CHAPTER X
JACINTA IS NOT CONTENT
Darkness was closing down on the faintly shining sea, and the dullmurmur of the surf grew louder as the trade-breeze died away, whenJacinta and Muriel Gascoyne sat in the stern of a white gig which twobarefooted Canarios pulled across Las Palmas harbour on the evening onwhich Austin was to sail. In front of them the spray still tossed infilmy clouds about the head of the long, dusky mole, and the lonelyIsleta hill cut black as ebony against a cold green transparency, whileskeins of lights twinkled into brilliancy round the sweep of bay.Jacinta, however, saw nothing of this. She was watching the_Estremedura_'s dark hull rise higher above the line of mole, andlistening to one of the boatmen who accompanied the rhythmic splash ofoars with a little melodious song. She long afterwards remembered itsplaintive cadence and the words of it well.
"Las aves marinas vuelen encima la mar," he sang, and then while themeasured thud and splash grew a trifle faster, "No pueden escapar laspenas del amor."
He did not seem to know the rest of it, and when she had heard thestanza several times Jacinta, who saw Muriel's eyes fixed upon herenquiringly, made a little half-impatient gesture.
"It's the usual sentimental rubbish, though he sings passably well.'Even the sea birds cannot escape the pains of love,'" she said."Absurd, isn't it? like most of the men one comes across nowadays, theyprobably spend all their time in search of something to eat. Still, Isuppose--you--would sympathise with the man whose perverted imaginationled him to write that song."
Muriel looked at her with a hint of reproach in her big blue eyes, whichwere very reposeful. "I don't think I ever quite understood you, and Idon't now, but I once went to see an English gullery," she said. "Therewere rows of nests packed so close that one could scarcely pick a waybetween, with little, half-feathered things in most of them. They allhad their mouths open."
Jacinta laughed musically. "Of course," she said. "You are delightful.But never mind me. Go on a little further."
"It was the big gulls I was thinking of," said Muriel gravely. "Theydidn't fly away, but hung just above us in a great white cloud,wheeling, screaming, and now and then making little swoops at our heads.It didn't seem to matter what happened to them, but any one could seethey were in an agony of terror lest we should tread upon some of thelittle, half-feathered nestlings. I came away as soon as the otherswould let me. It seemed a cruelty to frighten them."
"It seems to me," said Jacinta, "that you are anticipating, or confusingthings considerably, but I'll try not to offend you by making that alittle plainer, though, I should almost like to. I'm in quite a pricklyhumour to-night."
She sat silent a moment or two, while a trace of colour crept in hercompanion's face, looking out towards the eastern haze, as she had doneof late somewhat frequently.
"Yes," she said, reflectively, "I feel that it would be a relief to makeyou upset and angry. You are so aggravatingly sure of everything, andserene. Of course, that is, perhaps, only natural, after all. You have,in one respect, got just what you wanted, and have sense enough to becontent with it."
Muriel turned and looked at her with a trace of bewilderment, for therewas an unusual hardness in Jacinta's tone.
"Wouldn't everybody be content in such a case?" she asked.
"Oh, dear no!" and Jacinta laughed. "I, for one, would begin to look forflaws in the thing, whatever it was, and wonder if it wouldn't be wiserto change it for something else. In fact, I don't mind telling you Ifeel like that to-night. You see, for a year at least, I have beentrying to bring a certain thing about, and--now I have succeeded--I wishI hadn't. Of course, you won't understand me, and I don't mean you to;but you may as well remember that it's a somewhat perilous thing to keepon giving people good advice. Some day they will probably act upon it."
"But that ought to please one."
Jacinta glanced once more into the soft darkness that crept up from theEast with a little shiver. "Well," she said sharply, "in my case itcertainly doesn't."
They were alongside the _Estremedura_ in another minute, but the seamanthey found on deck did not know where Austin was, and led them down toMacallister's room. It was beneath the spar-deck, and very hot, for thedynamo was not running that night, and a big oil lamp lighted it. It wasalso full of tobacco smoke, and--for the port was open--the rumble ofthe long swell tumbling against the mole came throbbing into it. A bigman in very shabby serge, with a hard face, sat opposite the engineer,until the latter, seeing the two women, laid a hand upon his shoulder.
"Out ye get!" he said, and his guest was projected suddenly into thedimly-lighted space about the after-hatch.
Then he smiled upon the newcomers affably. "Come away in," he said. "Wasit me or Mr. Austin ye came to see?"
"On this occasion it was Mr. Austin," said Jacinta, who found a placeopposite him, beside Muriel, on a settee. "Of course, that was becausehe is going away. Isn't he here?"
