For Jacinta

"What d'you want?" he said. "I'm not going in for cargo unless it's worth while. We're tolerably full this trip."

"A passage," said Austin. "There are myself and two sick men. We're going to Grand Canary."

"What's the oil for?"

"To cover the ticket."

The skipper appeared to be gazing down at him in astonishment.

"Sixteen pounds' worth, at the most, for three men to Grand Canary! You have good nerves," he said.

"I can't go any further, and you see they're very sick."

The skipper was understood to say that his ship was not a several adjectived hospital, but Austin only smiled, for he was acquainted with that kind of man, and aware that he was, at least, as likely to do him a kindness as an elaborately got up mailboat's skipper.

"Well," he said, "if you won't have us, I'll take them back and bury them. It's tolerably sure to come to that. Two of us will not eat much, any way, and we'll be quite content to sleep on deck."

There was no answer for a moment, and then, as the bridge came slanting down, the man who leaned out from it laughed.

"It's a puncheon of oil to nothing, and I've been hard up myself," he said. "The next thing is, how the devil are you going to get them up? We've stowed away our ladder."

"Then it'll have to be a sling. I'll steady them up when she rises, and some of your crowd can hand them in."

It was done with difficulty, for the steamer rolled with a disconcerting swing, and then Austin grasped Bill's hand before he went up the rope. A gong clanged sharply, the launch slid astern, and several seamen carried the two bundles of foul blankets away. While Austin watched them vacantly a hand fell upon his shoulder, and propelled him into a room beneath the bridge. Then he heard a harsh voice:

"There isn't any factory I'm acquainted with hereabouts. Where d'you get that oil from?" it said.

Austin sat down on the settee and blinked at the burly, hard-faced man in front of him.

"I don't know if you'll be astonished, but we really came by it legitimately," he said. "In fact, we got it out of a stranded steamer – one we're endeavouring to heave off, you see."

The skipper smiled as comprehension suddenly dawned on him. "Then you're one of the – fools who bought the Cumbria?"

"I am. Still, I'm not sure that your opinion of us is quite warranted yet. If it isn't, you'll get more than the one puncheon for taking us across. In the meanwhile, I'm a little anxious about those men."

"They're all right. Pills will see to them. We have one. He probably killed somebody by accident, or did something of that kind, or he wouldn't be here. Directors had a notion we might pick up a few passengers. They, however, prefer the liners."

Austin laughed, and the skipper's eyes slowly twinkled. "The fact is, I don't blame them," he said. "Any way, you will lie down here until they get you a room in the poop ready."

He went out, and an hour or two later Austin was roused by a touch from a fitful sleep. A young man who stooped over him was regarding him intently.

"Put that in your mouth?" he said.

Austin slipped the little glass tube between his lips, and the doctor nodded when he passed it back to him.

"Yes," he said, "you have a very promising case of fever coming on. Get up and lean on me; the sooner we pack you between the blankets the better."

Austin rose unsteadily, and found that he had some difficulty in walking when they went out upon the slanting deck. He was quite sure of that, but everything else that he did, or was done to him, during the next few days, was wrapped in obscurity. Still, he had a hazy notion of the doctor and another man half dragging him into a little room.

CHAPTER XVIII

JACINTA BECOMES INDIGNANT

It was fifteen days after he boarded the steamer when Austin reached Las Palmas in a condition which, at least, prevented him chafing at the delay as he otherwise would have done. On the second day something went wrong with the high-pressure engine, and the little, deep-loaded vessel lay rolling idly athwart the swell, while her engineers dismantled and re-erected it. Then the trouble they had already had with the condenser became more acute, so that they would scarcely keep a vacuum, and it also happened that the trade-breeze she had to steam against blew unusually fresh that season.

Austin, however, was not aware of this at the time. He lay rambling incoherently for several days, and when at last his senses came back to him, found himself too weak and listless to trouble about anything. He gained strength rapidly, for the swamp fever does not, as a rule, keep its victim prostrate long. It either kills him without loss of time, or allows him to escape for a season; but its effect is frequently mental as well as physical, and Austin's listlessness remained. He had borne a heavy strain, and when he went ashore at Las Palmas the inevitable reaction was intensified by the black dejection the fever had left behind. It seemed to him that he and Jefferson were only wasting their efforts, and though he still meant to go on with them, he expected no result, since he now felt that there was not the slightest probability of their ever getting the Cumbria off. It was a somewhat unusual mood for a young Englishman to find himself in, though by no means an incomprehensible one in case of a man badly shaken by the malaria fever, while one of Austin's shortcomings was, or so, at least, Jacinta Brown considered, a too complaisant adaptation of himself to circumstances. She held the belief that when the latter were unpropitious, a determined attempt to alter them was much more commendable, and not infrequently successful.

