The Message

“You gave it to me at Cowes?” she went on.

“Yes, I did, but – ”

“But I refused it. Well, when they told me at Lagos that you were surely lost in the desert, I asked for it. I – I – almost believed it would bring us together again.”

“Let’s have a look at it,” chimed in Fairholme.

She was strangely reluctant at first, and her unwillingness to produce that sinister carving was not to be wondered at, for she had seen sufficient of the men of Oku during the past few hours to disturb her dreams for many a year. But Warden joined in the chorus of persuasion, and she brought the canvas bag from her room.

“Please open it,” she said to her lover. “I dare not. Though I confess to an uncanny confidence in its power, I am still afraid of it.”

He drew forth the calabash with a sudden movement, hoping to startle some of the onlookers by the extraordinary vitality of Domenico Garcia’s masterpiece, but Evelyn alone was affected, and she uttered a cry of dismay.

“It is ruined!” she exclaimed. “The moist heat has destroyed the lacquer! Even the eyes have gone. Oh, Arthur, please do throw it away this time. The thing is dead!”

In her excitement she had used exactly the right phrase. The man of Oku was dead, in fact decomposed. His face had melted away, his mosaic eyes had fallen out, the mocking smile worthy of a triumphant demon had faded from his thick lips. In truth, the mask on the gourd was a mere travesty of its former self.

Warden was quite as bewildered as the girl.

“Well,” he cried, “that is really the most amazing coincidence I have ever known. It knocks any of my adventures into a cocked hat. Just think of it – this thing lived, I tell you. It was a superb creature of genius. It must have been found two hundred years ago when some Portuguese or Spaniards looted Benin. It was brought to England only to be lost in a sailing ship that foundered on the east side of the Isle of Wight. After passing a couple of centuries under the sea, it bobbed up serenely one day last August, disturbed from its resting–place when the Emperor’s yacht struck the sunken wreck. I firmly believe it was made within a few miles of this very place, yet it survived through the ages until the hour when the Oku power is broken for ever, and now it is destroyed. Did you ever hear anything like it? Surely this is a thing not dreamed of in our philosophy.”

None but Evelyn among those present could share his opinion. It was impossible for any one who had not seen the calabash on the deck of the Nancy to picture the malign fascination of that graven face.

But Warden was convinced of his theory. To please his lady, he bade Beni Kalli take the gourd and throw it on the smoldering embers of the mission huts. And so ended the pilgrimage of the grim contrivance fashioned by Domenico Garcia to carry his story to the world that had forgotten him. It perished in the ashes of the old Kadana, on the site where a new enterprise would soon mark the practical inception of Hume’s day–dream.

Nor was the hour far distant when all in that room remembered Warden’s emphatic words. Next day came messengers from the King of Oku. His majesty deplored the excesses caused by the evil counsels of certain professors of ju–ju. These men, difficult to control, were aided and abetted by a notorious Portuguese half–caste, one Miguel Figuero to wit, who had helped the Oku rebels by importing arms from foreign territory and generally disturbing the peace of the kingdom.

“I have now dealt with Figuero and the others,” said M’Wanga through his envoys. “They will trouble the land no further.”

He meant that he had nailed them to trees as a guarantee of good faith, when, in the small hours of the morning, he grew fully assured that his guns were useless, his river flotilla captured, and his army broken up. Unfortunately for the success of his sudden conversion to British notions of law and order, that which was only a minor disturbance in a native state assumed the gravest political significance when a number of troops of a foreign power crossed the border at various points with the avowed object of restoring peace to a province in which the armed might of Britain was set at nought.

