"We were wondering what had become of you, and Mrs. Hatherly is waiting to go home," said the latter. Then she turned and caught a glimpse of the moving lights that were closing in on one another and growing dim again. "That must be the African boat?"
"It is. She is taking out six careless sailormen whose lives are, perhaps, after all, of some value to them."
Muriel looked at her, and wished she could see her face. "Every one of them may be of some value to somebody else."
"I suppose so," and Jacinta laughed curiously. "You obvious people are now and then to be envied, Muriel."
"If there is anything you would like to tell me----" and Muriel laid a hand upon her arm with a gesture of sympathy.
"There isn"t. We all have our discontented fits, and mine is, no doubt, more than usually unreasonable since everything has turned out as I wanted it."
Then she rose and turned towards the stairway with a little laugh which Muriel fancied had a hint of pride in it. "I really don"t think I would have had anything done differently, after all, and now I must not keep Mrs. Hatherly waiting."
CHAPTER XI
THE LAND OF THE SHADOW
It was towards the end of the afternoon when the skipper of the West-coast mailboat, peering through his gla.s.ses, made out two palms that rose apparently straight out of the sea. He watched them for some minutes, and then took their bearing carefully upon the compa.s.s, before he rang for half speed and called Austin to the bridge.
"That"s your island, and we"ll run in until I get under six fathoms," he said. "After that it will have to be the surfboat, and I fancy you will be very wet when you get ash.o.r.e."
It seemed to Austin that this was more than probable, for although there was not an air of wind to wrinkle it, a long heave came up in vast, slow undulations out of the southern horizon, and the little mailboat swung over them with sharply slanted spars and funnel. She stopped once for a few moments while the deep-sea lead plunged from her forecastle, and then, with propeller throbbing slowly, crept on again. She had come out of her course already under the terms of the bargain Austin had made with the Las Palmas agent, for some of those steamers have the option of stopping for odd boatloads of cargo and pa.s.sengers wherever they can be found along the surf-swept beaches, and since no offer he could make would have tempted her skipper to venture further in among the shoals, Austin had fixed upon that island as the nearest point of access to the _c.u.mbria_. He did not, however, know how he was to reach her when he got there.
In the meanwhile they were slowly raising the land, or the nearest approach to it to be found in that part of Africa, which consists of mire and mangroves intersected everywhere by lanes of water. It lay ahead, a grey smear streaked with drifting mist against which the palms that had now grown into a cl.u.s.ter rose dim and indistinct, and a thin white line stretched between themselves and it. The skipper appeared to watch the latter anxiously.
"There"s considerable surf running in on the beach, and I"m a little uneasy about my boat," he said. "I suppose it wouldn"t suit you to go on with us, and look for a better place to get ash.o.r.e to-morrow?"
"No," said Austin, decisively. "I"m far enough from where I"m going already, and one would scarcely fancy that there are many facilities for getting about in this country."
The skipper made a little gesture of resignation. "That"s a fact," he said. "Well, I can"t go back on the agent, but if the boat turns you and the boys out before you get there you can"t blame me."
Austin laughed. He had got many a wet jacket, and had once or twice had to swim for it, in the surf of the Canary beaches, though he was quite aware that there are very few places where the sea runs in and breaks as it does on the hammered coast of Western Africa. Indeed, as he watched the blur of steamy mangroves grow clearer, and the filmy spouting increase in whiteness, he could have fancied that nature, in placing that barrier of tumbling foam along its sh.o.r.e, had meant it as a warning that the white man was not wanted there. The air was hot and heavy, the sky a dingy grey, the sea a dim, slatey green, and there came off across the steep heave a dull booming like the sound of distant thunder.
It was not an encouraging prospect, and Austin knew from what he had heard about the country that he was not likely to be more favourably impressed with it upon closer acquaintance. He also felt that if there was not quite so much at stake he could very willingly leave the salving of the _c.u.mbria_ to Jefferson and take the next steamer back again. He could fix upon no sufficient reason for his being there at all, since the very uncertain profits on a quarter share in the venture did not account for it. In one respect, also, Jacinta"s favourable opinion could scarcely be of any practical value to him, since she would naturally marry a man of means by and by, and forget all about him. Still, she had, dropping now and then a barbed word which rankled in his memory, striven to stir him to endeavour; and now he was watching the spray drive across a beach of Western Africa, while he wondered what the result of it all would be, and whether he or the men he had brought with him would escape the fever. So far as he was concerned, it did not seem to greatly matter. He had taken life easily, but he realised that it had very little to offer him, and it was, perhaps, fortunate that he did so, since it is, as a rule, broken men and those who have nothing to fall back upon who accomplish what is most worth doing in the lands that lie beneath the shadow.
