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Pieces of Eight, a novel by Richard Le Gallienne |
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Book 2 - Chapter 4 |
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_ BOOK II CHAPTER IV In Which We Take Ship Once More.
As the reader may recall, "Short Shrift Island" lay a few miles to the northwest of Andros Island. Now Andros is a great haunt of wild duck, not to speak of that more august bird, the flamingo. Attraction number one for the good Charlie. Then, though it is some hundred and fifty miles long and some fifty miles broad at its broadest, it has never yet, it is said, been entirely explored. Its centre is still a mystery. The natives declare it to be haunted, or at all events inhabited by some strange people no one has yet approached close enough to see. You can see their houses, they say, from a distance, but as you approach them, they disappear. Here, therefore, seemed an excellent place for Tobias to take cover in. Charlie's duck-shooting preserves, endless marl lakes islanded with mangrove copses, lay on the fringe of this mysterious region. So Andros was plainly marked out for our destination. But, when Charlie was ready for the start, the wind, which is of the essence of any such contract in the Bahamas, was contrary. It had been blowing stormily from the southwest, the direction we were bound for, for several days, and nothing with sails had, for a week, felt like venturing out across the surf-swept bar. It is but forty miles across the Tongue of Ocean which divides the shores of New Providence and Andros, but you need to pick your weather for that, if you don't want to join the numerous craft that have vanished in that brief but fateful strip of water. However, the wind was liable to change any minute now, Charlie said, so he warned me to hold myself in readiness to jump aboard at an hour's notice. The summons came at last. I had been out for dinner, and returned home about ten to find the message: "Be ready to sail at midnight." There was a thrilling suddenness about it that appealed to one's imagination. Here I had been expecting a landsman's bed, with a book and a reading-lamp, surrounded by the friendly security of houses; instead, I was to go faring with the night wind into the mystery of the sea. It was a night of fitful moonlight, and Nassau, with its white houses and white streets, seemed very hushed and spectral as I made my way down to the wharf, vivid in black and silver. There is always something mysterious about starting a journey at night, even though it be nothing more out-of-the-way than catching a midnight train out of the city; and the simple business of our embarkation breathed an air of romantic secrecy. The moon seemed to have her finger on her lip, and we talked in lowered voices as though we were bound on some midnight raid. The night seemed to be charged with the expectancy of the unknown, and Sailor, who, of course, was to be a fellow-voyager, whined restlessly from the wharf side at the little yawl that awaited us in the whispering, lapping water. Sailor had watched his master getting his guns ready for some days, and, doubtless, memories stirred in him of Scotch moors they had shot over together. He raised his head to the night wind, and sniffed impatiently, as though he already scented the wild duck on Andros Island. He was impatient, like the rest of us, because, though it was an hour past sailing-time, we had still to collect two of the crew. The same old story! I marvelled at the good humour with which Charlie--who is really a sleeping volcano of berserker rage--took it. But he reminded me of his old advice as I started for my first trip: "No use getting mad with niggers--till you positively have to!" Well, the two loiterers turned up at last, and, all preliminaries being at length disposed of, we threw off the mooring ropes, and presently there was heard that most exhilarating of sounds, to any one who loves sea-faring, the rippling of the ropes through the blocks as our mainsail began to rise up high against the moon which was beginning to look out over the huge block of the Colonial Hotel, the sea-wall of which ran along as far as our mooring. A few lights in its windows here and there broke the blank darkness of its facade, glimmering through the avenues of royal palms. I am thus explicit because of something that presently happened, and which stayed the mainsail in its rippling ascent. A tall figure was running along the sea-wall from the direction of the hotel, calling out, a little breathlessly, in a rich young voice as it ran: "Wait a minute there, you fellows! Wait a minute!" We were already moving, parallel with the wall, and at least twelve feet away from it, by the time the figure--that of a tall boy, cow-boy hatted, and picturesquely outlined in the half light--stopped just ahead of us. "Like the herald Mercury," I said to myself. He raised something that looked like a bag in his right hand, calling out "catch" as he did so; and, a moment after, before a word could be spoken, he took a flying leap and