CHAPTER XXI
ON THE BEACH
Desmond was asleep when the men his comrade had left behind came in,but the negroes' sense of hearing was quicker than his, and when herose drowsily to his feet there was already a bustle in the camp.Ormsgill, who was giving terse directions, turned to him.
"These boys have brought me word that there is a handful of troops ina village a few hours' march away," he said, pointing towards twohalf-seen men who were talking excitedly to the dusky carriers. "Asthey know where we are heading for they will probably be upon ourtrail as soon as the sun is up." He did not seem very much concerned,and when he once more turned to the negroes, Desmond, reassured by hisquietness, glanced about him. The fire had died out, and there was nolonger any moonlight, but the palms cut with a sharp blackdistinctness against the eastern sky. It was also a little cooler.Indeed, Desmond shivered, for he was stiff and clammy with the dew.The negroes were hurrying to and fro, apparently getting their loadstogether, and the seamen were asking each other disjointed questionsas they scrambled to their feet. Desmond could see their faces faintlywhite which he had not been able to do when he went to sleep.
"Well," he said, "I suppose we'll have to make a move of some kind?"
"It would be advisable," said Ormsgill. "Fortunately, it will bedaylight in a few minutes. You will start for the coast as soon as youare ready, and take most of the boys I brought down along. It would bewiser to push on as fast as possible, though it's scarcely likely thatthe troops will come up with you. If they do, you will give the boysup to them, but in that case one of the carriers will slip away andbring me word. Any resistance you could make would be useless and veryapt to involve you in serious difficulties."
Desmond smiled dryly, and did not pledge himself. He was not a man whoinvariably did the most prudent thing.
"You are not coming with us?" he said.
"No," said Ormsgill. "There are six boys not accounted for yet. I amgoing back inland for them. The troops will, of course, pick up yourtrail, and they will probably be content with that. It's scarcelylikely to occur to them that there might be another."
Desmond exerted all his powers of persuasion during the next minute ortwo, and it was not his fault if his comrade did not realize that itwas a folly he was undertaking. Desmond, at least made a strenuousattempt to impress that point on him, in spite of the fact that it wasa folly he would in all probability have been guilty of himself.Ormsgill, however, only smiled.
"As you have pointed out, anything I can do to straighten out thingsin this country is scarcely worth while," he said. "I'm also willingto admit that it's not exactly my business, and I'm far from sure thatthe role of professional philanthropist is one that fits me. Still,you see, I have undertaken the thing, and I can't very well leave ithalf done." He stopped a moment, and laughed, a trifle harshly."Especially as it's scarcely probable that I shall have an opportunityof doing anything of the kind again."
Then he turned to the negroes, and spoke to them for several minutesin scraps of Portuguese and a native tongue. Their villages on theinland plateau had been burned, he said, and there was, so far as heknew, no one he could trust them to in the country. If they stayed init some white man would in all probability claim them, and they wouldbe sent to toil for a term of years upon the plantations. They knewwhat that meant.
They certainly appeared to do so by the murmurs that rose from them,and Ormsgill pointed to Desmond. He had pledged himself to set them atliberty, he said, and his friend would take them to a country wherenegroes were reasonably paid for their services, and, unless theydeserved it, very seldom beaten. What was more to the purpose, if theydid not like the factory they worked at they could leave it and go toanother, which was a thing that appeared incomprehensible to them,until a man with a blue stripe down his forehead stood up and toldthem it certainly was as Ormsgill had said. He had himself earned asmuch by twelve months' labor at a white man's factory as would havekept him several years in luxury. Then one of the boys, athick-lipped, woolly-haired pagan with nothing about him thatsuggested intelligence or sensibility asked Ormsgill a question in thenative tongue, and the latter looked at Desmond.
"He asks if I can give my word that they will not be ill-used inNigeria, and it's a good deal to assure them of," he said. "Still, Ithink it could be done. There are outcasts in those factories, menoutside the pale, and it's possible that some of them occasionallybelabor a nigger with a wooden kernel-shovel, but considering what thenegro is accustomed to in this country that is a little thing, andthey usually stop at it. After all, it is not men of their kind whopractice systematic oppression or grind the toiler down. When I was aragged outcast it was the men outside the pale who held out theirhands to me."
