"Open her out," he said. "That"s a steamboat coming, and it looks as if she would go by well to the south."
Bill pulled at a lever, the engine clanked faster, and the launch commenced to rail more sharply as she lurched over the long undulations with an increasing gurgle beneath her side. The sea was oily smooth, and she rolled southwards fast; but the steamer"s lights were rising high, and the pounding of engines grew louder in a sharp crescendo, until they could hear the black water frothing under iron bows. Then the launch"s whistle broke into a shrill scream. There was no answer, and Austin turned to the fireman again.
"Shake her up! There will not be another boat for a week!" he said.
Bill pulled the lever over a little further, and stirred the furnace, and the clanking grew louder, while the launch rolled more violently.
When she swung up, Austin saw a strip of dusky hull that swayed and heaved in front of them, and then was suddenly lost to view again.
"She"s not one of the mailboats, anyway. They"d be lighted, saloon deck and p.o.o.p," he said. "It almost looks as if she would get away from us."
Bill opened the whistle full, and left it screaming while he sprang up on the side deck, a black figure holding high a strip of blazing waste.
Its red glare streaked the water, and the burning oil dripped from it in a sparkling rain, while Austin felt his heart beat when the man flung it down with an imprecation. Then a deep, vibratory blast came trembling across the glimmering water, and he saw the piled-up foam fall away beneath the big iron bows.
"They"ve seen us," he said. "She"s standing by."
Five minutes later the launch lay lurching beneath the steamer"s high, black side, while a man leaned out from her slanted bridge above, looking down into her.
"What d"you want?" he said. "I"m not going in for cargo unless it"s worth while. We"re tolerably full this trip."
"A pa.s.sage," said Austin. "There are myself and two sick men. We"re going to Grand Canary."
"What"s the oil for?"
"To cover the ticket."
The skipper appeared to be gazing down at him in astonishment.
"Sixteen pounds" worth, at the most, for three men to Grand Canary! You have good nerves," he said.
"I can"t go any further, and you see they"re very sick."
The skipper was understood to say that his ship was not a several adjectived hospital, but Austin only smiled, for he was acquainted with that kind of man, and aware that he was, at least, as likely to do him a kindness as an elaborately got up mailboat"s skipper.
"Well," he said, "if you won"t have us, I"ll take them back and bury them. It"s tolerably sure to come to that. Two of us will not eat much, any way, and we"ll be quite content to sleep on deck."
There was no answer for a moment, and then, as the bridge came slanting down, the man who leaned out from it laughed.
"It"s a puncheon of oil to nothing, and I"ve been hard up myself," he said. "The next thing is, how the devil are you going to get them up?
We"ve stowed away our ladder."
"Then it"ll have to be a sling. I"ll steady them up when she rises, and some of your crowd can hand them in."
It was done with difficulty, for the steamer rolled with a disconcerting swing, and then Austin grasped Bill"s hand before he went up the rope. A gong clanged sharply, the launch slid astern, and several seamen carried the two bundles of foul blankets away. While Austin watched them vacantly a hand fell upon his shoulder, and propelled him into a room beneath the bridge. Then he heard a harsh voice:
"There isn"t any factory I"m acquainted with hereabouts. Where d"you get that oil from?" it said.
Austin sat down on the settee and blinked at the burly, hard-faced man in front of him.
"I don"t know if you"ll be astonished, but we really came by it legitimately," he said. "In fact, we got it out of a stranded steamer--one we"re endeavouring to heave off, you see."
The skipper smiled as comprehension suddenly dawned on him. "Then you"re one of the ---- fools who bought the _c.u.mbria_?"
"I am. Still, I"m not sure that your opinion of us is quite warranted yet. If it isn"t, you"ll get more than the one puncheon for taking us across. In the meanwhile, I"m a little anxious about those men."
"They"re all right. Pills will see to them. We have one. He probably killed somebody by accident, or did something of that kind, or he wouldn"t be here. Directors had a notion we might pick up a few pa.s.sengers. They, however, prefer the liners."
Austin laughed, and the skipper"s eyes slowly twinkled. "The fact is, I don"t blame them," he said. "Any way, you will lie down here until they get you a room in the p.o.o.p ready."
He went out, and an hour or two later Austin was roused by a touch from a fitful sleep. A young man who stooped over him was regarding him intently.
"Put that in your mouth?" he said.
Austin slipped the little gla.s.s tube between his lips, and the doctor nodded when he pa.s.sed it back to him.
"Yes," he said, "you have a very promising case of fever coming on. Get up and lean on me; the sooner we pack you between the blankets the better."
