Foe-Farrell Part 43

"He told me quite faithfully," said I. "We--Mr. Collingwood and I-- both know it."

"Ay," Farrell retorted, "but neither you nor your Mr. Collingwood, when you say that, understands a bit what it means . . ." He broke off, searching for some words to convey the remembered agony to our brains that had no capacity (he felt) even to imagine it.

"No," came a dull voice from the couch--startling us, dull though it was. "Only you and I, Farrell, understand what it means. Tell them just the facts, as I told the facts, and no more. Tell them, and me, how you escaped."

"By the same s.h.i.+p as you did, if you wish to know--the _I'll Away_ schooner, Captain Jefferson Hales. And I'll tell you something even more surprising.--Your ill-luck started the very hour you left me and Rover to die like two dogs together. When you stepped aboard the _I'll Away_, you stepped aboard as a lost missionary. You had your own bad reasons for not wanting to tell too much: and Hales had his own very good reasons for not putting too many questions. To start with, he didn't like missionaries as a cla.s.s, _or_ their conversation: and I gather that his crew likewise didn't take much truck in them; neither in the species nor in you as a specimen: least of all in you as a specimen. I'm sorry for it, too, in a way: because, at first, I pictured them asking you to put up a prayer, and pictured your face and feelings as you knelt down to oblige.

Well, that was one of the pretty fancies that ought to come true but don't manage to, in this world. As for the next, there's no saying.

You pa.s.sed yourself for a missionary, and if Satan has humour enough to accept you on that ticket, a pretty figure you'll make, putting up false prayers in h.e.l.l. . . . Anyhow, you didn't make friends on board that schooner--eh?"

"I did not," Foe answered listlessly.

"You weren't over comfortable with that crowd when you changed me for it?"

"I was not, if that's any comfort to you."

Farrell grinned. "Of course it's a comfort to me. They sent you to Coventry more or less; and I'll tell you the reason, if you don't know it. There was a whisper going round the s.h.i.+p forward. . . .

One of the hands--it being a clear day--had heard a dog barking from the sh.o.r.e. Another fancied that he had. Then a third called to mind having heard somewhere--he couldn't remember the public, or even the port--that when old Buck Vliet marooned his missionary he'd left a dog with him in compa.s.sion. . . . I should tell you two gentlemen that the yarn about Vliet and how he caught a missionary by mistake, and how he'd short-circuited him somewhere in a holy terror, was a kind of legend all along the coast and around the Eastern islands.

I dare say it crossed to the Atlantic in time: for again it was the kind of story that starts by being funny and gets funnier as each man chooses to improve on it. . . . All I can say is, that if the body you and I, Foe, looked down upon, that afternoon, belonged to Vliet's missionary, I don't want to hear any more fun about it. . . . So you see, gentlemen, this G.o.d-forsaken lot, down in the _I'll Away's_ fo'c'sle, patched it up amongst them that this man, in his hurry, had deserted his dog. Now, as I shall tell you, if they had reasoned, they'd have known that the dog wouldn't starve, anyway. But they didn't reason. They were a G.o.d-forsaken lot--mostly broken men, pliers about the islands--and it just went against their instinct that anyone should forsake so much as a dog. If they'd known you had forsaken a man, you Foe, they'd have tarred and burnt you.

"--Captain Hales, as it happened, hadn't caught the barking or any faint echo of it: the reason being that he was hard of hearing, although in the rest of his senses sharper than all his crew rolled together, and in wits or at a bargain a match for any trader between Chile and Palmerston. Also I have heard it rumoured that he had run a bit wild in his youth, found himself within the law or outside of it (I forget which), and come down to the South Pacific for the good of his health. But that was many years ago. He was now a middle-aged man, and had learnt enough about these waters to call you a fool if you suggested by way of flattery that what he didn't know about them wasn't worth knowing.

"--Something, at any rate, in his past had turned him into a silent, brooding man, seldom coming out of his thoughts until it came to a bargain, when he woke up like a giant from sleep. His deafness helped to fasten this silent habit deeper upon him. Also he was touchy about his deafness: didn't like at any time to be reminded of it; and was apt to fly into a sudden rage if anyone brought up a reminder, even by a chance hint. And that, belike, was the main reason why he alone on board--barring yourself, Foe--never heard tell of this barking which he had missed to hear with his own ears.

"--And now for one thing more, Foe--and it'll make you squirm by and by! Like most deaf men he was a bit suspicious: and looking at you sideways as you came on board--what with one thing and another, not liking missionaries as a line in trade, and, in particular, mistrusting the cut of _your_ jib, he thought things over a bit and altered his helm.

"--I'll explain. You see, you not only came aboard looking what you are, but you came aboard fairly slimed over, in addition, with all that had ever been told or guessed against Buck Vliet's missionary.

The stories didn't agree about his sect: but they agreed that Vliet, though a ruffian, hadn't marooned the man just for fun--that he must have been a hard case somehow. The stories might vary concerning Vliet's reasons: but they agreed that the man hadn't come to it by sheer over-prayerfulness: and the conclusion was--reasonable or unreasonable--that you, Foe, must have been a bad potato somehow, or at best a severe trial, if so hardened a stomach as Vliet's hadn't been able to keep you down. Worse; he guessed you for a spy.