In any case, it was clear that he had broken down the last bridge behind him when the mailboat stopped and lay rolling more wildly than ever athwart the long swell. A big surfboat sank down her side amidst a clatter of blocks and complaining of davit-falls, down which a cl.u.s.ter of almost naked black men slid on board. It was not an easy matter to descend after them. The steamer rolled one way, the boat another, while the latter swung up one moment almost level with her rail and swooped down beneath a fathom of streaming side the next. Austin, Bill, the fireman, and the Canarios, however, accomplished it, and there was a waving of hats among the cl.u.s.ter of pa.s.sengers who watched them above.
Then the negroes, perched six or seven on either side, took up the paddles, and Austin was sensible of a momentary sinking of his heart as the boat slid out from the rolling steamer. She was a part of the civilisation he had been accustomed to, and when a sonorous blast of her whistle came throbbing after him in farewell he sighed.
He would, however, at least not look behind, and sitting in the stern-sheets, out of the paddlers" way, he tossed the Canarios a bundle of maize-husk cigarettes, and pa.s.sed one to Bill, the fireman, who glanced at it scornfully. Then he made himself as comfortable as he could upon the box of dynamite while he lighted another, for that compound of nitro-glycerine is supposed to require a detonator, and n.o.body is very particular who has lived in Spain. The black men wanted cigarettes, too, but Austin did not hand them any. The island was still a good way off, and it seemed to him advisable that they should devote their attention to their paddling.
They did it, swaying rhythmically, with toes in a loop of fibre, and naked black bodies that straightened suddenly and bent again, while some kept up a measured hissing and the rest broke into a little doleful song. A brawny man, with a blue stripe down his forehead, stood upright grasping the sculling oar astern, and the boat swung along smoothly, with big, dim slopes of water rolling up astern of her. They, however, grew steeper as she drew in with the sh.o.r.e, and the easy dip and swing became a succession of fierce rushes, during which she drove onwards, lifted high, with the foam seething to her gunwale, and then swooped suddenly into the hollow. When she did so Austin, glancing aft, could see a great slope of water that grew steeper and steeper as it came speeding after her.
Then the slopes became ridges that frothed above and roared, and the paddles whirled faster, while the big muscles bunched beneath the helmsman"s skin, and the veins began to stand out on his sable forehead.
The boat no longer sailed insh.o.r.e. She sped like a toboggan on an icy slide, though it seemed to Austin that the comparison was faulty, because she went fastest uphill, while when he rose upright for a moment he could see no sh.o.r.e at all. There was only a succession of parallel white ridges in front of them and a filmy cloud of spray. The afternoon was also wearing through, and the vapours from the steaming swamps obscured the dingy heavens.
It was even less consoling to glance astern, for the surf that sweeps the fever coast was evidently rather worse than usual that day, as it is now and then for no very apparent reason. The ridges had become walls, with great frothing crests and sides that were smeared with spumy lines.
They had the vast, slow lift and fall of the ocean behind them, and were running up a smoothly slanted plane of shoals.
The black men paddled faster, and they no longer sang. They hissed and shrieked and whistled, while the thud of their paddles rose in a strenuous rhythm like the tapping of a great drum, and the craft careered at furious speed beneath them, driven by the sea. The foam stood feet above her now when she sped along, very like an arrow, and boiled in over her high, pointed stern every now and then. There was a foot of brine inside her that swilled to and fro, and every man was dripping, while the roar of the tumbling rollers had grown bewildering.
They appeared to be crumbling upon hammered sand not very far away.
How the negroes meant to beach her, Austin did not know, and he was content that it was their business and not his. The Canarios were evidently uneasy, for, sailormen as they were, they had never run through surf like this; but they were also of Iberian extraction, and, when discussion is clearly useless, and the last crisis must be faced, the Spaniard is, at least, as capable of calm resignation as most other men. In any case, there is certainly no better boat-boy than the West African Kroo, and Austin left the affair to the helmsman, when there was a sudden horrifying crash that threw three or four of the paddlers down together. It was evident that they had touched bottom, but, fortunately for them, the swirl of the sh.o.r.e-running sea dragged them off again, and they went up, not more than half swamped, sideways, with the foam seething into her, on the next roller. Then the spouting chaos about them seemed to suddenly melt away, and Austin, wiping the water from his eyes, saw that they were sliding round a sandy beach into a little bay.
In another few minutes they were out on the sand, though they toiled for the next half hour helping the negroes to tilt the great boat and run her in again when they had emptied the water out of her. It was done at last, and Austin felt almost sorry, while he was once more sensible of vague but unpleasant misgivings when the negroes drove her lurching out into the spray. Night was not very far away, and he had no notion of where he was to sleep, or what he was to eat, for that matter, since the provisions the steward had given him were, for the most part, saturated.
