the adequacy of the others for

granted. They had simply to be equal to their tasks; but I wondered how

far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one’s own

personality every man sets up for himself secretly.

* * * * *

Meantime the chief mate, with an almost visible effect of collaboration

on the part of his round eyes and frightful whiskers, was trying to

evolve a theory of the anchored ship. His dominant trait was to take all

things into earnest consideration. He was of a painstaking turn of mind.

As he used to say, he “liked to account to himself” for practically

everything that came in his way, down to a miserable scorpion he had

found in his cabin a week before. The why and the wherefore of that

scorpion—how it got on board and came to select his room rather than the

pantry (which was a dark place and more what a scorpion would be partial

to), and how on earth it managed to drown itself in the inkwell of his

writing-desk—had exercised him infinitely. The ship within the islands

was much more easily accounted for; and just as we were about to rise

from table he made his pronouncement. She was, he doubted not, a ship

from home lately arrived. Probably she drew too much water to cross the

bar except at the top of spring tides. Therefore she went into that

natural harbour to wait for a few days in preference to remaining in an

open roadstead.

“That’s so,” confirmed the second mate, suddenly, in his slightly hoarse

voice. “She draws over twenty feet. She’s the Liverpool ship _Sephora_

with a cargo of coal. Hundred and twenty-three days from Cardiff.”

We looked at him in surprise.

“The tugboat skipper told me when he came on board for your letters,

sir,” explained the young man. “He expects to take her up the river the

day after to-morrow.”

After thus overwhelming us with the extent of his information he slipped

out of the cabin. The mate observed regretfully that he “could not

account for that young fellow’s whims.” What prevented him telling us

all about it at once, he wanted to know.

I detained him as he was making a move. For the last two days the crew

had had plenty of hard work, and the night before they had very little

sleep. I felt painfully that I—a stranger—was doing something unusual

when I directed him to let all hands turn in without setting an

anchor-watch. I proposed to keep on deck myself till one o’clock or

thereabouts. I would get the second mate to relieve me at that hour.

“He will turn out the cook and the steward at four,” I concluded, “and

then give you a call. Of course at the slightest sign of any sort of

wind we’ll have the hands up and make a start at once.”

He concealed his astonishment. “Very well, sir.” Outside the cuddy he

put his head in the second mate’s door to inform him of my unheard-of

caprice to take a five hours’ anchor-watch on myself. I heard the other

raise his voice incredulously—“What? The captain himself?” Then a few

more murmurs, a door closed, then another. A few moments later I went on

deck.

My strangeness, which had made me sleepless, had prompted that

unconventional arrangement, as if I had expected in those solitary hours

of the night to get on terms with the ship of which I knew nothing,

manned by men of whom I knew very little more. Fast alongside a wharf,

littered like any ship in port with a tangle of unrelated things, invaded

by unrelated shore people, I had hardly seen her yet properly. Now, as

she lay cleared for sea, the stretch of her maindeck seemed to me very

fine under the stars. Very fine, very roomy for her size, and very

inviting. I descended the poop and paced the waist, my mind picturing to

myself the coming passage through the Malay Archipelago, down the Indian

Ocean, and up the Atlantic. All its phases were familiar enough to me,

every characteristic, all the alternatives which were likely to face me

on the high seas—everything! . . . except the novel responsibility of

command. But I took heart from the reasonable thought that the ship was

like other ships, the men like other men, and that the sea was not likely

to keep any special surprises expressly for my discomfiture.

Arrived at that comforting conclusion, I bethought myself of a cigar and

went below to get it. All was still down there. Everybody at the after

end of the ship was sleeping profoundly. I came out again on the

quarter-deck, agreeably at ease in my sleeping-suit on that warm

breathless night, barefooted, a glowing cigar in my teeth, and, going

forward, I was met by the profound silence of the fore end of the ship.

Only as I passed the door of the forecastle I heard a deep, quiet,

trustful sigh of some sleeper inside. And suddenly I rejoiced in the

great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my

choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems,

invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute

straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.

The riding-light in the fore-rigging burned with a clear, untroubled, as

if symbolic, flame, confident and bright in the mysterious shades of the

night. Passing on my way aft along the other side of the ship, I

observed that the rope side-ladder, put over, no doubt, for the master of

the tug when he came to fetch away our letters, had not been hauled in as

it should have been. I became annoyed at this, for exactitude in small

matters is the very soul of discipline. Then I reflected that I had

myself peremptorily dismissed my officers from duty, and by my own act

had prevented the anchor-watch being formally set and things properly

attended to. I asked myself whether it was wise ever to interfere with

the established routine of duties even from the kindest of motives. My

action might have made me appear eccentric. Goodness only knew how that

absurdly whiskered mate would “account” for my conduct, and what the

whole ship thought of that informality of their new captain. I was vexed

with myself.

Not from compunction certainly, but, as it were mechanically, I proceeded

to get the ladder in myself. Now a side-ladder of that sort is a light

affair and comes in easily, yet my vigorous tug, which should have

brought it flying on board, merely recoiled upon my body in a totally

unexpected jerk. What the devil! . . . I was so astounded by the

immovableness of that ladder that I remained stock-still, trying to

account for it to myself like that imbecile mate of mine. In the end, of

course, I put my head over the rail.

The side of the ship made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling glassy

shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and pale

floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a faint

flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly from the

naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping water with the elusive,

silent play of summer lightning in a night sky. With a gasp I saw

revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid back

immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow. One hand,

awash, clutched the bottom rung of the ladder. He was complete but for

the head. A headless corpse! The cigar dropped out of my gaping mouth

with a tiny plop and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute stillness

of all things under heaven. At that I suppose he raised up his face, a

dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship’s side. But even then I could

only barely make out down there the shape of his black-haired head.

However, it was enough for the horrid, frost-bound sensation which had

gripped me about the chest to pass off. The moment of vain exclamations

was past, too. I only climbed on the spare spar and leaned over the rail

as far as I could, to bring my eyes nearer to that mystery floating

alongside.

As he hung by the ladder, like a resting swimmer, the sea-lightning

played about his limbs at every stir; and he appeared in it ghastly,

silvery, fish-like. He remained as mute as a fish, too. He made no

motion to get out of the water, either. It was inconceivable that he

should not attempt to come on board, and strangely troubling to suspect

that perhaps he did not want to. And my first words were prompted by

just that troubled incertitude.

“What’s the matter?” I asked in my ordinary tone, speaking down to the

face upturned exactly under mine.

“Cramp,” it answered, no louder. Then slightly anxious, “I say, no need

to call any one.”

“I was not going to,” I said.

“Are you alone on deck?”

“Yes.”

I had somehow the impression that he was on the point of letting go the

ladder to swim away beyond my ken—mysterious as he came. But, for the

moment, this being appearing as if he had risen from the bottom of the

sea (it was certainly the nearest land to the ship) wanted only to know

the time. I told him. And he, down there, tentatively:

“I suppose your captain’s turned in?”

“I am sure he isn’t,” I said.

He seemed to struggle with himself, for I heard something like the low,

bitter murmur of doubt. “What’s the good?” His next words came out with

a hesitating effort.

“Look here, my man. Could you call him out quietly?”

I thought the time had come to declare myself.

“_I_ am the captain.”

I heard a “By Jove!” whispered at the level of the water. The

phosphorescence flashed in the swirl of the water all about his limbs,

his other hand seized the ladder.

“My name’s Leggatt.”

The voice was calm and resolute. A good voice. The self-possession of

that man had somehow induced a corresponding state in myself. It was

very quietly that I remarked:

“You must be a good swimmer.”

“Yes. I’ve been in the water practically since nine o’clock. The

question for me now is whether I am to let go this ladder and go on

swimming till I sink from exhaustion, or—to come on board here.”

I felt this was no mere formula of desperate speech, but a real

alternative in the view of a strong soul. I should have gathered from

this that he was young; indeed, it is only the young who are ever

confronted by such clear issues. But at the time it was pure intuition

on my part. A mysterious communication was established already between

us two—in the face of that silent, darkened tropical sea. I was young,

too; young enough to make no comment. The man in the water began

suddenly to climb up the ladder, and I hastened away from the rail to

fetch some clothes.

Before entering the cabin I stood still, listening in the lobby at the

foot of the stairs. A faint snore came through the closed door of the

chief mate’s room. The second mate’s door was on the hook, but the

darkness in there was absolutely soundless. He, too, was young and could

sleep like a stone. Remained the steward, but he was not likely to wake

up before he was called. I got a sleeping-suit out of my room and,

coming back on deck, saw the naked man from the sea sitting on the

main-hatch, glimmering white in the darkness, his elbows on his knees and

his head in his hands. In a moment he had concealed his damp body in a

sleeping-suit of the same grey-stripe pattern as the one I was wearing

and followed me like my double on the poop. Together we moved right aft,

barefooted, silent.

“What is it?” I asked in a deadened voice, taking the lighted lamp out of

the binnacle, and raising it to his face.

“An ugly business.”

He had rather regular features; a good mouth; light eyes under somewhat

heavy, dark eyebrows; a smooth, square forehead; no growth on his cheeks;

a small, brown moustache, and a well-shaped, round chin. His expression

was concentrated, meditative, under the inspecting light of the lamp I

held up to his face; such as a man thinking hard in solitude might wear.

My sleeping-suit was just right for his size. A well-knit young fellow

of twenty-five at most. He caught his lower lip with the edge of white,

even teeth.

“Yes,” I said, replacing the lamp in the binnacle. The warm, heavy

tropical night closed upon his head again.

“There’s a ship over there,” he murmured.

“Yes, I know. The _Sephora_. Did you know of us?”

“Hadn’t the slightest idea. I am the mate of her—” He paused and

corrected himself. “I should say I _was_.”

“Aha! Something wrong?”

“Yes. Very wrong indeed. I’ve killed a man.”

“What do you mean? Just now?”

“No, on the passage. Weeks ago. Thirty-nine south. When I say a man—”

“Fit of temper,” I suggested, confidently.

The shadowy, dark head, like mine, seemed to nod imperceptibly above the

ghostly grey of my sleeping-suit. It was, in the night, as though I had

been faced by my own reflection in the depths of a sombre and immense

mirror.

“A pretty thing to have to own up to for a Conway boy,” murmured my

double, distinctly.

“You’re a Conway boy?”

“I am,” he said, as if startled. Then, slowly . . . “Perhaps you too—”

It was so; but being a couple of years older I had left before he joined.

After a quick interchange of dates a silence fell; and I thought suddenly

of my absurd mate with his terrific whiskers and the “Bless my soul—you

don’t say so” type of intellect. My double gave me an inkling of his

thoughts by saying:

“My father’s a parson in Norfolk. Do you see me before a judge and jury

on that charge? For myself I can’t see the necessity. There are fellows

that an angel from heaven—And I am not that. He was one of those

creatures that are just simmering all the time with a silly sort of

wickedness. Miserable devils that have no business to live at all. He

wouldn’t do his duty and wouldn’t let anybody else do theirs. But what’s

the good of talking! You know well enough the sort of ill-conditioned

snarling cur—”

He appealed to me as if our experiences had been as identical as our

clothes. And I knew well enough the pestiferous danger of such a

character where there are no means of legal repression. And I knew well

enough also that my double there was no homicidal ruffian. I did not

think of asking him for details, and he told me the story roughly in

brusque, disconnected sentences. I needed no more. I saw it all going

on as though I were myself inside that other sleeping-suit.