The strongest party of these unlooked–for allies marched on Oku. Its commandant, Count von Rippenbach, seemed to be intensely surprised when he found the city in the grip of a British column, and its king a prisoner awaiting trial by court–martial. He was not only surprised, but intensely chagrined, and was so unwilling to return to his own territory that there were “alarums and excursions“ in various centers of diplomacy before he swallowed his wrath, invited the British officers to a farewell dinner, and marched back to the Cameroons. M’Wanga was found guilty of murder and high treason, and was duly hanged in front of his own residence. Pana, the third of the negro visitors to Cowes, was banished to St. Vincent, and the clearance among the witch–doctors which Lord Fairholme so ably initiated was carried a good deal further.

Among the effects of the arch–plotter Figuero were found documents of such highly inflammable nature that they were promptly interned in the deepest dungeons of the Record Office. But some of his belongings had a more direct interest than state papers for the two people with whose fortunes he was so curiously bound up. Warden came across another copy of the very page of the newspaper he bought at Cowes wherein was described the accident to the imperial yacht. In the same packet were an extract from Evelyn’s stolen letter, in Rosamund Laing’s handwriting, several complete letters written to him by the girl herself after leaving Lochmerig, and his own long letter delivered to her in Las Palmas by Peter Evans.

It amused him afterwards to enclose these pièces de conviction and the scrap of tattooed skin with the full report he was asked to send to the Colonial Office, and there is reason to believe that an Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs borrowed the said report for perusal, and took it with him to wile away the tedious hours of a week–end at the seaside ordered by his doctor.

Warden and Evelyn were married at Old Calabar, with Colville as best man and the Earl of Fairholme in loco parentis. The bride’s dress was merely a confection of white muslin, but she wore a ruby brooch, roughly contrived by a native jeweler, that would have evoked the envy of many a royal dame. The finest wedding present to the happy pair was the bequest of Rosamund Laing’s estate. Poor woman! she had fenced in her gift with no restrictions. Indeed, in her will she hinted at remorse, for she expressed the hope that Arthur Warden would be happy with the woman of his choice.

No one – least of all those acquainted with West Africa – will be surprised to learn that Warden resigned his commission when the affairs of Oku were settled. His first care was to visit Lisbon, and insure that the name of Domenico Garcia should never again be forgotten in the memorial services for the dead, while every year, in August, a special mass is sung in the Cathedral of the Patriarch for the “repose of the soul“ of the ill–fated artist. Two years later, Evelyn and he were on board the Nancy, running into Falmouth before a lively breeze, when Peter Evans pointed to a steam yacht.

“There’s the old San Sowsy,” he said.

Evelyn instantly turned her binoculars that way.

“You are mistaken, Peter,” she cried. “The Baumgartners sold her before they went to South America. She is like the Sans Souci, but that vessel’s name is Rover.”

“Beggin’ your pardon, mum, but us pilots never troubles about a craft’s name. W’y, I’ve known ‘em to be re–christened w’en they was on’y fit for the extry insurance of a castaway. That’s the San Sowsy right enough. Chris, there’s a picter postcard of ‘er in my locker. Fetch it, an’ we’ll run close alongside.”

“By Jove, you went to a yacht’s agent to get that card for me when I forgot to note the Sans Souci’s exact lines, although I was asked by the Under Secretary to observe them carefully,” said Warden.

“That’s it, sir. It’s an old sayin’ an’ a true one – Keep a thing ten years an’ it’ll come in useful at larst.”

“Fancy you forgetting anything, Arthur!” cried his wife. “You are the one man in the world whom I should never have suspected of missing an item like that – it might have been so important.”

“Some places have a phenomenal effect on the memory, my dear. I went to Plymouth with the special object of jotting down all the Sans Souci’s features, but I took a stroll on the Hoe, and my mind at once became utterly obtuse to every consideration save one.”

“Oh, don’t be silly! How could I guess you would bring Peter’s postcard in evidence against me?”

But she blushed most delightfully, so the recollection of that evening at Plymouth must have been very pleasant, and present happiness is apt to shed its golden light on the days that are past.

THE END

notes

1

Pronounced “Neela Mool–la,” and meaning literally, “Blue Priest.”