"Ah, but yais." The Dago had known ships call. "Not often, but
sometimes. There is leetle trade, an' ships come. On de tide,
floating up to anchor, so close you hear de men talkin' on de
fo'c'sle head, and dey hear de people ashore girl singin', perhaps
and smell de trees."
"Do they, though?"
"Yais. Dat night I go out to fish in de boat ah, dat night! a girl
was singin', and her voice it float on de bay all round me. An' I
stand in de boat an' take off my hat" he rose to show them the
gesture "and sing back to her, an' she is quiet to listen in de
darkness."
When dinner was over it fell to the Dago to take the "kids" back to
the galley and sweep down the deck. So he had barely time to smoke
the cigarette he made of shredded ship's tobacco rolled in a strip of
newspaper before he had to go on deck again to holystone the spilled
tar from the planks. Dan gave him advice about using a hard stone and
plenty of sand, to which he listened, smiling, and then he went up
the ladder again, with his rags shivering upon him, to the toil of
the afternoon.
The seamen were already in their bunks, each smoking ruminatively the
pipe that prefaces slumber.
"Queer yarn that feller tells," remarked one of them idly. "How much
of it d'you reckon's true, Dan?"
In the for'ard lower bunk Dan opened drowsy eyes. He was lying on his
back with his hands under his head, and the sleeves of his shirt
rolled back left bare his mighty forearms with their faded
tattooings. His big, beardless face was red, like rusty iron, with
over thirty years of seafaring; it was simple and strong, a
transparent mask of the man's upright and steadfast spirit.
"Eh?" he said, and the other repeated his question. Dan sucked at his
pipe and breathed the smoke forth in a thin blue mist.
"It might be true enough," he answered at length, in his deliberate
bass. "Things like that does happen; you c'n read 'em in newspapers.
Anyhow, true or not, the Dago believes it all."
"Meanin' he's mad?" inquired the other. "Blowed if I didn't think it
once or twice myself."
"He's mad right enough," agreed another seaman comfortably, while
from Bill's bunk came the usual snarl of "bloomin' fool."
Dan turned over on his side and put his pipe away.
"He don't do any harm, anyhow," he said, pulling up his blanket.
"There's worse than him."
"Plenty, poor devil," agreed the first speaker, as he too prepared
for the afternoon's sleep.
On his knees upon the deck aft, shoving his holystone to and fro
laboriously and unhandily along the planks where the accident with
the tar-pot had left its stain, the Dago still broke into little
meaningless smiles. For him, at any rate, the narrow scope between
the stem and stern of the Anna Maria was not the world. He had but to
lift up the eyes of his mind to behold, beyond it and dwarfing it to
triviality, the glamours of a life in which it had no part. Those who
saw him at his dreary penance had their excuse for thinking him mad,
for there were moments when his face glowed like a lover's, his lips
moved in soundless speech, and he had the aspect of a man illuminated
by some sudden and tender joy.
"Now, then, you Dago there," the officer of the watch shouted at him.
"Keep that stone movin', an' none of yer shenanikin'!"
"Yais, sir," answered the Dago, and bowed himself obediently.
It needed the ingenuity of Bill to trouble his tranquility of mind.
The old Anna Maria was far on her passage, and already there were
birds about her, the far-flying scouts of the land, and the color of
the water had changed to a softer and more radiant blue. It was as
though sad Africa made herself comely to invite them to her shores.
Bill had a piece of gear to serve with spun-yarn, and was at work
abreast of the foremast, with the Dago to help him. The rope on which
they worked was stretched between the rail and the mast. Bill had the
serving-mallet, and as he worked it round the rope the Dago passed
the ball of spun-yarn in time with him. The mate was aft,
superintending some work upon the mizzen, and Bill took his job
easily. The Dago, with his little smile to which his lips shaped
themselves unconsciously, passed the ball in silence. The Cockney
eyed him unpleasantly.
"Say, Dago," he said presently, "wot was the name o' that there place
you said you come from?"
"Eh?" The Dago roused from his smiling reverie. "De name? Ah, yais."
He pronounced the name slowly, making its syllables render their
music.
"Yus," said Bill, "I thought that was it."
He went on working, steadily, nonchalantly. The Dago stared at him,
perplexed.
"Why you want to know dat name?" he asked at length.
"Well," said Bill, "you bin talkin' abaht it a lot, and so, d'yer
see, I reckoned I'd find out. An' yesterday I 'ad to go into the
cabin to get at the lazareet 'atch, an' the chart was spread out on
the table."
"De chart?" The Dago was slow to understand. "Ah, yais. Mapa chart.