“It happened while we were setting a reefed foresail, at dusk. Reefed

foresail! You understand the sort of weather. The only sail we had left

to keep the ship running; so you may guess what it had been like for

days. Anxious sort of job, that. He gave me some of his cursed

insolence at the sheet. I tell you I was overdone with this terrific

weather that seemed to have no end to it. Terrific, I tell you—and a

deep ship. I believe the fellow himself was half crazed with funk. It

was no time for gentlemanly reproof, so I turned round and felled him

like an ox. He up and at me. We closed just as an awful sea made for

the ship. All hands saw it coming and took to the rigging, but I had him

by the throat, and went on shaking him like a rat, the men above us

yelling, “Look out! look out!” Then a crash as if the sky had fallen on

my head. They say that for over ten minutes hardly anything was to be

seen of the ship—just the three masts and a bit of the forecastle head

and of the poop all awash driving along in a smother of foam. It was a

miracle that they found us, jammed together behind the forebits. It’s

clear that I meant business, because I was holding him by the throat

still when they picked us up. He was black in the face. It was too much

for them. It seems they rushed us aft together, gripped as we were,

screaming “Murder!” like a lot of lunatics, and broke into the cuddy.

And the ship running for her life, touch and go all the time, any minute

her last in a sea fit to turn your hair grey only a-looking at it. I

understand that the skipper, too, started raving like the rest of them.

The man had been deprived of sleep for more than a week, and to have this

sprung on him at the height of a furious gale nearly drove him out of his

mind. I wonder they didn’t fling me overboard after getting the carcass

of their precious ship-mate out of my fingers. They had rather a job to

separate us, I’ve been told. A sufficiently fierce story to make an old

judge and a respectable jury sit up a bit. The first thing I heard when

I came to myself was the maddening howling of that endless gale, and on

that the voice of the old man. He was hanging on to my bunk, staring

into my face out of his sou’wester.

“‘Mr. Leggatt, you have killed a man. You can act no longer as chief

mate of this ship.’”

His care to subdue his voice made it sound monotonous. He rested a hand

on the end of the skylight to steady himself with, and all that time did

not stir a limb, so far as I could see. “Nice little tale for a quiet

tea-party,” he concluded in the same tone.

One of my hands, too, rested on the end of the skylight; neither did I

stir a limb, so far as I knew. We stood less than a foot from each

other. It occurred to me that if old “Bless my soul—you don’t say so”

were to put his head up the companion and catch sight of us, he would

think he was seeing double, or imagine himself come upon a scene of weird

witchcraft; the strange captain having a quiet confabulation by the wheel

with his own grey ghost. I became very much concerned to prevent

anything of the sort. I heard the other’s soothing undertone.

“My father’s a parson in Norfolk,” it said. Evidently he had forgotten

he had told me this important fact before. Truly a nice little tale.

“You had better slip down into my stateroom now,” I said, moving off

stealthily. My double followed my movements; our bare feet made no

sound; I let him in, closed the door with care, and, after giving a call

to the second mate, returned on deck for my relief.

“Not much sign of any wind yet,” I remarked when he approached.

“No, sir. Not much,” he assented, sleepily, in his hoarse voice, with

just enough deference, no more, and barely suppressing a yawn.

“Well, that’s all you have to look out for. You have got your orders.”

“Yes, sir.”

I paced a turn or two on the poop and saw him take up his position face

forward with his elbow in the ratlines of the mizzen-rigging before I

went below. The mate’s faint snoring was still going on peacefully. The

cuddy lamp was burning over the table on which stood a vase with flowers,

a polite attention from the ship’s provision merchant—the last flowers we

should see for the next three months at the very least. Two bunches of

bananas hung from the beam symmetrically, one on each side of the

rudder-casing. Everything was as before in the ship—except that two of

her captain’s sleeping-suits were simultaneously in use, one motionless

in the cuddy, the other keeping very still in the captain’s stateroom.

It must be explained here that my cabin had the form of the capital

letter L the door being within the angle and opening into the short part

of the letter. A couch was to the left, the bed-place to the right; my

writing-desk and the chronometers’ table faced the door. But any one

opening it, unless he stepped right inside, had no view of what I call

the long (or vertical) part of the letter. It contained some lockers

surmounted by a bookcase; and a few clothes, a thick jacket or two, caps,

oilskin coat, and such like, hung on hooks. There was at the bottom of

that part a door opening into my bath-room, which could be entered also

directly from the saloon. But that way was never used.

The mysterious arrival had discovered the advantage of this particular

shape. Entering my room, lighted strongly by a big bulkhead lamp swung

on gimbals above my writing-desk, I did not see him anywhere till he

stepped out quietly from behind the coats hung in the recessed part.

“I heard somebody moving about, and went in there at once,” he whispered.

I, too, spoke under my breath.

“Nobody is likely to come in here without knocking and getting

permission.”

He nodded. His face was thin and the sunburn faded, as though he had

been ill. And no wonder. He had been, I heard presently, kept under

arrest in his cabin for nearly seven weeks. But there was nothing sickly

in his eyes or in his expression. He was not a bit like me, really; yet,

as we stood leaning over my bed-place, whispering side by side, with our

dark heads together and our backs to the door, anybody bold enough to

open it stealthily would have been treated to the uncanny sight of a

double captain busy talking in whispers with his other self.

“But all this doesn’t tell me how you came to hang on to our

side-ladder,” I inquired, in the hardly audible murmurs we used, after he

had told me something more of the proceedings on board the _Sephora_ once

the bad weather was over.

“When we sighted Java Head I had had time to think all those matters out

several times over. I had six weeks of doing nothing else, and with only

an hour or so every evening for a tramp on the quarter-deck.”

He whispered, his arms folded on the side of my bed-place, staring

through the open port. And I could imagine perfectly the manner of this

thinking out—a stubborn if not a steadfast operation; something of which

I should have been perfectly incapable.

“I reckoned it would be dark before we closed with the land,” he

continued, so low that I had to strain my hearing, near as we were to

each other, shoulder touching shoulder almost. “So I asked to speak to

the old man. He always seemed very sick when he came to see me—as if he

could not look me in the face. You know, that foresail saved the ship.

She was too deep to have run long under bare poles. And it was I that

managed to set it for him. Anyway, he came. When I had him in my

cabin—he stood by the door looking at me as if I had the halter round my

neck already—I asked him right away to leave my cabin door unlocked at

night while the ship was going through Sunda Straits. There would be the

Java coast within two or three miles, off Angier Point. I wanted nothing

more. I’ve had a prize for swimming my second year in the Conway.”

“I can believe it,” I breathed out.

“God only knows why they locked me in every night. To see some of their

faces you’d have thought they were afraid I’d go about at night

strangling people. Am I a murdering brute? Do I look it? By Jove! if I

had been he wouldn’t have trusted himself like that into my room. You’ll

say I might have chucked him aside and bolted out, there and then—it was

dark already. Well, no. And for the same reason I wouldn’t think of

trying to smash the door. There would have been a rush to stop me at the

noise, and I did not mean to get into a confounded scrimmage. Somebody

else might have got killed—for I would not have broken out only to get

chucked back, and I did not want any more of that work. He refused,

looking more sick than ever. He was afraid of the men, and also of that

old second mate of his who had been sailing with him for years—a

grey-headed old humbug; and his steward, too, had been with him devil

knows how long—seventeen years or more—a dogmatic sort of loafer who

hated me like poison, just because I was the chief mate. No chief mate

ever made more than one voyage in the _Sephora_, you know. Those two old

chaps ran the ship. Devil only knows what the skipper wasn’t afraid of

(all his nerve went to pieces altogether in that hellish spell of bad

weather we had)—of what the law would do to him—of his wife, perhaps.

Oh, yes! she’s on board. Though I don’t think she would have meddled.

She would have been only too glad to have me out of the ship in any way.

The ‘brand of Cain’ business, don’t you see. That’s all right. I was

ready enough to go off wandering on the face of the earth—and that was

price enough to pay for an Abel of that sort. Anyhow, he wouldn’t listen

to me. ‘This thing must take its course. I represent the law here.’ He

was shaking like a leaf. ‘So you won’t?’ ‘No!’ ‘Then I hope you will

be able to sleep on that,’ I said, and turned my back on him. ‘I wonder

that _you_ can,’ cries he, and locks the door.

“Well, after that, I couldn’t. Not very well. That was three weeks ago.

We have had a slow passage through the Java Sea; drifted about Carimata

for ten days. When we anchored here they thought, I suppose, it was all

right. The nearest land (and that’s five miles) is the ship’s

destination; the consul would soon set about catching me; and there would

have been no object in bolting to these islets there. I don’t suppose

there’s a drop of water on them. I don’t know how it was, but to-night

that steward, after bringing me my supper, went out to let me eat it, and

left the door unlocked. And I ate it—all there was, too. After I had

finished I strolled out on the quarterdeck. I don’t know that I meant to

do anything. A breath of fresh air was all I wanted, I believe. Then a

sudden temptation came over me. I kicked off my slippers and was in the

water before I had made up my mind fairly. Somebody heard the splash and

they raised an awful hullabaloo. ‘He’s gone! Lower the boats! He’s

committed suicide! No, he’s swimming.’ Certainly I was swimming. It’s

not so easy for a swimmer like me to commit suicide by drowning. I

landed on the nearest islet before the boat left the ship’s side. I

heard them pulling about in the dark, hailing, and so on, but after a bit

they gave up. Everything quieted down and the anchorage became as still

as death. I sat down on a stone and began to think. I felt certain they

would start searching for me at daylight. There was no place to hide on

those stony things—and if there had been, what would have been the good?

But now I was clear of that ship, I was not going back. So after a while

I took off all my clothes, tied them up in a bundle with a stone inside,

and dropped them in the deep water on the outer side of that islet. That

was suicide enough for me. Let them think what they liked, but I didn’t

mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank—but that’s not the

same thing. I struck out for another of these little islands, and it was

from that one that I first saw your riding-light. Something to swim for.

I went on easily, and on the way I came upon a flat rock a foot or two

above water. In the daytime, I dare say, you might make it out with a

glass from your poop. I scrambled up on it and rested myself for a bit.

Then I made another start. That last spell must have been over a mile.”

His whisper was getting fainter and fainter, and all the time he stared

straight out through the port-hole, in which there was not even a star to

be seen. I had not interrupted him. There was something that made

comment impossible in his narrative, or perhaps in himself; a sort of

feeling, a quality, which I can’t find a name for. And when he ceased,

all I found was a futile whisper: “So you swam for our light?”

