Long Odds Part 14

"We have been wondering what Lister came back for, and the general notion is that you had had enough of him," said his friend. "In any case, he seems quite content with Las Palmas, and the British colony are watching his proceedings with quiet interest. After cleaning out several Spaniards at the casino he has apparently devoted himself to Miss Ratcliffe's service. It is not evident that he receives a great deal of encouragement from the lady herself, but her mother is ostentatiously gracious to him. She may have a purpose in this."

Desmond crumpled the letter in one hand. "Crosbie always was a--tattler, but it's more than possible that he's right," he said.

Then he sighed. "And I put Lister on board the mail-boat and sent him there! If I'd only known what the result would be I'd have drowned him."

He lay still for another few moments filling his pipe, and then flung the tobacco pouch across the room, for a sojourn off those beaches would probably try the temper of most white men, and the Hibernian nature now and then came uppermost in him.

"Damp," he said. "Reeking, dripping, putrid, like everything else on this forlorn coast! It would be a boon to humanity if somebody bought the besotted continent and scuttled it."

He rose to his feet as a man in bedraggled white uniform appeared in the doorway.

"You were speaking, sir?" he said.

"I was," said Desmond. "I suggested that it was a pity somebody couldn't torpedo this benighted continent. Any word from the men you sent ash.o.r.e?"

"They've signaled from the rise," said the _Palestrina_'s mate. "No sign of him yet. I don't expect them off until to-morrow. The surf's running steep." Desmond made a gesture of concurrence as he glanced at the filmy spray-cloud that drove like smoke up the wet and glistening beach. It was flung aloft by a wild white welter of crumbling seas, and he realized that the boat's crew who had gone ash.o.r.e could not rejoin the _Palestrina_ before the morning, at least. They went every day to watch for a lumbering ox team or a band of carriers plodding seaward across the littoral, and it seemed they had once more signaled that there was no sign of either. Then he moved towards the door bareheaded, with only an unb.u.t.toned duck jacket over his thin singlet, and the mate ventured a deprecatory protest.

"She's throwing it over her in sheets forward," he said.

Desmond disregarded him, and staggering clear of the deck-house stood with feet spread well apart gazing at the stretch of leaden sea while, as the _Palestrina_'s bows went up, the spray that whirled in over her weather rail wet him to the skin. He saw the livid tops of the combers that rolled by the point and heard the jarring cables ring, and then turned his eyes sh.o.r.ewards and gazed across the waste of misty littoral.

"It's a cheerful place, but now and then you feel you might get to like it," he said. "Perhaps it's the uncertainty as to when the fever will get you that gives living here a zest. When you come to think of it, some of us have curious notions."

He appeared to be considering the point as they edged back under the lee of the deck-house, and the mate grinned.

"The men don't take kindly to it, sir," he said. "They've been worrying me lately as to how long we're stopping here."

"A week," said Desmond. "Ormsgill's time is running out, and he'll be here or send us word by then. He said he would, and what that man says you can count on being done."

Something in his tone suggested that the question might be considered as closed, and they discussed other matters while the deck heaved and slanted under them until a man forward flung up an arm and turned towards them with a cry which the wind swept away. In another moment Desmond scrambled half-way up the bridge ladder, and clung there with the mate close beneath him gazing at the white welter where the seas swept by the point. There was a sail just outsh.o.r.e of it, a little strip of gray canvas that appeared and vanished amidst the serried ranks of tumbling combers. It drew out of them and drove furiously towards the _Palestrina_, and when a strip of white hull grew into visibility beneath it Desmond looked down at his mate.

"A big surf-boat. It's Ormsgill," he said.

There was certainty in his tone, as well as a little ring of satisfaction which was, perhaps, warranted, for it is, after all, something to be the friend of a man who does just what he has promised and never arrives too late. In the meanwhile the object they were watching had grown into a bellying lug-sail that reeled to lee and to weather with the sea streaming from the foot of it, and a patch of foam-swept hull. The boat came on furiously, and when the mate sprang from the ladder roaring orders Desmond could see three or four black figures through the spray that whirled over her. There was also another man in white garments standing upright in her stern, and Desmond was wholly sure of his ident.i.ty. Then she was lost for awhile, and only swept into sight again abreast of the _Palestrina_'s dipping bows, hove high with half her length lifted out of the crest of a breaking sea.