landed amongst us, plump in the cock-pit, and was clutching first one of us and then the other, to keep his balance. "Did it, by Jove!" he exclaimed in a beautiful English accent, and then started laughing as only absurd dare-devil youngsters can. "Forgive me!" he said, as soon as he could get his breath, "but I had to do it. Heaven knows what the old man will say!" He seemed to take it all for granted in a delightful, nonchalant way, so that the angry protest which had already started from Charlie's lips stopped in the middle. That fearless leap had taken his heart. "You're something of a long jump!" said Charlie. "O! I have done my twenty-two and an eighth on a broad running jump, but I had no chance for a run there," answered the lad, carelessly. "But suppose you'd hit the water instead of the deck?" "What of it? Can't one swim?" "I guess you're all right, young man," said Charlie, softened; "but ... well, we're not taking passengers." The words had a familiar sound. They were the very ones I had used to Tobias, as he stood with his hand on the gunwale of the _Maggie Darling._ I rapidly conveyed the coincidence--and the difference--to Charlie. It struck me as odd, I'll admit, that our second start, in this respect, should be so like the first. Meanwhile, the young man was answering, or rather pleading, in a boyish way. "Don't call me a passenger; I'll help work the boat. I'm strong, you'll see--not afraid of hard work; and anyway, won't you help a chap to an adventure?... I'll tell the truth. I heard--never mind _how_--about your trip, and I'm just nutty about buried treasure. Come, be a sport; I've been watching for you all day. Pretty late starting, aren't you?... We can let the old guv'nor know, somehow ... and it won't kill him to tear his hair for a day or two. He knows I can take care of myself." "Well!" said Charlie, after thinking awhile in his slow way, "we'll think it over. You can come along till the morning. Then I can get a good look at you. If I don't like your looks, we'll still be able to put you off at West End; and if I do--well--right-ho!" "My looks!" exclaimed our young stranger, with a peculiar mellow laugh. "What's the joke?" demanded Charlie. "O! I only wondered what my looks had to do with it!" "Well," laughed Charlie, entering into the spirit of the lad, "you might be pock-marked for all I know in this light--and I have a peculiar prejudice against pock-marked gentlemen." "Unfeeling of you!" retorted the boy. "Anyhow," he added, with the same curiously attractive laugh, "I'm not pock-marked." "We'll see at sunrise," said Charlie. "Now, boys," he shouted, "go ahead with the sails." Once more there was that rippling of the ropes through the blocks, as our mainsail rose up high against the moon and filled proudly with the steady northeast breeze we had been waiting for. The water began to talk along our sides, and the immense freshness of the nocturnal sea took us in its huge embrace. The spray began to fly over our bows as we nosed into the glassy rollers, one of which, on the starboard side, admonished us, by half swallowing us, that only the mighty-limbed immortals might dance with safety on the bar that night, and that it were wise for even 45-foot yawls to hug the land till daylight. So, reluctantly, we kept the shadowy coast-line for our companion, as we steered for the southwestern end of the island; to our right, companions more of our mood, parallel ridges of savage whiteness, where the surf boiled and gleamed along the coral shoals. How good it seemed to all of us to be out thus in the freedom of the night and the sea--not least to the great noble-headed hound sitting up on his haunches, keen and watchful by the steersman's side. What a strange waste of a life so short to be sleeping there on the land, when one might be out and away on such business as ours! So two or three hours went by, as we plunged on, to the seething sound of the water, and the singing of our sails, and all the various rumour of wind and sea. After all, it was a good music to sleep to, and, for all my scorn of sleeping landsmen, an irresistible drowsiness stretched me out on the roof of the little cabin, wonderfully rocked into forgetfulness. My nap came to an end suddenly, as though some one had flung me out through a door of blue and gold into a new-born world. There was the sun rising, the moon still on duty, and the morning star divinely naked in the heaven. And, with these glories, there rushed in again upon my ears the lovely zest and turmoil of the sea, heaving huge and tumultuous about us in gleaming hills and foam-flecked valleys. And there was Charlie, his broad face beaming with boyish happiness, and something like a fatherly gentleness in his eyes, as he watched his companion at the tiller, whom, for a half-asleep moment of waking, I couldn't account for, till our start all came back to me, when I realised that it was our young scapegrace of over-night. Charlie and he evidently were on the best of terms already. "Nice sailor you are!" Charlie laughed, as I sat up rubbing my eyes. "Falling asleep on watch! Our young friend here is worth ten of you." I smiled good morning to our young passenger. "How about the court-martial on his looks you spoke of last night, Charlie?" I asked. "Well, he's not pock-marked, at all events, is he?