Part 6 (1/2)

”I'm not quite sure. I was at Panama, and never had a touch of fever.

Any way, I'm going, and if you'll stand in with me, I'll put you down a quarter-share for a dollar.”

It was in one respect a generous offer, but Austin shook his head. ”No,”

he said decisively. ”Have you forgotten that Miss Gascoyne expects you to marry her?”

Jefferson's eyes glowed. ”I'm remembering it all the time. That's why I'm going. Would you take a refined and cultured girl and drag her through all the hard places men of my kind make money in up and down the world? Has she to give up everything and come down to me? No, sir! It seems to me, the man who wants to marry a girl of that kind has got to do something to show he knows her value before he gets her, and it would be way better for both of us that she should be sorry for me dead than that I should live to drag her down.”

It seemed to Austin that there was a good deal to be said for this point of view, and it also occurred to him that there was in this latter-day American, who had still the grime of the coaling wharf upon him, something of the spirit which had sent the knight-errant out in the days of chivalry. Still, he naturally did not say so, for he was, after all, what Jefferson called a hide-bound Englishman.

”Well,” he said, ”you're taking a big risk, but perhaps you are right.”

Jefferson rose with the abruptness which usually characterised his movements.

”You're not coming?”

”No. I haven't your inducement, and I'm afraid the contract's too big for me.”

”You have a week to consider it in,” said Jefferson, who opened the door. ”In the meanwhile there's another fellow ready for his coal, and I'm going along.”

CHAPTER V

THE TOMATO FINCA

Three weeks had pa.s.sed since his interview with Austin before Jefferson was ready to sail, and he spent most of the time in strenuous activity.

He had cabled to England for a big centrifugal pump and a second-hand locomotive-type boiler, while, when they arrived, Macallister said that five hundred pounds would not tempt him to raise full steam on the latter. He also purchased a broken-down launch, and, though she was cheap, the cost of her and the pump, with other necessaries, made a considerable hole in his remaining 2,000. It was for this reason he undertook to make the needful repairs himself, with the help of a steamer's donkey-man who had somehow got left behind, while Austin and Macallister spent most of the week during which the _Estremedura_ lay at Las Palmas in the workshop he had extemporised. He appeared to know a little about machinery, and could, at least, handle hack-saw and file in a fas.h.i.+on which moved Macallister to approbation, while Austin noticed that the latter's sardonic smile became less frequent as he and the American worked together.

Jefferson was grimly in earnest, and it was evident that his thoroughness, which overlooked nothing, compelled the engineer's admiration. It also occurred to Austin that, while there are many ways in which a lover may prove his devotion, few other men would probably have cared for the one Jefferson had undertaken. He was not a very knightly figure when he emerged, smeared with rust and scale, from the second-hand boiler, or crawled about the launch's engines with blackened face and hands; but Austin, who remembered it was for Muriel Gascoyne he had staked all his little capital in that desperate venture, forebore to smile. He knew rather better than Jefferson did that it was a very forlorn hope indeed the latter was venturing on. One cannot heave a stranded steamer off without strenuous physical exertion, and the white man who attempts the latter in a good many parts of Western Africa incontinently dies.

At last all was ready, and one night Jefferson steamed off to the African liner from Las Palmas mole, taking with him the steamboat donkey-man and another English seafarer, who were at the time disgracefully drunk, as well as six Spaniards from the coasting schooners. He said that when he reached the _c.u.mbria_ he would hire n.i.g.g.e.rs, who would be quite as reliable, and considerably cheaper. As it happened, the _Estremedura_ was going to sea that night, bound for the eastern islands, and Mrs. Hatherly, who was never seasick, and had heard that the climate of one of them where it scarcely ever rained was good for rheumatic affections, had determined to visit it in her. Jacinta, for no very apparent reason, decided to go with her, and it accordingly came about that most of her few acquaintances were with Muriel Gascoyne when she said good-bye to Jefferson at the head of the mole. She kissed him unblus.h.i.+ngly, and then, when the launch panted away across the harbour, turned, a little pale in face, but with a firm step, towards the _Estremedura_, and an hour later stood with Jacinta on the saloon deck, watching the liner's black hull slide down the harbour. Then as the steamer lurched out past the mole, with a blast of her whistle throbbing across the dusky heave, Muriel s.h.i.+vered a little.

”I don't know whether we shall ever meet here again, but I think I could bear that now, and it really couldn't be so very hard, after all,” she said. ”It would have been horrible if he had gone and had not told me.”

Jacinta looked thoughtful, as in fact she was. She was of a more complex, and, in some respects, more refined nature than her companion, while her knowledge of the world was almost startlingly extensive; but wisdom carries one no further than simplicity when one approaches the barriers that divide man's little life from the hereafter. Indeed, there is warrant for believing that when at last they are rolled away, it is not the wise who will see with clearest vision.

”I am not--quite--sure I understand,” she said.

There was a trace of moisture on Muriel Gascoyne's cheek, but she held herself erect, and she was tall and large of frame, as well as a reposeful young woman. Though she probably did not know it, there was a suggestion of steadfast unchangeableness in her unconscious pose.

”Now,” she said, very simply, ”he belongs to me and I to him. If he dies out there--and I know that is possible--it can only be a question of waiting.”

Jacinta was a little astonished. She felt that there had been a great and almost incomprehensible change in Muriel Gascoyne since she fell very simply and naturally in love with Jefferson. It was also very evident that she was not consoling herself with empty phrases, or repeating commendable sentiments just because they appealed to her fancy, as some women will. She seemed to be stating what she felt and knew.

”Ah!” said Jacinta, ”you knew he might die there, and you could let him go?”

Muriel smiled. ”My dear, I could not have stopped him, and now he is gone I think I am in one way glad that it was so. I do not want money--I have always had very little--but, feeling as he did, it was best that he should go. He would not have blamed me afterwards--of that I am certain--but I think I know what he would have felt if hards.h.i.+p came, and I wanted to spare it him.” Then, with a faint smile, which seemed to show that she recognised the anti-climax, she became prosaic again. ”One has to think of such things. Eight thousand pounds will not go so very far, you know.”

Jacinta left her presently, and, as it happened, came upon Austin soon after the _Estremedura_ steamed out to sea. He was leaning on the forward rails while the little, yacht-like vessel--she was only some 600 tons or so--swung over the long, smooth-backed undulations with slanted spars and funnel. There was an azure vault above them, strewn with the lights of heaven, and a sea of deeper blue which heaved oilily below, for, that night, at least, the trade breeze was almost still.