CHAPTER XVI
ELUSIVE GUM
It was in the small hours when Austin wakened, and, listening a moment,stretched his aching limbs with a little sigh of content. The odds andends on the table beside him were rattling merrily, and a deep pulsatoryhumming rang stridently through the silence of the swamps. The pump wasrunning well, for he could hear the steady splash of water falling intothe creek, and once more a little thrill of exultation ran through him.He was not in most respects a fanciful man, for in him the artistictemperament was held in due subjection by a knowledge of the world andshrewd practical sense. Still, there were times when he vaguelyrecognised that there might, after all, be a reality behind the fancieshe now and then indulged in with a smile, and that night it seemed tohim that the big centrifugal pump was chanting a song of triumph.
He had tasted toil, and what toil really is only those know who haveborne it in the steamy heat of the tropics, which saps the white man'svigour; while he had discovered what, artist as he was, he had notlearned before: that, by way of compensation, man may attain a certainelusive spirituality by the stern subjugation of his body, even when itis accomplished by brutal manual labour. As the _Estremedura_'ssobrecargo he had watched the struggle for existence between man and manwith good-humoured toleration of its petty wiles and trickeries, but nowit was the cleaner and more primitive struggle between man and matterhe was called upon to take his part in with the faith in the destiny ofhis species which is capable of moving mountains, and not infrequentlydoes so with hydraulic hose and blasting charges, as well as a few oddthousand tons of iron and water in a stranded steamer. Lying still awhile, he heard the great pump hurling out its announcement of man'sdomination to swamp and forest, and then went peacefully to sleep.
He was astir with the dawn next morning, but when they went down theladder into the hold he knew that the change in him had reached afurther stage. Whether the water had sunk or not, he was going to seethat fight out, and go back triumphant, or leave his bones in Africa. Itwas not alone to vindicate himself in Jacinta's eyes, for that, thoughit counted, too, seemed of less moment now; he was there to justify hisexistence, to prove himself a man, which many who have won honours inthis world have, after all, never really done. As a sign of it, he waswholly practical when, hanging down from the ladder, he laid the fingersof one hand upon the scratch Jefferson had made on the iron. Then heheld up the hand.
"Wet to the knuckles only," he said. "Last night the water was on thethumb."
They went up, and Jefferson looked at him keenly when they stood ondeck; in fact, as he had done when Austin first clambered, half naked,out of the hatch.
"Yes," he said quietly, "she is heaving it out, and you have done morethan start in. You mean staying with it now?"
Austin laughed. "I'm not sure how you know it, but I really think I do."
"No?" said Jefferson, with a twinkle in his eyes. "When it's in yourvoice, and stamped upon the rest of you. Well, I think we're going tofloat her, though it's perhaps not quite a sure thing yet. We seem tohave bluffed off Funnel-paint, but the trouble is, you can't bluff thefever. In the meanwhile, we'll see if she's draining any out of theengine room."
They went in, and stood on the top platform, looking down on the water,which, so far as they could discern, stood at much the same level as ithad done. Jefferson gazed at it with an air of reflection.
"If the bulkhead's strained and started so the water could get in, Idon't quite see why it shouldn't run out into the hold again, butthere's evidently no suction that way," he said. "You see how thattool-case lid is floating. There's another point that strikes me. Thosestarted plates don't seem to be letting very much water in."
"As you have already pointed out, there is a good deal it's a littledifficult to understand about the whole thing."
"Well," said Jefferson gravely, "it doesn't matter in the meanwhile, andwe'll probably find out by and by. The first thing we have to do is tolay hands on that gum, and until the water's lower we can't start in.The boys can lay off to-day. Well, what are you wanting, Bill?"
"Two of the Canariers down!" said the fireman, who appeared in thedoorway. "They was looking groggy yesterday, an' one o' them's talkingsilly now. I think it's fever."
Austin looked at Jefferson, whose face grew a trifle grim. "Ah," hesaid, "it's beginning. Well, I had expected we'd have that to grapplewith before very long. We'll go along and look at them."
They went, and found one of the men raving in the forecastle, whileAustin, who did what he could for him and his comrade, which was verylittle, afterwards spent a day of blissful idleness stretched at fulllength on the settee in the skipper's room, with a damp-stainedtreatise on navigation. He had never imagined that he could peruse awork of that kind with interest, but it served its purpose, for he felthe must have something to fix his attention on. In the meanwhile the bigpump hummed on, as it did for another day and night, until on the thirdmorning Jefferson stopped it and turned steam on the winch again.