Austin rose unsteadily, and found that he had some difficulty in walking when they went out upon the slanting deck. He was quite sure of that, but everything else that he did, or was done to him, during the next few days, was wrapped in obscurity. Still, he had a hazy notion of the doctor and another man half dragging him into a little room.
CHAPTER XVIII
JACINTA BECOMES INDIGNANT
It was fifteen days after he boarded the steamer when Austin reached Las Palmas in a condition which, at least, prevented him chafing at the delay as he otherwise would have done. On the second day something went wrong with the high-pressure engine, and the little, deep-loaded vessel lay rolling idly athwart the swell, while her engineers dismantled and re-erected it. Then the trouble they had already had with the condenser became more acute, so that they would scarcely keep a vacuum, and it also happened that the trade-breeze she had to steam against blew unusually fresh that season.
Austin, however, was not aware of this at the time. He lay rambling incoherently for several days, and when at last his senses came back to him, found himself too weak and listless to trouble about anything. He gained strength rapidly, for the swamp fever does not, as a rule, keep its victim prostrate long. It either kills him without loss of time, or allows him to escape for a season; but its effect is frequently mental as well as physical, and Austin"s listlessness remained. He had borne a heavy strain, and when he went ash.o.r.e at Las Palmas the inevitable reaction was intensified by the black dejection the fever had left behind. It seemed to him that he and Jefferson were only wasting their efforts, and though he still meant to go on with them, he expected no result, since he now felt that there was not the slightest probability of their ever getting the _c.u.mbria_ off. It was a somewhat unusual mood for a young Englishman to find himself in, though by no means an incomprehensible one in case of a man badly shaken by the malaria fever, while one of Austin"s shortcomings was, or so, at least, Jacinta Brown considered, a too complaisant adaptation of himself to circ.u.mstances.
She held the belief that when the latter were unpropitious, a determined attempt to alter them was much more commendable, and not infrequently successful.
In any case, Austin found Pancho Brown was away buying tomatoes when he called at his office, and the Spanish clerk also informed him that Miss Brown and Mrs. Hatherly had left Las Palmas for a while. He fancied they had gone to Madeira, but was not certain, and Austin, who left him a message for Brown and a letter Jefferson had charged him with to be forwarded to Miss Gascoyne, went on to the telegraph office more dejected than ever. Jacinta had, usually, a bracing effect upon those she came into contact with, and Austin, who felt he needed a mental stimulant, realised now that one of the things that had sustained him was the expectation of hearing her express her approval of what he had done. He had not looked for anything more, but it seemed that he must also dispense with this consolation.
He delivered one of the canarios, who was apparently recovering, to his friends, and saw the other bestowed in the hospital, and then, finding that he could not loiter about Las Palmas waiting an answer to his cable, which he did not expect for several days, decided to go across to Teneriffe with the _Estremedura_. There was no difficulty about this, though funds were scanty, for the Spanish manager told him he could make himself at home on board her as long as he liked, if he would instruct the new sobrecargo in his duties, as he, it appeared, had some difficulty in understanding them.
On the night they went to sea he lay upon the settee in the engineers"
mess-room, with Macallister sitting opposite him, and a basket of white grapes and a garafon of red wine on the table between them. Port and door were wide open, and the trade-breeze swept through the room, fresh, and delightfully cool. Austin had also an unusually good cigar in his hand, and stretched himself on the settee with a little sigh of content when he had recounted what they had done on board the _c.u.mbria_.
"I don"t know if we"ll ever get her off, and the astonishing thing is, that since I had the fever I don"t seem to care," he said. "In the meanwhile, it"s a relief to get away from her. In fact, I feel I would like to lie here and take it easy for at least a year."
Macallister nodded comprehendingly. Austin"s face was blanched and hollow, and he was very thin, while the stamp of weariness and la.s.situde was plain on him. Still, as he glanced in his direction a little sparkle crept into the engineer"s eyes.
"So Jefferson made the pump go, and ran the forehold dry!" he said.
"When ye come to think of it, yon is an ingenious man."
Austin laughed. "He is also, in some respects, an astonishing one. He was perfectly at home among the smart people at the Catalina, and I fancy he would have been equally so in the Bowery, whose inhabitants, one understands, very much resemble in their manners those of your Glasgow closes or Edinburgh wynds. In fact, I"ve wondered, now and then, if Miss Gascoyne quite realises who she is going to marry. There are several sides to Jefferson"s character, and she has, so far, only seen one of them."
"Well," said Macallister, reflectively, "I"m thinking she will never see the rest. There are men, though they"re no exactly plentiful, who can hide them, and it"s scarcely likely that Jefferson will rive a steamboat out of the African swamps again."