She drove forward with it, the foam standing half a man's height above her stern and the foot of the slanted lug-sail was.h.i.+ng in the brine, while a bent white figure struggled with the great steering oar. She swooped like a toboggan plunging down an icy slide when she was level with the _Palestrina_'s bridge, and some of the men who watched her from the latter's rail held their breath as the smoking sea pa.s.sed on and another gathered itself together astern of her. The helmsman, they knew, must bring the dripping, half-swamped boat on the wind to reach the strip of lee beneath the steamer's stern, and when he did it there was every prospect of her rolling over.

In another moment several black objects rose and grappled with the lug-sail sheet, and the big boat tilted until all one side of her was in the air. Then she went up in the midst of a white spouting as the slope of water behind fell upon her. Still, the slanted lug-sail rose out of it, and then came down thras.h.i.+ng furiously while naked black figures half-seen in the spray bent from her gunwale with swinging paddles as she drove towards the _Palestrina_'s quarter. After that there was a hoa.r.s.e shouting, and the lines flew from the reeling taffrail as she slid under the steamer's stern.

In another minute or two Ormsgill swung himself on board through the gangway. He had no hat, and the water ran from him, but he shook hands with Desmond unconcernedly.

"Ask them to hand that fellow up," he said pointing to a man who sat huddled in the water that swirled up and down inside the plunging boat. "We took rather a heavy one over two or three hours ago, and he brought up on the after thwart when the big oar jumped its crutch. As he's the only Kroo among them, I took the helm myself after that. I don't fancy he has broken anything."

Desmond hustled him into the deck-house when the negro had been brought on deck and the dripping boat rode astern, and an hour later he sat at dinner with his comrade in the little white saloon. Darkness had closed down in the meanwhile, and the lamp that swung above their heads flung a soft light across the table, where dainty gla.s.sware and silver glittered on the snowy cloth. Ormsgill smiled as he glanced at it and the glowing blotch of color in his wine gla.s.s.

"After all, this kind of thing has its advantages, especially when one has been accustomed to squatting in the wood smoke over a calabash of palm oil or some other unhallowed n.i.g.g.e.r compound," he said. "It's a trifle pleasant to wear clothes that fit you, too. Father Tiebout's and those Dom Clemente lent me didn't. I had to cut the wrists off the latter's jacket."

Desmond looked at him reflectively over his cigar, for he had something to say, and was a trifle uncertain as to how he should set about it.

"Well," he said, "I suppose it is nice for a while, especially, as you say, when it's a change. The point is, would it satisfy you long?"

"A dinner like this one is generally acceptable."

"We'll admit it. The trouble is that these civilized comforts are apt to cost you something. I mean one has usually to give up something else for the sake of them. You begin to understand?"

"I'm not sure that I do," said Ormsgill. "I'll ask you to go on."

Desmond laughed, though he did not feel quite at ease. He remembered the letter in his pocket, and felt that there was a responsibility on him, and that was a thing which, inconsequent as he was, he seldom shrank from. This was not a man who talked about his duty; in fact, any reference to the subject usually roused in him a sense of opposition. He contented himself with doing it when he recognized it, and since singleness of purpose is not invariably an efficient subst.i.tute for mental ability, it was not altogether his fault when at times he did it clumsily. There was also a subtle bond between him and the man who sat opposite him. Affection was not the right term, and it was more than _camaraderie_, an elusive something that could not be defined and was yet in their case a compelling force.

"Well," he said, "those quagmires and forests up yonder appeal to you.

It's a little difficult for any reasonable person to see why they should, but they certainly do. So does the sea. The love of it's in both of us."