“Yes—straight for it. It was something to swim for. I couldn’t see any

stars low down because the coast was in the way, and I couldn’t see the

land, either. The water was like glass. One might have been swimming in

a confounded thousand-feet deep cistern with no place for scrambling out

anywhere; but what I didn’t like was the notion of swimming round and

round like a crazed bullock before I gave out; and as I didn’t mean to go

back . . . No. Do you see me being hauled back, stark naked, off one of

these little islands by the scruff of the neck and fighting like a wild

beast? Somebody would have got killed for certain, and I did not want

any of that. So I went on. Then your ladder—”

“Why didn’t you hail the ship?” I asked, a little louder.

He touched my shoulder lightly. Lazy footsteps came right over our heads

and stopped. The second mate had crossed from the other side of the poop

and might have been hanging over the rail, for all we knew.

“He couldn’t hear us talking—could he?” My double breathed into my very

ear, anxiously.

His anxiety was an answer, a sufficient answer, to the question I had put

to him. An answer containing all the difficulty of that situation. I

closed the port-hole quietly, to make sure. A louder word might have

been overheard.

“Who’s that?” he whispered then.

“My second mate. But I don’t know much more of the fellow than you do.”

And I told him a little about myself. I had been appointed to take

charge while I least expected anything of the sort, not quite a fortnight

ago. I didn’t know either the ship or the people. Hadn’t had the time

in port to look about me or size anybody up. And as to the crew, all

they knew was that I was appointed to take the ship home. For the rest,

I was almost as much of a stranger on board as himself, I said. And at

the moment I felt it most acutely. I felt that it would take very little

to make me a suspect person in the eyes of the ship’s company.

He had turned about meantime; and we, the two strangers in the ship,

faced each other in identical attitudes.

“Your ladder—” he murmured, after a silence. “Who’d have thought of

finding a ladder hanging over at night in a ship anchored out here! I

felt just then a very unpleasant faintness. After the life I’ve been

leading for nine weeks, anybody would have got out of condition. I

wasn’t capable of swimming round as far as your rudder-chains. And, lo

and behold! there was a ladder to get hold of. After I gripped it I said

to myself, ‘What’s the good?’ When I saw a man’s head looking over I

thought I would swim away presently and leave him shouting—in whatever

language it was. I didn’t mind being looked at. I—I liked it. And then

you speaking to me so quietly—as if you had expected me—made me hold on a

little longer. It had been a confounded lonely time—I don’t mean while

swimming. I was glad to talk a little to somebody that didn’t belong to

the _Sephora_. As to asking for the captain, that was a mere impulse.

It could have been no use, with all the ship knowing about me and the

other people pretty certain to be round here in the morning. I don’t

know—I wanted to be seen, to talk with somebody, before I went on. I

don’t know what I would have said. . . . ‘Fine night, isn’t it?’ or

something of the sort.”

“Do you think they will be round here presently?” I asked with some

incredulity.

“Quite likely,” he said, faintly.

He looked extremely haggard all of a sudden. His head rolled on his

shoulders.

“H’m. We shall see then. Meantime get into that bed,” I whispered.

“Want help? There.”

It was a rather high bed-place with a set of drawers underneath. This

amazing swimmer really needed the lift I gave him by seizing his leg. He

tumbled in, rolled over on his back, and flung one arm across his eyes.

And then, with his face nearly hidden, he must have looked exactly as I

used to look in that bed. I gazed upon my other self for a while before

drawing across carefully the two green serge curtains which ran on a

brass rod. I thought for a moment of pinning them together for greater

safety, but I sat down on the couch, and once there I felt unwilling to

rise and hunt for a pin. I would do it in a moment. I was extremely

tired, in a peculiarly intimate way, by the strain of stealthiness, by

the effort of whispering and the general secrecy of this excitement. It

was three o’clock by now and I had been on my feet since nine, but I was

not sleepy; I could not have gone to sleep. I sat there, fagged out,

looking at the curtains, trying to clear my mind of the confused

sensation of being in two places at once, and greatly bothered by an

exasperating knocking in my head. It was a relief to discover suddenly

that it was not in my head at all, but on the outside of the door.

Before I could collect myself the words “Come in” were out of my mouth,

and the steward entered with a tray, bringing in my morning coffee. I

had slept, after all, and I was so frightened that I shouted, “This way!

I am here, steward,” as though he had been miles away. He put down the

tray on the table next the couch and only then said, very quietly, “I can

see you are here, sir.” I felt him give me a keen look, but I dared not

meet his eyes just then. He must have wondered why I had drawn the

curtains of my bed before going to sleep on the couch. He went out,

hooking the door open as usual.

I heard the crew washing decks above me. I knew I would have been told

at once if there had been any wind. Calm, I thought, and I was doubly

vexed. Indeed, I felt dual more than ever. The steward reappeared

suddenly in the doorway. I jumped up from the couch so quickly that he

gave a start.

“What do you want here?”

“Close your port, sir—they are washing decks.”

“It is closed,” I said, reddening.

“Very well, sir.” But he did not move from the doorway and returned my

stare in an extraordinary, equivocal manner for a time. Then his eyes

wavered, all his expression changed, and in a voice unusually gentle,

almost coaxingly:

“May I come in to take the empty cup away, sir?”

“Of course!” I turned my back on him while he popped in and out. Then I

unhooked and closed the door and even pushed the bolt. This sort of

thing could not go on very long. The cabin was as hot as an oven, too.

I took a peep at my double, and discovered that he had not moved, his arm

was still over his eyes; but his chest heaved; his hair was wet; his chin

glistened with perspiration. I reached over him and opened the port.

“I must show myself on deck,” I reflected.

Of course, theoretically, I could do what I liked, with no one to say nay

to me within the whole circle of the horizon; but to lock my cabin door

and take the key away I did not dare. Directly I put my head out of the

companion I saw the group of my two officers, the second mate barefooted,

the chief mate in long india-rubber boots, near the break of the poop,

and the steward half-way down the poop-ladder talking to them eagerly.

He happened to catch sight of me and dived, the second ran down on the

main-deck shouting some order or other, and the chief mate came to meet

me, touching his cap.

There was a sort of curiosity in his eye that I did not like. I don’t

know whether the steward had told them that I was “queer” only, or

downright drunk, but I know the man meant to have a good look at me. I

watched him coming with a smile which, as he got into point-blank range,

took effect and froze his very whiskers. I did not give him time to open

his lips.

“Square the yards by lifts and braces before the hands go to breakfast.”

It was the first particular order I had given on board that ship; and I

stayed on deck to see it executed, too. I had felt the need of asserting

myself without loss of time. That sneering young cub got taken down a

peg or two on that occasion, and I also seized the opportunity of having

a good look at the face of every foremast man as they filed past me to go

to the after braces. At breakfast time, eating nothing myself, I

presided with such frigid dignity that the two mates were only too glad

to escape from the cabin as soon as decency permitted; and all the time

the dual working of my mind distracted me almost to the point of

insanity. I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent

on my actions as my own personality, sleeping in that bed, behind that

door which faced me as I sat at the head of the table. It was very much

like being mad, only it was worse because one was aware of it.

I had to shake him for a solid minute, but when at last he opened his

eyes it was in the full possession of his senses, with an inquiring look.

“All’s well so far,” I whispered. “Now you must vanish into the

bath-room.”

He did so, as noiseless as a ghost, and I then rang for the steward, and

facing him boldly, directed him to tidy up my stateroom while I was

having my bath—“and be quick about it.” As my tone admitted of no

excuses, he said, “Yes, sir,” and ran off to fetch his dust-pan and

brushes. I took a bath and did most of my dressing, splashing, and

whistling softly for the steward’s edification, while the secret sharer

of my life stood drawn up bolt upright in that little space, his face

looking very sunken in daylight, his eyelids lowered under the stern,

dark line of his eyebrows drawn together by a slight frown.

When I left him there to go back to my room the steward was finishing

dusting. I sent for the mate and engaged him in some insignificant

conversation. It was, as it were, trifling with the terrific character

of his whiskers; but my object was to give him an opportunity for a good

look at my cabin. And then I could at last shut, with a clear

conscience, the door of my stateroom and get my double back into the

recessed part. There was nothing else for it. He had to sit still on a

small folding stool, half smothered by the heavy coats hanging there. We

listened to the steward going into the bath-room out of the saloon,

filling the water-bottles there, scrubbing the bath, setting things to

rights, whisk, bang, clatter—out again into the saloon—turn the

key—click. Such was my scheme for keeping my second self invisible.

Nothing better could be contrived under the circumstances. And there we

sat; I at my writing-desk ready to appear busy with some papers, he

behind me, out of sight of the door. It would not have been prudent to

talk in daytime; and I could not have stood the excitement of that queer

sense of whispering to myself. Now and then glancing over my shoulder, I

saw him far back there, sitting rigidly on the low stool, his bare feet

close together, his arms folded, his head hanging on his breast—and

perfectly still. Anybody would have taken him for me.

I was fascinated by it myself. Every moment I had to glance over my

shoulder. I was looking at him when a voice outside the door said:

“Beg pardon, sir.”

“Well!” . . . I kept my eyes on him, and so, when the voice outside the

door announced, “There’s a ship’s boat coming our way, sir,” I saw him

give a start—the first movement he had made for hours. But he did not

raise his bowed head.

“All right. Get the ladder over.”

I hesitated. Should I whisper something to him? But what? His

immobility seemed to have been never disturbed. What could I tell him he

did not know already? . . . Finally I went on deck.

CHAPTER II

THE skipper of the _Sephora_ had a thin red whisker all round his face,

and the sort of complexion that goes with hair of that colour; also the

particular, rather smeary shade of blue in the eyes. He was not exactly

a showy figure; his shoulders were high, his stature but middling—one leg

slightly more bandy than the other. He shook hands, looking vaguely

around. A spiritless tenacity was his main characteristic, I judged. I

behaved with a politeness which seemed to disconcert him. Perhaps he was

shy. He mumbled to me as if he were ashamed of what he was saying; gave

his name (it was something like Archbold—but at this distance of years I

hardly am sure), his ship’s name, and a few other particulars of that

sort, in the manner of a criminal making a reluctant and doleful

confession. He had had terrible weather on the passage

out—terrible—terrible—wife aboard, too.

By this time we were seated in the cabin and the steward brought in a

tray with a bottle and glasses. “Thanks! No.” Never took liquor.

Would have some water, though. He drank two tumblerfuls. Terrible

thirsty work. Ever since daylight had been exploring the islands round

his ship.

“What was that for—fun?” I asked, with an appearance of polite interest.

“No!” He sighed. “Painful duty.”

As he persisted in his mumbling and I wanted my double to hear every

word, I hit upon the notion of informing him that I regretted to say I

was hard of hearing.

“Such a young man, too!” he nodded, keeping his smeary blue,

unintelligent eyes fastened upon me. What was the cause of it—some

disease? he inquired, without the least sympathy and as if he thought

that, if so, I’d got no more than I deserved.

“Yes; disease,” I admitted in a cheerful tone which seemed to shock him.

