He climbed to the ladder, but a final odd fancy occurred to him, a parting twist to the other"s torment; and he summoned the big negro mate.
"You see that fella white man? Mebbe he wants to go below--good; you give him that other suit. Mebbe he raises h.e.l.l or touches the pump; you knock seven bells out of him. Otherwise no order. You savee?"
b.u.t.termilk saveed with a vacant grin.
There hung for a moment after the helmet had been locked a singled-eyed and monstrous red ghoul of the sea that presently lowered itself and sank....
Wetherbee landed easily on the boat deck of the _Fernshawe_ well away aft. It was hardly bright enough as yet above him, and he had to feel his path a foot at a time in somber green twilight. Quick fishes steered to and fro about him, silent and curious witnesses of this invasion. He gave no heed, he had no care of sharks or diamond fish or any possible danger, too intent on his errand, too elate and confident.
Balancing on his hands like an acrobat, he crawled over the edge, down to the main deck, and began to explore forward.
In one hand he held a short and heavy steel crowbar, with a fine ground tip. In the other he drew the coils of his life line and air tube. They lengthened after him as he entered by the main companion, pa.s.sed the door to the saloon, and up a long, dark pa.s.sage to a thwartship corridor. There, as he had known from a vague and general familiarity with its plan, was the door to the steamer"s strong room. The lock proved a trifle in the nip of his powerful jimmy....
When he groped out into the pa.s.sage, twenty minutes later, he carried slung to his belt, a sagging canvas bag.
It seemed to him that the ship must have moved in the interval of his search. Some shifting of cargo or fracture of the coral supports had tilted her sharply by the stern. He walked down a noticeable slope, and halfway he met a dead man, sliding on an upward current.
The stranger bobbed into him and went asprawl like a clumsy and apologetic pa.s.ser-by. His sightless eyes peered into Wetherbee"s with mild reproach. Wetherbee thrust him off, and he went bowing and spinning gravely on his course.
Wetherbee cared for no such matters. His nerve remained unshaken, his pulses calm, as befitted a man who had played out the end of a difficult game to rewarded success. But as he resumed his retreat down the pa.s.sage he caught a glimpse of something surely quite as human and lively as himself.
The light was somewhat stronger now and flooding in through the side panel made a kind of proscenium of the landing by the main companionway.
And in that s.p.a.ce he descried a dim form facing him there, looking toward him: a man as tall as himself, clad like himself in diving rig--like himself in polished copper helmet. He knew only two helmets of that particular shape and color. One he wore. The other he had left on the deck of the _Fancy Free_, his spare diving gear. No man of his crew ever could have worn it, for none of them used an apparatus. Therefore he knew that Deacon Selden had come down after all to dispute the prize with him and to claim vengeance on the spot.
He exulted; he could have wished it so and not otherwise. He had meant to kill Selden anyhow. But this was the time and the place and the manner to kill him; a manner to match and to complete his crime as an artistic achievement. One blow on the helmet would crush the fellow"s eardrums. And leave no trace--no trace at all! He could bear the body quite openly to Port Kennedy, and even inter it with honors for an unfortunate hand who had died in the line of duty. No trace. Everybody outgeneraled, duped, and defeated and himself free as air.
And the cream of it was: Selden was going to fight! He saw that when he took a stride and the other moved up with him. He stretched out a hand to steady for a rush. So did the other. He swung up his armed fist. The other did the like....
Laughing loud inside his casque, he flung the bar above his head, and went to meet the adversary in crashing impact.
Meanwhile, above in the sunshine, on the deck of the _Fancy Free_, a limp and wild-eyed gentleman, who had once been deacon in his far past, continued to call abroad with prayful fervor, if any help might come:
"_The wicked man lieth in wait secretly as a lion.... Lo, he hath said in his heart, G.o.d hath forgotten: he hideth his wrong in his heart.... Let him be snared in his own pit: in the net which he hid is his own foot taken.... Lord, break Thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man...!_"
And when the first luggers came flying from Port Kennedy to the scene of the wreck and the first investigators went below, they found the lifeless body of Captain Wetherbee, the only honest man that ever came to Thursday Island by sea, who had been drowned there: impaled among the shards and splinters of a broken mirror that had served to mask a saloon door aboard the murdered Brisbane steamer.