A little muddy creek oozed down amidst the mangroves across the bay, and there were a few huts, apparently made of rammed soil, beside it, as well as a canoe. The light was going when they reached them, and Bill, who went into the nearest, came out suddenly.
"There"s a dead n.i.g.g.e.r inside," he said.
Austin looked at him with a little smile. He had reasons for surmising that the man"s nerves were good, but his voice had an uncertain tone in it, and his eyes were anxious.
"Well," he said, "I suppose one must expect to come across a dead n.i.g.g.e.r now and then in this country."
Bill glanced furtively over his shoulder towards the hut, as though he desired to be rather farther away from it.
"That one wasn"t nice to look at," he said. "What did they leave him there for when there"s a creek just outside the door, and where are the rest of them? I"d like to know what he died of. It might be catchin"."
Austin was once more sensible of a little thrill of apprehension as he looked about him and considered the question. On the one side a tuft of palms dominated the narrow strip of sand, but the little ridge of high land behind it was covered with apparently impenetrable jungle.
Elsewhere the dingy mangroves rose from black depths of mire on slimy roots and pale stems that glimmered, blanched, amidst the drifting steam that clung about them. Night was close at hand, and, though there was no sign of the land breeze yet, the air was thick and heavy with a hot, sour smell. The clamour of the surf made the deep silence more apparent, for there was no sound of life about the cl.u.s.tered huts. Austin knew that the black man is frequently stricken by the pestilence, and as he stood there on the little strip of desolate beach he felt his courage melting away from him. The Canarios he also saw were standing close together and murmuring excitedly, while every now and then one of them would glance askance at the huts.
"If there was any n.i.g.g.e.rs but dead ones in the place they"d have been out by now," said Bill.
"The _c.u.mbria_ should lie about north from here up the biggest creek,"
said Austin. "If we borrowed the canoe yonder you could find your way to her?"
"I"d try that, or anything, so long as it was to get out of this."
He glanced towards the hut again, and Austin, who could not quite explain it, then or afterwards, became sensible that if he waited much longer he would say or do something that would not be seemly in one who was there as leader. He felt that had he been alone he would probably have turned and run.
"Well," he said, as quietly as he could contrive, "we will run the canoe down. I believe some of the things they get are infectious now and then."
He had no need to repeat the order. The Canarios jumped at the word, and in another few minutes they had launched the canoe and were paddling her out of the creek clumsily, as men unaccustomed to the oar might do. It opened into a wider one, through which the heave of the sea pulsed languidly, until they crawled round a point and the streamy mangroves closed in on them. Then suddenly the thick, hot darkness fell.
They moored the canoe to a slimy stem, and lay down in her, packed like herrings; but in spite of the mosquitoes Austin slept a little of the night. He was glad when all the swamps steamed again as the dawn broke suddenly upon them; and when they had eaten they took up the paddles.
The mists thinned and melted, the sun that sucked the damp from their dew-soaked clothing scorched their skin, and the glare from the yellow water became intolerable. Still, it was evident that it would not be advisable to waste any time, and through the long hot hours the canoe crept on.
Now she slid into steamy shadow among the mangrove islets, skirting belts of mire, and now crept, a slender strip of hull, packed with wearied and perspiring humanity, across broad reaches of flaming water that moved on inland under her, streaked with smears of yellow foam. It was evident to Austin that the flood tide ran longer than usual there, as it sometimes does about an island, or the Guinea stream had backed it up along the sh.o.r.e. The stream, however, did not only set up the creek, but slid through the forest, where the trees rose on arched roots above the water; and here and there they had to paddle hard to avoid being drawn into branch-roofed tunnels that smelt like open sewers. The refuse of leagues of forest seemed to lie rotting there.
By afternoon Austin"s hands were bleeding, and one of his knees was raw where he pressed it as a point of resistance to paddle from on the craft"s bottom; but he took his place when his turn came, though his eyes were dazzled, and the headache that had crept upon him was growing insufferable. He was now distinctly anxious as to when they would reach the _c.u.mbria_, for, though Bill said she lay up a big muddy creek north of the island, he appeared by no means sure that was the one, and Austin felt he could not logically blame him. Creeks, it was evident, were bewilderingly plentiful in that country, and there were no distinctive features in the scenery. Dingy, white-stemmed mangroves, fermenting mire, and yellow water, were all the same, and as they crept on past bend and island there was no sign of change.
The shadows lay black upon the water when they stopped again, all of them horribly cramped, and aching in every limb; but when they had sat portentiously silent, with the craft moored to a mangrove root, for half an hour or so, Bill stood up in the bow.
"Did you hear anything, Mr. Austin?" he asked.
Austin fancied that he did, though for a moment or two he was not sure that it was not the ticking of his watch, for the sound, which was very faint, had a beat in it. Then it grew a little louder, and he felt a curious thrill of satisfaction.