For Jacinta

It was not an encouraging prospect, and Austin knew from what he had heard about the country that he was not likely to be more favourably impressed with it upon closer acquaintance. He also felt that if there was not quite so much at stake he could very willingly leave the salving of the Cumbria to Jefferson and take the next steamer back again. He could fix upon no sufficient reason for his being there at all, since the very uncertain profits on a quarter share in the venture did not account for it. In one respect, also, Jacinta's favourable opinion could scarcely be of any practical value to him, since she would naturally marry a man of means by and by, and forget all about him. Still, she had, dropping now and then a barbed word which rankled in his memory, striven to stir him to endeavour; and now he was watching the spray drive across a beach of Western Africa, while he wondered what the result of it all would be, and whether he or the men he had brought with him would escape the fever. So far as he was concerned, it did not seem to greatly matter. He had taken life easily, but he realised that it had very little to offer him, and it was, perhaps, fortunate that he did so, since it is, as a rule, broken men and those who have nothing to fall back upon who accomplish what is most worth doing in the lands that lie beneath the shadow.

In any case, it was clear that he had broken down the last bridge behind him when the mailboat stopped and lay rolling more wildly than ever athwart the long swell. A big surfboat sank down her side amidst a clatter of blocks and complaining of davit-falls, down which a cluster of almost naked black men slid on board. It was not an easy matter to descend after them. The steamer rolled one way, the boat another, while the latter swung up one moment almost level with her rail and swooped down beneath a fathom of streaming side the next. Austin, Bill, the fireman, and the Canarios, however, accomplished it, and there was a waving of hats among the cluster of passengers who watched them above. Then the negroes, perched six or seven on either side, took up the paddles, and Austin was sensible of a momentary sinking of his heart as the boat slid out from the rolling steamer. She was a part of the civilisation he had been accustomed to, and when a sonorous blast of her whistle came throbbing after him in farewell he sighed.

He would, however, at least not look behind, and sitting in the stern-sheets, out of the paddlers' way, he tossed the Canarios a bundle of maize-husk cigarettes, and passed one to Bill, the fireman, who glanced at it scornfully. Then he made himself as comfortable as he could upon the box of dynamite while he lighted another, for that compound of nitro-glycerine is supposed to require a detonator, and nobody is very particular who has lived in Spain. The black men wanted cigarettes, too, but Austin did not hand them any. The island was still a good way off, and it seemed to him advisable that they should devote their attention to their paddling.

They did it, swaying rhythmically, with toes in a loop of fibre, and naked black bodies that straightened suddenly and bent again, while some kept up a measured hissing and the rest broke into a little doleful song. A brawny man, with a blue stripe down his forehead, stood upright grasping the sculling oar astern, and the boat swung along smoothly, with big, dim slopes of water rolling up astern of her. They, however, grew steeper as she drew in with the shore, and the easy dip and swing became a succession of fierce rushes, during which she drove onwards, lifted high, with the foam seething to her gunwale, and then swooped suddenly into the hollow. When she did so Austin, glancing aft, could see a great slope of water that grew steeper and steeper as it came speeding after her.

Then the slopes became ridges that frothed above and roared, and the paddles whirled faster, while the big muscles bunched beneath the helmsman's skin, and the veins began to stand out on his sable forehead. The boat no longer sailed inshore. She sped like a toboggan on an icy slide, though it seemed to Austin that the comparison was faulty, because she went fastest uphill, while when he rose upright for a moment he could see no shore at all. There was only a succession of parallel white ridges in front of them and a filmy cloud of spray. The afternoon was also wearing through, and the vapours from the steaming swamps obscured the dingy heavens.

It was even less consoling to glance astern, for the surf that sweeps the fever coast was evidently rather worse than usual that day, as it is now and then for no very apparent reason. The ridges had become walls, with great frothing crests and sides that were smeared with spumy lines. They had the vast, slow lift and fall of the ocean behind them, and were running up a smoothly slanted plane of shoals.