He stopped with a lifted hand, and, for the ports were open, Ormsgill heard the deep rumble of the eternal surf on the hammered beach. He also heard the onward march of the white hosts of tumbling seas, and the shrill scream of the wire rigging singing to the gale. It was the turmoil of the elemental conflict that must rage in one form or another by sea and in the wilderness while the world endures, and there is a theme in its clas.h.i.+ng harmonies that stirs the hearts of men. Ormsgill felt the thrill of it, and Desmond's eyes glistened.

"Lord," he said, "we're curiously made. What in the name of wonder is it that appeals to us in driving a swamping surf-boat over those combers, or standing on the bridge ramming her full speed into it with the green seas going over her forward and everything battened down?

Still, there is something. While we can do that kind of thing we can't stay at home."

Ormsgill smiled curiously. He was acquainted with some of the characteristics of the wild Celtic strain, and knew that his comrade now and then let himself go. "I think," he said, "considering where you come from, you should understand it more readily than I can do."

"You're not exempt," said Desmond, "you cold-blooded Saxons. What did you run that boat down the coast under the whole lug-sail for when she'd have gone nearly dry with two reefs tied down?"

"I don't know. Still, she lost the wind in the hollows. One had to keep her ahead of the seas."

Desmond laughed scornfully. "Is that it? When the boy went down with the breath knocked out of him as she took in a green sea, something came over you as you grabbed the steering oar. You went suddenly crazy, fighting crazy. You'd have rolled her over or run her under before you tied a reef in."

He stopped a moment, and made a little gesture as of one throwing something away. "Still, you'll have to give all that up when you marry and settle down, though it's a little difficult to imagine you going round in a frock coat and tight patent boots, growing fat, and overfeeding yourself like a--Strasburg goose. I suppose it is your intention to be married some day?"

"I believe it is," said Ormsgill quietly.

Desmond laid down his cigar and looked at him. "Well, I may be on dangerous ground, but when I get steam up I seldom allow a thing like that to influence me. Anyway, I've been worrying over you lately. The question is--are you going to marry the right girl, one who would take you as you are and encourage you to be more so? It isn't every woman who could put up with a man of your kind, but there are a few."

His comrade's expression might have warned another man, but Desmond went on.

"I don't know if my views are worth anything, and some of my friends doubt it, but you shall have them. After all, the matter's rather an important one. The wife for you is one who would sympathize with your notions even if she knew they were crazy ones, because they were yours, and when they led you into lumber, as such notions generally do, stand beside you smiling to face the world and the devil. There are such women. I've met one or two."

There was silence for a moment or two when he stopped, and Ormsgill, gazing straight before him with vacant eyes, saw a dark-eyed girl with dusky hair and a face of the pale ivory tint sitting where the moonlight streamed in between a colonnade of slender pillars. As it happened, Desmond saw her, too, and sighed. Then Ormsgill seemed to rouse himself.

"I am," he said, "going to marry Miss Ratcliffe, as I think you must be quite aware."

Desmond could have laughed. He fancied that it would have been almost warranted, but he laid a restraint upon himself. "Then," he said, "if you have both made up your minds and the thing is settled what in the name of wonder are you wandering about Africa for? The fact that you like it doesn't count. Why don't you go back--now--to her? It would be considerably wiser."

Ormsgill looked at him with half-closed eyes. "I'll have to ask you to speak plainly."

"I'll try," and Desmond made a little deprecatory gesture. "There are women it isn't wise to leave too long alone. They were not made to live that way, and if they find it insupportable you can't blame them.

How many years is it since Miss Ratcliffe has had more than a few weeks of your company, and is it natural that a young woman should be quietly content while the man she is to marry wanders through these forests endeavoring to throw his life away? Besides that, the thing might very possibly not commend itself to her mother."

The lines grew a trifle deeper on Ormsgill's forehead, and his eyes were grave. "I have," he said, "been a little afraid of what her mother might do myself."

"Then why don't you go across to Grand Canary and make sure she doesn't try to influence the girl? Isn't it only reasonable that she should expect you to be there and save her all unpleasantness in case of anything of that kind happening?"