But my point was gained, because he had to raise his voice to give me his

tale. It is not worth while to record that version. It was just over

two months since all this had happened, and he had thought so much about

it that he seemed completely muddled as to its bearings, but still

immensely impressed.

“What would you think of such a thing happening on board your own ship?

I’ve had the _Sephora_ for these fifteen years. I am a well-known

shipmaster.”

He was densely distressed—and perhaps I should have sympathised with him

if I had been able to detach my mental vision from the unsuspected sharer

of my cabin as though he were my second self. There he was on the other

side of the bulkhead, four or five feet from us, no more, as we sat in

the saloon. I looked politely at Captain Archbold (if that was his

name), but it was the other I saw, in a grey sleeping-suit, seated on a

low stool, his bare feet close together, his arms folded, and every word

said between us falling into the ears of his dark head bowed on his

chest.

“I have been at sea now, man and boy, for seven-and-thirty years, and

I’ve never heard of such a thing happening in an English ship. And that

it should be my ship. Wife on board, too.”

I was hardly listening to him.

“Don’t you think,” I said, “that the heavy sea which, you told me, came

aboard just then might have killed the man? I have seen the sheer weight

of a sea kill a man very neatly, by simply breaking his neck.”

“Good God!” he uttered, impressively, fixing his smeary blue eyes on me.

“The sea! No man killed by the sea ever looked like that.” He seemed

positively scandalised at my suggestion. And as I gazed at him,

certainly not prepared for anything original on his part, he advanced his

head close to mine and thrust his tongue out at me so suddenly that I

couldn’t help starting back.

After scoring over my calmness in this graphic way he nodded wisely. If

I had seen the sight, he assured me, I would never forget it as long as I

lived. The weather was too bad to give the corpse a proper sea burial.

So next day at dawn they took it up on the poop, covering its face with a

bit of bunting; he read a short prayer, and then, just as it was, in its

oilskins and long boots, they launched it amongst those mountainous seas

that seemed ready every moment to swallow up the ship herself and the

terrified lives on board of her.

“That reefed foresail saved you,” I threw in.

“Under God—it did,” he exclaimed fervently. “It was by a special mercy,

I firmly believe, that it stood some of those hurricane squalls.”

“It was the setting of that sail which—” I began.

“God’s own hand in it,” he interrupted me. “Nothing less could have done

it. I don’t mind telling you that I hardly dared give the order. It

seemed impossible that we could touch anything without losing it, and

then our last hope would have been gone.”

The terror of that gale was on him yet. I let him go on for a bit, then

said, casually—as if returning to a minor subject:

“You were very anxious to give up your mate to the shore people, I

believe?”

He was. To the law. His obscure tenacity on that point had in it

something incomprehensible and a little awful; something, as it were,

mystical, quite apart from his anxiety that he should not be suspected of

“countenancing any doings of that sort.” Seven-and-thirty virtuous years

at sea, of which over twenty of immaculate command, and the last fifteen

in the _Sephora_, seemed to have laid him under some pitiless obligation.

“And you know,” he went on, groping shamefacedly amongst his feelings, “I

did not engage that young fellow. His people had some interest with my

owners. I was in a way forced to take him on. He looked very smart,

very gentlemanly, and all that. But do you know—I never liked him,

somehow. I am a plain man. You see, he wasn’t exactly the sort for the

chief mate of a ship like the _Sephora_.”

I had become so connected in thoughts and impressions with the secret

sharer of my cabin that I felt as if I, personally, were being given to

understand that I, too, was not the sort that would have done for the

chief mate of a ship like the _Sephora_. I had no doubt of it in my

mind.

“Not at all the style of man. You understand,” he insisted,

superfluously, looking hard at me.

I smiled urbanely. He seemed at a loss for a while.

“I suppose I must report a suicide.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Suicide! That’s what I’ll have to write to my owners directly I get

in.”

“Unless you manage to recover him before to-morrow,” I assented,

dispassionately. . . “I mean, alive.”

He mumbled something which I really did not catch, and I turned my ear to

him in a puzzled manner. He fairly bawled:

“The land—I say, the mainland is at least seven miles off my anchorage.”

“About that.”

My lack of excitement, of curiosity, of surprise, of any sort of

pronounced interest, began to arouse his distrust. But except for the

felicitous pretence of deafness I had not tried to pretend anything. I

had felt utterly incapable of playing the part of ignorance properly, and

therefore was afraid to try. It is also certain that he had brought some

ready-made suspicions with him, and that he viewed my politeness as a

strange and unnatural phenomenon. And yet how else could I have received

him? Not heartily! That was impossible for psychological reasons, which

I need not state here. My only object was to keep off his inquiries.

Surlily? Yes, but surliness might have provoked a point-blank question.

From its novelty to him and from its nature, punctilious courtesy was the

manner best calculated to restrain the man. But there was the danger of

his breaking through my defence bluntly. I could not, I think, have met

him by a direct lie, also for psychological (not moral) reasons. If he

had only known how afraid I was of his putting my feeling of identity

with the other to the test! But, strangely enough—(I thought of it only

afterward)—I believe that he was not a little disconcerted by the reverse

side of that weird situation, by something in me that reminded him of the

man he was seeking—suggested a mysterious similitude to the young fellow

he had distrusted and disliked from the first.

However that might have been, the silence was not very prolonged. He

took another oblique step.

“I reckon I had no more than a two-mile pull to your ship. Not a bit

more.”

“And quite enough, too, in this awful heat,” I said.

Another pause full of mistrust followed. Necessity, they say, is mother

of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions. And

I was afraid he would ask me point-blank for news of my other self.

“Nice little saloon, isn’t it?” I remarked, as if noticing for the first

time the way his eyes roamed from one closed door to the other. “And

very well fitted out too. Here, for instance,” I continued, reaching

over the back of my seat negligently and flinging the door open, “is my

bath-room.”

He made an eager movement, but hardly gave it a glance. I got up, shut

the door of the bath-room, and invited him to have a look round, as if I

were very proud of my accommodation. He had to rise and be shown round,

but he went through the business without any raptures whatever.

“And now we’ll have a look at my stateroom,” I declared, in a voice as

loud as I dared to make it, crossing the cabin to the starboard side with

purposely heavy steps.

He followed me in and gazed around. My intelligent double had vanished.

I played my part.

“Very convenient—isn’t it?”

“Very nice. Very comf. . . ” He didn’t finish, and went out brusquely

as if to escape from some unrighteous wiles of mine. But it was not to

be. I had been too frightened not to feel vengeful; I felt I had him on

the run, and I meant to keep him on the run. My polite insistence must

have had something menacing in it, because he gave in suddenly. And I

did not let him off a single item; mate’s room, pantry, storerooms, the

very sail-locker which was also under the poop—he had to look into them

all. When at last I showed him out on the quarter-deck he drew a long,

spiritless sigh, and mumbled dismally that he must really be going back

to his ship now. I desired my mate, who had joined us, to see to the

captain’s boat.

The man of whiskers gave a blast on the whistle which he used to wear

hanging round his neck, and yelled, “_Sephoras_ away!” My double down

there in my cabin must have heard, and certainly could not feel more

relieved than I. Four fellows came running out from somewhere forward

and went over the side, while my own men, appearing on deck too, lined

the rail. I escorted my visitor to the gangway ceremoniously, and nearly

overdid it. He was a tenacious beast. On the very ladder he lingered,

and in that unique, guiltily conscientious manner of sticking to the

point:

“I say . . . you . . . you don’t think that—”

I covered his voice loudly:

“Certainly not. . . . I am delighted. Good-bye.”

I had an idea of what he meant to say, and just saved myself by the

privilege of defective hearing. He was too shaken generally to insist,

but my mate, close witness of that parting, looked mystified and his face

took on a thoughtful cast. As I did not want to appear as if I wished to

avoid all communication with my officers, he had the opportunity to

address me.

“Seems a very nice man. His boat’s crew told our chaps a very

extraordinary story, if what I am told by the steward is true. I suppose

you had it from the captain, sir?”

“Yes. I had a story from the captain.”

“A very horrible affair—isn’t it, sir?”

“It is.”

“Beats all these tales we hear about murders in Yankee ships.”

“I don’t think it beats them. I don’t think it resembles them in the

least.”

“Bless my soul—you don’t say so! But of course I’ve no acquaintance

whatever with American ships, not I, so I couldn’t go against your

knowledge. It’s horrible enough for me. . . . But the queerest part is

that those fellows seemed to have some idea the man was hidden aboard

here. They had really. Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

“Preposterous—isn’t it?”

We were walking to and fro athwart the quarterdeck. No one of the crew

forward could be seen (the day was Sunday), and the mate pursued:

“There was some little dispute about it. Our chaps took offence. ‘As if

we would harbour a thing like that,’ they said. ‘Wouldn’t you like to

look for him in our coal-hole?’ Quite a tiff. But they made it up in

the end. I suppose he did drown himself. Don’t you, sir?”

“I don’t suppose anything.”

“You have no doubt in the matter, sir?”

“None whatever.”

I left him suddenly. I felt I was producing a bad impression, but with

my double down there it was most trying to be on deck. And it was almost

as trying to be below. Altogether a nerve-trying situation. But on the

whole I felt less torn in two when I was with him. There was no one in

the whole ship whom I dared take into my confidence. Since the hands had

got to know his story, it would have been impossible to pass him off for

any one else, and an accidental discovery was to be dreaded now more than

ever. . . .

The steward being engaged in laying the table for dinner, we could talk

only with our eyes when I first went down. Later in the afternoon we had

a cautious try at whispering. The Sunday quietness of the ship was

against us; the stillness of air and water around her was against us; the

elements, the men were against us—everything was against us in our secret

partnership; time itself—for this could not go on forever. The very

trust in Providence was, I suppose, denied to his guilt. Shall I confess

that this thought cast me down very much? And as to the chapter of

accidents which counts for so much in the book of success, I could only

hope that it was closed. For what favourable accident could be expected?

“Did you hear everything?” were my first words as soon as we took up our

position side by side, leaning over my bed-place.

He had. And the proof of it was his earnest whisper, “The man told you

he hardly dared to give the order.”

I understood the reference to be to that saving foresail.

“Yes. He was afraid of it being lost in the setting.”

“I assure you he never gave the order. He may think he did, but he never

gave it. He stood there with me on the break of the poop after the

maintopsail blew away, and whimpered about our last hope—positively

whimpered about it and nothing else—and the night coming on! To hear

one’s skipper go on like that in such weather was enough to drive any

fellow out of his mind. It worked me up into a sort of desperation. I

just took it into my own hands and went away from him, boiling, and— But

what’s the use telling you? _You_ know! . . . Do you think that if I had

not been pretty fierce with them I should have got the men to do

anything? Not it! The bo’s’n perhaps? Perhaps! It wasn’t a heavy

sea—it was a sea gone mad! I suppose the end of the world will be

something like that; and a man may have the heart to see it coming once

and be done with it—but to have to face it day after day—I don’t blame

anybody. I was precious little better than the rest. Only—I was an

officer of that old coal-waggon, anyhow—”

“I quite understand,” I conveyed that sincere assurance into his ear. He

was out of breath with whispering; I could hear him pant slightly. It

was all very simple. The same strung-up force which had given

twenty-four men a chance, at least, for their lives, had, in a sort of

recoil, crushed an unworthy mutinous existence.