"You have got to keep your eyes open as well as hustle, boys," he said,as he stood with his hand on the lever. "There'll be forty dollars,Spanish, for whoever finds the first bag of gum."
Austin made this clear to them, and they went down the ladder, but twomen who had gone with them before were not there that day. The water hadsunk, and tiers of rotting bags lay, half afloat, in it, giving out asickening smell of fermentation. They were filled with little blacknuts, the oleaginous kernels of the palm fruit from which the layer ofoil had been scraped off, and these were evidently worth little in theirdamaged condition. Austin, however, had very little time to notice themin, for the winch above him rattled, and the day of feverish toil began.
The bags burst when they dragged them into piles and laid them upon thesling, while when the winch swung them up, a rain of kernels and slimywater came pattering and splashing down. Putrefying kernels floated upinto every hole they made, and now and then a man sank waist deep amongthe crumbling bags. Still, there was no stoppage or slackening ofeffort. Forty dollars is a large sum to a seaman of the Canaries, whocan bring up a family on one peseta, which is rather less thanninepence, a day, while the bonus contingent on getting the _Cumbria_off would set up most of them for life. They remembered it that day asthey floundered and waded about the stifling hold, for the work of thebig pump had renewed their ardour.
Still, the task before them was one most men would have shrunk from. Theheat below decks was suffocating, the smell of the steaming, fermentingmass of slime and oil and kernels nauseating. The water it swam in wasputrescent, and the weight to be hauled out of it and sent up into thesunlight apparently enough to keep them busy for months ahead, thoughthey had, as everybody knew, very little time to move it in. It was tobe a grim struggle between man and inert material, for unless the_Cumbria_ was hove off when the rains came, it seemed very probable thatshe would stay there until she fell to pieces.
They set about it in silence, which, in the case of Spaniards, was asignificant thing; but nobody had any breath to spare, and Austin gaspeddistressfully as he toiled, almost naked, in their midst. His hair wasfilled with grease, clots of oil smeared his shoulders, and the bagsthat burst as he lifted them abraded his dripping skin. Still, they wentup, opening as they swung out of the dusky hold, and the winch rattledon, while there could be no rest for any man while sling succeededsling.
He was half blinded by perspiration, the wounds on his raw hands hadopened again, and there were now red patches on his uncovered breast andarms. His muscles had, however, grown accustomed to the strain since thefirst arduous day, and he did a man's part, as their comrade, with therest. There were no distinctions down in the stifling hold. It was acommunity of effort for the one result, and again Austin wondered at theforethought of the fever-wasted man above who drove the hammering winch.
Jefferson was, beyond all question, boss; but with singular clearness ofvision, or, perhaps, that higher, half-conscious faculty of doing theright thing, that characterises the leader of men, he
had recognisedthat what he called bluff was of no service here, and had gone straightto the strength there is in simple human nature. There was, thoseuntaught sailormen knew, no labour he was not ready to bear his part in,and no command was flung at them for a show of authority. Jeffersonspent his strength and dollars freely, and while he asked no more than ahundred cents' worth for the latter, he got it with interest, ahundredfold.
It grew hotter and hotter, and there were curiously mingled ejaculationsof Latin prayer and imprecations that had somehow lost their sting. Theman with calumniated ancestry took it as a jest, and amidst the roar ofrunning chain and fierce rattle of the winch the work went on. The rainswere coming, there was very much to be done, and human courage braceditself to the task. Hard hands were torn and bleeding, veins showedgorged on dusky foreheads, muscles rose and bunched themselves under theolive skin, and Englishman and Iberian gave freely all that was in them,the sweat of the hard-driven body and tension of controlling will. Theywere alone in the land of the shadow, with a deadly climate againstthem, but the conflict they were engaged in has been waged before bySpaniards and Englishmen in half the wilder lands.
Then the winch stopped suddenly, and Jefferson came backwards down theladder. He alighted knee deep in water among the rotten bags, and allhis observations were not recordable. He had put off conventionality,and was once more the reckless sailor and the optimistic American, so hespoke of the lower regions, and called the men who had stowed the_Cumbria_'s cargo condemned loafers in barbarous Castilian and goodAmerican, while the olive-faced Canarios gasped and grinned at him.
"The man who packed those bags there should be hung," he said. "We can'tbreak the bulk out until we've shifted most of them. Then I'll send youdown the sling-tub, and we'll heave the stuff to ----! It's sixtydollars now for the man who finds the gum."
