CHAPTER IV
A BIG CONTRACT
It was the day after the dance at the Catalina, and Austin was runninginto Las Palmas harbour in a powerful steam launch which had been lenthim to convey certain documents to a Spanish steamer. The trade-breezehad veered a little further east that day, as it sometimes did, and thefull drift of the long Atlantic sea came rolling inshore. The launch waswet with spray, which flew up in clouds as she lurched over thewhite-topped combers that burst in a chaotic spouting on a blackvolcanic reef not far away from her. It also happened that the coalingcompany's new tug had broken down a few minutes earlier, and when thelaunch drove past the long mole the first thing Austin saw was aforty-ton coal lighter, loaded to the water's edge, drifting towards thereef. There was a boat astern of her, out of which a couple of Spanishpeons seemed to be flinging the water, preparatory to abandoning thelighter to her fate, but Austin could see very little of the latter. Thesea washed clean across her, and she showed no more than a strip ofsluicing side amidst the spray.
What became of her was no business of his, but when the whistle of a biggrain tramp rolling across the mouth of the harbour, and apparentlywaiting for her coal, roared out a warning, it occurred to Austin thatthe Spaniards in the boat might have considerable difficulty in pullingher clear of the reef against the sea. Accordingly, he unloosed thelaunch's whistle, and while it screeched dolefully, put his helm overand ran down upon the lighter. She was wallowing sideways towards thereef when he rounded up close alongside and saw, somewhat to hisastonishment, that there was a man still on board. He was very black,though the spray was dripping from his face, and the seas that sweptover the lighter's deck wet him to the knees. Austin shouted to him:
"I'll run round to leeward, Jefferson, so you can jump!" he said.
The wet man swung an arm up. "Stand by to take our rope. I'm not goingto jump."
Austin considered. He was by no means sure that the launch had powerenough to tow the lighter clear, and the long white seething on thejagged lava astern of her suggested what would happen if she failed todo it.
"Come on board. I haven't steam to pull her off," he said.
Jefferson made an impatient gesture. "If you want me, you have got totry."
Austin wasted no more time. It was evidently valuable then, and he knewhis man. He signed to the Spanish fireman to back the launch astern, andclutched the rope Jefferson flung him as she drove across the lighter'sbows.
"I can tow her just as well with you on board here," he roared.
"I guess you can," and a sea wet Jefferson to the waist as he flounderedaft towards the lighter's stern. "Still, you're going to find it awkwardto steer her, too."
This was plain enough, and Austin decided that if Jefferson meant tostay on board it was his affair, while he was far from sure that hewould gain anything by attempting to dissuade him, even had there beentime available. As it was, he realised that the lighter would probablygo ashore while they discussed the question, and he signed to theSpanish fireman, who started the little engine full speed ahead, andthen opened the furnace door. There was a gush of flame from the funnel,and the tow-rope tightened with a bang that jerked the launch's sternunder. Then, while she was held down by the wallowing lighter a big,white-topped sea burst across her forward, and for a few seconds Austin,drenched and battered by the flying spray, could see nothing at all.When it blew astern he made out Jefferson standing knee deep in water atthe lighter's helm, though there was very little else visible throughthe rush of white-streaked brine. Austin shouted to the fireman, whoonce more opened the furnace door, for that cold douche had suddenlymade a different man of him.
He did, for the most part, very little on board the _Estremedura_, andtook life as easily as he could, but there was another side of hisnature which, though it had been little stirred as yet, came uppermostthen, as it did occasionally when he brought his despatches off at nightin an open roadstead through the trade-wind surf. It was also known tothe _Estremedura_'s skipper that he had once swum off to the steamerfrom the roaring beach at Orotava when no fishermen in the little portwould launch a barquillo out. Thus he felt himself in entire sympathywith Jefferson as every big comber hove the launch up and the spraylashed his tingling skin, while for five anxious minutes the issue hungin the balance. Launch and lighter went astern with the heavier seas,and barely recovered the lost ground in the smooths when a roller failedto break quite so fiercely as its predecessors.
