Part 17 (1/2)

”By gad!” said White, ”you insolent little blackguard, you dare to speak to me like that!”

”I use what words I choose,” said Kettle, truculently. ”I'd have said the same to your late King Solomon if I hadn't liked his ways; but if I was pocketing his pay, I should have carried out his orders all the same.” He bent down to the voice hatch, and gave a bearing to the black quartermaster in the wheel-house below, and the little steamer, which had by this time left behind her the vessels trans.h.i.+pping cargo in the roads, canted off on a new course to the southward.

”Hullo,” said Sheriff, ”what's that mean? Where are you off to now?”

Kettle mentioned the name of a lonely island standing by itself in the Atlantic.

But Sheriff and the Jew were visibly startled. Mr. Sheriff mopped at a very damp forehead with his pocket handkerchief. ”Have you heard anything then?” he asked, ”or did you just guess?”

”I heard nothing before, or I should not have signed on for this trip, sir. But having come so far I'm going to earn out my pay. What's done will not be on my conscience. The s.h.i.+pmaster's blameless in these matters; it's the owner who drives him that earns his punishment in the hereafter; and that's sound theology.”

”But how did you guess, man, how did you know where we were bound?”

”A s.h.i.+pmaster knows cable stations as well as he knows owners' agents'

offices ash.o.r.e. Any fool who had been told your game would have put his finger on that island at once. That's the loneliest place where the cable goes ash.o.r.e all up and down the coast, and it isn't British, and what more could you want?”

With these meagre a.s.surances, Messieurs Sheriff and White had to be content, as no others were forthcoming. Captain Kettle refused to be drawn into further talk upon the subject, and the pair went below to the stuffy little cabin more than a trifle disconsolate. ”Well, here's the man you talked so big about,” said White, bitterly. ”As soon as we get out at sea, he shows himself in his true colors. Why, he's a blooming Methodist. But if he sells us when it comes to the point, and there's a chance of my getting nabbed, by gad I'll murder him like I would a rat.”

”If he offers a scrimmage,” said Sheriff, ”you take my tip, and clear out. He's a regular glutton for a fight; I know he's armed; and he could shoot the b.u.t.tons off your coat at twenty yards. No, Mr. White; make the best or the worst of Captain Kettle as you choose, but don't come to fisticuffs with him, or as sure as you are living now, you'll finish out on the under side then. And mind, I'm not talking by guess-work.

I know.”

”I shall not stick at much if this show's spoiled. Why, the money was as good as in our pockets, if he hadn't cut up awkward.”

”Don't throw up the sponge till some one else does it for you. Look here, I know this man Kettle a lot better than you do. He wants the pay very badly. And when it comes to sticking up the cable station, you'll see him do the work of any ten like us. I tell you, he's a regular demon when it comes to a scuffle.”

It was in this att.i.tude, then, that the three princ.i.p.al members of the little steamer's complement voyaged down over those warm tropical seas which lay between Lagos and the isle of their hopes and fears. Two of them kept together, and perfected the detail of their plans for use in every contingency; but the other kept himself icily apart, and for an occupation, when the business of the s.h.i.+p did not require his eye, wrapped himself up in the labor of literary production. He even refused to partake of meals at the same table with his employers.

The island first appeared to them as a huddle of mountains sprouting out of the sea, which grew green as they came more near, and which finally showed great ma.s.ses of foliage growing to the crown of the splintered heights, with a surf frilling the bays and capes at their foot. There was a town in the hug of one of these bays, and toward it the little steamer rolled as though she had been an ordinary legitimate trader. She brought up to an anchor in the jaws of the bay, half-way between the lighthouse and the rectangular white building on the further beach, and after due delay, a negro doctor, pulled up by a surf-boat full of other negroes, came off and gave her pratique.

The rectangular white building, standing in the sea breeze by itself away from the town beyond, was the cable station, but for the present they faced it with their backs. Kettle had seen it before; the other two acted as though it were the last thing to trouble their minds. There was no going ash.o.r.e for any of them yet; indeed, the less they advertised their personal ident.i.ty, the more chance there was of getting off untraced afterward.

Night fell with such suddenness that one could almost have imagined the sun was permanently extinguished. Round the rim of the bay lights began to kindle, and presently (when the wind came off the land) strains of music floated out to them.

”Some saint's day,” Sheriff commented.

”St. Agatha's,” said Kettle with a sigh.

”h.e.l.lo, Kettle. I thought you were a straight-laced chapel goer. What have you to do with saints and their days?”

”I was told that one once, sir, and I can't help remembering it. You see the date is February 5th, and that's my eldest youngster's birthday.”

Sheriff swore. ”I wish you'd drop that sort of sentimental bosh, Skipper; especially now. I want to get this business over first, and then, when I go back with plenty in my pocket, I can begin to think of family pleasures and cares again. Come now, have you thought out what we can do with the steamer after we've finished our job here?”

”Run up with the coast and sink her, and then go ash.o.r.e in the surf-boat at some place where the cable doesn't call, and leave that as soon as possible for somewhere else.”

”It will be a big saving of necks,” said Kettle drily. ”Why sir, you've been a steamer-owner in your time, and you must know how we're fixed.

You've given up your papers here, and you're known. You can't go into another port in the whole wide world without papers, and as far as forging a new set, why that's a thing that hasn't been done this thirty years outside a story-book.”

Mr. White came up to hear. ”I don't see that,” he said.

”You fellows don't understand everything in Jerusalem,” said Kettle, with a cheerful insult, and walked away. Captain Kettle regarded Sheriff as a gull, and pitied him accordingly; but White he recognized as princ.i.p.al knave, and disliked him accordingly.