"He is not," and Macallister beamed at her. "In one way, it's not thatmuch of a pity. There's twice the light-heartedness in me that there isin Mr. Austin."
"I can quite believe it. Still, light-heartedness of one kind is now andthen a little inconvenient. Where has he gone?"
"To the town. I don't expect him until he calls for his man--the oneI've just hove out--when the West-coast mailboat comes in. She won'tstop more than half an hour, but there's no sign of her yet."
Jacinta sighed whimsically, perhaps to hide what she felt.
"Then I'm afraid we shall not see him, which is a pity, because I'vebeen thinking over the nice things I meant to say to him, and nowthey're all wasted," she said. "You will tell him that we came to saygood-bye to him, won't you, and that I'm just a little vexed he nevercalled to tell us anything about his expedition."
Macallister grinned sardonically, and though Jacinta was usually a veryself-possessed young woman, she appeared to find his gaze a trifledisconcerting.
"Well," he said, "I know all about it. He has sold everything he had,and he borrowed AL40. One way or another he has another AL60 of his own."
Jacinta looked up sharply. "He has no more than that?"
"It's not likely," and Macallister watched her with a faint twinkle inhis eyes. "I do not know why he would not have the AL200 Mr. Brownoffered him. Maybe ye do."
There was a just perceptible trace of colour in Jacinta's cheek. "Ihardly see how you could expect me to when I never heard of it untilthis moment," she said. "Would AL100 be enough for Mr. Austin?"
"I'm thinking it would. No for everybody under the same circumstances,but enough for him. There are folks in these islands who have only seenthe outside of Mr. Austin, which, ye may observe, is in one sense quitea natural thing."
He stopped a moment, and smiled upon her genially. "It's not his faultthat he's no quite so well favoured as I am. What would ye expect of anEnglishman? Still, there are men aboard here who have seen what'sunderneath--I mean the other side of him--at nights when he brought thedispatch off through the surf, and once--though that was not hisbusiness--when I was sick, an' they let water down in the starboardboiler."
"Still," said Jacinta, "he would naturally have to have so many things."
"He has four good men, a little box o' drugs, and a case o' dynamite.Farquhar's going on to Australia with mining stores, and he gave ithim."
It seemed absurdly insufficient, and Jacinta struggled with an almosthysterical inclination to laugh. It was, she realised, a very big thingAustin had undertaken, and his equipment consisted of a case of dynamiteand a box of drugs, which, on his own confession, he knew very littleabout. Still, she saw that Macallister, who, she fancied, ought toknow, rated manhood far higher than material. It was Muriel who brokethe silence.
"But they will want a doctor," she said, with a little tremour in hervoice.
Macallister shook his head. "Ye would not get one to go there for AL500,and he would be no use if he did," he said. "Ye will remember thatmalaria fever does not stay on one long. It goes away when it has shakenthe strength o
ut o' ye--and now and then comes back again--while by thetime Austin gets there Mr. Jefferson will be----"
He stopped with some abruptness, but though she shivered, Muriel lookedat him with steady eyes.
"Ah!" she said, "you mean he will either be better, or that no doctorcould cure him then?"
Macallister made her a little inclination, and it was done with a gravedeference that Jacinta had scarcely expected from him.
"Just that," he said. "I'm thinking ye are one of the women a man cantell the truth to. It is a pity there are not more o' them. It is no ahealthy country Mr. Austin is going to, but I have been five years onthe coast o' it, and ye see me here."
"I wonder," said Jacinta, "whether you, who know all about ships andengines, did not feel tempted to go with Mr. Austin?"
The engineer smiled curiously. "Tempted!" he said. "It was like tryingto be teetotal with a whisky bottle in the rack above one's bunk; but Iam a married man, with a wife who has a weakness for buying dining-roomsuites."
"Dining-room suites! What have they to do with it?"
"Just everything," and Macallister sighed. "She will only have thebiggest ones the doors will let in, and she has furnished a good manydining-rooms altogether. Ye will mind that we lived here and there andeverywhere, while she's back in England now. Ye would not meet a betterwoman, but on AL20 a month ye cannot buy unlimited red-velvet chairs andsideboards with looking-glasses at the back o' them."
Jacinta laughed as she rose. "You will tell Mr. Austin we are sorry wedid not see him."
"I will," and Macallister stood up, too. "Perhaps ye mean it this time,and I'm a little sorry for him myself. There are men who get sent offwith bands and speeches and dinners to do a smaller thing, but Mr.Austin he just slips away with his box o' dynamite and his fewsailormen."