But I had no leisure to weigh the merits of the matter—footsteps in the

saloon, a heavy knock. “There’s enough wind to get under way with, sir.”

Here was the call of a new claim upon my thoughts and even upon my

feelings.

“Turn the hands up,” I cried through the door. “I’ll be on deck

directly.”

I was going out to make the acquaintance of my ship. Before I left the

cabin our eyes met—the eyes of the only two strangers on board. I

pointed to the recessed part where the little camp-stool awaited him and

laid my finger on my lips. He made a gesture—somewhat vague—a little

mysterious, accompanied by a faint smile, as if of regret.

This is not the place to enlarge upon the sensations of a man who feels

for the first time a ship move under his feet to his own independent

word. In my case they were not unalloyed. I was not wholly alone with

my command; for there was that stranger in my cabin. Or rather, I was

not completely and wholly with her. Part of me was absent. That mental

feeling of being in two places at once affected me physically as if the

mood of secrecy had penetrated my very soul. Before an hour had elapsed

since the ship had begun to move, having occasion to ask the mate (he

stood by my side) to take a compass bearing of the Pagoda, I caught

myself reaching up to his ear in whispers. I say I caught myself, but

enough had escaped to startle the man. I can’t describe it otherwise

than by saying that he shied. A grave, preoccupied manner, as though he

were in possession of some perplexing intelligence, did not leave him

henceforth. A little later I moved away from the rail to look at the

compass with such a stealthy gait that the helmsman noticed it—and I

could not help noticing the unusual roundness of his eyes. These are

trifling instances, though it’s to no commander’s advantage to be

suspected of ludicrous eccentricities. But I was also more seriously

affected. There are to a seaman certain words, gestures, that should in

given conditions come as naturally, as instinctively as the winking of a

menaced eye. A certain order should spring on to his lips without

thinking; a certain sign should get itself made, so to speak, without

reflection. But all unconscious alertness had abandoned me. I had to

make an effort of will to recall myself back (from the cabin) to the

conditions of the moment. I felt that I was appearing an irresolute

commander to those people who were watching me more or less critically.

And, besides, there were the scares. On the second day out, for

instance, coming off the deck in the afternoon (I had straw slippers on

my bare feet) I stopped at the open pantry door and spoke to the steward.

He was doing something there with his back to me. At the sound of my

voice he nearly jumped out of his skin, as the saying is, and

incidentally broke a cup.

“What on earth’s the matter with you?” I asked, astonished.

He was extremely confused. “Beg your pardon, sir. I made sure you were

in your cabin.”

“You see I wasn’t.”

“No, sir. I could have sworn I had heard you moving in there not a

moment ago. It’s most extraordinary . . . very sorry, sir.”

I passed on with an inward shudder. I was so identified with my secret

double that I did not even mention the fact in those scanty, fearful

whispers we exchanged. I suppose he had made some slight noise of some

kind or other. It would have been miraculous if he hadn’t at one time or

another. And yet, haggard as he appeared, he looked always perfectly

self-controlled, more than calm—almost invulnerable. On my suggestion he

remained almost entirely in the bathroom, which, upon the whole, was the

safest place. There could be really no shadow of an excuse for any one

ever wanting to go in there, once the steward had done with it. It was a

very tiny place. Sometimes he reclined on the floor, his legs bent, his

head sustained on one elbow. At others I would find him on the

camp-stool, sitting in his grey sleeping-suit and with his cropped dark

hair like a patient, unmoved convict. At night I would smuggle him into

my bed-place, and we would whisper together, with the regular footfalls

of the officer of the watch passing and repassing over our heads. It was

an infinitely miserable time. It was lucky that some tins of fine

preserves were stowed in a locker in my stateroom; hard bread I could

always get hold of; and so he lived on stewed chicken, paté de foie gras,

asparagus, cooked oysters, sardines—on all sorts of abominable sham

delicacies out of tins. My early morning coffee he always drank; and it

was all I dared do for him in that respect.

Every day there was the horrible manoeuvring to go through so that my

room and then the bath-room should be done in the usual way. I came to

hate the sight of the steward, to abhor the voice of that harmless man.

I felt that it was he who would bring on the disaster of discovery. It

hung like a sword over our heads.

The fourth day out, I think (we were then working down the east side of

the Gulf of Siam, tack for tack, in light winds and smooth water)—the

fourth day, I say, of this miserable juggling with the unavoidable, as we

sat at our evening meal, that man, whose slightest movement I dreaded,

after putting down the dishes ran up on deck busily. This could not be

dangerous. Presently he came down again; and then it appeared that he

had remembered a coat of mine which I had thrown over a rail to dry after

having been wetted in a shower which had passed over the ship in the

afternoon. Sitting stolidly at the head of the table I became terrified

at the sight of the garment on his arm. Of course he made for my door.

There was no time to lose.

“Steward,” I thundered. My nerves were so shaken that I could not govern

my voice and conceal my agitation. This was the sort of thing that made

my terrifically whiskered mate tap his forehead with his forefinger. I

had detected him using that gesture while talking on deck with a

confidential air to the carpenter. It was too far to hear a word, but I

had no doubt that this pantomime could only refer to the strange new

captain.

“Yes, sir,” the pale-faced steward turned resignedly to me. It was this

maddening course of being shouted at, checked without rhyme or reason,

arbitrarily chased out of my cabin, suddenly called into it, sent flying

out of his pantry on incomprehensible errands, that accounted for the

growing wretchedness of his expression.

“Where are you going with that coat?”

“To your room, sir.”

“Is there another shower coming?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. Shall I go up again and see, sir?”

“No! never mind.”

My object was attained, as of course my other self in there would have

heard everything that passed. During this interlude my two officers

never raised their eyes off their respective plates; but the lip of that

confounded cub, the second mate, quivered visibly.

I expected the steward to hook my coat on and come out at once. He was

very slow about it; but I dominated my nervousness sufficiently not to

shout after him. Suddenly I became aware (it could be heard plainly

enough) that the fellow for some reason or other was opening the door of

the bath-room. It was the end. The place was literally not big enough

to swing a cat in. My voice died in my throat and I went stony all over.

I expected to hear a yell of surprise and terror, and made a movement,

but had not the strength to get on my legs. Everything remained still.

Had my second self taken the poor wretch by the throat? I don’t know

what I would have done next moment if I had not seen the steward come out

of my room, close the door, and then stand quietly by the sideboard.

“Saved,” I thought. “But, no! Lost! Gone! He was gone!”

I laid my knife and fork down and leaned back in my chair. My head swam.

After a while, when sufficiently recovered to speak in a steady voice, I

instructed my mate to put the ship round at eight o’clock himself.

“I won’t come on deck,” I went on. “I think I’ll turn in, and unless the

wind shifts I don’t want to be disturbed before midnight. I feel a bit

seedy.”

“You did look middling bad a little while ago,” the chief mate remarked

without showing any great concern.

They both went out, and I stared at the steward clearing the table.

There was nothing to be read on that wretched man’s face. But why did he

avoid my eyes I asked myself. Then I thought I should like to hear the

sound of his voice.

“Steward!”

“Sir!” Startled as usual.

“Where did you hang up that coat?”

“In the bath-room, sir.” The usual anxious tone. “It’s not quite dry

yet, sir.”

For some time longer I sat in the cuddy. Had my double vanished as he

had come? But of his coming there was an explanation, whereas his

disappearance would be inexplicable. . . . I went slowly into my dark

room, shut the door, lighted the lamp, and for a time dared not turn

round. When at last I did I saw him standing bolt-upright in the narrow

recessed part. It would not be true to say I had a shock, but an

irresistible doubt of his bodily existence flitted through my mind. Can

it be, I asked myself, that he is not visible to other eyes than mine?

It was like being haunted. Motionless, with a grave face, he raised his

hands slightly at me in a gesture which meant clearly, “Heavens! what a

narrow escape!” Narrow indeed. I think I had come creeping quietly as

near insanity as any man who has not actually gone over the border. That

gesture restrained me, so to speak.

The mate with the terrific whiskers was now putting the ship on the other

tack. In the moment of profound silence which follows upon the hands

going to their stations I heard on the poop his raised voice: “Hard

alee!” and the distant shout of the order repeated on the maindeck. The

sails, in that light breeze, made but a faint fluttering noise. It

ceased. The ship was coming round slowly; I held my breath in the

renewed stillness of expectation; one wouldn’t have thought that there

was a single living soul on her decks. A sudden brisk shout, “Mainsail

haul!” broke the spell, and in the noisy cries and rush overhead of the

men running away with the main-brace we two, down in my cabin, came

together in our usual position by the bed-place.

He did not wait for my question. “I heard him fumbling here and just

managed to squat myself down in the bath,” he whispered to me. “The

fellow only opened the door and put his arm in to hang the coat up. All

the same—”

“I never thought of that,” I whispered back, even more appalled than

before at the closeness of the shave, and marvelling at that something

unyielding in his character which was carrying him through so finely.

There was no agitation in his whisper. Whoever was being driven

distracted, it was not he. He was sane. And the proof of his sanity was

continued when he took up the whispering again.

“It would never do for me to come to life again.”

It was something that a ghost might have said. But what he was alluding

to was his old captain’s reluctant admission of the theory of suicide.

It would obviously serve his turn—if I had understood at all the view

which seemed to govern the unalterable purpose of his action.

“You must maroon me as soon as ever you can get amongst these islands off

the Cambodje shore,” he went on.

“Maroon you! We are not living in a boy’s adventure tale,” I protested.

His scornful whispering took me up.

“We aren’t indeed! There’s nothing of a boy’s tale in this. But there’s

nothing else for it. I want no more. You don’t suppose I am afraid of

what can be done to me? Prison or gallows or whatever they may please.

But you don’t see me coming back to explain such things to an old fellow

in a wig and twelve respectable tradesmen, do you? What can they know

whether I am guilty or not—or of _what_ I am guilty, either? That’s my

affair. What does the Bible say? ‘Driven off the face of the earth.’

Very well. I am off the face of the earth now. As I came at night so I

shall go.”

“Impossible!” I murmured. “You can’t.”

“Can’t? . . . Not naked like a soul on the Day of Judgment. I shall

freeze on to this sleeping-suit. The Last Day is not yet—and you have

understood thoroughly. Didn’t you?”

I felt suddenly ashamed of myself. I may say truly that I understood—and

my hesitation in letting that man swim away from my ship’s side had been

a mere sham sentiment, a sort of cowardice.

“It can’t be done now till next night,” I breathed out. “The ship is on

the off-shore tack and the wind may fail us.”

“As long as I know that you understand,” he whispered. “But of course

you do. It’s a great satisfaction to have got somebody to understand.