"--Here, Sir Roderick and Mr. Collingwood, I must tell you that Vliet and Hales, as masters in this knock-about off-island trade, had grown to be rival kings in their way, and Hales in his brooding fas.h.i.+on as jealous as fire. From all I've heard, Vliet hadn't the ambition to be properly jealous: all _he_ objected to was his business being cut.

"--Vliet was an old man--a regular h.o.a.ry sinner, who kept his trade secrets by a very simple method. He stocked his crews entirely with lads of his own begetting. White, black, he didn't care how many wives he carried to sea, or how much of a family wash he carried in the shrouds on a fine day. He ran his trade on secrecy and close family limitations. He had no range. His joy was to have a corner unknown to a soul else in the world. Fat, lazy, wicked, and sly-- that was Vliet. He belonged to the old school.

"--Now, for years, Hales--of the new school, and challenger--had been chasing after a rumour that chased after Vliet from port to port--a rumour that Vliet drew on an uncharted island, in those lat.i.tudes, known only to himself and to so much of his progeny as the old Solomon didn't mistrust enough to lose overboard. . . . Well, the belief at Valparaiso is that old Buck Vliet, with his schooner--on which he grudged a penny for repairs--had found an ocean grave at last, somewhere. The guess is that he overdid the _Two Brothers_ in the end, being careless of warnings, with a top-hamper of wives.

There is also a legend--likely invented to account for the name of his schooner--that he left all his money to a twin brother in business in Salt Lake City, and that the brother and his brother's wives had fitted out a new schooner to hunt for the island's whereabouts.

"--Listen, you Foe! While I was lying sick, and you neglecting the look-out, Hales made our island, and anch.o.r.ed in the bay. While I was lying sick, and you neglecting the look-out, Hales made our island, that had been his dream for years; landed there, or on the far side, took its bearings to a hair, of course, and went ash.o.r.e with a party to prospect. What do you say to that?"

"I say," answered Foe, still languidly, s.h.i.+fting his head a little on the cus.h.i.+on, "that I always told you we were on the wrong side of the island, and that you would never listen."

"They landed, anyway," pursued Farrell; "and for a whole day, after watering, they explored. They never got over the crest that looked down on our camp."

"And if they had they would never have seen us," said Foe, responding like a man in a dream. "You had chosen the site too cleverly; the fern-brake would have hidden us, anyway. Let that pa.s.s."

"But there was the bonfire and the look-out, both unattended."

"Oh, if we're to start re-arguing arguments that kept us tired for about three years," answered Foe, "you built the bonfire on the wrong slope, as I always told you. And I'd cut down your flagstaff."

"We won't quarrel about _that_, since here we are," Farrell retorted with a savage grin. "So I'll drop it and get on with the story.

And the next thing to be mentioned in the story, Foe, is that for a clever man, you're about the biggest fool alive. You have no end of knowledge in you, which I admired on the island. The way you found all kinds of plants and things and turned them to account, and explained to me how traders and practical chemists could make fortunes out of them--why, it was wonderful. But it wasn't so wonderful to me as that, with all this knowledge, you'd never turned it to account, so to speak, when, with a third of it, at your age, I'd have been a millionaire. And the ways and manners of a gentleman you had, too; which I could easier set about copying--as I did.

It won't bring you much comfort to know that, half the time, I was sucking education out of you, grinning inwardly and thinking, 'Now, my fine hater, the more you're taking the superior line with me the more I'm your pupil all the time; the more you're giving me what I'll find priceless, one of these days, if ever we get back upon London pavements.' In the blindness of your hatred you never guessed that Peter Farrell, all through life, might have had a long way with him--a way of looking ahead--and all to better himself. You never guessed _that_, all the time, I was letting you teach me.

"--But in practical matters--in all that counts first with a business man--I saw pretty early that you were little better than a fool.

Yet I couldn't have believed you or any man such a fool as you showed yourself on the _I'll Away_: and even you couldn't have missed sensing it but for one thing--_you couldn't dare return to the island_.

"--A place so rich as that, unknown, uncharted!--reeking with copra, not to mention other wealth--fairly asking to be sold and turned over to a government, to a syndicate, to develop it! Man! you and Hales had a million safe between you when you boarded the schooner; and I can see Hales's mind at work when he spotted your boat and sized up the share he was losing by your turning up. The marvel to me is, he didn't turn you a blind eye. But Hales is a humane man. He did time in his youth, but he's not the sort that you are, Foe--the sort that could leave a man to die solitary and forsaken. Belike, too, the prize was so great in his grasp that he didn't care how much, in reason, might run through his fingers.

"--Listen! When you sighted him, he had made a careful offing of the southern reefs, and had hauled up close to his wind. Where do you suppose he was bound? He was fetching up to beat back to Valparaiso.

