Part 22 (1/2)

Then he turned, and they went up and back to the deck-house, while an exultant clamour broke out from the Canarios; but Jefferson's lean hand quivered a little when he laid it on the table as he sat down.

”If she has started any plates, they're not started much,” he said.

”Now, talk about anything you like, so long as it isn't the _c.u.mbria_.

I've got to slacken down to-night.”

CHAPTER XVI

ELUSIVE GUM

It was in the small hours when Austin wakened, and, listening a moment, stretched his aching limbs with a little sigh of content. The odds and ends on the table beside him were rattling merrily, and a deep pulsatory humming rang stridently through the silence of the swamps. The pump was running well, for he could hear the steady splash of water falling into the creek, and once more a little thrill of exultation ran through him.

He was not in most respects a fanciful man, for in him the artistic temperament was held in due subjection by a knowledge of the world and shrewd practical sense. Still, there were times when he vaguely recognised that there might, after all, be a reality behind the fancies he now and then indulged in with a smile, and that night it seemed to him that the big centrifugal pump was chanting a song of triumph.

He had tasted toil, and what toil really is only those know who have borne it in the steamy heat of the tropics, which saps the white man's vigour; while he had discovered what, artist as he was, he had not learned before: that, by way of compensation, man may attain a certain elusive spirituality by the stern subjugation of his body, even when it is accomplished by brutal manual labour. As the _Estremedura_'s sobrecargo he had watched the struggle for existence between man and man with good-humoured toleration of its petty wiles and trickeries, but now it was the cleaner and more primitive struggle between man and matter he was called upon to take his part in with the faith in the destiny of his species which is capable of moving mountains, and not infrequently does so with hydraulic hose and blasting charges, as well as a few odd thousand tons of iron and water in a stranded steamer. Lying still a while, he heard the great pump hurling out its announcement of man's domination to swamp and forest, and then went peacefully to sleep.

He was astir with the dawn next morning, but when they went down the ladder into the hold he knew that the change in him had reached a further stage. Whether the water had sunk or not, he was going to see that fight out, and go back triumphant, or leave his bones in Africa. It was not alone to vindicate himself in Jacinta's eyes, for that, though it counted, too, seemed of less moment now; he was there to justify his existence, to prove himself a man, which many who have won honours in this world have, after all, never really done. As a sign of it, he was wholly practical when, hanging down from the ladder, he laid the fingers of one hand upon the scratch Jefferson had made on the iron. Then he held up the hand.

”Wet to the knuckles only,” he said. ”Last night the water was on the thumb.”

They went up, and Jefferson looked at him keenly when they stood on deck; in fact, as he had done when Austin first clambered, half naked, out of the hatch.

”Yes,” he said quietly, ”she is heaving it out, and you have done more than start in. You mean staying with it now?”

Austin laughed. ”I'm not sure how you know it, but I really think I do.”

”No?” said Jefferson, with a twinkle in his eyes. ”When it's in your voice, and stamped upon the rest of you. Well, I think we're going to float her, though it's perhaps not quite a sure thing yet. We seem to have bluffed off Funnel-paint, but the trouble is, you can't bluff the fever. In the meanwhile, we'll see if she's draining any out of the engine room.”

They went in, and stood on the top platform, looking down on the water, which, so far as they could discern, stood at much the same level as it had done. Jefferson gazed at it with an air of reflection.

”If the bulkhead's strained and started so the water could get in, I don't quite see why it shouldn't run out into the hold again, but there's evidently no suction that way,” he said. ”You see how that tool-case lid is floating. There's another point that strikes me. Those started plates don't seem to be letting very much water in.”

”As you have already pointed out, there is a good deal it's a little difficult to understand about the whole thing.”

”Well,” said Jefferson gravely, ”it doesn't matter in the meanwhile, and we'll probably find out by and by. The first thing we have to do is to lay hands on that gum, and until the water's lower we can't start in.

The boys can lay off to-day. Well, what are you wanting, Bill?”

”Two of the Canariers down!” said the fireman, who appeared in the doorway. ”They was looking groggy yesterday, an' one o' them's talking silly now. I think it's fever.”

Austin looked at Jefferson, whose face grew a trifle grim. ”Ah,” he said, ”it's beginning. Well, I had expected we'd have that to grapple with before very long. We'll go along and look at them.”

They went, and found one of the men raving in the forecastle, while Austin, who did what he could for him and his comrade, which was very little, afterwards spent a day of blissful idleness stretched at full length on the settee in the skipper's room, with a damp-stained treatise on navigation. He had never imagined that he could peruse a work of that kind with interest, but it served its purpose, for he felt he must have something to fix his attention on. In the meanwhile the big pump hummed on, as it did for another day and night, until on the third morning Jefferson stopped it and turned steam on the winch again.

”You have got to keep your eyes open as well as hustle, boys,” he said, as he stood with his hand on the lever. ”There'll be forty dollars, Spanish, for whoever finds the first bag of gum.”

Austin made this clear to them, and they went down the ladder, but two men who had gone with them before were not there that day. The water had sunk, and tiers of rotting bags lay, half afloat, in it, giving out a sickening smell of fermentation. They were filled with little black nuts, the oleaginous kernels of the palm fruit from which the layer of oil had been sc.r.a.ped off, and these were evidently worth little in their damaged condition. Austin, however, had very little time to notice them in, for the winch above him rattled, and the day of feverish toil began.