MEANING--CHASE YOURSELF
At the moment I first saw Angus Jones I was taking my ease on Funchal beach. I lay by an upturned market boat, careful to keep even my feet in the shade. This is a prime precaution when you wear three toes leaking through either shoe and you live under a sun that burns like the white hot spot in a crown sheet. It was breathless noon. The waves came marching in to hiss on the basalt cobbles. Nevertheless and after a manner I was taking my ease, the only thing I was still free to take in all Madeira and the last thing I shall ever give up anywhere.
Off the one quay lay a rusted tramp with the lines of a wash boiler and the flag of Siam--of all tropic flags--hanging over her stern like a dishrag to a nail. With shoutings a half-naked crew hauled bags and crates out of her into sh.o.r.e boats. Her decks were a litter of teak beams, ill-stowed. She carried a sloven list that brought her port chains under, and she shouldered at her anchor like a drunken man at a post. Moreover, the reek of her was an offense along the water front.
And yet I desired her, with all her untidiness, her filth, her unseemly violence of activity, for presently when her cargo was out she would stagger off the roadstead as she had come and bear away for some other port--any other port. Happy ship that could be free to head up into the world again. Happy souls aboard who should leave the black beach of Funchal behind them! And so I lay and watched and envied her and them, admonishing sand hoppers between whiles.
"Do you chance to have the loan of a match about you?"...
I sat up the better to stare. The stranger stood all of seven feet, it seemed to me, built like a lath, hung around and about with the wreck of tweeds. But what struck me was his headgear. He wore one of those wool caps, half an inch thick, with which an inscrutable Providence has moved the peasantry of this blistering isle to inflict themselves. He had the ear flaps down. It made me sweat again to see him. But he seemed amazingly cool. And so indeed he was, for this was Angus Jones.
"Do you find yourself in need of a fire?" I asked.
"It"s for a light to my pipe."
"I"d rather not disturb myself," I told him, "but a smoke is an inducement. If the tobacco is worth it, I can probably raise a match or two from some fisherman."
"Rest yourself again," he said, observing me with interest. "I see you are a man of judgment.... It was my idea if I could beg a match I could also beg the rest."
So we reclined in the shade together, Angus Jones and I, and conversed in the liberal fashion of our calling.
"I am newly come from over yon." He hooked a thumb toward the mountains that wall the almost unknown North Coast. "The cheese from ewes is sustaining but monotonous. The people are of an incredible simplicity.
They talk pure Portuguese of the fourteenth century, and they count on their fingers."
"You should have stayed there," I made answer. "The people here are sophisticated by tourists and poverty. Also cheese is superior to cactus fruit, and from sugar cane one turns at last with loathing."
"Do you work for it?"
I was long since lost to shame. I confessed how I ballyhooed at the door of an embroidery shop whenever a ship loosed English pa.s.sengers for a two-hour visit.
"Not good enough," decided Angus Jones. "Though, mark you, I should never admit a town of this size to be as barren as you say. Still I am fed up with Madeira. I am disappointed in Madeira. Is it believable, after my stay of a month, I have yet to meet the famous wine of the name on its native heath?"
"Quite, since it does not exist. You could have met only an inferior imported Malaga with a fake label."
"Can such things be?" asked Jones, with an expression of pain.
"Oh, it"s all a fraud. Like the coasters from the Monte that have to be shoved, and the embroidery, which is cheaper in Paris, and the beggars, who are the only wealthy citizens by escaping the taxes."
He considered.
"I think I shall not stay. Tell me, how does a lad like you or me set about getting away from Madeira?"
"How much money have you?"
"As much as a gentleman needs."
"Not good enough," I echoed. "This is the one place in the world you cannot leave without paying for the privilege."
He looked down on my bitterness from between his ear flaps.
"Man," he said, "when dealing with people of a racial simplicity, never talk of paying. "Tis in the nature of the lesser nationalities to bear the white man as a burden."
And I laughed. It was a blessing to laugh. I thought I had forgotten how.