CHAPTER XII
NOCTURNAL VISITORS
Jefferson was standing at the open door of the house beneath the_Cumbria_'s bridge when Austin first caught sight of him, as he gropedhis way forward along the slanted deck. The black, impenetrableobscurity that descends upon the tropic swamps when the air is full ofvapour, hung over the stranded steamer, and the man's gaunt figure cutwith harsh sharpness against the stream of light. The thin duck he woreclung about him, soaked with perspiration and the all-pervading damp,emphasising the attenuated spareness of his frame, and Austin couldalmost have fancied it was a draped skeleton he was gazing at. Still, hewas a trifle reassured when he felt the firm grasp of a hot, bony hand.
"So you have come?" said the American. "It's good to get a grip of you.I guessed you would."
He drew Austin into the deck-house, and they sat down opposite eachother, and said nothing for almost a minute, though there was a littlesmile in Jefferson's face as he leaned back against the bulkhead. Hishair, which had grown long since he left Las Palmas, hung low and wetupon his forehead, and the big cheek bones showed through thetight-stretched skin, which was blanched, though there was a faintyellow tinge in it which relieved its dead whiteness. This had itssignificance, for the coast fever has not infrequently an unpleasantafter effect upon the white man's constitution.
"It isn't quite a sanatorium," he said, as though he guessed hiscomrade's thoughts. "Port Royal, Santos, Panama--I know them all--aren'ta patch on these swamps. Still, we needn't worry now you have come."
Austin smiled as he looked at him. "To be correct, I'm not quite surethat I did," he said, reflectively. "I mean, it wasn't exactly because Iwished to."
"Ah!" said Jefferson, as comprehension dawned on him. "Then the quartershare--that offer stands good--didn't bring you? Well, I was wonderingif she would make you go."
Austin was a trifle astonished, for, though he had a somewhat hardlyacquired acquaintance with human nature, it had never occurred to himthat the patronage Jacinta extended to her masculine friends naturallyattracted some attention, or that in this particular case the onlookersmight most clearly grasp the points of the game.
"I can't quite see why she should have wanted me to," he said.
There was another brief silence, during which the men looked at oneanother. This was not a subject either of them had meant to talk about.Indeed, it was one which, under different circumstances, they would havekept carefully clear of, but both realised that conventional nicetiesdid not count for much just then: They were merely men who hadhenceforth to face the grim realities of existence with the shadow ofdeath upon them, and they knew that the primitive humanity in them wouldbecome apparent as the veneer wore through.
"Still," said Jefferson, "I can think of one reason. There was a timewhen Muriel was good to her, and Jacinta can't forget it. She's not thatkind. The first day I met her I felt that she was taking stock of me,and I knew I'd passed muster when she made you stop the _Estremedura_.Perhaps, it wasn't very much in itself, but I was thankful. I've done afew tough things in my time, but I know I'd never have got Muriel ifthat girl had been against me. Still, it wasn't altogether because ofMuriel she sent you."
Austin showed his astonishment this time, and Jefferson smiled. "Youcan't quite figure how I came to understand a thing of that kind? Well,some of you smart folks have made the same mistake before. You don'tseem to remember when you waste ten minutes working a traverse roundwhat you could say in one, that however you dress it up, human nature'smuch the same. Now you're astonished at me. I'm talking. Sometimes Ifeel I have to. You want to know just why she really sent you?"
"To be frank, I have asked myself the question, and couldn't be quitesure it was altogether because she wanted me to get this unfortunatesteamboat off."
"It wasn't. You're getting as near to it as one could expect of anEnglishman. It hurts some of you to let anybody know what you reallythink. Well, I'll try to make my notion clear to you. There was a ladyin France who threw her glove among the lions long ago, but the man whowent down for it was of no great account after all. He hadn't senseenough to see the point of the thing."
"There were apparently folks who sympathised with him," said Austin,with a reflective air. "I'm not sure the man could reasonably have beenexpected to go at all, since the lady in question evidently only wishedto show everybody how far he would venture to please her."
"Now it seems to me quite likely that she meant to do a good deal more.The man may have been content to fool his time away making prettyspeeches to the court ladies and walking round dressed in silk whilethe rest of them rode out in steel. Can't you fancy that she wanted himto find out that he had the grit of the boldest of them, and could dosomething worth while, too? She probably knew he had, or she would neverhave sent him."
A little colour crept into Austin's face, but he laughed. "One could, nodoubt, imagine a good many other reasons, and most of them wouldprobably be as wide of the mark. Any way, they don't concern us. If thething ever happened, it was a very long while ago. We know better now."
"Well, I guess you can't help it," and there was a twinkle inJefferson's eyes. "Your shell's quite a good fit, and you don't like tocome out of it, though I almost thought you were going to a moment ortwo ago."
