Part 12 (1/2)
He rubbed his wet hands with a satisfaction, which to me, who had stood that kind of thing for several days and nights, seemed inconceivable in any non-aquatic creature.
”You seem to enjoy getting wet, Pilot,” I remarked.
He had a bit of land round his house in the suburbs and it was of his garden he was thinking. At the sound of the word garden, unheard, unspoken for so many days, I had a vision of gorgeous colour, of sweet scents, of a girlish figure crouching in a chair. Yes. That was a distinct emotion breaking into the peace I had found in the sleepless anxieties of my responsibility during a week of dangerous bad weather.
The Colony, the pilot explained, had suffered from unparalleled drought.
This was the first decent drop of water they had had for seven months.
The root crops were lost. And, trying to be casual, but with visible interest, he asked me if I had perchance any potatoes to spare.
Potatoes! I had managed to forget them. In a moment I felt plunged into corruption up to my neck. Mr. Burns was making eyes at me behind the pilot's back.
Finally, he obtained a ton, and paid ten pounds for it. This was twice the price of my bargain with Jacobus. The spirit of covetousness woke up in me. That night, in harbour, before I slept, the Custom House galley came alongside. While his underlings were putting seals on the storerooms, the officer in charge took me aside confidentially. ”I say, Captain, you don't happen to have any potatoes to sell.”
Clearly there was a potato famine in the land. I let him have a ton for twelve pounds and he went away joyfully. That night I dreamt of a pile of gold in the form of a grave in which a girl was buried, and woke up callous with greed. On calling at my s.h.i.+p-broker's office, that man, after the usual business had been transacted, pushed his spectacles up on his forehead.
”I was thinking, Captain, that coming from the Pearl of the Ocean you may have some potatoes to sell.”
I said negligently: ”Oh, yes, I could spare you a ton. Fifteen pounds.”
He exclaimed: ”I say!” But after studying my face for a while accepted my terms with a faint grimace. It seems that these people could not exist without potatoes. I could. I didn't want to see a potato as long as I lived; but the demon of lucre had taken possession of me. How the news got about I don't know, but, returning on board rather late, I found a small group of men of the coster type hanging about the waist, while Mr. Burns walked to and fro the quarterdeck loftily, keeping a triumphant eye on them. They had come to buy potatoes.
”These chaps have been waiting here in the sun for hours,” Burns whispered to me excitedly. ”They have drank the water-cask dry. Don't you throw away your chances, sir. You are too good-natured.”
I selected a man with thick legs and a man with a cast in his eye to negotiate with; simply because they were easily distinguishable from the rest. ”You have the money on you?” I inquired, before taking them down into the cabin.
”Yes, sir,” they answered in one voice, slapping their pockets. I liked their air of quiet determination. Long before the end of the day all the potatoes were sold at about three times the price I had paid for them.
Mr. Burns, feverish and exulting, congratulated himself on his skilful care of my commercial venture, but hinted plainly that I ought to have made more of it.
That night I did not sleep very well. I thought of Jacobus by fits and starts, between s.n.a.t.c.hes of dreams concerned with castaways starving on a desert island covered with flowers. It was extremely unpleasant. In the morning, tired and unrefreshed, I sat down and wrote a long letter to my owners, giving them a carefully-thought-out scheme for the s.h.i.+p's employment in the East and about the China Seas for the next two years.
I spent the day at that task and felt somewhat more at peace when it was done.
Their reply came in due course. They were greatly struck with my project; but considering that, notwithstanding the unfortunate difficulty with the bags (which they trusted I would know how to guard against in the future), the voyage showed a very fair profit, they thought it would be better to keep the s.h.i.+p in the sugar trade-at least for the present.
I turned over the page and read on:
”We have had a letter from our good friend Mr. Jacobus. We are pleased to see how well you have hit it off with him; for, not to speak of his a.s.sistance in the unfortunate matter of the bags, he writes us that should you, by using all possible dispatch, manage to bring the s.h.i.+p back early in the season he would be able to give us a good rate of freight.
We have no doubt that your best endeavours . . . etc. . . etc.”
I dropped the letter and sat motionless for a long time. Then I wrote my answer (it was a short one) and went ash.o.r.e myself to post it. But I pa.s.sed one letter-box, then another, and in the end found myself going up Collins Street with the letter still in my pocket-against my heart.
Collins Street at four o'clock in the afternoon is not exactly a desert solitude; but I had never felt more isolated from the rest of mankind as when I walked that day its crowded pavement, battling desperately with my thoughts and feeling already vanquished.
There came a moment when the awful tenacity of Jacobus, the man of one pa.s.sion and of one idea, appeared to me almost heroic. He had not given me up. He had gone again to his odious brother. And then he appeared to me odious himself. Was it for his own sake or for the sake of the poor girl? And on that last supposition the memory of the kiss which missed my lips appalled me; for whatever he had seen, or guessed at, or risked, he knew nothing of that. Unless the girl had told him. How could I go back to fan that fatal spark with my cold breath? No, no, that unexpected kiss had to be paid for at its full price.
At the first letter-box I came to I stopped and reaching into my breast-pocket I took out the letter-it was as if I were plucking out my very heart-and dropped it through the slit. Then I went straight on board.