In any case, Austin found Pancho Brown was away buying tomatoes when he called at his office, and the Spanish clerk also informed him that Miss Brown and Mrs. Hatherly had left Las Palmas for a while. He fancied they had gone to Madeira, but was not certain, and Austin, who left him a message for Brown and a letter Jefferson had charged him with to be forwarded to Miss Gascoyne, went on to the telegraph office more dejected than ever. Jacinta had, usually, a bracing effect upon those she came into contact with, and Austin, who felt he needed a mental stimulant, realised now that one of the things that had sustained him was the expectation of hearing her express her approval of what he had done. He had not looked for anything more, but it seemed that he must also dispense with this consolation.

He delivered one of the canarios, who was apparently recovering, to his friends, and saw the other bestowed in the hospital, and then, finding that he could not loiter about Las Palmas waiting an answer to his cable, which he did not expect for several days, decided to go across to Teneriffe with the Estremedura. There was no difficulty about this, though funds were scanty, for the Spanish manager told him he could make himself at home on board her as long as he liked, if he would instruct the new sobrecargo in his duties, as he, it appeared, had some difficulty in understanding them.

On the night they went to sea he lay upon the settee in the engineers' mess-room, with Macallister sitting opposite him, and a basket of white grapes and a garafon of red wine on the table between them. Port and door were wide open, and the trade-breeze swept through the room, fresh, and delightfully cool. Austin had also an unusually good cigar in his hand, and stretched himself on the settee with a little sigh of content when he had recounted what they had done on board the Cumbria.

"I don't know if we'll ever get her off, and the astonishing thing is, that since I had the fever I don't seem to care," he said. "In the meanwhile, it's a relief to get away from her. In fact, I feel I would like to lie here and take it easy for at least a year."

Macallister nodded comprehendingly. Austin's face was blanched and hollow, and he was very thin, while the stamp of weariness and lassitude was plain on him. Still, as he glanced in his direction a little sparkle crept into the engineer's eyes.

"So Jefferson made the pump go, and ran the forehold dry!" he said. "When ye come to think of it, yon is an ingenious man."

Austin laughed. "He is also, in some respects, an astonishing one. He was perfectly at home among the smart people at the Catalina, and I fancy he would have been equally so in the Bowery, whose inhabitants, one understands, very much resemble in their manners those of your Glasgow closes or Edinburgh wynds. In fact, I've wondered, now and then, if Miss Gascoyne quite realises who she is going to marry. There are several sides to Jefferson's character, and she has, so far, only seen one of them."

"Well," said Macallister, reflectively, "I'm thinking she will never see the rest. There are men, though they're no exactly plentiful, who can hide them, and it's scarcely likely that Jefferson will rive a steamboat out of the African swamps again."

"Once is quite enough in a lifetime, but it's when the work is done, and he has to quiet down, I foresee trouble for Jefferson. I'm not sure Miss Gascoyne's English friends would altogether appreciate him."

Again Macallister nodded. "Still," he said, "what yon man does not know he will learn. I would back him to do anything now he has made that boiler steam. Then ye will mind it's no the clever women who are the easiest to live with when ye have married them, and there's a good deal to be said for girls like Miss Gascoyne, who do not see too much. It is convenient that a wife should be content with her husband, and not be wanting to change him into somebody else, which is a thing I would not stand at any price myself."

Austin grinned, for it was known that Macallister had, at least now and then, found it advisable to entertain his friends on board the Estremedura by stealth. The engineer however, did not appear to notice his smile.

"Ye will go back when ye get the money?" he said.

"Of course. I have to see the thing out now, though I don't quite understand how I ever came to trouble myself about it in the first place."

This time it was Macallister who grinned. "I have been in this world a weary while, and would ye pull the wool over my eyes? Ye are aware that the notion was driven into ye."

Austin was astonished, and a trifle annoyed, as he remembered a certain very similar conversation he had had with Jefferson. It was disconcerting to find that Macallister was as conversant with his affairs as his partner had shown himself to be, especially as they had both apparently drawn the same inference.

"I wonder what made you say that?" he asked, with lifted brows.

Macallister laughed. "Well," he said drily, "I'm thinking Miss Brown knows, as well as I do, that ye would not have gone of your own accord."

"Why should Miss Brown have the slightest wish that I should go to Africa?"

"If ye do not know, how could ye expect me to? Still, it should be plain to ye that it was not for your health."

Austin raised himself a trifle, and looked at his comrade steadily. "The drift of your remarks is tolerably clear. Any way, because I would sooner you made no more of them, it might be as well to point out that no girl who cared twopence about a man would send him to the swamps where the Cumbria is lying."

"Maybe she would not. There are things I do not know, but ye will mind that Jacinta Brown is not made on quite the same model as Miss Gascoyne. She sees a good deal, and if she was not content with her husband she would up and alter him. I'm thinking it would not matter if it hurt the pair o' them."