"I don't like to be pulled out. One feels that it isn't decent. Theshell's the best of some of us," said Austin.
"Then we'll come down to business. You brought the giant powder?"
"A case of it, with fuses and detonators," and Austin's relief at thechange of subject was evident. "Are you contemplating blowing her up?"
"No, sir. She's worth too much. It is, however, quite likely that we'llmake a hole in the mangrove forest and shake up the bottom of thiscreek. That is, when we're ready. There's a good deal to be put throughfirst."
"Have you found the gum?"
"I haven't looked. She's full to the orlops, and we haven't started into pump her out. Didn't seem much use in trying while she had so muchweight in her, and we'll want all the coal we've got. When we have hovemost of it and the oil out I'll start the big centrifugal. You see, shehasn't a donkey on deck. That's why, though it cost me a good deal, Ibought the locomotive boiler. You folks have a library of ShippingActs, but you don't show much sense when you let anything under 2,000tons go to sea with her pumps run from the main engines. When you mostwant steam for pumping it's when your fires are drowning out."
It was once more evident to Austin that Jefferson knew his business, andhad foreseen most of the difficulties he would have to grapple with.Still, he fancied, by his face, that he had not quite anticipated all.
"Where are you putting the oil you take out of her?" he asked.
"On a strip of sand up a creek. That's one of the few things that areworrying me. We'll have to get it on board as soon as we float her offwhen the rain comes, or the creek will get it ahead of us. The nextpoint is that it will be a little rough on the men who have to watch itafter working all day long."
"To watch it! Who is likely to meddle with it here?"
"Niggers," said Jefferson drily. "They cleaned most everything theycould come at off the boat before I got to her, but they couldn't breakout cargo with the water in her, and didn't know enough to get at theprovisions in the lazaret. Still, while these particular swamps don'tseem to belong to anybody, there's trade everywhere, and oil's amarketable commodity."
"Where's the Frenchman who chartered the _Cumbria_?"
"Dead. I've been up to his place in the launch. I found it caved in, andtrees growing up in it already. Nature straightens things up quitesmartly in this country. Any way, I'll show you round to-morrow; and, inthe meanwhile, it's about time that Spaniard brought you some supper."
"It seems to me that everybody who had anything to do with thisunfortunate vessel invariably died."
Jefferson smiled a trifle grimly. "That's a fact," he said.
Then one of the Canarios brought in a simple meal, and when they hadeaten and talked for another hour, Austin stre
tched himself out on thesettee and Jefferson climbed into his slanted bunk. They left the lightburning and the door wide open, and both of them lay down dressed asthey were; but while Jefferson seemed to fall into a somewhat restlessdoze, Austin found that sleep fled the further from him the more hecourted it that night. It was very hot, for one thing, and strandedsteamer and mangrove forest alike seemed filled with mysterious noisesthat stirred his imagination and disturbed his rest. It was only by astrenuous effort he lay still for a couple of hours, and then, risingsoftly, with a little sigh, went out into the night.
The darkness closed about him, black and impenetrable, when he steppedout of the stream of light before the deck-house door, and the feebleflame of the match he struck to light his pipe as he leaned upon therail only made it more apparent. He could see nothing whatever when thematch went out, but the oily gurgle of the creek beneath him suggestedthe height of the steamer's hove-up side. She lay, so Jefferson had toldhim, with her inshore bilge deep in the mire, and two big derrick-boomsslung from the wire hawser that ran from her stern to the mangrovesalong what should have been the bank, as a precaution against anynocturnal call by negroes in canoes. Her outshore side, which he lookeddown from, was, he surmised by the slant of deck, between ten andfifteen feet above the creek.
It was a little cooler there, and the sounds were less disquieting thanthey had been in the room. He could localise and identify some of themnow--the splash of falling moisture, the trickle of the stream, and thesoft fanning of unseen wings as one of the great bats which abound inthat country stooped towards the light. Still, behind these weremysterious splashings among the mangroves and wallowings in the creek,while the thick, hot darkness seemed to pulse with life. He could almostfancy he heard the breathing of unseen things, and it did not seemstrange to him that the dusky inhabitants of that country should believein malevolent deities. Indeed, as he leaned upon the rail, with itsdarkness enfolding him, he was troubled by a sense of his owninsignificance and a longing to escape from that abode of fear andshadow. Other men, including those who had come out with a salvageexpedition, had found the floating of the _Cumbria_ too big a thing forthem, and he already understood that there are parts of the tropicswhere the white man is apt to find his courage melt away from him aswell as his bodily vigour.