He turned to the negro saying a few words quietly, and there was a lowmurmuring until one of the boys pointed to Desmond.
"Then," he said, "we are ready to go with him."
Even Desmond could understand all that this implied, and it stirredthe hot Celtic blood in him. It was a crucial test of faith, for itseemed that these half-naked bushmen had a confidence in his comradewhich no one acquainted with the customs of the country couldreasonably have expected of them. They knew how their fellows weredriven by men of his color, but in face of that his word that itshould not be so with them was, it seemed, sufficient.
"You already understand my wishes, and here are the letters for thetwo traders in Nigeria," said Ormsgill quietly. "There is nothing moreto say."
"There's just this," said Desmond turning towards the _Palestrina_'smen, who had naturally been listening. "If it costs me the yacht to doit I'll see these boys safe into the right hands."
The men from Belfast Lough and Kingston grinned approvingly. They andtheir leader were, after all, of the same temperament, and one of themcarried a sharp-pointed iron bar and others stout ash stretchers whichthey had, somewhat to their regret, not been called upon to doanything with yet. Desmond, however, walked a little apart withOrmsgill.
"When will you be back?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Ormsgill. "There is a good deal against me justnow. In any case, I expect nothing further from you. You have donemore than I would have asked of anybody else already."
"Will two months see you through?"
"It may be four, very probably longer."
"Exactly," said Desmond with a little smile. "In the meantime the_Palestrina_ is going to Nigeria. I don't quite know where she'll goafter that."
They said very little more until Ormsgill shook hands with him andcalling to his carriers marched out of camp. The sun had just lifteditself above a rise to the east, and for awhile Desmond watched theline of dusky men with eyes dazzled by the fierce light, and thenturned to give instructions to his seamen. They had already been busy,and in another few minutes they and the boys that had beenLamartine's had started for the coast.
It proved an arduous march, for before the sun had risen its highestit was blotted out by leaden cloud and the wide littoral was wrappedin dimness until the lightning blazed. It ceased in a few minutes, butthe men crouched bewildered for another half hour ankle-deep in waterwhile a pitiless blinding deluge thrashed them. Then they went onagain dripping, and every league or so were lashed by tremendous rainwhile mad gusts of wind rioted across the waste in between. The nextday there was scorching sunshine, and the men were worn-out, parched,and savage, when at last one of the boys who had served Lamartine,climbing a low elevation, assured his comrades that there were soldiersbehind them. He said they would be, at least, an hour in reaching thatspot, but there was haste and bustle when the information was conveyedto Desmond. The latter fancied it would be several hours before hemade the beach.
He and the white men had occasion to remember the rest of thatjourney. They strained every aching muscle as they plodded on with theperspiration dripping from them and the baked mire crumbling andslipping beneath their feet while a dingy haze once more crept acrossthe sky and the heat became intolerable. It was dark when they reachedthe be
ach, and Desmond gasped with relief when the roar of the_Palestrina_'s whistle rang through the thunder of the surf in answerto a rifle shot. It was evident that she had steam up. He sent twomen back to keep watch on the crest of the bluff, and then set aboutgetting the boat down with the rest.
She was big and heavy. The sand was soft, and the rollers instead ofrunning over it bedded themselves in it. The boys from the interiorwere also of little use at that task, and though the seamen toileddesperately it was almost beyond their accomplishing. The tide was atlow ebb, and the sand grew softer as they ran her down a yard at atime, until at last they stopped gasping. Then one of the men camerunning from the bluff.
"The soldiers are not far away," he said.
Desmond asked him no questions, but turned to the seamen. "We have gotto do it, boys," he said. "Shift that after roller under her nose."