Then the Spanish fireman either raised more steam, or the heavy weightof coal astern at last acquired momentum, for they commenced to forgeahead, the launch plunging and rolling, with red flame at her funnel,and the smoke and spray and sparks blowing aft on Austin, who stood,dripping to the skin, at the tiller. Ahead, the long seas that hovethemselves up steeply in shoal water came foaming down on him, but therewas a little grim smile in his eyes, and he felt his blood tingle as hewatched them. When he glanced over his shoulder, which it was notadvisable to do unguardedly, he could see Jefferson swung up above himon the lighter's lifted stern, and the long white smoother that ranseething up the reef.
It, however, fell further behind them, until he could put the helm overand run the lighter into smoother water behind the mole, when Jeffersonflung up his arm again.
"Swing her alongside the grain boat, and then hold on a minute. I'llcome ashore with you," he said.
Austin stopped the launch and cast the tow-rope off, and the lighter,driving forward, slid in under the big grain tramp's side. A few minuteslater Jefferson appeared at her gangway, and when Austin ran in jumpedon board. He was a tall man, and was just then very wet, and as black asany coal heaver. This, however, rather added to the suggestion offorcefulness that usually characterised him.
"That fellow has been waiting several hours for his coal, and as Icouldn't get a man worth anything on to the crane, I ran the thingmyself," he said. "The way the wind was it blew the grit all over me,and I'm coming across for a wash with you. I'm 'most afraid to walkthrough the port as I am just now."
He laughed happily, and Austin fancied that he understood him, since hefelt that if he had held Miss Gascoyne's promise he would not have likedto run any risk of meeting her in the state in which Jefferson was justthen. As it happened, it did not occur to either of them that they haddone anything unusual, which had, perhaps, its significance.
Austin took him on board the _Estremedura_, and when he had removed mostof the coal-dust from his person they sat down with a bottle of thinwine before them in the sobrecargo's room. Jefferson was lean in faceand person, though he was largely made, and had dark eyes that couldsmile and yet retain a certain intentness and gravity. His voice had alittle ring in it, and, big as he was, he was seldom altogether still.When he filled his glass his long fingers tightened on it curiously.
"I owe you a little for pulling us off just now, but that's by no meansall," he said. "Miss Gascoyne told me how you stopped the boat thatnight three weeks ago. Now----"
Austin laughed. "We'll take it item by item. When you get started you'rejust a little overwhelming. In the first place, what are you coalinggrain tramps for when somebody has left you a fortune?"
"It's not quite that," said Jefferson. "Forty thousand dollars. They'rebusy at the coal wharf, and wanted me to stay on until the month was up,any way."
"I don't think you owe them very much," said Austin. "In fact, I'm notsure that if I'd been you I'd have saved that coal for them; but we'llget on. I want to congratulate you on another thing, and I really thinkyou are a lucky man."
The smile sank out of Jefferson's eyes. "I'm quite sure of it," he saidgravely. "I get wondering sometimes how she ever came to listen to sucha man as I am, who isn't fit to look at her."
Austin made a little gesture of sympathy. This was not what he wouldhave said himself, but he was an insular Englishman, and the reticencewhich usually characterises the species is less highly thought of acrossthe Atlantic. The average American is more or less addicted to sayingjust what he means, which is, aft
er all, usually a convenience toeverybody. Before he could speak Jefferson went on:
"I've been wanting to thank you for stopping that steamer," he said."It's the best turn anybody ever did me, and I'm not going to forget it.Now----"
"If you're pleased, I am," said Austin, who did not care forprotestations of gratitude, a trifle hastily. "Any way, you have gother, and though it's not my business, the question is what you're goingto do. Eight thousand pounds isn't very much, after all, and Englishgirls are apt to want a good deal, you know."
Jefferson laughed. "Forty thousand dollars is quite a nice little sum tostart with; but I've got to double it before I'm married."
"There are people who would spend most of their life doing it," saidAustin, reflectively. "How long do you propose to allow yourself?"
"Six months," and there was a snap in Jefferson's voice and eyes. "If Ihaven't got eighty thousand dollars in that time I'm going to have nouse for them."
"When you come to think of it, that isn't very long to make fortythousand dollars in," said Austin.
