Part 14 (1/2)

”We have been wondering what Lister came back for, and the general notion is that you had had enough of him,” said his friend. ”In any case, he seems quite content with Las Palmas, and the British colony are watching his proceedings with quiet interest. After cleaning out several Spaniards at the casino he has apparently devoted himself to Miss Ratcliffe's service. It is not evident that he receives a great deal of encouragement from the lady herself, but her mother is ostentatiously gracious to him. She may have a purpose in this.”

Desmond crumpled the letter in one hand. ”Crosbie always was a--tattler, but it's more than possible that he's right,” he said.

Then he sighed. ”And I put Lister on board the mail-boat and sent him there! If I'd only known what the result would be I'd have drowned him.”

He lay still for another few moments filling his pipe, and then flung the tobacco pouch across the room, for a sojourn off those beaches would probably try the temper of most white men, and the Hibernian nature now and then came uppermost in him.

”Damp,” he said. ”Reeking, dripping, putrid, like everything else on this forlorn coast! It would be a boon to humanity if somebody bought the besotted continent and scuttled it.”

He rose to his feet as a man in bedraggled white uniform appeared in the doorway.

”You were speaking, sir?” he said.

”I was,” said Desmond. ”I suggested that it was a pity somebody couldn't torpedo this benighted continent. Any word from the men you sent ash.o.r.e?”

”They've signaled from the rise,” said the _Palestrina_'s mate. ”No sign of him yet. I don't expect them off until to-morrow. The surf's running steep.” Desmond made a gesture of concurrence as he glanced at the filmy spray-cloud that drove like smoke up the wet and glistening beach. It was flung aloft by a wild white welter of crumbling seas, and he realized that the boat's crew who had gone ash.o.r.e could not rejoin the _Palestrina_ before the morning, at least. They went every day to watch for a lumbering ox team or a band of carriers plodding seaward across the littoral, and it seemed they had once more signaled that there was no sign of either. Then he moved towards the door bareheaded, with only an unb.u.t.toned duck jacket over his thin singlet, and the mate ventured a deprecatory protest.

”She's throwing it over her in sheets forward,” he said.

Desmond disregarded him, and staggering clear of the deck-house stood with feet spread well apart gazing at the stretch of leaden sea while, as the _Palestrina_'s bows went up, the spray that whirled in over her weather rail wet him to the skin. He saw the livid tops of the combers that rolled by the point and heard the jarring cables ring, and then turned his eyes sh.o.r.ewards and gazed across the waste of misty littoral.

”It's a cheerful place, but now and then you feel you might get to like it,” he said. ”Perhaps it's the uncertainty as to when the fever will get you that gives living here a zest. When you come to think of it, some of us have curious notions.”

He appeared to be considering the point as they edged back under the lee of the deck-house, and the mate grinned.

”The men don't take kindly to it, sir,” he said. ”They've been worrying me lately as to how long we're stopping here.”

”A week,” said Desmond. ”Ormsgill's time is running out, and he'll be here or send us word by then. He said he would, and what that man says you can count on being done.”

Something in his tone suggested that the question might be considered as closed, and they discussed other matters while the deck heaved and slanted under them until a man forward flung up an arm and turned towards them with a cry which the wind swept away. In another moment Desmond scrambled half-way up the bridge ladder, and clung there with the mate close beneath him gazing at the white welter where the seas swept by the point. There was a sail just outsh.o.r.e of it, a little strip of gray canvas that appeared and vanished amidst the serried ranks of tumbling combers. It drew out of them and drove furiously towards the _Palestrina_, and when a strip of white hull grew into visibility beneath it Desmond looked down at his mate.

”A big surf-boat. It's Ormsgill,” he said.

There was certainty in his tone, as well as a little ring of satisfaction which was, perhaps, warranted, for it is, after all, something to be the friend of a man who does just what he has promised and never arrives too late. In the meanwhile the object they were watching had grown into a bellying lug-sail that reeled to lee and to weather with the sea streaming from the foot of it, and a patch of foam-swept hull. The boat came on furiously, and when the mate sprang from the ladder roaring orders Desmond could see three or four black figures through the spray that whirled over her. There was also another man in white garments standing upright in her stern, and Desmond was wholly sure of his ident.i.ty. Then she was lost for awhile, and only swept into sight again abreast of the _Palestrina_'s dipping bows, hove high with half her length lifted out of the crest of a breaking sea.

She drove forward with it, the foam standing half a man's height above her stern and the foot of the slanted lug-sail was.h.i.+ng in the brine, while a bent white figure struggled with the great steering oar. She swooped like a toboggan plunging down an icy slide when she was level with the _Palestrina_'s bridge, and some of the men who watched her from the latter's rail held their breath as the smoking sea pa.s.sed on and another gathered itself together astern of her. The helmsman, they knew, must bring the dripping, half-swamped boat on the wind to reach the strip of lee beneath the steamer's stern, and when he did it there was every prospect of her rolling over.

In another moment several black objects rose and grappled with the lug-sail sheet, and the big boat tilted until all one side of her was in the air. Then she went up in the midst of a white spouting as the slope of water behind fell upon her. Still, the slanted lug-sail rose out of it, and then came down thras.h.i.+ng furiously while naked black figures half-seen in the spray bent from her gunwale with swinging paddles as she drove towards the _Palestrina_'s quarter. After that there was a hoa.r.s.e shouting, and the lines flew from the reeling taffrail as she slid under the steamer's stern.

In another minute or two Ormsgill swung himself on board through the gangway. He had no hat, and the water ran from him, but he shook hands with Desmond unconcernedly.

”Ask them to hand that fellow up,” he said pointing to a man who sat huddled in the water that swirled up and down inside the plunging boat. ”We took rather a heavy one over two or three hours ago, and he brought up on the after thwart when the big oar jumped its crutch. As he's the only Kroo among them, I took the helm myself after that. I don't fancy he has broken anything.”

Desmond hustled him into the deck-house when the negro had been brought on deck and the dripping boat rode astern, and an hour later he sat at dinner with his comrade in the little white saloon. Darkness had closed down in the meanwhile, and the lamp that swung above their heads flung a soft light across the table, where dainty gla.s.sware and silver glittered on the snowy cloth. Ormsgill smiled as he glanced at it and the glowing blotch of color in his wine gla.s.s.

”After all, this kind of thing has its advantages, especially when one has been accustomed to squatting in the wood smoke over a calabash of palm oil or some other unhallowed n.i.g.g.e.r compound,” he said. ”It's a trifle pleasant to wear clothes that fit you, too. Father Tiebout's and those Dom Clemente lent me didn't. I had to cut the wrists off the latter's jacket.”

Desmond looked at him reflectively over his cigar, for he had something to say, and was a trifle uncertain as to how he should set about it.

”Well,” he said, ”I suppose it is nice for a while, especially, as you say, when it's a change. The point is, would it satisfy you long?”

”A dinner like this one is generally acceptable.”