Then he commenced to wonder dispassionately why Jacinta had sent him, orif he had, after all, been warranted in considering that she had doneso. She had, though he admitted it unwillingly, at least, not bidden himgo, but she had certainly done what she could to make him understandthat he was wasting his life on board the _Estremedura_. It would havebeen a consolation to feel that he was obeying her command and doing hera definite service, if it was only to bring Jefferson home to MurielGascoyne; but she had not laid one upon him, and even Jefferson seemedto understand that her purpose went further.
He was less pleased with the fancy that Jacinta had undertaken what sheapparently considered his reformation. He had been, in some respects,content as he was, for while there was no other woman he had the sameregard for, he had forced himself to recognise that it was quite out ofthe question that she should ever entertain more than kindliness forhim. Austin could be practical, and remembered that young women with heradvantages, as a rule, looked higher than a steamboat purser, while evenif Jefferson succeeded in his venture, and he went home with four orfive thousand pounds, which appeared just then distinctly unlikely,Jacinta was the only daughter of a man whose income was supposed toamount to as much a year.
Austin sighed a little as he decided that he did not really know why hehad come. In the meanwhile he was there, and there was nothing to begained by being sorry, especially as he could not even console himselfwith the fancy that Jacinta was grieving over him. She was probably, asusual, far too busy by that time with somebody else's affairs. He wasalso averse from permitting himself to feel any glow ofself-congratulation over the fancy that he was doing a chivalrous thing.In fact, he saw it with realistic clearness of vision as one that waswholly nonsensical, and it did not occur to him that the essence of allthat was best in the old knightly days might be surviving still, and,indeed, live on, indestructible, even in the hearts of practical,undemonstrative Englishmen, as well as garlic-scented Spaniards, andseafaring Americans. Still, when he had yielded himself instinctively toJacinta's will he had vaguely realised that, after all, the bonds ofservice are now and then more profitable to a man than dominion.
In the meanwhile the damp soaked through his clothing, and his physicalnature shrank from the hot steaminess and the sour odours ofputrefaction. It was unpleasant to stand there in that thick darkness,and even a little hard upon the nerves, but he had had enough of thedeck-house, and he could not sleep, which is by no means an unusualdifficulty with white men in the tropics. It was a relief when at lasta sound that grew louder fixed his attention, and resolved itself into ameasured thudding. Here were evidently canoes coming down the creek, butAustin was a little uncertain what to do. He had no wish to rouse theworn-out men, who probably needed all the sleep they could get, if thiswas a usual occurrence; but it did not appear advisable that thereshould be nobody but himself on deck in case the canoes ran alongside.He was considering what he should do when Jefferson, who held a glintingobject in his hand, appeared in the door of the deck-house. Then therewas a patter of feet on a ladder below, and another dim figurematerialised out of the darkness.
"That ---- Funnel-paint come back again," said the half-seen man.
Jefferson laughed unpleasantly. "He's getting monotonous, but he'staking steep chances this time."
The beat of paddles slackened a little, there was a murmur of voicesbeneath the steamer's side, and Jefferson leaned out, looking down intothe impenetrable blackness beneath him. A scraping sound came out of it,and apparently moved along, while, when the half-seen man thrust a bigblock of coal upon him, Austin turned and strode softly after Jefferson,who walked forward beside the rail.
"Better let him have it now, sir," said the other man. "She's quite lowon the other quarter, and if they try swimming round her stern the boomswon't stop them."
Then there was a vivid streak in the darkness, and a detonation that wastwice repeated, while Austin, who hurled his lump of coal down with allhis strength, caught a whiff of acrid smoke. There was also a splashbelow, and a confused clamour that was lost in the hasty thud of paddlesas the invisible canoes got away. Then, while the Canarios camefloundering across the deck, a single voice rose up.
"Bimeby we done lib for cut you t'roat!" it said.
"Oh, go to the devil!" said Jefferson, and the big revolver flashedagain.
There was no answer, and the splash of paddles slowly died away. It wasevident that the affair was over, and Austin fancied that nobody wasmuch the worse. Jefferson sauntered towards him snapping the spentshells out of his pistol.
"Funnel-paint is getting on my nerves. I'll have to drop half a stick ofgiant powder on him next time he comes," he said.
"He didn't make much of a show," said Austin. "You think he meant tocome on board?"
"If there had been nobody round he would have done so, but how far he'dhave gone then is another question. He probably knows that niggerstockades are apt to get blown up when a white man disappears, and it'squite likely his nerve would have failed him. Any way, he's hanging outat a village up the creek, and we'll probably go round to-morrow withsome giant powder and make a protest. In the meanwhile, I don't know anyreason why you shouldn't go to sleep again."
Austin went back with him to the house beneath the bridge, and, thoughit was not perceptibly cooler, found sleep come to him. His vagueapprehensions had vanished in the face of a definite peril.