They drew breath, and toiled on again. Their progress was notreassuring in view of the fact that the troops were close at hand, butthey made a little, and in front of them the spray beyond which laythe _Palestrina_ whirled in a filmy cloud. Every now and then therewas a thunderous roar in the midst of it, and part of the beach washidden in a tumultuous swirl of foam. Gasping, straining, slipping,but grimly silent, they toiled on, moving her a foot with everydesperate effort, until at last a yeasty flood surged past themknee-deep, and hove her away from them grinding one bilge in the sand.Then Desmond raised a hoarse voice.
"Hang on to her," he said. "Oh, hang on. Down on her bilge, and lether go when the sea sucks out again."
They went out with her and it amidst a sliding mass of sand, andsomehow contrived to hold her when the next sea came in. It brokeacross her, and some of them went down, but when the seething floodswept on up the beach she was there still, and they went out againwaist-deep in the downward swirl of it. Then they were up to theshoulders with a great hissing wall of water close in front of them,and black man and white scrambled in over the gunwale and flounderedfuriously in the water inside her, groping for oar and paddle. Still,they were perched on the gunwale, and the man with the blue-stripedforehead had the big steering oar before the sea fell upon them, andstraining every muscle they drove her through the breaking crest ofit.
She lurched out, half-full and loaded heavily, to face the next, andDesmond was never certain how she got over it, but at least, he wasnot washed out of her as he had half expected. He fancied there was afaint shouting on the bluff, but nobody could have been sure of thatthrough the din of the surf, and all his attention was occupied by hispaddle. Very slowly, fighting for every fathom, they drove heroutshore, until the combers grew less steep and their crests ceased tobreak, and Desmond gazing seawards could see the _Palestrina_ when shelifted. She swung with the swell, a dim, blurred shape, without alight on board her, but a sharp jarring rattle told him that hisinstructions were being carried out. Winthrop the mate was alreadyheaving his anchor. That was satisfactory, for Desmond knew thatnobody could see the yacht through the spray that floated over bluffand beach.
They were alongside in some twenty minutes with another troublesometask before them. The yacht was rolling heavily, and the bighalf-swamped boat swung up to her rail one moment and sank downbeneath a fathom of streaming side the next. It was a difficult matterto reach her deck, and Lamartine's boys were bushmen who knew nothingof the sea. They crouched in the boat's bottom stupidly until theirwhite companions who found thumps and pushes of no avail seized themby their woolly hair and dragged them to their feet. They were sent upone by one, and when at last the boat was hove in by the banging winchDesmond scrambled with the brine running from him to his bridge. Thewindlass rattled furiously for another minute or two, and then with aquickening throb of engines the _Palestrina_ swept out into the night.A little while later Winthrop the mate climbed to the bridge, andDesmond laughed when he asked him a few questions.
"I don't think those folks ashore got a sight of the yacht or boat,"he said. "It will be morning before they find out where we've gone,and we should be a good many miles to the north by then. I don'tsuppose they know Ormsgill isn't with us either, and that willprobably put them off his trail for a time, at least. In the meanwhileyou'll head her out a point or two more to the westwards for anotherhour, and have me called at daylight. I'm going down to change myclothes."
He had just dressed himself in dry garments when a steward tapped atthe door of his room.
"I don't know what's to be done with those niggers, sir," he said."The men won't have them in the forecastle."
"Ah," said Desmond a trifle sharply, "that's a thing I hadn't thoughtof, though, of course, it might have struck me. They're on deck still?Bring me a lantern."
The man got one, and Desmond who went out with him held it up whenthey stood beside the little group of dusky men who sat huddledtogether upon the sloppy deck. A seaman stood not far away from them,and he turned to Desmond.
"We can't have them down forward with us, sir," he said.
There was a certain deference in his tone, but it was very resolute,and Desmond made a little gesture of comprehension as he glanced atthe huddled negroes. Most of them were naked save for a strip oftattered waistcloth, and their thick lips, wooly hair, and heavy faceswere revealed in the lantern light. He realized that there wassomething to be said for the seaman's attitude. They had done whatthey could for these Africans, and had done it gallantly, but now theywere afloat again they would not eat with them or sleep in theirvicinity. Color is only skin-deep, a question of climate andsurroundings, but Desmond, who admitted that, felt that, after all,there was a wide distinction between himself and the seamen and thesealiens. It was one that could not be ignored. The theory of thebrotherhood of humanity went so far, and then broke down.