An' you look at-a 'im, yais?"
"Yus," answered Bill, who, like most men before the mast, had never
seen a chart in his life. "I looked at ev'ry name on it, ev'ry
bloomin' one. A chart o' Africa it was, givin' the whole lot of 'em.
But your place."
"Yais?" cried the Dago. "You see 'im? An' de leetle bay under de
hills? You find it?"
"No," said Bill, "I didn't find it. It wasn't there."
"Wasn't there?" The Dago's smile was gone now; his forehead was
puckered like a child's in bewilderment, and a darker doubt at the
back of his thoughts loomed up in his troubled eyes.
"No," said the Cockney, watching him zestfully. "You got it wrong,
Dago, an' there ain't no such place. You dreamt it. Savvy? All wot
you bin tell in' us about the town an' the bay an' the way you used
to take it easy there all that's just a bloomin' lie. See?"
The Dago's face was white and his lips trembled. He tried to smile.
"Not there," he repeated. "It is de joke, not? You fool me, Bill,
yais?"
Bill shook his head. "I wouldn't fool yer abaht a thing like that,"
he declared sturdily. "There ain't no such place, Dago. It's just one
o' yer fancies, yer know."
In those three years of wandering there had been dark hours turbulent
with pain, hours when his vision, his hope, his memory had not
availed to uplift him, and he had known the terror of a doubt lest
the whole of it should, after all, be but a creation of his
yearnings, a mirage of his desires. Everywhere men had believed him
mad. He had accepted that as he accepted toil, hunger and exile, as
things to be redeemed by their end. But if it should be true! If this
grossness and harshness should, after all, be his real life! Bill saw
the agony that broke loose within his victim, and bent his head above
his work to hide a smile.
"Ah!" The quiet exclamation was all that issued from the Dago's lips;
the surge of emotion within him sought no vent in words. But Bill was
satisfied; he had the instincts of a connoisseur in torment, and the
Dago's face was now a mask that looked as if it had never smiled.
It was Dan that spoiled and undid the afternoon's work. During the
second dog-watch, when the Dago kept the look out, he carried his
pipe to the forecastle head and joined him there. Right ahead of the
ship the evening sky was still stained with the afterglow of the
sunset; the jib-boom swung gently athwart a heaven in whose
darkening arch there was still a ghost of color. Between the anchors,
where they lay lashed on their chocks, the Dago stood and gazed west
to where, beyond the horizon, the shores of Africa had turned barren
and meaningless.
"Well, lad," rumbled Dan, "gettin' near it, eh? Gettin' on towards
the little town by the bay, ain't we?"
The Dago swung round towards him. "Dere is no town," he said calmly.
"No town, no bay, no anyt'ing. I was mad, but now I know."
He spoke evenly enough, and in the lessening light his face was
indistinct. But old Dan, for all his thirty and odd years of hard
living, had an ear tuned delicately to the trouble of his voice.
"What's all' this?" he demanded shortly. "Who's been tellin' you
there ain't no town or anything? Out with it! Who was it?"
"It don't matter," said the Dago. "It was Bill." And briefly, in the
same even tones, like those of a man who talks in his sleep, he told
the tale of Bill's afternoon's sport.
"Ah, so it was Bill!" said Dan slowly, when the recital was at an
end. "Bill, was it? Ye-es. Well, o' course you know that Bill's the
biggest liar ever shipped out o' London, where liars is as common as
weevils in bread. So you don't want to take no notice of anything
Bill says."
The Dago shook his head. "It is not that," he said. "It is not de
first time I 'ave been called mad; and sometimes I have think it
myself."
"Oh, go on with ye," urged Dan. "You ain't mad."
"T'ree years," went on the Dago in his mournful, subdued voice.
"T'ree years I go about an' work, always poor, dirty work, an' got no
name, only 'Dago.' I t'ink all de time 'bout my leetle beautiful
town; but sometimes I t'ink, too, when I am tired an' people is hard
to me: 'It is a dream. De world has no place so good as dat.' What
you t'ink, Dan?"
"Oh, I dunno," grunted Dan awkwardly. "Anyhow, there ain't no harm in
it. It don't follow a man's mad because he's got fancies."
"Fancies!" repeated the Dago. "Fancies!" He seemed to laugh a little
to himself, laughter with no mirth in it.
Night was sinking on the great solitude of waters. Above them the
sails of the foremast stood pale and lofty, and there was the
rhythmic jar of a block against a backstay. The Anna Maria lifted her
weather bow easily to the even sea, and the two men on the fo'c'sle
head swung on their feet unconsciously to the movement of the barque.