The black men paddled faster, and they no longer sang. They hissed and shrieked and whistled, while the thud of their paddles rose in a strenuous rhythm like the tapping of a great drum, and the craft careered at furious speed beneath them, driven by the sea. The foam stood feet above her now when she sped along, very like an arrow, and boiled in over her high, pointed stern every now and then. There was a foot of brine inside her that swilled to and fro, and every man was dripping, while the roar of the tumbling rollers had grown bewildering. They appeared to be crumbling upon hammered sand not very far away.

How the negroes meant to beach her, Austin did not know, and he was content that it was their business and not his. The Canarios were evidently uneasy, for, sailormen as they were, they had never run through surf like this; but they were also of Iberian extraction, and, when discussion is clearly useless, and the last crisis must be faced, the Spaniard is, at least, as capable of calm resignation as most other men. In any case, there is certainly no better boat-boy than the West African Kroo, and Austin left the affair to the helmsman, when there was a sudden horrifying crash that threw three or four of the paddlers down together. It was evident that they had touched bottom, but, fortunately for them, the swirl of the shore-running sea dragged them off again, and they went up, not more than half swamped, sideways, with the foam seething into her, on the next roller. Then the spouting chaos about them seemed to suddenly melt away, and Austin, wiping the water from his eyes, saw that they were sliding round a sandy beach into a little bay.

In another few minutes they were out on the sand, though they toiled for the next half hour helping the negroes to tilt the great boat and run her in again when they had emptied the water out of her. It was done at last, and Austin felt almost sorry, while he was once more sensible of vague but unpleasant misgivings when the negroes drove her lurching out into the spray. Night was not very far away, and he had no notion of where he was to sleep, or what he was to eat, for that matter, since the provisions the steward had given him were, for the most part, saturated. A little muddy creek oozed down amidst the mangroves across the bay, and there were a few huts, apparently made of rammed soil, beside it, as well as a canoe. The light was going when they reached them, and Bill, who went into the nearest, came out suddenly.

"There's a dead nigger inside," he said.

Austin looked at him with a little smile. He had reasons for surmising that the man's nerves were good, but his voice had an uncertain tone in it, and his eyes were anxious.

"Well," he said, "I suppose one must expect to come across a dead nigger now and then in this country."

Bill glanced furtively over his shoulder towards the hut, as though he desired to be rather farther away from it.

"That one wasn't nice to look at," he said. "What did they leave him there for when there's a creek just outside the door, and where are the rest of them? I'd like to know what he died of. It might be catchin'."

Austin was once more sensible of a little thrill of apprehension as he looked about him and considered the question. On the one side a tuft of palms dominated the narrow strip of sand, but the little ridge of high land behind it was covered with apparently impenetrable jungle. Elsewhere the dingy mangroves rose from black depths of mire on slimy roots and pale stems that glimmered, blanched, amidst the drifting steam that clung about them. Night was close at hand, and, though there was no sign of the land breeze yet, the air was thick and heavy with a hot, sour smell. The clamour of the surf made the deep silence more apparent, for there was no sound of life about the clustered huts. Austin knew that the black man is frequently stricken by the pestilence, and as he stood there on the little strip of desolate beach he felt his courage melting away from him. The Canarios he also saw were standing close together and murmuring excitedly, while every now and then one of them would glance askance at the huts.

"If there was any niggers but dead ones in the place they'd have been out by now," said Bill.

"The Cumbria should lie about north from here up the biggest creek," said Austin. "If we borrowed the canoe yonder you could find your way to her?"

"I'd try that, or anything, so long as it was to get out of this."

He glanced towards the hut again, and Austin, who could not quite explain it, then or afterwards, became sensible that if he waited much longer he would say or do something that would not be seemly in one who was there as leader. He felt that had he been alone he would probably have turned and run.

"Well," he said, as quietly as he could contrive, "we will run the canoe down. I believe some of the things they get are infectious now and then."

