""Hard over, Sir," said the leading seaman. "Way "nuff, boys!" I flashed my torch upon the tiny jetty which Grunbaum had made near his house, for he often went on fishing expeditions round the island, I had heard.
Steps had been cut down from a path in the face of the cliff which led away up to some workings facing the sea, but which are out of sight.
When I had climbed up the jetty I said:
""Now you wait here while I go along to the house, and make enquiries. I don"t suppose he"s very far off."
"I made my own way up the rough stones to the path, midway between the soft whisper of the waves and the frightful edge above my head and I felt a momentary vertigo. I was suspended in the depths of an impenetrable darkness. All things--the jetty, the boat, the path, were swallowed up. Even the ship was indicated only by the faint hurricane-lamp at the gangway and the reflection of the galley-fire against a bulkhead. Stone for building and for b.u.t.tressing the mine-galleries had been quarried out below, and the path was under-cut and littered about with the debris of an old ore-tip. I moved slowly toward Grunbaum"s house, and as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness I saw another path, a more slanting stairway, on the face of the cliff. I paused. It was some hundred yards or so to where Grunbaum"s house stood, as you see, at the foot of the slope. In the darkness Jack"s words seemed to me to shed light. There was something wrong. But if something was wrong, if young Siddons had come to some harm, how had it happened? He must have had some motive in leaving a cutter with six men to wait for him. As for my idiotic suggestion that he might have gone on the booze, there wasn"t a cafe within three miles that young Siddons would enter. He must have had some plan. Of course we are told, with wearisome insistence, to look for the woman; but we don"t in real life. We look for all sorts of motives before we look for the woman. And even if I did in this instance suppose for a moment that Siddons had gone off on some mysterious adventure involving say, Captain Macedoine"s daughter, I was no further advanced. He could hardly have told the sailors to wait. It was against all traditions of the service. And as I was deciding that he must have come to harm, and wondering how the deuce I was to discover him, a light shone out for a moment above me, I saw a figure silhouetted in a doorway and then vanish. Someone had gone in. I started up the steep by-path to make enquiries. I knew the pilot, a predatory person from Samos, had a hutch on the mountain somewhere, and it occurred to me that he had negotiated the sale of a flask or two of the sweetish wine of the island, and young Siddons had seized the opportunity to get it aboard without the old man knowing it. Quite a rational theory, I thought, as I toiled up the path getting short of breath. And suddenly I came upon the door which had opened and closed, a door in a house like a square white flat-topped box, with a window in one side shedding a faint glow upon a garden of shrubs.
"And now I was in a quandary. I sat down on a bowlder to take a breath.
Supposing I knocked at the door and asked if any one had seen the Third Mate, and the inhabitants had not seen him and couldn"t understand me, I should have done no good. And supposing they had seen him, or that he was inside, I should have some difficulty in explaining my interest in his private affairs. For I liked him, and we are always afraid of those whom we like. It is not only that we fear to tarnish our own reputation in their eyes, but we suffer a mingled terror and pleasure lest we discover them to be unworthy of their exalted position in our affections. So I got up and instead of knocking at the door I stepped among the shrubs and came to the window. And sitting close against the wall, with a small table in front of him and his head on his hand, sat Captain Macedoine.
"He was old. He showed, as we say, the ravages of time. And not of time only. Time alone could not furrow a human face into so many distorting folds and wrinkles. As I recalled the sleek, full-fed condition of his big smooth-shaven face when I had known him in the old days, I was revolted at the change. It was as though an evil spirit had been striving for years to leave him, and had failed. The cheeks were sunk into furrows of gray stubble and had sagged into sardonic ridges round the thin, wavering line of the mouth. The red eyelids blinked and twitched among the innumerable seams that ran back to the spa.r.s.e, iron-gray hair. The nose, quite a n.o.ble and aquiline affair once, was red at the end, and querulous, like the long lean chin and reedy neck.
Only the brow gave any hint that he might not be a casual loafer at a railroad station willing to carry your grip for a few pennies. High, narrow, and revealed remorselessly by the pa.s.sing of the years, it was the brow of the supreme illusionist, the victim of an implacable and sinister spiritual destiny. I have said that when I saw him the previous evening he had the look of a man trying to win back into the world. Now that I saw him more clearly, he looked as though he had come back, at some frightful cost, and regretted it.
"He was listening to someone I could not see at the moment, and raising his eyes with a regularly recurring movement that was almost mechanical.