You seem to have been there on purpose.” And in the same whisper, as if

we two whenever we talked had to say things to each other which were not

fit for the world to hear, he added, “It’s very wonderful.” We remained

side by side talking in our secret way—but sometimes silent or just

exchanging a whispered word or two at long intervals. And as usual he

stared through the port. A breath of wind came now and again into our

faces. The ship might have been moored in dock, so gently and on an even

keel she slipped through the water, that did not murmur even at our

passage, shadowy and silent like a phantom sea.

At midnight I went on deck, and to my mate’s great surprise put the ship

round on the other tack. His terrible whiskers flitted round me in

silent criticism. I certainly should not have done it if it had been

only a question of getting out of that sleepy gulf as quickly as

possible. I believe he told the second mate, who relieved him, that it

was a great want of judgment. The other only yawned. That intolerable

cub shuffled about so sleepily and lolled against the rails in such a

slack, improper fashion that I came down on him sharply.

“Aren’t you properly awake yet?”

“Yes, sir! I am awake.”

“Well, then, be good enough to hold yourself as if you were. And keep a

look-out. If there’s any current we’ll be closing with some islands

before daylight.”

The east side of the gulf is fringed with islands, some solitary, others

in groups. On the blue background of the high coast they seem to float

on silvery patches of calm water, arid and grey, or dark green and

rounded like clumps of evergreen bushes, with the larger ones, a mile or

two long, showing the outlines of ridges, ribs of grey rock under the

dank mantle of matted leafage. Unknown to trade, to travel, almost to

geography, the manner of life they harbour is an unsolved secret. There

must be villages—settlements of fishermen at least—on the largest of

them, and some communication with the world is probably kept up by native

craft. But all that forenoon, as we headed for them, fanned along by the

faintest of breezes, I saw no sign of man or canoe in the field of the

telescope I kept on pointing at the scattered group.

At noon I gave no orders for a change of course, and the mate’s whiskers

became much concerned and seemed to be offering themselves unduly to my

notice. At last I said:

“I am going to stand right in. Quite in—as far as I can take her.”

The stare of extreme surprise imparted an air of ferocity also to his

eyes, and he looked truly terrific for a moment.

“We’re not doing well in the middle of the gulf,” I continued, casually.

“I am going to look for the land breezes to-night.”

“Bless my soul! Do you mean, sir, in the dark amongst the lot of all

them islands and reefs and shoals?”

“Well—if there are any regular land breezes at all on this coast one must

get close inshore to find them, mustn’t one?”

“Bless my soul!” he exclaimed again under his breath. All that afternoon

he wore a dreamy, contemplative appearance which in him was a mark of

perplexity. After dinner I went into my stateroom as if I meant to take

some rest. There we two bent our dark heads over a half-unrolled chart

lying on my bed.

“There,” I said. “It’s got to be Koh-ring. I’ve been looking at it ever

since sunrise. It has got two hills and a low point. It must be

inhabited. And on the coast opposite there is what looks like the mouth

of a biggish river—with some town, no doubt, not far up. It’s the best

chance for you that I can see.”

“Anything. Koh-ring let it be.”

He looked thoughtfully at the chart as if surveying chances and distances

from a lofty height—and following with his eyes his own figure wandering

on the blank land of Cochin-China, and then passing off that piece of

paper clean out of sight into uncharted regions. And it was as if the

ship had two captains to plan her course for her. I had been so worried

and restless running up and down that I had not had the patience to dress

that day. I had remained in my sleeping-suit, with straw slippers and a

soft floppy hat. The closeness of the heat in the gulf had been most

oppressive, and the crew were used to see me wandering in that airy

attire.

“She will clear the south point as she heads now,” I whispered into his

ear. “Goodness only knows when, though, but certainly after dark. I’ll

edge her in to half a mile, as far as I may be able to judge in the

dark—”

“Be careful,” he murmured, warningly—and I realised suddenly that all my

future, the only future for which I was fit, would perhaps go

irretrievably to pieces in any mishap to my first command.

I could not stop a moment longer in the room. I motioned him to get out

of sight and made my way on the poop. That unplayful cub had the watch.

I walked up and down for a while thinking things out, then beckoned him

over.

“Send a couple of hands to open the two quarterdeck ports,” I said,

mildly.

He actually had the impudence, or else so forgot himself in his wonder at

such an incomprehensible order, as to repeat:

“Open the quarter-deck ports! What for, sir?”

“The only reason you need concern yourself about is because I tell you to

do so. Have them open wide and fastened properly.”

He reddened and went off, but I believe made some jeering remark to the

carpenter as to the sensible practice of ventilating a ship’s

quarter-deck. I know he popped into the mate’s cabin to impart the fact

to him because the whiskers came on deck, as it were by chance, and stole

glances at me from below—for signs of lunacy or drunkenness, I suppose.

A little before supper, feeling more restless than ever, I rejoined, for

a moment, my second self. And to find him sitting so quietly was

surprising, like something against nature, inhuman.

I developed my plan in a hurried whisper.

“I shall stand in as close as I dare and then put her round. I shall

presently find means to smuggle you out of here into the sail-locker,

which communicates with the lobby. But there is an opening, a sort of

square for hauling the sails out, which gives straight on the

quarter-deck and which is never closed in fine weather, so as to give air

to the sails. When the ship’s way is deadened in stays and all the hands

are aft at the main-braces you shall have a clear road to slip out and

get overboard through the open quarter-deck port. I’ve had them both

fastened up. Use a rope’s end to lower yourself into the water so as to

avoid a splash—you know. It could be heard and cause some beastly

complication.”

He kept silent for a while, then whispered, “I understand.”

“I won’t be there to see you go,” I began with an effort. “The rest . . .

I only hope I have understood, too.”

“You have. From first to last”—and for the first time there seemed to be

a faltering, something strained in his whisper. He caught hold of my

arm, but the ringing of the supper bell made me start. He didn’t,

though; he only released his grip.

After supper I didn’t come below again till well past eight o’clock. The

faint, steady breeze was loaded with dew; and the wet, darkened sails

held all there was of propelling power in it. The night, clear and

starry, sparkled darkly, and the opaque, lightless patches shifting

slowly against the low stars were the drifting islets. On the port bow

there was a big one more distant and shadowily imposing by the great

space of sky it eclipsed.

On opening the door I had a back view of my very own self looking at a

chart. He had come out of the recess and was standing near the table.

“Quite dark enough,” I whispered.

He stepped back and leaned against my bed with a level, quiet glance. I

sat on the couch. We had nothing to say to each other. Over our heads

the officer of the watch moved here and there. Then I heard him move

quickly. I knew what that meant. He was making for the companion; and

presently his voice was outside my door.

“We are drawing in pretty fast, sir. Land looks rather close.”

“Very well,” I answered. “I am coming on deck directly.”

I waited till he was gone out of the cuddy, then rose. My double moved

too. The time had come to exchange our last whispers, for neither of us

was ever to hear each other’s natural voice.

“Look here!” I opened a drawer and took out three sovereigns. “Take

this, anyhow. I’ve got six and I’d give you the lot, only I must keep a

little money to buy some fruit and vegetables for the crew from native

boats as we go through Sunda Straits.”

He shook his head.

“Take it,” I urged him, whispering desperately. “No one can tell what—”

He smiled and slapped meaningly the only pocket of the sleeping-jacket.

It was not safe, certainly. But I produced a large old silk handkerchief

of mine, and tying the three pieces of gold in a corner, pressed it on

him. He was touched, I suppose, because he took it at last and tied it

quickly round his waist under the jacket, on his bare skin.

Our eyes met; several seconds elapsed, till, our glances still mingled, I

extended my hand and turned the lamp out. Then I passed through the

cuddy, leaving the door of my room wide open. . . . . “Steward!”

He was still lingering in the pantry in the greatness of his zeal, giving

a rub-up to a plated cruet stand the last thing before going to bed.

Being careful not to wake up the mate, whose room was opposite, I spoke

in an undertone.

He looked round anxiously. “Sir!”

“Can you get me a little hot water from the galley?”

“I am afraid, sir, the galley fire’s been out for some time now.”

“Go and see.”

He fled up the stairs.

“Now,” I whispered, loudly, into the saloon—too loudly, perhaps, but I

was afraid I couldn’t make a sound. He was by my side in an instant—the

double captain slipped past the stairs—through a tiny dark passage . . .

a sliding door. We were in the sail-locker, scrambling on our knees over

the sails. A sudden thought struck me. I saw myself wandering

barefooted, bareheaded, the sun beating on my dark poll. I snatched off

my floppy hat and tried hurriedly in the dark to ram it on my other self.

He dodged and fended off silently. I wonder what he thought had come to

me before he understood and suddenly desisted. Our hands met gropingly,

lingered united in a steady, motionless clasp for a second. . . . No word

was breathed by either of us when they separated.

I was standing quietly by the pantry door when the steward returned.

“Sorry, sir. Kettle barely warm. Shall I light the spirit-lamp?”

“Never mind.”

I came out on deck slowly. It was now a matter of conscience to shave

the land as close as possible—for now he must go overboard whenever the

ship was put in stays. Must! There could be no going back for him.

After a moment I walked over to leeward and my heart flew into my mouth

at the nearness of the land on the bow. Under any other circumstances I

would not have held on a minute longer. The second mate had followed me

anxiously.

I looked on till I felt I could command my voice. “She will weather,” I

said then in a quiet tone. “Are you going to try that, sir?” he

stammered out incredulously.

I took no notice of him and raised my tone just enough to be heard by the

helmsman.

“Keep her good full.”

“Good full, sir.”

The wind fanned my cheek, the sails slept, the world was silent. The

strain of watching the dark loom of the land grow bigger and denser was

too much for me. I had shut my eyes—because the ship must go closer.

She must! The stillness was intolerable. Were we standing still?

When I opened my eyes the second view started my heart with a thump. The

black southern hill of Koh-ring seemed to hang right over the ship like a

towering fragment of the everlasting night. On that enormous mass of

blackness there was not a gleam to be seen, not a sound to be heard. It

was gliding irresistibly toward us and yet seemed already within reach of

the hand. I saw the vague figures of the watch grouped in the waist,

gazing in awed silence.

“Are you going on, sir,” inquired an unsteady voice at my elbow.

I ignored it. I had to go on.

“Keep her full. Don’t check her way. That won’t do now,” I said,

warningly.

“I can’t see the sails very well,” the helmsman answered me, in strange,

quavering tones.

Was she close enough? Already she was, I won’t say in the shadow of the

land, but in the very blackness of it, already swallowed up as it were,

gone too close to be recalled, gone from me altogether.

“Give the mate a call,” I said to the young man who stood at my elbow as

still as death. “And turn all hands up.”

My tone had a borrowed loudness reverberated from the height of the land.

Several voices cried out together: “We are all on deck, sir.”

Then stillness again, with the great shadow gliding closer, towering

higher, without a light, without a sound. Such a hush had fallen on the

ship that she might have been a bark of the dead floating in slowly under

the very gate of Erebus.

“My God! Where are we?”

It was the mate moaning at my elbow. He was thunderstruck, and as it

were deprived of the moral support of his whiskers. He clapped his hands

and absolutely cried out, “Lost!”