"Eef it was only a fancy," said the Dago suddenly, "eef it was only a
town in my mind, I don' want it no more." He made a motion with his
hand as though he cast something from him. "I t'ink all dis time it
is true, dat some day I find it again. It help me; it keep me glad;
it save me from misery. But now it is all finish."
"But don't you know," cried Dan, "don't you know for sure whether
it's true or not?"
The Dago shook his head. "I am no more sure," he said. "For t'ree
years I have had bad times, hard times. So now I am not sure. Dat is
why I t'ink I am a little mad, like Bill said."
"Never mind Bill," said Dan. "I'll settle with Bill."
He put his heavy hand on the other's arm.
"Lad," he said, "I'm sorry for your trouble. I ain't settin' up to
know much about fellers' minds, but it seems to me as if you was
better off without them fancies, if they ain't true. An' that town o'
yours! It sounded fine, as good a place as ever I heard of; but it
was mighty like them ports worn-out sailormen is always figurin' to
themselves, where they'll go ashore and take it easy for the rest o'
their lives. It was too good, mate, too good to be true."
There was a pause. "Yes," said the Dago at last. "It was too good,
Dan."
Dan gave his arm a grip, and left him to his look out over a sea
whose shores were now as desolate as itself, a man henceforth to be
counted sane, since he knew life as bare of beauty, sordid and
difficult.
Dan put his pipe in his pocket and walked aft to the main hatch,
where the men were gathered for the leisure of the dog-watch. He went
at his usual deliberate gait, a notable figure of seamanlike
respectability and efficiency. Upon his big, shaven face a rather
stolid tranquility reigned. Bill, leaning against a corner of the
galley, looked up at him carelessly.
"'Ullo, Dan," he greeted him.
"Hullo, Bill," responded Dan. "I bin talkin' to the Dago."
"Oh, 'ave yer?" said Bill.
"Yes," said Dan, in the same conversational tone. "I have. An' now
I'm goin' to have a word with you. Stand clear of that deckhouse!"
"Eh?" cried Bill. "Say, Dan--"
That was all. Dan's fist, the right one, of the hue and hardness of
teak, with Dan's arm behind it, arrived just under his eye, and the
rest of the conversation was yelps. No one attempted to interrupt;
even the captain and mate, who watched from the poop, made no motion
to interfere; Dan's reputation for uprightness stood him in good
stead.
"There, now," he said, when it was over, and he allowed the gasping,
bleeding Cockney to fall back on the hatch. "See what comes of not
takin' hints?"
They made Mozambique upon the morning of a day when the sun poured
from the heavens and the light wind came warm off the land. The old
Anna Maria, furling sail by sail, floated up to her anchorage and let
go her anchors just as a shore-boat, manned by big nearly naked
negroes, with a white man sitting in the stern, raced up alongside.
In less than an hour the hands were lifting the anchors again and
getting ready to go to sea once more. The cook, who had served the
captain and his visitor with breakfast, was able to explain the
mystery. He stood at his galley door, with his cloth cap cocked
sportively over one eye, and gave the facts to the inquisitive
sailors.
"That feller in the boat was th' agent," he said. "A Porchuguee, he
was. Wanted wine f'r 'is breakfus'. An' the orders is, we're to go
down the coast to a place called le'me see, now. What was it called?
Some Dago name that I can't call to mind."
Dan was among his hearers, and by some freak of memory the name of
the town of which the Dago had been used to speak, the town which was
now a dream to be forgotten, came to his lips. He spoke it aloud.
"It wasn't that, I s'pose?" he suggested.
"You've got it," cried the cook. "That was it, Dan; the very place.
Fancy you knowin' it. Well, we got to go down there and get in across
a sort of bar what's there an' discharge into lighters. Seems it's a
bit out o' the way o' shippin'. The skipper said that the charterers
seemed to think the old boat ran on wheels."
"Queer!" said Dan. To himself he said: "He must ha' heard the name
somewhere and hitched his dream to it."
The name, as it chanced, was one of many syllables, and the sailors
managed them badly. Men who speak of the islands of Diego Ramirez as
the "Daggarammarines" are not likely to deal faithfully with a narrie
that rings delicately like guitar strings, and Dan observed that
their mention of the barque's destination had no effect upon the
Dago. For him all ports had become indifferent; one was not nearer
than another to any place of his desire. He spoke no more of his
town; when the men, trying to draw him, spoke about food, or women,
or other roads to luxury, he answered without smiling.
"I t'ink no more 'bout dat," he said. "T'ree year work an' have bad
times. Before, I don' remember o more."
