Part 23 (1/2)

Wenlock shrugged his shoulders good-humoredly.

”Neither do I, and if I were a rich man, I wouldn't have dreamed of it.

Just think of what the girl probably is: she's been with those n.i.g.g.e.rs since she was quite a kid; she'll be quite uneducated; I'm in hopes she's good-looking and has a decent figure; but at the best she'll be quite unpresentable till I've had her in hand for at least a couple of years, if then. Of course you'll say there's 'romance' about the thing.

But then I don't care tuppence about romance, and anyway it's beastly unconfortable to live with.”

”I was not looking at that point of view.”

”Let me tell you how I was fixed,” said Wenlock with a burst of confidence. ”I'd a small capital. So I qualified as a solicitor, and put up a door-plate, and waited for a practice. It didn't come. Not a client drifted near me from month's end to month's end. And meanwhile the capital was dribbling away. I felt I was getting on my back legs; it was either a case of the Colonies or the workhouse, and I'd no taste for either; and when the news of this girl Teresa came, I tell you I just jumped at the chance. I don't want to marry her, of course; there are ten other girls I'd rather have as wife; but there was no other way out of the difficulty, so I just swallowed my squeamishness for good and always. See?”

”It was Miss Teresa Anderson I was pitying,” said Kettle pointedly.

”Good Lord, man, why? Isn't it the finest thing in the world for her?”

”It might be fine to get away from where she is, and land home to find a nice property waiting. But I don't care to see a woman have a husband forced on her. It would be n.o.bler of you, Mr. Wenlock, to let the young lady get to England, and look round her for a while, and make her own choice.”

”I'm too hard up to be n.o.ble,” said Wenlock drily. ”I've not come here on philanthropy, and marrying that girl is part of my business.

Besides, hang it all, man, think of what she is, and think of what I am.” He looked himself up and down with a half humorous smile--”I know nice people at home who would be civil to her, and after all, hang it, I'm not unmarriageable personally.”

”Still,” said Kettle doggedly, ”I don't like the idea of it.”

”Then let me give you an inducement. I said I was not down here on philanthropy, and I don't suppose you are either. You'll have my pa.s.sage money?”

”Two and a-half per cent of it is my commission. The rest goes to the owners, of course.”

”Very well, then. In addition to that, if you'll help this marriage on in the way I ask, I'll give you 50.”

”There's no man living who could do more usefully with 50 if I saw my way of fingering it.”

”I think I see what you mean. No, you won't have to wait for it. I've got the money here in hard cash in my pocket ready for you to take over the minute it's earned.”

”I was wondering, sir, if I could earn it honorably. You must give me time to think this out. I'll try and give you an answer after tea. And for the present I shall have to leave you. I've got to go through the s.h.i.+p's papers: I have to be my own clerk on board here just now, though the Company did certainly promise me a much better s.h.i.+p if I beat up plenty of cargo, and made a good voyage of it with this.”

The _Parakeet_ worked her way along down the Red Sea at her steady nine knots, and Mr. Hugh Wenlock put a couple of bunk pillows on a canvas boat-cover under the bridge deck awnings, and lay there and amused himself with cigarettes and a magazine. Captain Owen Kettle sat before a table in the chart-house with his head on one side, and a pen in his fingers, and went through accounts. But though Wenlock, when he had finished his magazine, quickly went off to sleep, Captain Kettle's struggles with arithmetic were violent enough to keep him very thoroughly awake, and when a due proportion of the figures had been checked, he put the papers in a drawer, and was quite ready to tackle the next subject.

He had not seen necessary to mention the fact to Mr. Wenlock, but while that young man was talking of the Miss Teresa Anderson, who at present was ”quite a big personage in her way” at Dunkhot, a memory had come to him that he had heard of the lady before in somewhat less prosaic terms.

All sailormen who have done business on the great sea highway between West and East during recent years have had the yarn given to them at one time or another, and most of them have regarded it as gratuitous legend.

Kettle was one of these. But he was beginning to think there was something more in it than a mere sailor's yarn, and he was anxious to see if there was any new variation in the telling.

So he sent for Murray, his mate, a smart young sailor of the newer school, who preferred to be called ”chief officer,” made him sit, and commenced talk of a purely professional nature. Finally he said: ”And since I saw you last, the schedule's changed. We call in at Dunkhot, for that pa.s.senger Mr. Wenlock to do some private business ash.o.r.e, before we go on to our Persian Gulf ports.”

Murray repeated the name thoughtfully. ”Dunkhot? Let's see, that's on the South Arabian coast, about a day's steam from Aden, and a beast of a place to get at, so I've heard. Oh, and of course, that's the place where the She-Sultan, or Queen, or whatever she calls herself, is boss.”

”So there is really a woman of that kind there, is there? I'd heard of her, like everybody else has, but I thought she was only a yarn.”

”No, she's there in the flesh, sir, right enough; lots of flesh, according to what I've gathered. A serang of one of the B. and I. boats, who'd been in Dunkhot, told me about her only last year. She makes war, leads her troops, cuts off heads, and does the Eastern potentate up to the mark. The serang said she was English, too, though I don't believe much in that. One-tenth English would probably be more near the truth.

The odds are she'll be Eurasian, and those snuff-and-b.u.t.ter colored ladies, when they get amongst people blacker than themselves, always try to ignore their own lick of the tar-brush.”