"No sign of it yet," said Austin. "They'd never have stowed it among thebulk kernels. They're worth something. Hadn't you better make sure ofthem?"
Jefferson laughed grimly. "They're worth--how do I know? Call it AL12 aton when they're not rotten. It's the gum we came for, and I'm going tofind it if I tear the ballast tanks and limbeys out of her. Clear thatbag bulkhead, and then stand by for the sling-tub. We'll heave everyblue-flamed kernel over."
The tub came down by and by, in fact, two of them, and those who had noshovels bailed up the slimy kernels with their hats and hands; but eachtime the chain swung through the hatch the tub below was full. It wastwo o'clock when they desisted, and some of them were waist deep inwater then, while soon after they came up the big hose splashed inagain. There were steampipe collars to unbolt and pack, and bolt again,before that was done; while when Austin came upon Jefferson, he held upone hand from which the scalded skin was peeling.
"I can run the ---- winch if I drive her with my mouth and foot," hesaid. "Get the comida into you, and then back into the hold again. We'regoing to make her hum."
Austin glanced suggestively towards the men, who stood with backs stillbent with weariness, about the entrance to the forecastle.
"I suppose so," he said. "Still, the question is, can they stand itlong?"
Jefferson laughed harshly. "They'll have to. We have the blazing sunagainst us, and the evening fever-mist; in fact, 'most everything thatman has to grapple with, and the worst of all is time. Still, they can'tbreak us. We have got to beat them--the river, the climate, and all theman-killing meanness nature has in Western Africa."
He stopped a moment, and, standing very straight, a haggard, grim-facedscarecrow, flung up his scalded hands towards the brassy heavens in awide, appealing gesture. "When you come to the bottom of things, that'swhat we were made for. There's something in us that is stronger thanthem all."
Austin said nothing, though once more a little thrill ran through him ashe slipped away quietly in search of his comida. What they were doinghad, he felt, been sung in Epics long ago, and Jefferson had, it seemed,blundered upon the under-running theme. It was the recognition of theprimal ban again, the ban that had a blessing for man to triumph in, andby it win dominion over the material world and all there is therein. Heand his comrade were men whose creed was crudely simple, though it wasalso, on points they did not often mention, severe; but they bore thebonds of service, which are never worn without compensation, willingly,and the tense effort of will and limb had clarified and strengthened thevague faith in them until they were ready to attempt the impossible.
Still, Austin had little time for his comida. The men in the forecastlewere very sick indeed, and he packed them in foul blankets, and dosedthem with green-lime water, boiling hot to start the perspiration, whichwas, he recognised, likely to accomplish more than his prescriptions.There were limes in Funnel-paint's village, and they had not scrupled torequisition them. One of the men lay still, moaning faintly throughblackened lips, and the other, raving, called incoherently on saints andangels. It seemed to Austin, standing in that reeking den, that therewas small chance for his patients unless they heard him. Two of thosewhose names he caught had once, he remembered, been, at least,fresh-water sailormen, and half unconsciously he also appealed to them.One creed appeared much the same as another in that dark land, andsomething in him cried out instinctively to the great serene influencesbeyond the shadow. When he had finished his work of mercy the Spaniardswere stripping the covers off the after hatch, and he had scarcely aminute for a mouthful before he joined them to heave the kernels up byhand. They went up, basket after basket, and splashed into the creek,but there was no sign of a gum bag or package anywhere among them. Bill,who hove them out through the open gangway, once turned to grin atAustin, who stood next the hatch.
"I've never been a millionaire, an' it's ---- unlikely that I'll ever beone, either; but I know what it must feel like now," he said. "Here areyou an' me slingin' away stuff that's worth twelve pounds a ton, an' oneo' them goes a long way with a man like me."
Austin said nothing. He had no breath to spare, but he thrust a brimmingbasket upon the fireman, and that did just as well. They toiledthroughout that afternoon, under a broiling sun, but when the blackdarkness came again they had still found no gum. Then, as they atetogether, Austin looked at Jefferson.
"You are sure the gum was really put into her?" he said.
"It was," said Jefferson, with a little grim smile. "Whether it's therenow, or not, is another thing. We'll know when she's empty, and if wehaven't found it then, we'll consider. Not a pound reached Grand Canary,and it's quite certain that the fellows who went--somewhere else--tooknone of it with them."