"He was better when he was crazy," agreed the seamen. It was as
though the gaiety, the spring of gladness, within the little man had
been dried up; there was left only the incompetent and despised Dago.
He faced the routine of his toil now with no smile of preoccupation
for a sweeter vision; he shuffled about decks, futile as ever, with
the dreariness of a man in prison.
Only to Dan he spoke more freely. It was while the watch was washing
down decks in the morning. The two were side by side, plying their
brooms along the wet planks, while about them the dawn broadened
towards the tropic day.
"I am no more mad," said the Dago. "Now I know I am not mad. Dat name
of de place where we go de men don' know how to speak it, but it is
de name of my town, de town I t'ink about once so much. Yais I know!
At last, after all dis time, I come dere, but I am not glad. I am
never glad no more 'bout not'ing."
Dan worked on. He could think of no answer to make.
"Only 'bout one t'ing I am glad," went on the Dago. "'Bout a friend I
make on dis ship; 'bout you, Dan."
"Oh, hell!" grunted Dan awkwardly.
"But 'bout de town, I am no more glad. I know now it is more better
to be sad an' poor an' weak dan to be mad an' glad about fancies.
Yais I know now!"
"You'll be all right," said Dan. "Cheer up, lad. There's fellers
worse off than you!" An inspiration lit up his honest and downright
brain for a moment. "Why," he said, "it's better to be you than be a
feller like Bill that never had a fancy in his life. You've lost a
lot, maybe; but you can't lose a thing you never had."
The Dago half-smiled. "Yais," he said. "You are mos' wise, Dan. But,
Dan! Dan!"
"Yes. What?"
"If it had been true, Dan dat beautiful town an' all my dream! If it
had been true!"
"Shove along wi' that broom," advised Dan. "The mate's lookin'."
They came abreast of their port about midday, and Dan, at the wheel,
heard the captain swear as they stood in through a maze of broken
water, where coral reefs sprouted like weeds in a neglected garden,
towards the hills that stood low above the horizon. He had been
furnished, it seemed, with a chart concerning whose trustworthiness
he entertained the bitterest doubts. There was some discussion with
the mate about anchoring and sending in a boat to bring off a pilot,
but presently they picked up a line of poles sticking up above the
water like a ruined fence, and these seemed to comfort the captain.
Bits of trees swam alongside; a flight of small birds, with flashes
of green and red in their plumage, swung about them; the water, as
they went, changed color. Little by little the hills lifted from the
level of the water and took on color and variety, till from the deck
one could make out the swell of their contours and distinguish the
hues of the wild vegetation that clothed them. The yellow of a beach
and a snowy gleam of surf showed at their feet, and then, dead ahead
and still far away, they opened, and in the gap there was visible the
still shining blue of water that ran inland and lay quiet under their
shelter.
"Stand by your to'gallant halyards!" came the order. "Lower away
there!"
It was evening already when the old Anna Maria, floating slowly under
a couple of jibs and a foretopsail, rounded the point and opened the
town. The bay, with its fringe of palms, lay clear before her; beyond
its farthest edge, the sun had just set, leaving his glories to burn
out behind him, and astern of them in the east the swift tropic night
was racing up the sky. The little town a church-tower and a cluster
of painted, flat-roofed houses, lay behind the point at the water's
edge. There was a music of bells in the still air; all the scene
breathed that joyous languor, that easy beauty which only the sun can
ripen, which the windy north never knows. With the night at her
heels, the old Anna Maria moved almost imperceptibly towards the
town.
"Stand by to anchor!" came the order from aft, and the mate, calling
three men with him, went up the ladder to the fo'c'sle head.
Dan was one of the three. He was at the rail, looking at the little
town as it unfolded itself, house after house, with the narrow
streets between, when he first noticed the white figure at his side.
He turned in surprise; it was the Dago, in the cherished suit of duck
which he had guarded for so long under his mattress. Heretofore, Dan
had known him only in his rags of working-clothes, a mildly pathetic
and ridiculous figure; now he was seemly, unfamiliar, a little
surprising.
"What's all this?" demanded Dan.
The Dago was looking with all his eyes at the town, already growing
dim.
"Dis?" he repeated. "Dese clo'se, I keep dem for my town, Dan. To
come back wis yais! For not be like a mendigo a beggar. Now, no need
to keep dem no more; and dis place oh, Dan, it is so like, so like! I
dream it all yais de church, de praca all of it!"
"Steady!" growled Dan. "Don't get dreamin' it again."
"No," said the Dago; "I never dream no more. Never no more!"
He did not take his eyes from it; he stood at the rail gazing,
intent, absorbed. He did not hear the mate's brief order that
summoned him and the others across the deck.