He said nothing further, for he had met other Americans in his time, andknew the cheerful optimism that not infrequently characterises them.
Jefferson looked at him steadily with the little glow still in his eyes."You stopped the _Estremedura_, and, in one respect, you're not quitethe same as most Englishmen. They're hide-bound. It takes a month tofind out what they're thinking, and then, quite often, it isn't worthwhile. Any way, I'm going to talk. I feel I've got to. Wouldn't youconsider Miss Gascoyne was worth taking a big risk for?"
"Yes," said Austin, remembering what he had seen in the girl's face. "Ishould almost think she was."
"You would almost think!" and Jefferson gazed at him a moment inastonishment. "Well, I guess you were made that way, and you can't helpit. Now, I'm open to tell anybody who cares to listen that that girl wasa revelation to me. She's good all through, there's not a thought in herthat isn't clean and wholesome. After all, that's what a man wants tofall back upon. Then she's dainty, clever, and refined, with sweetnessand graciousness just oozing out of her. It's all round her like anatmosphere."
Austin was slightly amused, though he would not for his life have shownit. It occurred to him that an excess of the qualities his companionadmired in Miss Gascoyne might prove monotonous, especially if theywere, as in her case, a little too obtrusive. He also fancied that thiswas the first time anybody had called her clever. Still, Jefferson'ssupreme belief in the woman he loved appealed to him in spite of itssomewhat too vehement expression, and he reflected that there wasprobably some truth in Jacinta's observation that the woman whose lovercredited her with all the graces might, at least, acquire some of them.It seemed that a simple and somewhat narrow-minded English girl, withoutimagination, such as Miss Gascoyne was in reality, might still hear whatJacinta called the celestial music, and, listening, become transformed.After all, it was not mere passion which vibrated in Jefferson's voiceand had shone in Muriel Gascoyne's eyes, and Austin vaguely realisedthat the faith that can believe in the apparently impossible and thecharity that sees no shortcomings are not altogether of this earth.Then he brushed these thoughts aside and turned to his companion with alittle smile.
"How did you ever come to be here, Jefferson?" he asked, irrelevantly."It's rather a long way from the land of progress and liberty."
Jefferson laughed in a somewhat curious fashion. "Well," he said,"others have asked me, but I'll tell you, and I've told Miss Gascoyne. Ihad a good education, and I'm thankful for it now. There is money in thefamily, but it was born in most of us to go to sea. I went because I hadto, and it made trouble. The man who had the money had plotted out quitea different course for me. Still, I did well enough until the night the_Sachem_--there are several of them, but I guess you know the one Imean--went down. I was mate, but it wasn't in my watch the Dutchmanstruck her."
"Ah!" said Austin softly, "that explains a good deal! It wasn't exactlya pleasant story."
He eat looking at his companion with grave sympathy as the details of acertain grim tragedy in which the brutally handled crew had turned upontheir persecutors when the ship was sinking under them came back to him.Knowing tolerably well what usually happens when official enquiryfollows upon a disaster at sea, he had a suspicion that the truth hadnever become altogether apparent, though the affair had made a sensationtwo or three years earlier. Still, while Jefferson had not mentioned hispart in it, he had already exonerated him.
"It was so unpleasant that I couldn't find a shipping company on ourside who had any use for the _Sachem_'s mate," he said, and his voicesank a little. "Of course, it never all came out, but there were morethan two of the men who went down that night who weren't drowned. Well,what could you expect of a man with a pistol when the one friend he hadin that floating hell dropped at his feet with his head adzed open. Thatleft me and Nolan aft. He was a brute--a murdering, pitiless devil; butthere were he and I with our backs to the jigger-mast, and a few of therest left who meant that we should never get into the quarter-boat."
Austin was a trifle startled. "You told Miss Gascoyne that?" he said."How did she take it?"
Jefferson made a curious little gesture. "Of course," he said simply. "Ihad to. She believed in me; but do you think I'm going to tell--you--howit hurt her?"