“Be quiet,” I said, sternly.

He lowered his tone, but I saw the shadowy gesture of his despair. “What

are we doing here?”

“Looking for the land wind.”

He made as if to tear his hair, and addressed me recklessly.

“She will never get out. You have done it, sir. I knew it’d end in

something like this. She will never weather, and you are too close now

to stay. She’ll drift ashore before she’s round. O my God!”

I caught his arm as he was raising it to batter his poor devoted head,

and shook it violently.

“She’s ashore already,” he wailed, trying to tear himself away.

“Is she? . . . Keep good full there!”

“Good full, sir,” cried the helmsman in a frightened, thin, child-like

voice.

I hadn’t let go the mate’s arm and went on shaking it. “Ready about, do

you hear? You go forward”—shake—“and stop there”—shake—“and hold your

noise”—shake—“and see these head-sheets properly overhauled”—shake,

shake—shake.

And all the time I dared not look toward the land lest my heart should

fail me. I released my grip at last and he ran forward as if fleeing for

dear life.

I wondered what my double there in the sail-locker thought of this

commotion. He was able to hear everything—and perhaps he was able to

understand why, on my conscience, it had to be thus close—no less. My

first order “Hard alee!” re-echoed ominously under the towering shadow of

Koh-ring as if I had shouted in a mountain gorge. And then I watched the

land intently. In that smooth water and light wind it was impossible to

feel the ship coming-to. No! I could not feel her. And my second self

was making now ready to slip out and lower himself overboard. Perhaps he

was gone already . . .?

The great black mass brooding over our very mastheads began to pivot away

from the ship’s side silently. And now I forgot the secret stranger

ready to depart, and remembered only that I was a total stranger to the

ship. I did not know her. Would she do it? How was she to be handled?

I swung the mainyard and waited helplessly. She was perhaps stopped, and

her very fate hung in the balance, with the black mass of Koh-ring like

the gate of the everlasting night towering over her taffrail. What would

she do now? Had she way on her yet? I stepped to the side swiftly, and

on the shadowy water I could see nothing except a faint phosphorescent

flash revealing the glassy smoothness of the sleeping surface. It was

impossible to tell—and I had not learned yet the feel of my ship. Was

she moving? What I needed was something easily seen, a piece of paper,

which I could throw overboard and watch. I had nothing on me. To run

down for it I didn’t dare. There was no time. All at once my strained,

yearning stare distinguished a white object floating within a yard of the

ship’s side. White on the black water. A phosphorescent flash passed

under it. What was that thing? . . . I recognised my own floppy hat. It

must have fallen off his head . . . and he didn’t bother.

Now I had what I wanted—the saving mark for my eyes. But I hardly

thought of my other self, now gone from the ship, to be hidden forever

from all friendly faces, to be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth,

with no brand of the curse on his sane forehead to stay a slaying hand

. . . too proud to explain.

And I watched the hat—the expression of my sudden pity for his mere

flesh. It had been meant to save his homeless head from the dangers of

the sun. And now—behold—it was saving the ship, by serving me for a mark

to help out the ignorance of my strangeness. Ha! It was drifting

forward, warning me just in time that the ship had gathered sternway.

“Shift the helm,” I said in a low voice to the seaman standing still like

a statue.

The man’s eyes glistened wildly in the binnacle light as he jumped round

to the other side and spun round the wheel.

I walked to the break of the poop. On the overshadowed deck all hands

stood by the forebraces waiting for my order. The stars ahead seemed to

be gliding from right to left. And all was so still in the world that I

heard the quiet remark “She’s round,” passed in a tone of intense relief

between two seamen.

“Let go and haul.”

The foreyards ran round with a great noise, amidst cheery cries. And now

the frightful whisker’s made themselves heard giving various orders.

Already the ship was drawing ahead. And I was alone with her. Nothing!

no one in the world should stand now between us, throwing a shadow on the

way of silent knowledge and mute affection, the perfect communion of a

seaman with his first command.

Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very edge of a

darkness thrown by a towering black mass like the very gateway of

Erebus—yes, I was in time to catch an evanescent glimpse of my white hat

left behind to mark the spot where the secret sharer of my cabin and of

my thoughts, as though he were my second self, had lowered himself into

the water to take his punishment: a free man, a proud swimmer striking

out for a new destiny.

FREYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES

A STORY OF SHALLOW WATERS

CHAPTER I

ONE day—and that day was many years ago now—I received a long, chatty

letter from one of my old chums and fellow-wanderers in Eastern waters.

He was still out there, but settled down, and middle-aged; I imagined

him—grown portly in figure and domestic in his habits; in short,

overtaken by the fate common to all except to those who, being specially

beloved by the gods, get knocked on the head early. The letter was of

the reminiscent “do you remember” kind—a wistful letter of backward

glances. And, amongst other things, “surely you remember old Nelson,” he

wrote.

Remember old Nelson! Certainly. And to begin with, his name was not

Nelson. The Englishmen in the Archipelago called him Nelson because it

was more convenient, I suppose, and he never protested. It would have

been mere pedantry. The true form of his name was Nielsen. He had come

out East long before the advent of telegraph cables, had served English

firms, had married an English girl, had been one of us for years, trading

and sailing in all directions through the Eastern Archipelago, across and

around, transversely, diagonally, perpendicularly, in semi-circles, and

zigzags, and figures of eights, for years and years.

There was no nook or cranny of these tropical waters that the enterprise

of old Nelson (or Nielsen) had not penetrated in an eminently pacific

way. His tracks, if plotted out, would have covered the map of the

Archipelago like a cobweb—all of it, with the sole exception of the

Philippines. He would never approach that part, from a strange dread of

Spaniards, or, to be exact, of the Spanish authorities. What he imagined

they could do to him it is impossible to say. Perhaps at some time in

his life he had read some stories of the Inquisition.

But he was in general afraid of what he called “authorities”; not the

English authorities, which he trusted and respected, but the other two of

that part of the world. He was not so horrified at the Dutch as he was

at the Spaniards, but he was even more mistrustful of them. Very

mistrustful indeed. The Dutch, in his view, were capable of “playing any

ugly trick on a man” who had the misfortune to displease them. There

were their laws and regulations, but they had no notion of fair play in

applying them. It was really pitiable to see the anxious circumspection

of his dealings with some official or other, and remember that this man

had been known to stroll up to a village of cannibals in New Guinea in a

quiet, fearless manner (and note that he was always fleshy all his life,

and, if I may say so, an appetising morsel) on some matter of barter that

did not amount perhaps to fifty pounds in the end.

Remember old Nelson! Rather! Truly, none of us in my generation had

known him in his active days. He was “retired” in our time. He had

bought, or else leased, part of a small island from the Sultan of a

little group called the Seven Isles, not far north from Banka. It was, I

suppose, a legitimate transaction, but I have no doubt that had he been

an Englishman the Dutch would have discovered a reason to fire him out

without ceremony. In this connection the real form of his name stood him

in good stead. In the character of an unassuming Dane whose conduct was

most correct, they let him be. With all his money engaged in cultivation

he was naturally careful not to give even the shadow of offence, and it

was mostly for prudential reasons of that sort that he did not look with

a favourable eye on Jasper Allen. But of that later. Yes! One

remembered well enough old Nelson’s big, hospitable bungalow erected on a

shelving point of land, his portly form, costumed generally in a white

shirt and trousers (he had a confirmed habit of taking off his alpaca

jacket on the slightest provocation), his round blue eyes, his straggly,

sandy-white moustache sticking out all ways like the quills of the

fretful porcupine, his propensity to sit down suddenly and fan himself

with his hat. But there’s no use concealing the fact that what one

remembered really was his daughter, who at that time came out to live

with him—and be a sort of Lady of the Isles.

Freya Nelson (or Nielsen) was the kind of girl one remembers. The oval

of her face was perfect; and within that fascinating frame the most happy

disposition of line and feature, with an admirable complexion, gave an

impression of health, strength, and what I might call unconscious

self-confidence—a most pleasant and, as it were, whimsical determination.

I will not compare her eyes to violets, because the real shade of their

colour was peculiar, not so dark and more lustrous. They were of the

wide-open kind, and looked at one frankly in every mood. I never did see

the long, dark eyelashes lowered—I dare say Jasper Allen did, being a

privileged person—but I have no doubt that the expression must have been

charming in a complex way. She could—Jasper told me once with a

touchingly imbecile exultation—sit on her hair. I dare say, I dare say.

It was not for me to behold these wonders; I was content to admire the

neat and becoming way she used to do it up so as not to conceal the good

shape of her head. And this wealth of hair was so glossy that when the

screens of the west verandah were down, making a pleasant twilight there,

or in the shade of the grove of fruit-trees near the house, it seemed to

give out a golden light of its own.

She dressed generally in a white frock, with a skirt of walking length,

showing her neat, laced, brown boots. If there was any colour about her

costume it was just a bit of blue perhaps. No exertion seemed to

distress her. I have seen her land from the dinghy after a long pull in

the sun (she rowed herself about a good deal) with no quickened breath

and not a single hair out of its place. In the morning when she came out

on the verandah for the first look westward, Sumatra way, over the sea,

she seemed as fresh and sparkling as a dewdrop. But a dewdrop is

evanescent, and there was nothing evanescent about Freya. I remember her

round, solid arms with the fine wrists, and her broad, capable hands with

tapering fingers.

I don’t know whether she was actually born at sea, but I do know that up

to twelve years of age she sailed about with her parents in various

ships. After old Nelson lost his wife it became a matter of serious

concern for him what to do with the girl. A kind lady in Singapore,

touched by his dumb grief and deplorable perplexity, offered to take

charge of Freya. This arrangement lasted some six years, during which

old Nelson (or Nielsen) “retired” and established, himself on his island,

and then it was settled (the kind lady going away to Europe) that his

daughter should join him.

As the first and most important preparation for that event the old fellow

ordered from his Singapore agent a Steyn and Ebhart’s “upright grand.” I

was then commanding a little steamer in the island trade, and it fell to

my lot to take it out to him, so I know something of Freya’s “upright

grand.” We landed the enormous packing-case with difficulty on a flat

piece of rock amongst some bushes, nearly knocking the bottom out of one

of my boats in the course of that nautical operation. Then, all my crew

assisting, engineers and firemen included, by the exercise of much

anxious ingenuity, and by means of rollers, levers, tackles, and inclined

planes of soaped planks, toiling in the sun like ancient Egyptians at the

building of a pyramid, we got it as far as the house and up on to the

edge of the west verandah—which was the actual drawing-room of the

bungalow. There, the case being ripped off cautiously, the beautiful

rosewood monster stood revealed at last. In reverent excitement we

coaxed it against the wall and drew the first free breath of the day. It

was certainly the heaviest movable object on that islet since the

creation of the world. The volume of sound it gave out in that bungalow

(which acted as a sounding-board) was really astonishing. It thundered

sweetly right over the sea. Jasper Allen told me that early of a morning

on the deck of the _Bonito_ (his wonderfully fast and pretty brig) he

could hear Freya playing her scales quite distinctly. But the fellow

always anchored foolishly close to the point, as I told him more than

once. Of course, these seas are almost uniformly serene, and the Seven

Isles is a particularly calm and cloudless spot as a rule. But still,

now and again, an afternoon thunderstorm over Banka, or even one of these

vicious thick squalls, from the distant Sumatra coast, would make a

sudden sally upon the group, enveloping it for a couple of hours in

whirlwinds and bluish-black murk of a particularly sinister aspect.

