Part 34 (2/2)
Then, little by little, the wire rope that ran out into the darkness astern commenced to curve--they could hear the swirl of the stream across it--and after another five minutes' tense effort they swung into a slacker flow or reflex eddy. There was, however, no slackening of the strain, and it was not until a dim, black wall rose up above them that Austin loosed his grasp upon the rope, and, floundering and stumbling in the rain and darkness, they strove to clear the anchor.
It went over with a mighty splash, the platform rose with a jerk under them; then, as they backed clear, there was a rattle of cable, and they seized the wire. The lashed craft swung like a pendulum athwart the stream, the rattling winch hauled them back fathom by fathom to the _c.u.mbria_, while, when he had crawled on board her, Austin dropped limply, and a trifle grey in face, on to the settee in the skipper's room.
”Well,” he said, ”that's done, though I think a little more of it would have made an end of me. It is rather an astonis.h.i.+ng thing, but while I felt fiercely anxious to get that anchor out before we started, it hardly seems worth the trouble now.”
”We couldn't heave her off without it,” said Jefferson. ”That means going home--eventually.”
”I suppose it does,” said Austin, with a little mirthless smile. ”Still, I haven't any home, you see, and I'm not sure that a lazar hospital of some kind isn't what is awaiting me. You will remember the encouraging words that fellow left--'My arm's almost rotten now.'”
Jefferson slowly clenched one scarred hand. ”That's a thing we are neither of us strong enough to think about. It's a little too horrible--it couldn't happen!”
”It's scarcely likely in your case, at least. He didn't put his arm round you, and I had nothing worth mentioning on that night. Men do die rotten, and I fancied once or twice I felt a suggestive tingling in my skin.”
Jefferson seemed to be holding himself in hand with a struggle, but Austin smiled.
”Well,” he said, ”if it comes at all, it will get the right one. I'm not going home to be married. In fact, I was told that it would be rather a graceful thing to come back upon my s.h.i.+eld, though I don't know that I would like to do so looking as that n.i.g.g.e.r did. In the meanwhile, I had, perhaps, better see to Wall-eye's hand.”
He went out into the darkness, and Jefferson stood still, with his lips set tight, leaning on the table. He was, in some respects, a hard man, and his sojourn in Africa had not roused his gentler qualities, but just then he felt an unpleasant physical nausea creeping over him again.
CHAPTER XXV
HOVE OFF
The rain came down in sheets, and the mangrove roots were hidden by the yellow flood, when Jefferson stood, dripping, on the _c.u.mbria_'s bridge.
Her iron deck was level, the stumpy pole masts ran upright into the drifting mist, and a column of black smoke floated sluggishly from her rusty funnel. Dingy vapour also rose from the slender one of the locomotive boiler, and cables--hemp and wire and chain--stretched between the mangroves and the steamer's bow and stern. Jefferson, leaning heavily on the bridge rails, considered them each in turn. He s.h.i.+vered a little, though the rain was warm, and his wet face looked unusually gaunt and worn; but his eyes were intent and steady, for at last all was ready for the supreme effort of heaving the _c.u.mbria_ off.
He looked down when Austin stopped at the foot of the ladder. His face and hands were black, and the thin singlet, which was all he wore above his duck trousers, seemed glued to him.
”Hadn't you better keep inside the wheelhouse until we start the mill?”
he said.
Jefferson smiled drily. ”Do you think you could? What are you wandering up and down the deck for?”
”I'm not. I've been firing the locomotive boiler, and spent the last twenty minutes in the forecastle. It isn't as dry as it should be there.”
He spoke lightly, though there was a suggestion of tension in his voice, and it was evident that both of them were anxious. Indeed, Jefferson fancied that his comrade found it difficult to stand still at all.
”Well?” he said.
”There are a third of them I daren't turn out, and two or three of the others who are down with Tom look a good deal shakier than I care about.
Still, you see, I couldn't keep them in. They've had about enough of this country, and I don't blame them. You can figure on about half of us as reasonably effective, but what everybody wants to know is, when we are to begin.”
”When you can give me eighty pounds of steam. Then we'll shake her up for an hour or two with reversed propeller, and heave on everything when you get up to the hundred. Still, although we have blown a good deal of the mud out forward, I expect she'll want another fifty before she'll move.”
Austin glanced at the gap in the forest beneath the bows, across which the shattered mangroves were strewn. He and Jefferson had gone over all this before, but since he had stopped by the ladder they must talk of something, for silence would have been intolerable just then.
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