Being Yankee born and not a stocking-banker like old Buck Vliet, he was all for Valparaiso with an island to sell to the Chilian Government, and a concession and a syndicate fair in view. This cargo of beads, cheap guns, sham jewellery, canned meats, and rum, that he had aboard for the islands, would keep: the rum would even be improved by a little Christian delay. But, if he sank it all, all was nothing to the secret he carried.

"--And then you hove on his view, for partner: and he took you in.

. . . I hope you'll remember him gratefully after this, Foe.

He chose to sight you--and he hadn't heard the dog. If he had, it wasn't in him to guess that you had left any better than a dog behind.

"--Then you fairly flummoxed him. Missionary though you were, he'd accepted you as prospective shareholder. It wasn't for him to guess that you dared not go back.

"--He's told me that, accepting you, for a day and a half he held on his course, close-hauled. Is that so? But he was suspicious, as deaf men are. He took a notion that you--you, keeping mum as a cat, having to pa.s.s for somebody else and avoid questions--were just lying low, meaning to slip cable at Valparaiso and hurry in with a prior claim. I am sorry to say it, Foe: but altogether you did not create good impression on board the _I'll Away_. To the crew you were an object of dark suspicion. To the skipper you were either a close knave, meaning to trick him, or an incredible idiot. After a while, and almost against hope, he determined to try you for an idiot.

He ordered his helm up, and watched you. You did not protest.

He put his helm farther and farther up, and headed for the Marquesas. Still you offered no objection. So he landed you--on Nukuheva, if I remember. And from Nukuheva, somehow, I guess, you got a slant out of your missionary labours to Sydney or else 'twas back to Valparaiso--I haven't tracked it: but from one or other you picked up some sort of a pa.s.sage home. Anyway, lost men as the _I'll Away's_ crew might be, they were glad enough, having traded you for nothing, to up-sail and lose you out of their sight. . . . And this man I find you two gentlemen treating as your friend, whom the sc.u.m of the earth (as you would call them) abhorred! And you _know_, whilst those poor men only guessed!"

"Stay a moment, Farrell," interposed Jimmy. "Sorry to interrupt . . . but will you kindly take a look around this room.

Not entirely a neat apartment, eh? A few odd cases and cabin trunks lying around? . . . You and Sir Roderick were almost at blows just now. But if you're curious to know the reason of all this mess, it is that, when you paid us this timely call, he was packing to search for you."

"So?" Farrell drew back, regarding me, and the upper lids of his eyes went up till they were almost hidden by his brows. "So?" he said slowly. "But why?"

"Put it at a whim," I said sharply, "and get on with your tale.

. . . If you interrupt again, Jimmy, I'll strangle you, or attempt to. You may have observed that I'm ready to fight anybody, this afternoon."

Farrell looked at me earnestly. "I see what you would be driving at, sir," said he, becoming the humble tradesman again. "And I admire.

But, by G.o.d, sir!" he broke out, "it won't do! It shan't do! No man is going to shoulder that man's sin, to rob me of him!"

"Get down from that horse," said I. "You can mount him again, if you choose, later on; but, first, finish the story."

"All very well," said Farrell, "to put it in that dictatorial way, when you've taken the heart out of a man. . . . Well, Hales headed back for Valparaiso, scarce believing his luck. There he interviewed the ministry, got a provisional concession, and started out for the island again, to make good--and found another inhabitant alive and kicking.

"--He behaved just as well as before, and better--for I was frank with him and knowledgeable. He couldn't understand missionaries, real or sham: but he understood a square deal, and didn't charge interest on bowels of mercy. His only grumble was, 'I'll put you on your honour. Tell me, please, there's no more of you hereabouts.

It's a long pa.s.sage to and fro: and if you're a man, you'll see that I'm almost as crowded as you are lonesome. Don't start me beating _all_ this brush for skunks!'

"--He sailed me back to Valparaiso, after we had spent three days prospecting the property together. At Lima I left him to fight out details with the Minister of the Interior--who, for some mysterious reason, turned out to be the person charged with trafficking for an islet three hundred miles from any interior--while I trained north and, crossing the Isthmus, sailed north for New York. The only man I knew in the whole Western Hemisphere was a friend of mine there, Renton by name, and I made for Renton, to raise capital.

"--I found that he could walk into Wall Street, and, arm-in-arm with me, raise the money easily. Moreover I found that he had stored some twelve thousand dollars for me as my share of an investment I'd helped him to in Costa Rica. Some day, gentlemen, I'll tell you of this little episode, if you care to hear about it. It was a deal in a queer sort of mahogany he had asked me to inspect.

"--But to return to the island, and wind up. Hales found me there, alive and hearty, Foe. For why? Because I had found a purpose in me--to wait and, when time came, to hunt you to the ends of the earth. It's _my_ turn now. You've taught me, and I'll improve on your teaching. You've bought a practice, I've learnt; and now I learn that you've fixed up to marry this Miss Denistoun.

"--Don't I know why? . . . Didn't I see that look in her eyes as she walked past me, just now?

"--Yes. . . . Santa's look. . . . No secrets between you and me.

But, by G.o.d, you shan't! I'll save her from _that_. Sooner than she shall be wife of yours, I'll marry her myself!"