Part 17 (1/2)

”Engines!” he said sharply. ”It's the launch.”

She swung out, apparently from the mangroves, in another few minutes, and came on towards them, clanking and wheezing horribly, with the yellow foam piled about her, but Austin felt that he had never seen anything more welcome than that strip of mire-daubed hull with the plume of smoke streaming away from it. Then she stopped close alongside them, and Austin shook hands with Tom as he climbed on board.

”Did you come across any n.i.g.g.e.rs, sir?” asked the latter.

”No,” said Austin. ”How's Mr. Jefferson?”

”Comin' round,” said Tom, with a grin. ”I've worked most of the fever--an' the sunstroke--out of him. It was a big load off me when, as I took him his mixture one morning, he looks up at me. 'Who the devil are you poisoning?' says he, quite sensible, an' like himself again.”

”You were coming down to look for us?”

”We were--an' uncommonly glad to see you. The blame n.i.g.g.e.rs is getting aggravating. Came down, two canoe loads of 'em, a night or two ago, an'

only sheered off when we tumbled one o' them over with a big lump o'

coal. Wall-eye dropped it on to the man in the bow of her from the bridge, an' so far as we could make out it doubled him up considerable.”

Wall-eye was apparently the squinting Spaniard who acted as fireman, and when he saw Tom glance at him he stood up, with a grimy hand clenched, and unloosed a flood of Castilian invective. Austin, who smiled as he watched him, felt that while most of what he said could not be effectively rendered into cold Anglo-Saxon, it was probably more or less warranted. In the meanwhile the launch was coming round with backed propeller, and in another moment or two she was clanking away into the darkness that descended suddenly, towards the _c.u.mbria_.

CHAPTER XII

NOCTURNAL VISITORS

Jefferson was standing at the open door of the house beneath the _c.u.mbria_'s bridge when Austin first caught sight of him, as he groped his way forward along the slanted deck. The black, impenetrable obscurity that descends upon the tropic swamps when the air is full of vapour, hung over the stranded steamer, and the man's gaunt figure cut with harsh sharpness against the stream of light. The thin duck he wore clung about him, soaked with perspiration and the all-pervading damp, emphasising the attenuated spareness of his frame, and Austin could almost have fancied it was a draped skeleton he was gazing at. Still, he was a trifle rea.s.sured when he felt the firm grasp of a hot, bony hand.

”So you have come?” said the American. ”It's good to get a grip of you.

I guessed you would.”

He drew Austin into the deck-house, and they sat down opposite each other, and said nothing for almost a minute, though there was a little smile in Jefferson's face as he leaned back against the bulkhead. His hair, which had grown long since he left Las Palmas, hung low and wet upon his forehead, and the big cheek bones showed through the tight-stretched skin, which was blanched, though there was a faint yellow tinge in it which relieved its dead whiteness. This had its significance, for the coast fever has not infrequently an unpleasant after effect upon the white man's const.i.tution.

”It isn't quite a sanatorium,” he said, as though he guessed his comrade's thoughts. ”Port Royal, Santos, Panama--I know them all--aren't a patch on these swamps. Still, we needn't worry now you have come.”

Austin smiled as he looked at him. ”To be correct, I'm not quite sure that I did,” he said, reflectively. ”I mean, it wasn't exactly because I wished to.”

”Ah!” said Jefferson, as comprehension dawned on him. ”Then the quarter share--that offer stands good--didn't bring you? Well, I was wondering if she would make you go.”

Austin was a trifle astonished, for, though he had a somewhat hardly acquired acquaintance with human nature, it had never occurred to him that the patronage Jacinta extended to her masculine friends naturally attracted some attention, or that in this particular case the onlookers might most clearly grasp the points of the game.

”I can't quite see why she should have wanted me to,” he said.

There was another brief silence, during which the men looked at one another. This was not a subject either of them had meant to talk about.

Indeed, it was one which, under different circ.u.mstances, they would have kept carefully clear of, but both realised that conventional niceties did not count for much just then: They were merely men who had henceforth to face the grim realities of existence with the shadow of death upon them, and they knew that the primitive humanity in them would become apparent as the veneer wore through.

”Still,” said Jefferson, ”I can think of one reason. There was a time when Muriel was good to her, and Jacinta can't forget it. She's not that kind. The first day I met her I felt that she was taking stock of me, and I knew I'd pa.s.sed muster when she made you stop the _Estremedura_.

Perhaps, it wasn't very much in itself, but I was thankful. I've done a few tough things in my time, but I know I'd never have got Muriel if that girl had been against me. Still, it wasn't altogether because of Muriel she sent you.”

Austin showed his astonishment this time, and Jefferson smiled. ”You can't quite figure how I came to understand a thing of that kind? Well, some of you smart folks have made the same mistake before. You don't seem to remember when you waste ten minutes working a traverse round what you could say in one, that however you dress it up, human nature's much the same. Now you're astonished at me. I'm talking. Sometimes I feel I have to. You want to know just why she really sent you?”