I shifted a little to take in another view of the small, shabbily furnished room. Standing by the end of a sofa, on which I could see a girl"s feet and skirt, was a dark young man brushing his frock coat and talking with what struck me as absurd eloquence. He had never shaved; his face was obscured in a sort of brown fungus and was blotchy about the forehead and chin. His black eyes rolled as he talked and flourished the brush. He seemed to be describing something highly creditable to himself. This, I may tell you, was Monsieur Nikitos, visible in business hours as a clerk at Grunbaum"s elbow, or in a bare barn of an outer office. He came over to the table, and sitting down near Captain Macedoine, opened an account book. This was evidently a _seance_ of the Anglo-h.e.l.lenic Development Company, I thought, and I moved back to the path. I had no desire to spy upon any of these people, you understand. I had to find Siddons, and even the intriguing amus.e.m.e.nt of watching a great illusionist had to recede before that urgent need. I regained the path below and thinking I would go down to the boat in case he had returned I started back. The torch showed me a steep descent of rubble where a cave-in had occurred, a gash in the edge of the path, I thought at first it was the way down to the jetty and I flashed the lamp steadily upon the bottom. There was someone lying down there. It was not long before I was kneeling over young Siddons.
"At first, you know, I really thought he was dead. He was lying face upward and his forehead had been gouged open above the left eye with some jagged edge and was bleeding in thick, slow runnels that disappeared into his curly hair. He lay perfectly motionless, but as I bent over him and searched the soft, delicate face in the first horror of grief, the eyes opened wide and blinked in a gaze of unconscious enquiry.
""What is it, my boy?" I asked and after seeming to collect himself he asked, in perfect calmness:
""Who is that?"
""The Chief," I answered. "Did you fall?" He closed his eyes and made an effort to move. I put my arm around him. He said:
""Chief, is the boat still there?" I told him it was.
""Help me up. Be careful. I think my collar-bone is broken again. Oh, Lord! Does--does the Old Man know?"
""It was he sent me," I said. "He was afraid you had had an accident.
Does that hurt?"
""No--but catch hold of me lower down, will you?"
""How did it happen? Did you slip?"
""Oh, Lord! Yes--slipped, you know--look out!"
""I thought you were dead," I said jocularly, as we reached the path.
"And under his breath he made a remark that Captain Macedoine"s daughter had made to me not so many hours before.
"He said he wished he was."
CHAPTER IV
"By Jove," said Mr. Spenlove, suddenly, after a long silence, "I have often wondered what might have happened to us if young Siddons hadn"t tumbled down there and smashed himself up. I mean, supposing our minds hadn"t been taken off the great subject of Captain Macedoine"s financial projects. Because, mind you, although I behaved in a very sagacious manner while discussing the matter with Jack and his wife, I"m not at all prepared to say that I wouldn"t have submitted if Jack had urged it in his tempestuous way. The psychology of being stung is a very complicated affair. We pride ourselves on our strong, clear vision and so forth, but it is very largely bluff. We are all reeds shaken by the winds of desire. In spite of my sagacity the notion of making a fortune was alluring. When I came to think of it the idea of a few years of ruthless exploitation of the toiling inhabitants of a region for which I had no sympathy, followed by a dignified return to England with a sunny competence--say ten thousand a year, afforded an attractive field for the development of one"s personality. I suppose it comes to all of us at times--a vision of ourselves with the power to expand to the utmost. And at the back of it all lay the exasperating and tantalizing thought that it _might_ be possible. The very preposterousness of the suggestion was in its favour, in a way. The very fact that n.o.body else had ever thought of making a fortune out of Macedonia led one to wonder if it might not be done. You get an idea like that in your head, and it lies there and simmers and seethes, and finally boils over and you have taken the plunge. That"s what might have happened, if I had not gone ash.o.r.e to look for young Siddons, and accidentally beheld the great Captain Macedoine himself and his lieutenant. I don"t say that the mere view of these two worthies discussing their plans was sufficient to convince me of their rascality. I"m not convinced of that even now. What I did acquire, even before young Siddons drove the whole matter into the background, was a sudden sense of proportion. To a.s.sociate a golden fortune with those two shabby and cadaverous birds of prey was too much.
And when we got aboard again the whole proposition seemed to have vanished into thin air.
"Of course everyone was excited. Jack had to take hold and give orders.
He shut his wife and youngster up in their cabin, ordered us all out of the saloon except the steward, and set to work on young Siddons, who was lying on the table with a towel under his head. Mr. Bloom, who had been rushing to and fro making friends with the Second, the Third, and even the donkey man, in a frenzied attempt to get information about the coal which was to be sold the next day, now favoured me with a heart-to-heart talk on the subject of professional etiquette. It was a mistake, in his opinion as an experienced ship"s officer, for the Captain to be a surgeon as well. It was time we took a firm stand. Owners should be informed that this primitive and obsolete state of affairs could be no longer tolerated. Now when he was sailing under the Cuban flag, they always carried a surgeon. Compelled to by law. Of course one couldn"t let a man die for lack of attention; but if he was in Captain Evans"
shoes, he would send in a report with a formal protest appended. Do everything courteously and in due form but--be firm! That was the trouble with sea-going officers--they were not firm with their employers. He himself, he was frank to say, had often given owners a piece of his mind, and no doubt he had suffered for it. And why? Simply because he got no support. Now he knew I wouldn"t take any silly offence if he mentioned a personal matter, but really for Captain Evans to send an engineer ash.o.r.e in a boat was in the highest degree unprofessional.