He had no need to repeat the order. The Canarios jumped at the word, and in another few minutes they had launched the canoe and were paddling her out of the creek clumsily, as men unaccustomed to the oar might do. It opened into a wider one, through which the heave of the sea pulsed languidly, until they crawled round a point and the streamy mangroves closed in on them. Then suddenly the thick, hot darkness fell.

They moored the canoe to a slimy stem, and lay down in her, packed like herrings; but in spite of the mosquitoes Austin slept a little of the night. He was glad when all the swamps steamed again as the dawn broke suddenly upon them; and when they had eaten they took up the paddles. The mists thinned and melted, the sun that sucked the damp from their dew-soaked clothing scorched their skin, and the glare from the yellow water became intolerable. Still, it was evident that it would not be advisable to waste any time, and through the long hot hours the canoe crept on.

Now she slid into steamy shadow among the mangrove islets, skirting belts of mire, and now crept, a slender strip of hull, packed with wearied and perspiring humanity, across broad reaches of flaming water that moved on inland under her, streaked with smears of yellow foam. It was evident to Austin that the flood tide ran longer than usual there, as it sometimes does about an island, or the Guinea stream had backed it up along the shore. The stream, however, did not only set up the creek, but slid through the forest, where the trees rose on arched roots above the water; and here and there they had to paddle hard to avoid being drawn into branch-roofed tunnels that smelt like open sewers. The refuse of leagues of forest seemed to lie rotting there.

By afternoon Austin's hands were bleeding, and one of his knees was raw where he pressed it as a point of resistance to paddle from on the craft's bottom; but he took his place when his turn came, though his eyes were dazzled, and the headache that had crept upon him was growing insufferable. He was now distinctly anxious as to when they would reach the Cumbria, for, though Bill said she lay up a big muddy creek north of the island, he appeared by no means sure that was the one, and Austin felt he could not logically blame him. Creeks, it was evident, were bewilderingly plentiful in that country, and there were no distinctive features in the scenery. Dingy, white-stemmed mangroves, fermenting mire, and yellow water, were all the same, and as they crept on past bend and island there was no sign of change.

The shadows lay black upon the water when they stopped again, all of them horribly cramped, and aching in every limb; but when they had sat portentiously silent, with the craft moored to a mangrove root, for half an hour or so, Bill stood up in the bow.

"Did you hear anything, Mr. Austin?" he asked.

Austin fancied that he did, though for a moment or two he was not sure that it was not the ticking of his watch, for the sound, which was very faint, had a beat in it. Then it grew a little louder, and he felt a curious thrill of satisfaction.

"Engines!" he said sharply. "It's the launch."

She swung out, apparently from the mangroves, in another few minutes, and came on towards them, clanking and wheezing horribly, with the yellow foam piled about her, but Austin felt that he had never seen anything more welcome than that strip of mire-daubed hull with the plume of smoke streaming away from it. Then she stopped close alongside them, and Austin shook hands with Tom as he climbed on board.

"Did you come across any niggers, sir?" asked the latter.

"No," said Austin. "How's Mr. Jefferson?"

"Comin' round," said Tom, with a grin. "I've worked most of the fever – an' the sunstroke – out of him. It was a big load off me when, as I took him his mixture one morning, he looks up at me. 'Who the devil are you poisoning?' says he, quite sensible, an' like himself again."

"You were coming down to look for us?"

"We were – an' uncommonly glad to see you. The blame niggers is getting aggravating. Came down, two canoe loads of 'em, a night or two ago, an' only sheered off when we tumbled one o' them over with a big lump o' coal. Wall-eye dropped it on to the man in the bow of her from the bridge, an' so far as we could make out it doubled him up considerable."