--he told the truth so far. But I've still a question or two to ask him before we leave West End. We'll have breakfast first--to give him courage." The lad made a humorous face to suggest his fear of the ordeal; as he did so, I took a good look at him. Charlie might easily have said a little more about his looks, had it been in his line, for, so far from being only "not pock-marked," he was something more like a young Apollo: some six feet in height, upstanding like the statue of a Greek athlete; a rich olive skin, through which the pink of youth came and went; and splendid blue-green eyes, fearless, and yet shy as a lad's eyes often are--at that moment of development when a good-looking lad, in spite of his height and muscles, has something of the bloom and purity of a girl, without in the least suggesting effeminacy. So, many tall athletic girls, for a brief period, suggest boys--without there being the least danger of mistake as to their real sex. He was evidently very young--scarcely more than eighteen--and had a great tendency to blush, for all his attempt at nonchalant grown-up airs. He was the very embodiment of youth, in its sun-tipped morning flower. What Charlie could have to "question" this artless young being--as incapable of plotting, it seemed to me, as a young faun--passed my conjecture; but, as Charlie had given me a quiet wink, as he spoke of the after-breakfast examination, I suspected that it was one of those jokes of his which are apt to have something of the simplicity and roughness of seafaring tradition. Meanwhile, old Tom had been busy with breakfast, and soon the smells of coffee and freshly made "johnny-cake" and frying bacon competed not unsuccessfully with the various fragrances of the morning. Is there anything to match for zest a breakfast like that of ours at dawn on the open sea? Breakfast over, Charlie filled his pipe, assuming, as he did so, a judicial aspect. I filled mine, and our young friend followed suit by taking a silver cigarette-case from his pocket, and striking a match on the leg of his khaki knickerbockers with a professional air. "All set?" asked Charlie, and, after a slight pause, he went on: "Now, young man, you can see we are nearing the end of the island. Another half-mile will bring us to West End. Whether we put you ashore there, or take you along, depends on your answers to my questions." "Fire away," answered the youth, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke in a delicate spiral up into the morning sky; "but I've really told you all I have to tell." "No; you haven't told us how you came to know of our trip, what we were supposed to be after, and when we were starting." "That's true!" flushed the lad, momentarily losing his composure. Then, partly regaining it: "Is it necessary to answer that question?" "Absolutely," answered Charlie, beginning to look really serious. "Because, if you don't mind ... well, I'd just as soon not." The boy's cheeks were burning with confusion, and he looked more than ever like a girl. "For that very reason, I want to know. We are out on a more serious business than perhaps you realise, and your answer may mean more to us than you think." "I'm sure it cannot be of such importance to you. Really it's nothing--a mere accident; and, besides, it's hardly fair for me to tell. I should have to give away a friend, and that, I'm sure you'll agree, is not cricket." The boy had such a true innocent air, not to speak of his taking ways which had already quite won my heart, that I protested with Charlie on his behalf. But Charlie was adamant. He'd got Tobias so on the brain that there was no reasoning with him, and the very innocent air of the lad seemed to have deepened his suspicions. "I'm sorry, but I shall have to insist," replied Charlie, looking very grim, and more and more like an Elizabethan sea-rover. "All right, then," answered the youth, looking him straight in the eyes, "put me ashore." "No; I won't do that now, either," declared Charlie, sternly setting his jaw. "I'll put you in irons, rather--and keep you on bread and water--till you answer my questions." "You will, eh?" retorted the youth, flashing fire from his fine eyes. And as he spoke, quick as thought, he leaped up on to the gunwale, and, without hesitation, dived into the great glassy rollers. But Charlie was quick too. Like a flash, he grabbed one of the boy's ankles, so that the beautiful dive was spoiled; and there was the boy, hanging by an imprisoned leg over the ship's side, a helpless captive--his arms in the water and his leg struggling vainly to get free. But he might as well have struggled against the grip of Hercules. In another moment Charlie had him hauled aboard again, his eyes full of tears of boyish rage and humiliation. "You young fool!" exclaimed Charlie. "The water round here is thick with sharks; you wouldn't have gone fifty yards without