It was a job for an executive officer, obviously. Not that he wished to criticise--far from it--but _verb. sap_ as they say at Oxford and Cambridge. A word to the right man, mind you, was worthy any amount of useless argument with--well, he wouldn"t mention any names, but I knew what he meant, no doubt.
"How long this enchanted imbecile would have continued his monologue I shouldn"t care to say, if Jack had not called me down to help get young Siddons into his bunk. The collar-bone, broken more than once at football, would knit nicely, he said, and he had put a couple of neat st.i.tches in the gash over the eye. Made him shout, Jack admitted as he washed his hands with carbolic soap, but what was a little pain compared with being disfigured for life? He reckoned it would heal up and leave no more than a faint scar. What did I reckon he was doing, eh? Funny for him to leave the boat. Very unusual. What did I think?
""Didn"t he give you any explanation?" I enquired.
""Well, I suppose you can call it an explanation," said Jack, "in a way.
He said he went ash.o.r.e for a few minutes on a private matter, and he would appreciate it if I took his word. I"m supposed to keep the matter private, too, so keep your trap shut, Fred. Fact is," he went on, "it"s that gel"s at the bottom of it. He"s one of those young fellers who take it hard when they do take it. What they call in novvels hopeless pa.s.sion."
"I was surprised at Jack"s penetration. Indeed I was surprised at his allusion to what he called "novvels" for he had never, so far as I knew, read any. Perhaps he had taken a surrept.i.tious squint at some of the exemplary serials which Mrs. Evans affected.
""Then you won"t take any action?" I said.
""Why should I? He"s had an accident, that"s all. If he"d fell down and broke his neck, it would be different. As it is, he"s had a lesson. I must go up and take a look round."
"Jack went up on deck to take a look at the mooring ropes, for the weather is treacherous in spring and autumn hereabouts, and more than once we had to slip and run out to sea. I stepped into the little alleyway on the port-side and walked along to young Siddons" room. The door was on the hook and a bright bar of light lay athwart the floor of the alleyway. He was lying on his back as we had left him, his unbandaged eye staring straight up at the deck overhead. As I opened the door and closed it behind me he turned that eye upon me without moving his head.
""All right?" I asked, just for something to say. He made a slight gesture with his hand, signifying, I imagine, that it was nothing. His face had that expression of formidable composure which the young a.s.sume to conceal their emotions. I don"t know exactly why I bothered myself with him just then. Perhaps because there is for me a singular fascination in watching the young. I won"t say it is affection, because our relations are usually of the sketchiest description. Sometimes I don"t know them at all. I fancy it is because one sees oneself in them surrounded by the magical glamour of an incorruptible destiny. As we say, they are refreshing, even in their griefs, and there is something in the theory that we, as we are crossing the parched areas of middle age, can draw upon their spiritual vitality to our own advantage if not to theirs.
""Nothing you want, eh?" I said, looking round. The one bright eye stared straight up again.
""Will you do me a favour, Chief?" he asked in a low tone.
""Of course I will," I answered. "What is it?"
""If you wouldn"t mind, when you go ash.o.r.e, to see Miss Macedoine and tell her I am sorry she couldn"t--you see," he broke off, suddenly, "I said I"d see her this evening. I went up ... she wasn"t there. I couldn"t wait ... boat waiting, you know. Then something ... well, I fell down. Would you mind?"
""I"ll tell her," I said. "Is she fond of you?"
"His eye closed and he lay as motionless as though he were dead.
""I don"t suppose it matters now," he remarked, very quietly. "I shan"t see her again, very likely. Only I thought--if you told her how it was ... you understand?"
""I tell you what I"ll do," I replied. "I"ll ask her to come and see you. Isn"t that the idea?"
""Yes, that"s the idea," he returned with extraordinary bitterness.
"That"s all it"s likely to be--an idea. I never did have any luck. It"s always the way, somehow. The things you want ... you can"t get. And now, this ... I say, Chief."
""Well?"
""Excuse me, won"t you, talking like this. I"m awfully grateful really.
It means a good deal to me, if she only knows I meant to be there. She said I could--if I liked."
""Isn"t she playing with you?" I asked, harshly. He put up his hand.