Wall-eye was apparently the squinting Spaniard who acted as fireman, and when he saw Tom glance at him he stood up, with a grimy hand clenched, and unloosed a flood of Castilian invective. Austin, who smiled as he watched him, felt that while most of what he said could not be effectively rendered into cold Anglo-Saxon, it was probably more or less warranted. In the meanwhile the launch was coming round with backed propeller, and in another moment or two she was clanking away into the darkness that descended suddenly, towards the Cumbria.

CHAPTER XII

NOCTURNAL VISITORS

Jefferson was standing at the open door of the house beneath the Cumbria's bridge when Austin first caught sight of him, as he groped his way forward along the slanted deck. The black, impenetrable obscurity that descends upon the tropic swamps when the air is full of vapour, hung over the stranded steamer, and the man's gaunt figure cut with harsh sharpness against the stream of light. The thin duck he wore clung about him, soaked with perspiration and the all-pervading damp, emphasising the attenuated spareness of his frame, and Austin could almost have fancied it was a draped skeleton he was gazing at. Still, he was a trifle reassured when he felt the firm grasp of a hot, bony hand.

"So you have come?" said the American. "It's good to get a grip of you. I guessed you would."

He drew Austin into the deck-house, and they sat down opposite each other, and said nothing for almost a minute, though there was a little smile in Jefferson's face as he leaned back against the bulkhead. His hair, which had grown long since he left Las Palmas, hung low and wet upon his forehead, and the big cheek bones showed through the tight-stretched skin, which was blanched, though there was a faint yellow tinge in it which relieved its dead whiteness. This had its significance, for the coast fever has not infrequently an unpleasant after effect upon the white man's constitution.

"It isn't quite a sanatorium," he said, as though he guessed his comrade's thoughts. "Port Royal, Santos, Panama – I know them all – aren't a patch on these swamps. Still, we needn't worry now you have come."

Austin smiled as he looked at him. "To be correct, I'm not quite sure that I did," he said, reflectively. "I mean, it wasn't exactly because I wished to."

"Ah!" said Jefferson, as comprehension dawned on him. "Then the quarter share – that offer stands good – didn't bring you? Well, I was wondering if she would make you go."

Austin was a trifle astonished, for, though he had a somewhat hardly acquired acquaintance with human nature, it had never occurred to him that the patronage Jacinta extended to her masculine friends naturally attracted some attention, or that in this particular case the onlookers might most clearly grasp the points of the game.

"I can't quite see why she should have wanted me to," he said.

There was another brief silence, during which the men looked at one another. This was not a subject either of them had meant to talk about. Indeed, it was one which, under different circumstances, they would have kept carefully clear of, but both realised that conventional niceties did not count for much just then: They were merely men who had henceforth to face the grim realities of existence with the shadow of death upon them, and they knew that the primitive humanity in them would become apparent as the veneer wore through.

"Still," said Jefferson, "I can think of one reason. There was a time when Muriel was good to her, and Jacinta can't forget it. She's not that kind. The first day I met her I felt that she was taking stock of me, and I knew I'd passed muster when she made you stop the Estremedura. Perhaps, it wasn't very much in itself, but I was thankful. I've done a few tough things in my time, but I know I'd never have got Muriel if that girl had been against me. Still, it wasn't altogether because of Muriel she sent you."

Austin showed his astonishment this time, and Jefferson smiled. "You can't quite figure how I came to understand a thing of that kind? Well, some of you smart folks have made the same mistake before. You don't seem to remember when you waste ten minutes working a traverse round what you could say in one, that however you dress it up, human nature's much the same. Now you're astonished at me. I'm talking. Sometimes I feel I have to. You want to know just why she really sent you?"

"To be frank, I have asked myself the question, and couldn't be quite sure it was altogether because she wanted me to get this unfortunate steamboat off."

"It wasn't. You're getting as near to it as one could expect of an Englishman. It hurts some of you to let anybody know what you really think. Well, I'll try to make my notion clear to you. There was a lady in France who threw her glove among the lions long ago, but the man who went down for it was of no great account after all. He hadn't sense enough to see the point of the thing."