"When I go out on de fishin' boat," he said aloud, thinking Dan was
still at his side, "a girl was singin' an'--"
"Here, you!" cried the mate. "What's the matter with you? Why don't
you?"
He stopped in amazement, for the Dago turned and spat a brief word at
him, making a gesture with his hand as though to command silence.
In the moment that followed they all heard it a voice that sang, a
strong and sweet contralto that strewed its tones forth like a scent,
to add itself to the other scents of earth and leaves that traveled
across the waters and reached them on their deck. They heard it lift
itself as on wings to a high exaltation of melody and fail thence,
hushing and drooping deliciously, down diminishing slopes of song.
"What the-" began the mate, and moved to cross the deck.
His surprises were not yet at an end, for Dan Dan, the ideal seaman,
the precise in his duty, the dependable, the prosaically perfect Dan
caught him by the arm with a grip in which there was no deference for
the authority of a chief officer.
"Leave him be, sir," urged Dan. "I, I know what's the matter with
him. Leave him be!"
The voice ashore soared again, sure and buoyant; the mate dragged his
arm free from Dan's hold and turned to swear; on the main deck the
horse-laugh of Bill answered the singer. The Dago heard nothing.
Bending forward over the rail, he stretched both arms forth, and in a
voice that none recognized, broken and passionate, he took up the
song. It was but for a minute, while the mate recovered his outraged
senses, but it was enough. The voice ashore had ceased.
"What the blank blank!" roared the mate, as he dragged the Dago
across the deck. "What d'ye mean by it, eh? Get hold o' that rope, or
I'll--."
"Yais, sir."
A moment later he turned to Dan, and in the already deepening gloom
his smile gleamed white in his face.
"Ah, my frien'!" he said. "Dere was no dream. T'ree years, all bad,
all hard, all sad dat was de dream. Now I wake up. Only one t'ing
true in all de t'ree years de friend I make yais."
"Hark!" said Dan. "Hear it? There's boats comin' off to us."
"Yais!" The smile gleamed again. "For me. It is no dream. Dey hear my
voice when I sing. By'm by you hear dem callin', 'Felipe!' Dat's my
name."
"Listen, then," said Dan in a whisper.
The water trickled alongside; they were coming up to their berth. The
bells from the church ashore were still. Across the bay there came
the clack of oars in rowlocks, pulled briskly, and voices.
"Felipe!" they called. "Felipe!"
The Dago's hand found Dan's.
III
WOOD-LADIES
The pine trees of the wood joined their branches into a dome of
intricate groinings over the floor of ferns where the children sat
sunk to the neck in a foam of tender green. The sunbeams that slanted
in made shivering patches of gold about them. Joyce, the elder of the
pair, was trying to explain why she had wished to come here from the
glooms of the lesser wood beyond.
"I wasn't 'zactly frightened," she said. "I knew there wasn't any
lions or robbers, or anything like that. But--"
"Tramps?" suggested Joan.
"No! You know I don't mind tramps, Joan. But as we was going along
under all those dark bushes where it was so quiet, I kept feeling as
if there was something behind me. I looked round and there wasn't
anything, but well, it felt as if there was."
Joyce's small face was knit and intent with the effort to convey her
meaning. She was a slim, erect child, as near seven years of age as
made no matter, with eyes that were going to be grey but had not yet
ceased to be blue. Joan, who was a bare five, a mere huge baby, was
trying to root up a fern that grew between her feet.
"I know," she said, tugging mightily. The fern gave suddenly, and
Joan fell over on her back, with her stout legs sticking up stiffly.
In this posture she continued the conversation undisturbed. "I know,
Joy. It was wood-ladies!"
"Wood-ladies!" Joyce frowned in faint perplexity as Joan rolled right
side up again. Wood-ladies were dim inhabitants of the woods, beings
of the order of fairies and angels and even vaguer, for there was
nothing about them in the story-books. Joyce, who felt that she was
getting on in years, was willing to be skeptical about them, but
could not always manage it. In the nursery, with the hard, clean
linoleum underfoot and the barred window looking out on the lawn and
the road, it was easy; she occasionally shocked Joan, and sometimes
herself, by the license of her speech on such matters; but it was a
different affair when one came to the gate at the end of the garden,
and passed as through a dream portal from the sunshine and frank sky
to the cathedral shadows and great whispering aisles of the wood.
There, the dimness was like the shadow of a presence; as babies they
had been aware of it, and answered their own questions by inventing
wood-ladies to float among the trunks and people the still, green
chambers. Now, neither of them could remember how they had first
learned of wood-ladies.