He stopped and looked hard at her a moment before he turned to Muriel."Still, we'll have the big drum out when he brings Mr. Jefferson and the_Cumbria_ back again, and if there's anything that can be broken leftwhole in this ship that night it will be no fault o' mine."
They went out and left him, but Jacinta stopped when they came upon theman he had ejected from his room, sitting on the companion stairway andsmoking a very objectionable pipe. She also held a little purseconcealed beneath her hand.
"You are going back with Mr. Austin to the _Cumbria_?" she said.
The man stood up. "In course," he said. "It's eight pound a month, allfound, an' a bonus."
"Ah!" said Jacinta. "I suppose there is nothing else?"
The man appeared to ruminate over this, until a light broke in on him.
"Well," he said, "Mr. Jefferson does the straight thing, an' he fed uswell. That is, as well as he could, considering everything."
Jacinta smiled at Muriel. "You will notice the answer. He is a man!"Then she held out a strip of crinkly paper. "That will make you almost amonth to the good, and if you do everything you can to make thingseasier for the man who wants to get the _Cumbria_ off, there willprobably be another waiting for you when you come back again."
The man, who took the crinkly paper, gazed at it in astonishment, andthen made a little sign of comprehension. "Thank you kindly, miss, butwhich one am I to look after special? You see, there's two of them."
Jacinta was apparently not quite herself that night, for the swiftcolour flickered into her face, and stayed there a moment.
"Both," she said decisively. "Still, you are never to tell anybody aboutthat note."
The man once more gazed at her with such evident bewilderment thatMuriel broke into a little half-audible laugh. Then he grinned suddenly,and touched his battered cap.
"Well, we'll make it--both," he said.
They went up the companion, and left him apparently chuckling, butJacinta appeared far from pleased when she got into the waiting boat.
"That was to have gone to England for a hat and one or two things Ireally can't do without--though I shall probably have to now," she said."Oh, aren't they stupid sometimes--I felt I could have shaken him."
In the meanwhile the man in the fireman's serge went back toMacallister's room.
"Give me an envelope--quick!" he said.
Macallister got him one, and he slipped a strip of paper inside beforehe addressed it and tossed it across the table.
"You'll post that. There's a Castle boat home to-morrow, and I'd soonertrust you with it than myself," he said, with a little sigh, which,however, once more changed to a chuckle.
"If there's money inside it ye're wise," said Macallister drily. "Still,what are ye grinning in yon fashion for?"
"I was thinking it's just as well I've only--one--old woman. It wouldmake a big hole in eight pounds a month--an' a bonus--if I had any moreof 'em. But you get that letter posted before I want it back."
"Wanting," said Macallister, reflectively, "is no always getting. Maybe,it's now and then fortunate it is so, after all."
It was two hours later, and Jacinta stood on the flat roof of PanchoBrown's house looking down upon the close-packed Spanish town, when thecrash of a mail gun rose from the harbour and was lost in the drowsymurmur of the surf. Then the other noises in the hot streets below herwent on again, but Jacinta scarcely heard the hum of voices and thepatter of feet as she watched a blinking light slide out from among theothers in the harbour. It rose higher and swung a little as it creptpast the mole, then a cluster of lower lights lengthened into a row ofyellow specks, and she could make out the West-coast liner's dusky hullthat moved out with slanting spars faster into the faintly shining sea.Jacinta closed one hand as she leaned upon the parapet and watched it,until she turned with a little start at the sound of footsteps. She was,one could have fancied, not particularly pleased to see Muriel Gascoynethen.
"We were wondering what had become of you, and Mrs. Hatherly is waitingto go home," said the latter. Then she turned and caught a glimpse ofthe moving lights that were closing in on one another and growing dimagain. "That must be the African boat?"
"It is. She is taking out six careless sailormen whose lives are,perhaps, after all, of some value to them."
Muriel looked at her, and wished she could see her face. "Every one ofthem may be of some value to somebody else."
"I suppose so," and Jacinta laughed curiously. "You obvious people arenow and then to be envied, Muriel."
"If there is anything you would like to tell me----" and Muriel laid ahand upon her arm with a gesture of sympathy.
"There isn't. We all have our discontented fits, and mine is, no doubt,more than usually unreasonable since everything has turned out as Iwanted it."
Then she rose and turned towards the stairway with a little laugh whichMuriel fancied had a hint of pride in it. "I really don't think I wouldhave had anything done differently, after all, and now I must not keepMrs. Hatherly waiting."