"We have a few strips of pine scantling among the stores," he said,after a moment's thought. "You can screw one or two of them down ondeck--but I can't have more than a couple of screws in each. Then ifyou ranged a bass warp in between it would keep them off the wet.There's an old staysail they can have to sleep in. We could toss itoverboard when they have done with it."
He turned away, and, soon after a meal was brought him, went to sleepwhile the _Palestrina_ sped on as fast as her engines could drive hertowards the north. In due time she also crept into one of the manymiry waterways which wind through the mangrove forests of LowerNigeria, and Desmond sent a boat up it with a letter Ormsgill hadgiven him to a certain white trader. An hour or two later a big gauntman in white duck came back with the boat and drank a good deal ofDesmond's wine. Then after asking the latter a few questions he lookedat him with a twinkle in his eyes.
"Well," he said, "Ormsgill is rather a friend of mine, and what youhave been telling me is certainly the kind of thing one would expectfrom him. It is by no means what I would do myself, but he alwayshad--curious notions. Most of us have, for that matter, though,perhaps, it's fortunate they're not all the same. Well, I'll be gladto have the boys, especially as it's difficult to get Kroos enoughfrom Liberia just now."
"I think there were certain conditions laid down in Ormsgill'sletter," said Desmond reflectively.
The trader laughed. "There were," he said. "Well, I'm willing to admitthat I have once or twice pitched a nigger who was a trifle impudentover the veranda rails. It's one of the things you have to do, and ifyou do it in one way they don't seem to mind. No doubt they understandit's only natural the climate and the fever should make you a triflehasty. Still, I don't think a Kroo was ever done out of his earnings,or had things thrown at him when he didn't deserve it, in my factory."
Desmond fancied that this was probable, for he liked the man's face.There was rough good-humor in it, and the twinkle in his eyes wasreassuring. As a matter of fact, he was, like most of those whofollowed his occupation in those swamps, one who lived a trifle hardand grimly held his own with a good deal against him. His code ofethics was, perhaps, slightly vague, but there were things he wouldnot stoop to, and though now and then he might in a fit ofexasperation hurl anything that was convenient as
well as hard wordsat his boys, they knew that such action was not infrequently followedby a fit of inconsequent generosity. There are men of his kind inthose factories whose boys will not leave them even when a rivaloffers them more gin cases and pieces of cloth for their services. Ina moment or two Desmond made up his mind.
"Shall I send the boys ashore with you?" he asked.
"No," said the trader reflectively. "After what you've told me itmight be wiser if I ran them up river in the launch to our factoryhigher up after dark. You see, nobody would worry about where theycame from there. In the meantime you had better go up and ask theConsul down to dinner. You needn't mention the boys to him, and it'sfortunate that a yacht owner escapes most of the usual formalities.I'll be back with the launch by sunset."
He kept his word, but while he was getting the boys on board hislaunch just after darkness closed down a little white steamer sweptsuddenly round a bend, and before the launch was clear two whiteofficers stepped on board the _Palestrina_. A thick white mist rosefrom the river, but Desmond was a trifle anxious when one of theofficers leaned over the yacht's rail looking down on the launch.
"You seem to have a crowd of boys with you, Brinsley," he said.
The trader stepped back on to the _Palestrina_'s ladder. "I could dowith more. Those folks up river are loading me up with oil. Anyway,I'd like a talk with you about that gin duty your clerk hasovercharged me."
Then he turned to a man in the launch below. "Go ahead," he said. "Youcan tell Nevin he must send me that oil down if he works all to-morrownight."
A negro shouted something back to him, and with engines clanking thelaunch swept away up the misty river, while it was with relief Desmondled Brinsley and his guests into the saloon where dinner was set out.