Then, with the lowered rattan-screens rattling desperately in the wind

and the bungalow shaking all over, Freya would sit down to the piano and

play fierce Wagner music in the flicker of blinding flashes, with

thunderbolts falling all round, enough to make your hair stand on end;

and Jasper would remain stock still on the verandah, adoring the back

view of her supple, swaying figure, the miraculous sheen of her fair

head, the rapid hands on the keys, the white nape of her neck—while the

brig, down at the point there, surged at her cables within a hundred

yards of nasty, shiny, black rock-heads. Ugh!

And this, if you please, for no reason but that, when he went on board at

night and laid his head on the pillow, he should feel that he was as near

as he could conveniently get to his Freya slumbering in the bungalow.

Did you ever! And, mind, this brig was the home to be—their home—the

floating paradise which he was gradually fitting out like a yacht to sail

his life blissfully away in with Freya. Imbecile! But the fellow was

always taking chances.

One day, I remember I watched with Freya on the verandah the brig

approaching the point from the northward. I suppose Jasper made the girl

out with his long glass. What does he do? Instead of standing on for

another mile and a half along the shoals and then tacking for the

anchorage in a proper and seamanlike manner, he spies a gap between two

disgusting old jagged reefs, puts the helm down suddenly, and shoots the

brig through, with all her sails shaking and rattling, so that we could

hear the racket on the verandah. I drew my breath through my teeth, I

can tell you, and Freya swore. Yes! She clenched her capable fists and

stamped with her pretty brown boot and said “Damn!” Then, looking at me

with a little heightened colour—not much—she remarked, “I forgot you were

there,” and laughed. To be sure, to be sure. When Jasper was in sight

she was not likely to remember that anybody else in the world was there.

In my concern at this mad trick I couldn’t help appealing to her

sympathetic common sense.

“Isn’t he a fool?” I said with feeling.

“Perfect idiot,” she agreed warmly, looking at me straight with her

wide-open, earnest eyes and the dimple of a smile on her cheek.

“And that,” I pointed out to her, “just to save twenty minutes or so in

meeting you.”

We heard the anchor go down, and then she became very resolute and

threatening.

“Wait a bit. I’ll teach him.”

She went into her own room and shut the door, leaving me alone on the

verandah with my instructions. Long before the brig’s sails were furled,

Jasper came up three steps at a time, forgetting to say how d’ye do, and

looking right and left eagerly.

“Where’s Freya? Wasn’t she here just now?”

When I explained to him that he was to be deprived of Miss Freya’s

presence for a whole hour, “just to teach him,” he said I had put her up

to it, no doubt, and that he feared he would have yet to shoot me some

day. She and I were getting too thick together. Then he flung himself

into a chair, and tried to talk to me about his trip. But the funny

thing was that the fellow actually suffered. I could see it. His voice

failed him, and he sat there dumb, looking at the door with the face of a

man in pain. Fact. . . . And the next still funnier thing was that the

girl calmly walked out of her room in less than ten minutes. And then I

left. I mean to say that I went away to seek old Nelson (or Nielsen) on

the back verandah, which was his own special nook in the distribution of

that house, with the kind purpose of engaging him in conversation lest he

should start roaming about and intrude unwittingly where he was not

wanted just then.

He knew that the brig had arrived, though he did not know that Jasper was

already with his daughter. I suppose he didn’t think it was possible in

the time. A father naturally wouldn’t. He suspected that Allen was

sweet on his girl; the fowls of the air and the fishes of the sea, most

of the traders in the Archipelago, and all sorts and conditions of men in

the town of Singapore were aware of it. But he was not capable of

appreciating how far the girl was gone on the fellow. He had an idea

that Freya was too sensible to ever be gone on anybody—I mean to an

unmanageable extent. No; it was not that which made him sit on the back

verandah and worry himself in his unassuming manner during Jasper’s

visits. What he worried about were the Dutch “authorities.” For it is a

fact that the Dutch looked askance at the doings of Jasper Allen, owner

and master of the brig _Bonito_. They considered him much too

enterprising in his trading. I don’t know that he ever did anything

illegal; but it seems to me that his immense activity was repulsive to

their stolid character and slow-going methods. Anyway, in old Nelson’s

opinion, the captain of the _Bonito_ was a smart sailor, and a nice young

man, but not a desirable acquaintance upon the whole. Somewhat

compromising, you understand. On the other hand, he did not like to tell

Jasper in so many words to keep away. Poor old Nelson himself was a nice

fellow. I believe he would have shrunk from hurting the feelings even of

a mop-headed cannibal, unless, perhaps, under very strong provocation. I

mean the feelings, not the bodies. As against spears, knives, hatchets,

clubs, or arrows, old Nelson had proved himself capable of taking his own

part. In every other respect he had a timorous soul. So he sat on the

back verandah with a concerned expression, and whenever the voices of his

daughter and Jasper Allen reached him, he would blow out his cheeks and

let the air escape with a dismal sound, like a much tried man.

Naturally I derided his fears which he, more or less, confided to me. He

had a certain regard for my judgment, and a certain respect, not for my

moral qualities, however, but for the good terms I was supposed to be on

with the Dutch “authorities.” I knew for a fact that his greatest

bugbear, the Governor of Banka—a charming, peppery, hearty, retired

rear-admiral—had a distinct liking for him. This consoling assurance

which I used always to put forward, made old Nelson (or Nielsen) brighten

up for a moment; but in the end he would shake his head doubtfully, as

much as to say that this was all very well, but that there were depths in

the Dutch official nature which no one but himself had ever fathomed.

Perfectly ridiculous.

On this occasion I am speaking of, old Nelson was even fretty; for while

I was trying to entertain him with a very funny and somewhat scandalous

adventure which happened to a certain acquaintance of ours in Saigon, he

exclaimed suddenly:

“What the devil he wants to turn up here for!”

Clearly he had not heard a word of the anecdote. And this annoyed me,

because the anecdote was really good. I stared at him.

“Come, come!” I cried. “Don’t you know what Jasper Allen is turning up

here for?”

This was the first open allusion I had ever made to the true state of

affairs between Jasper and his daughter. He took it very calmly.

“Oh, Freya is a sensible girl!” he murmured absently, his mind’s eye

obviously fixed on the “authorities.” No; Freya was no fool. He was not

concerned about that. He didn’t mind it in the least. The fellow was

just company for her; he amused the girl; nothing more.

When the perspicacious old chap left off mumbling, all was still in the

house. The other two were amusing themselves very quietly, and no doubt

very heartily. What more absorbing and less noisy amusement could they

have found than to plan their future? Side by side on the verandah they

must have been looking at the brig, the third party in that fascinating

game. Without her there would have been no future. She was the fortune

and the home, and the great free world for them. Who was it that likened

a ship to a prison? May I be ignominiously hanged at a yardarm if that’s

true. The white sails of that craft were the white wings—pinions, I

believe, would be the more poetical style—well, the white pinions, of

their soaring love. Soaring as regards Jasper. Freya, being a woman,

kept a better hold of the mundane connections of this affair.

But Jasper was elevated in the true sense of the word ever since the day

when, after they had been gazing at the brig in one of those decisive

silences that alone establish a perfect communion between creatures

gifted with speech, he proposed that she should share the ownership of

that treasure with him. Indeed, he presented the brig to her altogether.

But then his heart was in the brig since the day he bought her in Manilla

from a certain middle-aged Peruvian, in a sober suit of black broadcloth,

enigmatic and sententious, who, for all I know, might have stolen her on

the South American coast, whence he said he had come over to the

Philippines “for family reasons.” This “for family reasons” was

distinctly good. No true _caballero_ would care to push on inquiries

after such a statement.

Indeed, Jasper was quite the _caballero_. The brig herself was then all

black and enigmatical, and very dirty; a tarnished gem of the sea, or,

rather, a neglected work of art. For he must have been an artist, the

obscure builder who had put her body together on lovely lines out of the

hardest tropical timber fastened with the purest copper. Goodness only

knows in what part of the world she was built. Jasper himself had not

been able to ascertain much of her history from his sententious,

saturnine Peruvian—if the fellow was a Peruvian, and not the devil

himself in disguise, as Jasper jocularly pretended to believe. My

opinion is that she was old enough to have been one of the last pirates,

a slaver perhaps, or else an opium clipper of the early days, if not an

opium smuggler.

However that may be, she was as sound as on the day she first took the

water, sailed like a witch, steered like a little boat, and, like some

fair women of adventurous life famous in history, seemed to have the

secret of perpetual youth; so that there was nothing unnatural in Jasper

Allen treating her like a lover. And that treatment restored the lustre

of her beauty. He clothed her in many coats of the very best white paint

so skilfully, carefully, artistically put on and kept clean by his

badgered crew of picked Malays, that no costly enamel such as jewellers

use for their work could have looked better and felt smoother to the

touch. A narrow gilt moulding defined her elegant sheer as she sat on

the water, eclipsing easily the professional good looks of any pleasure

yacht that ever came to the East in those days. For myself, I must say I

prefer a moulding of deep crimson colour on a white hull. It gives a

stronger relief besides being less expensive; and I told Jasper so. But

no, nothing less than the best gold-leaf would do, because no decoration

could be gorgeous enough for the future abode of his Freya.

His feelings for the brig and for the girl were as indissolubly united in

his heart as you may fuse two precious metals together in one crucible.

And the flame was pretty hot, I can assure you. It induced in him a

fierce inward restlessness both of activity and desire. Too fine in

face, with a lateral wave in his chestnut hair, spare, long-limbed, with

an eager glint in his steely eyes and quick, brusque movements, he made

me think sometimes of a flashing sword-blade perpetually leaping out of

the scabbard. It was only when he was near the girl, when he had her

there to look at, that this peculiarly tense attitude was replaced by a

grave devout watchfulness of her slightest movements and utterances. Her

cool, resolute, capable, good-humoured self-possession seemed to steady

his heart. Was it the magic of her face, of her voice, of her glances

which calmed him so? Yet these were the very things one must believe

which had set his imagination ablaze—if love begins in imagination. But

I am no man to discuss such mysteries, and it strikes me that we have

neglected poor old Nelson inflating his cheeks in a state of worry on the

back verandah.

I pointed out to him that, after all, Jasper was not a very frequent

visitor. He and his brig worked hard all over the Archipelago. But all

old Nelson said, and he said it uneasily, was:

“I hope Heemskirk won’t turn up here while the brig’s about.”

Getting up a scare about Heemskirk now! Heemskirk! . . . Really, one

hadn’t the patience—