one of them getting you." ... "Sharks!" gasped out the boy, contemptuously. "I know more about sharks than you do." "You seem to know a good many things I don't," said Charlie, whose grimness had evidently relaxed a little at the lad's display of mettle. Meanwhile, my temper was beginning to rise on behalf of our young passenger. "I tell you what, Charlie," I interposed; "if you are going to keep this up, you'd better count me out on this trip and set us both ashore at West End. You're making a fool of yourself. The lad's all right. Any one can see with half an eye there's no harm in him." The boy shot me a warm glance of gratitude. "All right," agreed Charlie, beginning to lose his temper too, "I'm damned if I don't." And, his hand on the tiller, he made as if to turn the boat about and tack for the shore. "No! no!" cried the boy, springing between us, and appealingly laying one hand on Charlie's shoulder, the other on mine. "You mustn't let me spoil your trip. I'll compromise. And, skipper, I'll tell your friend here all there is to tell--everything--I swear--if you will leave it to his judgment." Charlie gloomed for a moment or two, thinking it over, while I stood aloof with an injured air. "Right-O," agreed Charlie at last; so our passenger and I thereupon withdrew for our conference. It was soon over, and I couldn't help laughing aloud at the simplicity of it all. "Just as I told you, Charlie," I exclaimed; "it's innocence itself." Turning to the lad, I said: "Dear boy, there is really no need to keep such a small secret as that from the skipper here. You'll really have to let me tell him." The boy nodded acquiescence. "All the same, I gave my word," he said When I told Charlie the innocent secret, he laughed as I had done, and his usual good humour instantly returned. "But to think, you young scapegrace," he exclaimed, "that you might either have been eaten by a shark, or have broken up an old friendship, for such nonsense as that." And, turning to me, and stretching out his huge paw, "My hand, old man; forgive my bad temper." "Mine too," said I. So harmony was restored, and the stubbornly held secret had merely amounted to this: Our lad was acquainted with my conchologist, and had paid him a visit the very afternoon I did, had in fact seen me leaving the house. Answering to the boy's romantic talk of buried treasure and so forth, the shell enthusiast had thought no harm to tell him of our projected trip; and that was the whole of the mysterious matter. Yet the day was not to end without a little incident which, slight though indeed it was, was momentarily to arouse Charlie's suspicions of our charming young companion once more. By this we had shaken off the unwelcome convoy of the coast-line, and, having had a thrilling minute or two running the gauntlet of the great combers of the southwest bar, we were at last really out to sea, making our dash under a good sailing breeze, with the engine going, too, across the Tongue of Ocean. This Tongue of Ocean is but a narrow strip of sea--so narrow indeed that you scarcely lose sight of one coast before you sight the other--yet the oldest sailors cross it with fear, for its appalling depth within its narrow boundaries make it subject to sudden "rages" in certain winds. Even Charlie, who must have made the trip half a hundred times, scanned the western horizon with an anxious eye. Presently, in the far southwest, tiny points like a row of pins began very faintly to range themselves along the sky-line. They were palm trees, though you could not make them out to be such, or anything in particular, till long after. One darker point seemed closer than the rest. "There's High Cay!" rang out the rich young voice of our passenger, whom we'd half forgotten in our tense scanning of the horizon. Charlie and I both turned to him together in surprise--and his face certainly betrayed the confusion of one who has let something slip involuntarily. "Ho! ho! young man," cried Charlie, his face darkening again, "what do you know about High Cay? I thought this was your first trip." "So it is," answered the boy, with a flush of evident annoyance, "on the sea." "What do you mean by 'on the sea'?" "I mean that I've done it many a time--on the chart. I know every bluff and reef and shoal and cay around Andros from Morgan's Bluff to Washerwoman's Cut--" "You do, eh?" "On the chart. Why, I've studied charts since I was a kid, and gone every kind of voyage you can think of--playing at buccaneering or whaling, or discovering the North Pole. Every kid does that." "They do, eh?" said Charlie, evidently quite unimpressed. "_I_ never did." "That's because you've about as much imagination as a turnip in that head of yours," I broke in, in defence of my young Apollo. "Maybe, if you're so smart," continued Charlie, paying no attention to me, "you can navigate us through the North Bight?" "Maybe!" answered our youngster pertly, with an odd little smile. He had evidently recovered his nerve, and seemed to take pleasure in piquing Charlie's bearish suspicions. _ |
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