It was borne in upon Austin that, after all, he understood very littleabout women. A few days earlier it would have seemed impossible to himthat a girl with Muriel Gascoyne's straitened views should ever havelinked her life with one who had played a leading part in that revoltingtragedy. Now, however, it was evident that there was very little shewould not do for the man who loved her.
"I'm sorry! You'll excuse it," he said. "Still, that scarcely explainshow you came to Las Palmas."
"I came as deck-hand on board a barque bringing tomato boxes over. Theywere busy at the coaling wharf just then, and I got put on. You know therest of it. I was left forty thousand dollars."
"You haven't told me yet how you're going to turn them into eightythousand."
"I'm coming to it. You know we coaled the _Cumbria_ before she went outto West Africa. A nearly new 1,500-ton tramp she was, light draught atthat, or she'd never have gone where she did. You could put her down atAL15,000 sterling. She went up into the half-charted creeks behind theshoals and islands south of Senegal, and was lost there. Among otherthings, it was a new gum she went for. It appears the niggers find gumsworth up to AL5 the hundredweight in the bush behind that country. AFrenchman chartered her, but he's dead now, as is almost everybodyconnected with the _Cumbria_. They've fevers that will wipe you out in aweek or two yonder--more fever, in fact, than anywhere else in Africa.Well, as everybody knows, they got oil and sundries and a little gum,and went down with fever while they crawled about those creeks loadingher. She got hard in the mud up one of them, and half of the boys wereburied before they pulled her out at all, and then she hit somethingthat started a plate or two in her. They couldn't keep the water down,and they rammed her into a mangrove forest to save her. More of themdied there, and the salvage expedition lost three or four men beforethey turned up their contract."
"That," said Austin, "is what might be termed the official version."
Jefferson nodded. "What everybody doesn't know is that the skipperplayed the Frenchman a crooked game," he said. "There was more gum putinto her than was ever shown in her papers; while they had got at thetrade gin before she went ashore. In fact, I have a notion that itwasn't very unlike the _Sachem_ affair. I can't quite figure how theycame to start those plates in the soft mud of a mangrove creek. Any way,the carpenter, who died there, was a countryman of mine. You mayremember I did a few things for him, and the man was grateful. Well, theresult is I know there's a good deal more than AL20,000 sterling in the_Cumbria_."
Austin surmised that this was possible. It was not, he knew, seafarersof unexceptional character who usually ventured into the still littleknown creeks of Western Africa, which the coast mailboats' skippers leftalone. He was a
lso aware that more or less responsible white men areapt to go a trifle off their balance and give their passions free reinwhen under the influence of cheap spirits in that land of pestilence.
"Well?" he said.
"I've bought her, as she lies, for AL6,000."
Austin gasped. "You will probably die off in two or three weeks afteryou put your foot in her."
"I'm not quite sure. I was at Panama, and never had a touch of fever.Any way, I'm going, and if you'll stand in with me, I'll put you down aquarter-share for a dollar."
It was in one respect a generous offer, but Austin shook his head. "No,"he said decisively. "Have you forgotten that Miss Gascoyne expects youto marry her?"
Jefferson's eyes glowed. "I'm remembering it all the time. That's whyI'm going. Would you take a refined and cultured girl and drag herthrough all the hard places men of my kind make money in up and down theworld? Has she to give up everything and come down to me? No, sir! Itseems to me, the man who wants to marry a girl of that kind has got todo something to show he knows her value before he gets her, and it wouldbe way better for both of us that she should be sorry for me dead thanthat I should live to drag her down."
It seemed to Austin that there was a good deal to be said for this pointof view, and it also occurred to him that there was in this latter-dayAmerican, who had still the grime of the coaling wharf upon him,something of the spirit which had sent the knight-errant out in the daysof chivalry. Still, he naturally did not say so, for he was, after all,what Jefferson called a hide-bound Englishman.
"Well," he said, "you're taking a big risk, but perhaps you are right."
Jefferson rose with the abruptness which usually characterised hismovements.
"You're not coming?"
"No. I haven't your inducement, and I'm afraid the contract's too bigfor me."
"You have a week to consider it in," said Jefferson, who opened thedoor. "In the meanwhile there's another fellow ready for his coal, andI'm going along."